Lounge 28 dec 2013 by HT Media

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

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Vol. 7 No. 52

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

LAST DANCES

25 THINGS TO FEEL HAPPY ABOUT

Performing chief ministers, a successful move to explore Mars, a TV show that didn’t make us wince and more. Who says it was all gloom and doom this year? >Page 20

REPORTING RAPE

2013 FONDANT FUN

WHY I’M NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

It is for those looking to be distracted by an inexhaustible supply of material —and not those for whom reading is a serious affair >Page 3

REIMAGINING INDIA

It became clear that we would see a different India after the 2014 election. Here, a writer sets his imagination free >Page 5

DIRTY YOUNG MEN Author Henning Mankell, 61, is best known as the creator of the iconic detective, Inspector Kurt Wallander.

HOW I SPENT THE YEAR

What happens when you sell your house and use the proceeds to doggedly chase an impossible dream >Page 4

HOME PAGE L3

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

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

VOICE LESSONS

y India’s standards too, this was an important year. It was the year we decided everything was not alright. It was the year we were done with dynasty—everyone except my father, that is—and ready to try our luck with any and every political alternative. Who knows whether or not the Aam Aadmi Party’s broom (its election symbol for sweeping change) will actually make any difference to the way Delhi is governed? At least it made urban Indians feel their voice still counts. It was the year we finally put the Ugly Indian Man under the scanner. The year we spoke up against the educated creeps in our workplaces. And talked about the horrors we faced on the streets and, worse, in our homes. It was the year everyone, including the media, was in the mood to listen to the Indian woman. Of course nothing will change until we devote time to humanizing our sons and teach them that women have as much right to life and freedom as they do—but then, this was also the year I

LOUNGE SPOTLIGHT

decided I would be positive—so maybe the process is under way. At least it was the year nobody rolled their eyes when I ranted about Indian men. Ironically, it was also the year I realized I know a lot of good men, who are as happy as us to debate their pathetic male counterparts. Personally, it was the year I decided I definitely didn’t like watching Arnab Goswami—although I must admit I felt happy when he yelled down sports officials for mistreating tribal football players. It was the year I accepted that my hair was more salt than pepper, the year I realized Babyjaan knew how to hold a tune and the year I ended the best way anyone possibly can—holidaying with extended family. We’ve tried to capture all the year’s heaving and frothing in 15 essays even though you’re probably on holiday and not reading the paper this weekend. If you did read this issue, email us your feedback at lounge@livemint.com.

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

The Amur falcon was the year’s great conservation story B Y A NANDA B ANERJEE ananda.b@livemint.com

······························ t’s hope amid gloom. 2013 will be remembered for the Amur falcon, a small, grey, insectivorous raptor that has changed lives in the wildlife conservation community, especially in Nagaland. Where tiger and rhino poaching continues unabated, conservation efforts to ensure safe passage for the Amur falcon, which makes a pit stop en route to its winter migration from Russia to South Africa, have been unprecedented. Pangti, Sungro and Aasha, three obscure little villages around the Doyang reservoir in the state’s Wokha district, made it to the world’s conservation map

this year. In October 2012, conservationists had stumbled upon the fact that thousands of falcons were being massacred every day for food and money during their two-month-long migration over Nagaland. The number of birds killed every day was staggering, estimated at anywhere between 10,000-14,000. This year, in a remarkable U-turn, not a single bird was harmed. This was the biggest conservation success story in recent years, and that too in just a year of sustained campaigning by a group of wildlife conservation NGOs and the state administration, led by the chief minister. For the complete story, visit www.livemint.com/amurfalcon

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAMKI SRINIVASAN

Priya Ramani Issue editor

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHERS: (CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT) PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT; JULIAN FINNEY/GETTY IMAGES; PAVANI KAUR/FIREFLY INDIA, NEW DELHI INSIDE PAGES: IMAGING BY: JAYACHANDRAN & MANOJ MADHAVAN/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In “Falling in line”, 21 December, this sentence should have read: The affective longing in Hashmi’s grid-like prints allows us to imagine, the repetition in the series, to remember, and the scale to help commit to memory.

FIRST PERSON

Super troopers: Flocks of Amur falcons over the Doyang reservoir.

AAKAR PATEL

WHY I’M NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA CANCAN CHU/GETTY IMAGES

It is for those looking to be distracted by an inexhaustible supply of material —and not those for whom reading is a serious affair

admire those who can use social media without the thing disrupting their lives. I find the idea of Facebook and Twitter far too seductive to be able to use them in moderation. This is of course because of their quality: Both are ideas of genius, and combine very good technology with great usefulness. They link individuals to the world in real time and in that sense are the highest expression of the Internet. All this is aided by some beautiful devices, and my friend Kumar Ketkar got it right when he described the iPad as “crack cocaine”. One can spend hours on it without noticing. The question is whether the user is able to dip into social media without succumbing to total immersion. Those who can do this are quite disciplined, and I admire them because I’m not

THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE USER IS ABLE TO DIP INTO SOCIAL MEDIA WITHOUT SUCCUMBING TO TOTAL IMMERSION. THOSE WHO CAN DO THIS ARE QUITE DISCIPLINED, AND I ADMIRE THEM BECAUSE I’M NOT AND THIS IS WHY I AM ON NEITHER FACEBOOK NOR TWITTER.

Solitary reaper: Try reading 100 pages a day and also find time to sing, learn a language and exercise. and this is why I am on neither Facebook nor Twitter. There are other reasons. As a writer, I personally find social media off-putting and not useful. Writers must be insulated from feedback, particularly of the immediate kind. One has no option but to be exposed to this on Facebook and on Twitter, and such things always carry the expectation of a response. The artist David Hockney uses an iPhone or iPad app to make paintings (can they be called that?) that he mails dozens of people, all of whom receive an

“original” that they can appreciate and give their feedback on. This is voluntary from the artist’s perspective; the writer, however, is confronted with the comments section. This is meant to be a conversation, and I accept that at times it is an intelligent one. But having comments on your work published alongside it is the equivalent of talking from atop a soapbox at Hyde Park. The hooting and the cheers and the heckling is all on display, and apparently for the benefit of the writer. All of this is fine, and

legitimate I suppose, and certainly it adds to the reader’s experience. But why subject yourself as a writer to it? Unless the idea is to bask in your popularity or infamy, there is little point. I find this to be true particularly of comments by Indians, which tend to be tangential, personal, often abusive and mostly irrelevant. I must also say that the quality of the comment is poor and that of the writing poorer. This is an anecdotal observation, but you know what I mean. It infects the other strain of social media,

which is user-generated reviews. I don’t think it is wise to pick a restaurant here through what people have written about it on the Internet. Then it is as a reader that I have the biggest problem with Facebook and Twitter. This might seem ungrateful from one whose pieces are often spread and read through links on social media. But along with the things that you want to and should read, a lot of other material is out there enticing you. Websites are brilliant at pulling you in through a seductive headline, and this is something called “clickbait”, passed around through links. Again, I think this is fine for those who are looking to be distracted by online pieces.

For such people, trawling through social media (or rather filtering stuff as it comes to you) is a good way of finding interesting things to read. But there is an inexhaustible supply of such material. One must draw a line, and I have drawn mine. This is the third year that I have been writing and reading full time, and for me the reading is a serious and educational affair. I have a pattern of reading where the broad subject is determined at the beginning of the year and the books on the list, already large, grow till it is all but unmanageable. On a good day, I go through 100 pages of a book. Why take away from this at the expense of a few hours of daily distraction, exchanging messages with acquaintances and strangers? It is hard enough to find time regularly for singing, learning languages and exercising. If I were to be on Facebook and Twitter I would rarely be able to. It used to be said contemptuously of newspaper editors that they lived in ivory towers. Meaning that they secluded themselves from the real world (the essayist Michel de Montaigne was the first man to do this) and lived among their books. I find this life greatly appealing. And one final reason for eschewing Facebook and Twitter. I don’t write where I’m not paid.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST PERSON

NEELESH MISRA

HOW I SPENT THE YEAR RAHUL MAJUMDAR/GAON CONNECTION

What happens when you sell your house and use the proceeds to doggedly chase an impossible dream :

t was an interesting faceoff. According to the tedious algorithm of new ideas and the real world, we were destined, from the beginning, to fail. According to the simple mathematics of guts and passion, there was no way we would not make it work. “It is a brilliant idea,” everyone said. “It will never work.” That face-off was being tested for the first time on a grimy afternoon in August 2012, as we entered Bhauwapur village, in a remote part of Uttar Pradesh, where our car negotiated narrow mud lanes. Young and old men crowded around, craning their necks and trying to take a peek at the curious new animal we had brought along. It was a rural newspaper. It was called Gaon Connection. It was our attempt to prove that ordinary people can start and successfully run a newspaper in India—without any outside resources, driven purely by editorial integrity, and with no political affiliations. Months before India’s first professionally run rural newspaper was launched, we were sampling a dummy copy we had created for feedback from rural readers. The older men loved the farming advice and the stories of agriculture role models. The youth loved the stories on the increasing use of Internet on mobile phones in villages, and complained that there should have been more sports stories. Goats sauntered by. Children exchanged secret verbal notes about us and laughed. Puppeteers prepared to host a show in our honour. And some distance away, as our volunteers distributed the paper, a group of women huddled around another woman who sat on a ledge, reading stories from the paper aloud for all. Snapshots like these gave us the courage we needed in this battle between logic and passion. So I sold my apartment in Noida, adjacent to Delhi, put the money in a fixed deposit and started Gaon Connection on 2 December 2012. We transported the dining table I used to sit on as a child in Nainital, and made that our conference table. The fridge at home was seized and brought to the Gaon Connection office in Lucknow, a guerrilla-style barter with my mother, as was the big cooler, two sofas and several items of cutlery from her kitchen. We cleaned our office, including our toilets, ourselves. Our initial team of two— associate editor Manish Mishra (no relation) and I—slowly grew as more and more people

Fine print: print: Gaon Connection estimates one newspaper is read by 13 readers. joined. Today, one year later, we print 15,000 copies of the weekly newspaper at The Indian Express press in Lucknow. Gaon Connection has about 15 employees and around 30 stringers who are also distributors. We walked with our newspaper into small town schools and colleges, courts, and even bombarded markets with sample copies, often being mobbed and congratulated for finally bringing out a rural paper. Gaon Connection is a 12page broadsheet newspaper that is all-colour, printed on imported newsprint, and brings together reportage, interviews, agricultural reporting, rural issues, rural cuisine, rural culture and useful information— everything from make-up tips for women and men, to the precautions needed while buying insurance, and how to use new mobile apps. The columnists include Ravish Kumar of NDTV India, Richa Aniruddha, who has for long hosted the popular TV show Zindagi Live, gender writer Vartika Nanda, Chicago-based veteran journalist Mayank Chhaya (who writes the column Amreeka Diary), digital expert Osama Manzar (also a Mint columnist), and herbal medicine expert Deepak Acharya. We completed a year this month, with our newspaper distributed by trains, buses and taxis to 48 districts across Uttar Pradesh, apart from western Bihar and Ranchi in Jharkhand. From the University of Texas at Austin, US, to the deepest

recesses of Bihar, our readers call us after reading our print and electronic versions. Broadcast alliances are being put in place. Brands and media buying companies are talking to us. We are now tying up longterm (a year or more) advertising deals with a national broadcaster, a top packaged consumer goods conglomerate and leading media buying companies. Next year, we want to scale up by becoming a daily. We are also about to launch an audio newspaper on the mobile platform for millions of consumers, another first, and we have been commissioned by Doordarshan to produce a TV show called Gaon Connection. And within 11 months of being in existence, we won our first journalism award. Editorin-chief S.B. Misra (also my father) won the Laadli National Media Award for gender sensitivity in the Best Editorials category. All this, of course, hugely affected my already chaotic professional life. Ever since I quit the last day job of my life (deputy executive editor, Hindustan Times) in 2009 and leapt into the uncertain world of the entertainment business, my life had transformed anyway. Far away from the 12pm editorial meetings, I now narrate stories on radio to 40 million listeners across 37 cities every night, do live storytelling performances and sing songs I have written over the past

‘GAON CONNECTION’ HAS ATTRACTED WIDESPREAD ATTENTION BECAUSE MAINSTREAM MEDIA HAS LONG STOPPED DOCUMENTING THE EXTRAORDINARY CHANGES AFOOT IN RURAL INDIA. JOURNALISTS HAVE STOPPED GOING WHERE THIS NATION IS TRANSFORMING—OUT THERE.

decade for Hindi films; write film scripts and run and mentor writers at Content Project, a writing company which produces radio, TV digital and film content. To complicate this already complicated life, I had now decided to start a newspaper. My fixed deposits were (are) fast running out. My colleagues in the Hindi film business were beginning to wonder if I had quit writing for films. At creative meetings about love stories I often talk passionately about Gaon Connection. I had to, with great difficulty, find professional recording studios in Lucknow, Kanpur and Agra where I could record stories for my radio storytelling show even while devoting time to Gaon Connection. In the middle of this madness, my wife Yamini was hugely supportive, and took over a lot of the operations work. That’s the beauty of start-ups—in the beginning, the only people who believe in you and will work for free are your family and friends. My parents, long used to my crazy ways and creative adventures, grumbled in front of me and worried behind my back in the early months, but slowly came around—and how. When we completed one year, the first congratulatory call was from my mother (Nirmala Misra), of course. Gaon Connection has attracted widespread attention because the mainstream media

has long stopped documenting the extraordinary changes afoot in rural India. Journalists have stopped going where this nation is transforming—out there. Out there, this is what’s happening, documented in some of the stories in Gaon Connection through the past year: Women in villages are flocking to beauty parlours, makeshift gyms are opening up for the youth, chowmein and momos are being sold on roadside thelas and eaten on leafy saucers (pattals). Dish antennae are penetrating deep into rural India, which means satellite TV and all its content— from saas bahu to Bigg Boss—is being watched by millions of emerging rural viewers alongside their urban counterparts. Girls are wearing jeans, breaking the earlier social taboo, and everyone’s on the Internet via their mobile phone. Back in Bhauwapur village in the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh, all these earthshattering changes might not yet have started to manifest themselves. But you can smell the aspirations and confidence. There is a hunger for information about new careers and government schemes that rarely reach the outback. A hunger that people in cities better understand rural India, erasing the time-frozen stereotypes that news and entertainment media have built about villages. A rural newspaper is a small beginning to build that bridge. Because India has a Gaon Connection. Neelesh Misra is the founder of Gaon Connection.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

POLITICAL SATIRE

SALIL TRIPATHI

REIMAGINING INDIA It became clear that we would see a different India after the 2014 election. Here, a writer sets his imagination free

ately, Saheb had not been able to sleep well. The heat in Delhi was unbearable. He put on his glasses and saw the light flashing on his iPhone, reminding him of messages he had not yet seen. It can wait, he thought. Governing Gujarat had been a simple matter; India was much more complicated, and constant interruptions were a nuisance. Gujaratis were simply more efficient—he issued an order and the job was done. In Delhi, the bureaucrats were just not obeying—every time he unveiled a new idea, they cited precedents, arguing that laws prevented them from doing what he wanted them to do. The judiciary wasn’t much help either—courts had blocked three of his initiatives. And the senior bureaucrats kept responding to his oral instructions in writing, copying other officials in their response. That was the biggest change from Gujarat—the bureaucrats here behaved as though they ruled the country. He felt he was in a foreign country; Lutyens’ Delhi a foreign capital. The one man he relied on implicitly was Amit Shah, his home minister. But even his performance outside Gujarat had been faltering. When they were in Gandhinagar, Shah could be relied upon to send him detailed accounts of what everyone did, moment by moment. In Delhi, his reports were always at least a few days behind. Take Jayalalithaa, his deputy prime minister. How hard was it to track her? You could spot her from a mile. But the recordings of her phone calls were not of much use. The silly woman kept speaking in Tamil, and the translators in Gandhinagar often took a full week before sending the transcripts back through angadias, the only messengers who could be trusted. The tapes of Mamata Banerjee’s conversations were much worse—her accent was so hard to follow that it was impossible for the transcribers to figure out if she was speaking in Bengali or English. He drank his glass of milk. He didn’t like the taste. Probably the Vadodara flight was late again. All along he had believed that the milk in Delhi came from Gujarat. But apparently there was a Mother Dairy here, which supplied milk to Delhi (why had nobody told him that?). Each morning the first flight from Gujarat brought him milk from Anand near Vadodara, but some days the

SAM PANTHAKY/AFP

flights were delayed, like today. Saheb left his new residence in New Delhi, in a car with outriders and the new Indian flag, the tricolour with a trident in the middle. There were still many parts of India where people kept using the old flag, with the Ashoka Chakra. He wanted the Ashoka Chakra banished—after all, after the Kalinga massacre Ashoka renounced violence and turned to Buddhism and became a pacifist. What would be the point? A dozen years after Godhra he was India’s prime minister. Now who was right? He was certain people would accept the new flag. And then, slowly, he would have the green and the white removed. And the flag would be gloriously saffron. But that would take time. Indians are an accepting lot, he knew. How easily they had accepted the new national anthem, Vande Mataram. He looked with satisfaction at the workers dismantling the elaborate barriers that blocked access to Race Course Road, now renamed Rathayatra Marg. One of his regrets was that the night of the election results, Sonia Gandhi had left for the US, ostensibly for health reasons. One of his first acts upon coming to power was to cancel her diplomatic passport. He thought the Americans would then send her back, or at least not let her in. But they did, on “humanitarian grounds” (must read up what humanitarian grounds are, he had made a note to himself on his iPad then). Saheb wanted to ask Americans to extradite her, but his foreign minister Naveen Patnaik threatened to withdraw his MPs if he did so. From that day, Shah was told Patnaik’s email account too had to be monitored. He had no choice but to accept bullying by regional leaders. When the din and dust of electioneering had ended, the Saheb-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won only 148 seats in the new Lok Sabha— the figure was much higher than the Congress’ 105, but much lower than the 335 that NitiCentral’s poll had predicted for the BJP. It could hardly be described as a resounding victory, and the BJP was woefully short of a majority. Like several Indian prime ministers before him, he’d have to forge a coalition. Arun Jaitley offered to help, but Saheb did not trust him. Jayalalithaa had agreed to support him, but demanded a big pound of flesh, his speech writer Kanchan Gupta told him. Saheb had no idea Jayalalithaa was non-vegetarian. Yeh maans khaane waale logon ka vyavahar hi alag hota hai, he said, reminding Gupta that meat eaters followed different customs. Gupta asked Swapan Dasgupta— who was writing a book on the rise of conservative politics in India—to explain, and Dasgupta told Saheb that actually “pound of flesh” was a turn of phrase from the Shakespearean play, The Merchant of Venice. “Don’t talk to me about Venice and those Italians,” Saheb retorted angrily, and that was that. “Saheb gussa ma chhe (Saheb’s angry)” Shah told the two Bengali intellectuals. “Aap log jaiye (you’d better leave).” Gupta was right in referring to the pound of flesh. Jayalalithaa was willing to let Saheb be the prime minister for the first two years, but she wanted to take over on the

second anniversary. The prime ministership in the fifth year would go to the leader under whom growth was higher during their two-year reign. Saheb was worried—what if? To prevent Amma, he decided to keep Didi on his side as reserve power. As he passed the Nathuram Godse Maidan, he wondered what that crafty Bihari, Nitish Kumar, was up to. Kumar had been meeting Sushma Swaraj this past week when she was in hospital and Saheb himself hadn’t had the time to visit her. Tehelka, the magazine which now operated from abroad, had reported they were plotting a vote of no-confidence against him. Sushmaben would take a chunk of MPs and support Kumar from outside. The Congress would also support, and then withdraw support, forcing fresh elections. And what would be its outcome, if Sonia’s health kept worsening? Too many things that could not be controlled. He had at least neutralized Rahul Gandhi, who was now in Tihar jail, held on corruption charges. But the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had told him that Rahul genuinely seemed to know nothing about how Congress finances were run. Even Manmohan Singh, whom he had spared because he knew very little anyway, had no idea what happened to the money United Progressive Alliance (UPA) politicians had

Page-turner: Next year holds the promise of a best-seller.

THE PLAN TO BUILD THE SARDAR PATEL STATUE HAD BEEN PUT ON HOLD— THE PRICE OF IRON HAD SHOT UP, AND THE RUPEE HAD CONTINUED TO DECLINE. IT WAS 85 RUPEES TO A DOLLAR NOW, AND THE NEW RESERVE BANK GOVERNOR, ARVIND PANAGARIYA, HAD TRIED TO ASSUAGE MARKETS, BUT THE MARKETS WERE SPOOKED WHEN RAGHURAM RAJAN LEFT AS RBI’S GOVERNOR ABRUPTLY, SAYING HE WOULDN’T OFFICIATE OVER A LAKSHMI ‘PUJAN’ BEFORE THE BUDGET.

accumulated over its almost 10year rule. He would release Rahul if the Americans would promise him a visa if he applied, he had decided, as a gesture of goodwill towards Americans, the way Chinese leaders do, releasing dissidents before a Washington visit. But he didn’t know how Americans would react, so he hadn’t applied. Saheb’s one serious regret was that Robert Vadra had managed to escape to Dubai. Vadra and his wife Priyanka had fled even though there were strict instructions at the Delhi airport to look out for them. But they had left from Mumbai, where the order was ignored because it was not translated in Marathi. Saheb wanted those officials fired, but law and order being a state subject, the Maharashtra chief minister had ignored Saheb’s note. Saheb’s convoy drove through Veer Savarkar Road, turning sharply on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Avenue. He returned to his iPad to read his favourite newspaper, NitiCentral. All government officials were now required to read NitiCentral first. His information technology (IT) cell had configured all desktops such that their browsers would open only to NitiCentral’s home page, and unless they clicked on at least five articles, no other website would open. In a few weeks the IT cell would report to him on the field

trials, to test the new surveillance software he had encoded on the chips of the new generation of biometric Aadhaar cards. Then Shah’s burden would reduce, and it would be possible to track all Indians. At the end of his first hundred days in office, Saheb’s major achievement was the taming of the media. Advaniji may be old, but he had been right—when asked to bend, the media crawled! Open was closed; Hartosh Singh Bal was teaching applied mathematics at the Indian Institute of Science; Outlook had become a magazine evaluating email software after Microsoft bought it; India Today kept its circulation alive by publishing polls on teen sex on campus. Journalists were also taken care of: Barkha Dutt had retired, setting up a handloom boutique in Connaught Place (which was to be renamed Deoras Chowk on Vijayadashami); Sagarika Ghose had gone to Oxford on a fellowship; Karan Thapar taught elocution at The Doon School; Rajdeep Sardesai was covering county cricket; and Aakar Patel was published only in Dawn. Teesta Setalvad was in protective custody, as CBI sleuths were going over the funding of the magazine Communalism Combat; Mallika Sarabhai’s passport had been cancelled so she could not go abroad to perform; Harsh Mander had moved to Bangladesh to run an NGO. The one man Saheb could not trust was his defence minister, Sharad Pawar. The Maratha strongman had to be cajoled to join the cabinet, and Pawar had agreed only after reports emerged in the Western media that Pakistani troops had made successful incursions into Indian territory along the Line of Control, and Chinese troops had entered Arunachal Pradesh (Saheb’s first thought was that they were Christians anyway, but Pawar said India must not kowtow to the Chinese). The information and broadcasting minister, Madhu Kishwar, said India could barter Arunachal Pradesh in return for Chinese investment in Bangalore’s IT sector. But someone had been defacing billboards—a giant one near Modi Gardens (once known as Lodi Gardens) saying “Na Mo!” was overwritten to say “No More!” The plan to build the Sardar Patel statue had been put on hold—the price of iron had shot up, and the rupee had continued to decline. It was 85 rupees to a dollar now, and the new Reserve Bank governor, Arvind Panagariya, had tried to assuage markets, but the markets were spooked when Raghuram Rajan left as RBI’s governor abruptly, saying he wouldn’t officiate over a Lakshmi pujan before the budget. Saheb’s car reached the Red Fort and suddenly the driver applied the brakes. Saheb shouted at the driver. “What happened? Can’t you drive carefully?” “Sir, there was a small dog in the way; I had to stop, otherwise…” “If a puppy dashes across, it is the puppy’s fault. If the puppy dies, it is regrettable, but we must keep going,” he said. “We can’t control everything all the time. Things happen.” Salil Tripathi writes the column Here, There, Everywhere for Mint.

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The year we spoke the same language Translations from regional languages set a new benchmark for literary fiction in English

f you are the kind of reader who expects a book to be “the axe for the frozen sea within us” (as Franz Kafka famously said), then English-language publishing in India, especially original fiction in English, may well have turned you into an iceberg by the end of 2013. The Kafka effect is hard to encounter even if one reads promiscuously—forgetting the trappings of social, cultural and political context, that dreaded cage for professional critics and publishers—but it is a necessary standard to hold on to, however unrealistic. The original English fiction scene in India this year was dotted with smart, accomplished, even memorable titles, though few came close to meeting Kafka’s golden standard (see box). In contrast, 2013 seemed to be a turning point for Indian writing in translation, not only in terms of the number of titles that appeared this year but also for their consistently excellent quality, and the enthusiasm with which they were received. The trend is not new though. The curiosity that drove early Indologists like William Jones, Charles Wilkins and Henry Colebrooke to initiate projects to translate from Sanskrit stayed with the makers of modern India. As early as the 1950s, the newly independent Indian nation entrusted the Sahitya Akademi with the task of executing the Nehruvian vision of “unity in diversity” by translating extensively from the regional languages. For several decades, trade publishers pitched in tentatively, until the last couple of years, when translation lists

started making their presence felt in the market. In spite of the commercial risks involved in the venture, any literary imprint worth its salt must aspire to have translations from regional languages. While there is a robust Anglo-American tradition of translating from the European languages—not only from the canon but also from contemporary literature—translation in India has focused primarily on “classics”, ancient or modern. Increasingly, writers who are alive and active, not just the dead and revered, are entering the catalogues of mainstream publishers. If literary prizes are any markers of international reach, Kannada writer U.R. Ananthamurthy was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize this year for his contribution to literature (he lost to Lydia Davis), while the shortlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014 featured two titles in translation, The Book of Destruction by Anand (translated by Chetana Sachidanandan from Malayalam) and Goat Days by Benyamin (translated by Joseph Koyippally from Malayalam), both published by Penguin Books India. Speaking on behalf of the jury at the announcement of the shortlist in London last month, the chair of the DSC Prize this year, Antara Dev Sen, pointed out that each of the six titles chosen is “a window opening on to the complexity of the South Asian experience”. While

READING

Somak Ghoshal ate, read and did not fall in love this year.

this sentiment is largely true, it is also remarkable that the finest novels in translation transcend, as all literary works of distinction do, the particularities of time, place and character (for example, The Book of Destruction, published last year, is nominally a work of fiction, profoundly invested in exploring theories of evil; while Goat Days, also dating back to 2012, is filled with spiritual resonances that inform, but also exceed, the simple story of a poor goatherd living in exile and oppression in a Gulf nation). Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue (translated

ctedness Despite the quantum increase in the conne reality for of societies, the local remains the primary ow a most people, the place where they first kn culture. shared sense of community, identity and — PANKAJ MISHRA

by Jerry Pinto from Marathi) and Shanta Gokhale’s Crowfall (translated by the author from Marathi), two of the best novels I read this year (both published by Penguin), are grounded in the conventions of the realist novel, and yet succeed in creating new forms of inwardness. Kundalkar’s story, set in a small town near Mumbai, unfolds as interior monologues spoken by a brother and a sister about the man they both loved and were abandoned by. Stark and comfortless, it is not only a tale of many betrayals—romantic, familial and societal—but also, at its most poignant, a reminder of the gulfs that exist in relationships where trust and understanding are taken for granted. Gokhale’s novel, by contrast, evokes a certain phase in the history of Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) cultural life. Literature, music and the arts flow into, and become one with, the lives of its characters. Unlike “global” novels that span several continents or are set in war zones— usually a reasonable guarantee of international success— Crowfall promises little excitement in its jacket copy, which offers just enough information to arrest the attention of the discerning reader. In an essay in Financial Times earlier this year (“Beyond the Global Novel”, 27 September), critic and novelist Pankaj Mishra wrote that “writers of non-Western origin” seem to be “vending a consumable—rather than challenging—cultural otherness”. In India, this propensity is still pervasive in literary fiction in English, but sharply absent in the genre in translation and in popular fiction in English. The latter—a conglomerate of “campus novels”, mythological thrillers, cheesy love stories and fantasy fiction—caters to a mostly homegrown readership. These cheap and cheerful mass-market produces are written in a uniquely postmodern idiom— usually combining the brevity of SMS language with the melodramatic intensity of Facebook status updates—to create a package that is easily digestible for readers who are tuned into the pulse of these fictional worlds. These narratives, while kin-

dling their target readership’s aspiration to travel and dream big, seldom travel themselves in the international literary circuit. But in the case of literary translations, some of which are also set in milieus that are provincial and claustrophobic, the result is strikingly different. In Ajay Navaria’s riveting collection of stories, Unclaimed Terrain (translated by Laura Brueck from Hindi, published by Navayana) and Uday Prakash’s The Walls of Delhi (translated by Jason Grunebaum from Hindi; Hachette India), the protagonists come from backgrounds of intense deprivation, economic and emotional, and hover on the margins of society. Navaria’s piercing narratives portray the lives of Dalits in urban India, giving us a glimpse of the twisted modernity of the world’s largest democracy. Prakash’s angry, sarcastic and bitter stories also lash out against the injustice perpetrated by the educated elite, sometimes unthinkingly, on a lesser class of people. More quirky but also full of barbs, Upendranath Ashk’s Hats And Doctors (translated by Daisy Rockwell; Penguin) brings together a set of gem-like stories by a master of Hindi literature. Krishna Sobti’s The Music of Solitude (translated by Rahul Soni; HarperCollins India) and two novels by Nirmal Verma—Days of Longing (translated by Krishna Baldev Vaid; Penguin) and The Red Tin Roof (translated by Kuldip Singh; Penguin)—add to the rich list of translations from Hindi this year. Removed from the interests of the “global novel”—which, to quote Mishra, “seems to emerge from an apolitical and borderless cosmopolis” and advocates a “steady erasure of national and historical specificity”—the “local novel”, at least the version of it that is emerging in India, gives primacy to the lived realities of a society that remain innately foreign to a majority of Anglophone readers, not only outside India but also within the country. A novel like The Mirror of Beauty, a magnum opus by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (translated from the Urdu by the author; Penguin) about the life and times of a famous courtesan in 19th century India, or the mysterious stories of Naiyer Masud (translated by Muhammad Umar Memon from the Urdu; Penguin), may speak only to an elect, having the taste, perseverance and imagination to allow such stories to inhabit their minds. But for their artistic audaciousness and afterlife in a language read by the majority of the world’s readers, these works are bound to set new benchmarks for the way fiction in English is written, read and received in contemporary India.

OUR PICK OF ORIGINAL FICTION AND NON-FICTION IN ENGLISH Seeing Like a Feminist, Nivedita Menon (Zubaan): Mixing theory and anecdote, this is a handbook of feminism with a difference. The Competent Authority, Shovon Chowdhury (Aleph Book Company): Satire hasn’t been this good since Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August: An Indian Story.

Those Pricey Thakur Girls, Anuja Chauhan (HarperCollins India): Another smart and sassy story from the brightest star of pop fiction in India.

Helium, Jaspreet Singh (Bloomsbury India): A masterful fictional revisiting of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and their aftermath.

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (Random House India): The first successful novel from a storyteller of great talent.

Gandhi Before India, Ramachandra Guha (Penguin): The first of a magisterial, multivolume biography. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, Gaiutra Bahadur (Hachette): Moving from India to Guyana to the US, a powerful account of the survival of a family.

City Adrift, Naresh Fernandes (Aleph Book Company): A short biography of Bombay, looking beyond its reputation as India’s glamour capital.

Nony Singh—The Archivist (Dreamvilla Productions): The story of a family told through beautiful black and white photographs. On Hinduism, Wendy Doniger (Aleph Book Company): A necessary volume of essays on Hinduism, especially in these times of radical misinterpretations.

Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala (Virago): A haunting memoir of life after losing one’s entire family in the 2004 tsunami. The Scatter Here Is Too Great, Bilal Tanweer (Random House India): The most promising fictional debut in the subcontinent. Five Movements in Praise, Sharmistha Mohanty (Almost Island Books) A work that eludes generic classification—straddling prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Somak Ghoshal

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The year the dynasty declined Will the Congress seat tally hit double digits in the coming general election?

ithin a few days of the humiliating whitewash in four state assembly elections, the Congress party sat up, dusted itself and launched a carefully orchestrated campaign moulded around Rahul Gandhi for the passage of the Lokpal Bill. The popular sense was that, once again, the country’s oldest party was merely reacting to exigent circumstances: one, to divert attention from a stinging defeat just months before the next general election; two, to stave off another wrenching face-off with social activist Anna Hazare, who had launched a fresh hunger strike for the passage of the Bill. This is the core of the crisis staring at the Congress party: a credibility deficit which, if anything, is only widening. As a result, even if the intent is good, few believe the party. It is a daunting proposition at any time. Now more so than ever; a general election is due in the next four months and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is rediscovering the spring in its step. The big question—and this is actually being discussed both publicly and internally by political parties—is whether the Congress is going to be an also-ran in the next general election. Will it plumb double digits, as some fear? Or will it, like it did in 2004 and 2009, come out from

nowhere and surprise the BJP a third time? None of us are soothsayers, yet we can hazard a safe guess. My sense is that the Congress performance will depend to a large degree on how it deals with five hot-button issues. First is Rahul Gandhi, of course. Ever since he was elevated to a top job a little less than a year ago (Sonia Gandhi, his mother and party president, has receded into the background almost completely), Rahul Gandhi has floundered. Much to the glee of his critics, both within and outside the party, he has bounced from one bad performance to another. As a result his efforts to reorganize the party to rebuild the grassroots connect—ironically the very same strategy that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) used so effectively to trounce the Congress party in the just concluded election to the Delhi assembly—has become an object of ridicule. Unfortunately, the Congress party, since it is organized like a sole proprietorship, has no option but to rely on Gandhi, a personally likeable man who impresses in small gatherings, but is not able to hold his own while speaking to the public. Both he and the party are at the crossroads. A lot will depend on whether Gandhi can repackage his image, reposition his party’s political message and launch fully into a campaign that nobody gives the Congress a

chance to win; but like they say, never write-off the underdog. Second, the party has to come up with a big idea in doublequick time. Not only will it give the party an extra edge, it will also blunt the big idea of disruption proposed by parties like AAP by playing on the cynicism about organized parties. The message of secularism and entitlements, at the end of 10 years, is beginning to sound stale. Especially since this country stands structurally transformed. Not only has the Indian economy grown to an impressive size of $1.8 trillion (around `111.6 trillion), the growth has materially benefited far more sections of the population than ever (unfortunately it’s a message that the Congress never highlighted). There are far more stakeholders in the growth process today and their concerns are now inspired by their respective aspirations. This new desire of being taughthow-to-fish as opposed to being given fish, means that a big idea that will have instant appeal is a promise to generate jobs. Unfortunately for the Congress party, its United Progressive Alliance government has completely dropped the ball on this. Not only have they not been able to generate jobs to absorb the 12 million

POLITICS

Anil Padmanabhan discovered Myanmar and exercised his right to NoTA in the Delhi election.

being added to the workforce every year, the loss in growth momentum from 9%-plus to about 4%-plus means even existing jobs have been lost. Persistent double-digit inflation has only added to the agony of the aam aadmi. Merely claiming that they will provide jobs, given the credibility deficit, won’t be enough for the Congress. Third, and closely linked to the above, is how Gandhi and his party deal with the youth and urban voters. In the coming general election, about 150 million will be voting for the first time. These first-time voters, in the age category of 18-24, only add to the already overwhelming demography of

India wherein 65% are less than 35 years of age. In other words a large proportion of the 750 million voters in the country are young and most of them have come of age in the best years of India’s economic history—the first decade of the new millennium. And they are driven by aspirations. The urban lot, especially in north India, is angry and anecdotally we do know that their counterparts in rural India are not necessarily going to adhere to the traditional electoral script built around caste, ethnicity and religion. Gandhi, who himself is in his early 40s, should logically hold the edge over his 63-year-old BJP rival, Narendra Modi, but there is no evidence of that yet. Fourth, a lot will depend upon the new pre-poll alliances that the party strikes with old friends. Already, the defeat has strained the nerves of some of the allies. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, an ally for the last 10 years, has made official the end of its relationship with the Congress. Clearly, the Congress is now being perceived as a liability and that is the worst thing that can happen to a party—the BJP went through this cycle immediately after the drubbing in 2004. As a result it will not be negotiating from a position of strength, a huge handicap when dealing with wily politicians like Lalu Prasad—who is now out on bail

and looking to resurrect the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s fortunes, even if he stays persona non grata for elected office. Finally, the Congress party and Gandhi have to worry about their traditional vote base. In the just-concluded election, yet again, there was evidence that it is no longer assured of the votes of either the Muslims, Dalits or the economically disenfranchised. So far it was its ability to stitch a coalition that not only guaranteed the support of minorities but also the so-called bottom of the pyramid—both of which were weaned away by rivals such as AAP—that won it power for two consecutive terms. In a multi-cornered contest, this is the recipe for defeat. For the last 10 years its message of entitlements addressed a legitimate issue of class—those who did not gain from the unprecedented surge in economic growth. However, with the fall in poverty to a historic low of 22% in 2011-12 and the better material circumstances of people in general, the terms of the debate have changed. So continuing to harp on class or beating up the BJP for its questionable record on secularism is unlikely to get the same traction, even in rural India, as before. Appealing to class is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to gain political power. In the final analysis it is clear that at the least the task of recovering lost ground is daunting for the Congress. In many ways it is a test of character for the party and Gandhi—will they stand up or buckle under pressure? Unfortunately for the Congress party, the challenge has come at a time when the country is witnessing a paradigm shift, both politically and economically. The good news is that it is not just the Congress, but most politicians who are struggling to come to terms with new India and the inspired expectations of voters—exactly what underlined the success of AAP. But as a non-performing incumbent, the pressure on the Congress is that much more.

am that when Country wants bigger dreams. We must dre nce, nobody should de en ep ind its of ars ye 75 tes ple com ia Ind better healthcare. to ess acc d an n tio uca ed d, foo t ou ab d be worrie ht for their rights. fig to ve ha t no ll wi es ag vill in le op pe d Tribals an ir doorstep. The right of the people should come to the — NARENDRA MODI

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The year of the dirty young man He lies and cheats, gets drunk and stoned, has daddy issues, lip-locks furiously, and openly acknowledges his sexual impulses

ne of the most striking images of 2013 is of a string of rope, an umbrella and a dead rat being extracted from Riteish Deshmukh’s posterior. Indra Kumar’s box-office winner Grand Masti, a sex comedy about three men who feverishly seek satisfaction outside marriage, has several other eyepopping moments, many of them stolen from Hollywood but localized for Indian consumption, including an emasculation paranoia scenario in which a cat clamps its teeth on Aftab Shivdasani’s family jewels. But none is as eyebrow-raising as the scene in which it appears as though Deshmukh and his target are up to stuff that will be hard to find in BDSM manuals. Three other lusty-eyed punters belt out double entendres in David Dhawan’s Chashme Baddoor, while in Mrighdeep Singh Lamba’s Fukrey, four friends undertake a series of shenanigans to achieve their admittedly low-level dreams. However, the most memorable set of needy males is from Go Goa Gone, directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. and starring Kunal Khemu, Vir Das and Anand Tiwari. The stoner zombie comedy, set in India’s party capital, features clueless corporate cogs marked by short-term

ambition (girls, girls and girls) and a tendency to run in the opposite direction from responsibility—in short, perfect fodder for the fleshfavouring undead. Shamelessness, abandon and confusion characterized several of our leading men in 2013. While popular cinema remains obsessed with men and their desires and ambitions, giving space to women only in matters of sex or revenge, the loafer-level behaviour on display has been hard to ignore, especially in a year when sexual violence regularly made the headlines. The movies have had their share of I-did-it-for-familyhonour archetypes and superheroes so ultra-macho they can scarcely be described as human, but the alternative to the dutiful son and singlet-sporting jock is the Jockey-clad anti-hero, who lies and cheats, gets drunk and stoned, has daddy issues, liplocks furiously, and openly acknowledges his sexual impulses. The newfound permissiveness that is being fanned by filmmakers and willing talent has been building up for a while on the fringes of the mainstream. If the 1980s’ leading man was seen as boorish and chauvinistic and the 1990s’ hero too metrosexual and urbane, the new romantic rowdy is a bit of both. He might not have staying power, though. Popular cinema is notoriously faddish, and the good-natured good-for-nothings could

CINEMA

Nandini Ramnath found that the best place from which to look upon the mysteries of existence is the cinema seat.

disappear just as quickly as they appeared. Yet, what is not going to change is the set of interlocking factors that created this figure in the first place: the youngish directors and stars who dominate the business, the vast numbers of permissive young people flooding the cinemas, an embrace of themes, characters and story treatments that acknowledges the flood of diverse and uncensored international cinema and television flowing into the home of anybody with a broadband connection, and the relaxation of censoriousness by the Central Board of Film Certification. Lust, with caution, is the guiding principle of the newly minted kiss-kiss-bang-bang bloke. The fount of change in the image of the Hindi film hero can be located at the mouth. The smooch, previously the preserve of Emraan Hashmi, whose pucker-ready lips taught at least one generation of Indian males how to use theirs, is soon going to be commonplace enough to be unworthy of comment. Ranveer Singh kisses, so does Ranbir Kapoor. Sushant Singh Rajput’s wide-eyed romantic Raghu in Shuddh Desi Romance smooches and beds two women in quick succession. But Raghu also embodies the latest version of Indian maleness—he is all dressed up but isn’t too sure where to go. He remains at the centre of a love

triangle and gets the girl in the end, but Jaideep Sahni’s screenplay makes it obvious that he is being guided by the women, whose experience in bedroom matters matches, if not exceeds, his. The undeniable joke contained in Grand Masti is that its three leads, Amar, Prem and Meet, played with suspicious elation by Deshmukh, Shivdasani and Vivek Oberoi, respectively, hanker rather unsuccessfully for the stuff that usually follows the kiss, stooping vigorously but not quite conquering. Other paragons of damaged virtue scored at the box office this year. Shadab Kamal’s Mukesh from Ajay Bahl’s erotic neo-noir B.A. Pass pays a heavy price for succumbing to the charms of Shilpa Shukla’s underclad housewife, but not before learning how to become a stallion between the sheets. In Aashiqui 2, Aditya Roy Kapur’s alcoholic staggers in the footsteps of Kris Kristofferson from the movie’s source, A Star Is Born, and dedicates and ultimately sacrifices his life for his live-in lover. Roy Kapur reappears with a bottle for

company in Ayan Mukerji’s giga-hit Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, in which he plays the BF of another man-child who is unable to hold down a job, a relationship or any emotion. Mukerji’s hedonistic crowdpleaser, starring Ranbir Kapoor as Bunny, recommends wanderlust and alcohol as therapy for the trauma of crossing into adulthood. Kapoor’s other reckless romantic number is jejune in comparison. Abhinav Singh Kashyap’s Besharam, starring Kapoor as a lusty car thief, does have some more enduring images of the Indian male, including Rishi Kapoor straining his bowels while on the pot, Ranbir sniffing the mattress of the beloved as though he were in a Pedro Almodóvar movie, and Kapoor Jr again promising said beloved that his love for her will shatter the bedsprings. The leading ladies of Hindi cinema are nearly always virgins, with exceptions (and tortuous backstories woven into the plot to prevent general outrage), but there has been a lingering suspicion that the leading men haven’t exactly been around the block either. Not so with the real “besharam” of the year, from Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela. In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s rambunctious retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, the movie’s loverboy Ram, played by Ranveer Singh, thrusts his pelvis in all directions, boasts about his conquests, mimics an orgasm and wears his dhoti dangerously low. Brash in his speech and aggressive in love, yet mature enough to understand the consequences of a star-crossed romance and generous to a fault, Ram is the kind of man parents despise and the body yearns for. The sexually assertive man raised his head in a year dominated by one woman.

Deepika Padukone’s ascent on the marquee started last year with Cocktail. She extended her streak in 2013 with Race 2, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Chennai Express and Ram-Leela. Faced with her confidence, hard work and beauty, her male stars could only do the following: rinse and repeat mannerisms perfected in Part 1 (Saif Ali Khan in Race 2), coast on an image built up of a commitment-phobe who is finally tamed by love (Ranbir Kapoor in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani), market self, back catalogue and movie furiously (Shah Rukh Khan in Chennai Express) or become a heat-seeking missile (Ranveer Singh in Ram-Leela). Economists say competition brings out the best in us all. Padukone’s conquest of the box office seems to have uncorked the dirty young man. A course correction to all the puckering and preening came in the form of Anand L. Rai’s Raanjhanaa, in which Dhanush’s Kundan displays borderline stalking behaviour. The movie’s surprise success cannot be attributed only to the nationwide fame that followed the Tamil actor after his monster hit song Kolaveri Di. Dhanush’s sincerity blends with Rai’s astute realization that despite the new rape laws and guidelines on sexual harassment, vast sections of society continue to believe that when a man loves a woman, it is forever, and this sense of ownership persists even when she is unwilling and in love with another man. Dhanush’s working-class character Kundan, single-minded and unshakeable till the very end, is a riposte to all the movies that attempted to reinvent the Hindi movie hero to suit everchanging audience expectations. If the dirty young man is about lust first and romance maybe later, Kundan’s unreconstructed male stands for the kind of love in which the only bodily fluid spilt is blood from the veins. Which one will it be?

MOVING IMAGES Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela

Star (Bombay Talkies)

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s giddy and gaudy swirl of characters and emotions is powered by a sex-exuding Ranveer Singh.

Dibakar Banerjee’s segment from the ‘Bombay Talkies’ anthology is a smart meditation on cinema and the city.

Shahid

Hansal Mehta’s engrossing biopic of a radical Islamist-turned-lawyer Shahid Azmi (deftly portrayed by Raj Kumar Yadav).

Mere Dad Ki Maruti

A fun comedy with a winning turn by Saqib Saleem, who runs all over Chandigarh in pursuit of his father’s car.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’, based on Indian athlete Milkha Singh, is a commendable entrant in the growing Indian biopic genre even though it is shackled by formula requirements and flag-waving impulses.

This zombie comedy from Krishna D.K. and Raj Nidimoru spills over with some silly jokes, several very good ones, and an outstanding turn by Kunal Khemu.

More fun than Parineeti Chopra’s free-spirited babe is Sushant Singh Rajput’s unwitting stud and kissing-lesson provider.

Kai Po Che

Abhishek Kapoor’s halfwaysuccessful movie maps the ups and downs of three friends (Amit Sadh, Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar Yadav) who seek fortune in different ways.

A self-consciously handsome cross between Bengali ‘zamindari’ yarns and O. Henry’s ‘The Last Leaf’, including a sensitive performance by Sonakshi Sinha.

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

Go Goa Gone

Shuddh Desi Romance

Lootera

Ship of Theseus

A beautifully lensed and performed directorial debut by Anand Gandhi explores the meanings and boundaries of matters corporeal and physical.

B.A. Pass

Shilpa Shukla’s seductress Sarika raids the padded brassiere catalogue in this as she first seduces, and then pimps, a teenager, in this assured debut.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Vishal Bharadwaj’s version of a Bertolt Brecht play is neither fish nor fowl, but it has some superb sequences, mostly involving Pankaj Kapur, who is capitalist when sober and socialist when sloshed.

The Lunchbox

A misdelivered lunchbox connects Irrfan Khan’s Saajan Fernandes with Nimrat Kaur’s housewife. The idea of two lonely people reaching out to each other through handwritten notes works very well till they fall in love.

Nandini Ramnath

Whether it’s sharing my feelings ection, through messaging or showing physical aff I am very expressive. I am a superb lden star. boyfriend. I’d give myself an A ++ and a go — RANVEER SINGH

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SOCIETY

Seema Chowdhry volunteered to file an RTI to find out which agency is responsible for fixing the sewage drain that floods her colony’s park.

The year of the volunteer

The success of the Aam Aadmi Party will further people’s belief that they can be catalysts of change

ven as we engaged in a larger debate on whether privileged Indians tend to treat their domestic help poorly, a group of volunteers, all residents living in Whitefield, Bangalore, went about making inquiries in November and then engaged with the state labour department to ensure that around 600 of their domestic help could get enrolled in the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). As part of a non-registered, completely voluntary group cofounded by Nitya Ramakrishnan and R.K. Misra in March, members of Whitefield Rising have only one agenda: to make Whitefield a better community space to live in. From waste management to cleanliness drives, the community has many volunteers who engage in different activities. “It took some 10-12 hours of work for a couple of weeks, sorting 300 mails and 400 hard copies, meeting the additional labour commissioner in Bangalore and requesting him to process our case even though the deadline was over. We wanted our domestic help and their families to have access to better medical facilities. It was an idea that one of the volunteers had, and then we all pitched in by talking to health insurance experts, etc., till someone told us about RSBY,” explains Ritu George, chief operating officer, Whitefield Rising. On the face of it, Dinup Mathew, Munish Raizada, Parthiv Shah and Victoria D’Souza have nothing in common with George. Mathew lives in Mayur Vihar, Delhi and is a human resources (HR) trainer and consultant. Dr Raizada is a Chicago-based paediatrician whose extended family lives in Faridabad. Shah is a 16-year-old class XI student in Bangalore and D’Souza, or “Hurricane Victoria”, is a Bangalore-based freelance event manager. Yet each of them has played a little part in bringing about change in their community, in their city. They made an effort this year to take time out of their busy schedules to support a cause they believe in: not for the sake of power or money but because they believe change is the responsibility of citizens and not governments alone. “Do you know that I was asked for a bribe of `2,000 just to get my marriage registered on a par-

ticular day? I felt so disgusted and helpless. When I heard Arvind Kejriwal talk about corruption, I wanted to do something too. In April, I walked into the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) office, filled up a digital one-page form to become a member and volunteer and spent the first month just helping to answer emails,” says Mathew, who runs an HR consultancy, Nephenthus Knowledge Solutions LLP, and has done his master’s in business administration from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi. By July, he was working on AAP area surveys with Yogendra Yadav, a national executive member of AAP and a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi and in December, he trained polling booth agents for AAP. Instead of the three days a week he had set aside for volunteer work, he was volunteering on almost all days by December. “September was the worst month for me business-wise but I had made a commitment to bring about political change and there was no turning back,” says Mathew. Since AAP has secured 28 seats in the Delhi assembly poll this month and his clients and friends found out that he worked as volunteer—a fact that Mathew had shared with no one expect his immediate family—his phone has not stopped ringing. “The number of people from my clients’ offices who also want to volunteer for AAP is amazing. People are willing to give up Sundays, work from home—anything that gives them a chance to be a part of this revolution,” says Mathew, who has now gone back to a volunteering schedule of three days a week. Dr Raizada has returned to the US, but not before spending every day of his three-month sabbatical at the AAP office. “In spite of immense talent, on the global stage where is India today? I blame this on the lack of a political will to change things, poor governance and on us the people who are too busy with

our own lives to make a commitment to our country. In Chicago, I was part of an NRI group that worked at raising awareness about AAP, but I wanted to do more. My wife agreed and we decided that I should be here in the middle of it,” says Dr Raizada, who intends to return to volunteer for AAP closer to the general election. Parthiv Shah, a member of Whitefield Rising, volunteers only for causes he believes in, such as water conservation, and only on days he has no pressing school engagements. “My parents volunteer and I started because of them. Many kids in my school, when they hear about what kind of work we do, want to volunteer too but they don’t have such work happening in their community.” George, meanwhile, has opted for flexi hours so she can devote more time to her voluntary work. “What keeps me going is that I see how much difference we can make at the community level,” she says over the phone from Banaglore. In the last year, the urban Indian has come to the forefront, wanting not just to be a spectator in change that s/he is demanding, but also as a participant in the process. Chairperson of Arghyam and Pratham Books and author of Stillborn and Uncommon Ground, Rohini Nilekani, says that while there is an upswing in volunteer work around urban India, it is still not a uniform trend. “But yes, in many cities people no longer want to wait. They feel like they have the agency, an internal locus which says ‘I can and I will’. For a long time in the cities, individual good and common good were not linked but now people are realizing that they have to go beyond ‘my good’ to ‘our good’; and that the two are linked. They know that with engagement and connection, things can work for a larger, common good that will benefit the individual too.”

Real change involves making the call for participation ‘local and personal’. That is the magic sauce to bring democracy alive. — SWATI RAMANATHAN

D’Souza, who began her tryst with political volunteering in 2011 with the anti-graft protests at Freedom Park in Bangalore, is one such example of how people are thinking about volunteering even in different cities so long as it results in common good. She signed up to be a part of AAP even though the party has no political engagements in Bangalore yet. Meenakshi Bharath, who stood as a Loksatta Party candidate for the Malleswaram constituency in the May 2013 assembly elections, recalls D’Souza storming into her office in early 2013 offering to volunteer with her. “AAP wasn’t fielding candidates in the assembly elections but Dr Bharath’s agenda to remove corruption matched AAP’s and I wanted to help,” says D’Souza who managed and organized Dr Bharath’s campaigning schedules. Now, she hopes that Loksatta and AAP can come to some kind of agreement for the 2014 general election and support each other. “I have hope for this country. Politics is not dirty, it’s a service to the country,” she says, narrating how she spent time in Delhi talking to people on the streets about AAP. “In fact on 8 December, when the

counting in Delhi was going on, I walked around with an AAP cap and it was amazing how people called out to me from buses and showed me a thumbs-up sign in support,” she says. “This is not a passing phase, there is a fundamental shift that is taking place, and mainstream political parties will do well to take note. The anger that the urban Indian is feeling has reached tipping point, with people now wanting to make a difference by doing something about it themselves—however small—and not just staying angry and helpless,” says Swati Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a Bangalore-based not-for-profit organization, and chairperson of the Jana Urban Space Foundation, a not-for-profit working on urban planning, Bangalore. But she cautions that this desire to participate is dependent on concrete and positive outcomes. “Volunteerism is one of the strongest foundations of any society. However, volunteers need successes to build up. They need to believe that

their time and effort results in moving the needle on their chosen cause, they need both opportunities and hope if this gathering momentum of volunteering is to sustain.” As someone who has worked with volunteers in the past, Ramanathan suggests that those who manage volunteers, especially youthful ones, should aim to give them “bite-size things to start with, so that they are not intimidated by the size of the problem; give them a tangible achievement. Connect them to the romance of the larger vision always, but also give them closure and a sense of accomplishment to say, ‘I created this outcome.’ Also, provide opportunities for some amount of grassroot community mobilizing or field work, which is always exciting; Finally, there is a strong sense of optimism and hope in youth volunteers. Don’t let that be killed, nurture it—because all change, especially for nationbuilding, is ultimately fed by large doses of hope.” Pavitra Jayaraman contributed to this essay.

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MORAL POLICE

The year Mumbai came full circle

After ACP Vasant Dhoble’s SS run ended, the party had just about reignited—but he is back

hiv Sena nativism, the mercurial Sensex, film stars, the proverbial illmanaged monsoons—these headline staples don’t deter a person from other parts of Maharashtra or from another end of India’s geographical axis from migrating to Mumbai. What still attracts the industrious and the romantic to it? Why do more and more migrants inundate it every year? It is possibly what AmericanJewish writer Cynthia Ozick called “the synthetic sublime”, describing her city, New York— look beyond the tarnish, and you’ll see the city’s polyglot population, a seething cultural mix, making a city with a mind and a character, as opposed to a global

village. In Mumbai, less than 50% of the population speaks the native tongue Marathi. Parents in small towns still worry the city will corrupt their gifted child because they imagine absolutely nothing can thwart a young man’s or woman’s desires in “Bombay”. We Bambaiyyas wish that paranoia was still justified. The city’s reputation has been in peril for many years now. Ugly mutants of the parents hijacked Mumbai’s law and order establishment virulently and with sadistic force in 2012. The Nationalist Congress Party’s R.R. Patil, the current state home minister, Arup Patnaik, police commissioner from 2010-12, and his then subordinate, assistant

commissioner of police (ACP), social services (SS) branch, Vasant Dhoble, formed a Malvolian triumvirate determined to implement archaic laws formulated in colonial times for the native mass. Dhoble used a hockey stick and a video camera to threaten, arrest and bully people because they did not have permits that no court or police establishment had asked for till then. If Shakespeare’s Malvolio from Twelfth Night was intolerant of “cakes and ales”, Dhoble deemed women drinking at a restaurant worthy of being sent to a remand home for sex workers. He picked on German women tourists and filmed them because they were at Voodoo, ironically a gay nightclub that shut last year. He wielded the hockey stick at Café Zoe, a hip central Mumbai restaurant, and at Trilogy, a suburban nightclub, which shut down by July 2012. In 2012, Dhoble and

Sanjukta Sharma developed a taste for brandy at her neighbourhood bar WTF.

his men arrested more than 100 people in a span of around seven months. In early 2013, after a hawker died during a drive against vendors and an inquiry was initiated against him, Dhoble was shifted to an insignificant post. There were rumours he had retired. By August 2013, the parties returned. Deejays who had stopped working because Dhoble and his men threatened to lock them up for not possessing a PPL (public performance licence) got their gigs back. The Supreme Court lifted the ban on dance bars that the Maharashtra government had forced with an amendment in the Bombay Police Act, 1951. The state chief secretary, Jayant Banthia, announced that the government was considering whittling down the number of licences required to open a restaurant. By October, even the Shiv Sena’s Aditya Thackeray, who was instrumental in having a novel by Rohinton Mistry withdrawn from the syllabus of the University of Mumbai in 2010 because of its “anti-Shiv Sena” content, made a joint public appearance with mayor Sunil Prabhu to say they were pushing the state government for round-the-clock “chilling time” in Mumbai. Trilogy opened at the same venue. But Dhoble is back. Last week he was transferred back to

the Mumbai Police’s crime branch. Himanshu Roy, joint commissioner of police, crime branch, confirmed this news. He may go back to his crucible: the Hitlerian SS branch. The SS branch has three cells: the anti-trafficking cell that initiates action under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA); the social counselling cell which deals mainly with matters of domestic violence; and the copyright violation and antigambling cell, again under PITA. Under this regime, it became an umbrella Act. Everything related to a night out in town, or a night of drinking at home, became illegal. You required a permit to purchase or drink alcohol although no excise official or police officer ever asked us for proof of age. The drinking permit itself is a farce. It is issued after a person of or above the age of 21 presents a certificate from a doctor saying he or she needs to consume alcohol for medical reasons. In that dystopian June, the excise department was inspirited too. One evening, officials raided the home of Worli resident Priti Chandriani, a documentary film-maker who, after folding up a chocolaterie her family had founded, was running it as a hobby on a much smaller scale from home. They seized all her alcohol and booked her under the Bombay Prohibition Act, 1949. This Act made her ownership of 20 units of alcohol at home, and the making and selling of chocolates that contained alcohol, a crime. At that time a person could buy and store only 12 units of alcohol at a time. So even a cavernous cellar stocking several hundred bottles in a wine manufacturing state was illegal, and buying imported liquor chocolates at a supermarket was illegal. Since then, Chandriani has been appearing for hearings at the Bombay high court. Her hearings often get deferred because judges dimiss it as “the chocolate case”. She has stopped making chocolates and is making films largely in India because impending hearings do not allow her to travel out of

We will find a position suitable for dly wait Mr Vasant Dhoble in the crime branch. Kin for any confirmation until I sign the order. — HIMANSHU ROY

India. Dhoble thrived and ruled the SS branch with so much impunity because our primitive laws are unchanged, and also because the city’s citizens helped. Dhoble has rarely spoken to the media. When he has, he has said emphatically that he is working on behalf of the law and that Mumbai’s people who were fed up of late nights and loud music asked for his help. With deadpan seriousness, he said in an interview to Rolling Stone India that overcrowded nightclubs can kill people and make sex workers out of young women. Those Dhoble harms the most help him too. Most restaurateurs, DJs, nightclub owners and socialites don’t openly speak about the irrelevance of the laws that empower him, and the need to amend and nullify them. Tehseen Poonawalla, a Pune resident who filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission against Dhoble because of the “Talibanization of Mumbai”, asking for an inquiry against his violent tactics, says: “Bombay never speaks out. The most disappointing thing about this moral police saga is that.” Two sisters had spoken. They were at a party at the Masala Curry restaurant in a western suburb when Dhoble and his men swooped. Both were arrested under PITA and then sent to a reform centre for sex workers for 21 days. After showing a large number of documents proving they were legitimate, tax-paying citizens, mothers and wives, they were released. They filed a `2 crore defamation suit against Dhoble, which the Bombay high court dismissed with a warning to them, on the ground that Dhoble had acted on behalf of the law. The sisters received no support from the city although their court appearances were reported widely by local papers. After the court verdict, they stopped talking to the media. So the only lesson Dhoble taught them—and all those he arrested or warned—is about ourselves. In the new year, don’t expect us to do more than just ask: What is Dhoble going to do now?

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MEDIA

The year the news was in the news

The trend is likely to continue unless we introspect on ownership models, ethics and governance

ndian media didn’t lose its way in 2013—that happened sometime back—but it ended the year no closer to finding answers to existential questions about ethics, governance, ownership, and business models. In Chennai, the Kasturi family that has always given the impression that it believes all desirable journalistic qualities are embedded in one closed genetic pool, fired The Hindu’s first non-family editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, who had managed to liven up a dense, albeit cerebral offering. The Kolkata-based proprietor of Open magazine, Sanjiv Goenka, famous for going on stage and singing a Bengali song to please the state’s chief minister, fired his political editor because said editor’s writings were presumably making several politicians across the spectrum uncomfortable. The India Today group, in which the Aditya Vikram Birla Group acquired a significant stake last year, blanked out some not-so-nice news about the group’s chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla. The TV18 group seemed to acquire a new political orientation that reflected that of its new owner, Reliance Industries Ltd. As of this writing, Tarun

Tejpal, the editor and partowner of Tehelka, a magazine that many saw as the quintessential antiestablishment publication, was in a Goa jail facing charges that he sexually assaulted one of his employees (and the magazine itself looks set to implode, with its managing editor too leaving). Outlook Publishing (India) Pvt. Ltd stopped publishing the local editions of three international magazines, and fired 120 people. The TV18 group restructured its operations and 300-400 people, including the chief executive of two of its channels, lost their jobs. Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd ceased publication of its weekend paper Crest, although no one lost their job. Business Standard sold BS Motoring to Delhi Press. The ABP Group sold Businessworld to Exchange4media founder Anurag Batra and some others. Indian media companies and groups made a lot of noise about, and some investments in, the digital space. Elsewhere, journalists got spellings and facts wrong, messed up math as only journalists can,

happily peddled the propaganda of their political and business masters, even resorted to stings and blackmail to make a quick buck—for themselves as well as their employees. A journalist at the Ghaziabad bureau of a Hindi daily, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that his bureau chief had a “revenue target”. The businessmanowner of two successful regional language channels, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was horrified when his deputy editor came to him and offered to “make `40 crore for the company”, all in cash (which means unaccounted money), from candidates contesting the elections—by blackmailing them. There are many other examples, but everything points to three questions that we are

R. Sukumar saw the Greater White-fronted Goose this year. Shuchi Bansal lived with giant spiders and glow-worms in her timber cottage in the hills this summer.

no closer to answering at the end of 2013 than we were at the beginning of the year. 1. What is the best ownership structure for media companies? 2. What is the best business model for media companies? 3. What is the best regulatory structure for media companies? The Guardian, a paper that is universally respected and admired, is owned by a trust, but not all Indian newspapers, channels and websites have that luxury. Some are privately owned by families or individuals or business

groups—which means they are not vulnerable to the demands of the stock market, although they may well be driven by the whims and interests of their owners. Others are listed on the stock market, and rated quarter on unforgiving quarter by analysts, but the public ownership also makes them, by and large, better governed and transparent. Some are large, making the stakes that much higher for them, but they can also better withstand pressure from politicians and large business houses about what to run and what not to. Others are small, and independent, but the consequent struggle for survival makes many of them do things they wouldn’t have liked to. The issue of ownership is also related to the one on how media companies make money. In a country like India, where people have been conditioned to pay nothing, or very little, for content, media companies are overwhelmingly dependent on advertising and advertisers—so much so that some media companies have lost sight of their original lofty objectives and now merely exist to link audiences and advertisers. With news becoming all about audiences, it isn’t surprising that some companies have resorted to packaging ads as news. Digital or online advertising accounts for 10-15% of all advertising depending on who you talk to, and that proportion will only increase. So if they are to stay relevant, media companies will have to ensure that 10-15% of their revenue comes from their digital operations. For most large media companies, the proportion is much lower, around 5-7%. And few are making the kind of investments required to grow this share. The writers do not have a personal

The current print-based mass media system onmentally is economically challenged as well as envir dia unsustainable. The key for conventional me uld allow them outlets is to conceive of a model that wo to move quickly to other platforms. — MARTIN SORRELL

preference when it comes to structure—each has its merits— although we do believe that a media company should focus on profits (after all, they fund the business, help it grow, and also provide a return to shareholders who put up the risk capital) without profiteering. We also believe media companies should address the imbalance between the revenue they get by selling content and that they do by providing audiences. This may mean higher cover prices, cable fees, and pay-walls. India has close to 200 million Internet users according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Even discounting that number by half, to remove those users who access limited online services such as Facebook on their so-called feature (or nonsmart) phones, and the result by another half to exclude irregular users, means India has 50 million “real” Internet users. Surely, some proportion of that will pay for content. The issue of governance is more complex. Self-regulation is desirable, but it hasn’t worked; the government can’t govern itself so it would be too much to expect it to govern media; and the country’s experience with independent regulators, across sectors, has been inconsistent. For every example of a newspaper or TV channel that governs itself admirably— we’d like to think Mint is one such—there are 10 that do not. The solution may be a new law, but one that is carefully crafted and balances all interests and has enough safeguards to prevent misuse (while on the subject of law, we’d also like India to scrap criminal defamation). Unless, or till these three issues are addressed, we are likely to see more news about the news in 2014 as well. Still, 2013 had one very bright spot as far as the media was concerned—it finally started covering itself.

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The year rape stayed on the front page

How a Dalit schoolgirl is negotiating life after a gang rape and a murder PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

New questions and new conversations all said the same thing: no more silence

ome things you don’t forget. What stays with me are the angry tears that came tumbling out and the incoherent explanation when my mother opened the door. I lacked the words to describe what had been done to me, how non-existent breasts had been groped and strange hands had violated me in the dimly lit stairwell of my building. I was 11 and my attacker ran a small roadside stall. I had recently befriended him on my way to school in Mumbai. That day he had followed me home. My mother knew exactly what to do. Without a word and consulting nobody, she grabbed my hand and frog-marched me down the street. He was packing up his things. Still wordless, she took off her slipper. Pachaak, it landed on his cheek. I remember his expression as he put his hand to his face. Chataak, it came down again. Did she yell at him? What did she tell the shocked bystanders? I have no recollection. But this I remember. She told me: Don’t say anything to anyone. That day my mother was my hero. A superwoman seeking retribution for her daughter. But I never asked her why I needed to hide what had happened. I never asked her about my forced silence. Had I somehow been shamed? And why? Nearly 40 years later, those questions still unanswered, that

memory still alive, I stepped out one winter day for the first time in my life to take a stand. Like so many Indians, the rape and subsequent death of a 23year-old medical student on the night of 16 December 2012 shook me in a way I still cannot explain adequately. How many like me were summoning our own individual traumas with sexual violence as we marched? How many marched for our sisters, our daughters? How many to give vent to unspeakable fears? How many to shame a listless government? We all had our reasons but we were all saying the same thing: no more silence. It was this collectiveness, galvanized by one single event that dominated headlines on television and in print. Nothing could eclipse it, not even the Gujarat state election results that brought Narendra Modi back to power. The government responded, first with water cannons and teargas and then by appointing a committee and passing stricter laws on women’s safety. Online petitions were launched, as were gender-specific sites like The Ladies Finger and Genderlog. In newspapers, rape stories gravitated from the crime pages to the front page. There was a new awareness of the power of words: sexual harassment not “eve-teasing”, survivor not victim. Nothing was left unsaid. Not marital rape, which the Justice J.S. Verma Committee wanted to make a criminal offence (the

government pulled back, alas); not the rape of citizens by the Armed Forces under a special Act that grants it inordinate powers in conflict zones such as Kashmir and Manipur. Rape was the new conversation in drawing rooms and seminar halls, in mainstream media and online chat rooms, in police stations and street protests, around dining tables and college canteens. Those conversations continued as new questions unravelled. In Mumbai, the gang rape of a woman journalist at Shakti Mills in August brought back the outrage of the preceding months but also the discomfiting question: Are some rapes more newsworthy than others? Do we give the same attention to the daily violence against Dalit women in states like Haryana? The questions continued even after the handing down of the death sentence to four men accused in the Delhi December gang rape. What had changed, we asked. Female foeticide and “honour” killings continue. Women still struggle to reclaim public spaces. Women who “step out of line”—by going to school, seeing a movie, coming home from work, enjoying a drink at a pub—are told they asked for it. The year limped to a close on an angry, noisy note as a young journalist with Tehelka levelled sexual assault charges against Tarun Tejpal, the founder and editor of the magazine. Unlike the 16 December rapists, Tejpal

THE RAPES WE DON’T REPORT

CRIME

Namita Bhandare made a film and rediscovered her voice.

was an “insider”; one of “us”. His own favoured thinking cap was that of a crusader against injustice, fighting for the rights of victims against powerful vested interests. That sanctimonious cover was blown as he stood accused of gross abuse of his position and, worse, of a shabby cover-up that reeked of arrogance and entitlement. Tejpal is not the first editor to have been accused of sexual assault or misuse of power. But if there is one thing that has changed post 16 December, it is the increasing refusal of women to remain silent. A million mutinies rage as a young intern accuses West Bengal Human Rights Commission chief Justice Ashok Ganguly of sexual harassment, as journalists come forward with charges against their editors, as Dalit girls say they will not “compromise” with their rapists and will press charges. Forty years ago my mother dealt with my molester in the best way she knew. Not with words but a retributive slap. Even then I understood that slap meant I never had to accept being violated. But I also understood that as a victim, I had something to hide. My silence cloaked a sense of misplaced shame. What happened to me four decades ago is just as likely to be repeated to someone

else’s daughter. But in 2013, we have a new willingness to confront it; to shout about it. We have nothing to hide because misogyny can no longer be confronted with silence. There is a new mood, if not a new direction. And that is something to talk about. In Kolkata, the woman known as the Park Street rape victim steps forward. She has a name, she tells the BBC. It is Suzette Jordan. “I am tired of being made to feel ashamed. I am tired of feeling scared because I have been raped. Enough is enough.” It is not enough. But it is brave and it is a beginning. Namita Bhandare is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.

...I saw the fear lty na pe ath de the ced un no an ge jud the When e or forget of death in their eyes…. I will never forgiv w paying the true no ’re ey Th r. hte ug da my to did y the at wh price for what they chose to do that night. — BADRI SINGH PANDEY

The year of PhDs in rape theory

PUBLIC DEBATE

Be it chowmein and lingerie mannequins or disc jockeys and early puberty, everyone from politicians to local goons had an opinion on why rapists rape

T Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance, evoking an urge to indulge in such acts. — JITENDER CHHATAR

his was a significant year in India’s intellectual history— never before have so many original theories of what leads to rape been generated in such little time. Our statesmen became scholars. Mamata Banerjee insisted that the increase in the number of rapes was caused by increased male-female interaction, claiming that “earlier if men and women would hold hands, they would get caught by their parents and reprimanded but now everything is so open”. Haryana minister Geeta Bhukkal claimed that “the way in which the statistics (on rapes) are being projected for Haryana, it is a conspiracy against the state”. Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, blamed it on either Western culture, deforestation, or urbanization, saying: “You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang rape or sex crimes. Where ‘Bharat’ becomes ‘India’ with the influence of Western culture, these type of incidents happen.” Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Raj Thackeray, to everyone’s surprise, blamed

immigrants, claiming that “all these rapists are from Bihar”. Ritu Tawade, a corporator in Mumbai, moved to ban lingerie mannequins and ads, claiming that “lingerie mannequins promote rapes. Skimpily clad mannequins can pollute young minds.” Chhattisgarh home minister Nanki Ram Kanwar blamed massive luminous spheres of plasma held together by their own gravity, saying, “Harm can come on a person if the stars are in adverse positions.” Haryana’s khap panchayats turned out to be particularly fertile grounds for radical theory. Sube Singh Samain claimed that “girls should be married at the age of 16, so that they have their husbands for their sexual needs, and they don’t need to go elsewhere”. Jitender Chhatar claimed that “chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance, evoking an urge to indulge in such acts”. Mahender Ghimana attributed the rise to the spread of “vulgar programmes on TV and cinema...which leads to early puberty and some of (the youth) are unable to handle it, which results in such incidents”. Inder Singh claimed that disc jockeys were responsible because “with DJs around, youngsters dance

under influence of liquor and sometimes misbehave with women”. Rameshwar Sharma, a member of the Brahmin Samaj in Uttar Pradesh, said that women “should...not use mobile phones, as these are things that provoke criminals to assault them.” Our religious leaders shared their wisdom with us. Asaram Bapu, speaking of the victim of the Delhi gang rape, said: “The victim is as guilty as her rapists.... She should have called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop.... This could have saved her dignity and life.” Swami Agnivesh said, “I think rapes will come down significantly if people stop eating nonvegetarian. ... Rapes will come down significantly if alcohol consumption is not there.” The police lent the full measure of their experience. Gurgaon’s police department ordered employers to seek permission for women employees working after 8pm. Andhra Pradesh barred women from clubs, pubs and bars after 10pm. Andhra Pradesh’s director general of police till September, V. Dinesh Reddy, blamed fashion, claiming that “even the villagers are wearing salwar-kameez from coastal Andhra villages where it

B Y N AMITA B HANDARE ···································· fter they had finished raping her, the 15-year-old schoolgirl remembers what the two men in the car told her. “Don’t bother telling anyone. Don’t bother complaining to the police. Nobody cares about a low-caste girl.” Then they added: “Come back to us in 10 days. If you’re not here, we will do to your mother what we’ve done to you.” Then, they slowed down the car, dropped the girl off, and sped away. It was 6 August 2012. The girl had earlier that year been promoted to class XI, the first person in her family to get that far. At her school in the Winging it: For many girls in rural India, school is their ticket to a better life. village, the Sanskrit teacher remembers her as a “bright” student, not very regular ries again, the workload on her will with attendance but someone who made the goddess Durga astride a tiger and a reduce, but she worries that his new wife sliver of mirror nailed to the wall. Someup with enthusiasm when she did show up. When she cleared class X, she was one had scrawled in Hindi below it a soli- might ill-treat her younger brothers and sisters. She is saving to buy her sister a done with the village school. Two years of tary word: Ma. new uniform that she desperately needs high school were a short bus ride away After the mother’s murder, the two but grumbles that she doesn’t chip in from home to the nearest town. men and the neighbour had been enough with the housework. arrested after the police finally began an When they grabbed her, she had just She worries that she will never be able investigation. A single armed guard who got off the bus and was walking the to get out of her village and will forever be had been provided for the family’s proremainder of the short distance to school. It was 9.30 in the morning, she rememtection accompanied the father while the labelled as “that” rape victim but she thinks she might be able to get married in bers. She hadn’t wanted to go to school girl said she stayed home because “they the years ahead. that day. Her father, a daily-wage labourer, will catch me”. The families of the men “If I step out of the house or even smile, in the nearby village were waiting and had already gone off in search of work to people in the village pass comments, ‘See watching, she feared. the fields nearby and her mother was out I drove through that village, accompa- how shameless she is to smile even on some chores. Her younger sisters and though her mother died because of her,’” nied by Savita, who pointed out the brothers had left for the local school. “My she says. uniform wasn’t washed,” she says. But a younger man’s house to me: a two-stoHer father no longer gets work because neighbour dropped in. “Missing again? rey building with terracotta tiles and This can’t go on. You must go.” carved columns in an area where people the upper castes who own the land want to teach him a lesson for refusing to “comof the upper-caste Rod community live. And so, reluctantly, she went, unaware promise”, she says. Former classmates and On the balcony two women were hangthat they were waiting for her, the two girlfriends now shun her because their ing baby pink garments out to dry. Who men, a 20-year-old from a neighbouring parents don’t want to antagonize the powvillage and his 36-year-old uncle. Waiting did they belong to? A niece of the erful families of the accused. in a car with tinted windows, they hit the accused? How were the older women Her accused rapists remain behind bars. accelerator as soon as they spotted her, related to the 20-year-old? And what did But the raped girl struggles within her own stopping just to drag her inside. they make of the charges against him? invisible prison. For the next 2 hours they drove around, Were they angry and ashamed? I have “There is nothing romantic about village taking turns to rape her, twice each. When no way of finding out. Savita urgently life for young girls,” says Savita, the daughthey were done with her, they dropped her suggested we move on before things ter of a bank manager who completed her off, warning her to return after 10 days so turned ugly. I followed her advice and bachelor’s in arts from Kurukshetra Unithat they could rape her again. went to meet the sarpanch instead. “These are isolated incidents,” says the versity. “We cannot dress up. We cannot She did not go back. Did they wait for her sarpanch, Hansraj, a Jat farmer. “There is wear jeans. We cannot even laugh. If at the place where she was supposed to no need for fear. These things don’t hap- someone harasses us, we are asked, ‘What meet them so that they could rape her pen in my village.” So how does he did you do to provoke it? Was your head again? Did they curse each other for percovered?’ I tell my cousins in the village to haps not beating her or scaring her enough? explain the spurt in reported rapes throughout Haryana? He is silent but a get out as fast as they can. There is nothWho knows? The girl didn’t show up. younger man, Jagan, a mechanic, ing for them there.” Then on 3 September, less than a explains to me that in 80% cases the This morning the schoolgirl finds an month after she was raped, her mother “girls are to blame”. hour of freedom as we wander in the marwent missing. The 38-year-old mother of “They make friends with boys. They ket nearby for an hour. She buys some five never knew what had happened to get into relationships. And when the fabric to gift her grandmother. “Nani her eldest child that day in August. She comes over sometimes. I like it when she did not know about the rape or the obvi- relationship comes out into the open, does,” she says. She doesn’t want to give it ous complicity of her neighbour. The girl they say they’ve been raped and the boys get trapped.” to the tailor to stitch, though—`130 is a lot says she was just too embarrassed to tell of money when there is her mother’s sewher mother. When she got back home, ****** ing machine at home and she can, incredthe neighbour had asked her to take a ibly, steal the time from her regular chores bath. Then she took her clothes and Six months after I first met her, I am to stitch it. When I drop her back home, washed them. back at the village in Karnal to see how life she asks when I will come again. Now the mother had left home in the has changed for the girl after she was Yet, she’s not entirely alone. Recently, a morning to go to the market to buy mediraped and her mother murdered. non-governmental organization, the KD cine, it was getting late and there was no Six months ago, the girl had proudly Singh Foundation run by the Trinamool sign of her. As night fell, the worried girl shown me the first chulha (hearth) she Congress’ Rajya Sabha MP K.D. Singh, went to her father to finally tell him what had made. She posed for photographs, arranged for her to take her examinations had happened. She was scared, she said. smiling shyly, with her younger sisters. as a private student at a nearby school. What if the men had picked up her mother? They wouldn’t act on their threat, Now, it takes me a minute to recognize the Textbooks for Hindi, English, fine arts, girl who enters the room, carrying a sack physical education and home science have would they? been bought for her. But the only time she Her father was taking no chances. A few of just-harvested rice on her head. She is thinner and looks older. The smile is gone. can study is late at night after the rest of years ago, his brother’s wife had gone She makes me a cup of tea and talks the family is asleep. missing. Just like that, gone without a about her day, an unrelenting routine that “If I study, then maybe I can get admistrace. “She was mentally challenged,” the begins at 4am to tend to the family’s bufsion to a hostel nearby. The NGO people police officer at the local police station say they can get my father a job and says when I ask him about it. “Who knows falo. Then it’s time to make the tea, make rotis, get the four younger siblings ready maybe then we can all move out of here,” where people like her run off to?” for school, wash clothes, clean the house, she says. Now the girl’s father was back at the feed the buffalo again in the evening, cook There is tremendous pressure on the police station, trying to register a comdinner and then sleep, seldom before mid- girl and her father from the families of the plaint. “A Dalit man complaining about a accused to “compromise”, she says. “They missing wife is never taken seriously,” says night. Along with all of this, she must juggle court dates for hearing that often get have offered me either `60 lakh or 2 acres Savita, a social worker who uses no last adjourned and appear there to testify. of land,” the girl’s father tells me. It’s a name. “Of course they hounded him out Soon after news of her rape filtered out, huge sum of money for anyone, more so with a couple of abuses.” Two days later a decomposed body was the then principal of her higher secondary for a man fighting with his back to the wall school struck her name off the rolls, she against a system that is loaded against found floating in the canal nearby. Once again, the girl’s father made the trip to the says. In any case, it’s impossible for her to him. But “money”, he says, “cannot comgo to school—she needs to stay home and pensate for my dignity.” police station, this time not to report a take over her mother’s chores now that And, you, I ask the girl, what do you missing wife but to identify her body. She she is dead. want? had been beaten, tortured, raped, killed, At 16, the schoolgirl had to become an She looks me in the eye: “They took and dumped. adult. She worries like one. But she’s also away my self-respect. They killed my I first met the girl six months after she still just a teenage girl. So she frets about mother. I want only justice. I want them had been raped, for a film I was making money and the sort of legal fees her father to hang.” for Miditech, a production house. She Then she looks down at her hands and was home in her two-room house in Har- is paying to the lawyer he has hired from adds: “Did you know I was my class moniyana’s Karnal district. A bunch of gnarled the financial compensation her family tor? My teachers said I could become anycarrots and a few unripe tomatoes waited received from the state. But she also worries about not having any new clothes. thing, even a bank manager.” to be cooked for dinner as she talked She understands that if her father marAnd then she breaks down and cries. inside a dimly lit room with a poster of

used to be very traditional. All these things provoke these type of things, which is not in control of the police.” Of course, our intellectuals were at the forefront of theorizing. Abhijit Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that rape arises due to the “inequality of access to sex” and claims that high housing prices deny poor men “the right to a normal conjugal life. If you are poor in urban India or even middle class and 25, you have to be very lucky to have a room of your own in the family home, let alone a separate apartment that you can call your own.” Journalist Praveen Swami blames the high price of movie tickets: “Increasingly, cities have no recreational spaces for young men. Films, long one of the few cultural activities that a working-class audience could participate in, now target elites; ... in its place, the street becomes the stage for acting out adulthood, through substance abuse and violence.” Ratna Kapur, a professor of law at the Jindal Global Law School, believes that female empowerment is causal: “As women enter the workplace and the public arena, their boldness and confidence

Navin Kumar spent the year trying to teach mathematics.

seem to trigger a sense of insecurity in a society where men are used to being in charge.” Many people blamed capitalism. Writer Arundhati Roy said: “There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Earlier at least the rich did what they did with a fair amount of discretion. Now it’s all out there, on television, all the sort of conspicuous consumption, and there is an anger and a psychosis building up ... young urban women ... are very very vulnerable to this kind of psychotic rage.” Activist Kavita Krishnan claimed that gender violence is the result of “the imperatives of global capitalism and imperialism and their local

agents”. Journalist Patricia Mukhim blames class conflict: “There is a palpable estrangement between the categories—rich, middle class, poor—in India today. ... The only way that some ... feel they can kick the system and hurt the high and mighty at whose hands they suffer daily reprimands and insults, is to commit acts that shake the very foundations of what we call ‘decent’ society. Rape then becomes a way of venting all frustrations.” Activists turned into thinkers. Ruchira Gupta blames the caste system for rape, noting that the December rapists were “all uppercaste men whose sense of traditional entitlement based on their caste may have been challenged in the big city of Delhi”. She speculates that the rapists were “socialized into believing that sex was connected to violence through countless hours of watching porn”. Kalpana Misra successfully petitioned to get Yo Yo Honey Singh’s New Year concert cancelled, claiming, “These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women-hating sentiments like these that men think that it’s fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi.” The musical preferences of the rapists in question have not yet been released to the public. Navin Kumar is an associate professor at the department of economics, Gargi College, University of Delhi. This article originally appeared on his blog: nationofbeancounters. wordpress.com

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The year rape stayed on the front page

How a Dalit schoolgirl is negotiating life after a gang rape and a murder PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

New questions and new conversations all said the same thing: no more silence

THE RAPES WE DON’T REPORT

CRIME

Namita Bhandare made a film and rediscovered her voice.

The year of PhDs in rape theory

PUBLIC DEBATE

Be it chowmein and lingerie mannequins or disc jockeys and early puberty, everyone from politicians to local goons had an opinion on why rapists rape

T Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance, evoking an urge to indulge in such acts. — JITENDER CHHATAR

Navin Kumar spent the year trying to teach mathematics.

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The year of the big fight If a sport is measured by its depth of talent, wrestling’s future is in prime fighting shape

WRESTLING

Rudraneil Sengupta has been picked up and thrown on a wrestling mat by Sushil Kumar and has lived to tell the tale.

n the last week of February, a village on the edges of Gurgaon is getting ready for a dangal—a traditional Indian wrestling competition. Here, the last line of high-rises gives way to a patchwork of green and yellow farmlands that stretches to the horizon. The arena for the bouts is being set in the middle of this sea of wheat fields. Hundreds of people come pouring in hours before the scheduled start—in cars, on foot, or piled on tractors like some stunt dare. A hysterical voice announces the competition endlessly. A cloud of swirling dust lends the whole scene a coppery hue, like an old photograph. The first set of competitors enter the simple earthen arena to great applause. Yogeshwar Dutt, the bronze medallist in the men’s 60kg freestyle wrestling at the 2012 Olympics, looks on at the carnival with a bemused smile. “We should get the Olympics people here,” he says, “show them what wrestling really means, how much it is loved.” Just a few days earlier, wrestling had suffered a great fall. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had removed the sport from its list of 25 core disciplines for the 2020 Games and recommended that it be dropped from the Olympic programme, a

Fila does no lobbying with the IOC, does not participate as a good citizen . in IOC activities and does not market itself — BILL SCHERR

decision that was received with shock and dismay around the world. In India, where wrestling has a long and rich history, and where the sport had just begun a spectacular resurgence triggered by the Olympic triumphs of people like Dutt and Sushil Kumar, it felt like a death blow. Kumar, whose 2012 Olympic silver made him India’s only athlete to win two Olympic medals in an individual sport, was nursing an injured shoulder at Chhatrasal Stadium, the wrestler’s offseason training haunt in Delhi, when the news reached him. “I did not believe it at first,” he says. “And then I felt angry, and then helpless, like I was in a nightmare where I was losing a bout but could not move my body to fight back. How could this happen? Is there any sport older than wrestling in the world?” This antiquity was doubleedged: It was one of the causes of the sport’s Olympic slip, and finally also its saving grace. Wrestling is as old as civilization—cave paintings depicting the sport go as far back as 7000 BC, when human beings were just beginning to learn how to farm. It’s as old as creation, if you are a believer in the Book of Genesis, where Jacob gets his grip on an angel. It was part of the ancient Olympics, and has been a constant feature of the modern Games since the inaugural edition in 1896 (with one exception in 1900). This is why, despite repeated warnings from the IOC, wrestling’s governing body, Fila, thought itself invincible. No one from the organization attended the meeting where the decision was taken to drop wrestling. Bill Scherr, a 1988 Olympic bronze medallist, told journalists: “Fila does no lobbying with the IOC, does not participate as a good citizen in IOC activities and does not market itself.” The threat of Olympic exclusion was a wake-up call. Fila’s president Raphael Martinetti resigned, and the new head Nenad Lalovic immediately announced a slew of changes touching everything from administration, the rules of the game, and arena design, to gender issues (for example, from the 2016 Olympics there will be six categories for women—up from four—and six for men, down from eight). In May, the IOC gave wrestling a reprieve, shortlisting the sport along with softball/baseball and squash as contenders for the lone new spot for the 2020 Olympics. A month after the IOC reprieve, Indian wrestling pulled off an impressive coup, winning 17 medals at the Asian Junior Championships,

more than any other country. If a sport is measured by its depth of talent, wrestling’s future in India is in prime fighting shape. A few hours spent at Chhatrasal Stadium and you know why things are so good. There’s Kumar, on the centre of the wrestling mat, a circle of young boys around him watching raptly as he explains and demonstrates a complicated move. Outside the wrestling hall, near the running track, Dutt is teaching the importance of feinting to another group of young trainees. On the steps of the stadium, Virender Singh, a two-time Deaflympic medallist and a two-time World Deaf Wrestling Championships medallist, is leading the more experienced lot of wrestlers through a set of brutal workouts. Everyone’s a champion here, or on their way to becoming one. On 8 September, a Sunday, the usual grind and monotony of hard training at the stadium was broken by an outpouring of joy—wrestling had been voted back into the Olympics during a meeting of the full Olympic Committee, comprising all 95 member states, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “We were following it in real time on the Internet,” Kumar says. “And it was crazy celebrations here when the news broke. I got calls and messages from around the world, from the US, from Bulgaria, from Iran.” A little more than a week later, as if in sympathetic response, India recorded their best-ever finish at the World Wrestling Championships, grabbing three medals. And no, those were not won by Kumar or Dutt (who were both out with injuries). In freestyle, they were won by Amit Kumar (silver) and Bajrang (bronze), who officially uses one name, two 19-year-old tyros fighting in their first-ever world championship. Sandeep Tulsi Yadav, 25, from Mumbai, won India’s first Greco-Roman medal (bronze) to complete the trio. As is usual in wrestling, all three have fought poverty with a single-minded commitment to their sport to get where they are now. They found their love for the sport in tiny local akharas or wrestling schools— little more than rectangular pits of soft earth to grapple on—and left their homes when very young to join more established residential training centres. Amit comes from a farming family from a village on the outskirts of Delhi, and was brought to Chhatrasal by a local coach who recognized his talent. Bajrang comes from a farming family from a small village near Jhajjar in Haryana, and Yadav’s family, who are small-time dairy farmers, live in a Mumbai slum. A few years back, Amit was adopted as a trainee by Sushil Kumar—“I could hardly believe my luck,” Amit says. “An Olympic medal winner training me? How could this be true?” At around the same time, Bajrang was picked as his training partner by Dutt. It was an injury to Dutt that allowed Bajrang to break into the Indian team for the 2013 World Championships, and Bajrang dedicated his medal to his partner and mentor. “He has never held back from teaching me,” Bajrang says. “No one has ever done more for me.” Yadav had almost given up wrestling because of financial problems a few months before he was picked for the World Championships. Now all three dream of Olympic medals in 2016.

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SPORTS

The year of last dances Staying great is often harder than becoming great

s December ends, and memory is rewound, I don’t dwell too long on the found of sport. The found is the new discovery, the emerging young hero, the shine of cricketer Mohammed Shami, the indifferent cool of chess player Magnus Carlsen, the contained precocity of golfer Lydia Ko. The found is invigorating, newness always is, for it is akin to a present just being unwrapped. Yet for all of that, as December nears its end, it is not the found that percolates in my memory but the lost. The older I get, edging closer to my own mortality, the more I am a sucker for last dances. It is the wounded champion whose years are running out whose imprint is stronger in the memory, perhaps because soon he might be banished from it. It is not the struggle to be great which I remember, but the struggle to stay great. Here, in the athletic twilight, where speed dims, reflex dies, injury arrives, ideas leak, auras fade, is the naked, vulnerable champion. His face is often painted in a bewildered weariness, he is disconsolate yet he shrugs on a stoic, if slipping, mask. We’re voyeurs, we want to see his pain; he’s angry, he doesn’t want you to look. Every month this happens in 2013, every month this year an athlete has wondered: How did I forget to win, how does nothing work, how do mistakes come like a river? In the month of November this man just happened to be V. Anand. Athletes understand one day it must all finish but the reality of their own endings is uncomfortable. At the post-final press conference, Anand, so often a man of polished articulation, left some sentences incomplete as he attempted to describe his defeat. His pauses hung in the air like his unfinished ideas at the chessboard. He was trying to logically answer questions even as he could not comprehend his absence of answers in certain games. He was a man lost for more than words. Athletes win, nations preen. It’s how it works. Anand mentally wrestled the world into submission on his way to five world titles. India loved it for there is nothing like a fellow man to boast about. Anand was the first, he was fast, he was funny, he was faithful to his craft. But now he is a journey ending and such a one will not come again. He is not done, he will play on, he will win titles, but in this defeat something has been lost forever. Athletes fall off sporting cliffs in slow motion. Decline is gradual, like a disease invisibly

staining you inside and then spreading quietly within, like spilt water across newspaper. It’s hard to tell when the end will come, but it has begun. Tiger Woods looks the same from a distance, is in the same position (No.1 in the world, with five victories), but he doesn’t feel the same. Something is lost. It is assurance. He will win majors, of course, but in 2013 he appeared a golfer who was always almost ready. Woods, this stony creature of mechanics, theories, desire, repetition, is fascinating. He is anxious at majors (the anxious Tiger was once a fictional idea). He has lost consistency in tiny measure, his intimidation has waned, his body is disobedient, his calm wavers, and now he must win and dominate despite all this. In effect, he is the oncegreat author attempting to produce a literary work while creativity leaks away, he is the musician performing as his hearing is gently lost. How can you look away? All year I watch for these athletes who fight time which belittles them. Time strips away speed, it brings injury, it allows for the new challenger. Time is what basketball player Kobe Bryant scraps with and boxer Manny Pacquiao spars against. Time is having a quiet word with footballer Lionel Messi, 26, whose body has suddenly turned mutinous. Injury follows injury. He misses games, he scores less, he is currently not the best player in the world. Yes, he is still majestic, he will win trophies and dazzle, but already there is a tiny hint of something lost. He has met with vincibility. It’s never a nice conversation. Any young athlete when he is 19 thinks time is limitless. For a few years it will be even said of him: Oh, give him time. But time leaks away like liquid he can’t hold on to and suddenly he finds no one gets better with time. Only worse. Soon the athlete wants to slow time down only because he is slowing down but it seems to go even faster. Suddenly a year has passed and four Grand Slams and Roger Federer is not even in one final. It is like sand slipping through his fingers. The champion is a complex machine who almost gives off a hum when in form, and then, like a classic timepiece, a wheel slips, a lever breaks, a spring rusts. But the athlete is not a watch, he cannot rebuild everything nor replace every part. Speed once lost is never found again. Perhaps, at best, he finds substitute skills: cleverness to compensate for a deadened acceleration. Federer, 32, will try that next year, but this year he looked lost and it was sad and beauti-

ful and real. These athletes talk differently now. The lounging conceit and superior air that came with their dominance is very gently passing. Now they talk with a little more defensiveness, with a little more weariness (damn, those questions again). They talk with a little more insistence. Pacquiao told me, across a table this autumn, with the soft voice of an undeterred priest: “I can still fight”. He repeats it, twice, thrice, and it is optimism wrapped in desperation. They talk with a little more defiance, they are a little more testy. Kobe Bryant, 35, plays minutes upon minutes, pushing his body and team till his Achilles ruptures and his agent sends him a headline from the Los Angeles Times: “Injury Clouds the Future for Bryant, Lakers”. From hospital, Bryant posts on Facebook: “I’m keeping track of all doubters and haters.” They talk uneasily about subjects never broached before. Federer is talking streaks— finals he hasn’t reached, tournaments he hasn’t won. When young they won’t negotiate with themselves—they have to win, all the time, everywhere. Now they’ll settle for less punches thrown, less titles won, less average points scored. If only they can have one, last, historic shining moment. Not everyone likes the struggling, scrapping champion. Go, people tell Federer. No, no, stay. Fight, dammit. Train. Try. Run. Hit. Screw legacy, screw history, just push. There’s a mad romance to his fight against inevitability, in his want to retrieve the irretrievable. He can never be Federer for the whole year. But he could

be Federer for just two weeks. For the right two weeks on grass in June-July. His vanity, his ego, tells him that. In August, a lovely moment unfolds. Federer talks about winning, he says winning is trophies, headlines, fame; he says it is fun; but he says it doesn’t translate to more love of the game. It’s when you don’t play well, he explains, that love shines. To keep going is love. To still enjoy practice is love. Only at the endings of athletes will they speak like this, will they become plaintive and wistful and philosophical. Only at the endings of athletes do we truly see

ng season. It’s no joke No year is lost...it was actually an interesti everything...it was an ion est qu to d ha I . rse cou of d, ure inj ing be ent people reacted, interesting experience—to see how differ f. and how I dealt with this situation mysel — ROGER FEDERER

Rohit Brijnath discovered mortality and the truth that his forehand is never going to be great.

them clearly. The young athlete is inhumanly ambitious. The athlete at his peak is invincible. But the older athlete, this Anand, this Federer, this Kobe, this Pacquiao, these thousand desperate others, they represent

sports’ most human time. No cape is to be found any more among them. That is forever lost. And so in December, I wonder about such athletes because I am uncertain when I might see them again. Time claims them all, even Sachin Tendulkar. I don’t want to dwell too long on the year gone by for these athletes do not look back at defeat either. They are looking at their next fight, next match, next month, next January, next chance. They know history is studded with encores and comebacks and last hurrahs and final flourishes. They know they have a chance but can it be found? In late November, after two losses in 2012, Pacquiao wins again in the ring. Not as good as he was. But as good as he needs to be. He can still fight. So much is gone, yet all is not lost. Rohit Brijnath is a senior correspondent with The Straits Times, Singapore.

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TECHNOLOGY

Gopal Sathe did a factory reset on more devices than is possibly healthy.

The year of inside out and upside down Wearable tech, smart watches, sudden death and big exits—the tech world spun out of control

rom watching computers turning into phones, we now see people talking into their watches. And continuing with that 1980s theme, we’ve got car makers integrating iPhones and Siri; so you’re basically David Hasselhoff talking to KITT from the TV series Knight Rider. Which is very cool for people of a certain age. It’s not all cool and new Space Age stuff though. We’ve also seen some big exits and changes this year. Nokia, one of the biggest and most respected brands in the world, is on the way out; in September, Microsoft announced that it would be buying the company for $7.2 billion (around `44,640 crore). That might sound like a lot of money, but just a decade ago Nokia was worth $200 billion. Social apps Snapchat and Pin-

terest, two products that haven’t proved profitability, are being valued at $4 billion. The blame must lie with Nokia, which turned a blind eye to developments in the space it so completely dominated, and that’s a lesson Microsoft desperately needs to pay attention to. Of course, after 10 years of turbulence, Microsoft is a company that’s completely topsyturvy. And with Steve Ballmer leaving this year, after more than a decade at the helm, things are likely to get stranger. That’s because one of the things Ballmer has been rightly criticized for is firing anyone who looked to be a potential successor as CEO; top candidates have become writers and musicians. In November last year, heir apparent Steven Sinofsky left Microsoft following the poor reception to Windows 8. It was

It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers. — ELON MUSK

described as mutual, and Microsoft continues to insist, to this day, that Windows 8 has been a success. And we don’t talk about the Surface tablets. This year, before Ballmer retired, Don Mattrick, head of the Xbox division, left Microsoft to take over as CEO of mobile gaming company Zynga, just over a month after the Xbox One was announced. Mattrick’s leaving might possibly have had more to do with his wanting a bigger role than it did with the poor reception to the launch announcement, but it still was very reminiscent of Sinofsky’s exit. Today though, as we move towards a mobile world where wearable technology is emerging as the next big thing, this moment of change might actu-

ally be good for Microsoft as well. Microsoft has shown in the past that it can make amazing things. It’s important that the company get fired up and generate new ideas, because we’re living in a world where Apple’s decision to brand a plastic iPhone 5 the 5C is considered the second coming. One area where things are really different now is mobile technology. In 2007, when the iPhone launched, smartphones already existed. In 2013, we saw the first few smartwatches and wearables, and it’s safe to say that these early devices are as clunky and unexciting as phones were in the pre-iPhone

HITS, MISSES, AND TECH TOYS WE NOTED Temple Run 2

A casual game with surprising depth, this mobile game proves you don’t have to have a console to be a gamer.

iPhone 5s

The best iPhone yet—each new iPhone is hated by critics and loved by buyers, and the 5s is no different.

Google Glass

It sounds great in theory, but it’s still in beta—called the Explorer Program—and likely to stay there for a while.

Sony PlayStation 4

With a million units sold on launch, a (relatively) reasonable price tag (at $399.99, or around `24,640), and the promise of a focus on gamers, Sony’s PS4 is hitting all the right notes.

Samsung Galaxy Gear A jack of all trades, the Galaxy Gear does too many things on a tiny screen with limited battery life. Couple that with a bulky design, and this watch isn’t a great wearable.

Pebble

The only wearable people actually bought, the Pebble watch proves that sometimes, less is more.

Moto X

Limited by limited availability, the Motorola’s Moto X promised to take Android’s cutomizability and bring it to hardware. No availability in markets other than the US makes it not quite a hit though.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown iOS

‘XCOM: Enemy Unkown’ proved that a full-budget console game can actually be playable on a mobile phone without sacrifices.

Chromecast

This smartwatch is perfect, but you already own something better; the Chromecast is well built and cheap, but what’s the point?

SimCity

Making a notably single-player game require an Internet connection to play, and a server that was down, is a bad combination.

BlackBerry Z10

A great phone no one bought. BlackBerry was in need of a miracle at the start of this year, and unfortunately, the Z10 couldn’t deliver.

Nokia Lumia 1020

A great camera isn’t a good phone, and unless you’re printing billboards, you’re probably going to be just fine with the camera on an iPhone instead.

Grand Theft Auto V

Stupid and smart at the same time, ‘GTA’ has always revelled in letting you cut loose and have fun with explosions, while including biting satire. Gopal Sathe

era, interesting only to dedicated technology geeks. As one of those geeks, it’s safe to say that the smartwatch is very exciting right now. The Pebble, which uses an e-ink display, looks great and while it doesn’t have too many apps, it’s just useful enough to make a difference. Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is big, boxy, and needs to be charged every night, but it also packs a camera and sensors that make it a lifestyle accessory. Sony’s SmartWatch 2 and Qualcomm’s Toq have similar limitations, but while all these devices are more Inspector Gadget than anything else, that’s because they’re still finding their ideal-use case. With people like Pranav Mistry at Samsung (whose SixthSense demonstration at a TED talk in 2009 is still an impressive vision statement), it’s safe to say that we’re going to see this category expand drastically, and become far more usable. At the same time, Google also has Glass, which could bring about a revolution in augmented reality. Both these concepts work great with what we’ve already learnt about mobile, social and local technology, and over the next couple of generations, these should become the face of mobile technology. And 2013 is where these ideas all started. Gaming is also turning upside down. The Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 have been around since 2005 and 2006, respectively, and the start of a new console generation this year, with the launch of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, is going to take some getting used to. The new consoles are steadily moving away from discbased games to digital downloads, and now that game consoles are becoming mainstream, gaming is just one of the things these machines focus on. The new look of these con-

soles also reflects that—appearing more like DVD players than game machines. The new consoles promise to change the way we play, to deliver new experiences and emotions which games in the past simply could not. The way they want to do this, though, is as hackneyed as ever—your games will magically improve by getting better-looking. We’ve frequently tried to write about indie games that really do push the envelope, so a small eye roll is required at the thought that better graphics equal better storytelling in games—there is, however, actually some truth in that statement. When L.A. Noire-style facial animation can be tied to actually enjoyable gameplay, the potential for truly amazing, immersive experiences does sound a lot less like hyperbole. Gaming is ready for a big shake-up, and this could be what takes it fully out of niche entertainment into mass media. But it’s also very likely that some of the most interesting new experiences will also be born out of devices that have first made their presence felt this year, whether it’s something like the Gear and Glass, or things like the Oculus Rift headmounted display, which could make gaming the best new way to learn as well as play. And then there’s 3D printing. It’s still a reasonably niche area of development, particularly in India. According to IT research and advisory company Gartner, the numbers of 3D printers doubled this year from last year. Don’t get caught up in the hype though; wearables, watches and mobile are 2013. 3D printers? Look to 2020 and we’re probably going to see a future where you can download the design of a shoe, print it, and go for a run. For now though, it’s firmly in the realm of tinkerers, who’re excited about being able to print a cube. That’s also very cool, but not something the average consumer will care about. And amidst all these radical changes, the two most famous technology journalists in print, who had helped the average consumer make sense of things like Google, Twitter, and of course, the ever evolving smartphone, announced they would be moving on. Walt Mossberg (The Wall Street Journal) and David Pogue (The New York Times) said byebye after two decades and 13 years respectively. Both will continue to write online though. We can’t wait to see what comes next.

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NEW MEDIA

#Feku vs #Pappu: the year we subverted social media

Prayaag Akbar moved to Mumbai this year, where he ate vada pao for the first time.

We said bye-bye to a medium of happy anarchy. Increasingly popular social media faced the same threat as traditional media

he National Front government of V.P. Singh is remembered for a set of caste-based reforms that set fire to the nation, but one of its great parliamentary successes was the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990. Enacted seven years later, it granted, at long last, both Doordarshan and All India Radio a degree of autonomy from the government. You might well ask—why would V.P. Singh’s quickly-cobbled union of (Ram Manohar) Lohia socialists prioritize control over television content as an avenue of legislation? The answer lies in the great power media has, especially a pervasive visual medium like television. In the 1980s, the Congress had television programming in strict shackles. To watch Doordarshan (DD) was to be presented with a strange admixture: nationbuilding, pedagogy, manipulated news, some scant offerings of entertainment—a cocktail that aspired vaguely to Nehruvian ideals but never quite got there. It presented a certain vision of India, and, consequently, a certain vision of what it meant to be an Indian. But while the implementation of the Prasar Bharati Act brought some relief, putting distance

between direct political interest and programming, it was with the entrance of private television that the floodgates really opened. Its hunger for programming of all kinds meant we had, for the first time on our screens, competing visions of India, from saas-bahu to Chhota Bheem to MTV Roadies. If DD once ordered us to sing in tune (Mile sur mera tumhara), private television has us competing to be heard, teaching us to draw consonance from cacophony. Things have improved unsteadily in the decades since. The state has tried to exercise control over a proliferating media, with varying success. The costs and difficulty of putting together a newspaper or television channel make this easier—control is easier in an oligarchic system, where there are fewer parties in a position to influence proceedings. And big media in India has been an oligarchy, with a collusive tendency towards whoever is in power, for as long as the nation has been independent. This is why when blogs, Twitter and social media came along, when the Internet turned from a network of static pages to an organic entity you could interact with, mould and contribute to, it

arrived not so much as a breath of fresh air as a great swinging gale, promising to blow down every carefully constructed fence in its path. One may not agree with all the contentions of the first wave of bloggers and Twitter accounts that attacked the media for being fed by the ruling party, or the vituperative way they made their point, but there is no doubt they were pointing to a political reality that has had serious consequences on our democratic progress. When I joined Twitter, in 2010, I was surprised by a few things: the quality of debate; the freedom to make fun of anyone, whether Sachin or Sonia or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar; the wonderful, collaborative pinging of thoughts and ideas by concerned Indians from all over the globe; the wilful disdain of all those things traditional media had so long told us were sacred. There was an element of happy anarchy to it, unfettered and unbowed, as tweet after tweet whittled away at the pedestals of those in power. And it had a feedback effect: The raw derision of social

media has in turn elevated political commentary in our country, moving us past an era where obfuscation and a pretence towards temperance were used to disguise the compact between big media, big corporate and big politics. Human cognition seems to need a narrative in order to process a set of events. The media’s role in society is to construct narrative after narrative about everything that takes place around us. It is the first interpreter of our world; trust what it feeds you or not, journalism has a decisive say in how we believe events are connected, and which people and institutions are related to those events. Sometime in the past three years, driven by its immediacy and accessibility, social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, became the first interpreter of the events of the world for a great number of people. And because many of the journalists shaping the debate in television and print were honing their ideas, even getting them, from places like Twitter, social media started to have a spillover effect, beginning to influence how even those Indians who were not on social media saw events. Much of the enhanced debate that has surrounded the major political events in India in the last few years—think of Jan Lokpal; sexual violence; the National Food Security Bill, 2013; the khap panchayats—was first

constructed in social media, on blogs and social networks, and only then transported to the talking heads of television and comment pages of print. In fact, increasingly, the talking heads you see on television are found on Twitter. Perhaps it was inevitable that it could not last. Not with an election year impending. Perhaps anything that wields this degree of influence, this promise to direct the national consensus, will never remain uncompromized. The edifice upon which traditional media was built was slowly undermined by such disparate routes as backhand loans and munificent government advertorials and quiet threats and silent partnering. Now social media faces the same threat, though it comes in different clothing. The great strength of social media was its genuine independence: You might have preference, even affiliation, but you did not have an agenda. You came to debate not dictate, and you were there because you wanted to engage with others, to understand differing viewpoints, to refine your own thinking on an issue via someone else’s expertise. But that kind of engagement is much too congenial for our political leaders to accept. And the method they’ve chosen to subvert it—a subversion that stands as one of the grievous aspects of 2013—is through paid shills. Now it is impossible to tell who is being paid to tweet what. There are people that spend all day, every day, reacting to any bit of news that emerges about the political party and leader they love. This is not a little crush either, as some of them seem to do it for free. This is allconsuming, Fatal Attractionesque love, love that has them monitoring a Twitter feed every waking hour, waiting to pounce on any slight against their candidate, waiting to retweet any tired, mindless jibe as long as it makes fun of the other guy. This effort stems from a surging belief that social media will be crucial in the 2014 general election, a canard that only the polls can test. It started with an unusually high number of people attacking you every time you critiqued Narendra Modi. Trolls, we were told—the work of his huge social media team. The Congress, always one

ns in twentyI am convinced that a majority of politicia will first-century democracies—including India— like me, who were be tweeting within ten years, and those, solation ahead of the curve will have only the con of knowing that we got there first. — SHASHI THAROOR

to miss a trick, responded in the worst manner possible: They rounded up their own band of sycophants, who now do the same thing, but for Rahul Gandhi and against Modi. If this was a private squabble it would still be tolerable, but it’s the kind of thing anyone with an interest in politics cannot keep off their timelines. Before our eyes, social media turned from a place where you could find substantive debates over policy to a zone of pejoratives and hashtags. #Feku (Modi is a liar!) vs #Pappu (Rahul is a naïf!) is the discourse we deserve, apparently. Late in November, Cobrapost, an investigative journalism website, released the findings of a “sting” operation concerning social media. It confirmed what many regular users have known for some time, that most of the sad little jokes, unimaginative cartoons and ardent declarations of love or loathing towards politicians that do the rounds are controlled by social media companies. These social media outfits can either be tinpot operations, such as the ones Cobrapost associates with some very serious misdemeanours (up to, even, disenfranchisement of minority communities and spreading disinformation before an election), or much larger companies like Webchutney, which reportedly has the Delhi Congress contract, and runs the “Friends of Delhi” Facebook page, a thinly-disguised Sheila Dikshit fan page which has accrued around 203,000 “likes”. There is of course something singularly stupid about political parties creating fake accounts to post insults and praise—they’re lying to themselves about a metric only they are interested in, i.e. which one of them is “trending” that day, or how many “likes” a page has. More evidence of one of the few perennials in politics: Politicians like to lie to everyone, even themselves, about how many supporters they have. I first saw the potential of social media during the Jan Lokpal debate. Activists Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan released the document they hoped would give a council-byappointment authority over our highest legislative and bureaucratic bodies. Television biggies and opinion writers seemed caught up in the heady political moment, portraying this as the saviour of our heinously corrupt democracy. No one, it seemed, had actually read the document itself. Then we started seeing retweets of separate blog posts written by two lawyers, Gautam Patel and Amba Salelkar, who had made the effort to parse it, finding time to do it outside of their day jobs, one presumes. They pointed out the serious inadequacies in the Bill, and promoted a substantive debate about the clauses “Team Anna” had inserted and what it would mean for democracy in India. It was only after this had already taken place in the social media sphere that the first serious critiques of the movement started being written by our commentariat. If such a thing were to happen today, would we have seen those blog posts? Would those journalists who took the issue forward have had access to that expertise? Most likely the lawyers’ blog posts would be submerged in a sea of paid tweets in favour of and against the Lokpal, sent by shills in other clothing. Those who desire control will fight for it in many an insidious way. Unless we do something about it, this free and fearsome space will go, just as the others have. Prayaag Akbar is a journalist with The Sunday Guardian.

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STYLE

The year of flashback fashion

Red carpet

Shefalee Vasudev made a living out of looking at other people’s clothes.

Old was new as a re-enactment of history played in a loop; so what if the world celebrated the future?

he past is a safe place. What you don’t like about it can be reimagined. The future, however, is open-ended and unpredictable. So it came as no surprise when most couture and even some prêt collections this year chose to harvest from history. They invoked the past, recalling historical themes, mythological characters and the unending fascination Indians have for royalty. Maharaja, maharani, grand, palatial, antique, glorious, opulent, even decadent, crowded the visual vocabulary in 2013. Not only are couture collections “inspired” by past glory but historical references are used to erect lavish, period sets. Even where there is newness in the designs—a grammar of gold ghaghras, shimmery saris and embellished sherwanis—the affiliations are strongly archival. This repetition haunts the West as well. “I think it is time to free couture,” said Raf Simons, creative director of Christian Dior, after his Fall-Winter 2013/14 Couture show in July in Paris, France. “It annoys me that couture is thought of as the circus clown of fashion,” he said of his show that explored the influence of Europe,

the Americas, Asia and Africa on Dior. Huge digital projections of girls wearing clothes shot by top photographers appeared on the walls of a white box as the models walked past. The legendary Karl Lagerfeld too drove home the need to stop bowing to the past with Chanel’s Fall-Winter 2013/14 Couture offering in July. As soon as guests settled into the haute oldness of what looked like an ancient theatre with crumbling stone walls, broken windows, musty stage curtains and artificial “dust” on everything, the curtains opened to reveal a new, 21st century city. “On the way from the Old World to the New World and fashion is the only way to make the trip,” announced Lagerfeld, sizing up his show. 2013 was the year of “new couture” globally. Words like wearable, real, futuristic and “beyond the red carpet” got included in this métier bound by tradition. New, eerie-looking, diaphanous stuff, glittering circuitry, 3D effects and never-seen fabrics entered shows. Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection, in his Fall-Winter 2013/14 Couture show in July, with the catwoman as Alpha female, didn’t even roll out of a flamboyant set. The clothes

themselves presented the large, immersive idea of couture. Why then do things remain the same even when they change in India? Manish Malhotra’s finale for the PCJ Delhi Couture Week in August was inspired from the 1930s. “I visualized a maharani dressed in a layered lehnga ensemble embellished with antique gold, wearing heirloom jewellery, walking down a corridor with her entourage to meet the viceroy in his regalia,” said the collection note on sepiatinted paper. Malhotra’s set had old chandeliers, white candles, fragrant mogra flowers, ornate seats lined with deep red velvet cushions attempting a nostalgic remake of flourish that doesn’t exist any more. Sabyasachi’s couture Opium too was set against a brilliantly created old set, with old bottles and dusty wrought-iron seats, overgrown plants—a lovely edifice of decay. Anju Modi’s collection was called Draupadi, her set a monumental palace echoing with folk dances of yore. At the Aamby Valley India Bridal Fashion Week in July in Delhi, J.J. Valaya brought on the ramp the heavily bedecked “Maharaja of Madrid”. If Raghavendra Rathore traced

SHOW-STOPPERS

the genealogy of his inspiration to the 1920s for his bridal line, Ashima-Leena presented an ode to Chandni Chowk with a dastangoi performer retelling Dilli ki Daastan. Rohit Bal’s line Mulmul Masquerade flashed moments from the Elizabethan period with Victorian hairstyles, frilled, high-collared blouses teamed with saris and long robes. “The corsets…transported the audience to the Elizabethan era and reminded us of the rich and dramatic pageantry of princesses and fairy tales,” said the press note. Suneet Varma’s show The Golden Bracelet was inspired by the ancient city of Pompeii. With Roman art as the backdrop, the models came down the runway in toga-style saris. “Wreath-inspired headgear in gold, necklaces in shapes of twigs, spiral shaped long rings, and long spiral armlets were reminiscent of a bygone era,” went the accompanying note. For the finale of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2014 in October, Ashish N. Soni called his show La Dolce Vita, his passport for using 1950s as his muse for drama and design. The point is not about derivative themes but about an almost political commitment to history, an obsession among senior designers that confuses past grandeur with elegance. Old for new. Curious, isn’t it, for the fashion industry, known for its nanosecond fickleness, to be so history-conscious? Designers argue that they actually create contemporary garments where the past is only a departure point. “It’s easier to fall back on historical references,” admits Soni, explaining that his Spring/ Summer 2014 finale collection harked back to the 1950s because that era is the uncontested decade of glamour, representing the kind of fashion that defines his sensibility. Whereas Valaya, whose brand tag line is Future of the Past, says that “royalty, being true connoisseurs of art, craft and talent and by virtue of their glamorous (often debauched) existence, provide the perfect cocktail for reinterpretation in an all-new fashion avatar”. Varma offers academic reasoning. “In principle, couture all over the world is about reinventing tra-

w World On the way from the Old World to the Ne fashion is the only way to make the trip. — KARL LAGERFELD

Plastic fantastic

Vidya Balan as Hindustani Chanel in her first appearance on the Cannes red carpet in a white Sabyasachi sari, black blouse, vintage watch and low chignon.

Designers Amit Aggarwal, Rimzim Dadu, Anand Bhushan used silicone, stretch rubber, tough leather, industrial plastic and faux metal to create New Age Indian couture, a worthy repartee to the handloom war cry. PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Best look

Light fell on Indian couture as a gold and black, clingy, seethrough, slit, sequinned mesh gown by Gaurav Gupta arrived on the ramp.

Hot fabric

Most craftsy fabric: Rajesh Pratap Singh’s Ikat blended with wool.

Film fashion

Subarna Ray Chaudhuri dressed Barun Chanda as a ‘zamindar’ in ‘Lootera’ in starched ‘addi (white Kolkata cotton) kurtas’, the best menswear entry.

Brand perfect

Trend

Priyanka Chopra became the first Guess girl from India, a safe guess too if you had to list the best dressed in Bollywood.

Everywhere add-on

The Aam Aadmi ‘topi’ got formally elected as the most ubiquitous accessory.

Monochromes— black and white—ruled our fashion just as the rainbow ruled our social choices.

Design diva

Masaba became Indian fashion’s blue-eyed girl, gave the Nano her name and modern prints a run for their money.

Favourite accessory

Paromita Banerjee’s crocheted foot thongs (Spring/ Summer 2014) became avidly read footnotes.

Modelled on

In sauntered the ‘mantastic’ Milind Soman wearing just a white towel, and we realized why old spices set a dish on fire. Aftershave, anyone?

Best TV look

PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/ GETTY IMAGES)

Mandira Bedi’s stark, androgynous turnout and smoky eyeshadow in ‘24’ eclipsed Indian TV’s whopping, blinding bling.

dition,” he explains, adding that “we can only have a reference from something that’s already been done.” Varma cites instances of the many global designers who have been inspired by designers like Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau and The Great Gatsby, the book from the roaring 1920s and 1930s, considered worldwide to have been the most inspiring fashion decades. “A book called Royal Costumes of India remains my continual source. I have never not referred to it in the last 25 years of my work,” Varma adds. Tarun Tahiliani takes the debate further. “The fact that couturiers continue to emulate decadence of royals who were true patrons of art and finery, and revisit influences of our colonial past as an era of elegance, shows how difficult it is to be modern in this country,” he says. He has a point. Modern India is hardly an inspiration for resplendent couture. Ruptured roads, intermittent power supply, frightening inequalities and polyester fashion coexisting with buzzing malls, dazzling clubs and pubs and selective prosperity. Here fashion depends on underprivileged craftsmen for the unbelievably intricate embroideries that define Indian couture

Best innovation

Hemlines flirted with red carpets as the ‘anarkali’ left behind its ‘kurta’ avatar to become a floor-length, gown-like garment. Shefalee Vasudev

and make it aspirational. There are no go-to centres for extraordinary industrial sets or backdrops. Everything is handmade by local artisans and steeped in tradition. In the West, designers are becoming sensitive to the contexts of new couture customers. Some are from West Asia, others are young and rich non-celebrity global women keen on bespoke clothes which don’t make them look like the pall-bearers of a dead princess. In India, however, wedding couture is the only real couture; new and old customers mirror each other. So couturiers, however pathbreaking they may be, are forced to remain in the same thinking space as their clients instead of being mentors of taste. The rich plan their weddings with historical themes where the mandap is imagined as a royal palace. The bride and groom are royalty. The couturier is just the supplier of shiny goods to re-enact this vision in real life. Yet there are new stirrings. At a recent big wedding in Delhi, the bride wore a plain Raw Mango silk lehnga with a single necklace. “A new day dawned for Indian couture,” says Tahiliani, who was present. A small but significant port of departure from history, shall we say?

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LEGISLATION

The year we said yes to patient rights but no to gay rights

Achal Prabhala spent the year writing and dreaming of Brazil.

Both judgements made international headlines. And both were deeply, and ironically, connected

wo seemingly unrelated cases were decided in the Supreme Court this year. One made life-saving medicines affordable, the other turned homosexual people into criminals again. Both made world headlines. One was met with jubilation, the other with horror and a kind of stunned disbelief. On the face of it, these two cases have nothing to do with each other: How could a consensual act of sex between gay adults have any connection to an affordable treatment for cancer? And yet, the cases are deeply and ironically connected. On 1 April the Supreme Court issued its decision in Novartis AG v. Union of India, bringing to an end the long saga of imatinib, a miracle cure for chronic myeloid leukaemia, on which the validity of the 2005 amendments to the Indian Patents Act was staked. Novartis’ monopoly claim was struck down and the law upheld. The consequences were immense: Millions of people in India and the world over were assured access to affordable medicines. Nine months later, on 11 December, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Koushal v. Naz Foundation, marking the latest instalment in a long struggle for gay rights. At the heart of this case was Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code of 1861, a provision that criminalizes sodomy, the social effect of which has been to render queer people open to mockery, discrimination and abuse. In 2009, the Delhi high court issued a judgement that “read down” Section 377 by recognizing the Constitutional rights of sexual minorities. The Supreme Court reversed this judgement. The first judgement was celebrated around the world— and even replicated. Five months after the Novartis judgement, South Africa’s department of trade and industry launched a consultation to comprehensively update patent law in the country; two months later, the lower house of the National Congress of Brazil issued a report on patent law reform in support of a formal bill launched by a Workers’ Party Congressman. Both efforts had Indian law in mind as a model. The second judgement induced rage, as well as some smugness in the weird little museum of pantheological dinosaurs. That we can proudly serve as a model for patient rights in South Africa (where gay rights have been constitutionally protected since 1996, and gay marriage has been legal since 2006) or Brazil (where homosexuality was decriminalized in 1830, and gay marriage has been legal since the middle of this year) and simultaneously

ignore their record on gay rights is ironic. Patent law affects medicines; medicines save lives; and the irony is that we owe our lives to the gay rights movement. Until the 1990s, access to medicines was facilitated by a booming generic drug industry which was the outcome of the Indian Patents Act of 1970. Since the late 1990s however, and right up to the present day, every single development that made the law we now have can be traced back to the gay rights movement. Certainly, there are people from all traditions involved in public health activism in India, but no single movement has played a larger role in making our access to medicines a reality. ****** David France’s stunning documentary How to Survive a Plague makes the connection with force. The film begins in New York City, in the dark days of 1987, when being HIVpositive meant certain death. Six years into the AIDS epidemic, homophobia is escalating, hospitals are turning away dying men, and there are no medicines to treat AIDS: In response, hundreds of gay men and women come together to form the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—ACT UP. How to Survive a Plague follows members of ACT UP as they set the template for public health activism. First, they familiarize themselves with the science of pharmaceuticals and the technical aspects of public policy. Then they barrage their government into allocating money towards AIDS research, and convince the US food and drug administration that life-saving medicines deserve a better, faster review. And they win. Gregg Gonsalves, one of the activists featured in the film, embodies the global impact of the gay rights movement. After ACT UP, he founded the Treatment Action Group with Mark Harrington, and later moved to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, both US-based organizations; he also worked in South Africa, where he ran a regional advocacy organization (and where another ACT UP spin-off, Health GAP, which plays a crucial role in global treatment access, has been active). “At first, it was not about access because there was no access to be had. We needed drugs,” he said, in a recent conversation. “And then, in 1996, all that changed. We had a way to treat HIV infection now and our thinking shifted.” His connection to South Africa was formed in early 2000, when a young South African called Zackie Achmat came calling in New York City. Achmat had formed an organization called the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Cape

Town, and was interested in replicating what his American counterparts had achieved. Later that year, Gonsalves and Achmat met again at the International AIDS Conference in Durban. It was a historic gathering. Nelson Mandela gave the closing speech. Hundreds of people from around the world listened to an impassioned appeal from Justice Edwin Cameron—who founded the the advocacy group AIDS Law Project and would go on to join the constitutional court of South Africa—on the need for access to AIDS medicines in developing countries. Like many leaders of the AIDS movement—including Achmat and Gonsalves— Cameron is gay and HIVpositive, which gave his public appeal a personal force. “His speech was absolutely gripping,” Gonsalves said. Among the people gripped by Cameron’s speech in Durban were members of the Lawyers Collective, a pioneering Indian public-interest initiative. Anand Grover, one of its founders, would serve as the link between the two Supreme Court cases— as the lawyer for both the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA) in the Novartis case, as well as for the Naz Foundation in the 377 case. Vivek Divan, who was on the staff of the Lawyers Collective, recalls Grover returning from Durban with renewed energy. After having spent time with TAC in South Africa, he knew his organization would have to take the lead at home: Four years on, India—“the pharmacy of the developing world”—was bound by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to bring its patent law into line. Many of these transcontinental currents are captured in Dylan Mohan Gray’s powerful new film, Fire in the Blood. “This was an area of work that was completely mystifying to people,” Divan says. “We needed to break it down. We needed to make people aware of the implications of 2005 (the looming patent law amendments). We needed to create a groundswell of support.” He had several reasons to be excited. For one, there seemed to be a way to create an original, bold and WTO-compliant patent law that safeguarded access and boosted innovation. For another, working on AIDS gave him an opportunity to combine his interests in sexuality and the law: He had come out to his family and friends, and was glad for the encouraging environment. Divan coordinated the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS unit for several years, launching initiatives that would dramatically improve the state of treatment access across the board. Among those initiatives is one he remembers particularly well. At the World Social Forum in

Every single drug that’s out there is because of ACT UP. It is the proudest achievement that the gay population of this world can ever claim. — LARRY KRAMER

2004 in Mumbai, he met a group of South Koreans who were questioning Novartis’ claims on imatinib in their country. Divan followed up. He was interested in looking beyond AIDS treatment, and sought a meeting with the CPAA. “They were reluctant to engage with us at first,” he says. “We had HIV/AIDS in our name and it was confusing to them. But it was a superb dynamic that evolved.” That dynamic endured as Novartis upped the ante into the most serious threat posed to Indian patent law since it was masterfully amended in 2005, a threat that was eventually overcome with the Supreme Court judgement in April. ****** The contemporary access-to-

medicines movement was built on the back of the gay rights movement. It began with AIDS in the US, and its victory was getting a marginalized community heard. It moved into achieving access to the medicines it had forced into creation, and at the cusp of the 20th century—as the epicentre of AIDS moved—the movement matched the geography of the virus. If a large group of predominantly gay men and women had not spent a decade working on access to medicines in the US, the South African movement might not have got off the ground as well as it did. And if a core group of committed gay rights activists had not turned their attention to treatment access in South Africa, it is likely their Indian

counterparts would not have had a compelling reason to work as clearly and urgently as they did. Yes: Our medicines are totally gay. If none of the events described here unfolded as they did, imatinib might have remained unaffordable to leukaemia patients; pegylated interferon might have remained out of reach for people with hepatitis; sorafenib might have stayed unavailable to people with renal and liver cancer; and trastuzumab might not have become affordable to women with breast cancer. Ten million people with HIV/AIDS in the developing world might not have lived at all. But this chain of events is real. All of it happened. As did the Supreme Court judgement on Section 377 this December, which repaid the debt we owe queerness by kicking it out of our polity. Achal Prabhala is a writer and researcher in Bangalore.

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The year of the home bakers

A revolution has started, but it will take more than TV shows and social networks to fire it up

hether it was the runaway success of Mumbai’s Sweetish House Mafia, a baked goodies delivery store on wheels, or the launch of KitchenAid appliances, an American home appliances brand, or the setting up of Fitness Bakery, a Mumbai-based home bakery specializing in cookies, cakes and muffins that use whey protein, gluten-free flours and sugar substitutes, 2013 has been the year of the home baker. It is also the year when people like hotel management graduate Deep Singh Bawa, a member of Facebook group Home Bakers Guild, felt no hesitation in announcing they had quit a regular job to brush up on baking skills and Suzanne Hughe, a books editor at Rupa Publishing, quit and moved to Bangalore from Delhi to undertake a fivemonth baking diploma at the Lavonne Academy, a baking and pastry arts school. “It’s been a great year for home

bakers. I say this because I come across so many people who have started their own catering business or deliveries from their house on a day-to-day basis. The numbers are really crazy, there are some 200 people on my list (of home bakers) and that’s just for Mumbai,” says Insia Lacewalla, who runs her own food consultancy company, Small Fry Co., in Mumbai. The numbers speak for themselves. For a closed Facebook group that is about a year and a half old, Home Bakers Guild (www.facebook.com/groups/ homebakersguild) has made quick progress. K.P. Balakumar, a stock markert trader, amateur baker and the Chennai-based cofounder of the guild, says it is only a matter of days before they cross the 12,000 member mark. “Nowadays we get as many as 50 requests a day from people wanting to sign up; of course not all get selected to be a part of this group, which includes home bakers with a business to promote, amateur bakers looking for tips, and customers looking to find bakers who will customize their orders,” he says. Jennifer Duthie, founder of Bake Mela (www.bakemela.com), a directory of home bakers in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ranchi, Pune and Ahmedabad set up in December 2012, has about 13,000 likes on the Bake Mela Facebook page and is part of a network of around 150 home bakers from various cities. In fact the Delhi-

based cake subscription club Bake Box (www.bakebox.in) that she has been running for a little more than a year now has a waiting list of more than 100 home bakers. “When we started Bake Box in August 2012, I was not sure if I could sustain it. We barely got 15 applications in the first few months, out of which we could see that we could work only with six-seven home bakers because they passed our tests— quality, ability to deliver volumes, consistency, use of the right ingredients. But this year, our database has gone up to 100 home bakers in Delhi alone with whom we think we can do the bake boxes, and this selection happens after each baker goes through three-four rounds of tasting,” says Duthie. While the craze for baking started four-five years ago, with cupcakes clouding out the local, established bakery shops that hadn’t bothered to update their four-cake repertoire for decades, 2013 was really the year that gave baking a shot in the arm— it saw the rise of the home baker, one who was not afraid to plunge into a world of tiered cakes with figurines, themes, and colourful fondant, all in his/her modest, noncommercial kitchen. “People have realized now that if one is a good home baker, you can earn a living from it. Also, the number of shops and online stores selling baking equipment have gone through the roof. You can find almost anything in India since mid-2013, whereas earlier people had to rely on friends and family living abroad to supply fancy cake decorations, sprinkles and equipment,” says Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal,

chen in the Chefs were pretty much closeted in the kit ow the chef. old days. But now everybody wants to kn — JAYDEEP MUKHERJEE

FOOD

Seema Chowdhry had many foodie adventures with her tween. Prerna Makhija became a restaurant reviewer this year.

blogger and founder, APB Cook Studio, Mumbai. Mohit Jain, regional director of KitchenAid for Asia-Pacific, sees 2013 as the year that ignited a baking revolution in the region: “I believe that 2016-17 is going to be the inflection point of this revolution. We made the choice to come to India now, because we found a lot of people reaching out to us in the US asking for the Kitchen Aid stand mixers, etc.” Adds Pooja Kejriwal, owner, Home Collective, a kitchen gadgets and accessories store in Mumbai, “Over the last one year, people have started to demand very specific type of baking equipment, like a special type of sieve or a particular kind of mould.” Pradeep Gopalan, who has been organizing the Bakery Business trade show at the World Trade Centre in Mumbai’s Cuffe Parade area since 2006, says that when he started out only 17 companies took part, and most of the equipment targeted commercial bakers. This November’s show had 150 companies on board, half of them showcasing ingredients and equipment that was useful for home bakers, and attracted close to 7,000 visitors. In fact, this year Gopalan organized the third edition of The Professional Home Baker’s Challenge and had as many as 48 participants who cooked for 3 straight hours to put out their dish. “In the last two editions, it was mostly a display challenge, but this year we had a bake-off because the level of competence

of home bakers is very high. Many of them are at par with trained pastry chefs. This is because they have time to learn and experiment on their own,” says Gopalan, who also runs a bimonthly magazine, Bakery Biz. While most bakers agree that 2013 has been the year of fondant cakes with elaborate themes and cake pops (lollipops made with cake balls dunked in sauce), some like Deeba Rajpal, a Gurgaon-based home baker who runs the blog www.passionateaboutbaking.com, believes in baking everything from scratch and indicates that savoury stuff like breads and pies has also found many takers, something that was not happening earlier. “TV shows and social media have changed the way baking happens in this country. People are no longer just looking to make red velvet cupcakes, and think they have done a great job or be satisfied with Sanjeev Kapoor and Tarla Dalal style baking sections. This year we got baking equipment more easily, now if only more ingredients

were made available at cheaper prices, then people will experiment even more. And if only we would get more cookbooks with local recipes,” says Rajpal. This was also the year customers didn’t hold back, demanding more and more from bakers, something that the founder of Sweetish House Mafia (she refuses to be named) testifies to. “In the first few months of launching, everything was positive, but now my clients are pushing me to introduce new things. They are not satisfied with the same menu week after week. I have just added chocolate-chip sandwich cookies (with cookie dough as the filling) and am experimenting with more recipes.” Balakumar adds that perhaps this was the year that consumers realized their wishes could be fulfilled. The next stage of the baking revolution will be to see how it moves to tier 2 and tier 3 towns and how industrial baking ingredient manufacturers look out for the interests of the small-time home baker.

BITE-SIZE TRENDS Brewpubs

It took Gregory Kroitzsh over two and a half years but his brewpub, The Barking Deer, was the first to get Mumbai all hopped up on its in-house craft beers this November. Bangalore continued its march too.

Our own bubbly

Brandy

Given the funds, we’d only drink champagne. This year we celebrated with Moët-Hennessy India’s Nashik born and bred Chandon Brut, `1,200, and Chandon Brut Rosé, `1,400 (prices for Maharashtra).

It’s no longer something you put in a mug of hot toddy. Liquor companies promoted a slew of expensive, grape-based brandy labels, especially in the southern states, including Bols from Amsterdam.

Studio Fifteen

Mumbai dessert queen Pooja Dhingra’s cooking school Studio Fifteen is a community centre for the city’s budding gourmands.

Speakeasies

Organic food

Since PCO, in Delhi, replicated New York East Village institution PDT’s (Please Don’t Tell) phone booth entrance system last year, copycat speakeasies have cropped up in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Mumbai got its first all-organic café, The Birdsong, in Bandra, and Fitness Bakery, a home-based service that offers glutenfree cupcakes and cookies.

Subscription start-ups

A new wave of start-ups like The Gourmet Box and Eatopia filled monthly subscription boxes with surprise gourmet snacks and desserts by home bakers.

Sexy sliders

House-proud

Big, juicy burgers are the reigning kings of the gourmet junk food movement the world over. Local cafés have joined the trend. Our favourite: Monkey Bar in Bangalore and New Delhi.

PHOTO COURTESY KUNAL CHANDRA

Small food entrepreneurs used social media and their best dishes to get into the business of baking, tea-making, and liqueur-producing. The latest one on the block in Delhi—Mimi’s Gourmet Gelato, home-delivered.

Cronuts

Corporate fare

Overrated imports

Smoothies

The biggest fast food sensation was the Cronut—the croissant and doughnut hybrid from New York. Locally, however, it was a flop.

Why is a London-based hasbeen celebrity hangout taking up prime space at the Taj Land’s End Hotel in Mumbai? The bland Italian restaurant Maritime by San Lorenzo isn’t the only one that disappoints—UK chain Ping Pong serves so-so Asian fare.

The Masala Library, Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai, and SodaBottleOpenerwala, Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, joined a new breed of F&B outlets in plush glass-and-steel business districts.

We may fall for the live cultures bit that frozen yogurt makers talk about but there’s just no way a milk and cream blend can taste good and be fat-free.

Prerna Makhija and Seema Chowdhry

LOUNGE

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THE CONTRARIAN VIEW

SHOBA NARAYAN

25 THINGS TO FEEL HAPPY ABOUT Performing chief ministers, a successful move to explore Mars, a TV show that didn’t make us wince and more. Who says it was all gloom and doom this year?

1 Anjali Tendulkar gets to see more of her husband.

2 Deepika Padukone is a bona-fide stactress (staractress). Six years old. Nearly a dozen endorsements and four `100 crore-plus hits this year. And she made the pavadai-dhavani cool. 3 Our Mars mission was

launched flawlessly for a tenth of the cost of one season’s Diwali crackers.

4 Our children are in school.

Primary school enrolment in India is nearly 100%. Now if we could only make sure that those who are enrolled— teachers and students—show up every day.

5 Thanks to our learning from

Uttarakhand, we managed Phailin with remarkable efficiency: 215 kmph wind speed, 900,000 evacuated in 36 hours. Fewer than 50 deaths.

6 We have a great election

coming up—perhaps the most important since 1977. The voting public is engaged and turning up in record numbers. Anything but the Congress appears to be the mood of AJAY AGGARWAL/ HINDUSTAN TIMES

the moment. Aam Aadmi rises. Narendra Modi rallies everywhere. Billionaires are standing for elections when they have little to prove.

7 Jai ho! For once, content rules on Indian television. Megabudget show 24, a licensed adaptation of the hit US show, produced by and featuring India’s own ageless wonder, Anil Kapoor, has big-screen worthy production values. Plus: It has action, outdoor locations, gun fights and car chases. 8 A respected scientist gets the Bharat Ratna.

9 The non-profit

Conservation India succeeded in preventing the slaughter of the migrating Amur falcons through Nagaland. A thousand volunteers register themselves at

Bandipur National Park to participate in the quadrennial event, All India Tiger Census. Delhi’s non-profit Wildlife SOS unchains elephants. A roar and trumpet of thanks.

10 The hotel sector is coming of age. There are budget-hotel chains such as Ginger, Red Fox, Premier Inn and Accor that offer travellers a clean room in small towns. There are specialist hotels such as Daiwik hotels, catering to pilgrims in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, and Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh; and the Sarovar chain that caters to Char Dham pilgrims. Travellers are no longer hostages to five-star hotel rates. Four Seasons is coming to Delhi and the Ritz-Carlton has come to Bangalore. 11 New satellite towns like

Devanahalli and Siruseri are being created, adding to the list of existing ones like Gurgaon, Magarpatta, Rajarhat and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Our silly real-estate boom has ended. Forget the Capital. Buy in Coimbatore instead.

12 We have five chief ministers with at least three terms. Mindless antiincumbency is ending and good work is being rewarded. 13 The middle class is finally engaging in public affairs. Organizations—such as Bangalore Political Action Committee (Bpac), Delhi’s Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Mumbai’s Action for Good Governance and Networking in India (Agni)—and platforms such as SmartVote, point out that good governance doesn’t grow on trees. What began as fashionable social causes and animated conversations at parties has moved from handwringing to action. 14 The stock market is at an

VIRENDRA SINGH GOSAIN/HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE REFORM ARGUMENT HAS MOVED BEYOND HARD-TO-GRASP ECONOMICS AND FDI TO THINGS THAT MATTER— CORRUPTION, ROADS, AND COAL. ARVIND KEJRIWAL ARTICULATES THESE BEAUTIFULLY. MAYBE HE REALLY HAS A SHOT AT NATIONAL OFFICE. THIS VIPASSANA-PRACTISING VEGETARIAN CAN TEACH BRAND MARKETERS A THING OR TWO ABOUT AUTHENTICITY. all-time…. Let me not jinx anything. The rupee and stock market are...ahem, picking up

15 Thanks to the J.S. Verma

committee report, amendments that relate to sexual harassment against women have come to pass, including various forms of sexual assault, sexual violence against children and stalking, thereby setting up a continuum of offences that are prosecutable. Hallelujah! NATHAN G/HINDUSTAN TIMES

16 Niche and regional media is growing even though national media isn’t. Witness newspapers such as Rajasthan Patrika, book publishers such as Tara Books and Zubaan, and magazines, print and online, such as The Caravan and Kafila.org. And as the Tehelka incident shows, media can turn the harsh lens on itself. 17 Subodh Gupta’s solo show is

opening at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi, on 16 January. A government museum taking notice of a living contemporary artist is a good thing. The next generation of artists—Ranjani Shettar, L.N.Tallur, Mithu Sen, A. Balasubramaniam, Navin Thomas, and Manjunath Kamath, to name several, are redefining the Indian art vocabulary. Sheela Gowda is an underrated rock star in the art world. Art by Vasudev Gaitonde—deservedly—sells for `23.7 crore at the global auction house Christie’s first India auction in Mumbai.

18 Is Indian philanthropy finally

taking off? Shiv Nadar and Azim Premji top the lists and are making the rules. According to China’s Hurun Indian Philanthropy List 2013, south Indians made cumulative donations of `10,000 crore, while north Indians made contributions of `4,865 crore. Mukesh Ambani, when are you going to pitch in and change the game?

19 The reform argument has moved beyond hard-to-grasp economics and FDI to things that matter in daily life, like corruption, roads, and coal.

20 Arvind Kejriwal articulates the above things beautifully. Maybe he really has a shot at national office. This vipassanapractising vegetarian can teach brand marketers a thing or two about authenticity. 21 Home-grown firms like Café

Coffee Day, Zomato and Flipkart show that an entrepreneurial culture is possible in India. They all used ideas borrowed from the West though.

22 Khadi and handwoven fabrics have become cool among the urban elite at last. 23 The mandate on corporate

social responsibility (CSR) spending will help the burgeoning number of NGOs in all parts of India. ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists), or community health workers, and toilets are two areas where this money can be put to good use.

24 If labour-market reform reaches fruition, this country, with one of the world’s largest number of technically skilled graduates, will truly live up to the potential that proponents of the “demographic dividend” are talking about. 25 We still live with, or visit,

grandparents. We still have noisy raucous weddings. The joint family fabric of India is alive and well. Evidence: No other country has as many “multi-cooshine” restaurants as we do. Thank God! Shoba Narayan will be listening to local bands at a local dive in Bangalore this New Year’s Eve.

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