Lounge for 07 May 2011

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

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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 19

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE A portrait of Rabindranath Tagore taken in Singapore, 1927.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH FLIPKART’S BINNY BANSAL >Page 6

BAND AID

There’s nothing like some bold wrist work to smash your style quotient off the charts >Page 7

THE ASIAN MIND

DESERT RUNNER The first Indian to complete a 250km­ long trail in the Chilean Atacama, one of the toughest endurance races, shares his experience >Page 12

On the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, we revisit Visva­Bharati and find out how his Asian journeys shaped him—and the university he created >Pages 9­11 LUXURY CULT

LEARNING CURVE

RADHA CHADHA

TOWERING PALACES, FADING MEMORIES

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am at a penthouse in a swank condominium complex that overlooks the DLF Golf Course in Gurgaon. The apartment has been gutted and is in the throes of a head-to-toe renovation to suit the tastes of the new owner. There is a lot being done—walls moved, false ceilings added, floors marbled, bathrooms remodelled, kitchen jazzed up, woodwork galore and, of course, dozens of “loose pieces”—the term for movable furniture— being tailor-made for the family. The amount of work on the terrace alone... >Page 4

GOURI DANGE

THERE’S PLENTY IN A NAME

T

he Internet is full of sites about parents giving children names ranging from the odd to the downright ridiculous. People then quote “studies” either about how children with odd names do well, or how they fail at what they do, etc. I tend to feel that it is pretty cruel to have a child deal with a name that is not only odd—but “funny and obscene”?

Surely there is no need to get so attached to the significance of a name... >Page 4

THE VANISHING RAIN SACK

‘Barsatis’ once defined a way of life in Delhi. But the terrace room with the monsoon breeze is in terminal decline >Page 18

CULT FICTION

R. SUKUMAR

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

OSAMA TEZUKA’S CLEAN INTENSITY

H

e died in 1989, but some of his books are just being published in English, so it’s not surprising that the works of the godfather of manga Osama Tezuka are seeing a revival of sorts in the English-speaking world. Volumes of Black Jack, Tezuka’s light-hearted series about the capers of a skilled but unlicensed doctor, continue to be published regularly. And every once in a while Vertical Inc. publishes books such as Buddha (in eight volumes)... >Page 15

PHOTO ESSAY

BRUSHING UP HISTORY

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

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

LONG LIVE THIN­SKINNED INDIA

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learly the bureaucrats presidential-hopeful who came up with the Trump at a high-powered country’s new set of Internet White House dinner that rules last month have never the latter attended. Then lived in online India. They he announced that his have never encountered an team had killed Osama Internet Hindu, an Orkutiya bin Laden. Case closed. or that most vile of species, I wonder if our bureauthe Anonymous Indian who crats even understand the under the guise of his anoimplications of these new nymity can wish you are rules? Who will regulate raped, your new baby girl gets these complainants?

AIDS and dies, or that your Already, Indian creativity helicopter meets the same struggles to combat the fate as your chief minister coldark shadow of wasteful league’s did.

Public Interest Litigation If they had they would (PIL); our film industry is never have come up with the the worst hit.

Silence please: French cartoonist Michel Cambon absurd Information TechnolRecently, the Goa high satirized curbs on free expression on the occasion of ogy Rules, 2011 that require court dismissed a PIL World Press Freedom Day on 3 May. the hosts or owners of weballeging the depiction of sites to take action on “objecGoa and its culture in the tionable content” within 36 hours of virulently when anyone outside India film Dum Maaro Dum. Previously, receiving a complaint. The new rules critiques any aspect of the way we live courts have dismissed PILs objecting s a y t h a t c o n t e n t s h o u l d n o t b e and think. When I wrote a satirical col- to the titles of Slumdog Millionaire and “grossly harmful, harassing, blasphe- umn on my relationship and frustra- Dhobi Ghat; they have shooed away a mous, defamatory, obscene, porno- tions with India last year, the appalling PIL asking for a ban on chartbusters graphic, paedophilic, libellous, inva- reaction from readers even included Munni badnaam hui and Sheila ki jawaani and another that demanded sive of another’s pri- one death threat.

And what about the people who the court do something about the film DEBATE v a c y , h a t e f u l , o r r a c i a l l y , e t h n i c a l l y conjured these rules? Our rulers are so Guzaarish as it “promotes” mercy killobjectionable, disparaging, relating or thin-skinned that political humour ing. And who knows how many PILs have been dismissed against Bollyencouraging money laundering or doesn’t even exist in this nation. gambling, or otherwise unlawful in They could learn a thing or two wood’s biggest star, Shah Rukh Khan.

The new rules, if implemented, will any manner whatever”. from politicians in the US and UK. They might as well ban every web- Take Barack Obama. Even after he only serve as a chastity belt for our site and shut down our online world. released it, the US President’s birth writers. If at all anyone needs protecContent providers can certainly not certificate has provided so much fod- tion in cyberspace, it’s the writers who shoulder the responsibility of reining der for late night comics in that coun- ignore the scum of the subcontinent in anything and everything that any try. “President Obama released his and continue to analyse and dissect an Indian user might find “objection- long-form birth certificate, proving I n d i a c h a n g i n g a t t h e s p e e d o f able”. We would be left only with the once and for all he was born in this light—and a country that is still stock prices. country. But you know, it never ends. weighed down by its mucky baggage.

In 2002, Wall Street Journal columI n d i a n s a r e n o t o r i o u s l y t h i n - Now Republican leaders are saying skinned. We routinely object to books they want to see the placenta,” said nist Peggy Noonan once asked: “Why do we celebrate those who complain? without reading them; we throw a tan- television host Jay Leno. trum when the buzz words cricket, Obama’s reaction to megalomaniac Why don’t we celebrate stoics who can Kashmir, Pakistan, Ram, Gandhi, Donald Trump’s sustained attack on take it? They’re the ones who move hismanoos, sex, cattle class, cow, Hindu, his nationality was simple. After he tory forward.” The question is still valid.

Muslim and Arundhati Roy are used in made his birth certificate public, he almost any context; we object more cracked a couple of great jokes about Write to lounge@livemint.com

LOUNGE LOVES | MANIK­DA: MEMORIES OF SATYAJIT RAY

The ‘do­it­yourself’ man Ghosh reminisces from the shoots of seven films which, taken together, can define Ray’s idiom: Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Aranyer Din Ratri, Pratidwandi, Ashani Sanket, Mahanagar, Seemabaddha and Ghare-Baire. He describes instances where Ray does exactly what he wants despite acknowledging other views, and without resorting to tyranny.

Nobody really told Ray how to do something. lmost all Indian writing on Satyajit Ray Ghosh often found him answering his is eulogistic. Barring a few, including own phone calls, helping his technicians, Chidananda Dasgupta’s The Cinema of Sat- always answering the door of his house himyajit Ray, most writers and critics can’t hide self and reaching his filming locations much their reverence. His stature as auteur and before time. “His mantra,” says Ghosh, “was modernist film vanguard has no Indian par- ‘do-it-yourself’. He had that unusual quality allels. But the works, informed by an urbane, of leadership. During location shootings, if Western sensibility, like any work of art, have the call time was at 6 in the morning, he made for riveting critiques—among others, would be ready by 5.30 and silently walk up Marie Seton’s first biography of him, Portrait and down the veranda outside our room.” of a Director: Satyajit Ray, and some of Pau- Ghosh was a close friend of the family and line Kael’s essays on his films, including one recalls taking some candid shots of him and of the 1960 film Devi. his wife together, hosting friends at their The latest book out on Ray, by photogra- home. But Ray, known to be cagey about his pher Nemai Ghosh, is another unapolo- personal life, requested Ghosh not to pubgetic panegyric. It is a worshipper’s blind lish those photographs. ode to his deity.

Manik-Da is also an autobiography. The Ghosh spent around two decades with fuller portrait is that of Ghosh himself, an Ray, photographing him at work and profes- accidental, self-taught photographer who sionally shooting the stills for his films. Ray realized his full potential because he “saw” recognized the theatre actor’s talent with the things like the most towering Indian filmmaker of that time did. Ray liked camera and unwittingly became his his camera angles and his patron. Later, Ghosh became a understanding of natural part of the Ray household—a light, and decided to nurture friend to his wife Bijoya and son his talent.

Sandip. The book, Manik-Da, is a Although it’s a personal short, anecdotal account of times account, the book also offers a spent with Ray on location and at sense of the age— when couhis home until his death in 1992. It rageous and self-willed crealso includes a memorable meetativity was revered. ing Ghosh had with photographer The portraits and working Henri Cartier-Bresson, then the Da stills in the book are rare and Vinci of the single-lens camera, one of the pleasures of sifting when he persuaded Cartier-Bresthrough the glossy black and son to write a foreword to a book of white pages. Ray can be seen at Ray’s photographs. his most reflective, most candid In spite of the author’s idola- Manik­Da—Memo­ trous voice, a portrait of Ray ries of Satyajit Ray: and most animated. A keep for film lovers. emerges. It reveals the director’s HarperCollins antipathy to sycophancy, and a India, Sanjukta Sharma natural gift to lead and inspire. 107 pages, `199.

Photographer Nemai Ghosh’s ode to the director through words and some rare portraits

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LOUNGE LOVES | SOTHEBY’S

MAHARAJA WATCHES

High time Why the maharaja of Patiala may have been Cartier’s biggest patron

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n 15 May, auction house John Graff, perhaps the foreSotheby’s will hold its first most Swiss portrait enamelist biannual auction of watches for of the late 19th century. The 2011. This year the auction, rajas usually sent their photowhich will be held at the Hotel graphs to workshops in and Beau-Rivage in Geneva, will around Geneva, often through feature a selection of hand- agents in London, where they picked, Indian-themed time- were translated into portraits.

The Indian market for prepieces. Geoffroy Ader, the comp a n y ’ s E u r o p e a n h e a d o f mium timepieces lasted from watches, told Lounge that all the middle of the 19th century the watches came from private to early 20th century. During collections and were part of the this time, says Ader, the mahacompany’s growing catalogue raja of Patiala perhaps became of Indian pieces. the most important individual So far Sotheby’s has had suc- client in Cartier’s history. cess selling watches of Chinese Sotheby’s selection includes and Turkish provenance to pieces previously owned by buyers. Ader hopes this new maharaja Bhupinder Singh of collection could arouse interest P a t i a l a , a n d P r a t a h s i n g from Indian buyers too. “We Bahadeer, maharaja of Orchha, want to develop that market Tikamgarh and Bundelkhand. and, therefore, we have The latter piece, made in carefully chosen watches around 1890, features an in meticulous condition intricate portrait in which and with a strong history the maharaja is wearing a behind them.” Given the necklace inlaid with diahistory and quality, monds and rubies. For Ader says, the this piece Sotheby’s prices are attracestimates a price of tive even for Swiss Franc new collectors.

20,000−30,000 The high( a r o u n d lights from the `10.32-15.49 Rajah Watches lakh). “We are selection include hoping buyers in cases with beautiIndia will be keen to ful portraits of kings bring these elements and noblemen in the of their heritage and Historic: The Geneva style of patrimony back Maharaja Pra­ enamel work. Many home,” Ader says. tahsing Bahadeer pieces were crafted watch (lot 109). by the renowned Sidin Vadukut ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY: VISVA­BHARATI PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT, KOLKATA

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

RADHA CHADHA LUXURY CULT

No place for memories in our towering palaces

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COURTESY SICIS

designers such as Philippe Starck), Kohler, Roca, Grohe is the done thing.

If you are picking Cera or Hindware, careful, you may be on the wrong side of the luxury track. The view on kitchens is mixed—some say go all out with one of the firang (foreign) brands although the cost of the kitchen may equal the cost of the rest of the home; others suggest homespun woodwork because the maids are going to use it anyway. One thing that unfortunately hasn’t changed—servant rooms continue to be small, unadorned appendages to these Versailles-wannabe condos.

Another baffling trend is choosing artworks to match the sofas—yes, you read right, choose your sofa colour scheme first and then find a “matching” painting to hang on top of it, assuming, of course, that your woodwork hasn’t gobbled up all the walls. I have this vision of scouring the world for the perfect Souza or Ram Kumar to go with the pista-green couch.

But the most alarming trend is this—every piece of furniture, artwork, mirror, vase, planter, you-name-it, is spanking new. Every trace of your life before is deleted. You shed the past like a worn-out skin and start afresh with designer-selected memory-devoid pieces surrounding you. You throw away the first chairs you bought after you got married, the paintings your daughter made when she was 10, the Irani Café table that made you laugh, and you reboot into the new Opulent Eclectic, woodwork-smothered, Italian-marbled, matched-artwork space that is now home.

am at a penthouse in a swank condominium com-

plex that overlooks the DLF Golf Course in Gurgaon. The apartment has been gutted and is in the throes of a head-to-toe renovation to suit the tastes of the new owner. There is a lot being done—walls

moved, false ceilings added, floors marbled, bathrooms remodelled, kitchen jazzed up, woodwork galore and, of course, dozens of “loose pieces”—the term for movable furniture—are being tailor-made for the family. The amount of work on the terrace alone is impressive—it is being transformed into a landscaped garden, complete with water body, lawn, gazebo, full-scale bar, specially commissioned sculptures, the works.

A modern-day Sita may well be swayed by this Ashok Vatika-on-a-terrace.

The architect-cum-contractor is a young man, exuberant, painting word-pictures of how each space will be radically altered. What will be the style of the completed apartment? He gives me a “duh, dumb question” look, pauses and finally sums up the style as “eclectic”, quickly going on to explain how the sink in the powder room will be gold, but other bathrooms will merely have modern, minimal, top-of-the-line sinks. The lobby wall, which scales up two floors, will have a burnished gold rendition.

Facing it is a wooden framework with an odd-shaped hole in its belly—apparently a sculpture of some significance will be embedded in it. By now I know better than to ask why an independent artwork needs to be ensconced in wood—the rule of this house is “more is more”, where even embellishments have to be further embellished. And the style code seems to be not just “eclectic”, but rather “Opulent Eclectic”, where the brief seems to be to interpret unabashed opulence in as many different ways as you can.

As I check out several projects by other interior designers, it sets me thinking. There is an amazing flurry of

upscale home decor activity in Gurgaon—the Magnolias complex, for example, is like a beehive with a few hundred apartments being “done up” from scratch by individual owners.

Substantial budgets are being blown up. Going rates for interiors in this neck of the woods range from `2,500-4,000 per sq. ft, luxury apartment sizes are usually upwards of 3,000 sq. ft—you do the math and the zeroes start lining up rapidly. The aforementioned penthouse is an expansive 10,000 sq. ft. The average apartment in Magnolias is 5,800 sq.ft., there are 589 apartments, and let’s say each spends a “modest” `1 crore (i.e., no gold sinks, no silver-plated beds), that is still `589 crore on interior decor being spent in one housing estate alone. And there are umpteen such condominium complexes sprouting up all over Gurgaon.

The sheer scale of it suggests that this is a defining moment for interior decor. New rules of design are being written and it worries me that the best we can come up with—barring a few exceptions—is Opulent Eclectic or some garish mutation of it. I have no problem with opulence—the Taj Mahal is opulence personified, but it is also breathtakingly beautiful— however, the Opulent Eclectic style reigning in Gurgaon has little regard for beauty. It worships the Goddess of Wealth at the expense of the Goddess of Beauty. I wish it worshipped both.

What are some of the rules in place?

Use the finest raw materials, fittings, fixtures—if possible imported—is one for sure. Italian marble has become de rigueur, and designers rattle off Satuario, Botticino, Travertino, etc., as basic choices for your floors or bathrooms (there are creative ways to spotlight it too—in one of the homes a

Gilted: Sicis’ Gustav Klimt range of wall mosaics is opulent yet beautiful. large glass wall had been flanked with fat slabs of marble waist-high—lest somebody miss the fact that expensive marble was used). Designer tiles are in vogue for bathrooms and kitchens—they are available in amazing variety—and I was surprised to learn that top-end tiles cost more than marble. I saw a unique home where the floors were patterned in a variety of exquisite tiles—it was quirky, it gave a sense of who the family was—it was painstakingly put together,

a personal labour of love.

Wooden flooring for the bedrooms is in. In fact, smothering the place in woodwork seems to be another unwritten law—“more is more” on steroids—and some homes have so much woodwork there’s barely any wall left for paintings (the fact that many of these designers also have furniture factories may have something to do with it). Bathrooms are crucial spaces to splash out on—pricey imports from Duravit (which offers

Radha Chadha is one of Asia’s leading marketing and consumer insight experts. She is the author of the best-selling book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury.

Write to Radha at luxurycult@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Radha’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/radha­chadha

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

THERE’S PLENTY IN A NAME My sister has given her child a very obscure name from the scriptures.

The word sounds funny and near-obscene in English and looks really bad when written down. The baby is just some months old, but already the other children laugh at the name and go on chanting it because it is very amusing. You can imagine what it’s going to be like when the child goes to school. My sister says the name has been suggested by her spiritual leader, and its meaning is so beautiful and appropriate that she will teach her daughter to be proud of it. What is your opinion? I am urging her to find another with a similar meaning and greater social acceptability.

Please advise if this is right on my part or whether, as my sister says, the child will deal with it. She reads your column and I would appreciate an answer.

The Internet is full of sites about parents giving children names ranging from the odd to the downright ridiculous. People then quote “studies” either about how children with odd names do well, or how they fail at what they do, etc. I tend to feel that it is pretty cruel to have a child deal with a name that is not only odd—but “funny and obscene”? Surely there is no need to

get so attached to the significance of a name if it is going to set your child up for teasing, mockery and ridicule.

“Unusual” names a child can be taught to live with and even be proud of. But frankly, going into the distinctly odd and laughable zone is just placing a millstone around a child’s neck.

Your sister’s faith in her spiritual leader does not have to be manifested in the child’s name necessarily, you could tell her. And if it is possible, you could speak to this leader, and ask him/her why he/she is playing this cosmic joke on the child by suggesting a name that will be so embarrassing for the child to live with.

Many people born with odd names that invited teasing and derision when they were growing up say they waited impatiently till they could jettison the name legally, or resorted to “giving themselves” a pet name, going to great lengths to hide the real name. With the world becoming something of a global village, today it is not easy to live with a name that means something terrible or terribly funny in another culture, since various cultures do intersect often now. It’s not that parents need to consider how it sounds or means in many languages, but if as you say it

sounds bad in English itself, which is spoken all over the world, and in this country too, then I would say she really needs to reconsider her decision about naming her baby.

We have a 10-year-old daughter. I am expecting a child again. Two years back we lost our younger son at age 6 to cancer after a 10-month struggle with the disease. We had the help of a family counsellor (we lived in the US at the time) and our daughter, though very traumatized during the time and after the death, has managed to deal with things, as have we. However, she is absolutely adamant now that we name the child after the brother she lost—and a variation of that name if it is a girl. My husband and I find the thought painful and also unfair to the child that is to come. Please advise us on how to handle this.

In the grieving process, one of the deepest fears and guilt, of both adults and children, comes from continuing to live life “normally” after the loved one has departed. The guilt and fear centres around “forgetting” the person. Of course we don’t forget, but the fact that we resume our routine life worries us; we feel this in some way diminishes the memory of the person. It is in response to this fear that many people in your situation choose to give the new child the older name. This way, it is felt, the child’s memory is kept fully alive. Perhaps your daughter is (unconsciously) doing the same thing—letting go of the departed person feels too much like “forgetting about him”. And, hence, the insistence on the earlier

How do you get this across to your daughter? First, by reassuring her in many ways, not necessarily always verbal, that her departed brother is and will forever be a precious part of your lives. Also, you could a little matter-of-factly say, the next time that she brings up the naming issue, “no, the new baby can’t have the old name because he/she is an entirely new person and needs its very own name”. If when you say this, she cries, or sulks, or shows any kind of distress, lead her into a conversation about her brother, about missing him, about Baby blues: Prepare your child for the new person. loving him, remembering him. name. It is also a way of dealing with Perhaps you could even go so far as the pain of loss, by thinking of the to say that he wouldn’t have liked his new child as a simple replacement. name given away like that. But tread Also, at her age, perhaps she does carefully here, because this is territory think that the arrival of the baby will which involves guessing at what be like her little brother never went someone who has died “might have away. And so giving him or her the liked and not liked”, which is same name will just be part of this emotionally tricky terrain. thought process, perhaps for her.

But as you rightly feel, this is not Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting. healthy—for the family as well as the new child. The new child must be a Write to Gouri at person in his own right, not a learningcurve@livemint.com “replacement” for the one that died.

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SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

L5

Eat/Drink COOLERS

Message in the bottle PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Rooh Afza and its timeless siblings have successfully weathered the market for decades

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

B Y A MRITA R OY amrita.r@livemint.com

···························· hen the hot, dusty winds started blowing in from the deserts of Rajasthan they would bring a visitor to author Rakhshanda Jalil’s childhood home in Nizamuddin, Delhi. Hakeem Abdul Hameed would drive up in his Fiat and present her father, his friend, a bottle of Rooh Afza. The gentleman is no more, and the decades have loosened family ties, but the jewel red, Unani syrup made by the hakeem’s Hamdard (Wakf) Laboratories since 1907 still heralds in summer at the Jalil home.

“My mother still makes Rooh Afza sherbets and milkshakes. Specially during the days she sets up water kiosks to serve thirsty passers-by,” Jalil says.

Across the country, every sip at Paramount, the sherbet-only shop at Kolkata’s College Square, comes with the assurance of history. It is a muggy April evening, and the shop, seven short of a century, is brimming with the thirsty: There are college students, elderly couples, young romantics and singletons emptying glasses of Green Mango, Grape Crush and Cocoa Malai under a tall ceiling, watched over by mounted photographs of grim-looking Bengali nationalist leaders from the previous century.

Rooh Afza and Paramount are successful legatees of the old summertime tradition of sherbet making introduced by the Mughals.

Every household has its own tale and its signature recipe for the blistering months. Arun Kumar recalls his mother used to crush the root of the Indian Sarsaparilla—known as nannari in Tamil, sogade beru in Kannada and anantamoola in Sanskrit—and toss it in while making their afternoon tea. “It was common practice to add items with medicinal

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INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

properties to our daily food,” says Kumar, who now helps run a family business in Gokarna, Karnataka, that has been manufacturing sherbet concentrates for 25 years.

Most sherbets claim some medicinal properties, based as they are on Ayurvedic and Unani traditions. Kumar’s Ashoka Honey and Food Products brews Sarsaparilla with saffron and sugar to make a honey-coloured concentrate. The sweet, vitamin C-rich sogade beru sherbet is consumed all year for its medicinal value, but it’s the summer months that make it indispensable in traditional Karnataka homes. It is also popular as a blood purifier and the manufacturers claim sogade beru and the sherbet made from it helps contain hyper-acidity, urinary tract infection and anaemia.

The Rooh Afza website too cites a long list of health benefits—it aids in digestion, relieves acidity and dehydration, is an energy drink, and much more. It has survived changing tastes and cola giants, even acquiring its first brand ambassador in actor Juhi Chawla a couple of years ago. But what’s remained unchanged is the distinctive, overly-sweet, slightly medicinal taste that evokes strong sentiments (you either love it or hate it, there’s no middle path) and its versatility—it is had as a sherbet, as a shake, a smoothie, in sundaes, custard and mocktails, drizzled over kulfis and falooda.

Another drink without a con-

Thirst busters: (clockwise from left) Sherbets at Par­ amount, Kolkata; Nehru sips on Sosyo; the Har­ narain Gokalchand shop in Old Delhi; Rooh Afza was formulated in 1907; and sogade beru sherbet is rich in vitamin C.

sensus about its taste is Sosyo.

“Sweet and sour”, “very tangy”, “like toned down vinegar with lots of sugar”, “reminds of cider”—the a e r at e d d ri n k fro m Gujar a t attracts many adjectives. To complicate matters, the bottle’s tag line is The taste with a twist. Limited to Gujarat, other than some following in Mumbai, it was originally called Socious, a Latin word meaning “ally” or “comrade”; the name a nod to the reformist, nationalist era it was first manufactured in. Mohsin Hajoori, a Surat industrialist, closed his family business of manufacturing Vimto, a British drink, in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for

Swadeshi and introduced Socious—complete with a secret formula—in 1927. Thirty years later, the name was formally Indianized to Sosyo.

Paramount’s signature daab sherbet, a coconut-based creation, is of historical extraction too. It was Prafulla Chandra Roy, the nationalist leader and entrepreneur, who goaded the Mazumdar family, the owners, to invent a drink that would cool young India and fire their entrepreneurial zeal.

In 1962, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was photographed taking a sip of Sosyo. “My grandfather loved it,” says Farah Khan, a Surat-based entrepreneur who was in the drink’s marketing team in the early 1990s, “but my children have it only at their school.”

That is because the school serves no other cold drink. “Nowadays,

SHERBET SOLUTIONS

it in the mixer. Add the puree to about six glasses of mango panna (for how to make mango panna, log on to www.livemint.com/sherbet.htm). Strain the mixture and serve with kala namak sprinkled on top.

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Saunf ka Sherbet

Raisins in ‘aam panna’, nutmeg and saffron in ‘lassi’, and other tricks to spice up your drink his summer add a twist to your usual glass of lassi and aam panna with recipes we learnt at the Sharbat Making Workshop held by Red Earth, an independent arts organization focusing on the revival of Indian culture, in April. “We all have memories of sherbets that our grandmoms made when we visited their houses as children during summer break. My idea is to revive some of those cooling, delicious drinks,” says Himanshu Verma, who conducts these workshops at his Lado Sarai studio in south Delhi.

Of the 15 varieties he teaches, which include ber and phalse ka sherbet, imli ka panna, gulab ka sherbet and ginger-lemon cooler, we chose four.

Piyush Serves 4 Ingredients Kkg yogurt 3-4 tsp sugar (use less if you wish) A couple of pinches of grated nutmeg A pinch of saffron

Method Soak the saffron in a glass of warm water for 2-3 hours. Mix the yogurt and sugar in a blender. Add the saffron water and blend again. Serve in a glass with ice, and garnish with nutmeg.

Sattu ka Sherbet Serves 1 Ingredients 2 tsp sattu (roasted gram powder) Shakkar (Indian brown sugar) to taste Method Add about 2 tbsp of sattu per glass and shakkar to taste. Top up with chilled water and ice, mix and serve.

Kishmish ka Panna Serves 6 Ingredients 20 kishmish (raisins) 2 lemons 6 glasses of diluted aam panna Method Wash the raisins and soak them in lemon juice for at least 2 hours. Blend

Serves 20 (diluted) Ingredients 100g badi saunf (large fennel seeds) 1kg sugar 1.5 litres water 2 pods of green cardamom Method Wash the saunf thoroughly. Boil in 1.5 litres water on medium flame for 20-30 minutes till the water is infused with the essence of the saunf. You can strain the mixture to remove the saunf granules. Add sugar to the saunf water and boil till you get a thick syrup. Crush the green cardamoms (discard the peel and use only the grains) and add them to the concentrate. Serve mixed with chilled water to taste.

The next workshops will be held on 8 and 29 May, noon-5pm. The fee is `1,200 per person. For details, call 011-41764054.

Seema Chowdhry

children go for Coke and Pepsi,” Khan says.

It’s a common gripe. “Today’s generation wants everything instant, ready-to-serve. They don’t want to make the effort to mix a drink,” says Vineet Arora, a scion of an Old Delhi family that is one of the oldest FPO licence holders in the city.

The Aroras’ store, Harnarain Gokalchand at Khari Baoli in Old Delhi, reputedly the largest spice market in India, has been selling murabbas, pickles and syrups since 1944 under the Harnarains brand. It is one of the few shops where the buyer is not greeted by heady stacks of spices and dry fruits. Instead, the shelves are lined with colourful bottles of rose, kewra, bael, khus, even sandalwood syrups. Arora’s great grandfather, Harnarain, set up

the shop to sell home-made concoctions based on family recipes.

The recipes have remained unchanged, though they are now manufactured at their factory in north-west Delhi.

It’s the sameness of tradition, the assurance of familiarity in a fast-changing world that has kept consumers loyal. “We are a regional player and we are surviving because of brand loyalty and the taste,” says Abbas Hajoori, the founder’s son and a partner in Hazoori & Sons. “There’s something comforting about the Rooh Afza: the same old glass bottle when everything else has gone plastic, the flowery label and, of course, its distinctive taste,” says Jalil. The Dub Sarbut (as it is listed on the Paramount menu) too has withstood shifting eras and tastes; so has Paramount since 1918.

Indeed, opposite the small sherbet outlet is a billboard featuring a Bollywood actor advertising aerated cola and cleavage.

Shamik Bag, Mayank Austen Soofi and Pavitra Jayaraman contributed to this story.

L6

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

Business Lounge

LOUNGE

BINNY BANSAL

The flip side of an e­venture The COO of one of India’s most successful e­commerce outfits looks forward to the Kindle bug hitting bookworms

B Y R AHUL J AYARAM rahul.j@livemint.com

···························· e are at The Oberoi in Bangalore and the previous night’s rain has brought to life the garden overlooking the lobby. It also seems to have energized the 28-year-old man I am sitting with.

Binny Bansal, COO and cofounder of Flipkart, initially comes across as shy and reserved. Clad in a T-shirt and a pair of denims, Bansal is far removed from the suit-and-tie image I had of the chief operating officer of a company whose 2010-11 turnover was `75 crore. But Bansal’s online retailing company is somewhat like him and its cofounder Sachin Bansal (not related to Binny)—there is more to the duo than their unassuming and low-profile public personae.

Three and a half years into becoming one of India’s fastest growing e-commerce outfits, known particularly for books, Bansal cannot forget his company’s first customer.

Or the way he delivered the goods for his first sale. “After

W

two weeks of the launch, we left messages on a lot of blogs about Flipkart. One of those was on the blog of a Hyderabad-based person named V.V.K. Chandra. He came to our site searching for a book which he had been looking for for the last two years. It was Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood, and he placed the order. Next day, we went to several distributors in Bangalore, but most of them didn’t have it. Finally, we traced the book to a store in the Indiranagar area of Bangalore. I went there to pick up the book, then found out I didn’t have my wallet and called a friend who worked nearby to give me money. Then it started raining heavily. Some-

Kartwheels: Bansal says Flipkart has delivered to almost every pin code in India and ‘definitely every pin code in Kerala’.

how, we packed it and shipped it to the customer. We informed Chandra about the delay. He said he had waited for it for two-three years and could wait for three more days,” Bansal recalls.

“We were clear from the beginning that the focus of our firm would be totally customer-oriented while having a strong technological base.” Since that first customer (who went to order at least 50 more books in the coming months), there has been no looking back.

Both the Bansals did their software programming from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Before getting into the “technology of selling books”, Binny Bansal joined the USbased Sarnoff Corp., a firm that is into high-end automation projects for the defence and automobile industries, in Bangalore in 2005. In the year and a half he spent there, Bansal developed a lane sensor for cars—a mechanism enabling a camera in the car to detect road lanes. If the driver moved from one lane to the other without giving a signal, it would beep automatically.

“There are lots of accidents in the West when people doze off on long drives and unconsciously move lanes. I was always into cool technology and working on this was fun.”

Today, Bansal has no qualms about being described as India’s Amazon.com. “Our vision was always to be the Amazon of India,” he says. Flipkart has around 10 millions books on its catalogue across different genres and is now moving into selling other products such as music and movie CDs, electronic goods, computers and peripherals. Every month it gets about six million visitors online.

Both the Bansals have worked for Amazon in the past. Sachin joined Amazon in January 2006, followed by Bansal in January 2007. Both quit in September 2007. “While at Amazon, we realized we should do something on our own since the scope for e-commerce was huge,” Bansal says, emphasizing: “I never wanted to go abroad unlike most IITians. I wanted to be in India but create something on the Internet using technology that we can create at home, hoard up and make millions of dollars.”

However, in late 2007, soon after the company’s launch, it still seemed a risk. “We were lucky

IN PARENTHESIS

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

Binny Bansal was born and raised in Chandigarh. A late convert to reading serious fiction, he is a big fan of Salman Rushdie and loved all three books in Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ series. He is an active sportsman, captained his school and college basketball teams, and used to be a big fan of the Chicago Bulls. “They aren’t a great team now though,” he says. White­water rafting has been an obsession with him since his IIT­Delhi days.

since neither of us was married and didn’t have much family responsibility. Sachin and I put in `2.5 lakh each and started with seed money of `5 lakh.”

They began working from a two-bedroom apartment in Koramangala. One of the rooms was converted into an office.

They tied up with all the distributors of major Indian publishers in Bangalore. Every day, one of them would go on a bike and buy books to make their own catalogue. “We would sit down on the floor and make the packages to give to the courier agencies for shipment. This went on for three months, with just two people running the whole show,” he says.

Flipkart, headquartered in Bangalore, now has around 120 employees. Initially, few distributors or publishers took them seriously. So what has been the key to the company’s sudden rise?

From a turnover of a few lakhs in the first year (2007-08) to `2.5 crore the next (2008-09), `25 crore in 2009-10 and `75 crore now (2010-11)—what was the real catalyst? “We needed to build a slick website that was fast, and where the discovery of the product was easy. Also, the payment delivery systems had to be easy and smooth,” says Bansal.

An important change took place around 2010: the payment mechanism. It’s a feature of Flipkart’s model that is distinct from Amazon’s.

“We looked at how Chinese companies—where e-commerce is huge—did retail online. The US has an established credit card culture, while China (like India) is a cash-based economy with lesser credit card penetration. So looking at e-commerce models in China, we put in place a cashon-delivery system.” Today, more than 50% of their orders operate on a cash-on-delivery basis, Bansal says. Most importantly, on nearly each book a consumer buys through Flipkart, the price is “15-35%” cheaper than the cover price.

Though Bansal says Flipkart has transported books to “nearly every pin code in India, and definitely every pin code in Kerala”, 50% of their orders come from the metros: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. The remaining buyers are from other parts of the country. Each day, Flipkart ships 1,000-odd items “through the government book post as so many villages don’t have courier facilities”. According to Bansal, the most saleable categories are fiction, trade paperbacks and Indian writers. More than 60% of Flipkart’s customers are working males between the ages of 25 and 35.

With the iPad and the Kindle, what is the future of books and booksellers such as Flipkart?

Bansal thinks e-books are advantageous for outfits such as theirs.

“It depends on which economies we speak of. In growth terms, India will be behind the West by four-five years when it comes to e-books. The projection for the US is that 50% of books will be e-books by 2015. In India, it will be by 2018 or 2020, not before that.” He says the demand for the normal paperback or hardcover is still high in India. “The e-format will dominate in India too, but not before the entire structure for it to take off has been set up,” he says.

The distribution model for e-books is online, so that’s a transition Bansal is waiting for.

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SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

L7

Style

LOUNGE RETAIL THERAPY

t Farah Khan: Snake cuff with tsavorite and blue sapphires and coffee diamonds in 18­carat yellow gold, at Farah Khan Fine Jewellery, Turner Road, Mumbai, `7.5 lakh.

Band aid There’s nothing like some bold wrist work to smash your style quotient off the charts t Chanel: Black and white metal bracelet with glass stones, at Hotel Imperial, New Delhi, `1,71,200.

B Y R ACHANA N AKRA ····························

q Swarovski: White bracelet with crystals, at all Swarovski stores, `21,500. p De Grisogono: Dolphin bracelet in white gold with blue sapphires, at www.eboutique. degrisogono.com, `8,61,204.

u Eina Ahluwalia: Rose Window cuff inspired by the Milan Cathedral in Italy, at Ensemble, Lion’s Gate, Mum­ bai, `15,250.

q Mawi: Tutti Frutti claw­set pearl cuff, at Ozel, M­Block Market, Greater Kailash­1, New Delhi, `29,500.

q Rose: Marquise and round­cut diamonds with rubies set in gold, at Breach Candy, Mumbai, approx. `13 lakh.

t Mirari: Peacock galuchat cuff, at DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, `1 lakh onwards.

WATCHMAN

SIDIN VADUKUT

PROFESSIONAL BIAS

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n March I interviewed Francesco Trapani, CEO of luxury brand Bulgari. Trapani and his company have been in the news lately after Bulgari, one of the world’s largest jewellery brand, was sold to luxury giant Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) for a whopping $6 billion (around `27,000 crore).

Trapani spoke about a variety of topics, including the sale to LVMH and sentiments about the transaction both inside and outside the company, before moving on to Bulgari’s outstanding watch collection for 2011.

It was something of a relief to see that corporate upheavals hadn’t come in the way of Bulgari’s usual business of making beautiful, expensive things. This year again the company had a new interpretation of its signature Serpenti watch for women. The

Serpenti is, frankly speaking, more of a jewellery piece than a timepiece. Each piece is designed like a snake with a small watch forming the head, and a spring-loaded coiled bracelet forming the body of the serpent.

For 2011, Bulgari has a Serpenti with a bracelet that is seven coils long. Wear the coils tightly and you have an eye-catching piece of jewellery.

Space them out and you have a dramatic fashion statement.

But the real showstoppers were the two watches that Trapani picked out as his favourites during the interview: the Octo Quadri-Retro Chronograph and the Chronosprint Endurer All Blacks Special Edition.

The Quadri-Retro is a new update of last year’s award-winning Bi-Retro design.

This time the watch has four retrograde movements instead of just two. In other words, the face

has four dials with needles that move, not in round circles, but back and forth in arcs.

The All Blacks watch, on the other hand, is remarkably understated. Launched in collaboration with New Zealand’s famed rugby team, the key element of the watch is the tattoo pattern on the dial. Made of high-lustre anthracite material, the motif was designed by a member of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people. And I was told that it signifies life, growth and rebirth.

While discussing both watches with Trapani we began wondering what kind of people would wear them.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that the Quadri-Retro would be worn by the guy who owned a company. It would go with his high-flying lifestyle, private jets and stretch limos.

Bold, brash but still classy. Like the watch.

The All Blacks would probably be worn by the guy who ran it for him. The chap who turns up every morning in a suit with his BlackBerry buzzing away.

Serious, muted but not lacking

Timeless: The Serpenti can be worn as a piece of jewellery. flair. Like the watch.

That, I think, is an interesting way to look at watches. In fact, I would even go one step further.

Why not try matching your timepiece with what you do in life? This might seem hard to do for anyone who isn’t a deep-sea diver or a race-car driver.

But with a little experimentation, there is tremendous potential to match wrist to the rest, as it were.

Suppose you do something involving heavy engineering or manufacturing. Then I’d recommend a Rolex Milgauss. First introduced in 1956, and targeted at scientists and researchers, the Milgauss is built with a certified shield against magnetic interference. The watch is unmistakeably a Rolex but has an interesting lightning bolt-shaped seconds hand and clean, sober design. You could spend weeks geeking out over the specifications.

For professionals always on the move, notching up frequent flyer miles, nothing less than a GMT, World Time or Dual Time watch will do. These timepieces either allow you to keep track of time in two different places, or help you jump from one time zone to another with a few clicks. This year Breitling has a Chronomat GMT watch with a new Calibre 04 in-house movement and a choice of six dials.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

For a more classical look, choose from one of several top-end world time watches that have been launched in 2011 by brands including Breguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin.

If crunching code or designing algorithms is what pays your bills, then you need a watch that has commensurately hi-tech ambitions. Perhaps you will like the new Tissot Racing-Touch.

This extends Tissot’s popular touch-enabled technology to 11 functions, including compass, chronograph and dual time zones. And there is a “feminine” all-white version of the watch too.

But if all you seek is no-nonsense timekeeping, then look no further than an Alliance or an Airboss from Victorinox.

Not only are the watches good value for money, they will also last through the most rigorous abuse on the field or in the office.

Have a complicated job profile that fits none of these buckets? Drop an email if you need help finding your timepiece. Remember: Your watch is out there.

Write to Sidin at watchman@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

Play

LOUNGE HUMZA YASIN

Q&A | RANJAN SHARMA & MARIANO ETCHEPAREBORDA

&

SEAN MALIK/WWW.SHANKAREHSAANLOY.COM

‘iPads lack power’ The men behind Swar Systems, which helped take Indian instruments to the digital age, on branching out into new territory

B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· ou could be A.R. Rahman or Loy Mendosa. An edgy electronica artiste or an independent composer of advertisement jingles. But if you’ve had even the faintest encounter with creating Indian music, chances are you’ve used the software of a small Switzerland-based company.

Swar Systems, based in the city of Rolle, makes music software that synthesizes the sound of Indian instruments—from string (sarod) and wind (flute) instruments to percussion (dholak).

Its eight-year-old successful SwarPlug series has become ubiquitous in both Bollywood and the Asian electronica circuit.

Now, the company is branching out into fresh territory—iPads and Androids. Earlier this year, it released music creation apps for iPad and Android devices, allowing people to jam with a virtual tanpura or play along with a tabla.

It has also just released SwarGroove, a program that lets you add Indian drum ensembles (in various folk styles such as bhangra, garba or qawwali) to recorded tracks and live performances.

Lounge spoke to Ranjan Sharma, art director, and manager Mariano Etchepareborda, on piracy, tablets and idle SwarPlug-spotting.

Edited excerpts:

Y

Do you ever “spot” a SwarPlug use or sample when you’re listening to a piece of music?

Sharma: Whenever I go for a movie or watch a daily soap, I can easily make out Swar Systems products being used.

I remember once I was sitting at a restaurant and having lunch with some guests.

Songs from Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna were playing in the background. There was this particular song that had a very long sarod piece which caught my attention. I was convinced that the sarod was played using SwarPlug. I then wrote a mail to Loy of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, who confirmed that, indeed, they’d used SwarPlug for the sarod as no live musician could play that musical phrase as beautifully as it had come out.

The song was Mitwa.

I still remember my meeting with A.R. Rahman when we launched south Indian instruments. He was busy but ended up spending around 45 minutes with us as he was really excited to see SwarPlug.

When you started, there weren’t any electronic versions of Indian instruments. Are there still specific areas or subgenres in Indian classical traditions that are under-represented electronically?

Etchepareborda: You mention the classical traditions when in fact these have hardly been explored. It was our intention at the beginning to go deeper into classical music with not only tutorials, but also developing the richness of the taal (rhythm) and raga systems. Unfortunately the market for such products is extremely limited, so we had to turn to more popular styles of music like fusion and filmi music. Our latest developments have mainly been for such composers, though we have tried to provide improvements to our current classical music software.

But you are right in your assessment of the situation regarding electronic Indian instruments. When we started,

only Western instruments were available in electronic form. For others, the only offer was CDs of sampled loops, which is somehow limited if you want something specific. Now there’s software like ours, and samplers that tend to include some Indian instruments as well.

Can you tell me a bit about SwarGroove?

Indian percussion is known for its complexity, so how did you work towards translating that into software?

Etchepareborda: Indeed, Indian percussion is arguably the most developed rhythmic system in this world.

Fortunately for us we didn’t have to program all those rhythms and grooves from scratch.

This is all the result of all the rhythmic sequences that have been put in our products from the very early stages in 1996, starting from basic patterns and evolving into full-fledged solos. The object-oriented model we have implemented allows us to reuse a rhythmic pattern into something more evolved. You can also customize it to the beat by defining the specific volume, strokes played, pitch modulation of each stroke.

This then produces a result that can’t be differentiated from a live recording, even though it’s just MIDI events triggering sounds at specific times and with specific parameters.

Do you think platforms such as the iPad will be interesting in future for the creation of music?

Etchepareborda: At the moment, such platforms lack processing power. Even a simple software can take a long

SANDY YOUNG/ GETTY IMAGES

It’s not easy being part of the Android army, filled as it is with hundreds of near-identical phones with marginal differences in price and features. But HTC manages to stand out in this crowded field. How? Allround performance. Samsung’s phones may have the best displays and Motorola’s the wackiest sense of design, but HTC makes the best package, the best combination of hardware and software. When you’re considering which Android phone to buy (a task fraught with choices), HTC is often top of the mind in every category and price point.

Their new flagship phone, the Desire S, best exemplifies all these qualities. It’s a top-ofthe-line device—a 1 Ghz “Snapdragon” processor, a super bright 3.7-inch screen, and the first phone in India to run the latest “Gingerbread” version of Android. It’s fast, smooth and good-looking. And it has the three-punch combo of HTC advantages.

For one, their proprietary “Sense” user interface is the only one worth tolerating. It’s customizable, doesn’t hog resources and adds to the stock Android experience rather than

subtract from it.

Two, their engineering is fantastic. Their sense of design is understated, yet not plain. The anodized aluminium shell looks classy and elegant. The phone has great build quality and cleverly optimized battery life.

Three, the company takes its software updates seriously. This is a gigantic problem with many handset operators who don’t push updates fast or often enough. The Desire S ships with “Gingerbread” version 2.3.3, and if HTC’s track record is anything to go by, it’ll stay on the software frontlines.

There are, however, a few niggling problems. Nothing deal-breaking, but potential sources of much annoyance.

Some users have reported cataclysmic drops in Wi-Fi signal if the phone is held in a certain way. It’s unlikely that you will hold the phone like this (it involves covering the top half of the back panel completely), and the problem is said to go away if you buy a protective case, but

Pro tools: Shankar­Ehsaan­Loy (above) and A.R. Rahman (extreme left) use Swar software iShala.

time to load, so I can’t really imagine running a full virtual studio on them, when currently you need a dual processor computer with 4 GB + RAM and terabytes of disk space to be comfortable. The display is also very limited, so I think personal computers still have a future. But there’s no doubt that such mobile devices will find their way in both studios and deejay equipment, probably more as

controllers of the dedicated musical hardware/software.

Is piracy out of India still a big problem?

Etchepareborda: Piracy is indeed a serious problem, whether in India or abroad. In general, people feel that if it’s downloadable, then it should be free. Those who think a bit further imagine that companies must be making a lot of money anyway, so what’s the harm in getting a free copy? But the fact is that this attitude is a real threat to many companies that are trying to release innovative products. In our case, our market is very limited, so if users interested do not pay for the software we simply cannot cover the expenses of new recordings, graphics or manpower. Thus, we won’t be able to release new products in the future. It’s the cruel truth.

GADGET REVIEW | HTC DESIRE S

Five­star general The latest HTC recruit to the Android army is a brilliant phone at a brilliant price

B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· n two years, the Taiwanbased HTC Corp. has morphed from a niche producer of Windows-based smartphones to one of the industry’s most exciting companies.

Their story is quite remarkable. Founder and chairwoman Cher Wang (whom BusinessWeek called “Taiwan’s priestess of the PDA”) started the experimental firm back in 1997, a good five years before the word “smartphone” would enter the tech lexicon. For the next decade, their PDAs, or personal digital assistants, were solid yet unremarkable, but a decision to shift focus to Google’s Android operating system in 2009 paid off. Their gigantic investments in research and development (a department that constitutes a quarter of their employees) helped. The company raked in $9.5 billion (around `42,180 crore) in revenue in 2010, and sold nearly 25 million handsets worldwide.

I

Owner’s pride: The Desire S.

be sure to keep that in mind.

The phone’s soft buttons below the screen aren’t very responsive, and sometimes need too much prodding. The camera, 5 MP strong and boasting autofocus, is underwhelming. It doesn’t shoot videos too well

and there’s no dedicated camera key on the side.

The Desire S is priced at `25,490. For those about to purchase a smartphone, the Desire S is a no-brainer. Great software.

Great hardware. Occasional misbehaviour.

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SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

L9

Cover

LOUNGE COMMEMORATION

THE ASIAN MIND

As a traveller, Rabindranath Tagore felt ‘homesick for the outside world’. On his 150th birth anniversary, we revisit Visva­Bharati and find out how his voyages to Japan, China and other Asian countries shaped him—and the university he created Photographs are courtesy Visva­Bharati Publication Department, Kolkata

B Y S HAMIK B AG ································· n the middle of the cricket World Cup, that concluded last month, a small newspaper report appeared amid the cricket clutter. This too was on cricket, but it mentioned Rabindranath Tagore in the headline: Odd bedfellows, it seemed, considering that the Nobel laureate had died over four decades before India’s first World Cup win at Lord’s in 1983.

Tagore, the report went on to mention, was enjoying an unprecedented omnipresence in World Cup matches involving three countries.

While it is well known that the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh were composed by Tagore, every time the Sri Lankans took to the field, Tagore made a roundabout entry, having inspired the creation of the Sri Lankan national anthem, Sri Lanka Matha.

“Jana Gana Mana and the Sri Lankan national anthem are based on the same raga too,” explains Supriya Roy, who is curating an exhibition of photographs, text, poems and manuscripts titled Rabindranath Tagore: Pilgrimages to the East, which opens on Monday to coincide with Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. A letter from Ananda Samarakoon, the composer of the Sri Lankan anthem, to Tagore is in the possession of the Tagore archives of Visva-Bharati University, Roy says.

In it, Samarakoon—a former stu-

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dent at Tagore’s Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan who was moved by Rabindrasangeet to create the modern Geeta Sahitya music style in Sri Lanka—expresses gratitude to Tagore and hopes the Sri Lankan song “pleases” him.

Beginning with his first visit to Japan in 1916, and subsequent visits in 1924 and 1929, Tagore took months off from his busy schedule in Santiniketan and Kolkata to make significant journeys to Asian countries and cultures: China (1924), Burma (1916, 1924 and 1927), Singapore (1916, 1924 and 1927), Java and Bali (1927), Malaysia (1924 and 1927), Thailand (1927), Vietnam (1929), Iran and Iraq (1932), and Sri Lanka (1922, 1928 and 1934).

The visit to Sri Lanka in 1934 would be the last foreign tour of the first Asian Nobel Prize winner, ending a long and passionate tradition of travelling which began when Tagore took the ship to England at the age of 17.

“It is only in our country that people ask why a man should go somewhere without reason,” Tagore wrote in a letter explaining his wanderlust. The letter was published in the essay On the Eve of Departure in the book Towards Universal Man edited by Humayun Kabir. “The natural desire to travel is something that we cannot understand. We are so strongly tied to our homes, and the very thought of TURN TO TO PAGE PAGE L10 u TURN L10® INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

The archivist: Supriya Roy has been researching on Tagore’s travels in Asia.

The voyager: Tagore at Borobudur, Java, in 1927.

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ESSAY

Walking with the master Why Tagore’s human vision was his real art and why his music won’t let you walk alone

® FROM PAGE L9

moving out is so much inhibited by fear of the inauspicious and tears of parting, that the world has slipped away from our purview.

Our kinfolk make such a close circle that all who are beyond it appear unrelated.”

Tagore’s Asian voyages were different from his travels to other continents, says 66-year-old Roy, who has been researching Tagore’s Asian travels for many years and has edited and written often on the subject, including the books Talks in Japan (2007), Journey to Persia and Iraq (2003), and Letters from Java—Tagore’s Tour of Southeast Asia (2010). “Tagore’s visits to Europe and America during his younger days were marked by light-hearted romantic adventurism,” she says. “But when it came to the East, there was a strong element of solemnity. His visits to Asian countries were like pilgrimages where he was almost a humble representative of our country.”

At the Santiniketan home of Roy, a retired librarian and archivist at Rabindra Bhavana, the Tagore Memorial Museum Archives and Research Centre of Visva-Bharati University, a large wall-mounted painting vies for attention with stacks of books, artistic knick-knacks, an unfinished canvas and the cuddle-seeking family dog.

Artist Nisar Hossain’s painting is a portrait of Ituko Kasahara, Roy’s benign and wizened Japanese mother-in-law, and her grandchildren.

Mention of the painting unspools a bittersweet episode in the history of the Kasaharas and Roys. Tagore’s deep-entrenched admiration for traditional Japanese aesthetics saw him bring Ituko Kasahara’s father, the Japanese artisan Kimtaro, to Visva-Bharati as a teacher of Japanese woodwork and gardening. For many years, the Kasaharas led a peaceful and settled life in Santiniketan. All that would end with World War II, when the police of British-ruled India started rounding up Japanese citizens. While the Tagores could exert their influence to free young Ituko Kasahara, her mother was transferred and confined in a camp in Meerut. When she was finally set free and allowed to go back to her native Nagasaki, the city had crumbled under the impact of the American atomic bombing and her family had perished.

“I, along with the rest of Asia, did once admire and look up to Japan

and did once fondly hope that in Japan, Asia had at last discovered its challenge to the West…,” Tagore wrote in a letter to Rashbehari Bose, the Indian revolutionary leader, encapsulating his thoughts on how a newly powerful Japan would safeguard the culture of the East. “But Japan has not taken long to betray that rising hope,” Tagore added.

Tagore was getting ever more critical of the steady Westernization of Japanese traditional society; the chauvinistic nationalism of some of its leaders and Japan’s military aggression in China, from which the poet disassociated himself. In a publicized spat in 1938 through an exchange of letters with Yone Noguchi, the influential Japanese poet, Tagore wrote: “You are building your conception of Asia which would be raised on a tower of skulls.

I have believed in the message of Asia, but I never dreamt that this message could be identified with deeds which brought exaltation to the heart of Tamerlane at his terrible efficiency in manslaughter.”

That Tagore had firmly invested his hope on the humanist and artistic practices of Japan can be understood from the steady stream of Japanese visitors to Santiniketan and Kolkata—the art scholar Okakura Kakuzo who, according to Tagore’s son Rathindranath Tagore, “oriented the minds of intellectuals in Bengal towards a healthy nationalism”; the artists Taikan and Hishida, who taught Japanese brushstrokes and wash techniques; the woodwork artist Kimtaro Kasahara; and the wrestler Takagaki Shinzo, who was invited to teach judo and martial arts to students.

In Japan itself, Tagore seemed to be swimming against the tide.

“There was no dearth of people in Japan, specially among Buddhists and Christians, who admired Tagore for his lofty visions and convictions,” observed the late Bhabani Sengupta, a political analyst, in his Japan and India: When Shall the Twain Meet (1998). “But Tagore saw Japan only as a follower of the Buddha, he ignored Shintoism and the military culture it spread among the Japanese. For those in power in Japan, he was a disappointment.”

In China, Tagore revelled in the spirit of a country that had captivated his imagination since childhood. It was partially a result, Roy contends, of Tagore’s belief in the two great ancient civilizations, India and

At home in the world: (clock­ wise from above) Tagore on his way to China in 1924; with students at a girls’ col­ lege in Karuizawa, Japan, in 1916; at the tomb of Hafez in Iran in 1932; and inaugu­ rating a road in Java, Tago­ restraat, in 1932.

China, and his fascination for Buddhism. She props up her statement with an anecdote of how Tagore, a Brahmo Hindu who did not believe in idol worship, had “spontaneously genuflected” in front of the Buddha idol in Bodh Gaya. “When it came to China, he was both aware and sympathetic,” says Roy. Nevertheless, his 1924 visit to China was marked by rancour and protests by a section of the student community. At a time when the country was witnessing the early stirrings of Communism, Tagore’s spiritual discourse went against the fledgling political momentum. Protest leaflets were distributed at his lectures and his speeches were interrupted often. The situation became so bad that after delivering two lectures, Tagore called off his seven-lecture schedule in Beijing, even though in Nanjing, the auditorium balcony was at the risk of collapsing under the weight of the audience. The China episode made Tagore comment that “they are determined to misunderstand me”.

“It is possible that a section of the student community in China felt that Tagore’s message was regressive.

That Tagore, through his work, was a revolutionary himself in India is something that they tragically missed,” says Roy. On Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary, Roy says, the China trip is being reassessed and the previous misunderstanding is making way for a renewed understanding of Tagore’s love for the country. “The complete works of Tagore have been translated into Chinese and a detailed documentation on what Tagore had to say about China throughout his life has been completed. His love for China is at last being vindicated,” says Roy. It might also vindicate Tan YunShan’s faith and belief in the person he deemed to be the “Gurudeva of humanity”. It was in Singapore in 1927 that Tagore met Tan Yun-Shan, the young Chinese teacher who later started teaching the language at Visva-Bharati; an association that led to the formation of the Indian branch of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society in

Looking East: The poet in Japan in 1916.

B Y S ALIL T RIPATHI ································· y earliest memory of Rabindranath Tagore is the image of his portrait in the large assembly hall of my school. The portrait was a profile in black and white, and Tagore’s face looked luminous, his flowing beard shining. To the uninitiated, he’d have looked like a forbidding patriarch; over the years, as I read his thoughts, heard his music, saw his art and learnt to appreciate the breadth of his vision, I understood his essential playfulness and humanity, and how he made his life, and his response to it, part of our collective consciousness.

The Vyas family, which had set up our school, New Era, was inspired by two titans of modern India. Gandhi gave the school its sense of social purpose; Tagore, its philosophy of openness. That meant respecting all faiths but favouring none; it also meant going outdoors often and learning from outside the classroom, deriving pleasure from nature and expressing one’s self through art; discovering different parts of India, enjoying different forms of dance and music, and reading literature beyond the “narrow domestic walls” our own state (Maharashtra) or our own language (Gujarati) imposed. Being without boundaries, where the mind was without fear—that’s what we learnt.

Rabindra Sangeet was heard often in that hall. Tagore had inspired our school’s song; teachers encouraged parents to join activities at the school, and when I was a little boy, I remember my father, who loved to sing, going to Rabindra Sangeet classes on Sundays. He would then hum songs such as Amar mone (In my heart) to himself, sometimes mangling the pronunciation but staying close to the tune, and his humming formed the reassuring background to my morning ritual of getting ready for school.

Tagore’s gentle lilt and melody were always pleasing. The songs were not loud, like what we heard on Vividh Bharati (for Mumbai had no televi-

M

1937 and the founding of the Cheena Bhavana in Visva-Bharati, which continues to house one of the most important libraries on classical Chinese study in India. “When I saw Rabindranath, I at once found in him the very representative and symbol of the Buddha’s country,” Tan YunShan wrote in a 1941 essay.

In 1921, Tagore established VisvaBharati, his idealized educational institution in Santiniketan based on the motto: Where the world makes a home in a single nest. The motto seems apt for a visionary who often allegorized his wanderlust with the idea of birds, wings and flapping.

“For wings stiffened by disuse, the joy in sheer flying is beyond comprehension,” Tagore wrote once to elucidate his craving for distant shores.

Around 200km from Kolkata, in the rural district of Birbhum, VisvaBharati would soon turn into a global cultural cauldron, with Tagore arranging for research in Islamic and Zoroastrian studies, and courses offered in Chinese literature, Persian, Japanese, old Persian, Islamic culture and history, Indo-Iranian philology, Turkish and the history of Turkey.

Visva-Bharati, according to Tagore’s description to Mahatma Gandhi, was “a vessel that carries the cargo of my life’s best treasures”.

His trip to Asian countries such as Malaysia in 1927 somewhat assuaged the state of financial crisis that perpetually hounded Visva-Bharati, says Roy. Tagore was advised by friends in Malaysia to visit the country when the prices of rubber—a widely produced commodity there—increased and probable donors had more cash in hand. The hugely successful “fundraising trip”, says Roy, was also a particularly tiring one. Tagore was pursued by fans everywhere he went and requested to deliver speeches extempore. “I too get down and start talking like one of those popcorn machines in the USA where popcorn keeps bubbling out of its mouth,” Tagore reported on his trip.

Today, like the “remnants of old India” he observed in Bali, nuggets of the Asian cultures Tagore carried back with him continue to embellish life in Visva-Bharati—in the subtle hints of South-East Asian architectural patterns that decorate some buildings; in the Javanese elements inherent in the choreography of Tagore’s dance dramas; or in the batik prints worn by students—a printing style carried over from Indonesia for the first time by Tagore’s entourage and introduced in India.

The connections he made between

the cultures of India and other Asian countries were often serendipitous.

While travelling in Bali, home to ancient Hindu practices and artistic traditions, Tagore was hamstrung by the language barriers he faced with his fellow traveller, a tribal chief. Captivated by the sheer beauty of the place, Tagore was seeking compensation in the fact that “nature here does not speak Balinese” when suddenly, at the sight of the sea, the tribal chief muttered “samudra”. In the island that Tagore felt “India itself had forgotten”, the tribal chief would go on to mention Sanskrit and Indian language synonyms for the sea.

For some, the multicultural influences that streamed through Tagore can be gauged easily through his distinctive style of dressing: the long robe strongly pointing towards Iran, a country he visited along with Iraq, in 1932. While Tagore admired the communal harmony he witnessed in Iran, King Faisal of Iraq would assure him of Muslim-Hindu amity in India, saying: “The strained relationship is a temporary situation. During the reawakening of a people in a country, the many communities become acutely conscious of their distinctive nature and identity and intensify their efforts to maintain them. But soon enough this impulse would

decelerate and the communities would be more relaxed.”

He was a traveller who claimed to “feel homesick for the outside world”. And when it came to his frequent visits to Asian countries, Roy feels there were a number of reasons. “On closer scrutiny, it is found that all these strands converge at one point, Visva-Bharati.” He wanted the Asian countries to participate in the creation of this university and re-establish the spiritual and cultural ties that existed between India and other Asian countries. Visva-Bharati complemented Tagore’s mission to “create an Asian mind”.

Most of the information for the article has been sourced from three books: Talks in Japan (published by Shizen, 2007), Journey to Persia and Iraq (Visva-Bharati, 2003) and Letters from Java—Tagore’s Tour of Southeast Asia (Visva-Bharati, 2010).

Rabindranath Tagore: Pilgrimages to the East will be on at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Kolkata, from 9 May-10 June. It will then travel to Thailand and other Asian countries.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

sion then), and nor was the rhythm monotonous, such as the garba and dandiya raas that we heard night after night at Gujarati weddings in the wedding hall near our apartment.

I began my own journey in Tagore’s universe with several friends, boys and girls— we saw his films together, we read his books, some of us decided to paint, others, to dance. And what a rewarding journey it has been: discovering the Gujarati translation of Kabuliwala and its bittersweet ending at the library; seeing the first of Satyajit Ray’s films based on Tagore’s writing; seeing his elegant art emerge from the way he filled blank space on the page between the words.

The year I left school, on Tagore’s birth anniversary, we enacted some of his poems, including the one I liked a lot, about the unrequited love of two birds, one caged, the other free; a few months later, in Kolkata, I heard Suchitra Mitra sing the original song Khachar pakhi (the caged bird); I saw it as my school-leaving reward. I also remember seeing Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, discovering how different the yodelling Kishore Kumar sounded when I heard him sing Ami chinigo chini tomare, ogo bideshini (I know you, O fair one from afar).

When I first saw that film, I was in my early teens. It was only later, when I was older, that I understood the underlying pathos of that novel, about the lonely wife, Charulata, the exuberant brother-in-law, Amal, the scholarly husband, Bhupati, and the growing chasm between Bhupati and Charulata, which they try to fill as their hands draw closer, about to touch; a conclusion Ray’s camera denies, freezing the frame moments before the hands can meet. That scene is etched in my memory, and whenever I think of it, I think of someone trying to reach out, coming close and yet staying far, like the caged bird and the wild bird in that Tagore poem. But also fingers poised elsewhere, like the two hands about to meet in Rodin’s sculpture Cathe-

dral, but never quite managing to touch, and the fingertips yearning to brush one another at Pioneer café, where Amina meets Nadir, in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Neither had anything to do with Tagore, but you could see such connections if you saw the world through his eyes.

To infuse that world view, in the late 1970s I learnt Bengali, for the rather snobbish reason of wanting to read Tagore in the original and see Ray’s cinema without subtitles. I managed that up to a point: I went to the classes for two years, and what I learnt was good enough for me to have reasonable conversations in rural Bangladesh when I went there as a reporter, in 1986. Over the years, my Bengali has fallen into disuse—until I see another film, and it comes back, like an old friend returning to occupy her favourite couch in my room. To read, I now await Arunava Sinha to translate more of his work; my fluency at reading Bangla is too slow.

And then, there is the vision. In her recent book Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum emphasizes Tagore’s ideas on education, a theme elaborated from her earlier book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future, in which she champions Tagore’s vision over Nehru’s or Gandhi’s.

Tagore was wary of extreme nationalism. While two of his songs ended up being national anthems—India’s and Bangladesh’s—martial nationalism was farthest from his mind.

Tagore’s “nation” had no boundaries. Cultures changed a bit and became different along the flow of a river, but the borders didn’t have guards or fences with watchtowers.

He would react with horror as the camera zooms towards the horizon and suddenly stops at the end of the rail track in Ritwik Ghatak’s film, Komal Gandhar (E Flat).

Nationalism divided people and aroused uncontrollable passions, and so Tagore turned away from

mass mobilization: In Ray’s film on Tagore’s novel, Ghare-Baire (The Home and The World, which I remember seeing at a theatre near Lincoln Center in New York in 1984, with a friend from my school days who had moved to America, and with whom I had seen many of Ray’s films in Mumbai), Nikhil does not share his old friend Sandip’s nationalism—but that’s not out of feigned aristocratic elitism; rather, it is because of the passionate intensity it unleashes. Gandhi understood that; he suspended the satyagraha when his supporters turned violent in Chauri Chaura in 1922. And he wrote to Subhas Chandra Bose that while they had both wanted India to be free, their means were so different, that their ends only appeared to be the same. And yet Gandhi was sympathetic to the idea of nationalism, as a way to assert a wounded culture’s identity. Tagore liked to celebrate the identity, but remained worried that nationalism would lead to divisions and boundaries.

Tagore was at home in the world.

He believed in its beauty and aesthetic. And he enhanced my life, through his presence on my bookshelves in the homes I have lived in over the years. His ideas gave shape to many of my thoughts, impulses, responses and emotions. It was a Tagore poem, Ananta Prem (Unending Love) that I read out when I got married; it was to that poem that I turned nearly two decades later, at my wife’s funeral, and read aloud again, for Tagore sang “the songs of every poet past and forever”. In the difficult months that followed, it was another friend from those days at school who sent me two CDs with hundreds of Tagore songs to let the music heal.

With him by your side, you never walked alone.

Salil Tripathi writes the column Here, There, Everywhere for Mint.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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ESSAY

Walking with the master Why Tagore’s human vision was his real art and why his music won’t let you walk alone

® FROM PAGE L9

moving out is so much inhibited by fear of the inauspicious and tears of parting, that the world has slipped away from our purview.

Our kinfolk make such a close circle that all who are beyond it appear unrelated.”

Tagore’s Asian voyages were different from his travels to other continents, says 66-year-old Roy, who has been researching Tagore’s Asian travels for many years and has edited and written often on the subject, including the books Talks in Japan (2007), Journey to Persia and Iraq (2003), and Letters from Java—Tagore’s Tour of Southeast Asia (2010). “Tagore’s visits to Europe and America during his younger days were marked by light-hearted romantic adventurism,” she says. “But when it came to the East, there was a strong element of solemnity. His visits to Asian countries were like pilgrimages where he was almost a humble representative of our country.”

At the Santiniketan home of Roy, a retired librarian and archivist at Rabindra Bhavana, the Tagore Memorial Museum Archives and Research Centre of Visva-Bharati University, a large wall-mounted painting vies for attention with stacks of books, artistic knick-knacks, an unfinished canvas and the cuddle-seeking family dog.

Artist Nisar Hossain’s painting is a portrait of Ituko Kasahara, Roy’s benign and wizened Japanese mother-in-law, and her grandchildren.

Mention of the painting unspools a bittersweet episode in the history of the Kasaharas and Roys. Tagore’s deep-entrenched admiration for traditional Japanese aesthetics saw him bring Ituko Kasahara’s father, the Japanese artisan Kimtaro, to Visva-Bharati as a teacher of Japanese woodwork and gardening. For many years, the Kasaharas led a peaceful and settled life in Santiniketan. All that would end with World War II, when the police of British-ruled India started rounding up Japanese citizens. While the Tagores could exert their influence to free young Ituko Kasahara, her mother was transferred and confined in a camp in Meerut. When she was finally set free and allowed to go back to her native Nagasaki, the city had crumbled under the impact of the American atomic bombing and her family had perished.

“I, along with the rest of Asia, did once admire and look up to Japan

and did once fondly hope that in Japan, Asia had at last discovered its challenge to the West…,” Tagore wrote in a letter to Rashbehari Bose, the Indian revolutionary leader, encapsulating his thoughts on how a newly powerful Japan would safeguard the culture of the East. “But Japan has not taken long to betray that rising hope,” Tagore added.

Tagore was getting ever more critical of the steady Westernization of Japanese traditional society; the chauvinistic nationalism of some of its leaders and Japan’s military aggression in China, from which the poet disassociated himself. In a publicized spat in 1938 through an exchange of letters with Yone Noguchi, the influential Japanese poet, Tagore wrote: “You are building your conception of Asia which would be raised on a tower of skulls.

I have believed in the message of Asia, but I never dreamt that this message could be identified with deeds which brought exaltation to the heart of Tamerlane at his terrible efficiency in manslaughter.”

That Tagore had firmly invested his hope on the humanist and artistic practices of Japan can be understood from the steady stream of Japanese visitors to Santiniketan and Kolkata—the art scholar Okakura Kakuzo who, according to Tagore’s son Rathindranath Tagore, “oriented the minds of intellectuals in Bengal towards a healthy nationalism”; the artists Taikan and Hishida, who taught Japanese brushstrokes and wash techniques; the woodwork artist Kimtaro Kasahara; and the wrestler Takagaki Shinzo, who was invited to teach judo and martial arts to students.

In Japan itself, Tagore seemed to be swimming against the tide.

“There was no dearth of people in Japan, specially among Buddhists and Christians, who admired Tagore for his lofty visions and convictions,” observed the late Bhabani Sengupta, a political analyst, in his Japan and India: When Shall the Twain Meet (1998). “But Tagore saw Japan only as a follower of the Buddha, he ignored Shintoism and the military culture it spread among the Japanese. For those in power in Japan, he was a disappointment.”

In China, Tagore revelled in the spirit of a country that had captivated his imagination since childhood. It was partially a result, Roy contends, of Tagore’s belief in the two great ancient civilizations, India and

At home in the world: (clock­ wise from above) Tagore on his way to China in 1924; with students at a girls’ col­ lege in Karuizawa, Japan, in 1916; at the tomb of Hafez in Iran in 1932; and inaugu­ rating a road in Java, Tago­ restraat, in 1932.

China, and his fascination for Buddhism. She props up her statement with an anecdote of how Tagore, a Brahmo Hindu who did not believe in idol worship, had “spontaneously genuflected” in front of the Buddha idol in Bodh Gaya. “When it came to China, he was both aware and sympathetic,” says Roy. Nevertheless, his 1924 visit to China was marked by rancour and protests by a section of the student community. At a time when the country was witnessing the early stirrings of Communism, Tagore’s spiritual discourse went against the fledgling political momentum. Protest leaflets were distributed at his lectures and his speeches were interrupted often. The situation became so bad that after delivering two lectures, Tagore called off his seven-lecture schedule in Beijing, even though in Nanjing, the auditorium balcony was at the risk of collapsing under the weight of the audience. The China episode made Tagore comment that “they are determined to misunderstand me”.

“It is possible that a section of the student community in China felt that Tagore’s message was regressive.

That Tagore, through his work, was a revolutionary himself in India is something that they tragically missed,” says Roy. On Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary, Roy says, the China trip is being reassessed and the previous misunderstanding is making way for a renewed understanding of Tagore’s love for the country. “The complete works of Tagore have been translated into Chinese and a detailed documentation on what Tagore had to say about China throughout his life has been completed. His love for China is at last being vindicated,” says Roy. It might also vindicate Tan YunShan’s faith and belief in the person he deemed to be the “Gurudeva of humanity”. It was in Singapore in 1927 that Tagore met Tan Yun-Shan, the young Chinese teacher who later started teaching the language at Visva-Bharati; an association that led to the formation of the Indian branch of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society in

Looking East: The poet in Japan in 1916.

B Y S ALIL T RIPATHI ································· y earliest memory of Rabindranath Tagore is the image of his portrait in the large assembly hall of my school. The portrait was a profile in black and white, and Tagore’s face looked luminous, his flowing beard shining. To the uninitiated, he’d have looked like a forbidding patriarch; over the years, as I read his thoughts, heard his music, saw his art and learnt to appreciate the breadth of his vision, I understood his essential playfulness and humanity, and how he made his life, and his response to it, part of our collective consciousness.

The Vyas family, which had set up our school, New Era, was inspired by two titans of modern India. Gandhi gave the school its sense of social purpose; Tagore, its philosophy of openness. That meant respecting all faiths but favouring none; it also meant going outdoors often and learning from outside the classroom, deriving pleasure from nature and expressing one’s self through art; discovering different parts of India, enjoying different forms of dance and music, and reading literature beyond the “narrow domestic walls” our own state (Maharashtra) or our own language (Gujarati) imposed. Being without boundaries, where the mind was without fear—that’s what we learnt.

Rabindra Sangeet was heard often in that hall. Tagore had inspired our school’s song; teachers encouraged parents to join activities at the school, and when I was a little boy, I remember my father, who loved to sing, going to Rabindra Sangeet classes on Sundays. He would then hum songs such as Amar mone (In my heart) to himself, sometimes mangling the pronunciation but staying close to the tune, and his humming formed the reassuring background to my morning ritual of getting ready for school.

Tagore’s gentle lilt and melody were always pleasing. The songs were not loud, like what we heard on Vividh Bharati (for Mumbai had no televi-

M

1937 and the founding of the Cheena Bhavana in Visva-Bharati, which continues to house one of the most important libraries on classical Chinese study in India. “When I saw Rabindranath, I at once found in him the very representative and symbol of the Buddha’s country,” Tan YunShan wrote in a 1941 essay.

In 1921, Tagore established VisvaBharati, his idealized educational institution in Santiniketan based on the motto: Where the world makes a home in a single nest. The motto seems apt for a visionary who often allegorized his wanderlust with the idea of birds, wings and flapping.

“For wings stiffened by disuse, the joy in sheer flying is beyond comprehension,” Tagore wrote once to elucidate his craving for distant shores.

Around 200km from Kolkata, in the rural district of Birbhum, VisvaBharati would soon turn into a global cultural cauldron, with Tagore arranging for research in Islamic and Zoroastrian studies, and courses offered in Chinese literature, Persian, Japanese, old Persian, Islamic culture and history, Indo-Iranian philology, Turkish and the history of Turkey.

Visva-Bharati, according to Tagore’s description to Mahatma Gandhi, was “a vessel that carries the cargo of my life’s best treasures”.

His trip to Asian countries such as Malaysia in 1927 somewhat assuaged the state of financial crisis that perpetually hounded Visva-Bharati, says Roy. Tagore was advised by friends in Malaysia to visit the country when the prices of rubber—a widely produced commodity there—increased and probable donors had more cash in hand. The hugely successful “fundraising trip”, says Roy, was also a particularly tiring one. Tagore was pursued by fans everywhere he went and requested to deliver speeches extempore. “I too get down and start talking like one of those popcorn machines in the USA where popcorn keeps bubbling out of its mouth,” Tagore reported on his trip.

Today, like the “remnants of old India” he observed in Bali, nuggets of the Asian cultures Tagore carried back with him continue to embellish life in Visva-Bharati—in the subtle hints of South-East Asian architectural patterns that decorate some buildings; in the Javanese elements inherent in the choreography of Tagore’s dance dramas; or in the batik prints worn by students—a printing style carried over from Indonesia for the first time by Tagore’s entourage and introduced in India.

The connections he made between

the cultures of India and other Asian countries were often serendipitous.

While travelling in Bali, home to ancient Hindu practices and artistic traditions, Tagore was hamstrung by the language barriers he faced with his fellow traveller, a tribal chief. Captivated by the sheer beauty of the place, Tagore was seeking compensation in the fact that “nature here does not speak Balinese” when suddenly, at the sight of the sea, the tribal chief muttered “samudra”. In the island that Tagore felt “India itself had forgotten”, the tribal chief would go on to mention Sanskrit and Indian language synonyms for the sea.

For some, the multicultural influences that streamed through Tagore can be gauged easily through his distinctive style of dressing: the long robe strongly pointing towards Iran, a country he visited along with Iraq, in 1932. While Tagore admired the communal harmony he witnessed in Iran, King Faisal of Iraq would assure him of Muslim-Hindu amity in India, saying: “The strained relationship is a temporary situation. During the reawakening of a people in a country, the many communities become acutely conscious of their distinctive nature and identity and intensify their efforts to maintain them. But soon enough this impulse would

decelerate and the communities would be more relaxed.”

He was a traveller who claimed to “feel homesick for the outside world”. And when it came to his frequent visits to Asian countries, Roy feels there were a number of reasons. “On closer scrutiny, it is found that all these strands converge at one point, Visva-Bharati.” He wanted the Asian countries to participate in the creation of this university and re-establish the spiritual and cultural ties that existed between India and other Asian countries. Visva-Bharati complemented Tagore’s mission to “create an Asian mind”.

Most of the information for the article has been sourced from three books: Talks in Japan (published by Shizen, 2007), Journey to Persia and Iraq (Visva-Bharati, 2003) and Letters from Java—Tagore’s Tour of Southeast Asia (Visva-Bharati, 2010).

Rabindranath Tagore: Pilgrimages to the East will be on at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Kolkata, from 9 May-10 June. It will then travel to Thailand and other Asian countries.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

sion then), and nor was the rhythm monotonous, such as the garba and dandiya raas that we heard night after night at Gujarati weddings in the wedding hall near our apartment.

I began my own journey in Tagore’s universe with several friends, boys and girls— we saw his films together, we read his books, some of us decided to paint, others, to dance. And what a rewarding journey it has been: discovering the Gujarati translation of Kabuliwala and its bittersweet ending at the library; seeing the first of Satyajit Ray’s films based on Tagore’s writing; seeing his elegant art emerge from the way he filled blank space on the page between the words.

The year I left school, on Tagore’s birth anniversary, we enacted some of his poems, including the one I liked a lot, about the unrequited love of two birds, one caged, the other free; a few months later, in Kolkata, I heard Suchitra Mitra sing the original song Khachar pakhi (the caged bird); I saw it as my school-leaving reward. I also remember seeing Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, discovering how different the yodelling Kishore Kumar sounded when I heard him sing Ami chinigo chini tomare, ogo bideshini (I know you, O fair one from afar).

When I first saw that film, I was in my early teens. It was only later, when I was older, that I understood the underlying pathos of that novel, about the lonely wife, Charulata, the exuberant brother-in-law, Amal, the scholarly husband, Bhupati, and the growing chasm between Bhupati and Charulata, which they try to fill as their hands draw closer, about to touch; a conclusion Ray’s camera denies, freezing the frame moments before the hands can meet. That scene is etched in my memory, and whenever I think of it, I think of someone trying to reach out, coming close and yet staying far, like the caged bird and the wild bird in that Tagore poem. But also fingers poised elsewhere, like the two hands about to meet in Rodin’s sculpture Cathe-

dral, but never quite managing to touch, and the fingertips yearning to brush one another at Pioneer café, where Amina meets Nadir, in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Neither had anything to do with Tagore, but you could see such connections if you saw the world through his eyes.

To infuse that world view, in the late 1970s I learnt Bengali, for the rather snobbish reason of wanting to read Tagore in the original and see Ray’s cinema without subtitles. I managed that up to a point: I went to the classes for two years, and what I learnt was good enough for me to have reasonable conversations in rural Bangladesh when I went there as a reporter, in 1986. Over the years, my Bengali has fallen into disuse—until I see another film, and it comes back, like an old friend returning to occupy her favourite couch in my room. To read, I now await Arunava Sinha to translate more of his work; my fluency at reading Bangla is too slow.

And then, there is the vision. In her recent book Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum emphasizes Tagore’s ideas on education, a theme elaborated from her earlier book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future, in which she champions Tagore’s vision over Nehru’s or Gandhi’s.

Tagore was wary of extreme nationalism. While two of his songs ended up being national anthems—India’s and Bangladesh’s—martial nationalism was farthest from his mind.

Tagore’s “nation” had no boundaries. Cultures changed a bit and became different along the flow of a river, but the borders didn’t have guards or fences with watchtowers.

He would react with horror as the camera zooms towards the horizon and suddenly stops at the end of the rail track in Ritwik Ghatak’s film, Komal Gandhar (E Flat).

Nationalism divided people and aroused uncontrollable passions, and so Tagore turned away from

mass mobilization: In Ray’s film on Tagore’s novel, Ghare-Baire (The Home and The World, which I remember seeing at a theatre near Lincoln Center in New York in 1984, with a friend from my school days who had moved to America, and with whom I had seen many of Ray’s films in Mumbai), Nikhil does not share his old friend Sandip’s nationalism—but that’s not out of feigned aristocratic elitism; rather, it is because of the passionate intensity it unleashes. Gandhi understood that; he suspended the satyagraha when his supporters turned violent in Chauri Chaura in 1922. And he wrote to Subhas Chandra Bose that while they had both wanted India to be free, their means were so different, that their ends only appeared to be the same. And yet Gandhi was sympathetic to the idea of nationalism, as a way to assert a wounded culture’s identity. Tagore liked to celebrate the identity, but remained worried that nationalism would lead to divisions and boundaries.

Tagore was at home in the world.

He believed in its beauty and aesthetic. And he enhanced my life, through his presence on my bookshelves in the homes I have lived in over the years. His ideas gave shape to many of my thoughts, impulses, responses and emotions. It was a Tagore poem, Ananta Prem (Unending Love) that I read out when I got married; it was to that poem that I turned nearly two decades later, at my wife’s funeral, and read aloud again, for Tagore sang “the songs of every poet past and forever”. In the difficult months that followed, it was another friend from those days at school who sent me two CDs with hundreds of Tagore songs to let the music heal.

With him by your side, you never walked alone.

Salil Tripathi writes the column Here, There, Everywhere for Mint.

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RACING

Desert runner The first Indian to complete a seven­day, 250km­long desert trail in the Chilean Atacama, one of the toughest endurance races in the world, shares his experience

High and dry: (clock­ wise from top) Cidambi at the Ata­ cama ultra with vol­ canic peaks in the background; at the finishing line at San Pedro; and negotia­ ting a rocky climb.

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

···························· n March last year, Sumanth Cidambi, CFO with a Hyderabad-based company, received an email from a friend that simply said “game for a run?” It also had a link to the website of possibly the world’s most challenging running event, the 4Deserts—a series of four 250km self-supported desert ultramarathons, each run over seven days, that include the Atacama in Chile, the Sahara in Egypt, the Gobi in China, and Antarctica.

Cidambi, who picked up running in 2005 after being diagnosed with diabetes, quickly found an aptitude and passion for the sport that went far beyond just health concerns. From struggling to finish even a kilometre in 2005, he was jostling with other competitors at the starting line of the Mumbai half-marathon in 2006. A full marathon in 2007 was a natural progression. Racing through almost the entire country of Chile on the driest, most brutal desert on the planet though was an exponential leap.

“I spent a couple of months thinking about it and researching the race,” says Cidambi, “and then in August 2010 I signed up for it as a 40th birthday gift to myself.”

Cidambi, who already had a daily 10km runn i n g schedule, began

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scaling up his training for the extreme race immediately. For the next six months, Cidambi turned the guest bedroom in his house into a supply and equipment depot, woke every morning at 3.30, ran for 2 hours, did strength training and stretching exercises for another hour, before returning home and leaving for work by 8.30. For his wife Nandita and their year-old son Atri, this crazy schedule meant tailoring all their activities around it.

Nandita began a blog called The Runner’s Wife to write about her experience. “…all those missed moments of togetherness doing simple stuff like having a cup of tea together in the morning or staying late watching a movie on the telly, it is almost like I have loaned my husband to someone else in this whole period.” Nandita wrote on her blog during this period. Nandita, a doctor specializing in nutrition, played a crucial role in Cidambi’s training; managing his strict and complicated daily caloric requirements, and sourcing the specialized running shoes, equipment and supplements through friends and family returning to India from foreign countries.

By the end of six months of training, which included running the 2011 Mumbai Marathon, Cidambi was comfortably running 25km a day, and 35km on Saturdays.

The race On 2 March 2011, Cidambi flew from Bangalore to Santiago de Chile, before finally arriving at San Pedro de Atacama, a small sun-bleached town on the northern edge of the great Atacama desert. Cidambi spent two days walking around and acclimatizing at San Pedro, which is surrounded by volcanic mountains,

lagoons and archaeological sites dating back as far as 800 BC. On 5 March, Cidambi left San Pedro with the other 109 competitors, including 42-year-old housewife Michelle Kakade from Pune, an ultramarathoner and mother of two, for Camp 1, tucked in between high canyon walls. They were the first Indians to compete in the Atacama ultramarathon.

“Despite some last-minutebutterflies-in-the-stomach syndrome, I was quite calm and meditative,” Cidambi says.

He went to sleep early under a sky ablaze with fist-sized stars.

The next morning at 8, the race began. The stunning landscape of sand dunes, rocky climbs, bare mountains, canyons and volcanoes gave Cidambi the motivation he needed.

“Running is a solitary sport— you have to push yourself, fighting blisters, nausea, heat and dryness,” says Cidambi. “Ever so often I stopped and breathed in deeply, and found inspiration from the incredible views.”

The temperature soared to above 40 degrees Celsius in the daytime, and dropped to around 5 at night. Pink flags marked the race route, through breathless climbs and pounding descents.

Stage 2 began with an 8km run through a deep river canyon, and Cidambi emerged soaking wet after multiple river crossings. Next was an old mountain road and an ancient footbridge believed to be of Inca vintage.

“The next 9.6km saw us climb up and up and up,” says Cidambi.

“Great scenery, but I wasn’t in a frame of mind to appreciate. The incline was really steep, at times almost 45-60 degrees.”

At the end of the stretch was a ridge-line with a volcanic mountain range dominating the horizon, with wispy smoke rising from their peaks. Cidambi then tumbled down a 1,000ft sand dune at an incline of about 60 degrees.

“I earned my first blister that day.”

For the last 26km of the day’s run, Cibambi, running all alone, spotted just one tree. One of the hardest stages of the race was the Salt Flats, the fourth day of the

race—a 43km stretch with 20km of rough, crusty salt.

“I don’t even remember how I managed to complete this stretch,” says Cidambi. “But by the end of it my legs were hurting very badly after pounding through the sharp, jagged salt plain.”

But Day 5, a 73.6km run appropriately called “The long march”, was even worse. By then Cidambi’s blistered and sore feet were ready to give up, he had gone without eating for two days (the untested freeze-dried food he was carrying did not agree with him), surviving on soup, carb powder, water and antacids.

“The dry desert heat was brutal,” Cidambi says, “and there was no shade anywhere. I was hobbling for the most part given my bad legs from the previous day’s run and at one point almost felt like giving up.”

Six kilometres of Stage 5 passed along a fenced-off minefield, a result of a border dispute between Chile and Argentina, with glow sticks marking out a safe route.

“The key at all times was to stay positive,” says Cidambi. “I never gave in to despair out of loneliness or exhaustion, and always held on to good thoughts.”

On the morning of 12 March, after seven days in the Atacama, Cidambi ran towards the finish line at the San Pedro town square waving the Indian flag.

He became the first Indian to complete the Atacama Crossing in the eight-year-old history of the race. Eighty-seven other competitors, including Kakade, finished the race. “The feeling of elation and pride I felt is indescribable. ‘Being first’ was merely an optional extra,” Cidambi says. “At the race, we had several first-timers, sharing mutual hopes and fears. We helped each other and were helped by those who were running in such events for the second or third time. It was like being part of a large family.”

Cidambi then went straight to the food counter and ate 10 large slices of pizza, washed down with three cans of coke. His first “real” meal in a week.

COURTESY

RACINGTHEPLANET

CARRY ON LUGGAGE Cidambi lugged an 11kg backpack through the self­sustained race l 30­litre Mountain Marathon backpack, Marmot sleeping bag l Petzl Tikka 2 Headlamp (35­40m range), compass, knife/multi­tool, whistle, sunglasses l Thermolite survival bivvy (a thin, warming 200g blanket) l Sunscreen, lip screen, blister kit, medicines, toilet wipes l Red flashing LED safety light l Mountain Hardwear jacket, CW­X shorts/tights/underwear (meant to support key running muscles and featuring quick sweat­drying technology) l Inov­8 rocklite shoes (a multi­terrain shoe that can handle wet rock, loose rock, sand and shale) l Cap, fleece hat and iPod l Freeze­dried food such as veg ‘tikka’ and rice for seven days, Hammer Nutrition range supplements such as Sustained Energy (slow­releasing carbohy­ drates) and electrolyte capsules l Water bottles (2.75 litre) Cidambi spent roughly `4 lakh on the race, including the $3,300 (around `1.46 lakh) registration fee, and `1 lakh for return airfare (Bangalore­Paris­ Santiago) and gear.

Rudraneil Sengupta

DRY RUN The Atacama Crossing is the first ultramarathon in the 4Deserts series.

The others are: Gobi March 26 June­2 July Start and finish: Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Temperatures will reach a max­ imum of 45 degrees Celsius.

The ancient city of Gaochang, a key point on the Silk Road dat­ ing back to 1 BC, falls en route.

Registration: $3,300 (around `1.46 lakh) Sahara Race 2­8 October Start and finish: Pyramids of Giza, Cairo Competitors will cross the Val­ ley of the Whales, the rem­ nants of an ancient sea that contains fossils believed to be whales with legs that died 40 million years ago. Tempera­ tures reach a maximum of 50 degrees Celsius.

Registration: $3,300 The Last Desert (Antarctica) The final part of the series has not been scheduled yet for 2011, but usually happens in November. Competitors pass near vast penguin rookeries, fur seals and spectacular ice shelves and glaciers. Entry is by invitation only, extended to those who have completed at least two of the other races.

Information courtesy www.4Deserts.com

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EXCERPT

Hall of the mountain king An 18th century travelogue on Tibet is filled with awe for the country’s sparse beauty

B Y A ADISHT K HANNA ·········································· n Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet was written by Samuel Turner about his 1783 journey to Bhutan and Tibet. Turner, at the time a lieutenant in the East India Company army, was lucky enough to have famous relatives: His cousin was Warren Hastings, the governor general of India. In 1782, the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama had been found, and eager to create a trade route to China through Tibet, Hastings sent Turner to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Panchen, or Teshu Lama. It turned out to be complicated; Turner reached Tibet to find the Lama was 18 months old.

Arthur Conolly did not inspire paranoia about Russian designs on Central Asia, Persia (now Iran) and India until 1829, so Turner’s book predates the stereotypes of the Great Game by at least 40 years.

His book is free of cynical musings on the geostrategic importance of Tibet, and has a greater sense of wonder, which would be expected from one of the first white men to visit Tibet.

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That doesn’t mean that An Account of an Embassy avoids military matters or stereotyping altogether.

Turner refutes the then popular stereotype of the savage Tartar, only to replace it with a generalization of how kindness is essential to the Tibetan character.

He is also definitely not the enlightened white India hand that William Dalrymple writes about. He spends the first chapter complaining bitterly about the idle and shiftless “Bengalee native”.

Turner’s mood improves later. The man who accused Bengalis of being too lazy to even plant pineapple trees on their own initiative went on to praise the Assamese for their military prowess, the Bhutias for their industrious agricultural practices, and Tibet for its stark beauty and wildlife. Released from a punishment posting, and off adventuring in the Himalayas and beyond, Turner’s disposition became lighter and kinder.

He came to embody a stereotype himself in the end: the man who travels, and, doing so, broadens his horizons.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Samuel Turner’s ‘An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet’ is now in the public domain and can be downloaded from Google Books. Selected excerpts: Turner dislikes Bengal The country has a most wretched appearance, and its inhabitants are a miserable and puny race. The lower ranks without scruple dispose of their children for slaves, to any purchaser, and that too for a very trifling consideration; nor yet, though in a traffic so unnatural, is the agency of a third person ever employed.

Nothing is more common than to see a mother dress up her child, and bring it to market, with no other hope, no other

view, than to enhance the price she may procure for it.

Indeed the extreme poverty and wretchedness of these people will forcibly appear, when we recollect how little is necessary for the subsistence of a peasant in these regions.

The value of this can seldom amount to more than one penny per day, even allowing him to make his meal of two pounds of boiled rice, with a due proportion of salt, oil, vegetables, fish, and chili.

COURTESY GOOGLE BOOKS

An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet: Originally published by G and W Nicol, digitized by the Google Books Project, 473 pages.

On European and Bhutanese costumes A long conversation ensued with the Raja on the dress and customs of the English. He admired, and minutely examined, every part of our clothes; nor did the pockets least of all excite his wonder and surprise, by presenting such a number of comprehensive and concealed resources. He gave due credit to the convenience of our dress, its lightness, and the liberty it left to the limbs; but I could plainly perceive he judged its structure

defective, as differing from his own, in shewing too plainly the general outline of the body. Thus it is, that the less enlightened Booteea, accustomed to observe the dignity of human character exist in factitious concealment, looks for importance in exterior ornament: divest his sacred superior of the robe of state, and his pontifical insignia, and he would, no doubt, conclude all authority and religion to be entirely at an end.

The music of religious practice in Tibet

Postcards: (clockwise from right) Sketches from the book of a yak; waterfalls in Bhutan; and the Teshu Lama’s residence.

As far as I am able to judge, respecting their ritual, or ceremonial worship, it differs materially from the Hindoo. The Tibetians assemble in chapels, and unite together in prodigious numbers, to perform their religious service, which they chant in alternate recitative and chorus, accompanied by an extensive band of loud and powerful instruments. So that, whenever I heard these congregations, they forcibly recalled to my recollection, both the solemnity, and sound, of the Roman Catholic mass.

The instruments made use of were all of an enormous size.

Trumpets above six feet long; drums stretched over a copper cauldron such as are termed nowbut, in Hindostan; the gong, a circular Chinese instrument of thin hammered bell-metal,

capable of producing a surprising sound; cymbals, hautboys; and a double drum, shallow, but of great circumference, mounted upon a tail, slender pedestal, which the performer turns with great facility, striking either side with a long curved iron, as the piece requires a higher, or a lower tone: these, together with the human tibia, and sea conch, a large species of the buccinum, compose, for the most part, their religious band.

Harsh as these instruments, individually taken, might sound to a musical ear, yet when joined together in unison, with the voices of two or three hundred boys and men, managed with varying modulation, from the lowest and softest cadence to the loudest swell, they produced to my ear an effect extremely grand.

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In the world of night and fog ULLSTEIN BILD/WSJ

The 12 years of Hitler’s Third Reich are still fertile ground for novelists—and why Berlin Noir is a crowded genre

B Y A LLAN M ASSIE ···························· hilip Kerr published March Violets, his first Bernie Gunther novel, in 1989.

The obsession with World War II and the Nazi regime was of course long-established, the subject of countless novels, memoirs and films. Kerr’s originality was to write about pre-war Berlin from the point of view of a German Nazi-sceptic, an ex-policeman turned private detective.

The book was an immediate success, and over the past 20 years Kerr has followed Gunther’s career—in which he is drawn against his will into the Nazis’ world—through the war, its immediate aftermath and to Argentina, which offered a refuge to so many Nazi criminals. (the new seventh instalment, Field Gray, has Gunther being arrested and sent to West Germany to face genocide charges).

If the novels set in the 1930s are the most compelling, this is because they remain the freshest, assuming that adjective may properly be applied to any depiction of Hitler’s repulsive regime. But Kerr has set a fashion, and now Berlin Noir is a crowded place.

Gunther must surely have bumped into Nikolai Hoffner—the hero of Jonathan Rabb’s Berlin Noir trilogy—in the offices of the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) in the Alexanderplatz.

And both may have worked with Gunther Behn, another ex-Kripo turned private detective. Behn is recruited by a journalist named Jake Geismar in Joseph Kanon’s 2001 novel of occupied Berlin, The Good German. Back in the Weimar years any of them might have briefed Hannah Vogel, the crime reporter in Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke (2009).

And Geismar surely knew the Anglo-American journalist John Russell—hero of David Downing’s four Berlin novels—in the pre-war years and shared a

P

Potsdam Station:

By David Downing, Soho, 304 pages, $25.

Field Gray:

By Philip Kerr, Putnam, 431 pages, $26.95 (around `1,200). drink with him at the Foreign Press Club, where they could safely join in mockery of Joseph Goebbels’ press conferences.

All or any of them must also have exchanged words, nods or glances in the bar of the Adlon, Berlin’s most fashionable hotel, where Gunther worked as the house detective between his resignation from the Kripo and his recall and promotion at the command of the terrible Reinhard Heydrich (SS Obergruppenführer, head of the police under Hitler and organizer of the “Final Solution”). There too they would have observed some of the foreign correspondents and elegant diplomats who engage in espionage in Alan Furst’s novels. And I would like to think that some of them at least may have come across Christopher Isherwood’s Norris, incompetently and fearfully serving the Communist cause—for the time being anyway—and may have heard Sally Bowles sing, so badly, at the Lady Windermere Bar. The Nazis preached a narrow restrictive morality while making the state a criminal enterprise. They passed laws and subverted the principle of justice. The criminal was no longer an outsider; he was an officer of the state. Consequently the just man or woman became, in the eyes of the state, a criminal. All the heroes and heroines of Berlin Noir novels rebel against the morbid reality imposed on Germany. They are subversives precisely because they are not WARNER BROS/PHOTOFEST

pathological. They still believe in love, fraternity, sympathy and loyalty to family and friends rather than to the Moloch of the Nazi state.

Yet because they operate in the shadow of a regime that denies all these, they find themselves committing crimes in their war against criminal power. Kerr’s Bernie Gunther, the most soiled of Galahads, does not hesitate to shoot anyone who stands in his way.

Downing’s John Russell, making his fourth appearance in the new Potsdam Station, is an Anglo-American with divided loyalties—a German lover, a German ex-wife now married to a Nazi, and a German son. He is willing to lie and deceive in his struggle against lies and deceit.

All writers are in debt to their predecessors. Any novel of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy is prefigured in miniature in Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma. There too you have an autocracy with its secret police, corrupted law courts, prisons and executions.

And the shades of Chandler and Hammett loom over Kerr and Rabb. Their heroes wisecrack like Marlowe, and their Berlin is a more vicious and pathological Bay City.

The cool, laconic novels of Alan Furst are in debt to Eric Ambler and the Graham Greene of Stamboul Train and The Confidential Agent. Charles McCarry—whose servants of “The Outfit” (an idealized version of the CIA) flit in and out of pre- and post-war Berlin (with more cameos by Heydrich)—

owes something to John Le Carré; the themes that interest both are betrayal and the clash of public and private loyalties.

Nazi Germany presents us with a drama in black and white.

We have no doubt that the heroes of these novels are on the proper side. They choose good, not evil; right, not might. They are mostly versions of Chandler’s lonely man walking down mean streets—even when they are propping up the bar of the Adlon. And they have their loyal helpers, usually the women who love them or, for Rabb’s Nikolai Hoffner, his younger son (the elder is a Nazi).

There is, however, a grey area, only lightly touched on in most Berlin Noir novels because its inhabitants, ordinary Germans, are neither Nazis nor anti-Nazis but rather people who accept the reality of the moment. They fit uncomfortably into the chiaroscuro of these books and are, therefore, mostly excluded.

The question of “the good German” lurks in the undergrowth of all these novels. In Kanon’s novel of that title, it is centre stage. Jake Geismar has returned to the ruined city in the summer of 1945, ostensibly to cover the Potsdam Conference, really to search for the woman he loved before the war.

There is no doubt about Lena; she is a good German who worked in a hospital during the war and helped to save Jews—as did John Russell’s film-star lover Effi in Stettin Station (2010).

Both are girls whom Hollywood might have found no difficulty

War cries: (above) A cou­ ple in the Tiergarten on a snowy night in 1933.

Hitler took power on 30 January that year; and Cate Blanchett and George Clooney in The Good German (2006). in casting—Ingrid Bergman for Lena, Audrey Hepburn for Effi.

At the heart of the Berlin Noir novels, even those that seem to set out only to thrill and entertain, lie ethical questions: What is right conduct? How do you survive, your moral integrity and honour intact, in a criminal state? This is why such novels are worth reading, even those that at times sink to blood-and-guts trash.

It is not just the seedy glamour of the Nazis that holds one’s attention. It is, as Kanon especially shows, that there is something pathological in the behaviour of all states and political action, where time and again the end is held to justify the means. Nazi Germany was the politics of irresponsible power taken to the extreme, but all power politics, even when concealed behind the veil of democracy, “tilt towards morbidity”.

Allan Massie is an author whose many works include a loose trilogy of novels about mid-20th century Europe: A Question of Loyalties (1989), The Sins of the Father (1991) and Shadows of Empire (1997).

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JAMIL AHMAD | THE WANDERING FALCON

CULT FICTION

The nine tales of Tor Baz

ANDREW SMITH/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

A Pashtun story set in the North­ West Frontier, in McCarthy­esque, stark prose

B Y S ANJAY S IPAHIMALANI ···························· t was Rudyard Kipling who was largely responsible for the myth-making about the clans of what was known as the North-West Frontier. His tales and poems of men who would be kings, Pashtun traders and barrack-room ballads spread the legend of timetrapped tribes who were noble and fierce, enmeshed in a matrix of honour that they were prepared to defend to the bitter end.

Echoes of this are to be found in 78-year-old Jamil Ahmad’s debut novel, The Wandering Falcon. The setting of his book, identified on the first page, is largely the “tangle of crumbling, weather-beaten and broken hills, where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet”. The novel comprises a series of episodes dealing with the tribulations of nomadic tribes who inhabit this inhospitable terrain, covering a period after the departure of colonial powers and before the rise of the Taliban.

Nominally, this is the story of the coming of age of Tor Baz, the wandering falcon of the title. He appears, sometimes in little more than a walk-on part, in almost every one of these nine tales: first, as abandoned infant, then as a

Rocky canvas: Ahmad’s book is set in the area where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet. boy passing from tribe to tribe, as a witness and observer, and finally as an informer and guide to the region.

The circumstances of his birth are narrated in the brutal, somewhat over-determined events of the first story. The child of an alliance brutally torn apart by an honour killing, he is almost left to the mercy of the elements. As he comes to manhood, however, he adapts and thrives in a hostile environment. He’s something of a cipher, though; there’s little, barring revelations of shrewdness and cheerful amorality towards the end, of Tor Baz’s own feelings. His character, then, is something of a peg to hold the individual episodes together.

The other characters who inhabit The Wandering Falcon range from cataract-afflicted tribal leaders to peripatetic, tricky mullahs to women losing control over their fates in an environment in which they are little more than chattel.

The author’s aim is not to vilify or to defend, but simply to portray, although there is clear sympathy in his depiction of tribes forced to abandon their grazing grounds because of passport controls and border checkposts. The old, however settled, gives way to the new and Ahmad con-

trasts “settled life as opposed to nomadic life, and the writ of the state as opposed to nomadic discipline”.

The prose is bleached-bone clean, sometimes rising to the level of stark poetry: “Where the fields end, the convolutions and whorls of bare, cruel rock once again resume their march across the land—occasionally throwing up spires and lances of granite into the sky” (some of these passages, in fact, make the book sound like a blanched, distant cousin of Cormac McCarthy’s novels of ranchers and cowboys adrift on American borders, grimly facing bleak landscapes and changing times). The dialogue, though, can sometimes be arch and folksy: “Wailing in a man is like honey in a pot. As honey attracts flies, so does wailing attract trouble.” More echoes of Kipling to be discerned there.

Clearly, Ahmad has spent time in close quarters with the people he writes about. There are knowledgeable details of daily life, customs and terrain, in all their cruel as well as hospitable aspects. Once in a while, there’s bitterness at an acknowledgement of the outside world: “No politician risked imprisonment: they would continue to talk of the rights of the individual, the dig-

The Wandering Falcon: Penguin India, 181 pages, `399. nity of man, the exploitation of the poor, but they would not expose the wrong being done outside their front door.” That sounds familiar.

“To live outside the law,” Bob Dylan famously sang in Absolutely Sweet Marie, “you must be honest”. The Wandering Falcon relates, with honesty and grace, chronicles of those who live outside national laws, gazing upon the twilight of their anachronistic codes of conduct.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Spare beauty on the North­West Frontier

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

···························· s the success of a literary festival directly proportional to how picturesque its location is? If Jaipur and Kovalam are any indication of the truth of this, then it’s fair to say that Mountain Echoes, the literary festival inaugurated last May in Thimphu and Paro by the India Bhutan Foundation, will one day be the most popular of them all.

“Let me quote William Blake to you,” Namita Gokhale, festival director of Mountain Echoes, says. “‘Great things are done when men and mountains meet / This is not done by jostling in the street.’” In the Himalayan fastness of the world’s newest democracy, a land

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so beautiful that colonialists once speculated it was the mythical Shangri-La, humans may dream at least as grandly as the landscape.

Nonetheless, Mountain Echoes, whose second edition will be held later this month, started out small. The festival’s first edition drew capacity crowds—but at the picturesque Tarayana Centre, this was just about 400-500 people per session. Bhutan’s Queen Mother, the writer Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, is the festival’s royal patron, so it’s not surprising that members of the court and government flocked to the readings and panel discussions. But most of the audience, says Mita Kapur, producer of the festival, were students, aspiring writers and readers who responded as enthusiastically to Gulzar as they did to Chetan Bhagat.

Pavan Varma, India’s ambassador to Bhutan, says he thought of a literary festival as a way to bring the two countries culturally closer.

“We have such close political and

economic relations,” he says. “But the embrace has not always allowed for closer people-to-people contact. And Indians did come all the way to attend, just as ordinary Bhutanese showed up in large numbers.”

The Queen Mother may be one of Bhutan’s most high-profile writers, thanks to her Bhutan memoir, Treasures of the Thunder Dragon, but young writers such as Sonam Kinga (a member of Bhutan’s parliament), who translated the 18th century poem Gaylong Sumdar Tashi from Dzongkha to English, are increasingly better known in India, thanks to appearances at the Jaipur Literature Festival and elsewhere. The novelist Kunzang Choden, whose 2005 novel The Circle of Karma was published to international acclaim, remains a star attraction. Both Kinga and Choden will return to the festival this year.

The human themes of novels like Choden’s are universal, as Gokhale notes, but it’s impossible

e died in 1989, but some of his books are just being published in English, so it’s not surprising that the works of the godfather of manga Osama Tezuka are seeing a revival of sorts in the English-speaking world.

Volumes of Black Jack, Tezuka’s light-hearted series about the capers of a skilled but unlicensed doctor, continue to be published regularly. And every once in a while Vertical Inc. publishes books such as Buddha (in eight volumes), Ode to Kirihito, or MW. Ayako is the latest.

Ayako is set in post-war Japan and it is different from other Tezukas in that there’s no element of fantasy in it. Tezuka looks at the degradation of Japan and Japanese society through the story of Ayako, a girl who is the product of incest, and through the story of her family, the Tenges, a once-proud samurai clan that loses, along with most of its landholdings, its decency and morals. Ayako is abused and exploited by almost everyone around her, yet she somehow retains her innocence, stumbling from one misadventure to another; she spends almost her entire childhood and adolescent years locked up in a room and, even in later years, is most comfortable in a large box, yet, somehow, the world has its way with her. Her years in isolation seem to make her capable of only the most basic emotions and feelings—including lust (and we will come to this in a bit).

That’s heavy stuff and could end up making a book dense, boring, and (forgive the stereotyping), almost Russian.

This is where the medium helps. The book is shot through with dark humour and Tezuka’s lines are as clean and light as in his other books. A different visual treatment could have well ended up making Ayako unreadable.

In its current form, despite being close Ayako’s world: It’s set in post­war Japan. to 700-pages long (that’s a pretty lengthy comic book) it is eminently readable (and this columnist read it, like he does most comic books, in one sitting).

Ayako also highlights Tezuka’s ability to use sex to amplify the messages he wishes to convey. At times, there is a certain sensuousness to his depictions of nudity and sex. At other times, there is a hint of desperation evident. And at still other times, the illustrations speak of degradation and depredation.

Tezuka was probably responsible for ensuring that nudity and sex became central to manga but there are few other artists who have been able to use them to as good effect as he has (which is why a lot of new-age manga and anime is almost pornographic). Unlike most other Tezukas Ayako doesn’t have a clean ending and that too is only apt. Most of the other characters die, but Ayako runs away and is never seen again. There are elements of freedom and hope in running away or disappearing and Tezuka may have well wished the ending to just evoke these feelings in readers.

After all, Ayako is outside the box.

R. Sukumar is editor, Mint.

Write to him at cultfiction@livemint.com THINKSTOCK

Thunder dragon times Mountain Echoes brings Bhutanese literature into the spotlight

OSAMA TEZUKA’S CLEAN INTENSITY

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There are knowledgeable details of daily life, customs and terrain, in all their cruel as well as hospita­ ble aspects

R. SUKUMAR

SESSIONS TO WATCH The highlights of this year’s festival

Landscape: The second Mountain Echoes fest will unfold in Thimphu. for a festival of this nature not to speak to the specific culture that surrounds it. Last year’s festival had extensive sessions on the poetic and mythical traditions of Bhutan. “The location is programmed into the consciousness of the festival in some ways,” Gokhale says. “There is an awareness of a Bhutanese model of life.

There is a strong sense of the environment—and Bhutan is far ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to environmentalism—and conservation,” says Gokhale.

But the Indian brigade at Mountain Echoes represents a different sort of glamour. Among others,

this year will feature a range of writers, from Shobhaa De (in conversation with Malashri Lal and Lily Wangchhuk), to Javed Akhtar and Imtiaz Ali, and Samit Basu and Indrajit Hazra.

“I think there are going to be a lot of laughs at that one,” Gokhale says about the last. “It’s a young festival, with a very young air—that, I think, is its essential vibe.”

Mountain Echoes will take place from 20-24 May in Thimphu, Bhutan. For the complete schedule and travel packages, log on to Mountainechoes.org

u ‘Tagore: A Tribute’ (20 May, 5.55pm): Gulzar reads his selections of Tagore poetry u ‘Stories of Earth and Sky: Folk Tales and Contemporary Themes’ (21 May, 2.30pm): With Dasho Kinley Dorji, Lingchen Jurmey Dorji, Karma Singye Dorji and Tshering Tashi u Concert (21 May, 7pm): The Vivek Rajagopalan Quartet u Duet (23 May, 12.30pm): Kunzang Choden in conversation with Anita Roy u ‘Dawn of the Digital Age—Social Media and the New Bhutan’ (23 May, 4.15pm): With Tshering Tobgay, Gopilal Acharya, David Davidar and John Elliott

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SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011

Culture The 1980s genera­ tion has slipped into celebration mode, and is frantically reclaim­ ing its lost icons

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Children of the Disco Dancer

shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· xcuse the 1980s child for feeling a bit short-changed.

The awkward middle-child generation caught between its post-independence and post-liberalization siblings never had a classic defining icon, like the 1960s’ twist, or the 1970s’ “angry young man” or even Facebook.

We did, however, inherit our own assorted legacy of gems.

We got Mithun Chakraborty in crotch-hugging metallic drainpipes (Disco Dancer, 1982); Amitabh Bachchan making the ultimate statement on masculinity (“Mard ko dard nahi hota”, Mard, 1985); and the Ramsay Brothers’ genre of horror (zombie villain attacking semi-naked woman in shower).

On the state-supported television channel Doordarshan, bored housewives surrounded by the six bowls of their best pudding set gave afternoon lessons on palak ke pakode; suited farmers gave farming advice to a generation so desperate for entertainment they had no choice but to watch them deconstruct manure (Krishi Darshan, perhaps every alternate hour).

There was also the first-ever rabbit (the Lijjat Papad rabbit) in the history of rabbits from Peter to Brer who managed to scare the living daylights out of children with his fiendish laugh.

And no respectable Sunday would start without Mahabharat.

Cut to 2011. Two decades later—and at a safe distance away from the horrors of statecontrolled TV and its supporting subcultures—the generation that grew up in the 1980s has slipped into celebration mode. Part critical, part laughing, part loving; in books, blogs, film, theatre and art, the 1980s’ children are attempting to “reclaim” the past (to quote graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee).

Documenting the lived realities of the middle class—because Complan Boy was as much a part of history as the country’s eighth general election—they’re revisiting an era swept away by the tide of the Internet, free porn, and globalized pay cheques.

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Nehruvian thrift: the economic context If there are two icons of ideal womanhood in the times of Nehruvian socialism, it would be Surf’s Lalitaji and Super Nirma’s Deepikaji, both smart and shrewd; Lalitaji for her ability to distinguish between a sasti cheez (cheap product) and achhi cheez (good product), and Deepikaji for her paar ki nazar (far-sightedness).

“In the 1980s, everyone, including people with bungalows in Worli Seaface, talked of bachat (saving),” says Banerjee, who has actively been on a “great reclamation project” with his latest works—his graphic novel The Harappa Files, an exhibition of artworks The Psychic Plumber

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COURTESY SARNATH BANERJEE/THE HARAPPA FILES

and Other Lies and an animation film. “Reclamation”, says Banerjee, is more “value-neutral” than “nostalgia” because it’s also part criticism, unlike nostalgia, which is just good-old-days pap.

The Psychic Plumber captures quirky snapshots of pre-liberalized India and features Complan Boy and Only Vimal; the panel on Only Vimal, for instance, is an ode to the practice of taking “cut pieces” to stitch suits. “The idea is to swim against received history and essentially, personalizing history,” says Banerjee.

Pre-liberalization, middleclass India was a place where foreign trips were an unaffordable luxury and Toblerone was as good as gobbledegook. Filmmakers such as B. Subhash (director of Disco Dancer) attempted to capture the haveworld and “create an idea of what posh meant”, says Anuvab Pal, whose book Disco Dancer (HarperCollins, 2011) is an attempt to capture that ethos. This “posh India”, entirely a product of such film-makers’ imagination, thus became inhabited by disco dancing, disco balls, a place where vamps wore revealing dresses and smoked cigarettes.

This imagined India also acquired a “goofy” character with its “gigantic Afros, huge aunties with paunches, golden bodytights and jhinchak innocence,” adds popular blogger Arnab Ray, whose first book May I Hebb your Attention Pliss (HarperCollins, 2010) is a celebration of this tacky, idiotic, deprived and lovable India.

Immediately after the eco-

nomic liberalization process began, the country’s popular culture was in a slightly adolescent state of clumsy unsureness.

Early attempts at modernity in the 1990s were almost as ridiculous as imagined modernity in the 1980s, like some of Zee TV’s earliest serials (think Navneet Nishan’s emancipated woman in Tara) and DD’s attempts at being cool with the launch of DD Metro. Advertisements also tried to capture this new idea of cool, such as the iconic VIP Frenchie ad with an underwearclad Dalip Tahil trying to save a girl from sexual harassment.

The ad was a combination of machismo, sexual licentiousness and modernity, perhaps the zenith of aspiration.

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The new wave of “internationalized Bollywood” with its svelte extras is as homogenized as any other shopping mall. “When I see derivative item numbers, perfectly copied from rap videos, I reminisce fondly of the craziness of the 1980s and 1990s, at least previously it was entertaining in an unintentional sort of way,” says Ray.

Gandhian puritanism: sex, morality and censorship In the 1980s, sex was not to be shown to polite audiences—and there was an institutional machinery to control that. Sunil Shanbag’s play S*x, M*rality & Cens*rship, which won a Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award (META) in 2010, documents the attitudes to sex at the time. The play is a tribute to Vijay Tendulkar’s revolutionary Sakharam Binder (1972), and simultaneously a critique of the hypocrisy of an entire generation.

At a time when all forms of entertainment played carrier to those stuffed-shirt values, the going was tough for teenagers looking for “sexual release”, as Ray’s book recounts. “(In the world) outside, Sharon Stone was crossing and uncrossing

Personal histories

boundaries and we had to make do with petals touching the wind,” says Ray. Mercifully, there were ways of getting around such hurdles, as the characters in his book discover. For instance, sex could happen under extenuating circumstances (to provide heat to a dying heroine), and nudity could be shown using the classic play of white fabric and water (Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili). There was also the practice of “punching”, courtesy cinema hall owners, so a perfectly safe family film would be interspersed with sex scenes of the latest raunchy production.

Journalist Kai Friese’s epic article “Slow Speed” was one of the first widely read elegies to the era gone by. In 2007, Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om was an ensemble of self-referential jokes on Bollywood of yesteryear-era and, as Pal says, “without Disco Dancer, we wouldn’t have had Om Shanti Om”.

Other people furiously documenting the era of smugglers, safari suits, Vikram Betal, Mogambo and “washing powder Nirma” include Bangalore-based Jai Iyer, a webcomic artist (www.iyermatter.wordpress.com), Gurgaon-based Vinayak Razdan (www.8ate.blogspot.com), who has extensively archived ads and film stills; and Delhi-based vintage art dealer Deepak Jain, who combs the

That ’80s show: (clockwise from top) Disco Dancer; a still from Krishi Darshan, which was punctuated by advertisement divas such as the Liril girl (left) and pop­ ular jingles (illustration by Sarnath Banerjee). interiors of the country to source vintage ads, film posters and pop culture memorabilia to stock his Hauz Khas Village store. “When I posted these (ads and film stills), I had no idea how they might be reused,” says Razdan, whose blog has been of immense use to advertising catalogues, researchers and film-makers.

The generation born in times of standardized perfection has no “recollection or interest” in their immediate past. “To that generation, the fact that we had a whole different country with its own cultural identity (however ridiculous) needs some attempt at documentation,” he adds. “No one wants to be a disco dancer because we know what success and fortune look like. No matter how we point out that he is foolish, his was an India we have lost forever,” says Pal. But he was ours, and we are holding on to him tight.

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MUSIC

A brand new sound cocktail ZAFAR SIANWALA/MINT

Hindi film music is in for an overhaul; think Marathi folk and rock spiked with Hindustani classical

B Y L ALITHA S UHASINI ···························· t 11, Sachin Sanghvi was prepping to become the next Kumar Sanu. He’d already made his playback debut in the Aamir Khan-Juhi Chawla starrer Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (1993). Like most Indian children, he too trained in Hindustani classical vocals. “And then Roja happened and changed everything.

Rahman was the reason I learnt to play the keyboard and realized that we could program music on computers,” says the 30-year-old composer when we meet at his north Mumbai studio.

Jigar Mukul Saraiya, his 26-year-old work partner, joins us later at their dimly lit workspace.

Groggy-eyed, both look ready to go back to sleep.

The 36-inch Vu monitor throws the brightest light in the studio. Its desktop wallpaper is a photo of Sachin’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Tanishka. A tiny altar in one corner holds several idols of the Hindu god Ganesh. Besides a fear of God, Sachin-Jigar, as they are known, are also terrified of budding lyricists who haven’t stopped calling since their first big hit Char baj gaye lekin party abhi baki hai from the campus flick F.A.L.T.U., which released in April. “This is why we prefer working at night. No calls, no distractions. It’s just you and your music,” Sachin says. Ten minutes into the interview and the phone has rung several times.

Sachin says sheepishly, “Lyricists.”

Incidentally, it was Sameer, the veteran songwriter who is an influential figure in film circles, who helped Sachin-Jigar land their debut film project Teree Sang (2009). Former Bombay Vikings singer Neeraj Shridhar pushed Sameer into listening to

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their tunes. Sridhar, a long-time collaborator with Pritam, saw promise in Sachin-Jigar, who then worked as music arrangers. The soundtracks for Teree Sang and the Mehul Kumar-directed Krantiveer (2010) went unnoticed. But F.A.L.T.U. and more recently, Shor in the City, have turned the spotlight on the duo.

For Shor in the City, the composers juxtaposed textured Indian classical sounds (sitar and violin) with rock and pop sounds to produce tracks such as Saibo with Tochi Raina and Shreya Ghoshal on playback. The result wasn’t different from what the likes of Amit Trivedi (Dev. D, 2009) or Sneha Khanwalkar (Love Sex aur Dhokha, 2010) are known for, but Sachin-Jigar credit Pritam, one of the most mainstream names in the industry, with having directed their sound.

At work, Sachin tweaks the melodies and Jigar works on the rhythm. “We enjoy using sounds that contradict each other, but it’s Pritam sir who taught us how to divide our skills and how to strike the right balance,” says Sachin, citing the example of Prem ki Naiya from Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani, which they had arranged for Pritam. “At the heart of it there was a UP (Uttar Pradesh) folk flavour, but we also aimed for a Western country sound.”

The biggest endorsement for folk music will be Karan Johar’s next production—the remake of the Amitabh Bachchan cult film Agneepath slated to release this year.

Johar signed on composers Ajay-Atul, who won the National Award for their score in the Marathi film Jogwa (2009). Agneepath, originally set in rural Maharashtra and Mumbai, needed largescale orchestral sound similar to what LaxmikantPyarelal had scored for the original. Johar zeroed in on Ajay-Atul after watching Natrang

(2010), another Marathi film.

Yash Raj Films’ just-launched Y-Films, a new youth films studio, has roped in Bangalore-based folk rocker Raghu Dixit to score for Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge, a romcom set against the backdrop of social networking. “We wanted a live sound, not a regular Bollywood score with one dream sequence, one love song and one sad song,” says Ashish Patil, who heads Y-Films.

“We’ve been bringing in artistes from the live circuit,” says Patil, referring to Suman Sridhar, who lent her vocals to a track called Luv ka The End. Sridhar bends soul, jazz, funk and opera. Most recently, she featured on the soundtrack of the Nameeta Nair-produced 404, composed by actor Imaad Shah.

The film’s score has been composed by actor Imaad Shah who fronts a funk/rock ‘n’ roll band The Pulp Society. The songs on the album are devoid of the jangle expected from a rocker and focus instead on lyrics and vocals. Sridhar’s track

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

WHEN THE PRODUCER IS THE STAR

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s Ekta Kapoor the new Aamir Khan? The Balaji Telefilms joint managing director is India’s soap opera queen who changed the face of Indian television to make it resemble that of Smriti Malhotra Irani.

She altered television-watching behaviour—perhaps forever—and is now trying to make a similar impact on the movie business.

Kapoor is usually better at following the tide than creating a wave herself, but she has been an unusually astute producer so far, backing both offbeat film-makers (Love Sex aur Dhokha, Shor in the City) and old-fashioned crime dramas (Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai). Like Khan, she has thrown her celebrityhood behind her films. Her forthcoming release, Ragini MMS, has won a large part of its battle purely on the basis of its unforgettable title. Make no mistake: The film has a director attached (Pavan Kirpalani), but it is very much un film de

Ekta Kapoor.

Ragini MMS is a classic sex-and-horror cocktail in which Rajkumar Yadav from Love Sex aur Dhokha is caught with his pants down for the second time in 15 months. The movie, about a couple on a dirty weekend who are chased by a supernatural force, is burning up the grapevine purely on the basis of its sensational premise and the flamboyant personality of its producer. Whether Ragini MMS flops or flies, Kapoor has proved that some Hindi films are as dependent on their producers as they are on the star cast. If Ragini MMS makes its money—which, given its floor-level budget, it is likely to—Kapoor’s gamble will have worked. In the event that it doesn’t, she will still be remembered for her risk-taking behaviour and her tireless dedication to boosting the chances of her film.

Kapoor is one of many recently emboldened producers

who’re stepping out from the darkness of the studios to push their projects. Until recently, only actors were considered the real stars of Bollywood. They still are, but several others also want to be decorated for being make-believe artists. The average release has an army of publicity relations executives attached to it—the stars have their reps, the second rung of actors want to be interviewed too, and the director doesn’t want to be left behind. There is no reason then for the producer, who makes the film possible in the first place, to be denied the right to issue a self-promoting press release.

Although star producers are not a new phenomenon by any means, most studio bosses usually like to remain in the background, emerging into the spotlight only when a movie makes pot-loads of money or when the government needs to be lobbied for concessions.

Directors such as Yash Chopra and Rakesh Roshan also

Anachronistic: (above) A still from Ragini MMS; and Ekta Kapoor. produce (or are they producers who also direct?). Actors have increasingly begun to control the shooting and promotion of their films. “Hindie” directors lend their hard-earned critical credibility to new projects. Why should the producer who has never done anything but produce be left behind? In any case, very few films work on their own steam any more. The forces behind any movie, whether it’s a blockbuster or a modestly budgeted venture, throw everything they can at audiences, hoping to strike a chord somewhere, anywhere.

includes tapori-style lyrics that take potshots at politicians. “In a few years, the entire soundscape of Bollywood will change if this trend continues,” says Dixit.

Sachin-Jigar have also had the backing of big names from the start. For instance, Jigar’s natural affinity for percussion was noticed early on by composer Rajesh Roshan. “Rajeshji was my first teacher. At 17, he told me to learn programming and keyboards. He said, ‘Ab acoustic ka zamana gaya’,” recalls Jigar, referring to the end of the live orchestra era.

Jigar dropped out of his MBA midway to begin arranging for Roshan in films such as Krrish and Krazzy 4. Meanwhile, Sachin too had abandoned the idea of turning into a chartered accountant to begin arranging music for TV serials. “Once the dhokla-khakra connection was made, we realized we worked extremely well together,” jokes Sachin. The arranger partnership was indispensable to Pritam right from Jannat (2008) to Singh is Kinng (2008), until the composer “drove them out to find their own sound”.

“We’d been arranging for 10

Out of the box: (above) Composers Sachin­Jigar; and folk rocker Raghu Dixit. years. Pritam sir was confident that we could make our own music,” says Sachin. Pritam adds, “Among the newcomers, they have the mass appeal sound but with an edge.” In fact, Pritam called them back into his studio when he scored for big banner films such as Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani (2009) and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010).

Crafting an accessible sound is key to Sachin-Jigar’s work. “The audience is really sharp and if you overdo either the classical or the rock bits, you’ll be caught,” says Jigar. Despite multiple offers, they are currently working on only one film—Hum Tum aur Shabana. The composers are waiting for a suitable film to unveil a new genre they’ve been working on. “It’s sitting in our computers,” says Jigar with boyish enthusiasm. “But till then, we’re in no hurry to sign up more films. We’re not a factory.”

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Producers do more than get a film off the ground, of course.

A creative producer can make all the difference between a quality movie and a dud. Ram Gopal Varma’s early protégés speak glowingly of the valuable contributions he made to the scripting, filming and editing process (this was before Varma decided to behave like an uroboros and eat into his own back catalogue, thereby seriously denting his cinematic legacy). A passionate and intelligent producer can protect his director, gather finances for a project, get recalcitrant stars to behave and publicize the film in the right way. Perhaps producers want to remind audiences that film-making is a team effort that binds together a staggering variety of creative forces. The person who pays the piper calls the tune—and now wants to go down in folklore for having done so.

Ragini MMS releases on 12 May. Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

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PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

DIVYA BABU/MINT

DELHI’S BELLY | MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

The vanishing rain sack ‘Barsatis’ once defined a way of life in Delhi. But the terrace room with the monsoon breeze is in terminal decline

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t’s vanishing. The barsati.

The small room at the top of the house where the family could enjoy the cool breeze during the monsoon. A unique Delhi phenomenon.

The city’s real estate regulations spawned a way of life that was artistic and idealistic, temporary and flamboyant. Taking its name from barsat, Urdu for heavy showers, the barsati was a room with a large terrace. Holed up in these below-the-sky capsules, young, unconventional middle-class migrants waited for new opportunities.

A few barsati residents later became famous. Painter M.F. Husain lived in a Jangpura barsati. British author Ian Jack had a barsati near the railway tracks in Defence Colony. Writer Arundhati Roy shaped her world view in a string of barsatis in Lajpat Nagar, Nizamuddin West COURTESY PRADIP KRISHEN

A writer’s den: Arundhati Roy at

and Malcha Marg. Author William Dalrymple’s first year in Delhi was spent in a barsati in Nizamuddin West.

Novelist Anita Desai immortalized the barsati by making it the setting of her short story The Rooftop Dwellers. She described the dwelling with her characteristic understated humour: “The rooms had once been built on Delhi’s flat rooftops so that families who slept out on their roofs on summer nights could draw in their beds in case of a sudden dust storm or thunder shower.

But now that Delhi was far too unsafe for sleeping alfresco, these barsatis were being rented out to working spinsters or bachelors at delightful profits.”

The barsati is now in terminal decline. “In the 1980s, 75% of renting places in Defence Colony were barsatis,” says Shankar, a real estate agent in this upscale south Delhi neighbourhood.

“Today, most bungalows have turned into multi-floor apartments. The entire area has only 25 barsatis.”

The author of the story of the rise and fall of barsatis is the Delhi Development Authority.

The floor space index (FSI) regulates the built area of the property in relation to its plot size. In most neighbourhoods, there was a limit on the number of floors a bungalow could have.

In the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, for instance, a bungalow could have a ground

floor and a first floor. On the second floor, only a small room would be permitted, which was the barsati, the rain shelter.

Doubling up as servant quarters, it was soon being rented out by the landlord for extra income.

Today, the bungalow owner in Chanakyapuri can raise four floors and get more rent.

The barsati is doomed; the South Delhi Barsati Marxists (SDBMs) are already extinct.

The SDBMs flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, when no one was disturbed by telemarketing calls offering home loans. This tribe of Leftists claimed to have rejected careers in the corporate world. Mostly college lecturers, PhD students and journalists (the would-be writers were exceptions), the SDBMs had great aspirations. They saw avant garde European films in Max Mueller Bhavan, attended literary evenings at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture, watched plays in Mandi House theatres, ranted against American imperialism at the Indian Coffee House, and had a regular hang-out joint in Sapru House.

At night, they played audio cassettes of the Beatles, Sting and Bob Dylan on their terraces.

Replace Mandi House with the India Habitat Centre, Indian Coffee House with 4S Bar, and Marxist socialism with guiltless consumerism, and life in the city’s few remaining barsatis is still the same, with Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene downloaded from iTunes. The new rooftop dwellers are students, photographers, film-makers, journalists and mid-level corporate executives. Since south Delhi landlords are increasingly unwilling to rent out to Indians not employed with multinational firms, the barsatis are filling up with single expats.

“Three years ago when I arrived in Delhi and started looking for a place, barsati was the buzzword,” says her barsati in Chanakyapuri during the 1990s.

Annette Ekin, editor of the Motherland magazine. Hers in Greater Kailash-I is like the uncluttered version of a Hauz Khas Village curio shop. On the terrace, the props include a framed poster of Raj Kapoor’s film Shri 420, a signboard of a bone-setting wrestler, a string cot, a yellow watering can and a black water tank. Two frangipani trees grow out of large pots. One is topped with a real bird’s nest and the other has a plastic one, with a fake owl. The bamboo furniture consists of three chairs and a table, on which is kept a tube of Bushman, an insect-repellent lotion from Australia. Though her barsati has two rooms, Ekin says, “When I have friends at home, we never sit inside.”

A few miles away in BK Dutt Colony, D. Bhattacharjya Tato, who works at the French Cultural Centre, has been living in a single-room barsati for five years.

Most of his books are packed in trunks kept on the terrace, which also has a sofa. At night, the barsati is lit up with small electric bulbs, as if it’s a Diwali evening. “Thanks to the top-of-the-world privacy,” says Tato, “I can roam on the terrace stark naked.”

The 1980s exposed most SDBMs as closet capitalists. After a few years of living in barsatis, they moved to apartments in east Delhi localities such as

Patparganj. Others left for universities in England and the US, made money and returned to buy property in places where they had once lived in barsatis.

The 1990s arrived with barsati renters who were lawyers and executives waiting to grab the next promotion. “I was the only one among the barsati people with a different career,” says hairstylist Sylvie. Her barsati in Green Park had a bamboo terrace with 200 palms, a tandoor, a bar and a giant birdcage, which was home to cockatoos, love birds and fowls.

“We had parties till 4am,” says Sylvie, who now lives in a bungalow in Gurgaon.

Before buying an apartment in Mehrauli, thumri singer Vidya Rao was a rooftop dweller. “A barsati is in the house, yet not contained by it,” says Rao. “This is a metaphor for the way I would like to live. Engaged in this world’s ups and downs, yet not submerged in its noise, always open to the sky’s mysterious vastness.”

To many who could not afford bungalows with gardens, barsatis gave a chance to create a forest of potted plants. Till 2008, architect Golak Khandual lived in a series of barsatis, including one on Malcha Marg which had been vacated by Roy. “In my last barsati, I grew tomato, green chilli, herbs, spinach and once a pumpkin,” says Khandual.

Rooftop people: (top) Annette Ekin with her friend Elliot Hannon at her barsati in Greater Kailash­I; and D. Bhattacharjya Tato’s barsati has trunks filled with books.

At his barsati in Jangpura, interior designer and architect Sanju Mahle has basil, asparagus, lilies, arrack palms, cement cranes, birdcages, a granite table and a garden bench. Bougainvilleas climb the wall. “Open space is important to me where I can have my own greenery, different from that cultivated in parks,” says Mahle, who has been living in barsatis since he arrived from Mumbai in 1984. Once known for his barsati parties, he now spends quiet evenings in the “green house” with his dog Sonu.

In BK Dutt Colony, Tato loves the monsoon shower. “There is this huge open space from the staircase to my room and when I’m entering the barsati, I have to run if I don’t want to get wet,” he says. “But I always get wet.”

One day soon, however, there will be barsat, but no barsati. mayank.s@livemint.com www.livemint.com To see the slide show, log on to www.livemint.com/barsati.htm