Final pdf for web 03 nov 14 by Open Media Network

SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY STREETS OF HATE

SHAMSUR RAHMAN FARUQI LAST USTAD

THE LOST ART OF MUJRA l i f e

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3 N OV E M B E R 2 0 14 / R S 4 0

THE SHOw GOES ON The second referendum on Modi propels Change

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor PR Ramesh Deputy Editors Aresh Shirali, Ullekh NP art director Madhu Bhaskar Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

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R Rajmohan

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Volume 6 Issue 43 For the week 28 October—3 November 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

cover design

Anirban Ghosh

Chandrasekaran

The author pits the psyche of the poor against the rich that stems from the yawning gap between the two (‘Why Indians Hate the Rich’, 27 October 2014). But the portrayal of animosity between the two, instead of [blaming] a role or policy of the government for the huge disparity, seems diversionary. In any unequal society, such distrust is inevitable. The hard truth that tax reprieves, concessions and incentives showered on big business houses exceed India’s budget deficit bears testimony to the skewed The huge inequality in priorities of the rulers. It income, as revealed by is the saga of keeping the official data, warrants affluent in good health that the Centre re-jig its while letting the poor go policy to narrow the gap lament their destiny. between the indigent The Planning and wealthy Commission earlier earned the ire of the public for its unrealistic estimate of the poverty level. Ironically, both the Congress and BJP are seen on the same page of economic propositions. The huge inequality in income, as revealed by official data, warrants that the Centre re-jig its policy to narrow the gap between the indigent and wealthy.  letter of the week Here’s to Hindi Fiction

this is one of the finest pieces I read in Open (‘The New Heroes of MBA Lit’, 27 October 2014). I am so glad this subject got written about. As a reader, I have no personal dislike for popular English fiction ruling the market right now, but definitely have a literary snob’s anguish at the market. But this piece neither condemns nor hails either market forces or pop lit in Hindi or English. After reading this article, I have decided to read Nikhil Sachan’s Namak Swadanusar. The last books in Hindi I read were Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Parineeta and Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s Umrao Jaan Ada four years ago when I was a student of English literature; in fact, the only two novels in Hindi that I have read after class X.  priya

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Erasure of History

this article on Mecca is incredibly sad to read (‘The Reconfigured Utopia’, 6 October 2014). Erasure of rich history, no matter where and how—whether it happens in the bombed cities of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or via willful demolition as in China or in Saudi Arabia—is deeply troubling. Beautifully written in a tone of gentle melancholy, this article is also a scorching satire on the consumerism and intolerance that have overtaken the movers and shakers of the Islamic world.  MJ

Amma’s Nemesis

this refers to the article ‘Payback Time’ (13 October 2014). Dictatorship and demagoguery are the peculiar twins of Tamil Nadu politics. In fact, the very birth of the

Dravida Khazagam and its breakaway factions DMK and AIADMK are owed to a peculiar Dravidian fanaticism, revolving around high decibel Tamil nationalism and deification of street-smart politicians (barring a few like Annadurai) as statesmen. No wonder, filmstars-turned-politicians found the political field more lucrative than the fickle fortunes of filmdom, and they promoted geo-centric politics, and fashioned the poor, gullible and cine-crazy Tamil masses into vote banks. They devalued all democratic norms, degraded bureaucracy as the handmaid of the ruling party, dabbled in the politics of neighbouring countries, gagged the press, discredited opponents and evolved deeply detestable personality cults. J Jayalalithaa is a product of this perverse political ambience, and she eventually projected herself as ‘Amma’, the supreme matriarch. While she along with her accomplices Sasikala, Sudhakaran and J Ilavarasi looted the public exchequer, the gullible masses hailed her as ‘Thalaivi’ and even held the judiciary as the villain out to vilify their goddess. Despite being the owner of 20 kg of gold, 800 kg of silver, 700 pairs of footwear, 10,000 saris and 2,000 acres of land, she landed in Bangalore Central Jail. Though her resurrection is not ruled out, one has to agree with the poet Byron, who said that ‘Tyranny is far the worst of treasons—the prince who neglects or violates trust is more a brigand than a robber chief.’  SM Kompella

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openmagazine to 56070

small world

Abhishek Srivastava

Bharath Kumar, Shashi Kumar Vand and Deepak NS (from left to right)

A Divine Approach to Dirt In a small town near Bangalore, three inventive youngsters put waste at the service of gods Bidadi is a small town 35

km from Bangalore, but the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan can take a leaf out of the book of three youths there. Bharath Kumar is just 21 years old, but in Bidadi is known as someone who turns trash into art, including that for adorning gods. Among other things, he, along with two others, decorates the idol in the 135-year-old temple there using recycled waste on occasions like Navratri. BG Shiva Kumar, a fourth generation pujari who runs the

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temple, says, “I allow the boys to decorate the Tripurasundari deity in different avatars by using waste material, vegetables and other imaginative things every Navratri, Shivratri and other festivals.” The unique form of worship has made his temple very popular. The youngsters use waste to make replicas of monuments, well-known personalities, temples and festivals. Pieces of cloth, cardboard, chalk, anklets, marbles, discarded serial lights, caps and covers of all types, plastic, engraved

snuff boxes, mobile boxes, discarded Barbie dolls or whatever catches their fancy are used. They are helped by their extended families and shopkeepers in town. “We do not throw out any waste without the trio inspecting it,’’ says Ravi Kumar, a neighbour who runs a shop in Bidadi. The trio made a replica of the late king of Mysore with an old Nokia phone box. Bharath Kumar is now working on a small replica of the Sabarimala temple with the 18 steps leading to it.

Bharath Kumar’s father says that his son has been crafting such things ever since he was a child. He would use discarded pieces of lining material and other fabrics from their cloth store-cumhome. Bharath Kumar later enrolled in a well-known arts school in Bangalore. The other two in the mission are Shashi Kumar Vand and Deepak NS. The former is an apprentice with a car manufacturer and helps hunt for material. Deepak NS is a class 10 student. n Anil Budur Lulla

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contents

The maximum city after the results

hurried man’s guide

mumbai

Apple Pay

23 locomotif

cover story

Is India prepared for it?

open essay

Marked out in a merciless village

haryana

The constant campaigner

ebola

Now part of the BJP empire

Push for change

in memoriam

Benjamin C Bradlee (1921–2014)

Editor the Great The celebrated Washington Post editor who oversaw the Pentagon Papers and Watergate stories was the gatekeeper of a free press madhavankutty pillai

4 open

Charles del Vecchio/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Bradlee’s death, Woodward said he was Department of Defense on the Vietnam here are infrequent moments probably the greatest editor of the War that detailed a history of covert when a newspaper’s course melts aggression against the country despite the 20th century because he created an into the course of history. For atmosphere in the Post’s newsroom about routine denials of US leaders. After The instance, on 13 January 1898, the writer there being “mysteries out there, things New York Times started publishing the Émile Zola wrote a letter to the French papers leaked by Ellsberg, the government we don’t know about, we are not getting to President on the cover page of L’Aurore the bottom of... so we have to keep digging managed to get a court injunction against under the headline ‘J’Accuse’. He listed at it.” When Bradlee was appointed the it. That was when Bradlee, who also got the flawed evidence that led to the Post’s assistant managing editor in 1965, it the papers from Ellsberg, decided to carry imprisonment of an army colonel, Alfred them in The Washington Post in violation of was a regional daily vying with local Dreyfus, for spying. Zola charged that rivals. In a few years, he’d turned it into a the order. It was a test case on the public’s Dreyfus’ only ‘crime’ was being Jewish. vigorous institution with pan-American right to know versus the State’s right to Zola was also sentenced, went into exile and later global influence. ‘He achieved secrecy. It moved to the Supreme Court, but the ripples of that article led to that goal by combining compelling news which said it was the duty of a free and Dreyfus’ release, an overhaul of the stories based on aggressive reporting unrestrained press to challenge any French army and the country confronting with engaging feature pieces of a kind government deceiving its people. its anti-Semitism. previously associated with the best In Watergate, burglars had entered and In modern newspaper history, it has magazines,’ wrote the paper of him. bugged the Democratic Party office with been the publication of the Pentagon He was a reporter’s editor who had the knowledge of US President Richard Papers and the Watergate scandal in the served in World War II and also had an Nixon. Overseen by Bradlee, the steady early 1970s that changed the definition of understanding of the government because press freedom. Both had their own stars in stream of exposes by Woodward and he had been part of its propaganda Bernstein led to Nixon being forced out the form of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked division. He then turned to journalism, of office. Speaking to CBS News after the Pentagon papers, and the reporters beginning as a correspondent Bob Woodward and Carl for Newsweek, which was bought Bernstein who uncovered Benjamin C Bradlee (left) with Katharine Graham of The Washington Post by the Post, his next employer Watergate. But the man who (and so till he retired). they submitted their exposes to As an editor, Bradlee resisted and who decided that this was an all phony attempts to invoke issue worth fighting the US ‘national security’ as a pretext to government over was muzzle the press. And he had a The Washington Post Executive journalist’s sense of scepticism. Editor Benjamin C Bradlee, who In Woodward’s words, “He didn’t died on Tuesday at the age of 93. believe the first version, the Watergate is more famous, but second version... when you got for an editor, the Pentagon Papers to the tenth version he might expose was riskier because it say ‘okay’. One of his favourite would mean flouting a court lines was ‘The truth emerges injunction for a principle. The but slowly.’” n Papers were a study by the US 3 november 2014

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

Govinda’s comeback mantra

books

mujra

Arundhathi Subramaniam’s new collection of poems

Passing of a culture

p s

books

science

Urdu writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

■

ind west

ies cr

icket

te am

■

f o r abandoning their India

tour midway The West Indies cricket team recently abandoned their India tour after the fourth one-day international (ODI) in Dharamshala, with one ODI, a Twenty20 and three Test matches still to go, resulting in a loss of 17 days of cricket. The pull-out occurred because of a row between the cricket team and the West Indies

Art and gender

Cricket Board (WICB) over a new MoU between the Board and the players. Although the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) tried to intervene and even warned them that there would be consequences, the impasse couldn’t be broken and the tour was abandoned. Both WICB and the players failed to appreciate the ill effects of such a drastic decision. The BCCI has replaced the abandoned matches with five ODIs against Sri Lanka next month, but it still stands to lose, media reports say, about $65 million in revenue. But the BCCI has now suspended all bilateral tours to West Indies. India was expected to play five series against West Indies over the next eight years, including four visits to the Caribbean. The Indian Board will reportedly also be initiating legal proceedings against the WICB. The players will probably be suspended, or worse, banned for life from international level cricket. n

The NCP had ruled out any deal with the BJP but the latter’s electoral victory in Maharashtra has made it rethink its stance realpolitik

“There is no question of going with BJP” —NCP chief Sharad Pawar, 4 October, CNN-IBN

turn

ers able Play n o s a e r n U ek of the We

“We will extend unconditional outside support to the BJP” —NCP leader Praful Patel, 19 October

around

Vigilance as the Price of Domestic Security Investigation Agency (NIA) has promptly registered an FIR in the Burdwan blast case that points to increased activities of jihadi elements in the hinterland of West Bengal. Although the first reflex of the state government led by Mamata Banerjee was to whitewash the peril, the evidence gathered from the site forced the regime to acknowledge that there could have been a plot to unleash a terror attack. Bangladesh, which has been coordinating its anti-terror operations with India, had

the national

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recently informed the Centre that funds are being pumped in from across the border for terror activities. Agencies in India do not rule out the possibility that the bombs made in Burdwan were for Bangladeshi outfits. It should be recalled that al-Qaeda had announced the constitution of a South Asia unit to coordinate its terror plans in the region. It is time politicians rose above petty considerations of vote bank politics and aided the efforts to thwart the danger of terrorism. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to Apple Pay—the next stage in smartphone evolution With Apple announcing Apple Pay on Monday, it has now taken a step towards making the phone a credit card and a wallet too—the next big leap in the use of a smartphone as money. With Apple Pay, a man can walk into stores, buy something and pay by touching his iPhone. Sure, it is currently limited to some establishments and financial networks, but the concept has been unleashed. It is only a matter of time before it becomes ubiquitous across all phones and countries.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

There have been previous attempts to do this but when Apple enters the market, it usually means that the revolution has truly beMoney in currency gun as the company form might also holds the key to reachdisappear in the ing out to most of the future, replaced by United States. As a the phone or other New York Times article wearable wrote, ‘Large tech and technologies like telecom companies like watches or glasses Google, Verizon and AT&T have tried for years to replace the traditional wallet with smartphone apps, having a click here or swipe there replace a credit card or dollar bills at the register. But commerce experts say they believe that the involvement of Apple, which helped revolutionize the mobile industry, could be the impetus that moves

The Apple Pay logo in a San Francisco-display window

mainstream consumers to digital payments— the latest in an evolution of the way people buy goods and services.’ This means that it might be time to start saying goodbye to the credit card. At present, it’s the credit card number fed into the phone that does the transaction, but once you have done that, why would the card be needed? The number itself will be enough. Money in currency form might also disappear in the future, replaced by the phone or other wearable technologies like watches or glasses. Technology travels fast and in India too it won’t be too long before this is introduced. n

The Unnatural Response On the Catholic Church’s recent reluctance to ‘welcome’ homosexuality M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

recent issue of The

Economist with the cover headline ‘The Gay Divide’ talked about how the world is made up of countries where gay rights are winning and those in which homosexuals are still treated as criminals (in Saudi Arabia they can even be stoned to death). On the time scale, at least, there is a progression in societies believing that a person’s sexual orientation is his or her own business. The younger generation especially, even in countries that criminalise homosexuality, is agreeing less with such discrimination. The Vatican City is technically a country but here the tug of war over this is somewhat different. The current Pope Francis was once asked about his stand on homosexuality and said that he was no one to judge. But even he is finding it tough to change the mindset of those he leads, as was evident in a U-turn that happened recently. A little more than a week ago, an Assembly of Bishops brought out a draft document which, with some riders, was lauded for finally shedding the Church’s antipathy to gays. A Reuters report said that the document had said ‘the Church should challenge itself to find “a fraternal space” for homosexuals without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony. While the text did not signal any change in the Church’s condemnation of homosexual acts or gay marriage, it used less judgmental and more compassionate language than that seen in Vatican statements prior to the 2013 election of Pope Francis. “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming

home,” said the document...’ But by the time the Assembly brought out the final report, the document had been diluted and the heading of a section called ‘welcoming homosexual persons’ was changed to ‘providing for homosexual persons’. If ‘welcoming’ had been changed then the obvious inference was that the Church was not ready to welcome them. The Guardian wrote that the Pope had lost out to powerful conservatives in the Church and added that in the final report, ‘there is no mention—as there had been in a draft version—of the “gifts and qualities” gay That priests people can offer. choose to Nor is there any remain recognition of celibate the “precious throughout support” same-sex their lives partners can give also goes each other.’ against the This obviously order of has a fallout nature, if it wherever there is a presence of exists the Church, including India where homosexuality is still criminal thanks to an unexpected judgment by the Supreme Court. The opposition to homosexuality, for reasons hard to comprehend, comes inevitably from religious leaders of all dispensations who believe that it goes against an order of nature created by God. But, if you look at it through the prism of rationality, religious orders themselves are prone to ‘unnatural’ ways of being. For example, that priests choose to remain celibate throughout their lives also goes against such an order of nature, if it exists. But there is no such thing as natural or unnatural. Anything that exists in nature exists and so long as it harms no one, it is equal and free. n 3 november 2014

lo co m ot i f

The Constant Campaigner S PRASANNARAJAN

ideology. The admiration he evokes in a majority of the here are two kinds of leaders. For the populace is as spontaneous as the fear he evokes in others first, the struggle for power ends with the who abhor change—and see popularity as no measure of a attainment of office. Once in power, for this man’s worth. lot, it is all about growing old along with Isn’t Narendra Modi one such leader? Look at the pace of his the country, as if you are merely a helpless evolution, and its impact on an India that can claim to have object caught in the flow of history. Such seen almost every variation of salvation theology. Power has leaders come and go, leaving behind a only accelerated his campaign for India; and, if you haven’t country more scarred than redeemed in the noticed yet, there is no perceptible difference between wake of their retirement to oblivion. In India, where the politics and governance, and that is for the better in a country mercilessness of democracy is only matched by its elasticity, like India where politics has come to be seen as a dark art, and such leaders have been a familiar sight since Independence: governance a part-time concern of the ruling politician. Maybe products of circumstances, bystanders thrust on to the centre Indira Gandhi at her peak was the only other leader in this stage, sustained by the exigencies of realpolitik rather than mould, but her provenance was different—of bloodline and national interest. It is easy to attribute their ascent—and entitlement. Still, power was a passion play for her, or politics the inevitable descent—to fractured mandates and to the 24/7. But it was politics driven by the inheritance of reality of one of the world’s last thriving political black socialism and the instincts of a paranoid leader. What was markets. Their freedom, it could be argued, is subordinated unquestionable was her intimacy with India, and that to the whims and wishes of their masters whose egos, in a coalition polity, are larger than their constituencies. That said, emotional covenant between the leader and the nation still remains intact. Modi, a politician in power for more than a it is the mind that differentiates the leader who is in power decade, has never seen governance as an activity independent from the leader who is in office. The truth is that the former, of politics. As a chief minister, he was not an apostle of coweven if he is not blessed with an overwhelming popular dung capitalism; he was an unabashed capitalist in a party that mandate, can do a lot in this country. The ones we are most often behaved as if it was here to take care of the economic familiar with have not done so because they were smaller interests of the corner shopkeeper. His years in Gujarat as men, and power for them was a lucky wayfarer’s fortune. We Chief Minister were a political campaign, without an have had enough of them. Do I need to name them? interruption, for India. The other kind of leader is a rare occurrence. He comes from As Prime Minister, he refuses to call it off. The assembly the deep recesses of a nation’s anxiety, shatters the idyll of elections in Maharashtra and Haryana were, at one level, status quo. He is not the kind to be made use of by history, but, another referendum on the man. Being a ruler as constant as Joseph de Maistre would have said, one to make use of national conversationalist, he needs to know what India thinks history. He has never been a bystander; he has always been of his style. It doesn’t matter to him, whether it is Madison there, making his own ambition one with the desperation of a Square Garden or Mumbai; what matters is the message of country. His struggle does not end with the attainment of being Modi. Modern leadership, after all, is about office. His struggle only intensifies once he is in office. Power communication. Modi, with his innate for him is a permanent state of illustration by anirban ghosh mistrust of media, is his own interpreter struggle. Such a leader is not and image consultant. This is considered a constrained by the limits of office; sign of audacity or arrogance by those who his single-mindedness increases the cannot still fathom his grievance against possibilities of office. The worth of professional truth seekers and conscience such a leader is larger than the keepers. In a country that for the last ten mandate he has won. He builds a years was known for the absence of leadernation with the same zeal with ship and the atrocities of a hologram, this which he perfects his own overabundance of one man and his message iconography. Nothing remains the may seem unsettling to those who dread same once he begins to play out his the shock of change. The fastest evolving mind—and plays with the hopes leader in Asia wants every moment in power and fears of others. The cozy to be a confidence motion tabled in the mind certainties of politics as usual are of India. Narendra Modi has never been swept aside as he puts ideas afraid of judgments. n above the inherited burden of 8 open

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INNOCEAN-001/12

THE SHOW GOES ON politics

The second referendum on Modi propels reforms By PR RAMESH and Ullekh NP

12 open

so spoke

Haryana, which together account for 378 assembly seats, were touted as an acid test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s votecatching ability and his enduring appeal as a leader who breaks caste barriers and takes apart the stomping grounds of political dynasties. Pundits were in a hurry to give a verdict whether the Modi magic, on full display during the General Election of April-May, had waned since then. They were curious to see whether he could still generate a cascade of support for his party in state elections, where local priorities often outweigh national concerns. These elections were also a referendum on BJP President Amit Shah, his first full-fledged election since assuming the party’s top post. Any electoral reverse would have had the commentariat and political rivals calling Shah a one-time wonder, having micro-managed caste arithmetic and the BJP campaign successfully in the Lok Sabha polls as the party’s pointperson in Uttar Pradesh. Yet, Shah was ready to take the risk of pulling out of the party’s alliance in Maharashtra with its recalcitrant ally, Shiv Sena, and go it alone. He had his reasons, though he found it difficult to convince party colleagues early on. Some leaders, like Union Minister Arun Jaitley, were worried about any possible electoral setback being portrayed as Shah’s failure as president. Others were averse to taking such a risk within months of a resounding victory, insisting on the status quo. Besides, the tie-up was several decades old, and never had the BJP fought elections alone in Maharashtra, where the Sena— known for its abrasive ways—was used to playing the dominant partner. Back in those days when the late BJP leaders Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde would discuss the alliance’s strategy with the Sena founder, the BJP’s list of candidates would usually be rejected outright, with a new list handed over by the late Balasaheb Thackeray—with no questions asked; BJP leaders would quietly swallow the insult. That was then. Under new circumstances, Shah had other plans. He had already sensed a groundswell of support in the state for the BJP, thanks mainly to Modi. “I had extensively toured both the states (Maharashtra and Haryana) well before the election campaign had begun (polls were held on 15 October and results declared four days later). And by the time I returned, I was not ready to compromise my cadres’ self-respect any longer. My decision was clear: any tie-up had to be mindful of the interests of the party and cadre,” says Shah in an exclusive conversation with Open, a day after his party has won a majority in Haryana and become the single-largest party in Maharashtra, where the BJP has won over 100 seats. No party has secured more than 100 seats in Maharashtra elections in the past 24 years. The BJP has bagged 123. When Shah broke the news of snapping ties with the Shiv Sena at a BJP Parliamentary Board meeting, Modi

Shah

he state elections of Maharashtra and

We (BJP) are at a time now when we have an undisputed leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi with large approval ratings. Across the country, the BJP has grown much beyond its traditional strongholds and support base” 3 november 2014

Qamar Sibtain/India Today Group/Getty Images

“I was not ready to compromise on my cadres’ self-respect. Any tie-up had to be mindful of the interests of our workers in Maharashtra” “The new Government of Modi doesn’t follow a onesize-fits-all approach. These schemes have to work. And they cannot be run from Delhi. Schemes need people’s participation” 3 november 2014

People have lost faith in the Congress. Successive elections have shown the diminishing clout of the dynasty. There is revulsion against dynasty politics. People vote for performers, not scions”

“We were ready to break new ground. We wanted the BJP to grow in this fertile state and we have many committed leaders with unblemished records in public life, and here we are” open www.openthemagazine.com 13

Kalpak Pathak/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray greets supporters

was preparing to leave for his tour of the US. Modi, who would return to address some 27 massive rallies, left the decision to Shah’s discretion. Many others were fidgety, and soon, party veteran LK Advani would argue that the BJP should keep the coalition in the state intact. Shah’s logic was clear and he wouldn’t have the old guard offer

him tips. “[Such] coalitions took shape when the country lacked a credible leadership and parties lacked geographical spread,” he says, emphasising that the BJP’s base had grown manifold over the years. The current party leadership’s apprehensions of fielding Advani in the campaign were vindicated when he suggested a patch-up with the Sena right after the poll results were announced on 19 October. “He would have been a reluctant campaigner, not someone who would have lived up to the aggressive nature of the campaign that saw bitterness between the allies come to the fore. Shiv Sena’s rowdy behaviour and regionalistic indiscretions came under sharp attack. He would have remained soft,” says a senior BJP leader from Maharashtra. Shah knew whom he was betting so big on. “But we are at a time now when we have an undisputed leader in Modi, with large approval ratings. The BJP, too, has grown much beyond its traditional strongholds and support base. BJP has now become the principal pole in Indian politics,” he tells Open Shah wouldn’t want to dwell on the intricacies of the snapping of ties with Shiv Sena, but party insiders say that the BJP President’s problems with that party, now led by Thackeray’s son Uddhav, were strictly over professional concerns. “Shah, an organisational wizard, resented parleying on equal terms with a man who has 100 per cent less efficiency compared with his father and 100 per cent more arrogance,” says a BJP leader. Once the decision was taken, Shah didn’t want the likes of Advani at the stump. He didn’t want a person devoted to the sanctity of an uneven alliance to dampen a fiercely fought election, which saw a fierce exchange of words between the two allies. But Shah had his team in place. Emboldened by the central leadership’s resolve to fight the polls alone, the BJP cadres swung into action; it was an opportunity for them to make the most of Modi’s popularity. For his part, Shah didn’t want to leave anything to chance. As always, he was in high-energy mode, barely sleeping and managing the war room. He also had senior leaders from other states assisting him. While Union Minister Ananth Kumar was put in charge of monitoring the situation in Delhi, Radha Mohan Singh and Manoj Sinha were in charge of Hindi-speaking urban areas of the state; Bhupender Yadav and Santosh Gangwar were managing the affairs in Hindi-speaking rural areas. Union ministers such as Dharmendra Pradhan and Nitin Gadkari were also thrust into action in Maharashtra. Rajiv Pratap Rudy did a commendable job, organising rallies across the state, especially those addressed by Modi. Every 50 wards (the list of which typically appears

The late Bal Thackeray dictated terms to the BJP when the late Pramod Mahajan negotiated with the Sena

on a single page, or panna) had a senior BJP leader in charge (called ‘panna in-charge’). Shah, a master of grassroots India, knew of the crackup of the incumbent Nationalist Congress Party-Congress party alliance before walking out of the Sena-led coalition in Maharashtra. The Congress would accuse the BJP and NCP of an unholy plot, but the BJP has denied engineering any such political coup. “Had that been the case, how come we went hammer-and-tongs against the NCP during the campaign? How come Modiji campaigned in NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s pocketboroughs that no national leader since Indira Gandhi had ever dared enter?” asks a BJP leader from the state. After the victory, Uddhav called Shah to congratulate him. Shah thanked him, and contrary to the expectations of the Sena leader—whose party mouthpiece Saamna suggested mending ties a day ahead of the poll results— Shah didn’t discuss politics. However, there was no dearth of speculative reports in the media of the Sena approaching the BJP for plum posts in the new cabinet. A senior BJP leader laughed off such reports, saying no one in the party has shown any inclination for a rapprochement with the humbled ally. The leader contended that

contrary to perceptions in a section of the media, both the BJP and RSS are on the same page on this issue. “The Sangh leadership has given us a blank cheque to act on what we think suits our interests in Maharashtra,” he says without elaboration, but adds that the BJP is in no hurry to negotiate with any party. “Let the party cadres celebrate. It is their moment.” Shah thought of the Maharashtra gamble as a long-term strategy. After all, party workers were disillusioned with the alliance. Besides, the growth of the BJP in the state was slower than expected, with aspiring leaders preferring to join the Sena instead because it was the dominant partner, the one presiding over ticket distribution. “We were ready to break new ground. We wanted the BJP to grow in this fertile state and we have many committed leaders with unblemished records in public life, and here we are,” says Shah. Modi Blitz, Again The Prime Minister never stopped fighting, even after reducing the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to irrelevance in the General Election earlier this year. He has shown no PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP/Getty Images

BJP’s Chief Ministerial nominee Devendra Fadnavis outside the party office in Mumbai

mercy to the political parties he has felled in the process; he continues to target them aggressively, and he did so in the Maharashtra polls as well. His primary intent was clear: to expand the BJP’s turf and gain control of the Upper House of Parliament, the members of which are elected by an electoral college of state legislators. An hour before he was to depart from the US after a blockbuster tour, Modi called up leaders back home and asked them to draw out a ‘hectic’ campaign schedule for him. While in America, his Madison Square Garden address had created just the ripples he’d wanted back home. The image of an Indian leader enthralling crowds overseas, impressing bureaucrats and sharing cheerful moments with US President Barack Obama had inspired national pride. That successful visit lifted Modi’s popularity several notches in India, no matter what the pundits had to say about the content of his speeches and the clichés of his pronouncements. Back from the US, the Prime Minister hit the ground running, campaigning tirelessly to ensure an edge for the party in Maharashtra. He did so knowing well that the state’s Assembly elections were going to be a referendum on his popularity as a crowd-puller. Never short of ideas, he plunged right in, calling for an end to dynasties, referring to the Thackerays and Pawars of politics. To his own delight, Modi’s image as the perpetual dynasty slayer seems to have stuck. Like President Obama, whom he spent quality time with in Washington DC, Modi too has used his oratorial

skills for a political advantage. Like leaders of the stature of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Modi’s capacity to communicate effectively seems to have paid off. Evidently, he has a left a mark wherever he has addressed gatherings, be it at a doctors’ summit or a high-level conclave of businessmen. At the peak of the campaign, on 9 October, he took time off to fly to Indore to address businessmen at a meet aimed at promoting investment in Madhya Pradesh, ruled by his BJP colleague Shivraj Singh Chouhan. His speech at the function stood out, and he was well prepared. The previous night, the gist of what he would speak about was shared with the Chief Minister’s office so that both would not raise the same points. Modi brought up specific issues and challenges facing the state of Madhya Pradesh, and the businessmen in attendance, including those from abroad, were impressed. “He is a natural speaker, but Modi still prepares and knows what to raise and when. He never disappoints anyone while giving speeches and that is a great positive in any popular leader,” says a person close to him. As the country returns to a phase where the fortunes of regional parties are on a slide, Modi has been able to project himself as a strong-willed ruler who means business. “We are thankfully in a phase where politics of performance matters more. If you perform, you will survive, or else you will perish,” says Shah. Some experts attribute the weakening of regional parties to a super cycle in politics that saw the power of national parties diminish in the late 1960s when the Indira Gandhi-led

LK Advani was benched during the campaign as he went against the party’s tough line on the Shiv Sena raul irani

Congress high command started nominating leaders in states—which led to a lot of bad blood within the party with pliant state leaderships spurring the rise of regional satraps and parties. Rhythmic Cadence While Modi focuses on sanitation, women’s empowerment and the effective use of government schemes, he does not believe in doling out lollies. “The new Government of Modi doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach. These schemes have to work. And they cannot be run from Delhi. Schemes need people’s participation,” Shah says. The Modi Government has made it clear through various statements that it would get rid of welfare schemes that have destroyed entrepreneurship. Many poverty economists have failed to look at opportunity costs associated with a scheme like the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA); in focusing on employment, they forget

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Sharad Pawar’s NCP offered support from outside to the BJP even before Maharashtra’s vote counting was over

Kunal Patil/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

that the scheme’s outlay could be better spent on the building of rural infrastructure and skilling initiatives that would eventually generate more income for the rural poor and help turn them more enterprising as well. The guarantee of an assured—even if low—income tends to generate laziness. Modi, however, is not someone who wants to get rid of a useful scheme just because the Congress party was behind it either, party leaders aver. “Modi’s style of governance is presidential. Which is why he decided to make the most of the Unique Identification number (UID) project,” says one of them. Modi recently rejected suggestions by a few party colleagues that the UID project be done away with. His argument, according to a person close to the matter, was that much investment had gone into it and that it was a useful project. Similarly, he often shoots down suggestions that border on the utopian. A senior leader 3 november 2014

had suggested that the Ganga cleaning programme be expanded to cover other rivers like the Yamuna. Modi simply said such an expansion would dilute the spirit of the programme that needed single-minded devotion. “We shouldn’t lose focus,” he told one of his Cabinet colleagues. He has, in the past, shot down a Foreign Affairs Ministry proposal not to support plans for a BRICS Bank headquartered outside India. He had said that one needs to be pragmatic in dealing with trade partners. The Prime Minister has also let action—rather than rhetoric—do the talking while dealing with incursions and attacks from Pakistan. When informed of Pakistani strikes, he asked the Army to give a befitting reply with the gun. Several rounds of mortars were fired for several hours to stun Pakistani forces. Then the guns fell silent on both sides of the border. “Strength respects strength. Pakistan would not have stopped had we not gone for a massive offensive,” a senior Foreign Affairs Ministry open www.openthemagazine.com 17

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Sonia Gandhi with Rahul Gandhi

official says. According to Delhi-based geo-strategist and author Brahma Chellaney, the mortar-for-bullet response showed that Modi is different from his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, whose peace-at-any-price approach was founded on the naïve belief that the only alternative to do nothing in response to terror was to go to war. “So, whether it was the Mumbai attacks or a border savagery, such as a captured Indian soldier’s beheading, Singh responded by doing nothing. The real choice was never between persisting with a weak-kneed policy and risking an all-out war. Indeed, that was a false, immoral choice that undermined the credibility of India’s own nuclear deterrent and emboldened the foe to step up aggression,” Chellaney says. A Union minister claims that there is indeed a “cultural shift” underway in Raisina Hill. “The idea is to have bureaucrats and politicians work in tandem to ensure the speedy implementation of projects. That was made a few officials unhappy because they are used to dawdling. Otherwise, the whole Government is working hard. There is fear of being caught napping. Which I think 18 open

is not bad,” he says. He adds that it is a “renewed sense of purpose” that prompted the Government to go ahead with big-ticket reforms such as diesel price deregulation and a new pricing formula for domestically produced natural gas. Over the next few months, the Government will unleash its next round of reforms by implementing the Goods & Services Tax (GST) and going for higher foreign direct investment (FDI) in insurance and pension, says the minister. “A new coal allocation policy is also being drafted,” he adds. The victory in these elections (in a departure from tradition, Modi was the face of the state polls too) is expected to give a big push to Modi’s initiatives. “After all, with Gujarat and Maharashtra (likely) under its control, the party will have control of states that contribute 22 per cent to the country’s GDP. That gives enormous confidence to any ruler,” says the Union Minister. Certainly, state-election victories are expected to give Modi more strength in the Rajya Sabha, which will see many members retiring by 2016. He would be less constrained then to push ahead with key pieces of 3 november 2014

legislation that may otherwise face resistance in the Upper House, where the BJP is in a minority. Maharashtra and Haryana together send 24 members to the Rajya Sabha. At the moment, the BJP has two Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra and none from Haryana. The party has over the past one year won several state elections, and wrested control of Congress-ruled states like Rajasthan. Which means Modi’s goal of a majority in the Rajya Sabha is likely to be achieved. It is just a matter of time. Red Tape to Red Carpet So far, the Modi Government has been trying to undo the damage done by the previous Congress-led Government, which had promoted cronyism besides harassing other businesses. Its latest move is to reduce the time of registering a company to a single day from 27 days (as estimated now), as part of a series of measures aimed at making the process of doing business in the country less cumbersome. Currently, on the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index, India ranks 134 out of 189 countries listed, way behind China and even neighbours such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) would be the nodal agency and it has set a deadline of 3-6 months for the implemention of these changes. A Cabinet note says that the Government also plans to slash the number of taxes. It adds that the DIPP has set timelines for various

major blow to cronyism cultivated in the past both by corporates and politicians alike. A senior Mumbai-based businessman couldn’t meet ministers despite spending weeks in Delhi. “Businessmen can meet Mr Mishra. They don’t have to waste their time or that of the ministers. They don’t have to take any circuitous route,” says another Union minister. Businesses have often complained that half their time in getting a project run was spent lobbying in the corridors of power in Delhi. The Manmohan Singh Government had come under flak over a raft of scams, including allocation of coalmining rights and spectrum licences to companies that enjoyed the goodwill of the regime. The country’s external auditor, Comptroller and Auditor General of India, had said in various reports that such unethical practices on the Centre’s part had resulted in losses of several lakh crore to the exchequer. The Government of the time also allegedly tweaked policies to suit the needs of friendly corporates, and scared off foreign investors with frivolous taxation measures. The record of the previous Government in stalling projects by denying environmental clearances for flippant reasons had also generated much controversy. Jairam Ramesh had been ticked off by his own party leadership and his successor in the environment ministry, Jayanthi Natarajan, reportedly lost her job for allegedly seeking bribes to give the ‘green’ nod for held-up projects. She had

Rahul Gandhi led from the back. He addressed several rallies in the two states but failed to enthuse even his own cadre reforms for ministries and departments. For example, it has been suggested that there should be no inspection of low-risk businesses and only a computer-based random selection of high-risk ones for scrutiny. The Government move comes in the wake of American businesses referring to a certain ‘fatigue’ in doing business in India. The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) has raised concerns about India’s taxation policies. “It is not seen as a tax-friendly country and high-profile cases like Nokia and Vodafone, the last where issues of retrospective taxation came up, worry potential investors,” Asoke K Laha, IACC president, has said. In the face of huge odds, within months of coming to power, the Modi Government has put in place a mechanism to address the grievances of corporates. Additional Principal Secretary PK Mishra is the new point person of the Government to deal with corporates. Though many top-bracket businessmen may not be able to rub shoulders with their politician-friends the way they did in the past, their concerns can be addressed by Mishra. Anyone who has difficulties in getting clearances for their projects can approach him—a practice that could serve a 3 november 2014

been sitting on piles of files without giving any plausible reason and in the process slowing investment and hurting investor sentiment. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), during Natarajan’s tenure, has been charged with holding up as many as 35 mega projects, each with a proposed investment figure exceeding Rs 1,000 crore. She had denied any wrongdoing, but jokes were rife that all projects that needed a green clearance also incurred a ‘Jayanthi tax’. Her predecessor Ramesh was accused of holding ‘extreme views’ on environmental safety. “The Congress has brought in a culture of distrust and chaos while dealing with corporates,” says a Mumbaibased industrialist, reeling out a list of “harassments” he has faced from state and central Congress leaders for not paying bribes for getting his projects on track. As late as this month, leaders of the Congress-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha coalition reportedly demanded money from Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry for extending a land lease in Steel City, Jamshedpur. Meanwhile, the second BJP minister says that though the Modi Government would be friendly towards all businesses, it would be strict with companies that err or open www.openthemagazine.com 19

indulge in unethical practices. “Only fear of punishment would stop them from committing frauds. We are all for them until they try to cheat,” he says. He emphasises that the Government has also placed a lot of stress on fiscal management. It has hired US-based economist Arvind Subramanian as Chief Economic Advisor and plans to enlist the support of the likes of Deutsche Bank’s global strategist Sanjeev Sanyal to shape policy decisions. Meanwhile, wholesale inflation in India has slowed to a five-year low of 2.4 per cent in September, the weakest since October 2009, according to Commerce Ministry data. Consumer Price inflation also declined in September. “A better performance of the BJP in states will certainly inspire Modi to fast-track his reform moves,” says a Congress leader from Haryana, a state where the BJP has crushed two political dynasties and Jat-centric politics in the process (see ‘Shock Therapy in Hinterland’ on page 23). BJP insiders credit its leaders Anil Jain and Kailash Vijayvargiya for the gains, especially among Dalits, in the state. Crushing Loss The Modi bandwagon has not only demolished the Congress party, which won its lowest ever tally in history in the recent General Election, but has also demoralised its cadres and leaders. Most of the grandees of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) have disappeared from the political stage since then. Otherwise highly vocal politicians like P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and several others are nowhere to be seen either. This seemingly deliberate effort to stay away from public glare exposes the plight of the Congress that has been repeatedly hammered in elections. While the party clamoured for leader-of-the-opposition status in the Lok Sabha (which it is not entitled to, thanks to its low tally, though the ruling party has the discretion to accord the leader of the Congress Parliamentary party that status), its leaders have disappeared from TV studios, leaving to juniors the impossible task of justifying the NehruGandhi family’s leadership. The Congress has been relegated to the third position in both Haryana and Maharashtra. Analysts say the party’s setback in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region is particularly remarkable where its tally has fallen to 10 seats from 24 in the 2009 elections. Separate statehood is a contentious issue in this part of Maharashtra, which comprises 10 districts and has seen hundreds of farmers commit suicide over the years because they could not service their debt to unscrupulous moneylenders. Political scientists such as Princeton University

Professor Atul Kohli believe that unless the Congress gives up its dependence on its first family, it will not be able to grow as a political force. But then, there are no signs that its party workers, fed on dynasty glory, will revolt against the Gandhis—whose control of the party remains unquestioned despite the humiliating electoral setbacks. “We have suffered a debilitating defeat at the hands of Modi. This has forced many of my leaders to go into a sort of hiding mode. This is not good in a democracy, especial-

A meltdown of the MNS led by estranged cousin Raj Thackeray is the only consolation for Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray

Kalpak Pathak/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

MNS chief Raj Thackeray

ly if the party wants to fight Modi and make a return. The party’s senior leader seems to be suffering from a huge inferiority complex, and they all shrink at the mention of Modi. It is surprising. We will have to start highlighting his failures as the opposition is meant to do,” says a former UPA minister. Like most Congressmen, he doesn’t, however, think that Rahul Gandhi is to blame for the “overall failure of our previous government”. Gandhi loyalists have tried hard to shield the family scion—who is largely missing in action—from any attack over the drubbing the party has suffered. The Manmohan Singh Government was remotecontrolled by his mother and it is no secret that Rahul Gandhi himself tried to undermine the Prime Minister’s 3 november 2014

authority in public through several of his actions. Months before the General Election, he publicly tore into pieces an ordinance introduced by the UPA Government to negate a Supreme Court order on disqualifying convicted MPs and MLAs, describing the Government’s move as “complete nonsense”. Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to distance himself from the previous regime have not yielded any results so far. It is not just the Congress, the entire opposition seems to be suffering from an inferiority complex that the former minister talks about as Modi becomes increasingly popular. “The seniors of almost all opposition parties tend to feel they pale in comparison with Modi. This is ridiculous. I don’t know how senior leaders in the open www.openthemagazine.com 21

Arvind Yadav/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

BJP workers celebrate the party’s stunning victory in Maharashtra

opposition managed to stay in the limelight when Indira Gandhi was in power,” wonders the former minister. The non-BJP opposition also seems to be in disarray. “There has been no meeting or public event to express a sense of solidarity among them and their opposition against Modi, who is slowly becoming an all-powerful dictator,” regrets a CPM leader. The BJP feels that it must sustain its victory momentum and spread its influence to new turf. The party leadership has zoomed in on Bihar and West Bengal as states where it will make all-out efforts to achieve power. In Bihar, where the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) have formed an alliance to keep the BJP at bay, the party wants to dent the caste affiliations of this ‘opportunistic’ alliance through a ‘carefully calculated’ strategy. In West Bengal, where the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is now a shadow of its former self, the BJP hopes to consolidate nonTrinamool Congress votes. The BJP national leadership, emboldened by its performance in the recent assembly bypolls in Bengal where it won the Basirhat Dakshin seat, is hoping to wrest control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation in the next year’s election and make gains in the 2016 assembly polls. 22 open

“Like we want to make Congress-free across India, we want to make West Bengal Trinamool Congress-free,” the second BJP minister said. Ties with RSS Senior leaders of the BJP hasten to dispel the notion that there are differences of opinion between the Sangh and the BJP. “Believe me, there is nothing like that. Whoever spread such canards are fools. Especially at the level of Modi and Shah, who are from the RSS, there would be no effort to undermine the role of the RSS,” says a senior leader. The RSS has a new leader to engage with the BJP, Krishna Gopal, who has worked closely with Shah and other leaders. He was deputed by the RSS to help with the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. “We enjoy great rapport with him, just as we enjoyed good relations with Suresh Soni whom Gopal replaced,” the senior leader adds. “Modiji and Amit Shah cannot do a thing that would earn the RSS’s displeasure.” Perceptions outside may be slightly different, but having the RSS on board will definitely help Modi forge ahead, as his campaign doesn’t seem to end. His cause is greater power, and he needs all hands on deck. n 3 november 2014

HARYANA

Shock Therapy in hinterland One more state breaks out of traditional political loyalties and joins the BJP empire By Kumar Anshuman

were to visit his home state Gujarat from Delhi by road, he would not have to pass through any state where his Bharatiya Janata Party is not in power. Haryana, the first state border he would have to cross, is now under BJP rule for the first time ever. And that too, without an alliance partner. Part of the credit for that achievement belongs to BJP President Amit Shah, whose decision to go solo in the Haryana Assembly polls was seen as an act of bravado by some observers just a few weeks ago. Going into the fray, the party had only four of the Assembly’s 90 seats, won back in 2009. Now it has 47, despite having dropped its General Election ally, the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), and the credit for that goes to Modi’s message, which rang out loud and clear across the state. Taking charge of the campaign, the Prime Minister promised serious work over sycophancy, good governance over corruption, and development over lethargy. Implementing all that is now the task of Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana’s first BJP Chief Minister. It wasn’t long ago that the BJP’s alliance with the HJC looked firm. Earlier this year, the two fought the Lok Sabha election together, and the BJP won seven of the eight seats it contested. It got a vote

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f Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Manohar Lal Khattar in Chandigarh on 21 October open www.openthemagazine.com 23

share of almost 35 per cent in Haryana at the time. More importantly, it had a lead in 52 Assembly segments. In a state where the party did not even have block offices, let alone a cadre base, this performance was a stunner. For Shah, it spelt conviction that BJP could win on its own. The alliance may have stayed intact had the HJC President Kuldeep Bishnoi accepted the BJP’s demand of 45 seats—to contest—in seat-sharing talks. But Bishnoi tried to drive a hard bargain that has left it nowhere. The HJC has been reduced to two seats. In contrast, the BJP not only won a majority, there are six seats where its candidate lost by less than 2,500 votes. “We won more seats than we were asking our earlier coalition partner to leave for us,” said a triumphant Amit Shah after the victory. The BJP has been able to capitalise on caste equations while making inroads into other parties’ vote banks. It helped vastly that the Modi hurricane that swept Haryana during the Lok Sabha polls still had force enough to upset the old political equations in the state and knock established parties down. The BJP campaign was multi-layered, and it was backed by a strategy to attract voters of all caste and other groups. However, the tipping point was its consolidation of non-Jat votes. In a state

that has seen its politics dominated by Jats ever since its inception, with only occasional swings to non-Jat leadership, this was remarkable in itself. Jats comprise 25 per cent of Haryana’s electorate and have always occupied a prominent place in the state’s power structure. Notably, Chief Minister Khattar, an RSS pracharak, is a non-Jat leader. The 75 per cent non-Jat vote is a mix of 24 per cent OBCs, 30 per cent ‘uppercastes’ and 21 per cent Dalits. The state’s non-Jat votes used to be divided among different parties. Typically, ‘upper caste’ voters would prefer the Congress, while some would vote BJP; the state’s OBCs would often vote against Jats; and Dalits would switch between the Congress and INLD. For this election, the BJP created a social coalition of almost all non-Jat groups. For the first time, the Dera Sacha Sauda, a religious organisation with strong influence over Dalits, issued a call in support of the BJP. This went against both the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party. In the Yadav-dominated south Haryana region of Ahirwal, the BJP won 15 of its 24 seats. In fact, the party did well in all regions except the heavily Jat-populated western part of the state, where the INLD and Congress retained their sway. Even there, however, the BJP created a flutter

Rajeev Tyagi/Fotocorp

The INLD of former Chief Minister OP Chautala fared worse than it did in the 2009 Assembly polls

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in other camps by fielding 27 Jat candidates, higher than any other party in the state. Overall, the gameplan worked, with the BJP estimated to have got over one-fifth of Jat votes. Regardless of caste factors, another important segment that sided with the BJP was Haryana’s youth, especially in urban belts. By one survey, the party was the first choice among 30 per cent of young voters. They were impressed by Modi’s pitch focusing on vocational skills. The youth played a crucial role in improving the victory margins in rural areas as well. As many as 24 of its 47 seats were won with a margin of over 20,000 votes, and all these constituencies have sizeable youth populations. That the BJP had won urban favour was evident during the Lok Sabha election as well. This trend continues, as seen in its performance in the urban areas of Haryana. Of the 11 urban seats, the BJP won 10, including Rohtak, the erstwhile Hooda bastion of the Congress. In most urban centres, the BJP got over half the total vote. “The BJP was the preferred choice of urban and educated voters in Haryana,” says Sanjay Kumar, director, Centre for the Study of Developing Society (CSDS).

he BJP victory in Haryana marks

a new beginning for the state in several ways. The days of dynastic politics now seem numbered, with the Jat clans down and out and the Congress having lost power after two terms. Take first the Grand Old Party. This was one of its worst performances in the state; anti-incumbency sentiments against Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s government ran strong. In his 10 years of power, Hooda focused all development efforts on his own Rohtak-Jhajjar-Sonepat region, where the Congress has not done too badly, winning 10 of its 14 seats (with BJP getting the rest). Everywhere else, the Congress was battered. It was not even in contest in most of the constituencies and stood third with a final party tally of 15 seats, even less than the INLD’s 19. The Congress should have expected it. In many places, people reported satisfaction with the infrastructure work done by Hooda, but various land scams and alleged favours doled out to the wellconnected played on their minds. The 3 november 2014

Ravi Kanojia/Express Archive

Hooda’s infrastructure work was patchy and land scams involving ‘favours’ played on people’s minds infighting within the Congress party also played havoc with its election pitch. The election was left entirely to Hooda and his team, as no other state leader participated in the campaign. Senior state leader Kumari Selja had upped the ante against Hooda just after the Lok Sabha debacle; she wanted a leadership change in the state, but the Congress High Command stuck with Hooda. The party’s state president Ashok Tanwar at one point even offered to resign over ticket distribution. Many other senior leaders, such as Chaudhary Birender Singh, left the party to join the BJP, an exodus that weakened its vote catching ability. The reluctance of the Congress central leadership to campaign in the state stood in sharp contrast with Modi’s rallies in Haryana. Modi addressed as many as 11 gatherings, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi attended just seven. Modi spoke for at least 45 minutes everywhere, while the top two Congress leaders concluded in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes. Marred by corruption charges, the Congress campaign had little to offer by way of defence. Neither Hooda nor the 3 november 2014

central leaders took on the issue. At the end, say analysts, it has exposed the mai baap manner in which the Congress operates. “It is imperative to listen to leaders from the state. If you ignore them and try to rule from Delhi, the message is clear,” says a senior state leader. Party workers’ confidence in the leadership was almost nil, and this might trouble the Congress in time to come. As a distant third, it has plenty of thinking to do.

he election results also cast a shadow on the future of Haryana’s regional parties that have had dynastic leadership for a long while. The INLD of former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala—himself the son of former Chief Minister Devi Lal—fared worse than it did in 2009, when its tally was 32 seats. “It is definitely a surprise for us, but we respect the people’s mandate,” says senior party leader Abhay Chautala. The party had tried to recreate the appeal of the erstwhile Janata Dal with leaders such as Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and HD Deve Gowda campaigning for it, but it fell flat. The INLD has a strong base among Jat voters and the party was

Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda at his residence before the results

able to retain its hold of the state’s JindSirsa region. Elsewhere, it was hit badly by a division in Jat votes. While the INLD may seek solace in having kept its vote share more or less intact, the defeat of its young leader Dushyant Chautala to the BJP’s Prem Lata, Jat leader Birender Choudhary’s wife, says a lot about the party’s decline. In election rallies, Modi kept up an attack on OP Chautala for trying to take oath as Chief Minister from jail, where a corruption case has landed him. Kuldeep Bishnoi, son of former Chief Minister Bhajan Lal and president of HJC, fared far worse. Whatever success Bishnoi has had so far has been on account of non-Jat support. But this time, that support was squarely in the BJP’s corner. He was able to win his own family seat in Adampur, and his wife won Hansi, but that’s all the party managed: like the BSP, just a couple of seats. Apart from ‘Modi magic’, another interesting factor might have worked in the BJP’s favour: historically, Haryana has always voted for the party that is in power at Centre. And the BJP it was. ‘Voted for a hope in the dark’ said a tweet on 15 October, election day. The tweeter spoke for many. n open www.openthemagazine.com 25

MAHARASHTRA

getting

Change goes saffron in the city of

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3 november 2014

it right in Mumbai perpetual makeovers By Lhendup G Bhutia

wo large BJP party workers, large flaming tilaks on their

foreheads and lotus symbols pinned on their shirts, stand on one side of the door, pushing, as a petite woman with a microphone under her arm has a go from the other side. “Let me in,” she screams. “I want to go in. They know me, they know me.” A limb makes through, then a hand. But the men manage to keep her torso out. An hour ticks by. It’s now almost 10 am and we are at the BJP’s Maharashtra headquarters at Nariman Point. The state’s election result is to be declared by noon, all exit polls have estimated a spectacular victory for the party, and even the early results on TV are saying so. But there are no BJP leaders in sight. Everyone, we are told, is cocooned behind the doors in the BJP’s “war room”. Whenever a new leader arrives at the headquarters, they quickly disappear into the office. Even the otherwise ebullient BJP spokesperson, Shahina NC, responds 3 november 2014

photographs by ritesh uttamchandani

to queries with just a smile. It appears no one is to talk before there is some confirmation of the results. Outside, the trees on the roads sag under the weight of paper lotuses. There are Narendra Modi cut-outs, TV sets, tuned into the channel showing the best results for BJP, both outside on the road and at various corners inside the office, and an electronic board displaying digital lotuses and the figure ‘145+’, the seats required to form the Maharashtra government. The area is now swelling with reporters, policemen, and BJP wellwishers. At some point, the water in the office runs out, and the city’s municipal body, under the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, sends a water tanker. With no leader available for a comment, the journalists now walk around with troubled frowns, their large microphones sticking out like thermometers from their arms. men. The petite woman stations herself right outside the door, ready to get a quick TV byte. open www.openthemagazine.com 29

aharashtra, especially Mumbai, has never been a BJP

stronghold. The only time it tasted power here was as part of a coalition with the Shiv Sena in 1995. But that period, coming right after the Babri Masjid demolition and the Ram Mandir movement, and the riots and bomb blasts that rocked the city, was a very different time. Otherwise, it has usually been the Congress’, either alone or with the help of an ally. In the past, the ruling and opposition spaces in the state used to be occupied by those of a left-of-centre ideology. It would usually be the Congress in power with parties like the Peasants and Workers’ Party, the Republican Party of India and the Janata Dal in the opposition. It was only in the 1990 election that right-wing parties first made a mark. Then with 94 seats, their best ever performance, a Shiv Sena and BJP alliance came to form the opposition. But even then, right up till the last state election, the BJP, lacking both in organisational strength and electoral vigour, had always been the junior of the two. “If BJP comes to power, it will have changed Maharashtra’s politics forever,” says Kumar Ketkar, a senior journalist and political commentator. “It is from Maharashtra that the so-called Congress system, with its ties with unions and cooperatives, came to be. To see them decimated and the BJP as the most dominant party would be unheard of.” The state and city have for many years now survived only on coalitions. The great cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, with the tugs and pulls of its vast array of people and their aspirations, has for long thrown up only a fractured mandate. There are just too many people, too many different ideas and needs, to find the shade of a single umbrella enough.

here is a shuffle of feet on the other side. A swarm of TV

reporters station themselves outside the door, as the woman with the microphone pushes herself right in front. When the doors open, it is not the sight of Devendra Fadnavis, widely tipped then to become the next Chief Minister, or Pankaja Munde, whose name as CM has also been doing the rounds, or any of the leaders that greets the reporters, but the enormous sound of two tutaari horns, played by two men in shimmering red and green outfits. Somewhere on the road, firecrackers are bursting. Some are drawing lotus motifs on the road. More Modi cutouts are brought out. Laddoos are being distributed. The TV now shows the BJP leading in 120 seats, with the second placed, Shiv Sena, at around 60. A man runs around with a BJP flag shouting—“AM, PM, zindabad! AM PM zindabad!” When asked, he explains that AM stands for Amit Shah and PM for Prime Minister Modi. People now appear, wearing what look like life jackets with images of the lotus and Modi emblazoned on them. A Muslim man in a saffron kurta appears with a packet of laddoos to feed a cutout of Modi, as others join in. Egged on by photographers, one supporter, with puckered lips, kisses the parted lips of a Modi cutout. “They (BJP) don’t know how to celebrate,”

one policeman tells another. “They aren’t used to it here.” Every CM candidate, right before he hits the big league, gets a taste, it appears, of the commoner. He gets the local train squeeze. Fadnavis, when he emerges from closed doors, is tugged, pulled, tossed and flung. He moves from one sweaty embrace to another. Some, with their heads somehow positioned underneath his crotch, are trying to lift him. Ladoos are force-fed, sometimes into his mouth, sometimes into his nostrils. Arguments break out among supporters and cameramen. It is impossible to get a word from him, and he moves away, into his car and, from thereon, we are told, to the airport to travel to his constituency, Nagpur. The other victors get similar treatment. Sardar Tara Singh, the BJP victor from Mulund, with his waxed, upturned moustaches has to apply saliva on them to keep them from wilting. Shahina NC, who spent most of her day at the headquarters, says, “We would have liked a full majority. But this is still good enough for us. We are going to form the government,” as her voice is drowned out by the noise. The BJP has in all won 122 seats of the 288, its best ever performance in the state. This is more than twice its tally of the last state election. With a 28 per cent vote share, it has failed to attain a majority by just 23 seats. The second placed Shiv Sena, in comparison, has managed just 63 seats. The BJP has not only decimated

In Mumbai, many BJP candidates won by over 60,000 votes, such as Vinod Tawde from Borivli, who won by 79,267

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3 november 2014

(Clockwise from top left) State Congress chief Manikrao Thakre with a party worker; Diwali lanterns in the waiting room of Uddhav Thackeray’s office at Shiv Sena Bhavan; A lone party worker at the newly built NCP office

the Congress and NCP, which seemed to be a given, it has also effectively marginalised the Shiv Sena. While the BJP has been able to win 12 of the 44 seats Shiv Sena won in 2009, the latter has managed to snatch just one from the former’s 2009 kitty of 46. The results are most interesting in Mumbai. Of the total 36 seats, the BJP bagged 15, Shiv Sena 14, and the Congress only five. The victory margin was often also exceptionally high for the BJP, which is something remarkable in a four—and sometimes five—cornered fight. Several BJP candidates won by over 60,000 votes, with the likes of Vinod Tawde from Borivli defeating the second-placed candidate by 79,267 votes, but only one Shiv Sena candidate, Ajay Chowdhari with a victory margin of 64,407 votes from Sewri, was able to cross the 40,000 plus gap. The political landscape of Maharashtra, and Mumbai, has completely changed, it appears. “I don’t think it is ever going to be the same,” Ketkar says. “The BJP, with its sort of sophisticated image and middle class-educated-white collar base was somewhat more of an urban phenomenon in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena was the one with more organisational skills and links. Sainiks ruled the streets, not BJP.” According to Ketkar, the demography of the city has changed rapidly in the past few years. The strikes of mill workers, most of whom were Maharashtrians from the Konkan region, the chief vote-bank of the Shiv Sena, and the subsequent closure of the mills in the 1980s, led to a large number of them emigrating from the city. “Over the years, this exodus of the Marathi worker community has been filled by people from other states, and the city’s economic vibrancy has drawn in more migrants from other parts of the country. All this has diluted the Shiv Sena’s 3 november 2014

votebank,” he says. Mahesh Jethmalani, a senior advocate at the Bombay High Court and a BJP leader, says, “Growing urbanisation has brought a change in the state’s politics. People, especially those living in cities and towns, are young and possess high aspirations. They are not interested in caste and language. They want development and welfare.” “The results are fantastic,” he says, “given that we never ever had a dominant position in the state.”

t Sena Bhawan, the Shiv Sena office, the mood is sombre. According to rumours, most Shiv Sena candidates were flown or driven to Sena Bhawan in the morning and kept behind closed doors to ensure none of them were poached away. But there is no sign of them. A few leaders who have won in Mumbai come by in a procession of drummers and dancers, and one even has a man dressed up as a tiger. But Uddhav Thackeray stays back at his residence, Matoshree. It is as though they are confused about the results—to cheer their good haul or stand dejected in their once junior ally’s rise? On the first floor hall of Sena Bhawan, which is used for press conferences, there are empty chairs and a few journalists waiting in the hope that something news-worthy might occur. In one corner is the late Bal Thackeray’s first car, the bullet-proof Contessa with the number plate ‘1995’ (the year he purchased the car), shrouded in grey canvas. The only Shiv Sena member around seems to be the party’s public relations officer. When asked for comments or information, he raises his hand and shrugs his shoulders. n open www.openthemagazine.com 31

open essay

By SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

MARKED OUT IN A MERCILESS VILLAGE

The culture of hate in an ignorant, intolerant India

3 November 2014

reconciled to the Times of India calling him ‘Mr Lyonpo Dawa Tsering’, oblivious of the Bhutanese prefix Lyonpo meaning minister and replacing ‘mister’. Another common newspaper tautology was to refer to the Bhutanese king’s aunt as ‘Princess Ashi Sonam’. Ashi means princess. These examples will probably encourage the ebullient Markandey Katju to further tub-thumping about journalistic ignorance. Alas, the judiciary is no better. A Calcutta High Court judge once aired (as he thought) his global knowledge by sternly telling a motorist accused of running over and killing a pedestrian that he would have been tried for manslaughter in Britain. No one had told him that British law long ago replaced manslaughter with the less ominous sounding charge of ‘causing death by careless driving’. Katju’s own invocation of Voltaire and Rousseau when trying to belittle Indian newspapers betrayed his ignorance of Europe’s media. It’s extraordinary that a country that has suffered wave upon wave of conquerors and been thoroughly exposed to British influence in every aspect of life for over a century remains locked in impenetrable traditional prejudices. Perhaps an explanation lies in PV Narasimha Rao’s claim to a Singaporean audience that every conqueror save the last had been Indianised. Even that might be disputed by continental Europeans who believe Britain’s Indian experience made it that bit less European. Conventional Americans accused Indira Gandhi of posturing when she declared her India had no “inclination to be a power— big, small or of any kind.” But John Gunther Dean, the American ambassador of German- Jewish lineage, demonstrated greater perception. Foreigners were irrelevant to India, he thought, because India was wrapped up in India. Dynasties came and went, kingdoms rose and fell, wars blazed and were extinguished. Only the struggle for survival went on. Students at a protest demonstration after the murder of Nido Taniam

Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times/ Getty Images

ndia is a village. Like villagers swept by tides of primitive passion, Indians are prey to fear and superstition, and haunted by a dread of the unfamiliar. Comfort lies in the charms and incantations of mountebanks and charlatans whose assertion of direct communion with divinity wins them even political space. Sunanda K Datta-Ray ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, the is a columnist and Mahopanishad’s ancient Sanskrit author of several books phrase, doesn’t signify ‘the world is one family’ in the sense of a lofty all-embracing vision. It means that Indians who come into contact with the world drag it down to their puny level. The nationalist sun that rides the skies has warmed to life nascent forces that erupt in organisations that cash in on credulity by promising to enforce indigenous purity. The Constitution’s ‘India that is Bharat’ means for them ‘India is Bharat’. Hence the chant of ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ that reportedly rent the air last month as three young Africans cowered in a police booth in the heart of New Delhi with the police doing nothing to save them from the fury of a howling mob. The rising spate of attacks on other Indians who are seen as outsiders and the mounting instances of rape and sex crimes against children reflect the frustration of primeval society gloating on the promised ‘achhe din’. The keynote is ignorance. ‘You call yourself educated and learned men’ chants Borkung Hrangkhawl, the 27-year-old rapper from Tripura who has survived three stabbings. ‘And you don’t even know where Arunachal Pradesh is situated in the map!/ Tell me, is your knowledge of geography that bad?/ While on the other hand I am glad/ I bet I know a lot about India and its culture, cus it’s my country.’ It was also Nido Taniam’s country. And Akha Salouni’s. Nineteen-year-old Nido with the Mohawk mane was from Arunachal Pradesh; Salouni, 29, from Manipur. Both were murdered for being different. Even more different, Mapaga and Yohan from distant Gabon and Guira from Burkina Faso escaped with their lives. All five were victims of the hate that feeds on differences of food and features. Whether in politics, the media or the judiciary, few societies are so complacently self-centred. The Doordarshan broadcaster who called Xi Jinping “Eleven Jinping” was not the only example of the grotesquerie that insularity produces. A trait we have in common with the Chinese is that neither nation thinks it necessary to pay heed to unfamiliar names. Chinese Singaporeans called me “Mr Sunanda”, adapting my name to their style. We do the same. Even the cosmopolitan Kunwar Natwar Singh refers to Singapore’s veteran Lee Kuan Yew as ‘Yew’ in the index of his memoirs. The transgression might have been less gross if Natwar hadn’t been fluent in Mandarin and an old friend of Lee’s. Such blunders are not exceptional. When Alec Douglas Home was Britain’s Prime Minister, All India Radio invariably pronounced his last name phonetically instead of ‘Hume’. Bhutan’s longtime foreign minister, Dawa Tsering, was

Indira Gandhi was fond of recounting an anecdote in Peter Sellers’ film, The Party, in which an Indian is asked, “Who do you think you are?” Quick as a flash, he replies, “Indians don’t think. We know who we are.” She interpreted that as an affirmation of identity and purpose that makes an Indian the equal—if not the superior—of anyone in the world. Not only is India a village, it’s the ‘Village that Voted the Earth was Flat’ (to borrow a line from Kipling’s eponymous story) in defiance of logic. It’s a unique gift to be frequently wrong but never in doubt. This sublimity isn’t surprising against the reality of grinding poverty beyond the ostentatious consumerism of small elites in Delhi or Mumbai: the poor have only their convictions. Nor does it conflict with an extensive diaspora. As I wrote 55 years ago, expatriate Indians sleep like Dracula on a bed of native soil. Even demographic diversity doesn’t make for catholicity: Michael Lamjathang Haokip, a Manipuri engineering student in Bangalore, and his friends were assaulted for not speaking Kannada, because small minds are prisoners of village limitations. Young Nagas are racially abused, locked up, beaten and their heads shaved. ‘We are not Nepalese, Chinkies, Chinese. We are North-east Indians’ say their protest banners. But who cares? They don’t look ‘Indian’. Neither did the martyred Richard Loitam, Danna Sangma and Reingamphi Awungshi. Juliet Zonunmawi from Mizoram was the latest to die. ‘Just for your knowledge, let me tell you who we really are,’ Borkung sings. ‘There are eight states: Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim, Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh/ And together we are the North-East’. The eight states may seem as remote in Bangalore as Gabon and Burkina Faso, but the national capital is expected to be more knowledgeable. Delhi even boasts an Africa Avenue. But political gimmickry doesn’t educate attitudes. In an earlier outrage, ‘nine African women were victims of molestation and manhandling by a mob led by Mr Bharti’ according to Delhi Police. Somnath Bharti was law minister in Delhi’s shortlived Aam Aadmi Party administration. The ignorance that fuels intolerance is not new. Mumbai’s leading hotel asked Hokishe Sema, four time Chief Minister of Nagaland, for his passport. Around the same time, I was sitting with the Karnataka government’s principal information officer in Bangalore when a Naga student was shown in: the PIO assumed he was from the Tibetan settlement at Bylakuppe. These were genuine mistakes. There was no mistake when Indian police stopped a Sikkimese couple resident in Gangtok returning from Nepal at the West Bengal border. The Sikkimese were told they would be arrested as illegal Tibetans if they didn’t pay up. That was criminal exploitation. Borkung again: ‘Is it a curse or a blessing, or a blessing at its worst, and at times I feel like I am lost in the crowd/ Is it Adversity at its diversity? ‘Cus to me, it seems like democracy has just voted me out/ ‘Cus if our Preamble

teaches equality and fraternity then why are we behaving like a hypocrite and promoting hypocrisy in abound? But here’s the doubt, the rebound aspirations that we found.’ Kiren Rijiju, Union minister of state for home and himself from Arunachal Pradesh, vows “hate crimes will not be tolerated”. He also says the recommendations of the committee set up in February with a retired civil servant and member of the North-Eastern Council, MP Bezbaruah, as chairman would soon be implemented. Meanwhile, he has sanctioned an exclusive helpline for north-easterners living in Gurgaon, which is emerging as a cesspool of vicious parochialism.

helpline isn’t enough. The police must be ordered

stringently to enforce the many punitive anti-discriminatory laws on the statute book, law courts instructed to hand down deterrent sentences. Above all, education syllabuses and teaching methods and contents must be overhauled. ‘So let me take you back to when in grade 6, I learnt everything about India and its culture through our textbooks leaving out North-East; now tell me that ain’t racist?’ Borkung asks. ‘Justice, liberty and fraternity lead to greatness/The greatness that we’ve been waiting for, then why is it that in our own country we feel so insecure, in our own country…?’ Our own country. A persecuted people’s loyalty is ardently protested. ‘I want you to listen, why r u killing/ Isn’t it the same air that we are breathing?/ I can hear the heart beating, Mom back home weeping/ And I guess you are day-dreaming.’ Yes, day-dreaming that India is an empire where Aryavarta rules lesser breeds without the law. It’s Animal Farm all over again, yesterday’s disadvantaged reinventing themselves as today’s chosen people. ‘…you take us for granted’ Borkung warns, ‘if I am wrong then confront me /Isn’t it that the government is of the people, by the people and for the people?/ Mahatma Gandhi himself said, ‘See no evil, hear no evil and do no evil’/ Then why are you so eager to hurt our sentiments, it’s like we are living down below while you are piling up the sediments/ The predicaments in this game of death, you are the participants/ So don’t constrain yourself to the limitation of what your actions have caused/ Life is a blessing from God, then how on Earth are you ever gonna pay that cost’. Then, the resounding finale, ‘We are Indians as much as you are.’ For how long? The panic-stricken exodus of 2012 when 35,000 north-easterners fled Bangalore alone, with many others fleeing Pune, Hyderabad and Mumbai, was a reminder that India is still not a single entity. Those with longer memories cannot forget that Nagas, Mizos, Meteis and other north-easterners fought long and bitter wars against the Indian State. Let’s not push them too far. Iqbal articulated a deeply-entrenched belief when he composed Saare Jahan Se Achcha, but the ‘Hindustan’ of his song must refer to the entire country if India is to survive. n

The DD broadcaster who called Xi Jinping “Eleven Jinping” was not the only example of the grotesquerie of insularity. A trait we have in common with the Chinese is that neither nation pays heed to unfamiliar names

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3 November 2014

HEALTH

viral alert

India is at high risk of Ebola. How prepared are we? By Aanchal Bansal

n 4 October, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Belgian

virologist Peter Piot expressed his concerns over the possibility of an Ebola pandemic. “An outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people in India who work in trade or industry in West Africa,” he said. “It would only take one of them to get infected, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus’ incubation period, and then once he becomes sick, go to a public hospital there,” added the man who helped discover the virus in 1976 as a 27-year-old scientist in Antwerp. That year, Piot and his team had received a blue thermos with the blood sample of a Belgian nun who had mysteriously fallen ill in a nondescript town called Yambuku in Zaire. They identified the pathogen involved and named it after Ebola, a river in Congo. Back then, there had been simultaneous outbreaks in Sudan and Congo. The 2014 outbreak of this disease, reported in Africa since March and marked by a high fatality rate, could be the worst ever on record—with the World Health Organisation (WHO) noting 9,000 cases and about 4,500 deaths, almost all of them in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which are believed to be the epicentre of its outward spread this time. The outbreak was officially declared in Guinea on 22 March; and, as feared, there are signs of its having reached other continents. The WHO recently announced that no country is safe from the virus and predicted that as many as 10,000 new cases could be identified around the globe every week by December this year. According to an academic team from the US-based Northeastern University and University of Florida that is studying Ebola, international air travel 36 open

Indian passengers in protective gear on their arrival from Ebola-hit Liberia at Delhi airport on 26 August 3 november 2014

Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poor healthcare system, hygiene practices and dense population together make the country vulnerable to the rapid spread of Ebola 3 november 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 37

is one of the main causes of its spread. Based on flight data analysis, India is 21st on a list of 30 countries likely to witness an Ebola case. High-risk countries across the world include the UK, France and Belgium, which see the most flights coming in from West Africa. While India is classified as a low-risk country, it cannot afford to take Piot’s warning lightly. The country’s poor healthcare system, hygiene practices and dense population together make it vulnerable to its rapid spread if it happens to reach Indian shores. By figures provided by the Indian Government, 4,700 Indians live in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and about 40,000 people live in Nigeria alone, where eight of its 20 reported cases so far have died. So, how prepared is India? Alarmed by the WHO wake-up call earlier this month, Union Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth met health secretaries of 19 states to assess India’s preparedness to deal with the spread of the virus. Each state has been asked to identify one state hospital with an isolation ward and other requirements like isolated lifts and trained and dedicated staff. While the Government is seeking the participation of airlines in screening passengers, it has identified nine international airports that will be equipped with thermo scanners and thermo guns. Currently, the travel records of inbound passengers are being examined and they are also being screened for symptoms, on the basis of which they may be quarantined if need be. In the words of Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, who is monitoring the country’s preparation measures, “We have a thorough screening mechanism in place at all airports and are carefully monitoring all possibilities. We hope to detect cases before [patients] enter the country.” At Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, for example, passengers are being asked to declare if they have any flu-like symptoms. If they do, they are put to the test of a thermo screen that records body temperature. The airport has an Ebola cell that serves as a special quarantine. All passengers arriving from West African countries are compulsorily screened. According to the Government, about 22,150 passengers have been screened since August across India, of which 38 open

about 1,000 were categorised as suspect cases and 63 were placed in the high- or medium-risk category. While low-risk passengers are given general advice on the disease and allowed to leave, midand high-risk passengers are observed for 30 days and lab tested for the Ebola virus. So far, no case has tested positive in India. Still, even the suspect passengers who have been allowed to go are being tracked—mostly in Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal— by special personnel who keep calling them for health updates. If the numbers rise, screening efficiency will need to reach US levels. The five American airports that have been marked out as high-risk entry points are equipped with handheld thermo guns that can detect body temperature swiftly without any physical contact. According to Indian government officials, India is in the process of procuring these handy devices at a cost of about Rs 10 lakh apiece.

he Ebola virus disease, formerly

known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is highly infectious. The initial symptoms are like any other flu—namely, nausea, vomiting and a headache. Once the virus takes hold of the infected person, it raises the body temperature and often results in multiple organ failure with internal and external bleeding. A zoonotic virus, Ebola is believed to be carried by fruit bats in Africa. Though it is not an airborne disease, the virus is easily contracted through an infected person’s bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, sweat, urine and faeces. While this reduces the risk of contracting the virus without contact—unlike the airborne SARS or H1N1—what worries experts is the country’s poor healthcare system. “The key in controlling the disease is early screening, detection and prevention,” says Professor K Sreenath Reddy, president of Delhi-based thinktank Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). “For this, we need our primary healthcare system in order. With just one nurse available for every 1,000 patients in India, compared to 10 nurses for every 1,000 in the US, we are in trouble,” he says. “There are some states like say Tamil Nadu that have a very sound system of health-

care, but what would happen, say, in the case of Bihar or Uttar Pradesh?” Adding to Dr Reddy’s point, says Dr Manish Kakkar, head of infectious and zoonoses diseases at PHFI: “If the disease could spread in the US, which undoubtedly has a better healthcare system in place, you can well imagine what could happen in India.” Healthcare workers in the US who handled its first Ebola case were reported to have contracted the virus themselves, and this is a serious problem. Healthcare workers in India need to be trained to handle such cases with care, says Kakkar. “We are short on the number of healthcare personnel and you don’t want a situation like in Africa, where healthcare workers have refused to attend to patients for fear of contracting the disease,” he adds. Citing the example of a Nipah outbreak in West Bengal in the early 2000s, he says that delays in detection resulted in healthcare workers falling prey to it in large numbers. “The training and protection of primary healthcare workers like nurses is imperative,” he adds. Agrees Narendra Saini, general secretary of the Indian Medical Association. “We have poor personal and public hygiene systems in India,” he says, “Practices as basic as washing one’s hands and not defecating in the open are not practised in India. We need to spread information and keep a tight vigil on any case reported.” Experts say that this may be how Nigeria has managed to contain the epidemic; no new case has been reported there since 8 September. Nigerian authorities are believed to have urged people not to urinate or defecate in drains, dump sites and open spaces in Lagos, the city that had most of its cases. According to Dr Ashish Jha, director of Harvard Global Health Institute, even one infection in India may lead to a ‘cascade’ of infections, with the numbers multiplying by ‘dozens’ in no time. “I would be surprised if there is not one confirmed case in India by the end of the year.”

part from screening passen-

gers and trying to maintain a vigil at airports, the Government has also begun distributing protective gear that includes masks and gloves to 3 november 2014

A woman mourns the loss of her sister as an Ebola burial team takes her body for cremation in Liberia

John Moore/Getty Images

Medecins Sans Frontieres, an organisation that’s playing a vital role in tackling Africa’s Ebola outbreak, has been sharing information with virus trackers in India doctors and healthcare workers. Mock drills and workshops conducted by the WHO and other NGOs are being planned in order to train health personnel adequately. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which has been at the forefront in tackling the disease in Sierra Leone, has been sharing information on Ebola with the National Institute of Virology in Pune and Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai in Mumbai. Global organisations like Save The Children and MSF have played a vital role in setting up institutional care posts in West Africa to tackle the outbreak. “We are looking at getting health experts together and training our health personnel. It will be done soon,” says a senior official in the Health Ministry, “It is very important to train health workers on how to quarantine a patient, collect blood samples and tackle a patient without contracting the disease.” With just two lab testing centres available in India, in 3 november 2014

Delhi and Pune (which have together tested 96 samples so far), the Government is looking at setting up 10 more labs across the country.

hile the world woke up to Ebola

only about six months after the outbreak was first reported in Guinea, observers allege that even the WHO took too long to recognise the danger of its spread. This was reportedly because of bureaucratic hurdles like lack of funds in Geneva and lack of adequate staff in Africa. It was only in August that the Organization took adequate note of Ebola. As the Health Minister has made clear, the Indian Government does not want to be caught napping. Thankfully, it is not too late. At the time of going to press, Open had no report of any Ebola case in India yet. Also, the incubation period for the disease is such that it offers an opportunity to block the disease out.

“The incubation period is anywhere between two and 21 days, and the patient is not contagious till the visible symptoms are not visible,” says Dr Kakkar, “This gives us enough time for screening and quarantining the patient. And because it can be contracted only when in contact with body fluids, precautions and care can do the trick.” However, Martin Sloot, director general of MSF India, says that the current strain of Ebola, known as the Zaire strain, is “unpredictable, constantly evolving and requires a robust and fluid response”. In his words, “The trend is difficult to follow—we have seen a lull in cases in one area only to see numbers spike again later. Isolation centres with trained staff are essential.” As Dr Saini says, “We need to include private hospitals and have them work in tandem with the Government.” If India mounts a well coordinated response to the threat, the country could yet escape. n open www.openthemagazine.com 39

society

The Last Mehfil S

he had been condemned to a life of pleasure. But pleasure

is no more, nor is there any promise of anything else. In the autumn of her life, Naseema laments her fate. The life of a tawaif is often a dedication to the gratification of others—carnal or otherwise. It is a life spent in hope, an eternal wait for a lover who would take her. Yet, to marry would be to leave what she inherited, a dismissal of her identity. The body doesn’t last forever. The firmness of the breasts, the curves of the hips, none of it is permanent. At some point, the wrinkles began to distort the face, and the juice of the betel leaves she chewed began to overflow and run down the cracks in her skin. Her face must have been beautiful at one time. In those days, she used to sing this song. Saiyan rooth gaye, main manaati rahi … shyam jaane lage, main bulaati rahi… (My beloved is upset, and I go on urging him. Shyam is leaving, and I keep calling.) Singing was an exercise in the melancholy of unrequited love. Conformist love, she says. There was the pleasure of being wanted, though, and of being denied the place of the spouse. In this village of tawaifs, she is one of the older ones, her career long done. Those who could, went away to a respectable life. But not her. She missed her chance. She had lovers, and they abandoned her. She is old, and wizened. All day, she sits in a chair outside her house wondering about her fate. Why was she unable to find a patron after years of singing and dancing? There were those that found men who would keep them, provide for them, and free them of worries in the autumn of their lives. Like Nazneen, her grandfather’s sister who was the beloved of the Nawab of Puraniya. “Now, the nawabs are no more and nor are tawaifs,” she says. Basuka in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh is full of such women. It is a village of tawaifs. In its two segregated sections—Bada Para and Chota Para—there are women who can sing and dance, and revel in the glory of the past where they were treated as artistes and not as sex workers. But they also bear witness to a shift in attitudes and perceptions. There was once a nawab, who came and stayed, and then took a woman under his aegis. They still smile when they speak about that story of love. “I think our ancestors came from Fatehpur, and were settled here around 400 years ago,” she says. “Our mothers and grandmothers did it. We know no other way [of life]. We cherish it because we were destined to be tawaifs.” Naseema inherited the life of a courtesan. It wasn’t by choice. When she was very young, she was forced to learn singing and dancing under an ustad, and when she was ready, she would be sent on performance tours. She would travel with other village women to perform at weddings, and concerts. Sometimes, men came to their village, and they would gather musicians, and dance. “Do you think what we do is bad?” she asks. The tawaifs keep to their colonies. A narrow street divides the village 40 open

From Benares to culture. As they

Express Archive

Mirzapur, mujrawaalis of today live on song and nostalgia, mourning the passing of their prepare for the final farewell, CHINKI SINHA goes in search of their last performances

Meena Kumari plays the role of a courtesan in the 1972 film Pakeezah

Anand Singh

Many young women from Basuka, a village of tawaifs in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh are working as mujrawaalis, or bar dancers in other cities

It was honourable once, the life of a tawaif. The best of them were artistes, aware of worldly things, with all the graces and subtlety of poetry to offer men who valued it into two parts. A young boy offers to guide me, but looks at his father for approval, which he gets. We cross the street, and enter the lanes of Bada Para. “That is the mohalla of tawaifs,” he says. “We don’t go there.” Mehrunissa sits by the side of the path. Her wavy hair framing her face, palms dipped in henna, and her short blouse just covering her breasts, she sits in the afternoon sun chewing paan, the red of which flows out of her mouth, streaking her wrinkles red. She too would have been a beautiful woman once. Even now, one can see traces of it in those eyes that must have enticed the many who came to listen to her songs. “Sab khatam ho gaya,” (everything has ended) she says, and turns away. “What do we speak of? Our descent into something despicable.” They didn’t even get time to prepare for the final farewells. Their patrons vanished. Those who came, wanted other things. There were girls from other places who were ready to go all the way. Nobody was interested in the thumri, khayal and tappa. Not many understand the songs they sang anyway. The ragas, and the sensual caress of the voice, and the movements of the eyes, and the waist, and the fingers. They didn’t want to linger, and be tempted by longing, and love, and eventual consummation. They wanted the instant gratification of flesh. Naseema’s elder daughter is visiting her for Bakra Eid. She 42 open

doesn’t offer her name. She is married now, and has given up the life that could have been hers. Naseema didn’t want her daughters to continue. It was honourable once, the life of a tawaif. It meant fulfilling a social need. Men were polygamous, and needed other women. They were the ‘other’. They knew their lovers came to them for pleasures their wives couldn’t give. Their calling was to fulfill those desires of soul, and melancholy. The best of them were artistes, aware of worldly things, with all the graces and subtlety of poetry to offer men who valued it. Now, most of the young women are elsewhere—Gaya, Mumbai, Kolkata, and other cities. They dance in concerts, and live in the red-light areas of these cities trying to compete with sex workers. But art is lost on those who come for only carnal pleasure. With art, there is only poverty. There are those who are trying to keep up the old tradition. Like Kajal, who is sitting with her ustad Badre Alam, who is 60 years old, and hails from Azamgarh. For years, he has lived in Basuka, teaching women the lost arts. She is 20 years old, and lives in Gaya in Bihar where she performs as a mujra dancer in the red light district. She says she has found a patron, a man who would take her in, and she is happy. Her mother sits next to her, and watches her daughter’s hands on which the leaves and flowers drawn in henna run parallel to the veins.

ohammad Jeelani, 64, is one of the many who have tried to change with the times. He has taken on Bhojpuri songs, and other Bollywood songs, and tries to tell women that for their survival as performers, the classic mujra of art and finesse needs to be corrupted. “In those days, people were connoisseurs of arts, and now, only a few remain who come and ask for those songs. That makes me happy. But the rest, they want popular songs,” he says. 3 november 2014

But in Basuka, they haven’t let of go of everything. Not yet. They refuse to play recorded music, he says. “When they come to see a mujra, we take out our instruments and play,” he says. There are old houses, and new ones. The old ones belong to those who resisted change, and the new to those who learnt to adapt and move on. Zuleikha, his aunt, comes and sits next to him. She had grown up watching her aunts do the mujra, and was sent to an ustad to learn the art. She liked to dance, and she had the delicate beauty of her mother, she says. She spent a few years in the kothas of Dal Mandi in Benaras and then returned to Basuka. She married a man from the village, and now her daughters are mujrawaalis but live in different cities. “If they are beautiful, and they want to do it, what’s wrong?” she says. There are men who wander the village lanes, looking lost. They were born in these houses that belonged to courtesans, and are trying to get out and find new lives elsewhere. Some stay. Over time, many hope, Basuka will have erased its scars of being the village of tawaifs. Like Izhar, who is Naseema’s son, a daily wage labourer. The women of Basuka always had sad lives, he says. They never had the luxury of choice. Or the glory of being courtesans. But change is at hand. Only a few houses remain that have had to send their daughters to other cities to fend for themselves as mujraawalis. The ones who stayed back are the withered ones. Once in a while, a man would ask for the old women to sing along with the young ones. That’s when Zuleikha shines. That’s when she is herself. At other times, she walks along the dirt tracks like a woman who doesn’t belong anywhere. Like a woman with no identity left. But this is the world of India’s mujrawaalis. It is like everyone forgot them. But they are still around. In the 1970s, the kothas where mujras were performed were brought under the purview of the Immoral Trafficking Act. Prior to that, the British, in order to expose the debauchery of Indian princes, had taken to maligning the kothas as dens of vice. Dal Mandi, which used to house such kothas, has suffered for it. An old social activist in Benares says that at one point in the 1960s, All India Radio declared that all Baijis must be rechristened as Devijis to be able to sing on radio, and those who could get married and get the dignity of ‘Devi’ did so, while the voices of others got lost. Nobody tells you who they were, or where they are. It is a pact of trust.

here is an old story in the family about a man, who grew up in Benares. He fell in love with a mujrawaali named Rajkumari, and had her reside in a separate house. They don’t speak about this, and there are faded memories of the man and his mistress. She was an acclaimed dancer and danced on batashas, and he had a few children with her. All they could tell you is that she was beautiful, and that he loved her. But they don’t tell the whole story. It is a stigma. These women were self-made. Artistes. It all started to change in the 1970s when the Trafficking Act came into force, and even musicians had to apply for licences. Tawaifs were arrested, and

3 november 2014

it resulted in the closure of many kothas in cities like Bombay, Delhi, Nagpur, Banaras, and Lucknow. “Everything was lost except the primal desire of men, which was for flesh, and that prospered,” says the social activist. “Other brothels came up on the periphery of the cities, and these were where the sex workers lived. The mujrawaalis were lost. There was a chastity crisis. They were forced to either leave, or take up sex work in these new brothels.” “You know in mehfils in those days, there was art. Now, it is just about flesh trade,” he says. To find those who haven’t given up, he says, you must travel beyond the cities, or go into inner katras. There will be memories, and from those will emerge a few names, and a few addresses. But be careful, he says. “Aag bahut khoobsurat cheez hai basharte aap usse khelen nahin,” he says. Fire has beauty but you mustn’t play with it. “If you find them, ask them about the the glorious days of the thumri and the mujra and the kothas. Ask them why they are losing themselves.”

he kite-seller asks me to turn into the next katra, and find the fourth house in Dal Mandi, which has turned into a general goods markets. “There you shall find him. But he won’t sing for you.” The doors are open, and up the narrow flight of stairs, a young woman points to a room where Sharafat Ali Khan is finishing his food. It is an old house. The sort where the walls are of stone, and painted a shade of green, discoloured, and dismembered in parts. Here lives a man who once played the harmonium as the dancers in Benares’ Dal Mandi entertained their patrons. But years have gone by, and they all left one by one. Dal Mandi no longer has mujras and mogras. In its cramped alleys, they haggle over prices of spices, and other things. Rasoolan Bai’s house exists, but nobody sings there. They say Nirmala Devi, the famous thumri singer, also lived here. There were others, but after the crackdown, they left for elsewhere. They weren’t sex workers but had been clubbed with them. Like the geishas of Japan, their job entailed singing and entertaining their patrons, and elite households would send their sons to learn of literature, poetry and culture from courtesans. Even daughters of families would learn social graces, and the art of seduction from them. Sharafat Ali Khan, 85, is a lost man. For years, he tried to continue in his ways, and taught young girls of the neighbourhood and elsewhere how to sing, but he gave up. Fourteen years ago, he gave his harmonium to his son-in-law, and never turned back. During Muharram, he sings Marsia, an elegiac poem about the death of Hussain ibn Ali in the battle of Karbala.

Elite households would send their sons to learn of literature, poetry and culture from tawaifs. Even daughters of families would learn social graces, and the art of seduction open www.openthemagazine.com 43

“Kahaaniyan toh bahut saari hain,” he says. There are many tales. “But to tell them all, it requires a lot of courage. Those times have ended. That era is lost.” He mourns its passing with vacant eyes, and his wife looks at him with a baffled expression. For more than a decade, the only times she has heard him sing is during Muharram, and she has seen him break down often as he sings nohas of Hussain’s ride to the battlefield. He comes from a family of musicians. His father trained Rasoolan Bai, who came from Mirzapur, and belonged to the Benares Gharana of Hindustani classical music, and went on to become a famous thumri singer. He remembers. Although he says he left it all behind. In Islam, he says, such things were prohibited. But that’s the dichotomy of it all. Music was part of him. But that was then. The mujras now meant gyrating to Bollywood music. Moves that were once sensual were becoming vulgar. “My father Shammu Khan was well-regarded,” he says. He doesn’t remember much, he says, but then bit by bit he gathers the pieces and weaves a narrative. The women were like fireflies, and the Dal Mandi area was bustling with patrons who understood the genres the women sang. They came to indulge in more than just lust. But when the women started to see themselves descend into something the world deemed despicable, they started to get married to patrons who would have them as wives. “Even Rasoolan married a salesman when she was 44 and lived in one of the lanes of the city,” he says. Rasoolan’s mother Adalat Bai was also a famous courtesan. “Here, there were the houses of tawaifs. In the evenings, the rich would come, sit in mehfils where they played six different genres of music,” he says. “Those who didn’t come would call them to their homes for private mehfils.” Then, the rich stopped coming. The abolition of the zamindari system shook up the lifestyles they were used to. Estates were taken away. And the courtesans had no more courts to go to. For some time, they survived by performing at concerts, and weddings, and then they started to look out for other alternatives. Not many would admit they belonged to a family of courtesans. “Everything was in front of these eyes, and now these eyes don’t see anymore. When I left teaching, I knew if the art needed to survive, it had to be done properly. Here, once you have reached a certain stage, then money comes. But without patrons, it was difficult to carry on.” “Gham ka vaqyaa sunenge toh aasoon toh bahenge,” he says. If you hear a sad story, then tears will flow. And then his wife asks him to sing a noha. He refuses, but then he begins to sing. There’s a slight moment when his face comes to life. The tears begin to flow.

“What do we have except a few songs, and a few memories?” asks Mangla Devi . “A tawaif doesn’t marry. If she marries, she can’t return to the kothas” 44 open

asma lives in Mirzapur’s Pasarhatta Bazaar, where

mujrawaalis reside in a handful of houses. An old crumbling house has a steep staircase that leads to the unswept, uncaredfor chambers of these women who say they don’t know which way to turn. For more than four decades, they have occupied this floor. Its red walls are sooty, and they haven’t had a coat of paint in years. There is an old mattress against the wall, and a small balcony from which light filters into the room. An old woman sits against the wall. Another wall that seems blue has a collage of old studio shots with flower vases, and women with flowers in their hair, and painted lips. So, it was not always like this. Not always so dark, so decrepit, so gloomy. Aasma has hazel coloured eyes and brown hair, and a fair complexion. She spent years as a bar dancer in Bombay but had to return to the kotha after the city cracked down on dance bars. These women come from Chilbila village in Allahabad district. Aasma says she is among the last mujrawaalis. She sent her daughter away, and got her married. Hardly anyone comes upstairs to listen to their songs. They have begun dancing to Bhojpuri songs. During the famous Kajri Jagran in Mirzapur, they have invitations to sing and dance. Other times are lean. “There are temptations but I won’t do wrong things. I know others do it. But as long as I can hold myself together, I will do it,” says Aasma. Mangla Devi, the old woman, speaks about a sister who danced on shards of broken glass. These were art forms that were taught by the ustads, and special glass was made for such events. There is a photo of her sister in a white salwar kameez on the wall. “That’s her,” she says. Once upon a time, she had been a sought after mujrawaali. There’s a coarseness in her voice that she says is the result of bitterness. Her daughter Sunita sits next to her, and looks at her mother. Her little son and daughter roam around in the house. Lovers came, and left. Nobody owned them, nobody claimed them. “What do we have except a few songs, and a few memories?” she says. “A tawaif doesn’t marry. If she marries, she can’t return to the kothas.” But they are not shy of giving themselves to men who promise love. “Because nobody can live this life alone. To be lonely is a curse,” she says. “You are meant to love. We are meant to not expect loyalty. But love comes, and maybe it doesn’t stay. It doesn’t have to. Our songs are testimony to this bereavement… these are songs of union, and sensuality, and teasing, and longing for the beloved. But there are no listeners now.” And there are daughters who are born out of such love. They make sure they don’t live this life. “Mirzapur will not have us for too long. We are the last ones in our generation,” she says. Sunita is a thin dark woman with large vacant eyes and a deep voice. She had wanted to study, and be like other women. But she was born into a gharana of mujrawaalis and followed into her mother’s footsteps. “I wanted to get married, but who would have looked after my mother? So, I stayed back,” she says. The shopkeepers downstairs in the Pasarhatta Bazaar speak of 3 november 2014

Anand Singh

n an old mud house, the old woman once sang songs of a summer gone by, urging the lover to move into the shade. A song of submission to love. In what they called the usara (corridor) of their ancestral home in Bhabhua, Bihar, her grandmother would never sing the full song. She would ask her why she sang, and she would tell her she was a courtesan. She wipes a tear. “Afsos toh yeh ki dukaan saji hui hai lekin koi khariddaar nahin hai,” she says. The shop is all decked up but there are no customers. At the end of a narrow lane in Hukulganj, Benares, hers is the last house. Upstairs, in a large room with green stained glass windows, she is sitting on a bed. She answers mostly everything with verse of a ghazal. She sings in a voice that sends tremors through you because there’s so much in it. There’s nostalgia, and memory, and there is loss, and pain. There is broken pride, and there’s the mourning of what could have been. At 58, she feels she has not done enough. In other places, they call her Dolly. Her name is Saira Begum.

Saira Begum’s husband would later ask if she saw the lust in the eyes of men who’d sit listening to her. She would say she thought they were here for her voice, not the heaving of her chest Rani Singh has shed her mujrawaali identity and calls herself a folk singer now

their voices, and feel sad for the few who remain in this lane. Across the street lives Rani Singh, whose fame as a folk singer is alive and well in these parts. The walls of her dilapidated house are lined with her certificates. She says she isn’t a mujrawaali. Her mother used to sing, and she too trained in Benares under Pandit Lok Nath Mishra and other ustads. She has also acted in a few Bhojpuri films, and says she never got married because singing demands rigour and a dedication that doesn’t leave room for other things. It is a small room, decorated with posters of gods and goddesses. Eight years ago, she took up bhajan singing, and most evenings she is at a nearby temple singing with other women. They know her in these lanes. But she has gone far and beyond her past. She says there must have been a mistake. But her teacher Lok Nath Mishra remembers her. He is 90 now, and has trained many mujrawaalis. They would come to his house for tutorials. He tells me of the women who came and are now lost. You will find one of them in Pasarhatta Bazaar, he says. “Tell her I sent you. She will remember.” But Rani Singh dismisses the tag. Aasma says not all women acknowledge their lineage. They want to break free of it. “The woman across the street is one of us,” she says. “She can deny it, but we know. We also understand who don’t want to be us.” 3 november 2014

“Raat bhi, neend bhi, kahani bhi... hai kya cheez hai jawani bhi,” she sings. The night, the sleep, the story… what is this thing called youth? A pause, and she says it is the story of a young woman wanting to sing, and losing everything in that quest. She married a man who wanted her to sing to him every night, and after he died, she felt abandoned. Her mother, who didn’t take up singing, had discouraged her. But her grandmother’s songs haunted her. She performed in many places except her own city, which was Benares after her marriage. Her husband would later ask if she saw the lust in the eyes of men who’d sit listening to her. She would say she thought they were here for her voice, not the heaving of her chest. Saira Begum lives with her son, who is mentally unstable. He has two children, and she has to provide for all of them. It has been a difficult life. “My daughters would cry listening to me sing,” she says. “Whoever wants to find the art, they manage. Only, it makes them loners.” Saira Begum is one of the few remaining mujra singers in Benares now. In fact, the only one who doesn’t deny it. “I own it. I claim it, and I know it is a dying culture,” she says. “We are the ghosts.” And then she sings an old ghazal. This, she says, will tell you everything. And her voice rises. Rafta rafta, woh mere asthi ka samaan ho gaye… (Subtly and gradually, he became part of me...) And then she asks. “What is a sur (musical note)? It is only pain that you can feel. This is the only way I can express myself.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 45

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books

THE POETIC AND THE SPIRITUAL Arundhathi Subramaniam’s new collection of poems 54

Those left behind

o p e n s pa c e

Govinda Homi Adajania

n p lu

Kill the Messenger The Judge

cinema review

iMac with Retina 5K Display Seiko Prospex Aviation Solar Chronograph BlackBerry Passport

tech & style

Art and gender Smoking and stress hormones Beware of trivial graphs

science

Bollywood’s last monarch

roug h cu t

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s latest collection of stories The Sun That Rose from the Earth Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam’s latest collection When God Is a Traveller

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mindspace

the hindu images

prabhat kumar verma

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3 november 2014

The Last Ustad Acclaimed writer and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi on poetry, Indian literary theory and Urdu’s legacy in an exclusive preview of his new book RAJNI GEORGE

“W

hen I was younger,” he begins, then laughs. “When I was young, I mean!” In a leafy corner of Allahabad, that dusty old city modernising around vestigial past glory, a celebrated man of letters keeps history ever-green as he lives out his days in the old way, among a retinue of relatives, near-relatives and loyal staff. “We seem to be lacking what we need to understand our culture and past,” he tells me. “You have to know the past, or you dont know what you are deviating from. No one can really be the same person once one has absorbed that kind of richness.” The kind of reward 79-year-old Shamsur Rahman Faruqi offers the patient reader. His airy home on Hastings Road (now Nyaya Marg), designed with the fluent space of the mosque in mind, bears the memory of his late wife, who supported Faruqi through the early days and lingers in the black-and-white images which chorus from room to room. His son-in-law and assistant Amin Akhtar manages his business affairs and joins us for lunch with his niece and grand-niece. Nearby, a parrot erupts occasionally, and a host of budgies and parakeets fill an outdoor enclosure. There are too many questions to ask, too many tales which may come of them. The grand master of contemporary Urdu literature brings us, steaming, the fragrant stories we have missed, forgotten or mislaid by the wayside, in the hurtling cavalcade from resplendent and subsequently looted Hindustan to postliberalisation India. A Scheherazade of many eras whose tales teem in the bylanes of the old Delhi he memorialises, Faruqi publishes a vivid new collection of stories around the lives of poets, The Sun That Rose from the Earth, in English next month. His first volume in English, The Mirror of Beauty— published in Urdu in 2006 as Kai Chaand The Sar-e-Aasmaan, a magnificent opus around 19th century beauty Wazir Khanam who enchants both Mughal nobility and an officer of the East India Company—was just longlisted for the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The 1,000-page epic is testament to the pervasive influence and accessibility of Faruqi’s work; the Guardian named it one of the best books of 2013, and the writer Mohammed Hanif compared it to the Koh-i-Noor.

Faruqi has authored a four-volume study of the poet Mir Taqi Mir, for which he won the Saraswati Samman, and another set on the Urdu oral epic Dastan-e Amir Hamza; he has written widely on ilm-e bayan (poetic discourse) and literary tradition as an influential critic; and translated popular and literary works; while editing and publishing literary magazine, Shabkhoon, and holding engagements at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Today, he is among Urdu literature’s most prominent figures; a bridge between the rich inner chamber of that world and the large auditorium of the English-speaking world. “There can be no easy consensus,” he says. “Those who were opposed to me say, ‘Faruqi is taking refuge in the ruins of the past’. But if you see the past as a bundle of ruins, you have abrogated the responsibility to live. People think, ‘Arre kya hai, nothing but women and wine; praising kings to the sky. Ghalib was okay, because we understand him, otherwise theek hai’. It is easier to write of the ancient past than the near past.”

The new book tells five lyrical tales of the lives and loves of the great Urdu poets in the full glory and misery of their times; from Mir to Mushafi

3 november 2014

f there was ever a period to mine, it is that of the 15th through 18th centuries, as displayed in the lyrical mini-epics that make up The Sun That Rose from the Earth: at this time, ‘Hindu, Muslim, even the occasional Firangi, was like the moth on the taper of poetry, or crazy after the universal beloved called poetry.’ For, ‘The previous century was the century of the fullest flowering flush of Persian and the rise of the Golden Orb of Hindi from the earth which had lately been worshipful of only Persian’. These were central concerns, says Faruqi; “Ghalib is himself related to Indo-Persian poets and the decline of the star of Indian poetry circles is something I mention; Ghalib began to say in 1875 that Indian poets don’t know Persian poetry.” Here is the early selfhood of Hindustan, rising to assert itself as an entity in its own, while mindful of its debt to other influences. But here is also restraint: ‘A poet should strive for newness, but newness in the world, not in an artificial, shallow courtly audience,’ proclaims the eponymous tale. These five powerful novellas—ranging from several hundred pages to one that is just about 70—form a single narrative in the sum of its parts, each dealing with a singular open www.openthemagazine.com 49

poet and the long tradition before him. Dense with reference and laden with the literal and figurative riches that fill the pages of Urdu literary history, the prose often scans like verse, mixed with verse and bits of song. Life, love and war level every one of these men of verse, and the women who take up with it too; the protagonists are usually orphans, to make their vulnerability even more apparent. Long, sonorous, plaintive in their slow, detailed unfolding, the stories connect in their attempted divination of the same mystery of inspiration, life—and death. The project began, of course, with Ghalib, that preeminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last years of the Mughal Empire. “Ghalib’s 200th birth anniversary was celebrated in 1997 (not with the same gusto as his death anniversary!). Everyone was bringing out special issues. I thought I should at least devote some pages, 20 to 40 pages out of 80, in my magazine; others were doing special issues.” Faruqi had two contributors who were professors of Persian and Urdu, and one Banaras Hindu University scholar. He decided to contribute himself through fiction, to add to the mix. “I thought, ‘Let me write a story about Ghalib. In that story I’ll weave something about my origins in Allamgarh, then I’ll get into other questions about Ghalib, like why did he dislike Indian Persian poets.’ The story began with a first person narrator, a young man, and I picked dialogues from Ghalib’s own letters. The narrator clicked very well, a young—now old—man passing time in Kanpur having served in an ordnance factory. Somehow the voice was so compelling that people were deceived. I gave the author’s name as Mani Mahar Vishwa; they thought someone had written a memoir.” The story was well-received; he expanded to include other poets. “I began with a great sense of disaffection; how to reinstate these people? How are they writing in the same city differently? What makes them different? I began to go into this matter in the late sixties. For example, Mir and Ghalib: there was a school which argued Mir was better, others argued Ghalib was the poet, that he seems to vibrate in the same rhythm as we do. There were others, too. My quest began here.” Does he have a favourite poet? “Mushafi. Here is a man who has been given a dirty deal. I wanted to place him centrestage as he hadn’t been, bring him into the mainstream of Urdu literature and the life of Urdu. He came in the middle of things. He was so forward-looking, at the end of life he had adopted the style invented by his pupil. Even I follow it. I built the story about him around his wife, her entire character from one line; ‘My companion is a woman with whom I had a contract marriage’. I believe it is possible for a woman to be self -

contained. She is a slave of her time, of her environment. Yet she’s able to stand up to life and adversity, to appreciate the goodness being done to her. He is my favourite poet, but still I can’t forgive him for not making any provisions for her.” Isn’t the student’s trap looking too much at the life? “I’ve always denied the pride of place that people have given in my culture to the biography of the poet. Whether their life or success can be made relevant to their work, I don’t think it’s a healthy way of looking at this work. But it has been one of my curiosities. How would I have got along with Ghalib, Mir? Would they have got along with me? Whether their life or success, etcetera, can be made relevant to their work—I don’t believe in that.” What the biographies achieve is to create new literature in themselves, while advancing our understanding of evolving Indian poetic craft, of how our current idiom came into being, to mixed results: “Here in the mission school, the new Hindi was the rising star; I even heard some of the masters say that Hindi is a separate, independent language; it is the language of Hindus, whereas the language of Muslims is known as Rekhtah, or Urdu. We were further informed that Urdu meant ‘language of the Court of the Mughal’, or ‘the language of the lashkar’.” Like Hindi itself, a ghost become new, appears a mysterious presence in the third novella, ‘The Rider’: a figure on a horse that is seen differently by different viewers, then echoed in the narrator’s sighting of a handsome poet who becomes a dear friend and then renounces the world, then in a courtesan the narrator desires. “Once I finished the story, I saw that it puts people in touch with Delhi of the 18th century. Powerful, rich, aware, not as decadent as historians have been telling us; they said it was a city of decline, that the whole 18th century was a period of decline after 1739 when Ahmed Shah had come and gone and so on. Delhi came out as a real, great, powerful entity.”

“Urdu is rich in words of love. Conveying this in English is not always possible.” The Mirror of Beauty is a great historical love story

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aruqi began working with the Indian postal service in his early twenties, around the time he began to write. “At that time, everyone was writing fiction. I had a strong moralistic view, I knew everything about women and about life,” he jokes. A short novel was a result, and then that reality of his vocation: “I used to wait for rejections slips; at least this meant the stories had been received,” he remembers. He knew important people in the literary world, teachers at the University of Allahabad where he studied English; like scholar and critic Muhammed Askari, who he considers among his influences. He was also disdainful of some contemporary 3 november 2014

writers and critics, however, who in turn engaged passionately. An interview held as recently as the nineties is unusually volatile, recording an exchange between Faruqi and Urdu poet Prem Kumar Nazar, who charges him with egotism and a lack of understanding of Faiz, among other things (Urdu Alive, 1997). Charming and armed with tehzeeb, yet unapolegetically blunt, Faruqi is not afraid to speak disparagingly of writers—“Not my kind of writer!” —and work—“I hate what is known as poetic prose”—he doesn’t enjoy. The writer-critic is ultimately self-taught, and fought his way through the literary firmament as he met Western literary thinking with pre-existing Indian models. Dubbed the ‘TS Eliot of Urdu literature’ by critic Kalimuddin Ahmad (a tag he doesn’t seem to take to entirely), Faruqi is both supremely confident of his contribution to Indian literature and reluctant to take himself too seriously. He underlines the value of his magazine, too. “It was a platform,” he says. “It gave me access.”

he early days of Indian literary theory were crucial. “A

number of people are important to the historical development of Urdu,” says Faruqi. “The fact is that the early modernisers didn’t want to go back to the past. They had read English only to the extent they were taught, and the first thing they were taught was extreme metaphorical statements are not desirable, open discussion is bad manners, and so forth and so on; that kind of narrow Victorianism is not known anywhere except in India. The Victorians were very colourful in their own way; they produced the longest pornographic novel, yet they were known to us for their pulchritude. For them to read Dryden and Pope, and then to read and enjoy Sauda and Mir, angry and bawdy, full of bad words... they thought, ‘This is not poetry’.” What of the hunger today of English language publishing for Urdu and regional languages? “Now that there is a huge market for almost everything, it only needs somebody to promote them. There is a big market for the early progressives, partly because they are really great writers, and partly because of some nostalgic feeling for them. There is a kind of assertion that the immediate past generated by the late 19th century writers is important. The pre-immediate past is something else. From 1890 to 1930, most were practically illiterate in Western literature and could barely read high school Urdu; how could they go back to the great past? Fiction began to grow slowly, at the end of the 19th century.” What is it like to translate his own work, he is often asked. “I have rarely added anything,” he says, of working between Urdu and English. “And I have not omitted anything. Though archaic Urdu is not possible to put into English, and women’s speech is practically extinct. High Urdu couldn’t go into English, so I use 19th century English. Now, the kind of otherworldly effect this Urdu has, has been able to revive itself in English.” Indeed, words like ‘carked’, ‘condign’ and ‘contumely’ litter the text, as well as expressions for the long health of potentates, the deepening of their shadows and other wonderfully atmospheric elements. Peculiarities of

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E X C E R P T

‘I

t was Mir’s sense of humour that saved him from another onrush of melancholia, or even mental derangement. He was no longer that very young and inexperienced man who believed that a girl of surpassing beauty beckoned him from the moon on moonlit nights. He could smile at his own Akbarabadi accent and intonation, just as he smiled a minute ago at the harsh karkhandari intonations—freely dropping the somewhat vague ha sound, and substituting the emphatic ya in its place, enunciating all the hard sounds even harder—of the boy messenger whom he had been upbraiding, blaming him for not delivering his letter. He could laugh at his own impatience, his own eagerness, juvenile at best, and futile and pointless at worst. Just as he could laugh at these idle things, he could also laugh at his love (or lust, or perhaps nothing but lust). He could see that his love-lust could also be a form of self-love, the expression of the desire to be admired by a beautiful woman of great refinement. He had no illusions about his love, or about his own self. Neither one was from a world outside this world, not from another planetary land, not from an ultra distant star. What he was doing was play, lila, of the gods, or of men. I am not the first lover, nor Nurus Saadat the first beloved. Everyone believes their world to be very big, though in fact all worlds are very small, puny and insignificant. Of what weight are the loves loved here, the lives burnt and the souls reduced and diminished here? These are smaller than chess games played on the tiniest of boards. What is Lailah here and who the mountain-cleaver Farhad? What are their madnesses, their failures and successes? I am a poet, perhaps a great poet, but a lover? I am just like any other lover. Not above him, not below him. All of us feel the same heat of lust when it boils over; all of us have the same self-regard, and perhaps the same contradictory desire to lose oneself in the ocean of love, to let oneself go, to destroy one’s own self and be reborn in someone else’s self. I am not alone in this. There have been others, there will be others. No, I can’t fl y above the great poets, the great lovers. I love the body more than the soul. But, oh Mir, what body would that body be whose fragrance seems to be running away with me not only in my thoughts but also in my body! Well, I can at least laugh at myself. Was it not I who wrote:

We’ve heard of sad people But none could ever be like Mir Who, when he heard the word ‘Joy’ Said: It must be someone’s name! ... But no, I am well aware that the realm of poetry is not the same as the world of men. They’re not equal, not even parallel. Men want bodies. I want the heart of Nurus Saadat, but only for the duration that she makes her body my body. I should take off her clothes; keep awake the whole night, looking at her bare body. Stupid, am I not? ... Mir was not the same Mir now, but what he’d lost were his angularities. Nurus Saadat’s love taught him humility, at least in the presence of love. He joked and played the games still, especially chess, of which he was something of a master. But he also knew that he was small. He could write any kind of poetry, but he could not command his kind of woman.’ Excerpted from ‘In Such Meetings and Partings, Ultimately’, The Sun That Rose from the Earth

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language? “English is rich in words of hatred, difference,” Faruqi says, always forthright. “Urdu is rich in words of love. Conveying the experience of love in English is not possible in the same way at times, but I didn’t try to make it sound sensual. As for the homoerotic, it becomes salacious. In Urdu, it passes, no problem at all. It was quite usual to be known as homosexuals, no one abhorred them as they would do even in the 1950s. The story ‘Timecompression’—I chose those people to show how subtly and how effectively homoerotic friendship can be shown without being salacious or attempting to be open; that is the great power of my language and my culture.” The Urdu-to-Hindi translation of his texts is also of interest. A well-known translator, Naresh Nadeem, carried it out, and Faruqi was careful to retain the Urdu if it sounded clunky. “In English, this is not possible. In the Hindi edition, in some cases we could translate what the Urdu was saying. The difficulty was in words that are emotive. Urdu was Hindi at the time: Rekhta, Dehlvi, Japani. Literary Hindi. If you read any page of Hindi, it is full of Urdu words.” Originality is both a recurrent theme and a necessary impossibility in Faruqi’s oeuvre; the idea of tawarud, or the same poetic expression coming simultaneously to two different minds, is referred to, as are other conventions based on earlier works. “The idea of originality, that this should come from your own stomach, your own heart—the tradition preceding you is so strong you can’t avoid it. In the early 1920s, a famous poet called Allaha said Ghalib’s verse was copied from an earlier verse long ago. At that time no one had the sense to say he was a fool. It was quite common to take a theme and give it a different slant, the tradition of istiqbal referred to in my book [in going forward to welcome the old work, the poet transcends it]. Up to the 19th century, the audience would know where you got the idea; intertextuality and all those phrases created by the French post structuralists. Every poem is nothing but a palimpsest over other poems which have been written before.”

partly because of this. That memory was practically erased from the surface of the earth. And whatever I read, in fiction, Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi and other books by Khushwant Singh and others, they were so Anglicised.” The knowledge of the past remained out of reach in English, he says. “My own people were almost entirely aware of the past, those professionally involved by being writers of Urdu, claiming to be representatives of the Urdu of 18th and 19th centuries and earlier. In Urdu, there are a huge number of metaphors and tropes that are inexplicable today unless you understood the mind that created those tropes.” He cites a few examples; “Ask any Urdu scholar, why are the eyes of the beloved bimaar, or sick? The idea is that you can’t rise because you are ill; this can be applied to the beloved’s eyes. And why is the sky called old? Because it is bent!”

he writer works in all rooms. Sometimes the bedroom,

a light-filled space with a large double bed and a James Patterson novel half emerging from under a pillow—“I may pass the day reading a light novel”—sometimes the adjoining living room, sometimes the study spilling over with books bearing all scripts. The last is an open point of access for many visitors; in the afternoon, a clutch of teachers have arrived to see how Faruqi saab is faring after recent health problems. The caretaker of classics is also interested in contemporary literature and speaks of the contemporary work of Mohammed Hanif, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Chandra fondly; on Sacred Games, “I love that book, it’s a true book”. But, he maintains, “We must not be afraid of the past. The other stories you read are valuable, but they are not Indian.” Next, he plans a new novel he has had in mind for a while, and a translation of Mir which is underway. He stands strong by the edifice, even as it crumbles; he may be the bridge, but his great-niece, I hear during lunch, does not read Urdu literature, though she studies it at school and reads the Quran. Who are his successors? And what is his advice to readers and writers today, who cannot appreciate the original language and story, to writers who deal with India today? “I admire them, I like them. They have given me days and days of joy,” he says. “Someone had to experience all of this. Those who did not know will write their own kind of book. If we can’t emulate them, at least learn to value them. A whole century of my past... and no one has undertaken the task of reconstructing that past. Maybe all we can do is read about that. If I can create readers who at least want to access that world, I hope I have achieved that. We can go back, and return with some fruit from there.” n

“The tradition preceding you is so strong, you can’t avoid it. Every poem is nothing but a palimpsest over other poems which have been written before”

aruqi was postmaster-general for a while in Delhi,

which he describes as an easier job than others available, affording him time to write. “Delhi is not an easy place to live in, it has become almost impossible,” he says. “Even in 1996, through the pace of life and the way it was growing, I could see no one had any affection or love for that city. Everyone was using it for their own purposes, not to contribute anything to the city itself. The Delhi that lives in my imagination was almost completely gone when I went there.” One of his first visits was in 1958, a short visit for examinations, but right in the heart of the city; “I wrote these stories

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The Sun That Rose from the Earth (Penguin Books India, 620 pages) will be published next month 3 november 2014

books The Poet in Search of the Self How spirituality and poetry mix in the

ritesh uttamchandani

peripatetic world of Arundhathi Subramaniam

Madhavankutty Pillai

And I know what it is to live in a place where the mind’s ink has many tributaries, fermented enough to make all songs seem just a little untrue.

n 1997, Arundhathi Subramaniam had just had a very happy holiday in Nepal. From there she came to Delhi for a week before getting on the Rajdhani Express to return to Mumbai, where she lived. In the train she was reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying with what she describes as a certain focus that happens when there is just you and a book. Then she started dying. “That is the way it felt. It wasn’t an emotional experience. I couldn’t think of it as a psychological experience. Nor was it like I was physically ill. The body just seemed like it was turning into a carcass. I could look and see it for what it is. But I could equally see it stiffening, hardening, darkening into a corpse,” she says. She arrived in Mumbai in that state but thought a good meal and a night’s sleep would turn things normal. It didn’t. She would wake up and again be confronted with that quality of darkness. She calls it a time of great terror. “Because I had no way to understand this. It was also a realisation that all the things that I believed counted—love, books, travel, poetry, I couldn’t clutch any of them. I couldn’t even pick up a phone or meet a friend and talk about what is going on inside because it was not a place that one could describe,” she says. The experience began to taper away after a week and it was accompanied by a great sense of freedom, buoyancy and lightness. “It was fabulous coming out of it. But I also knew that it had been preceded by terror and emptiness. I knew that I had to make my peace with that emptiness because it seemed very clear to me that fundamentally this is what my life had to be about; what life is. And if you don’t make your peace with that emptiness, you haven’t understood life at all.” She had always been spiritually bent, but from then on the quest became less intellectual. “I was willing to try whatever it takes because I had known that terror,” she says. Arundhathi speaks about that experience as falling into a crater on a page of poetry and suddenly realising what those huge gaps in a poem actually mean. “We think we are manipulating language. Anyone who deals with language with a certain measure of intensity discovers at some point that you can tumble into places that are completely unmapped by language. Where you are no longer playing grand manipulator. It is no longer you calling the shots,” she says. open www.openthemagazine.com 55

In When God Is a Traveller, spirituality is an underlying thread, but it is subtle. There are poems on linen, high heels, wry crumbly gods in little anonymous shrines doling out deep communions, shoeboxes, cats and epigrams for life after 40 Trust him, whose race is run, whose journey remains, who stands fluid-stemmed knowing he is the tree that bears fruit, festive with sun.

n When God Is a Traveller

(HarperCollins India, 116 pages, Rs 399) Arundhathi’s latest collection of poems, spirituality is an underlying thread, but it is subtle. Her poetry is broad spectrum. There is Bones, about listening to the language of the body; Sharecropping, about growing into the image of parents and coming to terms with age without turning old; there is the slightly erotic Black Oestrus; poems on linen, high heels, wry crumbly gods in little anonymous shrines doling out deep communions, shoeboxes, cats and epigrams for life after 40. They jump from the existential to the spiritual to the material to the mundane to however else you want to relate to them. The main preoccupations of her poetry deal with relationships, place— the external landscape impinging on the self, love, life, time and quest. Her first collection, On Cleaning Bookshelves, was published in 2001, representing a decade of work that had preceded it. “There was a kind of exuberance and variety of themes and preoccupation in them,” she says. The second book, Where I Live, came out in 2004 and addressed a gap between where she lived and where she belonged—“not knowing where I belong and not being entirely satisfied with where I live”. Now with When God Is a Traveller, she says she has absolutely no clue where she lives. She leads a peripatetic existence, spending time between Mumbai, an ashram in Coimbatore, her parents’ home in Madras and travelling for poetry-related events. But, paradoxically, she also feels less nomadic within. “I can’t tell you where I am most of

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the time but there is a much deeper sense of belonging than ever before; a much deeper anchorage in your self. I wouldn’t trade this for any of the more comfortable moments of my life in the past,” she says. The transformation has much to do with her finding a guru. After that near death experience, Arundhathi had wanted someone to help her not just to understand that experience but guide her back into it, who would take her “into places within myself that would help me make my peace with these areas that I had not dreamt even existed; someone who knew what life was and what death was.” In 2004, completely by chance, she walked into a talk by Jaggi Vasudev, the founder of the Isha Foundation whose yoga programmes have a wide following. “I remember that first encounter. I was hearing him and being just so convinced that I was in the presence of someone of clarity. But a clarity that was not just certainty, which I think is a distinction between the mystic and the fundamentalist. He wasn’t giving certitudes or feel good tips for life. It was an invitation to deeper experiences. I was drawn but the process happened over a period of time.” What you might say to the sage: It only makes sense if you are looking for me too— wild-eyed but never despairing certain I’ll get through eventually

oems don’t happen to Arundhathi at one go. The only poem that did was one called 5.46 Andheri Local. “I wrote and put it away and many months later looked at it again and said it holds and I don’t want to do anything to it. Most of the time the way I would work is: a poem often starts

with an image, or it might start with some kind of idea that is churning on a level when it is not just an idea or emotion and is finding its way in some deeper part of yourself. I’d write something, put it away, deliberately not look at it for a while. And then when it is sort of erased, pick it up again and look at it to find out whether it touches a chord. Is it sounding fraudulent? Is it working? You return to it, circle around it, again put it away. It is many moments of putting it away and returning to it. Which explains why I haven’t written that much poetry,” she says. For an illustration into the process, take the longest poem in When God Is a Traveller. It is called Eight Poems For Shakuntala and according to Arundhathi is the very heart of the collection. The poem’s journey began in 2003 when she was in a hotel room in Guwahati while attending a Sahitya Akademi seminar. She was lying in bed staring at the ceiling when Shakuntala’s story started running in her mind and there came an image of leave-taking— a pregnant Shakuntala leaving the forest and the hermitage of her father, the ascetic Kanva, to go to her husband Dushyanta who (she doesn’t know it yet) has forgotten her because of a curse. “And for some reason I found I was crying. I don’t usually have this kind of response to a story,” she says. Seven years later, in 2010, when Arundhathi found that the story was still persisting in her, she decided to begin writing. “My starting point of the poem was just this: as someone who is the daughter of a rishi and an apsara, Shakuntala is a recipe for disaster, a genetic calamity who is never going to be one thing or the other. Suddenly I discovered that it was a familiar human scenario. I started with that but by the end of the cycle of poems I actually began to see her as a tremendous possibility. As someone who is citizen of more than one world and 3 November 2014

therefore gifted with the kind of vantage point that is unique. How often do you have someone who can tell what it is to be both apsara and rishi; who knows the experience of matter and mind, who knows the experience of human and the divine all at once? I saw her location as a great gift.” And it feels like I too could   wait for you,  while I perform   the erotic liturgies of another world,  wait for you,  who understands like none other  the prosody of my breath

nother art that influences her

poetry is dance. Arundhathi has trained in Bharatanatyam but, in her teens, felt she had to choose between poetry and dance. She chose poetry but dance kept resurfacing in her life in some form or other. Initially she wrote on it. Then there was curatorial work at the National Centre for Performing Arts. “I know my poetry draws from understanding of movement, particularly of the spine, by yoga as well as dance. I am going to sound horribly pretentious if I say how. I am not going to say how but it is important,” she says. Alarmel Valli, the celebrated Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, has known Arundhathi for more than 25 years when she used to write on dance. She remembers that in interviews Arundhathi was able to get the essence of what Valli was conveying and express it with great clarity and feeling. “It was the poet in Arundhathi even in those days when I didn’t know her as one,” says Valli. Valli was present in Chennai for a reading when Arundhathi’s first collection of poems had come out. “I was deeply stirred by what I was hearing. Her poems have many layers. Each time I read them, I discover new dimensions, new meaning. Even with poems I don’t fully understand at first, I am moved. Arundhathi’s poetry speaks directly to you, makes you see things afresh and sometimes you learn something new about yourself. That, for me, is the mark of true art,” she says.

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As a dancer, some aspects that strike her about Arundhathi’s poetry are the vivid visual quality of her metaphors and the music of her language. It led to an interesting collaboration in 2010 between the two—Only until the Light Fades, a production of love poems through the ages, in which Valli choreographed Arundhathi’s poem Vigil. “I selected it for the same reason I would have chosen a Sangam poem. There was a deep response to it and I wanted to express it in dance. Arundhathi had actually written the poem with Indian dance and dancers in mind. I wanted to interpret it as I would, a song in Bharatanatyam—not as an abstraction of the theme, but using sancharis and embroidering around the poem.” Only until the Light Fades received very warm responses in all the major metropolises. Valli finds Arundhathi’s

tacks had just happened. The poem ends with the city becoming ‘suddenly mine’. Mumbai was where she was born, studied and began writing poetry even as a student. Her relationship with poetry changed after chancing upon a book of TS Eliot’s poems and reading The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and Wasteland. Even though she didn’t understand what they were about, she felt the presence of poetry. “It was an important realisation that poetry can be about mystery; that it doesn’t have to be about what I call ‘100 watt illumination’. It can be about areas that are shadowed, that it is part of the experience of its beauty.” Later, when in college, she became part of the Poetry Circle, a group that met in south Mumbai. It was a time when the novel was becoming the most fashionable genre with writers who saw the success of icons like Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth. But the novel has nev-

“Arundhathi’s poetry speaks directly to you, makes you see things afresh and sometimes you learn something new about yourself. That, for me, is the mark of true art” Alarmel Valli, Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer spiritual core reflected in her poems. “Everything that she says is completely from the very core of her being. Not one thing is said for effect or merely to impress,” she says. This time we didn’t circle each other, the city and I, hackles raised, fur bristling

t has only been a couple of months since Arundhathi has decided not to have a fixed address in Mumbai anymore. It is a severing that she is anxious about but getting used to. It is a city where she always felt a sense of siege; a place she both hated and loved. In When God Is a Traveller, there is a poem The City and I in which she speaks about one brief moment when she connected with Mumbai as a fellow fugitive. That was when she returned after the 26/11 at-

er been a temptation for Arundhathi. “For whatever strange reason, at least some of us felt like it was poetry we wanted to be around. It was an odd thing to be doing, it was unfashionable and it wasn’t easy at all at the time to be published. But you felt a strange obstinate need to be doing it,” she says. Poetry does not believe in simplification or making it easy on the reader, but, like all art, it craves an audience. The poet has to decide how to walk that line. Arundhathi makes a distinction between being understood and connecting. “Even when I am reading out poetry, I am making a very real effort to connect. Because I want to be able to share this experience. As to how you receive it, even what sense you make of it, that to my mind is not really a concern. A certain emotional access in a poem is very important. I’d like to believe that a reader or listener tunes into that even before they fully understand a poem,” she says. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

rough cut

Bollywood’s Last Monarch Will there ever be another star like SRK, selling aspiration to middle-class India? Mayank Shekhar

ctor Shah Rukh Khan is blessed with a fine sense

natural ally of those marketing a post-liberalised India. of humour—mainly if it is directed at others. He’s SRK once spoke about having to leave a package behind also good at poking fun at himself. This was a quality with the security guard of a building because his friend rarely seen among Bollywood stars in the 90s. It’s quite comwasn’t home. Although a movie star by then, he was surmon now. But usually, when others make fun of SRK to his prised to notice that the security guard didn’t recognise him. face, he looks rather self-conscious. You can notice this in his It almost sounded like the actor had failed some exam. Over interview with a fake Arnab Goswami on a YouTube the past two decades, no Indian actor has worked quite as video that went viral recently. The fact that he even chose relentlessly and unabashedly on self promotion. His core job to appear on Qtiyapa’s ‘Barely Speaking with Arnub’ made has been to sell himself. Selling everything else—face Arnub (with a ‘u’) rightly call SRK the ‘national sport of whiteners to film tickets—has automatically followed. The India’. It’s not something a mainstream movie star will quality of those products is immaterial. SRK is the main prodreadily risk. Although true for most mortals, forget superuct anyway. The BJP’s General Election campaign of 2014, stars surrounded by yesmen, SRK is also not exactly great in that sense, appeared borrowed from Bollywood, where with taking criticism. I experienced this personally in 2004. Narendra Modi, a rank outsider to many parts of India, Responding to a review of his film Main Hoon Na in including New Delhi, was untiringly placed in the collective Mid-Day, SRK had decided not just to pull back the film’s imagination as a bona fide national hero. The muscular camads from the paper, he also vowed never to speak to it again. paign was designed to rubbish the notion that there is any A year-and-a-half later, I, who had written that review, and such thing as an overkill. Round the clock, for days on end, it my editor, who had placed it on the front page, was impossible to escape Mr Modi on TV, were both working with Mumbai Mirror. SRK radio, comic books, hoardings, bus-stops, had granted me an interview. He was still not social media or mainstream print. People were Over the past speaking to Mid-Day, which was really the justly swayed by the message—that message two decades, paper’s loss. being the man himself. This sort of one-man no Indian actor Quick-witted and uncannily sharp, SRK is canvassing isn’t vastly different from how SRK has worked as as much an interviewer’s as a stage audience’s promotes his home productions. The marketrelentlessly and delight. During the conversation, one thing he ing blitzkrieg for his film Ra.One began on 1 unabashedly said he could genuinely take credit for wasn’t January 2011, and continued until its release expanding the ‘overseas’ (or NRI) territory for on 24 October that year, by when many as SRK to sell Hindi films, but bringing educated people into believed the film had already come and gone. himself Bollywood’s audience. This claim is hard to Likewise with this year’s Diwali release, Happy verify. Yet, of the three Khans—Salman and New Year, he has certainly clocked over 100 Aamir being the other two who were also born the same year hours of uninterrupted airtime on TV for a film that’s three (1965) and have ruled Bollywood since the early 90s—SRK hours long. The drill is the same: ensemble cast takes a back is the one who best represents the great Indian middle-class seat; SRK towers over the audience like a demi-god, or King dream. Salman is still the frontbencher’s film star. Linking Khan; everyone listens in rapt attention. Then the film is his larger-than-life persona to Rajinikanth’s, he’s probably forgotten. No one’s seen it anyway. Nostalgia takes over. elongated his career by a decade or so. Aamir is the Indian SRK’s younger contemporaries may not benefit much film buff’s hero No 1. People look forward to his films from this level of idol worship. At least in movies, I guess the rather than just his presence. SRK as the romantic hero, middle-class now considers actors as equals or professionals Rahul, had cornered the female imagination with a wonrather than stars from another sky. This is why even Ranbir, derful fantasy of ‘one life and one love’. For the most part, let alone Ranveer, Arjun, Sidharth, Varun, Sushant, Emraan though, SRK, the ‘convent-educated’, hardworking or Imran, have to experiment with their roles rather than family man from Delhi who hit the big time in cinema and rely on image alone. Could SRK then be the last of the built himself a bungalow by the sea stood for the ultimate, middle-class movie monarchs? I suppose or hope so. n aspirational middle-class story of his own. Materialism Mayank Shekhar runs the pop culture website TheW14.com defined most of his pictures and his personality. He became a

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3 november 2014

tobacco peril US National health statistics show that about one in 10 expectant moms in the US continue to smoke during pregnancy, with higher rates among young, poor and underserved moms

Art and Gender Men and women view art differently. So says a new study

Smoking and Stress Hormones

photographer’s choice/getty images

science

ould there be some truth to the

old stereotype that art is a ‘girl thing’. That women love and appreciate art, whereas men just don’t get the appeal and have to be dragged to exhibitions and museums. According to a new study, there just might be some truth to this old stereotype. A total of 518 men and women participated in a study that appeared in Psychology and Marketing. The researchers got the participants to judge two unfamiliar paintings and to read a fictitious biography of the artist. Some were made to read a biography that characterised the artist as ‘authentic’, which meant the artist was experienced and his work unique, while others read one that claimed the artist was ‘ordinary’ and had taken up the craft recently. When the participants were asked for their opinions on the artist and the artwork and whether they would purchase such artworks, both men and women had a more favourable impression of the artist and the work when the biography described the artist as authentic. What appeared as a differentiating factor was the issue of art investment. Unlike the women who went through a complicated process of evaluating

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the artwork, the men based their decision completely on what the biography said of the artist’s merits. The authors write in the journal, ‘Despite the fact that the art market is a multibillion dollar industry, marketing researchers have yet to fully explore the factors that drive consumers’ purchase intentions toward fine art… Attitude toward the artwork had a stronger effect on behavioral intentions for women compared to men, whereas attitude toward the artist had a stronger effect on behavioral intentions for men compared to women. Overall, the results reveal that consumers use information about that artist’s brand in the valuation of the artwork and have important practical implications for the management of the artist’s human brand.’ In a press release, the lead author of the study, Stephanie Mangus, claims the findings are consistent with past research that shows men use factors that are known to them when making decisions. She says, “Women are more willing to go through a complicated process of actually evaluating the artwork… whereas men may say, ‘This guy’s a great artist, so I’ll buy his art’.” n

A study in Sychoneuroendocrinology indicates that newborns of mothers who smoke cigarettes during pregnancy show lower levels of stress hormones, lowered stress response, and alterations in DNA for a gene that regulates the passage of stress hormones from mother to foetus. “Our results suggest that these newborns may not be mounting an adequate hormonal response to daily stressors. Their stress systems may not be prepared for the stressors of daily life,” says Laura Stroud, lead researcher, “This may be particularly detrimental in babies born to mothers who lack resources and parenting skills and whose babies may encounter more daily stressors.” n

Beware of Trivial Graphs

A new study by Cornell University found that trivial graphs or formulas accompanying medical information can lead consumers to believe products are more effective. “Your faith in science may actually make you more likely to trust information that [merely] appears scientific but really doesn’t tell you much,” said lead researcher Aner Tal. The study shows that when a graph with no new information is added to the description of a medication, 96.6 per cent of people believe that the medicines are effective in reducing illness. Without the graph, only 67.7 per cent of people hold the same belief. “Don’t let things that look scientific but don’t really tell you much fool you. Sometimes a graph is just a graph!” warns Tal. n 3 november 2014

tech&style

iMac with Retina 5K Display A sleek workhorse with the world’s sharpest resolution display gagandeep Singh Sapra

ultra high definition A 5K display has a 5,120 x 2,880 pixel resolution at a 16:9 aspect ratio, while a 4K display has around 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution for the same aspect ratio; 5K in the context of the new Retina iMac means 14.7 million pixels packed into a 27-inch screen

Seiko Prospex w Aviation Solar Chronograph

Price on request

Rs 179,900

The Prospex Aviation Solar Chronograph is a modern reinterpretation of a Seiko classic. The slide rule on the watch allows calculations of distance, fuel and oil consumption and speed, while the chronograph measures elapsed time of up to 60 minutes. Powered by light alone, this watch delivers what pilots need most: complete reliability throughout their flight. n

BlackBerry Passport

he Retina i Mac’s 5K monitor

uses 14.7 million pixels to offer some great images, and amazingly all these pixels are packed in a machine that is just 5 mm thin at the corners, and Apple made the 27-inch display just 1.4 mm thin to make sure it has a clean and crisp look. Apart from precision calibration on the display for colour accuracy that serves unbelievably life-like details of photos and videos, Apple has also used a new timing controller that switches pixels on and off in accordance with specific requirements without hogging too much energy. The new iMac also features fourth generation Intel Core processors with the base model running on a Core i5 Quad Core with turbo boost speeds of up to 3.9 GHz, an AMD Radeon R9 M290X with 2 GB RAM graphics card and a 1 terabyte fusion drive. You can even order custom-built machines with full solid state storage, as well as proces-

3 november 2014

sors going up to 4.0 GHz Intel Core i7, and an AMD Radeon R9 M295X graphic card with 3 TB fusion drive. The iMac comes preloaded with 8 GB of RAM that can neatly be upgraded to a maximum of 32 GB, and an optimised OSX Yosemite. The OSX Yosemite has a feature called ‘continuity’, which lets you continue what you were working on your iPad on the desktop, and then shift the work back to your iPad without any loss. Yosemite works closely with your iPhone too, letting you use your iMac to answer iPhone calls or answer text messages so long as your iPhone is on the same network as your iMac. For those who want high-speed connectivity of external peripherals with the iMac, the Retina iMac has two thunderbolt ports in addition to four USB 3.0 ports. The headphone slot, ethernet jack and the SD card slots are at the rear of the unit. It’s priced at a premium, but Apple knows just who it’s aimed at. n

Rs 49,990

With an innovative square format screen, a new keyboard that features hard keys and also works as a capacitive input to scroll up and down and left and right, the BlackBerry Passport commands attention. The phone’s battery powers nearly 26 hours of usage before recharge. The phone’s 10.3 BlackBerry OS Update gives you access to the Amazon App Store. Other features include: improved larger antenna, 13 MP camera, Quad Core processor, 3 GB RAM and 32 GB of storage. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

bold and unusual American producer and director Michael Cuesta, who directed Kill The Messenger, is known for his unconventional plotlines. His credits include acclaimed TV shows like Six Feet Under, Dexter, Homeland and his 2001 debut feature L.I.E which showed a paedophile in sympathetic light

Kill The Messenger With a great subject treated lifelessly, this film shies away from taking a stand ajit duara

current

o n scr een

The Judge Director David Dobkin cast Robert Downey Jr, Robert

Duvall, Vera Farmiga Score ★★★★★

k er, Robert Patric Cast Jeremy Renn a el Cuest Director Micha

he story that Gary Webb broke

turned him into a hero of journalism, before it crucified him. As a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, he wrote an investigative series called Dark Alliance in which he said that Nicaraguan drug dealers supplied crack cocaine to the streets of Los Angeles and used the money to fund the Contra rebels in that country. Since the CIA supported the arming of the Contras in the 1980s, Webb said that the Agency had to be complicit in the drug deals, which had a devastating impact on inner city communities. It was a huge story and the first to go viral online in 1996, when the newspaper uploaded it on its website. As the title of the film suggests, Kill The Messenger is about how the ‘system’ destroyed Gary Webb. Powerful government networks ferreted dirt on him. The mainstream media, after lapping up his story and turning him into a celebrity, quickly did an about-turn and questioned his data

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and investigative methods. His own newspaper eventually ditched him and ‘admitted’ that Webb’s investigation was deeply flawed. The subject of the film is fascinating, but unfortunately the treatment is sluggish. The movie puts us to sleep by intermittently playing stock TV footage of the 1980s to build a narrative, rather like in a convoluted political argument by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, but without his cleverness or humour. Clearly, director Michael Cuesta has plenty of information on Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) but no opinion on the quality of his journalism, his legacy as an investigative reporter or even on the personal courage of the man. Webb was never hired again as a journalist after his story was mercilessly ripped apart by his peers. What does this say about the fine tradition of American journalism? The movie doesn’t adopt a firm position— political or personal—and this absence of a stance is very disappointing. n

This is a film with an excellent cast caught in a production that just drifts along aimlessly. A defence lawyer comes home to a small town in Indiana on hearing of his mother’s death. As soon as he gets home, he is caught in an emotional conflict with his father, the distinguished Judge of the town. The father affects scorn for his son’s proficiency as a lawyer, while the son is mystified by the father’s lack of any real affection for him. Soon, in a twist of fate, Judge Palmer (Robert Duvall) is arrested in a hit-andrun case and has no recollection of what happened. Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr) desperately tries to wrest the truth from his cantankerous father so that he can build a credible defence to keep the old man from going to prison. Family sentiment is a fine thing and holds enough emotional resonance to keep a narrative going. But at some point the fuel runs out and we are left with a courtroom drama about an old man who can’t remember what he did. The movie meanders and then stalls. At the end, we are left to contemplate the acting skills of Duvall, and to think of all the memorable roles he has played in the past. n AD

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Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Many Faces of Reincarnation

Finding Fanny helmer Homi Adajania will more than likely direct Deepika Padukone again in his The Fault In Our Stars official remake for Fox. Homi reportedly conducted a look test with Deepika and Varun Dhawan last Sunday, and has set a March start date for filming. He’s also bailing out his Cocktail and Fanny producer Dinesh Vijan by agreeing to co-direct the reincarnation film that Dino had intended to make with Saif Ali Khan and Parineeti Chopra. According to sources, Dino’s credibility took a bit of a beating when Saif left the film and called off their producing partnership. Homi has apparently stepped in so Dino can make the film after all. The project will now go on the floors in October next year, with Kai Po Che star Sushant Singh Rajput and Alia Bhatt stepping in as leads. The only hitch now is Karan Johar’s Shuddhi, also a reincarnation story, and one that’s likely to go into production around the same time. However, Shuddhi, a bigger project both in terms of budget and scale, is expected to have a longer production schedule. Certainly with the very busy and ummm… erratic Salman Khan attached, the makers would be wise not to get into any race towards completion. Besides, Dino and Homi’s film is a reincarnation love story, while Shuddhi is an action movie, so it’s not like both films will be carbon copies of each other even if they do arrive in cinemas around the same time.

Govinda’s Comeback Mantra

Like it or not, we’re going to be seeing a lot of Govinda in the months ahead. Out of work until recently, the Saajan Chale Sasural star is enjoying something of a career revival, having landed significant roles in major upcoming releases. In Yash Raj Films’ Kill Dil, he plays “an unconventional negative role” opposite Ranveer Singh, Ali Zafar and Parineeti Chopra, and in Happy Ending he has “an interesting cameo” alongside Saif Ali Khan and Ileana D’Cruz. He’s also playing the lead (yes!) in a film that he’s producing himself titled, Abhinay Chakra. Industry insiders are saying the famously unprofessional star has finally cleaned up his act. “There was a time he didn’t show up on set until after lunch for a 9 am shift,” a longtime producer reveals. “He was also an incredibly expensive actor to 3 november 2014

work with, because he travelled with an entourage of nine to 10 people including his family members. And the costs always had to be borne by the producer.” It was that very work ethic (or the lack of it) that saw the immensely talented actor’s career end prematurely in the early noughties. While Govinda may have become more punctual and less unprofessional, there are still some things he remains stubborn about. The star won’t work in any movie that he thinks isn’t ‘commercial’. His old friend and Partner co-star Salman Khan is reportedly peeved that Govinda turned down the Hindi remake of the acclaimed Marathi film Shikshanachya Aaicha Gho, which Salman is producing. “That seemed like an art film, and I don’t do art films,” Govinda told the press when he was asked why he opted out of the film. “I believe in the Rajinikanth school of cinema,” he added with a smile.

The Secret Couch Unveiled

A respected senior filmmaker, with a reputation for experimenting with new genres and different subjects, recently went red in the face out of embarrassment during a meeting in his office with a media-person. This is the sort of story you’ll wish you were there to witness in person! The female journo, who was meeting with the veteran to talk shop, reportedly became privy to one of his closely guarded secrets that particular afternoon by sheer accident. Turns out that when the filmmaker pressed a bell to summon an office help to order refreshments for his guest, what he actually ended up doing inadvertently was hitting the wrong button. As a result, a seemingly innocuous ‘wall’ at the opposite end of the room rotated to reveal—wait for it—a concealed cozy queen-size bed! The lady was visibly shocked. The filmmaker apparently didn’t know where to look. He nervously sputtered something about having created that little nook for himself—to retire when he needed a nap at work. The lady was not convinced but tried not to let it show. It is perhaps unfair to draw a sleazy conclusion from what she saw, but the gentleman’s discomfort was a telling sign, she insists. You make up your own mind with the facts at hand! n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Those Left Behind

by as h i s h s h a r m a

Yasmeen Jan, 31, widow of Shafat Sidiq, a Kashmir based photojournalist, cradles her twoyear-old son Mohammad at their home in Bohri Kadal, Srinagar. During the recent floods in Kashmir, Yasmeen’s husband Shafat had gone on assignment to shoot pictures of the water that had inundated Lal Chowk. He did not return. Five days after he went missing, rescue workers came across Shafat’s bloated body, his two cameras still around his neck. He had not filed any pictures with his employer, Dainik Jagran, a Hindi daily, but the cameras recovered showed that he had taken quite a few. Shafat had been a photojournalist for 20 years and was the only breadwinner of his family. He is survived by his father, his mother and two sisters, apart from his wife and son. So far, they say, they have received no help from either the government or Shafat’s employer 64 open

3 november 2014

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