Lounge September 12 by HT Media

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

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Saturday, September 12, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 36

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie, releases in the US on Christmas Day.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH GENPACT’S NV ‘TIGER’ TYAGARAJAN >Page 8

BUSINESS & PLEASURE The director of Collage Sports Management never mixes workwear with party wear >Page 7

HOLLYWOOD

FUN ON TAP

Over 16 days and countless mugs of Bavarian beer, Oktoberfest celebrates the best of German hospitality. Raise a glass to good cheer >Page 13

HITS THE BOOKS Mr Fox, Sherlock Holmes and a crew of wild things leap to the screen > Page 10

REPLY TO ALL

THE GOOD LIFE

AAKAR PATEL

WEED OUT THE GITA’S MESSAGE

he message of the Bhagavad Gita is so electrifying that its narrator Sanjay reports that his hair is standing on end (roma-harsanam). But what exactly is that message? When he began reading Indian authors, V.S. Naipaul noticed a strange thing. T h ey o nly record ed i nn er ex peri en ce, ignoring the world around them. In 1888, on his first visit outside India, Gandhi landed in Southampton. In his autobiography he noted two things... >Page 4

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

RAISE A CUP TO CHICORY

while back, there was a discussion in Silk List, an Internet mailing group that I belong to, about coffee. While Silk is a global community, what interested me was that many of those discussing coffee happened to be south Indian (judging from their names). This is a pattern. South Indians are obsessed with coffee. Tell me, is it the same for you chai-drinkers? Do you folks dissect tea minutely—where to buy it, which brand is better... >Page 4

SAMAR HALARNKAR

THE STEAMY WEEKEND AFFAIR

h yes, it’s true. We fell in love one warm monsoon weekend, nearly 13 years ago. I can’t forget those furtive touches, spice-laden caresses and the grand finale that steamed up my glasses. Down, all of you. That’s what the ancient Indian art of dum or sealed, steam cooking does to me. My friends always did question the ecstasies that food sparked in me, but their fears that I would spend my life divided between writing and the kitchen dissolved when a woman wriggled her way into my attentions. >Page 18

PAKISTAN’S ALTERNATE ENERGY SOURCE

The world is finally taking notice of life beyond the conflict zone; Indian collectors have helped >Page 16

DON’T MISS

For today’s business news > Question of Answers— the quiz with a difference > Markets Watch

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)

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LOUNGE REVIEWS Sony’s NWZ B143F Walkman Impact. Rumble. Suave. Jiggy. Bongo. Headbutt. Or even Dropkick. I could think of any number of cooler names for Sony’s latest USB-drive-based MP3 player. Why do people even name their devices “NWZ B143F”? Yes we’ve ranted about this very problem in Lounge before but, alas, no one at Sony’s marketing department seems to be listening. Try as I might, I just can’t see fashionable music fans flaunting their Sony B143Fs in front of their iPod-toting friends. But just imagine if a little branding had happened: Boy 1: “Your player sucks compared to my iPod Shuffle…” Boy 2: “Oh, this. This is my Sony Fatal Tsunami Attack MP3 player…” Boy 1: “Drool, swoon, drool...” What a pity. Especially because there is much to like about this feisty, capable little music player that is impressive, despite the yawn-withmouth-wide-open USB-drive design it is cursed with.

The good The B143F test piece we received came with a glossy red finish on the

Head banger: The Sony USBdrive based MP3 player.

display and controls side, and a more sober and sturdy rubberized finish on the other: a nice mix of macho and metrosexual. The little Chicletsized screen is very bright and you should have no trouble figuring it out in any light condition. As with most Sony MP3 devices, the sound quality was quite good. (Disclaimer: We tested it with a pair of tried and tested Panasonic in-ear phones that tend to give all devices a little fillip.) And if listening to the powerful device at full volume isn’t enough, Sony has built in a little bass-boost button on one side that significantly ups the low frequencies in a flash. This is actually quite a smart feature to have. With most such crammed devices, managing the audio equalizer, if there is one at all, can be quite painful. You need both acute eyesight and reedy fingers to manoeuvre through the menus. So a bass boost in one step is a good thing. And if the 4GB on-board memory fails to deliver sufficient music variety, there is always the FM radio function. The player also has a good audio recording functionality that can be activated with a single button press. Perfect for sting operations (recordings are in the form of WAV files and eat up around 1.5MB per minute). The highlight of the player, however, was the 70-minute charging facility. Plug it into a computer USB port and it’ll be ready to go in just over an hour. And the company website promises 90 minutes of operation at just 3 minutes of charging.

The notsogood While strolling around Connaught Place in New Delhi one evening, I noticed that every time the earphone wires moved, the quality of the FM radio signal wavered. And that too in a disconcerting fade in, fade out way. As if you were running towards and then away from a speaker entirely

inbox Write to us at lounge@livemint.com MEN AND FASHION I found the editorial, ‘Why Ravi Bajaj is leading a dandy march’, 5 September, on Van Heusen India Mens Week (VHIMW), spearheaded by Ravi Bajaj, immensely intriguing. In India, fashion is primarily associated with women. Indian men don’t care much about being fashionable. But it’s high time men caught up with the changing trends in clothes and accessories. Let’s see what the men’s fashion week throws up. RASHI JOSHI

BEING SALMAN KHAN The article ‘When Salman Khan turns hit man’, 5 September, fails to capture the magic of the superstar. The writer has not mentioned the names of all his successful films and I think it is incorrect to say Khan’s costars were appreciated more than him in all his successful films. In ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’, it was Khan who stole the show. He also overshadowed Shah Rukh Khan in ‘Karan Arjun’. He is a star with tremendous screen presence and style. MANJUSHA PATIL DADAR, MUMBAI

NOT A HEGEMONY In the column ‘When will the BrahminBania hegemony end?’, 29 August, “hegemony” is an incorrect description of a situation where an individual belonging to a caste or community happens to lead an organization. If the proportion of employees in an organization belonging to the community is a minority, then how can they hegemonize it? After six decades of reservation in the

randomly. I felt giddy after a while and had go inside a KFC and order a burger. To recuperate.

Talk plastic The B143F is a good MP3 player, decent value for money at Rs3,990, and except for a spot of bother with the FM radio, was very wellmannered indeed. But with a name like that… Sidin Vadukut

Ping, Bangalore Barring a few restaurants in five-star hotels, such as Zen at the Leela Palace Kempinski and the Schezwan Court Big bites: Fire Cracker Prawns at Ping, at The Oberoi, Bangalore didn’t have any restaurant that specialized in dim esting fusion of tofu, bamboo sums. That void has been filled by shoots, bell pepper, shitake, pak Ping, which opened in Koramangala choi and water chestnuts stir-fried three weeks ago and serves “over 35 in a mild sesame soya sauce. The varieties of dim sums”. sauce is not very spicy and does not overpower the other ingredients. The good The Crispy Fried Fish, tossed with “All momos are dim sums, but all h o m e - m a d e t a m a r i n d s a u c e , dim sums are not momos,” the maî- though a tad too tangy, tasted good tre d’ reiterated as we scrutinized the with burnt garlic noodles. menu. The comprehensive list of The restaurant also has a special steamed and pan-fried dim sums menu for children which is not too confused us initially (who would experimental. It has dishes such as have thought of combining tofu and French fries and chicken lollipops spinach in a steamed dim sum or which they are always happy to eat. chicken and basil in the steamed Spicy Chicken and Basil Cheong The notsogood Fan?). We decided to opt for the set Most of the dim sums are a bit bland platters—vegetarian (Rs325) and for the Indian palate. If you like your non-vegetarian (Rs425). Each platter food a little on the tangy side, don’t offers two pieces each of six varieties forget to ask for the wasabi mayonof dim sums. naise dip. As for the platters, a diner Vegetarians must try the Spicy doesn’t get to choose the dim sums, Soya and Basil Dim Sums. Don’t pass which would make them a limiting it over because of the rather unappe- and boring option on a repeat visit. tizing-looking green wrap (the colour comes from the basil). While my taste buds were on fire because of an TODAY’S BLOG overdose of chillies, there was also the lingering taste of refreshing basil. My non-vegetarian co-diner recommends the Fire Cracker Prawns BY with Orange Chilli Dip for the crisp ANINDITA GHOSE outer layer and soft prawn meat filling. And the Lamb and Ginger This and more at Wotip for the unusual combination. blogs.livemint.com/ For the main course, we ordered livelounge the Eight Treasure Tofu, an inter-

Real dandy dudes

WO IT! N

LOVE STORY I enjoyed reading ‘The age of love’, 5 September, a review of Shakil Warsi’s book on the making of ‘MughaleAzam’. It is an alltime favourite that I have watched more than 100 times. Making such a masterpiece at a time when technology was not so advanced is a great achievement. K. Asif was stunned when he saw a few scenes done in colour and wanted to reshoot the whole movie in colour, but his financiers did not cooperate. His dream was realized in 2004 and the movie became the first Indian film to be shown in Pakistan (legally). SEEMA SHARMA DELHI

(The writer of this week’s winning letter wins a gift voucher worth Rs3,500 from Wills Lifestyle, redeemable at any of their outlets countrywide. Wills Lifestyle offers a complete lifestyle wardrobe incorporating the latest fashion trends. Choose from Wills Classic workwear, Wills Sport relaxed wear, Wills Clublife evening wear and Wills Signature designer wear.)

educational system, the socalled privileged castes are actually victims of discrimination. A large proportion of Brahmins don’t get opportunities that they are qualified for because of their caste. ANAND SHANBHAG

HAVES AND HAVENOTS Aakar Patel’s column ‘When will the BrahminBania hegemony end?’, 29 August, was informative. But I want to ask Patel: Do we need reservation on the basis of caste and religion? If yes, won’t these reservations prolong the caste system? I am neither a communist nor a capitalist. But from what I understand, there are only two religions in the world—the haves and the havenots. Those with money are manipulating and controlling the

majority, who are just existing. These are the real issues we should be looking at. NANDAKUMAR NAIR

SECRET OF SUCCESS Aakar Patel’s column ‘When will the BrahminBania hegemony end?’, 29 August, was in bad taste. In times when we strive and yearn for egalitarianism, the dissection of success achieved by people on the basis of caste is unsavoury, especially when no thought has been spared for the difficulties that might have sprung up in their path to success. Unfortunately, we continue to live with such trivialities. Success calls for focus and toil; a person’s caste must not be an impediment to success. CK VINOD DELHI

Priya Ramani’s column First Cut will be back next week. ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH: WARNER BROS/EVERETT COLLECTION CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In ‘The first family of quizzing,’ 8 August, the photographs were by M. Lakshman.

Bangalore. Ping is yet to obtain a bar licence, so we ordered a green apple bubble tea, which came with tapioca balls at the bottom of the glass. It was way too syrupy, and did not complement the subtle flavours of the dim sums. While Ping has gone the extra mile to ensure the place doesn’t look like an “Oriental” restaurant, Abba and Westlife don’t quite gel with dim sums and jasmine green tea either.

Talk plastic A meal for two can cost up to Rs1,000 (taxes included) for the main course and dim sums. The executive meal, which has an assortment of three dim sums, a stir-fry to accompany rice or noodles and one dessert, is priced at Rs250 (taxes extra) for the vegetarian lunch and Rs275 for the non-vegetarian one. For reservations, call 080-41521773. Pavitra Jayaraman

L4 COLUMNS

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AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

Why Hindus should weed out Gita’s message

he message of the Bhagavad Gita is so electrifying that its narrator Sanjay reports that his hair is standing on end (roma-harsanam). But what exactly is that message? When he began reading Indian

authors, V.S. Naipaul noticed a strange thing. They only recorded inner experience, ignoring the world around them. In 1888, on his first visit outside India, Gandhi landed in Southampton. In his autobiography he noted two things: It was Saturday, and he was the only person wearing white flannel (it was October). The scale of London, its foreignness, its buildings and architecture, its cleanliness, its people—all of that is taken for granted by Gandhi, a 19-year-old villager from Porbandar. He should have been stunned by the differences. But he notices nothing. Indians, Naipaul observes, have “no feeling for the physical world”. He is right, but why do we look away from the physical world? To see what our culture says about this let us look at the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita has three messages: u We must work without expectation of reward u The soul is immortal: The body and the outside world are unimportant— Chapter 2 u We must aspire not to a state of action (rajas) or inaction (tamas) but purity (sattva)—Chapters 14 and 18 The Gita’s definition of sattva—goodness (14:5), serenity (14:6),

wisdom (14:17)—will puzzle someone who wants to follow Krishna’s advice and become sattvik. On the other hand it is easy to be rajasik—driven to action (14:9), passionate (14:12), hungry for reward. Human experience tells us that those asked to work without expectation of reward normally do no work, or do shoddy work. The Gita believes otherwise. We are familiar with the famous line that starts Karmani eva adhikaraste... (2:47), but it is actually a couplet. The second line cautions us not to be motivated in action, or attached to inaction. In another place we are told the wise man sees action in inaction and inaction in action (4:18). This ambiguity in the Gita—act but don’t act—has given spiritual gurus the space to do endless philosophizing. It is the favourite text of all from Vivekanand to Sri Sri Ravishankar, and Gita sessions dominate the daily engagements column of newspapers in our cities. The Gita tells us to withdraw our senses like a tortoise its limbs (2:58), because all answers are within us. So this looking inwards, this detachment that Naipaul observes, is actually prescribed by the Gita. Are all Hindu texts like this? No. The Vedas are very different, aggressively materialist and extroverted.

AFP

The Vedic chant is really We are one of the filthiest a list of demands on the people on earth in 2009. Gods, particularly Agni But we can live beside filth and Indra: Give me this, quite comfortably because give me that. But the we are trained to ignore it. chanter’s hunger assumes Our high tolerance to the action that needs divine anarchy of India comes support. In the from our religion. vocabulary of the Gita, Today the Mumbaikar the Vedas are rajasik. recognizes the Parsi for his Naipaul then makes a ability to engage with second, more cruel, machines. We even pay observation. Because him a premium for the car Indians are oblivious to he cares for. But we the world, we don’t cannot replicate his simple participate. The actions, which should behaviour of Indians “is come easily to us because parasitic. It depends on every other culture the continued activity of behaves that way. We others, the trains cannot, because the Gita’s running, the presses message of disengagement printing... It needs the Inner world: Gandhi was unmoved by London’s buildings and people. is so effective. The world but surrenders the unobservant do not invent, organisation of the world to others” Kipling, who knew Indians well, and that is true of Indians, a highly (India: A Wounded Civilisation). When wrote about its danger in The Miracle of evolved people who have little or no the Indian is at a great foreign airport, Puran Bhagat. It is the story of a invention to their name. his thoughts are on how not to look powerful minister, a wise man, who When he comes, if he comes, our foolish. He has no wonder about how renounces his position and family and Martin Luther must reform the culture the place works (A Bend in the River). becomes a sage. He tries to run away by moving the Gita from Hinduism’s He is right again. All who observed from the world but eventually finds centre to its periphery, where it should India closely have noticed our himself only through action, not be revered, not followed. Its peculiar shutting out. mindless renunciation. sophisticated message of detachment is Allama Iqbal went to Europe for his Are we stuck with our culture for yogis, not ordinary men. Something PhD and came back transformed in forever? Not necessarily. The detached more mundane and work-oriented 1908. The great unifier till then, he Gandhi of Southampton became a must replace the Gita, even if that began separating Muslim culture from magnificent man of action, but only message is less electrifying. Hindu on his return. In 1904, Iqbal after exposure to Europeans. When he wrote Tarana-e-Hindi, commonly called visited India in 1896, he was aghast by Aakar Patel is a director at Hill Saare jahan se achcha. In 1910, he our apathy, because after eight years Road Media. wrote Tarana-e-Milli, which goes: abroad he was able to observe it as an Send your feedback to Muslim hain hum, watan hai saara outsider. He saw the inexplicable replytoall@livemint.com jahan hamara (The whole world is the attitude of the Indian, obsessing about Muslim’s nation). Iqbal didn’t suddenly ritual pollution to his body through www.livemint.com decide to start hating Hindus: He caste, but oblivious to an environment Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at worried that their culture would also he kept polluted beyond belief. www.livemint.com/aakarpatel take Muslims down with it. Modernity has brought no difference:

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Raise a cup to chicory, all ye coffee snobs

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

south Indian (judging from their names). This is a pattern. South Indians are obsessed with coffee. Tell me, is it the same for you chai-drinkers? Do you folks dissect tea minutely—where to buy it, which brand is better, how long to steep it, whether to add cow’s milk or buffalo’s milk, whether ginger is better than cardamom for the masala, things like that. Do you guys scour the earth for the best tea and then diss the households that serve you poor versions of this beverage? We do that with coffee. All of us who live south of the Vindhyas. Even gentle souls like my father sometimes refuse to visit a friend’s house at a certain time because they serve poor coffee. “Chakkara kashayam,” he will say, which means too much sugar in the decoction. Suresh Ramasubramanian, who I have never met, is an authority on coffee. I encountered him on Silk List, where he posted the provocative query: “Anybody know where to get Mysore Concerns coffee in Madras?” I had heard of Monsooned Malabar coffee and Mysore Nuggets, but never Mysore Concerns. I was intrigued. Turns out Mysore Concerns is a coffee shop in Matunga, Mumbai, which sells great coffee. Several “Silk Listers” as

they are called raved about Mysore Concerns coffee. If any of you Mumbaikars have tasted this brew, would you let me know if it is up to snuff? And please realize that if you have a non-south Indian name, chances are that I won’t trust your judgement. Sorry, but when it comes to coffee, I am as fanatical as the rest. I grew up with coffee snobs. Chennai is full of them. I googled Silk List’s Ramasubramanian and discovered that he too is a Chennaiite. His day job has to do with software—IBM, Linux and whatnot—but what he really seems to do is chase coffee. In Chennai, he buys Leo Top blend, which, he says, is a “good nice even roast with a chocolatey aftertaste”. Mysore Concerns is a “good dark roast…with none of that chicory rubbish”. This is the other thing with south Indian coffee: the whole debate about whether to add chicory and in what percentage. You’d think we would have better things to argue about, but no. Carla Bruni might be carrying; swine flu might be taking over the world; the Afghan elections might be tearing the country apart; but when it comes to coffee, we hone in like owls and forget the world. Most coffee connoisseurs

Coffee chasers: Mysore Concerns in Mumbai sells a dark roast blend without chicory. hate chicory. For many years, my mother-in-law, who worked part-time in Delhi, bought coffee at Devan’s Coffee at Khanna Market near Lodhi Colony and carted it all the way to Thiruvananthapuram where she lived. The reason: The Delhi coffee didn’t have chicory mixed in with the powder. I feel sorry for chicory since it is dissed so much. Reflexively, I tend to stick up for it. My father used to go to Leo Coffee on Lattice Bridge Road in Chennai to personally supervise his “Plantation and Peaberry” blend that was mixed without any hint of chicory. Chicory gives coffee its girth. New Orleans coffee comes mixed with chicory as do some Italian ones. Some say that chicory gives them indigestion; others say that it keeps the blood

glucose levels down. I have to admit that coffee sans chicory does have a more well-rounded taste with less acid and more flavour. It fills the mouth without tasting like paste. The best coffee in Bangalore is Mysore Nuggets, which Kalmane Coffee in Jayanagar home-delivers. It costs Rs220 for 500g which, when you think about it, is the cost of one “venti latte skim no-sugar” from Starbucks (whose coffees I detest, by the way). The person who introduced me to Mysore Nuggets from Kalmane was Shiv Shankar Shastry, a surgeon who lives in his ancestral home in Basavangudi. He is a friend of a friend and although I don’t know him very well, I invited myself to his house with the ulterior

motive of tasting his coffee. I came away with a bag. Predictably, Mysore Nuggets coffee has no chicory. Like most of us, I track several people who I think are interesting. This means that if I meet them at a party, I am likely to sidle up to them and try to make conversation; or stand around tongue-tied. They include Jaisim the architect (because another architect I admire, called Ramu Katakam, told me that he was inspired by Jaisim); Sukanya Ramgopal (a female ghatam player—’nuff said) Girish Karnad (for his breadth of knowledge); Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) commissioner Bharat Lal Meena (because Bangalore’s roads are getting paved); assistant commissioner of police Praveen Sood (because I got an Internet email that showed how responsive he was) and Sunalini Menon (whose job title, “coffee taster” makes her compelling). The list is longer, but the build-up was to say that even Menon said that in blind tests, most south Indians preferred a mixture of Peaberry, Plantation and Robusta beans, mixed with (drum roll please) 10% of chicory. Take that, all you chicory snobs. Shoba Narayan drinks chicory-laced Kotha’s coffee but is considering switching to Kalmane’s Mysore Nuggets coffee. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Insider HOMES

Viewer’s choice Television actors Shweta Kawaatra and Manav Gohil have designed their 1,500 sq ft Mumbai pad themselves

B Y G EETIKA S ASAN B HANDARI Better Homes and Gardens

···························· oming from Delhi, I never felt at home in Mumbai; all the flats felt like pigeonholes,” says the 33-year-old television actor Shweta Kawaatra, best remembered as the evil Pallavi from Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii. So when Kawaatra and her husband Manav Gohil, 34, set out to do up their Malad flat in Mumbai, like many of us they had no idea how to go about it. “But being confused helped me; I bought furniture books and went from shop to shop to find the right things,” says Kawaatra, who was certain she didn’t want an interior designer to do the job. “I was very clear about what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I wanted.” Popping in and out of stores helped Kawaatra zero in on the details—she knew she wanted to u s e woo d, b u t wa s wo r ri e d about it swelling in the rains—and that’s when she stumbled upon sleeper wood, which is preseasoned. The slats have been put to great utilitarian and aesthetic use as under-thewindow benches in three rooms (with storage underneath).

Tiles are something Kawaatra always liked, and decided to incorporate in unique ways in her decor. Many of her tables have grooves where she has inserted bright tiles, all Keramos. “Tiles break the boredom of too much wood. I have used them in cupboard handles, as table bases, and even to add colour to a small nook in the wall, which serves as office space.” Though the couple, who will soon be seen co-hosting a travel show on Zoom, are comfortable in their space, Gohil be li e v e s t hat “a ho use i s a work-in-progress always”. His idea of having a cycle suspended from the ceiling was brushed aside by Kawaatra in the early days itself. While she has a passion for plants, Gohil admits to feeling slightly tortured by the 100-odd plants sprouting from pigs, rhinos and frogs all over. “Our tastes are completely different, and he wanted one room to be done up in his style, so I gave in, but then he would forget about it and I would go ahead and do my own thing,” says Kawaatra. Write to lounge@livemint.com Comfort zone: (clockwise from left) Kawaatra and Gohil describe this room as an allinone room where they hang out, pray, and even party; these caricatures were made in Universal Studios, Florida; the couple’s living room is dotted with potted plants in animalshaped pots; and a faux antique station clock that Kawaatra picked up in Delhi hangs in the corridor.

Travel picks: (right) These knickknacks (including a handpainted ostrich egg, an elephant and a mask) were picked up by the couple in Africa; and the wisecrack coasters were bought from Bed Bath & Beyond in the US.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY VIKRAM BAWA STYLING BY RAGINI SINGH/BETTER HOMES MAKEUP BY RAKESH JAGTAP HAIR BY VIDYA J.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Style OUT OF THE CLOSET | LATIKA KHANEJA

Business and pleasure PHOTOGRAPHS

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

The director of Collage Sports Management learnt early that work gear should be distinct from party wear

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

···························· or a meeting with Virender Sehwag or Ishant Sharma, or any of the other cricketers she represents, 45-year-old Latika Khaneja is likely to be in trousers and a shirt. But for a night out, it is mostly dresses. She is not averse to starving for two days just so that she can get into her favourite fitted burgundy dress, yet for a sit-down dinner party, she will always wear something loose because “I like to eat when I am out”. The director of Collage Sports Management has strict dressing rules for cricket stadiums, boardrooms and parties. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What do you wear for meetings with sportsmen? When I go to watch cricket matches, I wear jeans, a Polo T-shirt with a visor and coloured sneakers. Caps are a no-no because you have to get your hair done after removing them. If I have to attend a function such as a birthday party for a cricketer’s child or somewhere where I am likely to meet their family, I wear a salwar-kameez. It’s more palatable to everyone around, and definitely less intimidating. Usually, for evenings I prefer dresses, though if a cricketer is coming for the party I always wonder what they will think when they see me in one. Why would you worry about that? I find that being dressed too formally or fashionably can be intimidating. In fact, in corporate India, even though women have taken to wearing trousers, it is more for comfort and less for fashion. Mostly girls wear white shirts and grey trousers to blend in rather than to stand out. Any style rules that you never tamper with? No short dresses or a sari for sit-down dinners. You can never make these outfits look good when seated. They are perfect for parties where you are likely to stand mostly. If you don’t want to make a fool of yourself, go shopping with your teenage daughter. She will never let you buy things that will not look good on you. Thanks to my 16-year-old daughter, I have stopped visiting Mango, Promod, Aftershock. These are very children stores now. If I am buying an outfit which is a new silhouette (for me), I always get it in black or white. How did your dressing style evolve? I started wearing stuff I liked when I set up my own garments business in mid 1990s. In the late 1980s, when I was a management student at IIM (Indian Institute of

Style staples: (clockwise from above) Khaneja (in a Ralph Lauren shirt and Gucci trousers) wears white for special meetings; the red Dior watch and the Breguet watch are her favourite party accessories; the Nike skirt is a Sunday golf staple; a special cupboard is dedicated to her heels; and party wear is usually a dress such as this Gucci dress paired with Stuart Weitzman sandals and a clutch. Management), Calcutta, and we had to go out for projects, etc., we only wore cotton saris. The system was geared in such a way that a dhobi (washerman) would come in to take your sari for cleaning, ironing and starching. It was well organized. Plus saris did not make one seem aggressive. What, according to you, is a myth about corporate dressing for women in India? Only fashion magazines recommend pencil skirts as workwear for Indian women. You can never really wear them to office—they are a pain. They ride up all the time, especially when you sit; you have to walk up on “that” side of the staircase from where no can see up your skirt. Honestly, I would never wear a dress or skirt to work. It is not practical. What about wearing heels? I love wearing heels but this year I decided to stick with flat shoes for work. I wear heels if I have a meeting at an advertising agency and usually carry a spare pair in the car. I don’t think flat shoes look unprofessional or tacky. Earlier

I used to have rules like I will not wear jeans to work, but since I have started managing sportsmen I find that informal wear works better not just with them but also the companies I have to meet for securing endorsements for them. At Nike, Adidas, Reebok, the management staff is mostly dressed casually. So when do you wear heels? At parties. I mostly buy stilettos, pumps and sandals from brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Bottega Veneta because they tend to last longer and are more comfortable to wear. I buy shoes when I am travelling overseas. Most of my heels are about 3 inches or more and thankfully my daughter does not raid my cupboard for them. Currently, among my favourites is a pair of purple Stuart Weitzman’s sandals, which I got a few months back. I also own about five pairs of black stilettos because you can never have too many black shoes. Do you read fashion magazines? Regularly. I like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Are you partial to whites? I wear all colours but yes, I love whites though I would never wear a white shirt or an outfit for a routine meeting. Whites are reserved for special occasions such as conferences or meeting an interesting person. Whites are tough to maintain. One wear and they have to go for dry-cleaning. I tend to ration them. Do you have a favourite Indian designer? Suneet Varma. I love his saris and own quite a few of them. I do not like embellished dresses and that’s why I never buy them from Indian designers.

Bag rules: The Louis Vuitton red bag is what Khaneja is likely to carry through the day, while the orange Bottega Veneta clutch is a preferred evening accessory.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Business Lounge NV ‘TIGER’ TYAGARAJAN

Eye of the tiger Precise decisions and a desire to hit the road shaped the Genpact COO’s career B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· t’s 10.40am on a Friday, and the staff on duty at the Trident, Gurgaon, are beginning to get suspicious of me. I’ve been ambling about and shuffling a sheaf of papers for the past 10 minutes, circling one of the lobby’s corner sofas like a predator patrolling his territory. I’m a bit early for my breakfast meeting with N.V. Tyagarajan, the 48-year-old chief operating officer of the business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact, and the staff would really appreciate it if I stopped wearing out the carpet in the interim, thank you very much. Dressed in a crisp dark grey suit, and wheeling a suitcase, Tyagarajan is the very image of the roving executive. His handshake is firm. “Hi. I’m Tiger,” he says by way of introduction. The story of how “Tiger” became his prefix of choice (it’s even on his visiting card) takes him back nearly 40 years. “I went to a Catholic school in Mumbai, and in (the) second grade we came out of a poetry class, having just learnt Tiger, tiger, burning bright by William Blake,” he says. The name “Tyagarajan” was proving a little too phonetically complex for his Mumbai classmates, and “Tiger” filled that gap competently. “It’s not a bad name to have in the corporate world,” he says. It is Tyagarajan’s approach to business that has undoubtedly made the name stick. “It’s the way you attack a problem,” he says softly, carefully measuring each sentence before speaking. “Break it down into parts, think about a logical, rational, step-bystep solution—that’s the way I think about a lot of things.” It’s an unnervingly precise mechanism for decision-making, but “unnervingly precise” is an accurate descriptor for Tyagarajan’s career, from his early days in Pond’s India to being the COO of the $1 billion (around Rs5,000 crore), 37,000-employee Genpact, which was previously called GE Capital International Services, or Gecis, and was a captive arm of General Electric. Tyagarajan orders a “strong” masala chai. “Drink of choice?” I ask. “Not really,” he says, his wispy moustache curling as he

breaks into a grin. “But I’ve had two espressos since morning, so I thought I’d take a break from coffee.” The early proof-of-concepts for Gecis, the prototype for the Indian BPO industry, were beginning to float around in 1997-98, when Tyagarajan was working with GE Capital. He, along with other BPO pioneers Raman Roy and Pramod Bhasin, conducted pilots (“basic call centre stuff”) that became hugely successful. It excited then GE boss Jack Welch when he visited in 2000. Till 2004, Gecis remained moored to the GE port, providing BPO services only to in-house companies. Tyagarajan, meanwhile, left for the US in 2002 to work with GE Commercial Finance. He returned when Gecis became Genpact, an independent company. By then BPO had become a buzzword. “When you’ve built a company and a concept up from scratch, you look at your job, and your career, much differently,” he says. “We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg with BPOs,” he says. “I can see myself doing this particular job for at least 20 more years.” A student of mechanical engineering at IIT Bombay in the early 1980s, Tyagarajan homed in on his interest early. “I didn’t see myself joining the engineering cadre and designing stuff,” he says. “Commercial decisions attracted me. Working with a team attracted me.” IIM Ahmedabad followed, and in 1985, Tyagarajan landed his first job as sales manager in what was then Pond’s India. “I was very clear that I didn’t want to join brands and product management to begin with. I wanted to hit the road, and hit the ground,” he says. Pond’s allowed him to do just that. “I loved the culture of the company. It was action-oriented, and gave far more importance to sales than to the brand. That attracted me. I’m older and wiser now, and I understand the importance of brands, but back then it was just wishy-washy stuff.” He joined the western region office in Mumbai, and within a week was on the road in Madhya Pradesh. Talcum powder was Pond’s star performer there, commanding up to 90% of the market share in certain areas. Tyagarajan quickly settled in,

TRIVIAL PURSUITS | CRICKET N.V. “Tiger” Tyagarajan has been a cricket fan for more than three decades. “I did not play cricket formally in school, nor was I part of college teams, but (I) have been in love with the sport since my early school days,” he says. From being hunched around a radio, listening to the crackle of audio commentary, to the highdefinition television extravaganzas of today, it’s a love affair that hasn’t waned for 35 years, even through his stint in the US. “It’s difficult to catch cricket when you’re in the US,” he says. “But sometimes you can watch it on the Web—and I did!” Tyagarajan says he has “standard” favourites—Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are two cricketers he likes to watch. “The most memorable match for me, though, the one I will never forget, is the 1983 World Cup final. Kapil Dev’s team and the victory there...what an experience!”

dealing with salespersons, stockists and other wizened veterans of the talcum powder trade. “I spent six-and-a-half years there, and loved every second of it,” he says. He moved to Citibank in 1991, joining its mortgage business in Chennai. After six months in sales and marketing, he decided to switch tracks to the operations side. “I thought operations was the gateway to a wider career,” he says. Within a year, he got a chance to make that shift. “Someone tapped me on t he should e r an d sai d , ‘There’s a credit and collections job in the west (Mumbai). I think you should do it.’ I asked why, and they said, ‘It’s a mess. We’d like you to go and clean it up.’ That, to me, was an interesting comment to make to someone who’s never done that stuff before,” Tyagarajan says. After this stint in Mumbai, Tyagarajan was posted to Delhi. His wife Viji, then working for ABN Amro, and their son Abhinav, who was born in 1993, stayed on in Mumbai. “Three cities, six jobs, six portfolios. Four years. Typical Citibank career in those days.” In 1994, he left Citibank to join GE Capital, a company he’d been fascinated with since its entry into India. “With GE, I saw the opportunity to build a 25-year career,” he says. “I actually thought this way: I could be doing credit cards one day, and aircraft engines the next. Changing jobs without changing the company.” He joined as risk head for GE’s joint venture with HDFC L t d, ca ll e d Count ry wi d e . When Gecis started in 1997, he moved to Delhi. “And for the second time, I moved and my wife didn’t move!” he laughs. “Viji was working at Rabobank, and she joined me only after 18 months, when she moved to Aviva.” In those 18 months, Tyagarajan immersed himself completely in Gecis, often drowning out the mutinous protests of his team, who wished he’d “move back to Mumbai”. “I worked like crazy,” he recalls. “But those were the formative years. Our target was 3,000 people (employees), and by the time I left (for the US) in 2002, we had 12,000.” “Work is a big part of who I am,” he says. Tyagarajan spends almost 15 days a month travelling on business, a routine that leaves him with precious little time at home. “I probably do not spend enough time at home as I should,” he says. “It’s always a challenge.” He went recently on a 10-day vacation to China with his family, but admits that his ideal holiday would be staying put. But every workaholic has a weakness, and Tyagarajan is no exception. “I’m an unbelievably passionate follower of cricket,” he says. I ask him to describe just how big a fan he is. He replies almost immediately. “I would bunk work if there’s a good match on.”

On target: Tyagarajan joined GE because he wanted a career, not just a job, and became an architect of the BPO business in India.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Play GAMING

Can you resist The Beatles?

Strum along: The Beatles: Rock Band (left) and Guitar Hero 5 are projected to be among the topselling games this year.

With the interest in music games waning, videogame makers are trying every trick in the book to get gamers on board

B Y Y UKARI I WATANI K ANE ···························· rsatz rockers are turning down the volume on their music-game purchases. So the makers of the blockbuster Guitar Hero and Rock Band games are ramping up their offerings with giveaways, spin-offs and crowd-pleasing music choices. For the first time, Activision Blizzard Inc. is offering a freebie—Guitar Hero: Van Halen—with the Guitar Hero 5 game that made its debut recently. Consumers who buy the $59.99 (around Rs3,000) Guitar Hero 5 in its first month on shelves get the Van Halen game free when it is released in December. Also, Activision is launching DJ Hero in October; a version with a turntable controller for urban hip hop fans. In November, it is releasing Band Hero, a more mainstream version packed with popular music. That will add up to the most Guitar Hero games that the company has launched in a four-month span. In the meantime, Viacom Inc.’s MTV Games is, for the first time, relying on the appeal of just one band with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band. MTV is also teaming up with Time Warner Inc.’s interactive entertainment company to create Lego Rock Band, a family-friendly version of the game that is due out in November, with characters made from the ubiquitous toy. The moves illustrate the challenges of building on a maturing genre amid a recession. As they gear up for the holiday shopping season, video-game makers are working doubly hard to grab consumers. Such music games, which tap

into people’s inner desire to be rock stars, have fuelled much of the video-game industry’s growth in the past few years. But some video-game experts say that interest in the genre is waning as consumers are overwhelmed by a growing selection of games that, for the most part, do the same thing. In addition to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, consumers can find karaoke games such as Sony Corp.’s SingStar games and Microsoft Corp.’s Lips on shelves. “People have experienced a little bit of fatigue with them,” says Libe Goad, editor-in-chief of AOL Games’ online gamingnews site GameDaily. “Now we need something new.” Kathryn Smith agrees. The 25-year-old insurance broker says she is happy with her purchase of last year’s Guitar Hero World Tour game and doesn’t plan to buy a new version. “I like playing it and I’m glad I have my own but one is enough,” says the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, resident. In a typical music game, as many as four to six players take on the role of rock stars and push buttons on a guitarshaped controller, tap on the drum set or sing into a microphone according to scrolling cues on the screen. The games have attracted an audience beyond core gamers by catering to a variety of music tastes such as 1960s rock and heavy metal. Many of the old music games have online components—such as the capability to download extra songs—that keep the games fresh. Rock Band offers some songs free or for 99 cents, but most are $1.99. Songs for Guitar Hero games are available for $1.99 a song or $5.49 for three. Companies such as Tapulous Inc. are also wooing musicgame fans with similar games for Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Its Tap Tap games, in which users tap on or shake the phone to the beat, have been downloaded more than 10 million times since its July 2008 debut. But even big music-game

fans like Mark Rapanut are no longer rushing to buy every new music game. The 28-yearold project manager, who has bought almost every major Guitar Hero game so far, still plans to purchase Guitar Hero 5—but he didn’t buy the Aerosmith and Metallica versions that came out in the past two years, says the San Jose, California, resident. The upshot: Even though Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band are projected to be among the top-selling games this year, overall music-game sales have fallen by about half so far this year from a year ago, analysts say. That outpaces the 14% decline in industry-wide software sales, according to market research firm NPD Group. In 2008, the games had hauled in nearly $2 billion, or about 17% of overall video game sales, making it the biggest game category, according to San Diego, California, research firm DFC Intelligence. A big part of the plunge is because games publishers aren’t selling as many special instrument-like controller packages that go with music video games. Many consumers already own the accessories, with MTV Games estimating 25 million households own some kind of music-game controller. The controllers can be

used to play sequels of the same game and sometimes, other music games. Video game executives acknowledge the game and controller bundles, which cost $99.99 for Guitar Hero 5 and $249.99 for The Beatles: Rock Band, may be too steep in a recession. Paul Raines, chief operating officer of video-game retailer GameStop Corp., says it is “very, very happy” with advance orders for music games but adds that they haven’t been as strong for the bundles. MTV Games says it only has “modest” forecasts for its bundles. Activision and MTV Games say the music-game genre hasn’t peaked. But they are trying to do more to expand their audiences and get existing ones to keep buying new games. “Innovation is critical in any entertainment,” says Scott Guthrie, executive vice-president of MTV Games. Activision is pursuing a multipronged strategy of creating more targeted games such as the urban DJ Hero and Band Hero, and adding more capabilities to its main Guitar Hero games. In Guitar Hero 5, for example, players can also play songs from last year’s Guitar Hero World Tour. Some songs in DJ Hero can be played with both the turntable and guitar controllers. “What we want to do is build

the best game, create a lot of value and take market share in hard times,” says Dan Rosensweig, chief executive of Activision’s Guitar Hero unit. Activision is also eyeing overseas markets and choosing artists with global appeal, such as Eminem and Jay-Z. Activision won’t say how much more it has invested in the franchise. MTV Games says it has increased its marketing spending on the Beatles game “significantly” from past Rock Band games. After losing out to Guitar Hero last year in terms of games sold—in part, it says, because of a smaller marketing budget—the company this year is aggressively promoting the game on its MTV Networks and through tie-ins with music publisher EMI Group Ltd, which is releasing remastered CDs of The Beatles’ original catalogue. MTV also recently announced a service called Rock Band Network, in which emerging bands can contribute original downloadable songs. And it is working on a product for which it will join up with the band Green Day. “Do I expect it (music games) to continue to have double-digit growth? No. But it’s a massive category,” says Guthrie. Write to wsj@livemint.com

L10 COVER

COVER L11

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

New Moon

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Fame

Intellectual action: Downey as Doyle’s famous sleuth, with Law (right) as Dr Watson.

Where the Wild Things Are

Sherlock Holmes: martial artist

The star of the coming movie about the famed detective talks about giving the role a fresh spin B Y L AUREN A .E . S CHUKER The Wall Street Journal

··································· e’s played Iron Man and Charlie Chaplin, but Oscar-winner Robert Downey Jr says his greatest challenge may be his next role: Sherlock Holmes. The 44-year-old actor will star as the great sleuth in the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes, opening on Christmas Day. Scottish-born author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories about Holmes, and over the years there have been countless stage and screen portrayals of the detective, who first appeared in print in 1887. The coming film, which was first inspired by a comic book that producer Lionel Wigram wrote to help build support for a Holmes movie, promises to give the Holmes franchise a provocative twist—by adding a dose of martial arts, something that most portrayals of the hero have ignored. Downey, who did many of the fight scenes himself, says that the film hews very closely to Doyle’s original descriptions of the British investigator, which focused on his superb martial arts skills as well as Holmes’ close relationship with his friend and sometime roommate, Dr John H. Watson (played by Jude Law). Downey spoke about playing an “intellectual action hero” from London, where Ritchie is shooting several weeks’ worth of additional scenes for the film. Edited excerpts:

H Avatar

FILMS

HOLLYWOOD HITS THE BOOKS Mr Fox, Sherlock Holmes and a crew of wild things leap out from the pages of your favourite classics and on to the screen

The Princess and the Frog

B Y L AUREN A .E . S CHUKER ······························ his fall, Warner Bros is trying to reinvent Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr starring as the fictional sleuth. Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich, will put a modern twist on the storybook classic Where the Wild Things Are. And some recent bestsellers, including Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (in an adaptation from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson), will hit the big screen. Hollywood is racing to adapt novels, comics and children’s stories as the ability of movie stars to draw audiences wanes. Popular books,

with built-in fan bases, pose less risk for Hollywood studios trying to eke out a profit in a tough economic climate. One of the most anticipated adaptations is the November sequel to Twilight, based on the best-selling book series by Stephenie Meyer. A wave of animated films based on children’s stories are scheduled for release over the next several months, including Disney’s revision of the age-old fairy tale, The Princess and the Frog; Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, a mostly stop-motion animation version of the Roald Dahl novella; and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, a three-dimensional (3D) take on the popular children’s book.

One giant exception: Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns to feature film-making for the first time since Titanic with his new movie Avatar, a sci-fi epic with an original story that’s not based on a book. The 3D movie follows a war veteran (played by Sam Worthington) on his journey to an alien planet. After a summer that saw box office revenues soar ahead of old records, there are far fewer films coming out in the US this fall and winter season, with just 135 films currently planned for release through the end of 2009. The cutback does have some positive consequences, say studio executives. “With fewer films, there won’t be as much cannibalization, and each film will have a better shot at finding its audiences,” notes Mike Vollman, who runs marketing for MetroGoldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, home of the James Bond franchise. In Fantastic Mr Fox, a crafty chicken thief—voiced by George Clooney—strives to outwit three farmers who wage war against him for stealing their prized goods. In an unusual move for an animated feature, Anderson, best known for off-

beat comedies shot in subdued tones such as The Royal Tenenbaums, made all the actors record the audio tracks together and act out some of the motions in the film, says Jason Schwartzman, who performs the voice of Ash, Mr Fox’s runty son. “George and I are having an intense emotional scene,” he recalls, “and we weren’t in costume or make-up, but I was really on the ground digging for dirt.” In Avatar, which opens in December, Cameron employs computer-generated imagery to animate some of the characters, who look like blue, oversized humanoids. The director says that even though the film is in 3D, intricate special effects are not at its emotional centre. “This movie is about people running around in the rainforest, it’s not about technology,” he says. Also coming back to the multiplex: Buzz Lightyear and teenage heartthrob Robert Pattinson. Disney will debut Toy Story 3 next year and in preparation, the studio will rekindle the franchise by releasing new 3D versions of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Just a year after the teen vampire romance Twilight, directed by Cath-

erine Hardwicke, became a cultural sensation, Summit Entertainment has a sequel, New Moon—featuring werewolves and a bevy of new special effects—set to hit theatres the weekend before Thanksgiving. Summit hired a new director to make New Moon, which has “a totally different look”, according to the studio’s chief executive and cochairman Rob Friedman, and “offers a lot more for the guys than the first movie did”. Werewolves (including Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner) emerge in the sequel as protectors, shielding Bella (actor Kristen Stewart) from the menacing vampires that prey on her after Edward (Pattinson) departs. The film focuses in part on that break-up—and its resolution—but it also features more computer-generated effects to render the wolves. New Moon director Chris Weitz says the new werewolf element forced film-makers to ramp up the special effects. “We weren’t going to just use a guy in a wolf suit,” he says. Hollywood’s fall line-up features two movie musicals: Fame, a loose remake of the 1980 hit film of the same name set at a New York high

The Princess and the Frog

school for performing arts, and Nine, director Rob Marshall’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film Chicago. Nine was inspired in part by Federico Fellini’s film 8½ and features a star-studded cast, including Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Penelope Cruz. A grittier take on the high school musical genre, Fame follows a group of students—dancers, singers, actors—as they try to achieve fame for their artistic pursuits. The original music for Fame, which won Academy Awards for original score and original song, has been supplemented and updated to sound more contemporary. Emmy-winner Megan Mullally, who plays one of the Fame teachers, says that the new movie is more like a regular film than a musical. “The musical numbers are integrated in a seamless and organic way,” she says. The fall’s comedic fare includes a new Coen brothers movie A Serious Man, about a physics professor (played by Michael Stuhlbarg) who struggles to raise his family in a middle-class Jewish neighbourhood in the Midwest when his wife threatens to leave him. It’s Complicated, a

Nancy Meyers film, follows a woman (played by Meryl Streep) who is pursued by two men (Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin). Jason Reitman’s comedy Up in the Air, featuring actor George Clooney, tells the story of a corporate-downsizing consultant whose nomadic existence—and impressive frequent flier mileage—is placed in peril, making him question his lifestyle. “The movie is about the examination of a philosophy—what if you decided to live hub to hub, with nothing, with nobody?” says Reitman, who spent six years writing the film and, in that time, got married, had a baby and directed the hit movie Juno. Reitman says this film, which was only loosely based on Kirn’s novel, was a more deeply personal effort than his first two feature films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. “The main character was written very much from my own heart,” he says. Jamin Brophy-Warren contributed to this story. Write to wsj@livemint.com

Sherlock Holmes is a big leap from the previous characters you’ve played. What got you interested in the role? As I remember it, I went in for a meeting with (producer) Joel Silver and said, “Dude, where’s my franchise?” And this came up as the answer...And Holmes was like a cross between two previous parts I’d done, Tony Stark (alter ego of Iron Man) and Chaplin, which I loved. Iron Man wasn’t a big enough franchise for you? Iron Man was not enough. I wanted something else. And Sherlock Holmes was such a no-brainer even as a stand-alone project, but particularly with Guy (Ritchie)’s reported interest and involvement. How did you and Ritchie make the film—and the character—more accessible to a modern audience? Well, I had a fair amount of leeway after Iron Man.... So we were sitting in a meeting discussing what to do and we thought, “Why do a stodgy version of it?” Doyle never writes a three-page action sequence, but after the fact he will talk a lot about the physical contact that happened. Doyle talks about how Holmes is a stick fighter and a master of baritsu (Doyle’s altered spelling of the real martial art bartitsu). So Guy (Ritchie) made those traits a big part of the character. While Sherlock Holmes isn’t a superhero like Tony Stark, it sounds like he still fights a great deal—at least in this movie. How does your character approach action differently? Holmes always thinks his fights through and wins them in his head before he

even physically gets into them. That embellishment is really central to the way action plays out in the movie. It sounds like the film mainly focuses on the fight sequences and martial arts. Yes, but not to the exclusion of the real centre of the story, which is his relationship with Watson. To prepare for the role, as well as that important relationship with Watson, did you watch previous portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, in movies, on television? I watched some of the old movies, but to tell you the truth, the more you watch the old stuff, the more you realize how not traditional it is—it’s not like the stories at all. Part of the tableau in which Holmes is always thought of is him, in profile, with a deerstalker hat and with a curved pipe in his mouth. Nothing about that has anything to do with Doyle’s description—in one description, Doyle says he is wearing a hat, but it’s more of a moleskin cap. The oversized pipe came from something that theatre actor (and playwright) William Gillette used in his portrayal—and now it’s always used on stage. When I see Holmes portrayed with those two props now, I always think, “Really? That’s not what the writer meant.” So how did you prepare? I really wanted to portray Holmes as Doyle wrote him. When I played Chaplin, I flew all over the planet looking for clues, but the definitive Western expert on Holmes (Leslie S. Klinger) lives 20 minutes up the road in Malibu. So I went and hung out with him, I read through his book, a definitive annotated Sherlock Holmes, which was probably the modern data centre for us. Did you read a lot of Doyle’s stories? I read them all. Were you a Sherlock Holmes fan before you signed on for the movie, or did you pack in all that reading afterwards? I honestly knew nothing about the character—just that he’s a detective and that he’s a weirdo. But there are all kinds of misconceptions about him. Many have said that he’s a huge drug fiend, but it’s clear reading the stories—he’s not. It’s just that none of those behaviours were considered strange or illegal at that time, so he partakes in drugs, but he doesn’t abuse anything. He just overindulges in them when he’s bored, and when he’s not bored he puts them down. Why do you think Sherlock Holmes is such an enduring character? Look at Hill Street Blues or CSI—there have been so many legacies that respond to Holmes’ character. He can be a little cocksure and full of himself, but Holmes is also like that freaky roommate everybody has once in their life, that guy who is a math genius but could never pay his part of the rent. And at the same time, he has this dedication to doing the right thing to the exclusion of doing all other things. He sacrifices everything so he can become better at what he does. As a character actor, I found that trait endlessly compelling. Write to wsj@livemint.com

L12

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Travel LOCH NESS

Monsters and more

Lake eerie: Urquhart Castle, on the northern shore of the famous Loch Ness. SANDEEP VASUDEVAN

The recent Google Earth shot of Nessie was no fluke. In the Scottish gloom, mysteries take on lifelike proportions

B Y S ANDEEP V ASUDEVAN ···························· hey say that Scotland has only one season, with barely perceptible variations. It essentially consists of cold, driving rain, occasionally punctuated by spells of what seems like God’s grace but is, in fact, sunlight. So it rains in the spring, it rains in the summer, it rains in autumn, but it doesn’t rain in the winter. Much. It mostly snows. And so, after much rumination on paradigm shifts and into each life some rain falling (and that is a bad thing if you’re in Britain), I decided to do the things that everyone does in Scotland. Other than get sozzled on whisky, that is. I decided to go take in some history, and maybe go home with a piece of Nessie as well. So we took off on what appeared to be a par-for-thecourse Scottish morning (not really raining but threatening to do so just as one sat back, took the shoes off and said, “Ah!”), made good time over the Firth of Forth, and passed on to one of

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

the numerous well-proportioned highways that wound themselves through the Scottish landscape and drove northward. And then, just as the gloom was threatening to deepen and the clouds, mercifully silent, were threatening to unleash, we found, through the trees on one side of the road, that we were driving parallel to a river. As we tried to figure out where exactly we were, one extremely perspicacious Polish friend pointed out that this was, in fact, the mythical Loch Ness. We’d found it—or, more appropriately, it had found us. We then decided to stop and take a look at the lake that I had flown almost halfway around the world and numerous time zones to see. It was a narrow strip of water, bounded on either side by dark, forested hills, with nary a sign of human touch except, perhaps, the road that we were standing on. The gloom intensified this feeling, and the lightly fallen rain had made things wet, primordial. We scrambled down the steep bank for a closer look. And then discovered the Loch Ness monster. We got down to the water’s edge and dipped a metaphorical toe into the waters. It was magical, the experience. Nowhere else, except maybe in the misty heights of the Himalayas, could we have felt more intrusive. It wasn’t a place for frolic or frivolity. It wasn’t even a place for quiet contemplation. The loch just didn’t want us. She ignored us at a cosmic scale, displaying a complete indifference to the shenanigans of mere mortals. Acknowledging that, we decided to frolic anyway, and a few of us broke into impromptu jigs. I went further, rushing in where fools feared to tread, and called out on Nessie to come out and say hello. Which was when I discovered how stupid I really was. Because she did. See, the monster does exist at Loch Ness, but the reason people haven’t really found it is because they misjudged the scale of the entire thing. The real monster at Loch Ness isn’t a prehistoric gar-

Gloomy waterfront: There are hardly any signs of civilization near the shores of Loch Ness. gantuan, it’s actually white, winged and probably six-legged. Apparently, during the wars with Spain many centuries ago, sailors inadvertently brought back these species of flies from the south. Once here, the flies settled down nicely and went forth and multiplied. And then some. So now, there were gazillions of the rotten things all over the loch and the forest that surrounded it. In 5 minutes, we were haring up the bank and back into the cars, waving our hands around like our heads were on fire. The flies had descended upon us in their amorous millions, trying to enter our bodies through every orifice that was available to them—nostrils, ears and mouths. Chastened, we drove on. And that’s when we discovered Urquhart Castle. We’d been seeing the signs along the way, and decided to at least check this last place out before we went home. So we drove into a practically deserted parking lot and grew even more weary when we saw that the information booth-cum-tourist centre was shut. We got off in the parking lot and paced up and down, trying to catch a glimpse of the castle through the surrounding foliage. Then, suddenly, we saw a couple of women get into a decrepit old saloon, the

only other car parked in the lot. One of them saw us trying to catch a dekko of the castle and yelled: “Oh, there’s nobody there. Just climb over the gate, that’s what we did!” So I went, soon followed by the others, and walked the short distance down the path, which gave us our first view of the castle. It was rather disappointing, whatever there was—and it wasn’t much. There were a few walls standing here and there, a small wooden bridge over a small, dry moat, a trebuchet (one of those catapult thingamajigs that they used in the olden days to bung heavy rocks at the bad guys) out in front, and that was it. We went in. Which was when it hit. The sense of hoariness, of a past buried, of events that had lost even the memory of their happening—the castle was an echo from the depths of history calling faintly to us. The walls that stood, looking over the absolute stillness of the lake, whispered to us in endless silence. The lake, reflecting only the leaden grey of the tumescent sky, ignored us, as it had done so far. And we stood at the end of a promontory, the last witnesses, the final observers of the end of time itself.

It was like the world was ending, here, in the gloaming at an ancient castle whose memories were lost, a mere dot in the darkness of the forested hills and the glassy silence of the loch. We stood, hearing the whisper of the sands of time running out, staring over the lake, into the beyond, where there would be no apocalypse, no tumultuous last trump, just a gentle weary sigh as the world laid itself to rest and darkness fell. We stood, unable to go, as time inexorably held us, softly wondering, asking us to remain till the day ended. With an effort we freed ourselves and left, not wanting to go back to the intentness and purpose of human life, the inevitable scurrying, the vicelike grip of having to live and make a good thing of it. We left, bearing the gentle burden of the ending. We left, but we left a bit of us there. To wait for us when the end came. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

While there isn’t anything specifically childfriendly about Loch Ness, the locale is bound to stoke a child’s imagination.

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FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Fun on tap

Over 16 days and countless mugs of Bavarian beer, Oktoberfest celebrates the best of German hospitality. Raise a glass to good cheer

Information and map courtesy: German National Tourist Office

Rolling on a river

Whitewater highs

s a means of getting around, kayaking is probably as old as the wheel. If so, white-water kayaking is to paddling what F1 is to city traffic—only, you don’t have to be a wannabe Schumi to take on the thrills of the Indian mountain rivers. Aquaterra Adventures, with years of white-water experience, is launching an introductory course in kayaking for those among us who’ve gazed on longingly at helmeted men with paddles, navigating rough rivers with grace and discipline. The four-day course holds novices by the hand as they learn to paddle in a straight line (one of the hardest things to do!), graduate to tackling class 1 and 2 rapids, and then finish off by conquering the big mamas of class 3 and 4 rapids. Expect classes in theoretical kayaking and safety and rescue techniques before they allow you to step into the water (on Day 2) for lessons in paddling skills, wave-surfing, rolls and eddy turns—and trust

the instructors as they decide whether you can take on the real trashing saved for Day 4. To run from 1-4 October at Aquaterra’s Silver Sands camp (27km from Rishikesh), the course costs Rs14,000 plus taxes per head. There’s place for only six people in a course, so if white-water is your next frontier, sign up right away. Contact Aquaterra at 011-41636101, or email at vaibhav@aquaterra.in

f the rafting season’s upon us, can the itineraries be far behind? Leading outfitters are checking out their safety jackets for what promises to be yet another thumping season in the white-waters—the upper reaches of the Ganga, Satluj, Kali, and the mother of them all, the Brahmaputra. So put on your goggles, and hit the white highs!

u Satluj: The seven-day river

run begins at Rampur Bushair and ends at Tattapani, 44km from Shimla. Outfitter: Aquaterra Departure: 5 October Cost: Rs55,000 per person, plus taxes u Upper Alaknanda: Six days, and 80-odd class 3 or 4 rapids. The Chamoli-Rudraprayag section is perfect for the adventure buff who isn’t quite sure of his extreme chops. AQUATERRA

Water rush: The ChamoliRudraprayag section on the Upper Alaknanda is perfect for adventure buffs.

Outfitter: Aquaterra Departures: 24 October, 25 December Cost: (exDelhi) Rs 25,000 per person, plus taxes u Alaknanda: Starting at Srinagar, Day 1 encompasses a good introduction to class 2 and 3 rapids for beginners. You raft past Devprayag, the confluence of the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi, and on Day 3, encounter Daniel’s Dip. Outfitter: Mercury Himalayan Explorations Departures: 24 November, 15 December Cost: (exShivpuri) Rs9,700 per person, plus taxes, for a group of six minimum u Mahakali: The river forms the border between India and Nepal, passing through scenic terrain of villages, orchards and jungles. Days 6 and 8 will take you through thick forests and challenging rapids. Outfitter: Aquaterra Departure: 2 November Cost: Rs29,830 per person plus taxes u KaliSarda: Starting from Pancheshwar, the trip makes for six days on the Kali river on the Nepal-India border. Day 6 encounters a big class 4 rapid at Chooka, where Jim Corbett shot a man-eater.

Outfitter: Mercury Himalayan Explorations Departures: 7 November, 23 March Cost: Rs36,000 per person, plus taxes u Brahmaputra: One of the greatest rivers in the world, it makes for a holiday you won’t forget in a hurry. The 13-day trip begins at Pasighat, 80km from Dibrugarh, and throws in interaction with tribal villagers. Outfitter: Aquaterra Departure: 28 November Cost: Rs1.2 lakh (inclusive of DelhitoDelhi airfares) u Upper Subansiri: This could well be the last opportunity to ride this tributary of the Brahmaputra, as a hydel power station is scheduled to come up on its lower mountain mouth by September 2010. The 10-day trip promises challenging rafting. Outfitter: Aquaterra Departure: 21 December Cost: Rs1.3 lakh (inclusive of DelhitoDelhi airfares). Mercury Himalayan Explorations: 011-23340033 09999747041. Aquaterra: 011-29212641 Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Books AFP

HISTORICAL FICTION

The making of a dynasty The first instalment in a series of historical novels about the Mughal empire maintains a fine balance between fact and drama B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· erhaps the most authoritative set of documentaries ever made about World War II is The World at War series first released in the UK in 1973. The acclaimed Jeremy Isaacs produced the 26-part series, and each episode began with an introduction by Isaacs. In one such introduction, perhaps for an episode early on in the series, Isaacs talks about how that particular instalment told its story differently. It was not told from the perspective of massive armies, pincer movements or U-boat raids, but from that of the people. In this episode, Isaacs explains, you will hear about the war from the men and women who lived through it and whose lives were drastically transformed by it. Isaacs’ words reverberated strongly in my head as I began reading Alex Rutherford’s Raiders from the North, the first in his Empire of the Moghul quintet on the Mughals. The book, an uneven, moviescript-like but thoroughly enjoyable read, focuses entirely on the life of Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty. What a life it was. Forced to the throne at the age of 12, after the untimely death of his father in a freak accident, Babur began his reign from the tiny kingdom of Fergana. Compared with the empire he would later build, Fergana was an insignificant little valley nestled between modern-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. What Rutherford tries to do in

Raiders from the North: Headline, 448 pages, Rs495.

this “historical novel” is to explain the why, how and what of Babur’s many victories and defeats, culminating in his unlikely conquest of Hindustan. And he does this with a foot in each of the two styles of history that Isaacs spoke about in his introduction. Yes, there are armies and a couple of maps and multitudes in motion. But there is also Babur himself and his frailties, doubts and hopes. Stir in a dose of ripe imagination, and it makes the book more than history. From the opening paragraphs itself, it is clear what Rutherford’s style-substance equation is going to be: “Babur shifted his weight on the stone step and returned his attention to his father, the king, who was pacing the fortress walls, hands clasped against the turquoise fastenings of his robe.” Raiders from the North is not of the Abraham Eraly or William Dalrymple genre of authorship. It belongs instead with the Valerio Massimo Manfredis and Conn Igguldens on your bookshelf (in fact, I daresay, Iggulden’s recent trio of books on Genghis and Kublai Khan may have inspired Rutherford’s series). Rutherford goes on to trace the history of Babur’s reign through many ups and downs as he matures into a shrewd ruler and formidable commander of armies. And we are constantly reminded, through Babur’s thoughts and words, that his prime motivation is to be remembered in history as an able successor to Timur, the great Mongol warlord who was his ancestor. What Rutherford has done is to paint the outlines of Babur’s history with broad brushstrokes—one thing happens after the other in the right order but no one is really keeping track of time or space. Rutherford then fills in the details, where he chooses to, with dramatic flair.

Q&A | GURCHARAN DAS

The first emperor: A miniature portrait of Babur, whose frailties and doubts are depicted by Rutherford. For instance, this is what he says about harem doors: “The silver doors shuddered under the impact of a battering ram carried up from one of the courtyards below and the turquoises shattered, bright shards falling to the floor. Yet the doors held. Beneath the shining silver, the wood must be thick and the bolts strong, Babur thought…” The book does not include detailed maps or use too many dates. Instead, Rutherford gives Babur much introspection to do and it is largely through the emperor’s thoughts that we

piece together the man and his story. Plenty of secondary characters troop in and out of the plot, but none of them leave a lasting impression. Yet Rutherford’s writing never does the one thing that could have made this book even better: Leave me with a lasting mental picture of the first Mughal. Instead, what you get is a combination of Wikipedia-like facts, some engaging dialogue and colourful, visual prose. You wouldn’t want to refer to the book if you were giving an exam on the Mughals, but it

B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· hen Gurcharan Das—newspaper columnist, playwright, novelist—turned 50, he quit his job as the head of the Indian arm of a multinational company to become a full-time writer. In 2002, he went to the University of Chicago to devote himself to studying Indian classics in Sanskrit. There he was increasingly drawn to the epic Mahabharat and what it said about the human condition. His latest book The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma explores what the epic says about dharma, in all its varied meanings, and its relevance today. Edited excerpts from an interview:

You began reading the Mahabharat to find out the

meaning of ‘dharma’, or how to conduct one’s life. Were you successful in your quest? Mahabharat is not a self-help book and my book will not fall in that category either. The epic is obsessed with dharma (but) nobody looks to God to answer the question—Why be good? The Mahabharat asks at one point—“Where does dharma come from? Where does the authority of dharma emerge from?” And people say, “Maybe it’s the Vedas. But hang on—the Vedas contradict each other too. So let’s ask the wise Brahmins. But wise Brahmins are fighting with each other. So maybe we have to depend on ourselves.” So the quest for dharma is a rational quest. Mahabharat seems to suggest that there are no easy rules.

IN SIX WORDS Emperor Babur’s story, with narrative frills

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

Dharma versus religion Why there are no easy rules in the Mahabharat; and why it is a literary epic

would do well enough to fuel cocktail party chatter (if there are cocktail parties where one chats about this sort of thing). It passed the ultimate test: I do look forward to reading the forthcoming Empire books. Especially the Akbar one. Rutherford has a tough job on his hands, though. In my mind Akbar already has a shape and form. It’s called Hrithik. And it’s awesome.

Nevertheless, it leaves you with ideals. You also wrote this to cure yourself of what you call “third stage melancholy”, the third stage being the onset of ‘vanprastha’, when a man begins to retreat from worldly life. Are you happier now? A lot of my third stage melancholy was caused by governance failures. The fact that the rickshawallah has to pay one-fourth of his earnings to the Ex libris: Das in his private library. police. I see the Mahabharat as holding the melancholy—you retired at mirror to the policeman who 50 in the middle of a very is taking hafta (a bribe). successful career. Maybe my melancholy will That is correct. And a lot of only go away when we do people turn to religion at that these reforms. point. I resisted that But there was also a personal temptation; instead of turning element to the to religion, I turned to dharma.

The Difficulty of Being Good: Penguin/Allen Lane, 434 pages, Rs699. But the Mahabharat is a religious text, so you did turn to religion. This I what I’d like to contest. I am advocating that the Mahabharat should be treated like a literary epic. Therefore, we should read it in college and school the way English children read Milton, and Italian children read Dante, Greek children read Iliad. Even in Dante there is God, but it is an epic. Therefore, it should be treated as a national heritage.

Ninety-five per cent of the commentary on the epic that you have cited is by European and American scholars. It says something about Indian scholarship. Yes, it does. I think the last Indian scholars I cite were writing in the 1930s and the 1940s. Great scholars like (P.V.) Kane, who wrote the history of the Dharmashastras. Basically, after independence we did not produce any serious scholars. What explains the enduring reverence for Krishna, who is guilty of so much trickery and deceit in the Mahabharat? You have to see Krishna at many levels. If you see him as human—as one of the many characters or god with a small “g”, you can certainly talk about his failures. But there are characters in the epic who see him as God with a capital “G”. Like Uttanka the hermit. He is very angry with Krishna. “How could you let it happen? You were God, why didn’t you prevent the war?” And Krishna is taken aback. He says, “I couldn’t, it had to happen. There are some things that even I can’t control.”

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THE AYATOLLAH BEGS TO DIFFER | HOOMAN MAJD

READING ROOM

The small voice of history ZOHREH SOLEIMANI/BLOOMBERG

TABISH KHAIR

PILGRIMS AND POETS Indian Canterbury Any book by William Dalrymple is good news, but a travel book after close to a decade calls for a dash to the bookshop instead of a click on Amazon. Nine Lives, Dalrymple’s first travel book after two exhilarating expeditions into Indian history, is a risky enterprise. Evoking Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the grandfather of literary and travel texts in English, Dalrymple knits together the narratives of nine “pilgrims” and the people around them. They are pilgrims in the sense that they are all deeply immersed in a religious tradition of India. They are also pilgrims in the Canterbury sense because they have or have had a secular life: The Naga sadhu has an MBA, the inspired theyyam dancer is also a jail warder, and so on. It is difficult for anyone, let alone “Westerners”, to write about Indian religious traditions without slithering into Orientalist, New Ageist or Hindutva tropes. It is even more risky to narrate Indian religious beliefs against the template of today’s India, which is itself a half-mythical being in the throes of constant change. But Dalrymple has managed to do so, and with aplomb. Nine Lives will be released in the UK this month and a little later in India.

Poetic relief

The Ayatollah’s gaze: Majd supplies the context to stereotypical views about Iran.

An erudite, yet humorous survey of the conflicting currents of modern Iranian society B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· hen the governments of America and Iran have been, for three decades, such bitter and suspicious adversaries, then perhaps it is fitting that one of the best books in English on modern Iran—a work that might serve to explain one culture to the other and, indeed, to the rest of the world—should be written by a man who suggests he is “both 100% American and 100% Iranian”. The math of those numbers, of course, doesn’t add up, but to me this seemed like one of the very few false notes in Hooman Majd’s otherwise erudite, spirited, and often laugh-aloud funny survey of contemporary Iran, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. The grandson of an ayatollah and the son of a diplomat in the employ of the old monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi, overthrown in 1979, Majd is someone whose credentials as an interpreter of the conflicting currents of Iranian politics, religion (which itself is highly political in Iran’s theocratic regime) and culture could hardly be bettered. Although he has been an American resident all his life, Majd’s Farsi and grasp of Iranian veri-

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: Penguin, 274 pages, £9.99 (around Rs800).

COUNTRY OF CONTRADICTIONS The political turmoil in Iran has spurred several literary works u The Struggle for Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue (2007) Bringing together a set of long essays originally published in period icals such as ‘New York Review of Books’, ‘The Struggle for Iran’ offers a splendid tour of contemporary Ira nian society, politics and culture. De Bellaigue has also written a memoir of his years in Iran, ‘In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs’. u Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni (2005) The daughter of Iranian exiles in America, Moaveni returned to her home country in 2000 in search of her roots. The value of her book lies not just in what it says about

the political scene, but in Moaveni’s access to the experiences and dilemmas of women in a highly gendered and segregated culture. u Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader by Kasra Naji (2008) Now enjoying a controversial second term as Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man of so many quirks and contradictions that it needs another mind to make sense of him. Iranian journalist Naji takes us behind the scenes to show us where Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith, comes from, and to suggest what it is that he wants.

ties are more than adequate. In the book, he manages simultaneously to obscure the American side of his identity, growing a beard and hauling down his fastidious dress sense a couple of notches, and to derive capital from it, allowing native Iranians to admire his stylish cellphone and entertaining their fantasies of immigration. The stereotypical view of Iran is that of a country fiercely Islamic and often fundamentalist, where mullahs inveigh against the godless West, basic social and political freedoms are denied, women live as second-class citizens, and excellent kebabs and art films are made. Majd works away at all these perceptions, refining them and often supplying the context that either refute them or make them seem more reasonable. That Iran is Islamic may not be as important, he argues, as the fact that Iran is specifically Shia, and subscribes to a strain of Islam to which its own neighbours in West Asia are hostile. Shia Islam is more receptive to music, poetry, religious ritual and pictorial representation than the more orthodox Sunni strain. Merged with the distinct emphases of ancient Persia’s pre-Islamic, Sassanid civilization (itself rich in song and poetry), it has created a religious ethos that is distinctly Iranian, and cannot be adequately explained by larger and murkier phrases such as “Muslim” or “anti-modern”. Neither is Majd, we quickly sense, a stereotypical liberal, all fired up because women still have to wear a hijab in public (Majd shows that Iran’s own gender rights movement is more concerned with other issues); critical of the role, indeed rule, of religion in political and social life; and insistent that Western-style liberal democracy is the only answer to the problem of political authority and legitimacy. Indeed, Majd often supplies, or at least quotes, ingenious defences of some of the more bizarre moves of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now Iran’s President for a second term and a self-styled “man of the people”. Majd shows that although Iranian people are often critical of the excesses of

the current government as well as the larger principles and continuities of theocratic rule, by and large they do not want a change from the idea of “Islamic democracy” ushered in by Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution. Indeed, as Majd shows us through his description of the modest, low-key lives led by Iran’s political elite, |Iranian leaders at least do not live inside a self-fashioned bubble that leaders in democracies worldwide seem to fashion for themselves. And while the Iranian regime is certainly not very tolerant of political dissidents and agitators, neither is it the case that Iranian people enjoy no freedom of speech at all. One of Majd’s emphases is the separation made in Persian life between the public and the private spheres, the most obvious symbol of which is the highwalled garden (or pairidaeza, from which the English word “paradise” originates) found in traditional Iranian homes. Within and across their homes, Iranians are relatively free to confer, and to articulate controversial and even seditious opinion. “It is perhaps because of the home and the garden as the defining centre of life,” writes Majd, “that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behaviour somewhat tolerable.” Lastly, Majd is a fabulously charming presence, and a writer with enough command of prose style to be able to transfer the hues and tones of his own attractive personality into his book. His jazzy chapter headings, love of jokes, speculation, snatches of poetry and sensual pleasures, alertness to subtle social graces and put-downs, and willingness to hear what Indian scholars of subaltern studies would call “the small voice of history”, make this much more than your standardissue non-fiction tract. Don’t miss this one. Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf. Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Iran, besides Islam and the Ayatollah

RAMESH PATHANIA/MINT

After a long lull, a fresh and vigorous breeze appears to be touching the desolate shores of Indian poetry in English: Jeet Thayil, Tishani Doshi and others have brought out exciting new work. Arundhati Subramaniam’s Where I Live (Bloodaxe Books) combines her two published-in-India collections, On Cleaning Bookshelves and Where I Live, with a selection of new poetry. This is accomplished poetry, the poetry of perception and nuance. As the senior poet and writer Keki N. Daruwalla puts Nine Lives: About secular sadhus. it: “Subramaniam’s poetry is one of illumination. She flashes a pencil-torchlight on a subject, and suddenly you feel you are the richer for it.” Subramaniam belongs to a new crop of poets, all born around or after 1960, who have finally lifted the flag of Indian poetry in English, filling it with the breeze of inspiration that seldom blew strongly after the long (and strong) generation of poets such as Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra, Daruwalla and others. Talking of that founding generation, so few of whose members are still alive, here is another book one should run to the bookshop for: Kolatkar’s The Boatride and Other Poems, published with much love by Pras Prakashan, Mumbai. With an introductory essay by the poet, critic and personal friend A.K. Mehrotra, it contains 262 pages of poems from across Kolatkar’s career, both originally written in English and translated from Kolatkar’s Marathi collections. It also includes Kolatkar’s excellent translations of Namdeo, Tukaram and others. It is a collector’s item, to my mind, and so reassuring in these days of literary fads. But then, as Kolatkar writes in one of his poems, “You need a double barrelled gun/to shoot a bilingual poet./One bullet in the head will never be/enough to kill me.” No, not even the machine gun of commercial publishing, it appears. It is enough to make one start believing in Ganesh and Saraswati again—and in publishers, or at least those like Pras Prakashan.

Literary giant Born in St Kitts and now living in London and New York (such dual location being as much a signifier of success in literary life as a Booker), Caryl Phillips has been described as “one of the literary giants of our times”. His latest novel, In the Falling Snow, sustains this reputation. Through an account of Keith, a black social worker estranged from his English wife and teenage son because of a rash affair, Phillips provides a penetrating portrait of multicultural, contemporary London, a world where one can feel vulnerable both as a black man and as a white-collar, middle-aged father. It is also a touching story of what parents, despite their individual differences, owe to their children, and the pressures thereof. Tabish Khair is the Denmark-based, Bihar-born author of Filming. Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

FREE VERSE | CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

In That Place Where Mind Meets Mind In that place where mind meets mind Eye speaks to eye, and in the same breath hears The long-barred self is intertwined With one that it both needs and steers A peace opens out, and a music binds One moment to another, and day to day The soul runs free, and all that it finds It somehow both keeps and gives away. Such was the place, or such the dream That smiled, and then from me was taken I slipped back into the common stream My life moved on, but my faith was shaken. Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Culture ART

Pakistan’s alternate energy source PHOTOGRAPHS

The world is finally taking notice of life beyond the conflict zone; Indian collectors have helped

Montage: (right) High Rise: Lake City Drive (detail) by Huma Mulji); (centre) The Principal of Delicacy by Anwar Saeed; and Feroza by Adeela Suleman.

B Y M ELISSA B ELL

ASIA SOCIETY

New targets: Young and the Fearless by Arif Mahmood.

melissa.b@livemint.com

···························· nternational headlines on Pakistan are uniformly negative. Political upheavals, violent clashes, suicide bombings: The list goes on. But a flurry of upcoming art shows may begin to change the global conversation about the country. “Art flourishes in the worst of circumstances. We have issues to talk about. We have issues to engage with,” says Salima Hashmi, curator of the exhibition Hanging Fire at the Asia Society, New York, which opened on 9 September. “The spotlight on Pakistan is very different internationally, and specifically in the US. This is an opportunity for us to talk to them.” Artist Bani Abidi agrees. Western media, in writing, but even more importantly in visuals, presents Pakistan strictly as a conflict zone, she says. There is absolutely no imagery that allows readers to see the life that exists. The show is the first US museum exhibition of contemporary Pakistani art, but it is not the only place one can find Pakistan in New York this month. A gallery show at Aicon Gallery presenting artist Farida Batool began yesterday. And Christie’s has an auction of modern South Asian art, featuring 10 Pakistani artists, on 16 September. Pakistani contemporary art has slowly been building momentum in the international art market, especially since the 2005 Beyond Borders show in Mumbai. In fact, Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society, says Indian collectors have helped foster and support the fledgling Pakistani art community with their patronage. Anupam Poddar, founder of the Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, has been one of the largest purchasers of pieces from Pakistan. He plans to display some of them at an exhibition curated by Pakistani artist Rashid Rana in New Delhi in December. According to Pakistani art critic Quddus Mirza, the contemporary art scene has taken shape over the past 10 years. Hashmi agrees, “We’ve seen a great burst of energy.” A big emphasis has been on the reinterpretation of Mughal miniatures. Encouraged by artist Zahoor ul Akhlaq, who died in 1999, artists began to contemporize this traditional form. Hashmi included Akhlaq in the Hanging Fire show because of the strong impact he has had on the Pakistani art world. “So many of us ben-

COURTESY THE

efited from being his contemporary. There are about four artists in the show who were directly his students. And then there are third-generation artists who were mentored by those students.” Mirza says one of the greatest strengths of the contemporary art scene in Pakistan is this continuity from teacher to student. Prior to 1990, there was only one art school in the entire country, the National College of Arts in Lahore. “It is really a closely knit society,” he says. But “there is no great policy of the government, of the public, of the market to shape something into ‘Pakistani Art’”, says Mirza. “So there is great confusion, which is also a great infusion. You blend times, genres, methods, techniques; it has really enriched Pakistani art.” Artist Huma Mulji says the show is a “crash course” in the contemporary art scene and

will be important for showcasing more than just the miniatures. “Contemporary miniature painting is exquisite and a strong ‘movement’, but one of the crucial reasons it gets attention is because it’s easy to show, transport, sell. In that context, this is an important exhibition, which allows for video, sculpture and photographic works to be seen too, which in Pakistan are thriving.” Chiu says the idea of hosting a Pakistani show at the Asia Society came to her several years ago when she saw the popular miniature work at a gallery show in New York, but she quickly realized she wanted to show more than just the reinvention of the miniatures. Over 50 works by 15 different artists are now on show, ranging from the large-scale installations by Adeela Suleman and Hamra Abbas to the miniature work by Imran Qureshi.

While there are artists involved in miniature tradition innovation, including a piece installed in the museum specifically for the show by Qureshi, there are pieces from a variety of mediums. Arif Mahmood showcases photo documentary work. Huma Mulji has installed her statues of cows suddenly caught on top of neoclassical pillars, a playful look at the clash between rural life and modernization in the suburbs of Pakistan. And Rashid Rana has displayed the photomontage work he is known for. There are some pieces that Hashmi picked that are geared to speak specifically to an American audience, such as Bani Abidi’s video installation Shan Pipe Band Learns ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. Abidi paid a Pakistani wedding band to learn the US national anthem. She recorded their hearing the song, their practices and their final performance, which Hashmi says comes off just slightly off-key, creating a unique, humorous conversation about US-Pakistan relations. Abidi says the men in the band do not come off as pitiable. They find the whole process funny as well, so the audience wavers about “who the joke is on”. She notes that the brass bands are actually a relic from the British colonial period; the Shan Pipe Band was originally a Scottish band. That adds another layer to her story: “You’re almost not over one form of colonialism and you find yourself in a situation where you have to grapple with another form of colonialism. It’s funny…it’s melancholic.” Aicon Gallery knew the buzz on Pakistani art was building in the

US and so chose to open its fall programme with a solo exhibition of Farida Batool. Her three-dimensional holographic photographs impose conflicting images to explore the pull-and-push Pakistan exerts over Batool. “It’s really refreshing to see new work coming out of a place that doesn’t have a lot of resources,” Aicon director Priyanka Mathew says. “These cultures are subjugated in some sense and art is a way to break through these shackles and a way to live freely.” Critic Mirza says that art has moved away from specific motifs into more universal themes. “What I find is very positive, artists are not assuming positions; saying what is right or what is wrong. It doesn’t provide solutions.” Hashmi says it was a concern of hers that American audiences would impose symbols on the work. “They’re looking for kind of pegs in the art to hang their preconceived notions on.” She hopes the show won’t leave room for that, and will instead introduce the artists’ individuality and vibrancy to a broader audience. Hanging Fire is on at the Asia Society Museum in New York until 3 January; Farida Batool will show at the Aicon Gallery, New York, until 10 October; Christie’s South Asian Modern+Contemporary Art auction will be held in New York on 16 September. www.livemint.com Get updated on what’s new in the Indian art circuit with previews of five shows at www.livemint.com/artmap.htm

CULTURE L17

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ART

RAAGTIME

Raw passions

SAMANTH S

UNCLEAR RECEPTION

For Bangladeshi artist Mahbubur Rahman, the boundaries between personal and political expression blur to create art

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

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

···························· n a 2004 photographed performance titled Transformations, a man wearing a mask made of jute mesh and buffalo horns, that covers his eyes, blunders about on a beach in Bangladesh. The performance tries to recreate the pathos that the Bangladeshi writer Syed Shamsul Haq evoked in his story about a colonial-era indigo farmer. The farmer’s buffaloes had been taken away, leaving him with no option but to be yoked to the plough till he died of exhaustion. The performer is Mahbubur Rahman—among Bangladesh’s most exciting and radical artists today. The performance, later repeated in shows in London and Warsaw, is distinctly representative of his oeuvre. Much like the farmer who was left without resources and forced to use his body, Rahman often uses his face and body to make statements about Bangladesh’s complicated political and cultural environment. Forty-year-old Rahman’s work is visceral and raw. In one painting, Cosmic World 1 (2004), he depicts his own autopsied body and in another installation, North South (2005), two life-sized video projections of himself are connected by dangling twin hearts. The first is Rahman’s comment on a changing society’s need to self-analyse, and the second, on Bangladesh’s splintered history. Rahman paints in various formats. He also performs, makes installations, creates video and engages in photography. His love for different media is what drew Devi Art Foundation’s Anupam Poddar to him. A pioneering col-

lector of works by emerging contemporary artists from the subcontinent, Poddar first came across Rahman’s work on a trip to Dhaka in 2006. He was impressed by the artist’s concern for society. “His practice has a potent combination of play and a certain political commitment,” says Poddar, explaining what drove him to buy around 20 of Rahman’s artworks. Poddar is now showcasing select pieces from his personal collection as a Mahbubur Rahman solo show at the Devi Art Foundation’s gallery space in Gurgaon. Cows, which symbolize Bangladesh’s communal divide; autopsied bodies and brains that connote the artist’s process of self-analysis; and screaming faces that portray the common man’s frustration—these are recurrent motifs in Rahman’s works. Curator Vidya Shivadas has put together a show that tests its audience. In an installation titled Toys Are Watching Toys (2002), you come face to face with a video, projected on a wall, of a cow being slaughtered in a crowded marketplace in Dhaka to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha. Mannequins of a bride and groom are seated below the projection and a roomful of burqa-clad mannequins serve as spectators.

Visceral: (clockwise from left) Mahbubur Rahman at Anupam Poddar’s residence in New Delhi; Transformations, 2004, photograph by Tayeba Begum Lipi; and The Story of Four Days, 2000, oil on canvas.

Through this installation, Rahman likens the fate of the bride to cow slaughter. The graphic installation is a collaborative venture with his wife, feminist artist Tayeba Begum Lipi. Through the Britto Arts Trust that he co-founded with his wife and fellow artist Shishir Bhattacharjee, Rahman has produced many other collaborative works. Some years ago, a 10-day interactive workshop between rickshaw painters and artists resulted in fascinating canvases that blended kitsch with classical art forms. In 2006, he worked

alongside religious Paubha painters from Nepal. Rahman studied painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Dhaka, and because of the country’s decade-long military rule, it took him 13 years to graduate. It was here, in the fiercely political environment of his art school—set up in 1943 by freedom-era political artists such as Zainul Abdein and Anwarul Haq—that much of his political outlook took shape. Though Rahman has attended art residencies in Ireland, Indonesia, India, Korea, Denmark and Britain, he laments the lack of exposure for Bangladeshi artists today. “Back home, I work from my living room,” he says. “Our country has other concerns to look into,” he adds as he walks me through his works at Devi, evidently pleased with the dedicated space for his work. Rahman is working hard to change things. The Britto Arts Trust has been been striving to generate resources and studio space for artists. And more importantly, to create an open space for generating public opinion. Yet, Rahman shrugs off labels, saying with perfect calm, “I’m not an activist, just an artist.” Mahbubur Rahman-Solo Exhibition is showing at Devi Art Foundation, Sirpur House, Gurgaon, till 1 November.

or south Indians, one of the most evocative reminders of the wedding season is the sound of nadaswarams and thavils (drums)—a holdover from the times when these ceremonies were performed in temples but still somehow fitting beautifully into this era of air-conditioned marriage halls. This is no mere muzak; in the key early morning rituals, the artists perform very specific functions. When the couple sits on a swing, to be blessed by a retinue of aunts, the troupe plays a set of classic melodies, including the sweet, poignant Sita Kalyana. When the groom ties the thali around the bride’s neck, some grizzled old relative on the dais will hold one finger up above the throng and shake it rapidly—the cue for the percussionists to go to town and pound their instruments into submission. Throughout, the music meshes into the morning’s ceremony like the gears of smooth clockwork. On the other hand, the evening reception, a newer element of the south Indian wedding, hasn’t quite figured out how to integrate live Carnatic into its operations. The scene is thus dismally familiar. Bride and groom stand at one end of the hall, shaking hand after hand, summoning up smile after smile for photo after photo. Around them, their guests wade heartily into social talk, finally able to ask Gopal Mama in person if his new son-in-law Badri is the same Badri who studied at IIT Bombay with Mala’s brother Vishnu. At the other end of the hall, a violinist plays a wonderful little phrase in the raga Abheri, caught only by a handful of enthusiasts who wish the others would shut up about Badri. I’ve often attended such On the side: Musicians at a wedding reception. receptions, and I’ve always felt keen stabs of sympathy for the musicians. There seems to be no easy solution to this problem. For a number of upcoming musicians, the wedding reception offers not only terrific visibility but also a secure livelihood; over the course of 2 hours of relatively undemanding performance at a reception, a musician can earn three or four times the pay she would from a more gruelling concert-hall recital. Without that subsidy, I suspect that many more musicians would get disheartened with their shaky finances and return to their chartered accountancy exams or pursuing their engineering degree. For the guests, most of whom nowadays meet their extended clan only at weddings, the lure of conversation is understandably strong. For the sensitive host, any well-intentioned attempt to impose a semblance of silence can feel unreasonable and draconian. My sister recently attended a reception where the groom’s mother, a musician herself, sternly insisted on shushing her guests when the concert was in progress. But garrulity still had its way; eventually the crowd began to thin as people simply took their conversations outside the hall. I did go to one reception, two years ago, that had engineered a fair compromise. The invitation clearly announced that the concert would take an hour before the actual reception, allowing those who wanted to listen to the music to turn up accordingly. During the concert, the lights were dimmed, and the bride and groom sat in the front row and resolutely refused to mingle. Then, once the concert ended, they took their places on the dais, ready to begin an evening of glad-handing the assembled masses. Write to Samanth Subramanian at raagtime@livemint.com

FILM REVIEW | DISTRICT 9

All too human How will mankind treat helpless aliens in its midst? B Y A .O . S COTT ···························· or decades—at least since Orson Welles scared the daylights out of radio listeners with War of the Worlds back in 1938—the public has embraced the terrifying prospect of alien invasion. But what if, notwithstanding the occasional humanist fable like E.T., all those movies and television programmes have been inculcating a potentially toxic form of interplanetary prejudice? District 9, a smart, swift new film from the South African director Neill Blomkamp, raises

such a possibility in part by inverting an axiomatic question of the UFO genre. In place of the usual mystery—what are they going to do to us?—this movie poses a different kind of hypothetical puzzle. What would we do to them? The answer, derived from intimate knowledge of how we have treated one another for centuries, is not pretty. A busy opening flurry of mock-news images and talkinghead documentary chin scratching fills in a grim, disturbingly plausible scenario. Back in the 1980s, a giant spacecraft stalled in the skies over Johannesburg. On board were a large number of starving and disoriented creatures, who were rescued and placed in a temporary refugee camp in the part of the city that gives the film its title. Over the

next 20 years, the settlement became a teeming shanty town, like so many others in the developing world, with the relatively minor distinction of being home to tall, skinny bipeds with insectlike faces and bodies that seem to combine biological and mechanical features. Though there is evidence that those extraterrestrials—known in derogatory slang as prawns because of their vaguely crustacean appearance—represent an advanced civilization, their lives on Earth are marked by squalor and dysfunction. And they are viewed by South Africans of all races with suspicion, occasional pity and xenophobic hostility. The South African setting hones the allegory of District 9 to a sharp topical point. That country’s history of apartheid and its continuing social problems are never mentioned, but they hardly need to be. And the film’s implications extend far beyond

Less than stellar: Humans come off very poorly in District 9. the boundaries of a particular nation, which is taken as more or less representative of the planet as a whole. No group, from the mostly white soldiers and bureaucrats who corral and abuse the prawns to the Nigerian gangsters who prey upon the aliens and exploit their addiction to cat

food, is innocent. But casual bigotry turns out to be the least of the problems facing the exiles. As it progresses, District 9 uncovers a horrific programme of medical experimentation yoked to a near-genocidal agenda of corporate greed. A company called MNU (it stands, none too subtly, for Multi-Na-

tional United) has taken over the administration of the prawn population, which means resettling the aliens in a remote enclosure reminiscent of the Bantustans of the apartheid era. At its core the film tells the story—hardly an unfamiliar one in the literature of modern South Africa—of how a member of the socially dominant group becomes aware of the injustice that keeps him in his place and the others, his designated inferiors, in theirs. The cost he pays for this knowledge is severe, as it must be, given the dreadful contours of the system. But if the film’s view of the world is bleak, it is not quite nihilistic. It suggests that sometimes the only way to become fully human is to be completely alienated. ©2009/The New York Times District 9 released on Friday. Write to lounge@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

My steamy weekend affair PHOTOGRAPHS

A method of cooking loved by the Mughals enchants this writer

h yes, it’s true. We fell in love one warm, monsoon weekend, nearly 13 years ago. I can’t forget those furtive touches, spice-laden caresses and the grand finale that steamed up my glasses. Down, all of you. That’s what the ancient Indian art of dum or sealed, steam cooking does to me. My friends always did question the ecstasies that food sparked in me, but their fears that I would spend my life divided between writing and the kitchen dissolved when a woman wriggled her way into my attentions. Still, dum cooking and I brook no distraction. When I put something on dum, my eyes tend to glaze over as I spend my time tending to the details and getting excited about the possibilities. I’ve always attempted dum cooking on a weekend, when I have time on my hands: This is not something that should be rushed. Dum is the ancient Indian method of steaming or stewing food in its own juices—doesn’t that sound exciting already?—in a vessel or pan, sealed with dough. You can also use a foil, or use a foil instead of a lid and then seal it with dough. Purists will tell you that you need to use a spherical clay pot, a handi. That would be ideal. But I’ve never gone beyond a battered aluminium pan and a worn non-stick vessel. It works. Dum is particularly good when you’re having guests because (a) it’s an easy method to cook for many and (b) it looks cool,

doesn’t it, to cut through the dough and let them inhale that flavour-laden steam. There’s a reason, beyond looking regal, that the Mughal empire was so taken with dum cooking. It’s just the best way to retain the flavours of your meats and spices. I don’t really have a favourite dum recipe. You can throw in any combination of spices and meats—don’t try fish unless you want a soupy mess. I’m a firm believer in experiments in the kitchen. When I first tried my version of dum cooking 13 years ago, it worked immediately. I do remember that the gravy was watery, possibly because I had not dried the chicken well. The recipe I’m offering you is my take on something I read somewhere as a Kashmiri Pandit dish. Of course, the Pandits never used olive oil or rosemary. My colleague Ashutosh Sapru tells me Pandits generally cooked mutton and fish, not chicken—like their Muslim cousins. Chicken was first cooked in his home only in the 1980s. Till the day she died, his grandmother refused to eat it.

Chicken in a pot: 1. Marinate the chicken for at least an hour; 2. seal the vessel with chapati dough; and 3. garnish with rosemary once the chicken is cooked. 2 green chillies, deseeded and chopped Half a handful of parsley (or coriander), washed and chopped 1K cups of yogurt N tsp mustard seeds 1 clove

Ingredients 1kg chicken 1 tbsp olive oil 3 sprigs of rosemary

For the sealing dough Roughly prepare chapati dough with flour and water. Roll out into two-three baton-size noodles. Method Wash and clean the chicken.

Drain all the water. Mix all the ingredients of the marinade well, apply on chicken and set aside for at least an hour (5-6 hours is best). Take a medium non-stick vessel. Heat olive oil. Don’t let the oil smoke. When hot, pour in the marinated chicken. Increase heat and turn over for 5-10 minutes. Lower heat, place vessel on a tawa (iron griddle) so that it does not get direct heat. Close lid and start sealing, pressing the dough

down on the lid and on the side of the vessel. Take care, the vessel will be hot. With the gas on simmer, allow the chicken to steam in its own juices for about 70 minutes. Patch up the seal with dough if you spot leaks. After 70 minutes, cut open the seal with a knife. Sprinkle rosemary over the chicken. Serve hot with an accompanying raita (recipe follows). Best with plain, steamed rice.

Option After opening the seal, sprinkle home-made garam masala (from the seeds of 2 black cardamom pods, a 1-inch piece of cinnamon, 7-8 cloves and 9-10 black peppers)

Radish raita Ingredients 5-6 small red radishes, or K a large radish, grated

HUNGRY PLANET | NAOKI OKUMURA

Kaiseki with a French twist Sashimi with a French dressing and salad leaves B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

···························· aiseki is a Japanese style of cooking, with food served in small portions. Its roots lie in the elaborate 16th century rituals of a Japanese tea ceremony. Kaiseki, traditionally a very formal cuisine, uses only fresh, natural and local Japanese ingredients. Naoki Okumura, whose team runs the 16-seater Naoki counter at The Aman, New Delhi, serves kaiseki with a French twist. Trained in the French style of food preparation, Okumura likes to describe himself as a chef who fuses two diverse styles of cooking and presentation to create a unique third. It is a concept that he says has worked well at Gion Okumura, his restaurant in the heart of Kyoto’s historical Gion

district. Edited excerpts from an interview: You trained in French cuisine, but are now a kaiseki chef. Why the switch? My father had experimented with mixing French and Japanese styles of food preparation and I too wanted to train in French techniques. That’s why I studied in Paris. But if you run a restaurant in Kyoto, like I do, it is tough to ignore the traditional aspects of serving and preparing Japanese food. I could not disassociate myself from it completely. Besides I found French cuisine limiting as far as presentation was concerned. Japan has four seasons and our food has unique seasonality. In French cooking there is no such concept. What is different about my cooking is that I use the kaiseki concepts for presentation but while cooking I fuse French techniques and Japanese methods. What is unique to kaiseki? The guest must not only enjoy

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Kashmiri Dum Chicken with Rosemary

For the marinade 1 tsp ginger powder (sonth) 3 tsp saunf powder 2 tsp deghi mirch 1K cups curd Salt to taste A few strands of saffron 15 raisins

Method Whip the yogurt till smooth. Fold in the grated radish and half the coriander. Now, prepare the seasoning (tadka). Add mustard seeds to half-a-teaspoon of hot olive oil. When the seeds start to pop, add the chillies and clove. Let the tadka cool before pouring over the raita. Decorate with the remaining parsley. 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 the managing editor of the Hindustan Times. Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com PHOTOGRAPHS

eating the food but also looking at it. Everything used in the preparation and presentation of food in kaiseki is part of “equipment”. Even a plate is equipment and hence it must be beautiful. In French cuisine, the emphasis is on simplicity in presentation vis-á-vis beauty. What sets a kaiseki restaurant apart? The interaction between the chef and the clients is important. Most kaiseki chefs work on one side of the counter while the guests are seated on the other. The chef must not just feed but also entertain the client—and that is done through the kind of equipment used, the dishes created and constant interaction. A kaiseki chef must also surprise his clients constantly. I usually ensure that the first dish is spectacular. This is to create a good first impression. I also alternate styles of cooking. So if the first recipe uses a Japanese style, the second will use a French one. How are Japanese clients different from European ones? Japanese clients want to sample varieties—small bites of many things rather than a large main course dish. They want many courses. To know the French style of cooking helps me to create many different dishes they have not tasted before. For example, sashimi is usually

HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

Mix ‘n’ match: Naoki Okumura at the Naoki counter, The Aman, New Delhi; and (above) tomato soup served in a bell pepper. served with wasabi and soy sauce but I prepare a dish at my restaurant in Kyoto where I serve sashimi with salad leaves and a dressing that is influenced by French cuisine.

Tomato soup Serves 4 Ingredients 500g tomatoes 20ml rice vinegar Salt to taste 400ml soya milk 30ml milk 10ml fresh cream 100g okra ¼ yellow zucchini A yellow bell pepper (to be used as serving bowl)

Method Peel tomatoes using hot water and remove seeds. Sprinkle a small portion of salt over the tomatoes and bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 8 minutes. Purée in a blender and chill in a refrigerator after adding some salt and rice vinegar. To make Yuba crème, bring soya milk to boil once, and then cool. Keep the temperature at 40 degrees Celsius, and remove the film on the surface (which is Yuba).

Wait 13 minutes for the new film to set. Repeat the process twice more. Blend the Yuba with milk and fresh cream. Boil water in a pot and add some salt. Put okra in for a second and then take it out. Remove seeds and mince to get a sticky mass. Slice the zucchini and deep fry. Cut the bell pepper in half and remove seeds. Chill the bell pepper and then pour the tomato soup in it. Garnish with a drizzle of Yuba crème, minced okra, and fried zucchini.

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