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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 22

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in an Elie Saab gown at this year’s Cannes film festival as the brand ambassador of L’Oreal.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH SAMSONITE’S RAMESH TAINWALA >Page 8

THE NEW LIFE OF HARSH MAYAR The hero of ‘I am Kalam’ is acutely aware of his success; and his family is counting on it >Page 6

LIP SERVICE, CHIN MUSIC

Cannes may have been awash in Hindi­movie glamour, but the truth is that Bollywood is hardly a blip on the radar of world cinema and culture, says renowned British critic Derek Malcolm >Pages 10­11

The Bollywood lie REPLY TO ALL

PIECE OF CAKE

THE MAGICAL LYRICISM OF URDU

THE PERFECT SUMMER DESSERT

AAKAR PATEL

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halib announced he would give up all his poems to have written this one couplet: “Tum mere paas hote ho goya/Jab koi doosra nahi hota (You remain within me even/When nothing else is mine)”. The couplet is by Momin Khan “Momin” (The Believer) who died in 1851. It is a spare line, perfectly weighed. The sentiment in it is haunting, a word often used. In this case it’s justified. Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” (The Conqueror) died in 1869... >Page 4

MUSIC MATTERS

PAMELA TIMMS

I

t may be a little passé now in the days of anthropology, media studies and performing arts but when I was at school, we were taught to cook. While the boys were plunged into the manly arts of woodwork and metalwork, we girls learnt how to make stew, quiche and Victoria sponge (we also had to do sewing, but the less said about gingham aprons and felt pin-cushions the better). Every week after cookery class we would proudly carry home our dishes and bask in the... >Page 5

SHUBHA MUDGAL

Up in Norway, where the days are long, the beer cold and the people warm, in pursuit of the flamboyantly hirsute >Pages 12­13

STUDIO EFFECTS

‘Coke Studio@MTV’ wants to recreate an India united by music, but can it boost the indie music scene? >Page 17

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

DOCUMENTING A LIFE IN MUSIC

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oing by the number of invitations to book launches that one receives these days, it would seem that every other Indian has taken to authoring books, publishing and launching them in style.

Despite all this prolific literary activity, it does seem a pity that the stylish launches, the invitation cards, the newsletters and the publicity are largely reserved only for books written in English, and not for writing in Hindi and other Indian languages. >Page 17

PHOTO ESSAY

CAPTIVE FUTURE

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

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE LOVES | ‘THE MASALA ART’ BY HEMANT OBEROI & CRAWFORD MARKET CANDLES

The master of spices

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

RAMESH PATHANIA/MINT

Chef’s Chef’s special: Hemant Oberoi at the Masala Art restaurant.

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

Soothing: Crawford Market candles are more refreshing than paraffin ones.

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT JASBIR LADI

Honeybee lights

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI

That romantic candlelight dinner for two now has a great eco­friendly option

©2011 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

The man behind many of Taj’s landmark restaurants shares his secrets

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o author a cookbook of “Indian food” and list only half a dozen ways to cook chicken and nearly four times as many recipes for seafood—and resolutely leave out butter chicken and chicken tikka—isn’t the feat of an ordinary chef. But Hemant Oberoi, whose first book The Masala Art is just out, knows a thing or two about risks. The corporate chef, luxury division, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, says he has always trusted his instincts. He launched the first contemporary Japanese restaurant in India, refused to tone down the spice quotient of Indian food while taking it from hot to haute or dilute the authenticity of regional cuisines despite fancy makeovers.

“It’s a dream for chefs to leave a legacy. This book is about our signature recipes—dishes you’ll find only in our

restaurants,” says Oberoi. He adds that he has held nothing back and that enthusiastic home cooks can replicate his dishes if they follow his instructions.

The lushly produced coffee-table book includes Oberoi originals such as Crab Varqui and its vegetarian version, Khumb Varqui. He lists a selected mix of dishes that are contemporary interpretations of popular northern and southern cuisines, such as a Lemon Grass Rasam, a Bombay Gotala or a Delhi ki Challi.

The last few years have been significant for the Taj brand of restaurants.

Besides rebuilding the kitchens of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel in Mumbai following the 2008 terrorist attacks on the city and the hotel, Oberoi set up the Masala chain of innovative Indian restaurants in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. He launched Varq at Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, with its emphasis on contemporary versions of traditional north Indian cuisine, brought Wasabi by Morimoto to Delhi (the first Wasabi in Mumbai recently made it to the S Pellegrino list of top 100 restaurants in the world for the fourth consecutive year), took the West

Asian restaurant Souk to Kolkata and the London-based Bombay Brasserie to Cape Town, South Africa.

In the midst of all this, Oberoi travelled across the country looking for forgotten recipes and refined them—coming up with interesting dishes such as Alleppey Meen Curry and Paperwali Macchi, lightly spiced fish fillets wrapped in parchment paper and cooked on smouldering charcoal, a traditional peasant recipe from Punjab.

“There’s much to be discovered. In Punjab I came across a recipe for atta chicken. After the day’s meals were over, the women of the house would wrap the leftover chicken in a thick layer of dough, leave it in the tandoor and go to bed. Next morning, the dough would be baked and the chicken inside cooked to perfection. Since it is a dry dish, the men would take it along while going to work in the fields,” he says, adding that the dish may soon appear on a Masala menu.

The Masala Art—Haute Indian Cuisine; Roli Books; `795.

on’t be misled by the name. These candles are not in any way related to Mumbai’s iconic marketplace. The man behind the brand, David Crawford, says his grand uncle was the city’s first commissioner; it was under him that the original Crawford Market came into being. When Crawford decided to launch his brand of eco-friendly products two years ago, the name was his first choice. Luckily for him, the name was not registered and he got the copyright.

The Crawford Market candles are made of beeswax and come in six fragrances—Lemon Grass, Cinnamon, Clove, Tulsi, Natural and Flower. The soothing, fume-free candles are more refreshing than the overpowering fumes of paraffin candles.

Lemon Grass and Flower, the best varieties, take time to release their aromas, but are

Amrita Roy

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: FRED DUFOUR/AFP

LOUNGE LOVES | SUZETTE

That Parisian feeling SHRIYA PATIL SHINDE/MINT

A crêperie with an eclectic menu at the heart of Mumbai’s business district

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ucked away on the ground floor of one of the many giant officious-looking buildings in Nariman Point, Mumbai’s business district, Suzette takes over space previously occupied by a coffee chain. French partners Pierre, Jérémie and Antonia, who prefer using their first names to distinguish their day job personas, spent three years working and living in Mumbai before deciding to start a crêperie. Having eaten out a lot, they figured this was a cuisine they could make a success of.

The trio had no experience in the food business except the standard student days’ summer waiter jobs.

But inspired by memories of their grandmothers’ kitchens, and after a week-long course in Brittany, France, they decided to take the plunge with their own recipes.

Pierre insists they have not “Indianized” the menu, so there is no chicken tikka version of a French crêpe, but the menu has been designed for a “largely vegetarian” clientele. So the dough can be eggless and there are lots of salads, like Soleil, with its bitter roquette and a lingering aftertaste of tapenade and basil.

But Suzette gets it right where it matters—with the crêpes. They are made with buckwheat from Brittany, which is one of the main imported ingredients besides ham, cheese and French teas. The eclectic choice of combinations, with a generous mix of savoury and sweet crêpes (the latter usually made of organic flour), is as good as any, including the popular

All­day eating: Suzette offers eggless crêpes for vegetarians. roadside stall of London’s Hampstead High Street.

My tasting of a variety of crêpes came over two visits, with the advantage of shared plates with friends. My favourite remains the Campagne (chicken bacon, goat cheese, honey, toasted walnuts, `270), the Complete (egg, ham or chicken bacon, Emmental, `230), and the vegetarian Pomme (goat cheese, apple compote, honey, gomasio, `270).

The sweet selection, which brought squeals of “dosa” delight from a bunch of vacationing children, much to the relief of the lone accompanying harrowed adult, has some lovely combinations such as Nutella or melted chocolate, banana, grated coconut or apple compote, cinnamon and vanilla ice cream with toasted walnuts. Prices range from `230-270 for the savoury crêpes and from `100-150 for the sweet ones, with specials at `200.

For the slightly more health-conscious, there is good news—the crêpes are neither too heavy nor over-

stuffed, dripping with butter.

The partners speak of expanding to other locations, out of the comfort of their Atlanta building space, and doing deliveries besides the normal takeaways they have now.

The ambience of Suzette, open 8.30am-10.30pm on all days except Sundays (they also serve crêpes for breakfast), is one of its most inviting features. The cozy little café with an open kitchen has seating for just 20-25 people, is child friendly, Wi-Fi enabled, with a bar counter (it does not serve liquor) and a newspaper corner (minus Le Figaro). You may well get served by its owners, their post-work formal jackets a contrast to the place’s casual visage. And if you get luckier, there may even be a political discourse from Jérémie to complete the Parisian feel in the middle of Mumbai.

For details, visit www.suzette.in or call 022-22880055.

Arun Janardhan

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perfect accompaniments to a relaxed evening at home.

Beeswax, produced from the beehive of honeybees, is proven to have qualities that purify the air it is burnt in. “In Europe and North America, what’s sold as beeswax candles contain only about 15% of beeswax and the rest is made of paraffin because beeswax is not easily available there,” says Crawford, who tied up with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which work for eco-friendly solutions, including the NGO Under the Mango Tree, to buy beeswax.

Prices range from `200 for a pack of six tealight candles to `650 for one of the largest sizes.

For details, visit www.crawford market.in. The candles also sell through other websites, including www.greenandgoodstore.com Sanjukta Sharma

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

The magical lyricism of Urdu

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PAINTING

halib announced he would give up all his

BY

SHUBNUM GILL/FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/SHUBNUMGILL

poems to have written this one couplet: “Tum mere paas hote ho goya/Jab koi doosra nahi hota (You remain within me even/When nothing else is mine)”. The

couplet is by Momin Khan “Momin” (The Believer) who died in 1851. It is a spare line, perfectly weighed. The sentiment in it is haunting, a word often used. In this case it’s justified.

Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” (The Conqueror) died in 1869, the year Mahatma Gandhi was born. Ghalib himself wrote many, many couplets poets would sacrifice their life’s work for including this jewel: “Na tha kuch to Khuda tha, kuch na hota to Khuda hota/Duboya mujh ko hone ne, na hota main to kya hota?” I will leave this untranslated because it is byzantine, with dozens of meanings. A terrific line of poetry.

Ghalib thought himself great, and he was, and he was justifiably arrogant. But in one couplet he tips his hat to another poet: “Rikhta kay tumhi ustad nahin ho, Ghalib/Kehte hain aglay zamanay mein koi Mir bhi tha (You aren’t Urdu’s only master, Ghalib! Apparently there was once another, called Mir).”

Rikhta is another word for Urdu. The Mughal court functioned in Farsi, but Mir Taqi “Mir” (The Leader) who died in 1810 wrote in Hindustani/Urdu, making him a pioneer. Mir described why he took to Urdu in this couplet: “Khugar nahin kuch yun hi hum Rikhta-goi kay/Mashooq jo apna tha, bashinda-e-Dakhan tha (It isn’t casually that I began dabbling in Urdu/I picked it from my lover, a native of the Deccan).”

Deccan is where Urdu was thought to have originated (the scholarly consensus now is that it rose in Gujarat). The “Deccan lover” Mir refers to is Wali Muhammad “Wali” (The Friend) who died in 1707, the year that Aurangzeb Alamgir also died. He is also called Wali Gujarati. Wali is the first of Urdu’s great poets.

On the afternoon of 28 February 2002, a Gujarati mob tore down his tiny grave outside the Ahmedabad police commissioner’s office and paved the road overnight. Nothing now remains. I happened to come across a tattered book of Wali’s poems a few weeks later. The opening line was: “Dar Firaaq-e-Gujarat so hai khaar khaar dil (Parting from Gujarat leaves thorns in my chest)”.

My heart stopped when I turned the page to another poem titled: “Ta’arif-e-shehr Sourat (Lines in praise of the city of Surat). I read out Wali’s couplets to Gujarat’s chief minister one cold evening. I asked him to consider restoring that little tomb, no more than 10x8ft, but Narendrabhai was unmoved.

For some Indians, the two-nation theory is a living thing.

Faiz Ahmed “Faiz” (Success) died in 1984 and thought Partition was unfulfilling. He wrote a poem about this called August 1947, which opens with this couplet: “Yeh dagh-dagh ujala, yeh shab-gazidah sehar/Woh intezar tha jiska, yeh woh sehar to nahin (This stained light we see in this tattered dawn/This isn’t the morning we had been promised).”

Partition is a good subject for Urdu poetry because it involves a critical image for Muslims: hijra, or exile. A decade or so ago journalist M.J. Akbar interviewed Pakistan’s Mohajir leader Altaf Hussain.

A Partition exile from Uttar Pradesh (Mohajir means he-who-did-hijra), Hussain had then been chased away from Karachi and led the MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) party in exile from London. He said of his plight: “Na Khuda hi mila, na visaal-e-sanam/Na udhar kay rahay, na idhar kay rahe (I found neither faith, nor union with my lover/And now I belong neither there nor here).”

Before he was fired as editor of The

Asian Age, Akbar often ran Urdu headlines, especially to his own stories.

After he wrote an election feature from Andhra Pradesh in 1996, he ran this headline: Hyderabad: Jo beet gaya dard, guzar kyon nahin jaata? (The wound is healed, why does my pain still remain?).”

This was modified from the lovely poem written by Mumbai’s Nida Fazli (born 1938). The actual lines are: Benaam sa yeh dard thehar kyon nahin jaata?/Jo beet gaya hai woh guzar kyon nahin jaata? (This echo of pain, why does it insist on remaining?/That which is past, why is it not yet gone?)”.

Fifteen years ago, newspapers would use high-culture references like this one, but no longer. This is a reflection of the decline in the quality of readership.

Some publications then had readers of such quality that they themselves wrote first-rate poetry.

Singer Jagjit Singh says he got his break with HMV for his first record when he happened to come across one such poem. The poem was published in the magazine Shama (owned by Sadia Dehlvi’s family) and had been sent in by a reader. Its magical opening line was: “Baat niklegi to phir duur talak jaayegi (If our secret is revealed, word soon will spread).” The writing is actually arrhythmic, and Jagjit Singh had to set it to a stop-start rhythm. It remains his finest song. One can imagine the shock and exhilaration that still-anonymous writer must have felt on suddenly hearing his or her (I suspect her) words one day, rendered in that magnificent voice.

Director Sudhir Mishra named his movie after the Ghalib couplet: Hazaaron khwahishen aisi, kay har khwahish pe LEV IVANOV/AFP

Stalwarts: Faiz Ahmed Faiz (above) and Gulzar are two prominent Urdu poets of the post­Partition era.

Poetic wit: Ghalib was the rare great poet who could laugh at himself. dam niklay/Bohat niklay meray armaan.

Lekin phir bhi kam niklay.

The lethal line of this poem is actually its maqta. The maqta is the poem’s final couplet which contains the poet’s signature, his name. Kahaan maikhanay ka darwaza Ghalib, aur kahaan waiz/Par itna jaante hain, kal woh jaata tha kay hum niklay (You wouldn’t associate the mullah with the tavern, Ghalib/But this I know: I was leaving it yesterday when I saw him enter).

Ghalib could laugh at himself and that made him unusual, for good poets are pompous. My absolute favourite couplet from him is: “Yeh masail-e-tasawwuf, yeh tera bayaan Ghalib/Hum tujhay wali samajhte, jo na badakhwar hota (These philosophies you spout with such pompous gravity, Ghalib!/People would think you wise, if you weren’t such a goddamn drunk).

Lyricist Gulzar wrongly puts this line at the opening of his serial on Ghalib. He has Ghalib (Naseeruddin Shah) in old age begin slowly to walk up a mosque’s steps but stop, shake his head, recite this couplet, and turn back. Gulzar sees it as a moral comment. It’s not. The poem it is set in doesn’t justify this sentiment, but that of Ghalib making a joke.

Another instance of Ghalib’s humour comes from the poem that Bollywood film Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota is named after. It is the poem’s maqta, and it is superb: “Hui muddat kay Ghalib mar gaya par yaad aata hai/Woh har aik baat pe kehna ke: ‘Yoon hota to kya hota?’

(It’s been a while since Ghalib died but I still RAJ K RAJ/HINDUSTAN TIMES

remember/His love of argument, always saying: ‘Fine, but if THIS had happened, then what?’).”

This couplet reveals so much about Ghalib’s personality, and attracts us to it. The funniest couplet I know was recited by writer Khushwant Singh, though I’m uncertain if he wrote it.

Asked to make a speech in Pakistan he opened with this gem, which would have startled his audience: “Waiz! Teri duaon mein asar ho to masjid ko hila kay dikha/Nahin to do ghoont pee, aur masjid ko hilta dekh (If your prayers are potent, Mullah, move this mosque my way/Else have a drink or two with me, and we’ll see its minarets sway).”

One writer I am fond of is the Gujarati polyglot Sheikh Adam Abuwala. Few know him, but all of us know his work.

He wrote the ghazals that Gujarati singer Pankaj Udhas sang. Abuwala wrote in Urdu and in very good Gujarati. One couplet of his I like is: “Adam, gajab ni vaat chhe: astik hata amey/Nastik bani gaya amey, karan Khuda mali gayo (I used to be a believer, O Adam/But I stopped after knowing God).” Abuwala had a certain style about him. He spoke German and English, and one of his books is called Adam thi Sheikh Adam sudhi (From Adam to Sheikh Adam!).

Years ago, Gulzar visited the Ahmedabad office of a Gujarati newspaper I then worked in. He strolled up to where I was sitting. I rose, but his eyes were on the wall where I had pinned a poem I had just discovered. It was written by a revolutionary Pakistani poet. In his sonorous, masculine voice Gulzar read it out slowly: “Aisay dastoor ko, subh-e-benoor ko/Main nahin maanta, main nahin jaanta...”

“Habib Jalib,” I said.

“Main jaanta hoon (That I know),” Gulzar said.

The lines are: This lawless constitution, this lightless dawn—I reject, and I shall never recognize.

But of course, Pakistanis had to accept it. Pakistan seems to have the same problems for decades. Columnist Ayaz Amir referred to this by quoting the couplet: “Ek aur darya ka saamna tha, Munir mujh ko/Main ek darya kay paar utra to maine dekha (I saw I had yet another river to cross, Munir/When I just about managed to cross this one).”

Mohammad Ali Road in Mumbai is named after Mohammad Ali Jauhar, who led with Gandhi the Khilafat movement of the early 1920s. He wrote one of poetry’s most stirring couplets, and one which always moves me: “Qatl-e-Hussain asl mein marg-e-Yazeed hai/Islam zinda hota hai har Karbala kay baad (The murder of Hussain is actually the end of [his killer] Yazeed/Islam is refreshed by the blood of the martyrs of Karbala).”

I was familiar with Iqbal’s

Tarana-e-Hindi (which we know as Saare jahan se achcha). But I had not registered its most stirring couplet till I heard Manmohan Singh, then Union finance minister, recite it one magical moment in his first budget speech 20 years ago. My gooseflesh flared when I heard Singh deliver these words in his soft voice: “Yunaan-o-Misr-o-Roma, sab mitt gaye jahaan say/Ab tak magar hai baqi, naam-o-nishan hamara (Classical Greece, Pharaonic Egypt, Imperial Rome are all dust/But our India—ancient, unchanged, alive—lives forever).”

I often mumble this couplet to myself, because it has beauty and such power. It is shocking to learn that Iqbal was only in his 20s when he wrote this great poem. He died an Indian in 1938, a decade before Partition, but he’s Pakistan’s national poet.

Pakistan’s current spell of democracy came after the rebellion of its chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, against General Pervez Musharraf. Justice Chaudhry was mistreated but held firm and then was supported by the lawyers and the political parties. Describing his ordeal, he recited a couplet by the great Bollywood poet Majrooh (“Wounded”) Sultanpuri: “Main akayla hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar/Log saath aatay gayay aur kaarvaan banta gaya (Alone, I turned in the direction of my destination and yet/As I began, others started falling in and we walked together).”

A few years ago, mad scientist Dr A.Q. Khan and I used to write columns for Pakistan’s Jang group. He on Wednesday and I on Sunday. One week he wrote a piece about his memory of Pakistan’s surrender to India at Dhaka in 1971. He described the humiliation he felt with this couplet: “Yaad-e-maazi azab hai ya rab!/Chhin le mujh say hafiza mera (The events of the past so torment me, Lord!/That I want taken away all of my memories).” I thought that was a little drastic.

The Momin poem that Ghalib would give up all his lines for has another stunning couplet: “Haal-e-dil yaar ko likhun kyon kar/Haath dil say juda nahin hota (I ache to pick up a pen and write how much I miss her/I cannot, for my hand is occupied with nursing my heart).”

What melancholy is contained in these words. That is the magic of Urdu.

Because of the vocabulary of its multicultural, muti-religious experience, Urdu is the richest language in India.

One morning over a cup of tea at his house, Gulzar told me that film actor Shabana, daughter of poet Kaifi Azmi and wife of poet Javed Akhtar, couldn’t read the Urdu script. Her dialogues (and those of all the four Khans) are today written in Roman.

Urdu couplets capture a moment, as all good poetry does. But they also capture an emotion and a mind space and this is uncommon. European poetry is extroverted: It describes the physical world. Dylan Thomas described life as “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. What a magnificent description.

Indian poetry is introverted. It describes internal states. Urdu couplets have no rhyme (see all the ones in this piece) and yet are magically lyrical to us.

Our poetry is sentimental, with a high content of emotion. Others, who see these words in translation, will be unable to understand why the lines move us so.

“Wah!” is a unique word and a unique sentiment, and it is ours alone. We are inheritors of a mighty tradition that we can justly be proud of. That is why Gandhi instructed all Indians to learn Hindustani in both its Devanagari and Persian scripts.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

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

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SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

L5

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

The summer dessert A handful of juicy cherries, a few minutes in the kitchen, and you have a glorious fruity pastry

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t may be a little passé now in the days of anthropology, media studies and performing arts but when I was at school, we were taught to cook. While the boys were plunged into the manly arts of woodwork and metalwork, we girls learnt how to make stew, quiche and Victoria sponge (we also had to do sewing, but the less said about gingham aprons and felt pin-cushions the better). Every week after cookery class we would proudly carry home our dishes and bask in the appreciation of our families, especially our mums, who could have the night off.

Most of the dishes were fairly basic, but one, the jalousie, seemed to me wildly sophisticated. It had a French name, involved puff pastry, and what’s more my brother now

thought I was a bona-fide pastry chef.

In fact, I was well on my way to becoming a proud member of the kitchen cheats’ club: Our cookery class jalousies were made with ready-made, bought puff pastry from the supermarket. We filled them with strawberry jam but you could use any type of jam or any of the soft fruits in the market at the moment: peaches, apricots, plums, apples (I suppose you could try mangoes but I’m not sure if I approve of baking with mangoes).

In my Indian kitchen the jalousie is now a leading contender for the title of “Perfect Summer Dessert”, that is, one which involves very little time in the kitchen. If you make it with jam, the whole process will take about 5 minutes, with fresh fruit only a little longer. Half an hour later you have a glorious dessert, perky sweet fruit peeking through crisp flaky pastry.

I’ve added some almond flavouring (a cherry liqueur would be an alternative) to my grown-up jalousie because it’s a natural partner for cherries, but only go down this route if you have some natural extract.

The synthetic varieties will take you down a very undesirable path more reminiscent of chemistry class. And schoolgirl

me definitely wouldn’t approve of that.

What I didn’t know when I was 13 is that jalousie is the French word for an Austrian window blind—the type that has slats—which the top of the tart resembles.

Cherry and Almond Jalousie Serves 4 Ingredients 350g readymade puff pastry 500g sweet cherries, pitted 3 tbsp vanilla sugar 1 tsp almond extract (if the natural, pure variety isn’t available, leave it out) 1 tbsp cornflour A little extra flour for dusting A little beaten egg (or milk) Method Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. You will need a baking tray, 20x30cm.

Put on an apron—cherry juice goes everywhere.

Carefully take out all the stones from the cherries—you don’t want any nasty surprises lurking in the gentle flakes and fruit. This is easiest with a cherry stoner, an inexpensive little gadget but indispensable if you want to make the most of the wonderful Indian

Easy does it: A cherry jalousie is the perfect introduction to home baking for the novice. cherry season.

Tip the cherries into a thick-bottomed pan, add sugar, almond extract, if using, and cornflour. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, 1 or 2 minutes. Don’t let the cherries disintegrate though—the fruit should still be whole once the jalousie is cooked.

Cut your block of pastry in half and on a floured board, roll each half out until it measures 30x17cm and about 2 or 3mm thick. Trim the edges to make two perfectly even rectangles.

Place one rectangle of pastry on a baking sheet. Take the second rectangle and gently, without pressing, fold it in half lengthways. Starting at one of

Swirl, sip and turn Two new brands try to make wine fun, but the experiments don’t always work B Y S ONAL H OLLAND ······························· urning Point is an evocative name for a wine. To my mind, it connotes a welcome departure from the snobbery that surrounds wine appreciation. In a broader sense, the name also suggests a watershed. For the Indian wine industry, which continues to grapple with excess production, inadequate export levels and a poor international image, a watershed is the need of the hour. Several domestic consumers consider Indian wines plonk.

Ask Ashwin Deo, the founder and managing director of Trinity Vintners, which launched the Turning Point range of wines last month, how he relates to the name and he says that after having managed operations for multinational wine and beer companies, where it was all about hard-selling (yes, that’s what it apparently takes to get your wines listed at Indian hotels and restaurants), launching his own brand was a turning point.

Deo emphasizes that his wines are meant to be uncomplicated and fun to drink. The packaging is vibrant, youthful, unpretentious and targets the non-traditional wine drinkers: The wines have clear descriptions in three words to help the first-time drinker take his pick of the four wines on offer (the fifth, a rosé, will follow soon). So far so good.

I sampled four Turning Point wines and one from another new brand, Kimaya. Here are some early impressions:

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Turning Point’s Chenin Blanc It is pale lemon in colour, and citrus lemon and slightly floral on the nose.

The wine is off-dry (with a hint of sweetness), with a taste of grapefruit on the finish. You can feel a slight alcoholic warmth at the back of your throat, but overall the wine is what it promises to be—light, easy and crisp. It will pair best with salads, light fried snacks and delicately spiced steamed fish.

Turning Point’s Sauvignon Blanc The colour is again pale lemon. It has pungent aromas of green pepper and grass, coming from the grape variety. It is crisp and refreshing on the palate, with a lemony finish. It will pair well with soft cheeses and pasta dishes.

Turning Point’s Shiraz It is a deep ruby colour, but on the nose, the wine was disappointing. The ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Tasting notes: Kimaya keeps it traditional, while Turning Point aims to demystify wine.

wine lacked the taste of sweet fruit and the vegetal notes were overwhelming.

The acidity seemed out of balance. This one definitely needs improvement.

Turning Point’s Shiraz Cabernet Again a deep ruby colour, it emanates cherry aromas and is a blend of two grape varietals. There was a concentration of flavours and fullness of body.

However, there is no good use of oak.

This wine is simple, with possibly green unripe tannins because the aftertaste is slightly bitter, and will pair well with mildly spiced Indian and Italian dishes and red meat.

Kimaya’s Shiraz 2010 Global Wines and Spirits recently launched Kimaya Wines, a range of Australian wines made under the expertise of Ben Riggs, an Australian winemaker who is known to have championed McLaren Vale’s (a wine region in Australia) efforts at making outstanding Shiraz. With its reasonable price range, Kimaya is likely to work well with consumers who seek value for money in a country laden with heavily taxed wines.

The Shiraz is a deep ruby, with a combined aroma of strawberry, red currants and a hint of spice. It is dry and full-bodied, with an acidity emerging from sweet ripe red and black fruits intermingling with sweet spice. The wine lacks complexity derived from oak, but it’s a good fruity wine that can go well with mildly spiced curries, grilled fish and tandoori and meat dishes.

Turning Point’s wines are priced at `375 (for a 375ml bottle) and `675 (for 750ml). Kimaya’s wines are priced at `1,200-1,500 (750ml).

Sonal Holland is a Mumbai-based wine educator, consultant and writer.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

the narrow ends cut a slit 3cm from the end and 3cm from the top edge. Cut slits all the way along, 2cm apart, leaving 3cm at the other end. Carefully unfold the slashed pastry.

Tip the cherry mixture on to the pastry on the baking sheet and spread it evenly, leaving a 2cm rim all the way round.

Brush some beaten egg/milk around the rim.

Lift the slatted top and place it over the cherries. With the tines of a fork, press the edges of the pastry together to

make a neat pattern. Brush egg all over the pastry top to give it a good shiny brown finish when baked.

Bake for about 25 minutes until the pastry is well risen and browned on top. Sprinkle with caster sugar and eat warm with cream or ice cream.

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

www.livemint.com To see a video on baking a jalousie, visit www.livemint.com/jalousie.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

L6

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

Life Wire

LOUNGE JAVEED SHAH/MINT

Mirror, mirror: Harsh at his south Delhi home, with his mother and brother.

PROFILE

The new life of Harsh Mayar The hero of ‘I am Kalam’ is acutely aware of his success; and his family is counting on it B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· ational Award-winning actor Harsh Mayar’s neighbours haven’t seen his film.

Not too many own a television set in the row of brick-and-mortar shanties in Dakshinpuri in south Delhi, where the teenager lives.

When Harsh and his parents heard that he had won the National Award for best child actor for his debut in I am Kalam on 19 May, they were oblivious of its importance. A low-budget Hindi film produced by Smile Foundation, an NGO that works on child development, the film has already won more than 12 awards since it premiered at Cannes’ market section last year.

But none of these really affected Harsh; he had no reason to think this would be any different.

It was only when Gulshan Grover, who stars in the film, called to congratulate him—and told him he hadn’t won a National Award for any of the 400-odd films he’d acted in—that it sunk in.

Harsh’s father Ashok runs a tent contracting service, setting up shamianas (tents) for small functions. Reams of brightly coloured fabric, folding chairs and tables, and assorted paraphernalia for celebrations, lie in a heap outside their home.

The family’s own celebrations have been muted. Ashok has lived in that row of 100 sq. ft plots since he was a child, seen it go from thatched huts to concrete; and he’s afraid to “show off”. And as Harsh’s mother, Reeta, says, the neighbours don’t believe a thing anyway. “They think he’s going to come on TV…everyone knows him as a good dancer

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around here,” she says.

In I am Kalam, Harsh plays Chhotu, a boy who waits tables at a dhaba. One day he watches A.P.J Abdul Kalam on television and learns that the former president of India grew up poor too, selling newspapers. “I am Kalam,” Chhotu finds himself saying.

Harsh’s own ambitions are comparable with those of the character.

He is a bright-eyed 13-year-old (he was 11 when the film was shot) whose dream is to act with Aamir Khan. While his father’s work ensures him meals and an education, his attitude has already catapulted him to a place where a boy from a slum in Dakshinpuri would ordinarily never reach.

Unlike his parents, or his shy nine-year-old brother Chandan, Harsh isn’t quite the model of humility. He is a savvy performer. In the 2 hours we spend with him, he’s sung us a Jus-

tin Bieber song (he has 38 songs by him on the cellphone that the family shares). He’s also demonstrated how he wins boxing matches on his new PlayStation—which he bought with his earnings.

Perhaps a marker of an aspiring star, appearances are already important for him. He carried a full-sized suitcase when he went to Amsterdam for three days for the Cinekid film festival in October. He can’t stop talking about the BMW and the Bentleys that ferried him around. His biggest concern these days is what he’ll wear for the film’s premiere in Mumbai in July.

“I’ve worn my black suit a couple of times…I’ve asked the uncles at Smile for a grey one this time,” he says. Grover has promised to rope in his Bollywood connections. And Harsh has asked Pitobash bhaiya (Pitobash Tripathy, another coactor) to invite Akshay Kumar, who he is shooting with now. He also wants Rajpal Yadav to a t t e n d because he is a “real” actor.

For all his

precociousness, Harsh is a class VIII student who loves his mother’s kadhi-chawal and wants new gadgets and clothes when he sees them. But he has an understanding of the fact that despite being driven around in sedans, he couldn’t really buy anything for his little brother from Amsterdam. “We were carrying Indian money and you know how little it is when you convert,” he says, even as Reeta says she has no idea where he learnt to talk like that.

Grover, who acted pro bono in the `2 crore film, says the film was a particularly good fit for Harsh.

“His rawness is a precious quality,” he says.

Bidhu Bhushan Panda, the casting director, picked Harsh from close to 1,000 children he’d scouted. Panda had seen him playing on the street—the leader of his pack—around April 2009.

He made a call to his director: “Kamaal ka Chhotu mil gaya (I’ve found an amazing Chhotu).”

“For child actors, it’s not about method acting as much as it is about disposition,” says director Nila Madhab Panda, who’s worked extensively with children. “Harsh is an incredibly street-smart kid…a

little too smart at times,” he says, referring to the number of tantrums he threw on set. He recalls the toothache Harsh frequently brought up when he didn’t feel like working. His role required him to sit on a camel, which he flatly refused to do midway through the shooting schedule. “He was manipulating us! Gulshanji said he’d handle it. All it took was to let him play with his cellphone for an hour,” says Madhab Panda.

Shooting star Inside the Mayar home, Harsh’s success hangs heavy. A poster of the film is on one wall; a trophy for being the first student from his school to act in a film rests on a shelf. There’s also a PC (personal computer) gifted to him by Madhab Panda, which hasn’t been used because Harsh is yet to get an Internet connection.

“We knew miracles like these happen but we didn’t know it could happen to us,” says Reeta.

Ashok is so overwhelmed he can barely speak. He breaks down when he says the family spent most of the `22,000 advance from the film to conduct a barsi for his father—a ritual on death anniverCOURTESY SMILE FOUNDATION

Powerhouse: With Gulshan Grover in a still from the film; and (left) an efferves­ cent portrait of Chhotu.

saries. This was held 16 years later than intended. “My life is closer to Chhotu’s. My father passed away when I was 12 and I had to work to support my mother. I couldn’t finish school,” says Ashok. “Today, Harsh has made all of that worthwhile.”

The award doesn’t translate into much money. It’s `50,000 divided between four winners.

But Ashok is crying because he can’t fathom what this award can lead to. “My son was brought up in a slum. But what he has become today is for everyone to see,” he says.

Harsh’s family has stakes in this success. It was his maternal uncle, who works in a restaurant in London, who had urged his parents to enrol him in a theatre workshop three years ago. That summer workshop, sponsored by his uncle, is the only training Harsh has had. Reeta used to take him every day for his theatre classes at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra and wait while they were under way.

Though proud, Reeta is worried about Harsh’s sudden transformation. “He used to be a good student but he’s stopped studying since this film came up,” she says.

Harsh reassures her that he will finish college but that he has to keep acting alongside. He is paranoid that people will forget him if he “goes away”.

Santanu Mishra, one of the founding trustees of the Smile Foundation, is a tad wary too.

He recalls how disappointed Harsh was when he wasn’t selected in a recent audition for a Vishal Bhardwaj film. He’s considering arranging some form of counselling to help Harsh cope.

The high point for Harsh, so far, was meeting Kalam before the film went on the floors. He has good memories of the meeting: He complimented the former president on his hairstyle and was told that no one had done that before. Kalam reiterated his message (from the film) to Harsh, the one that changes Chhotu’s life: “Destiny isn’t written but can be made”.

I am Kalam will release in theatres across India in the last week of July.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

L7

Style

LOUNGE IN THE CLOSET | PIA PAURO

Bohemian rhapsody PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

This young mom, a retailer­turned­ designer, believes in collecting clothes rather than dress to the season

Colour burst: (clockwise from top) Plumed acces­ sories are Pia’s favourite; a Pia Pauro waistcoat; a vintage Prada dress she has had for a decade; Pia has two cupboards full of shoes, cuffs and bracelets; she likes chunky necklaces; and Pia with her greatest fashion luxury—two in­house tailors.

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

···························· f the four cupboards in their bedroom, Pia Pauro has three while her husband, restaurateur Andrea Aftab Pauro, makes do with one.

Of course, the four lofts above the cupboards belong to Pia and she uses them to stock her winter stuff. A large chest in the room holds her accessories, another one outside the room, her shoes, and two cupboards near the terrace a floor above hold her Indian clothes and more shoes. Yet, when the 34-year-old designer walks into the room post noon with her two-and-a-half-year-old son, she looks like any other mom who has just picked up her child from school. Pia is wearing a floral-print, knee-length cotton dress with gold kolhapuris, her hair is tied in a ponytail, and her Fendi denim handbag looks well-worn. “In summers and during the daytime especially I live in dresses. I love the bohemian look and am most comfortable in it,” she says.

Pia, who studied fashion management at the London College of Fashion, has been dabbling on and off in the Indian retail market since 2003 and recently launched her label Pia Pauro, which she retails out of Ogaan in New Delhi and Mumbai, and her store Rockabella in Gole Market, New Delhi. She tells us why jersey and cashmere are her fabrics, what her greatest fashion luxury is and what has changed with Delhi girls when it comes to style. Edited excerpts from an interview:

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How different is your day look from your out-on-the-town

dressing style?

Daytime is usually about dresses in summer, Patiala salwars with a T-shirt or a ganji, kurta with lycra pants. I have two small children and I have to visit my workshop (a garmentmanufacturing unit), so I like to wear clothes that are comfortable. I prefer the skinny look rather than the voluminous one, that’s why jersey is one of my favourite fabrics. In the evening, my look is more edgy. I am not into the glam red-carpet gowns kind of clothes. I like jersey outfits with geometrical prints, or dresses with big shoulders, silhouettes that are unusual. Sometimes I like in-your-face bling too. My open-toed heels (nowadays she wears her own label Pau Wow) are ultra glam. In winters I am a classic dresser. I lived in Europe while growing up,

WATCHMAN

SIDIN VADUKUT

PIECES OF TIME

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uxury watchmakers are notoriously wary of marketing gimmicks. Admittedly, the turbulent economic situation has made many brands open to things such as line extensions and more accessible price points —IWC’s new Portofino range and Corum’s new Admiral’s Cup pieces are cases in point. Some might even try funky materials, fusion designs a la Hublot, or the odd high concept piece.

But the boat is seldom rocked vigorously. That metaphor, in fact, is an apt one to use in the context of Romain Jerome (RJ).

Founded in 2004, RJ jumped to worldwide prominence almost exactly a year ago when it launched the Eyjafjallajokull-DNA model. Manufactured in a limited edition of 99 pieces, each watch has a bezel and dial made with ash and cooled lava from the

Icelandic volcano.

When the watches came out, the newsworthiness, combined with a high-octane marketing campaign focused on airports and in-flight magazines, gave RJ huge media visibility. “That worked out really well for us.

People were printing about us in countries we didn’t even have stockists in,” CEO Manuel Emch told Lounge.

RJ’s leap in fortunes has coincided with Emch taking over in 2009. Earlier Emch was head of the Swatch Group’s luxury Jaquet Droz brand. At RJ, he says, he had the opportunity to take a brand and rebuild it completely.

Today RJ’s self-described strategy is to create a “celebration of history on the wrist”.

In addition to the “volcano

so yes, I like dressing in overcoats, sweatshirts, pants and boots. I cannot do without cashmere. It helps me avoid wearing six layers in winter, which I seriously detest. Rugby

by Ralph Lauren and J Crew’s amazing Italian cashmere lines work well for my family.

And Indian wear—do you like bling there as well?

I prefer a Kanjeevaram or French chiffon sari to an elaborate designer sari. A lot of my saris are hand-me downs from my grandmother and I end up using the borders of old saris on new saris. I am fond

of gota borders. I like Anamika and Sabyasachi.

Four cupboards and four lofts—have you ever thrown anything you have bought?

I like to shop...from anywhere.

And I still fit into most of my old clothes. So do I throw things out? Rarely. I am a collector of clothes. The older an outfit gets, the more vintage its design is. I like that and do not believe that an outfit which has seen one season must be discarded.

What is your greatest fashion luxury?

In-house bespoke tailoring. My mother-in-law has always had

Hot: RJ’s Eyjaf­ jallajokull­DNA model is made with lava from the volcano.

There is only so much moon dust and Titanic steel in the world. In fact, Emch says, only a pinch of the dust goes into each watch, and the company’s entire stock is kept in a jar, in a safe, in his office in Geneva, Switzerland.

When Lounge spoke to Emch at the Baselworld watch fair in March, he joked about waiting for the next volcano. At the time of writing this piece a new volcano, Grimsvotn, had erupted in Iceland. No doubt someone from RJ is scouring the site.

So far Emch’s strategy has worked well. RJ finds itself in a niche that is unique. Any other brand trying something like this will come across as a copycat.

The real challenge ahead is to manage a product pipeline that doesn’t depend on the occasional media blitz. Or natural disaster.

watch”, the other two collections are the Titanic-DNA and the Moon Dust-DNA. As the names suggest, the former line includes watches made of steel from the wreck of the Titanic, and the latter incorporates actual moon dust into the body of the watch.

Gimmicky? Of course.

But does it work?

Surprisingly, it does. Though clearly not like Patek Philippe or Cartier do. Even though RJ sells complicated watches with tourbillons in them, the timepieces are really style statements and conversation starters. Imagine what a little moon dust could do to a party.

Emch says he is constantly on the lookout for historic materials.

Not only is this essential to keeping the brand fresh and in the news, there is also the small matter of supply and demand.

Romain Jerome watches sell in India starting at around `7.5 lakh for the RJ Moon Dust-DNA Black Mood.

Write to Sidin at watchman@livemint.com

in-house tailors and when I got married I was quite amazed to find not one but two of these guys working out of the house. My husband gets his linen shirts and breeches stitched by them. My kids’ clothes are also stitched here sometimes and mine are altered or fitted as and when I need.

You said women in Delhi have started dressing differently from when you first moved here about 10 years ago. How? A lot has changed. I lived in Mumbai as a little girl and Mumbai has always been a lot more happening. When I first came to Delhi after living in London and Switzerland, I felt restricted. I had to dress in a certain way around male servants, had to be a little more conservative. I used to think 10 times before wearing anything revealing. The choice was to do what the Romans do when in Rome or stand out like a sore thumb. Today, I feel everyone around me has gotten that much more naked. Rule-breaking is happening, hemlines are getting shorter for all ages, there is

pressure to look a certain way. Besides, everyone I know is invited to six dos almost every day of the week. People are going out so much more—you have to look good, dress the part.

Four drawers are full of accessories—you really like add-ons, don’t you?

My accessories drawers are my daughter’s favourite playground.

She has so much fun when she is allowed a free hand. But yes, I love necklaces, cuffs, earrings. I love feathers and can never resist any accessory with feathers. And I usually wear only one feather earring in one ear.

I shop for accessories from everywhere—Phuket, Shanghai, Europe and even Hanuman Mandir in Delhi. They have some of the best bangles and cuffs in town. I am a hoarder of sorts and some of the pieces have been with me forever.

Which looks cannot go wrong this season?

Go for the African look—clothes with beadwork, outfits in warm tones like mustard, pink and orange. Floral prints are huge.

You can’t go wrong with maxi dresses and jumpsuits.

HANDBAG MANAGER Is your handbag chaotic? Do you end up hunting for your cellphone, lipstick or health bar in the mess that your bag always is? In that case, you need a BagSwitcher—a small PVC­plastic­cotton mix pouch with six­seven compartments that allow you to organize your bag and change handbags with considerable ease regularly. You can choose between a 12­inch BagSwitcher (`399) or 6­inch (`320) one. The former is useful if you want to organize your books, diary and larger items, while the latter is best for cosmetics. A combo (small and large pouch) costs `699. You can also custom­design a BagSwitcher as per your choice of colour, length, width and number of compartments. The delivery is free and takes three­five days within Mumbai and six­eight days outside. For details, contact bagswitcher@gmail.com Seema Chowdhry Get organized: The 12-inch BagSwitcher, `399.

L8

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

Business Lounge

LOUNGE

RAMESH TAINWALA

Life packed in a suitcase The group president of Samsonite, Asia­ Pacific, has led his company’s revival; today they’re worthy competitors in a luggage war

B Y S APNA A GARWAL sapna.a@livemint.com

···························· y his own admission, Ramesh Tainwala is not comfortable with PowerPoint presentations and prepared speeches. But that doesn’t stop him from tossing numbers and telling the story of how the company that filed for bankruptcy in September 2009 is back on track post restructuring and is looking at a billion-dollar listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by mid-June.

Tainwala, 52 —executive director at Samsonite International SA, the world’s largest luggage company, and group president for Asia-Pacific and West Asia—likes telling stories. In his first interview in April with analysts and bankers to present the story of Samsonite and get investors to buy into the issue, the 15-year veteran at the company went against the instructions of his bankers Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to run through a prepared presentation and spoke to the audience “from the heart”. “This is our story, we know it the best. How can they tell me what to speak?” he says.

Not surprisingly, when I meet him at

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Indigo Deli at Phoenix Mills in Mumbai over tea, he is chatty, relaxed and cheerful. Not surprisingly again, the evening lasts close to 2 hours because Tainwala likes telling stories.

As a postgraduate from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Tainwala applied for jobs with Asian Paints and Century Spinning and Indian luggage manufacturer VIP Industries Ltd, India’s largest luggage company—but was rejected. That was in 1981. Nearly two decades later, he became the president (Asia-Pacific and West Asia) of Samsonite Asia Ltd, VIP’s biggest competitor. Tainwala today heads this most profitable region, which accounted for over 40% of the operating profit and a third of the $1.2 billion (around `5,400 crore) net sales of the parent in 2010. He is also one of the key people in the management team of six for the parent holding.

There is more than one twist to the Tainwala-Samsonite-VIP saga. Tainwala’s connection with VIP runs deep. He started his career in 1981 with a plastic trading company that was a vendor to VIP Industries. After a five-year stint, he started his own company, Tainwala Trading and Investment Co. Pvt. Ltd, for commodities trading and plastic sheet manufacturing and once again became associated directly with VIP Industries and Asian Paints as a vendor.

“I was always aware that I had not got a job with these companies and yet am crossing paths with them time and again,” says Tainwala.

The next twist came in 1995.

Samsonite was in talks with VIP Industries for a joint venture. The talks failed and the company, unable to find any other suitable partner, took on Tainwala, a vendor, as a silent partner for the India entry. “I was lacking the

experience and funds,” he says, explaining that he had approached the company in the past and even hosted management on their visits to India, but was never considered worthy of being a partner.

By 2000, Samsonite had failed to make inroads into the India market and was almost ready to pack its suitcases and exit the country. VIP Industries, a clear market leader with over 90% market share in the organized trade, had proved too tough a competitor.

“It was an embarrassment for me. I could not face my family and friends as a failure,” says Tainwala. He requested the American parent to change his partnership status and give him management control for two years.

He became chief operating officer of Indian operations in 2000, and general manager of West Asian operations in 2007. Samsonite hasn’t looked back since.

According to a Samsonitecommissioned Frost & Sullivan report released earlier this year, Samsonite, which also owns the American Tourister brand, gained the leadership position in December in India with a 16.8% market share. The study is part of the prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange earlier this year. VIP Industries, which operates the VIP, Carlton and Delsey brands, has a market share of 15.8%, according to the report.

The sales figures are a bone of contention between the two companies. Samsonite saw sales of $77.9 million, or about `350 crore, in India in 2010, according to the prospectus. In 2010, VIP Industries posted sales of `679.2 crore in India, almost double the figure (an independent 30 September Networth Stock Broking Ltd report says VIP Industries is the leader, with a 58% market share).

Tainwala discredits VIP sales figures as “inflated”. In turn, Dilip Piramal, chairman, VIP Industries, debunks the Frost & Sullivan report and Samsonite’s leadership claims as “inaccurate”.

The turnaround in India saw Tainwala rework the price, size, design and colour strategy for India. Consultants had told the multinational corporation (MNC) that Indians consider

black inauspicious, so products in that colour should be avoided.

Samsonite followed the advice till Tainwala became chief operating officer. Today, black accounts for 70% of its overall sales.

In addition, Samsonite sold at a premium to VIP in India, so for the value-conscious, Tainwala got in American Tourister, a brand the company had acquired globally. More than half of Samsonite’s sales in India are from American Tourister.

The organized retail trade channel was dominated by VIP. Samsonite worked around the challenge by launching its own retail store network. In 2000-02, the company opened 200 retail stores. Today, company-owned showrooms account for 60% of Samsonite’s retail trade in India; in other parts of the world, the figure is just 10%.

The change in strategy worked.

“Sales in India soon equalled the rest of Asia, excluding Japan,” says Tainwala.

Samsonite’s turnaround in India got Tainwala acceptance within the company. In 2004-05, he was offered a partnership for the West Asia, Central Asia and Africa regions. In 2007, this was extended to include China. In February, he became the executive director.

Looking back, Tainwala says he realized the company’s model of having a team of expatriates running an operation in a market they were not clued into was never going to work. “They used to come in, start training and implementing processes without understanding how the market works,” he observes, sharing an anecdote of how approval for opening a showroom would take three-five months. By then the property would be off the market and the company would have to start all over again.

“Asians were not empowered to make any decisions and that was one of the biggest failings of the company,” says Tainwala, who divides time between Hong Kong, the region which the MNC has chosen for its public listing, and Mumbai, where his family lives.

Even as he scales new heights, Tainwala may still be carrying past baggage, so his most momentous achievement may still be in the making. After all, to lead the company to a clear win in the home market would be incomparable payback.

IN PARENTHESIS

Frequent flyer: Ramesh Tainwala shuttles between Hong Kong, where he works, and Mum­ bai, where he lives.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

When the Volkswagen Beetle was launched in India, Ramesh Tainwala was quick to place an order. His wife and daughter were aghast. “I felt I owed it to myself,” says Tainwala, who has been fascinated by the car since childhood and calls “her” his first indulgence. The sad part, though, is that he hardly gets to drive it; he is at all times chauffeured. The car draws a lot of curiosity, he says, and leaving it parked anywhere would mean the logo and other such paraphernalia are bound to go missing. Tainwala owns five cars—a Mercedes S Class, BMW, Volkswagen Passat, Beetle and Maruti Swift—all in black. Next on his list is the Range Rover, which he has asked his children, Anushree and Ayush, to buy for him. Anushree is pursuing an MBA from Harvard Business School, Ayush works as a management trainee with Planet Retail. The deal is that he will loan them the money and they can pay for it when they begin earning. On the list of cars he would like to own is an Aston Martin. He says he has a fetish for small cars.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011

L9

Play

LOUNGE FRENCH OPEN

New tennis balls have a je ne sais quoi As Babolat replaces Dunlop at the Roland Garros, players say they’re too fast and hard

B Y T OM P ERROTTA ···························· ven as the sport of tennis changed radically over the last 100 years, the balls pretty much stayed the same. At this year’s French Open, however, the old Dunlops have been replaced with new balls made by Babolat and the players, a notoriously vigilant lot, have noticed.

And noticed. And then noticed some more.

Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 seed, who won his 41st straight match of 2011 on Wednesday, called the balls “very, very fast” and “really difficult to control”.

Men’s No. 3 seed Roger Federer, a 16-time Grand Slam winner, said they’re “faster, indeed”, especially when they’re fresh.

“That will be an issue,” he said.

Samantha Stosur, last year’s women’s finalist, said she thinks the new models are “a little bit harder”.

A faster, harder ball, the thinking goes, could add a little zip to a serve or forehand, making it more difficult to return. “Maybe it’s going to favour the servers and the big hitters,” Djokovic said.

Mark Woodforde, the former doubles champ from Australia, peeled open a can of the new balls at a restaurant in Paris on Sunday.

“Feel that,” he said, squeezing the ball and indicating how firm it was. “They fly off the racket, and after you’ve played a bunch of games with them, they still don’t seem to have much clay on them.”

Babolat and the French Tennis Federation say the new balls have the same performance character-

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istics as the old ones. “The laboratory tests prove that these balls have the exact same specifications as last year,” says Christophe Hayaux du Tilly, the federation’s sponsorship manager. “The same speed, the same rebound, the same size, all the same.”

Of the four Grand Slams, the French Open has changed ball brands the most recently. It used Dunlop before 2001, Technifibre from 2001 to 2005, and Dunlop again from 2006 to 2010. Wimbledon has stayed with Slazengers since 1902—though it did change to yellow from white in 1986—and the US Open has used Wilson, since the 1970s.

The Australian Open also uses Wilson since 2006.

Babolat’s contract with the French Open is for five years.

The change itself seems to have inspired more complaints than the physics of the new ball. The clay-court tournaments leading up to the French Open used Dunlop balls and the players would

rather not have to adapt to new ones for the year’s most important clay event. “That, for us, is the most frustrating part,” Federer said.

Babolat, which began as a string company in 1875 and started making balls in 2001, had just a few months to design the ball. It subjected it to a barrage of lab tests and gave samples to the French federation and to players—and not just Babolat players, says Jean-Christophe Verborg, the company’s international tour manager. The federation also sent each of the top 10 players on the men’s and women’s tours a box of the new balls this spring. Player

travel being what it is, though, it seems the balls mostly gathered dust. Stosur’s box was sent to Liechtenstein, where she stayed for a bit during the European clay-court swing.

“I was only there twice; practised one time each,” Stosur said.

David Ferrer, a Top 10 player from Spain who reached the finals in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, looked miffed when asked about his delivered balls. “I didn’t see them,” he said.

The bulk of Babolat’s player tests were conducted in Europe last fall. Players were given several unmarked balls and allowed to hit them for as long as they liked, Verborg says. He was present for some of the tests, including Rafael Nadal’s, which took place in October in Manacor, Majorca (both Nadal and Stosur use Babolat rackets).

“They didn’t see a difference,” Verborg says. Verborg and Hayaux du Tilly suggested other factors might account for the players’ perceptions. One possibility: Paris has had warm and dry weather of late,

so the courts are harder, which can make them faster.

Kai Nitsche, vice-president of racket sports at Dunlop, says laboratory tests can’t tell everything about a ball—especially how it feels.

“There really would have been no way to duplicate our ball unless they had our formula,” Nitsche says. “The core itself, while natural rubber is the main component, has 14 additional ingredients.” Nitsche declined to reveal the ingredients.

“We’ve been making balls for over 100 years,” he says. “That’s certainly not something we’re going to give away.”

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) regulates tennis balls and tests them for compression, mass, size, deformation, rebound and durability.

But as Jamie Capel-Davies of the ITF’s technical department explains, the ITF doesn’t analyse composition.

“You don’t even need traditional rubber if you have discovered something else,” he says.

“Our test is a performance test rather than a materials test. We see if it looks and behaves like a tennis ball, not how you achieved it.”

Hayaux du Tilly says he isn’t bothered if the players say the ball is different, as long as they don’t say it’s defective. “The important point is, no one said it is bad,” he says. “All the players say this is a very good ball.”

Ferrer agrees. “It’s faster than the Dunlop, but I have no problem,” he says.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

AP

Before the serve: Coco Vandeweghe of the US balancing the ball in a match against Maria Kirilenko of Russia at Roland Garros on Monday.

The three title hogs B Y C ARL B IALIK CHRISTOPHE ENA/AP

The Wall Street Journal THIERRY ROGE/REUTERS

··························· ovak Djokovic has been greedy with trophies in 2011, clutching one at the end of each of the seven tourna­ ments he has entered. But the two rivals who straddle him in the rankings, No. 1 Rafael Nadal and No. 3 Roger Fed­ erer, can’t complain: They each recently had their turn as title hogs. Nadal won three big clay tournaments, then three straight majors, last spring and sum­ mer. Federer won four of five tourna­ ments he entered from last fall through early January.

In their wake, the three top dogs have left scraps for the rest of the tour.

In the period that began a little over a year ago in Monte Carlo, at least two have been in the draw at 21 tourna­ ments. And 17 times, one of them has

N

won. In 11 of those 21, one of the three lost in the final as well. And six times, all three reached the semis. Even on the nine occasions when just one of the three entered a tournament—always a third­ or fourth­tier event—that player came away a winner five times, and a finalist once.

Lately, it has been Djokovic’s turn.

The 24­year­old Serb has won 39 straight matches entering the French Open. But the only two men to win at Roland Garros since 2005 haven’t been far behind. Nadal has reached six straight finals this year, while Federer has fallen before the quarter­finals just twice in the past year­plus. Even if Djok­ ovic falters in Paris, the rest of the men’s tour will have to reverse recent history to get past Federer or Nadal for the title.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

NADAL DJOKOVIC FEDERER

Aces: (from left) Novak Djokovic; Rafael Nadal; and Roger Federer.

REGIS DUVIGNAU/REUTERS

No. of tournaments Titles Lost in finals Made semis Made quarters Wins over other two Losses to other two Record vs everyone else

21 9 5 3 3 5 5 86­7

20 8 2 5 4 8 6 75­8

22 5 5 7 3 5 7 73­10 Source: ATPWorldTour.com

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FILM

The Bollywood lie Cannes may have been awash in Hindi movie glamour, but the truth is that Bollywood is hardly a blip on the radar of world cinema and culture B Y D EREK M ALCOLM ······························ s I write, I have just returned, battered but still breathing, from the Cannes film festival, the most important but most exhausting annual film jamboree in the world. And this year, despite the fact that there was only one properly Indian film on the entire official programme, the Indian presence was honourably upheld.

The Indian pavilion, run for the first time by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) under the energetic Nina Lath Gupta, was light years better than usual, and a welcome and useful place of refuge not only for Indians but for foreign delegates.

I was there most days. A sepulchral home for DVDs of rotten Bollywood movies and dotty tourist posters had been turned into a lively meeting place.

Added to that, the Indian party on the beachside of the Croisette was a big success, neither running out of food or drink which, compared with the pallid British effort, perched atop the nearby Marriott hotel, was a considerable blessing. It was hardly disturbed by a worse-for-wear Reliance man who smashed a glass on the forehead of a waiter before attempting to urinate against the bar.

For once, India, which doesn’t have the best record at Cannes, with far too many hangers-on generally outnumbering its more useful delegates and hardly any films, Bollywood or otherwise, looked as if it knew what it was doing.

It was, however, a pity that

A

Bollywood: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, produced by Shekhar Kapur but put together by others, didn’t do what was expected of it. Here surely was a chance to show that Bollywood (and I know the very name jars with some) has a unique history of fine films from master directors such as Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, V. Shantaram and Mehboob Khan, who were not simply concerned with clichéd stories and ever sillier song and dance numbers, but often made films of social and cultural significance.

What we got instead looked like an over-extended trailer for song and dance extravaganzas, entertaining for about 20 minutes but feeble at feature length. Some thought it an insult to Bollywood.

I wouldn’t go as far as that. But it did confirm prejudices about Indian cinema as a whole. Would that Kapur had directed it himself. We might then have got coherent clips of some of the great films of the past.

It must have proved to Bollywood’s denigrators, which have often included myself, that Indian popular film-making is even less sophisticated than that of Hollywood, and even less able to deal with important or controversial subjects with audacity and without sentimentality.

It is, of course, a fairly common view in some Indian circles that the country has become a shining beacon to the world at large and that an ever more glamorous Bollywood has led the way in attracting attention not only to Indian films but to India itself. I’m not at all sure that the second half

of the argument is really true.

Ask most people in the UK what they know about India and they tend to have three pat answers.

The first is that India is indeed a coming superpower, if often both bureaucratic and corrupt, but highly unlikely to beat China and the US in the world pecking order anytime soon.

The second is that Indian cinema is indeed Bollywood, and nothing much else. And that means song, dance and star personas emitting romantic clichés. They’ve heard about the movies but they don’t actually go to see them.

The third is that there are an awful lot of Indians in the UK who keep the newspaper shops open, drive much more carefully than they do in India for fear of the law and have provided the Brits with chicken tikka masala and other staples you can now buy in the supermarkets if you don’t want to visit the many restaurants (often actually run by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) after a beery night out.

I’m not saying these views are true. I’m saying that’s what the average Briton thinks. India equals emerging economic power, Bollywood and curry.

Our view of Bollywood, however, is not one bought from experience. We don’t actually go to the Bollywood movies that often make so healthy a profit in our multiplexes. It’s the Indian immigrants who do, particularly the older generation, largely to be reminded of home. Their sons and daughters tend increasingly to prefer Hollywood, which provides better car chases and more luxurious special effects.

Magazines and newspapers, and sometimes television, occasionally take photographs of visiting Indian stars, publicize Indian fashion and write articles about the fusion of Indian and British rock music. We read all this, but we don’t actually partake. I once brought a sari back for a girlfriend a few years ago and all I got was: “For God’s sake! Where on earth do I wear that?”

The real influence of Bollywood on anyone other than the diaspora is practically nil. It’s thought to be a bit of a joke—a huge engine that spews out dozens upon dozens of films a year, some of which make large profits but most of which sink without a trace. A couple of years ago, the main companies distributing Bollywood in the UK organized press shows for British critics. They duly went along to the first two or three. But the reviews were short and often negative, and soon the idea of adding to the 10 or 12 new films opening in London each week with a slice of Bollywood was quietly dropped.

If the sheer gigantomania in India’s film factories has indeed attracted bemused attention in recent years, it is largely because of the omission of Indian cinema from most global histories. Dozens of books have been devoted to the history of Hollywood in the West.

Very few have even tried to tackle Bollywood, which, until it realized that as much money could be made abroad as in India itself, frequently seemed to come from a vast, enclosed world nobody but Indians knew a great deal about.

The idea that Indian commercial

cinema, whether from Mumbai or not, is made for the illiterate masses and seen by no one even slightly sophisticated, dies hard in the UK. It was always a view verging on sheer ignorance and, even today, when it could be claimed that India’s cinema has been technically strengthened but culturally weakened by Western influences, it’s not entirely true.

It certainly wasn’t so in the post-war decades that produced a whole series of film-makers, stars, musicians and playback singers worthy of anyone’s attention. I

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

HINDUSTAN TIMES

HINDUSTAN TIMES

AFP HINDUSTAN TIMES

Behind the camera: (clockwise from above) Directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, and more recently, Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj represent Indian cinema which is outside the Bollywood bracket of formu­ laic blockbusters.

have soundtracks from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that combine Indian classical, folk and traditional music with memorable skill. Would there were good-quality DVDs of some of the lost films.

But India has always been careless of its cinematic heritage.

Witness the fact that some of the best films of the New Indian cinema of the 1970s and 1980s no longer seem to exist, or at least cannot be found. A few years ago I tried to mount a season of New Indian cinema at the National Film Theatre in London. I suggested a dozen of the best. We could only find four, so gave up.

When I first came to India in the early 1970s, there was a festival retrospective of the films of Ritwik Ghatak made up of prints of appalling quality. Asked by the film magazine Sight & Sound to write the first British survey of Ghatak’s work, I did the best I could from a point of some ignorance and was rather late with the copy. “Where is your article about Gatwick Airport?” asked the editor. Ignorance sometimes makes for blissful jokes.

After this, I tried my best to follow the brave independents, who rejected Bollywood and tried to relate to a “real” India. Often financed by the NFDC and encouraged by the thought of a profitable outing on state television, they ultimately found themselves with no place to go in cinemas that only showed Bollywood or its regional equivalents. In the end, the movement petered out, with many of the talented directors either giving up, moving into television or trying to get a Bollywood film

under way without too much compromise. It very seldom worked, though brave men such as Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj are now trying very hard and with some success.

It was an extraordinary time and sometimes an amusing one. I once opened the door of my Kolkata hotel very early one morning to a director who pleaded with me to see his first film. “Is it on the festival programme?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Has it got subtitles?” I enquired. The answer came after only a little hesitation: “Maybe.”

Of course, it hadn’t.

At this moment in time, many festival directors have virtually given up on Indian films, though Cannes thinks it might be fun to find a Bollywood film to show in competition one year soon.

Unfortunately the rumour is that they can’t find one good enough to put before the critics of the world. It’s not so much a form of Western snobbery as the inability of most Bollywood directors to produce truly innovative cinema.

I’m constantly told that there are now a number of young film-makers determined to alter this situation, and I met some of them at Cannes. I was shocked to find that a couple of the youngest had only seen a few Satyajit Ray films and had never heard of Adoor Gopalakrishnan, generally considered the best director of non-Bollywood films in India just now. I was also surprised that few of these possible saviours of Indian cinema had gone to see many of the films at Cannes which would have given them a few ideas as to how to change things.

I wish them luck. If you don’t want to make an overtly commercial film, it is a very hard row to hoe in India just now. But let’s have a little judicious doubt about the claims made for Bollywood itself. Despite the huge success of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire in the West if not in India (which was a better directed Bollywood film in all but ownership), Bollywood is not the flavour of the times. It may like to think it is, but that’s largely a hopeful myth.

I’ve been going to India now for some 40 years and things don’t change all that much in the film world. But it’s been a wonderful experience nonetheless, if not without its weird and wonderful moments. I once was in the lift at the Ashok Hotel in Delhi, which is not exactly the best resting place in the world for the many foreign guests who are put there by the government. A robed man was in the lift with me and I thought I recognized his face. Probably a delegate from the festival, I thought. “Isn’t this an awful hotel?” I said to him. He gave me a beatific smile and replied: “We were put on this earth to suffer, you know.”

It was the Dalai Lama.

Derek Malcolm has been coming to India for around 40 years, first as a cricketer and then as a film critic.

He was film critic for The Guardian for 30 years. He is currently with the London Evening Standard. He is former director of the London Film Festival, and honorary president of the International Film Critics Association.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

The hip shake: (from far left) Stills from the films Dabangg, Bunty aur Babli and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, which had wide appeal among non­resident Indian (NRI) audiences; Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj was a box­office failure; and a red­carpet promotion of Bollywood: The Greatest Story Ever Told, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (right) which was screened at the Cannes film festival, 2011.

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VALERY HACHE/AFP

FILM

The Bollywood lie Cannes may have been awash in Hindi movie glamour, but the truth is that Bollywood is hardly a blip on the radar of world cinema and culture B Y D EREK M ALCOLM ······························ s I write, I have just returned, battered but still breathing, from the Cannes film festival, the most important but most exhausting annual film jamboree in the world. And this year, despite the fact that there was only one properly Indian film on the entire official programme, the Indian presence was honourably upheld.

The Indian pavilion, run for the first time by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) under the energetic Nina Lath Gupta, was light years better than usual, and a welcome and useful place of refuge not only for Indians but for foreign delegates.

I was there most days. A sepulchral home for DVDs of rotten Bollywood movies and dotty tourist posters had been turned into a lively meeting place.

Added to that, the Indian party on the beachside of the Croisette was a big success, neither running out of food or drink which, compared with the pallid British effort, perched atop the nearby Marriott hotel, was a considerable blessing. It was hardly disturbed by a worse-for-wear Reliance man who smashed a glass on the forehead of a waiter before attempting to urinate against the bar.

For once, India, which doesn’t have the best record at Cannes, with far too many hangers-on generally outnumbering its more useful delegates and hardly any films, Bollywood or otherwise, looked as if it knew what it was doing.

It was, however, a pity that

A

Bollywood: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, produced by Shekhar Kapur but put together by others, didn’t do what was expected of it. Here surely was a chance to show that Bollywood (and I know the very name jars with some) has a unique history of fine films from master directors such as Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, V. Shantaram and Mehboob Khan, who were not simply concerned with clichéd stories and ever sillier song and dance numbers, but often made films of social and cultural significance.

What we got instead looked like an over-extended trailer for song and dance extravaganzas, entertaining for about 20 minutes but feeble at feature length. Some thought it an insult to Bollywood.

I wouldn’t go as far as that. But it did confirm prejudices about Indian cinema as a whole. Would that Kapur had directed it himself. We might then have got coherent clips of some of the great films of the past.

It must have proved to Bollywood’s denigrators, which have often included myself, that Indian popular film-making is even less sophisticated than that of Hollywood, and even less able to deal with important or controversial subjects with audacity and without sentimentality.

It is, of course, a fairly common view in some Indian circles that the country has become a shining beacon to the world at large and that an ever more glamorous Bollywood has led the way in attracting attention not only to Indian films but to India itself. I’m not at all sure that the second half

of the argument is really true.

Ask most people in the UK what they know about India and they tend to have three pat answers.

The first is that India is indeed a coming superpower, if often both bureaucratic and corrupt, but highly unlikely to beat China and the US in the world pecking order anytime soon.

The second is that Indian cinema is indeed Bollywood, and nothing much else. And that means song, dance and star personas emitting romantic clichés. They’ve heard about the movies but they don’t actually go to see them.

The third is that there are an awful lot of Indians in the UK who keep the newspaper shops open, drive much more carefully than they do in India for fear of the law and have provided the Brits with chicken tikka masala and other staples you can now buy in the supermarkets if you don’t want to visit the many restaurants (often actually run by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) after a beery night out.

I’m not saying these views are true. I’m saying that’s what the average Briton thinks. India equals emerging economic power, Bollywood and curry.

Our view of Bollywood, however, is not one bought from experience. We don’t actually go to the Bollywood movies that often make so healthy a profit in our multiplexes. It’s the Indian immigrants who do, particularly the older generation, largely to be reminded of home. Their sons and daughters tend increasingly to prefer Hollywood, which provides better car chases and more luxurious special effects.

Magazines and newspapers, and sometimes television, occasionally take photographs of visiting Indian stars, publicize Indian fashion and write articles about the fusion of Indian and British rock music. We read all this, but we don’t actually partake. I once brought a sari back for a girlfriend a few years ago and all I got was: “For God’s sake! Where on earth do I wear that?”

The real influence of Bollywood on anyone other than the diaspora is practically nil. It’s thought to be a bit of a joke—a huge engine that spews out dozens upon dozens of films a year, some of which make large profits but most of which sink without a trace. A couple of years ago, the main companies distributing Bollywood in the UK organized press shows for British critics. They duly went along to the first two or three. But the reviews were short and often negative, and soon the idea of adding to the 10 or 12 new films opening in London each week with a slice of Bollywood was quietly dropped.

If the sheer gigantomania in India’s film factories has indeed attracted bemused attention in recent years, it is largely because of the omission of Indian cinema from most global histories. Dozens of books have been devoted to the history of Hollywood in the West.

Very few have even tried to tackle Bollywood, which, until it realized that as much money could be made abroad as in India itself, frequently seemed to come from a vast, enclosed world nobody but Indians knew a great deal about.

The idea that Indian commercial

cinema, whether from Mumbai or not, is made for the illiterate masses and seen by no one even slightly sophisticated, dies hard in the UK. It was always a view verging on sheer ignorance and, even today, when it could be claimed that India’s cinema has been technically strengthened but culturally weakened by Western influences, it’s not entirely true.

It certainly wasn’t so in the post-war decades that produced a whole series of film-makers, stars, musicians and playback singers worthy of anyone’s attention. I

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

HINDUSTAN TIMES

HINDUSTAN TIMES

AFP HINDUSTAN TIMES

Behind the camera: (clockwise from above) Directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, and more recently, Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj represent Indian cinema which is outside the Bollywood bracket of formu­ laic blockbusters.

have soundtracks from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that combine Indian classical, folk and traditional music with memorable skill. Would there were good-quality DVDs of some of the lost films.

But India has always been careless of its cinematic heritage.

Witness the fact that some of the best films of the New Indian cinema of the 1970s and 1980s no longer seem to exist, or at least cannot be found. A few years ago I tried to mount a season of New Indian cinema at the National Film Theatre in London. I suggested a dozen of the best. We could only find four, so gave up.

When I first came to India in the early 1970s, there was a festival retrospective of the films of Ritwik Ghatak made up of prints of appalling quality. Asked by the film magazine Sight & Sound to write the first British survey of Ghatak’s work, I did the best I could from a point of some ignorance and was rather late with the copy. “Where is your article about Gatwick Airport?” asked the editor. Ignorance sometimes makes for blissful jokes.

After this, I tried my best to follow the brave independents, who rejected Bollywood and tried to relate to a “real” India. Often financed by the NFDC and encouraged by the thought of a profitable outing on state television, they ultimately found themselves with no place to go in cinemas that only showed Bollywood or its regional equivalents. In the end, the movement petered out, with many of the talented directors either giving up, moving into television or trying to get a Bollywood film

under way without too much compromise. It very seldom worked, though brave men such as Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj are now trying very hard and with some success.

It was an extraordinary time and sometimes an amusing one. I once opened the door of my Kolkata hotel very early one morning to a director who pleaded with me to see his first film. “Is it on the festival programme?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Has it got subtitles?” I enquired. The answer came after only a little hesitation: “Maybe.”

Of course, it hadn’t.

At this moment in time, many festival directors have virtually given up on Indian films, though Cannes thinks it might be fun to find a Bollywood film to show in competition one year soon.

Unfortunately the rumour is that they can’t find one good enough to put before the critics of the world. It’s not so much a form of Western snobbery as the inability of most Bollywood directors to produce truly innovative cinema.

I’m constantly told that there are now a number of young film-makers determined to alter this situation, and I met some of them at Cannes. I was shocked to find that a couple of the youngest had only seen a few Satyajit Ray films and had never heard of Adoor Gopalakrishnan, generally considered the best director of non-Bollywood films in India just now. I was also surprised that few of these possible saviours of Indian cinema had gone to see many of the films at Cannes which would have given them a few ideas as to how to change things.

I wish them luck. If you don’t want to make an overtly commercial film, it is a very hard row to hoe in India just now. But let’s have a little judicious doubt about the claims made for Bollywood itself. Despite the huge success of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire in the West if not in India (which was a better directed Bollywood film in all but ownership), Bollywood is not the flavour of the times. It may like to think it is, but that’s largely a hopeful myth.

I’ve been going to India now for some 40 years and things don’t change all that much in the film world. But it’s been a wonderful experience nonetheless, if not without its weird and wonderful moments. I once was in the lift at the Ashok Hotel in Delhi, which is not exactly the best resting place in the world for the many foreign guests who are put there by the government. A robed man was in the lift with me and I thought I recognized his face. Probably a delegate from the festival, I thought. “Isn’t this an awful hotel?” I said to him. He gave me a beatific smile and replied: “We were put on this earth to suffer, you know.”

It was the Dalai Lama.

Derek Malcolm has been coming to India for around 40 years, first as a cricketer and then as a film critic.

He was film critic for The Guardian for 30 years. He is currently with the London Evening Standard. He is former director of the London Film Festival, and honorary president of the International Film Critics Association.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

The hip shake: (from far left) Stills from the films Dabangg, Bunty aur Babli and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, which had wide appeal among non­resident Indian (NRI) audiences; Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj was a box­office failure; and a red­carpet promotion of Bollywood: The Greatest Story Ever Told, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (right) which was screened at the Cannes film festival, 2011.

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Travel

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Lip service, chin music Up in Viking country—where the days are long, the beer cold and the people warm—in pursuit of the most flamboyantly hirsute B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ···························· he first indication that this trip is going to be a little unusual is on the SAS flight to Oslo. A group of Americans occupy four of the six seats in the two rows across the aisle from mine. Scruffily dressed in the universal budget tourist uniform of T-shirts, battered sneakers and drawstring bottoms, they look unexceptional.

Except for the fact that they all wear luxuriant beards and moustaches. The quietest fellow has a long, brown, somewhat scraggly beard that easily reaches his seat belt. The most talkative one has a shorter but much thicker beard with a pronounced finger-thick moustache. Just before take-off, an unsuspecting middle-aged woman sitting next to him asks him about it.

When he is done enthusiastically telling her about the World Beard and Moustache Championships (WBMC) in Trondheim, the plane has levelled off and the cabin crew are preparing breakfast. He only stops talking because everyone around him is beginning to squirm uncomfortably, or feigning sleep.

The Oslo-London-Oslo plane takes off from Heathrow at 7.30am. On board, demand for breakfast is high. Besides, I have been warned about spending money in Norway. Oslo is widely considered one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Trondheim, about 500km further north, is cheaper. But not by much. I order SAS’ breakfast bag: a value-for-money combination of muesli, yogurt, sandwich, juice and coffee served in a paper bag that costs 65 Norwegian kroner (around `530).

As it happens the muesli is nowhere to be found.

T

************ Oslo Airport at Gardermoen is much like most modern airports except for the ubiquitous use of wood. Ceilings in the arrivals terminal are high, swooping, curving affairs made of strips of wood massaged into flowing shapes. In some places the airport looks like a massively oversized log cabin.

“Why are you going to Trondheim?” asks the woman from Norwegian Border Control.

Before I can finish explaining, she nods and stamps my passport: “Yes. Today… so many people with beards…”

The Scandinavian countries are often held up as the epitome of all that is good and great about democracy and mature governments. In his latest book, The Origins of Political Order, author Francis Fukuyama talks about how countries can “get to Denmark”, that is, how they can become liberal democracies with a functioning state, rule of law and an accountable government.

Fukuyama could have easily used Norway instead. The country

Hair­raising! A participant in the Sideburns Freestyle cate­ gory of the championship; and (below) Germany’s Pia Weis prepares her husband Hans­Peter for the Full Beard Freestyle event. of around five million people has the world’s highest Human Development Index scores. It also boasts of some of the highest wages, per capita GDP and lowest income disparities in the world.

Which is why the locals can afford to pay the ridiculous sum of some 100 kroner for a pint of local beer, three times as much as in London.

All this might make you think the Norwegians take life easy. But, in fact, they also have one of the highest rates of hourly productivity on the planet.

Still, no amount of economic prosperity and social equality can prevent bizarre airport toilet graffiti. In big blue letters on the wall in my cubicle someone has written only one word: “SNOB!” Perhaps there is a context there that only the original artiste is aware of. ************ The train from Oslo to Trondheim, which I only catch after many trials and tribulations, takes approximately 7 hours. By the time I reach Trondheim, it is almost 10pm. The summer days are long here in the land of the midnight sun, and even at this hour there is as much light as on a cloudy morning in Delhi.

The city is deserted on a Saturday night. The only people I see on the streets are other passengers from Oslo racing away, noisily dragging strolleys behind them. The Thon Trondheim hotel is a 15-minute walk from the railway station. I count three hotels in Trondheim that belong to the Norwegian Thon chain: one “proper”, one business and one budget. My room is at the budget Thon Trondheim, and the 2011 World Beard and Moustache Championships are taking place at the “business” class Thon Prinsen.

My hotel is minimal, the receptionist brisk, the vending machine in the lobby well stocked and the room minuscule. The only way to get anything done is sideways.

Just a stone’s throw from the hotel is the tall statue of King Olav Tryggvason, who founded the city in 997. The statue stands on top of a tall column and looks out towards the sea.

During the Viking Age in the 12th and 13th centuries, Trondheim was the capital of Norway.

Since then it has had a somewhat mixed history and the remnants dot the city—from one of the largest churches in north Europe to an old Nazi submarine base called DORA 1.

Yet the Viking Age is what the city is most known for. That and the fact that Trondheim is known in Norway as “Bartebyen”—the city of moustaches. ************ The next morning, the moustaches and beards are everywhere. It turns out that the hotel is hosting dozens of contestants and two video crews from the US and UK. The breakfast room is occupied by four large groups of diners—a dozen or so German contestants, a handful of Americans with wives and children in tow, scattered individual contestants and, finally, flabbergasted

tourists who have no idea what is going on.

At one point a clean-shaven resident guest walks into the room, looks around in alarm, whispers loudly, “F!@£… !@#… so many beards!” and then turns around and leaves.

Downstairs in the lobby I talk to Lina, who is married to one of the contestants from Texas, US. Her husband is participating in the “natural full beard” category. While he is preparing in his room, Lina is out for a walk and a smoke.

I ask her how she lets her husband grow a beard that reaches his belt buckle. “Well… they are Texan men. You know

how they can be.”

But surely it takes a lot of commitment?

“Sure. And not just for the guy growing the beard. Forget everything else…he sheds hair everywhere. Especially in the shower.

All the time…hair, hair, hair.”

Before she runs back to the room I ask her if he will shave it off after the championships. “No. Maybe he will trim it a little.”

Did I see tears in her eyes?

Later, an hour or so before the event, I run into Wolfgang Schneider in the lobby. Schneider is staying in the room next to mine. He is dressed in a Scottish kilt and has a luxuriant full moustache that curls up on both

TRAVEL L13

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SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP

Gothic pride: Judges inspect Ger­ many’s Jurgen Draheim’s Musketeer; (below, right) Peter Weiss and fellow Germans, as well as Americans, were the most serious contenders at the World Beard and Moustache Cham­ pionships; and Gerhard Knapp, another German contestant.

sides to a point.

Schneider is in a bad mood and desperately wants to share his troubles. I don’t even have to ask.

“The water in Norway is very soft! Very soft! Very bad for my moustache.”

Schneider is a computer networks engineer from Stuttgart, Germany, where, he says, the water is much harder. This helps him shape his whiskers better.

Because Schneider is participating in the “natural moustache” category, he is not allowed to use any chemicals or wax.

“This is very bad. But I will shape it again at the venue before the event,” says Schneider. Many competitors, he explains, trim or convert their whiskers into more sober shapes after the event.

Especially if they work in organizations or have jobs where creativity with hair is frowned upon.

Not so for Schneider: “This is how I keep my moustache always.”

While we speak, a small, short man pops his head out of Schneider’s room and asks him something in machine-gun German.

Then he smiles, says hello to me, and vanishes. However, there was just enough time to notice his moustache: This one was thin, black and generously waxed into points that stood perpendicular to his upper lip—a Dali. Yet another of the 17 categories that

would be hotly contested at the Prinsen hotel, starting noon. ************ For all the brouhaha and coverage on CNN.com, WBMC 2011 looks deceptively like a low-key affair. At the entrance to the Prinsen there is a handwritten sign tacked on clumsily to a noticeboard.

Outside the ballroom there is a table manned by some local volunteers. Initially there seems to be some kind of attempt to sell tickets and use stickers to control access. But this breaks down in minutes. By the time Ole Skibnes, the president of the local organizers, Norwegian Moustache Club of 91, delivers the opening address, people have started coming and going freely. Competitors are allowed to register till the last minute and some, based on what they see on other faces, even make last-minute strategic changes to their categories.

The ballroom is packed with around 500 people—half are competitors, and half are supporters and media. Sitting next to me initially are Simon and Magnus, two second-year students of physics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Both are competing in the natural moustaches category but are doing it for fun. They know they have no chance—Schneider’s moustache

is half as big as Simon himself.

In total the event will take around 10 hours. Starting with natural moustache, competitors in each category will first be paraded in front of a set of judges, and then asked to present their whiskers individually before taking a place on stage. The judges will then pick the top three. After the finalists from all 17 categories have been picked, they will be called back again to announce the gold, silver and bronze medallists. The gold winners will be called back in order to choose one overall winner—the Best of the Show.

After Skibnes’ cheerful opening speech, the Norwegians get down to business. The 17 categories are broken into three groups: moustaches, partial beards and full beards. And each group has one

‘They want to conduct the... championships in stadiums and broadcast it on live television…

I am not so sure that will work.’

judging panel. There is one officer in charge of collecting scores and another in charge of tabulating them. The latter is a local lawyer who is dressed in full white collar and black robes. Throughout the event she operates with a grim, professional countenance.

Despite the diabolical schemes of the Trondheim municipal water supply, Wolfgang Schneider sails into the final three in natural moustache. Unfortunately, his room-mate is not as lucky. The Dali category has several strong contenders, none more so than Juhana Helmenkalastaja of Finland. Helmenkalastaja is not only dressed in a sharp dark suit with a flamboyant white hat, but also does the “Dali eyes”. He tips his head backwards, opens his eyes wide and then glares down at the judges and audience—a classic Salvador Dali pose. The crowd goes wild, unleashing a hurricane of hair.

After six moustache categories are judged in about 2 hours—Natural, English, Dali, Imperial, Hungarian, Freestyle—a 30-minute break is declared. The event is going exactly as per schedule and the organizers look thrilled.

During the break I speak to Rod Littlewood, one of the celebrities of the beard and moustache firmament. Littlewood is the president of the Handlebar Club in London and one of the office-bearers of the World

Beard and Moustache Association. Littlewood was eliminated from the preliminary round for natural moustache, but assures me that he is absolutely thrilled.

“This means me and the boys can have a proper piss up! If you’re a finalist you need to go prepare and get pictures taken…

I couldn’t be happier.”

Then he pauses for a second and adds: “But the beers here are so bloody expensive. £10 (around `730) I paid last night for a pint.”

Thankfully, Littlewood says, the next major competition is in Hungary, where the beer is a pound a pint.

I ask him if all the competitors take the event as lightly. “The Americans and the Germans take it very, very seriously. They’re going to keep score of the golds and silvers and bronzes and update their websites immediately after the event.”

While the majority of the competitors are here for the fun and games, Littlewood explains, there is a disturbing new trend. Not only are some nations taking it too seriously, some of the organizers want to market the event and make it a global spectacle. “They want to conduct the world championships in stadiums and broadcast it on live television… I am not so sure that will work.”

This trend has also led to a proliferation of categories, Littlewood adds. “Honestly you should really only have natural moustaches and natural beards. Everything else is really hairdressing.” Littlewood is referring to the elaborate freestyle creations that usually get the most acclaim and press coverage after each event.

“Come on! All that is done by a hairdresser,” he says, pointing to a German gentleman with a beautiful but thoroughly artificial “free-

style partial beard”.

A few hours later, as we approach the marquee freestyle full-beard category, the event is surprisingly still on schedule.

Bjorn Bogen Jr, one of the local organizers, gives me inside gossip.

Apparently the Finnish fellow with the “crazy Dali eyes” had initially registered under the Musketeer category. But then Helmenkalastaja realized the competition was too strong. So he shaved off his chin whiskers, waxed up his moustache and enrolled in the Dali (it is a shrewd move. Eventually Helmenkalastaja wins gold).

No doubt the 65-kroner price of the excellent local beer helps keep things on time, but it is largely due to the fact that Norwegians operate a tight ship. The final rounds start almost exactly on time and, no surprises here, Wolfgang Schneider wins gold for the natural moustache. One by one the winners scream, and yodel, some of them even break down. The theatrics help inject fresh life into a crowd that is slowly thinning and tiring.

An hour and a half later, as expected, the winner of the freestyle full-beard event also wins the Best of the Show. Elmar Weisser, a German hairdresser, has crafted his beard into a sleigh with a Norwegian flag at one end and a reindeer at the other.

Yes, a reindeer. From beard hair.

The World Beard and Moustache Championships are not for the weak of heart. Or the poor of whisker.

Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com For an extended version of the story, moustache tips and videos, visit http://blogs.livemint.com

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Books

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EXCERPT

Sweet dreams are made of these DIRK WAEM/AFP

“The government agreed to provide the land free of cost, and pay for the construction. The maintenance was to be covered by charging users.”

The question was, would the man on the street pay? Sceptics said that in Bihar most people travelled ticketless in buses and trains—would they shell out money to use a toilet?

Bindeshwar said, “We will keep it spotlessly clean. They will pay.”

An exclusive from a new book which profiles 20 Indian social entrepreneurs who set out to make a difference to society B Y R ASHMI B ANSAL ····························

Bindeshwar Pathak, Sulabh International When Bindeshwar was a young boy, his grandmother once made him eat cowdung to “purify” himself, after contact with an untouchable. The same Brahmin boy grew up to lead a movement we know as Sulabh. A revolution in toilets and a rightful place in society, for those who once cleaned them.

I Have a Dream:

By Rashmi Bansal, Westland and Tranquebar Press, 361 pages, `150.

In the afternoon the Administrator declared that the toilet block should be ready by tomorrow noon.

The Chief Engineer panicked.

How was that possible? The man was due to retire soon, this would be a black spot on his otherwise illustrious career. In desperation, he turned towards Bindeshwar and asked, “Can you do something?”

Bindeshwar was taken off-guard but, in a fraction of a second he made a bold decision.

So far Sulabh had focused on converting bucket toilets in homes into pit privies. Here was a chance to venture into the public domain.

He smiled and said, “This? No problem at all… We’ll do it by tomorrow!”

The Administrator took out his red ink pen and wrote the work order—on the Chief Engineer’s left hand!

He said, “Take this to the office, get it typed and come back with `20,000.”

The money was sanctioned and the Administrator said he would be back the next morning—at 7am—to inspect the completed toilet.

Ab karein kya? Aur kaise?

The spot where the toilet block was to be built was in fact an open air toilet already. Some two to three thousand men and women used the place to relieve themselves each morning. The entire area—and miles around it—stank of human waste.

Bindeshwar had a brainwave.

He sent his workers to Koliwar, a place where lal baalu (red sand) was available and had them bring

Anita Ahuja, Conserve India Like many well-to-do women in Delhi, Anita Ahuja took up social work. But, deeply moved by the plight of ragpickers, she decided to do something to improve their lives.

Today. Anita and her husband Shalabh run a unique income-generation programme—recycling plastic waste to create beautiful export-quality handbags.

Big idea: Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh builds clean public toilets. in twenty truckloads.

By this time, it was late evening.

Next, he sent workers to all the maalis (gardeners) in town. They were told to bring as many potted plants, bushes and trees as possible. Whatever the price.

The sand was laid out in the maidan.

The plants were placed, pots hidden, in that layer of sand.

And one pit was dug, and filled up with sweet smelling sandalwood.

The entire area looked good, and smelt good.

By now it was 4am.

Keeping in mind the calculation of 2 cubic feet per person per year for the standard 2 pit toilet, Bindeshwar estimated the space required for 500 people. And multiplied that by 8 cubic feet.

Workers began digging and by 7am—when the Administrator

ADAPT | TIM HARFORD

arrived, there were no toilets.

But the maidan no longer had the spectacle of men and women displaying their bums and lotas.

In its place was a fragrant garden and some work in progress on the toilet block.

“He became so happy, he said, ‘This is looking beautiful’. And he forgot all about the actual toilets, which had not even been built!”

In reality the Administrator had instructions from the Chief Secretary to ‘do something’ about that ugly open air toilet in front of the Reserve Bank within two days. So toilet or no toilet, the goal had been achieved.

More important than letter, is spirit.

Meanwhile in ten days time, the actual toilet block was also up and ready (except for the roof—that came later). It was a pay-for-use toilet—10 paise per visit.

“I decided Conserve would work to improve the life of ragpickers.”

But how?

While grant supported programmes continued, side by side, Anita started ‘playing around’ with plastic waste. The typical bluepink-yellow variety of thailis you see everywhere.

“We were already making compost—using wet waste to create a saleable product. Why not find a use for plastic waste collected by the ragpickers? So, I started experimenting.”

Anita researched the recycling technologies available on the Internet and tried dozens of different things.

“First, I tried weaving and making carpets. But the products that came out looked home-made and were very labour intensive.”

Not financially viable and hard to sell. But despite getting nowhere, Anita kept going. Ultimately she developed a texture of layering the plastic bags together and it came out very nicely.

“I found I could create beautiful patterns and no one could tell this was made from plastic waste at all!”

At first Anita thought she could just make artworks and installations, have an exhibition and try and raise money.

But Shalabh—being the more practical of the two—realised it

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

···························· ill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Inc., set failure as one of the cornerstones of his hiring policy. “When you’re failing, you’re forced to be creative, to dig deep and think hard, night and day,” he said in a 1995 interview to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“Every company needs people who have been through that.”

Tim Harford, best known for his Undercover Economist books, takes that thesis forward in his latest work. He argues that failure is necessary and useful, especially in an increasingly complex

B

world—not only for organizations and governments, but in our individual lives as well.

“Given the likely shape of (these) ever-shifting landscapes, the evolutionary mix of small steps and occasional wild gambles is the best possible way to search for solutions,” Harford writes.

While that seems like a notion counter-intuitive to human instincts and how organizations and businesses traditionally work, it is not a terribly new topic. The importance of innovation has been stressed for at least a century now, notably in Clayton M. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.

Even the notion of failure as a stepping stone to success has been explored in other works, recently in Paul Ormerod’s Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics.

Harford succeeds with the ele-

Rashmi Bansal is the author of two best-selling books on entrepreneurship, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish and Connect the Dots, and the cofounder and editor of JAM magazine. Her new book I Have a Dream launches next week.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

PARAMOUNT PICTURES/BLOOMBERG

The science of epic fail The economist’s new work discusses the merits of trial and error

would not work.

“If the objective is to generate income, we have to look at starting a factory.”

The first step in that direction came when Shalabh fabricated a machine which could mass-produce the plastic sheets. Artist creates, engineer automates—a fine example of left brain-right brain collaboration!

“It took us about six months; the whole process of learning how to combine the right colours and make the sheets look pretty.

Because if you just put anything then it’s just a sheet; then it doesn’t sell. It looks dirty, like dirty plastic.”

By trial and error Anita produced a portfolio of 200 unique designs. She calls them her 200 ‘paintings’.

Initially, Anita made a few simple things like wine bags and carry bags, files and folders. To do this, she hired a few roadside tailors.

The merchandise was sold at embassies which had trade fairs around Diwali season.

“Since we had already worked with the funding agencies, I knew them. So I went and put up a stall at these fairs, “ recalls Anita. The ragpickers were trained to man these stalls and do the selling.

But Anita quickly realised that a wine bag or a file/folder would fetch a maximum of `60-100. The profit margin was slim so there wasn’t much left—to share with the ragpickers.

But, the sale was not in vain.

As they say, the customer is queen and when she makes an outlandish demand you stop and ask yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that!”

One woman said, “I really like the colours and texture. Can you make a better bag—a proper handbag—with the same fabric? I’ll pay you a lot more.”

And that’s how Conserve started making well-designed, high-quality handbags. The practical, viable, ‘hot selling’ product she had been searching for all along.

gance with which he tries to persuade us that trial and error is the most effective way of solving problems. He draws on research in evolutionary biology, genetics and nuclear engineering. He traipses through the battlefields of Iraq and schools in Africa to buttress his argument.

Along the way, he throws in facts and nuggets of research which challenge conventional wisdom and understanding—for example, on how productivity in idea generation has remained flat despite the increasing numbers of research and development professionals. Or how experts are fallible because the world is simply too complicated for anyone to analyse with much success.

What makes the book a delightful read, apart from the different theatres it explores, ranging from war to nuclear engineering, is the cast of protagonists—people who challenged convention and took

Winning formula: Bill Gates. gambles. In most cases, they succeeded; an unfortunate few were sidelined by bureaucracy and rigid policymakers or, in the worst case, ended up dead.

There is the swashbuckling Colonel H.R. McMaster, who chose to define his own tactics during the US occupation of Iraq; Reginald Mitchell, who invented the Spitfire fighter plane; Mario Capecchi, a pioneering geneticist; and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, whose first brush

Adapt—Why Success Always Starts with Failure: Hachette, 320 pages, `499. with development ended in failure.

But the hero of this book is Peter Palchinsky, an engineer in Stalinist Soviet Union, who was shot dead because he advised against grandiose projects such as the Lenin dam and the steel mills of Magnitogorsk, both of which ultimately proved to be failures.

He was one of the first to raise his voice against centralization and the need to study ever-changing local conditions, and summed it up in three statements. One, con-

stantly seek out ideas and try new things. Two, try these things on a scale where failure is survivable.

Three: Learn from your mistakes as you continue to experiment.

Most of Harford’s book is an elaboration of these principles, to which he refers time and again.

Using these as a foundation, he shows not only how central command systems and bureaucracies can mess up things, but also suggests solutions.

He makes the case for a carbon tax to solve climate change, for using randomized trials to distribute development funds, for prizes as the way to promote innovation, especially when governments are risk-averse when funding projects, or indeed to avert future collapses of the global financial system by decoupling banking activities.

This is also where Harford’s book almost assumes the tone of a self-help book, with the last chapter talking about how we might use this learning in our individual lives. While such books might usually be avoided on principle, picking up Harford’s book is not a wild gamble at all.

BOOKS L15

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Sky’s the limit: Glaeser describes Mumbai as the next Manhattan.

Goodness Gratiaen Poet and author Sakuntala Sachithanandan on winning Sri Lanka’s top literary honour B Y S MRITI D ANIEL ························································ t turns out that 200,000 Sri Lankan rupees (around `8,000) is just enough to publish a modest number of books. Enabling that first run is what the Gratiaen Trust does for its winners. The trust was instituted by Michael Ondaatje with his winnings from the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient in 1992. Today, it continues to support writers in Ondaatje’s native Sri Lanka through the Gratiaen Prize. The prize is named in honour of Ondaatje’s mother, Doris Gratiaen; entries may include both manuscripts and published work and need not be limited to any genre—poems, short stories, novels, plays, literary memoirs and even the odd musical compete every year for the honour.

Previously, the prize has gone to writers such as Nihal De Silva (The Road from Elephant Pass went on to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award) and Carl Muller, best known for his trilogy about Sri Lanka’s Burgher community. In 2008, the prize helped launch the career of Shehan Karunatilaka, whose Chinaman manuscript won the honour that year.

Ondaatje may have been conspicuous in his absence from the event in the last 17 years, but his words at the first Gratiaen Prize ceremony are often quoted: “(The Gratiaen Prize) is to celebrate and test and trust ourselves. To select and argue about the literature around us. To take it seriously, not just to see it as a jewel or a decoration.”

It took author Sakuntala Sachithanandan a few decades to summon the courage to publish her poetry. With the cricket World Cup related mayhem to consider, the 2010 Gratiaen award ceremony was postponed from early April to 21 May. But the wait has been worth it for Sachithanandan; her collection of poems, On the Street and Other Revelations, won the prize and was praised by the judges for its engagement with social issues. Edited excerpts from an interview:

I

TRIUMPH OF THE CITY | EDWARD GLAESER

Skyscrapers and sweatshops An ode to the mega­city and its role in shaping the world’s future. It’s a theory not yet applicable to India

Triumph of the City: Penguin Press, 352 pages, $29.95 (around `1,350).

B Y S HEKHAR K RISHNAN ···························· he past two decades have seen large cities in North America and Europe rebound from a painful post-war history of technological change and spatial restructuring. Since the 1980s, urban centres throughout the developed world have built new business districts and gentrified into consumer zones as educated workers and families returned to cities hollowed out by decades of de-industrialization, suburban flight and social upheaval. Urban manufacturing hubs and ports shaped by the production and shipment of goods and commodities were left behind by finance, information and business services in a new global economy centred in cities such as New York, Chicago, London and Paris.

This post-industrial city has since become the archetype for mega-cities across the world, and Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City is a tribute to the endurance of the metropolis and the capacities of its citizens to rebuild spaces and reinvent economies. Weaving historical comparisons with policy discussions and the passion of a committed urbanist, the book is an attempt by a respected academic economist at mass market non-fiction. Like Thomas Friedman’s writings on globalization or Samuel Huntington’s on the clash between the West and Islam, Glaeser styles his theories into simple universals.

Globalization works hand in hand with urbanization, therefore the world is “paved, not flat”. Civilizations don’t simply clash, but also exchange goods and transfer ideas via cities which are “gateways between markets and cultures”.

The first chapter, What Do they Make in Bangalore?, essays themes explored throughout Triumph of the City—of how cities g r o w , d e c l i n e a nd reinvent themselves, and the human and policy dimensions of the fast pace of urbanization. Bangalore and Silicon Valley are “success stories” which show that despite the “death of distance” prompted by new information and communication networks, people’s physical proximity remains central to productivity and innovation. This paradox means cities command flows of people, ideas and capital around the world, and are also the most central hubs in this new econ-

T

omy. As with the elevator, which made vertical growth possible in skyscrapers, and the automobile, which encouraged horizontal expansion into the countryside, new technologies have contradictory effects on urban life.

An ardent modernist and proponent of free markets, Glaeser has no love lost for heritage conservationists who seek to limit building in historic neighbourhoods, since this drives up the prices of scarce land and housing, or for the pastoralism of suburbanites who own large homes and commute by car to the city. Glaeser hopes that highrise urban density will prevail over low-rise suburban sprawl.

The costs and externalities of US-style suburban living, if adopted in India and China, would spell global ecological disaster, and Glaeser is genuinely eager for India and China to “leapfrog” this unsustainable model to limit global emissions and safeguard the planet.

Glaeser reaches for a global readership in Triumph of the City, and ranges freely across time and space to draw comparisons between cities—from classical Athens to colonial Singapore to Reformation-era France to industrial Milan.

However, his core arguments and research are almost entirely drawn from policy debates in the US, and his anecdotes and facts on other cities are often ahistorical or superficial.

Glaeser connects his chapters through the key concept of “human capital”—the accumulated skills, education and experience of city dwellers. He uses the term flexibly, to mean everything from sail-making in Boston before the coming of steamships, to state subsidies for education and industry in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. “Successful” cities are those whose policies aim at nurturing talent, attracting expertise from around the world, and exploiting this capital for maximum competitive advantage.

Public policy in India has only begun to treat urbanization with the attention it deserves. Glaeser’s prescriptions are useful to a post-liberalization generation which has outgrown the Gandhian dictum that India lives in its villages, but who are doing more to “catch up” than “leapfrog” when it comes to urban policy and planning. Triumph of the City makes many forceful pleas: that “cities are people, not structures”—urban renewal is driven

by investing in human capital and not showcase constructions; that overcrowded slums are a sign of urban vitality—a calculated bet by the poor to improve their lives; or that road-building can never decongest a city—only congestion pricing and carbon taxes can limit traffic.

While Glaeser’s advocacy of high-density, low-carbon, megaurban growth is eloquent and instructive, urban policy in India (or other developing cities) cannot be based solely on the virtual economy of “skills” and “ideas”.

His celebration of “human capital” has a decidedly white-collar bias, claiming that “less-skilled manufacturing cities have faltered while more-skilled ideaproducing cities have thrived” throughout history.

In spite of ambitious urban projects to go global—some, like the Delhi Metro, truly qualify as leapfrogging—Indian cities thrive both on the casual labour of the poor in slums, as well as the “skilled” work of human capitalists living in skyscrapers. Glaeser’s description of Bangalore as boom town or Mumbai as the next Manhattan may appeal to American readers anxious about outsourcing—or who have seen Slumdog Millionaire—but their relevance in India is questionable.

Since half of Mumbai’s population is priced out of the formal property market, his advice to uncap limits on vertical construction will not make housing more affordable for the poor or middle class. Though he considers Bangalore a “success story”, its IT sector has arguably done more to routinize and reexport innovations than to create new breakthrough technologies. Our slums support higher densities than our skyscrapers, and our IT parks often resemble sweatshops as much as university campuses.

Globalization has certainly created winners in India, and they mostly live in cities, but Triumph of the City in India is still far from assured.

Shekhar Krishnan is an urban historian completing his PhD on colonial Mumbai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS The future in an urban world

What inspired the poetry in ‘On the Streets and Other Revelations’?

The poems in this book were written off and on over a period of four decades as and when events inspired me.

The collection has drawn critical praise for the diversity of voices represented in it—how did you unearth these stories?

The plight of the marginalized has always affected me deeply and such things have inspired me to write. All is Burning, for instance, is about a labourer who attempted suicide, while The True Tale of the Poet at heart: Sachithanandan.

Stolen Potatoes is about a poor man and his family. They are all based on what I have seen myself.

I have also always been sensitive to animal issues.

Is it difficult being a poet in Sri Lanka today?

It is difficult indeed. Especially for a poet who writes in English; the readership is limited. A poet has to expect to write only for his or her own gratification and that of perhaps other poets.

You are better known as an author of children’s stories—are there more of those in the offing?

Some years ago, I started writing children’s stories and illustrating them for my own pleasure and for that of my two children. When my son grew up, he persuaded me to send them to a local newspaper, where they were accepted. I went on to do their children’s page for a few years. I gave this up eventually, but I do have a whole suitcase full of those stories.

My book Tales from the Tree House are all from this hoard. The Adventures of Sokadi the Line Room Mouse will be next. It is about a young female mouse who lives in the “line room” of Amara, a plucker on a tea estate. I wanted to present to Sri Lankan children a story against a backdrop different from what they have always read about.

On the Streets and Other Revelations has been published in Sri Lanka

by Godage International Publishers.

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FREE VERSE | AMIT MAHANTI

The Prayer Flag’s Song once upon a time I prayed the hail would melt into gentle rain and come to wash my colours every morning; for strong wind to fill me with awe for the mountains where they were born; for Rangyong waters to carry my soul back to the Kanchenjunga.

I prayed for the spirit that hid behind a rock who came to me in a dream one night after twelve weeks of silence. deep inside you are afraid of the hail, so afraid the river will swallow you one day that you must tame it. your fear has entered me, every morning I dream of a swollen river, of a wind that destroys; I mumble a forgotten prayer for today’s departed.

Amit Mahanti is a documentary film-maker based in New Delhi.

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Culture

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DOCUMENTARY

A violent rebellion on the pitch PATRICK EAGAR

Bouncer: (clockwise from above) A poster of the documentary; West Indies supporters in Leeds, 1984; and Michael Holding bowls a vicious ball to English cricketer Derek Underwood.

Stevan Riley’s film captures the rise of the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s and 1980s

B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

···························· n January 1976, after the Australian cricket team again beat the West Indies by a massive margin in a Test match, an Australian cricket writer wrote: “If ever the West Indies could match the determination of the Australians, they would win more Tests, but they would not be so entertaining.”

Soon after, the West Indies, led

by Clive Lloyd and inspired by Vivian Richards among others, decided to end the stereotype of easy-going “calypso cricketers” who did not have the discipline and drive to win.

The West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s, with its

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fearsome fast bowlers and attacking but entertaining batsmen, became one of the most incredible success stories not just in sports, but also in the fight against racism and the revival of a culture post-colonialism.

Director Stevan Riley’s documentary film Fire in Babylon, which released worldwide on 20 May, captures this era through extensive archival footage, interviews and a pulsating reggae soundtrack.

Edited excerpts from an interview with Riley: You’ve made one sports documentary before, ‘Blue Blood’, on boxing in Oxford.

What inspired ‘Fire in Babylon’?

In 1984, I saw Malcolm Marshall bowl for the first time. I remember Andy Lloyd got hit badly by a Marshall delivery. I was 9, transfixed by the pace of Marshall and terrified for the English batsmen. That team really changed cricket, and got me hooked to the game. I was a West Indies fan before I was an England fan, so this film has been a long time coming.

What kind of research did you do for the film? How long did it

take to complete the project?

I locked myself in for a few months with every book I could find on West Indies cricket. I began with C.L.R. James’ Beyond a Boundary, and all available biographies and autobiographies of players from that team. I backpacked through the West Indies for three weeks, when I met (Michael) Holding and bounced off ideas with him.

I was determined to tell the story from the West Indies’ perspective, give it that Caribbean flavour. I sourced archival footage from production houses, television channels and libraries in Australia, England and the West Indies. Getty gave me access to their backroom and I spent a few days going through photographs that weren’t even in their system. Photographer Patrick Eagar let me go through all his contact sheets of unpublished photographs and pick from them.

It took me eight months just to edit. So there’s a lot of stuff in the film no one has ever seen before, and it’s all heavily tied up to the music.

The film’s soundtrack— legendary reggae and dub tracks—are mostly set to

History takes centre stage A play on Nehru is the latest production to resurrect political heroes of the past B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· silhouetted figure leans against one corner of the stage. In the background, an azaan (call to prayer) blends into the gentle ringing of temple bells.

Suddenly, there’s a blood-curdling scream; two men, one in a fez cap, race on to the stage; one kills the other.

It’s all a blur. The silhouetted figure cries out in horror: “It seems amazing that a question that could be settled with mutual consideration for others’ feelings and little adjustment should give rise to great bitterness and rioting and death. But religious passions have little to do with reason or consideration or adjustments.”

Sixty years on, nothing seems to

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have changed. These words, spoken by Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1940s, still hold true. Nehru: His Inner Story, a play written and directed by London-based Pramila le Hunte on the occasion of Nehru’s 47th death anniversary, weaves together Nehru’s writings over several years, and resurrects him in his various shades: scholar, lover, father and political hero.

In a shift from trends in urban theatre over the last year, a significant number of plays, such as this one, have stepped out of the urban-angst mould (think suicidal bankers and dysfunctional relationships) in an attempt to resurrect great political leaders, and through them, the genre of political theatre.

In Kolkata, much before Mamata Banerjee’s green sweep

happened, Khowab (Dream) predicted the failing popularity of Marxism by positing Gandhian ideals of ahimsa against Marxist violence. In Bangalore, Rabindranath Tagore’s take on terrorism was contemporarized in Crisis of Civilisation: A Journey with Tagore. And Dara, a Pakistani play eulogizing the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (Aurangzeb’s brother) and the relevance of his peace-loving values played to packed audiences in Delhi in January.

Nehru: His Inner Story, while personalizing the political figure, also politicizes the personal, capturing his reflections on the IndoChina war, communalism and Kashmir. Because the entire play is made up of words actually written by Nehru, it uses an interesting device of imaginary characters while Nehru delivers his monologues. The idea is to have Nehru talk to the audience with minimal disturbance.

PATRICK EAGAR

literally jaw-breaking fast bowling by the Windies…

I pay a lot of attention to music in my films. I loaded my iPod with reggae and dub and walked around London playing it non-stop until I found something that really clicked. Some of the fast bowling had me wincing. I saw Robin Smith being targeted in 1980, and I’m watching it in the raw. You could really feel the pain. I thought how do you get out of that stuff, four guys bowling at that speed? The West Indies imperative at that time was to move forward, move fast and leave their colonial past behind.

Maybe that’s why the pace quartet became the symbol of their team, a kind of violent rebellion on the pitch.

Richards says “my bat was my sword”. Would you say your film is more about broader issues of politics and race than about cricket?

That’s probably true. The word “Babylon” in Rastafarian lingo means a system of repression.

This is a story about how the West Indies team used cricket to fight everything from racism to the idea that they were just a bunch of lazy, party-loving guys who would take defeat lying down. It was also amazing to see how many Rastafarians were close to the team, considering all the cricketers came out of a strictly British education system that actively subverted their culture.

Viv had a teacher who became an active Rastafarian and had a huge impact on him. Most people know Bob Marley as a football fan, but he loved cricket too and he was close to Viv. What were your interviews with the cricketers like?

Viv was brilliant. He really has this gravitas that draws you in—you know, when he says something, he really means it.

Most of that team in the 1970s was fresh out of school and you needed people like Viv, who was really steely and aware, to remind the players what they were fighting for. Colin Croft was incredibly honest. Gordon Greenidge gave a sensitive interview about the problems he faced growing up in England. Bunny Wailer (a reggae legend who was one of the driving forces behind the band Bob Marley & The Wailers) travelled all the way to the other side of Kingston because he wanted to wear his cricket whites for the interview!

Fire in Babylon does not have an India release date. It will be out on DVD on 6 June.

Using a similar device, Crisis of Civilisation, written by Ranjan Ghoshal and directed by Jagdish Raja, captures Tagore’s views on nationhood, terrorism and poverty. While reflecting on the Bengal famine, in a particularly chilling scene he asks his audience, “Citizens of the 21st century, surely nobody goes to bed hungry in your time, please tell me they don’t go hungry.”

Meanwhile, Gandhi is brought to life in a tribal village in a Maoist pocket of Bengal in Khowab. Written and directed by Kolkata-based Ashish Chattopadhyay, it resurrects the ideals of ahimsa and posits them against Marxism (and its violent manifestations).

Much as theatre needs to address political debate, going back to old political heroes is a reflection of the “total bankPRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Throwback: Nehru and Gandhi in a still from Nehru: His Inner Story.

ruptcy of new icons”, says Arundhati Nag, creative director of the Ranga Shankara theatre in Bangalore. She plans to focus this year’s Ranga Shankara festival on politics. “In times of political rot and corruption, there is a need to relive these heroes as we want to pass on to our children the capacity to discern right from wrong,” she says.

Similar trends can be seen in Pakistan. Lahore-based playwright-director Shahid Nadeem believes the return to heroes of the past is because “the problems we’re facing today have their roots in the past”.

Nadeem brings his plays Dara and Bulleh Shah to Delhi again on 30 and 31 May. “After Partition, the trend had been to abandon many of the pre-Partition heroes, ones that were now Indian and non-Muslim. But now we’re making a conscious effort to reclaim and re-own our heritage,” he says.

Nehru: His Inner Story will run at the India Habitat Centre on 28-29 May, Dara and Bulleh Shah at Kamani Auditorium on 30-31 May.

CULTURE L17

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MUSIC

Studio effects

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

A LIFE IN MUSIC

G Surround sound: The Coke Studio set; and (below) Leslie Lewis, the show’s music director.

‘Coke Studio@MTV’ wants to recreate an India united by music, but can it boost the indepen­ dent music scene?

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

···························· hen the heat rises across the subcontinent, a large part of its population, across borders, greets the new season of Coke Studio with the rapture usually reserved for thunderclouds in late summer. Since 2008, this Pakistani television show has brought together classical, folk and pop musicians to create new sounds out of Pakistan’s old and diverse traditions, and acquired a formidable army of Indian and expatriate fans around the world.

Some of its extraordinary appeal could be gleaned, perhaps, in the joy with which MTV began recording the Indian edition of the show in April. As producers and executives greeted each other, the refrain, “We did it!”, echoed around the sets.

“We’ve been thinking about this for years,” says Aditya Swamy, channel head, MTV India. Months of scouting for performers across India, of a gruelling schedule of collaboration and practice, of days and nights of recording have now come together.

On Coke Studio’s signature black and red set, with no interruptions from anchors, judges or audience, Sunidhi Chauhan records with the stalwart Wadali brothers.

Assamese folk superstar Khogen

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Da sings with Shankar Mahadevan. Classical singer Bombay Jayashri jams with Chinna Ponnu, perhaps best known outside Tamil Nadu for the folk anthem Nakku Mukka.

“We want the Kashmir-to-Kanyakumari experience for listeners,” Swamy says.

Pakistan’s Coke Studio reinvented the pop-folk crossover. As teen pop icons sang the poetry of Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah, and Strings re-recorded their monsterhit Duur accompanied by the classical stylings of Ustad Hussain Baksh Gullo, it seemed like a wholly new musical idiom was emerging; slick and easy on the ear, but without the limitations of a shallow remix.

In a country where recorded music was failing to keep up with piracy and the concert scene increasingly threatened by security concerns, a TV show that was all music and offered, moreover, free downloads of every song and episode on the Internet, became a phenomenon.

In India, the behemoth of Bollywood music already offers a platform, warts and all, for the crossover sound. Vocalists such as Kailash Kher and Kavita Seth, for example, are already well known for bringing their Sufi-inspired music to the increasingly diverse soundtracks of Hindi

movies. But Coke Studio@MTV chooses not to draw a line between itself and an industry often accused of crushing the life out of the independent artistes it chooses not to swallow whole.

Leslie Lewis, the show’s musical director, is keenly aware of this.

“When ‘Indipop’ began in the 1990s, it took seven or eight years to pick up. The Yaaron Dosti (his song, with KK, recorded for indie film Rockford) phase was one thing. Colonial Cousins (his project with Hariharan) was totally different; by this time people were saying they had heard music before, but never like this.”

But Lewis’ success apart, that scene began to repeat some of Bollywood’s own mistakes—prizing saleability over talent, creating a landslide (in the closing years of the 1990s) of poor products. Bollywood eventually overwhelmed a fledgling recording industry of non-film music.

In collaborating with the show’s other artistes, and performing himself (he and Hariharan will have a Colonial Cousins set), Lewis has lost months of sleep, but found a whole new groove.

Independent music is increasingly popular, finding new venues and audiences in English and Hindi as well as, in a limited way, in other languages. But Coke Studio@MTV may be the first product

built on a scale that begins to approximate film music’s mammoth reach.

“I think this might widen MTV’s target group like nothing else has,” Swamy says. “We’re not thinking 15-25 (years) here, it’s probably 15-75.” He says the channel is “not looking at numbers” for the show’s audience.

In India, where Shafqat Amanat Ali is perhaps best known for singing film hits such as Mitwa (from 2006’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna), the show will bring an Indian audience closer to the performer who, on Pakistan’s Coke Studio, reworked the enchanting Hindustani “light classical” sound of Khamaaj and Aankhon Kay Saagar, his early hits with his band Fuzon. It will lay down classic blues guitar lines behind Mahadevan and Khogen Da’s voices, and have the folksy Kher improvising as per Lewis’ jazz sensibilities.

Seen one way, it could be an enormous project of reconciliation—to bring the Sunidhi Chauhan fans to the Wadali brothers, and Wadali enthusiasts to Chauhan, and bring both these audiences to music in “Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil—a host of languages”, as Swamy says. For a generation of listeners who may not remember Mile sur mera tumhaara, MTV is looking to recreate the idea of an India connected by its music.

“Everyone’s always asking, what’s new? What’s next? What else after Bollywood?” Lewis says. “So, you know, here you go. This is a great starting point for what’s next.”

Coke Studio@MTV will air on MTV starting 17 June, every Friday at 7pm. For details, follow www.fb.me/cokestudioatmtv

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

Q&A | RAGHU DIXIT

JEREMY LLEWELLYN JONES

‘I still get free auto rides’ The songwriter on his second album and becoming a UK crossover hit B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· n 24 June, over 50,000 people will watch singer Raghu Dixit and his band take over the prestigious John Peel stage at the Glastonbury music festival in the UK, playing an hour-long set of Kannada and Hindi folk songs.

The Bharatanatyam-trained former microbiologist’s band, the Raghu Dixit Project, has become one of Indian indie music’s biggest crossover success stories.

Their self-titled 2008 debut album has topped the iTunes World Music charts twice in the last year, and they played more than 60 international shows in five countries in 2010. “Glastonbury is going to be huge. It’s going to be

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oing by the number of invitations to book launches that one receives these days, it would seem that every other Indian has taken to authoring books, publishing and launching them in style. Despite all this prolific literary activity, it does seem a pity that the stylish launches, the invitation cards, the newsletters and the publicity are largely reserved only for books written in English, and not for writing in Hindi and other Indian languages. What a pity then that some wonderful writing never gets due attention or, at best, is noticed only in some circles. Add to this the problem of sourcing and buying books in Hindi. It requires a fair amount of dedicated investigation to discover where one can buy books written in languages other than English, or even if they can be ordered online. Books on music are even more difficult to come by and perhaps that is why I missed out on acquiring a copy of Sharad Dutt’s extensively researched and brilliant biographical work on the life and music of veteran music director Anil Biswas, titled Ritu Aaye Ritu Jaaye.

Fortunately for me, some well-meaning spammer forwarded an announcement about the book on email a while back and I was able to buy a copy. This is the second edition of the book, released after the demise of Biswas on 31 May 2003. Dutt, an acclaimed figure in the world of media and broadcasting, shared a close association with Biswas, whom he first met when the author joined Doordarshan and was allotted a room adjoining that of the composer. Biswas was, at the time, director of the national orchestra at Akashvani. But greatly in awe of the renowned music director, Dutt struck a rapport with Biswas only in 1976, during the making of a Doordarshan programme on singer Mukesh, who died in August 1976. Over the years the two grew close, and Dutt often urged Biswas (whose literary bent of mind manifested itself in the writing of song lyrics and poems in Bengali) to pen his COURTESY SAARANSH PUBLICATIONS autobiography. Biswas turned the tables on Dutt by declaring that if at all his life was to be documented, it was not for him to do so himself, and that he considered Dutt a suitable candidate for the job! Thus began an extended series of discussions and chat sessions where Biswas shared his memories with Dutt, who captured them on tape. The sessions resulted in approximately 60 memory-packed hours of recorded material, which provided Dutt with the ingredients that went into the making of Ritu Aaye On a good note: Anil Biswas.

Ritu Jaaye.

What draws me to the book is that despite the author’s obvious and abundant admiration and deep respect for Biswas, he does not turn him into a mythical figure with wings, or a demi-god, as often happens in books on Indian musicians. We meet Anil Biswas, the human, albeit an extraordinary one whose enormous contribution to the world of Hindi film music commands reverence and immense admiration. An added bonus that Dutt gifts to his readers is comprehensive and easy-to-refer-to lists of his work as a music director and composer, the singers he worked with, Biswas’ Bengali adaptations of his favourite Urdu poetry from the works of Hazrat Amir Khusrau, Mir Taqi Mir and others, and even translations of articles written by Biswas originally in Bengali, on themes such as the ghazal, orchestral music and music for ballets. Thank you, Mr Dutt, for sharing with us the world of Anil Biswas.

madness,” Dixit told Lounge over the phone from Bangalore. “It’s like a Carnatic musician performing inside the Tirupati Balaji temple. The ultimate pilgrimage.” He talks about cracking the UK market and the advantages of being a household name in Karnataka. Edited excerpts from an interview: It’s been a fantastic year for you.

What made it all happen?

The seed was sown quite a few years back, I think, when our first album was released and we managed to get a slot at the London Lovebox festival in 2009.

We had a 2pm slot, it was raining and the only people in the audience were a woman with her two children. But we soldiered on, and halfway through the first song, a huge exodus occurred from the main stage to ours, and by the end we had close to 3,500 people cheering and dancing.

Here we got lucky, and we were booked for the Womad (World of Music, Arts and Dance) Festival

(in the UK) a week later because another band had dropped out. We had nearly 10,000 people there and it really reaffirmed our faith in our music, and we began to feel that we could try becoming international performers.

The real turning point was playing on the popular BBC music show ‘Later...with Jools Holland’ in late 2010. How did that happen?

We have two managers in the UK, and the two of them came up with a full-length, three-phase tour of the UK in 2010. We played a number of events there for folks from the music industry in May and, as a result, gained a number of evangelists for the band. One of the people who came for the May showcase gigs was a producer for Later...with Jools Holland.

How did the show help?

We played the season finale, along with Arcade Fire and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin). It’s so hard for me to say that we played “along with” names like that.

Buoyant: Raghu Dixit.

That show went out to millions of people. When it aired, I was sitting here in India, in the middle of the night, watching our site and Facebook page go crazy. It pushed the album to No. 1 almost overnight.

No Man, the song we performed on the show, was top of the charts for that week.

How will your second album differ from the first?

The first album was recorded over a period of seven years, and in very piecemeal manner...you can hear many inconsistencies in the tonal quality. The second will be well-prepared, well-studied and will hopefully take the reputation of the first album to a higher level.

It will also feature more languages than just the Kannada and Hindi of the first.

You’re also working on the music for a Bollywood film.

In 2007, I did the music for this Kannada film, Psycho, which made me a household name in Karnataka thanks to one song called Mahadeshwara. That song went to every nook and corner of the state, and to this day I get free auto rides, free lunches at restaurants and waivers from

bribes at government offices because people recognize me.

In 2009, I did another movie called Just Maat Maathalli. After that, I got contacted by Y-Films, part of Yash Raj Films, asking, “Would I be interested in a Bollywood film?” I said, “Of course!” The film had Ashish Patil as producer, and he used to head MTV India back in the day. I remembered us playing several free shows for MTV all those years ago, so this felt like him saying, “Here’s your payment for that!”

The film is called ‘Mujhse Friendship...’?

Fraaandship! With three “As”.

Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge?

You recorded a session for the Indian edition of Coke Studio recently. Tell us about that.

It was fantastic, but we were really disappointed that we got to play only one song. We chose Hey Bhagwan. We were part of a session that included Bombay Jayashri, Ustad Rashid Khan and playback singer Richa Sharma.

Sadly, and unlike the Pakistani Coke Studio, we didn’t get to collaborate with these artistes. But we’re excited, and this opens up a whole new audience for us.

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MUMBAI MULTIPLEX | SIDHARTH SIDHARTH BHATIA

Chor Bazaar in a swank mall?

Bhendi Bazaar, south Mumbai’s famous ghetto and the backdrop of a forthcoming film, is poised for a drastic makeover

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hendi Bazaar is the kind of place Mumbaikars have heard about but rarely been to, unless they are street food buffs or collectors of memorabilia. Every Sunday, socialites, interior decorators and kitsch connoisseurs converge at Chor Bazaar, the “thieves’ market” that lies cheek by jowl with Bhendi Bazaar. During Ramzan, the bazaar’s streets are packed with foodies chomping on kebabs and nihari.

One of the city’s old neighbourhoods, Bhendi Bazaar, now the canvas of a forthcoming gangster film called Bhindi Bazaar Inc. by Ankush Bhatt, is home to thousands of Dawoodi Bohras, a sect of Shia Muslims.

Eighty per cent of the nearly 20,000 residents are of Bohra faith. Most residents live in rickety old buildings, many of which are propped up by wooden poles—and, well, sheer willpower. A typical tenement is 100 sq. ft in size; entire families live in them. Each floor has one or two common toilets.

All this is about to change.

Bohra mohalla, another name for Bhendi Bazaar, is gearing up for a massive facelift. If all goes according to plan, by the end of this decade the ramshackle ghetto will have been transformed. The decrepit structures will be replaced by skyscrapers. Each resident will get a minimum of 350 sq. ft of living space with tiling, lights, appliances and en suite toilets.

The stereotypical Oriental bazaar look will give way to shopping centres. There will be parks, water bodies, walking tracks and garbage recycling systems. The makeover will come for free; neither the residents nor the city will pay for it.

The plan has been conceived as part of the Maharashtra government’s Cluster Redevelopment Scheme under which developers get additional floor space index (FSI) if they

In focus: (clockwise from top) The main junction at Bhendi Bazaar; Bohra women in rida; a curio store in Chor Bazaar; and an old building in the area.

agree to rebuild structures over 50 years old. Estimates suggest there are 16,000 such buildings in Mumbai, of which nearly one-third are 100 years old. What makes the proposal unique—and somewhat controversial—is that instead of redeveloping just one old building, a developer can potentially raze an entire neighbourhood, provided at least 70% of the local residents and landlords agree. Many activists have criticized this scheme as a bonanza for builders. The government says the end result will be good for residents.

Last month, the first two precincts were given permission under this policy—the Chira Bazaar area and Bhendi Bazaar.

The former encompasses over 200 acres and has hundreds of buildings, shops and other establishments, making the process complicated. Bhendi Bazaar has a little more than 16 acres, with about 250 buildings.

It is taking off first. Residents have been queuing to join in.

In the nearly 100-year-old Batul Manzil there is excitement.

In her 200-plus sq. ft home, Sajida Kabira, in her 60s, remembers how she came to Bhendi Bazaar as a young bride 41 years ago. “Our building was terrible; gutter water flowed all the time on the landing and every day we worried about the building falling on us while we slept. Over the years, the

government has repaired it, but it is still awful,” she says, pointing to cracks in the structure. Her neighbour Munira Jawadwala is blunt: “These repairs are like applying lipstick and make-up to a face. Only you know how bad the reality is.”

Looking reverentially at a framed photo on the wall, Kabira says, “It is all due to our Aqa Maula.”

Aqa Maula is the name Bohras have for Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the community’s 100-year-old spiritual leader. It is his trust—Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust—that has undertaken to revamp Bhendi Bazaar. “The key word here is upliftment—this is not a profiteering venture,” says Abbas

Master, CEO of the trust. “We have all the signatures we want and the work can begin soon.

Where other builders may want 80% of the land for their own commercial exploitation, we will give 80% to the local community and commercially develop the rest to sell in the open market.”

The project may take up to seven-eight years, and cost `4,000 crore, according to the trust.

Till their new homes are ready, the residents will be moved to transit flats 3km away. Fifty families have already shifted to buildings where fans, geysers, washing machines and, yes, indoor toilets have been provided. Once construction is complete and all the Bhendi Bazaar residents have moved into their new homes in the high-rises, the trust proposes to erect four towers of over 45 storeys, each of which will be sold at market price—an estimated `50,000 per ft now. A 1,000 sq. ft apartment in the new towers could thus go for `5 crore or more. Master says this is how the `4,000 crore needed to subsidize the project will be generated.

It seems the deal is a bargain for the residents, but urban planners have their reservations.

“In any top-down approach an appreciation of the complex social fabric of a neighbourhood that develops over decades is rarely taken into consideration.

You can never get all the nuances of life in such inner city areas,” says Mustansir Dalvi, who teaches at the Sir JJ College of

Architecture. He grew up across the road from Bhendi Bazaar in Dongri, a similarly dense neighbourhood, and fears the new “cleaned-up” development will be a gated community.

“There is something to be said about the virtues of a dirty city,” he says.

The look and feel of the bazaar will disappear and in its place will come an anodyne cluster of high-rises no different from anywhere else. Master admits there has been a lot of thinking about how best to maintain the unique characteristics— architectural flourishes, community feeling and shop frontages—of Bhendi Bazaar, but this has to be balanced with the needs of residents.

The street-level retail activity of restaurants and shops selling everything from fans to auto spare parts to ready-made ridas (the colourful burqas worn by Bohra women), which give the bazaar its character, will probably shift to higher floors.

The loss of character is not the only concern. Builders are likely to control vast areas of public land. Is this going to be the future of urban regeneration for a city like Mumbai, where several areas are old and crumbling? Could this become another freebie for the already powerful builder lobby? Chor Bazaar in a glitzy mall—it doesn’t match up.

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