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Saturday, March 12, 2011
Vol. 5 No. 11
LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE
Friends and relatives mourn Neetu Solanki at her home in Matiala, Delhi.
BIHAR’S PRIDE, EAT IT >Page 8
THE REMAINS OF NAXALBARI
This oneroad village wears no clues to its revolutionary past >Pages 67
THE GIRL WITH THE PEACOCK TATTOO
EXPERIMENTS WITH BOOKS
Zubaan’s Urvashi Butalia helped create the blueprint for indie publishers. Now she hopes to make it a sustainable, forprofit business >Page 14
The tattoo was Neetu Solanki’s way of saying she would live life on her own terms. But in aspirational, conservative new India, being forthright and fearless can be deadly >Page 10 REPLY TO ALL
THE GOOD LIFE
DYSFUNCTIONALLY FUNCTIONAL
LESSONS IN RAJAT GUPTA’S CALL
AAKAR PATEL
I
ndian society functions as a whole. Observed in part, it’s dysfunctional. Let me explain. Without Gujaratis and Rajasthanis, India wouldn’t have an economy. Delete Tata/Birla/Ambani/Mittal/Premji and India begins to look like Bangladesh. The rest of the country—Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Kashmir, UP, etc.—will have lots of culture but little else. That such a tiny community monopolizes the ability to raise and manage capital is frightening. However, it needs to be understood... >Page 4
T
Moving beyond traditional imagery, contemporary Tibetan art is carving a niche for itself >Page 16
PIECE OF CAKE
SHOBA NARAYAN
here is a Sanskrit saying that I grew up hearing, “Vinasha kaleshu viparitha buddhi”. My grandfather used it to sketch out doomsday scenarios, the idea being that as one’s doom approaches, one’s mind works perversely—like Ravana when he kidnapped Sita or Duryodhan before the Mahabharat. What fascinated me was the corollary. If your mind works perversely in bad times, can you avert the bad times by adjusting your mind and your... >Page 4
LEAVING LHASA VEGAS
PAMELA TIMMS
DON’T MISS
in today’s edition of
THOSE DELECTABLE CRUMPETS
J
ust what is so sexy about crumpets? Elizabeth David noted in 1977 that “crumpet” had long been a colloquialism used to describe “a piece of skirt, any likely young woman, a girl with whom someone is having a passing affair, and other less polite interpretations”. In the heyday of political incorrectness, a leading British broadcaster, Frank Muir, coined the phrase “thinking man’s crumpet” to describe Joan Bakewell, a woman audacious enough to be both... >Page 9
PHOTO ESSAY
UP IN SMOKE