Lounge for 15 Jun 2012

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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 24

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

THE NEW FOOD BRIDGE It looks, feels and tastes like meat, but is not meat. Behind the fascinating reinvention of vegetarian food >Pages 10­11

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH MORGAN STANLEY’S RUCHIR SHARMA >Page 8

A MAKEOVER FOR HAWAIIAN SHIRTS Menswear designers and retailers are attempting modern spins on these shirts to make them less billowy and loud >Page 7

BUZZ LIKE A LATINA The Colombian dance fitness programme makes an offer you can’t refuse—party your way to good health >Page 12

LIMITED EDITION Kung Pao Veg Prawn garnished with spring onions at China Garden in Delhi.

THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR

THE GOOD LIFE

N. RAJADHYAKSHA

DECODING OUR RED­ BEACON CULTURE

E

vening walkers on the lovely promenade along Carter Road in Bandra, Mumbai, are often treated to an ugly sight, as a noisy cavalcade carries one of the surliest men in Maharashtra politics back to his house. The flashing lights, screaming sirens, gun-toting policemen and private thugs are all part of a grotesque display of power that is common in many parts of India. In the mornings, the same cavalcade also makes its way to the sea bridge linking Bandra and Worli, as the man goes to work. There are queues of... >Page 4

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

EAT A SURPRISE OR TWO

T

wo years ago, Olive Beach, a restaurant in Bangalore, made a special tasting menu for a group called The Bangalore Black Tie, of which I am a member. Typically, these are off-menu dishes that the chef specially crafts for the group, paired with wine. Each member pays a fixed price. What was unusual about this meal was that the chef, Manu Chandra, had made it vegetarian. Not just that, he had used Indian ingredients... >Page 4

SAMAR HALARNKAR

A few determined indie poets and publishers have taken up the curation and publishing of this genre >Page 16

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

BOARS, BOREDOM AND BYE­BYES

I

t is a question I must frequently answer. “So, what do you miss most about California?” If I say “nothing”, people think I am some kind of ultra-nationalist who is lying or is clearly delusional. So, here are my semi-truthful answers.

I miss the ability to walk and run long distances on America’s wonderfully constructed sidewalks, and I miss the bright and beautiful food, vegetables triple-washed and sprayed with fine mist to keep them looking like they were plucked an hour ago.

I say semi-truthful because, really... >Page 5

PHOTO ESSAY

SILVER STORY

T h eMi n t i P a da p p Ne ws , v i e wsa n da n a l y s i sf r o mMi n t ’ sa wa r d wi n n i n gj o u r n a l i s t s .

T h eMi n ta p pf e a t u r e sl i v es t o c kq u o t e s , b r e a k i n gn e ws , v i d e o r e p o r t sa n ds l i d e s h o wsb a c k e du pwi t hc o mme n t a r yt oh e l py o u ma k es e n s eo f t h ewo r l do f b u s i n e s sa n df i n a n c e .

Pr e s e nt e dby

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM HDFC LIFE SPELL BEE, INDIA SPELLS

2012

FIRST CUT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

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

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

SO YOU WANT TO GROOM A CHAMPION?

I

wonder how many parents grabbed a copy of last week’s Outlook and turned straight to Page 44 to read the “100 per cent guaranteed advice” from five-time world chess champion on “How to make your child the next Vishy”.

I know I did. Not so Babyjaan could be the next Viswanathan Anand (highly unlikely any way since she has a zero attention span and he apparently was born with focus and concentration). Even when he was reading a book, “nobody and nothing could distract him”, his mother Susheela told the news magazine.

No, I was just curious to know how much time and effort Anand’s parents had invested in the sport.

Susheela introduced her son to chess at 6 and played PARENTING regularly with him, although Anand says nurturing a champion was never a goal for his mother or father. His advice to parents is simple: Be supportive and enthusiastic rather than pushy. Expose your child to lots of activities but don’t force them to pursue specific things; let them “naturally absorb” a sport.

Seems like a highly implausible strategy to groom a chess champion though I’ve actually seen it work first-hand in my family. My cousin Gyan introduced his son Janak to the game at age 6 too and gently fanned the passion that quickly developed.

“I showed him the beauty in positions, gave him some tactical insights, essentially just lit the spark,” says Gyan over email from Canada where they live.

Janak is now officially a Candidate Master rating approximately 2,200

and his father posted a quick summary of his track record on Facebook when he turned 13 earlier this year: “5 Canadian National Golds, North American Champ 2009, Switzerland (Biel) Under 18 Champion 2010, Bombay Premier League Champion 2011, Grand Pacific Open Blitz Champion 2012 and one Grandmaster scalp.”

Janak’s take on his dad’s online life is simply: “Dad, get off Facebook, it’s not cool.”

The history of sports is full of rock stars who were shoved hard by a parent. Tiger Woods was watching golf from his high chair courtesy his Vietnam vet father. Rafael Nadal’s pushy uncle has always been a tremendous influence. Golfer Sean O’ Hair’s father Marc once said he looked at his son as a “business venture” and that the duo never had a father-son relationship. “It has always been the investor and the investment,” he said. Tennis champ Mary Pierce’s dad commanded his 12-year-old daughter who was playing a match: “Mary, kill the bitch!” This quote is forever destined to find a place in any tale of pushy parents.

My favourite sports columnist Rohit Brijnath says that “some parents simply go too far and the relationship becomes abusive and counterproductive. It’s as if they’re vicariously living their dreams through their children”.

But, he adds, “some push is often necessary and most athletes are thankful for it. I am sure they sometimes resent it but they also often wouldn’t be great without it.”

Of course in India, the quest for a better life is as good a reason to

become a champion as a pushy parent. We see that in so many of our amazing sports stars who have qualified for the Olympics, for example.

We’re all familiar with the aggressive Soccer Mom stereotype, the Type A parents who drive their young children hard to excel at the cost of anything. Yet these days there’s clearly a small but fierce band of parents who are determined to let their children be children.

Janak has never had a chess coach, and his dad said no when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wanted to make a documentary on him because “that adds pressure and expectation”. Parents often ask Gyan if Janak wants to be an international master. “I honestly don’t know, and nor does he,” Gyan replies. “He wants to enjoy his childhood and the sport. There is no aim or level he’s trying to reach.”

I find myself increasingly drawn to mothers who try to replicate their “retro” childhood experiences for their offspring—you know that lifebefore-summer-camps life. The annual holiday in an old house in the middle of nowhere; an entire month spent climbing trees, plucking jamuns, sleeping under the sky, and growing up with cousins. I identify with Facebook friends who post pictures of their carefree little girls lounging on wooden benches.

I called the mother of a young champ who lives in the same city as me to find out how she contributed to her 15-year-old daughter Samvida’s victory at the 2012 HDFC Life Spell Bee. Inculcating the reading habit thanks to Easylib (easylib.com), one

Time pass: Spell Bee winner Samvida plays badminton and enjoys art classes. of Bangalore’s first Internet-enabled libraries, said Veena Venkatesh promptly. “It was close to our house; we enrolled and got new books every four or five days.” Samvida began reading at age 4 and by class V—usually the time when organizations do the annual talent spotting rounds in schools—she was a natural candidate for spelling competitions. She also plays badminton (because there is a sports facility nearby) and enjoys her art classes (a teacher noticed her talent when she was younger and

asked her mother to nurture it).

“I’m not the kind of person who would push my daughters into anything,” says Venkatesh of her two girls.

Bottom line: Anand’s advice may or may not result in a world champion (incidentally I wonder what he thought of Outlook’s pushy headline) but it’s perfectly sensible advice for any parent who wants his/her children to enjoy childhood.

Write to me at lounge@livemint.com

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

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NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR

Decoding our red­beacon culture

E

RAMESH PATHANIA/MINT

vening walkers on the lovely promenade along Carter Road in Bandra, Mumbai, are often treated to an ugly sight, as a noisy cavalcade carries one of the surliest men in Maharashtra politics back to his house. The

flashing lights, screaming sirens, gun-toting policemen and private thugs are all part of a grotesque display of power that is common in many parts of India. In the mornings, the same cavalcade also makes its way to the sea bridge linking Bandra and Worli, as the man goes to work. There are queues of cars at the toll booth on most mornings, but the convoy could not be bothered by the minor problem of ordinary people waiting for their turn. It weaves its way through the gaps in the queues, musclemen jump off, hands are waved, cars are halted—and the man cuts through straight to the head of the queue his cronies have chosen for the day. Then the SUV is off, followed by those flashing lights, screaming sirens, gun-toting policemen and private thugs.

Such displays of power are common in the private sector as well, but on a much more moderate scale and very rarely in public places. One has heard stories of the legendary J.R.D. Tata patiently standing in queue for a lift at Bombay House, the Tata headquarters in Mumbai. He was an exception. Most office towers have special lifts for special people. In buildings that do not have such reserved lifts, one can almost feel the tension in the air as a lift is hurriedly commissioned on the spot to carry the boss to his lair within moments of his car pulling in outside the building lobby.

He is considered too important to wait, unlike the clerks and cubicle slaves who are shooed away.

Such behaviour tells us a lot about the public culture of a country. In a

clever study published in 2007, two economists, Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, went through public records of parking tickets given in Manhattan to diplomats from 146 countries in the UN. Till 2002, the New York police did not enforce rules of traffic violations by diplomats, so there was an invitation to park at will.

Violating the law did not carry any costs.

Yet, diplomats from countries such as Japan, Sweden and Canada took care to drive around the block to find an open parking slot. Diplomats from countries such as Kuwait, Egypt and Angola parked at will.

Why did these two groups of diplomats respond in such different ways to the same incentive to break rules? Fisman and Miguel said social norms were the cause. They found a strong correlation between parking behaviour and the level of corruption in the home countries of the diplomats concerned. Essentially, parking behaviour is a reflection of the social norms prevalent in a country. It explains why a Kuwaiti diplomat has few qualms about breaking the law while a Norwegian diplomat would rarely do so.

The interesting thing about the study was that Indian diplomats were middling violators in terms of parking tickets per diplomat—82 out of a total 146 countries. European diplomats from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were worse. Here, the broad correlation between corruption indices and parking behaviour breaks down.

Of course, enforcement of the law

Flashpoint: The behaviour of the elite tells us a lot about our public culture. continues to matter. Parking violations by diplomats fell sharply after New York mayor Michael Bloomberg decided in 2002 to enforce the rules. However, the overall pattern persisted, as most of the violations continued to come from countries that have more corruption.

The Fisman-Miguel study—that was later part of a book, Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence And the Poverty of Nations—tracked the behaviour of the elite. But the ability to follow rules matters across all parts of society. It is an important ingredient of national success. Writing in The Huffington Post, writer O’Brien Browne asked whether the ongoing economic crisis in Europe can be explained by culture.

“In some cultures, people stand patiently at a red traffic light, waiting for it to turn green—even if there are no cars to be seen. Once the light changes, they cross the street, secure in the feeling that no car will hit them.

These Red Light cultures believe in rules and regulations. Other cultures believe that when crossing the street it is logical to simply look both ways. If

no cars are coming, it is safe to cross—the light is always green in their thinking. They don’t trust the ‘system’; they trust themselves.”

It is not hard to see that Germany has a Red Light culture while Greece has a Green Light culture. Each is puzzled by the other. In an earlier instalment of this column, The Impartial Spectator had used the insights of game theory to ask why Indians find it easier to follow social norms rather than rules created by governments (“Why we prefer social convention to rigid rules”, 5 May).

Coming back to the issue of parking violations, there is a story to be shared from London as well. The central parts of the city have a congestion charge that car owners have to pay. The £10 (around `850) a day congestion charge was introduced to dissuade people from bringing their cars into gridlocked streets. The road tax came into focus recently when the city government sent a bill to US president Barack Obama after his convoy went through central London.

There has been a bit of a debate

about whether government cars should be made to pay the congestion charge under international treaties.

The Indian Express reported in May that the Indian high commission in London owes £2.4 million. Data from British news reports shows that India is one of the top defaulters, while the New York study shows our diplomats to be relatively middling violators of parking rules.

One of the secondary results from the Fisman-Miguel study was that the intensity of parking violations was negatively correlated with how well a particular country got on with the US. It would be tempting to argue that the different behaviour in New York and London points to changing foreign policy—India is now closer to the US than it is to the UK. But that hypothesis gets shot to pieces because the top violator in London is the US embassy.

Also, the New York data is per diplomat while the London data is for the embassy as a whole.

The behaviour of our elite in public spaces is an indictment. So I was not surprised when I recently read that our parliamentarians are now demanding the same privileges on the Delhi Metro that they get when flying Air India—Metro staff to receive them at stations, help them board trains and, who knows, perhaps lift their bags for them. It is the same culture of the red beacon that assumes ministers should not wait at toll booths, government cars need not follow parking rules, and fines are for ordinary wimps.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor, Mint.

Write to Niranjan at impartialspectator@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Niranjan’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/impartialspectator

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Why you should drop your culinary crutches

T

wo years ago, Olive Beach, a restaurant in Bangalore, made a special tasting menu for a group called The Bangalore Black Tie, of which I am a member. Typically, these are off-menu dishes that the chef specially

crafts for the group, paired with wine.

Each member pays a fixed price. What was unusual about this meal was that the chef, Manu Chandra, had made it vegetarian. Not just that, he had used Indian ingredients such as drumstick, jackfruit, lotus stem, and even bathua, a local green, if memory serves me right. That’s the thing: memory; food memory; the thing I obsess about.

What makes a meal memorable?

The element of surprise makes for a memorable dining experience: paan shots at the Pink Poppadom restaurant at the Ista Bangalore; sake bombs at Edo in the ITC Gardenia; Brahmi juice for Sunday brunch at The Gateway Hotel are some from recent memory.

For professional restaurateurs and chefs, introducing the element of surprise is tricky because the spontaneous creativity that leads to surprise goes against the cardinal rule of a restaurant kitchen: consistency. Customers come back because they like your grilled fish

or Chettinad chicken. Change the recipe and you may incur their wrath.

Amuse-bouches are one great way to ask your chefs to be creative. It is off the menu; can be created on the whim of a particular chef on a particular day depending on what ingredients are available; and it forces chefs to be creative.

Another method is to remove a chef’s crutch or cushion. This thought occurred halfway through a sublime vegetarian tasting menu at L’Abeille at the Shangri-La, Paris.

The restaurant, named after the bee, which was Napoleon’s favourite emblem, is the signature fine-dining restaurant of this relatively new hotel. Owned by the Kuok family of Malaysia, the hotel has undergone a massive renovation to return it to its original state of being the home of Roland Bonaparte (Napoleon’s grandnephew).

Thanks to an introduction by a

F POINCET/COURTESY SHANGRI­LA

French fashion journalist, the restaurant invited me for a free vegetarian tasting a few weeks ago.

We had delicate white and green asparagus, which were in season, and several courses of excellent vegetarian dishes. Here’s the thing.

I know I enjoyed the meal but I can’t remember individual dishes unless I look at my notes or reach for the photos I took. But there’s one thing I remember right off the bat. The dessert was listed as “exotic fruits and vegetables”.

Oh, come on, I thought to myself.

I didn’t come all the way here to eat the fruits I get in my homeland.

I don’t want mangoes, pomegranates, or whatever it is that the French consider “exotic”. I want rich chocolate and painstakingly prepared pastries.

The dessert plate was ceremoniously placed in front.

Along came a violet—the flower that is; on the plate, among cut fruits. I could eat it, said the waiter.

I have never eaten a raw violet flower in a fine-dining restaurant. I have had squash blossom flowers in American restaurants, some of which were deep-fried like a tempura. As a child, I ate gulmohar flowers and roses. But I haven’t seen flowers served as part of the meal at any of our Indian fine-dining restaurants. Why not?

Since I am vegetarian, I dined at

HOTEL,

PARIS

Eat, experiment: You are bound to be surprised by the results.

L’Arpège, in Paris. Most of the vegetables come from chef Alain Passard’s 2-hectare kitchen garden outside Paris. The meal for three cost about €450 (around `31,050 now). It isn’t cheap, but it was wonderful. I remember several elements about the meal, but the surprising thing for me was how sparingly spices were used.

Every culinary tradition has a

signature touch: an ingredient, cooking style or technique that is essential to their notion of what makes a good meal; something they cannot give up. Put another way, every culinary tradition has a signature crutch; something that suffuses their dishes; something that they cannot give up. These are the culinary stereotypes: pasta for Italians; sushi for Japanese; French sauces; Indian spices.

Really great restaurants—and meals—rise above these stereotypes. The way they do this is not by reinventing an entire cuisine, which some do. One way they do this is by removing culinary crutches. So the next time you have to challenge your chefs at a restaurant or hotel, ask them to prepare an Indian meal; or at least one dish; or even just an amuse-bouche—without the usual spices. You, and your diners, may be surprised by the results.

Shoba Narayan is wondering why Indians don’t use our abundant betel leaves to create a dish besides paan. She is chewing on a paan as she writes this. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

L5

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Boars, boredom and the call of home SAMAR HALARNKAR

Drop in mustard seeds until they pop. Add onions and sauté till golden brown. Reduce heat, add ginger-garlic and sauté for a minute. Add the green paste and fry for about 5 minutes.

Add chicken and salt and turn up heat. When the masala starts to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes or until the chicken is semi-dry. Stir in curry leaves 5 minutes before switching off the stove.

The food may be brighter and the air cleaner in Berkeley, but there isn’t enough to keep a Bangalore boy interested

I

t is a question I must frequently answer.

“So, what do you miss most about California?”

If I say “nothing”, people think I am some kind of ultra-nationalist who is lying or is clearly delusional.

So, here are my semi-truthful answers. I miss the ability to walk and run long distances on America’s wonderfully constructed sidewalks, and I miss the bright and beautiful food, vegetables triple-washed and sprayed with fine mist to keep them looking like they were plucked an hour ago.

I say semi-truthful because, really, I only miss those long walks through our neighbourhood, draped across the lush hills of Berkeley, where I taught for a semester. Oh, all right, I also miss the ability to saunter down to the weekly farmers’ market and buy fresh-cut boar.

As for running, I do that well enough in Bangalore, thank you. If I get up early, I have entire roads to myself. If I had exquisitely preserved early 20th century houses and wild flowers accompanying me as I trotted through Berkeley, I have 19th century churches and rain trees and, more significantly, little street dramas in Bangalore: wobbly scooters careening up the one-way; a man hopping down the same street as part of some religious rite; and posters of the impressively hirsute star of the latest Kannada movie, Katariveera Surasundarangi.

Their message, “Super hit! 32 days!”

I admit the new Bangalore of gated apartment complexes, stupidly driven SUVs and jam-packed malls is quite a nightmare, but the streets of the old city—shaded by the remaining rain trees and cooled by a light wind we call the Bangalore breeze—are still around, should you seek them.

When it comes to food, of course I miss Berkeley’s stunning diversity from across the world.

But when I restart my kitchen in Bangalore—after trapping three rats and getting my dead fridge repaired—I realize what I left behind. In a country as yet unmarked by aisles and signs, there is so much to discover and explore in markets, on streets, in people’s minds and in the deep recesses of my kitchen.

I find Karnataka’s famed maddur vada has acquired a sleek, new pre-packaged baked avatar. I see Albert Bakery is still open from only 3pm to 8pm and quickly runs out of its bite-sized keema samosas. I eat crab in an onion-tomato and cashew paste, a prawn-and-drumstick curry and micro-dosa stuffed with prawn and presented in a shot glass. I meet Harish, a sous chef at the Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers in Chennai, who presented all these at a buffet and inspired me to cook what I have this week. I hear for the first time, at the city’s annual mango festival, of a mango varietal called “sugar baby”. I read of rogues, rowdies and an Air India plane that lands safely after a nose

Pepper broccoli with curry leaf Serves 1-2 Ingredients Broccoli, one small head, cut into small florets and cleaned 1 tsp freshly ground pepper 2 tsp peanut or sesame oil 3-4 large cloves garlic, smashed 1 tsp mustard seeds 10-15 curry leaves Salt to taste THINKSTOCK

wheel falls off.

I often battled boredom in Berkeley. After all, how many types of garlic can you admire at those cavernous supermarkets?

How many perfect streets can you walk down? How often can you marvel at the efficiency of public facilities? I acknowledge these American realities, but they are not my realities—excuse me while I try to get my BSNL phone fixed, dead for eight days now since I returned.

There is a second question that sometimes follows the first: “You didn’t think of finding something permanent and settling there?”

I tell them, if they will believe me, that (a) there is the small matter of visa and work permit and (b) the US is too sanitized and too perfect for me. It does

not excite my mind, refresh my soul or keep me entertained. As the writer Ruskin Bond said in Bangalore last week, “You can die of a hundred different things, but you can’t die of boredom in India.”

Curry house: This chicken dish was inspired by a chance encounter with a chef from Chennai.

Serves 4

white-wine or plain) 2 tbsp olive oil 2 onions, finely chopped 3 tsp ginger-garlic paste 2 tsp mustard seeds 15-20 curry leaves Salt to taste

Ingredients 1kg chicken 2 handfuls of coriander, cleaned 1 handful of mint, cleaned 4 green chillies 1-2 tbsp vinegar (red- or

Method Make a paste of the coriander, mint, chillies, vinegar and some salt. You might need to add some water. Gently heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a non-stick pan.

Mint, coriander and curry leaf chicken

Method Heat peanut or sesame oil. Do the tempering: Add mustard seeds until they pop, then add curry leaves. Add garlic and sauté till lightly brown. Add broccoli and stir-fry on heat. Just before the broccoli becomes crunchy, add pepper, salt and toss. Top with a sprinkling of fresh herbs, if you wish.

This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar is consulting editor, Mint and Hindustan Times.

Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com

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

HUNGRY PLANET | ORHAN GOMLEKSIZ

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

On the politics of kebab The Turkish chef on food from his country that the world needs to know about B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· hile in many parts of the world local cuisine is innovating, twisting and stretching boundaries, in Turkey food is taking an altogether different route. The land that gave kebab to the world—to the extent that countries like India adopted it as their own—is now determined to prove that there is more to Turkish cuisine than doner kebab, baklava and Turkish delight. In July 2010, 150 members of the All Cooks Federation of Turkey in Istanbul made 1,515 mezze platters—a different variety each—in 24 hours and secured a place in the Guinness World Records for the largest buffet.

Orhan Gomleksiz, à la carte chef, Sheraton Istanbul Maslak Hotel, is part of this larger project of “identity” and “reclamation” of Turkish cuisine.

Gomleksiz and two other members of the All Cooks Federation were in the Capital

W

for a food festival at Le Méridien New Delhi earlier this year. True to their promise, none of the predictables of Turkish cuisine figured on the menu. Instead, people got a chance to savour what Gomleksiz would much rather serve. Edited excerpts from an interview: The most intriguing dish on your menu.

In terms of historical legend, it’s the Imam Bayildi, a starter made of fried aubergine stuffed with onions. Legend has it that when an imam first tried the dish, he was so taken in by its beautifully subtle taste that he fainted. The word bayildi means “to faint”!

Why did this need for “identity” and “reclamation” arise?

As a chef, wherever I go, no matter what’s on my menu, I’m asked to make kebab. From France and Italy to New Zealand (where I worked), it’s always kebab, kebab, kebab. Turkish food is not kebab and baklava.

What are the different kitchens of Turkey like?

There are three kitchens in Turkey: eastern, western and Black Sea. The eastern kitchen is more spice- and meat-based (they will have meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner) and produces the kebab, most popular being the doner kebab, the adana kebab (lamb and beef minced together and then served on skewers), the urfa kebab and a milder version of the adana. The western kitchen is more European, closer to the Mediterranean style, almost Greek, in fact. They use a lot of green leaves, olive oil and fish.

The Black Sea cuisine leans heavily on farm produce, people will use corn, beans, from their own garden; even their bread is made from farm-produced corn, forest mushroom. The most popular ingredient is fish from the Black Sea. Any Turkish dishes that have been adopted by India?

Our desserts, halwa and sekerpare, the doloma, which in Bengal is the dorma, and, of course, the kebab!

If you had to use just one spice in your cooking, which one would it be?

Black pepper and chilli pepper (Okay, that’s two)—we use these

Cuisine crusader: Gomleksiz champions Turkish food beyond doner kebab and baklava. in everything in Turkey.

2 tbsp lemon juice

Sekerpare

Method To make the syrup, boil the ingredients for 15 minutes and put aside to cool. Now, in a separate container, combine the butter with powdered sugar, add the egg yolks and mix well with your hands. Add the semolina, then slowly add the flour and baking powder to form a soft dough. Cover it with a plastic wrap and put aside for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to

Serves 4 Ingredients 250ml unsalted butter 1 cup powdered sugar 2 egg yolks L cup semolina 2 cups flour, sifted 1 tsp baking powder 20 almonds, blanched For the syrup 2 cups each of sugar and water

375 Fahrenheit (around 190 degrees Celsius). Make 16 small balls and place on a tray. Lightly press down their tops. Put an almond in the centre of each Sekerpare. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until light brown. With a tablespoon, pour warm syrup over the hot, freshly baked Sekerpare. Repeat this a few times and let them soak in the syrup for about 15 minutes.

Then remove from the syrup and place on a plate. Sekerpare are best served cold.

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q Fabindia: Sheesham corner table, at Fabindia, N­Block Market, Greater Kailash­I, New Delhi; Jeroo Building, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai; 152, Commercial Street, Bangalore; and 11A, Allenby Road, Kolkata, `3,800.

Clean lines, angular designs— minimalist furniture that defines space rather than just filling it up B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

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p Shahid Datawala: Recliner, at Pallate Design Studio, Badamia Manor, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai, `72,600.

t Esthete: Handmade garden chair in recycled pinewood, made to order, at www.esthete.in or No. 24, Tavarekere Main Road, Chikkadugodi, Bangalore, `5,000.

t Rajiev Lal: Live chair, at 87, New Manglapuri, Mehrauli­Gurgaon Road, New Delhi, `15,000.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

t bent by design: Three­part cantilever stool made without any nuts and bolts, made to order, at www.bent.co.in, `18,000. q Rajiev Lal: Star coffee table, at 87, New Manglapuri, Mehrauli­Gurgaon Road, New Delhi, `40,000.

p Rooshad Shroff: Part of the C­Series range of furniture, this handcrafted chair is made without the use of any metal fasteners, at Le Mill, Masjid Bunder East, Mumbai, `44,500.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

A Dot for a Bounce Mumbai­based Fenny Ganatra’s circular chair with silicon mesh wins a design award

B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

···························· t could be a playful piece of furniture or your shot at levitation.

Bounce, a chair by Mumbai-based product designer Fenny Ganatra, has received the prestigious Red Dot Design Award 2012 in the product design category.

Red Dot is the largest competition in the field of design. Bounce has won an “honourable mention for seating innovation”, which implies “well-executed aspects of design work and is awarded to products with excellent detailed solutions”, explains Marie-Christine Sassenberg, communications manager, Red Dot, on email.

Bounce comprises a circular acrylic frame holding together a mesh of super-flexible knits made of re-engineered silicone that sink in as you sit on the chair. Without

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any mechanical support and just the tensile strength of the re-engineered silicone, it adapts to the shape of your body.

Ganatra will be heading to Essen, Germany, where the winners of this year’s competition will be honoured on 2 July.

The 24-year-old graduated from Raffles Design International, Mumbai (affiliated to Raffles Education Corp., Singapore), two years ago. The idea of Bounce occurred to Ganatra while she was still in college. “It began with a fascination with the material—silicone. It is currently used only in the medical or construction field, but its flexibility, durability and what it allows in terms of shapes, colours and uses, made me want to explore it more,” she says.

She spent the next two years experimenting with the material.

“It took several hits and misses of

moulding. Several prototypes broke before we got a composition with the right strength and elasticity,” says Ganatra, who has now patented the composition.

Once the designer was done understanding her medium, her inspiration for the design came from a philosophy described as organic essentialism—to use nothing more, nothing less than is needed.

In spite of its m i n i m a l i s t approach, Bounce is definitely a statement piece. Bright fuchsia pink knits on a transparent frame make you feel like you’re suspended in midair. It also comes in colour combinations of red and white, and black and blue.

The problem with most sink-in furniture is that it’s a task to get up, but that’s not true of Bounce.

It is of the right height so your feet can reach the floor, and the silicone knits are firm enough to offer slight resistance, making it easy to

pull yourself up.

In January, the first edition of Bounce was showcased at Maison&Objet in Paris, an exhibition that attracts the best and latest in furniture and product design from across the world. In April, at SaloneSatellite, a furniture design trade fair in Milan, Ganatra launched the second edition of Bounce, inspired by “biomimetics”, a trend that borrows from the patterns and processes of nature and turns them into contemporary designs.

“It is a tribute to the most natural human system, that of breathing,” explains Ganatra.

Bounce, starting price `62,000, is available at IDUS, Kirti Nagar, New Delhi; One Group, Survey No. 1000, Devidayal Road, Mulund West, Mumbai; and Couch Italia, 90, MG Road, Pune.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

L7

Style

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TOPMAN

TREND

When Hawaiian shirts get a makeover UNDERWOOD

&

RAG

&

BONE

UNDERWOOD/CORBIS

Menswear designers and retailers are attempting modern spins on these shirts to make them less billowy and loud Print run: (clockwise from top) Shirts from Topman and Rag & Bone; a flower print from Prada; George Clooney in The Descendants; and a still from 1953’s From Here to Eternity.

AD HOMINEM ENTERPRISES/THE KOBAL COLLECTION

B Y R AY A . S MITH ···························· he reasons some men love Hawaiian shirts are the same reasons other men dislike them: The tropical toppers are wildly decorated, comfortably billowy and just plain loud.

Now there is a tidal wave of designer brands—including Prada, Givenchy and Richard Chai—putting a modern spin on the oft-derided shirt. Some brands and retailers are calling them “tropical shirts”, perhaps to distinguish the new styles from the wide Hawaiian shirts donned by men of a certain age.

The newer versions come in much slimmer fits. In some cases, the patterns and colours are less vibrant. Topman, the fast-fashion retailer, produces the prints on its shirts from the inside out “so as to diffuse the colours”, says design director Gordon Richardson.

In other instances, the prints go beyond palm trees. Shirts from contemporary designer

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label Rag & Bone feature hand-drawn illustrations of low-rider trucks, sunsets, highrise complexes and houses with barbed wire.

“We felt that we didn’t want to do a classic, literal Hawaiian shirt, which was why it features low-riders as well as palm trees,” says Marcus Wainwright, co-founder of Rag & Bone. The company’s Spring 2012 collection was inspired by 1970s surfer culture with some East LA style mixed in.

Even Tommy Bahama, known for colourful, boldly patterned and voluminous Hawaiian shirts, has been updating its prints to reach a “more modern, possibly younger customer”, says a spokeswoman. It is selling some of its shirts in noticeably slimmer silhouettes than the brand’s traditional fit.

The reinterpretation of the Hawaiian shirt is the latest example of designers and retailers trying to create chic styles from items once thought nerdy,

PRADA

even tacky. Examples in recent years include bow ties, high-water pants, thick-framed glasses and tucked-in, shortsleeve woven shirts.

“I liked the idea of something that’s considered ‘off’ and making it into something desirable and cool,” says designer Richard Chai, who included soft-coloured, slim-fit Hawaiian-inspired shirts in his Spring 2012 runway show. Chai says retailers “really responded” to the shirts.

Durand Guoin, men’s fashion director at Macy’s, says designer Hawaiian shirts may take a while to go mainstream. For now it is “testing” versions of the new look, including “tropical print ideas on tank tops”, says Guoin.

Macy’s ordered a small batch of the shirts for select stores.

Known in Hawaii as aloha shirts, the tops became popular in the US following World War II, as servicemen brought them back from Pacific islands and Asia, according to Mark-Evan Blackman, an assistant professor of menswear design at the Fash-

Perfume bottles gone wild F MARTIN RAMIN/FOR WSJ

Fragrance makers bet flowers and butterflies will stand out at crowded counters B Y E LIZABETH H OLMES The Wall Street Journal

···························· perfume bottle has to work hard to get noticed these days.

On a fragrance counter crowded with hundreds of scents launched last year, a simple glass bottle doesn’t cut it any more. Packaging is getting more elaborate: The cap of Marc Jacobs’ Dot is a large Lucite butterfly. It took six months of testing to get the crocodile to stick properly on the new Lacoste men’s fragrance bottle. Glowing by Jennifer Lopez lights up for 15 seconds when sprayed.

“There are endless rows of counters of fragrances and you have a millisecond to catch your customer’s eye,” says James Fine,

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vice-president, marketing and product development, for retail chain Perfumania and Five Star Fragrances, a fragrance developer.

The brand-loyal customer who shops for a signature scent to wear every day “is a dying breed”, says Catherine Walsh, senior vice-president of American fragrances at the Coty Prestige division of Coty Inc. Now, shoppers view fragrance as a fashion purchase, influenced by trends, seasons and celebrities.

The average woman has five fragrances and chooses which to wear based on mood or occasion, Walsh says. Men’s perfume bottles too are changing, with more subtle design elements and masculine colours. Montblanc Legend Eau de Toilette comes in a black-and-silver bottle shaped like a flask.

There were roughly 1,200 fragrances launched worldwide last year, more than three times the number of launches a decade ago and more than 15 times the number two decades ago, according to Fragrances of the World, an industry databank. More than a third of

Second look: (from left) Marc Jacobs’ Daisy; Prada Candy; DKNY’s Be Delicious (Hearts); Jacobs’ Daisy Eau so Fresh; and Burberry Body. last year’s launches were limitededition scents and “flankers” related to a previous launch.

Series of scents are also hitting the market, with brands launching not one but many at a time. Ralph Lauren’s Big Pony collection for women is a group of four

scents—described as “sporty”, “sensual”, “free-spirited” and “stylish”—meant to give shoppers options. Next month, DKNY is releasing a collection of four fragrances based on its Be Delicious scent and cities of the world, in limited-edition apple-shaped bottles.

ion Institute of Technology, New York. Then, amid a post-war South Seas island craze and Hawaiian statehood in 1959, “it became the thing (for tourists) to bring home a Hawaiian shirt”, Blackman says.

The shirts got a celebrity boost after Elvis Presley sported one of designer Alfred Shaheen’s Hawaiian shirts on the cover of the “Blue Hawaii” soundtrack.

Shaheen, who started manufacturing rayon Hawaiian shirts in 1948, is credited as the first mass manufacturer of Hawaiian shirts. The style, adopted by surfers, symbolized a relaxed, beachy lifestyle.

Tourists and suburban dads embraced the trend with gusto—too much gusto for some tastes. The shirts gradually came to be seen as gauche. Pop-culture icons associated with the shirts included Tom Selleck’s character on TV’s Magnum P.I. in the 1980s, and Kramer on Seinfeld in the 1990s.

Fashion’s recent fondness for Hawaiian shirts began at youth-

The lifespan of most scents is much shorter now, says Kevin Marshall, vice-president and group creative director at Marc Rosen Associates, a boutique branding and package-design firm. “A couple of years would be a good run.” Meanwhile, the time put into developing a new scent, including packaging, has been cut in half. “We maybe had a year, a year-plus to do it before,” he says.

Now, “we’re lucky if we have six months sometimes”.

Marc Jacobs’ Daisy captured attention with its bottle design. It was Jacobs’ first launch with licensing partner Coty, and Walsh, who led the effort, wanted something different from the classic look of most designer fragrances (Jacobs had released two scents before the launch with Coty, both in more traditional bottles).

The company opted for flowers made of a flexible rubber and affixed to a gold cap, as if blooming from the bottle. The effect at the fragrance counter was “immediate”, Walsh says. “You could see it from across the room.” Daisy tripled Coty’s Marc Jacobs fragrance business. Many flower-embellished caps have followed, including the Marc

oriented festivals like Coachella, says Michael Fisher, menswear editor at fashion forecaster Stylesight. “Most of them were thrift-store finds and (concertgoers) were wearing them in an ironic way,” he says. Then Hawaiian-style shirts began appearing on runways, including Dolce & Gabbana’s D&G line’s Spring 2011 show, followed by Givenchy and Prada among others the next spring.

For its shirts, Topman used cotton instead of the more typical rayon or viscose to make the overall look less shiny and more subtle. “With a modern execution they need no longer be viewed as the sartorial outcast at a barbecue,” says Richardson.

Still, “a tropical print is off limits at the office if you work at a bank or law firm,” says Tyler Thoreson, vice-president of editorial, creative and customer experience for Gilt Man and Park & Bond. “In a more casual environment it can be a great look—provided you dress it up a bit.” In that case, he recommends pairing a colourful print shirt with a cotton or linen suit in cream, khaki or navy.

Thoreson also advises wearing this look with suede loafers and no socks, or with sneakers from Vans or Common Projects “to strike the right balance between classy and casual”.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

Jacobs scents Lola and Oh, Lola!

For Burberry Body, the fashion house’s latest fragrance for women, designer Christopher Bailey wanted an entirely new shape.

Burberry’s previous scents, for both men and women, came in “masculine” rectangular bottles covered with the brand’s iconic check, says Hugues de la Chevasnerie, director of Burberry Fragrances, part of Inter Parfums SA. Burberry Body needed a feminine and “sensual” design, de la Chevasnerie says. The company opted for an eight-sided rose goldtoned column whose most notable feature is its height—more than 8-inches tall for the large size of Burberry Body Eau de Parfum. The height “gave a kind of status”, says de la Chevasnerie. “It’s something that you want to keep.”

The new bottles are meant to be displayed, not hidden in a medicine cabinet. “You want the bottle to be so beautiful and unique that somebody wants to keep it out in the open. Then they are more likely to use it,” says Kecia Coby, founder of KCR Consulting, who worked with the Kardashians on their fragrances.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

Business Lounge

LOUNGE

RUCHIR SHARMA

The art of travel Morgan Stanley’s MD and head of emerging markets on writing economic travelogues and India becoming a breakout nation

B Y R AVI K RISHNAN ravi.k@livemint.com

····························· und managers, as a species, are usually ebullient and project a picture of optimism, however dire the macroeconomic circumstances. Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s managing director and head of emerging markets, however, doesn’t believe in this approach.

“I have been a writer as long as I have been an investor. My entire point is that…I have always spoken my mind. I’ve always found that it is better to say what is the truth rather than positioning yourself in terms of a marketing strategy,” he says.

New York-based Sharma is promoting his book Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles when we meet at the San-Qi restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai. He is in a pink shirt with a tie and says he finds it surprising that Indians wear heavy woollen business suits in the Mumbai summer. He is shy and not forthcoming when talking about himself, but gets animated about his ideas, the markets and his book.

In fact, just like the Big Mac Index which The Economist uses to compare the purchasing power parity of nations, Sharma has devised a Four Seasons Index. He uses that metric, along with other esoteric things such as the price of a Bellini, to measure how expensive each emerging market is.

According to Sharma, a country’s ranking on the index says a lot about its competitiveness in world markets, and the higher it is, the more its future growth is at risk.

India ranks somewhere in the middle, while Brazil and Russia are the most expensive.

The book, which has had its share of bouquets and brickbats, particularly from the wonks and pundits of nations Sharma projects as “losers”, mirrors Sharma’s approach to managing his $25 billion (around `1.38 trillion) fund.

“There are many approaches to what I do, mine is more of a ground report,” says 38-year-old Sharma. “I like to spend time in emerging markets talking to different people, even when I am in India. I don’t like being in the office too much. You never know when you’ll get new insights.”

In fact, as he writes in the book, it was a chance meeting with the son of a multimillionaire at a Delhi pub—whose casual “where else will the money go?” response when he learnt that Sharma was a fund manager—that helped him form his idea for a book. The basic premise of his book is that the extended economic boom we saw between 2003 and 2007 was part of a synchronized global boom, one that isn’t likely to be repeated any time soon. Each emerging market now faces different problems and there is no rising tide of liquidity that will boost all markets.

“I wanted to write an economic

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travelogue but I needed a big idea. Those couple of meetings (the Delhi pub and a presentation to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cabinet, where they displayed a sense of complacency) helped me crystallize what the big idea was going to be,” says Sharma.

While it is not unknown for fund managers to be writers, what makes Breakout Nations different is Sharma’s width of reportage, from visiting Bihar during the elections to partying at Istanbul’s nightclubs by the Bosphorus. The interest in individual emerging markets, as opposed to viewing them as one single entity, finds its way into Sharma’s other interests as well. He says he watches two foreign films a week as he finds it’s “like learning something. I love to understand the social fabric of a country, I like seeing different sets of different parts of the world.”

Recently, he watched The Intouchables, a French film. He counts the German movie The Lives of Others among his favourites.

He says he carries a notebook, a habit for the last 16 years, when he travels—at least 10 days a month.

He tries to visit a couple of socalled frontier markets (economies which are underdeveloped even relative to emerging markets, but have potential) through the year and often writes in aeroplanes “when his thoughts are fresh”.

Sharma has been a writer since his college days. While doing BCom honours from the well-regarded Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi in 1991, he started writing on global markets for the daily Business And Political Observer and later The Economic Times, where he is still a regular columnist. Back then the Indian economy had just started liberalizing and the opening up of the local capital markets was still a couple of years away.

“I have had a fascination for global economics from my school days, so the idea was how it could translate into something of practical use,” he says. “To be writing is a natural extension of my job. I am obsessed with this game—what is going to happen in the global economy. When you write about it, you end up researching and crystallizing your thoughts so much better.”

After college, Sharma continued writing the column though he secured a day job as an economist for investment banking and corporate advisory business Prime Securities Ltd, and it helped him hit the jackpot.

“I was keen to do a PhD abroad,” recalls Sharma. “Then some people from Morgan Stan-

ley liked what I used to write.

They were quite fascinated by the fact that someone sitting in India was writing about all this and hired me.”

Sharma dropped the idea of a PhD, joined the firm in Mumbai as an analyst in 1996 and was quickly covering Asia for them. It was a “baptism by fire”, because soon after he joined, the region was in the grip of the 1997-98 currency devaluation crisis.

“At that early stage in your career, that was quite something.

Also, the fact that so many people and firms I knew in Asia were wiped out and the whole asset class was questioned.” People started asking whether it made any sense to invest in emerging makers at all. It was an existential crisis, he recollects.

“It just toughens you up when you start that early and go through hell like that. Somehow, when the 2008 crisis happened, it didn’t bother me as much,” he adds.

The biggest learning from the Asian crisis, according to Sharma, was that trends are ephemeral in nature.

“They last for a while and pass, whereas the biggest mistake we all tend to make is that we extrapolate from the past,” Sharma says, a point which he reinforces repeatedly in his book.

By 2003, Sharma had moved to New York, and became the cohead of Morgan Stanley’s emerging market fund by the end of that year. Russia was one of their early emerging market picks, he reminisces.

But now that his sentiment on Russia has “completely turned around” as the political leadership loses its way, where will the money go? “Philippines is one country we discovered in the last two-three years. You want to invest in markets which are beginning to feel the pain and want to do something to turn things around,” he says.

Sharma is not too optimistic about India, giving it a 50-50 chance of being a breakout nation, or one “which will beat expectations and grow faster”.

“Whether that is a controversial view and something which is being gradually dubbed as too pessimistic, I don’t know,” he adds. “Today, the more time I spend in Delhi and Mumbai, the more bearish I get.

The more time I spend travelling in other states, the more bullish I get.

“What I find fascinating when I travel during elections is that India’s growth model should be evaluated state by state,” says Sharma.

Write balance: Sharma has been interested in writing since his college days.

IN PARENTHESIS Apart from writing, Ruchir Sharma’s other big passion is running; he even represented India at the World Masters Athletics last year at Sacramento in the 4x100m relay. As a runner, Sharma knows a thing or two about building strength and stamina.

His prognosis for the Indian economy is that it has run out of steam. Well, almost, as he hedges his position and assigns the country a 50­50 chance of making it. His thesis is that since there’s no longer any global liquidity to boost emerging markets, each individual nation has to chart its own path. In India’s case, this will not happen unless there is a reform push—that could mean a return to pre­2003 levels of growth, as the latest GDP numbers show.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

Play

LOUNGE PREVIEW

Remaking the idiot box A new method of user interaction makes smart TVs even more convenient to use B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

···························· uilding a smarter television is a goal that manufacturers have not been able to meet fully. The real problem is the user interface—Internet access and apps are of no use if you have to use a complex remote.

One popular solution is a wireless keyboard, but this adds clutter. The other option is to have voice and motion controls, such as those in the Microsoft Kinect, or the Samsung Smart TVs launched in May, but the problem with this is that the motions needed are tiring, and need you to be sitting in a fixed position in front of the camera for it to work.

Next week, Indian hardware manufacturer Amkette will launch an Android TV device called the Evo TV, which uses a remote with a gyroscope to allow motion control with a lot less effort.

It’s similar to the Nintendo Wii remote, but uses a capacitive button to activate the cursor, a huge improvement. Because of this, you can move the cursor to one side, let go of the button, adjust the angle of your hand, and then move in the same direction again, just like you would use a mouse on your desktop. In contrast, the Wii remote would need you to bend

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your wrist to an unnatural degree to reach some parts of the screen.

Also, since the Evo TV remote uses a gyroscope instead of the Wii’s infrared sensor, you can use it from any place in the room without having to point at a sensor directly. Simply put, using it is like using a mouse, where taking your finger off the capacitive button is the same as lifting the mouse off the table.

The remote is the highlight of the Evo TV. It has a scroll wheel like the original iPod to control zoom with clockwise and anticlockwise touches. Press the “Mode” button and it enters game mode, but this only works for optimized games such as Stick Cricket.

The “Dev” button activates the universal remote feature, which can be used to control your TV and set-top box.

The Evo TV is a little black box that sits inconspicuously by the television. It can connect via Wi-Fi so you only need two cables— power, and an A/V or HDMI cable to connect to the TV. It uses the ARM Cortex A9 processor and an ARM Mali-400 GPU (graphics processing unit), and was able to handle HD video playback smoothly. However, Amkette needs to add more polish to the interface—scrolling through a list is the biggest prob-

lem. It’s often slow, and the system sometimes required a forcible closure of applications.

A company statement says Amkette will address these problems with a software update that will be available automatically to all online users within a week of the launch. The system will be available in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata from 20 June, and in other cities by mid-August.

The Evo TV has 4 GB internal storage for apps and media but you can also extend that by plugging in a USB drive or an external hard drive. There are four USB slots, and one SD/MMC card slot.

There is an HDMI out, and an AV out, for users who don’t have an HDTV. There is also a 7.1 point audio out to plug in your surround sound system.

The USB ports can also be used to plug in a mouse or keyboard, or a Bluetooth keyboard if you need to do a lot of text entry.

You can connect a webcam for video chat. The Evo TV remote

also has a built-in mic, so you don’t have to speak loudly from across the room to be heard.

When you start the device, a series of screens guide you on using the remote; then the start screen is divided into “views”, tiles arranged horizontally in a scrollable list. The views act like folders, and while you can create and organize your views, the device comes with a number of programs and views preloaded.

It is possible to get to the base Android layer and tweak things

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yourself, but if you’re doing that, then this device is not needed.

To make YouTube easier to use without having to type anything, there is a YouTube Viewer app which is the first view, where you can easily make lists of videos based on searches and interests, which can then be accessed directly from the home screen.

There are also views for favourite TV shows (which Amkette powers through legal content available on YouTube), media centre (for your local content), games, favourite websites and widgets for Twitter and Facebook. The Google Play Market is also installed, and we tried a lot of different apps that worked really nicely with the remote, though there is also an Evo TV Store selling opti-

Simple smart TV: The Amkette Evo TV and remote.

mized Android apps that will run well on a TV. The preloaded content makes the Evo TV easy to use, and will also help people to learn quickly about the capabilities of their new system. The way the company has leveraged YouTube videos is great, and should help people find a lot of the excellent free content that is legally available online. Similarly, having preloaded views grouped into learning, entertainment and finance will help people reach different types of content easily.

All these features make Evo TV a great option for someone who doesn’t already own a smart TV. The device will first be available in large format retail stores such as Croma, at an MRP of `12,995 and an expected retail price of around `10,000. The price is a little high for a device that still needs polish, but if the company sticks to its plans for upgrades, then the Evo TV may be a good buy.

Amkette needs to show that it is committed to perfecting the experience by sticking to timelines for updates to create confidence among consumers. Because this device is not for geeks, who probably have better Do-It-Yourself solutions, but for people who want a simple set-up and interface.

Amkette’s Evo TV will launch in India on Wednesday.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

NEW MEATING PLACES

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She loves her steak, you love your soy. Plan your next dinner date at one of these eateries that offer the best of both worlds

NEW FOOD BRIDGE

Hakkasan, Mumbai Chef Poon Kam Loong stirs up a vegetarian chicken with sugar snaps in black pepper sauce (`750) and a four­style vegetable with vegetarian duck (`450). The latter is also available at Yauatcha, Mumbai, by chef Wah Cheong Soon.

Courtyard by Marriott, Mumbai Executive chef Suresh Thampy serves up a Mapo Tofu—bean curd in a spicy chilli­ and bean­based sauce, cooked with fermented black beans (`450) and a Phad Tow Hoo Hed Sod—wok­fried bean curd and button mushroom with chilli garlic sauce (`450). The hotel also serves mock beef, chicken, ham and mock prawn on demand.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

It looks, feels and tastes like meat, but is not meat. Behind the fascinating reinvention of vegetarian food gayatri.j@livemint.com

···························· n the future, you may well eat beef grown in a test tube, grow your vegetables on the sea floor or munch on a crunchy insect, points out Josh Schonwald, author of a new book on foods of the future, The Taste of Tomorrow, launched in April in the US. Schonwald, a Chicago-based writer and journalist, travelled across continents, researching traditional and alternative methods of growing and consuming foods. While the US turns to meatless Mondays, countries like India, Schonwald notes in an email interview, are heading the other way. “I’m encouraged by the growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in the West. The reverse trend is occurring in traditionally vegetarian places like India, where the appetite for meat-eating is soaring.” While several food experts explore in-vitro meat for the US, in India, the first hesitant steps towards replacing meats are being made, alongside the overall increase in consumption of meat.

Mock meats, initially thought needless in a country with myriad vegetarian options, are beginning to make headway after an almost five-year gestation period.

Also called faux meats or meat analogues, mock meats are proteins made of bean curd, soy or wheat gluten, and shaped, coloured and flavoured to resemble meats.

As a food trend, faux nonvegetarianism made its way into restaurants worldwide in the mid-2000s, in the midst of new debates on sustainable development, organic food and green growth.

While the shape and texture of mock meats are typically offputting for vegetarians, it is more those who have given up meat and may crave its texture or taste who take to faux meats, say restaurateurs. Mock meats are also popular among people in India who do not want to stand out in a group due to their vegetarianism.

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Freeman & Baker Deli, Mumbai Mock prawns, pork, chicken, etc., cold cuts, `800­900 per kg. Any of the fresh sandwiches they offer at the deli can be made with mock meats.

The slow burn At the swanky Freeman & Baker Deli in Juhu, Mumbai, where Japanese quail sits next to emu steak, owner and complete carnivore Vishal Mehra has a story about why he began stocking mock meats in late 2011. “A woman came to meet me one day. She had fallen in love with a vegetarian, married him and sworn to vegetarianism. But she was craving meat.

She said ‘please help me find mock meats’.”

Mehra chanced upon OKK, a brand popular in Singapore, w h i c h h e n o w s t ocks. “The woman and her family now have fried prawn balls and roast chicken—all faux—on Sundays, and she uses the fake ham for her children’s sandwiches,” Mehra says.

When the London-based Hakkasan opened in Mumbai in 2011, their restaurants Hakkasan and Yauatcha put mock duck on the menu. In 2010, Courtyard by Marriott, Mumbai, noted the number of increasing requests for mock meats and placed Mapo Tofu (minced tofu) on the menu. The Leela and the Taj group hotels cater to it on demand. In Delhi, The Yum Yum Tree’s Veggie Beijing Duck is a popular special. In Pune, the Tutto Bene Delicatessen caters for mock meat barbecues when mock meat stocks are available.

Bean Me Up at Anjuna-Vagator, Goa, run by Shawn Rodrigues, is a popular hub for mock meats.

Rodrigues says: “We cater to a lot of foreigners, specially those who visit Goa for yoga and spiritual expeditions. Western folks who are used to meat but have converted to vegetarianism and veganism find mock meat particularly interesting.”

On their menu are mock Chicken Masala, Cous Cous with Moroccan Style Seitan (made of wheat gluten) Stew and Harissa Sauce, and Smoked Vegan Hot Dogs.

Animal rights advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which declared a $1 million (around `55 crore now) prize in 2008 for anyone who can grow “cultured” chicken in a lab by 30

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ALTERNATIVES

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LOUNGE

Graze, Vivanta by Taj, Bangalore Executive chef Ramasamy Selvaraju can substitute dishes using meats with mock meats (soya­ or mushroom­based imitations and sourced externally) on demand. He also serves up Kung Pow (mock) Chicken (`650) and Mock Meat Chicken Burger with Cheese (`550).

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

The Leela, Mumbai Executive sous chef Qadar makes a braised mock abalone and deep­fried vegetarian fish using taro. Dishes using meats can be substituted (on demand) with mock meats (with jackfruit and ‘rajma’ to create fake meats, ‘rajma’ and yam to make substitute lamb in ‘galouti’ kebabs).

Analogue culture: (clockwise from left) Crab Claws (fake) with Romesque sauce; a veg soya ham sandwich at Freeman & Baker Deli, Juhu, Mumbai; Imitation Ham & Foccacia sandwich at Graze, Vivanta by Taj, Bangalore; and restaurateur Nelson Wang.

June this year, states that 378,000 people on their records turned vegetarian worldwide last year, taking up starter kits which help them transition to vegetarianism with the help of, yes, mock meats.

Where the twain meat The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that Indians’ per capita consumption of meat in 2011 is running at 5-5.5kg (11-12 pounds) a year, the highest since it began compiling records. According to the US department of agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, poultry production in India is now reaching 3.2 million tonnes, with an average annual growth of 10%. India is likely to become the largest exporter of beef (buffalo) in the world by 2013.

Foretelling this increase in India’s meat consumption made the founder of Java Green café in Washington, DC and a

pioneer in the field of in-vitro meats, Jason Matheny, turn vegetarian. In October 2003, Matheny was interning with the Berkeley-based Seva Foundation in India, and was appalled at the torturous conditions he found at a chicken farm on the outskirts of Delhi.

When he returned to the US, he was convinced he needed to find the world an alternative. In 2004, Matheny set up New Harvest, possibly the world’s first company to promote lab-grown, or in-vitro, meats.

Schonwald, who met Matheny at the time for an interview, now says: “We have to explore alternatives. Something has to give. As one Dutch scientist put it, if this planet doesn’t change its appetite for meat, we’re going to have to get another planet. It’s either a massive shift to vegetarianism, or a massive adoption of plant-based meats, or an alternative means—like in-vitro meat.”

Cult of the analogue Kwality Foods, a Mumbai-based company established in 1998, which calls its customers “vegetrendians”, retails mock meats—mock duck, chicken and sausages—in tins under the brand name Mock Treat and is vocal about the cause. Jatin Malik, one of the three proprietors, says they began it because of the family’s allegiance to the Radha Soami religious group.

“We believe in propagating nonviolent forms of eating,” he says.

Monika Siriya, 29, a member of Vegan India, is the Mumbai representative of an NGO called Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature (Sharan), which propagates veganism through food meet-ups. “Mock meats are not the tastiest—Indians have better vegetarian options—but they are good propagation tools and great for people who crave meat,” Siriya says.

Sharan hands out recipes

Out of The Blue, Mumbai Chef Tanai Shirali makes soya polpettes—soya and mushroom kebab­like polpettes (`355).

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

crafted by in-house expert Himani Shetty, ranging from Mangalorean sukha to mince that mimics animal-based food, and they craft their own mock meats out of soy.

This enthusiastic conversion to mock meat is not just religionbased—it is also driven by health and ethical concerns as part of an evolving world view.

Yasmin Jadwani and husband Harish are the Philippines-based Indian owners of Ahimsa Food in Gurgaon, which was set up in 2008 and manufactures vegetarian continental ham, hot dogs, drumsticks and kebabs. “We’ve noticed that though we put nutritional information on the box, nobody really reads it. More than health, it’s a personal philosophy that makes people take to mock meats,” Yasmin says.

The wave is part of a larger debate currently raging across the Western world. Gourmand and food writer Rashmi Uday Singh, just back from touring

France for her book A Vegetarian in Paris, says fake meats have not caught on in most of Europe, which is still firmly on the meat side of the debate. The US has reacted more favourably to options.

On 20 March, writer of The New York Times Magazine’s column The Ethicist, Ariel Kaminer, ran an essay contest asking readers to justify why they thought it was ethical to eat meat. Mark Bittman, NYT food columnist who was on the judges’ panel for the responses, stated that the average American ate 200 pounds (around 90kg) of meat a year, and declared the results in his NYT column on 15 May, saying: “Only if meat were produced at no or little expense to the environment, public health or animal welfare (as, arguably, some of it is), would our decisions about whether to raise and kill animals for food come down to ethics.”

Today, American companies,

China Garden, Mumbai and Delhi Chairman Nelson Wang offers over 75 dishes made of veg­chic, veg­prawn, veg­beef, veg­duck and veg­lamb (`90 onwards).

The Yum Yum Tree, Delhi Vegetarian Peking Duck with pancakes, scallions, cucumber and hoisin sauce (`885).

Bangalore Bistro, Bangalore Mock meat steak—made of soya, served with vegetables and brown sauce (`275).

Little Italy, all outlets The vegetarian Italian restaurant serves a bolognese that substitutes soya mince for the ragu. You can also order the Pasta Matriciana (`550).

All rates exclusive of taxes.

Gayatri Jayaraman

such as Worthington, roll out fake sausages; Fry’s Vegetarian in South Africa has retailed a range of 18 mock meats to India since 2009. It’s off the shelves since December, and the company is currently negotiating with an Indian multinational to handle increased demand.

Shaun Richardson, international trade director, Fry’s Vegetarian, says in an email: “We see that children are influencing their parents (in India), and this has shifted a lot of purchases from meat.”

Australia, the US and UK, says Richardson, post the highest demand.

Tracing roots Places such as Java Green were among the first to put mock meats on the menu, and as veganism, vegetarianism, slow food and organic food spread, alternatives emerged.

Yet, it is Far Eastern cuisine that best lends itself to mock meats, which are also called “Buddha’s meat” across SouthEast Asia, and which trace their origins to monastic diets.

According to the 1976 book Chinese Gastronomy, mock meats were developed by Chinese temple cooks. The Buddhist emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (502-557 AD) wrote an essay titled “Forsake Alcohol And Meat” in which he urged Buddhists to become vegetarians. Many Chinese and Japanese Buddhists sects then prohibited meat eating, essentially an injunction against taking life (Chiung-fang). Temples in China, each with rich culinary traditions, began to experiment with alternatives.

In India, though, mock meats may have arrived in the early 1970s via Bareilly. An American missionary Robert Nave, in a bid to introduce nutrition into the protein-lacking diet of the local underprivileged, asked for the donation of an extruder—a machine that processes soya to a meat-like texture—and began incorporating soya nuggets into local diets, says Suresh Itapu, CEO, NutriTech Consulting Services and honorary executive director, Soy Food Promotion and Welfare Association. This took off on a commercial scale in association with the nearby GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar.

Hyderabad-based Itapu says mock meat is now becoming a staple for the underprivileged of north and North-East India.

Itapu says: “It has 52% protein, which is three times the protein of any meat. It also keeps at room temperature for up to a year. For the poor, when vegetables are rare or expensive, 100g of soya meat is a good replacement.”

The idea caught on commercially when Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd began to promote Nutrela soya nuggets and chunks in 1989.

From nutrition to taste, soya mock meats then made the jump to fine dining via people like Nelson Wang, founder of the restaurants China Garden in Mumbai and Delhi.

Wang first put mock meats on his menu in 2007 after seeing the variety available in Taiwan.

“When I went to my cousin’s restaurant in Taipei in the early 2000s, I saw even roadside eateries were full of mock meats. On numerous festival days, all Taiwanese are vegetarian. I thought this is similar to India, it will work here,” he says.

Wang experimented with bean curd, using the stems of Chinese mushrooms to craft the fibres of mock meat, adding artificial colouring, essence and flavouring.

In the first week of June, Wang left for another trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong and then

Singapore to put himself through a one-month training process in mastering newer processes of mock meats.

The menu at China Garden, which has survived many years of half-hearted demand, will now be revived after Wang returns.

Spread of the influence At Mikado, an erstwhile dance bar near Chembur’s Basant cinema in Mumbai once notorious for hosting underworld dons, and where Gujarati businessmen brought their clients to crack deals, soya nuggets quickly became the hottest—not literally—dish on the menu. Informally known as “Jain chicken” and “Jain keema”, they were made by basting a tikka of soya with tandoori spices, and cooking till it looked no different from its chicken or mutton counterpart.

Mikado’s manager Chandrashekhar says: “My clients enjoy it but I don’t make it here.

When they ask for it, I order it from a place in Ghatkopar.”

Follow the trail to a “family” eatery near the Rajawadi Hospital, the restaurant Garden, and there’s more. Manager Mohan Pujari of Garden is proud of his mock menu—soya tikka masala, soya keema, soya dum biryani (cooked dum-sealed till tender), soya bean chilli (which substitutes the popular drinking snack chilli chicken) and a soya Manchurian.

About 20% of his customers demand the fake non-veg, Pujari says, and then there are those who order in from bars like Mikado. “Lots of Gujarati businessmen order these because they don’t want to show that they don’t like non-veg. It may break deals,” he says. “Others do it for reasons of health.”

Mocked meat It is a subject that has the food industry sharply divided, though.

Chef and restaurateur Rahul Akerkar tells of a young girl, a diner, who tried to get him to sign up for the mock meat wave.

He stoically refused. “My customer has a sensitive palate. I would not insult him by putting a mock meat on his plate. I would not serve it,” says Akerkar, managing director of deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, the company that runs the Indigo and Indigo Deli restaurants in Mumbai.

Clinton Cooper, executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, does get requests. He says: “I have to play the devil’s advocate; I am simply not a fan! I am a firm believer in keeping food simple and letting the flavours speak for themselves.”

“With mock meat, this is not the case. It is often so packed with artificial colouring, flavouring and additives that it is a wonder it can still be considered food. I certainly don’t consider it as such.”

A.D. Singh of the Olive chain of restaurants in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, who had experimented with it in 2008, soon took mock meats off the menu because they were not successful.

But others like Wang soldier on, believing it is a perception problem. Wang conducts periodic blind tastings. He labours to perfect the fibre and cut. “I would never spoil anyone’s religion. Vegetarians in India cannot stomach something that looks so much like meat. I was wrong there,” he says.

He has learnt from his mistakes. “Now, I am making mock meats for non-vegetarians,” he says. “People are always looking for some excuse not to eat meat.

They say my wife is not eating, so I am not eating.

“For that guy, I give him this.”

L10 COVER

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

NEW MEATING PLACES

THE

She loves her steak, you love your soy. Plan your next dinner date at one of these eateries that offer the best of both worlds

NEW FOOD BRIDGE

Hakkasan, Mumbai Chef Poon Kam Loong stirs up a vegetarian chicken with sugar snaps in black pepper sauce (`750) and a four­style vegetable with vegetarian duck (`450). The latter is also available at Yauatcha, Mumbai, by chef Wah Cheong Soon.

Courtyard by Marriott, Mumbai Executive chef Suresh Thampy serves up a Mapo Tofu—bean curd in a spicy chilli­ and bean­based sauce, cooked with fermented black beans (`450) and a Phad Tow Hoo Hed Sod—wok­fried bean curd and button mushroom with chilli garlic sauce (`450). The hotel also serves mock beef, chicken, ham and mock prawn on demand.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

It looks, feels and tastes like meat, but is not meat. Behind the fascinating reinvention of vegetarian food gayatri.j@livemint.com

···························· n the future, you may well eat beef grown in a test tube, grow your vegetables on the sea floor or munch on a crunchy insect, points out Josh Schonwald, author of a new book on foods of the future, The Taste of Tomorrow, launched in April in the US. Schonwald, a Chicago-based writer and journalist, travelled across continents, researching traditional and alternative methods of growing and consuming foods. While the US turns to meatless Mondays, countries like India, Schonwald notes in an email interview, are heading the other way. “I’m encouraged by the growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in the West. The reverse trend is occurring in traditionally vegetarian places like India, where the appetite for meat-eating is soaring.” While several food experts explore in-vitro meat for the US, in India, the first hesitant steps towards replacing meats are being made, alongside the overall increase in consumption of meat.

Mock meats, initially thought needless in a country with myriad vegetarian options, are beginning to make headway after an almost five-year gestation period.

Also called faux meats or meat analogues, mock meats are proteins made of bean curd, soy or wheat gluten, and shaped, coloured and flavoured to resemble meats.

As a food trend, faux nonvegetarianism made its way into restaurants worldwide in the mid-2000s, in the midst of new debates on sustainable development, organic food and green growth.

While the shape and texture of mock meats are typically offputting for vegetarians, it is more those who have given up meat and may crave its texture or taste who take to faux meats, say restaurateurs. Mock meats are also popular among people in India who do not want to stand out in a group due to their vegetarianism.

I

Freeman & Baker Deli, Mumbai Mock prawns, pork, chicken, etc., cold cuts, `800­900 per kg. Any of the fresh sandwiches they offer at the deli can be made with mock meats.

The slow burn At the swanky Freeman & Baker Deli in Juhu, Mumbai, where Japanese quail sits next to emu steak, owner and complete carnivore Vishal Mehra has a story about why he began stocking mock meats in late 2011. “A woman came to meet me one day. She had fallen in love with a vegetarian, married him and sworn to vegetarianism. But she was craving meat.

She said ‘please help me find mock meats’.”

Mehra chanced upon OKK, a brand popular in Singapore, w h i c h h e n o w s t ocks. “The woman and her family now have fried prawn balls and roast chicken—all faux—on Sundays, and she uses the fake ham for her children’s sandwiches,” Mehra says.

When the London-based Hakkasan opened in Mumbai in 2011, their restaurants Hakkasan and Yauatcha put mock duck on the menu. In 2010, Courtyard by Marriott, Mumbai, noted the number of increasing requests for mock meats and placed Mapo Tofu (minced tofu) on the menu. The Leela and the Taj group hotels cater to it on demand. In Delhi, The Yum Yum Tree’s Veggie Beijing Duck is a popular special. In Pune, the Tutto Bene Delicatessen caters for mock meat barbecues when mock meat stocks are available.

Bean Me Up at Anjuna-Vagator, Goa, run by Shawn Rodrigues, is a popular hub for mock meats.

Rodrigues says: “We cater to a lot of foreigners, specially those who visit Goa for yoga and spiritual expeditions. Western folks who are used to meat but have converted to vegetarianism and veganism find mock meat particularly interesting.”

On their menu are mock Chicken Masala, Cous Cous with Moroccan Style Seitan (made of wheat gluten) Stew and Harissa Sauce, and Smoked Vegan Hot Dogs.

Animal rights advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which declared a $1 million (around `55 crore now) prize in 2008 for anyone who can grow “cultured” chicken in a lab by 30

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

ALTERNATIVES

B Y G AYATRI J AYARAMAN

COVER L11

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Graze, Vivanta by Taj, Bangalore Executive chef Ramasamy Selvaraju can substitute dishes using meats with mock meats (soya­ or mushroom­based imitations and sourced externally) on demand. He also serves up Kung Pow (mock) Chicken (`650) and Mock Meat Chicken Burger with Cheese (`550).

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

The Leela, Mumbai Executive sous chef Qadar makes a braised mock abalone and deep­fried vegetarian fish using taro. Dishes using meats can be substituted (on demand) with mock meats (with jackfruit and ‘rajma’ to create fake meats, ‘rajma’ and yam to make substitute lamb in ‘galouti’ kebabs).

Analogue culture: (clockwise from left) Crab Claws (fake) with Romesque sauce; a veg soya ham sandwich at Freeman & Baker Deli, Juhu, Mumbai; Imitation Ham & Foccacia sandwich at Graze, Vivanta by Taj, Bangalore; and restaurateur Nelson Wang.

June this year, states that 378,000 people on their records turned vegetarian worldwide last year, taking up starter kits which help them transition to vegetarianism with the help of, yes, mock meats.

Where the twain meat The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that Indians’ per capita consumption of meat in 2011 is running at 5-5.5kg (11-12 pounds) a year, the highest since it began compiling records. According to the US department of agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, poultry production in India is now reaching 3.2 million tonnes, with an average annual growth of 10%. India is likely to become the largest exporter of beef (buffalo) in the world by 2013.

Foretelling this increase in India’s meat consumption made the founder of Java Green café in Washington, DC and a

pioneer in the field of in-vitro meats, Jason Matheny, turn vegetarian. In October 2003, Matheny was interning with the Berkeley-based Seva Foundation in India, and was appalled at the torturous conditions he found at a chicken farm on the outskirts of Delhi.

When he returned to the US, he was convinced he needed to find the world an alternative. In 2004, Matheny set up New Harvest, possibly the world’s first company to promote lab-grown, or in-vitro, meats.

Schonwald, who met Matheny at the time for an interview, now says: “We have to explore alternatives. Something has to give. As one Dutch scientist put it, if this planet doesn’t change its appetite for meat, we’re going to have to get another planet. It’s either a massive shift to vegetarianism, or a massive adoption of plant-based meats, or an alternative means—like in-vitro meat.”

Cult of the analogue Kwality Foods, a Mumbai-based company established in 1998, which calls its customers “vegetrendians”, retails mock meats—mock duck, chicken and sausages—in tins under the brand name Mock Treat and is vocal about the cause. Jatin Malik, one of the three proprietors, says they began it because of the family’s allegiance to the Radha Soami religious group.

“We believe in propagating nonviolent forms of eating,” he says.

Monika Siriya, 29, a member of Vegan India, is the Mumbai representative of an NGO called Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature (Sharan), which propagates veganism through food meet-ups. “Mock meats are not the tastiest—Indians have better vegetarian options—but they are good propagation tools and great for people who crave meat,” Siriya says.

Sharan hands out recipes

Out of The Blue, Mumbai Chef Tanai Shirali makes soya polpettes—soya and mushroom kebab­like polpettes (`355).

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

crafted by in-house expert Himani Shetty, ranging from Mangalorean sukha to mince that mimics animal-based food, and they craft their own mock meats out of soy.

This enthusiastic conversion to mock meat is not just religionbased—it is also driven by health and ethical concerns as part of an evolving world view.

Yasmin Jadwani and husband Harish are the Philippines-based Indian owners of Ahimsa Food in Gurgaon, which was set up in 2008 and manufactures vegetarian continental ham, hot dogs, drumsticks and kebabs. “We’ve noticed that though we put nutritional information on the box, nobody really reads it. More than health, it’s a personal philosophy that makes people take to mock meats,” Yasmin says.

The wave is part of a larger debate currently raging across the Western world. Gourmand and food writer Rashmi Uday Singh, just back from touring

France for her book A Vegetarian in Paris, says fake meats have not caught on in most of Europe, which is still firmly on the meat side of the debate. The US has reacted more favourably to options.

On 20 March, writer of The New York Times Magazine’s column The Ethicist, Ariel Kaminer, ran an essay contest asking readers to justify why they thought it was ethical to eat meat. Mark Bittman, NYT food columnist who was on the judges’ panel for the responses, stated that the average American ate 200 pounds (around 90kg) of meat a year, and declared the results in his NYT column on 15 May, saying: “Only if meat were produced at no or little expense to the environment, public health or animal welfare (as, arguably, some of it is), would our decisions about whether to raise and kill animals for food come down to ethics.”

Today, American companies,

China Garden, Mumbai and Delhi Chairman Nelson Wang offers over 75 dishes made of veg­chic, veg­prawn, veg­beef, veg­duck and veg­lamb (`90 onwards).

The Yum Yum Tree, Delhi Vegetarian Peking Duck with pancakes, scallions, cucumber and hoisin sauce (`885).

Bangalore Bistro, Bangalore Mock meat steak—made of soya, served with vegetables and brown sauce (`275).

Little Italy, all outlets The vegetarian Italian restaurant serves a bolognese that substitutes soya mince for the ragu. You can also order the Pasta Matriciana (`550).

All rates exclusive of taxes.

Gayatri Jayaraman

such as Worthington, roll out fake sausages; Fry’s Vegetarian in South Africa has retailed a range of 18 mock meats to India since 2009. It’s off the shelves since December, and the company is currently negotiating with an Indian multinational to handle increased demand.

Shaun Richardson, international trade director, Fry’s Vegetarian, says in an email: “We see that children are influencing their parents (in India), and this has shifted a lot of purchases from meat.”

Australia, the US and UK, says Richardson, post the highest demand.

Tracing roots Places such as Java Green were among the first to put mock meats on the menu, and as veganism, vegetarianism, slow food and organic food spread, alternatives emerged.

Yet, it is Far Eastern cuisine that best lends itself to mock meats, which are also called “Buddha’s meat” across SouthEast Asia, and which trace their origins to monastic diets.

According to the 1976 book Chinese Gastronomy, mock meats were developed by Chinese temple cooks. The Buddhist emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (502-557 AD) wrote an essay titled “Forsake Alcohol And Meat” in which he urged Buddhists to become vegetarians. Many Chinese and Japanese Buddhists sects then prohibited meat eating, essentially an injunction against taking life (Chiung-fang). Temples in China, each with rich culinary traditions, began to experiment with alternatives.

In India, though, mock meats may have arrived in the early 1970s via Bareilly. An American missionary Robert Nave, in a bid to introduce nutrition into the protein-lacking diet of the local underprivileged, asked for the donation of an extruder—a machine that processes soya to a meat-like texture—and began incorporating soya nuggets into local diets, says Suresh Itapu, CEO, NutriTech Consulting Services and honorary executive director, Soy Food Promotion and Welfare Association. This took off on a commercial scale in association with the nearby GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar.

Hyderabad-based Itapu says mock meat is now becoming a staple for the underprivileged of north and North-East India.

Itapu says: “It has 52% protein, which is three times the protein of any meat. It also keeps at room temperature for up to a year. For the poor, when vegetables are rare or expensive, 100g of soya meat is a good replacement.”

The idea caught on commercially when Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd began to promote Nutrela soya nuggets and chunks in 1989.

From nutrition to taste, soya mock meats then made the jump to fine dining via people like Nelson Wang, founder of the restaurants China Garden in Mumbai and Delhi.

Wang first put mock meats on his menu in 2007 after seeing the variety available in Taiwan.

“When I went to my cousin’s restaurant in Taipei in the early 2000s, I saw even roadside eateries were full of mock meats. On numerous festival days, all Taiwanese are vegetarian. I thought this is similar to India, it will work here,” he says.

Wang experimented with bean curd, using the stems of Chinese mushrooms to craft the fibres of mock meat, adding artificial colouring, essence and flavouring.

In the first week of June, Wang left for another trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong and then

Singapore to put himself through a one-month training process in mastering newer processes of mock meats.

The menu at China Garden, which has survived many years of half-hearted demand, will now be revived after Wang returns.

Spread of the influence At Mikado, an erstwhile dance bar near Chembur’s Basant cinema in Mumbai once notorious for hosting underworld dons, and where Gujarati businessmen brought their clients to crack deals, soya nuggets quickly became the hottest—not literally—dish on the menu. Informally known as “Jain chicken” and “Jain keema”, they were made by basting a tikka of soya with tandoori spices, and cooking till it looked no different from its chicken or mutton counterpart.

Mikado’s manager Chandrashekhar says: “My clients enjoy it but I don’t make it here.

When they ask for it, I order it from a place in Ghatkopar.”

Follow the trail to a “family” eatery near the Rajawadi Hospital, the restaurant Garden, and there’s more. Manager Mohan Pujari of Garden is proud of his mock menu—soya tikka masala, soya keema, soya dum biryani (cooked dum-sealed till tender), soya bean chilli (which substitutes the popular drinking snack chilli chicken) and a soya Manchurian.

About 20% of his customers demand the fake non-veg, Pujari says, and then there are those who order in from bars like Mikado. “Lots of Gujarati businessmen order these because they don’t want to show that they don’t like non-veg. It may break deals,” he says. “Others do it for reasons of health.”

Mocked meat It is a subject that has the food industry sharply divided, though.

Chef and restaurateur Rahul Akerkar tells of a young girl, a diner, who tried to get him to sign up for the mock meat wave.

He stoically refused. “My customer has a sensitive palate. I would not insult him by putting a mock meat on his plate. I would not serve it,” says Akerkar, managing director of deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, the company that runs the Indigo and Indigo Deli restaurants in Mumbai.

Clinton Cooper, executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, does get requests. He says: “I have to play the devil’s advocate; I am simply not a fan! I am a firm believer in keeping food simple and letting the flavours speak for themselves.”

“With mock meat, this is not the case. It is often so packed with artificial colouring, flavouring and additives that it is a wonder it can still be considered food. I certainly don’t consider it as such.”

A.D. Singh of the Olive chain of restaurants in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, who had experimented with it in 2008, soon took mock meats off the menu because they were not successful.

But others like Wang soldier on, believing it is a perception problem. Wang conducts periodic blind tastings. He labours to perfect the fibre and cut. “I would never spoil anyone’s religion. Vegetarians in India cannot stomach something that looks so much like meat. I was wrong there,” he says.

He has learnt from his mistakes. “Now, I am making mock meats for non-vegetarians,” he says. “People are always looking for some excuse not to eat meat.

They say my wife is not eating, so I am not eating.

“For that guy, I give him this.”

L12

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

Fitness

LOUNGE

ZUMBA

Buzz like a Latina The Colombian dance fitness programme makes an offer you can’t refuse—party your way to good health

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· n a large studio at Temperance, the newly opened “culture hub” in the Mumbai suburb of Bandra, around 20 young men and women are sweating it out to Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca. Track pants, sports bras and muscle T-shirts—they’re dressed for a high-intensity cardio workout.

The Colombian dance fitness programme Zumba is the new girl in the Indian fitness circuit. It masks a dozen sets of squats, lunges and hip rolls with a mash-up of Latin American dance moves.

Think of it as power aerobics with serious sex appeal: Zumba’s choreography incorporates salsa, merengue, samba, mambo, tango and bachata with hip hop and a few Bollywood and belly dance moves.

The instructor, 26-year-old Roshan Singh, looks at the mirror in front of him and dances. We follow suit for a whole hour with barely a minute’s break between songs. There’s no give or take of instructions. The class looks like MTV Grind on fast-forward, justifying the tag line used to promote Zumba around the world: “Ditch the workout, join the party.”

Part of the winning formula for Zumba (which some believe is Spanish slang for “buzz like a bee”) is that instructors are encouraged to keep the choreography simple, and avoid over-directing so students can drop their inhibitions and “feel” the music.

“You can burn anything between 600-1,000 calories in one session,” says Singh, who calls it an “exercise in disguise”.

“Women, especially, are easily bored by treadmills and gym routines. This works for just about anyone because it’s never the same and you’re motivated because you’re learning something new,” he says.

Zumba is part of the first set of classes offered at Temperance, which started rolling out batches last month. “We were gauging the demand for Zumba along with our planned classes for Hatha and Iyengar yoga, power pilates, mixed martial arts, Bolly-hop and contemporary dance. We realized its potential at the ‘it’ bag of the fitness circuit. We had to offer classes,” says Aakanksha Gupta, communications director. Temperance now offers Zumba in three evening slots, and three morning slots are in the works.

A dancer with seven years of Bharatanatyam training herself, and a student of salsa and jive, Gupta says Zumba took her by surprise. “Our internal team usually takes demo classes from instructors before we open them up. I’d followed some Zumba from online videos before but when I attended my first class I realized it works at a whole different level altogether.”

Delhi Dance Academy, a

I

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

ZUMBA WORLD What you need to know about the new workout What: A Latin dance­inspired cardio workout When: Founded in 2001 in Colombia (Zumba Fitness is now headquartered in Florida, US) Who: Dancer and choreographer Alberto “Beto” Perez Where: Practised in 125 countries by around 12 million people Different styles: Eight Visit www.zumba.com to find a class.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Get moving: (from top) Sucheta Pal conducting a class in Connecticut, US; Dianne CobbPennisi with branded Zumba ‘toning sticks’; Roshan Singh with his class at Temperance; and (extreme right) Zumba’s founder, Alberto Perez.

10-year-old dance studio in New Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar, also started offering Zumba three months ago.

A senior instructor, Sanjay Kumar Angaria, who goes by “San”, says they had to start classes “because it was in fashion”. The fad following aside, he lists benefits that would impress gym rats. “Indians tend to put on weight around their midriff. Since Latin dance is entirely dependent on waist movements, Zumba makes for a superb core workout,” he says.

The academy offers add-ons such as dumb-bells and exercise balls in their classes. San mentions another benefit: It can work as a primer for those interested in pursuing salsa, merengue and other Latin dances.

Zumba was born of a “happy accident” in the mid-1990s when Colombian dancer and choreographer Alberto “Beto” Perez forgot to carry the required aerobics music to his class. He decided to wing it with old salsa and meren-

GARETH CATTERMOLE/ GETTY IMAGES

gue music in his personal collection and the experiment resulted in a non-stop dance class.

In 2001, Beto brought his dance-fitness style to Miami, Florida, and with two other Colombian entrepreneurs—Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion— branded it Zumba Fitness.

Zumba® is now a trademarked style, and by 2005, it had spawned a full-fledged Zumba Academy™ to license instructors.

For something as dynamic and intuitive as Zumba, the instructor is an invaluable asset. Sucheta Pal, who heads the Zumba pro-

gramme at Temperance, is the only official Zumba education specialist (ZES) in the country presently (which means she can license other Zumba instructors).

An engineer before she quit to pursue Zumba full-time, Pal was introduced to Zumba while living in Connecticut, US, three years ago. “I was hooked to the music at first. Then I came on board with the fitness aspect: It’s intense cardio, and at the end of a session, you’ve worked on almost all your muscle groups. I call it the happy drug. It’s addictive.”

Pal pegs the number of licensed

instructors in India at more than 300. A search on the official website Zumba.com throws up around 50 centres in Mumbai, and 15 in Delhi and Bangalore each. Most of these are between a month to a year old.

Zumba is catching on in nonmetro cites as well, in smaller cities in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa. Jaya Maheshwari, 38, a furniture retailer from Kolhapur, is part of a group of women who meet five times a week for a mixed aerobics session. They sent their trainer to Pune, 220km away, to

learn Zumba. “We met a girl visiting from Pune who had lost a lot of weight doing Zumba, and what she described seemed like a lot of fun,” says Maheshwari, before adding: “It wasn’t just for us.

There’s such a demand now that it made business sense for our trainer to learn Zumba.” The newly opened branch of Gold’s Gym in Kolhapur, she points out, offers Zumba as well.

The mushrooming of Zumba classes across India brings up the question of authenticity. San, for instance, confesses that the Delhi Dance Academy trainers are self-taught. As the first ZES in India, part of Pal’s job (she moved back to India in April) is “to sort out this mess by training more instructors”.

“There are lot of instructional videos online, which is where the problem lies. Licensed Zumba instructors receive a DVD every month from the headquarters in Florida to update their music and choreography,” says Pal. Pal recalls her only meeting with Beto, earlier this year, when she was receiving her ZES training. “Every single move on every Zumba DVD that goes out has been approved by him. He’s very hands-on.”

Zumba Fitness currently offers eight styles of Zumba—from Zumba Gold, which is geared towards senior participants, to Aqua Zumba, which is meant to be performed in a swimming pool.

In 10 years, Zumba has developed into a mega brand with its own Z Life magazine, Xbox and Wii video games, and an extensive line of music CDS. The credit for popularizing Zumba in India goes to a retired American stewardess and belly dancing instructor, Dianne CobbPennisi, 57, who moved to New Delhi in 2009. She was one of the first Zumba instructors in India, and started conducting classes at two top-of-the-line Delhi gyms—Fitness First and Gold’s Gym—and was pleasantly surprised at the response.

“Zumba took off in India because it offers something for all fitness levels...and it’s a given that general fitness levels are not high,” she says. CobbPennisi moved to Bangalore in 2010 and started hosting classes there. “Unlike belly dancing, Zumba is much less intimidating to the general public. For me, it’s an excellent way to keep moving.”

Meanwhile, other new dancefitness styles are already emerging to compete with Zumba. Batuka has caught on in Spain in recent years as a Latin-infused cardio workout with “a Zen-like approach”. There’s also Latinva, which offers a heart-pumping workout with bachata, cha cha, cumbia, mambo, merengue, salsa and tango dance steps.

It’s picking up fast, CobbPennisi says. “People no longer ask me if it’s an African dance form,” she says. With general awareness on the rise, it sets the scene for introducing the different styles. In April, CobbPennisi started Zumbatomic (for children) at the Hogwarts School in Bangalore.

Temperance, too, plans to host Zumba Gold classes for its senior clientele, says Gupta. “In July, we’re planning to invite the international Zumba Education specialist Kelly Bullard for a masterclass,” she says.

The Zumba beat is slipping out of fitness studios and into pop culture. Last month, CobbPennisi thought she heard a Zumba track in a club in Bangalore. “That’s when I knew it had really arrived.”

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

Culture

LOUNGE Q&A | RAJESH MAPUSKAR

MUSIC MATTERS

‘Only a Parsi came to mind’ PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

The debutant director on Raju Hirani’s thought process, Sharman Joshi’s Parsi accent and Vinod Chopra’s strict scripting rules

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

···························· ajesh Mapuskar— Mapuskar, Mapu or Maps—tried his hand at many careers when he moved to Mumbai in 1983: modelling, assistant direction on Marathi soaps, production for advertising films and assisting on movies like the Munna Bhai series and 3 Idiots, before he wrote and directed his first film, Ferrari Ki Sawaari, which released on Friday. “I am a doer. Give me anything to do and even though I am saying it myself, I will do it well,” he says.

Mapuskar, 43, who grew up in Shrivardhan village, Raigad district, Maharashtra, is totally at ease poking fun at himself and nonchalantly dismisses questions about having been babied during the making of Ferrari Ki Sawaari

by Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Edited excerpts from an interview:

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How did you get the idea of making a film around Sachin Tendulkar’s Ferrari?

I was working on the post-production of Munna Bhai MBBS and had an advertising-related assignment for which I had to get super cars like Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce and Ferrari for a client who made hubcaps for expensive cars. I managed to get all the cars for the shoot except a Ferrari. A friend told me about a Ferrari parked at Pali Hill. I went to see the car, and stood outside the building looking at the car because the security guard would not let me in. I remember the thought that came to me then: “What if I steal this car for a day?

What will happen?”

Four­wheel drive: Ferrari Ki Sawaari is Rajesh Mapuskar’s first directo­ rial venture; and (right) a poster of the film.

Later, I bounced the idea of a man stealing a Ferrari for a day to Raju (Hirani), who said develop it further. Over time the story became about Sachin Tendulkar’s Ferrari rather than just any car. Around that time I noticed how crazy Vinod’s son Agni was about cricket and I thought of including a boy who was cricket crazy in this story about a Ferrari (the car used in the film is the Ferrari originally owned by Tendulkar).

Who contributed more to your film—your co-story writer Hirani or your co-screenplay writer Chopra?

It is tough to say who contributed more to it. Ideating with both was like throwing dough at each other—all three of us gave it the shape we wanted and then threw it back at each other for more inputs.

But yes, Raju and I have been friends for 22 years, and we look at life similarly. Most of my thought processes match the way Raju thinks.

Are you worried that everyone will say this is a Hirani film?

No. I never had this thought and even if people say it, that’s fine.

What was the learning from working with Chopra on the screenplay?

How to write a scene that is really tight on paper. He said if you want to make a scene 5 minutes long on screen, then write only two pages of dialogues, which means 2 minutes. Use the remaining time for the treatment of the scene. The tighter the scenes, the faster a film moves and the less time the audience has to think.

You felt Sharman Joshi would not suit the role. What did he do to convince you that he would?

Sharman wanted to audition for the role right after he heard the script during the filming of 3 Idiots. I thought he looked too young for it, even though he is a father in real life and his daughter is around eight years old. At the time he had lost a lot of weight to play a college boy.

To convince me, he put on weight, thickened his eyebrows and spoke with a Parsi accent.

Why a Parsi family setting?

I come from a small village in Raigad district but for holidays, I was sent to Mumbai to stay with an aunt who lived in Dadar Parsi colony. I got acquainted with their music, their furniture and their way of living. For me, they were like foreigners who spoke Gujarati and that fascinated me.

When I was thinking about the car thief, I asked myself who would be so careful with a vehicle that was not their own—and only a Parsi came to mind. I love music and even before the script was decided, I had decided what kind of background music I wanted. I like the sound of the accordion and the harmonica, and those were going to be the instruments used. I couldn’t relate this music to a Maharashtrian or Punjabi family set-up. It blends well with Parsis.

Why are you reluctant to direct the third instalment of ‘Munna Bhai’?

The vision of Munna Bhai and its characters is Raju’s. At best, I am like a chacha (uncle). Sure, I love the film and the characters, but I am not as close to them as Raju is.

Is there an autobiographical element to the film?

Well, yes. A lot of things that you see in Rusy’s character (Joshi) are similar to my father and my relationship with him.

The simplicity, lack of inhibition, honesty—that’s my father.

Seven-and-a-half years to write the first script…. Hope you have the second one going.

Yes…but it’s raw. And it will be about music. Maybe I will make a documentary on music next and then a film. Or maybe make a musical.

Is this an exciting time to work in Hindi cinema?

Of course. Imagine a line producer getting a chance to direct a film about a father, his son, cricket and a Ferrari with Vinod Chopra productions. It would not have been possible seven years ago. You know, I narrated this story to two producers between the filming of the two Munna Bhais and after listening to the story, both asked: “Aur kuch hai kya (is there anything else)?” I hope they see the film now.

Shakespeare’s ‘nautanki’ lesson HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Atul Kumar’s adaptation of ‘Twelfth Night’ weaves in nuances of folk traditions B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· he cast of characters in Atul Kumar’s Hindi translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Piya Behroopiya, speak an assortment of dialects—used fascinatingly to sketch out the comedy’s motley crew.

Piya Behroopiya, produced by Kumar’s Mumbai-based theatre group The Company Theatre, was one of 37 plays invited to be staged at London’s Globe Theatre in April as part of Globe to Globe (21 April-9 June), a festival within the World Shakespeare

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Festival 2012. Ranging from Mandarin to Palestinian Arabic to Portuguese, each production offered a new look at the bard’s verses. The only other export from India was Sunil Shanbag’s Maro Piyu Gayo Rangoon in Gujarati, a translation of All’s Well That Ends Well.

Piya Behroopiya is a musical set in Shakespeare’s original context, in the ancient city of Illyria in south-eastern Europe. The characters retain their original names. Linguistically, though, it is set somewhere in north India, between Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. So, Countess Olivia speaks Hindi with a distinct Punjabi twang. Her maids and clowns speak Bundeli or Bhojpuri. Orsino, the duke who’s wooing Olivia (and who she is resisting) is the “outsider”: He speaks Bambaiyya Hindi, frequently breaking into Marathi.

Amitosh Nagpal, an actor in

Folk champion: Atul Kumar at Prithvi Theatre. the production who has also worked on the translation, is dismissive of the socio-political connotations, saying that his choices were entirely character-oriented.

“Like I knew Mansi Multani (who

plays Olivia) just had to be a garrulous Punjabi speaker. I worked with the actors’ personal backgrounds to layer the script.”

The language twist is part of what makes the otherwise de

SHUBHA MUDGAL

TALK TO THE BLUES

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ow if only they’d allow fat, bindi-wearing, kohl-sporting women in handloom saris entry into those snazzy clubs and lounges where you have bands belting it out every other night, I might have stood some chance of earning a place as a groupie. Indeed, that’s the thought that crossed my mind when I first heard Tipriti Kharbangar, lead vocalist of the popular Shillong-based band Soulmate, earlier this year. She stood on stage, very petite, strumming a guitar under the open skies in Pune. I had heard the band on YouTube earlier, but nothing quite prepared me for the gut-wrenching and intensely tuneful voice that suddenly seemed to emerge from the slip of a young woman who stood on stage.

The band started by playing a track called Shillong (Sier Lapalang) that begins with an instrumental segment and then leads into a song section, which Tipriti sings in her mother tongue, the language of the Khasis. I had no idea what the words meant but there was this give-it-all-you-have abandon and sense of conviction in her voice that was both stunning and riveting at the same time. In fact, there was this lament-like quality about the song, but not a resigned lie-down-and-cry-your-heart-out kind of lament. It was a wild, uninhibited howl-like lament that brought down an attentive hush on the listeners. Later, during a phone interview, I asked her about the track and she explained that Sier Lapalang is a long poem with several stanzas, but the extract she chose described a doe watching helplessly as her fawn is killed before her eyes by hunters.

I then moved on to ask Tipriti if they had written other songs in Khasi, and learnt that barring Shillong, meant to be a tribute to their hometown, Soulmate prefer to do their songwriting in English. “We want to reach the world, so writing only in our language will not get us anywhere...,” she said, as she justified her preference. I do not argue because I meekly accept that fat, bindi-wearing, kohl-sporting women in handloom saris have no idea of blues or blues-rock, or soul or rock ‘n roll music, or of the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures that shape such decisions.

But I continue to believe, perhaps a little naively, that music speaks to its listeners in a language all its own. After all, I didn’t understand the Khasi language, and yet the music conveyed the sense of grief to me with utmost clarity. I am also curious to know how a blues band BAIA MARBANIANG

FOR I VORY

COTTAGE CREATIVES

Wild note: Tipriti Kharbangar is the lead vocalist of Soulmate. from India is received by audiences in the West. If one were to go by the general condescension of classical Indian performers towards their non-Indian counterparts who have spent decades studying Indian music and acquired admirable skills, Soulmate and other bands could well face a fair bit of discrimination when performing outside India. I ask hesitatingly, afraid to offend, if they are taken seriously when performing abroad, and am comforted by Tipriti’s reply that they have gained acceptance as a blues band, even though initially people are always sceptical and even expect that they would include sitars, tablas and other Indian elements. But once they give the band a hearing, they are left with no doubt about the band’s commitment to blues.

No doubt, Tipriti’s voice, with its howl and rasp, contributes in good measure to the band’s success.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

rigueur translation interesting.

The other is that Kumar chose to stage it as a musical in the nautanki style. The 2-hour play has 21 songs and all the actors have singing roles.

“It was stimulating to try a completely oddball approach to Shakespeare. Otherwise, yes, it would have been just another translation,” says Kumar.

Tom Bird, the festival’s director, met Kumar while he was touring the UK in 2011 with another Company Theatre production, Hamlet, The Clown Prince. “He liked our work and gave us a choice of four plays.

Since we’d just finished work on two tragedies, I picked Twelfth Night because of its comic potential,” says Kumar. He’d initially proposed Hamlet as well as Nothing Like Lear (both directed by Rajat Kapoor, and in which the actors speak in English and gibberish). “But Tom said we absolutely couldn’t stage those. They were both too idiosyncratic and had nothing to do with the linearity of Shakespeare’s plays.”

When Kumar settled on

Twelfth Night, he saw it at once as a Hindi film. “Among all of Shakespeare’s plays, this is probably the one with the most musical possibility.” Having never directed a musical before, Kumar worked closely with the music director Saurabh Nayyar to create a style which was true to India’s musical theatre tradition. “We used existing folk songs from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab as well as original compositions,” says Nayyar.

“Apart from the fact that I was excited to be able to perform at the historic space, it felt good to be part of an effort to present 37 different ways of looking at Shakespeare to English audiences who only know one way,” says Kumar. “There’s more to that body of work than standing in one pose and reciting lines.

One group did their adaptation in sign language!”

Piya Behroopiya will premiere in India with two shows at 8pm, 23-24 June, Rang Sharda, Bandra West, Mumbai.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

Travel

LOUNGE STIG NYGAARD/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

COPENHAGEN

Have a ‘hygge’ day THUE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

When you’re done with the must­sees, turn to history, which peppers the palaces, litera­ ture, design and museums of this cosy town B Y E LIZABETH Z ACH ···························· he poor fellow, according to the translation of the ancient script, would be sorely missed and fondly remembered by all. The deceased man was generous in spirit, neighbourly and sensitive.

So much for the common belief that Vikings were ferocious takeno-prisoners savages, conquerors of both the Old and New Worlds.

What I was reading was an epitaph, in archaic hieroglyphic-like Norse characters, or runes, on a tombstone displayed at Copenhagen’s marvellous Nationalmuseet. Along with the massive stone, I stumbled across heavy yet

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surprisingly stylish gold necklaces and a reconstruction of a slender and elegant Viking vessel.

For visitors to Copenhagen, a tour of the Nationalmuseet, with its detailed and lively exhibits on Danish history, both prehistoric and relatively modern, is a must.

So is Tivoli, the world’s second oldest amusement park. So is The Little Mermaid. And there are two palaces in the capital too. But even with so many delights to offer, the Danish capital is compact and easily covered on foot or bicycle.

On a recent visit, already familiar with the must-see attractions, I went instead to a museum of Islamic art, and also ventured a

TRIP PLANNER/COPENHAGEN Rosenborg Slot Nyhavn

You will need a Schengen tourist visa for Denmark.

Apply for one through visa application centres operated

by VFS Global. For details, visit http://dk.vfsglobal.co.in/

The Little Mermaid

Amalienborg Slot

Nimb Tivoli Hotel

COPENHAGEN

Freetown Christiania

DENMARK

COPENHAGEN Airport

Germany

Current airfare to Copenhagen from Indian metros:

Emirates Finnair (oneworld) SAS (Star Alliance), Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa KLM/ Air France (SkyTeam)

Delhi R46,860 R62,400 R47,250 R47,250

Mumbai R52,570 R56,370 R64,210

Fares may change.

Stay

Bangalore R46,820 R70,450 R73,090

Eat

Do

Denmark’s first themed hotel, the Tivoli Hotel (www.tivolihotel.com), is appropriate for both single travellers and families. It is a 10-minute walk from central Copenhagen and the main train station, and it also overlooks a waterway and the city’s Amerika Piers. Guests receive one free entry ticket to Tivoli. Rooms (double occupancy) range from 1,200-1,600 Danish krone (`11,500-15,000).

The gourmet restaurant Nimb (www.tivoli.dk/composite-7553.htm) is often referred to as a runner-up to Noma—the world’s best restaurant, according to numerous food critics.

Nimb offers a light and fresh Scandinavian menu of seafood and an extensive wine list.

Noma is also located in Copenhagen.

Freetown Christiania is Copenghagen’s famous (or infamous, depending on your political leanings) alternative community. In 2007, the community agreed to cede part of its land to the government for redevelopment, a landmark decision in its 40-year history. The ideals remain: green consciousness, free love, revolution. Christiania has psychedelic murals and tottering shacks, a whiff of cannabis in the air. Old railway carriages serve as housing, and many of them have attractive waterside views facing the old city bastions.

GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

bit north to visit the homestead and grave of celebrated Danish author Karen Blixen.

On my first day in town, I walked to Rosenborg Slot, one of Copenhagen’s two palaces. It was sunny and the Kongens Have park that surrounds this Renaissance castle played backdrop to picnickers and cyclists alike. The Danish crown jewels are on show here, as is the sword of King Christian III, a Lutheran reformer and able administrator of the 16th century.

My imagination still filled with gentle Norsemen and Danish nobility, I exited the park and crossed the Kronprinsessegade to the east to reach a stately yet unassuming villa. It’s easy to miss the plaque out front that announces The David Collection and directs you to an inner courtyard and a different world.

The David Collection is perhaps the most impressive collection (and certainly the largest in Scandinavia) of Islamic art. Even better, entry is free. C.L. David, a practising lawyer in the early 1900s, was an indiscriminate collector of everything from 18th century European to Danish early modern art, as well as Islamic tapestries, mosaics and ironwork. You can see his European cache on the first and second floors. But I headed to the third floor to take in the breathtaking mosaics, calligraphy, textiles and miniature paintings originating from Spain, India and Persia. The rooms are kept dark, eliciting a dramatic feel to the

exhibit; and all the explanatory texts are in well-written English.

The next day, I was on the trail of yet another worldly Dane. I took a local train north for half an hour, arriving in the small town of Rungstedlund, and after a short walk from the station through a wooded path, I came upon the simple grave of Blixen under a muscular beech tree. Blixen, whose pen name was Isak Dinesen, entered the pantheon of world literature in 1937 with the publication of her book Out of Africa. Also known for her Seven Gothic Tales and Babette’s Feast, she was regrettably (as the committee admitted years later) overlooked for a Nobel Prize before her death in 1962.

Further on through the woods, which are actually a nature preserve and bird sanctuary established by Blixen in 1958, visitors come MARIUSZ PAZDZIORA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS to the Blixen family homestead, a handsomely decorated country house facing the Øresund coast.

The highlights for me were Blixen’s study and the heavy desk where she penned her books. On one wall hangs her collection of K e n y a n spears, and there are wistful photos of Change of guard: At Amalienborg Slot.

Calm before the charm: (above) Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s picturesque canal promenade; and Rosenborg Slot, one of the city’s two palaces.

her with the dashing British pilot—and her soulmate— Denys Finch Hatton, along with a classy shot of her at cocktails with Arthur Miller, Carson McCullers and Marilyn Monroe.

Later, back in Copenhagen, I was struck by two opposing and appealing features. The first was its modern architecture, innovative and aesthetic. It may come across as cold and austere, but I found it sleek and bold. Some examples are the expressive Danish Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, and also the Amerika Pier, which is a community of waterfront penthouses and open spaces. Both impressed me as perfect examples of Scandinavian design, several admirable notches above Ikea.

At the same time, I was charmed by what the Danes refer to as Hygge, which roughly translates into “cosy”. You see this in the cafés on a chilly day, in the creative window displays and in the vibrant façades along the Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s picturesque canal promenade.

The Nyhavn, where I had stopped for tea one afternoon (food around the Nyhavn is especially pricey in an already pricey city) at Cap Horn, can give Amsterdam a run for its money any day of the week (as can the armada of cyclists who blanket the city). The 17th century town houses face the canal that was constructed to link the harbour with the city centre. Today, it bustles with both locals and tourists, the latter snapping photos at every turn, despite a wind that was rather brisk that day.

After warming up amid the Hygge at Cap Horn, I walked a few blocks north to Amalienborg Slot, Copenhagen’s royal residence since 1794, when the regal family moved here from Rosenborg Slot. If you arrive at Amalienborg at noon, you can see the changing of the guard. I missed that during my visit but I also one-upped it.

Amalienborg is, unlike its British counterpart Buckingham Palace, a rounded open plaza around which the guards parade.

There are no gates or barricades which, in this age of omnipresent security measures, is quite remarkable. You can easily approach the guards, ignoring their regal garb and serious demeanour. I took a chance, and asked one of the younger ones if he wouldn’t mind a photo. He nodded, I tip-toed up to him, and struck a pose.

Later, browsing through my photos, I found that I’d managed to tease a smile out of the chap, not unlike, say, that ancient Norseman whose tombstone at the Nationalmuseet demonstrated a generosity and hospitality the Danes really do possess.

Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Tivoli, a statue of Hans Christian Andersen and the Nationalmuseet replete with interactive displays, it doesn’t get much better than this.

SENIOR­FRIENDLY RATING

Copenhagen is best seen on foot or bike—several streets are strictly for pedestrians. The bus and train networks are extensive.

LGBT­FRIENDLY RATING

Denmark is one of Europe’s most progressive countries and its capital renowned for acceptance, evidenced by the founding of Freetown Christiania.

TRAVEL L15

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

JOURNEYS

Here be dragons The epic quest is the cornerstone of travel literature. A guide to its common features B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· s all literature travel literature?

In “The Quest Hero”, W.H. Auden’s classic essay about The Lord of the Rings, Auden tells us that it is impossible for “a history-making creature” like man to express his existence in a single image. We can never live only in the present. And when we look at our future, Auden says, “the natural image is of a road stretching ahead into unexplored country”, while our past is a city “which is built in every style of architecture and in which the physically dead are as active citizens as the living”.

We experience our own life stories as giant travel narratives, full of roads and cities. We are always going somewhere else in order to know ourselves better. Auden thinks that this is also why the quest story—the classic tale of the hero setting out on a journey, accomplishing an arduous task and returning home—remains one of the most popular ideas in Western literature.

Quests are legendary in every culture. The literary critic Joseph Campbell devised an elaborate structure to explain folklore that allowed him to include, among others, the story of Gautam Buddha as a quest story. We should take this under advisement, since most non-Western cultures would prefer not to think of their mythologies and folk tales as part of a holding pattern that could explain everything from the Odyssey to Star Wars.

The ancient Greeks loved quests: It takes Odysseus 10 years

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Such a long journey: (below) An artist’s rendition of Ithaca; in search of the Holy Grail; and (top) an illustration from The Lord of the Rings.

THE ARTIFEX

FROM

FLICKR/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

to circle back home from Troy.

Medieval Frenchmen loved quests: The Holy Grail was the billion-dollar IPO of the Middle Ages. J.R.R. Tolkien, the subject of Auden’s classic essay, came back from World War I to write The Lord of the Rings, a fantasy about sacrifice and redemption couched in the language of the quest narrative.

The narrative may change from era to era, but the signposts have remained the same all along.

Here’s a short guide on what to expect on an epic journey:

The hero Campbell’s mythical archetypes always have a hero, and rarely a heroine. Campbell thought that since women have been historically considered keepers of wisdom and the ultimate creators, it was relatively rare to find girls setting out on perilous journeys to find things they could probably already make at home. Heroes have classically been men who were the best at whatever they did, like Hercules, because they had what it took to win against the implacable fates. The unlikely hero—the ordinary man who starts out with few apparent talents but wins the day with his secret reserves of courage and faith—is a figure rooted in Christian spirituality, barely a couple of millennia old. Those setting out on quests should take one of them along to win tournaments, and the other to beat the odds.

The swag “To look for a lost collar button is not a true quest,” Auden declared. Quests end in objects which make the journey worth it: the cup of gold, the elixir of life, the sword which cannot be defeated. Quests have also played

out on the pages of European history as grand and terrible adventures of commerce, finding new continents, new supplies and new markets. It’s no surprise that the myth of the Golden Fleece may have taken root in the old quest of Greek mariners for amber.

The pals A quest needs companions. They will sometimes take a bullet for the hero (here’s looking at Odysseus, asking the Cyclops to eat him last), sometimes pick him up when he stumbles, and sometimes make jokes when the mood gets too heavy. A central figure in the quest is the wise old lady (sometimes) or wise old man (almost always), who holds the key to vital knowledge for the hero to progress, and can be something of a father figure to the untested young traveller. Young readers everywhere will know this type at its best, thanks to Headmaster Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series (the most Campbell-esque of Campbell pastiches). But Potter fans would do well to remember that substitute fathers can be complicated WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

characters, and rarely survive the quest to fulfilment. Sorry about that, Professor Snape.

The ladies Harry Potter is a wonderful departure from tradition as far as its know-it-all buddy character, Hermione Granger, goes. Had Harry Potter been written some centuries earlier, Hermione would have been a dangerous witch, leading the innocent heroes into peril by unearthing forbidden knowledge for them.

Wait, that’s actually what she is in the books. Yet smart temptresses have not always been crowd favourites. Indeed, they often represented a diversion from the course of true knowledge for the intrepid quester: Think of the Aeneid’s Dido, queen of Carthage, the ruler of a great and complex civilization whose love detains Aeneas on the coast of Africa, putting a spoke in the wheel of fate.

His destiny is to found Rome; hers, to die of heartbreak.

Women represent stillness in the continuous movement of the quest. Whether they are spiders trapping heroes in their webs of deceit, like the nymph Calypso in the Odyssey, or faithful lovers holding down the fort waiting for the heroes, like Odysseus’ queen Penelope, they have, symbolically, been antithetical to the passion of discovery. That historical baggage, ultimately, is why J.K. Rowling’s series is called Harry Potter and not “Hermione Granger”.

The dragons The Romans wrote “hic svnt leones”—here be lions—to denote uncharted territory on their maps.

In later European iconography, the unknown came to be signified by dragons, mythical creatures embodying evil (quite unlike their Chinese counterparts, who tend to be models of wisdom and benevolence). Cunning, strong and shimmering with magic, dragons were the perfect guardians of quest objects in medieval fables, the last thing standing between the hero and the desire of his heart. Villains in quest stories are never ordinary criminals—in choosing to come

between the hero and his quest, they interfere directly with the order of the world as it should be.

Whether in monstrous form or human, they can rarely be met without flame-retardant armour, and a near-total willingness to die.

The return In his poem Ulysses, Alfred Tennyson writes of Odysseus as the restless explorer, bored with home, eager for new adventures on the high seas. Dante, in the Inferno, imagines something similar. But the Odyssey itself, is fundamentally a story about the loss of home, and the good fortune of rediscovering it. Scholars of the Odyssey tell us that some of its component parts are actually early Greek ballads called nostoi, or “returns”—stories of voyages and homecoming. Quest stories like the search for the Holy Grail, made this homecoming more complex. No one was expected to return once they had found the sacred object; but the promise of heaven is another kind of homecoming altogether.

Modern narratives of return are even more tenuous. A shellshocked Tolkien did not end The Lord of the Rings with the destruction of the magical object in question, but with a disastrous homecoming for the heroes of the Ring War, to a homeland overwhelmed by industrialization and forced labour. In an age of mass exile, with migration and displacement becoming standard conditions for humanity, the Odysseus of the 20th century spoke not in the voice of Homer, but of C.P. Cavafy, whose famous poem Ithaca declares, “Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage./Without her you would have never set out on the road./She has nothing more to give you.”

We love the quest story, Auden says, because it is the guidebook of our imagination. Here, the roads of the future and the cities of the past meet to create the topography of our present.

Sometimes, we read and write for the same reason that we travel: not to know what happens next, but to understand what is happening to us now.

EDWARD DODWELL/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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Books

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POETRY

Limited edition

FREE VERSE Two poems from independent poetry publishing

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PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Indie verse: Poet Vivek Narayanan is the co­publisher of poetry at Almost Island Books; and (below) S. Anand of Navayana has published volumes by poets Cheran and Meena Kandasamy.

One wire, what’s left of me.

If it worked like a hologram you’d get the full picture: what I was when you first brought me home years ago.

It’s me you miss most, not the Tate, the flicks. You miss the cities of music you had at your fingertips: Berlin, Luxembourg, Hilversum, Paris, their crackle, their hiss.

One touch and I gave you the full Braille of their music to learn.

And that’s how you made your way, city by musical city, out of London, my pointer your cane, my blind face close to yours, sending out words you could sing.

Adil Jussawalla, Trying to Say Goodbye (Almost Island Books, 2011).

Somewhere I Lost My Losar* Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don’t know where or when.

A few determined indie poets and publishers have taken up the cura­ tion and publishing of this genre

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

······························ will make you buy my book,” declared Tenzin Tsundue, selfpublished Tibetan poet, writer and activist, at New Delhi’s Yodakin book-store launch of Tsen-Gol, a mix of prose and poetry comprising his fourth book. He was explaining how publishing poetry at a grass-roots level literally sustains his activism.

“Mine is a model of persistent personal entrepreneurship anyone can use; it’s my food.”

This determined small-scale salesmanship vivifies the small group of publishers who comprise India’s independent poetry scene today.

Sidelined, as always, by the country’s publishing boom of the last five years, poetry is still a vocal player in its tough corner of the market. For this decade’s independent publishers—Poetrywala Publications, Almost Island Books, Pratilipi Books, Harbour Line Press, Navayana Publishing, Yoda Press and Zubaan Books (of these, only Poetrywala Publications and Harbour Line Press publish solely poetry)—the effective dissemination of the genre still comes first; before profits that they wouldn’t mind, but cannot reasonably expect.

Being ignored as well as sometimes blindly adored by the masses is the birthright of poetry. Even dedicated readers do not always have time for it.

Out of everyone reading the books pages, a few might read this piece. But poetry also possesses the viral kind of cultural power usually commanded by socio-political causes.

Take writer Meena Kandasamy, who burnt a path to the many op-eds she writes today with Ms Militancy, her slim 2010 volume of potent verse. Or Kamala Das, whose career in Malayalam prose ran parallel to her rise in Indian English poetry. Debuting as a poet in 1965, she was still speaking to younger generations several decades

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later, through Only the Soul Knows How to Sing, selected poems tastefully produced in 1996 by Kottayam-based DC Books (a major Malayalam language publisher but a small English language one, particularly of poetry).

None of these would have sold more than a few thousand copies, yet they were sent out into the world and spoken about with a zeal that belies the small print runs.

Numbers have always been low, impact wide. Poetry publication in the 1960s had Kolkata’s Writers Workshop, founded in 1958, and the Sahitya Akademi, founded in 1954 and working quietly on state subsidy—both are less prominent today. In the 1970s and 1980s, outfits like Clearing House, the ephemeral Mumbai poetry collective founded by senior poets like Adil Jussawalla and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra in 1976, left a significant influence. The indies who took over in the noughties, after the reign of mainstream press Rupa & Co. in the 1990s, have had to be inventive to survive.

Tsundue, 37, uses a basic publishing plan to ensure his verse is read.

Imperial Printing Press, Dharamsala, prints 2,000 copies—usually on reused newspaper and with handmade, recycled covers—at a cost price of roughly `8 per copy, so he can sell them at an unrivalled `50. This suits his politics and minimal lifestyle. “Mainstream publishers often cannot wait for five years for a book. But I am completely independent; I can produce more as I like, I have the copyright.”

Are these one-man lyrical empires a necessary model?

“The scene is so emaciated, you can’t plug into something that is already there. You have to multitask and build the whole edifice: writing, publishing, editing, criticism,” confirms Delhi-based poet, publisher and editor Vivek Narayanan, 39. “You have

POETRY

PRADESH Fortnightly stories about publishing, writing and preserving Indian poetry to make your own scene; poetry has always worked this way.”

In April, he helped bring back Khari Boli, a performance featuring Hindi poets and English translators whose work later appeared in a limited edition of 100, as co-editor of online literary journal Almost Island. Founded by writer Sharmistha Mohanty, it holds an annual international writers dialogue in the Capital and debuted an eponymous poetry list in 2011 with Trying to Say Goodbye, Jussawalla’s first in 35 years.

Narayanan, whose own second book of verse is forthcoming, says it cost only `20,000-25,000 to produce this print run of 500 priced at `300. “If you want to be published, publish someone else’s poems—it’ll come back to you,” he suggests.

For the poet-publisher, editing is also a creative activity. He lingered over and savoured the publication of his first the way a major publisher, with its many babies, cannot.

“My concern remains with small presses: There is a sense of cooperation, of working with people who care,” says Jussawalla, who keeps the memory of the Clearing House days alive. “The question is sustainability; small presses have their own natural life.”

Indeed, funding might be what dis-

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solves many a small poetry press—but no one ever does it for the money.

“What we need are prizes and recognition for poetry like those for fiction, high visibility,” says S. Anand, 39, journalist and co-founder of Navayana Press, a publisher focused on caste.

“At the moment, grants, often from outside, and foreign rights help keep poetry publishing alive.”

Navayana has published six stylish poetry books for under `200 each—one or two a year—since it began in 2003, featuring non-mainstream voices like N.D. Rajkumar, a daily wage worker in Nagercoil. Ms Militancy is a top seller, at 1,000 copies in 18 months, and earned review attention rare for poetry.

Anand tells of his first collaboration—now legendary in poetry circles—with Marathi poet Dilip Chitre, who translated Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal, and to whom he offered an unheard-of advance of `10 000; poets do not get advances, only due royalties. “Over three nights of wonderful drinking and merrymaking, we (Chitre and Anand) did the whole book; after 6pm we drank, and around 1 or 2am came the serious work. I woke up early and edited, then Chitre woke up—and it began all over again.”

Indie poetry is this alternatively rewarding kind of party.

“Poetry is compressed art. You can pay nothing for it or `5,000,” explains Anand. Reminding me that poetry reportedly constitutes only .04% of the world’s books, he adds, ”How many bookshops, though, have a contemporary poetry shelf, forget contemporary Indian poetry?”

Popular online book store Flipkart is the answer for Hemant Divate, 45, a Marathi poet, translator and editor who began self-funded Poetrywala Publications 10 years ago. “We focus on quality new voices,” he says. The largest independent poetry publisher today, Poetrywala Publications has released 40 books, including noted younger poets such as Sampurna Chattarji and Anand Thakore, and plans 8-10 titles this year. Each has print runs of 500 and sells over fourfive years, ranging from `700 for Chitre’s 364-page book, to just `80.

Ultimately, though, Narayanan reminds us, “Poetry is the last un-commodified art form.” He narrates the tale of a Chinese prisoner who handcopied verse from his journal in the ultimate limited edition. “We’ve been trying for more than a century to turn it into a commodity, ” he says, “and haven’t succeeded.”

Should we be trying now?

It wasn’t a one-fine-day incident.

As I grew up it just got left behind, very slowly, and I didn’t go back for it.

It was there when as a kid I used to wait for the annual momo dinner, when we lined up for gifts that came wrapped in newspapers in our refugee school, it was there when we all gained a year together, before birthdays were cakes and candles.

Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don’t know where or when.

When new clothes started to feel stiff and firecrackers frightening, when our jailed heroes ate in pigsties there, or were dead, heads smashed against the wall as we danced to Bollywood numbers here, when the boarding school and uniforms took care of our daily needs, when family meant just good friends, sometime when Losar started to mean just a new year, few sacred routines, somehow, I lost my Losar.

Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don’t know where or when.

Colleged in seaside city, when it was still Bombay, sister’s family on pilgrimage, uncle in Varanasi, mother grazing cows in South India, still need to report to Dharamsala police, couldn’t get train tickets, too risky to try waiting list, and it’s three days, including return journey it’s one week. Even if I go, other siblings may not find the time. Adjusting timings, it’s been 20 years without a Losar.

Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don’t know where or when.

Losar is when we the juveniles and bastards call home, across the Himalayas and cry into the wire. Losar is some plastic flowers and a momo party. And then in 2008 when our people rode horses, shouting ‘Freedom’ against rattling machine guns, when they died like flies in the Olympics’ spectacle, we shaved our heads bald and threatened to die by fasting, but failed. I couldn’t die.

Somewhere along the path, I lost it, don’t know where or when.

Somewhere, I lost my Losar. *Losar is the Tibetan New Year in the lunar calendar which generally falls in February or March.

Tenzin Tsundue, Tsen-Gol (2012).

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CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH

The trouble with Barker’s bite CINEMARQUE­FILM FUTURES/NEW WORLD/THE KOBAL COLLECTION/AFP

After gore specialist Clive Barker’s near­death experience earlier this year, we revisit his own fictional nightmares STEVEN FRIEDERICH/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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arlier this year, news headlines online screamed about how Clive Barker nearly died after he went to see his dentist.

As you may know, Barker, celebrated as “the Gore guru”, is the most imaginative and influential horror writer of our times; his stories, almost metaphysical meditations on humankind’s darker sides, belong in the realms of extreme fantasy. Even if you haven’t read him, you’ve come across his movies on late-night cable—Hellraiser, for example—or perhaps played his computer games.

When Barker was still a newcomer in the field, in the 1980s, the veteran Stephen King said, “I have seen the future of horror and its name is Clive Barker.” A few years later, King gave Barker even more praise: “He’s even better than I am now.” These days Barker, aged 59, is so much of a phenomenon in popular culture that I had forgotten that behind all those products, there’s a normal human (normal? Well, human at least).

Things went horribly wrong at the dental check-up that afternoon in early 2012. I’ve managed to piece together from the reports what sounds like something right out of one of Barker’s weirder tales. One of the dentist’s instruments pierced his gum, and Barker noticed slight bleeding.

Nothing alarming, so he headed back home. Later he felt woozy due to what turned out to be severe blood poisoning by “bacterial overload”, which in turn led to a near-fatal toxic shock syndrome accompanied by seizures, putting him into coma: a 12-day non-stop nightmare of scary visions.

“Too horrible to talk about,” he later told his fans. While in

There will be blood: A still from Hellraiser (1987); and (left) Clive Barker.

coma, he completely stopped breathing, so when he woke up in a delirious state in a hospital bed in Los Angeles, where he lives, there were tubes inserted down his throat, and he didn’t know who he was, or where or why. His first words were, “Get me out of here!”

What boosted his eventual recovery was the concern of his readers—who obviously pray that he’ll live to write more.

Finally, in February, he could tweet to his fans and reassure them that he was still alive: “…my Doctors said that they had not anticipated a happy ending until I started to fight, repeatedly pulling out the tubes that I was constantly gagging on. After a few days of nightmarish delusions, I woke

up to my life again, tired, 20 pounds lighter but happy to be back from a very dark place. And here in the world I intend to stay.

I’ve books to write, films to make and paintings to paint.”

Next in line is apparently another Hellraiser remake.

Reading all this, I decided to a) intensify my tooth brushing so as to avoid unnecessary dentist’s visits, and b) more importantly, revisit my favourite Barker stories.

He started out by working with fringe theatre in England, before, via B-horror cinema (scripting films such as Rawhead Rex), he went on to become the leading light of the 1980s’ “Splatterpunk” genre, thanks largely to his Books of Blood that appeared in six volumes.

Later he started directing and producing movies, writing children’s books, designing gory toys, as well as painting (in oil, mind you) apart from having his horror characters developed into graphic novel franchises. On top of all this, he’s acted cameos in movies such as Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers.

Despite the many ways in which one can appreciate Barker, for me Books of Blood remain his finest contribution to the world of art. Not all arts aficionados will agree that the fountains of blood that Barker’s imagination conjures up is art.

Barker himself has interestingly pointed out: “One should probably not be surprised that this area of fictional endeavour is often treated with contempt.

The function these stories serve is too raw. It requires an admission of vulnerability in the experience; a willingness to confess to nightmares, in a culture that increasingly parades banality as feeling,

and indifference as proof of sophistication.”

For Barker, the story origin is often the subconscious—ideas break out in the middle of sleep. Reading Barker, therefore, is often like experiencing a waking nightmare. In the story In the Flesh, a small-time crook in a penitentiary gets a new cellmate who is as meek as a lamb yet bent on waking the foul soul of an executed convict. Usually I can’t stand fiction set in dreams, but in this case we’re taken to fascinating cities of eternal night, a virtual world of death, where every murder scene has its exactly measured out space, the forensic evidence as fresh as vacuum-sealed, upturned chairs, bloodstained carpets, the last supper still cooling on the table. We read: “Murder had as many faces as it had occurrences. The only common quality was one of wretchedness, of minds despairing after an age at the

site of their crime.”

At the core of many Barker stories, we experience such unpredictable transformations of reality into fiction, or fiction into reality, a point where the real world and the imagination crosses paths: throwing both the readers and the characters off their feet.

In The Body Politic, we peek into the mind of a man whose hands have stopped obeying him and, without him being able to do anything about it, kill his wife: “This is somebody else’s nightmare, he thought as he flicked on the dining-room light with his chin and made for the liquor cabinet. I’m innocent. Just a nobody. Why should this be happening to me?”

Other Barker ideas appear advanced because they’re so ahead of their times, such as, The Forbidden, a trendsetting novella about a female scholar who is researching urban legends, only to find that there is more—much more —to the myths than meets the eye. It was filmed as The Candyman, but written long before those other Urban Legend horror movies became a popular brand.

Although I enjoy Barker films, I prefer the stories where he really plays hardball with the reader’s imagination. Filmi special effects breed familiarity, which jades the viewer; while, on the page, Barker pulls our mental strings just enough to conjure up the scariest ideas thinkable. A movie, no matter how hi-tech its gore and splatter, can never outdo the creative pyrotechnics of our own humble but bizarre minds.

With the help of Barker, then, each of us gets the visions of horror that we deserve. To prevent them from becoming too real, please don’t forget to brush your teeth.

Zac O’Yeah’s new novel Mr Majestic! will be out later this year.

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

CLOSE, TOO CLOSE: THE TRANQUEBAR BOOK OF QUEER EROTICA | EDITED BY MEENU AND SHRUTI DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES

An oddness of intimacies They may not be a turn­on, but there’s still plenty to love in these stories of queer erotica

Close, Too Close—The Tranquebar Book of Queer Erotica: Tranquebar Press, 232 pages, `395.

B Y D EEPA D HARMADHIKARI ···························· hen a book subtitles itself The Tranquebar Book of Queer Erotica, it is tempting to judge it by the standards of the Internet, where you can find both quality and diversity if you know where to look. In an online world where queerness is normalized and textual porn that can get you off is plentiful, this collection of short stories is much too selfconscious and ideological to satisfactorily answer the question—is it hot?

Merely being explicit is not enough to qualify a story as erotica; mimetic and genre fiction has described genitalia and sexual acts in varying degrees of microscopic detail without being relegated to the porn bracket, whether in the pre-historic fiction series of Jean M. Auel or Hanif Kureishi’s post-colonial novels. One person’s kink is another person’s squick, so the erotica that one reader may find straightforwardly titillating, another may find queerly disturbing (puns fully intended).

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But the basic nature of erotica is to arouse. Sadly, although understandably, many of the stories seem written in a stridently hyperreal style, with the sort of defensive cataloguing of sexual minutiae that comes from an “I’m here, I’m queer” position taken in front of a potentially hostile straight audience. Additionally, 10 out of 13 stories are told in first person, which apart from creating a semiconfessional group therapy session atmosphere, leads to such implausible sentences: “I heaved my breasts and arched my back. I have very expressive shoulder blades a mere flick and they would sing; a narrowish waist, and on it I always wore a thin silver chain (sic)” (from Vinaya Nayak’s Screwing With Excess).

One also wishes the editors had paid a little more attention to proofreading and copy edits; it is rather jarring in the middle of a sex scene to realize the actions are physically impossible because the author has got the characters mixed up.

All said, though, this is a readable book of Indian queer

Rainbow: This book has little to fantasize about, but much to celebrate. fiction. Our identities as sexual beings are not limited to the bedroom, to the forced intimacy of public transport, and enforced voyeurism of public changing rooms. They are rich in narrative tension, used to good effect in stories like Chicu’s Soliloquy and Dreams And Desire in Srinagar by Michael Malik G. In The Half Day, Doabi puts a new spin on the post-coital cigarette ritual by providing, with straightfaced seriousness, the recipe of the rajma-chawal her characters have savoured. Meanwhile,

artist Nilofer has provided a vivid wordless piece of sequential art that blurs the line between fantasy and the loneliness of the mismatched.

Most important are the love stories. D’Lo portrays in Perfume the process of falling for a mind as much as a body. Abeer Hoque etches glimpses of a tumultuous relationship in Jewel And the Boy: “His thumb starts on the inside of the boy’s wrist. It slides up to the centre of his palm and pushes into the soft hot, his other four fingers splayed on the back of the boy’s hand. He holds

his hand in this way, in a way the boy cannot hold back, can only be held, in a way that says you’re mine, not I’m yours.”

Iravi in All in the Game writes a delightful, celebratory tale of friendship, playfulness and safe spaces: “But lesbians learn quickly, and have long memories.

Not that Abhay is a lesbian or even a woman. (...) Most of us really just call ourselves queer when we have to call ourselves something.”

And finally Devdutt Pattanaik crafts an utterly glorious successor to the folk tale in The Marriage of Somavat And Sumedha: “The sounds of lovemaking emerging from the cave excited the trees in the forest. Branches entangled with each other, while vine tendrils gripped the trunks more firmly. The forest-goddess let her thighs part to make room for the rivulets of passion sent down by the sky-gods.”

As a book to fantasize through, this collection may fall short, but as a chronicle of lives like ours, both perverse and playful, kinky and kind, awkward and aggressive, shy and selfish, and above all present and permissible, these stories are an authentic spectrum of the rainbow of desire.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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BANGALORE BHATH | GAUTAM BHAN

The (auto)‘rakshasa’ vs the citizen SUYOG GAIDHANI

Divided by the meter: An autorickshaw in Bangalore; and (below) the poster showing the auto­rakshasa.

A cartoon against autorickshaw drivers highlights the exclusions of our civil society campaigns

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sharp-fanged, dark-skinned “auto-rakshasa” demands one-and-a-half fare. The commuter is “harassed”. An organization called Change.org uses this image as part of a petition in which they urge an assistant commissioner (ACP) of Bangalore police to create “an efficient system” so that complaints made to report auto drivers who overcharge or refuse to ply can be tracked. How, it asks, can “concerned Bangalorean citizens” expect “justice” if their complaints are not tracked? We all must, it urges, “join the fight”.

Let me first say I do not mean to undermine the intentions and frustrations of those who launched this campaign and, yes, when the meter goes on without asking, it eases a morning commute significantly. The question is: If this does not happen at times (and indeed it doesn’t), then why is this so and what does one do about it? There is a lot to be said about the economics of the issue but this piece is not about that. It is about the campaign itself and how we articulate political questions in our cities. It is fundamentally about the easy, unremarked way in which a working urban resident and citizen—who is also, after all, a “fellow Bangalorean” and concerned with “economic justice”—can

be termed and portrayed as a “rakshasa” (demon) as if it were a banal utterance.

Our urban institutions don’t, in many ways, work. We know this, the poor have always known it and it seems to be the newly discovered ire of elite politics. We complain, the petition says, and “no action” is taken. This complaint is not unique to this campaign or to the elite. The narrative commonly told about our cities today is in terms of “failure” and “illegality”, whether it is dysfunctional institutions, corruption, broken infrastructure or slums. I am not contesting these failures or the anger of the petition writers at it. There is, however, a “but”. It is this: Not all institutional failures are the same, not all crimes are equal and not all illegalities lead to the same consequences.

Protesting against them without taking this into account is not just ineffective, it is unjust.

Let me take an example from housing. Rich people who build illegal houses make “farmhouses” and “unauthorized colonies”. Poor people who do the same make “slums”. In a campaign against “illegality”, only one of them gets demolished. Only one is called an “encroacher” and a “pickpocket”. Only one of them can be a “rakshasa”, the other gets to be a “citizen”.

But the campaign writers may rightly say, “We are not against auto drivers—it is about complaining against those that overcharge.” Does then a campaign’s representation, these words, this cartoon (ahem) really matter that much? It does. These imaginations, names, words and aesthetics alter, narrow and limit urban politics. You cannot see a rakshasa as another citizen who lives in your city. There was an alternative way to run this campaign: to sit with

associations and unions of auto drivers and come to an agreement. To find out if auto fares are reasonable, high or low. To figure out community mechanisms to prevent non-metered travel. To, if that’s what came out of the engagement, support campaigns for metre fare increases as inflation, prices and petrol/gas increase. To work out a periodic shock-absorption surcharge for periods with very high gas prices.

To find out why it costs four times as much to own and register an auto than a Tata Nano. To find out what the daily rental of the auto driver is that he is trying to make up in his 12-hour shift. To figure out why his fares are regulated though the rental he pays isn’t. To consider, quite simply, the auto driver as a person and a citizen rather than a criminal or a rakshasa. To find out how the institutions the petition is angry

at have failed him just as much and, most likely, with much deeper consequences.

Instead this campaign pits “concerned citizens” against “auto drivers” that are, as the image suggests, always already criminal. It repeats the mistake of multiple recent middle-class campaigns for “economic justice” and “social change”.

These campaigns increasingly target a particular set of issues—for example, corruption or security—that should concern all of us but because of the way they are defined and articulated instead exclude what is a majority of our urban citizens.

Where do such images come from? Let me trace just one possible thread. In another context, Leela Fernandes, a US-based associate professor of political science whose most recent book is India’s New

Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, has argued that Indian cities are defined by a “new urban aesthetic of class purity”.

She was referring to new forms of elite-built environments, from streets cleared of the poor, gated communities and enclosed malls, and parks where one can walk and play but not sleep and work. Yet this aesthetic doesn’t just manifest itself in the built environment—it is part of an elite urban politics that cannot imagine the poor as fellow citizens.

Elite and middle-class campaigns thus become something altered—they are reduced to the protection of what Fernandes calls a “lifestyle”. Not the Right to Life, but the Right to Lifestyle. In the protection of this lifestyle, the working poor cannot exist as fellow citizens with rights and dignities. Their concerns cannot be part of the conversation. They are rakshasas that take resources from the state, are the sole reason for public debt, encroach on public land, burden the government for “handouts”, and pollute and dirty the city just as they take hard-earned tax money taken away from its rightful heirs.

The responses that these campaigns seek can understand “economic justice” only in the form of punitive and disciplinary punishment for the always already criminal poor. In this particular campaign, the only possible result is a deeper surveillance and harassment of auto drivers by law enforcement—no other interaction is possible, no other solution is conceived. Herein lies the tragedy. What is this campaign fundamentally meant to be about? It is about what happens to a complaint made to a public institution about a service. It could relate then to other, larger campaigns about getting public institutions to

work and be accountable to all parts of what makes our urban public. The auto driver is as interested in this question as you or I, yet he is excluded, in this frame, from asking it. Worse, he is held responsible for it.

Many campaigns of and by the poor often make the same mistake. Many of them tend to demonize, for example, all things short-handed as “private”. This means that possibilities where private provision could be more egalitarian than the public become foreclosed before they are considered even though the “private” could also mean small-scale enterprises, informal associations, and even unions—not just mega-conglomerates. This is what rakshasas do: They draw lines of fire we cannot cross either in our minds or our politics. At stake are our increasingly polarized urban polities and the movements and campaigns that emerge from them and abound with rakshasas.

Finding a political space and language that can cross entrenched inequalities is perhaps impossible but nevertheless what we must continuously strive for. The challenge before us is to understand how the possibility of asking interconnected, larger questions that truly reflect the complexity of our “public” can emerge even if they take, at first, simply an act of protest like these words against the reduction of a fellow citizen to a rakshasa.

Gautam Bhan teaches urban poverty, planning and politics at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Delhi and Bangalore.

This piece originally appeared on Kafila.org.

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About the book...

The New Age Entrepreneurs is a collection of vignettes of thirty successful entrepreneurs from the southern states who made their own rules and set standards for the rest of the industry to follow. These trailblazers delved into diverse industries, ranging from information technology to luxury hotels and Indian sweets.

The entrepreneurs were selected from a shortlist of a few hundred that was vetted by audit firm Grant Thorton by a panel comprising of distinguished luminaries.

The book has snappy, insightful, and motivating tales, interspersed with interviews and vivid profiles.

The book is also the result of a collaboration between the southern region office of the Confederation of Indian Industry, catalysed by Sequoia Capital.

Available at all leading book stores across India