Lounge for 30 Apr 2011

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

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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 18

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

TRAFFIC ON MOUNT EVEREST

POP STARS >Pages 6­7

DESIGN AND MATHEMATICS

A growing number of Indian civilians are making a beeline for the Everest on commercial guided expeditions >Pages 9­11

Inspired by the Jantar Mantar, a boutique hotel near Jaipur seeks luxury in geometry >Page 8

RECLAIMING KASHMIRIYAT

Between the crossfire and curfews, a generation missed the liberal, vibrant Kashmir. We met artistes who are reviving it >Page 16

‘WAH’, ONCE AGAIN PLEASE Arjun Vajpai was only 16 when he summited the Everest last year, the youngest Indian to do so.

REPLY TO ALL

PIECE OF CAKE

CRIMINAL MIND

MY MULBERRY MORNING

FICTION BY THE CASEBOOK

AAKAR PATEL

OUR 22K CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

A

nalysis on corruption in India does not address its cultural aspect. We see nothing peculiar about corruption in India (except that it is everywhere). We see many corrupt individuals in a system unable to correct itself. Our media reports corruption episodically. One independent incident of greed follows another. Let us set all that aside and look at it differently. No race can be congenitally corrupt. But can a race be corrupted by its culture? To know why Indians are corrupt let’s look elsewhere... >Page 4

PAMELA TIMMS

I

f the mango is the Aishwarya Rai Bachchan of the Indian fruit world, dazzling and international, perhaps a little over-exposed, then the poor old mulberry is the shy unmarried sister left behind in the village to look after granny, with only cowherds to marvel at her fragile beauty. In the past few weeks, the Alphonso has embarked on her annual red carpet rounds in London, Paris and New York, barely batting an eyelid at all the gushing and fawning. >Page 5

ZAC O’YEAH

Hyderabad’s ghazal culture is being revived in living room soirées and university halls >Page 18

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

M

any of the older crime writers have been wary of diluting fiction with too much suspense-slackening fact. In Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories (1928), S.S. Van Dine laid it out—Rule 16: “A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations.”

H.R.F. Keating warns in Writing Crime Fiction that “facts from the real world... >Page 14

PHOTO ESSAY

EMOTION PICTURE

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

LOUNGE REVIEW | THE YOGA HOUSE,

PRIYA RAMANI

BANDRA, MUMBAI

MADHUBALA AND THAT ALMOST­FORGOTTEN AGE S Y WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT JASBIR LADI FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2011 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

ou only had to slip her into a wet sari, ask her to lean invitingly into the camera or hand her co-star a feather, and you could comfortably forecast that the cinematic sigh would resonate for at least a hundred years.

I’ve seen Hindi cinema’s most beautiful face in half a dozen of her most popular films, including several times in Mughal-e-Azam, her biggest hit—and the one where everyone finally acknowledged that she could act too.

But I know Madhubala best through her 1950s songs.

Flirty in Howrah Bridge’s Aaiye meherbaan and Chalti ka Naam Gaadi’s Ek ladki bheegi bhagi si; playful in Kala Pani’s Achha ji main haari and Phagun’s Ek pardesi mera dil le gaya; dreamy in Raj Hath’s Mere sapnon mein aana re, Mr & Mrs 55’s Thandi hawa kaali ghata; hazy in Mahal’s Aayega aanewala; to-die-for in every Forever: Madhubala’s beauty is timeless.

M-e-A song pictured on her.

How Dev Anand held his grim worked with them, you can’t do a good expression to her cheeky one for so biography.” Waheeda Rehman, for many stanzas before he accepted her instance, has refused to be involved in apology in the above-mentioned a book about herself, he adds.

“Stars are not open to writing song from Kala Pani will always be one of Bollywood’s unsolved myster- about themselves,” agrees V.K. Karthika, chief editor and publisher ies for me.

In the updated and re-released The of HarperCollins. “In India, there’s Story of Madhubala, author Khatija no concept of letting everybody see Akbar clarifies in the preface itself that what you’re all about.”

One way of circumventing the not she uncovered “no dark secrets, no skeletons in cupboards, no horror enough information, not enough tales of drunkenness insight dilemma is to let pictures do FLASHBACK or mean habits. Only the talking. So HarperCollins will h u m a n f a i l i n g s ” . release two coffee-table books, one on Akbar swings a 45-minute interview Dev Anand’s Navketan and another with Dilip Kumar, but it’s only about on the age of silent cinema. Roli Books Madhubala his colleague, not Madhu- will also release an illustrated book on Johnny Walker by writer Sanjit Narbala his true love. wekar later this year.

It doesn’t matter.

Increasingly, publishing houses are There are so few vintage biographies of people who were part of Hindi relying on fans to pitch in. Harper’s cinema’s Golden Age that I get excited new release R.D. Burman—The Man, every time a new one releases. My The Music (see page 15) is written by favourite in this genre in recent years fans with corporate day jobs. “There is was 2008’s Ae Mohabbat…Reminiscing a rediscovery of these books mainly Begum Akhtar and 2010’s My Name is because authors are so passionate and Gauhar Jaan! (although India’s first involved with the era,” says Karthika. gramophone artiste belonged to an The period from 1947 to 1960 wasn’t earlier time). known as the Golden Age for nothing, Ashok Chopra, CEO and managing Akbar points out. Music was one big director of Hay House, which has pub- reason we’ll never forget that time. lished the Madhubala book first Back then it rained astoundingly talreleased more than a decade ago, says ented music directors and trained, that the main reason there are so few ethereal voices. “If films could run books set in that era is that people solely on their music, no film would don’t want to talk. “Till you don’t meet have failed in the glorious fifties when the person concerned or interview all music as a matter of routine their associates and the actors that appeared to be only good, better or

best,” writes Akbar, whose book begins with nine-year-old Mumtaz’s entry into this world.

Mumtaz, who was born on 14 February with a hole in her heart and who later adopted the screen name Madhubala.

If nothing else, the book ensures a full update of your Madhubala trivia. Of course there are details of how Dilip Kumar and Madhubala fell in love and didn’t live happily ever after—their love story ended with the sensational Naya Daur court case. Personally, I preferred the anecdotes about Madhubala’s daily life. Akbar recounts how when Madhubala asked dance director Sitara Devi to help her improve her dancing, her reaction was typical of the industry: “Why ever do you want to learn to dance? You only have to move your hands about and it looks lovely.”

Madhubala was a workaholic.

She didn’t attend filmi functions, kept journalists away from her sets and had a fear of crowds.

Occasionally, she would slip into a burqa and go watch a film anonymously. She learned to drive at 12 and decided, at 17, that she should learn English. She picked up the language in three months. She dressed simply for shootings in a white sari. Her nails were usually unpolished and her face free of make-up. She was allergic to the fluttering eyelashes and quivering lower lip school of acting.

Akbar questions whether the demands of working on K. Asif’s magnum opus Mughal-e-Azam, which took nearly a decade to make, hastened the heart patient’s death. “The chains, the continuous night shootings…it killed her,” said Sitara Devi.

Like the Madhubala book, Penguin India’s just-out book on K.L. Saigal (see page 15) was also found worthy of repackaging. Author Pran Nevile, a fan and expert on the musician, had published a coffee-table book on Saigal that was sponsored by the ministry of culture. “We asked Mr Nevile to do an expanded version for us, mining his Saigal archives and incorporating as many rare pictures as possible—and we published the book in paperback this year, so as to reach the widest possible readership,” says Udayan Mitra, an editor at Penguin.

Mitra says many of these books may not sell that well, “but for old times’ sake, these books are worth doing anyway.” I couldn’t agree more.

oon after I entered The Yoga House, its co-owner and managing director Ajit Tapaswi told me, “We are simply selling life here.” That pitch was lost on me.

Anyway, after spending an hour at this wellness boutique, I thought the contrary. Tapaswi and his co-founder Maud Chuffart are selling a kind of Extreme Wellness—the organic, microbiotic, grainy antithesis of Health or Life, as we know it.

Yoga is part of the concept. You can buy spring water bottled in glass, hand-squeezed honey, grains grown organically on the banks of the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh (the Yamuna’s ecological purity is a subject of debate), face packs made of natural grains and juices. The café serves breakfast, lunch, juices and teas from a menu designed by Paris-based wellness expert Christopher James Clark, author of the book The Health Freedom Cookbook.

Chuffart, who envisioned the space and is overseeing the training of the chef and tweaking the menu according to Indian ingredients, says: “The culture of structured gym training, which exists in India, is outdated in Europe. We wanted to sell holistic wellness.”

She is trained in the Iyengar and Ashtanga schools of Hatha yoga.

There are five teachers trained in purist schools of yoga, including Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga and B.K.S. Iyengar’s school, which enforces the use of props to achieve perfect body alignments while performing asanas. I attended a class conducted by Nikhila Trikha, who combines elements of Iyengar and Ashtanga styles.

buds were gratified. The Orange Salad (`250) has a cashew and orange dressing over a bed of vegetables and orange. The Mediterranean Salad (`240) has a dressing of roasted sunflower seeds—both delicious. Quinoa Taboulé (`180) is a combination of Bolivian and Lebanese grains, dressed with onion, tomato and parsley. In the Apple Pie (`230), almonds, oat flour and dates replace sugar and butter. I found the Pink Juice (`250), made with pomegranate, rose water and watermelon, refreshing and simple—without the tangy aftertaste of artificial sweeteners and citrus.

True to Ayurvedic practice, juices are not served chilled. The yoga classes are suited for beginners.

Don’t join expecting results for specific health problems.

The good stuff

Talk plastic

The airy space—painted in white and blue—are a soothing backdrop for any form of yoga or meditation.

A narrow corridor overlooking the sea has been transformed into a breezy seating area. So there’s thought in the design. Besides honey, jaggery, wheats, lentils and copper vessels—from Lonavala, Indore, Varanasi and other places—The Yoga House has a line of comfortable white shirts and T-shirts for men and women in cotton (`1,200-2,300). The menu in the café is limited and almost entirely grease-free. But my taste-

Each class costs `600 and for three classes a week for a month, it’s `4,500 (to teach at home, a qualified Iyengar teacher charges `12,000 a month). A meal for two would cost around `800 and products on sale are available in the range of `20 (say, for 250g dalia) to `2,300 for a shirt.

The not­so­good Selling holistic well-being can’t be an easy task. The indiscriminate foodie is a thing of the past, he is politically incorrect.

Everybody knows this: Drastically cut sugar, oils, caffeine, saturated fats and alcohol in your diet; and exercise. In the wellness world, where new studies and new conclusions topple old ones in months, the concern is how to achieve physical well-being with moderation. If indeed you are a revolutionary and switch entirely to microbiotic and organic, why would you not change things at home? The yoga classes can be effective for flexibility and a general sense of well-being, like all classical forms of yoga, if pursued regularly.

The Yoga House, 53, Chimbai Road, Bandra (West), Mumbai.

For details, call 022-65545001.

Sanjukta Sharma ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Write to lounge@livemint.com

LOUNGE REVIEW | MYCITY4KIDS.COM

I

t’s a listings site with a difference—this one focuses on tots, tweens and teens. From discounts at acting classes, advice for parents on what to do with their children during Earth Hour, to preparing nutritious meals during exams, www.mycity4kids.com offers multiple choices for parents and children. While the Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) chapter was set up in October, the Mumbai and Bangalore sites went live early this month. At present the site is focusing on summer holiday activities. The site’s promoters claim to have 6,000 listings plus 180 events (summer camps, workshops, etc.) for Delhi, 2,500 listings plus 130 events for Bangalore, and 2,000 listings plus 210 events for Mumbai.

The good stuff The sheer number of listings, all in one place, makes this a handy tool for parents. You can get information on play schools, music classes for children even in the age group of 1-5, badminton coaching and children-specific events. The best part is that you can search by location, rating or age group. Any listing that has been paid for is clearly marked as a sponsored listing. Every listing comes with contact information,

email and Web addresses, contact person where applicable, relevant age groups, dates for the events and the final super value addition: Google maps to indicate the location where the event or activity is taking place. The listings are categorized under hobbies, sports, tuition, enhanced learning, making it easy for parents to surf and sift through the information.

At present the site has tied up with some activity organizers to offer discounts. For example, at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) summer camps in Mumbai, if you present a newsletter that you get if you subscribe to

the site and book for a camp 15 days ahead of the deadline, you can get a 15% discount on the camp fee. Or at the Barry John acting academy in Gurgaon, parents registered on Mycity 4kids.com can avail of a 20% discount on the course fee. A special summer activity guide (in association with Hindustan Times that is published

by HT Media Ltd, which also publishes Mint) will be on offer for the NCR region soon.

Registered members on the site have the option to review activities on the basis of value for money icons, ratings and can leave comments. The site managers claim

they have checks and balances in place to prevent those listed from praising their own centres.

Coming soon: By August, you can register for some activities through Mycity4kids.com instead of applying at the individual centres.

The not­so­good Not all the listings are verified and personally whetted by the staff at Mycity4kids.com though they do have a referral system for users. They need to work on some sections, especially listings for party planners, gift shops, etc.

They also need to be careful about their parenting articles, which seem to be geared towards those living in the Capital rather than in Mumbai or Bangalore.

Sure, this kind of content can be common between cities but telling a parent living in Mumbai to take his child to India Gate for Earth Hour makes no sense.

Talk plastic

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com FISH TALE I liked the steamed basa recipes suggested by Samar Halarnkar (“The strange, delicious tale of the basa”, 23 April). I also wanted to point out that IFB Agro Industries Ltd is a part of IFB Industries Ltd, hence the brand name is their patent and not a hijacked one.

SUDESH SAWANT

NOTES OF HARMONY

aspect of the modern world is its rigidity in rejecting everything that is old. The old values and traditions should not be dismissed in the pursuit of materialism.

SAS SARMA

ADULTS ONLY Mayank Austen Soofi’s “A rainy day with Ruskin Bond”, 23 April, was well­written. It is said that Bond writes for children, but I think only grown­ups can really enjoy his writings. I love all his books, except maybe one. But I am yet to meet a child (in the 9­15 age group) who truly appreciates his work. I wonder if anybody else shares my opinion.

VANDY

Registration on the site for parents is free, as is getting an activity or school listed. But if you want to highlight a listing or a business, there is a fee (`15,000 per quarter) involved.

With regard to the cover story “The rest is music”, 23 April, there can never be rivalries in music, if it is understood in its true sense. In India, music is not merely a combination of notes, it is a path to reach the divine and live in harmony with nature. The most unfortunate

Seema Chowdhry

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: TSHRING PHINZO

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL CGP GREY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Our gold­plated culture of corruption

A

PTI

Good lord! (above) The Swaminarayan temple in Neasden, London; and priests bathing the idol of Venkateswara in Tirupati.

nalysis on corruption in India does not address its cultural aspect. We see nothing peculiar about corruption in India (except that it is everywhere). We see many corrupt individuals in a system unable to correct itself.

Our media reports corruption episodically. One independent incident of greed follows another.

Let us set all that aside and look at it differently. No race can be congenitally corrupt. But can a race be corrupted by its culture? To know why Indians are corrupt let’s look elsewhere. What patterns and practices distinguish us?

First: Religion is transactional in India.

We give God cash and anticipate an out-of-turn reward. Our plea acknowledges we aren’t really deserving. The cash compensates for our lack of merit.

In the world outside the temple walls, such a transaction has a name: “bribe”.

In India God accepts cash from us, not good work, for which there is no reward. We don’t expect something from God in return for sweeping our neighbourhood streets.

We go with money.

Observe this in another way.

Why does the wealthy Indian give not cash to temples, but gold crowns and such baubles?

To ensure his gift isn’t squandered on feeding the poor. Our pay-off is for God. It’s wasted if it goes to man. See what this has produced.

In June 2009, The Hindu published a report of Karnataka minister G. Janardhan Reddy gifting a crown of gold and diamonds worth `45 crore to Tirupati.

According to the temple’s website, Tirupati got 3,200kg silver and 2.4kg of diamonds in just one year. The temple encourages such giving, according to a report in The Telegraph in April 2010. Those who gifted a kilo of gold, worth over `21 lakh, got “VIP darshan” (which means cutting the queue) of the idol.

In 2007, Vellore’s Sripuram temple was built with 1,500kg of gold. By weight alone it is worth `325 crore.

In May 2010, according to The Economic Times, 1,075kg of gold was deposited by Tirupati with the State Bank of India (SBI) for safe keeping.

In 2009, 500kg was deposited with

the Indian Overseas Bank.

In June 2004, Business Standard reported that Tirupati couldn’t melt down 8,000kg of gifted gold ornaments because devotees had stuck precious stones to their gift.

This 8 tonnes of metal, worth `1,680 crore but actually useless, was gathering dust in temple vaults.

On 11 February, according to The Hindu Business Line, 1,175kg of gold was deposited with SBI, and the temple trustees had yet another 3,000kg of gold handy.

What will they do with all this metal? Gold-plate the walls of the temple (lending new meaning to the phrase “India Shining”). This work was halted by the Andhra Pradesh high court in December. Not because it was wasteful—such things aren’t vulgar to Indians—but because it might have damaged wall inscriptions.

India’s temples collect so much of this stuff they don’t know what to do with it.

In February, 17 tonnes of silver, worth `117 crore, was found in an Odisha temple. The priests say they had no idea it was even there. But the devotee keeps giving.

Tirupati alone gets between 800kg (The Economic Times’ estimate) and 1,825kg (The Telegraph’s estimate) of gold a year.

When God accepts money in return for his favours, what is wrong with my doing the same thing? Nothing. This is why Indians are so easily corruptible.

Our culture accommodates such transactions morally. This is key. There is no real stigma. The demonstrably corrupt Indian leader can harbour hope of a comeback, unthinkable in the West.

Our moral ambiguity towards corruption is also visible in our history.

This is our second point.

Any number of books on Indian history tells us of the capture of cities and kingdoms after guards were paid off to open gates, and commanders paid off to surrender.

This is unique to India. We read of battles won after battalions evaporated.

Our corrupt nature has limited warfare on the subcontinent. It is striking how little Indians have actually fought compared to ancient Greece and modern Europe. The Turks’ battles with Nadir Shah were vicious and fought to the finish.

In India fighting wasn’t needed, bribing was usually enough to see off our armies.

The invader willing to spend a bit of cash always brushed aside India’s kings, no matter how many tens of thousands peopled their infantry.

Little battle was given at the “Battle” of Plassey. Clive paid off Mir Jaffar and all of Bengal folded to an army of 3,000.

There was always a financial solution to taking our forts.

Golconda was captured in 1687 after the secret back door was left open. In 1700, the fort of Parli, west of Satara, the headquarters of the Maratha government, fell after it took a bribe from Aurangzeb. In 1701, Aurangzeb invested the Panhala fort

for two months without success.

Then he bribed the Maratha commandant Trimbak, who let the Mughals in. Aurangzeb took the forts at Wardhangarh, Nandgir, Wandan and Chandan without fighting.

Khelna fought the Mughals (led by the mercenary Sawai Rajputs of Amber) superbly till commandant Parshuram accepted his bribe and gave up the fort.

According to The Cambridge History of India, Torna was the only fort captured in that long campaign without bribes. Allahabad was taken by the Mughals in April 1720 when Girdhar Bahadur left the gates open after being promised governorship of Awadh. The same year Asir opened its gates to Nizam-ul-Mulk after a bribe.

The Raja of Srinagar gave up Dara Shikoh’s son Sulaiman to Aurangzeb after a bribe. Shivaji took Kondhana (which he renamed Sinhagad) after the Mughal commander was bribed.

The Mughals lost Penukonda to the Marathas in 1706 after the

commandant was paid off.

We must understand that this isn’t one man bribed alone. He must share that money with his officers, who must in turn pass it along to the infantry and cavalry. Everyone participated in this treason.

Question is: Why do we have a transactional culture while civilized nations don’t?

The answer is that we haven’t learnt to trust one another as Europeans have.

Indians do not buy the theory that we can all rise if each of us behaves morally, because that is not the message of our faith. This is the third point.

Our faith assures us that God will deliver for us individually, but we must deliver to him too.

When Europeans came here they built schools (there were zero schools in Gujarat before Mountstuart Elphinstone built the first 10 in the 1820s).

When we go to Europe we build more temples. Patels alone have built 12 Swaminarayan temples in Britain.

Unfortunately, the European is tolerant and the Indian quite shameless, though it’s true also that he’s unaware of what he’s doing. He’s practising his magic in a culture where it isn’t needed. He doesn’t need God’s favours in a society that isn’t corrupt, that is moral, that is equal. All he needs is hard work, which he’s quite capable of giving.

Some might say the doctrine of our faith doesn’t support this behaviour.

That shouldn’t concern us here. We’re talking about its practice, the way we do religion, rather than its philosophy, which is ultimately meaningless.

The way we do it is Hobbesian.

We are up against everyone else, except God—and even he must be bribed.

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, APRIL 30, 2011

L5

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE SHELF LIFE

u Mama Mia: Green mango sorbet, at Church Street, Indiran­ agar and Koramangala, Bangalore, `65 per scoop.

Go green The colour of ice this summer comes from ‘jal jeera’, musk melon, mango and mint

q Nirula’s: Lime N Lemon, at all Nirula’s outlets in New Delhi, `79 (scoop with waffle cone).

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

·········································

t Kwality Walls: Rainbow Punch, at outlets and handcarts countrywide, `10.

u Cream Bell: Jal Jeera Licks, at handcarts countrywide, `5.

p Mother Dairy: Paan Kulfi, at outlets and handcarts in New Delhi, `15.

p Baskin Robbins: Mint Magic, at outlets coun­ trywide, `65 (scoop with waffle cone). t Gelato Vinto: Musk Melon sorbet, at Select Citywalk mall, New Delhi, `84 per scoop.

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY &

PRIYANKA PARASHAR PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

My mulberry morning The overflowing fruit basket of the Indian summer hides a tiny gem

I

f the mango is the Aishwarya Rai Bachchan of the Indian fruit world, dazzling and international, perhaps a little over-exposed, then the poor old mulberry is the shy unmarried sister left behind in the village to look after granny, with only cowherds to marvel at her fragile beauty.

In the past few weeks, the Alphonso has embarked on her annual red carpet rounds in London, Paris and New York, barely batting an eyelid at all the gushing and fawning. At around the same time I noticed the short, sweet mulberry season had started: There was no trending on Twitter, just a few purple splats on the car as the soft berries started to fall from the tree on our street.

Mulberries came to India from Persia—William Finch, a traveller in 1610, noticed “from

Agra to Lahore, a distance of 600 miles, the way is set both sides with mulberry trees”—and are chiefly used in silk cultivation; their leaves are the sole food of the silkworm. The intensely sweet and fragrant berries are also incredibly delicate, preferring not to stray too far from home. Mangoes can be packed and despatched thousands of miles—they’re one of the harbingers of spring on our street at home in Scotland—but mulberries, best eaten on the day they are picked, will always be a very local luxury. And for me, the fact that I’ll never see mulberries in Tesco in Edinburgh makes them all the more exotic and desirable.

They look like a long thin blackberry and taste like a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry but with a hint of harem decadence, conjuring up afternoons whiled away by tinkling fountains.

This week, though, mulberries proved elusive in Delhi. I didn’t fancy shimmying up the tree opposite my house, my man at INA market said there wasn’t

much call for them and responses to a plea on Twitter directed me to forests on the edge of Delhi and roadside vendors in Uttar Pradesh.

Finally, I had to make do with some rather forlorn-looking shrink-wrapped trays of mulberries from Khan Market.

They may well be at their best eaten straight from the tree with purple juices staining fingers and clothes but after gorging extensively, I just couldn’t resist giving this subtly exquisite fruit its 15 minutes of fame in my kitchen. Along with her friends from the village, chaach (buttermilk) and ghee (clarified butter), my ruddy-cheeked mulberry made the most wonderful, fluffy breakfast dish. It was her time to shine and these rich, light and fruity pancakes would certainly be enough to turn any potential suitor’s head.

Mulberry Buttermilk Pancakes Makes 10-12 pancakes Ingredients 110g plain flour (maida)—I also

Local beauty: The delicate mulberry doesn’t transport well. tried making these pancakes with wholewheat flour (atta) but I think it somehow killed the mulberries’ spirit 2 level tsp baking powder A pinch of salt 2 large eggs, yolks and whites separated 250ml fresh buttermilk (chaach) 25g ghee, or unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus a little more for frying About 150g purple mulberries

Method Remove the stalks from the mulberries—the fruit will break up a little but this won’t matter.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In another bowl, beat

together the buttermilk, ghee and egg yolks. In yet another bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour and stir very gently (no beating or whisking) to just incorporate the flour. Then gently fold in the stiff egg white—don’t worry about making a smooth batter, that’s not what you need here; in fact the less you mix the ingredients, the fluffier the pancakes will be.

Melt a small amount of ghee in a non-stick frying pan or griddle over medium heat.

Take a tablespoonful of batter and drop it on to the pan, then sprinkle a few mulberries on top. Leave for a couple of minutes until the bottom is golden brown, then flip over and cook for a further couple of minutes.

Serve the pancakes hot with maple, or even mulberry, syrup and a few fresh berries.

The batter will keep for a day or so in the fridge.

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

www.livemint.com For a slide show on how to bake mulberry pancakes, log on to www.livemint.com/pancake.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

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POP STARS Let bright colours clash in your wardrobe this summer. There’s not a dull moment with colour blocking, the season’s biggest trend BLING IT ON Purple sequinned jumpsuit, Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna, `29,500; yellow enve­ lope clutch with turquoise embellishment, Creo, `3,333; coloured perspex headband, Little Shilpa, `5,000 onwards; rectangular­cut crystal brace­ let, Creo, `4,500; flat sandal in patent calfskin, with flower in handpainted metal and patent calfskin, Christian Dior, `36,000.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Himanshu Sheth MODEL Ieva Kuzma/Anima Creative Management, Mumbai STYLED BY Ameeta Shankar & Rachana Nakra/Mint MAKE­UP Charmaine Rao Soares/ Yves Saint Laurent HAIR Wendy Fernandes & Sugandh Dariya, Paul Mitchell LOCATION COURTESY The Great Eastern Home, New Great Eastern Mills, Byculla, Mumbai

FLOWER GIRL Orange chiffon dress, Nachiket Barve, approx. `9,950; nude and orange pumps, Charles and Keith, `2,199; and perspex and floral head­ band, Little Shilpa, `5,000 onwards.

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TRUE BLUE Electric blue dress, Diesel, `10,595; black stilettos with neon green elastic mesh strap, Jimmy Choo, `35,500; and orange clutch, Zara, `5,990.

WORKING IT Pink jacket with black lapel, Zara, `8,990; pink cropped trousers, Zara, `4,590; yel­ low briefcase, James Ferreira, `4,000; pink floral ring with crystals, Swarovski, `14,000; and black suede pumps, model’s own.

SEE SEE GREEN GREEN Emerald Emerald green green dress, dress, James James Ferreira, Ferreira, ``9,500; 9,500; multi­strand multi­strand yellow yellow beaded beaded bib bib necklace, necklace, Creo, Creo, ``5,950; 5,950; animal animal print print clutch, clutch, Jimmy Jimmy Choo, Choo, ``26,000; 26,000; high­rise, high­rise, tie tie up up stilettos, stilettos, Tommy Tommy Hilfiger, Hilfiger, ``4,499.

4,499.

Make­up diaries Charmaine Rao Soares, make­up artist for Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), first prepped model Ieva Kuzma’s face with cleansing water and Top Secrets make­up base to help the make­up stay on longer. She then used Teint Radiance foundation to even out Kuzma’s skin tone and then added Touche Éclat as a highlighter. She finished the look with loose powder. The pink eyes are YSL’s new spring look and she achieved that with the 5 Colour Harmony for Eyes, shade No. 10. She used light pink all over the lid, the bright pink on the crease of the lid

and topped with the brownish pink shade in the palette. She smudged a black kohl pencil close to the lashes and finished off with Volume False Lash Effect Noir Radical mascara.

For a touch of pink she used Crème Blush on the cheeks and Rouge Pur Couture on the lips.

For the second look in blue, Soares used Eye Shadow Duo 25 and for the green eyes she used 5 Colour Harmony for Eyes, shade No. 6.

The rest of the look remained the same. To take the spotlight from the eyes to the lips, Soares left the eyes light with the yellow from 5 Colour Harmony for Eyes, shade No. 7 and

filled the lips with Rouge Volupte, a creamy coral shade.

Get the look Wendy Fernandes from Paul Mitchell says stylish yet unkempt braids are very popular this season.

Brush you hair smooth, make a centre or side parting or no parting at all and pull the hair on either side. Make a loose braid and pull out strands near your forehead. Easy, messy updos are a great partywear look. Tie up your hair in a ponytail and for extra volume on the top tease your hair with a brush or use fingers to lift and

fluff the hair. Now make a slightly loose updo and tuck all the hair around the pony. Use a soft holding spray to finish the look.

Shopping guide Charles and Keith: All stores in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Christian Dior: Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Colaba, Mumbai; and DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi.

Creo: Kemps Corner, Mumbai.

Diesel: All stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi.

James Ferreira: 47­G, Khotachiwadi, Girgaum, Mumbai.

Jimmy Choo: The Galleria, Nariman Point, Mumbai.

Little Shilpa: Bombay Electric, Colaba, Mumbai.

Nachiket Barve: Available on order, call 66912972.

Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna: Cue, D­19, Defence Colony, New Delhi.

Swarovski: At all Swarovski stores.

Tommy Hilfiger: At all Tommy Hilfiger stores.

Zara: Palladium, Lower Parel, Mumbai; and Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi.

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ARCHITECTURE

Design and mathematics

Sleight of light: (clockwise from above) A room at Devi Ratn with visible thekri work; the latticework lobby area; and the rooftop dining at the Pavilion.

Inspired by the Jantar Mantar, a boutique hotel near Jaipur seeks luxury in geometry B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· f time machines could ferry palaces and forts, we wouldn’t know whether to press the rewind or forward button for this one. Devi Ratn, the latest on offer from Boutique Hotels India Pvt. Ltd, is a curious hybrid that borrows from the 18th century Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, and marries its structural genius with a sparkly futurism.

The Jantar Mantar (or “calculation instrument”) is one of the five observatories commissioned by Maharaja Jai Singh II. It was the biggest of the lot and found itself a spot on Unesco’s world heritage list—one of the many reasons that Anupam Poddar, director, Boutique Hotels, picked it as a base

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model for his 63-suite luxury boutique hotel and spa destination just 10km from Jaipur city. He wanted something intrinsically local to peg his new venture to, and he wound up suggesting one of the more challenging ones to his architect Prabhakar Bhagwat.

Given that the Poddars’ flagship property in Udaipur, Devi Garh, is housed within an ancient fort palace which allowed scope for restoration but not for creative design, it is evident that with Devi Ratn, Anupam and his mother Lekha Poddar—India’s most discernible art collectors—pulled out the plugs.

Twenty minutes off the DelhiJaipur National Highway 8 on a dirt track will get you to the terracotta-coloured hotel complex, which rises ominously amid a bar-

ren landscape (the horticulturists are at work to change this). Once inside the porch, the fort-like appearance of the exterior gives way to a more palatial feel.

The lobby exhibits great innovation. Bhagwat’s team has replicated intricate latticework that wouldn’t have been possible to carve in stone, using a special kind of reinforced concrete instead.

The luxury of Devi Ratn doesn’t lie in its plushness but in its ornateness. Beaten silver surfaces, a modern interpretation of Mewari thekri work, create a running platform along the lobby, while ceiling-length acrylic glass sheets faceted like gemstones take up end walls.

The nine gemstones, or navratn, theme guides the decor of the hotel—and also lends to its name. But apart from the fact that the rooms are done up in gemstone colours (red, yellow, blue and green), this link is ten-

Something new in the old The latest Oberoi is a departure from the norm only in design. The rest remains impeccable

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

···························· he last Oberoi hotel built from scratch in an Indian metro or suburban city was The Oberoi, Bangalore, in 1992. Two decades later, the group has chosen Gurgaon to open its latest 202-room property spread over 7 acres, right next to its existing hotel The Trident.

While The Trident, in many ways, evokes the old world charm with its domes and chhatri facade, The Oberoi, Gurgaon, is a minimalist building in sandstone colour with add-on angular structures made with gleaming glass and glinting steel. All of this is set in a bed of vibrant green foliage which the hotel staff refers to as “a cultivated forest” (really, it’s just a patch of shrubs and creepers spread over 2 acres).

In many ways, this property is vastly different from the elegant, subdued, muted in beiges and white style of The Oberoi, New Delhi. Sure, the floors are pure white, but it’s the bold strokes of solid colours, such as the cobalt blue tiles in the water bodies, bright red carpets and giant rose

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installations in the lobby, and striking yellow sofas on teakwood decks in the water, that enhance the minimalist design even more.

When you drive up to the porch at the fifth-floor level (it may be better to call this an arrival deck, keeping in mind the ultra contemporary feel of the place), the “forest” belt that you pass through lures you into

uous. There are no nine colours to speak of.

In fidelity to his role as an art patron, the rooms in Anupam’s hotel are distinguished by artwork more than the size or amenities. A section of the executive suites (`30,000 per night) have digital pichwais by a third-generation pichwai artist trained at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad; some have lenticular prints that create optical illusions; while other rooms come with a quirky interpretation of the “toy box” (the wood-panelled boxes that are great for hiding small objects). Guests must push and pull their wall-sized toy box to reveal the bar and other utilities.

Devi Ratn’s suites are planned along crescent-shaped streets at varying heights, ensuring that each has a view of the Aravalli hills—undoubtedly one of the hotel’s best features.

What might appear too harsh in the daylight—the stone, con-

crete and reflective surfaces— transforms the hotel into a mellow haven at sundown. Lighting plays a good wingman. There is no direct light anywhere on the premises, only soft uplighters, tiny LEDs that look like diyas, and bounce-lighting. The light filtering out of the latticework at every corner and turnabout adds to the ambience.

The three restaurants have their distinct charms. Vajra, which serves Asian and continental food, is all elegance in matte gold and silver (and it has its own private sunken seating in a pool). The Jal café is a modern glass palace created using layers of glass arches.

And there’s Chakra Bar, where a circular sky roof enables moon viewing. But its crushed glass tables and revolving lights render it too kitsch for the morning.

A “wow” moment is the view from Vajra’s rooftop area called Pavilion, which overlooks the blue-grey hill ranges. Another

feeling that you are moving far out of the concrete jungle that is Gurgaon. Will this foliage survive the harsh summers? Only time will tell.

The yet-to-open retail arcade (13 outlets in all, scheduled to go live in August) is a change from the in-hotel shopping experience.

The all-glass and steel cubes, or “jewel boxes” as they are referred to, are a replica of the lobby structure and sit out in front of the hotel at the base of the drive-in and around the central water body. This space is disconnected from the main body of the hotel

and can be approached without setting foot in the lobby. It will house brands such as Burberry, an art gallery by Nature Morte and, of course, The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen.

At 620 sq. ft, the Deluxe room is all about the luxury of space.

More than half the rooms overlook the water bodies and it’s quite relaxing to see splashes of bright blue water in the middle of brick-and-mortar Gurgaon. There is no overwhelming art or artefacts in the rooms…just a mute coffee-coloured zardozi-panelled wall to add a touch of Indian-ness DIVYA BABU/MINT

Colour coding: The all­glass and steel lobby of The Oberoi, Gurgaon, has splashes of deep reds.

spectacular inclusion is the machaan or observation deck—the highest vantage point of the property—which is strongly tied to the Jantar Mantar theme. And there is Sila, the monolithic cuboid conference room made of white marble.

The raison d’être of Devi Ratn’s design is its attempt at fusing sophisticated technology with traditional materials and motifs such as jharokhas and jhulas. Take, for instance, the Italian terrazzo patterning on the Rajasthani granite in the flooring. But this “fusion” is best exemplified at the spa.

Housed inside a traditional stepwell, or baoli, the 20,000 sq. ft Devi spa is a dreamy underground maze of water bodies and green islands serviced by the French brand L’Occitane.

This ambitious attempt also results in a half-baked finish in parts. The intentionally rustic cement walls of the corridor might make one believe they were forgotten while the rest of the hotel was getting its luxury dressing.

Some decor elements are extraneous: Guests could do without a digital pichwai, for instance.

But then, every great leap of design must face a few hurdles.

to this otherwise austere space.

Though the suite (there are two such spaces) with the private plunge pool is really large, it is a little bewildering that the pool overlooks a mud cliff and a busy road. Would anyone really want to see trucks and scooters whizz past and honk away while they splash around?

While this Oberoi too will have a Belvedere Club (membership will open in June), there is no private dining space for members as The Oberoi, New Delhi, has.

Amaranta, the Indian seafood restaurant, is a departure from the signature eateries of The Oberoi. At most, it perhaps resembles Samundar at The Oberoi, Chennai—in spirit. The hotel claims that all seafood served here will be fresh catch of the day delivered daily to the restaurant from Kochi and Chennai.

The other eatery, threesixtyone°, is an all-day dining space with an oven for freshly baked bread running around the clock and five live kitchens serving Japanese (sushi and teppanyaki), Chinese, Italian and Indian cuisines.

The rack rate for the Deluxe room is `30,000 per night. However, the current best available rate, which is also an introductory offer (till August) is `16,000; this includes breakfast and airport pick-up in a BMW 7-Series car.

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At 45, Premlata Agrawal may soon become the oldest Indian woman to scale the peak. She’s among a growing number of Indian civilians who are making a beeline for the Everest on commercial guided expeditions

B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· e are always looking for excuses not to break walls,” says Premlata Agrawal in the car that her husband is driving to see me and the photographer off at the Jamshedpur railway station. Outside the rolled-up windows, Jamshedpur seems every bit the fume-spewing, horn-obsessed Indian city of the plains. Fashionable lifestyle shops and newly bought, gleaming sedans indicate rising aspirations; an army of bicyclists, scooterborne, helmet-shy families and chaotic crossings belong to the old order. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult for the imagination to summon up Mt Everest.

Yet, a day later, Agrawal left her in-laws’ home in Jamshedpur for the higher climes of Nepal’s Kathmandu. From there, the mother of two says in a calm calculated tone, “It’ll be towards Everest.”

If 45-year-old Agrawal makes it to the top of the world around mid-May, she will become “Jharkhand’s first and the oldest Indian woman to do so”. “My mother-in-law is a little worried,” says Agrawal. Her husband, Vimal, genially admits that he has no right to stop his wife from achieving her goal, while their two daughters—one is studying in Bhubaneswar and the second, who got married recently, lives in Mumbai—are confident that mom can.

As of now, Agrawal will join a lengthening queue of Indian civilians attempting to climb Mt Everest. In this year’s pre-monsoon climbing season, about a dozen Indian civilian climbers are vying to reach the jetliner altitude of the Everest summit: reportedly the largest-ever contingent of Indian civilian aspirants on the frozen slopes of the world’s tallest mountain.

Agrawal’s quest to climb the Everest tip started modestly—she came third in a climbing competi-

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Crowded Crowded at at the the top: top: Asian Asian Trekking Trekking got got 30 30 Indian Indian applications applications for for this this year’s year’s attempt attempt at at scaling scaling the the Everest.

Everest. Eight Eight have have confirmed. confirmed.

tion that required ascending the Dalma Range’s highest hill, at 3,000ft. That was in 1999.

Since then, Agrawal has undergone courses at Darjeeling’s Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) and Uttarakhand’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), successfully returned from expeditions to the Karakoram Pass (18,300ft) and Island Peak (20,000ft-plus) in Nepal, and been on a 40-day camel voyage across the Thar desert.

In 1999, Agrawal first approached veteran climber and India’s first woman to summit Everest, Bachendri Pal, who heads the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF) in Jamshedpur. It was to enrol Priyansha, her elder daughter, then 14, for a trekking trip. “She (Pal) wanted me to join too,” Agrawal beams, sitting at the TSAF office under a photographic collage from the successful Pal-led all-women Everest expedition in 1993.

As a homemaker in a “traditional” Marwari family, Agrawal’s daily life tallies with the many constructs—she cooks, looks after her in-laws, sees off her journalist husband to office, performs the household chores, shops, corresponds with her daughters, attends to guests and awaits her husband’s return. Basically, she does everything to keep the family wheels well-oiled.

For the past two years, in between performing her daily quadruple roles as daughter-in-law, wife, mother and mother-in-law, Agrawal puts in 6-7 hours of daily sweaty physical rigour: jogging, gym sessions, yoga, freehand exercises and rock climbing. “At HMI, I didn’t mention my children. I was anyway aged for the course and didn’t want more scepticism. But after I got the best trainee award, I started believing in my abilities,” she says. “Everest is the final goal.”

It is said that nobody remembers the second person to climb

Everest. Yet nearly six decades after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first made it to the top, human traffic on the peak just keeps on increasing.

Much of the movement, it is reported, has come from those on commercial guided expeditions, where non-professional climbers buy themselves a slot on expeditions organized entirely by agencies with experience in high-altitude climbing.

Everest has been a favourite for record hunters and even publicity seekers. The peak has been climbed by the visually challenged, the disabled, the one-armed and a double amputee— inspiring legions across the world. Attempts have been made to snowboard and ski down Everest and paraglide off its summit. In 2005, a Nepalese couple got married on the summit, after many similar but unsuccessful attempts by other couples. Recently, the record-making spree got more eccentric—a charity cricket match, supported by a cellphone manufacturer, was played a little above the Base Camp, and the world’s first diabetic scaled the peak.

Since 1965, when Capt. M.S. Kohli led the first successful Indian services team to the Everest, the peak has been the lofty expedition terrain for India’s various defence and police teams.

“Only the best would get selected,” says Kohli, who was also part of the first (1960) and second (1962) unsuccessful Indian attempts.

“The Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) would also nominate members. Individuals had little chance to be in Everest missions of institutional teams.”

Now individuals can buy themselves an Everest ticket. Last year, Asian Trekking—a leading Kathmandu-based commercial guided expedition company led by the much-experienced Ang Tshering TURN TO PAGE L10®

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Sherpa—was corresponding with 30 Indians interested in joining its Everest 2011 programme. Eight, including Agrawal, have confirmed. The numbers are growing: There was just one Indian client, Krushnaa Patil, in 2009, and three—Arjun Vajpai, Mamta Sodha and Bhagyashree Sawant—in 2010.

“There’s been a large shift in Indian attitude towards outdoor sports and adventures,” Tshering explains the “increasing trend” of civilian efforts over “government-funded” Everest expeditions by the Armed Forces. “India’s economy too has been booming and Indians have higher disposable incomes to pay for expeditions,” he says.

The fees pack a formidable punch.

While Tshering says Asian Trekking charges $32,350 (around `14.5 lakh) per individual, both Vajpai and Agrawal confirm their total Everest budget, including personal expenses, is around `30 lakh.

Vajpai’s expedition last year, when he became the youngest Indian to summit Everest at age 16, was funded by family and friends; Agrawal is being sponsored

by Tata Steel.

Once the money is paid, Asian Trekking takes over. Clients are picked up from Kathmandu airport, hotels arranged, assistance provided for the purchase of climbing equipment, permits obtained and domestic flights booked. Climbers are guided to the Everest Base Camp at 17,590ft, and lodging and meals organized. The agency runs a full-fledged kitchen with cooking staff, facilitates ropefixing, provides oxygen cylinders and radios to climbers, Internet and satellite phone facilities. Importantly, high-altitude climbing Sherpas accompany aspirants during the ascent. They act as guidementors and carry load.

“Basically, Asian Trekking takes care of all important details so that climbers can focus on the mountain,” says Tshering.

Indeed, there has been widespread commercialization of the mountain in the three decades since Walt Unsworth’s 1979 book Everest: A Mountaineering History talked about the unattainable having a special attraction—with climbers on Western commercial expeditions crowding the way to the top.

Commercial guided expeditions—with their paraphernalia of comfort, safety and personnel support right up to the perilous summit and back to Kathmandu airport—have made Everest seem more achievable than Unsworth could prophesize. In highfalutin fashion, Scott Fischer, leader of Mountain Madness, a US-based commercial guided expedition company, is quoted by journalist Jon Krakauer in his book Into Thin Air (1997) as telling the author: “We’ve got the big E totally wired.

These days, we’ve built a yellow brick road to the summit.”

Tragically, Fischer would perish on the peak, along with Rob Hall, the legendary climber and owner of New Zealand-based guided expedition company Adventure Consultants. Both were leading up clients.

That was 1996—the year of the worst Everest disaster, when eight people died on a single day and three more soon after.

Five of the eight who died following the snowstorm on 11 May belonged to guided expedition groups, a fact that later triggered debate on multiple issues—the competition among commercial expeditions to have more summiteers on their rolls; the rationale of allowing modestly experienced clients on Everest; the mam-

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

moth fees paid by clients which makes them desperate to succeed; and of no less significance, the rampant commercialization and trivialization of Mt Everest.

The three other climbers to die on 11 May 1996 were Indians of a paramilitary team. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) team members, Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup and Tsewang Paljor, died on the northern, Tibet side of the mountain.

On that day, when over 50 climbers from different routes were vying to stand on the oxygen-starved slender icy patch that is the top of the world, Mt Everest was in an unforgiving mood.

But it didn’t dim the attraction. Twentynine years after establishing Asian Trekking, Tshering knows India’s potential to be the next “big market for Everest expedition operators”. “Demographically, Indians are young and aspiring for the ‘world class’. This draws them to the challenges and achievements that Everest poses,” he adds. Already, the company has started designing India-specific Everest packages: cooks trained in Indian cuisine; Hindi language training for staff and climbing Sherpas; cost calculations in Indian currency and Indian bank transactions.

“With its long history and global impact, it’s great to see the wheel turn and India return to a prominent position,” says USbased Roger Kehr, Base Camp manager for the 2007 SuperSherpas expedition, the first-ever “role reversing” all-Sherpa ascent of Everest. Kehr, though, doesn’t directly answer my emailed query on whether a deep-pocketed India will further commodify the great mountain, a process that began with Westerners.

“Earlier in India, people had time but little money. Now, money isn’t the con-

straint but time is. This is where commercial guided expeditions come in,” says Harish Kapadia, author of 17 books on the Himalayas. Despite summiting 33 peaks over 45 years, Kapadia considers himself to be less of a climber and more of an explorer: one of the reasons, he says, that he craved to discover newer areas beyond the much-treaded Everest zone. “But in general consciousness, Everest is the ultimate in achievement.”

From the early 1920s, the unclimbed Everest had stood as a motif for national pride, its summit hotly pursued by the English and the Swiss. A hundred and one years after it was confirmed to be the earth’s highest point, New Zealander (and fellow Commonwealth citizen) Edmund Hillary reached the top in 1953—it coincided with Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Hillary’s feat reinstated British pride, dented after the North Pole and South Pole were reached first by American and Norwegian expeditions, respectively.

Meanwhile, India and Nepal bickered over the nationality of the Nepal-born but Darjeeling-settled Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who accompanied Hillary to the top.

After the Swiss successfully climbed Everest in 1956, the race for the third position was primarily between two nations, the US and India, says Kohli.

Taking advantage of two consecutive Indian failures, the US reached the top two years before Kohli put nine Indians on the summit in 1965, including Nowang Gombu Sherpa, the first person to summit Everest twice—he was with the previous successful American team too (Gombu, who had been part of Hillary’s team though he did not summit then, died on 24 April at his home in Darjeeling after a brief

illness. He was 79). Considering that citizens of 81 nations had climbed Everest till 2009, India’s fourth position is widely respected in mountaineering circles.

The relationship of Indians with Everest began in 1852 when Radhanath Sikdar, the “Bengali computer”, as the mathematician who worked with the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was known, discovered the world’s highest mountain. Sikdar’s calculation considered atmospheric refraction, the earth’s curvature and plumb-line defection before deducing the height of Peak XV (as it was christened then) to be 29,002ft above sea level—the apex of earth and the pinnacle of adventure.

Today one of the pillars used during the Great Trigonometric Survey stands in an unassuming corner of the busy BT Road fringing north Kolkata. The ancient looming brick tower would earlier be plastered with film and political posters, its pedestal used for drying dung cakes. It

was an object of conjecture till last year, when municipal authorities installed a plaque explaining its role in the survey and the consequent discovery of the world’s tallest mountain.

Everest has over the years increased in height (from the revised 29,028ft to 29,035ft, the Himalayas being a growing mountain range), but going by Kohli’s words, the sense of achievement has diminished.

Today Mt Everest seems to have regained its metaphorical pedigree in an age of open-market societies, when conquering its jetstream-penetrating tip seems a realizable dream for many. In 2005, when Kohli’s book On Top of the World was published, it carried the names of all 118 Indian summiteers over the 52 years since Tenzing’s ascent. In the last five years, the number has swelled to over 200, a worrying increase, Kohli feels. “Commercialization is the worst thing to happen.

Inexperienced climbers are getting pushed up by Sherpas after paying lots of money,” says the former IMF president. “Advance Sherpa parties formed by expedition companies fix ropes and ladders, set up tents, bring in rations and do all the hard work.

The adventure element is missing.”

In this age of convenience, nothing like George Mallory and Andrew Irvine’s 1924 ascent beyond the 26,000ft Death Zone of Everest can be expected. Their deaths, unlike those of the 180-odd others still lying in the Everest snow, have remained an unresolved mystery of mountaineering.

Or consider iconic mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s uncompromising solo ascent of Everest in 1980, unsupported by oxygen, ropes, ladders, radio or personnel (his girlfriend, Nena, stayed behind at Base Camp). “I must go, and yet each smallest chore is an effort. Up here life is brutally racked between exhaustion and willpower; self-conquest becomes a com-

pulsion,” Messner recounted in The Crystal Horizon. “This climb was one of the great moments in our human relationship with Everest, noting the near impossibility these days of enjoying such seclusion,” wrote ace mountaineer Tom Hornbein in The Mountaineers Anthology Series: Everest (Volume IV).

Yet Everest occasionally continues to serve a purpose. Its tip—8.85km above sea level; starved of oxygen; blasted by hurricane winds and with average summer temperatures between -20 degrees Celsius and -25 degrees Celsius—is often the high point, literally, in the lives of mountaineers, adventurers, activists, geologists, climate scientists, dreamers, idealists, film-makers, fame-seekers, fatalists, racists and rebels.

“My father told me that he climbed Everest so that we, his children, wouldn’t have to. He found a climbing Sherpa’s work dangerous,” Jamling

Norgay, son of Tenzing, told me on a sunny Darjeeling morning.

We chatted on the large verandah of the Norgay family home as the majestic Mt Kanchenjunga sat like a celestial crown above the hill town; a plume bellowing from its top—at 28,169ft the planet’s third highest point.

For a while, Kanchenjunga was thought of as the world’s highest peak. Eventually, Everest bagged the height and the stories; Kanchenjunga preserved its stature as the mountaineer’s mountain.

“For me Everest’s pull was compelling. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps,” says Norgay, who ascended the mountain during the infamous 1996 season. His climb was filmed in the David Breashearsdirected IMAX documentary, Everest (1998), and resulted in an autobiographical book Touching my Father’s Soul (2001).

Reasons and more reasons to hit the subzero Everest trail.

For Bachendri Pal, standing at its summit was the only way to break free from the limitations of life in her Uttarakhand village; undeniably it was about breaking new ground as an Indian woman and an Everest summiteer. “I’d practised with rocks tied to my ankles. To validate my practice away from my village, I would collect firewood for the family. Convincing my parents was difficult.” After becoming the first Indian woman to climb Everest in 1984, she led an Indo-Nepalese all-women expedition in 1993, putting seven women on the summit. Today, as TSAF chief, Pal is Agrawal’s mentor. “When you empower a woman you empower a family,” Pal says.

Everest has also bestowed stature. After two decades of high-altitude expeditions, including the ascent of the 25,000ft-plus Mt Kamet, it was only after climbing Everest in 2010—as part of West Bengal’s first successful civilian expedition with Debashish Biswas—that Basanta Singha Roy felt he was accorded climber’s status.

“Before the summit, I ran from pillar to post trying to arrange for `5 lakh. After our triumph, the state government took over our debt burden. Only Everest could have proved it for us,” says Roy, days before leaving for a Kanchenjunga expedition.

Everest promises to open doors for others too. For instance, the primary reason why the 28-year-old, Pune-based mountaineering club Giripremi is orchestrating an Everest expedition in 2012 is because a successful climb will net sponsors and allow the club access to the elite group of 8,000m peaks in the world. The 20-member team’s budget is `3.15 crore, which the club hopes to generate from well-wishers and corporate bodies. “There are other challenging peaks, but Everest is the only

Scaled up: (clockwise from above) Arjun Vajpai on his way to the top in 2010; Capt. M.S. Kohli, who led the first successful Indian team on Everest; Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman on the Everest; and Premlata Agrawal. name that can get sponsors,” says Umesh Zirpe, who heads Giripremi.

A new book, On Top of the World: My Everest Adventure by Arjun Vajpai with Anu Kumar (Puffin, `175), chronicles the adventures of 16-year-old Vajpai, the youngest non-Sherpa and the youngest Indian to climb Everest. This student of the Ryan International School in Noida, who wants to join the army like his father, has been trekking since he was 10. He writes that at the summit, there was a statue of the Buddha, placed there by previous summiteers. He knelt, bowed in front of it, and “felt complete.”

The summit is also inspiration. “Everest was once below the Tethys Sea and rose to be the earth’s highest. Nothing signifies dignity more. Despite all support, a climber still needs to breathlessly claw up. That is a huge test of the human spirit and only skilled mountaineers succeed,” says Dipankar Ghosh who, along with Rajib Bhattacharya, will attempt to scale Everest this year.

The Kolkata duo have invested `10 lakh of their savings to part-fund the expedition, organized by Loben Expeditions, which has offices in Darjeeling and Nepal.

The rest of their `30 lakh combined budget has come as easy loans from acquaintances. In a long mountaineering career, Ghosh has been on 36 expeditions and stood on the summit of 24 peaks, including the 22,769ft Kedarnath (Main). He thirsts for Everest above everything. “Nothing can erode its unique challenges—the weather and altitude beyond the Death Zone. It’s still the final outpost.”

In his backpack, Ghosh will carry a small idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, which he plans to place on the Everest summit.

As Indian divine iconography goes, Lord Ganesh has multiple associations. He is representative of the playful outdoorsy god; bearer of wisdom and luck; the remover of obstacles. And he is the carrier of wealth, a god to worship before any commercial start-up.

With a tie-up across domains of spirituality, exploration, knowledge and commerce, the Ganesh idol, when it gets carried up the steep whitewashed incline, will be a sublime summation of India’s ongoing Everest narrative.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

u Right after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, three Chinese climbers claimed to have made the first ascent of Everest North Ridge in 1960. As the story goes, after facing obstacles at 28,800ft, a climber took off his shoes and socks and overcame the hurdle with naked feet. Having climbed at night, the Chinese team didn’t have pho­ tographs to support its summit claim, pro­ viding fuel to sceptics. u For many years before the height of Peak XV was established, Mt Kanchenjunga’s summit was thought of as the highest point on earth. Peak XV, after it became known as the world’s tallest mountain and was chris­ tened Mount Everest, came to be referred to as the “Third Pole”. u On why he wanted to climb Everest, George Mallory had famously quipped, “Because it is there.” On different occasions he would comment: “Higher in the sky than imagination had ventured to dream, the top of Everest itself appeared” and “it would look rather grim to see others without me, engaged in conquering the summit”. Before his eventual death on the mountain in 1924, Mallory was quoted as having said: “I can’t see myself coming down defeated.” u The slopes of Everest have seen high­ altitude thefts, with at least one climber reported to have died after his essentials were snitched from his camp. There have been controversies about climbers not help­ ing other dying climbers in their zeal to reach the top. u For many years, it was not known who reached the summit first—Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay; both maintained a dignified silence on this issue. In later years, Norgay wrote that it was Hillary who placed the first step. u In his book ‘High Exposure’, acclaimed climber and film­maker David Breashears narrates the incident of him trying to locate one of the 30ft towers built in Bihar’s Dar­ bhanga during the 1840s for the Great Trig­ onometric Survey. In those days, Mt Everest could be seen from as far as the Bihar plains. Breashears’ efforts didn’t bring any result though: accumulated pollution and a strong factory­fuelled haze played spoilsport. u Kushang Sherpa, an instructor at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeel­ ing, is the only Indian to have climbed Ever­ est five times, including up the challenging and remote Kangshung Face, which Mallory had mentioned as “impossible” to negotiate.

Santosh Yadav, an alumnus of Uttarakhand’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, was the first Indian woman to ascend Everest twice. u After Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar discovered the earth’s highest point to be at 29,002ft in 1852, the height of Mt Everest has been revised only twice— 29,028ft, and the more recent 29,035ft, both times using modern scientific and satellite­ based technology.

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Sherpa—was corresponding with 30 Indians interested in joining its Everest 2011 programme. Eight, including Agrawal, have confirmed. The numbers are growing: There was just one Indian client, Krushnaa Patil, in 2009, and three—Arjun Vajpai, Mamta Sodha and Bhagyashree Sawant—in 2010.

“There’s been a large shift in Indian attitude towards outdoor sports and adventures,” Tshering explains the “increasing trend” of civilian efforts over “government-funded” Everest expeditions by the Armed Forces. “India’s economy too has been booming and Indians have higher disposable incomes to pay for expeditions,” he says.

The fees pack a formidable punch.

While Tshering says Asian Trekking charges $32,350 (around `14.5 lakh) per individual, both Vajpai and Agrawal confirm their total Everest budget, including personal expenses, is around `30 lakh.

Vajpai’s expedition last year, when he became the youngest Indian to summit Everest at age 16, was funded by family and friends; Agrawal is being sponsored

by Tata Steel.

Once the money is paid, Asian Trekking takes over. Clients are picked up from Kathmandu airport, hotels arranged, assistance provided for the purchase of climbing equipment, permits obtained and domestic flights booked. Climbers are guided to the Everest Base Camp at 17,590ft, and lodging and meals organized. The agency runs a full-fledged kitchen with cooking staff, facilitates ropefixing, provides oxygen cylinders and radios to climbers, Internet and satellite phone facilities. Importantly, high-altitude climbing Sherpas accompany aspirants during the ascent. They act as guidementors and carry load.

“Basically, Asian Trekking takes care of all important details so that climbers can focus on the mountain,” says Tshering.

Indeed, there has been widespread commercialization of the mountain in the three decades since Walt Unsworth’s 1979 book Everest: A Mountaineering History talked about the unattainable having a special attraction—with climbers on Western commercial expeditions crowding the way to the top.

Commercial guided expeditions—with their paraphernalia of comfort, safety and personnel support right up to the perilous summit and back to Kathmandu airport—have made Everest seem more achievable than Unsworth could prophesize. In highfalutin fashion, Scott Fischer, leader of Mountain Madness, a US-based commercial guided expedition company, is quoted by journalist Jon Krakauer in his book Into Thin Air (1997) as telling the author: “We’ve got the big E totally wired.

These days, we’ve built a yellow brick road to the summit.”

Tragically, Fischer would perish on the peak, along with Rob Hall, the legendary climber and owner of New Zealand-based guided expedition company Adventure Consultants. Both were leading up clients.

That was 1996—the year of the worst Everest disaster, when eight people died on a single day and three more soon after.

Five of the eight who died following the snowstorm on 11 May belonged to guided expedition groups, a fact that later triggered debate on multiple issues—the competition among commercial expeditions to have more summiteers on their rolls; the rationale of allowing modestly experienced clients on Everest; the mam-

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

moth fees paid by clients which makes them desperate to succeed; and of no less significance, the rampant commercialization and trivialization of Mt Everest.

The three other climbers to die on 11 May 1996 were Indians of a paramilitary team. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) team members, Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup and Tsewang Paljor, died on the northern, Tibet side of the mountain.

On that day, when over 50 climbers from different routes were vying to stand on the oxygen-starved slender icy patch that is the top of the world, Mt Everest was in an unforgiving mood.

But it didn’t dim the attraction. Twentynine years after establishing Asian Trekking, Tshering knows India’s potential to be the next “big market for Everest expedition operators”. “Demographically, Indians are young and aspiring for the ‘world class’. This draws them to the challenges and achievements that Everest poses,” he adds. Already, the company has started designing India-specific Everest packages: cooks trained in Indian cuisine; Hindi language training for staff and climbing Sherpas; cost calculations in Indian currency and Indian bank transactions.

“With its long history and global impact, it’s great to see the wheel turn and India return to a prominent position,” says USbased Roger Kehr, Base Camp manager for the 2007 SuperSherpas expedition, the first-ever “role reversing” all-Sherpa ascent of Everest. Kehr, though, doesn’t directly answer my emailed query on whether a deep-pocketed India will further commodify the great mountain, a process that began with Westerners.

“Earlier in India, people had time but little money. Now, money isn’t the con-

straint but time is. This is where commercial guided expeditions come in,” says Harish Kapadia, author of 17 books on the Himalayas. Despite summiting 33 peaks over 45 years, Kapadia considers himself to be less of a climber and more of an explorer: one of the reasons, he says, that he craved to discover newer areas beyond the much-treaded Everest zone. “But in general consciousness, Everest is the ultimate in achievement.”

From the early 1920s, the unclimbed Everest had stood as a motif for national pride, its summit hotly pursued by the English and the Swiss. A hundred and one years after it was confirmed to be the earth’s highest point, New Zealander (and fellow Commonwealth citizen) Edmund Hillary reached the top in 1953—it coincided with Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Hillary’s feat reinstated British pride, dented after the North Pole and South Pole were reached first by American and Norwegian expeditions, respectively.

Meanwhile, India and Nepal bickered over the nationality of the Nepal-born but Darjeeling-settled Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who accompanied Hillary to the top.

After the Swiss successfully climbed Everest in 1956, the race for the third position was primarily between two nations, the US and India, says Kohli.

Taking advantage of two consecutive Indian failures, the US reached the top two years before Kohli put nine Indians on the summit in 1965, including Nowang Gombu Sherpa, the first person to summit Everest twice—he was with the previous successful American team too (Gombu, who had been part of Hillary’s team though he did not summit then, died on 24 April at his home in Darjeeling after a brief

illness. He was 79). Considering that citizens of 81 nations had climbed Everest till 2009, India’s fourth position is widely respected in mountaineering circles.

The relationship of Indians with Everest began in 1852 when Radhanath Sikdar, the “Bengali computer”, as the mathematician who worked with the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was known, discovered the world’s highest mountain. Sikdar’s calculation considered atmospheric refraction, the earth’s curvature and plumb-line defection before deducing the height of Peak XV (as it was christened then) to be 29,002ft above sea level—the apex of earth and the pinnacle of adventure.

Today one of the pillars used during the Great Trigonometric Survey stands in an unassuming corner of the busy BT Road fringing north Kolkata. The ancient looming brick tower would earlier be plastered with film and political posters, its pedestal used for drying dung cakes. It

was an object of conjecture till last year, when municipal authorities installed a plaque explaining its role in the survey and the consequent discovery of the world’s tallest mountain.

Everest has over the years increased in height (from the revised 29,028ft to 29,035ft, the Himalayas being a growing mountain range), but going by Kohli’s words, the sense of achievement has diminished.

Today Mt Everest seems to have regained its metaphorical pedigree in an age of open-market societies, when conquering its jetstream-penetrating tip seems a realizable dream for many. In 2005, when Kohli’s book On Top of the World was published, it carried the names of all 118 Indian summiteers over the 52 years since Tenzing’s ascent. In the last five years, the number has swelled to over 200, a worrying increase, Kohli feels. “Commercialization is the worst thing to happen.

Inexperienced climbers are getting pushed up by Sherpas after paying lots of money,” says the former IMF president. “Advance Sherpa parties formed by expedition companies fix ropes and ladders, set up tents, bring in rations and do all the hard work.

The adventure element is missing.”

In this age of convenience, nothing like George Mallory and Andrew Irvine’s 1924 ascent beyond the 26,000ft Death Zone of Everest can be expected. Their deaths, unlike those of the 180-odd others still lying in the Everest snow, have remained an unresolved mystery of mountaineering.

Or consider iconic mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s uncompromising solo ascent of Everest in 1980, unsupported by oxygen, ropes, ladders, radio or personnel (his girlfriend, Nena, stayed behind at Base Camp). “I must go, and yet each smallest chore is an effort. Up here life is brutally racked between exhaustion and willpower; self-conquest becomes a com-

pulsion,” Messner recounted in The Crystal Horizon. “This climb was one of the great moments in our human relationship with Everest, noting the near impossibility these days of enjoying such seclusion,” wrote ace mountaineer Tom Hornbein in The Mountaineers Anthology Series: Everest (Volume IV).

Yet Everest occasionally continues to serve a purpose. Its tip—8.85km above sea level; starved of oxygen; blasted by hurricane winds and with average summer temperatures between -20 degrees Celsius and -25 degrees Celsius—is often the high point, literally, in the lives of mountaineers, adventurers, activists, geologists, climate scientists, dreamers, idealists, film-makers, fame-seekers, fatalists, racists and rebels.

“My father told me that he climbed Everest so that we, his children, wouldn’t have to. He found a climbing Sherpa’s work dangerous,” Jamling

Norgay, son of Tenzing, told me on a sunny Darjeeling morning.

We chatted on the large verandah of the Norgay family home as the majestic Mt Kanchenjunga sat like a celestial crown above the hill town; a plume bellowing from its top—at 28,169ft the planet’s third highest point.

For a while, Kanchenjunga was thought of as the world’s highest peak. Eventually, Everest bagged the height and the stories; Kanchenjunga preserved its stature as the mountaineer’s mountain.

“For me Everest’s pull was compelling. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps,” says Norgay, who ascended the mountain during the infamous 1996 season. His climb was filmed in the David Breashearsdirected IMAX documentary, Everest (1998), and resulted in an autobiographical book Touching my Father’s Soul (2001).

Reasons and more reasons to hit the subzero Everest trail.

For Bachendri Pal, standing at its summit was the only way to break free from the limitations of life in her Uttarakhand village; undeniably it was about breaking new ground as an Indian woman and an Everest summiteer. “I’d practised with rocks tied to my ankles. To validate my practice away from my village, I would collect firewood for the family. Convincing my parents was difficult.” After becoming the first Indian woman to climb Everest in 1984, she led an Indo-Nepalese all-women expedition in 1993, putting seven women on the summit. Today, as TSAF chief, Pal is Agrawal’s mentor. “When you empower a woman you empower a family,” Pal says.

Everest has also bestowed stature. After two decades of high-altitude expeditions, including the ascent of the 25,000ft-plus Mt Kamet, it was only after climbing Everest in 2010—as part of West Bengal’s first successful civilian expedition with Debashish Biswas—that Basanta Singha Roy felt he was accorded climber’s status.

“Before the summit, I ran from pillar to post trying to arrange for `5 lakh. After our triumph, the state government took over our debt burden. Only Everest could have proved it for us,” says Roy, days before leaving for a Kanchenjunga expedition.

Everest promises to open doors for others too. For instance, the primary reason why the 28-year-old, Pune-based mountaineering club Giripremi is orchestrating an Everest expedition in 2012 is because a successful climb will net sponsors and allow the club access to the elite group of 8,000m peaks in the world. The 20-member team’s budget is `3.15 crore, which the club hopes to generate from well-wishers and corporate bodies. “There are other challenging peaks, but Everest is the only

Scaled up: (clockwise from above) Arjun Vajpai on his way to the top in 2010; Capt. M.S. Kohli, who led the first successful Indian team on Everest; Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman on the Everest; and Premlata Agrawal. name that can get sponsors,” says Umesh Zirpe, who heads Giripremi.

A new book, On Top of the World: My Everest Adventure by Arjun Vajpai with Anu Kumar (Puffin, `175), chronicles the adventures of 16-year-old Vajpai, the youngest non-Sherpa and the youngest Indian to climb Everest. This student of the Ryan International School in Noida, who wants to join the army like his father, has been trekking since he was 10. He writes that at the summit, there was a statue of the Buddha, placed there by previous summiteers. He knelt, bowed in front of it, and “felt complete.”

The summit is also inspiration. “Everest was once below the Tethys Sea and rose to be the earth’s highest. Nothing signifies dignity more. Despite all support, a climber still needs to breathlessly claw up. That is a huge test of the human spirit and only skilled mountaineers succeed,” says Dipankar Ghosh who, along with Rajib Bhattacharya, will attempt to scale Everest this year.

The Kolkata duo have invested `10 lakh of their savings to part-fund the expedition, organized by Loben Expeditions, which has offices in Darjeeling and Nepal.

The rest of their `30 lakh combined budget has come as easy loans from acquaintances. In a long mountaineering career, Ghosh has been on 36 expeditions and stood on the summit of 24 peaks, including the 22,769ft Kedarnath (Main). He thirsts for Everest above everything. “Nothing can erode its unique challenges—the weather and altitude beyond the Death Zone. It’s still the final outpost.”

In his backpack, Ghosh will carry a small idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, which he plans to place on the Everest summit.

As Indian divine iconography goes, Lord Ganesh has multiple associations. He is representative of the playful outdoorsy god; bearer of wisdom and luck; the remover of obstacles. And he is the carrier of wealth, a god to worship before any commercial start-up.

With a tie-up across domains of spirituality, exploration, knowledge and commerce, the Ganesh idol, when it gets carried up the steep whitewashed incline, will be a sublime summation of India’s ongoing Everest narrative.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

u Right after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, three Chinese climbers claimed to have made the first ascent of Everest North Ridge in 1960. As the story goes, after facing obstacles at 28,800ft, a climber took off his shoes and socks and overcame the hurdle with naked feet. Having climbed at night, the Chinese team didn’t have pho­ tographs to support its summit claim, pro­ viding fuel to sceptics. u For many years before the height of Peak XV was established, Mt Kanchenjunga’s summit was thought of as the highest point on earth. Peak XV, after it became known as the world’s tallest mountain and was chris­ tened Mount Everest, came to be referred to as the “Third Pole”. u On why he wanted to climb Everest, George Mallory had famously quipped, “Because it is there.” On different occasions he would comment: “Higher in the sky than imagination had ventured to dream, the top of Everest itself appeared” and “it would look rather grim to see others without me, engaged in conquering the summit”. Before his eventual death on the mountain in 1924, Mallory was quoted as having said: “I can’t see myself coming down defeated.” u The slopes of Everest have seen high­ altitude thefts, with at least one climber reported to have died after his essentials were snitched from his camp. There have been controversies about climbers not help­ ing other dying climbers in their zeal to reach the top. u For many years, it was not known who reached the summit first—Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay; both maintained a dignified silence on this issue. In later years, Norgay wrote that it was Hillary who placed the first step. u In his book ‘High Exposure’, acclaimed climber and film­maker David Breashears narrates the incident of him trying to locate one of the 30ft towers built in Bihar’s Dar­ bhanga during the 1840s for the Great Trig­ onometric Survey. In those days, Mt Everest could be seen from as far as the Bihar plains. Breashears’ efforts didn’t bring any result though: accumulated pollution and a strong factory­fuelled haze played spoilsport. u Kushang Sherpa, an instructor at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeel­ ing, is the only Indian to have climbed Ever­ est five times, including up the challenging and remote Kangshung Face, which Mallory had mentioned as “impossible” to negotiate.

Santosh Yadav, an alumnus of Uttarakhand’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, was the first Indian woman to ascend Everest twice. u After Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar discovered the earth’s highest point to be at 29,002ft in 1852, the height of Mt Everest has been revised only twice— 29,028ft, and the more recent 29,035ft, both times using modern scientific and satellite­ based technology.

Shamik Bag

L12

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SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011

Travel

LOUNGE THINKSTOCK

BELIZE

Watercolour island

JAYATI VORA

JAYATI VORA

From electric purple to dainty pastels, Caye Caulker makes every dive an underwater adventure

B

swam by, barely missing my paddling feet in a feat of lastsecond navigation. Though they can grow up to 14ft, the sharks we saw were 2-4ft long. Below them the grey-blue Caribbean stingrays swooped, and despite stretching a tentative finger a time or two, I could never manage to stroke their backs as they dipped and dove under me. I stayed as long as I could, fascinated by their grace. Shark Ray Alley was the highlight of the day, and by the time our boat returned to shore, we were happy to hit the showers and then head out for some local seafood. The next day, we would begin our scuba certification course.

Our first scuba experience was in a mere 10ft of water, where we learnt that human beings cannot naturally breathe underwater—and that I was no exception. The simplest of our tasks defeated me. While diving, the snorkel mask can easily come off your face, and all divers must learn to remove it, breathe normally through their mouths using the regulator (mouthpiece), and replace it. My two companions mastered this skill in a matter of minutes. The first time I tried, the removal of the mask—which encapsulates your nose in an airtight triangle—confused my senses, and I inhaled a noseful of seawater.

Panicking and sputtering, I kicked my way to the surface.

Sheepish, I vowed to do better the second time—with the same result. My instructor, a sunny Canadian import called Hillary Pike, was patient and supportive. I mentally nicknamed her

the Diver Whisperer. Whenever I panicked, thrashed about, or came close to hyperventilating, she would calm my fears. The third time, by pinching my nostrils with one hand, I was able to dissuade myself from trying to breathe through my nose underwater. Victory!

Over the course of that day and the next, we did three more dives, the final two in 60ft of water. We learnt new skills each time, and practised some of the old ones. To my chagrin, I had to

TRIP PLANNER/BELIZE MEXICO

Corozal The Cayes Caye Caulker

Belmopan

BELIZE

Belize City

practise the mask removal thrice before Pike was convinced I could do it.

I wasn’t a natural at scuba.

But each successive dive was so beautiful that I couldn’t help but swallow my fears and get back into the water. Unlike snorkelling, where you’re on the surface, a foreign visitor to an exciting world, with scuba-diving, you can, for a short time at least, be part of the action. You can follow fish down to the coral, and squint into their hidey-holes

Airfare and visas to Belize are expensive, so it makes sense to combine your Belize vacation with a US or Canada trip. A single-entry tourist visa to Belize costs $250 (around R11,000). To apply for visas, contact Belize’s honorary consul to India at belize@modigroup.com or at 011-42504847. Your best option to get to Belize is to fly from India to Houston, and from Houston to Belize City. To get to Caye Caulker, you have to take a small plane or water taxi.

Stay

Eat

Do

C a r ib b ean S ea

 The Sea Dreams Hotel (www.seadreamsbelize.com), $100, is right on the beach and provides both rooms and San Antonio individual apartments  The Iguana Reef Inn (www.iguanareefinn.com), $155, is closer to the town’s main streets Punta Gorda  De Real Macaw (www.derealmacaw.biz), $30, has beach houses and furnished condos All prices are for a night’s double occupancy for a standard room. Check the websites for deluxe rooms, discount seasons and other details.

GUATEMALA

B Y J AYATI V ORA ···························· elize is a land smooth and green, like a bedsheet tugged flat, with an embroidery of palm trees that only wrinkle and bump the landscape.

We were staying on Caye Caulker, a tiny island just south of the larger, more famous and resort-crammed Ambergris Caye. It couldn’t have been further from the wintry streets of New York, from where we had come. Palm trees and brightly coloured houses fringed the unpaved streets. Golf carts—one needs a permit to own a car on Caye Caulker and they are rare—bicyclists and stray dogs were the undisputed kings of the roads. Locals and tourists alike strutted around sans shirts and shoes. And then there was the sea. Streaks of turquoise blended in broad brushstrokes with patches of agate green; a spatter of white topped the swells.

The next morning we set off for a half-day snorkelling expedition. The first site was somewhat intimidatingly called Shark Ray Alley. After a few basic tips from our guide (“Don’t pet the sharks, but you can touch the backs of the stingrays”) we got into the water. It was warm and welcoming; the sun’s rays easily pierced the shallow water. The water was slightly sandy, but the murkiness didn’t take away from the excitement of swimming with nurse sharks and half a dozen stingrays.

The sharks weren’t dangerous, we had been assured, but I was still startled every time one

 The beach shacks serve fresh seafood, and are all uniformly good. Sobre Las Olas was the best we ate at  For more upscale dining, head to Bamboo, with swings for seats and succulent lobster  Go to Café Paradiso for a breakfast of sandwiches and milkshakes  Don’t forget to try the local cocktail Micheladas—beer served with Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and lime juice  If you want to skip scuba-diving, try sea kayaking and sailing  For more leisurely options, go fishing or birdwatching  Café Paradiso (mentioned above) has open-air movie screenings on weekends GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

and see if they show any signs of coming out. You can swim all the way to the bottom and pick up small shells from the sand.

You can follow a shy eel as it tries to keep its distance. We did all that—and more.

Pike pointed out the landmarks of our underwater world.

Like a safari tracker, she found a lone nurse shark and beckoned us to follow it till it disappeared. She pointed out a spiny lobster that was half-hidden in a crevice of coral, coaxing it to emerge. We saw nearly circular blue tang and yellow tang, the small, striped bluehead wrasse, the aptly named Rainbow Parrotfish, more Caribbean stingrays, and a cleverly camouflaged spotted eagle ray, many, many shoals of yellowtail snapper, a thin grouper that was almost submerged beneath a layer of sand, a trumpetfish that looked as long and as silver as a needle, and several shimmering great barracudas, floating peacefully on the surface as though they were just there to catch a few rays. And those were only the ones whose names I remembered.

Even in spots where fish were scarce, the beauty of the coral was enough to make the dive worthwhile. There was incredible diversity. The colours ran from nightclub electric purple to dainty pastels. There was a hard brain coral, softly waving, leaflike coral, spiny ones that looked like stag antlers, and more.

Finally, there was the magic of stepping out of your world and into another—a bit like the experience of travel itself, but more intense, more new in every way.

Big blue: (clockwise from top) The colours of the coral reef off Belize; bicycles parked near the docks; and a street in town.

Thanks to complicated equipment, human beings can breathe (through their mouths!) underwater. The weight of all that water pressing down on you brings it home in a way that can induce panic, if you let it, or encourage wonderment. You play with your breathing, and allow time to slow down, and with it the big-city pace of your thoughts, to wait out that brown-and-white lobster that you’re determined to see in all its spiny glory, just once, to flap your flippers lazily and enjoy every second of this enchanting underwater adventure.

Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Children will love the water, snorkelling and the boat rides, but there aren’t any children’s menus or diaper­changing stations.

SENIOR­FRIENDLY RATING

With the focus on adventure sports, and hospitals being far away, Belize will only appeal to the fittest seniors.

LGBT­FRIENDLY RATING

Male homosexuality is illegal. Gay couples have visited without facing prosecution, but caution is advised.

TRAVEL L13

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HOLIDAY POST MORTEM | THOMAS ABRAHAM

Of fruit and fish SANJAY ARORA

THOMAS ABRAHAM

River commerce: (clockwise from above) Food vendors along the floating market; Abraham; and stalls on boats.

Frogs, shrimp soup, coconut ice cream and shopping at a floating market Businessman Thomas Abraham has been travelling to Thailand for more than 15 years.

On his latest trip, he finally visited the floating market of Damnoen Saduak

B Y A ADISHT K HANNA ···························· homas Abraham is the managing director of CCH India, a publishing and information services company for tax and accounting professionals. He tells us about the “Malayali affinity” for Thailand, being surrounded by frogs, and his most memorable street food experiences. Edited excerpts from an interview:

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Do you have regular haunts in Thailand, or do you do something new every time?

I’ve travelled to Thailand more than 10 times in the last 15 years. In the first few visits, I used to focus on general sightseeing, shopping and the nightlife, but recently we’ve been looking at other things to

do. Two years ago, I spent a vacation in Koh Samui along with my family and friends, where we scuba-dived for the first time ever. In the future, we’d like to go back for homestays so that we can imbibe the local culture. This particular trip was a business trip where I stayed for the weekend to look around Bangkok, and got to see the Mae Klong river market and the floating market of Damnoen Saduak.

What are those?

Damnoen Saduak is actually a canal. About 80km from Bangkok, a market forms on the canal itself—the merchandise is brought on boats and sold right out of the boat. If you want to go shopping, you have to take a boat yourself, and do all your purchases on the water. I’d read about the floating market many years earlier, and had always wanted to see it for myself, but this was the first time I got the

opportunity. My hotel’s travel desk arranged transportation and a guide for me.

Before going to the floating market itself, we stopped at the Mae Klong river market. This is famous for the narrow gauge railway that runs right through the market, bringing in vendors and shoppers. It’s a food market by and large—you see seafood, meats, spices, vegetables and cooked food all around you. At one point, I was surrounded by frogs on sale.

What I ended up buying was 3kg of brown sugar made from fresh coconut sap. This sort of sugar is a delight for the Malayali palate, because coconut sap brings back the taste of toddy. After that, it was on to what I’d been waiting for years to see—Damnoen Saduak.

What did you see and buy there?

Describing the sights is difficult—it’s a sea of continuous activity, with lots happening.

This market is also a food market, but there are handicrafts for sale on the canal banks too.

There is a bridge across the canal that divides the floating market into two sections.

The handicraft stalls don’t see as much action as the food boats, and all my purchases were to do with food. I saw mounds of mangosteens for sale, which brought back memories of my childhood home in Kanakappalam. I’d had a heavy breakfast in the morning, but still wolfed down a kilo of mangosteen. Later on, my guide told me that the mangosteens were off-season.

I also had fresh coconut ice cream, which was served in a coconut shell with tender coconut at the bottom, and which put fancy branded ice creams to shame in both taste and price—it was only 20 baht (around `30).

You’re clearly a fan of Thai food. Any memorable

FOOT NOTES

food experiences?

Thailand is a paradise for seafood and meat lovers, but you do need to be comfortable with the lingering smell of fish sauce in the air. The spicy shrimp soup and cashew-nut chicken shouldn’t be missed.

But what I really love about Thailand is the fruits. Apart from mangosteens and coconuts, I’m fond of the guavas and the jackfruits that are available there. As also the spicy green papaya salad.

Fruits make it to Thai desserts too—my personal favourite Thai dessert is a dish of water chestnuts, but the deep-fried banana fritters and Khao Niew Ma Muang (sticky rice with coconut cream and ripe mango) are also excellent.

Will you be going back to Thailand?

I’d love to go back to Damnoen Saduak for the divine mangosteens there, but also to spend time scuba-diving in the coral reef islands.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

GETTING THERE There are many direct flights to Thailand from New Delhi and Mumbai. Damnoen Saduak is about 2 hours from Bangkok.

Buses to the market leave from the Southern Bus Terminal every 40 minutes from 6am onwards.

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

THINKSTOCK

Dive right in How to get scuba certification, and places where you can put it to optimal use

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he most common entry-level scuba-diving courses are the Professional Association of Dive Instructors (Padi) Open Water Diver and Scuba Diver courses.

Open Water Diver is a full entry-level certification, while you can get a Scuba Diver certification simply by completing a portion of the Open Water Diver course.

You’re eligible to take these courses if you can swim comfortably and are in good health. The minimum age for scuba certification is 10 years for the Junior Open Water Diver or Junior Scuba Certification, and 15 for the adult certifications.

Padi certification is accepted around the world, and you must show your Open Water Padi Diver card before a dive centre will allow you to rent equipment or allow you to dive. If you have only completed a Scuba Diver course then you will require supervision from a Padi master

and cannot dive on your own.

The Open Water Diver course consists of three segments— learning about scuba (generally by watching DVDs that teach you about the jargon, equipment, and physics of diving, and perhaps some classroom instructions); confined water dives (which often take place in swimming pools but for us occurred in 10ft of seawater); and three open-water dives (which happen towards the end of your course, in 40-60ft of water). You will also be required to demonstrate the ability to tread water or swim for about 10 minutes on your own. At the end you will need to complete a three-part multiple choice quiz, for which you will need to study from the manual your dive centre will provide you, and the dive computer—a kind of calculator for divers—both of which are yours to keep.

If you are prone to seasickness, and will be diving from a boat, make sure you take some seasickness medication prior to heading out. Eat before diving; scuba-diving can make you really hungry. Diving with a cold can make it difficult to

Scuba do: A Padi certification and training course (left) is the gateway to memorable diving experiences, such as exploring coral reefs. equalize (clear the pressure in your ears by holding your nostrils and blowing).

Once you’re certified, here are four great places to go diving:

Boracay, The Philippines Boracay Island has 4km of beaches and clam waters, making it an ideal spot for vacationers who want to combine a beach holiday with a gentle introduction to scuba-diving. The corals here are at shallow depths, so if you find you’re not comfortable with

scuba, you can still snorkel down.

Caye Caulker, Belize If you’re an experienced diver, one of the best spots in the world to scuba is the Blue Hole, a circular limestone sinkhole halfway between Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye that’s the doorway to an underwater cave network.

The Great Barrier Reef, Australia We couldn’t leave this out: The

biggest barrier reef in the world is long enough and varied enough to provide multiple dive sites of varying difficulty. Every one of them has breathtaking corals and fish. The reef’s famous fans include author Douglas Adams and the late film-maker Jacques Cousteau.

Kuredu Island, Maldives Meant for the serious spender and the serious diver, this private island resort has villas on the beaches, so that you can

go snorkelling as soon as you leave your room. For a proper scuba-diving experience, there are 50 dive sites in the nearby Lhaiviyani Atoll. Along with sharks and rays, Lhaiviyani hosts Hawksbill Turtles.

To find diving instructors, or to plan a diving vacation, log on to www.padi.com Jayati Vora & Aadisht Khanna Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011

Books

LOUNGE

CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH

Fiction by the casebook MAXIM ARYUKOV

Why Peter James hung out with the police, locked him­ self up in a coffin and worked at a ladies’ shoe shop

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any of the older crime writers have been wary of diluting fiction with too much suspenseslackening fact. In Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories (1928), S.S. Van Dine laid it out—Rule 16: “A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations.” H.R.F. Keating warns in Writing Crime Fiction that “facts from the real world that you don’t need for your fiction serve only to clog things up” and although he allows for descriptive passages, he suggests that they be maximum 150 words long. Likewise, Rule 9 in Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing goes: “Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.”

However, Rule 2 in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler states that a mystery story “must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection” and the investigator “must at least know enough about police methods not to make an ass of himself.

When a policeman is made out to be a fool, as he always was in the Sherlock Holmes stories, this not only deprecates the accomplishment of the detective but it makes the reader doubt the author’s knowledge of his own field.”

So we are to understand that the facts and correct descriptions are important, but should be kept to a minimum.

However, the modern crime novelist also knows that readers enjoy learning and that facts aren’t necessarily boring—whether it is about getting intimate with alien cultures, or picking up titbits on forensic science and legal procedure. Consider the case of Robin Cook, a physician writing best-selling medical thrillers; or that rare moth in Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, which leads us to the serial killer’s lair.

Or consider Peter James, current chairman of the British Crime Writers Association, author of police procedurals that have sold six million copies in more than 30 languages, who recently visited India to launch the sixth novel in the Roy Grace series. All readers may not enjoy the dreary language of police files featured in Dead Like You but, on the other hand, that is exactly the strength of his novel: We get a close approximation of how Sussex policemen might behave.

Set out in meticulous detail, the plot revolves around frequent staff briefings in MIR-1, the Major Incident Room, which is the nerve

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

centre of the investigation, with various analytical specialists rattling off their jargon, with marker pens and cluttered whiteboards and computer database searches—a genuine flavour of the administrative work that police personnel handle much of the time.

This is deliberate: Even before the Roy Grace series (the first book was published in 2005), James had been hanging out with policemen to understand how they think and work. Interestingly, it all began with a burglary in his home.

The investigators were impressed when they learnt that James was a writer.

“Why don’t you come out with us sometime?” a policeman suggested.

Exposure to the realities convinced James of the fact that teamwork is the backbone of modern policing. So, although this goes against Van Dine’s Rule 9 (“To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader”), he decided to make his novels as realistic as possible and populate them with the different categories of professionals involved in investigative work—although, of course, Roy Grace remains the central character in charge of investigations. As a rule, crime novels must have a hero whose private life is an integral part of the story.

When not on book tours, James spends a day a week with the Sussex police, follows them on violent raids, and goes street patrolling.

Research can get scary. He told me that for the novel

On file: (clockwise from top) Peter James is chairman, British Crime Writers Association; a poster of the film The Silence of the Lambs; and best­selling author Robin Cook.

Dead Simple—which starts with a stag party that goes terribly wrong when a drunken bridegroom is sealed in a coffin by his mates who then go on to crash their car—he tested what it was like to be locked in a coffin.

When the lid was screwed tight, and the undertaker went away to attend to other work, James suddenly realized how claustrophobic it was. He says, “I knew that

the air would last for about 4 hours unless I panicked and started breathing faster, but what if the undertaker had a traffic accident and didn’t come back?”

For his latest book Dead Like You, based on the “Rotherham Shoe Man” case of a fetishist who raped over 20 women in the 1980s, James worked a day in a posh ladies’ shoe shop to study lurking male perverts—to his amazement a corporate-type

gentleman in a black suit came in and tried out a pair of golden 6-inch heels. He also collaborated closely with sexual offences liaison officers, to ensure that the rape scenes weren’t titillating, and to highlight issues around rape prevention.

At the end of the day a novel isn’t merely the sum of the research that goes into it.

Usually around 6pm James mixes a “massive vodka martini” and then sits down to write. At 11pm he wraps up, watches a soap opera like Desperate Housewives, and then he revises his text when he wakes up the next day.

Although he takes his work

seriously, James isn’t one of those secretive authors who don’t like to reveal their modus operandi—anybody can follow his research and writing on his blog.

Except for one thing: There’s a red thread running through the series—detective Roy Grace’s own wife went missing on his 30th birthday and hasn’t been seen since. While solving other crimes, Roy keeps looking for clues to her disappearance.

“I’ve got the mystery worked out,” James tells me, “and in a future book you’ll find out too.

But if I reveal it to you now, I’ll have to kill you.”

He looks at me and then guffaws. Ah yes, he’s a funny guy in real life.

Zac O’Yeah is the author of Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan.

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

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SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

REVIEWS

The masters’ voices

COURTESY PENGUIN INDIA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

What went into a Burman tune and other details of his music; illuminating facts from the life of KL Saigal

Packing a Pancham When the authors, evidently keen students of Hindi film music, set out to put this book together, they might have known of the enormity of the job at hand. It is a daunting task to chronicle the life of a legend. But it is an even more daunting task to chronicle his work, especially when the man happens to be R.D. Burman, or Pancham, and the work happens to be his music.

First things first. R.D. Burman—The Man, The Music by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal passes a key test any book on a music legend must. It manages to evoke nostalgia. On page after page, you relive hundreds of Pancham gems—some cult classics, some immensely popular, some only vaguely familiar. On more than one occasion, I found myself on the Internet, looking for a particular song that the book mentioned (it mentions close to 600), either to relive it again, or to get that now-whichone-was-this? discomfort out of my mind.

After an upfront declaration that the book is not a biography, Bhattacharjee and Vittal stick to Pancham’s music for the most part, and look at the man behind the composer, primarily through the filter of his music. Some of these moments are poignantly captured, such as his period of insecurity in the late 1980s (which included Subhash Ghai unceremoniously dropping Pancham from Ram Lakhan without informing him), leading up to his death a few months before the release of the music of 1942: A Love Story in 1994.

The writers are handicapped by the lack of research available on the Indian film industry, a fact that they lament a few times during the book. Here their work begins to find limiting boundaries.

The source material for much of this book revolves around five rel-

RD Burman–The Man, The Music:

By Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal, HarperCollins, 342 pages, `399. evant interviews published in the last 20 years, and some one-onones the authors managed in the process of writing. Important people in Pancham’s life, no less than Asha Bhonsle and Gulzar, are not a part of these interviews. Ironically, Javed Akhtar is quoted liberally, while the relationship between Pancham and Gulzar, one of the most fascinating ones in the history of our cinema, is interpreted primarily through the authors’ viewfinder.

The book manages to remain objective through much of its length. In fact, it seems that the writers over-compensate to ensure that they don’t lose objectivity. They dissect every single

allegation of plagiarism against Pancham in great detail, mostly inclined to the composer’s side, but sometimes trying to find reasons for his “errors of judgment”.

The book is essentially about the process of creation, and gets fairly technical at times—for the right reasons. The parts about notes, chords and ragas may come across as complex to layman listeners. In fact, the book comments on the inability of music critics to understand what goes into a composition, and calls upon them to “upgrade themselves”.

The authors sometimes go overboard in trying to lay the blame for Pancham’s failures at the door of his films, and their lead stars. For example, speaking about the failure of Mehbooba (1976), they say: “Even a reincarnation failed to cure Kaka of his wooden expressions and Hema Malini of her grunts.” In the same breath, Sunny Deol is targeted for the failure of Zabardast (1985): “True, lead actor Sunny Deol had the looks, but then, so do most TV newscasters.”

Notwithstanding a few uncharitable comments of this nature, R.D. Burman—The Man, The Music delivers for the most part, an engaging look at a legend’s chequered career. Soaked in trivia that ranges from being interesting to simply fascinating, it serves as a fitting tribute to arguably the most important man in the history of Hindi film music.

Sailesh Kapoor

The Saigal effect The first time one hears Kundan Lal Saigal’s voice, one is struck by the sheer alien-ness of it. It is as if one is hearing something that does not just belong to another age, another time, but another culture. It is a voice easy to parody and if one has had the misfortune, as I did, of hearing Saigal when one is young, it is a voice that is easy to dismiss (even Bollywood does it to Saigal. In Professor, when Lalita Pawar falls for the aged professor, who is of course the young Shammi Kapoor in disguise as an old man, she hums a Saigal-Uma Shashi hit to herself, “Prem nagar mein, banaaoongi ghar main”,

KL Saigal—The Definitive Biography:

By Pran Nevile, Penguin India, 248 pages, `299.

and we are all invited to laugh at her nasal intonation). But stumbling upon Saigal in one’s 40s, rediscovering him, as I did, is another matter altogether. Pran Nevile does a good workmanlike job of putting together the facts of the case in K.L. Saigal. Where the facts have blurred, he offers every version that is available. This means that there are four versions to the discovery of Kundan Lal Saigal; but in the industry that produces Hindi cinema, none are as industrious as the mythopoeists. Nevile has also added several appendices, including one that tells the stories of all the films as narrated in the booklets that once came out with every film.

We read of Saigal’s visit to the kothas (brothels) of Allahabad, of his being the first non-Bengali singer to be blessed by Gurudev (Rabindranath Tagore) and allowed to sing Rabindra Sangeet. But there is no explanation here for that voice. Yes, we know about the sore throat. We have heard of the fondness for alcohol.

But nothing I have read about Saigal’s voice explains what it was: something above and beyond the human.

The alien-ness of the voice no longer seems apparent now.

Instead, its almost mythical ability to conjure up a choral ensemble becomes apparent. Surely, one thinks, this is many voices singing in perfect unison? Then, one grows accustomed to the fact that this is a single voice but one is still not comfortable. Surely this is the sound of some large

Flashback: (above) Saigal and Jamuna in Devdas, 1936; and Burman and Bhonsle at a recording.

expect that, within two years, India will be back on the 9% per annum growth path that it has been during the last four years.”

Basu is near enough— growth fell to 6.7% in 2008-09 and is a few percentage points short of 9% in 2010-11.

So what’s his prediction for the future? “It is reasonable to forecast that 30-40 years from now, India will be a developed country.” I’d translate that to simply bumping up my SIP (systematic investment plan) contributions in the equity funds I have.

For those who freeze at the mention of the word economics, the book is a gentle entry into what is known as a dismal science. His binary thought process finds great application, using game theory to make prescriptions that are as varied as attempting to stop mis-selling of financial products and tracking down a thief in Italy. Miscellany is a great read not just because it allows the reader a glimpse into the person and not just the economist, but also because he does not hesitate to step into the intellectual quagmires of modern-day India—and talks about

(oh my God) God! My favourite story goes like this: Battling a midnight tummy upset in a secluded Japanese resort, Basu had two options.

One, wake up his Japanese colleague in the middle of the night.

Two, die. He tried a third, which began as a facetious idea, took root and in the absence of any other viable option, got implemented. Basu invokes the longlost connection with “God”. He prayed to God to please take pity and make him well. And if God wondered why he only called Him in a time of distress, Basu reasons: “Unlike other people who call on you day and night with little rhyme or reason, I never do.” Fifteen minutes later he was absolutely fine. That led him to two (of course!) conclusions: Either there is no God and he got better anyway. Or there is a God who loves him for his lack of faith and not troubling Him with daily prayers!

When I asked Basu last week if he now believed in God, Basu gave a vintage binary answer: There is a short answer and a longer nuanced answer.

The short answer is No.

and awkward instrument, something like a tuba, a bassoon, no, something with the gravitas of wind but the tonalities of string?

And then there is the emotional quality, the shading of the voice. It is the voice of heartbreak, it is the voice of masculine heartbreak. And this is what makes it odd because the other men sang as men; Saigal sang as a woman would but he is undoubtedly all man, all male.

When the male saints wanted to yearn, they took on the female voice. When they wanted to express birha (separation), they reached for the feminine forms of the verbs of love and longing.

Only a woman knows how to weep, to scream pain to the skies.

Actually, only Geeta Dutt knows how to sing the blues of the 20th century; Geeta Dutt and Begum Akhtar. And only Saigal sounds like a man who knows where love ends and pain begins. In fact, I don’t think Devdas would have been made over and over again had Saigal not played him the first time and given voice to “Saawan aaya tum na aaye/Tum bin rasiya, kuchh na bhaaye”.

And yet it is odd that we know so little about the first genuine bona-fide male superstar.

Jerry Pinto Write to lounge@livemint.com

AN ECONOMIST’S MISCELLANY | KAUSHIK BASU

Gods and the GDP The renowned economist’s erudite new collection will appeal even to the lay reader B Y M ONIKA H ALAN monika.h@livemint.com

···························· t’s not often that you get to read the minds of people who have a room in the power-filled corridors of North Block.

Though most of the book was completed just before Kaushik Basu’s first few days as chief economic advisor to the Union finance ministry, you do get to read a bit about the first impressions of a person more used to lecture theatres and tutorials than the ceremonial routines of the Indian bureaucracy.

No wonder that it took him some time to figure out that the sky-high “In” tray can be dealt with by using the tray labelled “Out”. And that it was pointless trying to open and shut doors for himself or carry his own beat-up laptop case. His toughest

I

An Economist’s Miscellany: Oxford University Press, 200 pages, `395.

moment? Trying to maintain his habit of speaking plainly and not getting into trouble. He finds similarity in the art of political speech, with a character in his play called Lachhu, who speaks in practised gibberish to hoodwink non-Indian travellers looking for the great Indian spirit on their way to Benaras.

An Economist’s Miscellany (the title self-admittedly influenced by British mathematician John Edensor Littlewood’s A Mathematician’s Miscellany) will disappoint those expecting a serious discourse on economic theory.

True to its name, it is actually just a collection of old columns, articles, translations, self-scripted plays and a game put in some order. But if the dour reader of economic theory can shed the serious mask for a while, there is plenty of deep stuff under the clock of a facetious storytelling style—written in the wonderfully self-deprecating style that Basu has perfected. I found myself turning chortles into coughs as I

read the book everywhere—in office, in elevators, in the Metro.

While the non-serious reader has enough to laugh about, the serious reader will do well to read carefully. At two points in the past Basu has predicted correctly the future rates of GDP. The first was in a column in 2005, when India was still to taste the fruit of sustained 8% growth: “Unless India makes a major blunder or gets inadvertently drawn into some costly war or generates so much inequality as to cause political instability, the growth rate should continue.

And to aim for a sustained growth rate of 8% and a rapid decline in poverty is entirely within the realm of the feasible.”

In the next he stuck his head out at a time when the world was collapsing. It was 2008 and the world was fast grinding to a halt.

That the US and Europe were not going to recover for a long time was clear, but it is a tribute to his skill as an economist that he wrote in October 2008: “...India’s growth forecast for this year has been lowered to 7%—my own expectation is that it will be even lower. But there is reason to

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SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011

Culture

LOUNGE

MUSIC

Reclaiming Kashmiriyat JAVEED SHAH/MINT

Between the crossfire and curfews, a generation missed the liberal, vibrant Kashmir. We met artistes who are reviving it B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

···························· hen news spread that a Kashmiri adaptation of a Shakespearean play in the traditional folk theatre style of Bhand Pather would be enacted in Akingam, a village around 70km from Srinagar, almost 10,000 people gathered to see it. “With the backdrop of the Pir Panjal mountain range, we performed King Lear in our traditional bhand style,” says Noor Mohammad Bhagat, who runs the Kashmir Bhagat Theatre.

In 2009, he teamed up with playwright M.K. Raina to translate King Lear into Kashmiri. The production has since toured cities across India, but the group holds its first performance in the village, in June of that year, close to heart.

In the last two decades, an entire generation missed out on Kashmiriyat—the liberal way of life that transcended religion, where Sufism and Shaivism coexisted, and evenings gave way to Sufiana mausiqi, or gatherings by the riverside.

Even in the recent past, before the violence started in the valley, it was common for Kashmir’s Muslims and Hindus to go to Srinagar’s famous Broadway theatre together—huddled in their woollen phirans with a kangri in tow—hooting for James Bond’s gadgets and girls. People loved to visit the 70mm cinema hall and late-night shows were common.

Cinemas such as Broadway and Regal closed many years ago, with the buildings sometimes being used by the military. Neelam is the only functional cinema hall in the valley, but it goes days on end without a screening.

After 1989, the people of the valley were starved of cultural activity for many years. They were scared to go to the movies or attend public gatherings. “Dhamaka na ho jaaye (what if there’s a bomb blast?)” is a reality that had become, and is, a way of life.

Some of that is now changing.

There are still spells of violence, but the last few years have seen singers, classical musicians and theatre artistes stepping out of city limits and going deeper into the valley, where there are no auditoriums or cultural centres.

Basharat Peer, author of the 2009 book Curfewed

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Night, attributes this movement to the evolution of a generation.

“Those who were around 14 years of age when the militancy broke out in the late 1980s are in their 30s today. Only now are they starting to make sense of what happened, and finding their own means of expression,” says Peer.

Performing in schools or on streets, practising their phun, or art, in far-flung, militancy-affected areas, the big turnouts they get reflect the enthusiasm a n d e a g e r n e s s f o r some—any—cultural activity.

“When more than two people are not allowed to collect in one place—because it’s banned by security forces—a gathering of many hundreds, where they meet, cheer and sing, is a welcome change. It gives people a chance to grieve, pray and celebrate collectively,” says Bhagat.

That music can heal is a belief that Srinagar-based Amit Wanchoo, a doctor by profession, lives by. Wanchoo, who leads a pop music band called Immersion, joined the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in 1997. “There were blast injuries coming in every day. Some would survive, some wouldn’t. It was depressing and I had to find a vent for myself and those around me,” he says. “Music helps us keep sane. Post-6 in the evening there’s nothing to do, no entertainment or cultural exchange.

There’s cable TV and DVDs, but in the villages there’s not even that,” he adds. Wanchoo belongs to one of the few Pandit families that stayed back in Kashmir.

Formed in 2000, Immersion sings in a mix of Urdu, Kashmiri and English. Their contemporary pop sound combines traditional instruments such as the rabab and tumbaknari with the guitar.

Love, lost childhood and nostalgia are themes that dominate their songs. Wanchoo’s band has done shows in Pune, Bhopal, Delhi, Jammu and Srinagar, but the band members love to play in the villages. “Last summer we were playing in Baramulla, a district in Kashmir. After the show, old Kashmiri women came out and kissed our lead singer King Paul Singh’s hands, muttering blessings in Kashmiri. It was touching. When you play in cities outside, you have to be stylish, presentation really matters. But as you go deeper into the valley,

Note bene: (clockwise from above) King Paul Singh, lead guitarist of pop music band Immersion; Mushtaq Saaz Nawaz plays the santoor at his home in Safa Kadal, Srinagar; and Mohammed Yaqoob Sheikh (on santoor) of the Qalin Baf Memorial Sufiana Music Institute practising with students in Srinagar. people are simpler. They only want some harmony and feel grateful for every little moment of joy,” says Wanchoo.

Another Pandit family is that of the Soporis. Santoor maestro Pandit Bhajan Sopori shifted to Delhi before militancy broke out, but his son, Abhay Rustum Sopori, is always looking for excuses to go back and take the santoor with him. “Playing in Jammu and Kashmir is more of a personal mission,” says Abhay, who received the

highest state award, the J&K State Award, on 26 January for his contribution to classical music.

“On 13 January, we performed at RS Pura, a border town in Jammu. It was Lohri, and a holiday in the school where we were performing, and everyone told us that there’s no point going all the way, because no on would turn up.

When we reached there, there was a crowd of over 700 students, parents, neighbours...everyone had come. The mood was positive. I

Drawing a line: (from right) Malik; a panel from his graphic novel, Endangered Species; and My Childhood, a painting by Malik.

SAJAD MALIK, VISUAL ARTIST AND CARTOONIST

A

JP BANDRAL

JAVEED SHAH/MINT

t 13, he was already drawing cartoons for the children’s page of an Urdu daily in Kashmir. Soon the editor told him his cartoons were better suited for the editorial page. They were more an expression and lament over the Kashmir conflict, the loss of cultural and architectural heritage. At 14, he was hired by ‘Greater Kashmir’, a Srinagar­based English daily.

Now 23, he has brought out three mini graphic novels— ‘Identity Card’ in 2007, ‘Terrorism of Peace’ in 2009 and now,

‘Facebook’. ”I get my ideas by talking to the older generation. I feel that gives me a more wholesome impression of things because it’s colloquial and visual,” he says.

‘Facebook’ is the story of a Kashmiri boy who posts cellphone videos of brutality in the Kashmir conflict on Facebook. The police make up charges against the boy, forcing him to flee the state.

To view Malik’s work, log on to www.kashmirblackandwhite.com

would sing an easy dhun (tune), and the kids would repeat after me,” he says. Sopori toured the border areas of Jammu, with performances at Rajouri, Khour and RS Pura.

High notes Kashmir’s Sufiana music culture transcends the Hindu-Muslim divide. Mushtaq Saaz Nawaz, who runs a Sufi music school in the region, explains that Sufi music is largely Persian and Urdu verses which express one’s love for a universal God. Bhagat agrees: “Bhand Pather has no religious bent either.

We are there at every Urs, we sing at Shiv-Bhagwati temples as well as the mausoleum of Noor-ud-Din in Char-e-sharif.”

Historically, only boys were taught Sufiana in Kashmir.

Mohammed Yaqoob Sheikh, grandson of the late Qalin Baf, one of Kashmir’s most well-known Sufi singers, runs a Sufi music institute in Srinagar called Qalin Baf Memorial Sufiana Music Institute.

Its success encouraged him to open another branch in Sonawari in November. They have 15 students now, including five girls.

“The beauty of music is that it spreads itself. When other children see children their own age singing so beautifully in Farsi, Urdu and Kashmiri, they want to learn. And parents are supportive, because they feel it will keep them out of

trouble,” he says.

The artiste explains that 1989-96 was completely bereft of cultural activity. The years thereafter saw a marginal improvement, but the last four-five years have been better. “We get some help from the J&K Cultural Academy and tourism departments but a lot more is needed. Regardless, Sufiana mausiqi has survived centuries and it will go on. Through bullets and stones, we will not let our art die,” says Yaqoob Sheikh.

A group from the Hindu-dominated Jammu city took up theatre for peace last year. Established in 1983, Natrang, set up by Balwant Thakur, is an established drama company that has performed 250 plays and held over 5,000 shows.

It has taken part in national theatre festivals, and held performances in Moscow, Frankfurt, Berlin, Rome and London. Though it confined itself to city auditoriums over the last 28 years, last year it broke out of proscenium theatre’s mould and travelled to the countryside with a play called Choona Hai Aasman. It is the story of a young boy growing up in a conflict zone and touches upon themes of communal harmony, brotherhood, peace and realization of personal aspirations.

“We publicized the play with loudspeakers and scrolls on local cable channels, but I was apprehensive if anyone would come, and worried for security reasons,” he says. When they performed in October in Kishtwar, there were over 15,000 people.

Generations pass on their traditions and heritage primarily through arts and culture. For a society that has seen a mass exodus, especially of the youth, a lot has been lost. But the young generation of Kashmiri artistes is making a determined, desperate effort to rebuild this lost heritage.

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MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

DOCUMENTARY

Fast cars and heaven

Pit stops: (clockwise from above) Senna cele­ brating after winning the Belgian Grand Prix in 1991; the film poster; and a 1989 picture.

A film on Brazilian F1 legend Ayrton Senna reveals his multidimensional persona

B Y A NUPAM K ANT V ERMA anupam1.v@livemint.com

···························· enius. Maverick. Outsider. Superstar. Legend.

These intertitles flash in the trailer of British film-maker Asif Kapadia’s latest documentary Senna—in sync with the varied seasons in the life of the film’s protagonist.

A life that tried to blend spiritual yearning and the deafening roar of Formula One cars into a harmonious symphony, and perished in the attempt. The mosaic of grainy images shifting from racetracks to podiums leads to the title: Senna.

Brazilian F1 legend Ayrton Senna’s talent, his religious piety and his great rivalry with Alain Prost between 1984 (the year he first stepped into a F1 car in his home Grand Prix) and the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix where he died, aged 34, in a crash that shook the Formula 1 fraternity, make up the film.

His wonder years with McLaren (now Vodafone McLaren Mercedes), which saw him bag three Formula 1 world titles (1988, 1990, 1991), his intrepid approach to

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driving (which he liked to call “pure driving, real racing”), and his many famous encounters with drivers such as Michael Schumacher are featured. The interviews with his family offer a sensitive perspective to Senna’s personality, which became the stuff of sporting legend, so much so that Brazil’s 1994 football World Cup winning team dedicated their triumph to him. His funeral had the highest number of mourners in Brazilian history.

“Frankly, I wasn’t an F1 enthusiast when I decided to take over,” says Kapadia over the phone from London. “But when I met Manish (the writer) I was infected by his great passion for Ayrton Senna.”

It was this passion which he saw in Manish Pandey that led producer James Gay Rees of Midfield Films to support the Senna project.

Pandey, a Shimla-born screenwriter based in London and a huge Senna admirer, had decided early on that he wouldn’t reduce Senna’s life to the days surrounding the Imola race in 1994 when he died. To accomplish this, in March 2006 he flew to Brazil to meet Senna’s family, which had till then

turned down all requests to make a documentary on the F1 driver’s life. But they were moved by Pandey’s 40-minute presentation. As Pandey says, Viviane Senna, Ayrton’s sister, hugged him after the presentation, whispering into his ear, “You really knew my brother.”

The documentary has had the full support of Formula 1 head honcho Bernie Ecclestone, who granted them unprecedented access to the F1 archives.

Researching for the 104-minute film was a five-year process. “We sent teams to different parts of the world in addition to culling footage from archives and institutes. Some of the footage we have used is from YouTube. That’s the range of the film,” says Kapadia.

Film-maker Stanley Kubrick deemed editing “the only aspect of the cinematic art that is unique”. Kapadia and co. seem to have clung to this maxim, for the film is really a smorgasbord of video footage of Senna pieced together painstakingly without voiceovers. The film disposes of talking heads; the interviewees’ voices take the images forward

without their faces ever making an appearance.

“No photographs, no narration—just cinema; pure cinema,” says Kapadia, borrowing words that his subject often used. The film’s Brazilian soul comes from the music of Antonio Pinto, of Central Station and City of God fame.

Senna is more narrative, less documentary. His exploits on the track blaze through the screen; his courage behind the steering wheel and his many initiatives to make Formula 1 safer for his fellow competitors crown his unique personality.

Senna has garnered many awards since its release in Japan in late 2010, the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival among them. As Kapadia points out, Senna won this award in a country (US) where no one really watches Formula 1.

As the film segues into its final act, with Senna crashing into the Tamburello corner at Imola, one is reminded of the epitaph of the devout racer’s grave in Sao Paulo which, translated, reads: “Nothing can separate me from the love of God.” Nothing could.

1 May is Ayrton Senna’s 17th death anniversary. Senna is slated to release in India around October.

Q&A | AMOLE GUPTE

Bonding over tiffin The actor’s directo­ rial debut takes a novel approach to filming children

BY A N U P A M K A N T V E R M A anupam1.v@livemint.com

···························· he casual cine-goer might remember him as Bhope, the comic don from Kaminey; the cineaste, as the screenwriter of Taare Zameen Par. Gupte now slips into another avatar, that of a director, with Stanley ka Dabba.

He talks to us about the film and working with children. Edited excerpts from an interview:

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What is ‘Stanley ka Dabba’ about?

Partho plays the role of Stanley, a spunky kid, in the film. Set in a school, my film is essentially about recesses, children bonding over tiffin boxes and learning to

stand up for each other. It’s about lifelong bonds. Remember the phrase “childhood friend”?

The film emerged from a workshop. Tell us more.

Holy Family High School in Andheri (Mumbai) also happens to be my alma mater. I decided to go back there to hold a workshop; to the smells of the classroom, to the tiffin boxes of childhood.

Through the film, I have tried to relay the message that you don’t need to put children through gruelling 12-hour schedules. We made this film by befriending the children. It was all voluntary, the shooting was done only on Satur- days and we didn’t even ask the children to take off their uniforms. In that way, I think this film is the first of its kind.We really need to change the rules when it comes to the monstrous shifts and reality shows.

You shot the film only on Saturdays. How did you get the professional actors to shoot on

Chalk talk: Gupte plays a grumpy teacher in his directorial debut. such a strange schedule?

I’m really thankful to Raj Zutshi, Divya Dutta and other actors who approached this film with the spirit of amateur theatre. They play the secondary roles of teachers, peons, etc. They’re busy, yet they managed to come to the school for 4 hours every Saturday.

Honestly, I hadn’t promised myself a film when I began working with these children.

Tell us about your acting roles.

All my characters are quirky, right from Bhope to the piles-afflicted politician in Phas Gaye Re Obama.

In Urumi, a Malayalam film, I followed a comic trail. I try never to repeat myself. Acting helps fuel my films with money, though this

movie was produced on peanuts.

The khadoos (grumpy) teacher I play in Stanley is an essential part of every child’s school life.

This film marks your directorial debut. How was it working with children?

I don’t direct children. I play with them. The script for this film was ready in 2008. It took me one-and-a-half years to make it.

But I always knew that I won’t stick to regular techniques. Not a single child out of the 500 that feature in it missed a day of school. Sundays remained holidays, as they should be.

Stanley ka Dabba releases on 13 May.

RAHMAN VIA KABIR

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am now a three-book-old follower of Nasreen Munni Kabir’s writing. From Talking Songs on poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, to Lata Mangeshkar...in Her Own Voice, to the recently launched A.R. Rahman: The Spirit of Music, her books take the form of transcripts of detailed conversations with iconic figures from the world of Indian cinema and music. While Akhtar, with his eloquence and quick wit, might possibly have proved to be easier to interview, her ability to get the elusive and almost reclusive Mangeshkar to agree to being interviewed via long, unhurried phone calls is nothing short of a miracle. And now, to get the celebrated but reticent Rahman to talk about his life and work is not just admirable but definitely suggests the high regard and credibility that the author herself enjoys.

In almost all television interviews that I have had a chance to see, Rahman remains all too brief, often doing a quick mumble in response to the questions posed to him, almost eager to get the interview over and done with at the earliest. But with Kabir, he definitely seems comfortable, ready to talk and share. Yet, you still can’t call him the greatest of conversationalists. In fact, what he seems most articulate about is his strong connection with spirituality.

Sheet music: Kabir’s book.

On matters pertaining to his music, his method of working, his preferences, his art and craft, he remains brief and eager to wrap up the conversation.

But despite this, there is a lot of information that the author manages to coax from a man who essentially wants to be left alone in his music room.

Singers wanting to make their mark in playback singing would do well to heed Rahman’s advice when he says (on Page 65): “I believe singers shouldn’t just sing well, but have acting and composing skills too. This adds so much to their abilities”. There are many more insightful remarks recorded in the book, making it a collectible even though it has none of the grand collector’s item appeal of the Lata Mangeshkar book.

There are, of course, a handful of rare photographs of Rahman as a child, but by and large the selection of photographs seems to concentrate on flat for-the-record shots of celebrity artistes with whom Rahman has worked and collaborated, or concert shots. Unless you are up for collecting photos of Rahman in coats, jackets and achkans in different colours, they appear repetitive for the most part. My personal favourite, though, is a photograph of Rahman’s wife Saira, in warm amber tones, taken by the maestro himself.

The book also contains a CD titled Connections with eight tracks composed by Rahman and mixed by his long-time associate H. Sridhar, who died tragically in 2008. For students of music, the book also contains the score for the Theme from Bombay and Cry of the Rose from Roja. So there’s a lot that the book offers to die-hard Rahman fans and students of music. Meanwhile, I wait eagerly for Nasreen Munni Kabir’s next book.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

SPRING IN THE STEP The Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra’s annual summer ballet season starts today with six productions that straddle the line between classical Indian dance and contemporary production vocabulary.

There is ‘Meera’, a dance­drama on the life of Meerabai (30 April); ‘Karna’, a brilliant ballet which uses Mayurbhanj Chhau and questions the relation between man and destiny (1 May); ‘Parikrama’, which explores the cycle of human birth and death (3 May); ‘Durga’, which tells of women harnessing their positive energies to conquer the negative forces of the Mahishasuras at large in society (5 May), and finally, the elaborate ‘Kamayani’, also in Chhau, which presents a medley of desire, action and knowledge and plays on the seven ‘chakras’ of the Kundalini (7­8 May).

Produced and directed by Shobha Deepak Singh, who’s been associated with the premier dance institution for the past 43 years, and with names such as Shashidharan Nair, who pioneered Chhau for the stage, vocalist Shubha Mudgal and puppeteer Dadi Pudumjee involved in the productions, this week of livewire stagecraft comes highly recommended.

Fiery moves: Catch Meera today.

The performances will be held at Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi, from 7pm onwards, 30 April-8 May. Passes available at the Kendra, 1, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi.

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The city’s ghazal culture is being revived in living room soirées and university halls

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ars line the road leading to Niraja Giri’s house. The ghazal singer is hosting Shaam-e-Ghazal. The setting recalls a time when mehfils in people’s homes were a common occurrence in the city, and “culture” readily available within the four walls of your home in the form of qawwalis, mushairas, ghazal evenings and discussions.

Inside, the first guests have arrived. Members can predict with certainty that it will be Air Chief Marshal (retired) Idris Hasan Latif and wife Bilkis Latif.

The couple is always the first to arrive, and they’ve been doing so for a while, having been a part of Shaam-e-Ghazal in Delhi.

Shaam-e-Ghazal, an organization of ghazal aficionados, has almost 50 members.

Ustad Aslam Khan, the singer for the evening, has come from Mumbai and is doing lastminute checks. The performance is taking place in the drawing room, the furniture has been moved to make room for the rows of chairs, and these fill up rapidly, surprisingly well before time. This time, the numbers have swollen with the addition of students from the city’s (and probably the country’s) first ghazal appreciation class.

Aadaabs are exchanged, and printed sheets of the evening’s ghazals distributed. It is one member’s job to sift through a

poet’s work—because even the best have written both the banal and the sublime—and pick eight.

He’s called the akhale-kul, the brain bank or mastermind, and the task has fallen to Prof. Yousuf Zayi. This time, the selection happened a little late and there has been no time to transliterate and print the ghazals in English. But for the most part it is not required—this is an audience that understands every nuance of the ghazal.

Khan acknowledges as much.

“It’s quite a rarity to find an audience like this, who not only understand the words but also the gayaki,” he says. Here, appreciation will be bestowed by a few “wah, wahs”, a nodding of the head or a gentle sway of the hand; applause breaks out only at the end of each ghazal.

Though he’s been performing for the past 55 years, there’s no mistaking his need to prove

himself again.

Almost on the dot at 7.30pm, conversations die down and the evening begins with a quick introduction of the singer and musicians, followed by a short biography of the poet, Firaq Gorakhpuri. Then it’s over to Khan, who will sing four ghazals before a tea break, and four ghazals after. The evening will wrap up by 10pm at the latest.

Shaam-e-Ghazal has been held six times a year for the past 15 years in Hyderabad. It began in 1996 when Hyderabadi Koakab Durry, who had started the institution in Delhi in the late 1960s, retired and returned to his hometown. Though he could find no patronage, it didn’t stop the organization from taking off. “We told him not to worry about the money, but just start it off,” says Dilnaz Baig, secretary and founder-member of Shaam-eGhazal in

Hyderabad. Their solution lay in memberships and a number of “old Hyderabadis”; many whose families had lived in the city for a few generations, quickly signed up. It seemed natural that the Urdu ghazal find respect in the region of its birth—the Deccan.

In Hyderabad, it has attracted performances by the brothers Ahmed Hussain and Mohammed Hussain, considered by many to be India’s finest ghazal singers. Rita Ganguly has sung too, as have a number of Hyderabadis: Vittal Rao, Giri, Jasbeer Kaur, Sabir Habib and Adnan Saalim. Few expect payment, considering it a privilege to perform for this audience.

Giri, a member of Shaam-eGhazal and a singer herself, was also one of the first people to sign up for Maulana Azad National Urdu University’s ghazal appreciation class, Tahseen-e-Ghazal, the brainchild of Prof. Khalid Saeed, when it launched last year. “I’m a ghazal singer and I wanted to know what I was singing,” she says, “so it would lend more feelings and involvement in my singing.”

Though her interest in the course was professional, she is more the exception than the rule.

Most people who have

NISHAT FATIMA

Cultural ambassador: Dilnaz Baig, founder­member and secretary of Shaam­e­Ghazal in Hyderabad.

Passage of time: (top) The audience at the Shaam­e­ Ghazal mehfil in Hyderabad; and a ghazal and dance recital at the home of a 19th century nawab in Hyderabad. joined Tahseen-e-Ghazal do so for a simple reason: to add an extra dimension to their enjoyment of ghazals.

The man who designed the course, Prof. Saeed, says the idea was born when Ashok Chauhan, the chairman of non-governmental organization (NGO) Pratham, asked him whether he knew of any classes where he could learn how to appreciate ghazals without having to read Urdu. “There is a system to the ghazal,” Prof.

Saeed says. “You have to become familiar with it to enjoy its literal and metaphorical meaning.”

The six-month course has been created especially for the enthusiast. It’s completely at the spoken level—even the exams. Classes are held once a week on Sundays, timed conveniently between 11am-2pm for the overwhelmingly adult, working audience (the current group includes a designer, a geneticist, a nephrologist, a couple of more doctors, two journalists, a poet and an independent researcher) and take place in the heart of the city, as opposed to the university campus 20km away. “When we began the course last year, 10 signed up and about four-five attended,” says Prof. Saeed. “This year, 22 have signed up and almost 15-16 are regular.”

He’s hopeful that the numbers will swell further with the next batch, especially as the university will soon also be meeting the demand for a course that teaches Urdu so they can enjoy the ghazal in every sense.

Early in March, the students

THE MASTERS Dakhini poets of Urdu ghazals Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (1580­1611): This sultan of Gol­ conda was the first Urdu poet to put together a ‘diwan’ or col­ lection of his work. His work was greatly influenced by the festivals, culture and people of the Deccan.

Wali Mohammed Wali (1667­1707): Famous as Wali Deccani, this Aurangabad­born poet’s work is one of the first instances of Urdu poetry in the north.

Siraj Aurangabadi (1715­63): One of Deccan’s most famous poets, but not much is known about the life of this mystic poet.

He wrote in what is called Fasih Urdu (pure Urdu).

Mah Laqa Bai Chanda (1796­1824): The world’s first female poet to have a ‘diwan’ of her work, she was also a singer and dancer. Considered a courtesan, she was learned and powerful, and lived through the courts of two nizams, the second and third.

She wrote in Dakhini. hosted an evening to commemorate the birth centenary of poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, an event attended by about a hundred people. They presented his life and work, discussed his verses, and Giri sang a few. It was attended by many members of the Shaam-e-Ghazal, so it seems inevitable that a number of students are also attending the event at Giri’s house—a meeting of Tahseen-e-Ghazal and Shaam-eGhazal that helps provide the fullest appreciation of the ghazal.

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