Mint Lounge for July 10, 2010

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

www.livemint.com

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 27

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

India’s biggest independent band has a new album out later this month. We look at how Indian Ocean stayed together, made music and faced the most challenging year of their two­decade existence >Page 10

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH KINETIC’S SULAJJA FIRODIA MOTWANI >Page 8

THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES Affordable prices, a line of watches, bridal wear that doesn’t weigh you down—Tarun Tahiliani is thinking ahead >Page 7

OCEAN’S

THREE THE GOOD LIFE

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

FICTION’S GLOBAL CRIME WAVE

Detective novels from Japan, Nigeria, Germany and Korea are pouring into the US as publishers hunt for the next Stieg Larsson >Page 14

(from left) Rahul Ram, Amit Kilam and Susmit Sen of Indian Ocean at a concert in Singapore on 3 July.

DETOURS

SAMAR HALARNKAR

SALIL TRIPATHI

THE RELUCTANT MAFIOSO The author of ‘Black Friday’ analyses the appeal of the quintessential ‘Bombay don’ ahead of another Haji Mastan film >Page 18

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

HOW TO DEAL WITH WARY STEPS INTO A NEW YORK SNARKY PUT­DOWNS BENGALI KITCHEN STATE OF MIND

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ore than personality flaws like chronic lateness or indecisiveness; more than failings like snoring or fidgeting; the one thing that seems to infuriate couples is the public put-down. It’s odd really, how much we value this public appearance of solidarity in a marriage (or relationship) when it ought to fall fairly low in the hierarchy of sins. Consider. Wife in her nightie talking on the phone with her husband: “Yes, I am ready. I was just getting into the car when you called. Yeah, sure, you can start driving. >Page 4

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f you are a Bengali, it might be a good idea to stop reading now. If you are a Bengali and are still reading, you are either (a) bored (b) curious or (c) liberal—enough to hear some upending of your traditions by a Konkani boy, who in turn had to abandon some grandmotherly advice in telling you what I am about to. Back in the 1970s when life was gentler, and children thought nothing of sharing their room with their grandmother, as my brother and I did, she often frowned upon... >Page 6

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ou can tell it is summer in New York by the bright light that invades your hotel room early in the morning. In other cities, you want to hide beneath the blanket and sleep longer. But New York does not allow indulgence; each moment is precious, and you have none to lose. You look down the street from your 25th-floor window, and there is already a line of cars crawling along those linear streets. The day began long before you woke up, because the night had never ended. >Page 13

PHOTO ESSAY

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

HOME PAGE L3

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 (MANAGING EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT (MANAGING EDITOR, LIVEMINT)

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2010 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

VIR SANGHVI REVIEWS | HOT DOGS IN DELHI

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ome foods convey a sense of place. Bhelpuri will always be a symbol of Mumbai. You can eat bhel in nearly every city of the world where there is a Gujarati community, but it will never fail to remind you of its Mumbai origins.

So it is with the hot dog. Few foods epitomize America as much as the hot dog does. The other iconic America dishes—the hamburger and the pizza for instance—have now been so franchised all over the world that there’s nothing particularly American about them any longer. The Big Mac you eat in Seoul will not be very different from the one they sell in San Francisco and as for pizza, millions of diners at global Pizza Huts are not even sure if what they are eating is American or Italian.

The hot dog, on the other hand, remains uniquely American. Buy one (for $2—around Rs95—or so) on the streets of Manhattan and even though you know you shouldn’t like it (the bun will be so cheap that the chewed-up bread will stick to the roof of your mouth; the sausage will be made from the sweepings of abattoirs; the mustard will be entirely chemical etc.), the damn thing will taste terrific.

Eat the same hot dog outside of America and its weaknesses will become painfully apparent.

Perhaps that’s why the great global fast food chains have steered clear of the hot dog even as they have franchised the hamburger or the donut.

A cheap hot dog works on the streets

of New York. But for a good hot dog, you need a good sausage. And that costs money.

Even so, the American Hot Dog Factory does not seem to be doing too badly. It already has four outlets in Delhi and more appear to be on the way. The American Hot Dog Factory’s style is simple. It aims to replicate the experience of buying a hot dog on the street in the US and its outlets offer no seating, just hot dogs freshly cooked in front of you and packed in cardboard so you can take them away.

The chain seems to specialize in mall outlets presumably on the grounds that shoppers may prefer to buy a hot dog and keep walking rather than queue up at a food court.

The outlet I went to, however, was in Khan Market, in the midst of Delhi’s most overpriced real estate.

Khan Market is not such a bad location for a hot dog place, actually.

For years and years, people have hung around such stalls as Khan Chacha, waiting for freshly cooked rolls (though Khan Chacha now has a restaurant of his own—and very successful it is too). So why shouldn’t they wait for genuine American hot dogs?

Fair enough. Except that these aren’t genuine American hot dogs. In the US, hot dog sausages are made either from beef or pork (or a mixture of both). I can understand the reluctance to serve beef in India but the American Hot Dog Factory also seems embarrassed about serving

Priya Ramani’s First Cut will be back next week.

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT This refers to Radha Chadha’s “Are you in the jam sorority?”, 3 July. I think there’s still a long way to go before Indian women can have a “whopping time”, investing in property, cars and the like. If you look at the average working woman, whose salary is much less than her male counterpart’s, she is still struggling to make ends meet and keep her job, fighting a traditional social fabric which condemns the working ‘bahurani’. But yes, the movement has begun—cheers to that!

DIVINEP

HOOKED TO PODCASTS Congratulations to the ‘Lounge’ team for the great weekly podcasts! I have been listening to them for a while but particularly enjoyed the ones with Samim Rizvi and the recent one with comedian Rohan Joshi. For people like me, who grew up with a radio ethic, this is a one­of­a­kind offering in the contemporary Indian media scene. I like the host too. The podcast could benefit from some overall production improvements but that will happen over time. Keep them coming. Make them longer.

GAURANG MAAL

EGO BRUISING This refers to Aakar Patel’s “Why we should de­weaponize our vanity”, 3 July. As always, Patel is brilliant and brutally frank. Patriotic ‘desis’ will, however, have a hard time reconciling to this.

CHIRU

THE BOMB IS SAFE This refers to Aakar Patel’s “Why we should de­weaponize our vanity”, 3 July. The article is based on India’s no­first­use policy. We must remember that it does not take long to change a policy, but it takes years to make a weapon.

Second, the presumption that the Pakistani weapon will be used only against India is also wrong. The Pakistani bomb is an Islamic bomb procured with monetary help from Saudi Arabia. So it will stay, regardless of whether or

not India abandons its own.

China and Pakistan both have proliferation records. India is not only in favour of de­weaponizing India but the whole globe. Till such time as the nuclear five don’t make sincere efforts to make the world free of weapons of mass destruction, India will stay with its own. India has complied with all the precautions required for safeguard under the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) regime, without signing the non­proliferation treaty. As for Pakistan, if reports are to be believed, the safeguard know­how itself is being provided by the US. LT COL ASHOK GAUTAM

PROXY ARSENAL This refers to Aakar Patel’s “Why we should de­weaponize our vanity”, 3 July. While Indian weapons were developed as a response to Chinese weapons, the immediate provocation for the 1974 test was the American nuclear threat during the 1971 war. Since Pakistan has been a proxy, first for the Americans and now the Chinese, any de­weaponization carried out by it has little meaning unless the sponsors de­weaponize themselves. This is so because the proxy can be rearmed overnight with an airlift of the appropriate weaponry from the sponsors. This is why India calls for global disarmament. Since neither the Chinese nor the Americans are willing to cooperate anytime soon in de­weaponizing, we are stuck with the status quo.

AMIT

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: PUSHKAR KANHERE/MINT

LISTEN TO THE LOUNGE PODCAST We speak with sports writer Dileep Premachandran who’d predicted a Netherlands­Spain Fifa final a month ago on the ‘Lounge’ podcast! We also deconstruct M. Night Shyamalan’s cinematic oeuvre and review Manu Joseph’s ‘Serious Men’. www.livemint.com/loungepodcast

pork. So, most of its hot dogs are made from chicken sausages which are not only inauthentic, they are also tasteless.

I had the basic hot dog (Original American Hot Dog, Rs99) and it was pretty bad. The sausage tasted of nothing and they had overdone the mustard in an effort to add some flavour. I also tried the Spanish chorizo hot dog, much to the consternation of the order-taker who leaned forward conspiratorially to warn “It is made with pork”. It was nice enough, with slices of chorizo (a spicy European sausage) and sautéed onions and though this was clearly lowest-common-denomination chorizo sausage (at Rs159, what do you expect?), it got the spicy message across. My problem with the dish was that it was not a hot dog in the traditional sense (a whole chorizo sausage may have worked. Sliced chorizo is not quite the same thing). If I want a chorizo sandwich, then I need better bread and better quality chorizo.

Still, I guess the franchisees know what they are doing. Perhaps the Punjabi obsession with chicken is such that a pork frankfurter will not work in Delhi. And so, while I will not be ordering their hot dogs again, I don’t think they care too much given the rate at which they are expanding.

The basic hot dog at the All Ameri-

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Not really American: A Chicago hot dog at the American Diner. can Diner at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre is more expensive than the fast food version but you do get to sit down, are offered a choice of chicken or pork sausage (I took pork in case you are still wondering) and eat a better-than-average hot dog.

I went when the Diner had its annual hot dog festival (on till 31 July) and though I had concerns about the service, the food was very good. I had a chili dog, misleadingly described as a Hot Weiner Dog (Rs265) but the sausage (made for the Diner locally) was good and I liked the chili con carne (“spicy meat sauce” on the menu) topping on the frank.

The best value however was a sampler (Rs425) of four medium-sized hot dogs, with fries. This included a Chicago Dog (with a nice honey-mustard sauce, onions, tomatoes and lettuce in a wholewheat bun); an Alabama Dog (a blue cheese bun with balsamic mayo); a Texas Dog (mushrooms and barbecue sauce) and a Honey Mustard BBQ Dog (honey-mustard sauce

plus barbecue sauce).

I’m too much of a purist to approve of Cointreau buns and blue cheese buns for hot dogs (though you do find them in the US) but I have to say that all of the hot dogs were made to a certain minimum standard and represented great value for this part of Delhi. Small wonder then that the Diner is always packed.

I went at 6.30pm—a good time to judge a restaurant because the manager has not usually come on—and the service was inept. My waiter did not ask me whether I wanted a pork or a chicken sausage. Later when I questioned him about it, he said he assumed I wanted chicken. One guy cheerfully took my order for Diet Coke, another said they had none (it turned out they had Diet Pepsi). After 25 minutes without food, the manager arrived and the entire experience was transformed.

If you do like hot dogs (and I can live on the damn things) then the Diner is your best bet. Avoid the fast food version, steer clear of hotel coffee shop dogs or best of all (given that as a Lounge reader, you are probably a well-heeled fat cat), eat your dogs on the streets of New York.

Sometimes, you just have to be there.

Vir Sanghvi is editorial director, Hindustan Times.

Write to lounge@livemint.com CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: Shoba Narayan’s column, “The manly art of mouthing a non­apology”, 3 July, misspelt Halley’s Comet.

In “Charm Offensive”, 3 July, a photo caption misspelt the article ‘the’.

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

How to deal with snarky put­downs

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ore than personality flaws like chronic lateness or indecisiveness; more than failings like snoring or fidgeting; the one thing that seems to infuriate couples is the public

put-down. It’s odd really, how much we value this public appearance of solidarity in a marriage (or relationship) when it ought to fall fairly low in the hierarchy of sins. Consider.

Wife in her nightie talking on the phone with her husband: “Yes, I am ready. I was just getting into the car when you called. Yeah, sure, you can start driving. I’ll be at the club in 20 minutes.

Pucca.” Blatant lie.

Husband to wife: “Oh, didn’t I tell you that I was going out of town with my motorcycle buddies this weekend? I thought I had. I thought I checked with you before committing. Didn’t you get my email?” Lie. There was no email.

We all tolerate such white lies from our spouses even when we know they are lying. For one reason—we’ve all said them. The same goes for spousal failings—undressing and dropping clothes on the floor; or doing the reverse and cleaning up obsessively. We accept all those irritating, infuriating habits of our spouses because we each have our fair share of them. Public put-downs, however, are in a league of their own.

Nothing good comes of them, and yet spouses dole them out anyway. Usually in mixed company, and often in front of a group of friends.

“Rahul does your taxes? Wow! I’ll be glad if Sriram even balances our chequebooks.” Wife laughs. Sriram glares at her. She stares back defensively.

Friends fidget.

“Man, your sister is a saint. Cooking non-veg food for her hubby when she is a strict vegetarian. I’ll happy if Deepa makes me some tea occasionally.”

Glare from Deepa as husband smiles at her impassive face. Doghouse for husband. Why? Public put-downs spring from private frustration. Every casually thrown public barb is a spousal after-clap with a long history; the last step after repeated attempts to influence and convert. The public put-down is a declaration of spousal failure—from both sides. One is unwilling to change and the other unwilling to accept defeat. So she scoffs, sneers and taunts. He tosses out a sarcastic comment under the guise of humour, realizing only later that he is the only one laughing. It’s a no-win situation.

Friends are embarrassed; the receiver is furious; and the giver is nonplussed.

Recently, a group of Bangalore women hit upon a rather novel solution to this problem. Public put-downs can only be prevented by private venting. The key is to find a friend or three to whom you can complain and confess your frustrations without the pressure of having to portray your relationship as perfect. These friends have to be discreet and non-judgemental.

Most important, they have to view your relationship as fundamentally sound and your spouse as decent even though you are telling them all the dirty secrets. This is a tall order. If you find one friend who meets all these criteria, my advice is to

No­win: There are few things that upset us more than a sarcastic comment casually uttered by the spouse in front of friends. hang on to them. If you find three, you are incredibly lucky. Men need to do this too but for some reason, few men are comfortable discussing personal stuff with each other. They will talk about sports or politics but clam up when it comes to spouses. “Avoid, yaar,” said one Mumbai man in a tone that said it all when asked about his wife.

Every marriage is as imperfect as its participants. Even good marriages go through bad patches. All this we know.

Even so, it gets lonely when couples bicker. Whom do you talk to? Parents and relatives will immediately attempt to do something: confront the erring spouse and confuse the situation even further.

That leaves friends.

Latter-day friendships are difficult. The stakes are too high. First, there is the time involved in making friends, which needs to be prioritized over family, children, work and other commitments. Who has the time to simply do lunch to nurture a friendship these days? Second, middle-aged folks have reached certain positions in their careers and life as a

result of which they cannot reveal themselves in the carefree fashion that they used to in college. They have to hide their vulnerabilities. Third, most of us don’t need friends the way we did in college when they were our supporters, soulmates, cheerleaders and rescuers. As we get older, we rely on multiple people for all the things our friends did for us: Spouses become soulmates, household help supports, and colleagues can become cheerleaders. Money covers much of what friends did. Where once we asked friends to pick us up at the airport or train station because we couldn’t afford a cab, now we can afford a limousine. Latter-day friends however (and this is the great merit of friendship) can be great emotional salves. Talking to them is a way of dealing with spousal frustrations in what psychologists call a “safe place”. Most people in the West go to marriage counsellors and therapists to talk about their marriage. In Bangalore, women go to Hypnos, Hard Rock Café, Bacchus and Kyra. After a few smokes and drinks, the stories came out.

“I used to be the sulker. Now he has usurped my role. He’s sulking and expects me to be the sweet-talker. I don’t want to sweet-talk. I want him to sweet-talk me. I deserve it more than he does.”

“When we fight, I want solutions. I don’t want apologies and compliments. I want a game plan, or at least a sense of where we are headed.”

“I can’t have sex when I am mad. I withhold. I am a withholder.”

The evening winds up. The girls go home with lighter hearts and wallets. Best of all, thanks to the sympathy and understanding they have received, their relationship becomes better. At least for a short while.

Shoba Narayan believes in latter-day friendships. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

GOURI DANGE LEARNING CURVE

The importance of having a chat When it’s time to educate your child about the facts of life, a heart­to­heart is the best way forward My son’s 16, my daughter 14. I find both of them singularly unambitious.

I’d have thought my son, especially now that he’s nearing the end of his schooling, would have had some idea of the direction he wants to take. But he seems to have no certain idea of what he wants to study for the next couple of years, forget the line of work he wants to take up. I’ve tried to chat with them, help them find out what they like doing—but both of them seem apathetic to the idea that they will actually have to work for their living one day. I find that their friends have similar dispositions. I was a very driven young man myself, and have worked hard to get where I am, and I am passionate about what I do even today. Is it too early for me to be pressuring them? I wouldn’t like them to feel insecure, but I do want them to have a goal in life.

What would you advise?

Well, at this age some of them do seem infuriatingly and frustratingly aimless and listless! You’ll have to have faith that they are learning, growing, thinking behind that nonchalant and blasé front. However, what you can do (or have another significant adult in their lives do, if you think they will simply yawn at you) is to draw them into setting two short-term goals at the beginning of, say, the school year, or the calendar year, or on their birthday,

or on Diwali—or any day that signifies new beginnings.

Try and get them to come up with goals. You could start with asking what they would like to change by the end of the coming four months. If they look blank, you can lead the conversation a little, and encourage them to have some goal—it may not necessarily be something that you as a parent think is a goal, but if it comes from them, that is a start. Having a goal thrust upon them does nothing to motivate teenagers.

Help the conversation along by asking them what really bugs them currently and one thing that they think is going well in their lives. It could be about friendships, or wanting things, or something about their own appearance, or school stuff. Once they come up with something, ask them to come up with five things that they need to do to achieve it.

If you find that this works somewhat, try to draw them towards one or two long-term goals, meaning something that can be done by the same time next year. See if any of the short-term goals tie in with the long ones. Make it like a game, if possible. I fully understand that drawing in lackadaisical teens is no small task—but perhaps in the process of doing this you may have some fun with your children, and not feel so anxious and hopeless.

Tell me: Be straightforward with children.

My daughter has recently begun her periods. She is just a little over 10.

She goes to school on these days and was managing okay. The problem arises when she needs to go to the toilet for a change. I put the pads in individual envelopes, and she just takes the envelope with her and goes.

However, a month ago, a couple of boys in her class (class V) saw her and asked her what was in the envelope. She refused to tell them and kept walking towards the toilet.

Finally, one of them grabbed it from her hand and then began to tease her, saying she wore diapers. She simply could not explain anything to them, and the story spread quickly through the school. Now she says she

will not go to school during those days. What do I do? Someone needs to educate these boys. But I don’t want to embarrass my daughter by making this a school/class-level issue.

Yes, someone needs to impart a few simple lessons to your daughter’s classmates. One, on bodily functions, and two, on treating girls with some respect and sensitivity. No doubt these sound like big concepts to introduce to young children, but the incident that you describe is a sure sign that the time for it has come.

A schoolteacher and principal—who I admire for her practical, yet sensitive way of handling tricky situations with her young students and their parents—told me how she handled a similar incident. Perhaps there can be some clues for you in this. When she realized there was a lot of ignorance, misinformation and teasing around the issue of periods and sanitary pads, she first sent around a well-worded circular to parents requesting them to tell their sons (and daughters) a few facts of life regarding the human body and its functions, and the changes that occur during this age.

Some of the parents felt it was too early, and that they would like to tell their boys only when they were 12 or 13. However, as quite a few young girls do begin to menstruate early, she felt this could not be left till so late. She had made a mental note of the boys who had been involved in teasing and name-calling, and called their parents in. Without blaming them or taking them to task, she told them of the

teasing, and said it would be so very good if these boys were given age-appropriate explanations.

On her part, the principal took a sanitary pad into the class, at first in an envelope. She pulled it out and showed it to class V, and asked them if they knew what it was. Some of the girls and boys did know, but quite a few were clueless. Yes, many of them thought it was a diaper. She told them briefly what it was, and said it was a time when girls needed to be given privacy and understanding, not teased.

After the first few uncomfortable giggles and whispers, she says, she found them listening quietly. She also went out of her way to reiterate that there was nothing funny or “dirty” or shameful about the process. She added that while having your period was not some awful secret, neither was it something any girl should be forced to declare or discuss.

She gave a lot of children and their parents a gentle but effective and long-lasting life lesson, and much to think about. Needless to say, the mood and attitude in this class changed, and as more girls entered puberty over that year, everyone found the transitions easier and gentler all round.

Of course, this puts the onus on the class teacher/principal of your daughter’s school to do something, and do it with grace and sensitivity.

You could suggest it. If they choose to handle it in this way, you could also request that your daughter’s name should not be brought up.

Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting.

Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

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Outsider SALLY RYAN/WSJ

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BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON

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Beds of predominately white blossoms are one hallmark of a moon garden

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5 2

Save room for a pond or fountain for soothing audio or shimmery visual effects

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Silvery foliage will glow in the moonlight

4 5 6

Candles or low­voltage lighting only

A mirrored ball adds interest, light

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Multicoloured gardens look muddy in moonlight but bright accents help

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Warning: Mosquitoes can be brutal

Bats, or a pond stocked with goldfish, can help with bug control

GARDENING

Midnight in the garden Busy professionals relax in backyards designed to be appreciated in the dark

B Y A NNE M ARIE C HAKER ···························· erri Douglas works long hours and travels a lot.

By the time she gets home from work at night, it’s usually too late, too dark—or she’s too tired—to putter in her flower beds.

Then she found out about moon gardens, where gardeners with day jobs can enjoy their hobby at night. Otherwise known as an “evening garden”, a “night garden” or a “white garden”, a moon garden is a backyard detox zone designed to be experienced and appreciated in the dark.

“I do have one of those houses where people drive by and look at the flowers,” says Douglas, a process improvement director for Emerson Electric Co., who lives and gardens in Powell, Ohio, US. “But truthfully, there is one place where I garden for me, and it’s my moon garden.”

Busy professionals by day repair to moon gardens by night for meditation, reading or latenight cocktails. East Coast moon gardens are currently paying extra dividends, functioning as evening oases in the heat wave. In thinking of gardens only for daytime pleasure, “you’re missing the half of it”, says Peter Loewer, author of The Evening Garden: Flowers and Fragrance from Dusk till Dawn.

Successfully planned and planted, the evening garden becomes a parallel ecosystem of night-blooming flora and fauna.

These plants and pollinators coevolved “so they don’t have to

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compete with daytime flowers and pollinators through the process of natural selection,” says W. John Kress, a botanist, who specializes in pollination biology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Multicoloured flower gardens look muddy in moonlight, but moon gardens glow because of their predominately white flowers and silvery foliage. Some blossoms unfurl only at day’s end—especially moonflowers (Ipomoea alba), a type of morning glory; angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia arborea), so named because the flowers open downward, as if from heaven; and devil’s trumpets (Datura meteloides), so named because they open from the opposite direction. Both are poisonous and emit a perfume that grows more pronounced in heavy evening air. The white flowers, which seem to illuminate the dark, are visible to night pollinators such as the sphinx moth, which is drawn to the scent and the tubular, nectar-filled blooms.

Understated and monochromatic, moon gardens require a shift in the usual American approach to garden design. Many people think of gardens as places for showy plantings to complement the exterior of a house, in full view of passers-by. A moon garden, though, isn’t meant to make a public statement. “It’s not something the neighbours, the home buyers will look at and say, ‘Wow, look at these people’s house’,” says Annie Huston, co-

owner of Columbine Design, an Englewood, Colorado, landscape design firm. “It’s a personal type of enjoyment.”

Some people do stage neighbourhood cocktail parties in their moon gardens though. Jean Marshall Arfield, a retired business development manager in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, throws a party when one of her cereus plants is expected to bloom. The large, gangly cactus, native to the American desert, typically produces one bud each year that opens up into an extraordinary, grapefruit-sized flower. Each year, a new bud will open slowly over the course of an hour—and then close, never to open again.

In the Philadelphia area, cereus usually blooms in the first or second week in August. “The timing of the party is so key,” says Arfield. He encourages neighbours to come for a 10pm blossoming and bring their flashlights. They all breathe in the scent, which is gone by morning. “The flower has collapsed and that’s it until next year,” he says.

Joan Wagner, the 56-year-old co-owner of a St Louis, Missouri, computer-consulting business, recalls that her moon garden began several years ago when she installed a pond near a backyard deck and envisioned it surrounded by a garden planted with white flowers. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to sit out here and have it be cool?” she recalls.

She planted white-flowering

annuals for what she calls “instant effect”, including sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) “which just blooms and blooms”. For silvery foliage, she planted Dusty Miller under a tropical-looking banana tree and lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina) interspersed in sunny spots. She also incorporates some chartreuse foliage that she says “just glows” at night, including a hosta called June and a big grouping of coleus.

Water features—a fountain or a pond—are welcome additions to moon gardens, adding audio effects and the shimmer of reflected moonlight. “When you’re not being overstimulated with colour and all the visual stuff during the day, you start to hear things better and you pay more attention,” says Scott Ogden, a garden designer and author of The Moonlit Garden.

But ponds can contribute to moon gardens’ principal downside—mosquitoes. The insects use ponds and other still water as breeding grounds, and that is why it’s worth considering stocking your pond with fish.

Some breeds known to eat mosquito larvae include goldfish, guppies and fathead minnows. Gambusia

IXITIXEL/WIKIMEDIA

Instant effect: Sweet alyssum.

affinis—nicknamed “mosquitofish”—has grown in popularity as a countermeasure to the West Nile virus because of its appetite. Be sure not to overfeed them: Hungry fish make better mosquito predators, according to the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District, California, which provides mosquitofish to homeowners at no cost.

Bats are attracted to pale nightbloomers and they too can put a dent in the mosquito population.

Other forms of control include products containing Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, naturally occurring bacteria that can kill insects.

Mosquito Dunks, manufactured

by Summit Chemical Co., Baltimore, Maryland, are small donuts that release a form of Bt when placed in water.

Wagner says mosquitoes in her moon garden could be brutal until she stocked her pond with goldfish and installed a smoke-emitting lantern near the deck. For additional lighting, she has interspersed five candle holders on stakes, staggered at different heights, throughout the garden.

The look is “more natural and soft” than electric or solar lights, she says. With the pond’s waterfall feature, the overall effect is “calm and soothing”, Wagner says. “You always hear the sound of water.”

Some people install low-voltage lights or a mirror ball which contributes more reflected moonlight for an ethereal effect.

Nurseries are getting more requests for white-flowering plants. Bowood Farms, an urban garden centre in St Louis, has started growing and displaying more plants for moon gardens.

Younger, artsy customers who have busy jobs but who enjoy being up at night are getting more interested in the idea, says horticultural manager Ellen Barredo.

“We’d be hearing, ‘Why don’t you

have any white plants?’” she says.

Last year in May, the nursery displayed all its white-flowering plants on a long table and sold out in a matter of weeks. This year, in addition to displaying classic evening bloomers such as devil’s trumpets and four o’clocks, Barredo experimented by stocking trays of a white marigold called Kilimanjaro White and a white zinnia called Polar Bear. “They love all this stuff,” Barredo says of her customers.

“People get home late from a long day of work and the idea of being able to still go out and appreciate nature is a romantic thing,” says F. Todd Lasseigne, executive director of the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, a 7-acre public garden that’s in the design and building stage in Kernersville, North Carolina. Lasseigne envisions an evening garden with a flower bed in the shape of an hourglass “to emphasize the element of time with plants that bloom in the evening”. The garden will be an important setting for evening fund-raisers and other events, he says.

Rosellen Bohlen, a retired nurse practitioner in Champaign, Illinois, is expanding the moon garden by her covered porch. She started it by scattering nicotiana seed; subsequent plantings included white-flowering Dianthus plumarius (commonly called “pinks”) and sweet-autumn clematis (Clematis ternifolia) climbing on the porch. This year, she added two climbing white roses called Darlow’s Enigma, white four-o’clocks and a group of three white heliotropes massed in front of the roses. “After working in the garden, I’ll sit on the swing and read a few pages and maybe fall asleep,” she says. “It’s a lovely, idyllic spot.”

Write to wsj@livemint.com

L6

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

Eat/Drink OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

A wary step into the Bengali kitchen Debjyoti’s ‘Doi Maach’

Warned by his grandmother against using curds with fish, the author tries just that

I

f you are a Bengali, it might be a good idea to stop reading now.

If you are a Bengali and are still reading, you are either (a) bored (b) curious or (c) liberal—enough to hear some upending of your traditions by a Konkani boy, who in turn had to abandon some grandmotherly advice in telling you what I am about to.

Back in the 1970s when life was gentler, and children thought nothing of sharing their room with their grandmother, as my brother and I did, she often frowned upon our violations of certain Konkan culinary traditions.

Prime among these infringements was our penchant for pouring a dollop of yogurt over fiery Goan fish curry. A small, strong woman who had given birth to 10 children over 24 years, my grandmother was illiterate, but she was well educated in her native wisdom and culinary traditions. In Goa, she said, no one ever ate fish with yogurt. “It doesn’t go,” was my grandmother’s obstinate response. “You develop white spots.” That’s vitiligo, said my mother, adding quickly that Goans would be “scandalized” if they knew of my attempts to cook fish with dahi (yogurt), Bengali style.

As you can see, when it comes to yogurt, Konkani and Bengali fish traditions may have evolved from different planets. I must confess that I know little about Bengali food, except that I like

it—well, most of it. This fascination for freshwater fish and the overwhelming addiction to mustard escapes me. What I have loved over the years is—my grandmother must be rolling in her grave as I say this—doi maach, or yogurt fish.

I also know it’s a healthier way to have fish than the typical Konkan pomfret swimming in coconut milk (though if pushed to choose, I would say, Go Goa!).

I got started with doi maach thanks to generous contributions from readers on my blog earlier this year.

The first contribution came from my colleague Debjyoti Chakraborty, who explained that there are, of course, many variations of doi maach, divided, as many Bengali recipes are, into an “east” (the region that is now Bangladesh) and “west” (now West Bengal).

Broadly speaking, he said, East Bengali recipes tend to enhance the fishy flavour of fish, while the ones from the West like to play up the flavour and aroma of spices. The East Bengal version of any fish curry is usually hot and the West Bengalis can’t help sprinkling a spoonful of sugar over almost everything.

One of his recipes inspired Soumya, a regular reader of my

Serves 3 Debjyoti says doi maach tastes best when prepared with rohu or a similar fish of the carp family.

Choose a rich, meaty fish, like a full-grown 2-4kg carp, and pick slices from close to the upper fin, avoiding the softer flesh of the underbelly. Slice into 1K-2-inch pieces.

Ingredients 4-5 big slices of fish Turmeric paste (enough to smear the fish with) Salt K tsp cumin seeds 3 cloves 3 green cardamoms K inch stick of cinnamon 2-3 green chillies, split from the top 2 bay leaves K teacup of sour curd, whipped with a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of sugar 1K tbsp mustard oil 1 cup of water

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

blogs (I know her by her handle, Chinz), to post her own version of Debjyoti’s recipe. I made my own adjustments to her doi maach, and I now boast my adaptation.

I cooked it, I liked it, I even suggested it to my mother, who remains as wary of yogurt in fish as her mother-in-law. Two weeks ago, she actually deigned to make my version of doi maach—I say deigned because

PHOTOGRAPHS

Trick and treating Powdered butter, aerated fruit—take a jab at molecular gastronomy B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

···························· eople who think food is made from the heart, tasted with love, with ingredients measured in pinches and dashes, might feel out of place in Mukul Tanwar’s kitchen at Le 15 Patisserie, Parel, Mumbai, where he recently conducted a workshop on molecular gastronomy. With white powdered substances in fancy packages, intimidating space age machinery and weighing devices that measure even 0.1g accurately, it’s more laboratory than kitchen.

“Molecular gastronomy is about the process of cooking. We use science and different kinds of equipment. The chefs do work in laboratories,” says Tanwar, showing off a mixer that does 10,000 rotations in a minute. “Just like an aircraft,” he adds.

Tanwar has trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and was recently in India for a visit. While working at a restaurant in Paris, Tanwar, also an engineer, found himself interested in the science of food.

He worked at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck, a Michelinstarred molecular gastronomy res-

P

taurant in England, for a few months and has been working at perfecting his science since then.

Not many of us have had the opportunity to dine at the temples of molecular gastronomy such as El Bulli or The Fat Duck—our exposure to this food science is possibly limited to fruit caviars bursting in our mouths or hot soup topped with chilled foam. We asked Tanwar to demonstrate some easy DIY molecular gastronomy procedures that will not require jetengine strength machines.

Peanut butter powder Malto is a tapioca starch and absorbs the oil and fat content from any fatty product. You can add it to mayonnaise, peanut butter or even flavoured oil. The butter will turn into a powder consistency, but melt in your mouth. Mix wasabi and mayonnaise with Malto and make wasabi powder. Dust the peanut butter powder on cupcakes or serve chicken satay or crisps dusted with wasabi powder. No need for the extra bowl of dip.

Ingredients 50g peanut butter 200g Malto Method Whisk together peanut butter and Malto till the mixture turns into powder consistency.

her doctor told her to lose weight and I have pointed out that delicious as our home curry is, she can do without the coconut milk. How did she like it? “It was nice,” was her guarded response, “but it tasted a bit oniony.”

Until some Bengali who has bothered to read to this end of this column invites me over, I will be satisfied with my potentially sacrilegious interpretation.

BY

Method Spread about half a teaspoon of turmeric paste or powder and as much salt over the fish and rub in the marinade lightly.

Heat about a tablespoon and a half of mustard oil in a pan and fry the fish slices lightly. Keep the fish aside. Put green chillies into the pan and before they begin to sputter, throw in the cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves. When the spices begin to cook and the aroma begins to tickle your nostrils (Debjyoti’s language), pour in a cup of cold water and let it come to a boil.

Dip the fish slices into the sauce.

Turn off the burner and pour the

whipped curd into the pan. Serve hot with steamed rice.

The healthy, Halarnkar ‘Doi Maach’ Serves 5 Ingredients 750g fish (sole or surmai). Red snapper and trout work well, so I’m told, not salmon or cod For the marination 2 tsp ginger-garlic paste 2 tsp red chilli powder (or more if you wish) 1 tsp turmeric powder K tsp sugar (I am wary of sugar in fish) 2 cups of yogurt Salt to taste 2 tsp olive oil Method Mix all of the above and set aside for at least an hour. Make a coarse powder of 3 black cardamoms, 3 green cardamoms, 1-inch piece of cinnamon, 6 cloves. Thinly slice 2 large onions. Heat 2 tbsp of olive or sunflower oil (oh all right, or mustard oil if you wish) in a non-stick pan. Add the coarse powder. When it starts to fizz, add the onions and fry till golden brown. Add the fish with the marinade. Close lid and cook on slow fire for 15 minutes or until done. Garnish with fresh, chopped coriander.

This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes a blog, Our Daily Bread, at Htblogs.com. He is editor-at-large, Hindustan Times.

Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com

KEDAR BHAT/MINT

peas ravioli. For caviar, use a syringe to pour drops of the liquid into the Calcic water.

Remove the caviar using a straining spoon. Top your ice cream and other desserts with the caviar and feel the burst of liquid in your mouth.

Muskmelon foam Delicately flavoured airy foam can be made with any kind of fruit or vegetable. This can be served on its own in a glass or topped on another dish. Use it to top cocktails or soups. “You can turn any liquid into foam using the soy lecithin. Just like milk foams because of the natural lactose present (in) it,” says Tanwar.

In the lab: (clockwise from above) Tanwar experiments with recipes; cupcakes topped with peanut butter powder; and molecular gastronomy ingredients by El Bulli.

Peas ravioli This dish might be called ravioli but the only connection it has to the Italian dish is the shape.

Sodium alginate is an emulsifying agent derived from seaweed, and together with calcium chloride is used to create spheres of liquids or purées. When a spoon of juice or purée is dropped into this mixture, it turns into a solid-looking globule with liquid inside. You can use any vegetable or fruit purée. Serve the dish as an appetizer.

Ingredients 300g frozen green peas 12 ounces water 2.4g gelatine 6.5g Calcic

Some sea salt mixed with gold leaf Method Blend the green peas and water in a hand blender to form a purée. Now strain the liquid and keep 16 ounces of the juice made after blending the peas and water aside. Add the gelatine and blend with hand blender.

Refrigerate for 5 minutes.

Measure 32 ounces of water in a container and add the Calcic and blend. Leave aside for 2 minutes. Now take a spoon and pour the peas juice in the Calcic water in the shape of a ravioli.

Leave inside for a minute and remove carefully with a spoon and immerse in plain water.

Leave for a minute and place in a small serving dish. Top with a piece of sea salt wrapped in gold leaf and serve.

Fruit juice caviar Use any ready-made juice such as Frooti or Slice or make a fruit juice using the method given for

Ingredients 25 ounce water 200g fruit 10g soy lecithin Method Cut the muskmelon into pieces, place in a bowl and add water.

Purée the fruit using a hand blender and then strain it. Add soy lecithin to the liquid and blend again till the liquid turns into foam.

The ingredients and tools used in molecular gastronomy can be found online at www.chenabimpex.com and at Nature’s Basket stores across the country, for Rs2,500 or above.

www.livemint.com Every Monday, catch Cooking with Lounge, a video show with recipes from well­known chefs, at www.livemint.com/cookingwithlounge

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

L7

Style SPOTLIGHT

The emperor’s new clothes PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Affordable prices, a line of watches, bridal wear that doesn’t weigh you down— Tarun Tahiliani is thinking ahead

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

···························· arun Tahiliani is no crusader and he is the first one to admit that. “Sari-gowns” (like printed T-shirts with jewels earlier) are his new objects of interest but he’s clear he doesn’t have a larger purpose in mind. “I am not driven because the sari needs a revival. I love it as an aesthetic and I am obsessed with draping. I have done pre-constructed saris before but perhaps the time for that innovation was not right then. Now it is. The sari is disappearing off the Indian landscape because younger women feel intimidated by it. ‘I need someone to come and tie it’, ‘It is not sexy’, ‘How can I dance in it’—a sari-gown is the answer to all these.”

He thinks it’s a “great triumph” that Indian celebrities are choosing the sari over the gown at red carpet events, such as the recently concluded International Indian Film Academy (Iifa) awards. “But if you want to wear a gown, at least call Dior. Don’t wear a horrific knock-off .”

We meet at Tahiliani’s home office, a rectangular room lit naturally by an oversized skylight.

There’s a cluttered mix of Indian furniture and artefacts such as two large black metalwork screens with animal motifs, many books, canvases and a Nespresso coffee machine that Tahiliani insists makes the best cuppa in town.

At 47, after a decade and a half in the business of designing clothes, Tahiliani says he finally feels he is in tune with himself.

“Normally, people’s own style gets defined in their 30s and 40s.

Donna Karan came into her own at 37, Armani started his label at 41. By the time I started designing seriously, I was 30. It’s taken me 10-15 years to learn and now I

T

Artist designer: (clockwise from far left) Tarun Tahiliani at his home­office; a sari­gown from the collection that will be showcased at the Bridal Exposition; and Indira Devi, the Maharani of Cooch Behar, who was Tahiliani’s muse for his forthcoming bridal collection.

‘A

feel I have command and understanding of myself.”

In around 10 days, Tahiliani will roll out the second edition of The Tarun Tahiliani Bridal Couture Exposition at DLF Emporio mall, Delhi; he has just previewed select pieces from this line. The colours are muted (mustard, beige, sapphire, burgundy), the veils are made from translucent fabric; sari-gowns, bodysuits and anarkali kurtas have all made it to the line. “My inspiration has been images of Indira Devi of Cooch Behar (mother of the famous Gayatri Devi),” he says.

The event idea is based on a procession in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk, and Tahiliani envisions it as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the era of the maharajas—though he insists he will not duplicate the feel. “It will be a son et lumière

and will have all that I associate with couture—performing arts, fun, theatre, a bit of fantasy…and wearable clothes.”

But can any wedding outfit really be called wearable? “How in the hell will the bride dance all night if she has to wear a 20kg outfit?” he asks.

Err...our point exactly.

“Wedding outfits should not weigh more than 6kg and still look good. Modernity lies in the lightness of an outfit.” Next on Tahiliani’s list is proportion and fit. “Brides are conscious about their figures today. They want backless cholis and they no longer sit in one place with a ghunghat. So we have to learn how to do away with a 400 kali skirt, and get the same impact from 30 kalis. We have to use architecture while designing.”

Tahiliani says he never ceases to be amazed at the kind of pain women are willing to bear for the sake of fashion. “I don’t understand you women. You are willing to suffer a lot for fashion and let me tell you this suffering is not for a man’s sake. You do it for each other, so don’t blame us.”

On his part, Tahiliani insists that he looks for ways to make fashion more comfortable.

“Some years ago I was with my friend Nasreen Qureshi in Paris at a bridal show. She wore a chikan sari, and on top wore a short Chanel jacket with the pallu of the sari draped around her neck. She was a sensation.

And what a perfect solution that was for women who want to wear saris in winter and don’t want to drape shawls around themselves. I have been making

Take a shine

PRINCESS REMEMBERS’/RUPA

&

saris with velvet coats for four or five years now.”

Right after the exposition, Tahiliani will be back to doing what he does best—extending his brand and experimenting with new business ideas. He is launching the Tarun Tahiliani line of watches for women in the next few months and is also working on a licensing agreement for designing a line of clothes that will be priced at Rs3,500-9,000.

“These will be things that you can wear for a party. I want to do this so that people can buy original Tarun Tahiliani instead of cheap knock-offs.”

Tahiliani believes any successful designer needs a strong business partner and good licensing arrangements. “You cannot manufacture everything on your own at varying price points.”

q Ray­Ban: Rimless aviator sunglasses with blue lens, at all Titan Eye Plus stores and other lead­ ing optical stores, Rs6,290.

Metallic frames with light tints is the way to go with sunglasses this season B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

····························

q French Connection: Gold­framed sunglasses with brown­tinted lens, at FCUK stores in Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs3,400.

p Calvin Klein: Sunglasses with blue­tinted lens, at all leading optical stores, Rs6,820.

q Tod’s: Grey­tinted aviator sunglasses with leather strap on the arms, at The Collective, Bangalore and Mumbai, Rs31,020.

CO

q Tommy Hilfiger: Purple­tinted sunglasses, at all leading optical stores, Rs5,280.

Tahiliani, who is mostly seen in functional clothes—black T-shirts, khakis, white linen shirts—does admit designing menswear is tough. “Women’s clothing can exist in the realm of fantasy but with menswear I always think, would I wear that?

Perhaps because of this I cannot do multicoloured, rainbow Swarovski-encrusted outfits for a man. I have simple taste and maybe because I am around ornate clothes all the time, I can’t really dress up. They say mithaiwala kabhi mithai nahi khata (a person who makes sweets never eats them). Totally true in my case.” www.livemint.com See the related video story at www.livemint.com/tahiliani.htm

MAC ART SUPPLIES Bring out the pencils and markers and get ready to paint—your face, that is.

MAC’s new Art Supplies collection comes in easy­to­ use markers and application sticks. The Greasepaint Stick can be used as a liner eyeshadow for an easy­to­do, smoky­eyed look. The Pearlglide Intense eyeliner comes with a sparkle effect. Our favourite is the Lipstain Marker with a felt tip.

Prices start at Rs920.

Rachana Nakra

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

L8

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

Business Lounge SULAJJA FIRODIA MOTWANI

Redirecting kinetic energy The managing director of the Kinetic group on what it took to sell an iconic brand

B Y V EENA V ENUGOPAL veena.v@livemint.com

···························· t is perhaps an indicator of a gender bias that if you google Sulajja Firodia Motwani, 40, one of the first results that comes up is a listing on eDesibabes.com (most hot male lists have Bollywood stars and cricketers, not CEOs). So let’s get that out of the way. Motwani is gorgeous, fit and looks a decade younger than she really is (and she is tickled by the eDesibabes reference). But as I learn in the course of our meeting, what makes Motwani really different from other business leaders is not her good looks, but her candour and her ability to clinically analyse a bad situation and choose a rational option.

It’s been 13 years since Motwani started working with the Kinetic group, the engineering and two-wheeler company that her grandfather H.K. Firodia set up. In that time, Kinetic became a household name, a girl’s first set of wheels, a symbol of freedom—from gears and the necessity of a male rider. Motwani, now managing director, was the face of the company.

All seemed great until mid-2008 when, loaded with debts and unable to compete with the big boys of the twowheeler segment, 80% of the company’s stake was sold to Mahindra and Mahindra. Anyone else would have cloaked this under meaningless, positivesounding phrases such as strategic redevelopment or changing the paradigm. But Motwani calls it what it is—a disappointment, something that had to be done.

“It was difficult,” she says, “and I had to convince the whole family that the best decision would be to have an alliance. If the market changes and you don’t have the right construct to make it in the changed market, then you can’t succeed.” Motwani saw only three options for a mid-sized player in a market dominated by large companies who have very

I

strong bargaining powers: an alliance, becoming a niche player or closing the business. “If we had done nothing, then we probably would have had to shut it down.

Or we would have to be so niche that we become a scooter company only in, let’s say, western India. I thought an alliance was the right way—it would move the company forward. Mahindra is a good partner, they understand the rural market, our customers, dealers and employees would benefit from the deal and we would also profit by being shareholders. So I was convinced this was the best way forward. And I laid it out to the family,” she says.

Motwani has spent the last two years changing tack and quietly focusing on building new businesses. So there’s an auto component division, an engineering services arm and an infrastructure company. But what Motwani is most excited about is an announcement that she will make in the next few months—the launch of a company that she guardedly says will bring the Kinetic brand from your garage to inside your home. The word in the market is that this will be a line of home appliances. “But don’t write us out of the automobile industry.

It’s in our blood, we will come back to it at some time in the future,” she says.

Motwani wants to focus on the new consumer business while her brother, Ajukya, will look after the engineering and infrastructure business. Her two sisters are not involved in the company. Working in the family business was not a non-negotiable condition thrust at her, but one she chose for herself. In 1992, after she completed her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, Motwani stayed on in the US and worked for Barra International, an investment analytics company. But working in Kinetic was always part of her

But don’t write us out of the automobile industry. It’s in our blood, we will come back to it some time.

plan and she came back to join the company in 1997. She says she did not just sit back and play the role of the owner’s daughter by throwing her weight around.

She earned her stripes, spending the first three years looking after the dealer network, travelling 20 days a month all over the country. “Once people know that you are working hard and your agenda is only that the business should succeed, they are quite supportive. As for being a woman, I feel people’s expectations from women are so low that they are overtly impressed if you just manage to make your point intelligently,” she says.

But a ready-made career in the family business is not as easy as it looks from the outside. “There are challenges to working in your family business. For one, the buck stops with you. If you screw up, you can’t change your job. Of course, when the company does well, you get the benefit. But if something goes wrong, it affects you directly. It becomes your life,” she says.

Though her self-image is professionally driven, she is careful to remind herself that it should not become her life.

Nine-year-old son Sidhant is a top priority, as is her fitness regime. “You don’t realize it because you are living it day-today. But when I get a chance to sit and look back, then I feel that I have been able to embrace a lot of things; I can multitask—be a good mom, a full-time professional and keep myself fit. I have been able to balance my life reasonably successfully,” she says.

Motwani has not let the business troubles of the last couple of years damage her optimism. “I am always saying ‘be positive’, it’s a joke in the family. In the movie No Entry, Anil Kapoor’s character constantly says ‘be positive yaar’ in a very annoying way. My family makes fun of me by mimicking that,” she says.

T h e n Motwani discusses something else not often heard from a business leader—gratitude. “There have been failures and problems, but I still feel fortunate. I tell myself if I can’t be thankful and happy, who can. I don’t have the right to complain, I’ve been given so much,” she says.

Changing gears: Motwani spends most of her time in strategy, deal­making and business development, and stays out of operational nitty­gritties.

IN PARENTHESIS As a former competitive badminton player, fitness is one of Motwani’s top three priorities. “For me, fitness is about an overall feeling of wellness—eating right, feeling energetic. It’s not about fashion or glamour,” she says.

Motwani works out three days in the gym for an hour in the morning and does both cardio and strength training. She does yoga the other three days and plays soccer with friends on Sundays. “I also run the Mumbai half­marathon. I can run 10 or 12km easily, and then ramp it up during the weeks prior to the race,” she says.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

L9

Play Q&A | TRISTAN DONOVAN

ALEXANDER COMMUNICATIONS/FLICKR

Action replay The author of a new book that delves into the creative history of video games says they need to be looked at as art, not technology B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· ristan Donovan’s Replay: The History of Video Games is an exhaustively researched account of the fledgling but extremely popular medium. From its origins in World War-II era research labs to its domination of living rooms, Donovan uncovers the creative and imaginative roots of gaming and game development.

The book, he says, is an attempt to move away from a “hardware-centric” conception of games—one which “suggests that games are nothing more than some by-product of hardware engineers and business decisions.”

In an email interview, the UK-based writer told us about game design culture, writing games history, and what non-gamers can learn from a video game or two.

Edited excerpts:

T

As a gamer, did delving into the medium’s history change your opinion of it significantly?

A little bit—I grew up with video games, they were always part of my life just like books and television, and so a lot of the research just reinforced what I knew. But there were some surprises. One was that not all game makers play games. Seems obvious in hindsight but it did surprise me that a significant minority of game developers—including many great ones—don’t play video games.

The biggest discovery for me, however, was how influential games were on the adoption of home computers. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, people didn’t know what to do with a home computer. They used to talk about storing family recipes or cataloguing stamp collections on them. Even the boss of Atari, which used to make computers, admitted in public he didn’t know what the point of them was.

Back then games were the

primary reason for owning a computer— although people were reluctant to say it.

Without them it’s doubtful computers would have sold in the numbers they did and without those sales it would have taken longer for the price of computers to fall. I’ve no doubt that the mass adoption of computers worldwide would have happened anyway, but I do think it happened that bit earlier thanks to the popularity of video games.

Is an increased awareness of this early history something you’d recommend to everyone who’s encountered a video game?

I think most avid game players would enjoy learning about the history of the medium. Games by their very nature require more investment from their audience than a movie, which most people could watch fairly effortlessly.

Because of this, game players tend to be more personally invested in the medium and more passionate about it. So I think they would find it enjoyable to learn just how far games have come in a few decades. There’s also something exciting about knowing you are a witness to the birth of a new form of entertainment.

What do you think non-gamers would take away from your book?

I would hope non-gamers would come away with a new understanding and appreciation for the creativity that lies behind video games even if they have no intention of playing them ever.

For example, I don’t like poetry, but I would never ever argue that it is not art or it is to be looked down upon because I understand it has something about it that connects with many, many people. I hope Replay could bring non-gamers to a similar viewpoint, where they understand that games are not just vacant silly diversions (although they can be that too) but an emerging art form worthy of respect.

TOMISLAV MEDAK

AND

BILL BERTRAM/FLICKR

I think the focus on the technology of video games has done the medium harm. In the UK, games are still included in the technology sections of newspapers, not in the arts, entertainment or culture sections.

That’s a mistake. It’s like looking at a painting and only seeing the types of paint used rather than the actual picture that paint has produced.

How well documented is the early history of the medium?

Music of our times: (top) Donovan; games such as The Beatles: Rock Band resonate with relevant themes.

Accidental rock stars KroaKing, the national karaoke contest, requires you to sing well and in tune

B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN pavitra.j@livemint.com

···························· et the inhibitions flow away (with a stream of alcohol) and let the bathroom singer in you take wing: So goes the drill on any other karaoke night at Opus, Bangalore’s charming Goan restaurant known for its live music.

But not on contest nights.

Though the mascot for KroaKing (the all-India karaoke contest organized by Opus) is a frog, croaking like one won’t get you anywhere.

That reality has struck participants such as Mrinalini Nayar, 23, who works with Deccan Cargo and is a trained pilot.

Nayar is part of her local church choir and the lead vocalist of her college band in Bangalore. So one evening, while at Opus with a group of friends, Nayar couldn’t resist the itch to get on stage and hold the mic. “I don’t

L

Did the fact that games are a true “digital” medium make uncovering their history easier?

Prior to the 1980s, the information is quite patchy.

Games only became commercially available at the start of the 1970s and the games were simple—mostly copies of the bat and ball game Pong. It must have been hard in 1975 to imagine that games could evolve into the medium we see today when your experience of video games has been knocking a ball back and forth on a black and white TV screen for hours on end. So people thought it was a novelty or fad and wasn’t worth much attention.

In the past 15 years, there has been a real effort by historians, particular amateur historians, to save the information that existed at that time from rubbish bins. A lot has been lost, including some historically significant games that were deleted from computers because people thought it was just a waste of memory space and details about the arcade games

being made in the Soviet Union during the 1980s.

But these people did make the job of tracking down information much, much easier and I owe them a debt.

That said, there were many gaps. There was little information available on the first coin-operated video game, Galaxy Game, for example. As a result, a lot of people have ended up believing that a game co-created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell called Computer Space was the first.

Other gaps included information on the early years of the video-game industry in Europe, especially outside the UK. France, for example, had a distinctive game-design culture of its own in the 1980s but it took a lot of digging to find out anything about it in French, let alone in English.

What was helpful in finding some of this missing information is that video games are still relatively new. Many of the early pioneers are still alive and it was possible to track them down and get information first-hand from them. That’s one of the reasons I think it was important to do this book now.

Do you think there’s a peculiar combination of circumstances

go out much, but on the evenings that I do, I like going out to sing,” she says. On one of these evenings, Opus noticed and asked her to take part in the contest.

It happened quite accidentally for 26-year-old Vaishnav Balasubramaniam too, who admits that he had dreams of being a rock star. Balasubramaniam and some friends had formed a band in college called Freakuency that lasted for a few years. Now, crooning to Elvis Presley’s Don’t be Cruel, Balasubramaniam doesn’t miss a beat or a word.

Like a seasoned performer, he invites the crowd to join in. “It’s not about just the singing, it’s a performance,” he says.

Carlton Braganza, the owner of Opus who introduced karaoke nights at the restaurant in 2005, says there are no prerequisites for entry. “If you think you sound good in the bathroom, go for it!” he says, laughing, fully aware of

the seriousness with which the contest is now taken.

What began as an in-house karaoke contest in 2006 is now organized in five places: Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Goa. Braganza also introduced “my sing-a-ling”, an online entry route that allows contestants across the country to record songs while looking at the words flash across the screen and music playing in the background.

“When the sample reaches us,

it comes in a mixed form, just like we’d hear in a karaoke situation on stage,” says Braganza.

Two online entries get a wild card to the finals. A grand finale will bring together contestants from each of the cities on 17 July. The contest has so far received 650 entries.

“People are looking at this as a possible career break,” he says, narrating a story about a contestant from Pune who travelled to Mumbai to take another shot at HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Sing for the moment: Songwriter Sudheep Menon onstage at Opus.

Historical artefacts: Sales of early home computers such as the Commodore PET and Colecovision were driven by video games. that create a vibrant game-design culture? India, for example, has a huge number of gamers but little local game development.

The lack of game development in India is surprising. India already has many of the ingredients. It clearly has the creative talent and technological expertise needed, as demonstrated by its film and IT industries. It also has a large domestic audience with access to platforms needed to play games.

One of India’s big problems is the high levels of piracy, but it isn’t insurmountable. South Korean game designers, for example, tackled their country’s piracy problem by focusing on making online multiplayer games. Since pirates would need a server to run these games, there’s little incentive to copy them. On top of that, many of these games are free to play and companies make their money from advertising or selling in-game items that enhance the experience to loyal players. It’s a model that has worked well, and since it emerged in the late 1990s it has spread throughout the world.

Bonus question: Would ‘Replay’ work as a video game?

That’s an interesting idea! I don’t think games are great for getting across factual information in a linear way; players need choices to make or an ability to influence what is happening in order to enjoy the experience. If you are just trying to tell them a series of facts, it’s hard to give them that choice or influence. But what might work is to have a game where you ran a game company and had to try and keep it going throughout the history of games.

That way the player would have influence but you might be able to get across some of the key ideas and moments from game history as you went along.

it. Braganza insists the contest is not about professional singers.

“However, we do have several professional singers registering and practising hard to do well, which is flattering,” he says.

One of the professionals is Sudheep Menon. A singer, songwriter and vocalist, Menon has released an album titled Long Road from Nowhere. “So I have all these credentials, but be warned, that doesn’t make me awesome here,” Menon says.

“There are these people with such big voices that if I sang the same songs that they do, I’d be in falsetto within minutes of the song,” says the 21-year-old.

The winner of the grand finale will win air tickets for two to Dubai, record a track for a music CD to be produced by Opus and get a chance to feature in Ashutosh Pathak’s (cofounder of Mumbai’s Blue Frog) next music album. A few finalists will be selected by the Kolkata-based band Skinny Alley’s lead vocalist Jayashree Singh to perform with the band.

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COVER L11

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM PUSHKAR KANHERE/MINT

HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY/MINT

Bandwidth: (clockwise from left) Lead guitarist Susmit Sen, drummer Amit Kilam and bassist Rahul Ram; the trio at a concert in Singapore on 3 July; and the original line­up (vocalist Asheem Chakravarty is in white) at their practice pad in Delhi’s Karol Bagh.

MUSIC

OCEAN’S

THREE INDIA’S BIGGEST INDEPENDENT BAND HAS A NEW ALBUM OUT LATER THIS MONTH. WE LOOK AT HOW INDIAN OCEAN STAYED TOGETHER, MADE MUSIC AND FACED THE MOST CHALLENGING YEAR OF THEIR TWO­DECADE EXISTENCE

KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY/MINT

B Y K RISH R AGHAV & B LESSY A UGUSTINE ·························· fter 20 years, five albums and 700 concerts around the world, the members of Indian Ocean are the first to admit they’re fed up of each other.

“No matter where I go in the world, I have to wake up to these faces every single day. It’s as terrible as being married,” says 48-year-old Susmit Sen, dressed in a full-sleeve T-shirt and corduroy pants, clouded in a haze of cigarette smoke.

The Indian Ocean guitarist, short hair parted neatly sideways, is lounging backstage before a concert at Dr DY Patil College, Nerul, Navi Mumbai.

It’s a rare quiet moment for the former advertising executive, between hours of tedious sound checks and a live show.

His bandmates, 36-year old drummer Amit Kilam and 46-year old bassist Rahul Ram, are watching the fashion show from backstage, while a crowd of 20-year-old college students drifts in and out of the auditorium. In spite of being India’s biggest independent band, their entourage is minimal, and they’re more than happy to blend in with the crowd.

The concert, held on 20 January, was the band’s second after vocalist Asheem Chakravarty’s untimely demise on 25 December. When Chakravarty was taken ill on the final leg of their 2009 world tour, the band had been hopeful of his recovery.

His loss was sudden, and the band members answer questions about him matter-offactly, in short, curt sentences.

“It’s a huge loss,” says drummer Kilam. “But we’re doing concerts, so we’re already getting used to not having him per-

A

form with us.” Experimenting with a new line-up, Indian Ocean went on to play in four Indian cities across February and March, before taking a break to finish their upcoming seven-song album 16/330 Khajoor Road, their first in five years. After numerous delays, the album is due out on 25 July, and with typical Indian Ocean commercial indifference (the band makes most of its money from concerts), will be free for download from their website.

Age is on Sen’s mind. The band has gone through much emotional turmoil over six months—a flux that has threatened their stoic two-decade existence. Between the distant din of pounding bass music and the occasional spikes of loud cheers from the audience, he says: “There’s this dialogue in the film Jalwa where Naseerudin Shah tells his senior, ‘Aadmi aur achaar mein farak hota hai’.

I love this line. Age has nothing to do with maturing. I’m not sure if I have matured with age.”

For a band that doesn’t shy away from exploring complex political and environmental themes, their irreverence is just as famous. Ask their manager, or the bands that have travelled with them in the past, and they all say the same thing: Here’s a group that can be profound and silly in the same breath, a group without “an iota of seriousness”. Serious debates at their practice space in Delhi’s Karol Bagh (whose address is the new album’s title) can descend into farce at a moment’s notice, and nothing is beyond the reach of a bad joke.

The phrase “chilled out” is evoked often, even though the band still does close to 80 shows a year, with about 30 of them outside the country. “People

KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY/MINT

say that art comes out of 5% talent and 95% sweat,” says Sen. “But for creativity, I think the most important thing is to relax.

I wouldn’t call it inspiration but just the ability to relax to allow self-expression.”

There’s an age-agnostic timelessness about their music as well. The fan favourite Kandisa, from the 2000 album of the same name, channels a millennia-old Aramaic hymn, while the politically charged Bandeh, one of the few Indian Ocean songs to receive healthy radio airplay, ends with a loud, raucous, distorted electric guitar solo.

“Being part of the band makes me feels like I’m enjoying youth again. And this time without any inhibitions,” Sen says, shrugging. “I guess when you’re creative you don’t grow old.”

Watering hole The story of how Indian Ocean came to be involves the pre-Partition Delhi mansion on Khajoor Road in Karol Bagh where Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz attended poetry sessions, a man with a mosquito swatter, and an errant South African emu.

Sen met Chakravarty in 1984, and the duo jammed and built their sound over the next few years, playing the occasional small gig. Chakravarty was a mathematics graduate who became a soil investigator for construction sites. Sen, who’d studied economics and management, worked with an advertising firm and left his job only after Indian Ocean’s first album was released many years later.

“I did pretty well. I would have been one of those successful types. Richer but unhappy.”

The name Indian Ocean, suggested by Sen’s father, stuck in

1990, and the band recorded a demo tape with a line-up that then consisted of Shaleen Sharma on drums, Indrajit Dutta and Anirban Roy on bass.

The tape impressed HMV enough for it to agree to an album. By this time, bassist Rahul Ram had joined the ranks, and the album, simply called Indian Ocean, was recorded with the help of “crummy mikes” and a “sozzled sound recordist” in Kolkata.

The album’s release, however, was mired in a Byzantine bureaucratic web, and got pushed back continuously.

When it finally released in 1993, it was a rare moment—a cassette of original songs by an Indian band that was devoid of covers or Bollywood histrionics.

“When Asheem and I started out, we were convinced it would last. We were told that bands can’t do original numbers, that if we needed to survive we’d have to play famous Hindi songs. Perhaps we were the first to compose our own songs. For us, music was always more important than churning out songs,” says Sen. The band has always tightly reined in their output, not releasing songs until they’re deemed “ready”.

Indian Ocean’s collective output has resulted in about 30 songs in 26 years.

The band’s signature line-up—Kilam, Ram, Sen and Chakravarty—was finalized in 1994. Kilam, then only 20 and still juggling exams with drum practice, joined after Shaleen Sharma’s departure. A few years of touring later, their Desert Rain album was released in 1997, a live recording of the 1997 Sahmat concert at Mandi House, which the band had actually recorded to

listen to for mistakes.

Sanjoy Roy, a director with independent production company Teamwork Films, was managing the band at the time.

He’s not sure of the year he started, but says it was around “15-16 years ago”. “Desert Rain was a fresh new sound, it was experimental—so we had only one record label willing to distribute it,” he says. “After it became popular, for the band’s second album a whole bunch of them turned up.”

This behaviour, he says, was symptomatic of the recording industry at the time. “Record companies were not willing to experiment. If (Alisha Chinai’s) Made in India became a hit, the next 10 albums they cut would sound exactly like Made in India,” he says.

Roy remembers a concert at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre around that time. One record company executive pushed his way through the crowd to meet the band. “He said, ‘I love the music, great concert. We should cut an album. But we need to, you know, jazz it up a bit, and play a few Bollywood songs.’

Can you believe that?” The band’s Bollywood debut was nearly a decade away at this point, and they’d evolve a simple rule on film projects: “Most directors come to us because they want ‘Indian Ocean’ music, and not the other way around,”

}

Sen says. The band has contributed the song Des Mera from their 2003 album Jhini to the soundtrack of the upcoming Aamir Khan-produced film Peepli Live.

The band’s signature sound—driven by Sen’s acoustic guitar and Chakravarty’s percussion (the vocals weren’t so prominent back then)—made the band hard to classify and pigeonhole. “I call it music from the roots,” Roy says. “It has a heavy classical component. Not rock, not pop.”

But the rock music landscape at the time was challenging, dominated by a few big bands.

“It was difficult in the early days.

It was Parikrama yay, Indian Ocean, who? Also, they weren’t a great act…it was great music, but not a great act,” Roy says.

The need to create a stage show evolved through constant touring, and Indian Ocean’s music matured just as their underground reputation came to the fore. Parikrama, on the other hand, let their songwriting stagnate, and Indian Ocean soon overtook them in both popularity and critical acclaim.

Times Music signed the band in 1998, and they stepped into a professional studio, minus the sozzled recordist, to record their second album, Kandisa. Released in 2000, the album marked a turning point in the band’s for-

tunes. It was this album that saw them tour extensively throughout the world.

“We performed this one gig in Kalgoorlie, Australia,” says Roy. “It was a real one hick town…with, like, one road going through it, and the concert was scheduled at an open park right next to the local zoo.

“So the guys start playing, and meanwhile, this emu in the zoo, presumably grooving to Indian Ocean music, breaks free of its cage,” he says. The errant emu charged through the crowd and jumped on stage. “So the audience is watching in shock as the emu, for some reason, starts chasing Susmit.” After a short chase and an impasse, Susmit and the emu began sparring in front of the crowd, Sen jabbing at it with his guitar. “Let’s face it, he didn’t stand a chance. The emu is a no-nonsense animal. It wasn’t going to just let Susmit off easy!” Thankfully, before any further damage to the emu or Sen, the zookeepers arrived and took the animal away.

Kandisa was a commercial success, and also features most of the band’s trademark tunes—Ma Rewa, based on a paean to the river Narmada, Hille Le, a protest song penned by activist Gorakh Pandey, and Khajuraho, an 8-minute song first performed for then president K.R. Narayanan at

People say that art comes out of 5% talent and 95% sweat. But for creativity, I think the most important thing is to relax.

the Khajuraho Millenium Festival. It was also the band’s first collaboration with lyricist Sanjeev Sharma.

Word­wise Sharma can’t answer any of our questions just yet. At his Mumbai bungalow courtyard, the theatre director is constantly distracted by a swarm of mosquitoes milling in the evening air. He excuses himself, disappears into the house, and reappears with a look of studious calm—and a mosquito electrocutor shaped like a tennis racquet. Two minutes of slaughter later, in which Sharma waves the bat as if invoking the spirits, he turns and says, “You’re always going to associate me with this picture now, no?”

Sharma first met Indian Ocean in 1997, when he was directing a musical for Company Theatre. “I wanted someone to compose the music for the play. A friend suggested Indian Ocean. “That’s the first time we worked together and we clicked,” he says. “Offstage, they’re complete lunatics but onstage, they’re ace performers.

They’re like those Kathakali artistes who get intoxicated, perform pujas and then transform themselves on stage.”

Till then, the band was mostly instrumental, occasionally throwing in a folk song or two. It’s only after Kandisa, Sharma says, that they started using, and paying so much attention to, words.

The album-opener, Kya Maloom, was written after the Kargil war. “(The opening line) Teevra Aandhi Mrityu Gaami comes from Krishna’s philosophy in the Mahabharat,” Sharma says. “Krishna tells Arjun, who is reluctant to fight the war with his own family, that if you’re detached enough, you can see beauty in the blood that has been spilled.”

The band composes the arrangements first, before Sharma starts work on the lyrics. “(The music) has got a certain intoxicating quality to it. A certain earthiness that tugs at your basic instincts.

The appeal is something similar to that of folk singers—they act as mediums to connect to your own core.”

Sharma’s favourite is the song Bhor in the 2003 album Jhini, originally intended for a song in a film by director Ajay Rana.

“The brief Rana had given me was that the character was looking for awakening and union at the same time.”

When the film got canned and Indian Ocean showed Sharma the music they’d composed for what would become Bhor, the lyrics “just tumbled out”.

But in typical Indian Ocean fashion, about four years after the song had been written and performed many times, vocalist Chakravarty asked him what the song meant. “We burst out laughing. Asheem always sang the song so soulfully. It’s just one of those mystery zones with them, they hardly understand what they are doing,” he says.

Then and now By 2006, Indian Ocean were indie superstars. The Anurag Kashyap film Black Friday, featuring their music, was in theatres, and the band had successfully played at concert venues around the world. It would begin years of routine for the band—consisting of film projects, world tours and special concerts. The band has also stayed fiercely independent, never letting the gravitas of stardom get between their music or audience.

“We’ve survived this long because we were mature enough to know the difference between getting along as people and getting along with ideas,” says Rahul Ram. The band still enjoys playing at small college venues and one-off gigs. “We don’t mind whether we’re playing in an opera house or college auditorium,” Ram says. “In an opera house, the audience is quiet but you know they’re concentrating a lot more on your music. In a college auditorium, there’s more frenzy; it encourages you to be more energetic.”

Current manager Dhruv Jagasia recalls a story that he says best exemplifies Indian Ocean’s spirit. In 2007, a student from a metallurgy college in Bihar (whose name Jagasia can’t recall) came knocking on his door. “He told me that the students of his college had been saving Rs100 a day for two years to be able to collect money to call Indian Ocean for a performance.” They had saved Rsl.5 lakh and asked Jagasia if it was enough to get the band to perform. “I was so touched by it that I agreed to get the band for that much money. As part of cost cutting, we even travelled by train and asked friends in Bihar to donate lights and other equipment.”

The band played there for 3 hours. The boys of the core committee, in charge of this plan, stood as security guards since they couldn’t afford security. The band, moved by the whole experience, played exclusively for the committee boys after the main concert. “We even treated them to booze later. We ended up spending more than earning. Things like these humble me,” says Jagasia. krish.r@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010

Travel EBC TREK

Baby steps

PHOTOGRAPHS

Walking to Everest Base Camp, the trekkers’ holy grail, has its ups and downs

BY

PURANDHAR POTINENI

B Y V EENA V ENUGOPAL veena.v@livemint.com

···························· ave you done high-altitude treks before?” That was the first question most people asked me when I announced I was going to the Everest Base Camp (EBC). And my reply, “No, this is my first trek of any kind,” would be greeted with pursed lips and an exaggerated nod of the head, universal signage for “Yep, she’s crazy”. The one significant deviation was a friend, a regular trekker, who indignantly blurted out, “But you can’t, the EBC is the holy grail of trekkers and novices can’t go.”

He was right: The EBC is the holy grail for the trekker. From the time he first hears the call of the mountains, through quick weekend walks, more adventurous weeklong trips and moderately challenging circuits, he is biding his time and building his strength for EBC. The sheer distance of the trek to the base camp (120km), augmented by the high altitude (5,545m at the highest point), make this a hard walk. The passionate trekker’s outrage at greenhorns traipsing to the Khumbu glacier—the final section of the EBC trail—is much like a professional photographer’s anguish at seeing a four-year-old with a point-and-shoot camera.

When we landed in Kathmandu, I must admit, my laissezfaire attitude towards the trek suffered a mild dent. Thamel, the tourist and hash centre of the universe, was teeming with skinny bodies with super-spectacular calf muscles. Everyone was a moun-

H

GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

taineer, a cross-continental trekker or a mountain guide. They all had lots of advice for us; even people hurrying down the road seemed to walk over to tell us what not to do on the trek.

Hope you have waterproof Gore-Tex pants, did you invest in a down jacket, how many pairs of liner socks do you have, hope you are carrying a camel bag so you can drink water as you walk. At a book store where I went to browse for sleeping bag-appropriate reading, David (last names are redundant on treks), an ageing mountain guide, enquired about our schedule. We gave him the details of our 14-day itinerary.

“Bah,” he said, “you are doing the McDonald’s version of the trek.

That’s not the real deal.”

The Sagarmatha National Park, which houses the EBC trail, is now a serious source of foreign exchange for Nepal. As tourists and holidaymakers line up to take in the snowy vistas, trekkers—the original visitors to the mountains—are feeling a bit, well, crowded in. Hence the gear talk, I think, and the unfriendly references to the “real deal”. Nevertheless, the following morning, when we headed back to the airport to board a plane, death due to lack of appropriate gear seemed a definite possibility.

An oversized beer can with wings, passing off for an aircraft, dropped us at the Tenzing-Hillary airport at Lukla, located 2,886m above sea level, and the starting point of the EBC trek. Sherpa boys thronged the gate of the airport, hustling to be picked as porters. That’s reason number one, actually, why anyone can go on the EBC trek: You don’t have to carry your own backpack. So weighed down only by our daypack—containing our drinking water and a few energy bars—we set off for Phakding, our designated stop for the night. Phakding (a name that lent itself to a million jokes) is at a lower altitude than Lukla, making for an easy, downhill walk on the first day.

We ran into several groups, most of whom we would bump into every day. We had names for them, largely based on how strong they looked—the “moun-

Mountain fever: (clockwise from top) Clouds lift to reveal Lhotse; the rhododendron forest; the suspension bridge over the river Dudh Kosi; and a view of Phakding village. tain goats”, the “super-fit monsters” and such. At a stop for tea, we met a Spanish couple, strong walkers, who were going to get married atop Kalapathar.

At Phakding, we walked into our first tea room house. These little lodges to dine and sleep, often run by Sherpa families, are the reason why it’s possible to walk to the EBC and back without ever pitching a tent. Hard-core trekkers might scoff at the idea, but a warm bed at the end of a long walk is just what you need to hit the trail the next day.

The rooms in these lodges are tiny, just large enough for a cot, so you spend all your waking hours in the dining room. The fire drum in the centre keeps it warm, making it a great place to knock back some Everest beer and chat up the other residents.

Across various tea houses, we met a young American surgeon of Indian origin, a Canadian postal worker who had climbed six of the world’s seven tallest peaks, a wildly handsome mountain guide from Montreal and a Russian weirdo who was an offensive drunk.

Overconfident from the easy walk on the first day, I didn’t realize that the walk from Phakding to Namche Bazaar—the centre of Sherpa life in the Himalayas—would be one of the hardest days on the trek. Overall, we ascended 800m, crossing and recrossing the Dudh Kosi, on scary-looking suspended bridges.

The walk took us about 8 hours: On the last two, I wanted to kill, first, myself, for embarking on this

crazy trip, and then the husband, for not stopping me. It was his fault, mostly.

But scrambling into Namche, we were greeted by our first views of the snow-capped summits, a breathtaking panorama that inflicts mountain fever on even the most unromantic. We had an extra day at Namche to help our bodies acclimatize to the altitude, which we used to hike up to the headquarters of the Sagarmatha National Park. Half an hour later, the clouds lifted, revealing Everest, Lhotse, Thamserku and Ama Dablam, stunning peaks that looked close enough to touch.

Even without binoculars, we could see the ridge and the Hillary steps leading to Everest, topography we had only seen in photographs. A huge mountain eagle swooped above our heads and it felt like a whole new world had opened up for us.

The good weather didn’t hold though: We set off from Namche to Deboche with a biting cold wind whipping at us. The long trail wound around mountains like a gift-wrapping ribbon, mists and clouds swirling around us. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and just when we thought it couldn’t get any prettier, we hit the rhododendron forests. For long stretches we walked under a canopy of trees, with a riot of red, pink and white rhododendrons as far as the eye could see. We stopped at the Buddhist monastery at Dingboche en route, where stallions and horses galloped about without a care in the world.

So it went on for the next seven

days. We walked in the blazing sun, pounding rain and swivelling snow. Our bodies got used to walking and climbing for long stretches, but the altitude made us hopelessly breathless. Because we were the novices, we walked slowly and felt the effects of the altitude the least.

At Labouche, a day before our final excursion to base camp and Kalapathar, we heard that the Spanish couple were hit by altitude sickness and had to settle for a quick ceremony on a nameless hill before descending. We hadn’t seen the super-fit monsters’ group since the previous day; it was possible that they had descended as well. We did see the other group of inexperienced trekkers, who called themselves “The Climbing Divas from Hyderabad”, singing their way to the base camp. The under-confident, certainly, have an advantage in the mountains.

Back in Delhi, the trekker friend listened to my stories with an expression of disgust and disbelief. “So do you feel the call of the mountains now?

Will you go back?” he asked. I don’t hear the call of the mountains. But I will go back. The trek was the quickest way to lose some weight. But I didn’t have the heart to tell him that.

CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

A 14­year­old could attempt the walk if he is an avid trekker; otherwise 16 is the advised lower age limit.

TRAVEL L13

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DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

New York state of mind

UDAYAN TRIPATHI

The Big Apple may be brash and relentless, but you never tire of this city that rejuvenates itself constantly

Y

ou can tell it is summer in New York by the bright light that invades your hotel room early in the morning.

In other cities, you want to hide beneath the blanket and sleep longer. But New York does not allow indulgence; each moment is precious, and you have none to lose. You look down the street from your 25th-floor window, and there is already a line of cars crawling along those linear streets. The day began long before you woke up, because the night had never ended. The city is on the move—you want to get down and join the crowd, otherwise it will race ahead of you.

The early joggers are already pounding the street. The man selling bagels has set up his stall. The newsvendor is ready with his supply of newspapers, chilled bottles of water, and granola bars for sale. The African man in dreadlocks has spread the carpet on which he has arranged the masks and beads and necklaces that he hopes to sell. Women in business suits walk briskly, carrying coffee from Starbucks, the waft of caffeine from its stores never more than a block away. These are formidable women—you don’t want to get in their way. I remember emerging from a subway station

some years ago, and saw a man hesitantly asking one such woman directions to the Empire State Building, and without looking at him, and continuing to march, she said: “Do I look like an information booth?” But today is a languid summer day, and women off from work or on holiday are in frilly dresses showing bare shoulders, some in tank tops and tiny shorts fraying at the edges, competing for attention with the row of flowers that divide Park Avenue. New Yorkers don’t give either a second look; everyone is in a rush, so what if it is summer and half the offices are empty. But outsiders ogle: You can tell that tourist is from the land where women are rarely seen in public, by his protruding zoom lens, settling on the scantily attired young women in Central Park.

I walk past the lake, the Dakota Building where Lennon was shot, towering over us. The city is blasé about its landmarks; too self-absorbed to notice what matters elsewhere. As Saul Steinberg commemorated in the famous cover of The New Yorker in 1976, the view from the 9th Avenue is clear: The dense city gets sparse beyond the Hudson, turning less detailed beyond Jersey, with China, Russia, and Japan looking like tiny salt pans.

Not just landmarks, even

Perpetual city: (clockwise from top) The New York skyline; sunrise over Manhattan; and the skating rink at the Rockefeller Center. world spectacles. The previous evening I was at a beer garden moments after Ghana ended the American dream. There was a giant screen, now gone blank. In a city such as London, Paris or Rome, the mood would have been angry, the conversation fixed on the opportunities missed. But here, people had already moved on, enjoying those tall glasses of beer, only the odd fan casually draping his body with the US flag.

In his 1949 essay, Here is New York, E.B. White divided the city into three categories: the city of the one born here, the one who commutes (whom the island’s natives now call the “B&T” crowd, for bridge-and-tunnel, the vestibules that connect this incredible powerhouse of

energy with the rest of the continent), and the city for the person who came here in quest of something.

And it is the energy of the third that keeps pulling the city along.

That’s why New York does not tire, and nor do you tire of the city, and New York rejuvenates itself constantly. An elevated railway line becomes a pedestrian garden. A door without signs is a new speakeasy. A meat-packing district becomes the home of art galleries. Grand Central station reclaims its glory, with the ceiling of its concourse filled with astronomical signs, as if making sure you know your place in the universe—at its centre, never alone, never lost. If you’ve forgotten your date, right

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

A dive with the manta ray Spot these elusive creatures in the Maldives, and even watch them do a ‘cyclone’ feeding dance

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anta rays are elusive, fascinating creatures—and manta sightings (watching their graceful, languid dance) can be a surreal, enthralling experience. Adventure travel firm The Life Aquatic with Lacadives is offering a chance to go manta spotting off the Maldives coast (near the protected Bay of Hanifaru and Baa Atoll Maldives) SUMER VERMA

Spotted: The monsoon is the time for manta sightings in the Maldives.

aboard its 30m triple-deck luxury liner in August. The boat has nine cabins, a large saloon with bar and a sun deck with a jacuzzi.

The trip, from 14-21 August, includes 17 dives into the colourful coral reef, accompanied by experienced dive guides. The manta rays converge at the reef around this time, feasting on plankton while swimming in hypnotic spiral patterns (a phenomenon called “cyclone feeding”).

The trip starts and ends at Malé International Airport. Shared accommodation is provided in an air-conditioned cabin, meals and snacks are included, and there’s a promised “barbecue dinner on a deserted island”.

This trip is for “experienced” divers only, and costs Rs85,000 for double occupancy. A percentage of the proceeds go towards a whale shark research project along the Gujarat coast. Seats are limited, so book early.

For details, call Lacadives at 09892311024 or 09892583615.

there is the clock, where people wait anxiously, at the stroke of 12, hoping to keep the appointment they’ve made.

New York can be brash, like those malls around Broadway, and sometimes it ceases to look like a neighbourhood, as with Times Square, now a permanent chewing gum for the eyes. But come winter, and the city turns sublime. No matter how often you pass by the Rockefeller Center, it is impossible not to pause and look at the large Christmas tree, and see dozens of people skating in that ice rink, your face showered by a flurry of light snow, strong winds slicing you as you walk between skyscrapers. New York becomes part of your DNA—its relentless pace, your heartbeat, those skyscrapers the city’s

cardiogram. The city becomes a part of your being, and as you walk along the Brooklyn waterfront and look at Manhattan, if you close your eyes briefly, you can imagine the grey silhouette of the scene from Woody Allen’s Manhattan, George Gershwin’s rousing Rhapsody in Blue playing in your mind. New York is also the city of grand gestures. In 2005, the artist Christo draped the Central Park with saffron flags. This time, it is Luke Jerram, a British artist, who has randomly left 60 grand pianos in the city, giving your fingers something other than a keyboard to press. It might be noisy, but it is music for this city’s cacophony, and for your loved ones, a moment of pure epiphany.

Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

Three is free N

ow that the monsoon has set in well and truly, even oh-so-familiar places are blessed with a new power and vitality.

Alibaug may be the backyard of Mumbai, but try this season to see the getaway in a whole new light. The Radisson Resort and Spa offers an incentive by way of its special monsoon package, as part of which you pay for two nights and get a third night free. Spread across 16 acres, with views of the Sahyadris on the one hand and Veshwi lake on the other, the property aspires to be your perfect extended weekend getaway. Depending on the accommodation you choose—from luxe rooms to private villas—the rates (valid till September) start from Rs20,999 for two nights

Getaway: The Radisson resort at Alibaug. for a couple, including breakfast and lunch or dinner. Also thrown in are complimentary use of the pool, discotheque, gym and library, besides a 10-minute foot massage at the Mandara Spa. Plus, of course, there’s the third night. For more details, log on to www.radisson.com/alibaug.in

The Rajasthan outpost T

here’s something about forts and palaces that never ceases to cast a spell. Bhainsrorgarh may not be one of Rajasthan’s most spectacular forts, but the grandeur of the 18th century construction is unmistakable. Partially restored before it threw open its doors for guests in 2007, this outpost of the Mewari kingdom has just five rooms, but boasts of all the conveniences—plus spectacular views over the Chambal river and the surrounding rocky terrain, and the promise of a step back in time.

Also assured: excellent service, chats with the

family (which resides here), and plenty of things to do—river cruises, forest picnics and a trip to Mukund Dara National Park (all organized at extra cost). Bhainsrorgarh lies 235km north-east of Udaipur and 50km south of Kota; limousine pick-ups are arranged on request.

Till September, the hotel has a two-night summer package for Rs14,000 plus taxes, inclusive of accommodation and all meals for a couple.

For details, log on to www.bhainsrorgarh.com Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Books

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TREND

Fiction’s global crime wave Detective novels from Japan, Nigeria, Germany and Korea are pouring into the US as publishers hunt for the next Stieg Larsson

B Y A LEXANDRA A LTER ···························· Nigerian detective unravels a web of corruption, suspecting an inside job when a bomb goes off at the mansion of a rich political candidate. A Japanese physics professor gets sucked into a murder investigation targeting a single mother in Tokyo, and tangles with his old university rival. A Turkish-German investigator in Frankfurt takes on a gang of neofascist Croatians involved in human trafficking.

It seems a certain Swedish hacker heroine with a dragon tattoo has paved the way for a surge in international crime fiction.

Spurred by the popularity of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, which has sold around 40 million copies worldwide, US publishers are combing the globe for the next big foreign crime novel. While major publishing houses have long avoided works in translation, many are now courting international literary agents, commissioning sample translations, tracking best-seller lists overseas and pouncing on writers who win literary prizes in Europe and Asia. The result is a new wave of detective fiction that’s broadening and redefining the classic genre.

In the coming months, Minotaur Books, a mystery-and-thriller imprint of St Martin’s, will publish new crime and suspense fiction from Iceland, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa and, naturally, Sweden. A few years ago, most of the imprint’s international authors were British. “A lot of publishers are looking at this because they don’t want to miss the next Stieg Larsson,” says Kelley Ragland, Minotaur’s editorial director.

Some have pegged Japan as the next crime-writing hot spot. Literary agent Amanda Urban of International Creative Management, who represents Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, took on Japanese suspense and crime writer Shuichi Yoshida, a bestselling author in Japan, because she saw his novels as literary works with commercial potential.

“Crime really crosses over,” says Urban.

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Mystery novels translate well across cultures, because they usually prize plot over literary acrobatics. The global influence of American and British crime writing has also led to the widespread adoption of familiar tropes and plot conventions: the gloomy, loner detective, clipped dialogue, the standard plot structure that opens with a body and follows the investigation. Best-selling Turkish crime writer Mehmet Murat Somer, who writes a series about a cross-dressing Istanbul detective with an Audrey Hepburn alter ego, says he’s been heavily influenced by Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith. Penguin published a US edition of his book The Kiss Murder in 2008, and has another translation, The Wig Murders, under contract for 2011.

Many cultures have crime-writing traditions that stretch back centuries. Early examples of Chinese crime writing date to the 18th century; Japanese writers were telling crime stories as early as the 1600s. By the 1920s and 1930s, commonly referred to as the Golden Age of detective fiction, British and American crime writers came to define the genre.

More recently, crime writers around the globe have developed their own brands of crime fiction, often blending classic suspense storytelling techniques with regional themes and literary styles. In Italy, where there’s been an explosion of crime fiction

lately, Albanian, Serbian and Asian immigrants have started to replace mafia dons as the favourite fictional crime lords. South African crime fiction tends to be noir-tinged and ultraviolent, with nods to the lingering effects of apartheid. Most Swedish crime writing turns on political and social issues (the original Swedish title of Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was Men who Hate Women). Latin American crime novels often centre on drug trafficking and police corruption; “narco-novels” about drug lords are booming in Mexico.

Some American crime writers are now taking cues from abroad.

Best-selling author Michael Connelly says he’s started bringing politics and economic issues into his novels after reading a lot of South African and European crime fiction. He’s now working

on a novel that touches on the mortgage crisis: An angry homeowner murders the banker who forecloses on her home. “Writers and readers in other countries tend to look at crime novels as social novels,” he says.

Much of the crime fiction being imported blurs the line between genre and literary fiction. In

Europe, where crime novels take top literary prizes, suspense writing is regarded as a serious literary endeavour rather than a form of mass entertainment. In Japan, top mystery writers Yoshida and Keigo Higashino have won multiple literary awards.

Minotaur is betting big on Higashino, with a first print

Much of the crime fiction being imported blurs the line between genre and literary fiction Swedish sleuths: (above) Queen of Swedish crime fiction Liza Marklund; and a still from the film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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run of 75,000 copies for his novel The Devotion of Suspect X, which comes out in the US next February.

Keith Kahla, executive editor of St Martin’s Press, described the author as the Japanese equivalent of James Patterson or Stephen King. “He’s huge, and he’s utterly unknown here,” says Kahla, who had never heard of Higashino before he was approached by the author’s agent. Just one of Higashino’s books, Naoko, had been previously translated into English and released by a small American literary press in 2004.

The Devotion of Suspect X is part of Higashino’s popular Galileo series about a university physics professor with an uncanny ability to crack tough murder cases. The five books in the series have sold around 3.2 million copies in Japan; more than a dozen of Higashino’s books have been adapted into films and TV dramas in Japan. Suspect X starts with a murder in a Tokyo apartment complex. A single mother strangles her ex-husband, and her neighbour, a math teacher, helps cover up the crime. A catand-mouse game unfolds as the math genius tries to elude the detectives and his old university rival, the physics professor.

The flat, unadorned prose and police-procedural elements of The Devotion of Suspect X will likely appeal to fans of American crime fiction, but much about the novel remains particular to Japan, down to the detectives’ exceedingly polite interrogation techniques and the murder weapon (the victim is strangled with an electrical cord attached to a kotatsu, a low, heated table common in Japanese households). “It has a very clean, very primal, and hence very universal set-up,” Kahla says of the book’s crossover potential.

Pantheon Books has also been snapping up Japanese crime fiction: Pantheon will release Yoshida’s 2007 novel Villain, a murder-and-manhunt tale set on the coast, this August. In Japan, Yoshida, 41, has published 10 books—four have been made into films and television dramas—and won several major lit-

erary awards for his novels, which often feature rootless, lonely characters in their 20s. He has been published elsewhere in Asia and in France but never translated into English before. Villain opens with the arrest of a young construction worker for the murder of an insurance saleswoman.

The investigation turns up other suspects, and the moody narrative unfolds from multiple characters’ perspectives. Pantheon also bought Yoshida’s 2002 novel Parade, featuring five young Tokyo room-mates whose neighbourhood is hit by a string of gruesome murders targeting women, which is scheduled for publication in 2012.

The flood of imported crime fiction is striking given American publishers’ longstanding resistance to works in translation.

Newly translated books still make up just 3% of titles released in the US, according to Bowker, a company that tracks the publishing industry, and translated fiction and poetry make up less than 1%.

In many European countries, translated books account for 25-40% of titles.

A recent string of surprise bestsellers has eroded the notion that Americans prefer home-grown authors. A 2008 translation of the French literary novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog from Europa Editions, an independent press dedicated to European fiction in translation, sold around 500,000 copies here; Larsson’s trilogy has sold around six million copies in the US. As the focus shifts towards international hits, American editors who used to rely on international book fairs and pitches from literary agents have gotten more proactive. Some are asking translators to suss out rising literary talents and provide plot synopses for books that are creeping up best-seller lists overseas. Urban, who represents Japanese author World­roving: (right) James Patterson has launched an interna­ tional franchise; and many new Japanese crime novels are set in Tokyo’s high­rises.

and international literary star Haruki Murakami, learnt about Yoshida’s crime novels from Philip Gabriel, Murakami’s American translator.

Carol Janeway, a senior editor and director of international rights at Knopf, tracks rising European literary stars by keeping an eye on Germany, which tends to lead the way in translating literature from other countries. Janeway, who also translates German novels, discovered Swedish novelists such as Hakan Nesser and Arne Dahl by reading German editions. This February, Pantheon will publish the first novel in Dahl’s popular crime

series, which has sold around two million copies in Europe.

Some small presses have also found that international crime can be profitable. Revenue at Bitter Lemon Press, an international publisher that focuses on translated crime fiction, has grown roughly 12% a year since the imprint was created five years ago, says co-founder François von Hurter, who declined to provide overall sales figures. The press’ top-selling authors include Italian crime writer Gianrico Carofiglio and Leonardo Padura from Cuba.

In October, New York-based independent press Melville DORON GILD/WSJ

House Publishing will launch an imprint devoted to international crime fiction, featuring mostly works in translation.

Fall titles include Cut Throat Dog, a psychological thriller about an ex-Mossad agent by Israeli novelist Joshua Sobol, and Kismet, a 2007 novel by German writer Jakob Arjouni, which centres on an ethnically Turkish private investigator.

Translated fiction is still a hard sell, and many US publishers remain wary. Foreign rights rarely exceed four or five figures, but translating a book can add tens of thousands to production costs. Marketing a book by an

unknown author poses challenges, particularly if the writer doesn’t speak English.

Publishers seem increasingly willing to gamble, however, especially on Nordic noir. The Stockholm-based Salomonsson Agency, which represents 36 Scandinavian writers, has sold nearly 40 books to US publishers in the last three years, says cofounder Niclas Salomonsson.

Twenty-one went to Alfred A. Knopf, which publishes Larsson and recently signed Jo Nesbø, who was formerly with HarperCollins. This spring, Simon and Schuster’s Atria Books paid around $500,000 (around Rs2.34 crore) for rights to four novels by Swedish crime queen Liza Marklund, whose books have sold 12 million copies worldwide.

Publishers and agents going after the next big thing say the US market for Nordic noir may have reached a saturation point, and are looking farther afield. Kent Wolf of Global Literary Management, an agency that focuses on international fiction, says he’s focusing on suspense novels from Asia. Wolf represents five writers from Asia, including South Korean novelist Young-ha Kim, whose spy thriller Your Republic is Calling You, will be published this September by Mariner Books.

The novel, a 24-like thriller, unfolds in a single day and features a North Korean spy who is activated after spending 21 years undercover in South Korea.

The explosion of crime fiction overseas could come at a price for US publishers. Danny Baror, president of Baror International, which sells foreign rights for around 100 American authors, says his sales have dropped by 25% in Germany and 15% in France and Italy in recent years because publishers there are focused on local writers. His worst market is Scandinavia, where sales have dropped by 90% since 2000: Local stars such as Dahl and Marklund now dominate there.

“We used to sell our entire catalogue in Sweden,” Baror says. “These days, they only buy Robert Ludlum.”

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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Culture PROFILE

The elephant woman

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

An auction record reaffirms Bharti Kher’s growing pre­eminence as a leading contemporary artist with an original vision B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· n New Delhi’s satellite city of Gurgaon, artist Bharti Kher’s studio is split between two adjacent three-storey residences.

One houses her office, where she executes her finer work, while the other is a workshop where fibreglass and metals are blown and cast.

Her office is on the top floor. A discarded branch of The Waq Tree (2009), which was exhibited at Art Basel last year, lies on the ground floor. It is a tree of life that bears pale-coloured gargoyle heads instead of fruits. Going up the stairway, we see sari-clad women diligently pasting bindis—the artist’s leitmotif—on mirrors and coloured boards. The cheerful women at work evoke a village welfare scheme. But then there are rooms stacked high with papers, packing, cardboard models. A chest of drawers takes up an entire wall on the first-floor landing, each with consignments of bindis in all imaginable colours and sizes. As we look up to see Kher waiting to receive us at the door of her office, we know this is no cottage industry.

Dressed down in cropped linen pants and loafers, she still stands tall. In the Indian art world, she is the woman of the moment: A couple of weeks ago, her life-sized sculpture, The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own (2006) created auction history in a sale by Sotheby’s London. The $1,493,947 (around Rs7 crore) it fetched is a record price for a work by any female contemporary Indian artist at auction. It surpasses the auction record for her husband Subodh Gupta, who is beyond dispute India’s best known contemporary artist. With this, Kher becomes the most expensive Indian contemporary artist at auction ever, after the Londonbased Raqib Shaw.

The sculpture is awe-inspiring in its scale and detailing. It portrays a female Indian elephant brought to her knees in a seemingly untenable position. Starting from the centre of her forehead,

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every fold of her skin has been meticulously contoured with a whirling array of sperm-shaped bindis. As Kher settles down on a couch, she is aware that she has brought two archetypal cliches of India—the elephant and the bindi—together to create a work that transcends India and places her firmly on the global art radar.

Trained as a painter at Newcastle Polytechnic in the UK, Kher has extended her practice to include collage, sculpture, photography, video and assemblage.

Her sensibility prompted prestigious galleries such as Nature Morte in New Delhi, Hauser & Wirth in London, Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris and Jack Shainman in New York, to show her work.

For Kher, the bindi is an oxymoron—condensing male sexuality and female adornment; forging links between the real and spiritual worlds in accordance with Hindu mythology. It is emblematic of her work in general, which is forever addressing paradoxes.

Her human sculptures are beautiful, as sensual as Rodin’s. But they are also macabre. One view of Arione (2004), for instance, is a somewhat appealing Amazonian woman. But from another angle she looks half-beast, with a hoof in place of a leg. Hybrids and contrasting identities are a common thread in her work.

Born and brought up in the UK, Kher has lived and worked in India since 1993. She fell in love with Gupta while on a post-college trip to visit her extended family in 1992. She had only been to India once before that. They married and Kher, now 41, has two children, aged 7 and 11.

Being married to an artist means that there are no off-topics at home. Art and art markets are dinner-table talk. And though it is too early to tell, Kher thinks that her seven-year-old daughter Lola has inherited the art gene.

Kher has often suffered from too biographical a reading of her work. Several critics have interpreted her part beast-part woman figures as reflecting her own identity crises. Stirring sugar into cups of Earl Grey tea, she

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Connect the dots: (clockwise from top) Kher in her backyard with a fibreglass cast of Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholy, Sanguine (2009), which was part of Hauser & Wirth’s outdoor exhibition in London till June; The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own (2006); and Indra’s Net Mirror 2 (2010). suggests that is a lazy reading.

“It’s been almost 20 years that I moved. That’s half of my life really. So when people ask me if I feel at home, if I feel displaced, I don’t know what they want me to say,” she says in a British accent watered down over the years.

Her status as a reverse emigré accentuates her sense of wonderment. She confesses that she continues to be amazed by Indian regional television and

the sheer variety of its programming. She’d discovered the bindi in 1996, when she’d seen a woman wearing a spermshaped one. After several visits to Old Delhi’s wholesale market, Sadar Bazaar, she found her bindi supplier. Her large-scale works have now made her the supplier’s biggest client. But she has never worn one.

Kher is not necessarily a femi-

nist but female identity is a strong part of her work. So when I ask her if the part about her being India’s highest selling “female” contemporary artist irritates her, she nods, putting down her cup of tea. “I’m not irritated.

I’m a woman and that doesn’t irritate me. The truth is that there are fewer successful women artists who’ve reached this stage financially,” she says.

Kher exudes a sense of self-

Osama for laughs The world’s most wanted man comes to Bollywood B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ··························· headache was the unlikely seed of an idea that led former Adlabs studio executive Abhishek Sharma to write and direct his debut feature film Tere Bin Laden. “I tied a towel tightly around my head—almost like a turban—to try and get some relief.

I also had a longish beard then and my wife said I looked like Osama bin Laden,” recalls Sharma, who has trained in design and direction at the National School of Drama.

This got him thinking: What if someone looked like the world’s most wanted man? Research followed and numerous conspiracy

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theories were explored, primarily that the bin Laden tapes could be fake or doctored. “I did not want to do a serious film because Osama is always taken seriously.

And I wanted to demystify him, so I thought of a comedy that includes a lookalike and a fake tape,” Sharma adds.

The biggest challenge was to find an actor to play Noora, the poultry farmer who resembles Osama. He is discovered by Ali Hassan (played by Ali Zafar), a Pakistani journalist desperate to realize his American dream, which has been thwarted in a post-9/11 world. Hassan uses Noora to create a fake bin Laden tape and sends it to an American TV channel.

“The actor not only had to look like bin Laden, but also needed comic timing to play Noora, who is 10 times funnier than the fake Osama. I could not get the right combination,” says Sharma, who

even auditioned a taxi driver he thought might look the part.

Fortunately, Sharma remembered Pradhuman Singh, who had participated in theatre workshops the director had conducted in Noida. A make-up test followed and Sharma found his bin Laden.

Singh says: “Abhishek didn’t tell me anything about the film or the part. He just showed me a video and said that is what I have to do.

When I saw a video of Osama bin Laden playing, I was shocked.

Working in films was a dream, but this was shattering all dreams. I didn’t know how to pull this off.”

Along with all the cast and crew, Singh too signed a nondisclosure agreement. It was not till January, 14 months after shooting started, that Singh could tell his family what he was working on in Mumbai. “It is difficult to make your family understand something like this, so we kept it under wraps till the first

Double take: The crew called Singh ‘Osama sir’ on the sets of the film. teaser. They were shocked,” says Singh, who left a job with Wipro to do this role.

Playing two completely different characters required a great deal of preparation. “I studied his (Osama’s) expressions and mannerisms; how he raises his fingers, or eyebrow; how he twitches his nose; how he smiles; how he half closes his eyes when he talks. We wanted it to be a mirror image,” says the 25-year-old, who plays 40-year-old Noora and the

60-something Osama.

For the part of Noora, Sharma applied some principles of method acting and insisted that Singh live with a rooster for a month. “He had to clean (up) after the rooster, feed him, learn how to pick him up, etc.,” says Sharma. Singh butts in: “It was painful. The only thing I learnt was how to clean his s*** and how to feed him. It put me off chicken for some time.”

Though Singh remained sceptical about his similarities with bin

awareness about where she has reached today, and how hard she has worked for it. A desk stacked with files that spill over, a phone that always rings, and administrative duties befitting a small manufacturing unit bear witness to it. Two years ago, she used to do two-three projects a year. The number now stands at 15-20. She put a lot of work “out there”, as she says, between 2003 and 2006.

Things started to click, people started to notice her bindis. Most importantly, Hauser & Wirth, arguably among the best five galleries in the world, signed her on in 2008. Kher is now working towards an upcoming solo in Bangalore’s GallerySke, another solo in Paris’ Pompidou Centre, and a couple of shows in the US. Part of Kher’s international appeal is her highly developed sense of narrative. Two years after Arione, she made Arione’s Sister: a pale green nude figure, but again with one hoof. The Waq Tree, too, is a follow-on from her Solarium Series. More recently, she has appropriated Tibetan singing bowls, antique globes collected from around the world and European vintage mirrors to string tales. Language is part of her artwork. Like the title The Skin Speaks… prompts the viewer to look beyond the elephant’s form, to ponder her skin’s texture.

Bharti Kher is, more than anything, a storyteller artist.

Laden, the reaction on the Mumbai set, where Karachi was recreated, settled his doubts. There was stunned silence on the first day of shoot when he stepped out of his van at Film City. Singh recalls: “A few people got scared.

They didn’t understand what was happening. Then a crowd of 40-50 people starting clicking photos. It was funny and scary because you never know when somebody might just do something believing something else.

On set, the crew called me ‘Osama sir’, or ‘Osama’.”

Ask Sharma what he would do if he were to meet bin Laden, and the 32-year-old says: “If the situation is under my control, I would lock him up somewhere and go for the $25 million (around Rs117 crore). I wouldn’t have to make any more films after that. But if the situation is under his control, I would ask him what he thought of my film.”

Tere Bin Laden releases on 16 July in theatres nationwide.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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MEMOIR

Forever young

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charm appear only in a list at the end of the book.

Much of Close-Up appears to be Segal prodding her memory and putting down what she can recall, but it lacks the good humour that Segal has often exhibited in interviews and public performances. The book needed more background research and editing to give the reader contexts to Segal’s memories.

A helping hand in writing, of the kind J.R. Moehringer provided Andre Agassi in Open, would have been very welcome because Close-Up is far from being the best testament to either Segal’s achievements or her irrepressible spirit.

t isn’t too often that Indian musicians get together just for laughs. But when they do, they can cause quite a riot, recounting hilarious stories with unmatched embellishments. If I were ever to publish a collection of such anecdotes, there are two I would definitely include under the title “String Section”.

Of course, they are about strings snapping in concert, a common enough occurrence that both musicians and music lovers would have witnessed. But mind you, the stories aren’t about sitar or sarod strings breaking mid-concert.

The first of these anecdotes was told to me by some of my dancer friends. Each brought in his/her individual style in the retelling, while remaining faithful to the basic outline. Years ago, in the Capital, dance and music lovers took their places at a popular auditorium to witness a Kathak dance recital by a well-respected husband and wife duo. Both pirouetted and struck poses with dexterity and ease until suddenly, at the climactic end of a really fast bout of whirling, the lady raised her hands above her head to strike a flamboyant pose at the sam, only to find that the drawstring of her lehnga had snapped and landed in a round, crumpled halo around her ankles.

A gasp went up in the audience, followed by the beginnings of sniggering and tittering.

Embarrassed though the lady must have been, caught onstage with just her uppers and inners, (choli, dupatta and the churidar all dancers wear under their lehngas to ensure that there’s no leg show when JAYACHANDRAN/MINT their skirts whirl), she and her gallant spouse showed remarkable presence of mind. As she nimbly stepped backwards and out of the crumpled circle around her ankles, he bent down gracefully, swept up the offending garment, held it up like a shield in front of his wife, and both danced out sideways into the wings—he holding aloft the lehnga at the waist, she hidden behind it!

The other story is about two iconic instrumentalists of the country, one a formidable tabla legend and the other a master of the sitar. It seems that the two performed at a hugely prestigious, la-di-dah, very private, by invitation only event overseas, with the British royalty in the audience. The music was enthralling and the maestros were given a well-deserved standing ovation at the end of the concert. While the sitar maestro stood up to bow and gracefully accept the admiration of the royal listeners, the tabla player would not budge.

Politely, the royals and their loyal subjects kept up the clapping to give him a chance to accept their salutations. By this time, the suave main performer had unsuccessfully tried to nudge and signal to the tabla player, hoping to catch his eye. But the tabla maestro was steadfastly gazing at nothing but his tabla. In exasperation, the main artiste then bent down and hissed in his ear, saying something to this effect: “Rani rukee hai yaar, utho bhi” (The queen is waiting. Stand up!). The tabla player hissed back, “Naheen uth saktaa yaar, naada toot gaya hai!”

(Can’t stand up, mate. The drawstring of my pyjama has snapped). What happened thereafter is unclear to me, because of the many versions that exist. Readers can draw their own conclusion.

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Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

Close­Up: Women Unlimited, 291 pages, Rs375.

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Flashback: (clockwise from left) Segal with her husband in a production by the Zoresh Dance Institute, Lahore; as Mrs Pong in The Primary English Class; and during her Budapest days. returning to India for good in the 1980s.

There are parts of the book that have the chirruping enthusiasm and energy that can be seen in the best of Segal’s performances.

It begins well with Segal foraging around the roots of her august family tree for curiouser and curiouser ancestors. Her letters to her favourite uncle, Sahebzada Saiduzzafar Khan or Memphis, as she called him, show the young Segal’s love for travelling and her unflagging good cheer.

The recollection of her epic journey to Europe with Memphis, driving through places such as Quetta and Balochistan, makes for a lovely read but also hints at Close-Up’s central problem: Segal isn’t the best of storytellers.

Despite having all the elements of a nail-biting tale, her encounter with bandits at the Balochistan border is told with the same tone as her first experience at a hamam in Mashhad (inexplicably spelt as Meshed here). This is why the letters in Close-Up, like those written by Kapoor, are often more engaging than Segal’s prose.

Inexplicably, the book almost entirely ignores her film career, though you would think otherwise from the fact that a letter from Amitabh Bachchan is plastered on the back cover. Bhaji on the Beach, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Cheeni Kum and the other films in which Segal managed to infuse a minor character with her distinctive spirit and

Rainbow city Anusha Yadav captures Salzburg’s diverse residents through her lens

Urbane: Yadav (above) and her portraits of a Czech and a Tanzanian Salzburgian.

SHUBHA MUDGAL

WHEN STRINGS SNAP

Zohra Segal’s memoir evokes a full life, but falls short of being a satisfying read

B Y D EEPANJANA P AL ···························· n the introduction to Close-Up, actor, dancer and choreographer Zohra Segal, 98, writes, “I have travelled extensively…met and known most of the famous names of my generation, experienced two world wars and two British Coronations…” She also worked with dancing legend Uday Shankar and actor Prithviraj Kapoor, and appeared in some of the most enjoyable South Asian films of the past two decades.

Segal’s life should be an interesting read, if not an important record. She was born to a progressive family, so when she wanted to drive to Europe from India with her uncle at age 18, her parents happily packed her off on the journey. During her drive to Europe, Segal decided she would study dance in Germany and enrolled at Dresden’s Mary Wigman Tanz Schule in 1931. After completing her studies, she returned to India and, after a couple of years, joined the Uday Shankar ballet. While working with Shankar, she met her husband, Kameshwar Nath Segal.

In 1943, as Shankar’s troupe began to fall apart, the Segals moved to Mumbai and Zohra joined Prithvi Theatre. She would work with Prithvi Theatre as choreographer and actor for 14 years. In the 1960s, after having tried her hand at running a government-sponsored folk dance centre in New Delhi, Segal moved to London.

Close-Up finishes with Segal

MUSIC MATTERS

SCREEN’

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· he calls herself an urban chronicler. Photographer Anusha Yadav, who graduated with a degree in graphic design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 13 years ago, became a full-time photographer in 2005.

She’s been photographing cityscapes since then, including the people who inhabit them. Her interest in the social landscapes of cities goes beyond her lens. She also runs a blog, the indianmemoryproject. wordpress.com, an archiving site for Indian family photographs, which indicates a scholarly interest in documentation.

Recognizing her work and her interests, the organizers of the prestigious SommerSzene festival in Salzburg, Austria, invited her to be part of a photo-documentation project that turns its lens on the inhabitants of Salzburg. Its architectural heritage has been documented often but the organizers felt

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only its citizens would represent a true portrait of the city.

Salzburg has a population of 140,000, and geographically it is roughly the size of the Mumbai suburb of Bandra. But even at a conservative estimate, it is home to people of around 150 nationalities.

Yadav and New-York based Austrian photographer Anja Hitzenberger—the SommerSzene organizers wanted two points of view—asked diverse Salzburgians to face the camera for an exhibition that opened on 8 July in Salzburg.

Earlier this summer, the two of them shot Salzburgians of 124 different nationalities in a span of 25 days. Among others, Yadav shot people of Iranian, Czech, Tanzanian, Finnish and Spanish descent.

She says she particularly enjoyed shooting a Catalan dancer and an Irish bartender.

The images by the two photographers are strikingly different.

Hitzenberger’s photographs are more art-oriented, with the people largely in long shots, and symmetry and colour taking dominance.

Yadav worked mostly in mid shots, with the personality or history of the person taking centre stage. One of her portraits of a Tanzanian woman, for instance, has behind her a pop art image with a figure sporting an afro.

Most interesting of all, Yadav says, was shooting a Singaporean girl of Indian descent. “She was of halfKerala and half-Goan origin and managed Salzburg’s largest sex store,” she recalls, adding, “This is why I like portraiture—the surprises it can throw up!”

The photos are being exhibited on the banks of the river Salzach, which flows through Salzburg. A video installation and a book accompany the exhibit, which is titled Portraits einer Stadt (Portraits of a City). The pictures are all colour, and almost life-size.

Yadav has undertaken a similar project in her native city of Mumbai and is now shooting city residents of various nationalities residing here. She hopes to showcase the results in an exhibition by the end of the year.

Select photographs from the exhibition are on view at www.anushayadav.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUMBAI MULTIPLEX | HUSSAIN ZAIDI

The reluctant Mafioso HINDUSTAN TIMES

‘B ACHCHA

NALIA’ BY

BHAWANA S OMAAYA

&

OSIAN’S CARD

Yesteryear’s don: (clockwise from left) Amitabh Bachchan’s role in Deewaar was inspired by Haji Mastan; Once Upon a Time in Mumbai releases on 30 July; and Mastan, who was a reformed smuggler.

The author of ‘Black Friday’ anal­ yses the appeal of the quintessential ‘Bombay don’ ahead of another Haji Mastan film

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on’t blame the don, it’s the marquee that does the trick. It’s debatable whether yesteryear don Haji Mastan deserves immortality through celluloid; what’s true is that mere mortals become larger than life on 70mm.

The gangster has always been fodder for Bollywood. Our scriptwriters have Indianized internationally known characters. They rechristened Dawood Ibrahim “D”, a rip-off on the merchant of death in Central Africa and Asia—Viktor Bout (better known as V). They then renamed Chhota Rajan as the Intelligence Bureau’s Lucky Luciano (a Sicilian Mafiosi who helped British allies during World War II). In Kamal Haasan’s Nayagan and Vinod Khanna’s Dayavan, the late Matunga don Varadarajan Mudaliar got a halo to adorn his obit.

Mastan was set to be our answer to the Godfather.

We will soon watch another interpretation of his life. Blurring the lines between hero and villain, will Ajay Devgn’s histrionics add another layer to

the myth in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (the film releases on 30 July)?

In his times Mastan was lucky to watch himself portrayed by none other than the Big B in Deewaar. Mastan’s compatriot Karim Lala got his own little moment under the sun when Pran portrayed him in Zanjeer as the good-hearted Pathan. After the movie, Lala gained a fan club and almost managed to escape his past as a goon.

The irony is, Mastan was not a dreaded gangster like Dawood or a muscleman like Mudaliar.

He was simply a reformed smuggler. He never gave up smuggling for any noble reason, as recorded by films in the past.

He gave up smuggling because he feared the law. When he needed muscle, he forged partnerships with gangsters and did not create his own gang. The aura around Mastan is simply a product of directors’ imaginations and a biopic’s inherent potential to glorify its subject.

But what made a man like Mastan tick? What was his ticket to power? To sum it up in a word, it was his alliances—two of the most notorious musclemen in Mumbai, Karim Lala and Mudaliar.

Mastan used people to his advantage. Even Dawood Ibrahim resented that his father, retired head constable Ibrahim Kaskar, was treated shabbily by Mastan. Kaskar was an honest policeman and had considerable clout among the city’s Muslim community and policemen, which Mastan tapped. The first bank robbery in 1974 that Dawood was involved in was carried out under the

impression that he was looting Mastan’s Rs4.75 lakh. However, it turned out that the money belonged to Metropolitan Bank, not Mastan. So, contrary to popular perception, Mastan was not Dawood’s boss, but his bete noir.

Mastan was a wealthy man.

But he realized that he could not buy respectability. While his wealth brought him acolytes in police and political circles, he could not shed his image as a smuggler. He was the first one to be jailed during the Emergency under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (Misa). He yearned for credibility and dabbled in Bollywood hoping that the stardust would rub off on him. Attempts at funding several Muslim social movies to promote his actor wife Sona also bombed.

Mastan’s life is the stuff of legend for another reason: It epitomized the quintessential rags to riches story that the metropolis became synonymous with. It was a life built on opportunity and hope.

Similarities to the character of Don Corleone in The Godfather are obvious. Mastan started out as a coolie and rose to the pinnacle of affluence and power.

Mastan Haider Mirza was born on 1 March 1926 into a farmer’s family in Panaikulam, a small village 20km from Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. His father, Haider Mirza, was a hard-working but impoverished farmer, who came to Mumbai after failing to make ends meet in his village. Father and son reached the city in 1934. After trying their hand at odd jobs, they managed to set up a small shop where they repaired cycles

and two-wheelers in Bengali Pura, near Crawford Market.

Mastan soon realized that even after all the toil he could only make a meagre Rs5 a day.

As he would walk home to his basti from Crawford Market, he would see the grand theatres, Alfred and Novelty, on south Mumbai’s Grant Road. He would stare at the cars of Mumbai’s rich and famous, their Malabar Hill bungalows, and dream. He wanted to be rich and famous.

In 1944, Mastan joined the Bombay docks as a coolie—his job was to unload huge boxes and containers of ships coming from Aden, Dubai, Hong Kong and other cities. Here Mastan learnt a few tricks. The British levied import duty on the goods that came in and there was a good margin to be made if this could be evaded. In those days, Philips transistors and imported watches were a rage in Mumbai. Around that time, he met a man named Shaikh Mohammed Al Ghalib, an Arab by descent. Ghalib was looking for someone who was willing to help and support him do

The media didn’t want a politician with a murky past, they wanted Haji Mastan, the don

exactly the same.

Soon after independence, smuggling on a big scale was unheard of. There were petty smugglers dabbling in permissible quantities, which back then used to be six watches, two gold biscuits, four Philips transistors, and so on.

The Arab told Mastan that being a coolie, it would be easy for him to tuck a couple of biscuits in his headband, stash a few watches in his underwear or a couple of transistors in his jhola. The Arab promised a good reward, and they were in business.

In 1950, Morarji Desai, the chief minister of the then Bombay Presidency, imposed prohibition on liquor and other items. With such impositions in the state, the mafia of the time saw an opportunity to rake in more profits through smuggling.

The windfall came in 1956 when Mastan came in contact with Sukur Narayan Bakhia, a resident of Daman and the biggest smuggler in Gujarat.

Bakhia and Mastan became partners and divided certain territories among themselves.

Mastan handled the Bombay port and Bakhia the Daman port. The smuggled items would come to Daman port from the UAE and to Mumbai from Aden.

Mastan took care of Bakhia’s consignments.

His rise was phenomenal. But Emergency took the wind out of his sails. The smuggler was incarcerated. The man who came out after 18 months in jail was reformed and surprisingly emerged a hero. Mastan Mirza began to introduce himself as Haji Mastan and began using the prefix of Haji, which refers to

devout Muslims who have been on a pilgrimage to Mecca, before his name.

The erstwhile smuggler with all the symbols of glamorous fame—a beautiful, aspiring starlet and a Malabar Hill residence—was trying to wipe the slate clean. While he yearned for respectability all his life, his redemption lay in his past—or at least the media thought so.

A fledgling political organization to tap into his popularity didn’t work out and his attempts to forge a strategic alliance with Dalit leader Jogendra Kawade and form the Dalit Muslim Suraksha Mahasangh as an answer to the Shiv Sena also turned out to be a bad idea.

The media didn’t want a politician with a murky past, they wanted Haji Mastan, the don. And that’s what they chose to talk, write and make movies about. Mastan’s life might not have been the most dramatic among Indian mafiosi, but it was without doubt the most accessible.

How else can you justify three films on Mastan and the absolute oblivion of Sukur Narayan Bakhia, a man who lived a far more dramatic life. Mastan lived in Malabar Hill, Bakhia in the obscure town of Porbandar.

The marquee does the trick.

Hussain Zaidi is resident editor, The Asian Age, Mumbai. He is currently working on his second book, Dongri to Dubai, which chronicles the history of Mumbai’s underworld.

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