Lounge for 10 Mar 2012 by HT Media

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 10

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

THE NEW THINK TANK Dry intellectual pursuits such as neuroscience and auction theory are solving problems on the ground. We met four people whose models prove how >Pages 911

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH HYDE PARK ENTERTAINMENT’S ASHOK AMRITRAJ >Page 7

SUMMER SONATA

The Lakmé Fashion Week threw up looks that were big on bright colours and mixed patterns >Page 8

MISSING PARIS FOR THE EIFFEL

Sometimes the point of a tiger safari is not the tiger alone. Wildlife parks have so much more to offer >Page 12

Biju Dominic uses behavioural science to reduce fatal acci dents on Mumbai’s railway tracks.

REPLY TO ALL

OUR DAILY BREAD

AAKAR PATEL

THE APOSTATES OF PAKISTAN

wrote this piece for the two Pakistani newspapers where I write columns, but they did not publish it. These papers are quite liberal, and their editors open-minded. This is the first time they’ve done this, and I see their point. The subject is difficult. It is about a sect of Muslims, originally all Punjabi, who are disliked in India and Pakistan. They are called Ahmadis, from the sect’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Or they are called Qadianis, from Mirza Ahmad’s hometown of Qadian in Gurdaspur on the Indian side. >Page 4

SAMAR HALARNKAR

THE GOOD LIFE

SHOBA NARAYAN

ROSEMARY AND THE BABY

DESIGN BEGINS AT HOME

hen people talk about India’s design aesthetic, they most often reach for the past. The decorative traditions of India took pleasure in crafting objects for everyday use that were quite beautiful. Is there an Indian design aesthetic? What are some objects of everyday use that exemplify this aesthetic? Here is my incomplete list of things I believe are beautiful and follow the form-marriesfunction credo. >Page 5

FAKE BIBLIOPHILIA

Our irritating new tendency to fetishize the physical book is actually an excuse not to read >Page 14

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE REVIEW | PUNJABI BY NATURE, BANGALORE

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

INSPIRING TALES

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

“Dream Girls”, 3 March, comes as a refreshing story of how girls in Haryana are overcoming the odds to achieve what they want. I’ll remember these stories whenever I am unsure of achieving what I want to achieve. SHASHANK

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

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

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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 9

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

DREAM GIRLS Four women from Haryana tell us how they are forging a life and career for themselves in a state that seems to have no place for girls >Pages 1012

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH STANDARD CHARTERED’S JASPAL SINGH BINDRA >Page 9

KITCHEN DRAMA

Turn up the tech quotient of your cooking zone with these new gadgets and appliances >Page 6

NOT JUST FORTY WINKS The Supreme Court recently said sleep is a ‘basic’ right. But human behaviour says it takes more than just the basics to get sleep >Page 8

RIPOSTE TO THE RIOTS

REPLY TO ALL

AAKAR PATEL

or most people familiar with the National Capital Region’s Punjabi by Nature, the signature dish—vodka golgappas—is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind. Though the golgappas have travelled to their newest restaurant on Hosur Road in Bangalore, guests at Punjabi by Nature seem more keen on the beer from the inhouse microbrewery. We tried the brews by brew master Subroto Cariapa, with Mohit Nischol of beverage consulting company Tulleeho.

The good The presence of a microbrewery in an opulent restaurant is surprising, but the pairing is positively interesting. Of the three lagers and one wheat beer to choose from, the dark lager is the best on the menu. The dark colour of the beer comes from the lightly toasted malt that adds a tinge of bitterness. Paired with the tandoori paneer tikka, “the slight bitterness of the beer offsets the strong flavour and smokiness of tandoori food”, says Nischol. The wheat beer has only light hints of wheat and is cloudy, as wheat ales

tend to be. Not strongly flavoured, the only ale on the menu is paired with a mildly spiced Veg Galouti Kebab or the shahi tangri kebab. Lager beers go surprisingly well with Indian food, and you’ll find the light beers on this restaurant’s menu don’t interfere with the spices in the food. For those heading to Punjabi by Nature for an evening of only good food, this restaurant does not disappoint. The paneer in the palak paneer is the most tender one available in Bangalore and the same goes for the chicken in the kastoori methi chicken. The size of the tandoori roti was large enough for two of us to share. The Kastoori Kebab that Nischol ordered with his dark lager was succulent.

The not so good The pale beer is a tad too pale. “It’s like a watered-down premium lager,” says Nischol, adding that the beer is not crisp and has little carbonation, a property one could identify as the fizziness of the beer. Even the premium lager is not crisp, and seems strangely creamy (with more of a smooth texture

than fizz). There are few options—just four beers to choose from. Nischol says the light beers on the menu might be to ensure that the flavours of the food are not interfered with. With limited options when compared to the other two breweries in town that experiment with new brews on a monthly basis, Punjabi by Nature is not your joint for a beer with the gang. It is, instead, a place for a special dinner, with the brews thrown in for good measure.

Talk plastic The price of 500ml of beer is `150 (exclusive of taxes), which is less expensive than the two other competitors in the city. The Veg Galouti Kebab (five pieces) comes at `350 and the Kastoori Kebab (chicken, five pieces) at `395 . A meal for two, with alcohol, will cost around `2,000. Punjabi by Nature and the Beer Garden microbrewery, Hosur Road, Koramangala, behind The Forum mall, Bangalore. For reservations, call 49138800. Pavitra Jayaraman

WHY EVERYBODY LOVES VIDYA

Khatoon Bano (in blue), 18, has worked for a year and her father ensures that her entire salary is deposited in her bank account.

She breaks every convention that defines Hindi film actresses of today, and deliberately keeps away from glamour >Pages 1617

Aakar Patel in “Learnt in Godhra, forgotten in Jaipur”, 4 February, says communal riots in T P T India are always onesided. He reminds us of Sikhs being at the receiving end of the riots in Delhi in 1984 and the Muslim community getting the worst of it all in Gujarat. Patel is blatantly wrong. Hindus were burnt, stabbed and killed in large numbers during the Partition in 1947. Heinous acts of crime aimed at the extermination of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan’s Punjab resulted in the fact that almost all those who survived the carnage, fled to India. Patel also talks about the communal violence that claimed hundreds of Sikhs in India in 1984. This despicable violence was instigated by a certain section of the then ruling party and is the darkest chapter in India’s recent history. Patel, however, forgets the systematic killing of hundreds of Hindus in Punjab during the late 1980s. Many Hindu families fled Punjab as the militants in Punjab lined up Hindus and shot them dead in full public view. SUDHIR BISHT THE GOOD LIFE

SHOBA NARAYAN

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

ALLAH ON PRIME TIME TELEVISION

WHAT IS PRIYANKA BRITAIN’S QUEEN GANDHI AFRAID OF? OF BAKES

he top four channels watched in Pakistan are Star Plus, Geo News, Sony and Colors. Of these, Star Plus has over three times the viewership of Geo News. Pakistanis get their news from local channels but their entertainment from Indian channels. This is so because it is not possible to produce entertainment in a moral society. If we think about it, entertainment can only be produced on the cusp of immorality. Because Pakistan is a pious society, it must borrow... >Page 4

riyanka Gandhi Vadra is a magnificent campaigner. In terms of sheer charisma, she beats her brother hollow. She has that preternatural ability to gauge the pulse of the people. It is much more than empathy—every good spiritual guru has empathy. The currency of campaign politics, however, is connecting to a crowd and giving voice to their dreams. It is the ability to deliver the same feel-good factor to a crowd that empathy offers to an individual. This emotional connect combined with... >Page 5

here was a wonderful drama series on the BBC, Call the Midwife, which reminded me how fortunate I was to have my children in the 1990s rather than the 1950s. At that time, with the National Health Service only a few years old, women were still birthing and dying at home, attended by midwives carrying bags full of scary looking contraptions. Fetching hot towels and boiling water was the order of the day, mainly as something for the men to do instead of pacing up and down and... >Page 5

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

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AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

The apostates of Pakistan

DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES

It is about a sect of Muslims, originally all Punjabi, who are disliked in India and Pakistan. They are called Ahmadis, from the sect’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Or they are called Qadianis, from Mirza Ahmad’s hometown of Qadian in Gurdaspur on the Indian side. Muslims in both India and Pakistan think Qadianis are apostates, betrayers of Islam, what is called murtadd in Arabic. Pakistan’s passport application forms have this declaration that all Muslims must sign: “I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Quadiani to be an imposter nabi and also consider his followers whether belonging to the Lahori or Quadiani group, to be non-Muslims.” Why force Muslims to sign this? Actually, the reason for this cruel wording is to ensure that Ahmadis do not sign it. But why? To deny them access to Mecca, where Saudis permit Muslims alone to enter. Pakistan’s four million Ahmadis are denied their religious obligation of Haj through this device. Pakistan’s electorate is separated into Muslim and non-Muslim categories. This means Ahmadis cannot vote in Pakistan, because the state doesn’t recognize them as Muslim and Ahmadis don’t consider themselves non-Muslim. Indian Ahmadis are more fortunate, but not because Indian Muslims are more open-minded. The Indian Express reported on 25 September that an Ahmadi exhibition of the Quran in 53 languages was not allowed to be held in Delhi. Jama Masjid’s Imam Bukhari was arrested with 55 other Muslims who threatened the exhibition. A dozen or so years ago, Darul Uloom Deoband’s and Nadwa’s clerics issued a joint fatwa prohibiting Indian Muslims from social and commercial interaction with Ahmadis. They were warned specifically against offering a thirsting Ahmadi water. I wrote an editorial against this, immediately getting the proprietor of my newspaper (who was Muslim) into trouble with Urdu newspapers. Pakistan’s The Express Tribune reported on 8 October that 10 students, including seven girls, and a female teacher were expelled from two schools near Faisalabad after the village learnt they were Ahmadis. On 28 May 2010, two Ahmadi mosques were attacked in Lahore and 93 Ahmadis were slaughtered. Reporting the mosque attacks live, Pakistan’s television channels called them “Ahmadi

places of worship”. Calling them masjid or mosque means up to three years in jail (section 298b). Three years in jail for the Ahmadi who refers to his prayer call as an azan. Why such hatred? Let’s try to understand the Ahmadi faith. At the age of 40, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (died 1908) said he began receiving visions. In one, he saw himself writing some decrees about the future and placing them for God’s approval. God, who “looked like a judge or a ruler”, flicked the pen first to get the ink flowing, and signed. When Mirza Ahmad woke, his shirt was spattered with red ink. This message from God qualified Ahmad as a prophet. This is unacceptable to Muslims because they insist God will communicate with no human of any faith after Muhammad’s death. That line has permanently gone dead. Despite his visions, Mirza Ahmad personally did not claim prophethood. He denounced Judaism and Christianity as error, and once also claimed he was an avatar of Vishnu. Muslims believe Jesus did not die on the cross, but ascended to heaven when alive. Mirza Ahmad said Jesus died not on the cross, but in India. Judgement Day would bring not Jesus, as Muslims and Christians believed, but him. Other than his claim of receiving visions, this is the second thing that is seen as problematic. Mirza Ahmad’s followers are split into two groups. The points of Islam on which all Ahmadis agree with other Muslims are: Shahada (“there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet”), prayer, fasting, giving alms and Haj. All Ahmadis consider themselves Sunni. Ahmadis don’t believe in taweez (amulets), in jinns, in dargahs and in pirs. In these things, therefore, they appear to resemble conservative Muslims rather than heretics. On the issue of prophethood, Ahmadis are split. The smaller Lahori group accepts the finality of prophet Muhammad and considers Mirza Ahmed only a renewer. The main Qadiani allows space for Mirza Ahmad’s “minor” prophecies. On 25 March 1938, Maulana Maudoodi accepted the Lahori Ahmadis as Muslim, but not the Qadianis. Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s foreign

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Persecuted: Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community praying in Chenab Nagar, Pakistan, in July 2010; and (left) Mirza Ghulam Ahmad with his son in a picture before 1900.

minister, and Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s Nobel laureate, were both from the Qadiani group. The May 2010 massacres in Lahore were of the Qadiani group. Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1974, Pakistan’s national assembly unanimously declared both groups non-Muslims. Under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, in 1984, laws were passed criminalizing the practise of religion by Ahmadis. On 21 November 1996, Salam died

in Oxford. His body was brought to Pakistan for burial in Rabwah, a city on the river Chenab built by Ahmadis. His tombstone referred to him as “the first Muslim Nobel laureate for his work on physics”. A Pakistani judge ordered the word “Muslim” to be defaced. It now reads “first Nobel laureate”. Even in death, Pakistan will deny the Ahmadi his faith. Two years later, on 17 November 1998, Pakistan’s Punjab assembly under Shahbaz Sharif voted to rename Rabwah because it is a Quranic name. Rabwah became Nawan Qadian (New Qadian) against the will of its residents. Some Muslims were uneasy at having to say the despised word “Qadian”. On 14 February 1999, it was again renamed. Rabwah is now called Chenab Nagar. Mirza Ahmad liked British rule because they gave full religious freedom and legal protection to their subjects. Though some of his teachings are contradictory, he seemed on the whole to be moderate in his interpretations and in his outlook. There is another thing that gets Muslims worked up about Ahmadis. This is Mirza Ahmad’s undoing of jihad. He told Muslims to give up qital (jihad’s violent aspect) entirely. His followers, he said, “would have nothing to do with war and fighting”. “Armed jihad ends, and only the jihad to purify your souls remains,” he said.

Jihad of the pen in place of jihad of the sword. Both Qadiani and Lahori groups hold this to be true. All Ahmadis reject Al Qaeda without qualification. It is difficult not to be attracted to such Gandhian pacifism. In Lahore 10 years ago to speak at the Kinnaird College for Women, I was rattled by the snarling response from a professor there, a woman who till that moment was quite sophisticated, when someone in our dinner group mentioned Ahmadis. She felt they were rightly being punished for their religion, and this is the view of Pakistanis across class. I would say some of the responsibility for their persecution lies with Pakistan’s Ahmadi community. They will reject this, and it is a callous thing to say given their state, but it is true. They were enthusiastic supporters of the two-nation theory, and of Pakistan. Sir Zafarullah Khan championed the Islamizing of Pakistan through its infamous Objectives Resolution of 1949. Ahmadis crossed over to do jihad in Kashmir, ignoring Mirza Ahmad’s wisdom. They raised a group of mujahideen there called Furqan Force to cleanse it of Hindu rule. Such bigotry against other faiths usually invites punishment against your own. For the apostates of Pakistan, it has. 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

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

THE LANGUAGE BARRIER I am from an English-medium school and my husband studied in Hindi schools till the higher classes. He subsequently joined world-class institutions and is today well placed and comfortable in global situations. However, his English has a bit of a regional Indian accent, and he mispronounces some words. I have never thought it is any kind of problem. However, our 11-year-old daughter has begun to correct him all the time. She seems to be almost embarrassed about him and recently even told me that I should come alone to the

parent-teacher association (PTA) meeting. I do not like this attitude and have explained to her that it is not a big deal. I am afraid this is going to cause a rift between them, because he too is now self-conscious around her. Children of your daughter’s age are at the beginning of that phase where there is a slightly exaggerated sense of not wanting to stick out, feeling watched by others, being afraid of teasing and ridicule, wanting desperately to blend in. Part of this means that they are mildly to acutely embarrassed by their parents. This awkwardness about one’s parents may not

even be for any apparent reason, or for reasons that seem minor and baseless to us as adults. Since their own egos are so wafer-thin, going towards adolescence, every little “variation” on how they think things “should be” are seen as threatening to their own dignity! The reason that your child is feeling socially awkward—her father’s accent when he speaks English—is an issue that you rightly believe needs to be tackled and put to rest. First, because it is her father, and second, to slowly but subtly weed out notions that arise out of meaningless snobbery from a growing child’s mind. It is the kind of snobbery that many grown people exhibit, and it cuts them off from connecting with a whole lot of good and valuable people and building relationships outside of little social boxes. Perhaps the school that she goes to and her

Selfconscious: Children tend to get embarrassed by their parents.

peer group too are feeding some of her notions. You could deal with it on a few different levels. At one level, her father could play along a bit and take on some of the corrections; he could also ask her to write down five words he mispronounces which bother her the most, and promise to work on them. Yes, it’s always good to say something the way it is supposed to be said, to speak a language well. However, you must send out the subtle message, both of you, that at some level it truly does not matter much, and that he functions perfectly well the way he says them currently. The correction is being made to please her. While you are on the subject of language, perhaps you could also put some pressure on her to speak her own mother tongue well, so that this “English superior to all other

regional languages” attitude is also questioned. You will have to show that you are both utterly comfortable in your own shoes and accents. Cutting a little closer to the bone of the issue, you could find ways for her to see how well her dad is doing in his field, how well-liked he is socially, and how none of this has anything to do with how he speaks. She is a little too young to load with too much information and lecturing right now on the subject, but you could find ways to keep up the line of thought—including talking about how many people with smooth and impeccable English accents can be quite deficient on many other levels. Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting. Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

COLUMNS L5

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Rosemary and the baby In which the author eats his words, but in so doing finds the secret to sharing meals with a picky daughter

ppropriately, it was my 22-month-old, eagle-eyed daughter—hereinafter referred to as the baby—who found the treasure hidden in plain sight under my misfiring nose. It was an unusually cold Berkeley morning when we were goofing off in the courtyard of the journalism school where I teach. We climbed the picnic benches set out for students, watched giant American squirrels (no wonder she calls them “Ta”, her name for a bear), watched the sky for aeroplanes and occasionally said hello to sundry students and professors who passed by. The baby was giggling wildly and chasing a pine cone I had hurled when it disappeared into the bushes that adorn the courtyard. She peered into a bush, made it evident that she was not going to plunge in and find the cone, and, while waiting for me to exasperatedly walk up, plucked a twig. She sniffed it delicately and declared it was “nice”. Oh? I wondered. I took the twig and smelled it too. Hello? What was this wonderful fragrance? I looked closely at the twig and then—in wonder—at the bushes I ignored every day. These bushes were nothing but giant clumps of my favourite Western herb, expensive—up to

`40 for a bunch of four-five twigs—and hard to find back in India: rosemary. After this discovery, rosemary exploded into my vision everywhere. I discovered it growing wild all along the 2km walk home. Most of the bushes had tiny, blue flowers, and I had ignored it as just another pretty flowering shrub of the Berkeley footpath. As soon as my current stock of rosemary runs out, you can be sure I am not buying more until June, which is when we say farewell to Berkeley and California. Now, excuse me while I eat some words I once wrote. In December 2010, when I lived in Delhi, I described how, to a man like me, “fattened by the endless and overstated endorsements of friends, family and readers”, the rejection of the food I had cooked for my then 5.5kg baby cut to the bone, cleaving through the flab of accumulated complacency. My mood darkened by this dismissal, I promised “this isn’t going to be a column—now or ever—where I blather on endlessly about my daughter and make a fool of myself as I discover a world that the world already knows”. So, okay, I suppose I will now make a bit of a fool of myself because my daughter, now more than 12kg, is eating everything that I cook.

The secret is that she likes flavour. For example, since age 1, she eats an omelette every morning; lately it required much persuasion, storytelling and, horrors, once (just once), an iPad. But ever since the rosemary discovery last week, the baby wipes out the omelette—often spearing it with her own plastic fork—within 10 minutes. It all changed when I started adding finely minced herbs to the egg. She clearly likes the flavours and even allows me to slip spinach into the omelette, which is a relief because she displays an alarming tendency —like her father—to ignore vegetables altogether. I also discovered that the herbs and mild spices allow us to share the same food, such as a baked/roast chicken that I make every other day to provide her with the two drumsticks she waffles down for dinner. The baby can take a bit of spice. Once, I gave her my chicken—exactly the same marinade, with the addition of red-chilli powder—after hers ran out. She ate it, primarily because the skin had absorbed most of the red chilli. Occasionally, she hits a spot of chilli, waves her left hand dramatically before her mouth and pants, “auter, auter”. If the occasional swig of water allows her and I to share our dinner, so be it. As for referring to the baby again, let me only say I will do my best to keep her from your life—unless of course she lends me fresh inspiration.

Baby’s herbed omelette breakfast Serves 1 baby or 1 adult Ingredients 1 tbsp tomato, chopped 1 tsp spinach, chopped 4-5 leaves of herbs (rosemary, sage or thyme), torn into little bits 1 brown egg A pinch of salt Method Whip the egg with other ingredients. Gently heat K tsp of olive oil or butter in a non-stick pan. When hot, pour in the egg mixture, mix it before it sets, then swirl the runny egg around so the omelette gets a round shape. Lower heat and cover. Open in a minute or two, fold omelette in half, flip once so it cooks through and remove. Chop into bits for baby (I offer her a plastic fork so she can feed herself when she feels like it), retain whole for daddy. I eat my egg with sausages or ham and try—unsuccessfully— to keep them to myself.

Baby’s baked rosemarygarammasala chicken dinner Serves 1 baby and father for two meals Ingredients K star anise 7-8 cloves 4-5 green cardamom 3 tsp garlic, finely minced 2 tsp ginger, finely chopped 2 large onions, chopped fine 1 tomato, chopped fine 2-3 tsp garam masala 3-4 tbsp soy sauce 1 sprig rosemary, 4-6 inches long Okg chicken (I use full legs, cut

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

into two-three pieces) Salt to taste Method In a non-stick pan, gently heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the star anise, cloves and cardamom. When they begin to swell and release a fragrance, add the onions. Sauté until golden-brown. Add garlic and ginger, and toss for a minute. Add the garam masala and stir for 15 seconds, then add the tomatoes and mix well, adding soy sauce so it does not stick. Add the chicken and make sure it is well coated in the masala. Remove from flame. In an oven-proof dish (I always line it with foil, so it’s easy to clean later), lay down the rosemary sprig and pour the chicken with masala on top. Seal the dish with foil and bake at 375 degrees Celsius

for 1 hour and 15 minutes. If your baby cannot handle the garam masala, simply wipe it away; the flavour will remain. Another way of making this chicken is to marinate it with garam masala, salt, garlic, soy and bake it with rosemary. I usually use chicken with skin because it soaks up excess spiciness, leaving the meat below full of flavour, moist and free of spice/herb grains. This is the recipe I use for the baby’s daily chicken. Samar Halarnkar is consulting editor, Mint and Hindustan Times. He is presently a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. Write to him at ourdailybread@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Samar’s previous columns at www.livemint.com/ourdailybread

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Design begins in your kitchen and your closet

hen people talk about India’s design aesthetic, they most often reach for the past. The decorative traditions of India took pleasure in crafting objects for everyday use that were

quite beautiful. Is there an Indian design aesthetic? What are some objects of everyday use that exemplify this aesthetic? Here is my incomplete list of things I believe are beautiful and follow the form-marries-function credo. The lota (a spherical water vessel). Of course. Thanks to American designer Charles Eames’ comment in The India Report, which led to the formation of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 1961. “Of all the objects we have seen and admired during our visit to India, the lota, that simple vessel of everyday use, stands out as perhaps the greatest, the most beautiful,” said Eames. The thali (plate). Perfectly suited to the multiple courses that are served

simultaneously in an Indian kitchen. The rimmed stainless steel tumbler. Used communally to drink fluids without having the utensil touch the lips. Our elders would say that it is more hygienic and uses fewer resources in terms of washing. The tiffin carrier. A thing of beauty really, used to carry multiple courses in train compartments and for long journeys. Immortalized by Subodh Gupta in his sculptures. Still used in urban India, where caterers carry food

in giant tiffin boxes in autorickshaws. Which leads us to the…. Autorickshaw. Inspired by the Italian Piaggio Ape, not as indigenous as the bullock cart, but a ubiquitous object of love and hate nevertheless. Ambassador car. Not exactly indigenous, but has become an Indian icon. Immortalized by Jitish Kallat in his work. Kulhad (earthen) cups. Disposable, biodegradable, hygienic. As easy on the eye as the paper plates designed by Japanese design firm Wasara (www.wasara.jp/index_e.html) Saris. Even though pretty much every Indian apparel is an example of good indigenous design, a few stand out. The sari is intrinsic to India, and conveys the soul of our textile traditions. This unstitched cloth reflects an aesthetic that is rooted in simplicity as the essence of purity. The regional variations possible out of this fabric are

Imagining India: (from left) The thali; and the autorickshaw is a ubiquitous object of love and hate.

MUHAMMAD MAHDI KARIM/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

mind-boggling in their creativity. Kurta. Called tunic globally, these long tops that we wear all over India are now sold in Stockholm, Sweden, and San Francisco, US. Bindis. Madonna wears them. Bharti Kher popularized them in her sculptures, although she doesn’t wear them herself. Lungi. Checked or plain, the lungi, dhoti, veshti and panchakacham, are all variations of a simple cotton cloth that is put to good use by our men. In Kerala, lungis raised to half-mast to reveal hirsute legs is a common sight. Toddy tappers tie them even higher as they clamber up trees and bring down the fluid that lubricates Kerala’s love of fish. Kolhapuri chappals. Uniquely Indian. Mojris and Chikan work. Prada is doing a take on these. Coir. Beds and mats are most common, but the range of objects that the “kalpavriksha” coconut tree offers range in number and drive some of Kerala’s economy. Chattais. Woven mats. We sit on them. We sleep on them. Now we put zari borders on them and colour them pink and purple. Jadhu (broomstick). Local materials tied together to make a cleaning object that is user-friendly, biodegradable and does its job. Tambu. Tent. It’s used all over the country. Turban. It finds multiple uses in the desert, from keeping your head cool to carrying some food in its folds. Jhola. These bags have become cool these days, with modern designers

putting their own spin on them. Safety pin. Not necessarily Indian but becomes an Indian woman’s Swiss army knife and is strung in her mangalsutra. Kiran Uttam Ghosh makes tassels out of safety pins in her clothes. Cradles made of saris in trains. Okay, so these aren’t exactly objects but examples of Indian jugaad (resourcefulness). But they conform to design firm Ideo’s credo of “human-centric design”. Kaajal-daani. Lovely object from Madhya Pradesh, used to apply kaajal (kohl) in eyes. Comes with a mirror inside. I own one. I bought it for `350 at Dastkar in Bangalore from a craftsman. Sit-cutting. Called boti in Bengali, addeli in Konkani, kathipeeta in Telugu, aruvamanai in Tamil, pankhi in Oriya, vili or morli in Marathi, thuriyo mane in Kannada, daat in Punjabi, hansua in Bihar and Jharkand, and kaanthne in Mangalore, this unique cutting instrument implies leisure and camaraderie in the kitchen. A beloved kitchen tool. What’s your list? Thank you, Sujata Keshavan, co-founder, Ray + Keshavan, and Surya Prakash, managing director, Design Core, for contributing to mine. Shoba Narayan’s current favourite design object is an uruli-table with a glass on top. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

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BOXING

‘We are now a boxing nation’ PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

From playacting to the Olympics, Manoj Kumar has come a long way to claim his place in the ring

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

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···························· ivers of sweat pour down Manoj Kumar’s face as he winds up his training. To cool down after the intense session, he shadow-boxes in the ring. He side-steps, ducks, throws a combination of punches, steps back, ducks again, and throws another punch—following the pull of a silent, internal rhythm. The boxing training centre at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports (NSNIS) in Patiala, Punjab, is barely lit. Most of the core group of boxers training for the 2012 London Olympics have left after their evening session. Only the corner ring, one of five inside the spacious hall, is lit by overhead lights, and under this halo, Kumar is working out a set of moves he’s trying to perfect. Every single day of training now is crucial for Kumar, 25, who needs to be in peak physical and mental condition for the Olympics in July. Every training day brings him closer to a dream that has been many years in the making. “It’s this shadow-boxing that got me into the sport,” Kumar says with a laugh after the session. Growing up in Rajound, a small village in Haryana, Kumar was 11 when he decided to ride pillion on his brother Rajesh’s bicycle to the nearby small town of Kaithal. Rajesh, only four years older than Kumar, was already training children in a gym in town to supplement the meagre pension their father got as a former soldier. “It became a regular thing,” Kumar says. “I’d come back home from school and immediately leave with my

brother for the gym. At the gym, Kumar would get immersed in the sights and sounds of the ring—the ripple of muscles, the hard thwackthwack of fists hitting the punching bag, the syncopated rhythm of shuffling feet—“it got drilled into my head, I felt at home.” Back in his house, Kumar would be lost inside his head pretending to fight an imaginary opponent. “In a couple of months, I was showing off my shadow-boxing skills to everyone. You didn’t have to ask me—I’d say hello to you and start showing you how to shadow-box. My brother’s friends were entertained by this play-acting, they thought I did a decent imitation. So one day at the gym, they convinced my brother to let me get in the ring against a junior boxer who was a state-level champion.” Kumar held his own, and that night, when they came back home, Rajesh began teaching Kumar the basics of the game. He also got a second-hand punching bag, and hung it outside the house. Kumar’s training had begun. “That bag was hanging outside my house till just a few months back—then some children accidentally tore it down,” Kumar says. In a few years, the home-tutored Kumar was entering national competitions. “One day, my brother told me something so seriously that it got stuck in my head. He said, ‘Look, we have many things that we can gain, but we have nothing to lose. You may think you are poor, but that is the perfect situation, because you have nothing to fear or fall back on.’ “I still go into the ring with this

DREAM CATCHERS thought playing in my head,” Kumar says. You could see that in Kumar’s fights at the 2011 International Boxing Association, or Aiba, World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he reached the quarter-finals in the 64kg category to become one of four boxers from India to grab early qualification spots for the 2012 Olympics. In the pre-quarter final, Kumar was up against local favourite Hu Qing from China, Asian Games gold medallist, 2008 Olympic veteran, and almost half-a-foot taller than Kumar. “I was fighting with an injured hand, so no one gave me much chance,” says Kumar. As soon as the fight started, Kumar charged Hu in a blur of punches. The Chinese fighter tried to circle away from the bull-rush, using straight jabs to maximize his height advantage. But Kumar was relentless, sometimes connecting, sometimes just throwing wild, loopy punches—his all-or-nothing approach. Hu led the first round 6-3, but by the second round, he was getting increasingly frustrated by Kumar’s ceaseless attacks, and his ability to get inside Hu’s reach. The round ended 7-7. In the third round, Kumar came in even harder, and faster. Hu could no longer use the long jab because Kumar was

always too close, so he resorts to holding Kumar in a cinch repeatedly. The referee had no option but to penalize Hu, and Kumar walked away with a 17-15 win, and a place in the Olympics. “But my family was not entirely pleased that I lost in the next bout,” Kumar says. “They told me, ‘Please, at the Olympics, win a medal.’” Kumar’s progress as a boxer has been a slow and steady climb, unlike his long-time room-mate at NSNIS, Vikas Krishan, who won a gold at the 2010 Asian Games, his first seniorlevel international tournament. Kumar’s first international medal was a bronze at the Asian Boxing Championships in 2007, and he had to wait three years before another medal of note. “The 2008 Olympics was a turning point for me,” Kumar says. “I watched Akhil (Kumar) beat the then world champion, saw Vijender (Singh) win a medal. It changed my perspective of what we can achieve as boxers. My ambitions had something to focus on.” In 2010, Kumar, for the first time in his boxing career, got a taste of fame and recognition, winning a gold at the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in New Delhi. Before the CWG, Rajesh, who was coaching India’s junior boxers in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, called up Kumar and told him that he would be ringside in Delhi only when Kumar made it to the final. “There was no middle-path,” Kumar says. “I said, OK, I’ll talk to you later…” But every day, Rajesh would follow Kumar’s bouts on TV, and at night the two would discuss every aspect of the bout. “He’s been teaching me since I was a child, so no one knows me better!”

Nothing to lose: Kumar has an aggressive allornoth ing approach to boxing. On the day of the final, Rajesh was ringside. Soon after his win, Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), a private organization that provides funds and expertise to selected Olympic athletes, signed him up. Backed by OGQ’s attention (personal physios, a crucial hand surgery), Kumar’s performance graph spiked quickly, culminating in the stellar performance at the 2011 World Championship. “After the Commonwealth medal, I felt that all the hard work, all the money that my parents and my brother spent on my training instead of saving it or buying land or a house, was vindicated,” Kumar says. “It sent a message to others like us—that it pays to spend money and effort in putting your children through sports; it gives people confidence to take that leap.” Kumar is taking a leap of his own. For Indian boxers, it’s not enough any more to be a part of the Olympics—every fighter on the squad is seen as a potential medallist. “It’s only once you are dropped in the ocean that you get an idea of its depth,” Manoj says (he has a penchant for spinning poetic sentences). “But I’ve got a foot in the door, and we are now a boxing nation, we can hold our own against anybody, so I’m absolutely confident that I’ll be giving it everything I’ve got.” www.livemint.com To read our previous stories in the Dream Catchers series, visit www.livemint.com/dreamcatchers

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An ace of movie moguls The producer says choosing diverse scripts and being Indian have much to do with his lon gevity in Hollywood

B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· t isn’t much of a surprise to see Ashok Amritraj, 56, in a tracksuit and flip-flops. Sports is in his genes. He is in the middle of one of his frequent whirlwind trips to Chennai and Mumbai. The former tennis player, the youngest of the three Amritraj brothers from Chennai, and now one of Hollywood’s leading movie producers—chief executive and chairman of Hyde Park Entertainment—is meeting “friends from the film world” and young filmmakers with ideas. We meet at Oakwood Premier, a serviced apartments building in Mumbai’s quintessentially filmi suburb, Juhu, in February. Instead of wine, which he is known to be a connoisseur of, it’s sugary masala chai for him. Being in India has something to do with that choice. Amritraj is upbeat and unassuming—Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the latest film from his banner released by Warner

Bros in India, is three days away from release and another, a small film, Jayne Mansfield’s Car, written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, is competing at the Berlinale 2012 for a top prize. These two films, being watched at the same time by two different kinds of audiences, pretty much sum up Amritraj’s philosophy as a movies man. “One of the reasons for the longevity of my career is that I have made a variety of movies. Double Impact, Ghost Rider in 3D, comedies like Bringing Down the House, smaller, intimate ones like Shopgirl, Moonlight Mile, a sexy thriller like Original Sin with Angelina Jolie—I’ve dabbled in all kinds. It is conscious, so that I am not known as the action guy or the comedy guy,” says Amritraj. His Hollywood dream is not complete—at present, he wishes to work with director Clint Eastwood and actor Meryl Streep. Amritraj’s first big break as a producer was with Double Impact, in 1991, which was also the first major role of action star Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was an action-thriller template that many in Hollywood, including Amritraj himself, followed. They were brain-dead thrillers with limp direction and stony heroes, but for producers, they made a lot of money. Amritraj’s career has progressed tangentially from that first hit, but it’s a career attuned to Hollywood’s changing dictates. Over the years, he has diversified into the technically advanced bigbudget blockbusters (the Ghost Rider franchise with Nicolas Cage,

IN PARENTHESIS Ashok Amritraj’s passion, besides tennis, is red wine. He is himself a vintner who bottles a cabernet under the Ashok Amritraj label and sells privately across the US. His vineyard is part of the Semler wineries in Malibu, US. “Opening a bottle of great red wine with dinner is an indulgence with me. In the US, my favourite labels are Silver Oak and Duckhorn, but there are lovely wines everywhere, and depending on where I am, I sample red wines everywhere. I don’t mind the Sula wines here in India, although at a Bombay fivestar hotel I would never pay `7,000 for an Indian wine just because the taxes are high. I am used to buying far better wines for half that price,” Amritraj says.

for example) as well as the small-budget, film festival favourites which get limited release. “The changes have been at the production and distribution levels,” he says, “and of course, the movies have got much larger and more expensive. The middle-budget films that used to get made a lot in the 1980s and 1990s are rarely made now. The Forrest Gumps of the world, the $40-50 million (`200-250 crore now) films, are dead. Films like The Descendants, the $12 million film, have taken their place. Then there are Pirates of the Caribbean, the superhero films, and Avatar, for which the budgets go to hundreds of millions of dollars.” His distribution model is equally scripted: Send out around 6,000 prints all over the world at the same time and plan a, say, $40 million marketing blitzkrieg in the US alone, which gets transmitted to the world market through new media. Amritraj interacts with writers personally—the basic difference, he says, between Hollywood and Bollywood is in the starting point. “It’s rare that you have a total business guy or a totally creative guy making decisions. While in India, producers or studios depend on six or seven stars, there we know that we can do without stars. I start with the writer. I can make a million-dollar movie without a famous actor.” Hyde Park Entertainment, the label he set up in 1999, is an independent entertainment production company that collaborates with Hollywood studios. It has tie-ups with the Singapore government, Image Nation of Abu Dhabi and National Geographic to produce creative content in genres spanning film, comics, gaming and television. After more than 30 years in Hollywood’s inner circle and after more than 100 films, Amritraj believes it is “a world of fantasy”. “I am fortunate to have strong women in my life. My mother, my wife, who is from Chennai like me, and my daughter, who keep me grounded.” Amritraj played tennis professionally until he was in his early 20s, for about nine years. He played at Wimbledon as well as the US Open. In 1975, he moved to Los Angeles (LA) and, as he says, got completely lost in the magic of the movie world. “I still played a lot of tennis but I wanted to say I have made some movies. I took that wish pretty seriously. I got to know a lot of people from Hollywood and played tennis with them. I would hang around at the editing room of (film-maker) Sidney Poitier and networked any way I could. No Indians were of any consequence then. Hollywood was a closed

world, very white, and Hollywood folks can grind you to the ground. “Today, it’s more econ o m i c t h a n racial—about how much green you have. The US is not the complete superpower. In the next 10 years, it’s going to change more. But I find the inner circle of Hollywood does not change much. If you are an outsider, you rub shoulders, you take some pictures with stars and that’s it.” After seven years of his struggle, what he describes as “anguish”, Amritraj set up his film company and Van Damme walked into his office. “We both made each other with Double Impact. It’s like the film Sliding Doors by Peter Howitt. It’s about a guy and two stories about him. In one, he catches a train and goes to office, in one he misses the train, returns home and finds his wife in bed with someone else. Things change on a dime.” Things have changed with his tennis as well—now, Amritraj plays with Dustin Hoffman, Pierce Brosnan and Matthew Perry, among others, every Saturday morning on his own private tennis court. In 1999, he suffered a serious back injury and had to give up tennis for a while, but the ritual has restarted at his LA home. “My children (a son and a daughter, both in their teens) play tennis. I inculcated the game in them because individual sports teaches you lessons on life that team sports can’t. It teaches you about crying, being responsible for yourself, and getting up on your own after crying. Tennis is a family thing.” The other constant with the Amritrajs (his brothers are Vijay and Anand), he says, is Chennai, where they are from—where he discovered his love for films and tennis. Amritraj is looking for Indian writers and directors who can tell him stories about the new India. “Stories are universal. If you can make any producer, including Hollywood producers, feel part of it, it’s a story they will want to make. If I am making a movie that takes India into account, I’d like to do more about India and about the India of today. I don’t make movies about American college life, for example, because I don’t get it.”

Strategist: Amritraj says his company tries to produce fourfive films every year with big and small budgets.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012

Style

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Summer sonata The Lakmé Fashion Week threw up looks that were big on bright colours and mixed patterns

t Imperfect symmetry

PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP

Balancing act: Shivan & Narresh make asymmetry look fresh again.

Calling it asymmetry just wouldn’t suffice. While lopsided shapes abounded on the ramp, nobody made it look as pleasing as Paromita Banerjee and Shivan & Narresh. The former showed one look that was printed with swagged motifs on one half and floral motifs on the other, still managing a harmonious effect, while Shivan & Narresh showed off their colour-mixing skills, making one fall in love with colourblocking all over again.

B Y V ISESHIKA S HARMA viseshika.s@livemint.com

t Midi skirts

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Hems that hit the shin seem to be hitting the spot this season. Nimish Shah’s clean and classic line Shift featured a lovely midilength skirt, printed with florals only on the front. Sailex showed a bright orange-textured skirt with a cropped top for a toned midriff-baring look. Not all midi-lengths had a hobble silhouette—Anita Dongre showed some charming full skirts that almost begged for a poodle print.

u Neon Delhi-based Pia Pauro of Rock-a-Bella showed a colourfully Bohemian collection incorporating neon tassels and sequins that melded easily with traditional Rajasthani embroidery. Pauro’s plain lime shift stood out even amid a sea of equally vibrant colours. The neon hue made an appearance in Priyadarshini Rao’s Mineral line, and Sailex’s show, among others. Even designers with a more earthy colour palette chose to incorporate small neon details in their collections, as evident in the grey sheath with minimal neon stripes that Paromita Banerjee began her collection with.

Neon: A look from Pia Pauro’s RockaBella line.

Shin dig: A Shift midi skirt hits the right note.

u Toneontone The tailor likes to call it selfembroidery. Single-colour looks achieved multiple dimensions with textural additions in the same tone. New York-based Bibhu Mohapatra showed a stunning green gown that used tonal sequinning to visually cinch the waist. Krishna Mehta (who curated the Indian Textiles Day, Lakmé Fashion Week’s initiative to promote Indian craftsmanship, this season) made an impactful return to the show circuit with a collection that featured black floral embroidery on black garments. Debarun Mukherjee showed a serene collection that used white-on-white with gorgeous results. Multidimensional: Bibhu Mohapatra’s waistcinching gown.

u Patternmixing

u Ikat Ethnic patterns are big this season, with highstreet retailers and designers embracing the trend globally. Anita Dongre’s much talked about augmented reality fashion show took place on a very real Ikat-printed runway, with models stomping the boards in mixed-Ikat ensembles. Other designers, such as Shift, incorporated Ikat in varying amounts in their collections. Ikat kit: An Anita Dongre ensemble.

What everyone else calls printmixing attains a different dimension in India with our wealth of weaves and surface treatments. Vikram Phadnis showed pastel-hued ensembles with as many as three different floral prints in a look, while Sashikant Naidu showed off his updated take on Kalamkari printing. Paromita Banerjee’s final ensemble mixed two floral prints and two different checked patterns with a striped stole to create an elegant melange. Deepika Govind showed lovely weaves that cleverly mixed multiple checked patterns for a harmonious look.

Mixed signals: Deepika Govind’s striking mix of checked patterns.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012

Cover

LOUNGE GROUND REPORT

THE NEW THINK TANK Dry intellectual pursuits such as neuroscience and auction theory are solving problems on the ground. We met four people whose models prove how B Y N IRANJAN R AJADHYAKSHA niranjan.r@livemint.com

······································ t was towards the end of the first season of the Indian Premier League in 2008 that I heard of the game theorist with a Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) photograph on his desk. The Kolkata Knight Riders had sought his expert help to help them bid for cricketers in the auction. The grateful team owner had gifted the professor an autographed photograph. It seemed a great story to tell, so I sought an appointment with the game theorist in

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New Delhi. He modestly told me the auction strategy he had designed was a mere afternoon’s work, and so there was not much of a story there for me. He had not attended the auction either, so he could not be sure how much his model had actually helped the team owners decide on how to bid during the auction. But yes, SRK had indeed gifted him that photograph. That a cricket team was prepared to seek advice from a game theorist was early indication that dry intellectual pursuits such as game theory, neuroscience, behavioural economics and auction theory—which

study how human beings compete, collaborate and interact with one another—were beginning to be used to solve problems on the ground in India. Here, we highlight four examples of people who are using their specialist knowledge to tackle important problems: a “behaviour architect” who has succeeded in reducing deaths at railway crossings; a neuroscientist who is applying the findings of her subject to microfinance; biologists and economists collaborating to give local communities a stake in tiger protection; and the work of a game theorist at the heart of government.

HOW NETWORK THEORY CAN EXPLAIN WHY PEOPLE ARE POOR

TARA THIAGARAJAN

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CHENNAI NATHAN G/MINT

adipatti is a small taluk in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. “On average a rural adult in Vadipatti travels beyond 5km from his or her home less than once a month. In an earlier study elsewhere in Madurai district we found that of 200 entrepreneurs, less than 2% travelled beyond 20km to sell products—ever. Contrast this with our behaviour. We often travel hundreds of kilometres in a month and go beyond 5km more than once every day,” says Tara Thiagarajan, chairperson of Madura Micro Finance. “Many people reported that they interact with only 25 people through most of the year. And with such low mobility, new information coming in is rare.” Thiagarajan believes that such situations, when interactions with others are minimal, are central to understanding why people are poor. A PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University, US, she has built her analysis of poverty using the principles of subjects such as physics, non-linear dynamics and biology. Thiagarajan says that what matters in complex systems—and the economy is one such system—are not the individual elements but the structure of interaction between these elements. She illustrates this insight using the example of the carbon atom: “You can’t really describe the properties of a single carbon atom because the properties only manifest on interaction with other atoms. Carbon can become hard like a diamond when the atoms form tight bonds or be soft like graphite when the bonds are

more fluid.” The same element can become either a brilliant diamond or a piece of black graphite depending on how carbon atoms bond together. Economic outcomes can be understood in similar terms: What really matters is how individual units link together in networks and how information flows dynamically along these links. The marooned lives of the poor in Madurai are a recipe for poverty, which the regular government schemes may not be able to tackle. What could help poor communities more would be interventions, products and infrastructure that strengthen the flow of information in these areas. “In impoverished communities, flow of knowledge and information is poor. The network structure and dynamics look different from those of more progressive swathes of society where networks are extremely dense with faster and more efficient dynamics,” says Thiagarajan, who is also a visiting scientist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. Economists have written about how so-called agglomeration effects reduce the cost of economic transactions, give easier access of skills and offer a rich information environment. That is one reason why dense cities are economic powerhouses. Recently, economist Ricardo Hausmann and physicist César Hidalgo, both at Harvard University, US, used network science to show the richest countries are the ones with the most dense economic networks, because that

From the field: Through insights from her research, Thiagarajan and her team want to assess the risk of microenterprises. allows for specialization. As Manas Chakravarty wrote in his Capital Account column in Mint in October, the complexity map of the world also has predictive value. Economic complexity in India and China is well above what is usual for countries at their level, which

the two Harvard researchers say is an indication of their potential to grow rapidly in the future. So how does a microfinance firm use these insights into the importance of networks? “In microfinance, our goal is not so much to create networks as it is

to use information ourselves to enable productive flow of capital,” says Thiagarajan. Yet, she adds, “We are working to take the insights we gain from the Vadipatti research and turn it into tools that can assess the risk of micro-enterprises based on the network and knowledge charac-

teristics of the entrepreneur.” The big question is whether public policy will adapt to this new framework, so that the graphite of poverty can be transformed into the diamond of prosperity. TURN TO PAGE L10 u

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HOW GAME THEORY CAN HELP THE GOVERNMENT DESIGN EFFICIENT PUBLIC POLICY

KAUSHIK BASU K

aushik Basu is an accomplished technical economist and an elegant writer with a rich sense of irony. But his career graph has led to an ironical development that even Basu must have been unprepared for. The game theorist found himself at the heart of government. In 1997, Basu, then a professor at Cornell University, wrote a paper on the art of policy advice. His basic point was simple. Economists innocently believe that governments will act on their advice. The reality is more complicated. Politicians and civil servants have their own preferences. Basu designed a theoretical game called Cheater’s Roulette to help the economic adviser understand the preferences of agents in government—and then give advice that would work. “Government advisers think their advice is good and their masters should accept it. Mostly it is ignored. Basu does not suffer such illusions. A great deal of his recent work has focused on not treating the government as a kind of black box where advice is put in and good outcomes are the result,” Mint wrote in an editorial welcoming the appointment of Basu, now 60, as chief economic adviser in December 2009, the first game theorist to occupy this important seat. Basu has entered government at a time when Indians are being treated to a law for every occasion and a grand plan for every problem. A disciple of Amartya Sen, Basu has never doubted the need to provide basic entitlements to citizens. But the game theorist in him has been quietly pointing out that ambitious poli-

cies often run into trouble on the ground. “Our policies are not wrong in concept but there are problems of implementation. We do not pay enough attention to the incentives faced by agents who are to carry out the grand plans,” says Basu. Just think of the ration-shop owner who would rather sell grain at a profit in the open market, the government schoolteacher who encourages his students to come for private tuitions, the bribe giver who does not complain because of laws that punish him as severely as the bribe taker. “In crafting good economic policy it is important to treat the various players on the market—the policeman, the rationshop owner and the ordinary citizen—as reasonably selfseeking, rational agents. If these agents get the opportunity to earn some extra money with little effort, they will seize the opportunity. Hence, to cut down on corruption and pilferage, we have to design policies in such a way that there is no incentive for ordinary citizens and the enforcers of the law to cheat. Accordingly, good mechanism design is the heart of the problem. Many a noble plan to reach out to the poor and increase the welfare of our citizens has fallen on hard times because of the policymakers’ propensity to assume that the policies are delivered by flawlessly moral agents or perfectly programmed robots,” Basu wrote in a fascinating chapter in the 2010 Economic Survey released by the finance ministry before the Budget. The game theorist in Basu wants the government to think more deeply about the actions of the individuals who imple-

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DELHI ment policy or benefit from it. Has he seen any change in attitudes in New Delhi? “There is now a subliminal awareness in government that we have to get the micro-foundations right,” says Basu. His own appointment was one clear indication, since the chief economic adviser has traditionally been a macroeconomist dealing in broad issues such as economic growth, inflation, exchange rates or industrial policy. Basu brings a fresh approach to economic policy in India, even though game theorists and behavioural economists have been used in other countries. For example, the Obama administration in the US has appointed Harvard University behavioural economist Sendhil Mullainathan, who has done fascinating research work on why people make bad economic decisions, to its consumer financial protection bureau. The British government has hired a Behavioural Insights Team—popularly called the nudge unit—to help design policies that will persuade people to make the right choices about their money, their health, their security. In India, development economist Abhijit Banerjee, whose work is based on careful research in poor communities, is in the running to head the new Independent Evaluation Office being set up to assess the impact of public programmes and suggest ways to improve their effectiveness, a sign that more attention is now being paid to groundlevel realities that affect the choices people make. “The paradigm of thinking about policy is gradually changing,” says Basu. RAJ K RAJ/HINDUSTAN TIMES

People’s economist: Basu says it is important to treat the ordinary citizen as a selfseeking, rational agent.

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HOW AUCTIONS CAN ENSURE THAT LOCAL COMMUNITIES HAVE A STAKE IN TIGER CONSERVATION

an or tiger? Indian policymakers have struggled to figure out how wild animals and poor communities can coexist in a country desperately hungry for land. The territory has been marked by conflict, as humans have invaded forests reserved for tigers while the cats have attacked encroachers. There are now just 1,706 tigers left in India, down from an estimated 100,000 a hundred years ago. A group of environmentalists and economists is now trying to give local communities a stake in wildlife conservation in the Western Ghats. A unique collaboration between the Puducherry-based Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning (FERAL), The University of Melbourne, Australia, and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is using auctions to solve the problem. Their laboratory is the Shencottah Gap in Tamil Nadu, where people living near the two tiger sanctuaries in the area will be paid to protect tiger habitats. The work is

Fast forward: Dominic, seen here at the Wadala station tracks, changed the behaviour architecture on Mum bai’s railway tracks to prevent deaths.

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CHENNAI

being co-sponsored by the National Tiger Conservation Authority with a $1.2 million (around `6 crore now) grant. How much should people be paid? The scientists working on the project will use descending bid auctions to figure out how much local farmers should be paid in exchange for leaving their land fallow or allowing undergrowth in their plantations. The conservationists are the buyers with a fixed budget while local farmers are sellers in the auctions. The latter keep dropping their bids till a price that is acceptable to the buyer is arrived at, which is quite different from the way an old painting or telecom spectrum is sold. The final price paid will be that of the lowest losing bid, and everybody who remains in the auction till that point gets paid. Those who have dropped out earlier do not get any money. “What makes the auction design difficult is that we are not dealing with a uniform good. Plots near the forest or near areas of animal move-

ment have more value,” explains E. Somanathan, a game theorist with the ISI who has worked on the auction rules. Care also had to be taken to ensure that the auction is transparent, local communities end up with surpluses, and there is trust between the buyers and sellers. “We designed the auction so that participants do not have an incentive to underbid. Also, one of the reasons we used descending bid auctions is that it is harder for participants to collude,” adds Somanathan. Why auctions? “Land purchases are too expensive so we have decided to use auctions,” says V. Srinivas, a biologist who leads the FERAL team working on the Shencottah Gap project. “We are trying to align social and individual incentives.” The auction models have been developed by the two other institutions, the ISI and University of Melbourne. The first payments should be made by July, says Srinivas. Participating in auctions is a tricky process, and the project

team is taking care to train local farmers in auction strategy. “The farmers are used to auctions for their products, but these are reverse auctions,” says Srinivas. Besides training the farmers in mock auctions, another type of education had to be imparted. Participants would bid depending on the opportunity cost of leaving their land fallow, or the money they were giving up. Many do not have adequate knowledge of costing to arrive at the figure. Most farmers know what their turnover is but are less sure of their profits. The FERAL team has also conducted costing classes for farmers so that they can make the correct economic calculations during auctions. The use of auctions to overcome the conflict between tiger sanctuaries and human habitations could be the way forward, as local communities become willing partners in conservation. The Shencottah Gap project could provide clues that can then be transferred to other parts of the country. COURTESY V SRINIVAS

HOW BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE CAN REDUCE DEATHS ON RAILWAY TRACKS

BIJU DOMINIC

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MUMBAI SEBASTIAN D’SOUZA/AFP

round 6,000 people get mowed down every year while making suicidal dashes across the railway tracks that snake through Mumbai, the biggest reason for unnatural deaths in the city. All the standard responses from the authorities—from warning notices to pedestrian bridges to walls flanking the tracks— have failed to prevent the deaths. Biju Dominic, 47, was lecturing at the Railway Staff College in Vadodara, Gujarat, when a senior official asked him whether what he had been telling his audience could actually be used to tackle the fatal problem. Dominic is chief executive of Mumbai-based Final Mile Consulting, a firm that uses insights from behavioural economics, cognitive neurology and anthropology to nudge people to change their entrenched habits. The Final Mile team hung around the most lethal crossings for several weeks, melting into the crowd, says Dominic, “like method actors living the character”. They quickly noticed that the people crossing the tracks were overconfident, one of the biases that behavioural scientists say are hard-wired into our brains, the same bias that ensures that equity analysts overestimate corporate earnings or cigarette smokers refuse to believe they can be struck down by cancer. “We went back to the railway authorities and said that trespassing cannot be stopped. But deaths can be reduced,” says Dominic. People would continue to cross the tracks on work, to get home to one of the slums near the tracks, and to relieve themselves in a city without adequate toilets. His team suggested ways to make people more careful

City in a hurry: Railway commuters in Mumbai cross a track, the cause of many fatal accidents in the city. when crossing the suburban railway tracks, to curb the optimism bias. The most effective pilot project was set up at Wadala, a station on Central Railway which had seen one of the highest increases in deaths in 2010. Final Mile gave several suggestions. First, warning people about death was not effective because people cannot “see” their own deaths; the message sent out through posters was of fear, building on the radical theories of neuroscientist V.S.

Ramachandran about the existence of mirror neurons that make human beings unknowingly mirror the emotions of others. Second, they told the railways that people respond to repetitive signals (something that political parties and organized religions instinctively know), so the posters of warning at the crossings repeated three images of a man about to be hit by a train rather than one large image. Third, the team at Final Mile identified a sweet spot 120m

away from a crossing point. People are overconfident when the train is more than 120m (or around 7 seconds) away, but they panic when it is closer than that. So they advised the railways to put up boards asking train drivers to blow the horn when the train is 120m from the crossing. Fourth, their reading of some musicologists told the Final Mile team that the silence between two notes is very effective, which means that the train horns should be changed to staccato bursts

rather than the current system of one long note. Fifth, since our brains are not well-equipped to judge relative speeds unless a reference point is provided, the behaviour architects got the railways to paint yellow lines on the sleepers that hold the tracks. These yellow lines allow trespassers to judge the speed of the train. These unusual but simple solutions seem to have done the trick. Dominic says that in the one year since their suggestions were put into effect at Wadala, the number of deaths has fallen from 40 in the six months prior to the changes, to nine deaths in the first six months, and then down to just one death in the six months after that. He says the railways want to take the model elsewhere as well. What Dominic and his team have done is interesting: They did not stop people from crossing, or suggest expensive pedestrian bridges that would never be used, or impose fines. They tweaked the environment so that people would be more careful while crossing. They changed the behaviour architecture. The Final Mile team has begun work on two other projects. One, they want to figure out how to get residents of a slum in New Delhi to use the toilet blocks built by the government, rather than defecate in the open. Two, they are trying to work with a Mumbai public hospital to ensure that people continue to take medicines even after symptoms recede, so that the course is completed and drug-resistant variants of tuberculosis are not unleashed in India. “To change behaviour, you need to understand what happens in the human brain,” says Dominic.

NATHAN G/MINT

Tiger’s friend: Srinivas at Periyar, Kerala; and (top) an auction undertaken at a village in Tamil Nadu by Srinivas and his team.

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ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

u FROM PAGE L9

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HOW GAME THEORY CAN HELP THE GOVERNMENT DESIGN EFFICIENT PUBLIC POLICY

KAUSHIK BASU K

V SRINIVAS

People’s economist: Basu says it is important to treat the ordinary citizen as a selfseeking, rational agent.

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HOW AUCTIONS CAN ENSURE THAT LOCAL COMMUNITIES HAVE A STAKE IN TIGER CONSERVATION

Fast forward: Dominic, seen here at the Wadala station tracks, changed the behaviour architecture on Mum bai’s railway tracks to prevent deaths.

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CHENNAI

HOW BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE CAN REDUCE DEATHS ON RAILWAY TRACKS

BIJU DOMINIC

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MUMBAI SEBASTIAN D’SOUZA/AFP

NATHAN G/MINT

Tiger’s friend: Srinivas at Periyar, Kerala; and (top) an auction undertaken at a village in Tamil Nadu by Srinivas and his team.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012

Travel

LOUNGE

KANHA

Missing Paris for the Eiffel THINKSTOCK

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Sometimes the point of a tiger safari is not the tiger alone. Wildlife parks have so much more to offer

THINKSTOCK

B Y N AMITA B HANDARE ···························· e are zipping ahead in an open jeep in the middle of the forest on a bumpy track to see that elusive beast, the tiger. Seeing a tiger in the wild has been No. 1 on my bucket list for some time now. I’ve seen many creatures in the wild—from deer to dogs—but the tigers I have seen are all in zoos. Some of these zoos have been pretty good ones. I think it’s cute that the tiger enclosure in the Singapore Zoo is sponsored by Tiger Balm. But although they do a reasonable job of creating a jungle look, you can’t really escape the fact that those striped animals are caged. It’s freezing cold on an early winter morning. Earmuffs, cap, muffler and gloves are lifesavers but my nose is uncomfortably numb. There’s no slowing down, however. We have a serious mission ahead of us: Find tiger. Our guide perfunctorily points out large herds of spotted deer, but we don’t stop to take a photograph. Chital are simply too common; we see them at dusk at our resort. We do slow down for the chausingha, the four-horned antelope, found only in this forest. And when we end up behind a jungle cat that strays on to our path and jogs along for a bit before it darts off into the undergrowth on the side of our tracks, we laugh, charmed by its tiny panic. But where is the tiger? They say spotting a tiger in the wild is pretty much a question of chance. But if you are going to spot one, then Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh is as good a place as any. Entry into the park is limited to 160 jeeps a day in all of the four zones. At daybreak, mahouts with walkie-talkies set out on elephants. When they spot a tiger, they send wireless messages to forest rangers, who then

HONZASOUKUP/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Jungle book: (clockwise from above) The Kanha National Park; a 2008 photo of tigress Indrani with her cubs; the baras ingha is a common sight in the park; and a bison.

TRIP PLANNER/KANHA NATIONAL PARK The nearest railheads are Gondia (110 km) and Nagpur (290 km) in Maharashtra; Jabalpur (203 km) in Madhya Pradesh; and Raipur (213 km) and Bilaspur (182 km) in Chhattisgarh. Take a taxi from there to Kanha, or check if your lodge will arrange for a pick-up. Jabalpur, Nagpur and Raipur are also connected by air to most major cities. Check your preferred travel portal or travel agent for train or air fare.

Stay

UTTAR PRADESH INDIA

Pench National Park

Bhopal

Bandhavgarh National Park Jabalpur

KANHA

National Park

MADHYA PRADESH MAHARASHTRA

Nagpur

Gondia

CHHATTISGARH

Raipur

We stayed at conservationists Latika and Nanda Rana's resort, the Singinawa Jungle Lodge. Double occupancy rates there for an individual stone cottage are R19,320 per night, inclusive of meals, snacks and taxes, childrens' activities, one cooking class and an eco-restoration walk. Jungle safaris, four-wheel drive vehicle, spa charges extra. Bandhavgarh National Park is 270km from Kanha and the Pench National Park, 210km. If you are going to Kanha via Jabalpur, you might consider a halt at India's ‘marble rock city', located on the banks of the Narmada river. GRAPHIC

alert the jeepwallahs. The tourists are then rounded up at the closest point of sighting, no more than five jeeps at a time, and asked to clamber atop elephants to get a closer look. Tiger conservationists Nanda and Latika Rana, who run the Singinawa Jungle Lodge where I am staying, say they can always tell which jeep’s passengers have sighted a tiger: It’s the one where the people have the biggest grins. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. There are days when you will see

nothing. There are days when you could get lucky and have a tigress and her cubs cross your road. But most people I know do manage to spot a tiger at least once in Kanha. When I finally see my magnificent male barely 20ft away from my elephant, I feel…cheated. There he is, full-grown male, and he’s fast asleep on the grass. I have faithfully followed the book: hauled myself on top of my elephant, set off into the jungle away from the road, kept my camera

ready and now this is my tiger moment? Where is the prowling, the leaping, the snarling of the innumerable National Geographic films I have seen? This guy doesn’t even want to lift his head, doesn’t bare even one tooth in a menacing snarl, doesn’t yawn, or stretch, or lick his paws. The minutes tick by and he remains asleep, my grand photo-op stolen by this non-performing fellow snoozing in the early morning sun. But I play along with the script, put on my “just seen tiger” grin and dutifully get back to my jeep. And then I think about it. Surely the point of being in a forest is the forest itself. The tiger is just a bonus. Yet we’ve showered it with myth and buried it under romance—“this may be your last chance to see a tiger in the wild” and “one day you’re going to tell your grandkids about this day”. It’s like going to Paris in the belief that all you need to see is the Eiffel Tower. To make the tiger the focus of the jungle is to undermine everything that the jungle

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

and the tiger stand for. If I’m going to dash around madly looking for this endangered species, then I’m going to lose out on the forest’s slow, cyclical rhythm and the beauty of its other gifts. Even when I get my wishedfor sighting, so programmed is my mind to expect to see gnashing of teeth and wild mating calls, that before me I can no longer see the perfect beauty of a tiger in repose. Years ago, a forest ranger in South Africa’s Kruger National Park told me: “Everyone wants to see the Big Five (African elephant, cape buffalo, lion, leopard, black rhinoceros). But the beauty of the wild is to look for the smaller creatures too.” Just then, a tortoise crossed our path. We stopped the jeep, waited for its laborious walk to the other side and used the time to just inhale the forest. No clicking of cameras, no excited chatter. I have never once seen a tiger on my many visits to Corbett National Park, in Uttarakhand, and yet each visit has been memorable: jungle lodges and hastily

prepared meals before lights out, blowing dandelions with my daughters and playing hide-andseek with the additional thrill of not really knowing what that rustle behind the bush is. In the forest, time takes on a new meaning. At our resort, there is no television, and mobile phone signals are erratic (the owner says he seriously thought of getting a jammer). When guests converge in the evening, the more adventurous reach for the Scrabble board, while others simply slouch around waiting for dinner. Life slows down and it takes a different sort of energy to become alive to its potential. I am cast away from breaking news and 140-character rants on Twitter. I don’t miss it for a second. On our last day in Kanha, we set off to watch the sunset from the plateau Bamni Dadar, the highest point in the park. This time, we drive slowly, knowing that tigers are rarely seen in this area, or perhaps we’ve finally learnt to slow down to the rhythm of the forest. When we get there, the sun has started its descent but there is no hurry to photograph the moment, no need for words. Just a calm, clear understanding of a perfect day in a sometimes perfect world. Right now, here in the forest, I have found it. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

Besides the jungle safaris, ask about the bicycle and nature trail, visits to the local village and school. SENIORFRIENDLY RATING

We travelled with my 84yearold fatherinlaw and 80yearold mother, who is diabetic and has limited mobility, and I can testify that they were well looked after. LGBTFRIENDLY RATING

We saw no evidence of prejudice.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/PAULMARCULESCU

Intermezzo

SALIL TRIPATHI

White expanse: (above) Views of the frozen Lake Malaren in Sweden; and Sweden’s waterfront.

In a frozen space between land and water, dark and light, Sweden’s Ingmaresque landscapes come to life

have seen the Swedish landscape in many moods. In spring, when the first flowers grow out of the buds, with icicles clinging to the leaves. In summer, when the sun won’t set, and the village stays bathed in faint light all night. In autumn, when the trees turn colour almost overnight, looking brilliant, as if aflame, against a clear blue sky. And in winter, when the sun disappears after lunch, and the bracing cold forces you to wrap layers around your body. But I hadn’t yet seen a frozen lake. When I admitted that, my Swedish friends would have none of it, and they insisted I leave with them after lunch (warm mushroom soup and white fish). I wore my dark scarf and green coat, and covered my head with a cowboy hat, and when Bo said I looked like Humphrey Bogart, only fatter, I said that was a useful disguise, in case I ran into Ingrid Bergman. We walked down a slope from the hotel, the road slightly wet, as the snow from last night had begun to melt. We kept walking along the road until we

reached a vast field and walked towards the lake. My feet sank into the snow, making a deeply satisfying hushing sound. Walking on snow can be tricky. When the snow is fresh and deep, each footstep sinks into the surface, and lifting the foot up seems easier than it is. A long walk through such a field can be pleasing, but it can also feel oddly tiring once you return, as you have been forced to use muscles you don’t use normally while walking. Closer to the road, the snow is shallower, well-trodden, and dark. Some of it has turned liquid. Ice-cold water has the habit of seeping into your shoes, and the trick lies in following the trail of a well-trodden path. I don’t usually get to walk in snow now, but just as with swimming and cycling, once you’ve learned how to walk on snow, you don’t forget it easily. My early training came nearly a quarter century ago, when I was a student in the US and lived six months every year with snow as my constant companion. As we walked, I looked at the gorgeous trees, with sunlight

glinting through their bare branches. It was around 2pm; the time was close to sundown. A sliver of light was outrageously bright, forming a thin strip over the horizon. Above that, the twilight was pale, but distinctly white. And beyond that gradation of whiteness were the grey clouds. The surface in front of us was utterly white and solid, like an

untravelled road. That was Lake Mälaren. I asked Bo’s daughter Sara if one could walk on that ice sheet. She told me that people often skate on it, sometimes going as far as Stockholm, a journey that would take 2 hours. The snow itself might be only 3cm thick, but it would have spread evenly, making it a good, solid surface to skate on.

FOOT NOTES | AADISHT KHANNA

Muscular travel Going from points A to B means ditching an internal combustion engine and getting in some cardio I want to ride my bicycle After walking, the least complicated way to get moving is on a bicycle. And unlike the other options we present here, you don’t need to catch a flight first—your hometown almost certainly has a group of bicycling enthusiasts and some familiar routes. If you’ve got your bike and safety equipment, start practising, build up your stamina, reserve a weekend, and get going. These are our favourite routes:

Delhi to Badkhal Lake The shortest and flattest route of the three we’re listing. Make your way on to Mathura Road, and then pedal towards Faridabad. Detour at Surajkund, and then make your way on to Badkhal Lake, which is rapidly drying up, but is still pretty. Start practising

this route now, so that when it’s time for the Surajkund Crafts Mela next year, you can cycle there with ease. For details, visit www.pedalyatri.in

Bangalore to Savandurga A short route that’s still challenging enough in terms of slopes, this will take you down the relatively peaceful Magadi Road and up to Savandurga, a monolith in the middle of a forest. The Indian Institute of Science’s (IISc’s) Randonneuring Club provides a detailed map and advice for this route, and suggests doing it in the monsoon. For details, visit Sites.google.com/site/iiscrando/

Chennai to Mamallapuram Get started early so that you avoid both the traffic and the afternoon heat. From Madhya Kailash, follow the East Coast Road. By the time the sun is up but not uncomfortably hot, you’ll be on a gorgeous scenic road. Keep at it until you hit Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram), where you can break for beach-bumming, sightseeing

Three centimetres? Could such a thin surface take the weight of a human body? Yes, she said; the only difference from skating on a regular surface was that you would feel the surface move beneath you, slowly—almost as if you were walking on a giant waterbed. And sometimes, she added mischievously, accidents happen. You mean, you hit another skater, right? I asked. No, the lake might crack, and you might get your leg wet, she said, and laughed. Fortunately, she wasn’t carrying an extra pair of skates, so I wasn’t going to have to act as though I was Bogart—or Fred Astaire, for that matter—that afternoon. We walked further, and saw weeds, standing majestically tall, looking firm and gorgeous in the winter light, their roots visible in the water. The water beneath became a mirror, and the reflection was perfect. The part of Sweden we were in was near the main waterfront, from where ships and boats sail to Tallinn in Estonia and St Petersburg in Russia, and icy cold winds came howling at night. The sensible thing to do was to stay huddled indoors, but the trees didn’t have that option. I saw solid barks of trees, powerful and bulky, bent low, at PHOTOGRAPHS

If cycling and walking are too passé for you, you can always head to the water instead, and

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

though with possibly far more competence. Row all day, and stop in the evenings at a campsite along the river. You’ll complete the distance in about a week. Your tour operator will provide you the boat, accessories and insurance. Unfortunately, camping equipment is not included in the package, to say nothing of the dog. For details, visit www.oxfordrivercruises.com

She called me a steed

Row, row, row your boat

Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com

THINKSTOCK

the Pallava sculptures, and an overnight hotel stay. Cycle back the next morning, and brag to your colleagues. For details, visit www.chennaitrekkers.org So you’ve decided to go on a really long walking tour that’ll take you a week or more. Then you’ve realized that you can’t really carry a week’s worth of luggage on your back, no matter how light you pack. The solution: Get an additional source of muscles—a donkey. Smaller and friendlier than horses, donkeys are excellent luggage carriers and ideal companions for long treks. It’s always been possible to rent donkeys in Ladakh and North Africa, but if you want to follow in literary footsteps, hike the GR70 trail through the French Cevennes mountains, which Robert Louis Stevenson did in 1878, when he was raising money to get married by writing travelogues. To make hotel bookings and to hire donkeys, visit http://causses-cevennes.com/ defaultUK.htm

improbable angles, revealing feline curves, kissing the surface of the lake, supine, but not broken. I paused, as I saw the perfect Robert Frost landscape. The sun cast a shimmering glow along the surface of the frozen lake, illuminating the trail of its fading light, and at that moment I saw so many variations of white: the pure white of the surface, the mournful white of the fading light, the translucent white of the trail of light, the dull white along the lake’s edges, and the crystal clear white of the flurry of snow that had begun to fall, in a random pattern, blurring our view, making the scene look like Sven Nykvist had just placed a soft-focus lens on his camera. The light began to disappear quickly. In the daily battle between darkness and light, it was night’s turn to assert itself, although it was not yet 3pm. Ingmar Bergman was from Uppsala near here, and you could see how the stark landscape shaped his worldview, and how in the bleakness of winter he saw signs of despair, and in the glory of the temporary summer, the sign of light, hope, and rejuvenation.

The Adriatic Sea

A different path: By cycling (top) and kayaking your way around a beaten path, you’ll get yourself a workout, besides seeing things anew. hire a rowing boat. At a gym, the rowing machine is maddeningly boring—in an actual boat, you’re at least getting a scenic route.

Oxford to London There’s a literary option available for boaters too: Follow the route taken by Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat,

Warm, sunny and usually placid, the Adriatic Sea is one of the best places to get started on sea kayaking. You can hop from island to island, hug the coast of mainland Croatia, or do a complete circuit of Sardinia. Stop off every once in a while to explore the history of the coast—and considering this was the sea where East and West both clashed and commingled, there’s a lot of it to explore. There are tours available in Italy, Croatia and Albania—take your pick. For details, visit http://croatia.hr/en-GB/ Discover-Croatia, www.adriatickayaktours.com, or Travelinkayak.blogspot.com Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012

Books

LOUNGE VALERIO PENNICINO/GETTY IMAGES

Eyepopping: Book displays take centre stage; and (below) a still from The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

FETISH

Fake bibliophilia Our irritating new tendency to fet ishize the physical book is actually an excuse not to read

B Y R AGHU K ARNAD ···························· t the Academy Awards this year, the prize for Best Animated Short Film went to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. This is a lovely visual fable, with the classic theme of books and readers breathing life into each other, and perhaps the award was intended as the Academy’s tribute to the printed word. If you haven’t watched it on YouTube yet: Mr Lessmore is a dead ringer for a young Vikram Seth, and he writes books. On the day we meet him, his books, along with the rest of his vintage-era town, are torn apart by a storm. He survives but the aftermath is bleak: The world, now strewn with ravaged pages, has turned black and white. But before long, a flock

of flying books appears on the scene, and they bring colour back to his life, as well as to the film. It’s a neat reversal of the start of the movie The Wizard of Oz, in which a storm carries Judy Garland out of monochrome Kansas and into Technicolor paradise. That transition, of course, is a tribute to the magic of the movies. As Dorothy steps into Oz, she feels the same amazement as her audience must have, back in 1939, when colour cinema was still young. Returning to The Fantastic Flying Books, you’re forced to admit that the dawn-of-colours thing works better as a metaphor for cinema than for reading. Books actually are black and white, most of them. If you look inside. You can leave The Fantastic Flying Books feeling that both the film and the Academy’s tribute are hollow and, all the more for their loveliness, self-defeating. I’d call them “booksy”. If you use Facebook or Twitter, you may have noticed the recent popularity of “booksing”, which is very different from reading. Booksing tends to show up as a gushy, shared celebration of the idea of books, rather than of the experience of reading any given one. Our reaction to last month’s award-winner is the latest example, but it isn’t the greatest, yet.

Going by YouTube hits, that title belongs to The Joy of Books, a stop-motion video that’s been viewed almost three million times in two months. At night, within a bookshop, hundreds of books whirl about in ecstatic, sovereign motion. It’s a mesmerizing effect, but in truth, a less cultured filmmaker could have set it in a supermarket, featuring hyperactive boxes of washing powder. The video ends zooming in on a black volume, whose title announces: There’s Nothing Quite Like a Real Book. At first, I thought it read

‘Booksing’ is a gushy, shared celebration of the idea of books, rather than of reading any given one

“This is”, but no, it’s “There’s”. Booksing often celebrates books through their most cosmetic aspects, like another viral hit, the website Bookshelf Porn (www.bookshelfporn.com). Reverse the order of those words, and at least you get some sense of content, but Bookshelf Porn is entirely about form. In fact, it’s entirely about furniture. Yet it was shared among friends as a testament to their love of reading. Writing about the site for Newyorker.com, Monica Racic implied that the nemesis of spectacular bookshelves is the Kindle. Wrong. The nemesis of spectacular bookshelves is a messy heap of books, which is to say, books that look like they’re being read rather than photographed. There are many ways of being booksy. They include the overscrutiny of cover design, the fetishization of typefaces, the reading of writing about reading and writing, and the purchase of Penguin India souvenirs. There is a new connoisseurship of pulp fiction, which we own not in hope of ever reading, but in hope of communing with the literary underbelly. There’s an epidemic of Tumblr pages that you can broadly call “Hemingway, Typewriter”, in which famous authors are seen doing things. Then there’s the veneration of the collection, the shelf, the bargain bin, the discount haul, and other forms of textual abundance (or, as we know too well, unread accumulation). Last but not least, being booksy means watching animated tributes to books that have nothing to do with actually reading.

The Fantastic Flying Books plays out the cute idea that our friends, the Books, literally live or die by our reading them, and they’re waiting to repay the favour to our own languishing imaginations. Yet within its kingdom of storybooks, the only one that’s ever identified is Humpty Dumpty: a child’s oral rhyme, not one you typically read. There’s nothing wrong with this, as a vision of books for children, especially considering the film’s inspiration—the sight of children, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, reading donated books in a shelter. “They had lost all their belongings and had no privacy, no TV, no way to escape,” William Joyce told Animation Magazine. “And once they started to read on their cots, they were totally lost in the worlds of their books.” Okay, he gets an Oscar. But what explains how we react to booksiness, not being children or hurricane victims? As images of reading that appeal to adults, or to the Academy in Hollywood, they are usually twee and patronizing. The pedagogy of books as “friends that you’re neglecting” doesn’t genuinely urge anyone to read. It only ends up furthering our admiration of books as design objects or symbols of lifestyle values. It doesn’t address the reasons our reading hours are disappearing. One thing I find that helps me to read these days is the appeal of a specific book—never the idea of books which dance around like hopeful fireflies. In our new digital lives, we’re deluged by text but evermore removed from proper reading. The textures and objects that once filled our lives have been replaced by the bald touch screen, though for every physical thing left behind, the Internet generates a billion virtual simulations. One result is booksing: a palliative appreciation of books as things, which muddles up the nostalgia for a more tactile world with our anxiety about just not reading enough. The joy of reading is harder to access than The Joy of Reading video. I’m as vulnerable to this as anybody. Yet when booksiness gets a big plug from the Academy Awards, it leaves me feeling suspicious and sad and mad, because it looks like a worthless welfare cheque from a healthy creative form to one that’s thought to be moribund. If reading is indeed about to die, then booksing is a good sign of its dropping pulse. If we stopped booksing instead, we’d have one less distraction. Write to lounge@livemint.com

RIOTS AND AFTER IN MUMBAI | MEENA MENON

Aftermath stories A veteran reporter goes back to the Mumbai riots 20 years after they happened B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· n an appendix to this book, Meena Menon describes her effort to obtain copies of police cases filed against Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray under the Right to Information Act. Menon filed her application in 2004, and immediately plunged into a multilateral battle with the police, bureaucracy and law to get some answers. They finally began to trickle in—in 2011, seven years later. It is a small, unvarnished account, but it forms a bleakly ironic coda to the substance of Menon’s book, and the ideas of truth and reconciliation—that dazzling phrase familiar to us from post-apartheid justice in South Africa—which motivate Riots and After in Mumbai.

Riots and After in Mum bai—Chronicles of Truth and Reconciliation: Sage Publications, 266 pages, `595.

Menon’s whole book is unvarnished; a raw, pavement-pounding investigation of how—or whether—truth and reconciliation have shaped the afterlife of a rioting, rioted-upon city two decades after the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992. The answer is no, but Menon recognizes that the work of reportage goes beyond either/or responses. Her interviews with people who live in the shadow of those days take up the punishing work of repeating, remembering and expanding their stories. The result is a work that does more to deconstruct the riots themselves, than to actually build a “20 years later” story. Testimonies from the battlegrounds of those days—chawls that have been charred to ash, slums which have become refugee camps, exurbs turned to Muslim ghettos—make it bleakly clear that, even if the riots have been suppressed in public memory, as disasters have a habit of doing in Mumbai, there is an unseen, unwritten city where they have never stopped happening. Perhaps this is the most powerful thought with which the book leaves readers. Disappointingly, if

Menon’s book succeeds in giving us any larger picture of post-riots Mumbai, it is mostly by accident. Her opening chapters do look at Mumbai’s long history of religious riots, as an attempt to put 1992-93 in some historical context, and to counter the unhelpful fable of a prelapsarian Bombay where identity politics only arrived with the Shiv Sena. But the rest of the book resists any real framework of ideas, choosing to pursue the memories of dozens of interviewees as an end in themselves, not pausing for political context or social history. Certainly, these stories speak for

themselves. Menon is particularly good at discovering the entrenchment of boundaries between Hindu and Muslim areas, at stories of resettlement and displacement. But much of this is the work of a reporter more interested in facts than style, a writer whose register falls somewhere between academia and newsprint. There is some deplorable editing: It’s common to be thrown out of the narrative by zingers like “What happened after that can only due to Rashida’s grit.” Yes, and due to a slumbering proofreader. Menon’s directness of purpose HINDUSTAN TIMES

Scorching: Menon’s book investigates a city still shadowed by the riots.

in reporting the effects of the riots curiously softens focus as far as their cause is concerned. Nine out of 10 victims of a riot will blame politics and the police, and say what we love to hear them say: that there is a conspiracy at work, and that common people just want to live in peace. The fact is that between December 1992 and March 1993, they didn’t, much as they didn’t in Delhi in 1984 or Ahmedabad in 2002. As this history slips away from public narrative, it becomes easier than ever to think that reconciliation is possible without truth. Riots and After in Mumbai, unlike that other recent work about an untold city story, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, is not a book of general interest; its audience is the reader who already knows or cares about, say, who Madhukar Sarpotdar is. Its deeper, more literary truths all lie in between its lines, and they are not about truth and reconciliation, but about an unresolved sorrow. “The walls of my own house charge upon me,” goes a poem of Namdeo Dhasal’s, quoted in this book’s epigraph. “They want to assassinate me.”

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CRIMINAL MIND

QUICK LIT | SIDIN VADUKUT

ZAC O’YEAH

The gore conundrum

Scarecrow strike Matthew Reilly’s improbable but superb hero is back in a gripping potboiler B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ························································ n the introduction to an anthology of 1970s science fiction stories, Isaac Asimov wistfully says how much he envies anyone who is about to read John W. Campbell Jr’s masterpiece Who Goes There? for the first time. This high praise ensures that anyone who has read the introduction immediately flips to the back to Who Goes There? Most fans of Matthew Reilly’s thriller novels will have exactly the same feeling when introducing the author’s works to new readers. How lucky you are, they think if not enunciate, that you are about to discover Shane Schofield and Jack West Jr and maghooks and statues made of meteorite fragments and secret army bases and underground treasure chambers and... That list is as limitless as Reilly’s irrepressible, and irresistible, imagination. Over a series of some dozen full-length novels, Reilly has perhaps created a subgenre that is uniquely his: the “cardiac arrest-inducing techno-thriller”. His plots usually take little more than a page or so to start. Perhaps a top secret weapon has been stolen from a military base, or a head of state is being ambushed during a visit to a remote research facility. Think of these early chapters as the part of the roller coaster where you judder up the hill before being flung down the other side. Reilly’s latest novel, Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves, begins with an all-but-abandoned Russian weapons base in the Arctic being taken over by a mysterious band of brigands called the Army of Thieves. Some miles away, but of course, our hero Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield is testing new experimental weapons (how convenient), including a small weaponized robot (how much more convenient), with a small Scarecrow and the force of scientists and US Army of Thieves: marines (many of whom must By Matthew Reilly, and will die). Orion, 416 pages, £6.99 A massive army of bad guys (around `550). against a small troop of good guys is exciting enough for most thriller novels. But not for Reilly. So we also have a group of French special forces who have a score to settle with Scarecrow, and are looking for him in the Arctic in a large submarine, which is later obliterated in a relatively minor skirmish. Everyone proceeds to kill everyone else. Sometimes several times over. Also, there are mutant polar bears and a doomsday weapon. Indeed, Reilly might be the first author to overlap the genres of mindless thriller and magical realism. With around a dozen novels behind him, Reilly now has a formula down pat. All his action happens in remote locations, allowing him to blow up things willy-nilly without worrying about collateral damage. His locations are complex and vague and thus make necessary the crude line diagrams and maps that all his novels have in the beginning. Every chapter ends with a cliff-hanger that is unresolvable by the laws of this universe. The dialogue, an utterly unnecessary distraction here, is always revolting. But most of all, Reilly has developed the ability to coopt the reader into surrendering every notion of credibility. This surrender, you could say, is at the heart of all writing. And what Reilly has to offer makes this capitulation wonderfully worthwhile. Matthew Reilly is by no means good writing. But it is awesome reading.

AMERICAN BOOKMEN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Ultraviolence: A screen version of the grim Lisbeth Salander; and (left) the relatively gentler Edgar Allan Poe.

Why is crime fiction increasingly violent, and can it ever mean good things about the society it reflects?

odern detective novels are apparently beginning to draw flak over their violent content. Just the other week, an interviewer asked me why I think there are so many atrocious descriptions of nasty deeds in pulp fiction today. Is the genre too misogynistic? Where has all the fun gone? Interesting points. Until recently, I’d never really thought about it, to be honest. I had always assumed that one picks up crime novels to read about crime. And just like there is spice in the curry, violence, or the threat of it, would seem to be an integral part of most crime stories, with the exception of pick-pocketing, fraud and car theft (unless they involve carjacking). There was, of course, a time when fiction was less violent, when purloined letters led to blackmail, as in Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story—although it can be argued that blackmailing is a form of mental violence. So while it is true that there is more violence in today’s plots, as compared to the Golden Age of detective fiction, which ended circa 1940 when noir pulp became popular, what we’re actually talking about is crime fiction having developed a greater diversity. One can still read stories as decent as anything Agatha Christie ever wrote, yet more global in flavour, like The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. Today we have, thanks to developments in the genre, thrillers set in Africa, India, Thailand, Japan and Scandinavia—places that weren’t part of the pre-1940s canon. If anything, the quality of crime fiction has consistently gone up—just consider the many literary masterpieces written in the form of mysteries: Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in the 1980s, Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome and Kerstin Ekman’s Blackwater in the 1990s, Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George in the 2000s... Earlier, no serious writer

would have chosen the detective story as a literary form. However, development takes us in many directions, not all necessarily pleasant, and fictional violence has consequently become more extreme in some cases. In the old days, there seemed to be a taboo against depicting women in violent situations—whether as victims or perps. This taboo was comprehensively broken by Mickey Spillane in his 1947 novel I, the Jury where a woman turns out to be a serial killer and is shot point blank during a striptease by the sleuth. Thirteen years later, Alfred Hitchcock shocked the world with Psycho—deliberately filmed in black and white so that people wouldn’t faint during the virtual bloodbath that the female thief, played by Janet Leigh, experiences in her bathroom at the Bates Motel. With that gory scene, Psycho defined the modern slasher, splatter and psycho horror genres, while bagging four Academy Award nominations (today, both Spillane and Hitchcock might strike you as not quite so nasty compared to what you’d find in your neighbourhood lending library). Ever since then, women have featured in proactive roles in thrillers. Think of Angelina Jolie merrily participating in shootouts on screen, or Lisbeth

Salander, the pierced misfit heroine of the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, who after being raped, carves vengeful tattoos on the chest of her perverted legal custodian. There have even been some memorable women versus female monster fightouts—remember Sigourney Weaver battling the Aliens, the biggest mamas of all horror movie creatures? Is this misogyny, or has fiction become up-to-date with gender equality? Certainly, crime is no longer a credible amusement only for aristocrats like Peter Wimsey (by Dorothy Sayers), or priests like Father Brown (by G.K. Chesterton), but something that ordinary people, including women, grapple with, in fiction as in real life. For example, the latest Swedish thriller sensation—She’s Never Coming Back by Hans Koppel—is violent enough to trouble even a hardened reader. In it, the suburban lifestyle of a typical middle-class family is disrupted when their psychopath-rapist neighbours kidnap the wife and hold her captive in their soundproofed basement. The plot is disturbing because it is reminiscent of several recent crimes, where female victims have been kept imprisoned for years. Such realistic depictions of

violence in fiction may perhaps be a creative response to the world of today. This, in turn, reminds me of a literary method popular in certain American creative writing workshops: “Dangerous Writing”. The idea is to write about what upsets or scares you, to explore your greatest fears. The best example of a popular writer who employs the method is Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel Fight Club on which the controversial and graphically violent 1999 Brad Pitt-starrer is based. At the end of the day, I ask myself what the appropriate connection is, or should be, between fiction and reality. While I regret that violence exists in reality, I doubt that fiction can completely revert to an era of purloined letters. There is unlikely to be a huge international readership for a trilogy about misplaced wallets, lost kittens and food adulteration. For obvious reasons, readers gravitate towards the books that address their issues and worries, and if reality is violent, then books about violent crime are perhaps the inevitable outcome. Consider how cinema and television bombard the unsuspecting entertainment seeker with images of evil day and night. Screen time is expensive time, so films rarely bother much with analysing the violence they broadcast. A novel, on the other hand, offers a space for reflection and is perhaps the last resort for human beings who need to understand what lies behind brutality. Pages can be devoted to a violent deed—unpacking the scary stuff at a pace that allows a reader to analyse the goings-on. It would seem, therefore, that one reads thrillers either for the thrills (a cathartic process similar to the one Aristotle postulated regarding ancient Greek drama), or for therapy (to help one think through one’s worries that may be echoed in them), but not for fun, surely? Can murder ever be considered fun, except by a certified sociopath? Probably not. Zac O’ Yeah is most recently the author of Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan. Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

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OUR PICTURES, OUR WORDS PHOTOFEMINISM Recalling the title of the historic feminist book, ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, Zubaan Books brings out a lovely tribute to the Indian women’s movement with its collection ‘Our Pictures, Our Words: A Visual Journey Through the Women's Movement’. This book puts together the historic protest art, pamphlets, posters and graffiti produced all over India by women’s activists since the early 1970s. With lucid text and helpful timelines that detail the challenges and milestones of Indian feminism over the last 40 years, it brings together some of the most eyecatching and inspiring public art made in modern India. Supriya Nair

Our Pictures, Our Words: By Laxmi Murthy and Rajashri Dasgupta, Zubaan, 228 pages, `695.

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Culture

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Art of the peninsula: (far left) A visitor to last year’s Art Chennai at a participating gallery; and the Kochi Muziris biennale emphasizes the reanimation of disused buildings.

Southern rising

New contemporary art events in south India may see collectors heading there in the near future

B Y R AJNI G EORGE rajni.g@livemint.com

···························· here’s something wonderfully cosy about the Chennai art scene; go for an opening and you’ll meet your aunt or former schoolteacher. For out-of-towners drawn by new art events down south—Art Chennai (10-18 March), now in its second year, and the muchawaited inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala—whose music, performance and talks programme will continue for three months from 12.12.12 to 13.03.13—it’s an intimate, reticent new world which might just be worth venturing into. Art Chennai consists of events at multiple venues, including the Taj Coromandel, which will host a conference and an artist residency. The participating artists at the event include Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Nilima

Sheikh, Arpita Singh, C. Douglas and M. Senathipathi. “It’s a citybased festival,” says businessman Sanjay Tulsyan, founder of the nine-day fair. “I started it because there was a lack of visual contemporary art out here. We wanted to take art to the common person, be inclusive.” This year, there are seven large installations around the city at locations ranging from malls to the Lalit Kala Akademi and even Marina Beach, as well as a four-part, 30-artist exhibition curated by art historian Chaitanya Sambrani. Tulsyan admits the fair was small last year, with 15,000 visitors—a mere 300 or 400 of these from outside Chennai—but he anticipates 30,000 visitors this year. From his and other accounts, it is likely to attract art collectors and gallerists loyal to the blockbuster India Art Fair in New Delhi, and not just the casual traveller or culturally conscious local. “The common perception was that the south was conservative,” says Sharan Apparao, owner of the well-known Apparao Galleries and an art scene veteran of 28 years. “South Indians are sophisticated and subdued, but that doesn’t mean they’re conservative—this is beginning to be understood by art sellers.” Some of the Indian art scene’s biggest power players hail from the south, with a central base in

I started it because there was a lack of visual contemporary art out here... Sanjay Tulsyan Founder, Art Chennai

New Delhi to consolidate their art world clout: Apparao in Chennai and Coimbatore’s Rajshree Pathy, art connoisseur and entrepreneur, both have their strongholds in the south but run their business empires from the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi. “Art Chennai is very relevant as it brings a focus on both southern artists and the collectors who are largely quiet,” says Pathy, founder of the first international India Design Forum in the Capital (from 2-10 March). “Regional events always serve as catalysts for growth in the area.” Pathy is also the founder of the multidisciplinary creative educational institute Coimbatore Centre for Contemporary Arts (CoCCA) in tier II city Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. “There are opportunities in

the south, but this is not just about an art fair,” Apparao emphasizes. “It’s about the sustained arts initiatives and events we organize on a regular basis; interactive art events, I think, are the future. Art Chennai is not big enough for people to come rushing down yet.” Yet, it’s apparently not so small that it will keep away major Delhi art world figures like Peter Nagy, director of New Delhi’s Nature Morte gallery. “I’m going for work as well as pleasure,” he admits. “The (Indian) art market is not as robust as it should be, considering the size of this country and how much it spends on things. There is no rising south Indian art scene just as yet.” What Chennai has always had is arts education and spaces like the Cholamandal Artists’ Village, established in 1966 as the largest artists’ commune in India, which Pathy calls “visionary”. Arts organizations like the Prakriti Foundation and dance and music academies like Kalakshetra are also part of an active Chennai art scene, whose denizens often discuss the nature of

true engagement. “I don’t see Art Chennai as truly participatory,” says Anitha Pottenkulam, senior travel consultant and art lover. “People like (artists) N. Ramachandran and V. Anamika are doing work independent of ideology and are socially engaged, that is (more) interesting to me.” While art fairs get media attention, their players understand that these are not necessarily indicative of an immediate increase in the size of the market—but more of a new energy. Take the excitement around the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. “The Kochi biennale will be awesome in its breadth of intellectual contemporary art expression for India,” says Pathy. “And the support from the Kerala government is an example of private-public partnership in the area of art and culture that should be emulated.” Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, Mumbai artists who are originally from Kerala, have planned the biennale as the first recurring international festival of contemporary art in India. “The India Art Fair is a market-based fair; this biennale is about people

consider design to be universal poetry. India abounds with art and craft traditions. Yet it seems like an unorganized sector. Why do you think this is so? What we ought to understand in India is that the automotive industry and other technological industries can benefit a great deal from the craft industry. Design could play a crucial role in synthesizing this. Sadly, crafts hold the shallow perception of being only decorative.

Indigenous skills hardly ever get coupled with state-of-the-art technology. There has been no attempt to organize the craft sector in higher educational systems. I look forward to the day when a boy or a girl from an artisanal family from rural India gets the opportunity to study and cultivate his or her skills in institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology. We have a huge gap in our system. One could learn a lot from countries like post-war Italy, where they seamlessly integrated their craft skills in automotive and other industries. What is your opinion on the Indian design style (from local textiles, handicrafts to architecture). Is there something you identify as Indian design? While we have an amazing varieties of handicrafts from all over India, we have little application of it in contemporary design. I personally stay away from the rhetorical talks about design styles. For me, a good design is innovative. That innovation could be in making or in rethinking the typology itself. To give a visual recipe of socalled Indian design does not suit my way of thinking. I would like

in a place, and artists coming from all over the world to make art,” says a spokesperson for the Kochi Biennale Foundation, a non-profit cultural organization. The event emphasizes reanimating disused houses and creating site-specific installations. Events will be held in Kochi, Muziris (around 30km from Kochi) and surrounding islands such as Willington and Bolgatty across mediums including film, sculpture, new media and performance art. Over 80 international artists have been invited, of which 25 are working on new commissions. Among those invited are Fiona Tan, Atul Dodiya, Alfredo Jaar, Bani Abidi, Gabriel Orozco, Tallur L.N., Wangechi Mutu and Zakir Hussain. The south seems to encourage experimentation; edgy outfits such as Bangalore’s GallerySKE are proof. Its founder, Sunitha Kumar Emmart, shows 5-10 artists a year. One of her shows featuring Škoda Prizewinning Navin Thomas had live birds and dead insects. “We don’t show pretty little pictures,” Emmart declares. “The troubled market is on everyone’s head. But people are sitting quietly here in Bangalore and creating new work; it’s a space where artists can be productive.” Emmart started with three artists in 2003 and today represents some of the country’s biggest names, such as Bharti Kher and Sudarshan Shetty. Efforts to expose the south to the rest of India work both ways. Apparao, for instance, is bringing Janardhanan and Sunil Sree, two young Chennai-based artists, to Delhi for the first time later this year. Artists Ebenezer Singh, who hails from Chennai, and Ashish Thapar began Singh and Thapar Projects four months ago in Connaught Place, Delhi, a space where they can show lesser-known south Indian artists like Sharmila Mohandas and Aparajithan Adimoolam, which hasn’t been commercially viable before. Ultimately, as Emmart puts it, “There needs to be the idea of building one language; what does it matter if it’s north Indian or south Indian art?”

Q&A | SATYENDRA PAKHALÉ

‘Design is universal poetry’ The Amsterdambased industrial designer connects the artisanal with the industrial B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

···························· t took about eight years for industrial designer Satyendra Pakhalé, 45, to perfect the technique of the Bell Metal Horse Chair. Modelled on an ancient technique from central India, it uses an alloy of bronze and beeswax rolled into strands and wound around a mould to create a one-piece object. The chair was first shown at Design Miami, Basel in 2007 to much acclaim. Then there are his Roll CarbonCeramic Chairs. Made from earthenware and stoneware, they are ceremonial welcome objects. Pakhalé’s version combines two unlikely materials seamlessly—hi-tech carbon fibre with the age-old ceramic. In Pakhalé’s designs, there is a

traditional craftsmanship at work but made contemporary with technology. His inspirations lie in world cultures but he steers clear of all nostalgia. Born in Washim, Maharashtra, Pakhalé trained at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and later at the Art Center College of Design (Europe), Switzerland. In 1998, he set up his own global design practice in Amsterdam. With clients ranging from Cappellini, Magis, Bosa and Alessi and with his works in museum collections worldwide, Pakhalé’s strength lies in innovation in materials, technologies and studying contexts. He is a speaker at the first two-day India Design Forum (IDF) in New Delhi which started on Friday. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Tell us a little about your presentation at the IDF 2012. I’m looking forward to sharing my design journey over the last 20 years. I’ve been invited to speak about excellence in design production. There’s a lot to talk about industry, innovation and how design truly boosts not only industrial and economic development but, above all, how design creates culture. You call yourself a “cultural nomad”. What does it imply? For me being a “cultural nomad” means to be free: Free of any intellectual or regressive traditions, beyond any “ism”. It means to be free to cultivate one’s own mind and therefore to create a body of work that is truly human. I

Mind over matter: Pakhalé with his Fish Chair.

to see plural expressions coming out of India, not burdened by nostalgia or orthodox points of view, but a genuinely refreshing way of doing things. You are one of the most prolific designers of recent times. What keeps you going idea after idea? Curiosity. I am curious about people, places, materials, technologies and cultures. I like to travel and meet people from around the world. One idea leads to another. Meeting like-minded people who are curious and willing to take on the creative journey together to arrive somewhere unexpected—that’s important. Do you think functional design is superior to design wholly geared towards aesthetics? In good design, these two cannot be separated. Products or systems that work are incredibly beautiful. On the other hand, nobody can tell me that the pure aesthetical act of offering flowers to your loved one is not functional. Satyendra Pakhalé will speak at the India Design Forum 2012 at Le Méridien, New Delhi, from 3-3.30pm today. For details, visit www.indiadesignforum.com

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FILM

Arc of a revolutionary anupam1.v@livemint.com

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Labour of love: (above) A still from the film shows Surjya Sen’s young rebels; and Bedabrata Pain.

uprising unfolding around its teenage protagonist. Pain deviates markedly from Ashutosh Gowariker’s film on the rebellion, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (KHJJS, 2010). Gowariker’s spotlight remained firmly on Sen, played by Abhishek Bachchan, as he devises a plan with his group to capture two armouries and destroy the telegraph offices in Chittagong. The raid results in the destruction of the telegraph offices and seizure of the police lines armoury. Sen then leads his band, weapons in tow, into the Chittagong hill ranges to hide and plan their next move. Gowariker shot the entire film in Goa; Pain looked elsewhere. “The terrain and vegetation of Chittagong is different from Goa. It was difficult even to find a place in Bengal for filming,” says Pain. He decided not to shoot in Ban-

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

···························· ’m a fatalist,” Shekhar Suman is saying to a reporter during his lunch break on the sets of his new project. “I believe we all come into this world with a bound script. We’re just acting out the scenes already written for us.” Suman has just flipped back the pages on his copy to revisit an old act of his. Starting Monday, he and his creative team are bringing back Movers and Shakers—the popular Hindi chat show of which he hosted over 200 episodes from 1997-2001. In the decade following, news channels and talking heads to suit every kind of middlebrow political discourse have multiplied, while entertainment channels have streamlined them-

COLOURED NOTES usic and colour have for long enjoyed a companionship, particularly when it comes to the use of cross-sensory references in descriptions of music. Remember the occasions when you have heard or read about a “dark” track or “bright” notes. References to colour when describing music are by no means new or uncommon, but they do invite a closer look. Similar references to colour can be found in the context of Indian music too. For example, in describing a hugely successful concert, Hindustani musicians and music lovers will invariably use the term “rang jamaa diyaa”. What does this actually mean? Does it indicate that the concert was colourful? Or was it the raga that was a colourful one? Like other culture-specific usage of language, this phrase defies translation. Possibly it means that the music was presented with such brilliance and artistry that it virtually drenched the ambience and all those who were present in its unique colours. Colour or rang is also used in conjunction with raga, to form the commonly used phrase raga-rang, which denotes the gaanaa-bajaanaa or music making. A variant of the same phrase manifests itself as raga-o-rang, where the impact of Persian can be seen in the stitching together of two Hindi nouns. Interestingly, the references to colour and colourful sounds of music are repeated even in Persian texts. Take, for instance, these lines quoted from Persian in South Asia by S.A.H. Abidi and Ravinder Gargesh:

B Y A NUPAM K ANT V ERMA

Shekhar Suman’s latenight television show returns after an 11year hiatus

SHUBHA MUDGAL

Bedabrata Pain’s debut film on the Chittagong uprising led by the iconic Surjya Sen focuses on a teen rebel

···························· n April 1930, Chittagong, then part of British India, stood liberated for a good two days. On the night of the 18th, a band of young men and women— including several teenagers—led by a middle-aged teacher at a local school, seized control of the police armoury. Surjya Sen, Masterda to his motley group, hoisted the national flag, and took the military salute as chants of “down with imperialism” rose into the night air. “These people were not fools. They knew they couldn’t overthrow the British empire with a single raid,” says historian Mridula Mukherjee of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. “It was a dramatic act for mobilizing support for the freedom struggle.” The act’s denouement came four years later, when Sen was hanged on 12 January 1934. “I was clear from Day 1 that my story will not be a story of defeat,” says Bedabrata Pain, director of Chittagong, a forthcoming film on the uprising. Pain decided to highlight a character with a traceable arc to his story. Subodh “Jhunku” Roy’s turn towards rebellion provided just that. Fourteen at the time, he stole his father’s licensed gun to join Sen’s band of rebels. “We met Roy a few weeks before he died in 2006,” says Pain. “I talked to him and thought that his story needed to be told.” Chittagong documents Roy’s journey from a young boy vacillating between patriotism and nagging self-doubt to a young rebel inspired by the vision of his beloved Masterda. Disillusioned by the scrimmage between revolutionary groups in Bengal, Sen had begun assembling the Indian Republican Army—a group of youngsters—to confront the British. Chittagong witnesses the

MUSIC MATTERS

selves to suit the apparent demand for reality television and soap operas. The celebrity chat show, both in Hindi and English, lives on in glitter and celebrity gossip, but now rarely goes beyond rapid-fire banalities from the movie star of the week. In the meanwhile, stand-up comedy has acquired a life of its own, on small but enthusiastic live circuits around the country, and on hit Hindi shows like The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. With its straight-up borrowing of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno format (stand-up, a band waiting to underscore punchlines with rimshots and laughter, newsy spoofs, good-humoured and shamelessly self-promoting celebrity guests), Movers and Shakers first arrived on screen in a decade full of loudmouth confessionals. Its draw, as well as its eventual problem, was its middle-of-the-road, hyuk-hyuk take on the state of the world that day. Four years is a long time to try and keep viewers charmed: If Leno, and his US counterparts

gladesh—where Chittagong now lies—due to all the permits it would have required. A friend told him about Lataguri, a village in West Bengal. One look at the village and Pain knew he had found his Chittagong. The rest of the film was shot in Kolkata. Pain credits his production designer Samir Chanda’s obsession with detail—sometimes rejecting houses because the doorknob didn’t fit the bill—for creating the sets for Chittagong. The film was shot in early 2010. A scientist with the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or Nasa, Pain used the money he received from a patent to fund Chittagong, after many producers backed out all of a sudden. Initially, the film was supposed to release alongside KHJJS, but he was forced to withhold it indefinitely owing to

David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, have managed to do it for years on end, it’s also fair to say that none of them will win any awards for elevating the public discourse. Suman, already a well-known Bollywood actor, had two seemingly contradictory things going for him: His energy and his movie career brought some high-octane glamour to television, but he was also a good old lad, a homeboy who could talk to audiences in north India in their own accents—if there was a joke to be had there. People who may not remember a single thing about Suman’s filmography today will still be able to identify him as one of politician Lalu Prasad’s most famous mimics. But times, and politics, have changed. “Yes, of course. Tastes evolve in all sorts of ways,” Suman says, a touch defensively. “So many new things have happened. Look at Twitter and Facebook, where everyone can now have their own take, their own standpoint. We’re taking care to cater to new audiences.” Every day, Suman and a team of writers—not all of whom have worked on the show’s first edition—sit down to brainstorm gags

unforeseen reasons well out of his hand. The reduced budget also forced Pain to economize on many aspects of the film. “I love to move the camera over long distances,” he says. “But some of my wide-ranging shots in which I wanted to show a whole shot of Chittagong, for instance, had to be scrapped for budgetary reasons.” Pain waxes eloquent about Manoj Bajpai’s portrayal of Sen and Delzad Hiwale’s Roy. “Surjya was carrying a lot of responsibility on his shoulders,” says Bajpai. “He was not comfortable with having children in his squad, but he had no choice. I had to bring that troubled mind to the fore in my portrayal of the man.” He says Pain’s meticulous homework on Sen helped him capture “the soul of Surjya”. Pain sifted through reams of documents in the original Bengali, visited places associated with the uprising and talked to survivors at length. The interviews with Roy’s brother aided Pain immensely in understanding the young rebel. “This was a frail boy whose father was a barrister, and who was destined for the spires of Oxford University,” concludes Pain. “Instead, he picked up a gun.” Chittagong is scheduled to release in theatres in May.

and stand-up scripts, most of which involve political figures, Bollywood and cricketers. They seem to clearly choose guests for conversation, rather than reputation: The new season opens with actor Govinda, follows up with Sandeep Singh and Sardar Singh from the Indian hockey team, and

Kar diide maina-e-raagi khwaan rang-e-sadaa gashte ‘iaan Waz naghma-e’aab arghuwaan dar juuyi takraar aamde Shud vaqt-e-Holi baakhtaan baa rang-o-buu pardaakhtaan. (If one hears the maina sing, colourful sound manifests itself And the song of the purple water repeatedly occurs, At the time of Holi I lose myself in the colours and aroma.) KEVIN FRAYER/AP

Riot: Literature makes references to colour in the context of music. Another wonderful association between colour and music is seen in the music of the Sufis, in which Sama’a gatherings often include the traditional forms called Qaul and Rang. Rang, as part of the Sufi repertoire, is usually a composition featuring verses on the theme of colour, sung in the moving and ecstatic style so typical of qawwali, always anchored in tradition and discipline and yet straining towards the surrender and trance-like abandon that the music seeks to establish. The Internet offers many examples of Rang, performed by a huge variety of singers. One that I particularly enjoy is Aaj rang hai ey Maa, rang hai ri performed by the Shankar-Shambhu duo decades ago, possibly for a television show: youtu.be/8TAlgeGA_mA Some say Hazrat Amir Khusrau recited the lines from this Rang in the presence of his mother when he returned home after his first meeting with Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in the late 13th century. He had searched high and low for a murshid, or spiritual master, and when he finally met Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, his joy at finding his master is expressed in the lines “Main Pir paayo Nizamuddin Auliya, jag ujiyaaro, jagat ujiyaaro…” and “main to aiso rang aur naheen dekhyo sakhi ri”. The last line is equally true of the impact of music, which colours our lives in a way that nothing else can. Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

goes on to composer Bappi Lahiri and his son Bappa Lahiri. The mood is relentlessly light. “They’re reporting that the Prime Minister will soon have a 3km-long tunnel connecting his residence to the airport, so he can walk there directly, if he chooses,” Suman dead-pans for ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

The last laugh: Suman on the sets of the new Movers and Shakers.

an on-camera rehearsal, in Hindi. “Really? Three whole kilometres? When we asked Digvijaya Singh we were told, ‘Look, if he were only following Soniaji, he’d be able to walk 30’.” “I think you always need a show like this as a safety valve,” says Shailesh Dave, the creator of Movers and Shakers, and a veteran of Hindi spoof and stand-up programming on television. “You think there’s no one to say a thing about the problems around you. You get angry, but you don’t have a soapbox on which to get up. So there you go—this becomes your platform and Shekhar Suman your spokesperson.” Suman says he worries constantly about giving offence. But for a show gung-ho about bringing politics back into familyfriendly TV (Suman wanted activist Anna Hazare to be his first guest, something he says was prevented by the latter’s ill-health), its makers aren’t really ready to unsheathe their claws, clearly more focused on sending their viewers to bed in a good mood than in a thoughtful one. Movers and Shakers airs on SAB TV from 12 March at 10.30pm, and will run on weeknights.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUMBAI MULTIPLEX | SUPRIYA NAIR

The amazing trace PHOTOGRAPHS

Parkour, a sport developed for the urban environment, has a small but devoted following. But the city just won’t let them be

he March sunshine is dissolving the last of the winter snap on a weekend morning in Kandivali East, and the scrub is already drying out on the hilly road that winds through the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI’s)’s training complex. On either side, various courts are filling up with young men and women training seriously at their chosen disciplines: cricket, tennis, hockey, track and field, freestyle fighting outside the women’s hostel (or no, that’s just an inter-athlete quarrel) and judo. In a gym high up the road, half-a-dozen young men are training for a sport which has no competitions, no awards and no official recognition yet. They somersault lightly on training mats, jump smoothly over high wooden vaults, and flip from height to height, looking for all the world like superheroes in training. This is Parkour Mumbai, and its members, currently looking as though they could walk on air if they thought hard enough about it, are Mumbai’s parkour

practitioners—its traceurs. I first heard of parkour three years ago, while interviewing dreamboat movie star Kunal Kapoor. Kapoor was bulking up for a role, as movie stars are always doing these days, and mentioned, off-hand, that he’d been practising this cutting-edge new martial art from France. Parkour, I learnt, was an urban sport which had its beginnings in the suburbs of Paris, popularized in the early 2000s. It took its name from the French parcours du combattant, shorthand for military training. Parkour involves a sort of freestyle athletics out in the unpredictable open, using buildings, playgrounds and public monuments as, essentially, elements in a giant and constantly changing obstacle course. Sounds like what commuters do in Indian cities every day? Yes, but with its rooftop jumps, acrobatics in stairwells and smooth gliding up walls, it is all too easy for the untrained eye, watching on YouTube, to think of it as rather Batmanesque. Post-Kapoor, parkour has blipped my radar time and again, always in connection with the movies. It was a major plot device in Anthony Minghella’s last feature film, Breaking and Entering (2006). No less a personage than Aamir Khan is reportedly getting parkour training these days for his role in the forthcoming Dhoom 3. I ask Parkour Mumbai’s chief whether he finds more and more actors interested in the discipline these days, and he smiles mysteriously and says yes. A fitness expert, who chooses only to be known as NOS (rhymes

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Hop, skip, jump: (clock wise from above) Chil dren on parkour bars; practising in the open; the Parkour Mumbai gym; and Vinay Jola para flies over a vault.

with “moss”), he is one of India’s earliest parkour enthusiasts, and set up Parkour Mumbai in late 2006, perhaps the first such group in India, after he came across the sport the way almost everyone in India does—on the Internet. “I figured it was something I had been doing all my life anyway,” he says. “Only now, it had a name and structure, and it was formalized.” “Parkour,” he explains, “is learning to overcome any obstacle in one’s path, using just one’s own body as a tool. It teaches you to move through your environment in ways that most people wouldn’t think about; it teaches you a whole different way of looking at things, it opens up your eyes to a whole new secret world you never knew existed. You see a wall somewhere, whereas I will see a playground.” It’s easy to see what makes the sport so attractive to its devotees: It is beautiful both to watch and, apparently, to

practise. As NOS’ trainee traceurs jog out of the gym and begin to crawl and slither up the set of bars erected for them in the strip of sand outside, a dozen children descend on the spot and proceed to imitate them with great enthusiasm. “To understand parkour,” NOS explains, “all you have to do is think of how a child explores the space in his or her own community, to let them loose in a park and see how they make sense of their surroundings.” The Parkour Mumbai logo shows three tall tower buildings, a traceur clinging softly to one side as though he or she is going to jump off at a second’s notice. But curiously, NOS explains, a sport whose lifeblood is the metropolitan environment finds it difficult to make any headway in Mumbai’s public spaces. In France and the UK, two places where parkour has thrived and continues to develop fast, cities are crowded

and messy. But they also mix densely planned settlements with open space. Their public architecture offers plenty of opportunity to explore, unlike the crowded and repressively policed public space here. Their monuments and abandoned housing complexes may be dry as dust, but it’s rare to find paan stains and other gooey messes in the places you want your hands to go. And the European sun won’t sap athletes of energy the minute they step out of their training environments. Vinay Jolapara, 26, whips over a high vault-horse like Jet Li wading into a fight—fly first, ask questions later. Indeed, he says, he started life as a wushu (a Chinese martial art) practitioner from Rajkot. “But I was looking for other sports to do,” he explains. “Then I discovered parkour on YouTube, so I came to Mumbai to study it.” “I learned about it because (NOS) showed me articles and videos on the Internet,” says Virendra Bhandarkar, assistant director of SAI, who took the unusual step of offering parkour space in the official complex in spite of it having no formal standing yet. “It’s a mix of a lot of things, something new—but I think it deserves mileage.” What about at night, I ask NOS, about taking the sport into the city, where it belongs: a quieter, darker, cooler Mumbai, surely? “People already think of it as kind of edgy,” he explains patiently. “Practising at night isn’t

very productive when you want to educate people.” But that isn’t the whole story. “I discovered this amazing location for parkour practice at a public place last week, which I figured would be completely deserted at night, but which is super, super crowded during the day,” he tells me. “So we planned a midnight excursion. When a few of our members finally got there, they discovered first-hand that there certainly can’t ever be a place that is ‘deserted’ in Mumbai. There were cops around, at 2 in the morning, and they chased our members away saying it was illegal to jump over the railings we were trying to train on.” Bhandarkar thinks it might actually be worth it for the police and Armed Forces to take a serious look at parkour for their training regimes—at least, among other things, it won’t be reduced simply to the sort of acrobatics adopted by thieves in movies (the traceur in Minghella’s Breaking and Entering, for example, is a cat-burglar). But for NOS and his traceurs, the appeal is purer. “I could teach any daredevil to conquer his fear and leap this stairwell,” he says. In front of us, Rimaan Sen, 19, is preparing to execute a flying precision jump between two ledges bordering a high staircase. “But in parkour, I ask, what’s your exit strategy? How do you control your body? How do you control your mind?” Sen leaps once, leaps back, and then leaps a third time, drops down to the steps, rolling gracefully. Behind us, the judo team pauses to watch, admiring. The urban environment makes martial artists of us all—if only the traceurs could actually go out and reclaim it. supriya.n@livemint.com