Lounge for 25 June

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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 26

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Abhijit V. Banerjee, 49, a director at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT, Boston, during a visit to a neighbourhood of slums in Delhi .

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH SOBHA DEVELOPERS’ PNC MENON >Page 8

SIT PRETTY

Accommodate those extra guests with these funky stools and pouffes >Page 5

PLAYFUL TAMIL NOIR

WHAT REALLY DRIVES THE POOR This economist utilizes his skills to tell us why we should take the poor seriously >Pages 10­11

REPLY TO ALL

PIECE OF CAKE

AAKAR PATEL

BEING AN ‘INDIAN’: ANSWERS TO FAQS

Q

: Are Indians patriots?

Analysis: Patriotism is “love of one’s country and willingness to sacrifice for it”.

The second aspect is objective and can be documented. If we observe Indians, do they demonstrate willingness to sacrifice for their country? The answer is no. In his country the Indian is an opportunist—in traffic, in queues, in avoiding process, in littering, in avoiding taxes.

Where he can find advantage, he will take it. He doesn’t see this as wrong. >Page 4

PAMELA TIMMS

PUFF GOES THE CURRY

I

wrote last time about my friend and baking partner Laura leaving Delhi, and the demise of our Uparwali Chai events as a result. Sad times, to be sure, but I thought I would pass on one last tea party recipe before forcing myself, reluctantly, to move on.

Although Laura and I changed the menu for every event, the one thing that always appeared was Curry Puffs. I sometimes wished it otherwise—they’re time-consuming and fiddly and it was my job to... >Page 6

CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH

A new acclaimed film points to a clutch of directors who are injecting irony and wryness into the genre >Page 17

LANDING IN DELHI, LOOSEN YOUR BELTS Dissecting the Capital shame that is known throughout the world as Delhi Belly >Page 18

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

THE BEST OF THE WORST

W

hat would a crime novel be without its bad guy? Nothing. The villains create nuisance, monger mischief, and are there for the hero to pummel. But if one takes a closer look at the baddies, one might wonder if these guys are for real—and the answer is: not very much. Most crime novelists use stereotypes for criminal opponents—either Professor Moriarty clones with evil chromosomes whose raison d’etre is to simply be a “Napoleon of Crime”, or... >Page 15

PHOTO ESSAY

A SOFTER WORLD

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

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 VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT JASBIR LADI FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2011 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

THE LANGUAGE OF SERVICE

T

he husband doesn’t enjoy taking me out to dinner. And no it’s not because I’m a vegetarian or because I don’t believe in eating my way through life. He’s convinced I morph into the spouse-he-would-rather-not-know every time I step into an eating establishment.

What can I say? My father’s side of the family is in the hospitality industry. It has often been forecast (mostly correctly) that any family member who strays from this profession, will eventually return to it. The family tree is littered with examples of chartered accountants who came back to the hotel RANT business. But I know I will never make the switch from journalist to restaurant owner. The hospitality business is seriously hard work. If only New India’s mushrooming breed of restaurant owners understood that before they thought to themselves: “Hey, I like food. I have money. I should start my own restaurant.” They certainly have no clue that managing a restaurant entails managing cranky consumers like me.

“What’s that smell?” I wonder when I enter a restaurant. Hmm, spotted tablecloths. Who knows what the hygiene standards are in the kitchen. Or what crawls in that dark corner. How is that dish prepared? No idea? Excellent. Keep your fingers off my food please. And, you’re supposed to be serving me, not invading my private space. How’s the food, did you say? I would try it if you

gave me a chance. Yes, two of your colleagues have already asked me whether I’m enjoying the food. PS: I’m still waiting for my cold water.

Despite the fact that there are 63 waiters hovering around my table.

W h e n w e l i v e d i n Table trouble: Are you being served?

Delhi, Italian restaurant Bacci in Sunder Nagar used to be my Mohindra asked. “Management needs to f a v o u r i t e n e i g h b o u r h o o d r e s t a u - get over their language barrier,” he says. rant—even when they suddenly replaced Sudha Kukreja, who runs a handful of the pine nuts with cashew nuts in their trendy restaurants in Delhi, misses the old flagship Famous Felix salad. It was culture of eating out where the server because of the excellent service (of greeted you with your name and organcourse, news of this excellent service ized your favourite drink just as you sat at reached the competition and eventually the table. “Nobody’s really faithful to any resulted in a staff exodus). restaurant any more,” she says.

New restaurateurs spend so much Kukreja organizes English classes for money importing ingredients and furni- smart servers who have not been able to ture that there’s nothing left over to move up the hierarchy despite years of train their staff. experience because they don’t speak the Restaurant consultant Manu Mohindra language of trendy restaurant-going says the blame for poor service should rest India. “Every now and then the server entirely on restaurant management. And may make a mistake but if he uses the on our colonial hangover. “We pay servers right language, the customer may not `5,000 to `9,000 and expect them to speak get as upset,” she says. fluent English,” he says. “The day we get Are poor service and the language of over this hangover, we’ll find that the ser- communication really that closely vice is good,” he says. Mohindra recently linked? The next time I visit a restauhelped a client set up an American diner rant I’ll be sure to list my complaints in in Chandigarh. But the stewards don’t the local language. speak English, the owner said. How does it matter when your clients are Punjabi, Write to lounge@livemint.com

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: RITESH SHARMA/THE INDIA TODAY GROUP/GETTY IMAGES CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In “The ‘sankutra’ nation”, 18 June, in some editions, PanAsian at WelcomHotel Sheraton New Delhi, Saket, should have been described as an East Asian cuisine restaurant.

Business news and updates on markets on your mobile.

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LOUNGE REVIEW | CONDOMKING.IN

T

he first time a friend told me about Condom King, India’s first online condom store, my reaction ranged from amusement to intrigue. Why a website to buy condoms? But then buying condoms has never been comfortable.

Strange looks from fellow shoppers or sales personnel, particularly if one is looking for a specific kind, often discourage buyers.

Condomking.in clearly indicates the three brands it offers—Kamasutra, Love Light and Moods—with categories, ranging from delay to flavoured to glow ones. To place an order, one needs to register on the website.

The good stuff The anonymity of ordering through a website and the liberty of taking my own time looking for the one I want is the biggest draw.

Overall, it’s got more variety in male condoms than supermarkets or chemists.

Condom King has categories of condoms from three brands, compared with five categories of

Kamasutra condoms available at one of the biggest hypermarkets in east Bangalore. It also offers a discount of 10% on most condoms. The KS Premium Contoured Condom 3S Pack (6 units), which costs `120 in the market, is available for `108. Besides condoms, other accessories and contraceptive products are available, and registering and placing orders is fairly easy.

The not­so­good The delivery takes twothree business days—too long a wait. It has only one kind of female condom, while there are at least six other varieties available in the market. Durex is not available and the only foreign brand available is Love Light, and that too only in the category of glow condoms. Free shipping is available only for orders more than `195 per brand.

Talk plastic Condom packs are available from `20-449.

Deepti Chaudhary

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

Anatomy of an ‘Indian’: answers to the FAQs

Q

SATISH BATE/HINDUSTAN TIMES

: Are Indians patriots?

religious tolerance (see note 5). Tolerance must exist outside of this belief. Does it?

The answer is no. Those who hold views opposed to ours must shut up or face violence. The evidence is in newspapers every day.

A: Indians are not tolerant.

Analysis: Patriotism is “love of one’s

country and willingness to sacrifice for it”.

The second aspect is objective and can be documented. If we observe Indians, do they demonstrate willingness to

sacrifice for their country? The answer is no. In his country the Indian is an opportunist—in traffic, in queues, in avoiding process, in littering, in avoiding taxes. Where he can find advantage, he will take it (see note 1). He doesn’t see this as wrong. This is why he must be constantly policed—because he hasn’t internalized common good.

A: Indians are not patriots.

Q: Are Indians nationalists?

Analysis: Nationalism is the “feeling of superiority of our nation over others”. In India, the word has not yet acquired the menace it has in English. Nationalism (“rashtravad”) is a good word, a warm word in all Indian languages.

A: Indians are nationalists.

Q: Are Indians opportunists?

Analysis: Opportunism is “taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others”.

This describes accurately the difference between our cities and those in Europe.

A: Indians are opportunists.

Q: Are Indians pious?

Analysis: Piety is “the quality of being religious”. Religiousness is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power.

A: Indians are religious and pious.

Q: Are Indians taught morals?

Analysis: Morals are “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour”. There is a problem here, and it is the definition of right and wrong behaviour (see note 2). Good conduct from “morals” in English is different from “dharma” in our languages.

A: The answer is that Indians are taught not morals, but dharma.

Q: Are Indians racist?

Analysis: Racism is the belief in superiority and inferiority based on skin colour. Indians view those fairer than them differently. We discriminate

positively against whites and negatively against blacks. Indians aspire to be white. No Indian cosmetic promotes dark skin.

A: Indians are racist (see note 3) Q: Are Indians secular?

Analysis: The universal meaning of secularism is accepting politics that is independent of religion. Our Prime Minister is not Hindu. Our most powerful leader is not even Indian.

A: Indians are secular.

Q: Are Indians hypocrites?

Analysis: Hypocrisy is “claiming moral standards to which our own behaviour does not conform”. Let’s examine corruption in India. One: The everyday behaviour of Indians is incompatible with our views on corruption. Two: Demonstrably corrupt people are admired and returned to power by us. (see note 4).

A: Indians are hypocrites.

Q: Are Indians communal?

Analysis: The universal definition of communalism is “reliance on cultural and social groupings”.

The most important clue—matrimonial advertisements—indicates our discomfort at leaving our social group.

A: Indians are communal.

Q: Are Indians conservative?

Analysis: Conservatives are “averse to change, holding on to traditional

In character: (above) Opportunism distinguishes Indian cities from European ones; Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi are the faces of a secular India.

PANKAJ NANGIA/BLOOMBERG

values, especially in politics”. Our politics is not based on values, but on group opportunism. Dogma does not win elections in India.

A: Indians are not conservative.

Q: Are Indians liberal?

Analysis: Liberalism is “being open to new behaviour and being willing to discard traditional values”. The collapse of vernacular schooling, the success of Indians in the modern economy shows our ability to easily set aside traditional values in our self-interest.

A: Indians are liberal.

Q: Are Indians tolerant?

Analysis: Tolerance is the “willingness to tolerate beliefs and opinions at variance with ours”. The Indian belief is polytheism (“many gods”) and pantheism (“god is everywhere”). This is mistaken for

Notes 1. Where his countrymen are damaged by his individual action—through illegal immigration—the Indian will choose himself over India. Embassies observe and record national behaviour.

Violations by Indians over decades, not racism, have made visa access restrictive, quite rightly, to all Indians.

In Australia the Indian youth behaves as he does in India, and then complains of racism when society objects and punishes him.

Our patriotic feeling is weak, though our nationalist sentiment is strong.

2. Is Shri Ram’s murder of Vali and his treatment of Sita moral? Is Shri Krishna’s advice to Arjun on Karna moral? Is his action on Jayadrath moral? Is Acharya Drona’s behaviour with Eklavya moral?

Our texts say: “Yes.” They are right according to dharma (if the question is asked in an Indian language). But they are wrong morally.

Dharma is opportunistic, while morals are not.

3. We mustn’t blame faith for this. Our texts repeatedly insist that our favourite gods—Shri Ram, Shri Krishna and Shiv Mahadev—are all black-skinned.

4. Indians think of corruption as something on the outside, which must be “solved” by the government. We are greatly agitated over this. The paradox is that a most honest, unelected man has been imposed by a foreigner over Indians on sufferance. Corruption is actually “inside” us but not apparent to a nation of hypocrites.

5. On the question of religious pluralism in Hinduism, Narendra Modi says Indians show acceptance and not tolerance. He is quite right. Tolerance is confused with pluralism (just as corruption is confused here with bribery).

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

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

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

DISAPPROVAL ONLY BREEDS REBELLIOUS BEHAVIOUR Our elder son, 11, is smart, sharp and obedient, except when it comes to studies. He is in class VII and we found him a tutor, but they don’t get along and both say the other doesn’t put in enough effort. My son is only interested in playing football and cricket, and watching mindless programmes on TV. He is also fussy about expensive brands which, I guess, comes from his peers in our colony.

He expects to eat out almost every day.

I travel regularly on work and my wife has to manage the home and our two sons—the younger one, 5, is intelligent, confident and has potential. Our elder son’s language is also becoming arrogant and his respect towards us is diminishing.

If I take him into confidence and explain things, he understands, but when it comes to actually doing it, he’s lazy. I have been trying to emphasize reading, but he doesn’t like. I do not want him necessarily to come first, but to put in some honest effort to achieve some goals. I work with and

successfully manage many people at work. Yet at home I don’t seem to be able to do it.

This is a stage when parents and children are almost in opposite corners of the field, in their expectations of each other and themselves. While this is a universal phenomenon, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for any parent or child to cope.

While parents, understandably, expect children entering class VII (with the spectre of higher studies looming large) to become “conscious, sincere and...put effort towards building a foundation”, as you describe it, the child is entering a phase that is nowhere close to these expectations.

Your son is entering adolescence, a time when his preoccupations are extremely personal, as he grapples with leaving behind some childish behaviour, but desperately clinging to some of it too, as the demands of being a little more “adult” begin to close in on him.

Much of what is going on inside his head is not something he can spell out

Within limits: Don’t let your expectations hinder your relationship with your child. or share with you. Through this thick fog, almost, of preoccupation, are demands from parents, teachers, “the system”, etc. What better way to escape than to either daydream, get heavily into outdoor things or passive sports watching, and when things get too hot, to act sullen, even rude.

While your management skills may work at the office, what is needed at home is a high degree of compassion and understanding and “letting be” towards your son. This doesn’t have to be evident to him in the sense that you don’t have to totally let him “do as he pleases” or spell out and verbalize your understanding of him. What it means is

that you expect less perfection from him as well as yourselves as parents. Yes, one of your main tasks as a parent is to get your son to study well and achieve his full potential. But this simply cannot happen at the cost of your relationship with him. And it seems from your letter that the relationship is taking a hostile turn. No lessons in growth and hard work can come from such a situation, however much you encourage him or push him in the “right” direction. It’s crucial that you “befriend” your 11-year-old in a genuine way, letting him know in small and big ways that you approve of him. Disapproval only breeds thick-skinned rebellious behaviour.

Second, I would urge you not to compare him with his five-year-old brother. That child is at a totally different stage of childhood, eager to please, learn, grow—and not influenced by peer pressure or the need to establish his own identity as urgently as your 11-year-old. I would be pretty sure that your elder son at 5 was quite the same.

Third, “emphasizing on reading” just does not work with children now. You have got to introduce reading in a way that he can relate to it—sit with him and read out loud whenever you get a chance. Get him to pick out a book, and promise him that you and he will read it together when you’re in town. You may just find that he’ll get hooked and want to sneak a peek at further chapters of the book when you’re not there. When reading becomes associated with the presence and enthusiasm of a parent, things change dramatically.

It’s not easy to remain interested and concerned about our children without being directive, anxious and angry. But if you can insert that much thrown about phrase, joyous love, into your equation at this time, it will go a long way in giving your son the assurance and acceptance so necessary for a child at this stage.

Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting.

Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

Insider

LOUNGE

t Zaza Home: Block­print stool, at Community Centre, Zamrudpur, Greater Kailash­1, New Delhi, `3,500.

u Lthr: Multicoloured hair­on­leather stool, at N­Block Market, Greater Kailash­1, New Delhi, `12,000.

PICKS

p Lista City: Bouchon from Francolight, Italy, at Akruti Sky Park, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Breach Candy, Mumbai, with frame, `13,200.

Sit pretty Accommodate those extra guests with these funky stools and pouffes B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

p Zoligns: Stools by Monica Graffeo, at C­19, Nizamuddin West, New Delhi, `64,200.

L5

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t Sandeep Sangaru design studio: Foldable stool with macramé seat, at www.sangaru.com, `5,000.

u Ajay Shah Design Studio: Grid stool, at Mahalaxmi Arch, Mumbai, www.industrial playground.net, `4,500.

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L6

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

Puffed in Hong Kong, curried in India PHOTOGRAPHS

A colonial classic that has travelled from Hong Kong’s tiffin lounges to Delhi’s high teas

BY

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

filling. The pastry needs to be started a few hours before you want to make the puffs because the rolling, folding and resting process takes some time. The pastry, and indeed the filling, can even be made the day before you want to assemble and fry the puffs.

CURRY PUFFS Makes 18-20 gujiya-sized puffs

I

wrote last time about my friend and baking partner Laura leaving Delhi, and the demise of our Uparwali Chai events as a result. Sad times, to be sure, but I thought I would pass on one last tea party recipe before forcing myself, reluctantly, to move on.

Although Laura and I changed the menu for every event, the one thing that always appeared was Curry Puffs. I sometimes wished it otherwise—they’re time-consuming and fiddly and it was my job to make them—but Laura always overruled me. As well as being amazingly delicious, she said, they were the very essence of what we were trying to do: India-inspired refined baking.

The original recipe, though—a classic French puff pastry filled with spicy chicken—actually originated in Hong Kong. It was given to me by a food writer friend called Susan Jung who is astonished that these “mock Indian” savouries, using curry powder of all things, have been so popular in India.

Don’t be daunted by the long list of ingredients and detailed instructions: The process is actually quite simple, and the result is so worth it—crisp, buttery, flaky layers holding a creamy spiced

Ingedients For the pastry 130g plain flour K tsp salt 30g white butter 80ml warm water For the fat layer 100g flour 90g white butter For the filling 2 tbsp sunflower oil 1 small onion, finely diced 1 garlic clove, grated 1-inch piece of ginger, grated 1 medium carrot, finely diced 1 medium potato, finely diced 40g peas 2 tsp garam masala (or curry powder for that authentic colonial touch) N tsp chilli powder 100ml coconut cream K tsp salt Method First make the pastry. In a large bowl, sift the first quantity of flour and salt. Add the 30g butter and rub with fingertips until completely mixed in. Add the water and form a dough with your hands.

If necessary, add a dash more water. Pat the dough into a square, cover with cling film, then refrigerate for 30 minutes.

For the fat layer, mix 100g of flour and 90g of butter in a bowl with your hands until you have a sticky mass. Put the bowl

in the fridge for 30 minutes.

While the pastry and fat layer are chilling, start the filling. Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the chopped onions and cook until soft, but not brown. Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 1 minute.

Add the carrots, peas and potatoes, add a splash of water, give the mixture a good stir and cook for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables are completely soft. If necessary, add more water to stop them sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add the garam masala/ curry powder, chilli, salt and coconut cream and mix well.

Continue to cook until the mixture is almost dry, then remove from heat. Adjust salt and chilli and leave to cool.

Roll the pastry out on a floured surface to a 15cm

Hot and spicy: (clockwise from above) Curry Puffs; the folds give it its flakiness; the rolling, folding and resting processes are crucial; a curried filling of vegetables; and deep­frying gives it its Indianness. square. Pull each corner out slightly, then place the fat/flour mixture in the centre of the pastry square in a diamond shape. Take each corner of the pastry and place on top of the fat/flour, then seal the edges of the pastry.

On a floured board, roll the pastry and fat/flour into a rectangle approximately 22x12cm. Take one of the short ends and fold one-third down towards the centre, then fold the bottom third up over that

so that it forms three layers.

Turn the pastry so that the short end is parallel to the edge of the work surface and repeat the rolling and folding process. Put the pastry in the fridge for 30 minutes, roll and fold twice more. Repeat the rolling, folding and resting

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

···························· ast week we took a friend who is leaving Mumbai soon to Madras Café in Matunga. As insurance for her return, we ate the staples of this legendary little restaurant that has nourished the reputation of Madrasi cuisine among Mumbai’s other communities for decades (the servers and I were probably the only south Indians in the joint).

We dispatched our brunch with the same grim efficiency as it was served: the vadas, idlis and dosas flew down the hatch. We were hungry; there were other customers waiting to be seated.

But when the upma came, surrounded by a moat of fresh coconut chutney and coated with ghee and molaga podi (gunpowder, as it is also known), time came to a standstill. There was no particular complexity in its taste. Its texture had a simplicity that upma chefs achieve only with long practice; caught somewhere

L

between glutinous and fluffy, it turned out to contain the comfort of both states. It imploded slowly on the tongue, slipping down before you knew it, but we savoured each spoonful, like the woolly heat of sunlight on a windy morning. Suddenly, it was a Sunday, and we had all the time in the world.

It may be easier to define what upma is not, than what it is. Mumbai-born Floyd Cardoz, the former executive chef of New York’s fancy Tabla restaurant, called his mushroom, kokum and coconut upma a polenta (some intrepid Tamilian probably made it to Milan in

It can be chunky or smooth...

Its protean quality takes the virtues of ‘upma’ beyond its austere origins

between the Goth invasions). He might have had a tough time impressing a child opening her break-box at school, but it pleased the judges of Top Chef Masters, the prestigious Los Angeles-based celebrity cookoff, enough to earn him the show’s top prize.

In south Indian kitchens, tiffin is not a leisurely production.

The term “all-day breakfast” here caters to a hunger very different from humanity’s perpetual craving for pancakes, golden hash browns and three kinds of eggs. Here, upma can seem like an amuse-bouche.

Usually, consistency is the first and least negotiable feature of the south Indian breakfast: Your parents’ idli and dosa, at least in memory, will always taste the same, and you will always be able to quantify your longing for it (you eat three idlis with molaga podi; your father eats four with coconut chutney).

These breakfasts are created in prose. But the upma is a small, unpredictable piece of poetry.

Not a romantic one, of course; maybe a delightful limerick.

Like peanut butter, it can be chunky or smooth. At Mysore Café (this newspaper’s favourite

Pamela Timms is a Delhi-based journalist and food writer. She blogs at http://eatanddust.wordpress.com Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com

www.livemint.com For a slide show on how to make Curry Puffs, visit www.livemint.com/currypuff.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

The champion of breakfasts Top Chefs are raving about Wild Mushroom Upma Polenta—and we understand why

process twice more, then leave the pastry in the fridge for at least one hour.

Roll out the pastry into a rectangle about 30x15cm.

Starting at the shorter end, roll the pastry into a tight coil.

Wrap in cling film and refrigerate until needed.

When you’re ready to make the curry puffs, cut the log of pastry into 1cm slices, then roll each slice into thin pastry disks—about 2mm thick.

Place the pastry disc on a gujiya mould and on one side place a teaspoon of the filling.

Close the mould to seal. If you don’t have a mould you could simply cut out circles of the pastry, fill one half, then seal.

Heat a deep pan with sunflower oil until a small piece of pastry rises quickly to the surface. Place the curry puffs a few at a time into the hot oil and cook until golden brown.

A touch of Maghreb: Indigo Deli’s version of the upma has couscous. lunch spot in Mumbai), Madras’ old rival, it is served on the principle that deliciousness is directly proportional to cashew nuts. At home, you can even apply upma-principles to vermicelli, beaten rice and broken wheat, to make semia, avil (poha) and lapsi upma. Indigo Deli and Café Basilico, in a Maghrebi mash-up, even produce a delightful version made with couscous.

You can eat it when you are fasting, according to most Hindu notions of the fast; it is nourishing, but modest—except cashew nuts. It accommodates most non-starchy vegetables with grace and poise. Its most

basic flavour comes from ginger, curry leaves and mustard seeds.

Its key quality, however, is texture. Too much water makes it a grainy broth; too little can make it seem like a mud cake with fried onions.

But its protean quality is what makes it all things to all people. Its versatility takes the upma’s virtues beyond its austere origins.

It isn’t just comfort food; if that were all, it would have a harder time crossing the gourmet line. If that were all, it would be melancholy to share it with a friend to whom I was saying goodbye. Comfort food is khichdi. The upma is for joy.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

L7

Spotlight

LOUNGE

RANJEET KUMAR/THE HINDU

THE COUNTERPOINT Shirley Telles, head of research, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth, on the efficacy of Kapalbhati.

Edited excerpts: Do you have instances of students/patients complaining of health problems after performing Kapalbhati?

So far we have not had any such reports. We have done a random check to check whether persons were hyperventilating or breathing incorrectly and have data using the standardized ‘Nijmegen questionnaire’. This was taken on over 400 people from camps at random and the data are available with us.

YOGA

Is Kapalbhati killing you?

Every diaphragm­ deflating session may double the risk of a heart attack and other illnesses, say experts

B Y G AYATRI J AYARAMAN gayatri.j@livemint.com

···························· .K.S. Iyengar, India’s most venerated yogi at 92, is not exactly known for passionate outbursts. His dismissal, earlier this week on a visit to China, of the Baba Ramdev school of yoga as “selling Kapalbhati” as “a short cut”, is indicative of the dangers of the TV-yoga craze.

Kapalbhati, a complex form of Pranayam (there are many gentler forms of this age-old breathing technique), the fourth stage of Ashtanga yoga, is primarily an advanced spiritual and yogic tool and not the quick-fix, six-pack abs formula or the cure-all it is often marketed as by practitioners such as Ramdev.

A verse in the Sama Veda cautions, “Yatha sinho gaja vyadho, bhavedvashya shanaiha shanaiha. Thartheva sevitho vayurnyartha hanthi sadhakam” (Just like an elephant, a lion or a tiger can be tamed slowly and gradually, in the same way a practitioner should try to tame his breath slowly, slowly or else it kills the practitioner himself).

Acharya Agyaatdarshan, a Delhi-based yogi, has made it his mission to disseminate correct information on yoga through his blog. He tackles the fallout of TVtaught Pranayam on a daily basis as he reaches out to those adversely affected by too much Kapalbhati. If not done correctly, it can kill you. “Kapal-kriya is the process of releasing prana or life breath, after death. Kapalbhati is controlling one’s lifespan through one’s breath,” he explains. Simply put, get it wrong, and you shorten your lifespan.

In 2008, the Asian Heart Institute (AHI) in Mumbai linked 31

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cases of heart attack to reckless practice of Kapalbhati. Vijay D’Silva, medical director of the AHI, confirms: “An independent yoga instructor affiliated to our cardiac rehabilitation department had conducted a study correlating 31 cases of heart ailments with improper practice of yoga. While we have not continued the study, we have found a 100% correlation between ‘unsupervised exercise’ and cardiac failure.” Most experts say that recklessly practising Kapalbhati can at the very least make you seriously ill.

Kapalbhati is de rigueur in many Indian households among people of all ages—and its practice a common sight in parks.

Revolutionized by Ramdev through yoga camps and television, it is a shrewdly marketed capsule form of yoga in its place of origin long after it became one of the more successful exports to the West in the early 1960s. It is claimed that Kapalbhati can cure cancer, blood pressure disorders, heart ailments, baldness, impotence—even homosexuality, as Ramdev famously declared in 2009. It may have been the subject of parody in Raju Hirani’s 2009 blockbuster 3 Idiots, but thousands of Indians today consider Kapalbhati a panacea for all ills, forgetting its complexity as a yogic tool, and the possible adverse effects in the hands of those with less experience.

Ramnavami, a senior teacher at the Sivananda Yoga Mumbai Centre for 25 years, trained at the Bihar School of Yoga. She suffers from epilepsy. In 1987, her guru, Swami Satyananda, forbade her from performing Kapalbhati. She does not teach it to her students.

“The benefits are not important, it is the contraindications that are important. It can lead to heart problems, high blood pressure, vertigo, hernia, epilepsy and related brain problems. If students insist they want to learn, we teach them to do it gently, for 20-30 counts. These 200-1,000 count sessions are not advisable,” she says.

Ashwini Gokhale, who has been a teacher of the Iyengar school of yoga for over 12 years and a student of it for over 20 years, says she has performed Kapalbhati “only once”. That was when Geeta Iyengar, Iyengar’s daughter, was conducting a session at the Pune Institute on a cold December

morning. “Everyone was coughing, so she asked us to perform it in a controlled manner, to clear our nasal passages. As a teacher of mine put it, it is like a dose of strong antibiotics—you would not take it every day and only ever under a doctor’s prescription.

Today, Kapalbhati is a quick-fix pill. It’s like those tablets people buy to lose weight. It’s a lazy man’s yoga,” says Gokhale.

The Internet is filled with quiet pleas of desperation: “I bleed every time I perform Kapalbhati, why?” asks Deepa. “I had excruciating pain when I masturbated. I practise Kapalbhati regularly,” says Subhash. “I have a deviated nasal septum, is that why I am nauseated every time I do Kapalbhati?” wonders yet another.

S. Rao, a 40-year-old software executive, used to be an alcoholic.

“I kept trying to quit, but just couldn’t,” he says. Then someone told him about Kapalbhati. “I switched on the TV and did it every morning. Within 10 days, I was drinking more, was agitated, irritable and had developed migraines.” Doctors and medication did little to stem the decline.

Then he met a guru, who told him to stop Kapalbhati immediately. “I was taught the correct form through basics: Puraka, Rechaka, Kumbhaka. In three months, I was fine,” he says.

Some years ago, G. Khairnar, a former deputy commissioner of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, famously had to be rushed to hospital after he overdid Kapalbhati, and industrialist Vijay Mallya reportedly stopped practising it when it aggravated an existing ailment.

What are its merits?

Kapalbhati, one of the Shatakriyas, was considered potent long before Ramdev made it popular.

The works of Paramahamsa Yogananda, Swami Rama, Swami Vishnudevananda, Iyengar, Swami Nadabrahmananda and Swami Vivekananda establish this. In 2004, a panel of senior doctors across the country, in association with The Yoga Institute, Santacruz, Mumbai, conducted a project to study the effects of Kapalbhati on a control group.

The results were published in the Journal of Association of Physicians of India in April that year.

B.K. Sahai, who was part of that panel, outlines the benefits

In the cross hairs: Baba Ramdev and his yogic practices have come under the scanner.

discovered as a result: “When Kapalbhati was taught under the guidance of medical and yoga experts, benefits were found in controlling diabetes, obesity, asthma, blood pressure.” It greatly energizes the mind and fights depression. While each kind of Pranayam has benefits, each also has contraindications.

Shashank Joshi, a consultant endocrinologist with Leelavati Hospital, Mumbai, says: “I have seen a lot of patients come in with problems caused by overdoing or incorrectly doing Kapalbhati. I recently had a patient with a lapsed abdominal wall who developed a hernia. Firstly, yoga is a way of life, not just some generalized exercise. Benefits need to be validated.”

Who should learn it?

The very basis of Ashtanga yoga is progressive graduation from asanas to Pranayam, the fourth step of yoga. “Traditionally, yoga required to see if the student could be accepted at all,” says Shekhar Ambardekar, a cardiologist affiliated with The Yoga Institute. A guru ensures you can channel the results. “While doing asanas, you cannot just start with exotic poses. It has to build up.

Even at a basic level, asanas effect physical and glandular changes,” adds Gokhale. The miracle cures being used to sell Kapalbhati only work at a complex, advanced level, say the experts. “And that too, to reverse an ailment or slow it down maybe, but not cure it,” explains Ramnavami. She points to the Bihar School of Yoga, which has health management courses for those who use Kapalbhati more regularly for ailments.

Such courses provide training in the correct form, method and application for each specific medical diagnosis.

How harmful can it be?

Gokhale seats herself in an incorrect posture, her back arched, and demonstrates how Kapalbhati is done on a daily basis by many. As she draws her breath in and out, her entire upper torso is jerked up and down. “When you jerk your entire body internally, you are giving all your inner organs a jolt.

You force the air pressure downwards, exerting extreme force on your uterus. What will be the result if you do that thrice a day?”

Common sense?

Shameem Akhtar, a Mumbaibased yogacharya who trained at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre and has authored two books on yoga, says: “Many people confuse practices. For instance, Kapalabhati is a lighter hyperventilation than Bhastrika; however, sometimes I see people doing Bhastrika, incorrectly. It can cause burnout and nervous system exhaustion.” She warns, “Certain Pranayam practices can trigger severe heat in the body that must be channelled. Reckless practice can magnify negatives like anger, irritation, and even illness.”

Students flock to yoga institutes and ashrams with ailments that are a result of bad yogic practices.

Gokhale says: “As teachers, we often have no empirical evidence.

Out of experience, we can see when someone has learnt to do Kapalbhati or is even telling us they are not doing it, but secretly are.” Such practices are against the essence of Pranayam. As Gokhale puts it: “Pranayam is not wilfully practised. It happens when you are ready. It is something that just happens when the body is provided the correct circumstances both internally and externally, there is alignment. You can teach someone to create those circumstances. Pranayam is not something you do. It is letting go.”

What steps do you take to ensure that students perform Kapalbhati in the correct manner?

We mention the obvious contraindications (recent surgery, epilepsy); apart from that we have trained teachers out in the field correcting the practice. We also emphasize the rate as our recent research showed that when a person breathes at this rate, there is no sympathetic activation (which is different from earlier studies where people breathed at 120 strokes/min).

An absence of sympathetic activation would reduce the chance of the practice leading to a rise in blood pressure. Hence we place emphasis on doing it slowly (compared to what is usually mentioned) and with no stress/exertion. We also check for other effects—and a very recent paper shows that Kapalbhati practised at the rate we prescribe improves visual perception.

Do you insist on students achieving proficiency in yoga asanas before starting Kapalbhati?

We ask practitioners to learn loosening exercises and diaphragmatic breathing.

Do you hold classes with trained gurus? To what level are these gurus trained in Pranayam and asanas?

The yoga teachers are trained and they have three levels of training. You may get further details from our course office.

Gayatri Jayaraman

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

Business Lounge

LOUNGE

PNC MENON

A career built brick by brick The chairman of Sobha Developers has built mansions for royalty.

He is now eyeing a new venture after retirement

B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN & M ADHURIMA N ANDY ···························· .N.C. Menon admits he is a bit of a perfectionist.

Dressed in a Lanvin suit with diamond-studded cufflinks, black Prada shoes and not a hair out of place, the 62-year-old chairman of Sobha Developers says: “If there is a spot of dirt on my shoes, I can’t work. It makes me lose my confidence.”

He points out that his need for perfection reflects in the kind of work he has been delivering for 25 years, which has led to a company with a market capitalization of `2,400 crore, and a presence in Bangalore, Thrissur, Pune, Coimbatore and Chennai.

Menon formed Sobha Developers Ltd in India in 1995, 18 years after he set up his interiors and construction business in Oman, where he climbed the first rungs of the ladder to success. That business is still there. Sobha Developers, named after his homemaker wife, is headquartered in Bangalore and became a public listed company in 2006. It started small but now has 2,000 full-time employees and 25,000 contract workers. Some of its prominent projects in Bangalore include residential ones such as Sobha Amethyst, Sobha Sunscape, Sobha Carnation and Sobha Magnolia.

Projects outside Bangalore include Sobha Carnation in Pune, Sobha Emerald and Sobha Turquoise in Coimbatore and Sobha Malachite

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in Thrissur.

Menon’s life fits the rags-toriches cliché, and he politely protests that the story has been told too often. Yet, at our insistence, he narrates his journey from Kerala to Oman when he was 26, with just `50 in his pocket. Menon’s father died when he was 10. He had to drop out of college because of financial problems at home—he was pursuing a BCom from Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur.

He then began doing small design jobs, such as interiors, in Kerala. He’d had no formal training. “I could say that it is destiny because I met my first business partner by chance when he was visiting Kerala to buy a fishing boat,” says Menon, who followed him to Oman.

Menon took a loan of 3,000 rials (around `3.49 lakh now) from a bank in Oman to set up his interior decor business. He climbed up steadily, “two steps” at a time. “My first assignment was the interiors of a photo studio, doing the panelling, etc.,” he recalls.

Over the next 17 years, he moved towards larger projects, hotels and then palatial homes, including a project for a royal family in West Asia.

Under contract not to name any of his royal clients, Menon shows a book containing photographic samples of his work in palaces.

“You have to be exceptional to be successful. I am not being arrogant,” he smiles, glancing at the intricate and rich work in the images, when asked how he landed these deals. With names such as the Sultan of Brunei on his list of clients (he did the interiors of a palace for him), Menon was keen to expand the geographical reach of his business.

“I tried the US and UK initially, but then decided that the scope for growth in India was high,” says Menon, who focused on premium and luxury residences in Bangalore before moving on to large office spaces. In 2008, he met Infosys chairman and chief mentor, N.R. Narayana Murthy, who gave Sobha the opportunity to build Infosys’

IN PARENTHESIS While going on holiday might not be his idea of peace, P.N.C. Menon spends two and a half hours every day praying. He recently donated his weight in gold to the Guruvayur temple in Kerala. Menon insists he is spiritual, while pointing at a shrine for all faiths in his Bangalore office. “The prayers are important to me, and even if I can’t do it at one go, I catch up during the day,” he says.

first campus at Electronic City. What triggered Murthy’s interest was one of their first projects, Sobha Sapphire, a premium residential project on Bangalore’s Bellary road.

“It’s been an honourable relationship,” says Menon of his association with Murthy, adding fondly: “He is a busy person, admirable and unusual.

It is difficult to have his vision. There have been only four people in India with that vision— J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla, Dhirubhai Ambani and Murthy.”

Menon’s entry to the country did not come without its share of troubles. The economic downturn of 2008-09 taught him key lessons. “What we learnt is that debt needs to be controlled. Debt used to be two-three times the equity, but in this situation, debt-equity can’t be more than 5:1.

From 2, our debt-equity ratio has come down to 0.6:1 now,” he says.

With all that water under the bridge now, Menon, who lives in Dubai, is planning his retirement or, rather, the work he can do after retiring. The whiteboard in his Bangalore office, where he spends up to two months a year, has a countdown to the day of his retirement. “We started five years ago when I was 58, and that number is changing every day,” he says, glancing at the number 928 (on the date of the interview) written in the blank space with a marker.

His son Ravi Menon (29), the vice-chairman of the company, will take over as chairman on 17 November 2013.

He also has two daughters—Bindu (31) and Revathi (26). “There is a clear succession plan in place with my son becoming the chairman. I may or may not be on the board,” he says, adding that his son, who works out of Bangalore, is perhaps more equipped than he was at his age to handle the business.

So what does he plan to do?

“There are three things I need—physical and mental health, plus I should be alive.

If all three are positive, I will be working,” says Menon, who plans to start a new firm that will make and sell furniture and home fittings. Labelled PNC, the new brand will be launched internationally and will perhaps not be available in India initially.

PNC reflects his need to work. “I’m a restless person, so I don’t take weekends off,” he says. “People who have worked their way up are insecure about the things they have. I wouldn’t know what to do on holiday.”

He pauses, thinking.

“Maybe (I’ll take) half a day,” he adds, deciding to give himself a concession. pavitra.j@livemint.com

Destiny’s child: Menon, whose father died when he was 10 and who couldn’t afford to complete college, now heads a `2,400 crore company.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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LOUNGE CURTAIN RAISER

national journalists on a guided tour of the Olympic Park in Stratford, the Olympic Park was still a vast construction site, albeit one expected to be completed well within schedule. In February, the Velodrome, nicknamed the Giant Pringle, became the first venue to be completed and handed over to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (this was several months ahead of schedule, despite the fact that late last year it was discovered that someone had forgotten to order the Siberian pine boards for the cycle track).

Mason told Lounge that the overwhelming strategy has been to avoid white elephants as much as possible. “Wherever we can build a temporary or mobile structure, we have. If there isn’t enough local interest in a particular sport, there is no point in wasting money on a stadium.”

This strategy has been implemented in some smart, efficient ways.

So the BMX off-road bicycling circuit will get landscaped back

Prudence park On a tight budget and in a grim economic environment, London’s Olympic Park project is working hard and smart

Eton Manor Capacity: 10,500 during the Paralympic Games (29 Aug-12 Sep) Olympic Games: Aquatics training Paralympic Games: Wheelchair tennis, aquatics training After the Games: It will be converted into a tennis, hockey and five-a-side football facility.

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Read an interview with Selina Mason at www.livemint.com/londonolympics.htm

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Velodrome Capacity: 6,000 during the Games Olympic Games: Cycling—track Paralympic Games: Cycling—track After the Games: The Velodrome will form part of a new VeloPark for community and elite use. It will be joined by the reconfigured BMX Circuit, and have additional facilities for road cycling and mountain biking.

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BMX Circuit Capacity: 6,000 temporary seats during the Olympic Games Olympic Games: Cycling—BMX After the Games: It will be reconfigured to form part of the VeloPark.

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Athletes Village The Athletes Village will provide accommodation for athletes and officials during the Games. It will have shops, restaurants, medical and leisure facilities, and large open spaces.

Olympic Games: Thousands of beds for athletes and officials Paralympic Games: Thousands of beds for athletes and officials After the Games: It will become part of the Stratford City regeneration project, providing thousands of new homes, with a mix of affordable tenures, shared equity and housing for sale and rent. There will also be education and healthcare facilities.

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Handball Arena Capacity: Up to 7,000 Olympic Games: Handball, modern pentathlon (fencing) Paralympic Games: Goalball After the Games: It will be converted into a multi-sport arena for sports, culture and business.

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Aquatics Centre The Aquatics Centre will act as a gateway to the Olympic Park. The venue will house two 50m swimming pools and a diving pool.

Capacity: 17,500 during the Games Olympic Games: Swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, modern pentathlon (swimming) Paralympic Games: Paralympic swimming After the Games: The pools will be open for use by the local community and elite athletes. The centre will also incorporate a crèche, family-friendly changing facilities and café amenities alongside a new public plaza.

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Basketball Arena Capacity: 12,000 during the Games Olympic Games: Basketball, later stages of handball Paralympic Games: Wheelchair rugby, wheelchair basketball After the Games: It will be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Hockey Centre Capacity: 16,000 during the Games Olympic Games: Hockey Paralympic Games: Paralympic five-a-side football, Paralympic seven-a-side football After the Games: The two pitches will be removed and relaid at Eton Manor.

IBC/MPC During the Games the International Broadcast Centre/Main Press Centre (IBC/MPC) will host 20,000 of the world’s media in state-of-the-art facilities.

After the Games: It will be converted into an employment space.

Visitors to London are welcome to participate in one of the free, guided bus tours of the Olympic park site on weekdays and some weekends.

For details, call 0300-2012-001.

There are strict security regulations on site, which include X-rays and airport-style pat-downs.

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Olympic Park during the London 2012 Games

After the Olympics, thousands of flats in the village will be refitted for family housing and will be released to buyers around September 2013. At the same time the athletes kitchen is designed to be converted into a school for the children staying in the village.

The lasting legacy of the London Olympics, however, will be regeneration of this corner of the city into a vast, green, sustainable complex with a river-centric park, housing and world-class sporting facilities.

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trial land in the lower valley of the river Lea that had once housed factories that made bone products, soap and chemicals.

Converting the land into a huge, modern complex comprising stadiums, accommodation and media facilities would take years.

But instead of hitting the road running, explains Selina Mason, deputy head of design, Olympic Delivery Authority, they decided to plan. “It may seem odd that we did nothing for two whole years,” says Mason, “but with a project of

this size and under the budget constraints we were operating under, there was no room for error. There was a lot to be done.

Right from cleaning the river and river channels to building the actual buildings. We had to be sure before we started.”

Today, with just around a year to go for the big event, that process of intense thought followed by frenzied activity seems to have worked.

The London Olympics have, so far, not been without controversies.

There have been issues with one massive budget expansion and, most recently, with a complicated, opaque ticketing system.

But embarrassing delays in site development or construction is so far not one of them. Last month, when Mason took a group of inter-

into the park’s greenery. The hockey stadium will get dismantled and the pitches will be moved to the Eton Manor swimming training location, which will then be converted into a multi-sport facility. The massive HD-ready TV and media centre will become office blocks. The “knock-down” basketball—completed and handed over earlier this month—and water polo venues are expected to be relocated and reused for other events. Mason says the basketball venue is in the reckoning to be used in Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Some of the venues that will remain on site will scale down capacities drastically to lower costs of usage and maintenance.

The main Olympic Stadium, for instance, is by no means a Bird’s Nest. But it is sensible. The “bowl of blancmange” will hold 80,000 during the Olympics but will get chopped to a capacity of 25,000 afterwards.

The athletes village and massive athletes kitchen are an example of thoughtful planning.

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B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ···························· fter London won the rights in 2005 to hold the 2012 Olympics Games, it spent the next two years not building a single thing. Instead, from July 2005 to July 2007, a team of designers, planners, project managers and money managers sat down and figured out, in as much detail as possible, what would go where, when and how. The site chosen for the Games was a 2.5 sq. km piece of run-down, polluted, semi-indus-

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Olympic Stadium The design features a stadium “bowl” with a capacity of 25,000, and an additional capacity of 55,000 that can be removed after the Games. An Olympic Stadium with such a large temporary element is a first in Games design.

Capacity: 80,000 during the Games Olympic Games: Opening and closing ceremonies, athletics Paralympic Games: Opening and closing ceremonies, Paralympic athletics After the Games: The Olympic Park Legacy Company is working on plans to transform the stadium into a venue hosting a variety of sporting, cultural and community events.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

COURTESY ABDUL LATIF JAMEEL POVERTY ACTION LAB

B Y N IRANJAN R AJADHYAKSHA niranjan.r@livemint.com

······································ chance encounter between a hungry economist and a woman selling dosas on a street would not be worthy of mention—unless the economist happens to be Abhijit V. Banerjee.

The two met in one of the poor neighbourhoods of Guntur, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. At around 9 one morning, the 49-year-old economics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was tempted to buy a dosa for breakfast. The street was lined with women selling fresh dosas. Banerjee and a local colleague walked up to a woman in a cream-coloured sari, who seemed to be less busy than the others.

As the economist dug into the street food, his colleague asked the woman in Telugu, the local language, whether she would be serving dosas for the rest of the day. She shook her head. She would pack up at 10am. Then she would go home to cook lunch for the family. It was only after her daughter came back from school at around noon that the woman would shift to a second job, making and selling saris that she embroidered by hand. All the other dosa makers on the street that morning had similar schedules. They would move to second jobs later in the day—collecting trash, making pickles or working as labourers.

The story of the women in Guntur offers some explanations about why the poor find it so difficult to improve their lot: Their tiny enterprises cannot be scaled up and multiple occupations do not allow them to specialize in a particular task. The dosa makers made their way into a brilliant paper on the economic lives of the poor, written by Banerjee and 38-year-old Esther Duflo, his MIT colleague and winner of the prestigious John Bates Clark medal awarded by the American Economics Association to young economists under the age of 40. Almost one out of every two Clark medal winners has eventually landed the Nobel Prize.

Some of the insights from that 2006 paper have been expanded in their new book, Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty and the Ways to End It, that is due to be released in India next month. The book has already made waves in the West. “It has been years since I read a book that has taught me so much. Poor Economics represents the best that economics has to offer,” wrote Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Steven Levitt in a review.

Banerjee and Duflo steer clear of tall claims about a yellow brick road out of poverty. Their implicit message is that we should take the poor seriously, because a considerate look at their lives and choices can give policymakers, aid givers and action groups a better sense of how to spend money in programmes that are supposed to help the poor. Such a focus on the little things that matter also means that the policy solutions offered by Banerjee and Duflo involve small interventions rather than grand solutions—a sore point with some critics.

The two MIT economists, who are directors with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the MIT campus in Boston, use field experiments to understand the lives of the poor.

Their basic technique is borrowed from the world of medical research, through controlled trials. Two groups of people are selected at random. One group is exposed to a small intervention and the other continues to live its life as before. The MIT team then sees whether the outcome in the first case is large enough to justify spending on it.

“What spending time with the poor taught me is that the poor have much more complicated lives than us, and they have to manage their lives like hedge fund managers,” says Duflo. “Not having to worry about most everyday chores like getting clean water or collecting fuel, we have time to focus on other things.”

A few years ago, the two economists were working in the Udaipur district of Rajasthan when they noticed that women were not bringing their children into government clinics for free immunization. Why were these women not taking advantage of a scheme designed to help them? More importantly, how could the problem be fixed? The MIT team designed a now-famous experiment.

They gave women in some villages two pounds (around 0.907kg) of dal when they came in to get shots for their children. Soon, the word spread and immunization rates soared. It is not surprising that their most favoured policy suggestions are dominated by simple solutions such as these (see A guide for the state).

Some of the most insightful work from Banerjee and Duflo is on the way poor families spend money. It is usually assumed that poor families are hungry and will use every extra rupee that comes their way to buy additional calories. Banerjee and Duflo found out in their fieldwork that the poor often prefer to spend their extra money on televisions or festivals or tasty but expensive food. “Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor,” they write in their new book.

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WHAT REALLY DRIVES THE POOR Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo have brought a rare microeconomic focus to development economics. Steering clear of a yellow brick road out of poverty, they tell us why we should take the poor seriously

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BHARATH SAI/MINT

Developing insight: Banerjee and Duflo suggest small interventions rather than grand solutions to help the poor; (left) a meeting of microfinance borrowers at Domakonda village in Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh, in November; and a slum abutting the upscale neighbourhoods of south Kolkata along Anwar Shah Road.

“They don’t just need nutrition that will keep them alive longer—they also need a reason to want to live longer. Being healthier by denying yourself the little pleasures you can afford, a cup of tea or a bowl of steaming rice, makes little sense if you have nothing else to look forward to,” says Banerjee. “I think they make exactly the choices I would make in their place as regards food.”

Banerjee grew up in Kolkata, in a house that was at the edge of a large slum. His friends from the slum had more free time and beat him at every sport. “I cannot remember a time when I was not curious about the funny lives that the poor lived. Not particularly sympathetic, bit curious,” he says.

Though his parents were economists, Banerjee came to the subject only after abandoning his first academic choice that proved to be too boring for him.

Duflo grew up in Paris. Her doctor mother did voluntary work with an organization that helped child victims of wars. “About once a year she would go in a trip with this organization, and when she came back she would show us photos. She would also read to us books on Mother Teresa, on African children, etc. I always knew there were poor people, and always felt that because I was fortunate enough to be born in a middle-class family in a suburb of Paris and I could in principle have been born as a poor girl somewhere in the world, I had a responsibility to do something

Poor Economics—Rethinking Poverty & the Ways to End It: Random House India, 303 pages, `499.

A GUIDE FOR THE STATE The economists on what the Indian government should do Abhijit Banerjee These are the things I would want it to try out and evaluate carefully as a prelude to scaling up (if successful, of course): a universal cash transfer to everyone 15 years and older based on biometric identification; free universal health insurance that covers treatment for catastrophic health events (accidents, major surgeries, etc.); clean drinking water within 200 yards of every home.

Esther Duflo Small incentives for immunization (perhaps cash, or perhaps some health products that people would like, such as double fortified salt). Poor people are not against immunizing their children, but they keep postponing it.

A small incentive is a nudge that would remind them to do it. A reform of the curriculum that emphasizes basic skills (reading, writing and mathematics) at the primary level; and make both the necessary resources and the necessary incentives available at the school level to achieve that. The school system is currently entirely focused on producing a small elite of students, and everybody else is left behind. This is a huge waste of talent.

The next two would need an experiment to be tested, but are promising, and I would hope such an experiment can be run.

First, I would like to see an experiment run with an unconditional, non­means tested, relatively small, cash transfer. We could answer your earlier questions: What will people do with the money? Will it be wasted or used productively?

Second, I would like to see an effective hospitalization insurance programme, where people would have access to high­quality network hospitals (including transportation), at a heavily subsidized premium.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

to help the poorest,” she remembers.

Their groundbreaking use of field experiments and household surveys has brought fresh life to development economics. Billions of dollars are spent every year on programmes meant to help the poor, but neither governments nor aid agencies seem to have a good sense of what works and what does not. There is not enough evidence—a favoured word in the lexicon used by Banerjee and Duflo—on what really needs to be done.

In India, we have seen huge government programmes pushed through with flimsy empirical support. “Hundreds of things are tried but what really works on the ground? For example, has the Janani Suraksha Yojana really brought down maternal mortality? Does deworming improve school performance?

Does the shift of the name on pension cheques from the grandfather to the grandmother increase the probability of the granddaughter going to school? Abhijit and Esther have done masterly work that offers us a way to extract signals from the overall noise,” says Nachiket Mor, chairman, IFMR Trust.

Banerjee and Duflo have brought a rare microeconomic focus to development economics, akin to the revolution in the 1970s when macroeconomics was bolstered with microfoundations. In simpler language, it means that the big picture is built only after understanding what the details on the ground are. For example, they have shown that panchayats run by women tend to spend more on public goods (such as clean water) that are preferred by women.

Their journeys through the villages and slums that are populated by the poor have given the two economists a deep respect for the choices made by people less fortunate.

“Perhaps the most important lesson I have learnt is that ideas and theories play as important a role in the lives of the poor as they do in ours. Indeed, they may well be more driven by ideas, simply because they have less information about the world outside and, therefore, feel a greater need to use their collective imagination to fill the gaps in their knowledge,” says Banerjee.

This same respect is evident in their responses to a question on whether the poor should be given food or cash, and more specifically whether giving them cash would mean that the money would be frittered away on drink and entertainment—an issue that has led to animated debate in India.

“I am sure people will use their cash to buy what they want and that will sometimes be a trinket or a drink. But unless you give them more food than they would have bought in any case, they can also do that with the money they save because they get food from the government. And if they think they have too much food they can just sell it. In the old days, when people like my parents were entitled to ‘rations’, it was customary to sell your lowquality rice and wheat rations to the poor,” says Banerjee.

Adds Duflo: “I think it would be quite patronizing to try to explain to the poor that they have the wrong preferences, and that they need to change. We would do exactly the same thing if we were in their circumstances.” She then offers concrete solutions. “Instead, we should make sure it is easy and cheap for them to get the nutrition they need, while eating the foods they like to eat. In this way, they would be able to get both a television and adequate nutrition. For example, if salt fortified with iron and iodine was a bit cheaper than regular salt, then both adults and children would be less likely to suffer from anaemia. It would be great use of public money.”

However, there are many economists who feel that the sort of work that is done by Banerjee and Duflo is a fad and underestimates the deeper structural reasons for mass poverty. In its March-April issue, Boston Review has a debate on the importance of randomized control trials—one type of experiment favoured by the MIT Poverty Action Lab. In his contribution to the debate, economist Pranab Bardhan begins by saying that random evaluations have enriched economics, but adds: “There are other issues in the discipline that may be ignored as the experimental programme becomes its own kind of fad: researchers often lose interest in important questions that cannot feasibly be explored using randomization methods. Some of these questions are historical, institutional, and structural in nature and have very little to do with the impact of simple treatments such as those of a micro-health or educational intervention.”

Other critics ask whether micro studies that reveal behavioural patterns in a specific region can offer useful general rules for policymakers.

When I asked Banerjee about these criticisms—though not specifically the points raised by Bardhan—he replied: “If you think about it, what are these great insights that really guide national policy? A few general ideas about the importance of some property rights protection, some recognition of the importance of market forces and exposure to foreign trade, etc. But even there we know that the general insights really do not go very far.”

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COURTESY ABDUL LATIF JAMEEL POVERTY ACTION LAB

B Y N IRANJAN R AJADHYAKSHA niranjan.r@livemint.com

······································ chance encounter between a hungry economist and a woman selling dosas on a street would not be worthy of mention—unless the economist happens to be Abhijit V. Banerjee.

The two met in one of the poor neighbourhoods of Guntur, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. At around 9 one morning, the 49-year-old economics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was tempted to buy a dosa for breakfast. The street was lined with women selling fresh dosas. Banerjee and a local colleague walked up to a woman in a cream-coloured sari, who seemed to be less busy than the others.

As the economist dug into the street food, his colleague asked the woman in Telugu, the local language, whether she would be serving dosas for the rest of the day. She shook her head. She would pack up at 10am. Then she would go home to cook lunch for the family. It was only after her daughter came back from school at around noon that the woman would shift to a second job, making and selling saris that she embroidered by hand. All the other dosa makers on the street that morning had similar schedules. They would move to second jobs later in the day—collecting trash, making pickles or working as labourers.

The story of the women in Guntur offers some explanations about why the poor find it so difficult to improve their lot: Their tiny enterprises cannot be scaled up and multiple occupations do not allow them to specialize in a particular task. The dosa makers made their way into a brilliant paper on the economic lives of the poor, written by Banerjee and 38-year-old Esther Duflo, his MIT colleague and winner of the prestigious John Bates Clark medal awarded by the American Economics Association to young economists under the age of 40. Almost one out of every two Clark medal winners has eventually landed the Nobel Prize.

Some of the insights from that 2006 paper have been expanded in their new book, Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty and the Ways to End It, that is due to be released in India next month. The book has already made waves in the West. “It has been years since I read a book that has taught me so much. Poor Economics represents the best that economics has to offer,” wrote Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Steven Levitt in a review.

Banerjee and Duflo steer clear of tall claims about a yellow brick road out of poverty. Their implicit message is that we should take the poor seriously, because a considerate look at their lives and choices can give policymakers, aid givers and action groups a better sense of how to spend money in programmes that are supposed to help the poor. Such a focus on the little things that matter also means that the policy solutions offered by Banerjee and Duflo involve small interventions rather than grand solutions—a sore point with some critics.

The two MIT economists, who are directors with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the MIT campus in Boston, use field experiments to understand the lives of the poor.

Their basic technique is borrowed from the world of medical research, through controlled trials. Two groups of people are selected at random. One group is exposed to a small intervention and the other continues to live its life as before. The MIT team then sees whether the outcome in the first case is large enough to justify spending on it.

“What spending time with the poor taught me is that the poor have much more complicated lives than us, and they have to manage their lives like hedge fund managers,” says Duflo. “Not having to worry about most everyday chores like getting clean water or collecting fuel, we have time to focus on other things.”

A few years ago, the two economists were working in the Udaipur district of Rajasthan when they noticed that women were not bringing their children into government clinics for free immunization. Why were these women not taking advantage of a scheme designed to help them? More importantly, how could the problem be fixed? The MIT team designed a now-famous experiment.

They gave women in some villages two pounds (around 0.907kg) of dal when they came in to get shots for their children. Soon, the word spread and immunization rates soared. It is not surprising that their most favoured policy suggestions are dominated by simple solutions such as these (see A guide for the state).

Some of the most insightful work from Banerjee and Duflo is on the way poor families spend money. It is usually assumed that poor families are hungry and will use every extra rupee that comes their way to buy additional calories. Banerjee and Duflo found out in their fieldwork that the poor often prefer to spend their extra money on televisions or festivals or tasty but expensive food. “Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor,” they write in their new book.

A

PROFILE

WHAT REALLY DRIVES THE POOR Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo have brought a rare microeconomic focus to development economics. Steering clear of a yellow brick road out of poverty, they tell us why we should take the poor seriously

INT INDRANIL BHOUMIK/M

BHARATH SAI/MINT

Developing insight: Banerjee and Duflo suggest small interventions rather than grand solutions to help the poor; (left) a meeting of microfinance borrowers at Domakonda village in Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh, in November; and a slum abutting the upscale neighbourhoods of south Kolkata along Anwar Shah Road.

“They don’t just need nutrition that will keep them alive longer—they also need a reason to want to live longer. Being healthier by denying yourself the little pleasures you can afford, a cup of tea or a bowl of steaming rice, makes little sense if you have nothing else to look forward to,” says Banerjee. “I think they make exactly the choices I would make in their place as regards food.”

Banerjee grew up in Kolkata, in a house that was at the edge of a large slum. His friends from the slum had more free time and beat him at every sport. “I cannot remember a time when I was not curious about the funny lives that the poor lived. Not particularly sympathetic, bit curious,” he says.

Though his parents were economists, Banerjee came to the subject only after abandoning his first academic choice that proved to be too boring for him.

Duflo grew up in Paris. Her doctor mother did voluntary work with an organization that helped child victims of wars. “About once a year she would go in a trip with this organization, and when she came back she would show us photos. She would also read to us books on Mother Teresa, on African children, etc. I always knew there were poor people, and always felt that because I was fortunate enough to be born in a middle-class family in a suburb of Paris and I could in principle have been born as a poor girl somewhere in the world, I had a responsibility to do something

Poor Economics—Rethinking Poverty & the Ways to End It: Random House India, 303 pages, `499.

A GUIDE FOR THE STATE The economists on what the Indian government should do Abhijit Banerjee These are the things I would want it to try out and evaluate carefully as a prelude to scaling up (if successful, of course): a universal cash transfer to everyone 15 years and older based on biometric identification; free universal health insurance that covers treatment for catastrophic health events (accidents, major surgeries, etc.); clean drinking water within 200 yards of every home.

Esther Duflo Small incentives for immunization (perhaps cash, or perhaps some health products that people would like, such as double fortified salt). Poor people are not against immunizing their children, but they keep postponing it.

A small incentive is a nudge that would remind them to do it. A reform of the curriculum that emphasizes basic skills (reading, writing and mathematics) at the primary level; and make both the necessary resources and the necessary incentives available at the school level to achieve that. The school system is currently entirely focused on producing a small elite of students, and everybody else is left behind. This is a huge waste of talent.

The next two would need an experiment to be tested, but are promising, and I would hope such an experiment can be run.

First, I would like to see an experiment run with an unconditional, non­means tested, relatively small, cash transfer. We could answer your earlier questions: What will people do with the money? Will it be wasted or used productively?

Second, I would like to see an effective hospitalization insurance programme, where people would have access to high­quality network hospitals (including transportation), at a heavily subsidized premium.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

to help the poorest,” she remembers.

Their groundbreaking use of field experiments and household surveys has brought fresh life to development economics. Billions of dollars are spent every year on programmes meant to help the poor, but neither governments nor aid agencies seem to have a good sense of what works and what does not. There is not enough evidence—a favoured word in the lexicon used by Banerjee and Duflo—on what really needs to be done.

In India, we have seen huge government programmes pushed through with flimsy empirical support. “Hundreds of things are tried but what really works on the ground? For example, has the Janani Suraksha Yojana really brought down maternal mortality? Does deworming improve school performance?

Does the shift of the name on pension cheques from the grandfather to the grandmother increase the probability of the granddaughter going to school? Abhijit and Esther have done masterly work that offers us a way to extract signals from the overall noise,” says Nachiket Mor, chairman, IFMR Trust.

Banerjee and Duflo have brought a rare microeconomic focus to development economics, akin to the revolution in the 1970s when macroeconomics was bolstered with microfoundations. In simpler language, it means that the big picture is built only after understanding what the details on the ground are. For example, they have shown that panchayats run by women tend to spend more on public goods (such as clean water) that are preferred by women.

Their journeys through the villages and slums that are populated by the poor have given the two economists a deep respect for the choices made by people less fortunate.

“Perhaps the most important lesson I have learnt is that ideas and theories play as important a role in the lives of the poor as they do in ours. Indeed, they may well be more driven by ideas, simply because they have less information about the world outside and, therefore, feel a greater need to use their collective imagination to fill the gaps in their knowledge,” says Banerjee.

This same respect is evident in their responses to a question on whether the poor should be given food or cash, and more specifically whether giving them cash would mean that the money would be frittered away on drink and entertainment—an issue that has led to animated debate in India.

“I am sure people will use their cash to buy what they want and that will sometimes be a trinket or a drink. But unless you give them more food than they would have bought in any case, they can also do that with the money they save because they get food from the government. And if they think they have too much food they can just sell it. In the old days, when people like my parents were entitled to ‘rations’, it was customary to sell your lowquality rice and wheat rations to the poor,” says Banerjee.

Adds Duflo: “I think it would be quite patronizing to try to explain to the poor that they have the wrong preferences, and that they need to change. We would do exactly the same thing if we were in their circumstances.” She then offers concrete solutions. “Instead, we should make sure it is easy and cheap for them to get the nutrition they need, while eating the foods they like to eat. In this way, they would be able to get both a television and adequate nutrition. For example, if salt fortified with iron and iodine was a bit cheaper than regular salt, then both adults and children would be less likely to suffer from anaemia. It would be great use of public money.”

However, there are many economists who feel that the sort of work that is done by Banerjee and Duflo is a fad and underestimates the deeper structural reasons for mass poverty. In its March-April issue, Boston Review has a debate on the importance of randomized control trials—one type of experiment favoured by the MIT Poverty Action Lab. In his contribution to the debate, economist Pranab Bardhan begins by saying that random evaluations have enriched economics, but adds: “There are other issues in the discipline that may be ignored as the experimental programme becomes its own kind of fad: researchers often lose interest in important questions that cannot feasibly be explored using randomization methods. Some of these questions are historical, institutional, and structural in nature and have very little to do with the impact of simple treatments such as those of a micro-health or educational intervention.”

Other critics ask whether micro studies that reveal behavioural patterns in a specific region can offer useful general rules for policymakers.

When I asked Banerjee about these criticisms—though not specifically the points raised by Bardhan—he replied: “If you think about it, what are these great insights that really guide national policy? A few general ideas about the importance of some property rights protection, some recognition of the importance of market forces and exposure to foreign trade, etc. But even there we know that the general insights really do not go very far.”

L12

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

Travel

LOUNGE JAYANTHI KURU­UTUMPALA

SRI LANKA

Elephantasia

Midday meal: A playful bunch of calves at the Uda­ walawe Transit Camp; and (below) two baby elephants being fed their lunch at the camp.

SHREYA RAY/MINT

B Y S HREYA R AY

Tourist, animal lover or wildlife freak, you’ll be seeing elephants everywhere by the time you’re done with Sri Lanka

shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· here are many reasons to go to Sri Lanka. It is the Emerald Isle of the Indian Ocean, with a gorgeous coastline, turquoise waters, and wonderful food. There is no-fuss visa-on-arrival and the currency is one of the few that requires Indians to perform division sums, instead of the more painful multiplication ones.

Civil war over, two of my best friends living there, and the reason I go there? Animals.

To give readers context: This is the same person who wanted to become a vet or zookeeper as a child, and skips splendid beaches in Bali just for a tete-atete with lion cubs.

So visiting this stunning country for the first time, I decide to focus my three-and-a-half days there around elephants. The idea was to appreciate the elephant in all the three schools of elephant tourism: 1) as a crass tourist, stuffing shopping bags full of elephant souvenirs; 2) seeing elephants in captivity to strike a balance between being a tourist and being an animal lover (incompatible concepts

T

TRIP PLANNER/SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka issues visas on arrival if you have a valid passport and ticket for a return/onward journey.

One-month advance booking return fares are currently: Delhi R13,176 R13,179

Sri Lankan Airlines SpiceJet Jet Airways India

Indian Ocean

SRI LANKA

Bangalore R12,851 -

Eat

Stay

Jaffna

Puttalam

Mumbai R14,239 R17,431

Batticaloa

Chennai R10,594 R6,860 R9,547

Do

At Udawalawe, the Hasthiagara eco-lodge is about $100 (around R4,500) per night. Visit http://tuskerwild.weebly.com/ or email rohanw@janashakthi.com to check availability and current rates.

 Try the Indonesian cuisine imported to Sri Lanka by the Dutch.

Lamp Rais is a combination of rice, Kandy vegetables, ‘sambal’ and meat/fish, all cooked and steamed in banana leaf; Love Cake is a Dutch cake Hikkaduwa adapted to include dates and jaggery.  Beef curry and string hoppers: Only red meat does justice to spicy Sri Lankan curry, and string hoppers are a favourite accompaniment.  Drink some Sri Lankan arrack, available at most liquor shops.

Don’t leave Sri Lanka without seeing some of its coastline. In the winter, the western coast is where the action is; in the summer, head east for turquoise water and beautiful sunsets.

Colombo

GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

as I was to find out later); and 3) for the real elephant lovers, elephants in the wild.

Elephant souvenirs Anyone with Sri Lankan friends would have heard of—and been given presents from—Odel (if you haven’t, you might want to question your friendship). Since I still have a day to go before I get to legs 2 and 3 of my elephantasia, and I do want to replenish my stock of elephant T-shirts, I decide to make a day of Odel.

Look at the website if you don’t believe me, but Odel really has the most incredible variety of elephants, in all shapes and sizes, on clothes, crockery, and cutlery, and more. Unfortunately, as I get to know only after I have donated a substantial part of my savings to their cause, their efforts are restricted to marketing, and they haven’t done much for the animal. Crass commercialism, I think, holding on to my bag of elegoodies, as I prepare for the more “real” leg of elephantasticness.

Elephants in captivity Most Sri Lankans are immensely proud of their wildlife and will never encourage any activity that hurts animals. All my pleas to go to the Pinnawala elephant orphanage are ruthlessly trampled upon by Jayanthi, my women’s activist-adventuresportsperson friend. “That’s not how we want you to see the eles,” she says.

The Pinnawala elephant orphanage was set up in 1975, a time when the elephant population on the island was close to extinction. Today, the orphanage has about 3,000 orphans which, according to the official website, is the “biggest herd of captive elephants in the world”.

When I see the website I realize why Jayanthi objected to it. It lists an orphan who lost a leg in a mine, and another one that is totally blind as its key selling points. “For a few Sri Lankan rupees” tourists are allowed to touch the animals, or take a picture of the babies feeding. The animals are all chained, spoilt rotten by the attention (it’s common to see people feed them bananas)

and only marginally better off than circus animals.

And so we drop Pinnawala in favour of an elephant transit camp, since I was insistent on seeing baby elephants up close. The transit camp, built into the Udawalawe National Park, is where orphaned or lost baby elephants are fed, before they can be rehabilitated into the wild. A board at the entrance reads: “Do not request to interact with the animals. Any human contact makes it difficult for them to be reintegrated back into the jungle.” I want to fold up and die. This is aimed at me: the despicable tourist who encouraged animalwhorism, and not the animal lover I thought myself to be.

But the sight of the babies (albeit from a distance) is therapeutic. They stand queued-up, and tumble out one-by-one towards the feeding area to gulp down their jug of milk (one of their four daily meals). Most wait patiently, but there are tantrums off and on. One of the calves, tired of waiting, rushes in before he’s called and sends a smaller calf by the feeding area toppling like a beach ball. The audience collectively sighs “Aneyyy!” (untranslatable Sinhala word that means “please”, “poor thing”, or “oh no!”, depending on the context). A few babies later, a much-reformed me

leaves the transit camp.

Elephants in the wild For an authentic taste of the wild, my friends ensure that we stay at an elephant-themed eco lodge in Udawalawe, ensconced in the jungle itself. The bedroom would have been a balcony in a regular house, open to the forest on three sides; the bathroom doesn’t have a ceiling. At 6am, three of us leave for the safari. The rules are simple: Don’t leave the jeep. These are not the babies you find at Pinnawala. Wild elephants, usually gentle giants, can also go completely berserk.

The park is a sanctuary for all sorts of animals, and the first ones to appear are water buffaloes, bathing in a huge lake. The peacocks arrive next, and perform item numbers in front of our jeeps.

About 20 minutes into the safari, we first see a fluttering grey ear.

Then, suddenly, more grey, more ears, whole bodies, of all sizes. It’s an entire herd.

They stand there grazing: mummy, papa, grandma, grandpa, cousins, uncles, aunts, and hidden between all of them stands the Child, all of a few weeks old. The babies in the herd are always hidden, says our guide, because the family members protect them by surrounding them on all sides.

After half an hour of grazing, play-

ing and giving us the best photoops, the herd decides to push off.

My curiosity finally satiated, I head back to the lodge, eager for some curry. There’s just one problem. I’m seeing elephants everywhere. In the bedroom curios, on the bathroom tiles, and even though my friend tells me this is the décor and not my imagination, I can’t quite believe her. I see elephants in random objects, furniture, even tree trunks. I suspect this is what Elephantastic Country does to everyone.

CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Colombo has lots for children, but unless they’re fond of animal­ spotting, there’s not much for them to do at Udawalawe.

SENIOR­FRIENDLY RATING

The drive to Udawalawe is smooth, and there’s plenty of scope for older people to relax, but they might not be able to participate in the local hikes and treks.

LGBT­FRIENDLY RATING

Colombo is more accepting and has a large and active LGBT scene but smaller towns are conservative.

TRAVEL L13

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

HOLIDAY POST MORTEM | VR FEROSE

Browsing in the hills

SANDEEP SAHDEV/HINDUSTAN TIMES

VR FEROSE

VR FEROSE

Collection drive: (clockwise from above) The Mall in Shimla; the Maria Brothers store stocks an original copy of the American Declaration of Independence; and Ferose and his wife, Deepali Kulkarni, both collect books.

Being the last at breakfast, burrowing in quaint old book stores for rare volumes, and other ways to make short work of vacations Rather than an exotic locale, VR Ferose, 37, the MD of SAP Labs India, would much rather be in Shimla or some other unhurried hill station. Edited excerpts from an interview

What has been taking you to Shimla?

I am intrigued by all hill stations. I was in Delhi for two and a half years before I moved to Bangalore. I have been to all the usual suspects: Mussoorie, Nainital and Shimla. In many ways they are all similar and my attraction to them is explained by the fact that I am a lazy person. I wouldn’t go for a holiday that requires too much work. The idea is to relax. I am the last person at the breakfast table, after which I go around and see a few places. But what I typically do is go hunting for book stores.

What sort of book stores?

For more than a decade I have been travelling looking for book stores. The best books are found in the rarest of places. If you read a Lonely Planet, or any travel book, they will not tell you where to find a book store. My search is to find nice and quaint book stores. All three hill stations seem to have good book stores. I guess it has something to do with the fact that there

are 20-25 famous authors who have settled in these places.

They even have something like a Woodstock for writers. In Mussoorie there is the Cambridge book store, where Ruskin Bond sits.

Is there a favourite in Shimla?

Maria Brothers book store has a huge collection of rare books, some of which are worth lakhs of rupees, but it is really a small corner shop. They became

FOOT NOTES | AADISHT KHANNA

famous because they have one of the 27 copies of the American Declaration of Independence printed in June 1776. Obviously, it’s not for sale, but it is an indication of what else one might find there. I saw some rare books there, and bought a priceless signed copy of Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography.

Book stores, is that all you do? What about family?

I walk around the place, and try to find the circle of people who know these things. I also look out for funny signs, which India has plenty of. I could write a book on the funny ones I have seen. When I go with family, I have to do the touristy stuff. My wife collects books too, but we don’t buy the same books, so we spend twice the amount.

Her idea would be to read the oldest version—say, the first edition of an Agatha Christie. If you want a sense of history, you should read old ones.

What other stores have interested you?

I recently spent two weeks in PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY

Thai Cooking Holidays Thai Cooking Holidays has tied up with the Bangkok training school of the Blue Elephant, one of Europe’s top Thai restaurants.

You can do a one-day intensive cooking course there on your regular Thailand vacation, or a seven-day course at the Thailand Culinary School at Chiang Mai in which you’ll learn to prepare more than 30 classic Thai recipes.

For details, visit www.thaicookingholidays.co.uk

K

itchens have invaded television sets—in the past six months, Sanjeev Kapoor, Zee Network and the Alva Brothers have launched 24-hour food channels in quick succession, lifestyle channels are increasing their food and cooking programming, and the Top Chef franchise re-entered Indian consciousness last week when Floyd Cardoz won the American show for making an upma remix.

Fun as it is to watch really good food taking shape on a TV set, there’s no substitute to doing it yourself. And as good as TV chefs are, they can’t give you personalized attention.

The solution? A cooking holiday that combines cooking classes, shopping for local ingredients and a resort experience.

Cooking holidays are still niche experiences. The people

As told to Pavitra Jayaraman. pavitra.j@livemint.com

WWW.THEPIMENTA.IN

Season to taste You don’t have to stick with insipid menus any more: pick a cooking holiday full of flavour instead

London. I spent almost all my free time at JW McKenzie. It’s a book store that specializes in cricket books. I spent 6 hours there every day. When I was in Germany, I went to a place where Helmut Kohl used to live.

It was his village. This store was close to his house so he put a few copies of his signed autobiography in there. It’s in German so I have never read it.

How do you know if the book is rare?

If you are a collector, you have to know what is genuine and what is not. The book-store owner in this case is your best friend. Of course, you have to do your groundwork, as with any investment. It can be a full-time job. A collection can possibly have no end. So collectors make it finite. For example, I have started collecting books signed

by Nobel Peace Prize winners.

I once had someone offer me (Rabindranath) Tagore’s Gitanjali, signed, for `10,000.

At that time I didn’t have the money. I got a Mahatma Gandhi book signed by (S.) Radhakrishnan for just `500, and (Jawaharlal) Nehru’s The Discovery of India, signed in the year 1947, for `15,000 at Select book store in Bangalore.

On The Menu Food trail: (clockwise from above) At The Pimenta, Kerala; parippu vada; and aubergines and cashew nuts. who’ve been taking them so far have usually been Europeans, not Indians, and the prices are targeted at European tourists, even in lower-cost destinations such as India and Thailand.

That said, the cooking holiday is a travel option that’s different and exciting. Lounge explores some options.

The Culina Located not too far away from the forested areas of the Kerala ghats, The Culina is an organic farm resort. It conducts four-day and eight-day courses on Kerala’s vegetarian cuisine, which are combined with visits to local spice gardens and factories, produce markets, and handicraft

workshops. The prices, starting at `27,000 per person for a three-day course (inclusive of boarding and lodging), are steep, but you’re assured of personalized attention in the kitchen: No more than eight people are allowed to take the course at a time.

For details, visit www.keralacookingholidays.com

A cuisine-focused offshoot of established tour operator On The Go, On The Menu runs cooking holidays all over the world. It started with Goa holidays for curry-mad Britishers, but now conducts courses in countries such as Italy, Mexico, Australia and Morocco. Visit their website (www.holidayonthemenu.com) for a complete list of courses and prices.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Books

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HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT | SUGATA BOSE

The last action hero KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

A Harvard historian produces the definitive biography of India’s maverick military hero

His Majesty’s Opponent: Allen Lane/Penguin, 388 pages, `699.

B Y S OUTIK B ISWAS ···························· ahatma Gandhi called him a misguided “patriot of patriots”. Others called him the greatest military hero in India’s modern history. But Subhas Chandra Bose, the maverick Cambridge-educated lawyer who threw away a career in civil service to join the freedom movement and became an anti-colonial icon, was more than that. His death in a plane crash prompted much myth and birthed a thriving conspiracy industry.

Now Bose lives in the public imagination as “Netaji”; another popular Indian deity.

What has been lost in the process, as Sugata Bose writes in this magisterial biography of the man, was a “genuine understanding of who he was as a human being and of his place in history”. On both accounts, the Harvard historian does a splendid job.

Bose etches a vivid portrait of Netaji as a protean nationalist of fierce integrity and conviction. At home, he espoused a brand of muscular and secular nationalism, went to British prisons 11 times and was even derided by his opponents as a Bolshevik propagandist. Abroad, the radical leader effortlessly morphed into a global statesman of sorts, trying to forge friendship between Indian and European countries to counter anti-Indian British propaganda. He later raised an army of Indian prisoners of war in exile and allied with the Axis powers to take on the British.

He also excelled as a mass politician, and was elected twice to the presidency of the Indian National Congress.

Netaji was a rousing orator and read voraciously, from philosophy to history and anthropology; he became a specialist of sorts of Irish history and literature. He was also a rare modernist, who believed in a strong, industrialized India free from caste and communalism. Netaji was

M

Note: Bose calls Netaji’s association with Hitler a ‘pact with a devil’. also exceedingly brave and took enormous risks—hoodwinking the police to escape from India in the middle of the night, embarking on a rough and dangerous submarine voyage from Europe to Asia and boarding a dodgy Japanese bomber to try and reach a new battlefield. He turned into what the writer describes as an uncompromising, though not uncritical, anti-imperialist, decrying

both the racism of Nazi Germany and the brute militarism of Japan, but allying with them to free India from British rule.

At the risk of sounding banal, it is almost tempting to describe him as a flawed Renaissance man.

The biographer—a grandson of Netaji’s brother, Sarat—displays considerable acuity in examining the icon’s complex love-hate relationship with Gandhi. It was a fas-

cinating association between a wily saint and a robust warrior, a rebellious son and a stodgy patriarch. Netaji sometimes found a “deplorable lack of clarity” in Gandhi’s political strategy, regretting that the saint’s struggle was neither militant nor diplomatic enough. In the Congress, where he was elected twice and eventually “outwitted and outmaneuvered” by Gandhi, he fell out with his mentor over Congress participation in coalition governments in Muslim-majority provinces.

But did Netaji’s singleminded obsession with Indian independence end up tarnishing his legacy? Bose calls Netaji’s association with Hitler a “pact with a devil”, and a “terrible price for freedom”.

His silence on the ghastly atrocities of Nazis and fascists remains inexplicable. “By going to Germany because it happened to be at war with Britain, he ensured that his reputation would long be tarred by the opprobrium that was due to the Nazis,” writes Bose.

But Netaji was also a prescient man. He believed most Indians would never find communism appealing because of its “lack of sympathy with nationalism ... and (its) antireligious and atheistic elements”. He understood Indians well—“India is a strange land,” he wrote to his Austrian wife, Emile, in 1939, “where people are loved not because they have power, but because they give up power”.

So was Netaji eventually a tragic hero, who lost his way and died in exile after a doomed military effort to drive the British out of India?

Bose insists that the leader’s tireless wartime activities—despite the military debacle suffered by the Indian National Army (INA)—hastened India’s independence and undermined further colonial conquests. Netaji’s admirers, the author writes, believe that if he had been alive India would not have been partitioned along religious lines. But then you have to remember that his much lauded multi-faith army was raised in foreign lands. It was

possibly easier to do that, far away from the growing religious tensions at home which eventually led to the dismembering of India.

Bose writes that Netaji would have been generous towards minorities and worked resolutely towards an equal power-sharing arrangement in independent India.

But one could reasonably argue that he could have been outwitted again by the rightwing, hardline sections within the Congress. Did he put too much faith in the cohesiveness of Congress while trying to steer it to a more radical, militant position (the leftists wanted to break away, and there were socialist factions that were unwilling to shed their identities)? Was he naive to believe that a strongly cultural multi-faith nationalism would be good enough to make all communities live peacefully in an intensely fractured society?

On the other hand, his critics believe he could have easily turned into a dictator, citing his alliances with totalitarian regimes opposed to Britain. Netaji, writes Bose, did speak on three occasions supporting a period of authoritarian rule after independence to speed up socio-economic reform. Bose doubts whether the leader would have turned authoritarian—the “streak of self-abnegation”, he writes “was stronger in his character than that of self-assertion”.

Today Netaji has been appropriated by all, from the Hindu right wing for his military heroism and a misreading of his robust nationalism, to muddled Communists who did a volte face and now regard him as a patriot. Idealism may be infra dig today, but India’s stormiest petrel remains an enduring hero, and a reminder of the times when leaders dared to dream and walked the talk.

Soutik Biswas is the India editor of BBC News online.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS An Indian idealist’s life and times

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

who like chick lit.

Susan Hatler, who writes humorous and emotional “young adult” novels, is out with her latest: The Boyfriend Bylaws. It is about Melanie Porter, who has been dumped—again.

When others accuse her of “being in love with being in love”, she agrees to let her best friend, Patti, step in and direct her dating life with “the Boyfriend Bylaws”.

THE READING ROOM

TABISH KHAIR

WHO WAS ‘GHANDI’?

Ghandi­Gandhi It never ceases to irritate me even after a decade in Europe: this tendency, in many European languages, to spell Gandhi as “Ghandi”. But there is a point to it. And once you get the point, you will also get the strengths and weaknesses of Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India.

Much of the controversy over the book in India had to do with Lelyveld’s depiction of the relationship of the Mahatma with Hermann Kallenbach, lifelong bachelor and body-builder. Though Lelyveld denied that his book claimed Gandhi was bisexual, it is clear that the book highlights a complex sexuality, with reference to that particular relationship.

But the point is not whether such a suggestion is

valid or not. The book, in many ways, is an interesting study of a fascinating man. It is also not hostile to either Gandhi or India. It has a number of strengths, and only one major weakness: It is a book about Ghandi.

Take, for instance, even such a relatively simple matter as the growth of Gandhiji’s opposition to the caste system in South Africa. The initial pages trace this, implicitly, to a number of factors, all of which were valid and all of which—including the influence of Christian proselytisers—are West-facing. It fails to comment on the fact, noted but not developed, of the Bhakti and even Jain influence on Gandhi (and his family) or that Gandhi had been brought to South Africa to represent a group of Muslim businessmen.

Both these factors are central

to an understanding of Gandhi’s evolving scepticism about the caste system.

The problem is not just the fact that Western scholars, inevitably, are more likely to focus on Western bridges. The problem is also that the generation of leaders to which Gandhiji belonged—whether Asian or African—were forced by circumstances to address a colonial and, hence, Western presence in their public pronouncements.

It is one of the fascinating things about Gandhiji that he developed from this position—a lawyer petitioning the Raj—to that of swaraj (self-rule), which finally went beyond the political. But it is also a fact that in his words Gandhiji seldom ceased to face the West. It is difficult today; it was impossible then.

It was only in his evolving

Kris Twain

Faux name: ‘Ghandi’ is not meant as an insult to Gandhi. practice—including the garb Churchill never understood— that he consciously ignored the West and faced only his own peoples.

Unless this fact is borne in mind, all biographies of Gandhi will end up being

biographies of Ghandi.

Chick lit I am sometimes asked by aspiring writers to suggest a reading list. I tell them: Read as widely as possible. So here is something for those of you

Kris Saknussemm’s new novel, Enigmatic Pilot, belongs to the category of fantasy literature.

Its protagonist is a six-year-old boy who could not possibly exist in real life but is eminently believable—and a refreshing contrast to children in some recent non-fantasy novels who could exist in real life and remain irritatingly unbelievable. Enigmatic Pilot is a rip-roaring trip through a fantastic mid-19th century America, a “tall tale too true” written in the spirit of Mark Twain’s novelistic journeys.

Write to Tabish at thereadingroom@livemint.com

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CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH

Imperious: Hrithik Roshan (left) in Jodhaa Akbar was only partially successful— like most fictive Akbars.

The best of the worst Crime novels create effective villains, but who are the true greats in this hall of infamy?

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hat would a crime novel be without its bad guy? Nothing. The villains create nuisance, monger mischief, and are there for the hero to pummel. But if one takes a closer look at the baddies, one might wonder if these guys are for real—and the answer is: not very much.

Most crime novelists use stereotypes for criminal opponents—either Professor Moriarty clones with evil chromosomes whose raison d’etre is to simply be a “Napoleon of Crime”, or maladjusted types with bad childhoods who go nuts at the mention of being the fat ugly child who never got the chick, which is why they now want to destroy the world. Open any run-of-the-mill detective novel and look for the criminal’s confession page—it’s all there in black and white.

Writers resort to sketchy crooks because they know that readers don’t have much sympathy for the baddies. And readers generally accept that a crook is a crook is a crook, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. I did a quick survey and here’s a sample list of the No. 1 arch villains: The aforementioned Moriarty is renowned pulp thriller translator Sudarshan Purohit’s favourite. The calculatingly cruel Count Fosco from The Woman in White (1860)

by Wilkie Collins is the most compelling villain according to quizmaster Arul Mani. Dracula from the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker is, of course, suspense writer Stephen King’s topper; British newspaper The Telegraph tops its “Fifty Foulest Fiends” with Satan from Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667); and The Daily Mail’s “Ten Greatest Literary Villains” is topped by Fagin from Oliver Twist (1838).

So authorities agree that the best evildoers belong to a pre-modern era, and only two out of the abovementioned five star in crime novels.

Now why is that? One reason could be that it is tiresome for authors to invest energy in creating bad guys who are bound to lose—and usually die—in the end, which means that they won’t make it to the sequel anyway. And the more stereotypical among current villains can’t, of course, measure up to the primordial evil of ancient literature. By ancient I

mean anything written before the 1930s, when American pulp crime fiction made us modern.

However, there are a few iconic villains in contemporary literature: Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter created by Thomas Harris, Patrick Bateman—aka the American Psycho—by Bret Easton Ellis, and that nurse from Stephen King’s Misery who cures her favourite author’s writer’s block with a sledgehammer. And I’d say that Graham Greene created a number of genuinely unforgettable crooks in Pinkie Brown (Brighton Rock), Alden Pyle (The Quiet American) and Harry Lime (The Third Man).

Then there’s Tom Ripley, introduced in Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley (1956), who is also a protagonist in some five movies including Purple Noon (1960), in which Ripley was played by none less than Alain Delon, and Wim Wenders’ The American Friend (1977).

Ripley is that rarity in crime fiction: a sympathetic psychopath who becomes something of a hero. It essentially goes against our moral sense to follow, with interest, the exploits of a murderer, and to sympathize with a person who ruins other people’s lives, so how did Highsmith achieve this?

Writers resort to sketchy crooks because they know that readers don’t have much sympathy for the baddies

My theory is that Ripley is an evolved, ironical version of Holden Caulfield, the young protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (incidentally published just five years before the first Ripley novel). Although there are hints of much earlier American novels by Henry James (The Ambassadors) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night), Ripley essentially is Holden who decides to, instead of going on cribbing and sulking, escape the rat race, the miasma and success mantras of Western civilization and forge his own dream life. Where Holden is caught in that rye field dream, Ripley makes a getaway.

He goes from New York to Italy where he takes over the identity of his soft-boiled untalented compatriot Dickie Greenfield, another escapee, after clobbering him, tying an anchor to his foot and sinking him in the Mediterranean. The novel picks up from there as Ripley turns himself into what Dickie could have been if he had realized his potential—an arts connoisseur living the good life in a palazzo, instead of beach-bumming. Ripley’s talent lies in how he is able to impersonate the ultimate expat.

But it is tricky to be Dickie.

“He had imagined himself acquiring a bright new circle of friends with whom he would start a new life with new attitudes, standards and habits that would be far better and clearer than those he had had all his life. Now he realized that it couldn’t be. He would have to keep a distance from people, always. He might acquire the different standards and habits, but he could never acquire the circle of friends—not unless he went to Istanbul or Ceylon, and what was the use of acquiring the kind of people he would meet in those places? He was alone, and it was a lonely game he was playing.”

So reading about Ripley is

not just a matter of following a murderer through a psychopathic spree. The author transposes the moral issues on to a practical level and tries to discuss what career options there are for a psychopath. To his surprise Ripley finds that it may occasionally be better to not kill a person. He also takes a perverse joy in being privy to the investigation into the case—the Italian police know that somebody has been killed, either Ripley or Dickie or some other tourist, and Ripley keeps switching identities and eluding them.

Patricia Highsmith specialized in such psychopathic/ neurotic heroes and in her guidebook, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, she discusses the problem of making the criminal hero likeable “or at least not repugnant”.

She suggests giving “the murderer-hero as many pleasant qualities as possible—generosity, kindness to some people, fondness for painting or music or cooking, for instance. These qualities can also be amusing in contrast to his criminal or homicidal traits.” Read that carefully: Here’s the blueprint for Hannibal Lecter & Co. Authors generally don’t explore their crooks as much as these crooks deserve. The trick is to make the character natural—and that is what Highsmith did. She says, “No book was easier for me to write, and I often had the feeling Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing.” And that is why Ripley is my No. 1 crook. Anybody who has a better suggestion can email me and we’ll rewrite the list of the best baddies.

Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based writer of Swedish fiction and the author of Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan.

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

AFP

Psycho: (clockwise from left) The beautiful but sinister Ripley played by Matt Damon (right); Alain Delon (left) in the thriller Purple Noon; and Anthony Hopkins’ on­screen version of Hannibal Lecter.

AFP

RULER OF THE WORLD | ALEX RUTHERFORD

The Mughal Hrithik Roshan Rutherford’s latest in the ‘Empire of the Moghul’ series is a disappointing book about the greatest emperor B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ··························· here is something about Akbar the Mughal.

Akbar won wars. Akbar signed treaties. Akbar loved paintings.

Akbar loved hunting. Akbar conquered. Akbar consolidated.

Akbar persecuted. Akbar brought peace. Akbar thought. Akbar debated. Akbar created religions.

Akbar was, in other words, a jack of all trades. One of the Jesuit priests who came to Akbar’s court in 1580, Francis Henriques, wrote: “Akbar knows a little of all trades, and sometimes loves to practise them before his people, as a carpenter, or as a blacksmith, or as an armourer.”

Nothing was beyond Akbar. So much so that he is one of the “great” figures in history along with Alexander, Constantine, Darius and Iyer (the last was a film with Mammootty playing a Malayali Nostradamus. It has a confusing, creepy sex scene).

But most of all history found Akbar worthy of being portrayed

by Hrithik Roshan.

Yet what is it about Akbar that makes him so inaccessible to fiction? Prithviraj Kapoor’s portrayal of Akbar in Mughal-e-Azam is so over the top it floats miles above the rest of the film, visible from the earth only as a tiny dot of ham.

Roshan’s Akbar is impressive onscreen, but the film was forgotten by the time you’d made it to the multiplex parking lot.

Perhaps fiction can only handle so much overwhelming fact.

Yet I was tremendously excited to read Ruler of the World, the third and latest instalment in Alex Rutherford’s Empire of the Moghul period fiction quintet. So far the series has produced two pulsating books that covered a wide, turbulent swathe of Mughal history. The first, on Babur, was markedly better than the second that comprised Humayun’s opium-laced reign. Yet the authors— there are two—had found a clever way of using ornamentation, visceral violence and strong central personalities to gloss over plot inadequacies. The end products were both very readable. And now that they had Akbar to deal with in Book 3, I figured, things could only get better.

The most infuriating thing about Ruler of the World is the dialogue. In order to somehow cover periods of history of great length and depth, the book frequently jumps years at a time.

Unfortunately the authors often use dialogue to help us catch up.

What you have is the “Hello?

Speaking. Yes? What! You are telling me that my boss has found out about my affair with his daughter and now he has decided to fire me and replace me with my archnemesis!!!” kind of dialogue that

T

Empire of the Moghul—Ruler of the World:

Hachette/Headline, 401 pages, `495.

plagues bad sitcoms. Sample this

by Akbar: “The crashing waves and seemingly limitless power of the ocean are a salutary reminder to me not to become vainglorious and over-confident. Although I have led great armies, won great victories, filled my treasuries and come to reign over vast millions—many more than any other ruler—I am still just a man, insignificant and transitory in the face of eternal nature.”

Mind you, this is not Akbar musing to himself. No. He actually says this to one of his generals. It is as if there was a tremendous shortage of full-stops in the Mughal empire at the time.

It soon becomes clear that the authors have decided to once again use violence and set-piece battles to plug holes. Brains pop out, eyes get slashed open and there is an awful lot of stabbing between the ribs. An awful lot.

But the book becomes an ordeal when, in the second half, it shifts focus to Salim, the future Jehangir. Salim’s general approach to life is to whine and wallow in self-pity. Akbar—who now sounds like a cantankerous old man who plays games with his family—is pushed to the background. The rest of the story is told from Salim’s perspective.

Ruler of the World is perhaps the most violent of the three books so far. But that is also because violence is used here liberally to fill in a listless storyline.

There are opportunities for gripping storytelling—Akbar’s dyslexia, and the possibility that he was inspired by Queen Elizabeth and Henry VIII in England to create his own syncretic Din-i-Ilahireligion. Butbotharedealt with with the most cursory of touches.

Still, Rutherford has readers hooked on an addictive but waning drug. Like the films of Roland Emmerich, one has no option but to subject oneself to the ordeal.

Meanwhile Akbar looms just beyond reach and comprehension. As ever.

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REVIEW | UNNATURAL SELECTION

The war against girls MA LIUMING/SOTHEBY’S/WSJ

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Since the 1970s, 163 million female foetuses have been aborted by parents seeking sons.

A new book has other startling findings

B Y J ONATHAN V . L AST ···························· ara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that’s as far as the natural window goes.

Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China’s and India’s populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Hvistendahl’s counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence.

In the mid-1970s, amniocentesis, which reveals the sex of a baby in utero, became available in developing countries. Originally meant to test for foetal abnormalities, by the 1980s it was known as the “sex test” in India and other places where parents put a premium on sons. When amnio was replaced by the cheaper and less invasive ultrasound, it meant that most couples who wanted a baby boy could know ahead of time if they were going to have one and, if they were not, do something about it. “Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later,” reads one ad put out by an Indian clinic, a reference to the price of a sex test versus the cost of dowry.

But oddly enough, Hvistendahl notes, it is usually a country’s rich, not its poor, who lead the way in choosing against girls. “Sex selection typically starts with the urban, well-educated stratum of society,” she writes. “Elites are the first to gain access to a new technology, whether MRI scanners, smartphones—or ultrasound machines.” The behaviour of elites then filters down until it becomes part of the broader culture. Even more unexpectedly, the decision to abort baby girls is usually made by women—either by the mother or, sometimes, the mother-in-law.

If you peer hard enough at the data, you can actually see parents demanding boys. Take South Korea. In 1989, the sex ratio for first births there was 104 boys for every 100 girls—perfectly normal. But couples who had a girl became increasingly desperate to acquire a boy. For second births, the male

M

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men: PublicAffairs, 314 pages, $26.99 (around `1,200). number climbed to 113; for third, to 185. Among fourth-born children, it was a mind-boggling 209.

Hvistendahl argues that such imbalances are portents of Very Bad Things to come. “Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live,” she writes.

“Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent.” As examples she notes that high sex ratios were at play as far back as the fourth century BC in Athens—a particularly bloody time in Greek history—and during China’s Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century (both eras featured widespread female infanticide). She also notes that the dearth of women along the frontier in the American West probably had a lot to do with its being wild. In 1870, for instance, the sex ratio west of the Mississippi was 125:100. In California it was 166:100. In Nevada it was 320. In western Kansas, it was 768.

There is indeed compelling evidence of a link between sex ratios and violence. High sex ratios mean that a society is going to have “surplus men”—that is, men with no hope of marrying because there are not enough women. Such men accumulate in the lower classes, where risks of violence are already elevated. And unmarried men with limited incomes tend to make trouble. In Chinese provinces where the sex ratio has spiked, a crime wave has followed. Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio.

A high level of male births has other, far-reaching, effects. It becomes harder to secure a bride, and men can find themselves buying or bidding for them. This, Hvistendahl notes, contributes to China’s astronomical household savings rate; parents know they must save up in order to secure brides for their sons (an ironic reflection of the Indian ad campaigns suggesting parents save money by aborting girls).

And to beat the “marriage squeeze” caused by skewed sex ratios, men in wealthier imbalanced countries poach women from poorer ones. Hvistendahl reports from Vietnam, where the mail-order-bride business is booming thanks to the demand for women in China. Prostitution

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Girl power: (clockwise) Healthcare graffiti in Roshni village, Madhya Pradesh; No 23 (2005­06), a painting by Ma Liuming; a girl in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh; and children at a school in Lucknow read up on child rights.

booms too—and not the sex-positive kind that Western feminists are so fond of.

Economist Gary Becker has noted that when women become scarce, their value increases, and he sees this as a positive development. But as Hvistendahl demonstrates, “this assessment is true only in the crudest sense”. A 17-year-old girl in a developing country is in no position to capture her own value. Instead, a young woman may well become chattel, providing income either for families or for pimps. As Columbia economics professor Lena Edlund observes, “The greatest danger associated with prenatal sex determination is the propagation of a female underclass,” that a small but still significant group of the world’s women will end up being stolen or sold from their homes and forced into prostitution or marriage.

All this may sound dry, but Hvistendahl is a first-rate reporter and has filled Unnatural Selection with gripping details. She has interviewed demographers and doctors

from Paris to Mumbai. She spends a devastating chapter talking with Paul Ehrlich, the man who mainstreamed overpopulation hysteria in 1968 with The Population Bomb—and who still seems to think that getting rid of girls is a capital idea (in part because it will keep families from having more and more children until they get a boy). In another chapter she speaks with Geert Jan Olsder, an obscure Dutch mathematician who, by accident of history, contributed to the formation of China’s “One Child” policy when he met a Chinese scientist in 1975.

Later, she visits the Nanjing headquarters of the “Patriot Club”, an organization of Chinese surplus men who plot war games and play at mock combat.

Hvistendahl also dredges up plenty of unpleasant documents from Western actors such as the Ford Foundation, the United Nations and Planned Parenthood, showing how they pushed sex-selective abortion as a means of controlling population growth. In 1976, for instance, the medical

director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Malcom Potts, wrote that when it came to developing nations, abortion was even better than birth control: “Early abortion is safe, effective, cheap and potentially the easiest method to administer.”

As early as 1969, the Population Council’s Sheldon Segal was publicly proclaiming the benefits of sex-selective abortion as a means of combating the “population bomb” in the East. Overall Hvistendahl paints a detailed picture of Western Malthusians pushing a set of terrible policy prescriptions in an effort to road-test solutions to a problem that never actually manifested itself.

There is so much to recommend in Unnatural Selection that it’s sad to report that Hvistendahl often displays an unbecoming political provincialism. She begins the book with an approving quote about gender equality from Mao Zedong and carries right along from there. Her desire to fault the West is so ingrained that she criticizes the British empire’s efforts to

stamp out the practice of killing newborn girls in India because “they did so paternalistically, as tyrannical fathers”.

Hvistendahl is particularly worried that the “right wing” or the “Christian right”—as she labels those whose politics differ from her own—will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself. She believes that something must be done about the purposeful aborting of female babies or it could lead to “feminists’ worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions”.

While Hvistendahl is not willing to say that something has gone terribly wrong with the proabortion movement, she does recognize that two ideas are coming into conflict: “After decades of fighting for a woman’s right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right.”

Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011

Culture

LOUNGE FILM

MUSIC MATTERS

Playful Tamil noir

SHUBHA MUDGAL

THE ‘N’ WORD

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A new acclaimed film points to a clutch of directors who are injecting irony and wryness into the genre

B Y S AMANTH S UBRAMANIAN ···························· n the canto of the Ramayan known as the Aaranya Kaandam, things have just hit the fan. Dasharath has died of heartbreak. Ram, Lakshman and Sita have been expelled to the forest, leaving behind two brothers, an assortment of mothers, and a kingdom ruled by a regent. Their exile from Ayodhya is soon compounded by their exile from each other; Ravana kidnaps Sita, and Ram, sinking into grief “like an elephant into mud”, Valmiki tells us, withdraws even from his brother.

Of all the epic’s cantos, this is the bleakest, the fates tossing around even a god in human form.

Bleakness is also the stock in trade for Aaranya Kaandam, the Tamil film that is the revelatory debut of a young director named Thiagarajan Kumararaja. Even its trailer—titillating us on YouTube ever since the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the South Asian International Film Festival last October—features, beneath chirpy narration, recurrent images of personal anguish. Brows frown, faces crumple, beatings are administered;at least once,every lead character is shown engulfed by loneliness, exiled unto themselves.

These characters are plucked from what W.H. Auden, writing about Raymond Chandler’s noir, once called the Great Wrong Place: the underworld. A jowly Jackie Shroff plays Singaperumal, a grizzled don whose authority is waning; when he can’t muster the courage to buy some stolen cocaine, a lieutenant offers to take the risks.

Meanwhile, the bag of “white man’s snuff” falls into the hands of a knifetongued boy and his drunken father. Elsewhere, Singaperumal’s moll Subbu (Yasmin Ponnappa)

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Dark and racy: Jackie Shroff (in white kurta); and (below) Yasmin Ponappa in stills from Aaranya Kaandam. and his youngest foot soldier Sappa, having fallen into giddy infatuation, decide to pilfer their master’s money and decamp to Mumbai.

“It’s a big city,” Sappa assures Subbu. “Nobody knows Singaperumal. It’s all Dawood out there.”

Aaranya Kaandam is the latest—and arguably the best—of a short chain of films that have buttoned the clothes of classic noir on to Tamil cinema. When these films began to be made, it was easy to have misgivings. Noir seemed to be a convenient excuse to give movies

over entirely to depictions of gangsters, to create characters so laconic and hard-boiled that they lost all nuance, to shoot in a palette alternating between black and neon, and to gussy up in stylistic devices the vicious violence that can often stain Tamil movies. Pudhupettai, in 2006, understood the visual grammar of noir marvellously—sometimes too marvellously, when one had to squint to pick out the less dark elements in a wholly dark frame. But it was otherwise tedious, a familiar story told in familiar fashion, emptied of humour, and unremitting in its violence.

Thankfully, film-makers learnt to stick their tongues into their cheeks, to inject irony and wryness into their noir. Vaa Quarter Cutting, a 2010 movie for which Kumararaja wrote one song, applies some of the tropes of noir—its eclectic characters; its mysterious dangers; its chiaroscuro look—to an enjoyably ludicrous plot. On a dry day, two ditherers hurtle through the night to procure a quarter-bottle of Old Monk rum, an alcoholic reprisal of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Roughly halfway through, the directors offer us a broad wink; during one misadventure, our heroes pass a wall plastered with the most iconic pulp image in recent memory: the jasmine-bedecked, lavishly proportioned,

gun-wielding amma from the cover of The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction.

Aaranya Kaandam belongs to this strain of playful noir, and it’s a better movie for it. The gloom of moral ambiguity is cut by the banter between the father and his exasperated son (“Are you really an idiot or do you just act like one?” the son hollers in despair; the line sounds so much better in Tamil and in context that it gets the film’s biggest laugh). Hectic chase sequences are set to curious music: an Irish jig melody once, Vivaldi another time, plinking piano notes on yet another occasion. Like Quentin Tarantino, Kumararaja constructs elaborate conversational riffs that go nowhere; in Kill Bill 2, Bill and the Bride discuss Superman, and in Aaranya Kaandam, gangsters swap pick-up lines that work on women. “Ask her if she likes Kamal Haasan or Rajinikanth,” one hoodlum says.

“That’ll tell you the kind of aunty she is.” This sweet advisory is dispensed even as, in an adjacent room, Singaperumal is handing Subbu a ferocious thrashing—levity and cruelty, close neighbours in a crowded world.

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You can’t watch a music channel or flip radio stations without hearing one of your songs these days. How did the journey start?

I was born in Mumbai but grew up in Lucknow. I returned to Mumbai in 1999 after I graduated with a BA in English and economics. I had wanted to be a singer all along really. In Lucknow, I was a member of state-level performing bands and

GURINDER OSAN/AP

Dance drama: BJP leader Sushma Swaraj at a press meet.

Aaranya Kaandam released in select theatres on 10 June.

command any respect. Is it not the right of all persons to practise their respective professions with dignity? As for politicians, their hypocrisy knows no bounds. When it is crowd-collecting time, they are quick to use artistes, actors, singers and dancers to campaign for them. Later, they become “naachne-gaane waale” of no worth.

Remember BJP’s loose cannon Pramod Mahajan, who rooted for a Bharat Ratna for Dhirubhai Ambani by stating that every naachnewala and gaanewala is given a Padma award by the government, so why not the big one for Ambani?

Well, every political party has its share of loose cannons, but perhaps it’s time for artistes in the country to ask Raghogarh ka Loose Cannon for some explanations.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya talks about inspiration and street­speak found himself at the heart of controversies, not least to do with the alliterative play on the song’s title. The 34-year-old came to Mumbai from Lucknow to be a singer—but destiny, he says, had other plans. Edited excerpts from an interview:

he television has ensured that night after night the nation watches its politicians show their true colours as they “debate” rabble-rousing issues taken up by news channels. It was a sad day for artistes when Digvijaya Singh, a politician holding the important position of general secretary of the ruling party, and a man with many decades of experience in public speaking, used the term “nachaiyyon” in a derogatory fashion. Reacting to video footage of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushma Swaraj’s silly jig at Rajghat (possibly to celebrate what she perceived as the BJP’s success in putting the United Progressive Alliance, or UPA, in a tight spot over the mishandling of the Ramdev show), Singh asked TV audiences indignantly if the BJP had turned into a “nachaiyyon ki party”. A few days later Singh chuckled gleefully during an interview with Barkha Dutt, describing himself as a “loose cannon”.

Well, Mr Loose Cannon certainly revealed his contempt for professional dancers, and well he might. For what would he know of the deep study and discipline required of a professional dancer?

After all, “loose cannon” is a term usually reserved for persons known to be unpredictable and likely to cause damage. A more befitting description there could not be of our own Raghogarh ka Loose Cannon, Raghogarh being the thikana or kingdom ruled by Loose Cannon and family for generations.

Sadly, no one questioned the Loose Cannon enough on his irresponsible reference to dancers. In the recent past, we have been witness to calls for the banning of films and songs for their supposedly derogatory references to caste and community. But who in this country cares for the arts, artistes, nachaiyaas and gavaiyyas?

They don’t constitute a vote bank, and so Loose Cannon can say what he likes and get away with it, chuckling merrily. Barring an acclaimed danseuse brought in briefly on a lone television channel to state her response to the “N” word, no one, not even the leaders of our so-called civil society movement, bothered to take up the issue.

As for the dancer, her chance to protest was dissipated by an audio problem that just about allowed her to cite a few references to Lord Shiva as Nataraj and Lord Krishna as Natvar before the programme ended hastily.

But do we really need mythological references to be able to garner respect for the professions we practise? By that logic, janitors, sweepers, ragpickers and cleaning staff would never be able to

RITAM BANERJEE/MINT

‘DK Bose’ is an ode to the underdog B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ···························· wo years ago, a pair of singers dressed as Elvis crooned “Bol bol, why did you ditch me?” The gavel sounded the birth of a new metaphor in film music and it marked the arrival of Amitabh Bhattacharya.

If you have hummed along to Emosanal Atyachar from Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D or Character Dheela from Ready, you know Bhattacharya’s words. A forerunner among a new, energized front in lyric-writing, Bhattacharya borrows from slang, street-speak and rustic wit. Most recently, he is the man behind Bhaag DK Bose from the soon-to-be-released Delhi Belly.

With this song, Bhattacharya has

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Wordsmith: Bhattacharya got his first credited break with Aamir. worked with a local radio station.

Before coming here, I had never tried my hand at writing.

The attempt started when I was jamming with my friend, composer Amit Trivedi. I would sing random words to a melody he had composed. I would just hum and fit some words in; but they were not gibberish. Eight years ago, I wrote the songs for the album Om: The Fusion Band under the pen name of Indraneel.

It was fun and it was something to do in the days of struggle.

What happened then?

I got my first credited break with Aamir (2008) and then Dev.D (2009) released, although that was the first film I was signed for...by Anurag (Kashyap). Since then, I have written lyrics for Chance Pe Dance, Udaan, Anjaana Anjaani, No One Killed Jessica, I Am, Luv Ka The End and Ready.

‘Bhaag DK Bose’ was in the news for its lyrics and faced some criticism.

Not everything you do is accepted by all sections of society. There

are different kinds of cinema and different moods within the story—it could be depressing, intense, patriotic, romantic or mischievous. DK Bose is mischievous and you need to listen to it with a sense of humour. I don’t understand why the good, the intense, the profound is not talked about.

Why are only songs like this picked on? I have written sensitive poetry for Udaan, I Am and No One Killed Jessica, but no one called me to ask about those. They only want to know about DK Bose, Mutton and Character dheela.

What comes first—the words or the melody?

For me, the lyrics come from the melody, the script and the background. These days, 99% of the time the melody comes first because everyone likes to lock in a style: rock, Punjabi, pop, reggae, etc. Then they want a catchy hook. Once I have a hook and a visual in mind, it’s easier to put words to a tune.

DK Bose is an ode to the underdog, losers who are stuck in the system. The inspiration for the words came from the backdrop, the characters and

script. Songs like this and Mutton—the masti songs—are easy to write. Romantic songs are harder to write because the metaphors and couplets have to be poetic and original.

Do you have a background or interest in poetry?

Now that I am into lyric-writing people assume I know about shayari, meter, etc. I have never been into shayari or poetry, though I do take an interest in the work of Javed Akhtar and Gulzaar saab. I grew up listening to old Hindi songs.

What are some of the films you are working on now?

I have done the Antenna song in Always Kabhi Kabhi and the entire album of Sanjay Leela Bhansali and UTV’s My Friend Pinto. I am working on two Dharma Production films, Shakun Batra’s film with Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor and the Agneepath remake, and there’s also Yash Raj Films’ Ladies vs Ricky Bahl. But going ahead, I want to work on albums where I am the solo lyricist. As a lyricist-singer my dream would be to work with A.R. Rahman.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DELHI’S BELLY | MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

We are landing in Delhi, loosen your belts PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

JAVEED SHAH/MINT

WORD PLAY Limericks on Delhi Belly u A New Delhi tourist called Justin Sensed a stir in his lower intestine He made a dash for the dunny But he felt something runny Now his shorts are consigned to the dustbin u There was a poor tourist in Delhi Who ate lots to fill up his belly He ate from the street some questionable meat And puked ’till his legs turned to jelly u If you ever get Delhi­belly Your poetry will be no match for Shelley You will feel like the pits Cos you’ve got the shits Which runs down your leg to your wellie Source: Wanderlust.co.uk MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI/MINT

Dissecting the Capital shame that is known throughout the world as Delhi Belly

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essy, smelly and non-stop—Jane Austen would have described it as a continual state of inelegance.

Delhi’s biggest embarrassment, it is now also the title of a Bollywood film. The phrase Delhi Belly, according to the Hanklyn-Janklin dictionary, is “a stomach disorder sometimes afflicting newcomers to the capital”. Infectious amoebic agents such as Entamoeba histolytica enter the body, the intestine reacts and throws out all infection through frequent motions.

It’s not Al Qaeda, but Americans take Delhi Belly seriously. According to a US diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity since he is not authorized to share this information, his embassy in New Delhi maintains a laboratory devoted to testing for germs and diseases such as Delhi Belly.

Embassy staff often arrive at the office carrying small brown bags that have jars with “poop” samples to be tested at the lab.

Delhi Belly is not the world’s only “traveller’s diarrhoea”.

There’s a limerick to be composed from the colourfully named loosies that dot the world’s tourist traps: Turkey trots, Montezuma’s revenge, Casablanca crud, Malta dog, Singapore shakes, Aden gut, Gyppy tummy, Rangoon runs, Kathmandu quickstep, Greek gallop, Hong Kong dogs and Trotsky’s. Strangely, it is Delhi that has captured the global imagination when it comes to vomit, runs and cramps. There are actually limericks on Delhi Belly (see Word play).

In his book Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story, the guidebook series founder Tony Wheeler writes about eating something that “violently disagreed” with him.

He blamed Delhi Belly, but hold on: It happened in Iran, on the road between Esfahan and Tehran, miles away from India.

Similarly, the Bradt guide on Macedonia advises its readers that while in Macedonia, “if you are prone to a bit of Delhi Belly,

bring some suitable medication with you from home”. And Macedonia is in the Balkans. This is the respect that the world has given to a city that boasts of a toilet museum.

“The perils of Delhi Belly are exaggerated,” says Ranjana Sengupta, the author of Delhi Metropolitan. “For purely fortuitous alliterative reasons, Delhi has been awarded this undeserved reputation. An E. coli outbreak has occurred in Germany. Will future guidebooks carry dark warnings about Berlin Belly? I doubt it.”

Rubbing salt in the wound, the international travel guides to India never warn of a Mumbai Belly. “It could be because Delhi rhymes with belly,” says author Pradip Krishen.

There is no record of the phrase’s first appearance. The section on diseases in A Gazetteer of Delhi 1883-84 mentions Delhi Boil, not Delhi Belly. “The term first appeared in the summer of 1857,” claims R.V. Smith, author of several books on the city. “The Indian mutineers had taken over the capital and the British were encamped on the Ridge where many of them were incapacitated due to upset tummies. It was they who coined the term Delhi Belly.”

Some 114 years later, then US president Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger made his career’s great diplomatic gamble, with some help from Delhi’s infamous syndrome. In 1971, he went to Islamabad, where he pretended to be down with Delhi Belly that required him to recover at a Pakistani resort. In truth, he secretly flew to meet Chinese leaders in Beijing, paving the way for Nixon’s historic summit with Mao Zedong.

Then, 31 years later, American journalist Jason Overdorf moved to Delhi and started a blog called… well, guess (incidentally, the phrase was the first choice for the name of this city column too). “The name for the blog came from my wife. We thought Delhibelly.blogspot.com was catchy and would also give us

The food bug: (clockwise from top) Foreign tourists walk through Paharganj’s main bazaar; a tourist sups on an Indian thali at a Paharganj eatery; people enjoying momos from a street cart; and Canadian tourist Bryce buying a plate of aloo­chaat in Paharganj. licence to whine about the city,” says the man who has been attacked by Delhi Belly more than 20 times.

“Delhi Belly is dead,” says Delhi-based Prof. Pushpesh Pant, author of India: The Cookbook.

“Now our hygiene standards are high, bottled water is available everywhere, dhabas cater to foreigners and many eateries serve gol gappas with mineral water. The Delhi Belly scaremongers are the types who dine at five-star hotels and who like to run down India, which is now a powerhouse economy.”

In his four years as the Delhi-based Asia correspondent of The Independent, Andrew Buncombe has frequently reported on India’s booming economy. A week ago he had his latest and most serious attack of Delhi Belly. “After 6 hours of shit and vomit, I was having muscular spasms in my leg and had to be

admitted to a hospital where I was given IV (intravenous) drips,” he says.

The attack is not confined to foreigners. “I get 40 cases of Delhi Belly each month, both Indians and foreigners,” says Sanjiv Zutshi, a physician who has two clinics in Nizamuddin East.

“Carelessness about picking your food is one reason and the other factor, which is common for foreigners, is that their stomachs are not used to Indian spices and sometimes their intestines react by causing loose motions.”

For most Delhi Belly survivors, memories of the first attack are as clear as if it had happened last night. “I first had Delhi Belly in the bathroom of the Ambassador Hotel after drinking a delicious lassi near Khanna (Talkies) cinema in Paharganj in high summer,” says South African designer Marina Bang, who has been living in the city for two

years. James Baer, a freelance writer from London, who has lived in Delhi for two and a half years, suffered from Delhi Belly thrice during the first six months.

“Once was after eating a burger at a five-star hotel,” says Baer. “I was in bed for two days, feverish and cramping, almost unable to move with the pain.” Ron Lussier, a San Francisco-based photographer, visited India early this year and caught the “inevitable rumblings” of Delhi Belly, 250km away in Jaipur. “It happened after trying gol gappas,” says Lussier.

Is there any way to remain forever a Delhi Belly virgin?

“I recommend avoiding meat and especially pork during high summer. Even in the most hygienic kitchens, a failed fridge can reduce meat to a hotbed of bacteria,” says Bang. “The trick is not to search for the so-called authentic food in the grubby

eateries of Old Delhi,” says Prof.

Pant. “Have piping hot dal, tandoori roti and uncut vegetables and you will never have Delhi Belly,” promises Dr Zutshi.

The foreign backpackers in Paharganj, popular for its cheap hotels, cafés and bakeries that have shelves stacked with tattered Lonely Planet guides and toilet paper rolls, have a Hindu-like fatalism about Delhi Belly. “It’s inevitable,” says Canadian tourist Bryce, popping in fried aloo wedges he has purchased from a roadside cart. “I eat everything. If you hide from germs and bugs, of course you’ll fall sick. Your body needs to get used to all this,” he says, waving his arm at the open drains, the urinating cow, the hanging wires, the half-naked beggars and the fly-ridden aloo-chaat cart. That’s perhaps the best survival tip. mayank.s@livemint.com