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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 20

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE Participants at an earlier edition of the San Fermin Fair in Spain.

THE JETSETTER’S SUMMER HOLIDAY GUIDE >Pages 1213

HOMELAND SECURITY

Explore caves in Meghalaya, milk cows near Bangalore, or jam with rock bands in Uttarakhand >Page 8

32 summertime flights AAKAR PATEL

DETOURS

PAMELA TIMMS

ADVANI, THE ‘WORST’ IT’S A PEACHY TIME KIND OF EXTREMIST TO BE A BAKER K Advani is an extremist. By this I mean he has little sense of proportion. His words occupy the extreme end of language, what is called hyperbole. It is unwise for Indians, reporters especially, to accept what Advani says because he uses the same apocalyptic formulation for everything. Let his own words demonstrate this. 29 December 2008 (speech to mark the Prem Kumar Dhumal government anniversary): “2008 has ushered in one of the worst economic recessions in recent times”. >Page 4

The enigmatic world of the Soviet space programme, a mass costume drama and a mother lode of motherboards >Page 10

Sip Sip volcanic volcanic wines wines in in Greece Greece,, volunteer volunteer in in an an Israeli Israeli social social commune commune and and tour tour Rushdie’s Rushdie’s south south Mumbai Mumbai >Pages >Pages 719 719 PIECE OF CAKE

REPLY TO ALL

GEEK GETAWAYS

SALIL TRIPATHI

EQUAL TO THE CASK

At the northern edge of the world’s whisky capital, the science of alcohol is no less than alchemy >Page 11

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

A PASSAGE THROUGH YOUTH

ntil I was old enough to learn how to pack my bag (which was much after I learned to tie my shoelaces), it was my mother who arranged things for me—the clothes I should take, the books I should read, the board games I should play, and the stuff I should carry, as she took me and my two younger brothers every alternate summer to Nadiad, where my grandparents lived, and then to whichever city in Gujarat my aunt and uncle were living in at the time. >Page 19

PHOTO ESSAY

MUMBAI 2020

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

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

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

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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

LOUNGE LOVES | THE TAKSHASHILA SHALA

Outside the classroom A public policy think tank combines scheduled talks with ‘BarCamps’ for a new kind of schooling

he Takshashila Institution, an independent think tank on Indian strategic affairs and policy, is spelt with an extra three letters. This makes it truer to the Gandharan-era (600 BC) pronunciation of its namesake—an ancient institute of learning. Nitin Pai, the institution’s founder, attributes the “s-h-a” to precision and nuance, both important attributes for an organization whose raison d’etre is public policy. Takshashila started off with Pai’s blog, The Acorn (www.acorn. nationalinterest.in), in 2003. Employed with the Singaporean government, Pai had started blogging on public affairs because, as he puts it, working in the government was a lesson on the limitations and failures of governance.

When a critical mass of “high quality” thinkers started associating around his blog, he set up a blog platform called Indian National Interest in 2005. A monthly digital publication on strategic affairs, public policy and governance called Pragati came next. Pai had by then quit his job to attend Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy for a better theoretical grounding. Pai founded the Takshashila Institution in 2009 as a non-partisan, non-profit public charitable trust. To preserve its independence, it only works on donations from Indian nationals and Indian grant-making trusts. There has been no corporate funding so far, although seed funding came from Rohini Nilekani, chairperson of the public charitable foundation Arghyam. Over the last two years, Takshashila has conducted several round-table conclaves to channelize its commentary. Closed-door executive sessions have been held in elite institutions such as the College of Defence Management in Secunderabad. But these have been limited to a small

group of participants and Pai was keen to reach a wider base. Takshashila’s inaugural “Shala” event in Pune on 29 May will do just that. It is an innovative format that will blend scheduled presentations with spontaneous, even extempore, talks from participants on the lines of the “BarCamp”, an international network of “unconferences”. Participants will announce topics they wish to speak on in the morning, attendees will choose what they wish to attend, and speakers who generate enough interest will be given a chance to make a 20-minute speech. In scheduled sessions, Takshashila fellows—Pai himself is a fellow of geopolitics—will share their research. Speakers will include government officials such as Navdeep Suri, joint secretary, public diplomacy, ministry of external affairs; and topics such as “India as a swing power” (Pai) and “B.R. Ambedkar as a champion of

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: The 7 May story, “The flip side of an eventure”, should have said Flipkart has around 1,000 employees in India.

Graduation: Takshila’s archaeological ruins; and (left) the latest Pragati. free markets” (B. Chandrasekaran, Hayekorder.blogspot.com). Though this new initiative, the “Shala”, again alludes to learning (in borrowing from the Sanskrit word for “school”), the event isn’t strictly pedagogic, but rather an informal one. Pai hopes to spread Takshashila’s lofty missions through the event, which is an “aim to establish itself as one of the most credible voices in India’s public policy discourse, known for its unambiguous pursuit of the national interest, through consist-

ent high-quality policy advisories.” The inaugural Takshashila Shala will be held from 9am-5.30pm at the NCL Innovation Park, Dr Homi Bhabha Road, Pune. Entry is free and open but attendees have to pre-register on www.takshashila.org.in/ events/shala (Mint’s executive editor Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is a trustee at the Takshashila Institution.) Anindita Ghose

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

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AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

Advani, the ‘worst’ kind of extremist

PTI

K Advani is an extremist. By this I mean he

kind of arbitrators”. 11 December 2006 (The Financial Express): “Sachar Committee findings are the worst kind of vote bank politics”. 12 January 2009 (speech on National Youth Day): “Colonialism of the mind is always the worst form of colonialism”. 7 August 2009 (speech at the release of his autobiography): “The joint statement contains two of the worst blunders in India’s diplomatic history”. 6 April 2006 (a speech during the Bharat Suraksha Yatra, Rajkot): “Naxalites are the worst enemies of the poor”. My Country My Life (his autobiography, Page 3): Partition was “the worst of all tragedies”.

has little sense of proportion. His words occupy the extreme end of language, what is called hyperbole. It is unwise for Indians, reporters especially, to accept what Advani

says because he uses the same apocalyptic formulation for everything. Let his own words demonstrate this.

ECONOMY WORST 29 December 2008 (speech to mark the Prem Kumar Dhumal government anniversary): “2008 has ushered in one of the worst economic recessions in recent times”. 8 February 2009 (speech at the BJP national executive meet): “India has been facing one of the worst economic crises”. Actually, India would grow quite robustly that year. But having decided the economy was sunk, Advani worked out precisely who was most affected by his recession. 25 August 2008 (IANS): “Common people are the worst sufferers”. 3 November 2008 (The Times of India): “Farmers are the worst sufferers”. 7 February 2009 (the BJP national council meeting): “Small investors are the worst sufferers”. 3 March 2008 (speech in the Lok Sabha): “Women are the worst affected”. 21 November 2008 (The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit): “Worst hit are the small and medium enterprises”. 24 November 2008 (a press conference in Indore): “Worst victims are the poor”. 22 September 2008 (a speech at the Vijay Sankalp Yatra, Jharkhand): “Worst neglected are the Adivasis”. 22 January 2009 (a chat on Rediff.com): “Aam aadmi experienced the worst kind of price rise in his life”.

TERRORISM WORST Advani likes to weigh in strongly on terrorism, his favourite subject. That is fine. But he also feels the urge to both use his extreme vocabulary and assign an order of importance to the attacks. This

has created problems in the hierarchy. 3 October 2008 (Lkadvani.in): “India is the worst victim of terrorism in the world”. 12 September 2010 (Lkadvani.in): “9/11 was the worst ever terrorist attack in human history”. 29 December 2008 (BJP.org): “2008 was the worst year in terms of terrorist violence.” 19 May 2003 (The Economic Times): “Suicide bomber has become the worst ever device”. 19 December 2001 (Frontline): “The attack on Parliament is undoubtedly the most audacious, and also the most alarming, act of terrorism in the history of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India”. 15 July 2006 (PTI): “Mumbai train blast is the worst-ever terror strike that hit India”. 27 November 2008 (The Economic Times): “26/11 is the most ferocious terrorist attack in India since independence”. 6 April 2009 (Sify.com): “26/11 terror attack was worse than 1993 bomb blasts”. 9 July 2005 (The Indian Express): “The Ayodhya temple attack is the most serious attack in the country after the Parliament attack”. 17 March 2004 (Rediff.com): “The Akshardham temple attack was worse than Gujarat disturbances”.

INDEPENDENCE WORST One set piece Advani is comfortable with is describing something as being the worst since independence. Since he is old enough (born 1927), he may possibly be qualified to know. 30 December 2007 (UNI): “Agriculture is facing the worst crisis

Lashing out: Advani’s language lacks the measured tone that sets a leader apart. since independence”. 27 January 2010 (Sify.com): “Rise in prices is the worst since independence”. 27 April 2009 (PTI): “Corruption by UPA is the worst since independence”.

SCAM BIGGEST Which is India’s worst scandal? Let Advani tell you. 21 November 2008 (IANS): “Cash for votes scam is the worst scandal in the history of independent India”. 18 October 2010 (The Pioneer): “Spectrum scam is the biggest scandal since independence”. 19 March 2011 (The Hindu): “WikiLeaks was the biggest scandal in independent India”.

GOVERNMENT WORST 7 March 2009 (The Indian Express): “UPA government is the worst people have had”.

30 October 2007 (IANS): “UPA is the worst example of a coalition.” 30 September 2008 (a speech at the Vijay Sankalp Yatra, Washim, Maharashtra): “Amarnath pilgrim issue was one of the worst failures of the UPA government”. 17 January 2011 (The Financial Express): “The government is going through its worst crisis”. 17 March 2009 (NDTV): “Manmohan Singh is the weakest prime minister of India”. 28 September 2008 (The Economic Times): “Manmohan Singh is the most incompetent prime minister of India”. 21 April 2011 (Sakaal Times): “The country’s condition has reached its worst under Manmohan Singh”.

MISCELLANEOUS WORST 25 November 2005 (The Times of India): “Retired judges are the worst

Leaders should be measured (Barack Obama and Manmohan Singh are fine examples). Their opinion must be calibrated, because they bring perspective. Like a teenage girl, however, Advani scatters “worst”, “most” and “biggest” with little restraint. To be fair to Advani, many middle-class Indians talk in this manner. Things are best or worst. But there is a difference between our uncle and his drawing-room certitude about everything and a politician wielding power. In speaking like this, Advani’s purpose is not leadership. In the language of our newspapers, this is “lashing out”. 21 February 2004 (The Indian Express): “Congress would deliver its worst-ever performance and win less than 100 seats”. He said this before the election, and he was wrong, of course. Might Advani have made our worst prime minister? Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media. Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/aakarpatel

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

UNSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR MAY MEAN DEEPROOTED ISSUES I am a widower with a son and daughter in their early 20s. The children were in school when my wife died in an accident. My son was very attached to his mother but managed to overcome the setback—he was sent to a school abroad. My daughter refused to leave the city even for a day. She completed her studies and began to work but has now taken to working only at animal shelters. She has become unsociable, has let her weight balloon, doesn’t stick to fixed schedules, completely ignores her loving maternal aunts and uncles. She does not communicate much with me either. Her home life is spent in bed with her two puppies. She takes no interest in tidiness, housework, etc. She is unhappy with life or some boyfriend. She has strong negative feelings about all women, especially those who work in office with me. I wish to remarry a divorcee with a daughter who is living elsewhere (we can’t live together since our careers cannot be aborted). I wish my daughter to be well adjusted and happy with life. Will my friend be able to draw her out of her hostile and negative shell? How should I handle her? She is hostile to the idea of meeting a counsellor (particularly a lady). From what you describe, your daughter is having a hard time processing not just what happened, but also current

developments. She has taken refuge in becoming reclusive and inaccessible, bordering on the dysfunctional. There seems to be a big disconnect with all human interactions, and this cannot but lead to more maladjustment and unhappiness, possibly a breakdown. I would venture to say she is almost in breakdown mode already. You will have to gently but firmly insist that she sees a counsellor. You must find a counsellor who will work empathetically with your daughter and help you rebuild a rapport with her; you could find a male counsellor or psychiatrist since she seems resistant to dealing with women. As for the relationship between your future wife and your daughter, I would strongly advise you not to put the task of counselling your daughter on to your future wife. It would be unfair to both. It will only make your daughter more hostile towards her and the situation. And for your future wife, it would mean stepping into territory she is not familiar or comfortable with. She can continue trying to make warm and friendly overtures towards the girl, and will hopefully handle rebuffs or rudeness with maturity and understanding. You do need professional help. Involve a counsellor or family elder or even one of her more balanced friends to intervene and get her out of her shell. You mention boyfriends. Could you perhaps contact one of them, someone

Locked up: Recluses need counselling. who has been a friend, and involve him and some of her other friends (possibly from the shelter) in getting her to deal with her issues, or to at least see that things cannot continue as they are? Another device you could use is to tell her you need to see a counsellor as you are contemplating a second marriage, and then ask her if she will come along for a future session as she is part of your life and the emerging situation. It may do you good to go meet a counsellor to help you balance the demands of your new life as well as the insecurities and issues that your daughter is currently experiencing. Our elder son (11) is adopted, while our girl (7) is our biological child. Our son has recently started making

negative references to being adopted. He has always known it, and till now has had no real, deep-rooted issues with us. However, nowadays he ascribes many of our disciplinary restrictions—they are the normal ones—to his being adopted. He recently said it out loud even in front of guests, which makes things awkward all round. Our daughter alleges we are partial to him because he is adopted. How do we get both to see there is no basis for what they accuse us of? It seems like there are two issues or tracks in here. One is that your son is entering an age—going towards adolescence—where his earlier ease or innocence about the fact that he is adopted is being replaced with some kind of anxiety and doubts about his “place” in the scheme of life. While he was still your little boy, his being adopted was only a vague concept, and his sense of well-being was not challenged because he related to you as a nurturer-parent. Now, and this is natural with all children his age, as his emotions and experiences are opening out and he is forming an identity for himself, separate from you, the uncertainty and questions begin to arise. This happens with all children. With adopted children, the inevitable question, with sadness and anger, about why they were given up for adoption by their biological parents is bound to come up—and you’re going to have to deal with it sensitively. When you have this talk, you can also work in the information that you very much wanted him, and if you wanted to mistreat a child, you wouldn’t have gone in for an adoption in the first place—you can reiterate this by saying you brought him and also had his sister because you need someone to love, and not someone

to be mean to. However, the other issue here is the plain and simple “using” of a fact by a child, like a cane, to keep parents on the back foot. In your case it is the fact of being adopted; other children find something else to hold over their parents’ heads. It’s all part of the “ammo” in a budding adolescent’s armoury. In your case, he has obviously touched a raw nerve, and this kind of allegation neatly derails the issue at hand—your attempt to discipline him. Suddenly the topic becomes whether he is loved or not, whether your motives are to do with what’s good for him or the fact that he’s adopted— and there you have it, a neat little sidestep tool used to great effect. As you say, your biological daughter too is “using” the word adopted to voice her own complaints about perceived injustices. Perhaps it is time to stop taking these allegations so seriously. In fact, you could sit them down when there isn’t a slanging match going on, and tell them this “because I am adopted”, “because he is adopted” phrase is going to be put into cold storage for a while. Tell them it has no bearing on anything, and if it is trotted out, you will not engage in the conversation any more. Let me reiterate that you need to continue to sensitively help your son with the emotional issues and questions about his adoption. It is just when you feel that there is almost a glib and convenient use of this fact by both your children, that you should firmly refuse to get drawn into the subject. Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting. Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

COLUMNS L5

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AMITAVA KUMAR GUEST COLUMN

The point of no return

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

ou wake up at 6 in the morning and decide you should first check and see if, far away in India, the Pune Warriors are going to play Sourav Ganguly or not. You notice there’s an email from your publisher in Delhi asking if you still hold an Indian passport. Your book is on their longlist for a prize and the good folks

over at the Vodafone Crossword Book Award want to know. There is a simple answer to that question. But you are still lying lazily in bed, your BlackBerry in hand, and you begin to consider your memories. It’s been a very long time. It is 1986. You know in your mind you will be here for two years. You will get your degree and go back. You think you will work as a journalist. Maybe even teach. No, you will work as a journalist. Teaching is for people who keep themselves safe from the world. Why return to India if you aren’t going to go out every day to learn about the lives around you? You don’t even try to get a New York driver’s licence because why waste time? You have your Indian licence. It will still be valid when you go back. One day, only months after your arrival, you hear an Indian friend, also a student in New York, order pizza on the phone. He sounds as if his birthplace is Buffalo. You know you won’t change like that. How can you? It will sound silly if you speak like that—when you are back—in a small office in Daryaganj or Indraprastha Marg. Lying in bed this morning, this is what you remember. You are a new immigrant in New York and whenever you pick anything up in a store you calculate what it means in rupees. A cauliflower, you find out, costs more than what you would pay for three chickens at home in Patna. You hoard your meagre wealth because you see it all slipping away in the future. But then, one day, at your university book store, you see a book with a name on its spine—Saadat Hasan Manto—and this name makes the distance between you and your birthplace collapse. The stories are in translation. It doesn’t matter. You want to be a writer, and Manto was a great writer. You know that because you have read his story Toba Tek Singh in school (the inmates

from a mental asylum are being transferred to the other side of the border after the Partition of India. The mad protagonist doesn’t grasp the idea of the border. He doesn’t know where he belongs. At the story’s end, he lies dying in the no man’s land between the two nations). In addition, you are drawn to Manto’s use of news to produce brief, biting pieces of social satire. His reports are savage in their brutality. You like this very much. Lost in this new country, in Reagan’s America, you think about buying the book that afternoon because it will be a handy guide to achievement. That is how the middle-class soul, conscious of the forbidding cost of the hardcover, begins to rationalize the purchase. If there are any doubts in your mind, they quickly dissolve when on the first page that opens under your thumb you read: “Dedicated to the memory of Saadat Hasan Manto, who was never to see any of his work translated during his lifetime…” Later, you read the stories and are pleased. But either right away or during later readings you discover that you can’t always guess what the words in the original were. You know the titles of the individual stories and you write the original names on the page where it says Contents. But the stories themselves, that is to say, the language of the original, the words in Urdu, cannot be recovered. Memory is failing you. Everything around you is in English. You speak in your language mostly on the phone, when talking to relatives and friends. The stories that were to take you back home become reminders of a different complication. That is important too, this discovery that you have become a translated man. Two years change to five, and then to 15. Around that time, you stop counting. It no longer surprises you when in a new town the barber tilts your chin and, scissors poised for a second above your head, looks in the JAVEED SHAH/MINT

mirror and asks you, “Are you going to go back?” It doesn’t surprise you not because another barber, and yet another before him, has asked you the same question. No, it’s not that at all. It doesn’t surprise you because you have looked in the mirror many times yourself and asked the same question and forgotten by now what your answer was. Wait! You are still in bed and from another room your son, who was born here, is calling out your name. Every day, you catch yourself saying something to him in Hindi. At night, you listen to old songs by Lata or Rafi when they are posted on Facebook. You are filled with a familiar guilt when talking to your parents on the phone in Patna. You have written a lot about people and places in India, in fiction and non-fiction, but are suspicious that so far you have written little about Indians in America. Why is this so? You know, of course, that nostalgia is for losers. If you indulge in it, nothing divides you from the guy who keeps going back to the woman who dumped him. Or worse, the woman who he had dumped, and now wants really badly to be friends with. See, this is what is wrong with nostalgia: You come up with shallow analogies to explain the world. You come out of bed to watch the match in Hyderabad on the Internet, but also because your older child, your beloved daughter, needs help with her dinosaur project for school. You remember later that you should write back to your publisher in Delhi. You are a teacher now. All the impulses that have been aroused by the publisher’s letter need to be put in perspective. So, you want to write a letter telling a story about the impossibility of return. You will tell him about coming across a brief report in The Daily Chronicle archive in a library in Trinidad, about an indentured labourer from Guyana brought on a ship from India to work in the sugar-cane fields. The report states that the indentured man was homesick and in a fit of despair waded into the sea to swim back to India. Our hapless swimmer was quickly rescued and jailed for 14 days for indecent exposure. Would be travellers to imaginary homelands, stay warned! Amitava Kumar is the author, most recently, of Evidence of Suspicion (Picador). He is now an American citizen.

Homeland: A busy traffic junction on the streets of modernday Patna.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Inspiration: Amitava Kumar, whose hometown is Patna, has used the city as a backdrop in his books.

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE

PIECE OF CAKE

HUNGRY PLANET | KABIR KHAN

PAMELA TIMMS PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

imprecise measurements. I think it takes the cake up to new (Himalayan) heights. Vive l’Andaaz.

Imperial cousins Momos with ‘dal’, ‘naans’ as spoons, and other bites of a shared culinary lineage

Vanilla Peach Andaaz Cake Serves 6

Just peachy

A word about the tablespoon measure: My mother’s spoon, heaped with flour or slightly rounded with caster sugar, measures one ounce (approximately 25g) but as long as you use the same spoon throughout, it doesn’t really matter, your cake will just be larger or smaller according to your spoon size—the main thing is to keep the ratios the same. Ingredients For the fruit Kkg of just-ripe (not squishy) Himalayan peaches 1 cup granulated sugar 2 cups water 2 vanilla pods For the cake 10 level tbsp plain flour (maida) 1 tsp baking powder 6 level tbsp vanilla sugar (caster sugar which has been kept in a jar with vanilla pods) 4 tbsp sunflower oil 8 tbsp milk 2 whole eggs Finely grated zest of a lemon A pinch of salt A little extra butter and sugar for the topping

Himalayan soft fruits are making their way to our bazaars; time to be a fruitful baker

frequently get messages from readers pleading for recipes which don’t require scales—most Indian “andaaz”-based kitchens, they say, simply don’t possess a set. Although I recommend investing in scales if you’re at all keen to explore home baking—personally, I’m a slave to mine—I come from a long line of cooks who weren’t. My mother, an excellent baker, would have been completely at home in an Indian kitchen, using a tablespoon to measure everything—at least until she went through a weird midlife crisis Cordon Bleu phase in the 1970s. I have inherited her beautiful, but now rather thin and worn, old spoon and use it most days—it makes me feel as if I’m stirring some magic into a cake or biscuit mixture. Today, I have used it as the base measure for a gorgeous, fruity sponge cake

which is a perfect showcase for every glorious soft fruit about to make its way down from the Himalayas: I’ve used the fragrant little peaches which are in season briefly now, but you could substitute apricots, plums, cherries and later the apples and pears. It’s inspired by a wonderful recipe in Jane Grigson’s 1982 masterpiece Fruit Book, given to the author by the owner of the village store near her French home. This, along with its companion volume on vegetables, is a book I refer to constantly—in fact, my copy falls open at this recipe’s page. Grigson named it Tarte de Cambrai but it’s really more of a cake. It requires minimal time in the kitchen—ideal for the next few months—about 5 minutes if you use fresh chopped fruit. I decided to use some peaches I had poached in a vanilla syrup first, again with

Method First prepare the fruit: Dissolve the sugar and water in a pan large enough to hold all the peaches and bring to a boil. Place the peaches in the syrup and let them simmer for 3 minutes, no longer. Lift the peaches out of the syrup and when cool enough to handle, remove the skins. Slit the vanilla pods and remove the seeds. Add both pods and seeds to the sugar syrup, then put the peaches back in and leave to cool to soak up some of the vanilla flavour. When you’re ready to make the cake, preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease something to bake the cake in. This also can be flexible. I used my beautiful Assamese earthenware dish but it works equally well in Pyrex or a metal cake or pie tin. Just make sure to grease it well. Remove the stones from the peaches and lay them in the baking dish to form a single layer—you might not need them all but whatever’s left is delicious with a dollop of cream. Measure all the ingredients into a bowl with your trusty tablespoon, then whisk to mix, or use a mixer. Pour the mixture, which will be like a batter, over the peaches. Put small dabs of butter over the surface along with a sprinkling of caster sugar. Bake for about 35-45 minutes until a skewer prodded into the centre comes out clean. Eat straight from the oven with thick cream or cold later. Pamela Timms is a Delhi-based journalist and food writer. She blogs at http://eatanddust. wordpress.com Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com www.livemint.com

Practise what you peach: (top) A sponge cake is the perfect showcase for the soft fruits in season now; (above, left) if using peaches, it’s best to poach them first; and the cake mix should have the consistency of batter.

For a slide show on how to bake a peachy sponge cake, log on to www.livemint.com/spongecake.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

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

························································ n a relatively quiet lane opposite the buzzing Central Market in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar, chef Kabir Khan, 45, a UNHCR refugee from Kabul, is busy making a fresh start. He seals the day’s first degh of pulao with some dough, checks that the fire is low so as not to overcook the fragrant, long-grained rice and settles down for a chat. The Afghani national dish, Kabuli pulao, or Qubuli Uzbaki as it’s called on the menu at Herat Restaurant, where he now works, is a cousin of the Mughlai biryani, he says. “It’s a simpler version with less spices,” says Khan. He claims the much-loved Mughlai cuisine is an Indianized and more elaborate version of his native Afghan cuisine. Given the Afghan links of the last of the imperial dynasties in India, the claim might be valid. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What are the differences between Afghan and Mughlai cuisines? The two are similar. Mughlai cuisine has richer, spicier gravies. We use less spices, mostly garam masala. But we use a lot of oil, yogurt and whey. Dum cooking is a common technique. Not just meats and pulaos, even vegetables like baingan are dum-cooked. However, our naans are quite different. They are served at every meal with every dish. You use them almost like spoons. Has Afghan cuisine changed over the years? Not much. It’s a simple cuisine: kebabs, qormas, rice dishes like chelow kebab and pulaos. But eating habits have changed. The Russians introduced us to salads. Used as Afghans were to shormas (traditional soups), Russian soups became popular. Now children are crazy about pizzas and chicken fry, thanks to the Americans. What would meals be like in a typical household? Breakfast is naan with a handful of mewa. We also eat a lot of PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT meats. A rich man eats meat at every meal, a poor man eats meat once a day. Another common item is mantu—a momo with beef or mutton stuffing. We eat it with dal and yogurt, not the spicy chutney that Tibetans have. During feasts, uzbaki is a must. Another treat, though rare, is spit roasted goat. A whole goat is gutted and roasted over coal fires for 4-5 hours. The Herat menu doesn’t have many desserts. Don’t Afghans have a sweet tooth? There are few desserts in traditional Afghan cuisine. One exception is phirni. We eat a lot of fruits. Our grapes, pomegranate, melons are the best in the world. Of course, nuts and dry fruits—walnuts, Afghan flavours: Chef Kabir Khan. pistas, kishmish, munaqqas. These are liberally used in cooking as well as eaten by themselves. But we do eat sweets, mostly Pakistani or Irani in origin, depending on where in Afghanistan you go. Along the eastern parts, where the Pathans live, you get a lot of mithai—laddoos, barfis. In the west, you get shirinis—kind of cookies made from all kinds of flour, rice and chickpea as well as maida.

Qubuli Uzbaki Serves 5-6 Ingredients 500g mutton 200g onion, sliced 200ml oil 20g garam masala 1kg basmati rice 200g carrots, julienned 100g raisins 50g pista (optional) 50g almonds, blanched (optional) 1 tsp saffron (soaked in half a cup of milk) Salt and sugar to taste Method Wash the rice, mix salt and keep aside. Heat half the oil in a heavy-bottom pan. Fry the onions and add meat. Sauté well. Add garam masala, salt and cook till the oil separates. Add water, cover and cook over medium heat till the meat is tender. Take off the heat and drain the stock. Keep the stock and the meat aside separately. In another pan, heat a little oil and sauté raisins till they are plump and brown. Remove from oil and keep aside. If using pistas and almonds, fry them in the same oil till golden. Remove from the oil and keep aside. In a degh, pour the remaining oil. Add the julienned carrots and sauté lightly. Add the rice, mutton, raisins, pistas and almonds—the carrots should be the bottom layer, so that they caramelize, and the raisins top-most. Sprinkle the saffron milk, sugar and salt over the rice. Add the stock. Add just enough water so that the water level is half an inch above the rice. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to minimum, cover the degh and seal the lid with dough. Dum-cook for about an hour. Serve hot, heaped on a big platter at the centre of the table.

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32 summertime flights

Travel

ummer is the season for escape. The season for plots and conspiracies, incubated in tropical heat, to escape. They could be imaginary itineraries, hypothetical round trips or an idle spin of the globe on Google Earth—but the kernel of an idea must exist. Allow us to help. From volunteering in a social commune in Israel or discovering the science of whisky in Scotland, to drinking volcanic wines in Greece and dressing up as a zombie, there’s something for every traveller in our summer travel special issue. If you can swing an “official” work trip in the coming months, preserve the globetrotter’s dream itinerary for this summer. Why ignore the Indian summer? Forests near Delhi, caves in Meghalaya and a music festival in the hills of Uttarakhand are some unusual but fulfilling places to visit. Or explore getaways immortalized in the works of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and other writers. And for homebirds, there’s always some way to make a staycathon interesting. So go ahead, plot and conspire.

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Homeland

security

Explore caves in Meghalaya, milk cows near Bangalore, or jam with rock bands in Uttarakhand. Here are three unusual holidays to take this summer VISHAL SABHARWAL/COLOURSOFNATURE.IN

Off track: Meghalaya’s cavernous secrets; and (below) Menwhopause bring the mountains alive at Escape 2010.

KHASI & SOUTH GARO CAVES | MEGHALAYA DEEPER UNDERGROUND Meghalaya’s luxuriously rich flora and fauna, fuelled by some of the heaviest rainfall in the world, has been a wonderland for thrill-seeking travellers for decades. What was hitherto hidden, however, was an incredible system of subterranean caves that ran deep below the green hills in the Khasi, Jaintia and South Garo regions. Led by the intrepid Brian Dermot Kharpran Daly, a caver and wine-maker from Shillong, the Meghalaya Adventurers Association began exploring and mapping the caves in 1992. Now more than a thousand such caves, including South Asia’s 10 longest cave systems, are open for any traveller. Nothing can prepare you for the thrill of a vast underground world—rivers and creeks run through them, crystal-clear ponds appear out of nowhere, “cave pearls”, perfect calcite spheres, are scattered along the path, massive stalactites and stalagmites hang majestically, and an incredible variety of sculptured rock formations, millions of years in the making, offer limitless visual delight. Then there is the sheer excitement of being deep in the underbelly of the hills, exploring tiny passageways and massive halls, squeezing through rock

VIJAY KATÉ

formations, rappelling down narrow shafts, or following a subterranean river, all in the spooky light of headlamps. For the East Khasi hill caves, Cherrapunji forms the base. Krem Mawmluh, just half a kilometre away, features a large subterranean river system, and Krem Phyllut has a massive “fossil passage”, an older area of the cave through which a river once ran. Jowai, a hill town that forms the base for caving in the Jaintia Hills, is 64km from Shillong along the Shillong-Silchar National Highway. Krem Um Lawan, the longest and deepest cave in India, is the main attraction here. It dates back to the Eocene Age (35-56 million years ago), and has some spectacular cataracts and waterfalls. For the caves in the South Garo hills, Tura, a town situated at the base of Nokrek mountain, is used as a base. Siju Dobakkol, the third largest cave in India, and home to thousands of bats, is probably the most popular caving spot in the country.

GETTING THERE Air India flies Kolkata Shillong, and return airfare starts from `24,320 (exDelhi) and `21,142 (exMumbai). The Meghalaya Adventurers Asso ciation, based out of Hotel Centre Point in Shillong (for details, call 364225210), provides caving guides and equipment, as well as customized packaged adventure tours.

Rudraneil Sengupta

THE ESCAPE FESTIVAL | NAUKUCHIATAL, UTTARAKHAND MOUNTAIN SONG The “getaway” music festival is the curse of Indian indie. The lure is easy to understand—spend a few days camping in the foothills of the Himalayas or on the banks of a river, and listen to eclectic, edgy music with hundreds of like-minded people. But 2010’s Ladakh Confluence, set 11,500ft high near Leh, came to an abrupt stop after protests by local tour operators. 2011’s Ujaan Festival, due to be held at the beach town of Frasergunj at the border of the Sundarbans, was cancelled after concerns about the event’s ecological impact. The criticisms and concerns are all valid. Music festivals are hardly low-key events, and they’re often rightly seen as urban “invasions” by local communities shut out from the festivities. But the Escape Festival (starting 20 May), at the Naukuchiatal Lake Resort in Uttarakhand, seems to have got something right. The fest is now in its third year, and is one of India’s few “camping” festivals, in the spirit of European festivals such as Glastonbury. “We thought carefully before scaling up our event from the little private party that it started out as,” says Escape founder L. “Mama” Tochhawng. For one, the festival is held at a rented-out resort, and doesn’t encroach beyond its pristine 32-acre confines. Tochhawng and his team also seem to have their priorities right. “In 2010, which was the year we had an influx of over 1,000 people, we looked seriously at keeping our carbon footprint minimal,” he says. “We also had to make sure that local communities were involved and participated at all stages of the festival.” The three-day festival has three stages, and the line-up for 2011 includes glitchy dubstep duo Teddy Boy Kill, and alternative acts Menwhopause and Indigo Children. There will also be plenty of interactive events, including guitar and drum workshops with many of the participating bands, and a “Flee” market with stalls from local artists. Krish Raghav

GETTING THERE Naukuchiatal is 35km from Kathgodam, and 41km from Nainital. Both towns are well connected by bus and train to Delhi and Dehradun. The Ranikhet Express and the Uttaranchal Sampark Kranti Express ply daily between the capital and Kathgodam. Once there, taxis and buses are available at the Haldwani road ways bus stand. Festival passes are priced at `2,500 and camp ing packages start at `6,700. To book, visit www.escapefestival.in

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM OURNATIVEVILLAGE.COM

OUR NATIVE VILLAGE | HESSARGHATTA, KARNATAKA

IN SEARCH OF PEACOCKS I remember being at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, a couple of years ago. My daughter, 12 at the time, would have been disappointed if Donald Duck had not been around to shake her hand and sign her slam book. But there he was, fabulous blue eyes and such an outsized smile we could almost say hello to his epiglottis. That’s the guarantee of a Disneyland—you get your ticket’s worth. No such luck at Our Native Village, on the outskirts of Bangalore, where we recently spent a couple of days in search of peacocks. In fact, the resident turkey of the village had just died. If we wished, we could milk the cow, we were told. That’s the big difference between “doing” Disneyland and “doing” Our Native Village—fictional animals are guaranteed in the former, real life and nature are elusive in the latter. Maybe that’s why we loved it. My daughter didn’t complain. Instead, she learnt to play gilli-danda and went cycling across the open grassy savannah landscape. But I get ahead of myself. Down with a cough that wouldn’t go away despite intense medication, I needed to get away from the city. At one time such places would have been called sanitariums. But Our Native Village is an eco-resort for holistic healing. So we woke up at 6am for a walk in 600 acres of forest with the air full of the smell of fresh rain. When we got back, there was hot breakfast waiting, much of the produce brought in from the organic farm on the property. Don’t be silly—of course you can get an Ayurvedic massage. This is south India, where there is no healing without a good oil rub or a shirodhara (a mesmerizing warm drip of medicated oil and milk on your forehead). Even better was the sound massage my wife wanted—lying on a wooden table while a therapist played 50 strings in the hollow below her. The vibrations had her stress knots all straightened out—somewhat like a trance party, except this was bespoke for an audience of one. I don’t know when, perhaps between reading the P.D. James mystery below the coconut tree in the afternoon and drinking the delicious jaggery-spiked coffee in the evening, my cough decided to abandon me. Talk about holistic healing. Arun Katiyar Katiyar is a Bangalore-based content and communication consultant. Write to lounge@livemint.com

GETTING THERE Our Native Village is located in Hes sarghatta, 40km north of Bangalore, off Tum kur Road. A night’s stay for two costs `6,800 (exclusive of taxes). This includes room cost, breakfast, lunch, dinner, group yoga, meditation, use of the pool, and cer tain village games and activities. There are also special multiday packages. For details, visit www.ournative village.com

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Geek

getaways WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The enigmatic world of the Soviet space programme, a mass costume drama and a mother lode of motherboards

DIVYA BABU/MINT

MEMORIAL MUSEUM OF COSMONAUTICS | MOSCOW, RUSSIA B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

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COSMONAUT COUNTRY Even the memorials to the Soviet space programme are punctuated with a sense of enigmatic hyperbole. Down Cosmonauts Alley in north Moscow, where the wide boulevard is lined with busts of engineers, scientists and space-faring dogs, a gigantic titanium structure shaped like a rocket’s exhaust plume rises out of the ground. This is the Monument to the Conquerors of Space, first designed to commemorate the Soviet Union’s early space victories when they put the beeping Sputnik 1 into orbit in 1957. At the foot of the monument, peering into the distance, is a life-size statue of rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (the man responsible for the oft-quoted line: “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever”). Tsiolkovsky, who died in 1935, wrote more than 100 scientific treatises on the specifics of space travel—what fuel a manned rocket would use, how the propulsion would be generated and the kind of pressurized suits that cosmonauts would need to wear. His writing was astonishingly detailed and the precursor to the advances of both the US and Soviet space programmes. Tsiolkovsky even devised a 16-step process of how humans would conquer space, a list science is still trying to play catch-up with (we’re still working on point 6 of 16). This sense of boundless vision is what makes the Soviet space programme so intriguing. While the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Apollo missions were a supremely well-engineered team project, the Soviet Union’s was a haphazard endeavour that relied on flamboyant genius and miraculous luck. At the base of the monument is the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics filled with nearly 3,500 artefacts from the space programme—from a golden spreadeagled Yuri Gagarin greeting you at the entrance to a preserved life-support pod from the planned “Luna” manned moon missions. The museum is open to visitors from 11am-7pm, daily, except Tuesdays.

BONUS BIKING TO BAIKONUR This is a trip only for the bravest of space nuts. The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh stan is ground zero for everything spacerelated. Here’s where Gagarin took off in 1961, and where the mon strous N1 rockets, which then Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hoped would take them to the moon, were tested. Trouble is, Baikonur is a spe cially administered Russian zone that’s a 23hour train journey from Kazakhstan’s capital Almaty. Opting for an official tour, either from Almaty or Moscow, is the best way to reach. Or you could bike across the steppes. It’s possible. For details, visit www.globalbiketours.com/ tour/show/536

Overloaded: The Monument to the Conquerors of Space; (top, right) seasculpted rock formations at Nanya; and an installation celebrating fandom at ComicCon.

COMPUTEX 2011 | TAIPEI, TAIWAN TECHNOLOGY RULES Taiwan is an obvious and frequently overlooked geek destination. It’s home to many of the world’s leading technology companies—smartphone maker HTC, motherboard giant Asus, and bicycle makers Merida. It’s also the site of Computex, the world’s second largest annual consumer electronics expo. Computex 2011 starts 31 May, and it’s a perfect excuse to explore Taiwan. On one hand, you’re in technology heaven—expect 3D tablets, new gaming consoles and self-driving cars to be showcased. But step outside the exhibition halls, and you’ll find a fascinating country to explore. An hour away from downtown Taipei is Yingge, the “Ceramic Town”. Yingge is a small artists village that specializes in pottery. You’ll see rows of small kilns and workshops, as well as independent stores selling the work of local artists. Further out from the city are Taiwan’s many national parks—all of them are stunning and many let you roam around on a bicycle. Not to be missed is Nanya, a spot on the north-east coast with wonderfully bizarre seasculpted rock formations and a pristine view of the Pacific. To the south is Yangmingshan, known for its hot springs and hiking trails, and the Taroko National Park, with its waterfalls and temple shrines. After dark, hit the Shilin Night Market and eat the best pork buns and oyster omelettes in South-East Asia.

GETTING THERE Return tickets to Taipei on China Southern from Delhi via Guangzhou start at `30,314. You can also fly Cathay Pacific, via Hong Kong (from Bangalore), `32,350 onwards. Indian passport holders do not need a visa to enter Tai wan, but you will need to register yourself before arrival with the country’s immigration agency at https://nas.immigration. gov.tw/nase/. Taipei is connected to all of Taiwan’s tourist destina tions by highspeed train. For details about Computex 2011, visit www.computex taipei.com.tw

COMICCON INTERNATIONAL | SAN DIEGO, US

GETTING THERE Aeroflot has direct flights to Moscow from Delhi. Return tickets start at `23,622. You will need a tourist visa to enter Russia. Contact the Russian consu lates in Mumbai (02223633627) or Delhi (01126110640), or visit www.visatorussia.com For entry to the Baikonur cosmodrome, contact the Russian consulate.

STRIP TEASE Welcome to pop culture central. On your left, an honest-to-goodness flash mob of costumed zombies with fake blood splats over their ripped clothes shamble about convincingly. On your right, legions of Batmen and Wonder Women browse through new comics or playing a video game. Ahead, a queue of people with a shock of purple hair, wait to enter a special preview of a yet-to-air horror TV show. Spiderman creator Stan Lee is somewhere in the vicinity, signing books. In the evening, there’s a panel discussion on the use of cephalopod monsters in fantasy novels. The San Diego Comic-Con, which starts 21 July, is only incidentally about comics. Comics are there, often in significant numbers, but the event has mutated in the last 10 years to embrace every form of pop culture—manga and anime, horror and fantasy, board games and toys. Everything new and exciting in all these fields makes an appearance here first. It premieres network shows, films and documentaries months before they first air or release. Outside the event, there are Diego’s miles of beaches, ripe for surfing, sailing or jet-skiing. Mexico is an hour’s drive away, as is Temecula wine country. Your interest in pop culture could be a curious little niche or gloriously mainstream—Comic-Con has something for everyone. All literary, cinematic and ludic condescension is discarded for the four days of the event. This is a celebration of fandom—of meeting with artists and creators who’ve shaped the way you think while dressed as a two-headed cow, or discovering that you’re not the only fan in the world of a cult Korean sitcom.

GETTING THERE United flies Delhi San Diego via Los Angeles. Return economy fares start at `68,465. Entry to the US requires a tourist visa. Be sure to apply for it at least three weeks before your flight date. Pack a cos tume—superhero, zombie, vampire, etc.—to blend in with the crowd. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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Equal

to the cask At the northern edge of the world’s whisky capital, the science of alcohol is no less than alchemy PHOTOGRAPHS

DUFFTOWN |

COURTESY

THE BALVENIE DISTILLERY

SCOTLAND

B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ···························· t all begins with barley. Heaps and heaps of this cereal grain sit on the second floor of a three-floor warehouse building on the grounds of The Balvenie Distillery Co. Ltd in Dufftown, Scotland. Outside, the weather is a disconcerting mix of bright sunshine and chilly wind. Too hot to keep your jacket on. Too cold to take it off. Disconcerting weather is one of Scotland’s specialities. Inside the stone-walled warehouse, small windows let in patches of fierce sunlight, but otherwise the air is evenly cool and a little musty. Besides the fact that there is a lot of it, the barley looks utterly unremarkable. But David Mair assures us that this indeed is where the process of whisky-making begins. All that wonderful, golden liquid that makes grown men and women weak at the knees, wet in their mouths and uncontrollable in airport duty-free shops is born unceremoniously in barley warehouses just like this one. Mair is what is known in the whisky business as a distillery ambassador. At Balvenie, a distillery first established in 1892 and part of the mammoth William Grant and Sons group of spirit brands, Mair’s job is to welcome visitors to the distillery, take them on 3-hour, behind-the-scenes tours of the facility and then introduce them to the nuances of pouring, nosing and tasting a good whisky. My visit to Dufftown, which is situated just south of Moray Firth, the triangle-shaped inlet of the North Sea that cuts into Scotland, is as part of an international group of journalists invited for the launch of a new whisky vintage by Balvenie. Called Tun 1401 Batch 2, the spirit comprises a blend of 10 casks of single malt Balvenie of vintages ranging from 1967 to 1989. The journalists include budding whisky expert Joel Harrison, of funky whisky blog Caskstrength.net, and Belgian magazine editor, writer and amateur bartender Dieter Moeyaert (whose claim to fame is being a stand-in for Colin Farrell’s left hand in the movie In Bruges). Dufftown houses a number of large, active distilleries such as Glenfiddich, Glendullan and Balvenie. Together they make Dufftown, the “Whisky Capital of the World”, the largest malt whisky producing region in Scotland. The Dufftown area also has one other claim to fame. In the Harry

Potter universe Dufftown is located near Hogwarts. In reality, nothing ever happens in Dufftown. Last year, in the local town of Huntly, they realized after winter that the police vehicles at the local station didn’t have to be moved from the parking lot for four months. Nothing had happened. At all. Inside the Balvenie distillery, tonnes of barley is tipped into vats of warm water and then aerated for two-three days. This softens the grain and prepares it for germination when the grain begins to sprout roots. The barley is then thrown on to a malting floor where it is allowed to germinate. From this point onwards the process has to be overseen carefully. Germinate for too long and the grains run out of sugar. Germinate for too short a

time and there isn’t enough sugar. The four who man the malting floor, one level below the warehouse, work in physically demanding conditions. The barley needs to be turned over several times to ensure even germination; originally this was done with a massive wooden shield at the end of a staff. Turning the barley is such hard work that malt men began to develop “monkey shoulders”, one dominant shoulder substantially bigger than the other. Nowadays, malt men at Balvenie use a motorized scoop to turn the barley over. And “Monkey Shoulder” is the name of a nice blended whisky, also sold by William Grant, that is crafted by malt master David Stewart. Stewart is also the brains, or nose rather, behind all of

Balvenie’s products. He chooses what spirit goes into what cask, what cask goes into what blend and what blend goes into what bottle. Every day, Stewart tells me, his job comprises tasting samples from various casks, deciding what is ready to bottle and what isn’t. In the course of a day he routinely tastes over 100 spirits. How, I ask him astonished, does he stay sober? “Oh, I just nose them mostly,” Stewart says. I ask him if his sense of smell is good enough to completely make the actual tasting process on the tongue redundant. He thinks for a moment and then nods shyly, as if embarrassed by his superpower: “Yes.” Once the damp barley, or green malt, has completed germination it is dried in a malt kiln, ground to a flour called grist, then rinsed with spring water, at 64 degrees Celsius. This warm water Goblet of fire: (clockwise from top) Hogwarts would’ve been close to the Balvenie Distill ery; David Stewart; and the prized casks of single malt.

completes the conversion of starch into fermentable sugar. The waste solid is removed and the sugar water is then combined with yeast to start fermentation. At this stage one can’t help wondering something: Who discovered fermentation? Who was the first human being who wondered what would happen if you let wet barley, for instance, rot and then, instead of throwing the stinking thing into a river or over an enemy, distil the mess and drink the outcome? The liquor from yeast fermentation, Mair tells some thirsty journalists, is drinkable and would taste like a beer. But it is the next crucial stage that makes whisky happen—distillation. There are six massive copper stills in the distillery. They look like giant margarita glasses made of copper placed upside down. Inside the stills, the product of fermentation, or wash, is boiled repeatedly till the alcohol is driven off, condensed and captured. What is left now is the longest step: casking the whisky. What happens inside a cask is almost alchemy: base alcohol to gold whisky. The distilled alcohol begins to absorb flavours from the wood and from the residue of the spirit that was previously contained in the cask. Balvanie usually uses casks that held bourbon, sherry and port. Bourbon casks impart a mild, vanilla flavour to the whisky. Sherry and port casks, on the other hand, make the spirit darker in colour and lend more fruity flavours. All in all it is inside these casks that the whisky, as you taste it, begins to take shape. Over the years, these casks will also concentrate the alcohol, thanks to absorption and evaporation. Despite the centuries of experience in making whisky, casks can still be eccentric.

“Sometimes when you open one after 40 years you find almost nothing left in it. Sometimes you find superb spirit,” explains Stewart. Malt master David Stewart’s work begins now. That evening the journalists are ushered into a dank, dark warehouse and he pours each one some of the first drams from a massive barrel of Tun 1401 Batch 2. We swirl, we nose, we sip. Even to the untrained palate the whisky is both powerful and complex. There are many strong flavours here, but none that make your eyes water or your tongue burn. A few days later, Harrison had this to say about Tun 1401 on his blog, CaskStrength: “Wow, this is a whisky with a big personality and the nose jumps out the glass at you; citrus fruit juices come through first, followed by a dumbing down of the energy thanks to some runny honey tones and finally oak and wood spices add some last min left turns to the aroma. A huge hit of spiced pineapple, as if used in a mild curry with some lime chutney and Seville orange marmalade.” In comparison my palate is philistine. I wouldn’t be able to recognize Seville orange marmalade if you hit me in the face with a bottle of the stuff. But the whisky was beautiful. Write to lounge@livemint.com GETTING THERE Flights to Aberdeen take off from airports all over the UK, including London. The Balvenie conducts two tours a day from MondayThursday and one on Fri day. The tours are 3 hours long and include a nosing and tasting ses sion. They cost £25 (around `1,840) per person. Visitors can buy a bottle of their own Balvenie from a cask for a further £25. Res ervations are essential. For details, visit www.thebalvenie.com

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The jetsetter’s

summer holiday guide

MAY

Our itinerary for those of you who can swing an ‘important’ business trip to London in June and Spain in August CITRAWARNA

21 MAY

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

Malaysia’s equivalent of the Republic Day parade without the allpervasive security, CitraWarna was conceived by the Malaysian government to showcase the culture of its states. The parade originally featured traditional dancers from across the country in Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka Square, and now includes food, fireworks and shopping offers. It’s no substitute for reading about the long and complex history of migration in SouthEast Asia, but will give you an amusebouchesized taste of all the ethnic groups in Malaysia today. NEED TO KNOW u AirAsia uses Kuala Lumpur’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal as a hub: Search for deals to Australia, Indochina and the rest of SouthEast Asia to extend your holiday. u If you’d rather stay in Malaysia, skip the tourist trap of Genting highlands and head further north to Cameron Highlands for a farm resort holiday.

26 MAY 5 JUN

HAY FESTIVAL

3 JUN ONWARDS

PHILLY BEER WEEK PHILADELPHIA, US

Philadelphia is one of the world’s best beer cities—it’s home to more than 30 local breweries and close to 500 beer bars that serve craft beer. Once a year, the city feels like showing off its stuff. Philly Beer Week is seven days of pub crawls, beer derbies, tastings, competitions and special offers. Breweries use the opportunity to inflict their latest experiments on you, restaurants offer marvellous discounts and Philadelphia’s illustrious history of alcohol production and consumption spills on to the streets. Be sure to wear a sombrero and don’t miss the Cinco De Mayo pub crawls. Need to know u Get yourself a Philadelphia CityPass which grants access to six of the city’s main attractions: the Franklin Institute Science Museum, Adventure Aquarium, Philadelphia Zoo, a 24hour pass on the Phila Trolley and the Big Bus Company, the playful Please Touch Museum for children and the grim Eastern State Penitentiary.

HAYONWYE, WALES

The tiny town of Hay, just south of the EnglandWales border, hosts one of the world’s biggest literary festivals—although “literary” is just shorthand at this point in the Hay Festival’s evolution, given that it hosts almost 700 events covering art, politics, economics, comedy and musical performances. Expect everyone from Nobel laureates V.S. Naipaul and Mohamed ElBaradei to concerts by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Afro Celt Sound System. Need to know u The ticketed events may cost anything from £419 (around `3001,400), so use the website filters to decide a genre or form you’d like to see and book online. u The surrounding countryside is perfect for an English summer idyll—medieval castles, splendid views of the Wye river and the countryside. In case you want more than intellectual exercise, there are plenty of adventure tourism options for biking, rafting and camping enthusiasts.

MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES

Wordsworth: HayonWye.

4 JUN 27 NOV

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

7 JUN ONWARDS

LOS ANGELES, US/COLOGNE, GERMANY/TOKYO, JAPAN

Video games are going to take over the world, so what better way to educate yourself in their ways than by stalking them across three continents. E3 (in June), GamesCom (in August) and the Tokyo Game Show, or TGS (in September), are the industry’s biggest events. If the term “industry event” makes you blanch, don’t worry. These are more like noisy, colourful exhibitions—full of strange sights and bleedingedge technology. And it’s not just about the games. Don’t miss the performances and the afterparties. Need to know u The exhibition halls tend to be dominated by the large game studios and companies. But don’t miss the small indie titles at the edges. u Head to GDC (Game Developers Conference) Europe in Cologne a week before GamesCom. It’s a fascinating peek into the art and craft of video games, as opposed to the commerce.

124 JUL

MARTIN VENEGAS/ ALLSPORTUK/ALLSPORT

COPA AMERICA ACROSS ARGENTINA

Brazil may have beaten Argentina to the trophy in the last edition of South America’s preeminent football tournament, but the Albiceleste are on home soil this year—and all of Argentina will be putting its heart and soul into supporting them in and around historic stadiums in eight historic cities. It’s a chance to watch some of the world’s most thrilling teams, including Chile, Uruguay and Mexico (allowed in from North America), all of whom are in the same group this year. There’s also the small matter of the home team and their greatest rivals, of course. Need to know u Cordoba and Buenos Aires are tourist hubs, but the biggest group matches will be in La Plata and Mendoza. Save the capital for later—it’s the final venue anyway. u If you’re in the stands, please find a section with likeminded fans before you start cheering wildly.

Gear up: Keep out of the way of bulls in San Fermin; and (left) enjoy the football mad ness at Copa America.

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

On two wheels: Enjoy the French countryside during Tour de France.

20 JUN 3 JUL

714 JUL

FESTIVAL OF SAN FERMIN

NAVARRE PROVINCE, SPAIN

When Papa Hemingway wrote ‘The Sun Also Rises’ in 1926, the Englishspeaking world came to know about the running of the bulls in Pamplona. But there’s more to the festival of San Fermin than being chased down a narrow alley by aggravated bulls: It started as a feast day for Saint Fermin and the religious procession continues to this day. Over the centuries,

WIMBLEDON

LONDON, ENGLAND The Wimbledon Tennis Championship is an excellent reason to visit London in summer. But if Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi or Sania Mirza all get bundled out early—as they sometimes tend to—don’t give up hope. London is positively brimming with things to do and places to visit and eat. For three days from 16 June, Regent’s Park hosts Taste of London, one of the biggest restaurant festivals in the world. Chefs attending this year’s whirlwind roster of classes, tastings, stalls and competitions include Michel Roux Jr. Later, retire to one of the many free music festivals all over the city, including the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, that will have acrobatic dancers from the Wired Aerial Theatre, dancing acrobats and everything else in between. Then there’s the Bluesfest London, the More London Free Festival and a brand new production of Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ starring the campilicious Tim Curry. If you stay till August, and you must, then Buckingham Palace is open for a bit this summer. We are told there will be Faberge eggs to see this year. With so much happening, thank goodness good, cheap beer is always within reach. Need to know u For more ideas, visit Londonist.com and see ‘Time Out London’ (www.timeout.com/london/).

JULIAN FINNEY/GETTY IMAGES

nonreligious activities were added on, and now the festival is a weeklong street party with music, drinking and, yes, bullfights. Need to know u Book rooms well in advance: Pamplona is a small town and accommodation runs out quickly. u Only four people have died in the running of the bulls in the past 30 years, but that’s no reason to be careless: Run sober and stay on the designated course. u Read the official guide to the San Fermin festival at http://www.pamplona.es for maps, videos and pamphlets.

BIG CHILL

57 AUG

224 JUL

TOUR DE FRANCE

ACROSS FRANCE

The most prestigious cycling competition in the world starts from Passage Du Gois, a tidal causeway linking the Isle of Noirmoutier on the northwestern coast of France to the mainland, before covering 3,471km, finishing in Paris after 23 days on the road. Following the race route means just about no region in France is left untouched. Visit Brittany with its megalithic sites and pink granite coastline; some of the best preserved medieval villages in the world on the route from Blayelesmines to Lavaur; the iconic Catholic pilgrimage town of Lourdes; and the remote mountain towns in the Italian alpine region of Pinerolo (the tour goes over four summits). Hundreds of cathedrals, castles and vineyards dot the route. So while the competitors sweat it out, you can enjoy artisanal breads and wine, the freshest seafood and umpteen varieties of meats and cheese. Visit www.letour.fr for the route map. Need to know u It will be challenging to book hotels or home stays in many of the small towns the tour passes through, and most places even in the larger cities and towns get a fair amount of tour enthusiasts, so book early www.discoverfrance.com offers holiday packages around the tour, and you can choose between hard cycling, moderate cycling or noncycling options.

Power shot: Watch Rafael Nadal, full throttle, at Wimbledon in June.

Art alive: Be there for India’s debut at the prestigious Venice Biennale, one of the oldest art fairs in the world.

AUG

E3/GAMESCOM/TGS

VENICE, ITALY

Need to know u Entry to Italy will mean getting a Schengen visa, which opens up almost all of mainland Europe for further exploration. u If you’re in the mood for more art, head to Paris, which plays host to many interesting art events in summer.

JUL

KER ROBERTSON/ALLSPORT

VENICE BIENNALE

2011 sees India’s debut at the 116yearold Venice Biennale—the oldest and most prestigious art fair in the world. It’s marked by its unusual choice of artists, including a radical Guwahati art collective called The Desire Machine, who “stretch the idea” of India, according to curator Ranjit Hoskote. The 250 sq. m India pavilion will be housed next to China’s pavilion, another debutante at the fair. The biennale is spread across more than 30 national pavilions with an eclectic “fringe” area for young, emerging artists. The Venice Film Festival is part of the biennale, as is a festival of contemporary dance.

JUN

EASTNOR CASTLE, UK

No, not the beloved café in south Delhi. The Big Chill is the most leftfield of the major European summer music festivals. The usual headliners and big names are (mostly) missing here, replaced by groovy, experimental and, most importantly, upcoming groups. This year’s concession to the mainstream is hip hop star Kanye West, who is riding on a wave of fantastic US gigs in support of his new album. Other names at Big Chill 2011 include the wonderfully erudite Janelle Monae, the groovy DapKings with Sharon Jones (pictured below) and Robert Plant. Need to know u Like its European cousins, the Big Chill is a camping festival. Make sure you pack proper gear and tone down expectations of hygiene. COURTESY DAPTONE RECORDS

Festive: A still from the upcoming film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, shot during Tomatina.

TOMATINA

31 AUG

BUÑOL IN VALENCIA, SPAIN

Right at the end of the summer is Tomatina, the world’s biggest food fight. The tomatoes grown in the nearby community of Extremadura aren’t the right variety for either eating or making ketchup, so they’re trucked into Buñol’s town square, the Plaza del Pueblo. At 11am, people in the trucks start chucking tomatoes at tourists packed into the square. Anything that isn’t a direct hit is picked up to use afresh. The chaos ends at noon when the municipality turns on water hoses for everyone to wash off.

Sound of music: Groove at the Big Chill festival.

Need to know u Once you’re done with the festival, head to Barcelona for art, architecture and paella. u If the end of August doesn’t work for you, head to Sutamarchan, Colombia, in the middle of June for their imitation food fight. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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The jetsetter’s

summer holiday guide

MAY

Our itinerary for those of you who can swing an ‘important’ business trip to London in June and Spain in August CITRAWARNA

21 MAY

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

26 MAY 5 JUN

HAY FESTIVAL

3 JUN ONWARDS

PHILLY BEER WEEK PHILADELPHIA, US

HAYONWYE, WALES

MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES

Wordsworth: HayonWye.

4 JUN 27 NOV

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

7 JUN ONWARDS

LOS ANGELES, US/COLOGNE, GERMANY/TOKYO, JAPAN

124 JUL

MARTIN VENEGAS/ ALLSPORTUK/ALLSPORT

COPA AMERICA ACROSS ARGENTINA

Gear up: Keep out of the way of bulls in San Fermin; and (left) enjoy the football mad ness at Copa America.

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

On two wheels: Enjoy the French countryside during Tour de France.

20 JUN 3 JUL

714 JUL

FESTIVAL OF SAN FERMIN

NAVARRE PROVINCE, SPAIN

WIMBLEDON

JULIAN FINNEY/GETTY IMAGES

BIG CHILL

57 AUG

224 JUL

TOUR DE FRANCE

ACROSS FRANCE

Power shot: Watch Rafael Nadal, full throttle, at Wimbledon in June.

Art alive: Be there for India’s debut at the prestigious Venice Biennale, one of the oldest art fairs in the world.

AUG

E3/GAMESCOM/TGS

VENICE, ITALY

JUL

KER ROBERTSON/ALLSPORT

VENICE BIENNALE

JUN

EASTNOR CASTLE, UK

Festive: A still from the upcoming film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, shot during Tomatina.

TOMATINA

31 AUG

BUÑOL IN VALENCIA, SPAIN

Sound of music: Groove at the Big Chill festival.

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The literary

detective

Each part of India has had representatives who brought the landscape to life through their books. Here’s how to explore their worlds INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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

································· own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” This was the private detective of Raymond Chandler’s dreams, a man who struck a match in the darkness of the big city. All travellers are detectives of a sort, determined to discover truth by following maps and guides. Stories are just another kind of map then: opening up a world in which plots become milestones and characters become a layer of the landscape. It’s why backpackers on Colaba Causeway are seen clutching, not the Lonely Planet guide, but Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram. In the 19th century, hackney cab drivers in Marseille would call out thanks to Alexandre Dumas as he passed them on the street for bringing their ill-reputed port city to international attention in The Count of Monte Cristo (Suketu Mehta might have liked Mumbaikars to do that). Indian writing in English has similarly broadened the world’s imaginative horizons about the subcontinent. Readers may well complain that the last few years have cynically overexposed the slums of Dharavi (Vikas Swarup’s Q&A) and the gated colonies of Gurgaon (Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger). But not all of the most famous vistas that Indian writers opened up are quite so neo-Dickensian. Over the last few decades, each quarter of the country has had a representative who brought the landscape to life in complex, delicate feats of literary cartography. What would some parts of India look like if you used their awardwinning novels to navigate them?

Canvas: (clockwise from above, left) History and geography meet in Ghosh’s Kolkata; Rushdie evokes Malabar Hill’s lovable humanity; Roy’s Kerala is far from backwaters tourism; and Ali’s Old Delhi is caught up in turmoil.

Book Name: Xaslkdjf publisher xx pages, Rsxx

THE EAST

THE WEST SANDIPAN DAS/MINT

MANOJ MADHAVAN/MINT

THE SOUTH

THE NORTH

THE EAST

THE WEST

THE NORTH

THE SOUTH

Other big cities may fight their respective corners, but like Renaissance-era Venice or pre-war Vienna, our expectations of a cultural capital are still deeply informed by India’s imagined Kolkata: not so much a place as a radical conversation between languages and histories, houses and streets, industry and intellect. It can be difficult to detect a physical city that frames the humans who loom so large over its literature. But there are those books which shade the landscapes of the East into the lives of its people. In the fiction of Amitav Ghosh, for whom geography and history have always been simultaneous, ordinary settings develop startling backstories. To walk through bylanes in residential Kolkata with The Shadow Lines is to realize a whole complex of Partition and ideology that envelops their histories. To sit in a tea shop is to unravel the pasts of the unknown young men who share your table. In The Hungry Tide, the story of an imaginary settlement on the Sundarbans reconstructs its entire ecosystem: to walk through its unparalleled forests in real life will forever be a quest for Lusibari and Garjontola. And in his Ibis trilogy, whose second instalment River of Smoke comes out this July, everything from Kolkata’s commerce in opium to the colonial histories of the India-Myanmar border becomes part of a wild intercontinental odyssey that begins on the banks of the Hooghly. There can be no better way to learn history, Ghosh says, than by making it personal.

There is no city that does not dream,” begins an Anne Michaels poem. If you went looking for the Mumbai of Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie, you would be hard-pressed to find a moment to dream in the unceasing churn of the workingclass eastern dock neighbourhoods. In the Mumbai of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, you’d be too busy trying to preserve your morals and your life to care. Literary Mumbai’s most rococo avatar is still found in the pages of Salman Rushdie, who wrote of his childhood home in the key of both celebration and lamentation. Rushdie’s Mumbai may seem overly dependent on the fluted columns and yellowed stonework of the neighbourhoods around Malabar Hill, with its parks where people from other parts of the city still come “on chutti” (holiday). But it is also the constantly crumbling, constantly remade world of the Irani cafés and art galleries of south Mumbai, of the Western Railway’s stations, of central Mumbai’s pickle factories and red light areas. The star attraction of Rushdie’s Mumbai, though, is always its grotesque but lovable humanity. His disaffected Parsis become rock stars; his psychotic cartoonists become political overlords; his magical midnight’s children become seers, beggars, lose their homes, find love. Rushdie was perhaps the first English-language author to bridge the gap between two wellworn clichés: In his novels, it made sense that the city that never sleeps is also the city of dreams.

First published in 1940 by Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, Ahmed Ali’s novel Twilight in Delhi is the best guidebook to Old Delhi for the sophisticated traveller. While the area is fast shedding its history, one can glimpse the vanished world. Keep a copy in your back pocket. On reaching Turkman Gate, flip to page 14. “The air was filled with the shouts of the pigeon-fliers who were rending the atmosphere with their cries of ‘Aao, Koo, Haa!’” Look up. There are boys on rooftops, flying their pigeons, and crying, ‘Aao, Koo, Haa!’ At a kotha (brothel) on GB Road, next to Ajmeri Gate, open page 52. “From all around came the sounds of song, whining of sarangis, and the tinkling of bells, as the dancing girls entertained their customers.” The girls still dance. At Jama Masjid, turn to page 77. “Vendors were selling small round kebabs fried in oil, and others still fried fish or meat cutlets, pulao or vegetable cutlets soaked in curds. Many sold sherbet…” And today, the vendors are selling kebabs and sherbets. Set in 19th century Delhi, the novel traces a civilization’s decline. Through a world of lovers, poets, pigeons, havelis, kothas, kuchas, mosques, dargahs and bazaars, it elegantly records the inner turmoil of a great capital. Today, Ali lies buried in Karachi and his Walled City is a maze of open drains and overhanging electric cables. But Delhi’s soul has survived in hidden corners which a tourist can discover if armed with this novel.

The killer massage. The hilly retreats amid the tea gardens. The pristine beaches. The houseboats glowing in the dusk. Kerala offers tourists so many easy ways out that these may often be the most overwhelming impressions that casual visitors take away from the state. The classical splendours of other places in the south are absent in Kerala’s vistas of blue and green, the human imprint reluctant to intrude on the tourist reverie. There are neither beaches nor tea gardens in Arundhati Roy’s Kerala, a place anchored to its time, not its advertising. It is overflowing with human energy: a place where a stop at a toddy shack might bring you in contact with a communist radical and a factory-owning capitalist at once; where a bus ride can be overwhelmed by protesters walking in the other direction; where an evening by the village river can change your destiny. It is a place of whitewashed churches, frenetic party offices and homes full of secrets. True, Roy’s Ayemenem is underpinned with such darkness that it may put you off the most quotidian activities, like going to a movie theatre (or at least its drinks counter) for some time after you’ve travelled through it. But unlike the tourist Kerala, it can be visited in the rainy season. It invites serious engagement. And we hear the pickles are delicious.

Shamik Bag

Supriya Nair

Mayank Austen Soofi

Supriya Nair

AMITAV GHOSH’S WORK

SALMAN RUSHDIE’S WORK

TWILIGHT IN DELHI

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

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The armchair

holiday Yellow snowstorms, green sandpipers, snowwhite ‘idlis’ and other joys of living in the city ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

MUMBAI

BUTTERED COAST The Arabian Sea is Mumbai’s best feature, as Juhu and Girgaum Chowpatty’s teeming crowds, even during the summer, will attest. Not the best spot for a lunchtime picnic, but you can follow the coastline to arange of places and events over this summer. At the tip of Worli is one of the city’s oldest and most visible fishing villages. The Koliwada has been called a slum, perched on the edge of the hyper-urban, new Worli, which includes the local passport office and Atria mall, but it is an ancient neighbourhood. Local tour operator Shriti Tyagi conducts informal sunset walks through the area, starting from the Golphadevi temple, dedicated to the traditional deity of the Kolis, through the bylanes of the village, exploring its food, religion and politics, ending with tea on the ramparts of the historic Worli Fort. For details, email beyondbombay@gmail.com. On Mumbai’s starboard side, the flamingo walks organized by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) at the Sewri mud flats may be over for this season, but the “flats” still offer a wide variety of birds and flora to see, including the common greenshank, common redshank, curlew and green sandpiper. BNHS will also take a nature trail to Elephanta on 22 May which will focus on the island’s fauna—yes, more than just monkeys and other tourists—rather than its history. For details, email bnhs.programmes@gmail.com

INSIDE STORY

DON’T MISS For some people Gorai Beach is best known as the landing point for the ferry to EsselWorld amusement park. While it’s no longer a proto Goan paradise, part of it remains one of Mum bai’s cleanest and qui etest beaches. As with most of north Mum bai’s coastline, its cur rents make it an unsafe swimming hole, but its walks are exhilarating, and the adjacent east Indian village of Gorai includes a real gem: the late 16th century Portu guese church of the Holy Magi.

All outdoor activity is best undertaken early in the morning, before the sun and traffic intensify. To escape indoors, remember that the National Centre for the Performing Arts and Prithvi Theatre are both on the coast—at Marine Drive and Juhu, respectively—and have summer performing arts festivals through the season. For details, visit www.ncpamumbai.com or www.prithvitheatre.org Supriya Nair MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI/MINT

CHENNAI

TIFFIN READY At 5am, walk the streets of Chennai. It’s safe to do so: The heat does not set in at this early hour. This will be about the coolest the city will get for the next four months. Notice, as you walk, that Chennai wakes up pretty early. Newspapers are being sorted, the milkman’s already done his round, trucks roll by. Walk (or drive) to Purasawalkam. It’s easy: Follow the smell of fresh sambhar. Udipi Welcome is a little, old world Chennai restaurant that serves one of the best things to eat in the morning: hot idlis drowned in the hottest, freshest sambar. Get yourself a newspaper, order your breakfast and dig in. Two idlis or 20, no Chennai breakfast is complete without a little pongal. Order a plate of the good stuff, and begin working on the crossword. Purasawalkam, a busy market area, is in north Chennai. It’s known for quaint, tiny streets with old houses, and the Gangadeeswarar Temple. Just down the road from Udipi Welcome, Gangadeeswarar Temple was built by the Chola dynasty, and pretty much left to its own devices. With shops hedging in on its space, and its tank hidden by new construction, Gangadeeswarar remains a quiet, cool place to puzzle over 15 Down: Disturbed new sect seen growing old (9).

PHILOSOPHIZE

Haven in home: (clockwise from top) History lives at the Worli Fort; amaltas trees bloom only in sum mer; and the quiet of the Ganga deeswarar temple.

The Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) is on Greenways Road, not far from where the river Adyar meets the sea. A sprawling, green campus, KFI is ideal to spend an afternoon. An Art Deco, two-storeyed building houses books, lectures and discussions of the KFI, and writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Pick one up, find yourself a spot under a tree (there are many) and read. Or listen to your music. There is no formal membership and no agenda for the foundation, and great stress is laid on doing your own thing in search of truth. As the day cools, regulars and newcomers meet on the lawn and talk philosophy, religion and Krishnamurti while the birds come home to roost. KFI is a good place for birds; and if you are a birdwatcher, for you too. The kingfisher, the parakeet, the cuckoo, the spotted owl and many more come here, to this large park on the banks of the Adyar.

IN BLOOM As the mercury crosses the 40-degree Celsius mark, head to Hailey Road. Tucked away behind the high-rises of Connaught Place, it is a traffic-free stretch with tree-lined pavements, old world bungalows, mossy brick walls and a 14th century ruin. In May and June, Hailey Road glows on both sides with a spectacular display of yellow. These are the flowers of amaltas, which bloom only in the summer. The yellow flowers climb up the electric poles, crawl around the metal plaques and entwine the branches of an occasional peepal or neem tree. All through the day, the flowers keep dropping (reminiscent of snowfall), turning the road into a thick yellow carpet. Even those who have never heard of Monet might feel transported into the world of an Impressionist painter’s canvas. Start the walk early.

CLOUDS OF GREEN

Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan Write to lounge@livemint.com DON’T MISS Close to the KFI is Eco Café/Anokhi, a coffee shop that makes superla tive espressos and pretty good food all day. Walk in, order, and spend as long as you want. The Croque Madame is a per sonal favourite. Wash it down with good coffee and some French vanilla ice cream. CHANDRACHOODAN GOPALAKRISHNAN

NEW DELHI

Twelve kilometres from Delhi lies nature’s miraculous gift to a dry, dusty city. A 100-hectare jungle, Mangarbani valley turns a glowing green in peak summer. This forest in the Aravallis has dhau trees which grow on dry rocky terrain. Unlike most trees in and around Delhi that remain bare throughout the dry season—from December to midJuly—dhaus sprout new leaves in May. “It’s one of the most beautiful sights in Delhi,” says Pradip Krishen, author of Trees of Delhi. “Standing at a cliff with the valley below you, it’s like looking at a giant cloud of green.” To go to Mangarbani, take the road to Chhattarpur and drive down towards Faridabad. A few minutes after crossing the Delhi border, you will spot a large dumping site on the right. Turn into the rutty track and keep driving till you reach a dead end. Go there at 6am. Mayank Austen Soofi

DON’T MISS Mangarbani also has a temple dedicated to an invisible mystic called Gudariya Baba, who is believed to strike terror if somebody cuts a tree. Tourists can learn more about him from children who live in the valley’s sole village. They recite poems on the baba every Sunday under the village’s banyan tree.

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The disappearing

vineyards Unbottled:: Many cafés are Unbottled springing up in Santorini’s vineyards.

SANTORINI | GREECE

The unique volcanic wines of this Greek island are in danger of becoming extinct B Y S ARIKA P ANDIT ···························· was standing in a cave-like underground museum at the Koutsoyannopoulos Winery in Vothonas, a few kilometres from Santorini’s Kamari beach. I was there to begin a tryst with the wines of Santorini, which I had heard were unique—but a tryst where actually drinking them would come later. As with any courtship, I would first have to spend time getting to know them.

As I stood watching a short film on the history of Santorini in a little room located at one end of the museum, I was entranced by the genesis of the island and its wines—a volcanic explosion that took place three and a half millennia ago. Later, as I sat in the wine-tasting room listening to modern laïká (Greek music) playing softly in the background, I talked to Alejandro, a local who worked in the winery and was our designated wine-tasting guide for SARIKA PANDIT

TODD DOUGLAS/TODDDOUGLASPHOTO.COM

The wine age: Dioramas at Santorini’s subterranean museum.

the day. “You must have heard of the vanishing Atlantis,” he said. “It is said that the volcanic eruption was so enormous that it was the source of the origin of that legend.” Whether Santorini or Thera was indeed Plato’s “lost continent” is a debatable question; what cannot be disputed is the wonder of the silver lining that followed the catastrophe—the breathtaking caldera and the vines which miraculously began to grow in the volcanic pumice and ash. “The wines from this winery are called Volcan,” Alejandro explained, “because they carry the characteristics of the Santorini soil.” Presently, the winery is run by George Koutsoyannopoulos, but its journey began three generations ago, with the passion and grit of his forefathers, brothers Gregory and Dimitris. The story goes that in 1870, the two brothers embarked on a journey from Sparta to the island of Syros with the intention of selling oil. However, fate decided to throw them off course. Midway, they got caught in a violent storm and their boat was pushed by the west winds towards Santorini. Reaching land, they soon realized that Santorini had potential for wine-making. Ten years later, their hard work resulted in the birth of their first winery. Lava, one of the products of the winery, was the first wine that Alejandro brought out for me to sample. As I sipped this dry and fruity white table wine, I was struck by its lightGETTING THERE Aeroflot flies DelhiAth ens via Moscow. Return economy fares start at `28,833. The best way to get to Santorini is to take the ferry from the Piraeus port in Athens and past the island of Paros or Syros. The two most popular ferry services are Hellenic Seaways (www.hellenicseaways.gr) and Blue Star Ferries (www.bluestar ferries.gr). Fares start from €35 (around `2,320). Santorini also has an airport, situated north of Kamari, with regular halfhour flights from Athens. To get to the Volcan Wine Museum, take a bus from Fira towards Kamari. The museum is on the way to Kamari beach and is open from noon8pm.

ness and its low alcohol content. Having tried the harsh Retsina in a couple of restaurants, I found this particularly refreshing and enjoyable. Alejandro explained that vines in Santorini are grown in a slightly different manner. “It’s called the kouloura method, which means that the vines are wound in circles to form a basket which shelters them from the strong wind, harsh sun and the difficult sand. You must have seen some of those crown-like vine coils in the museum.” I told him I had. In fact, the inventive kouloura method was a mere speck on the canvas of what the underground museum exhibits. Built over 21 years with heavy funding from the Koutsoyannopoulos family, its maze of hallways chronicles the history of Santorini viticulture from 1660-1970. Earlier that day, as I had navigated my way through the museum with the help of an audio guide, I had seen moving mannequins toiling away in little caves on both sides of the passage. These human figurines were shown working with different tools, from an archaic Bavarian grape compressor to a several-centuriesold, hand-operated wooden press; bringing to life every stage of Santorinian winemaking, from cultivation to bottling. The second wine Alejandro bought out was the Abelones, a rich, red wine with a distinct oakish aroma. I let the smoky wine swirl in my mouth and then savoured its soft, velvety aftertaste. Later, I learnt that it was made from three tongue-twisting Santorinian red grape varieties, the Mantilaria, the Mavrothiro and the Mavrotragano. I had just begun to agonize over which of the two wines I should take home when Alejandro whipped out the third and last wine for the day, an intense, amber wine called the Vinsanto. “This is the traditional wine of Santorini and is made exclusively from the Assyrtiko and Aïdani grapes,” said Alejandro. Both the grape varieties sounded positively Greek to me but Alejandro said the Assyrtiko is one of the best Greek white wine grapes and is typically blended with the

Aïdani grape to enhance its aroma. The magical combination of these two white wine grapes resulted in the creation of a perfectly balanced and naturally sweet, aromatic dessert wine. There are two theories about the origin of the name Vinsanto. One is that the name is derived from “vin de Santo”—“wine from Santorini”, while the other says the wine has its origins in Italy, where a similar sweet wine was used during mass and was called “Vin Santo” or “holy wine”. Interestingly, until the early 20th century, when Greece gained independence from the Ottoman empire, this Santorininan wine was exported to Russia, where it was used as a communion wine by the Russian Orthodox Church. As I had my last leisurely sip of the Vinsanto, I decided that the wine by any name would taste just as delicious. Its rich aroma of coffee, crème brûlée and roasted nuts reminded me of sinful desserts and left me craving for more. My internal conflict was quelled. This was definitely the wine that I would take home. While Alejandro packed the bottle, I asked him about the popularity of the Santorini wines abroad. “They are popular, but not as much as they have the potential to be.” Despite the ongoing financial crisis in Greece, Alejandro seemed optimistic about the future of Santorinian wines—but the fact is that tourism is one of the key threats to the local cultivars. Many farmers have built hotels or shops over their vineyards to get a share of tourist euros. Santorini’s atypical weather and soil have created interesting, unique wines, but have also meant that the vineyards yield much less than they would in conventional wine terrains. Despite valiant attempts by the local wineries to protect the island’s vineyards, and with tourism offering an alternative, there is a danger that the Santorini wines—little known and regarded to begin with—may go extinct. It would be a shame if the island’s heritage sank into nothingness, like Plato’s mythical continent. Write to lounge@livemint.com

A rare vintage A quick guide to the wines of Santorini Domaine Sigalas Santorini A fresh, fruity white wine with a crisp and dry finish; from the Sigalas Winery Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €1118 (around `7301,200) Koutsoyannopoulos Santorini A fullflavoured white wine with balanced acidity and powerful fruity finish Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €1134 Santo Wines Vinsanto A rich, sweet, fullbodied dessert wine with a high proportion of the robust Assyrtiko, blended with the aromatic Aïdani Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €2355 Boutari Kallisti Reserve A refined, complex and fullbodied goldenyellow wine with a strong aroma of fruits, roasted nuts and honey Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €918 Gaia Thalassitis A crisp, dry white wine with a subtle honey aroma and sharp acidity Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €1118 Estate Argyros Atlantis Red A light, smooth, fruity red wine composed of 90% Mantilaria and 10% Mavrotragano Grape variety: Mantilaria Price: €1015 Estate Argyros Assyrtiko A mediumbodied golden wine with citrus aroma, balanced acidity and a characteristic volcanic mineral tinge Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €1120 Hatzidakis Nykteri A beautifully balanced, organic white wine characterized by a fruit and butter aroma Grape variety: Assyrtiko Price: €1420 All prices are exclusive of sales tax.

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SHIRAN BEN YACOV

Community

service

At an urban kibbutz in an unlikely tourist destination, a reminder that there’s more to life than the daily grind NAZARETH ILLIT | ISRAEL B Y H ARI S HENOY ································· ou can’t throw a stone in Goa, Gokarna, Manali or Rishikesh without hitting an Israeli tourist. India is popular with Israelis who decide to traipse across the world once they’ve finished their compulsory military service. In contrast, an Indian going to Israel on holiday is a rare enough occurrence; my three weeks there were filled with warmth and curious questions. My fascination with Israel started in my teens, when I read about the kibbutzim in Leon Uris’ Exodus. Founded on a mixture of socialist and Zionist principles, kibbutzim were farming settlements in the desert. The romanticism associated with people turning barren desert into fertile land, and reclaiming their right to exist and thrive in the face of postWorld War II persecution, was enough to pique my interest in West Asian affairs. A decade later, my romanticism tempered with pragmatism and a greater awareness of the complicated situation in the region, I finally made my way to Israel, first to Jerusalem, and then to Nazareth. I was headed to an urban kibbutz in Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth), a Jewish town set up shortly after the Israeli war of independence to offset the Arab majority there. A mix of serendipity and technology had taken me this far. I had planned my travel on Aardvark (an online social search service), and some IMs, emails and Facebook event pages later, a couple called Naama and Rani had offered me a

place to stay for three nights. I was new to CouchSurfing, the website that lets you stay with like-minded people abroad, and staying with strangers in an unknown land was helping make my holiday as offbeat as I’d hoped it would be. My hosts welcomed me to their home, gave me a mattress to sleep on and told me to make myself comfortable. On my first evening there, they cooked dinner for me, and were nice enough to answer the many questions I had about their way of living. Urban kibbutzim aren’t as common as the stand-alone settlement variety. A group of people rent houses close to each other—usually in the suburbs—to practise community living. All the families in this kibbutz lived in their own houses with their children, while the singles shared apartments. This kibbutz had about 80 people. Each kibbutz member worked either within the kibbutz or outside to earn money that was placed in the collective kibbutz bank account. For instance, my hostess Naama managed a maternity centre, while Omer, another kibbutznik, taught at a school nearby. There was a community store where residents picked up groceries and other supplies. A shared Google spreadsheet was used to book the 10 cars that the group owned. All the children went to the same school in a nearby kibbutz, and there seemed to be a strong cooperative bond between all members in this group. I had arrived at the kibbutz with no fixed agenda beyond vague plans of

visiting the old town of Nazareth, Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee and possibly Safed, all of which were nearby. Serendipity helped again. Naama mentioned that her brother Avshalom, who was also a member of this kibbutz, worked at a restored moshava on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. A moshava is a rural farmbased community and this particular one was among the first to be created by the pioneers during the first wave of the aaliyah—the Jewish migration to Palestine—in the early 1920s. Referred to as the Kinneret courtyard and now a working museum, the volunteers I hung out with were in charge of its upkeep and maintenance, and provided guided tours to the numerous visitors that made their way to the Galilee. Rather than visit the possibly crowded holy sites in Nazareth, I chose instead to head to the Kinneret courtyard, where you’re allowed to hang out if you help out. The courtyard gets a fair share of volunteers—either inspired by Zionism or, like me, making their way around the Sea of Galilee and stumbling upon the opportunity. For the next two days, my duties were to help make breakfast and plant spinach in the kitchen garden just outside the office. While I worked in the garden under the warm sun, fighters of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) whizzed by on regular sorties, stopping just short of Syrian and Jordanian air space. Gardening and history lessons about the pioneers and their perseverance in making this tract of land fertile done, I was taken up to the southern part of the Golan Heights.

Hands on: (from above) You can hang out if you help out at the Kinneret courtyard; a peaceful Jerusalem street; and the view from Masada.

Here I had a chance to see the Jordanian and Syrian borders in close proximity. Ironically, I still haven’t seen any of India’s land borders. Had it not been cloudy, I’d have had a chance to see Mount Hermon, Israel’s only ski resort. I was shown bunkers on the western shores of the Galilee, where the Israeli army had dug in from 1948-67 to track the Syrian artillery that would shell Israeli farms. Later, I visited Yardenit (Little Jordan) on the banks of the Jordan, which people believe is the actual site where Jesus was baptized by John. But more than the sightseeing, it was living and spending time with people who strongly subscribed to communitarian ideals that made this a vacation with a difference. They weren’t encumbered by worries of

how big their next raise would be, but they were mindful about forsaking luxury for a relatively simpler lifestyle by choosing to stay out of the rat race. It’s not a bad trade-off, as the kibbutz has a rich social life. In addition to working for various initiatives, the members also gather regularly to have meetings and discussions on a variety of subjects—politics, literature, sports or music. Around four sub-groups had been formed, with the division based mainly on the age of participants or their marital status. Most people within a sub-group knew each other because of some common connections. Some grew up in the same kibbutz, some were from the same school, while some others served in the same unit in the IDF. The kibbutzniks didn’t celebrate the sabbath with the same religious zeal as the orthodox in Jerusalem. Instead, they partied in their own way and celebrated their day of rest and relaxation. The married couples met and hung out together, while the singles partied in settlements nearby. My Israel travels would eventually include a crazy parting in Tel Aviv, and solemn soul-searching in Jerusalem. But the three days in Nazareth Illit refreshed both body and soul, and reminded me that there was more to life than the daily grind. Write to lounge@livemint.com GETTING GETTING THERE THERE Turkish Turkish Airlines Airlines flies flies to to Tel Tel Aviv’s Aviv’s Ben Ben Gurion Gurion Interna Interna tional tional Airport Airport via via Istanbul Istanbul from from Delhi Delhi and and Mumbai. Mumbai. Return Return economy economy fares fares start start at at ``33,418. 33,418. Apply Apply for for aa visa visa through through VFS VFS (http://isr.vfs (http://isr.vfs global.co.in). global.co.in). Charges Charges for for aa B1 B1 tourist tourist visa visa with with aa three three month month entry entry are are ``1,100, 1,100, plus plus aa ser ser vice vice charge charge of of ``670. 670. An An Israeli Israeli tourist tourist visa visa can can normally normally grant grant you you access access to to Palestinianoccupied Palestinianoccupied territo territo ries ries on on the the West West Bank Bank and and in in Gaza. Gaza. However, However, exercise exercise caution caution and and seek seek advice advice from from locals locals when when you you visit. visit. IfIf you’re you’re staying staying for for aa reasonably reasonably long long duration, duration, volunteer volunteer at at aa kibbutz kibbutz (http://www.kibbutzvolunteer.com/) (http://www.kibbutzvolunteer.com/) and and take take up up the the ‘ulpan’, ‘ulpan’, an an adult adult learning learning course course to to learn learn Hebrew. Hebrew. READING LIST Israel is a complex country and society. Here are a few books to help the potential traveller understand it a little better •• ‘How ‘How to to Understand Understand Israel Israel in in 60 60 Days Days’’ by by Sarah Sarah Glidden Glidden Set Set in in presentday presentday Israel, Israel, this this graphic graphic novel novel provides provides aa take take on on the the conflicting conflicting emotions emotions that that an an American American Jew Jew faces faces on on her her first first visit visit to to Israel. Israel. •• ‘The ‘The Innocents Innocents Abroad Abroad’’ by by Mark Mark Twain Twain The The book book gives gives the the reader reader aa humorous humorous picture picture of of how how the the holy holy land land used used to to be, be, in in typical typical Mark Mark Twain Twain style. style. •• ‘O Larry Collins Collins and and ‘O Jerusalem!’ Jerusalem!’ by by Larry Dominique Dominique Lapierre Lapierre ItIt presents presents aa largely largely unbiased unbiased view view of of what what happened happened in in Jerusalem Jerusalem during during the the first first Arab–Israeli Arab–Israeli war war in in 1948 1948 and and can can help help aa visitor visitor understand understand and and appreciate appreciate the the city city better. better.

PHOTOGRAPHS

HARI SHENOY

TRAVEL L19

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM AARON OSTROVSKY

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

A passage

through youth Summer song: Kanchenjunga’s peaks.

Visits to an aunt’s house, sneaking away on a school trip and other memories of summer holidays gone by

Ahwa, and being scared by the stories that he and my aunt would tell me, of wild animals entering their courtyard; in Bharuch, exploring dungeons from the Mughal era with my uncle; in Vadodara, and playing badminton in their garden (and losing most of the time, while my aunt showed the vegetables they had grown to my mother), and finally, in Gandhinagar, the featureless state capital, listening to Simon and Garfunkel on hot afternoons. At all times, there would be a jeep in the house, and travelling with my uncle in those jeeps was a great adventure. Several of the summers in between were spent in Matheran with my family; the hill station

nearest to us, the toy train, the long walks to the various scenic points, the horse rides and the chikki, made of gur, groundnut, sesame seeds, almonds, pistachio and dried fruit. One afternoon, I recall bowling a rather fast ball to my father, who tried to play it back to me with a straight bat, but the bat hadn’t been seasoned properly, and it promptly broke into two. That ended our cricketing vacation. But then I learned to pack my bags, and started going on summer vacations on tours our school organized. Those were elaborate affairs, the nearly four weeks filled with sights to see. But we were Gujaratis first, so the tour party included a few cooks who would produce dal, kadhi, batata-nu shak, and puris and sometimes even shrikhand at odd locations. But those three

summers—in 1975, 1976 and 1977—are etched firmly in my memory. Our group typically comprised about 50 students, boys and girls, all in mid-teens; there would be up to four teachers; and we would pack 10-12 towns and cities within those four weeks. We would begin with a long train journey to Delhi. May is the wrong time of the month to see the capital: the trees offered little solace from the dry heat to which we coastal folk were unaccustomed, and the monuments reflected light with an intensity and brightness that seemed blinding. But Pathankot—and Kulu-Manali— our next destinations—were only a bus ride away. And how pleasant it became once we were on the banks of the Beas or Chenab! I remember the white foam of the flow of the river, the cool mountain air, the verdant banks, and the tall deodar and (rarer) chinar trees. One night in Manali, I remember one of our teachers asking me if I knew one Professor Sushil Panjabi from Kolkata—she was in Manali in the same complex where we stayed with her students and her daughter, Kavita. Indeed, I knew them; the good professor was an old friend of my mother’s from their college days in Mumbai, and it was the sort of coincidence that only happens in improbable Bollywood films, but the next morning Kavita and I went with our friends for a walk through an apple orchard, making the trip even more memorable. Later that week, with another teacher as our shield, 11 of us broke away from our group, which was headed for Vashisht Kund, and walked towards Rohtang Pass. Once we started to climb, it became exciting; we ignored our

watches, took deep breaths at the spectacular views, and kept walking up. And we discovered snow—solid and yellowing, clinging to the rocks, like dusty, unwashed drapery on furniture. We had never seen snow before, and the yellowing snow didn’t seem inspiring, when, as if to oblige us, fresh snow began to fall. It was a light flurry, and we were ecstatic, holding out our palms, catching it, letting it settle, and then seeing the flakes liquefy and disintegrate. One of my classmates, a boy called Dhiren who later went on to become a doctor, intoned knowledgeably that what we saw was the phenomenon of latent heat (I probably still don’t understand the phenomenon properly so please don’t ask and I promise not to attempt an explanation). The teacher who was with us taught physics and mathematics; he was pleased that at least one of us had paid some attention in his classes. We were scolded when we returned—there were no mobile phones then, and the teacher in charge of the entire group was in a panic, wondering where 11 of us had gone missing. That we had a teacher with us didn’t help matters. We, the children, were grounded the next day, which was just as well; the climb up to Rohtang had been exhausting. Of the 11 of us, seven were girls: Not only had they outnumbered us boys, the girls went on to jeer everyone who hadn’t come to the pass. We were proud of our shared secret, the awesome view of the Lahaul and Spiti valleys the 11 of us had seen together, which the rest of our obedient, unpunished classmates hadn’t seen. They probably got an extra helping of shrikhand. We didn’t mind. Later that week, we were in that unspeakably beautiful town of

Dalhousie, and I remember the sheer expanse of the valley seen from our hotel. In Dharamsala, we saw the river flowing, miles down from where we were. It moved soundlessly; sunlight rested on the water; and rocks forced the river to take amazing twists and turns—and the water turned effortlessly, with the grace of a dancer, circling the rocks. I saw the truly big Himalayan peaks only the following year, when we went to Nepal and Darjeeling. Annapurna and Dhaulagiri towered on the horizon on a perfect, cloudless day, with the sky blue, the air crisp, the wind mild, and the air cool. Seeing Kanchenjunga was harder, once we returned to India; clouds covered it as though it was a precious jewel that required a prior appointment for viewing. But then the sun relented, and the clouds parted; with sunlight resting on Kanchenjunga, the peak turned golden, as if it was aflame. The sky turned pink that evening, and the peak’s awesome beauty stayed imprinted in our minds. It was meghe dhaka tara, the cloud-capped star. Then we grew older; studying and preparing for the exams that would follow began to take over our summers. Soon I left India, and the months I understood as “summer” changed—instead of late April to early June, it became July and August. Visits to India happened, of course, but it meant chasing the monsoon. That has its own joys, like the late-season mangoes, but that’s a story for another time. Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011

Culture

LOUNGE INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

DOCUMENTARY

Reality check DETAIL FILM

With recognition, better funding and distribution, the Indian documentary is reversing its beg gingbowl syndrome

©A LEXANDER

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE & S HAMIK B AG ···························· t would be an odd young film-maker who wouldn’t be ecstatic about a review by Wim Wenders. Kolkata-based film-maker Supriyo Sen’s short documentary Wagah was one of the five that the 2009 jury of the Talent Campus at the Berlin International Film Festival—chaired by Wenders—decided to fund. The German film-maker also made sure it was the closing film of the festival. The film has won close to 30 awards since. Now, in a double coup of sorts, Sen’s film is among the first set to be part of the newly announced Economist Film Project. Since 28 April, in a tie-up between the American broadcasting network PBS and The Economist magazine, PBS is showcasing clips from selected documentaries, which will also be the focus of special segments airing regularly on PBS as well as the project website (www.film. economist.com) through the year. Wagah, a film about the daily ritual closing of the border between India and Pakistan, looks through the eyes of three children who sell DVDs of the parade to onlookers. They remain unmoved by the “patriotic” frenzy around them. Wenders distils the film’s essence with his pithy comment that is now the film’s strap line: “Wagah is a manifesto against any wall that divides people”. Another Indian documentary that has made headlines lately is activist and film-maker Ananya Chatterjee-Chakraborti’s Understanding Trafficking, an 89-minute documentary on women and child trafficking, which won the Humanitarian Award at the Tiburon International Film Festival 2011 in California, US, in April. While the two films are very

JANETZKO, BERLINALE

2009

The winning shot: (clockwise from above) Supriyo Sen at Berlinale 2009; a still from Wagah; and Sen at his studio in Kolkata.

different, their global success illustrates signs of a marked change in the way documentary films from India are navigating cinematic landscapes.

A new reel Right down to the new Wong Kar Wai-inspired lights in the loo, the office of Overdose Joint, “Q” or film-maker Qaushiq Mukherjee’s production company in Kolkata, has to be seen as a burst of fresh energy. The meetings are impromptu, visitors stream in incessantly and there is constant brainstorming on future projects. Q wears an uncharacteristically hassled expression. This is what he had foretold a few years ago, he says; “when there’s so much work, but so few people.” With Gandu (2010), a provocative Bengali feature film which assumed cultish dimensions, and his documentary Love in India (2009) having catapulted him into the league of newsmaking film-makers, Q has been working on Sari, a work-in-progress documentary, for over 18 months. It is the first film to be co-produced by the nonprofit media and human rights group Magic Lantern Foundation, he says, lighting up at the thought that this might begin to reverse the begging-bowl syndrome perpetually facing Indian documentary film-makers. When Ranjan De set up the Magic Lantern Foundation in Delhi in 1989, it was to give a semblance of form and order to the docu-

mentary circuit. De and his team had struggled with making their own documentaries for years, with no funding or support. “Independent documentary films were made, screened at a festival or two and then lost. It was all a shot in the dark,” says De. The “formalization”, brought about by a grant from the US non-profit Ford Foundation, meant helping independent documentary film-makers produce their films and coordinating with funding agencies. While the initial focus was on production, the foundation moved on to distribution with Under Construction Films (www.ucfilms.in) in 2005, and later, organizing an annual documentary film festival, Persistence Resistance, in 2008. But initiatives such as De’s are small steps in an uphill trek. “In India, there is no substantial space on television—a major avenue in other parts of the world—for documentaries,” says De. Sen, who has been a pioneer in more ways than one in his 16-year career as a documentary film-maker, agrees —his 2003 feature-length Way Back Home was one of the first Indian documentaries to have a theatrical release. While

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

Getting high: Q at the office of his production house, Overdose Joint.

Wagah won a National Award, the film has never been screened on Doordarshan. “Earlier, it was mandatory for Doordarshan to screen National Award-winning films but that rule seems to have lapsed now,” says Sen. Sen observes that access to international funding has been the primary factor in changing the status quo for documentary film-makers based in India. The few organized avenues that do exist are the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT), which produces a slew of 52 films annually. And there’s the Films Division and the ministry of external affairs—both of which are mired in bureaucracy. Over the years, Sen has received funding from bodies such as the US’ Sundance Documentary Fund, the Jan Vrijman Fund of the Netherlands’ International Documentary Film Festival and the Asian Cinema Fund of South Korea’s Busan International Film Festival. Wagah was made on a budget of €30,000 (around `19.86 lakh). Q’s Sari, which is expected to be complete in 2012, is being made with a budget of approximately `1.5 crore, an unimaginable figure so far for Indian documentary film-makers. The film studies the passing of the sari from everyday attire to ceremonial wear. “My mother’s is the last generation that wore the sari daily, unlike my girlfriend. Yet we see that the typical Indian look is in the sari state and even Savita Bhabhi, the current Indian sex icon, is sariclad,” says Q. Apart from Magic Lantern, he

has television networks such as YLE, Finland, and Knowledge Network, Canada, as co-producers. He has come a long way since he made his first quirky piece of documentary film, Le Pocha, in 2004, with a self-generated budget of `50,000. The film on Bengali alternative music, life and style was indicative enough of his talent for Shyamal Karmakar, a member of the faculty at Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), to invite the film-maker to Docedge, the documentary film training and pitching workshop held annually at SRFTI. His pitch for Love In India immediately bagged funds from the commissioning editors of YLE, Finland.

Parallel reality “What is happening is that newer narrative styles and more engaging forms are being explored by Indian documentary film-makers, who are also objective when treating content,” says Pranav Ashar, founder of the Mumbaibased Enlighten Media Group. Established in 2006 with the objective of disseminating world cinema in India, its newly formed arm, Enlighten Documentaries, is set to commercially release seven Indian documentaries by 15 May but the films will be available across India only around 25 May, keeping in mind logistics and other distribution processes. In 2009, they had released Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace and a twoDVD pack of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) documentaries. This new set of films which comprise John & Jane by Ashim Ahluwalia, Q’s Love in India, Lokapriya and Rasikapriya by Arun Khopkar, Bishar Blues by Amitabh Chakraborty, 7 Islands and a Metro by Madhushree Dutta, Children of

the Pyre by Rajesh Jala and Unlimited Girls by Paromita Vohra—will be available across 500 retail outlets in India, including Oxford, Crossword, Landmark, Odyssey, Music World and Planet M. This is a first of a kind initiative, according to Ashar. “We plan to add five of the best Indian documentaries every month. Our effort will be to create a market for them. Earlier, we tested the market with War and Peace and everybody made a small profit. We want to use the distribution network that we already have for our world cinema titles,” he adds. In tandem with direct sale ventures such as these, an increase in screening venues is helping raise overall awareness of the genre in India. The programmers of Shamiana—the short-film club which spans seven cities—include both Indian and international documentaries in its mix of short films for monthly screenings in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Important documentaries from around the world are routinely screened at initiatives such as that of the magazine Time Out Delhi, which screened the Oscarnominated Exit through the Gift Shop by Banksy and Bomb It by Jon Reiss multiple times over the last week as part of a workshop to increase the public’s understanding of graffiti. As Q puts it, the Indian documentary film has gone beyond the PSBT circuit. The film-makers have transcended boundaries too. A producer from Overdose Joint has travelled to Cannes to market Q’s work and connect with indie-minded producers and distributors anindita.g@livemint.com

CULTURE L21

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REVIEWS

Stranger than fiction These freshcut documentaries on or from India stretch the limits of the genre

There is Something in the Air

Director: Iram Ghufran Hindustani (English subtitles), 28 minutes, 2011, India One of the victories of Iram Ghufran’s first documentary is its subversion of the traditional truth claim. There is Something in the Air (Tisita) works with perceived realities and dream narratives, blending documentary and fiction tropes. There are no eyewitnesses here. And narrators could be unreliable.

Pink Saris

Director: Kim Longinotto Hindi (English subtitles), 96 minutes, 2010, UK You’ve seen a dozen photo essays that freeze the menacing looks of the Gulabi Gang but this is the first time you’ll see them swing into action. Sampat Pal is the foul-mouthed leader of the self-styled enforcers who navigate caste politics and violence against women in Uttar Pradesh. An illiterate, low-caste woman who lives with her partner, Pal makes a fiery protagonist. Married at 12 and left to fend for herself and her five children after being thrown out of her in-laws’ house, she is a combative character who targets practices that have kept women subservient—child marriages, wife beating and forced sexual intercourse. The narrative follows the stories of four women who have come to Pal for help. While the documentary has been winning international awards—including Outstanding Documentary at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in April— it is shrill in its approach. Pal is a dominating figure and soon it is evident that there isn’t much of a gang, but one individual who confronts men in authority. A low point is when she calls herself “a messiah for women”, very much a throwback to first-time Australian film-maker Megan Doneman’s partisan film on former police officer Kiran Bedi, Yes Madam, Sir (2008). Towards the end, the film does attempt to critique Pal’s arrogance; the fact that she loses more battles than she wins. But Pink Saris remains an important film which reminds us that impoverished rural India is decades away from progress. The film also has an excellent score by Midival Punditz.

Starting off in a psychiatric chamber, the film takes viewers to the Sufi shrine in Badayun in Uttar Pradesh, where women “petitioners” come to rid themselves of evil djinns. We follow accounts of spiritual possession which, in popular parlance, are termed hawai marz or an “affliction of the air”. Research, scripting and direction are all by Ghufran— who teaches photography to graduate students at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia. In terms of production, the film is a

first effort, but with marvellous camerawork. The viewer is never face to face with insanity. Montages are layered with voice-overs by the women in question. We never know who is talking; we only see the feet of the frantic, prancing women at the shrine. Ghufran makes madness poetic. Another triumph is that the film looks at the “state of madness” through prisms other than science or health, taking into account love, longing and desire instead. Above all, it asks: Does one

Partners in Crime

in New Delhi. With its noir-tinted beginning, the documentary takes the viewer through the grey worlds of art and the market. The film follows an assortment of stakeholders on either side of the culture copyright discourse: indie rockers who market their own music, folklorists who turn tribal aphorisms into stories, music archivists who hoard and share everything they can get their hands on, and anti-piracy fanatics who believe that piracy funds terrorism. While the documentary lacks visual finesse, it asks evocative questions and is a definitive primer on the ongoing copyright debate, covering everything from Internet downloads, the rise of music label T-Series, the porn film racket and the copyleft movement

Director: Paromita Vohra Hindi and English (English subtitles), 94 minutes, 2011, India This is a film on the history of Munni badnaam hui, among other things. The hit “item” song has precedents in Raziya Begum’s 1971 Launda badnaam hua; a Pakistani qawwal’s 1993 rendition; and various apocryphal versions by Bhojpuri folk singers. Paromita Vohra’s film on piracy questions notions of authorship, ownership and copyright. It was both the opening and closing film at the Persistence Resistance festival, organized by the non-profit media and human rights group Magic Lantern Foundation (which also produced the film) in February

Anindita Ghose

Tisita is a 2010-11 film supported by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) and has been aired on DD. DVDs are available with PSBT. Anindita Ghose

to the creative commons. DVDs forthcoming on www.ucfilms.in Anindita Ghose

You Don’t Belong

There’s a sense of migration and loss as Banerjee peels away each layer of the song’s journey, and a troubling sense that the fragmented nature of these traditions is being exploited, in a way, by music companies. The film doesn’t offer solutions. It just poses questions worth remembering the next time you encounter a glorious piece of music.

Director: Spandan Banerjee Bengali, Hindi and English (English subtitles), 75 minutes, 2010, India You Don’t Belong is an attempt to tell the story of something ephemeral and shadowy: a song. Director Spandan Banerjee goes in search of the origins of a Bengali tune, one that everyone remembers as a “traditional folk song”. What does that phrase mean? Does it have something akin to an “author”, and if so, does that really matter? Shot in stark black and white, this documentary comprises two overlapping narratives. It is, first and foremost, an exemplary film about music, and the way a tune travels through the complex tangled

To buy DVDs, visit www.ucfilms.in

choose insanity?

venn diagrams of the local music-producing industry. Most of the people who make an appearance in the film—Paban Das Baul, bands Bhoomi and Parashpathar, singer-songwriter Prabuddha Banerjee—are musicians, and the film extracts some wonderful, impromptu

performances from them. You Don’t Belong is also a larger exploration of the role of authorship in what is collectively referred to as “folk” traditions in Indian music.

You Don’t Belong is currently on the film festival circuit and is forthcoming on DVD. For a preview, visit www.overdosefilms.com Krish Raghav Write to lounge@livemint.com

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

NOTES ON A SONG

here was a time not so long ago when I would enthusiastically follow Hindi film music and hum along when I discovered a song that appealed to my personal taste. But amid the near-manic and often unimaginative tracks featuring sundry Munnis, Sheilas, Razias and Lailas that are fast becoming Bollywood music staples, I am no longer able to smile politely and respond obligingly when people ask which hit song I am listening to currently. So a track like Rangrez by singer-composer Krsna comes as an enormous relief. I first heard it while watching Tanu Weds Manu. I must confess that while the movie could not hold my attention for

too long, the unmistakable, deliciously crunchy-peanutbutter texture of Puranchand Wadali’s (the elder of the Wadali duo) voice on the Rangrez track brought me right back into the film. It even led me to buy the album, because I truly did want to hear the song again. The album offers two versions of the song, one rendered by music director Krsna, and the other by the Wadali Brothers. The composition is undoubtedly influenced by qawwali, and the arrangement reflects this influence. You can hear multiple layers of the tabla and dholak spit and crackle in the rhythm section, accompanied by the characteristic clapping that is typical of conventional qawwalis. There is also enough

Sparkling: Rangrez, by the Wadali Brothers, is influenced by qawwali. use of the smart, rhythmic play with words and phrases used by qawwali singers as a device for spotlighting a specific part of the song text. For an example, check the all-too-brief but effective Rang rang de, rang de chunri pi ke rang mein about 1.09 minutes into the track. Happily, the composer provides both

versions of the track and the lyrics on his site http://krsnamusic.com However, qawwali is essentially a form where a lead singer (or at times a duo) steers a group of singers who present the refrain or specific phrases allotted to them on the spot by the lead singer. This creates a unique collage of voices with

different timbres creating unexpected harmonies, tensions, ebbs and tides. I find this to be one of the most compelling and riveting aspects of qawwali. Krsna sings the lead and the chorus and refrains himself, layering his voice on multiple tracks to create the chorus effect. But the collage of voices is missing even though he uses his voice with abandon and power. When he tells me in a telephonic interview that he has been studying Hindustani classical music in Mumbai for several years from Mehboob Khan, I am not surprised to learn that he first came to Mumbai with the desire to be a singer. Going back to the Rangrez track, the version by the famed Wadali brothers does retain some semblance of the collage of voices by virtue of the two very different voices criss-crossing and weaving into each other. While one voice sings the song text, the other shoots off a taan or an alaap in a different interpretation of the

track. The melodic motifs and interludes on Krsna’s version are played on the sarangi and shehnai, but the Wadali version has some really sparkling harmonium pieces played with a flair that makes you want to know who dubbed them. Sadly the album cover provides no clues because no one thought it necessary to acknowledge the musicians. And it is only during my interview with Krsna that I am told it is Feroz Shah who plays the harmonium. Bollywood does have a way of first luring the most talented of people to its vast threshold, and then slowly sucking them into a vicious circle of formulaic and unimaginative working styles. Krsna will have to be a clever and resolute rangrez (a Farsi term for dyer) to ensure that he does not permit himself to be stained by the humdrum colours of the industry. May his talent and creativity give him due strength to do so. Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

L22 FLAVOURS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | SHAMIK BAG

The Maidan elite The many colours of the ‘bhadralok’ city find a common ground, literally, along the city’s biggest open space

Right of admission reserved: (from top) Mem bers of the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club; footballers of the Taltala Institute; the Calcutta Kennel Club; and the signage at the Measurers Club.

riumphalism is not something one expects from the ladies of the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, yet it is in the air. The intrigues of their “victory” in February, when police and politicians teamed up to keep the club greens free from invasion by participants of a Left Front election rally, are shared gladly. The concession followed a plea from the club authorities to save the greens from processionists. A bigger battle is coming up for what is described as Asia’s only women’s golf club: a victory rally by the political force that comes to power in West Bengal is expected at the Maidan. The Maidan, a tree-lined open space spread over 1,000 acres in the heart of Kolkata, has for two centuries been claimed by every interest in the city—from tarot card readers, ear cleaners, magicians, mendicants, buskers and dog owners to political parties. When the Left rode to power in West Bengal in 1977, it was at a rally at the Maidan (also known as the Brigade Parade Ground) that the comrades declared their plans for the state. It is sports clubs such as the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club that have had the longest presence at the Maidan—in their case, since 1891. Over 50 small clubs dot the greens, excluding the formidable presence of football clubs Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting. Each comprises a small temporary tent structure (the legal owner of the Maidan, the army, disallows permanent construction), a lawn and a practice field that is often shared between clubs. The Ladies Golf Club came about as a move against the male-dominated Royal Calcutta Golf Club, which used to disallow women—even the wives of British officers—from teeing off. I’m sitting on one of the wooden benches facing the manicured putting course of the club. Birds chirp noisily, horses neigh in the distance, and a green clubhouse with a bright red sloping

roof adds to the charm. Wizened teak-covered walls and floor, thick upholstery, a decently stocked bar, and a Burma teak-framed Belgian mirror resonate within the feminine vibe of the club. There is a wall-mounted honour board, starting with names such as Mrs Pedler (1891-93) and ending at the current club captain, Jyotsna David. As captain of a club that has 200 women members, David oversees a strictly enforced policy, “where wives sign in dependent husbands”. The club organizes tournaments and coaching camps for underprivileged children and throws the occasional party, complete with live bands. Occasionally, well-placed husbands chip in with sponsorship. On the northern flank of the

Maidan, 46-year-old Minati Roy is exercising at the premises of the 1932-established Calcutta Referees’ Association. She is among the 500-odd members, with a Fifa-empanelled referee and member as inspiration, who are involved in the craft of football refereeing. People are trained in “running, flag waving, whistling techniques, football rules and on keeping the eye and mind focused on the ball,” says Roy, her athletic frame clad in shorts and T-shirt. Many members come in after their office hours, change into a referee’s uniform, and conduct Maidan football matches. Vroom! A full-bodied volley of a trainee footballer finds the ball hitting the back of my shoulder, and knocks me forward. I’m at the premises of the Taltala Institute, a club founded in 1914. Like the Bhawanipore, Kalighat and Howrah Union clubs at the Maidan, Taltata Institute took its name from Kolkata neighbourhoods: “localities with a strong culture in sports”, according to the club’s football secretary, Gour Dey. Days before the ongoing annual Indian Football Association (IFA) registration of footballers, the selection process is on at the Taltala Institute ground—young players going through strenuous

rounds of physical exercise before a selection match. For the use of the sprawling premises, the club—like all other Maidan clubs—pays a notional annual licence fee to the police. Adjacent is the Measurers Club, there since 1902. I talk to its secretary, D.N. Biswas, a “retired measuring official”. The club was born out of the weights and measures department of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which would measure and weigh cargo shipped across the world from Kolkata Port and make freight calculations. With the river silting and the port falling on bad times, the department was wound up in 1988. The club manages to stitch together football and cricket teams. Evenings are mostly measured through pegs of subsidized liquor, the Measurers Club being one of the British-era clubs at the Maidan that got a bar licence. A large peg of Black Dog (Scotch) costs `150. “Since the excise duty has douballed as such the prise of hard drinks has increased marginally”, reads a notice. Ironically, the Central Excise Club premises is opposite the Measurers. Does such excise duty-led “prise” escalation see drunken evening brawls? Both the Central Excise and Measurers clubs are examples of office- and institution-patronized Maidan clubs—the clubs of George Telegraph, Income Tax, Bata, ICI (paint company), Food Corporation of India (FCI), High Court, Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Customs, Police and Anandabazar Patrika being some others wanting a piece of the Maidan action. The Maidan belongs to them as much as it belongs to the Kolkata Mounted Police, which trains each morning at its premises behind the Press Club, a disciplined affair of the mounties and their stallions. In another corner towards the Park Street crossing, the Calcutta Kennel Club sees

dozens of well-bred pets being trained in every conceivable kind of doggy conduct. Thrice during the winter months, the 1906-established club sees Great Danes, Rottweilers, Dachshunds and Setters vying for top position at the dog show—570 of them turned up for the last one. The club’s caretaker, whose father worked here too, professes a deep fear of the Doberman. “They don’t follow any rules when they feel like biting,” the caretaker says. Close at hand is the Armenian Sports Club, representing an early Kolkata community whose population has dwindled over the years. The gates were firmly bolted when we visited. There isn’t a single member to be seen in the sprawling compound of the 103-year-old Parsee Club either. A board holds three notices, one of them an invitation for lunch, an affair with “Dhandar, Machhi No Patio and Lagan-nu-Stew”. Colourful board pins are stuck into the otherwise empty, large velvet-topped noticeboard. At the Greer Club, founded in 1905 and named after a British chief executive of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, I meet 18-year-old Abhishek Ghosh. The boy who travelled all the way from Duttapukur, not very far from the Bangladesh border, is beaming. Just moments earlier he had been informed of his selection to the Greer Club football team: the bona-fide entry to the Kolkata football circuit. His IFA registration will soon take place. Years of hard work have paid off. Ghosh’s father died years ago and his mother, who works as an ayah, will be pleased. “I no longer have to ask her for money to come to Kolkata,” he says, before heading for the Sealdah railway station. From now on, the Maidan belongs to him too. Write to lounge@livemint.com