OPEN Magazine 10 November 2014

LUTYENS SYNDROME

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GAITONDE AT GUGGENHEIM

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OCTOPUS ON THE MENU

1 0 N OV E M B E R 2 0 14 / R S 4 0

THE THREE MEN WHO RULE INDIA

AN ICON JUST GOT LARGER

THE NEW NAVITIMER 46 mm

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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Volume 6 Issue 44 For the week 4—10 November 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

photo imaging

Sharad Tailang

Anirban Ghosh and

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bal govind

This refers to ‘The Show Goes On’ (3 November 2014).

The outright win in Haryana, a state where the BJP didn’t have a major presence, and the near halfway mark tally in Maharashtra speak volumes of Modi’s growing stature and acceptance of the BJP across the country. Though it might sound a bit arrogant, what Amit Shah has said about a Modi wave turning into a Tsunami is somewhat a reality. Achieving these two victories without any strong local face and regional ally further signifies that The BJP victory in voters have immense Maharashtra will help confidence in Modi’s Modi in his objective of policies and ways of bringing investment governance. That Shah into the country as is a master political this state has huge strategist has been economic potential proved once again and he has taken a huge stride towards Modi’s goal of a ‘Congress mukt Bharat’.

The victory in Maharashtra will help Modi in his objective of bringing investment into the country as this state has huge economic potential. Next in line should be Delhi and Jharkhand. With these resounding victories, Modi’s responsibility has also increased manifold, though, which he must fulfill soon.  letter of the week The Lost Art of Mujra

the article ‘The Last Mehfil’ (3 November 2014) brings forth the pain of a lost art and its artists. It is true that Mujrawaalis and their art of mujra are left unrecognised.

Bollywood makes money depicting them (in films like Pakeezah and Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani, with stars like Meena Kumari, Rekha and Madhuri Dixit doing the mujra), but is probably less interested in saving the art in its true form.

Fortunately, an initiative is being taken by renowned classical singer Kaushiki Chakrabarty Desikan. In a recent interview in a leading Bengali daily, she expressed her dream of forming an ‘all girl music band’, which will revive the traditional songs of courtesans. Kaushiki has said that, in a khayal or bhajan, the

though Indira was a big leader in her own right, the parallel with Modi ends there. For her, power for herself and her kids was, or perhaps became, the primary motivation. Modi is a reformer; power for him is for engineering changes in an India whose natural path of evolution was arrested a thousand years back.  R obert Khar sing

Holy Poverty

name of its writer or composer is mentioned, but in the case of a dadra or thumri, this tradition is not followed. As a female artist, she can’t tolerate such rejection. She wants to celebrate womanhood, as well as focus on the lost art. She named her band Sakhi, where Radha, Meera, Durga and courtesans will be on the same platform. I don’t know how well it will revive the lost art, but at least the art will get its due recognition from civil society.  Sar oj Darbar

Modi the Reformer

this is a beautiful article (‘The Constant Campaigner’, 3 November 2014). On one issue, however, I differ to a degree. I think Modi has to be compared with the real Gandhi, not the lady who took his name. Even

the indian idea of ‘Holy Poverty’ is to be blamed for this hatred of wealth (‘Why Indians Hate the Rich’, 27 October 2014). The idea of renunciation of wealth and power is ingrained in every Indian through holy texts and other stories. When Mahatma Gandhi came along, he used this renunciation as a symbol to stress self-sufficiency and Swaraj. Indians are not a nuanced people. They overdid the idea of renunciation. The Indian State and its bureaucracy were created to support the rulers and the ruling class.

Combine that with a host of nonsensical socialist policies and you have a breeding ground for corruption. Graft happens because there are too many arbitrary socialist and bureaucratic rules and regulations. All those who become rich are able to do so by beating the system or taking support from it. Hence, the popular resentment of the rich. Let’s hope there is a new narrative now for India: that it’s okay to be rich and the system will be made transparent so that it’s easier for all to achieve this.  D Brijlall

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Deepa Pawar outside a public urinal in Santacruz

The Gender Bias No One Talks About A ‘Right To Pee’ campaign in Mumbai is trying to address the dearth of public toilets for women In Mumbai, there are an es-

timated 5,993 public toilets, apart from 2,466 urinals for men. In comparison, women have access to only 3,536 public toilets. And while men are only charged money for using the toilet, and not the urinal, on the premise that water is not used for the latter, women are always charged money despite regulations to the contrary.

A group of 33 NGOs in Mumbai have joined hands under the campaign ‘Right To Pee’ (RTP) to force the city’s municipal body,

10 november 2014

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), to redress the bias. Although the group was formed in 2011, apart from a cursory meeting with the BMC Commissioner, Sitaram Kunte, in September this year, the municipal body has otherwise paid little heed to the campaign.

Unable to catch the attention of the authorities, the activists began a series of protests. They recently collected around 50,000 signatures of locals supporting their campaign, and began

to invite people to take photographs of ill-maintained toilets for women in the city and share them on Google Maps. During Diwali, members of the NGOs then sent pictures of badly maintained restrooms for women, along with the message ‘Ha Pee Diwali’, to the city’s municipal authorities. But unlike other occasions, this time they got a response.

The activists have now been invited for a meeting on 5 November to discuss a road map to solve the issue.

Deepa Pawar, a member of the NGO Vacha, which deals with gender issues and is part of the campaign, asks: “How can you talk about progress and equality for women, and not even have the most basic thing set up for them?” The activists want the municipal body to build more toilets for women, enforce the rule that women get free use of public toilets to urinate, and to maintain and equip these restrooms with basic facilities like washbasins and latches for doors. n Lhendup G Bhutia

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Ritesh Uttamchandani

small world

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contents

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cover story

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The three men who rule India

advertising

The evolved couple

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hurried man’s guide

Cyclone Nilofar comment

open essay

Why strong leaders are highly vitaminised

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The last fossils

lutyens’ delhi

Hard to say goodbye

person of the week pankaj advani

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A Natural Champion The Bangalore-based cueist has now won a record 11th world title in billiards Lhendup G Bhutia

arlier last week, a rather major Indian sporting achievement went largely unnoticed—the Bangalore cueist Pankaj Advani won a record 11th world title in billiards. The latest addition to his kitty is the World Billiards Championship (point format). After winning two other world titles this year, the World Team Billiards Championship and the IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Champion, he became the first to hold world titles in both snooker and billiards in the same year. There is also the possibility that he may end the year with more titles: at the time of going to press, he is competing in the World Billiards Championship (time format), and will participate in the IBSF World Snooker Championship in his hometown, Bangalore, in November.

Born in 1985 in Pune, Advani spent the first five years of his life in Kuwait, before moving to Bangalore with his family after the Gulf War. His father passed away when he was six. When he was about 10, Advani began accompanying his elder brother, Shree, who would play snooker post school hours, to a neighbouring snooker parlour. After a few weeks, he began playing the game on his own. It is said that such was his innate ability at the game that the managing committee of the Karnataka Snooker and Billiards Association awarded him a membership for free. In just a year’s time after he picked up a cue, Advani was not only competing in a state-level tournament (Sampath Memorial), but he also beat his elder brother Shree in the finals. Immediately

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after, at the age of 12, he won the state junior championships. By the age of 15, he won the Indian Junior Billiards Championship and held the title for seven years in a row.

Immediately after turning professional at the age of 18 in 2003, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship that year, after which, in 2005, he became the first cueist to achieve the grand double of winning both the timed and points format of the IBSF World Billiards Championship.

He repeated this feat of a grand double in 2008. He is also the only person to have won all five billiards tournaments in a season, an accomplishment he achieved in 2005 by winning both the Junior and DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images

Senior National Championships, the Asian Billiards Championship, and the World Billiards Championship in both point and time formats.

What makes Advani’s feats even more remarkable is that he plays both snooker and billiards at the top level, perhaps currently the only active cueist to be doing so. Most cueists usually choose one sport over the other, so that they can focus more and excel at one particular game. Not only are the two games different, requiring different strategies and planning, usually the dates of both sports in major events is not more than a week apart. A player has to quickly adapt his game to switch from one sport to the other.

Because of his skill as a snooker player, and on the advice of his long-time coach Arvind Savur, Advani became a professional snooker player in 2012. The coach felt that he was too good a player to not be playing as a professional. But earlier this year, Advani gave up his pro snooker card, because the rigours of pro snooker did not allow him to play more billiards. “Playing [professional snooker] over six months in England, there was no chance of playing billiards and I was missing my family as well. My sole objective is to excel in both [billiards and snooker] and it will be possible only if I’m based in India,” he told The Times of India then. Since that announcement, the ongoing World Billiards Championship has been his biggest event. The decision seems to have paid off. He has won the title in the point format. He might very well win it in the time format too. n 10 november 2014

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Taste of the sea

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NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

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Raveena Tandon’s artful ageing

books

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Retellings of Hindu mythology

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arts

The Manganiyars of Rajasthan

on able Pers n o s a e r n U ek of the We S h iv

h■ t il singe s h P r e s id e n ■ an Prad r a t Ut Sena

f o r announcing a Rs 21,000 cash

reward for Hindu families that have 10 or more children Shiv Sena’s national party President Uddhav Thackeray has two sons but the party’s Uttar Pradesh President Anil Singh believes that the minimum number of offspring a family must have is 10.

At least. The party unit there has announced a Rs 21,000 reward for those who have so

many children as long as they are Hindus. Singh has claimed that district units in UP have been directed to locate such families. This might be the obvious hate politics of tapping into the old bogey of the community’s population growth being outrun by that of minorities. But with the Shiv Sena’s marginalisation even in its home state of Maharashtra, thankfully no one is going to take Singh seriously. And even if anyone does, the economics does take some swallowing. At Rs 21,000 for 10 children, one child will get Rs 2,100. Granted it is free money, but it not exactly going to change lives. Uniquely, in a country that has been so desperately encouraging family planning, Singh says he will do the opposite, and from 1 November, party workers will even “close down all government medical help centres.” Despite the threat, it is only being greeted with amusement because Singh has to first conjure those party workers to begin anything. n

The Ministry of Home Affairs, which was once opposed to the UID programme under the earlier UPA regime, has now come out in full support of it rethink

‘The possibility of fake identity profiles in the UID data is real’ —Note from former Home Minister P Chidambaram, reported by CNN-IBN, 20 January 2012

‘As more and more government services are going to be linked to Aadhaar, it would be of utility to have an Aadhaar card.

Aadhaar will hence help the poor...’

—MHA letter, PTI, 29 October 2014

turn

VS Gaitonde

around

Altaf Qadri/AP

A Firm Stand on Black Money

Mukul Rohatgi , the current Attorney General of India 10 november 2014

T h e S u p r e m e C o u r t ’ s order to disclose the names of all foreign bank holders earlier this week reignited the debate on the need for a dynamic balance between various institutions. The court passed the order after it rejected the Government’s stand that such a move without establishing the alleged illegality of account holders would breach the confidentiality clause in existing bilateral double taxation avoidance agreements signed with other countries by India.

The Attorney General had argued that

these agreements were an important source of information about Indians operating accounts abroad. He had pointed out that if the Centre disclosed all names without launching prosecutions, it would jeopardise the prospect of India signing similar agreements in the future.

In this context, the court’s order on Wednesday not to make the names public before the investigations are over is a welcome step. It will make it easier for the Centre to pursue the matter with foreign governments. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

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angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to the cyclonic storm Nilofar Cyclone Nilofar originated over the Arabian Sea rather innocuously as a low pressure zone that intensified into a depression on 25 October. It then gradually gained in strength to become a cyclonic storm, and by 27 October the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had upgraded it to the category of a ‘very severe’ cyclonic storm. At one point, its depression reportedly surpassed that of Cyclone Hudhud that had begun over the Indian Ocean and was the strongest storm of the season so far.

The cyclone has been classified a Category-1 equivalent of a At one point, tropical typhoon by Nilofar’s depression the US-based Joint reportedly Typhoon Warning surpassed that of Center. Considered to Cyclone Hudhud, be the strongest storm the country’s after Cyclone Gonu strongest storm of that hit the Arabian the season so far Peninsula in 2007, the storm has been named Nilofar by the Pakistan government. The term refers to a kind of water lily.

Akhtar Soomro/REUTERS

India, which has had enormous casualties from cyclones, is now more efficient at mitigating the damages. Before Nilofar hit, fishermen on the coasts of both India and Pakistan were warned and asked to keep off the waters until it passed. Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel ordered the evacuation of people living in

A grounded fishing boat at Clifton Beach in Karachi

huts and weak houses along the coast. Kandla and Mundra ports were ordered to issue warnings to ships, and the Indian Government prepared to deal with floods because of the heavy rainfall expected.

A problem Andhra Pradesh faced because of Hudhud was the breakdown of telecom links in Vijayawada, which bore the brunt of the cyclone. Taking a lesson from that, the Gujarat government has ordered telecom companies to share their infrastructure for 15 days. Trees have been cut, thousands of people evacuated from coastal areas, and a helpline installed as part of the pre-emptive package. n

Lead, Kindly Light of Reason The Catholic Church evolves as the Pope acknowledges Evolution M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

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rom the time in 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus’ paper was published putting forward the idea that the earth is not the centre of the universe (so by extension mankind) and actually revolves around the sun, instead of the other way round, it took the Catholic Church almost 300 years to accept it. It was forced to do so by overwhelming in-your-face evidence that astronomers were seeing with their naked eye through telescopes.

Last Monday, the history of religion took a similar leap when Pope Francis said during an address to the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that Creation didn’t happen by a God with a magic wand as is sometimes imagined while reading Genesis. “He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive and their fullness of being… The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it.

The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of Creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.” This is a version of the ‘intelligent design’ theory and might not be enough for agnostics, atheists and rationalists. But that the head of the Church should so clearly embrace Evolution, even if only from the point that God set it off, signals an evolution of the Church itself.

There is plenty to argue against intelligent design, starting with asking if Evolution and Big Bang were arrived at through the rigours of science by incremental build-up of knowledge through proof and validation by peers, what prevents taking the same approach to the existence of God, even one without a magic wand? And then what will you get?

But this is not really the moment to do that. Science and reason has just scored a victory because to not acknowledge Evolution or Big Bang had become an impossible position to take. And in victory, there must be magnanimity.

It is not as monumental an occasion either as other earlier instances when the Church let go of redundant doctrines. When it refused to accept the Copernicus system, it was the most powerful cultural force in the world, holding the keys to Christian minds and the people of lands that Christianity would colonise.

It is now limited Science and to its own reason has followers, many just scored a of whom already victory. To not ignore those acknowledge parts of its philosophy that Evolution or don’t agree with Big Bang their reason. For had become instance, many an impossible Catholics in position to India have no problem with take contraception despite the Church’s opposition to it. The present acknowledgment by the Pope doesn’t really alter the course of human knowledge as it did half a millennium ago.

But no matter of what dispensation or ideology you are, it is difficult not to admire Pope Francis. Ever since he took over the Papacy, it has been governed without the rigid positions of orthodoxy—his refusal to ‘judge homosexuals’ for who they are, his apology to those who had been abused as children by priests, and now this acceptance of Evolution. And he has done all that using the fundamental principles of faith and compassion, the pillars on which the Church came into being. n 10 november 2014

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PR Ramesh

The Last Fossils

How the Left lost the fight against inequality to the Right

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uddenly, there is hyperactivity in the ideological bun-

Consequently, the nature of the industrial workforce kers of Gole Market in New Delhi. The bunkervaasis, who underwent a change as automation began to replace factory learnt Revolution 101 in the classrooms of Jawaharlal floor workers, and higher order skills became critical. BlueNehru University, are fighting over what went wrong with the collar strength stood diminished, and it was no longer easy to implementation of the political-tactical line of the CPM firmed unionise this kind of workforce. For example, a modern petroup decades ago at the party’s Jalandhar Congress. chemical complex can now be run by just 10 employees, all of The debate would have been fine if the comrades wanted to them managers and engineers, as almost everything else is nominate themselves for the Best Ostrich award—don’t we automated. As the Indian economy grew, this transformation know their tendency to bury their heads in fantasy? If not, it is has only accelerated, reducing the role of the Left even further. not difficult to understand why the Left lost the argument Decline of Poverty: Till about the turn of the new millenniand can’t win in the near future. um, the country’s primary development challenge was Inequality is on the rise everywhere like never before, even poverty. In 2004, when the BJP suffered a surprise defeat, in emerging economies like India. Strangely, the fight against everyone attributed this to an economic agenda that was less it is not being led by the Left, the traditional guardians of the inclusive. The Congress came up with its solution of a underprivileged, but by right-wing and centrist parties. In rights-based regime. Not only did it work, it transformed the India, the trend has been clear: first it was the Congress party Indian social landscape—poverty witnessed one of its that led the fight against it through its entitlement regime, sharpest falls ever. This was accompanied by a record growth and now the BJP has taken up the cudgels with its strategy— rate that took the Indian economy to nearly $2 trillion. couched in right-wing talk—of teaching people how to fish.

However, most benefits of this growth accrued to a small Here are few reasons that explain this phenomenon. segment of the population. Over the decade from 2004 to Left in a Time Warp: The Left movement in India has been 2014, the economy was able to add only a little over 10 million fashioned around an ideology that Karl Marx propounded in jobs, while 12 million joined the labour force every year. the context of the Industrial Revolution. Its adaptation to the Not only did that move India’s development challenge Indian context has pursued the same core principles, with its from poverty to inequality, it also resulted in rising aspirafocus on industrial clusters such as textile and jute mills and tions. Once again, the Left—still stuck in its power-for-thethe mobilisation of an agrarian workforce. proletariat syndrome at a time when an organised workforce This worked initially, but gradually, as the Indian economy is a mere fraction of the total—failed to read the biggest evolved—with synthetics replacing cotton fabric, for structural shift in India. example—the context in which the Left had operated began Appropriation of Ideology: Like the Congress earlier, the to alter. Similarly, its operations with the agricultural BJP has also appropriated the ideology of the Left—to fight for workforce had only limited reach, given the skewed land the underprivileged. The BJP’s strategy of empowering ownership structures that required the Left to acquire individuals by creating an enabling environment that power—as in Kerala and West Bengal—to effect change. So in recognises the advantages of a rule-based society seems well states like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and what is now Jharkhand, suited to the aspirations and attitudes of young India— this space was ceded to the ultra-Left Maoist groups. The remember, 65 per cent of the country’s population is under 35 failure of the Left to adapt to the new realyears of age. So when Finance Minister illustration by anirban ghosh ities meant that stasis set in. Instead of Arun Jaitley says his party can be “pro acknowledging this disconnect, the business and pro poor”, it is no tautology; Indian Left started adopting Stalinist he has just taken over the space hitherto purges to deal with internal dissent. occupied by the Congress. The Left has The New Economy: Beginning in the lost the argument and it is fast losing its mid-1980s, after a long debate within and last Soviet influence in sub-rural Bengal outside government, the Indian and Kerala. The last fossils of an ideology economy started discarding its socialist have nothing to lose now but the shackles. This came in various forms. redundant book preserved in the Trade barriers were lowered, technology haunted AKG Bhavan in Gole Market. n was embraced, the industrial licensing Locomotif will return next week regime was dismantled, and so on.

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open essay

By shiv visvanathan

WHY STRONG LEADERS ARE HIGHLY VITAMINISED

Narendra Modi and the steroid theory of politics

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is a certain folklore about masculinity and leadership among middle class India. Indians generally see their leaders as weak, almost feminine, and dream of a strongman. They want an individual who looks tough, acts tough, who is decisive, who is quick on the uptake, a combination of Machiavelli and Bismarck. It is a Shiv Visvanathan pity that apart from Akbar and Ashoka, considers himself most of our great leaders have been a social science religious leaders practising nonnomad violence. Their strength comes from ethics and renunciation. They seem almost androgynous, like Gandhi.

Today our leaders seem meek and submissive. Manmohan Singh and his passiveness haunt the middle class imagination.

He is presented as the leader who was bumbling, inarticulate, almost autistic. Watching Abe and Obama, our middle class and diaspora were desperate for a strong man, a man who was both leader and technocrat, whose body language spoke of power. Before Modi came, Sardar Patel and Advani fit the bill; but Modi appears to be a customised strong man, decisive, with the right touch of a nukkad bully, managerial, a man who can sway the masses, a victor after an epic electoral campaign. Even so, Modi realises he needs ancestors, a genealogy of decisiveness, and decides to build a giant statue of Sardar Patel. Patel has often been called the Bismarck of India after the way he handled separatist forces in Kashmir and Hyderabad. Many in middle class India felt Patel would have been a better leader than Nehru and this mood strengthened after the Chinese debacle in 1962.

Nehru’s Panchsheel and his idea of non-alignment was seen as a weak nation’s discourse. India has often dreamt of being a strong state lead by strong man. Deep down we feel that strong leadership and nuclear bombs will make us a superpower.

The search for strongmen stems from a desperate need to be recognised. Without an assertive sense of power, our egos deflate like empty balloons.

It is not that we have not had strong men in our politics. State level politics produced a BC Roy, an Atulya Ghosh, a Devraj Urs, a Partap Singh Kairon. But these men were not seen as leaders, they were presented as bosses. Bosses, we feel, underline the fact of power. They dictate terms; but leaders convey a sense of legitimacy and acceptance. They are charismatic and persuasive. Bosses are read as over-rated managers, but the leader as strongman breathes a different grammar of persuasion.

The leader as strongman has to have the mystique of power. Power must be both decisive and magical. A strongman as leader must be the nation’s aphrodisiac. The nation must get high on such behaviour.

Narendra Modi provides many cues, symptoms of the strongman syndrome. He has constructed himself on an epic scale, an outsider blowing down the walls of Delhi. here

He adds to it a new sense of immediacy.

Strength is now speed, silence, efficiency and delivery.

Time is money but speed is strength. Thirdly, a mere sense of physicality is not enough. Physicality can degenerate to brutality. Technology at one level sublimates violence, renders it abstract as technique. A leader has to combine the semiotics of technique and physicality like two kinds of muscle. Modi conveys both, through the way he handles security, making security essential for patriotism and insisting that leaders should be literally present at Siachen. Finally, a strong leader has to be perceived as strong and contrasted almost operatically, melodramatically with weak leaders. Playing Modi off against Manmohan and Rahul was critical. One had to show the emasculation of the Congress as a power, as a leadership, to build up the epic of Modi as the leader India was waiting for. To that overall mystique, one must add a sense of success, a whiff of fear, because the strongman as leader must have that touch of deterrence of violence as threat.

There are several folklore myths of politics and international relations at work here creating the new politics of machismo.

Today, the word ‘terror’ makes democracy feel vulnerable.

Terror seems to go beyond torture or rape in breaking down the innards of resistance. Terror makes power ineffective. The language of security has to go beyond territoriality to fight terror. Modi presents himself as a man who fights terror, who is ready to fight on the terror front and continue the muscular battle for development. Development is now presented muscularly, as involving speed, acceleration, as a kind of erotic economics providing the high of consumerism. Thirdly, Modi is read as a man who handles catastrophes, disasters. His work on the Gujarat earthquake adds a whiff of speed and response to his decisiveness. A strongman in that sense is a composite alloy, a blend of strengths which goes beyond the abstractions of leadership. A leader seems more transcendent.

He is a man who does the right things. One senses wisdom, judgment and ethics here. But a strongman comes closer to the Druckerian definition of a manager as someone who does things right and conveys a forceful message about them. Modi is a strongman who is not yet statesman. He is a strongman aspiring to be a statesman and India loves it, loves the claim to muscularity, decisiveness after years of symbolic impotence.

Today, in the age of superpowers with initials like G-7 and labels like ‘security council’, India feels left out. China, the USA, Britain and Russia are superpowers, with bloated muscles and bloated egos.

India as an aspiring nation suffers from superpower envy. It is a deprivation caused by being a developing nation where power as global musculature needs to be developed. There is a sense that morality is not enough. Morality needs machismo. As Stalin asked decades ago, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

Modi conveys that sense of power envy that the middle class felt for years. The last time the middle class and the elite got such a high was when we exploded a nuclear

Modi is a strongman aspiring to be a statesman and India loves it, loves the claim to muscularity and decisiveness after years of symbolic impotence

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photo illustration by anirban ghosh

bomb. That adrenalin surge for power, of being taken seriously, of having arrived, is now revived as India under Modi searches for superpower status. In that sense, the cult of the strongman is a Rorschach of our political needs and deprivations.

Oddly, India pioneered and experimented with non-violence, creating the great figure of the satyagrahi. It now seems to be cynical or at least sceptical of non-violence. In recent decades, the Indian state has grown aggressive, ready to show the Naxals and insurgents that we are a strong state. Our presentation of non-violence in the international domain is now seen as empty moralising, and the elite realise that China and the West took us seriously when guns and toughness backed decision making.

Non-violence is now left to civil society, to defeated causes like the battle for the Narmada, to Chipko, to temporary upsurges like AAP, while India, mainstream India, lives out its securitarian dream. Modi is a salve for elite egos as we strive to impress the world.

India feels that Modi as a strong man is taken seriously by the Japanese, the Chinese and the Americans, and there is a collective bloating of political egos.

Cults, even of strongmen, need myths, rituals, genealogies and Modi realises the importance of such frameworks. It is not history he is strong-arming, it is his own genealogy. Sadly,

India has too few strongmen. The strongest was Indira Gandhi.

Shastri does not fit because his strength was in his simplicity.

Manmohan was too invertebrate, Rahul, too adolescent and Nehru, too aesthetic. Add it all, apart from party bosses, there is only Sardar Patel. Suddenly Patel is no longer a victim of history, ignored by Congress. He is now the Lion of Gujarat to be reinvented in a monumental incarnation. Stalin dubbed himself ‘man of steel’ but the Indian Bismarck is going to be a greater creation. The outsize nature of the statue projects the new India, and Modi thrives on it. He is the new Patel of history and as determined as Patel to keep India together. Oddly, strong men as leaders are highly vitaminised. They seem full of Boost and Incremin, and other steroids of power, and this is precisely what haunts Modi. The wrong chemistry in a political sense can create an Indian version of Frankenstein or generate a collapse, where his dreams look pathetic. Either way, one hopes, this enables -us to go back to our monster’s genius for confusion, ambiguity, adjustment, non-violence. We seem to make more sense of history. Modi and his steroid theory of politics will then only be a tragicomic fragment of history, a fable to be laughed at and pondered over. n

Cults, even of strongmen, need myths and rituals, and Modi realises the importance of such frameworks. It is not history he is strong-arming, it is his own genealogy

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10 november 2014

POLITICS

Axis of Power 2014

THE THREE MEN WHO RULE INDIA

By PR RAMESH and Ullekh NP

I

n the beginning, it was bonding over dinner. It was the 90s, and Narendra Modi was a regular

visitor to Arun Jaitley’s Naraina home in New Delhi. Jaitley was then a full-time lawyer, and Modi, a BJP secretary and a name with little national resonance. Those were the days when the next-in-line stars of the BJP pantheon, after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, were the late Pramod Mahajan and KN Govindacharya.

They stayed friends when Jaitley joined the Vajpayee’s council of ministers and later when, by a stroke of good luck and perseverance, Modi was chosen the Chief Minister of Gujarat in late 2001. Their friendship endured in the tumultuous years that followed, when Modi was denounced over his alleged complicity in the state’s riots of 2002 and even ostracised by a section of the English-language media.

Jaitley, by then a full-time politician, knew that his friend needed help. He offered Modi help with legal matters as the Gujarat politician grappled with numerous cases. Over the years, they developed a close rapport.

In 2007, Modi was re-elected the Chief Minister of Gujarat, reinforcing his image as a charismatic leader of the BJP. He continued to fight cases that sought to link him to the riots, as also various other allegations levelled

concept madhu bhaskar illustration anirban gosh

against him. In 2012, Modi was re-elected yet again. As Gujarat’s Chief Minister for the third time, he had unquestionably arrived; his popularity within the party was on the rise and his appeal among Hindu voters soaring.

Jaitley was perhaps the first to realise it was time to pitch Modi as the party’s potential Prime Minister.

Amit Shah and Modi met more than three decades ago.

When they met in 1982, Shah, then 17, was an RSS activist and Modi a pracharak in charge of youth activities in Ahmedabad’s Mahanagar area. Modi and Shah took an instant liking to each other. Despite his seniority, Modi confided in young Shah the news of RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras asking him to join the BJP. Their relationship grew thicker in the mid-1990s when Modi fought the powerful Congress in the state inch by inch, starting with control of cooperatives and sports bodies and finally in the electoral arena for leadership of the state. Shah was elected to the state legislative assembly before Modi was, in a 1996 by-election. He has been re-elected many times since. When Modi became Chief Minister, Shah became a minister, and at one point, he held 10 crucial portfolios

Shah and Jaitley are Modi’s best friends, and Rajnath Singh’s clout is on the wane. Shah is the point person for the party and for polls while Jaitley is the go-to person on the economy

in the Modi cabinet in Gujarat.

Like Modi, Shah too faced denunciation for his alleged role in ordering the encounter deaths of terrorists who had reportedly plotted to kill Modi. And there were more cases. Though he was then Gujarat’s home minister, the judiciary in 2010 disallowed him from entering the state. For that period, Shah was forced to reside in Delhi, where he became a regular at Jaitley’s East of Kailash home. Jaitley became Shah’s closest ally in his political and legal travails.

About four years later, in September 2014, Jaitley was back in hospital within weeks of his gastric bypass surgery. He had developed a stomach infection and was being treated in a special wing of Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Services (AIIMS). His friends—Modi, now Prime Minister of India, and Shah, President of the 16 open

BJP—were there to help.

It was Modi who had suggested that Jaitley listen to the medical recommendation that he have gastric bypass surgery in early September. The Prime Minister took personal interest in his health and spoke to Jaitley’s family to persuade him to go in for an immediate surgery.

Even when he was away in the US, the Prime Minister was in constant touch with ministers like Piyush Goyal who had interacted closely with Jaitley’s doctors. After his Madison Square Garden speech, Modi’s first calls were to enquire about Jaitley’s well being. Shah, for his part, kept Jaitley abreast of the goings-on in the party, including his plans to snap ties with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

At the high tea that Modi hosted for members of the NDA at his Race Course Road residence recently, it was 10 november 2014

Subhav Shukla/PTI

(Left to right) Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley

Jaitley who the Prime Minister requested to give a speech about various reform initiatives being taken in the coal and oil sectors, apart from finance. “The PM gives a lot of importance to Jaitleyji at such meetings. It is clear to everyone in the cabinet who his favourite is in the Government,” says a BJP minister, adding that Modi takes Jaitley’s words “very seriously”.

The trio still gels well. And with the personalised style of Modi’s election campaign extending to the functioning of the Government, officials suggest that it is a trinity—Modi and his facilitators Jaitley and Shah—that is in power at the Centre. “Modi is the supreme leader. Then you have Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley as lieutenants.

There are a few ministers and bureaucrats surrounding each of them. The rest don’t matter at all,” says a senior government official.

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F

ormer Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram has a

penchant for pedagogy. A favourite of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram of the UPA, he perhaps thought it courteous to offer tips to young ministers in the BJPled coalition that came to power in May this year; but it was rather unmindful of him to forget the zero tolerance that the new dispensation had of babus who put on airs and graces, especially those who were UPA darlings.

Those who had expected a Modi-led Government keen on reforms to retain a specialist like Mayaram were in for a surprise when he was transferred out of the Ministry, though it was part of a mid-October reshuffle of top bureaucrats that saw some 20 of them assigned new roles.

In his place, the NDA brought in Rajiv Mehershi, the former Rajasthan secretary who had steered several dramatic reform initiatives in the state. open www.openthemagazine.com 17

Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

While Mayaram paid the price for his presumptuous behaviour, another senior bureaucrat was shunted out in September from a crucial post for his ostentatious displays of personal wealth—his fate was sealed the day he went to meet a senior minister flaunting a Rolex watch, a Montblanc pen and other luxury accessories. Immediately, enquiries were made about how he ran the affairs of his department. It emerged that he was known for a lavish lifestyle, and lived beyond the means of what babus could afford on their pay. This bureaucrat was also found to be quite unpopular among his department colleagues.

“The whole idea of such exercises was to [impart] the Government with hygiene. Any new Government would want to do that, especially when it comes to power after a big electoral victory. And Modi definitely wants to leave a personal touch on governance by cleaning up the system,” says a senior bureaucrat. “Of course, while doing so, it is very possible that favourites of the previous regime fall as the first victims of any such reshuffle,” he adds.

“Modi tends to run a presidential-style government in a parliamentary democracy. He has been at it successfully, thanks to the massive influence he wields in his party and the Government,” confides a senior minister.

In earlier regimes led by the BJP, back when AB Vajpayee was Prime Minister (1998-1999 and 1999-2004), party veteran LK Advani’s authority had rivalled the Prime Minister’s in many fields of goverance. First a formidable home minister, Advani was in 2002 elevated to the rank 18 open

of India’s Deputy Prime Minister and he held on to that post until the NDA was unseated in 2004.

Now all that seems like a long time ago. This is Modi’s government all the way, and his absolute power has made anti-BJP parties and several of his rivals within the party wary of him. But he has his admirers. After all, it was a highly Modi-centric campaign earlier this year that brought his party to power with such a stunning majority. Written off as an also-ran, the BJP revived its fortunes singularly on the slogan of strong leadership, which was offered as a complete contrast to the ‘weakness’ of a Congress government headed by Manmohan Singh, who had to get his party president Sonia Gandhi’s nod on every crucial policy issue.

Once in power, Modi was seen by people across classes and sectors as a quick decision maker. “What India needs now, more than ever, is centralised decision-making in setting fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, but [also] decentralised decision making with regard to creating new businesses and getting the economy going,” says Vijay Govindarajan, Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck, Dartmouth.

Centralised Leadership What India needs more than anything else at this moment is a centralised leadership that makes the Government a cohesive, well-oiled machine. Modi has the final word on all policy matters and has delegated 10 november 2014

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

(Facing page) Former BJP President Nitin Gadkari; (this page) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj

power to various senior bureaucrats. Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, is in charge of looking at infrastructure projects, welfare schemes and project implementation. PK Mishra, Modi’s additional principal secretary, manages government appointments.

AK Sharma, joint secretary, coordinates activity between ministries and various government departments. BVR Subramanyam, joint secretary in the PMO, helps steer reformist policies.

“But then, all power lies in one person: that is Modi.

Nothing happens without his knowledge,” says a senior government official, emphasising that to a large extent, Modi micromanages various functions of the PMO and various other arms of the Government.

In stark contrast to the Manmohan Singh set-up, where a Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) posed an impediment to Singh’s favoured reforms, Modi is the ultimate authority in the NDA. This in itself gives him the power needed to fast-track reforms. Though Modi is still constrained by his party’s lack of a majority in the Upper House of Parliament—which is a prerequisite for pushing ahead with crucial reform bills— he has started off well, argue economists such as Professor Kunal Sen of Manchester University.

Professor Sen says that the labour reforms initiated recently by Prime Minister Modi were long overdue, and would help revitalise smaller companies. Among others, he has lauded Modi for his move to rid small companies 10 november 2014

Gadkari was not part of the discussions on the changes to the Land Acquisition bill. With Modi micro-managing foreign policy, Swaraj has hardly anything to do

of a so-called ‘License Raj’. “Inspections of these smaller firms had to be taken away from the hands of labour and factory inspectors, and rationalised in such a way that it’s not arbitrary and highly discretionary, as it has been all this while,” says the professor.

Though a few critics have described Modi’s efforts at labour reforms as ‘targeting low-hanging fruit’, the Government’s online interface for labour-regulation compliance and move to randomise inspections is expected to eliminate harassment of small employers at the hands of unscrupulous inspectors who swoop down on factory premises to extract bribes.

Besides, the Centre has also announced the full-fledged deregulation of diesel prices, which means that local prices open www.openthemagazine.com 19

will move in line with global oil prices. This would slash the Government’s subsidy burden and ease pressure on the fiscal deficit, which could in turn boost the economy.

The decision was taken at a time when crude oil prices were falling in international markets, when Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan had appealed to the Government to seize the moment and decontrol diesel prices. Economists such as Arvind Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati have long argued that India has to crunch subsidies to maximise its growth potential.

The Modi Government, meanwhile, has also announced policies that would allow private companies to mine and sell coal. The Centre is also preparing to sell a 5 per cent stake in the state-run Oil India Ltd. Some pundits say it is thanks to his stature as his party’s paramount leader that Modi has been able to undertake these policy initiatives. India has long needed laws less cumbersome for business. And the granting of more space to the private sector in India’s economy is sure to raise confidence among investors both in India and overseas.

The BJP has argued that radical reforms need the support of both Houses of Parliament, and with the party winning power in a couple of more states this October, it is only a matter of time that Modi’s party will enjoy a majority in the Rajya Sabha, a good chunk of whose members are set to retire next year.

Be it gradualism or not, Modi has set his sights on some major goals, especially on enhancing the contribution of manufacturing to the country’s economic output. This sector accounted for only 13 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2013, according to GDP data—the corresponding figures are much higher in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Policy wonks want the Government to take even more steps in the right direction, especially towards resolving pressing labour issues and instituting a countrywide goods and services tax to get rid of the labyrinthine levies imposed on businesses in various states.

Facilitator Arun Jaitley is the Prime Minister’s ‘go-to’ person on all matters of economic importance. It was Modi and Jaitley who interviewed 10 people for the coveted position of Chief Economic Advisor (CEA). The list of those under consideration named Rakesh Mohan, former deputy governor of the RBI, who declined the position, and Columbia University Professor Arvind Panagariya, among several others. It was Arvind Subramanian who was appointed at the end of the exercise. “Modiji values Jaitleyji’s opinion a lot in all such decisions. Any one of them could have been chosen, but finally Modiji gives a lot of weightage to the opinion of his finance minister,” says another BJP leader.

Jaitley also engages closely with the BJP’s point person for economic affairs, Dr Bajranglal Gupta, who endorsed his choice of CEA. Deutsche Bank’s Sanjeev Sanyal, who 20 open

was also interviewed for the post, didn’t make it because of his age. “However, he is now being groomed for something big. Some of our ministers are good at handpicking talent,” says a Finance Ministry official, referring to Jaitley, who holds two crucial portfolios at the Centre, Finance and Defence.

As opposed to his predecessor AK Antony, who was indecisive and wary of taking decisions to modernise India’s military forces—struggling to make do with Soviet-era weaponry, which puts the lives of soldiers in constant danger—Jaitley has in a short time cleared defence projects worth more than Rs 80,000 crore. The Government has decided to indigenously build six submarines and buy more than 8,000 Israeli anti-tank guided missiles and 12 upgraded Dornier surveillance aircraft. The decisions were taken after a recent meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council that was chaired by Defence Minister Jaitley. The Indian Navy was given preferential treatment in the light of its dire need of capability enhancement.

Dharmendra Pradhan is a favourite of the power trio.

He works equally hard for the Government and the party

With hostilities between India and Pakistan now resurfacing following exchanges of fire across the Line of Control in Kashmir, New Delhi is in a hurry to equip itself to prepare for any escalation.

Despite the tardy economic recovery under UPA’s rule stretching itself into the NDA period, Jaitley has been instrumental in taking some bold moves to undo the damage done by the earlier regime’s misgovernance, insists a senior official. The most notable of these is the Centre’s decision to sack the heads of six public sector banks, following a report by a high-level panel that noted irregularities in the selection process of the chairmen and managing directors of these banks.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had not endorsed their candidacies. People close to the matter say it was “loanpushers” (those who allotted a lot of loans for companies and projects without proper verification) who ended up being made chiefs of these banks. Syndicate Bank chief SK Jain was arrested in August for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 50 lakh to enhance the credit limits of a 10 november 2014

india todAY

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan

company. Reacting to charges that ‘loan pushers’ were lording over PSU banks, Jaitley had said, “The time has come to be strict with PSU banks. I have urged the Cabinet Secretary and the RBI Governor to examine recent appointments in public sector banks.”

The Government will now devise a new process for the selection of chairmen and managing directors of stateowned banks whenever vacancies arise. Jaitley, meanwhile, is bracing for a full Union budget early next year.

This one is expected to have dramatic announcements on further liberalising the economy.

Jaitley, who joined politics as a student leader, mentors young ministers like Dharmendra Pradhan, Nirmala Sitharaman and Goyal. Pradhan, who is from Odisha, was general secretary of the party and previously its poll in-charge for Bihar. As Petroleum Minister, he has an unblemished record so far. He is seen as incorruptible and a workaholic who carries out party activities with gusto also enjoys good ties with BJP President Amit Shah, who sent him recently to Pune to oversee poll preparations 10 november 2014

ahead of the state elections in Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has earned a good name thanks to his promptness in clearing projects. “He has brought in some sanity to the ministry,” says a government official. Several corporates have complained that under the UPA regime, this Ministry had become a thorn in their flesh. Many bigticket projects were denied green clearances by ministers like Jairam Ramesh and Jayanthi Natarajan, sometimes without any reason being cited.

Under the new dispensation, a minister was recently asked to work on her etiquette by seniors after the minister kept the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, waiting.

The minister was ticked off for not rising to the occasion in extending courtesies to a highly successful business leader of Indian origin.

While such reprimands are par for the course for junior ministers, some senior ministers like Sushma Swaraj have ended up with smaller turf than they had hoped for. With Modi micromanaging foreign-policy decisions from the open www.openthemagazine.com 21

PMO, she doesn’t seem to have much leeway. Several positions adopted by the External Affairs Minister, including a stubborn insistence that the proposed BRICS Bank be headquartered in New Delhi, have been rejected by the Prime Minister. Modi has been clear that pragmatism demands that such a bank be based in Shanghai, as China wants, with an Indian as its first chief.

With the Prime Minister hopping from country to country, making the most of such tours, the External Affairs Ministry, like under the UPA, has long lost its stature.

Swaraj’s stiff opposition to Modi being the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister, and later to the party’s choice of Amit Shah as party-in charge of polls in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the General Election, has not helped her endear herself to the power triad. Her strained ties with Jaitley are also wellknown. Swaraj recently had to grin and bear it when her choice of Chief Minister, a central leader who didn’t contest the elections for Haryana, was shot down in favour of Manoharlal Khattar. Amit Shah was clear in his choice: the new Chief Minister of a state the BJP had won so emphatically would be of a non-Jat caste, but a unifier of all castes in the state. Khattar, of Punjabi origin, fit the bill.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, too, has many reasons to be upset. The overarching presence of Modi, coupled with that of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, has made his role in running the internal affairs of the country rather less exciting. Singh, who is seemingly unhappy with Modi’s hands-on style of functioning and because he is not always kept in the loop, pitched hard but unsuccessfully for Captain Abhimanyu to be 22 open

made Haryana’s Chief Minister. Surprisingly, one of the ministries where the Congress, still smarting under electoral reverses, has some influence is the Home Ministry. Which is why, BJP leaders contend, a senior bureaucrat may be shunted out. This senior official is known to be close to a Congress leader from India’s Northeast who was part of the Narasimha Rao cabinet. “[Rajnath Singh] seems to have lost much power ever since stepping down as BJP President,” says a person close to the matter. The plight of former BJP President Nitin Gadkari, a union minister from Maharashtra, where the RSS is based, is no different. Gadkari, who is in charge of Rural Development, was not part of the deliberations of the Central Government on the changes planned for the Land Acquisition bill. After the BJP victory in Maharashtra, his supporters had pitched his name for the Chief Minister’s post, but was told by party leaders to back off. Which he did—in next to no time.

The Conscience Keeper Amit Shah, who replaced Singh, is clearly Modi’s closest ally for troubleshooting within the party and steering elections. No important decision is taken by the Government, either, without his knowledge. For the Prime Minister, Shah plays a role equivalent in the party to what Jaitley does in the Government.

Quite unlike the operational set-up of the UPA, where the PMO was enslaved by the NAC, this time round with the NDA ruling the Centre, the PMO has consolidated power and enlisted the backing of the BJP President and 10 november 2014

PHOTOS Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

(Facing page) Prakash Javadekar (left) with Piyush Goyal; (this page) Nirmala Sitharaman at a press conference after 100 days of the NDA Government

ministers like Jaitley who hold crucial portfolios and mentor younger ministers who preside over key ministries.

Shah, who has picked up the ways of Delhi politics in a miraculously short period, is a 24x7 politician who keeps tabs on what the national capital’s high and mighty do.

Jaitley once joked that despite the long years he spent in Delhi as a lawyer-politician, it was Shah, a relative newcomer to Delhi’s urbane style of politics, who actually knows more about what Delhi’s swish class does.

Culture and Power Shift Business is no longer a dirty word, and Modi sees himself as a chief facilitator of entrepreneurship, small and big alike. But decisions are no longer dictated by corporates.

Modi is upfront about his business with businesses.

While he has not made any concession for Reliance Industries over the state-set price of gas, he flew down to Mumbai to be part of a philanthropic effort of the Mukesh Ambani family.

Besides, Shah and Modi have brought in a lot of discipline and dread into both the Government and the party.

This means politicians have vanished from Page 3 events, especially in Delhi where many BJP politicians were regulars on the party circuit. “They may still be partying hard, but must be partying elsewhere. There is a cultural shift in the party, thanks to these two prominent leaders, Modi and Shah, being vegetarians and teetotallers. The Page 3 types know it only too well that photographs of them partying appearing in newspapers would not be appreciated by these two leaders,” says a Delhi-based BJP activist.

10 november 2014

There’s more. Alcoholic beverages are no longer served aboard Air India One, the Prime Minister’s Special Aircraft. Nobody can smoke on the aircraft either. It was Vajpayee’s NSA and chain-smoker Brajesh Mishra who had okayed smoking on the PM’s plane.

Then there are fewer feasts compared with any government in the past. And the feasts are vegetarian. Even the visiting Chinese Xi Jinping and his entourage were served a vegetarian Gujarati dinner. Diwali celebrations by ministers and BJP leaders were a subdued affair this year, as widely noticed.

Meanwhile, people close to the matter say that the Government is looking to introduce an electronic auction of coalmines to rid the country of cronyism. Even the auctions of radio waves (for FM channels and so on) would be held online to eliminate chances of corruption. The UPA regime had come under a cloud over allocation of airwaves as well as coal-mining licences for favouring companies close to Government. UPA deals saw corporates walking away with undue gains. The distribution of coal-mining rights was a howler of a case. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), which reviews government transactions, pegged the loss due to irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum to the public at Rs 1.76 trillion and that of coal licences at Rs 1.86 trillion.

The trio of Modi, Jaitley and Shah bring an unlikely mix of quality to the table. Modi and Shah are unforgiving by nature. Jaitley, on the other hand, is urbane, suave and flexible and has friends across the political spectrum.

This is a mutually rewarding brotherhood. n open www.openthemagazine.com 23

PRIVILEGE

lutyens SYNDROME It’s one of the best addresses in Delhi—and one of the poshest and the classiest as well in its imperial elegance. Some occupants find it too good to vacate. chinki sinha finds out why

T

his isn’t a city. This is fantasia. Deep verandahs, and Corinthian

columns, and sprawling lawns and courtyards. Sometimes, they say, peacocks venture near the glass windows, and in the night, they can be heard. Such exquisite sounds in the city of gardens— the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ). The cacophony of the rest of the metropolis with its millions of cars honking, and its vendors shouting, and the city itself clamouring for space, the din of construction and other city sounds… none of it drowns the sound of the cicadas chirping, and the leaves blowing in the evening breeze here. There’s also the luxury of silence, an indulgence, one that has been lost to cities in modern times. It is a place of power. It isn’t painful here. No ugliness touches it. It is a nostalgist’s shrine. It is abnormal, and as Member of Parliament Ram Jethmalani once put it “an offensively luxurious anomaly”.

It is like royalty, says someone who lived here once in a guest house. He speaks of how he would invite his friends over, and be amused by the look on their faces when they encountered the space that seemed to stretch beyond the stereotype of a city. These weren’t high-rises. Here, the buildings didn’t rise

A bird’s-eye view of bungalows in Lutyens’ Delhi

beyond the tall trees that grew around them. They hid behind a green veil.

In the heart of the city, the temperatures register a drop in the months of summer.

Suddenly the air feels better, lighter, and in a metropolis that is finding its way into other states, clawing outwards at a speed that makes urban planners worry about a million things, life here is luxury. In the labyrinth of this neighbourhood that was built by the British to overshadow Mughal splendour, where all streets present an optical illusion of sorts with high walls and bungalows, it is like being in a bubble of everything that is power, or was, or could be.

But the Lutyens Syndrome (if it could be called that) is something that even the Jerusalem Syndrome—a hallucinatory state that induces psychotic experiences which even the non-religious may have on a visit to that city—cannot match. In this part of Delhi, where your neighbours could be politicians or industrialists, or even custodians of cultural capital,

ashish sharma

Road is where women shop for their handwoven silk and khadi saris. There are garden parties, and there is free-flowing champagne. At one of the residences that belongs to a Rajya Sabha member on Lodhi Road, a verandah leads to a reception area done up in seesham and teak, and upholstered in the choicest fabrics, and then through beautiful doors of glass and wood, you enter a large hall with a fireplace, and you see a mantle above it that sports beautiful artefacts.

Expensive paintings hang on walls, and everything speaks of taste.

This is a place where bungalows dictate lifestyles. Even the most socialist of politicians could not do much to alter the regal air of Lutyens’ Delhi. It’s all part of the syndrome, something that leaves few unaffected. Once they come, few ever want to leave.

A bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi is not just a power statement or a fashionable address. It also suggests a cultural leap.

Something no amount of money can buy

In Lutyens’ Delhi, the per-square-yard rate for a small bungalow is around Rs 10 lakh. Most plots are well over 2,000 square yards. For big bungalows with lawns to match, the rate is about Rs 5-6 lakh a Lutyens’ bungalow itself is a rite of passage, a visible symbol that one has ascended the country’s hierarchy of power.

The area’s Type VIII bungalows, which are the most spacious, with three-acre lawns even though they have only three or four bedrooms, are by far the most coveted. A casual walk through such an estate is enough to blur memories of other forms of luxurious living one may have harboured. Here, in these handsome whitewashed single-storied buildings with their old world architecture that fuses Indian, Mughal and British styles in ways interesting enough to put every thing else to shame, human lives can undergo complete transformations.

There is a code to living in Lutyens’ Delhi. A code of sophistication. The Santushti Complex near Race Course 28 open

because it isn’t for sale.

Yet, most bungalows exist in a time warp. Most are preserved just the way they were, though several have been rebuilt and altered. Some have had swimming pools put in, others have had entire new storeys added, but nothing can take away from their essential appeal. Living in these buildings is like being in a timeless zone. There are high ceilings, and officials of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) say the construction is a mystery, since the roofs are rather precariously perched.

The place offers history, and offers an opportunity to be remembered as part of that history. It is history that has been preserved because of its grandeur.

The Directorate of Estates has divided the properties into eight categories,

with Type VIII bungalows at the top— reserved for senior leaders. Citizens who have held positions like that of Prime Minister or President are even allowed to live in one these until death.

E

ven the departed want to be part

of what they once inhabited. Or so their kin feel, and through them, if not through their own volition or political performance, they want to hold on to a piece of Lutyens’ Delhi in the form of memorials. As one man who was in the Public Works Department put it— those who moved in didn’t want to think that they would ever have to leave. That’s what power does. Makes you believe in the immortality of it.

Lutyens’ Delhi, then, is also a graveyard 10 november 2014

The Jagjivan Ram Memorial on Krishna Menon Marg

of memorials, given that many who lost their grip on power wanted to hold on to the privilege so badly that they put in applications to the Urban Development Ministry in the name of trusts formed overnight, or in a matter of a few weeks, to turn official residences into memorials.

In the games of power where alliances are forged and diffused, and the reliance on memory and assertion of identities are held aloft, memorials are the only way to stay put. Like they do in Israel. Nobody is allowed to forget. There are memorials that you are confronted with on the streets where a bomb may have exploded, or in Masada, where they mourn the victimisation of Jews.

But not everyone who applied for a memorial was obliged. Like the kin of the former President Giani Zail Singh, 10 november 2014

who had requested that his official residence be turned into a commemorative structure; it was denied. Or the recent Ajit Singh case, where he was denied a memorial in the name of his father Charan Singh. As one official says, it didn’t mean much since his father died almost 30 years ago, and only after he was served an eviction notice from the house at 12 Tughlaq Road did the RLD leader, taking a cue from other such cases like that of former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar who was fined heavily for a property grab but later got away with it, ask the Government to dedicate the official residence where his father had spent almost three decades of his political career to his memory.

In a scuffle between the agitating RLD and Bharatiya Kisan Union members,

the police had to resort to firing rubber bullets, and in this game of memorials and holding on to symbols of power and eternity, even the Congress supported the agitating leader, calling his eviction ‘unceremonious’ and asking the NDA Government to grant the necessary permissions to convert the residence into a memorial.

But in 2000, the NDA regime had said no more memorials would be allowed in Lutyens’ Delhi, and again, the ban was cited in the case of Ajit Singh’s request. A 2013 Supreme Court judgment on the same lines also said that no more residential buildings owned by the Government could be turned into memorials. Although Singh vacated the place, he said that if there were memorials for Lal Bahadur Shastri and Kanshi Ram, open www.openthemagazine.com 29

A Lutyens’ bungalow

his father also deserved one, having lived in the same house for 36 years.

The UPA lost the argument, as did Ajit Singh. No siege on the LBZ worked, but it forced the new Government to revive the 2000 ban on converting residential properties into memorials, adding that while it would not pay for the maintenance of existing ones, it would let them stay. Like the one on 6 Krishna Menon Marg that was turned into a memorial for Babu Jagjivan Ram. The UPA Government had found a way around the 2013 Supreme Court judgment by leasing the building to a trust.

Inder Malhotra, a columnist and an author who lived in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi at Amrita Shergill Marg in a house that was provided to him by The Statesman decades ago, says that governments are loath to upset what they think are vote banks. In this particular case, it would be Dalits, and they looked the other way when Meira Kumar hung photos of her late father at the 30 open

bungalow, and via a trust called Babu Jagjivan Ram National Foundation, in August 2013, put in a request for it to be changed into a memorial and a museum.

It has been leased to the trust for 25 years.

In 2007, the Government had allocated bungalows No 12, 14 and 16 on Gurdwara Rakabganj road to the Bahujan Prerna Trust to construct a memorial for the BSP leader Kanshi Ram. When Mayawati combined the three buildings, and embarked on an ambitious project which included more construction than permitted by the guidelines laid down by the Urban Development Ministry, officials of the CPWD weren’t even allowed near.

But that’s not an unusual thing. A senior official who is now retired, says that in many cases they weren’t even allowed to enter the premises. Despite the guidelines that have been in place since the 1990s, not many bothered to adhere to the rules, and there wasn’t much that could be done about enforcing them.

“Memorial ka silsila shuru hua Nehru ke

time se,” the official says. The debate over memorials began in Nehru’s time. Those who stayed here thought they could hold on to the property, he adds. When they passed away, their heirs would try and make a memorial so they could forever belong. Of course, democracy didn’t allow for permanence, or eternity. But there was always a way out. They figured it as early as 1964 when Nehru died, and Teen Murti Bhavan, which was designed

by Robert Tor Russel and built in 1929-30 as part of Edwin Lutyens’ imperial capital, was converted into a museum and memorial for the first Prime Minister of India. Those who were around then tell stories of the first-ever memorial.

As Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri wasn’t interested in living in a mansion that size because he wanted his wife to cook and didn’t want the luxuries of an imperial establishment, according to Inder Malhotra.

Later, a memorial was built for him in the same manner, and then, for Indira 10 november 2014

Gandhi, who was assassinated at her residence in 1984 (this memorial has become a tourist destination of sorts).

Back in the British era, Teen Murti House was once the official residence of the Commander-in-Chief in India.

In August 1948, after the departure of the last British Commander-in-Chief, it became the official residence of Independent India’s first Prime Minister.

Jawaharlal Nehru lived here for 16 years until his death on 27 May 1964. “Then it never stopped,” the official says.

The process is simple, but needs to go through the Union Cabinet.

“When someone dies, an organisation creates a trust and then they apply for permission to the Urban Development Ministry and Home Ministry,” he says, “The Government also undertakes maintenance of these memorials. When a memorial is declared, a memorandum is drafted. You just need to register the trust.

But again, it is all about the politics and time of deaths. When Charan Singh died, his party was not in power, and Jagjivan Ram’s memorial was sanctioned much later. Most applications get rejected. If we approved every one of them, it would be a neighbourhood of graveyards.”

Lutyens’ Delhi has around 1,200 bungalows, and around four-fifths of them are owned by the Government. The rest belong to an elite bunch of industrialists and builders. It is an address of power and privilege. There are no power cuts in this part of town, and the streets don’t get flooded during the rains. Unlike the rest of Delhi, a water crisis is unheard of here.

The price tags on bungalows that have been on the market range anywhere from Rs 100 crore to Rs 600 crore. Not everyone can be part of the LBZ. Only if you have earned your way up in politics, or are a billionaire, would you be able to afford to live in this part of the city.

For the rest, for those who have only had the luxury of driving past these bungalows, Lutyens’ Delhi remains an enigma.

L

utyens’ Delhi may go through a complete transformation if the current NDA Government has its way.

Already, six bungalows have been reconstructed, and a plan spanning almost 25 years has been approved that clears the way for reconstruction of the zone’s bungalows in a phased manner. There

10 november 2014

are also plans to build high-rises to pave the way for modern housing options.

Raj nostalgia is not to be indulged. So believes the new regime, and so bemoan those that have viewed it as a legacy that must never be lost.

There’s no place for nostalgia in city planning, some argue. Nehru himself had not liked what Lutyens had built. In many ways, argue some, if the buildings are razed, it would be in keeping with his resistance to imperial symbols.

As William Dalrymple, the author of City of Djinns, wrote in The Guardian, ‘The capital had been commissioned in 1911 to testify to “the idea and fact of eternal British rule in India”, and its undeviating geometry was intended to symbolise Britain’s success in imposing order on a chaotic subcontinent. Yet by the time it began to be built, in the late 1920s, New Delhi had already become an anachronism.’

The bungalow structures were meant

worked to build the enclave back then.

Edwin Lutyens was a man of detail, and even decided which trees and flowers must be planted in the gardens of his epic project that would associate his name with power and prestige. We still call it Lutyens’ Delhi. But a senior official of the CPWD says it wasn’t Lutyens who supervised the construction of the bungalows. In fact, on the blueprints of the time, it is not him who is the undersigned. It is his team of deputy architects, James Russell being one of them. And the architectural grandeur that was intended to overwhelm what the Mughals had built is now just a hangover of times long gone, say some. Because cities, they say, are dynamic. This is an urban space, and must be utilised for modern housing.

When Lutyens’ granddaughter Candia Lutyens, whose architectural venture is itself inspired by her grandfather, visited the garden city, she complimented the

A bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi is not just a power statement or a fashionable address.

It also suggests a cultural leap, something no amount of money can buy because it isn’t for sale to last only 20 years, but they have outlived their intended lifespan. Those who lived here tell stories of long walks in leafy neighbourhoods, and of close friendships, and of a baby pool where a former Prime Minister would often go with his coterie of friends. There are stories of Nehru visiting Sardar Patel for tea every evening from his residence on what used to be called York Road, and of former Defence Minister George Fernandes’ bungalow where Burmese activists sang songs of liberation, and where only after the 13 December 2001 attack on Parliament was the old gate reinstalled. Those who rose through the ranks of power and claimed Lutyens’ bungalows also sought to stamp them with their own ideas of good living. Like Lalu Prasad, the former Chief Minister of Bihar and Railways Minister, who kept his cows and buffaloes in a special shed within the compound allotted to him.

And yet, Lutyens’ Delhi would hold its own. Around 29,000 labourers had

public officials on their meticulous maintenance of the legacy. She also told a highranking official of how in South Africa, it was all gone, and that it was only here that she could see the scale of her grandfather’s vision when he was called upon to build a capital city for the British Raj that had shifted base from Calcutta to Delhi, seen as the Subcontinent’s power centre since the Mughal days.

But Old Delhi languishes in poverty, and old establishments have lost their way to memory, and, even that is under threat. In its cramped alleys, you could stumble upon an old facade, but you would know it would soon be gone.

Lamenting the loss of heritage is a luxury here. And only a few structures have survived, like Ghalib’s haveli. Or Shah Jahan’s grand Jama Masjid. Or the Red Fort. But these were chosenfor special upkeep. Others have been lost to neglect and poverty. Nostalgia is an indulgence in an ever-changing metropolis.

Lutyens’ as a symbol of privilege, as open www.openthemagazine.com 31

an exclusive address of the rich and powerful, however, has been a constant through the decades since 1947. Nowhere in the world does there exist a place like the LBZ, with its sprawl of leafy avenues and vast bungalows, especially in a city faced with the challenge of housing millions of people. In many ways, it is still an imperialist structure with arches, and doors, and domes, and the way they rise to dwarf you with their glory. In other ways, it resembles American suburbia, with its identical lawns and isolated buildings. Privacy is a given here. No jostling for space, and no prying eyes.

J

or Bagh, Sunder Nagar and Golf

Links used to be peripheral properties then. Now, they belong to the rich and the mighty. In Lutyens’ Delhi, the persquare-yard rate for a small bungalow is said to be Rs 10 lakh. Most plots cover well over 2,000 square yards. For big bungalows with even larger lawns, the rate is about Rs 5-6 lakh per square yard. In Jor Bagh and Golf Links, where the houses are relatively modest in size, a 375 square yard bungalow would cost at least Rs 50 crore. In 2012, the artist Subodh Gupta reportedly bought a bungalow in Jor Bagh for Rs 100 crore.

These areas are close to Lodhi Garden, where many LBZ residents come for their morning and evening walks. The garden is open to all, but to those who live in the vicinity, it is part of their daily routine.

The bigger bungalows, of course, are even harder to buy. And when a sale is made, it often makes news headlines.

In 2014, Bharti Group’s Rajan Mittal reportedly bought a bungalow on Amrita Shergill Marg for Rs 156 crore via an auction overseen by the courts. His brother Sunil Mittal, also of the Bharti Group, bought a bungalow in 2002 for Rs 40 crore on the same road. Malhotra, who lived in the same neighbourhood, says the rents run extremely high. In the days when his newspaper had given him accommodation there, it wasn’t the era of such high real estate prices.

There are only around 200 privately owned bungalows in this part of the city, and demand for them is naturally greater than their supply, pushing prices up year after year. Real estate brokers say the 32 open

skewed increase is not only because of its characteristic charm as a bubble of luxury, but also on account of the prestige it confers.Overthepastdecadeorso,property prices here have increased multi-fold.

In a city with a population of over 16 million (2011 Census), a low-density area of only around 15 people per acre is, in Jethmalani’s words an “offensively luxurious anomaly” that needs to be fixed. Compare this to Old Delhi, where as many as 1,500 people live per acre.

This is the inequality that made Jethmalani, when he was Urban Affairs minister, look into the matter, even consider the bulldozing of LBZ to make way for modern flats. But the prices and hype are also based on the old world charm, and the love of a majestic setting, brokers say.

“The way the construction has happened in other areas, we are making a

concrete jungle,” says Sanjay Bhatia of Property Place. Bhatia, who works in South Delhi (including Lutyens’) as well as Noida, continues: “This area is beautiful.

There is enough money in the country.

This particular place is a lung of Delhi and if it loses the green belt, then it won’t work. The old must be retained. There must be some uniformity. A property in Lutyens’ Delhi is covered by guidelines and I hope they remain strict [though they] are a little unfair to buyers [who] might want more freedom.”

“There should be no high-rise there,” he adds. “It has been such an unplanned development all over the NCR. You are killing the oxygen belt of Delhi. No doubt there are shabby quarters, but they can’t be privatised. This part should not go to private builders because they will sell whatever inch they can and we will end up with just another city.”

Nehru’s former residence Teen Murti Bhavan, now a memorial and a museum

O

ver the years, there have been

cosmetic changes, but nothing has significantly altered the character of Lutyens’ Delhi. Yet, it would be incorrect to say that the Lutyens Bungalow Zone has not changed. At first, it changed in haphazard ways. That was before 1986 when occupiers built whatever they wanted, and added whatever they could to old structures. Then, after a 1986 PIL, the Delhi High Court said no construction would be allowed in the zone.

“Cognisance was taken. When they saw [that new buildings were] growing like mushrooms, they were worried.

For instance, on Ferozeshah Road, multi-storied buildings like Sagar Apartments came up. These were built by builders who had contacts in the establishment. So there were new guidelines in 1986. In fact, no alteration was allowed even. But then, the Government

realised they had to allow some scope for additions, like for [residences of] judges.

They needed offices in their homes; they had no offices in their homes. They needed to work at home. Ministers, on the other hand, said [that the] public [would] come to meet them and there was no space to hold meetings. When the English used to stay, they hardly stayed with family. They didn’t need too many bedrooms, so even if you look at the Type VIII bungalows, there are at most four bedrooms. They had wanted verandahs,” says Vijay Motwani, retired special director general of the CPWD. “Later, ministers said they needed more rooms. They approached the Government with functional necessities. And the Government said that based on individual cases, it would allow for construction, but they also said that the PMO would give the permission for any such additions to the property. This

a list with the Urban Development Ministry that had the names of those who had defied the guidelines.

An example of this blatant personalisation of heritage property is the former Minister of State for Power Kalpnath Rai who had a jacuzzi installed in his bungalow.

Motwani says there are numerous other cases, and yet the CPWD, which served notices to Amar Singh, couldn’t do much.

In many cases, they weren’t even allowed to enter the premises.

L

utyens’ Delhi was the last great

construction project to be completed by the British in India, and Robert Byron once said it was also ‘unlike English’ because it had domes and gardens, and delicately fused impressions that were quintessentially Indian even if with an

When Nehru died, Teen Murti Bhavan, which was designed by Robert Tor Russel and built in 1929-30 as part of Edwin Lutyens’ imperial capital, was converted into a museum and memorial was in 1996. On 12 April 1996, a relaxation of LBZ guidelines was issued by the Urban Development Ministry. It said that for building office spaces in judges’ and ministers’ bungalows, no permission would be required. Also, those who were entitled to Type VIII but lived in smaller bungalows, one room could be added. Besides, there were other provisions depending on the security one was entitled to. But cases started coming, and relaxations were given. And then, everything descended into chaos.”

In fact, conservationists have said that not a single bungalow has been left untampered with. Like the case of Amar Singh, who reconstructed the bungalow on his own, and even added a threeroom complex on the premises.

In 2004, suo moto cognisance was taken of news reports that said unauthorised construction was taking place in at least 38 such bungalows. The reports cited ashish sharma

imperial vision.

“The LBZ is a well-marked geographical zone,” says Motwani, “Until 1986, it was no different [from] the rest of the city. It was just that it was designed by Lutyens and housed government officials. Until 1986 there were no guidelines. Whatever anyone wanted to do they did. This is a prime area from the point of view of real estate.”

In altering the vision, which was done in spite of guidelines, a lot of wasteful expenditure was incurred. For instance, new allottees would invariably want the bungalows’ bathrooms to be renovated.

And the CPWD had to change six toilet seats in each bungalow each time a new occupant would arrive. There is a limit of 10 years, Motwani says, before that can be done. But few bother. “VIPs do their things.

They hope they will keep becoming something or the other, and continue to live here,” he says. open www.openthemagazine.com 33

The residence of BSP supremo Mayawati (above); RLD leader Ajit Singh’s ex-residence on Tughlaq Road (facing page)

Based on a PIL filed in Delhi High Court and after a long-drawn legal battle, in 2005 the court directed the Public Works Department to demolish all unauthorised construction. But then, nobody monitored the task, and the officials gave up after they weren’t even let inside some of the properties they had identified.

Along with the Directorate of Estates, and the Urban Development Ministry, the CPWD had listed around 85 bungalows that have defied the guidelines. “The cases got diluted, as is always the case,” he says.

Lutyens’ Delhi would have none of it.

B

ut contrary to the perceptions of

a lavish life in the leafy neighbourhoods that are so sheltered that they seem like a parallel universe in the capital city, living in these bungalows is a task.

34 open

There are things that are out of place, and nature is finding its way in. Nothing survives the ravages of nature.

“Contrary to their public image, these bungalows are not lavish at all. I won’t ever live in a bungalow. I’d prefer a modern flat,” says Motwani.

Besides tales of peacocks, and other exotic birds, and tamarind trees, there are also bats and rats, and termites, and the occasional snake in these bungalows.

Consider the bat menace in the bungalow allotted to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In the scorching summer months, when the high ceilings and the verandahs keep the heat out, bats tend to drop dead from the branches of trees that surround the quarters. The stench resembles that of dead rats, an official says.

Or the termite problem for which the CPWD can, at best, provide psychological treatment. Lutyens’ Delhi is infested

with termites and every two years they become resistant to insecticide treatment. Given the red tape-ism that exists, and the tedious bureaucratic processes, the CPWD needs to approach many departments before it can identify and use another insecticide. After years of trying to rid the zone of termites, the CPWD has now taken recourse to spraying chemicals as a placebo for residents, knowing full well that these insectsaren’tgoinganywhereandwillonly multiply. As one official says, the buildings don’t need to be razed. There are other forces at work, he quips.

There are anecdotes one hears. Like the case of former Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar. When he was the Union Minister for Railways, a snake was once spotted in his bedroom, and for days, fearful of snakes on the premises, the minister placed bowls of water under the leg stumps of beds 10 november 2014

photos express archives

to keep the menace away.

Again, in the days of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s occupancy, the newly constituted SPG had asked him to certify the bungalow as safe, and Motwani says that he had then said he couldn’t. The bungalows had long outlived their lifespan, and he wasn’t sure if they would last for much longer. “These bungalows are maintained very well.

But you never know,” he says. “Nobody can say these are safe. There are always requests for repair. Excellent maintenance is what makes them stay.” Some buildings in Sunheri Bagh were demolished because they were unsafe, he adds.

S

o the Delhi that Lutyens built, or had built by others, remains a power statement. It was always a place of privilege, and despite the new regime’s plans, it will take more than just political will to

10 november 2014

These bungalows have never been temporary in the minds of their occupants. Once their power disappeared, they tried to hold on to the bungalows by way of memorials undo its imperialist underpinning.

And perpetuating the problem is the property grabs that often occur in the name of memorials. These bungalows have never been temporary in the minds of their occupants, those who altered them to make them their own, and then once their power disappeared, tried to hold on to them by way of memorials.

“You have no control over memorials.

Mayawati got the Government’s okay and the Government said ‘yes’ because they were afraid,” Malhotra says. “There is no place in the world like this, and no

ministershavesuchgovernmentaccommodations. When I used to go meet them, what a beauty these bungalows presented!

It is one of the most imaginative [forms of] housing and only an imperialist government could have done it.”

But here, the imagined lives of those who live in Lutyens’ Delhi reign supreme. It presents the narrative of this country’s conflict. Here, they prove that democracy is truly the only way to beat the wealth and privilege of generations.

It is about upward mobility—even without high rises. n open www.openthemagazine.com 35

advertising

second sex? hang on There is a power shift in the

O Have lls M ixe r

der rin G ‘I am not a

PC Jew

kitchen appliance’: A wife tells her uld husband that he sho he cook for himself if he gets doesn’t like what

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‘I am the woman of the house’: The wife, a lawyer, runs the house, while the husband takes a break from work

f all media , advertising

most likes to view men and women, especially women, as stock characters. The woman is usually circumscribed to the kitchen or bedroom—as the nitpicky housewife, the sacrificial mother, or the sexpot. It’s old hat to discuss advertising stereotypes. But, apart from selling products, sometimes advertising shows us the way we lead our lives, or the way we ought to. A series of commercials on television seem to be changing the contours of the most frequently used trope in advertising, that of the married couple.

A recent Domino’s commercial for its new product Subwich uses a cutesy and recognisable premise of a husband floundering about at home, unused to domestic tasks, but gives it a new context by placing the woman at the workplace. The husband is on leave and keeps calling her and interrupting her work. It is funny and familiar: he asks her where the new toothpaste tube is stored, what to pay the presswaala, how to turn on the knob for the gas cylinder. She finally orders a Subwich for herself and one for him, and calls him to say, “Ab usse khao, mera dimag mat khao (Now eat this, not my brain).”

Indian advertising appears to have made a discovery, that there is another type of woman, the working woman. She is here and is changing the relationship

el

Air t

‘I can be your boss, but I will also cook for you’: A working couple with the wife as the husband’s superior at work, who goes home and cooks an elaborate meal for him

portrayal of couples in brand marketing by sunaina Kumar between men and women as seen on TV. Raymond is a brand that stands for a softer side of masculinity. ‘The Complete Man’ is a caring family man who is also a metrosexual, always dressed in a dapper suit. In a recent campaign, The Complete Man gets a new-age twist. In a film titled ‘Being There’, the husband volunteers to stay at home and take care of their baby as the wife drives off to work. A spokesperson of the advertising agency behind the campaign was quoted in an interview saying that, “The unique situation of the husband deciding to stay at home while the wife goes to work is relevant today and wouldn’t work for our older generation.” Raymond’s Complete Man is now the Evolved Complete Man. The most surprising portrayal of the working woman comes from a brand in a conservative category, jewellery. In a commercial for PC Jewellers, a husband and wife are shown at a party interacting with another couple; the woman admires the jewellery of the wife, and her husband says she is married to an investment banker after all. The banker husband tells them that he is taking a break from work to write a book (it does seem inspired by Chetan Bhagat’s life choices) while his wife runs the house. “So you’re the man of the house,” says the friend. “Even better, I’m the woman of the house,” she replies.

The ad is at best hamhanded in its approach to breaking stereotypes. There 10 november 2014

is a self-congratulatory note that is hard to miss. The advertisers seem to be saying, ‘Here, look at us, aren’t we progressive?’

But, as Anuja Chauhan, author and creative consultant at JWT, an ad agency, says, anything is better than nothing.

“Advertising is the most scared of all media. It is even more regressive than TV, which we blame for all our ills. We need some drastic correction and even if some of these ads are obvious in their intention, they balance all the sexist stuff that we see.” It’s not just the content she points out, even the casting is faulty. “Most ads will show a fake Indian woman, a darkhaired, fair, Brazilian model. And we’re so used to the low standards that are set by advertising, that when an ad like Tanishq comes along with a dusky woman and the concept of remarriage, we go all out, thinking it deserves a Nobel for being sensitive,” she says.

The one advertisement that brings out all the red flags is an Airtel commercial

“Advertising is the most scared of all media. It is even more regressive than TV, which we blame for all our ills. We need some drastic correction” Anuja Chauhan JWT

airing on TV a few months ago, the one that portrayed the wife as the boss, who goes home and cooks an elaborate meal for her husband, an employee whom she reprimanded in office. An apology on her part for being his superior at work.

The ad evoked a fair measure of outrage on social media and primetime television. Santosh Padhi, partner at Taproot India, which created the ad, says that the ad worked so well that the brand was in favour of having a sequel. “It was talkedabout and that is important,” he says. His explanation for the coda which shows the woman cooking: ‘She is not forced to cook, she realises that she’s done the job of the boss and now she can do the job of a wife and cook for her husband. If it was the husband who was home early, he would have done the same.”

That, somehow, is impossible to believe. As the American actress and author Joan Collins said some time back, “We should celebrate being women and having the opportunities to do things that our mothers and grandmothers were not allowed to do. They were expected to stay at home and do the cooking and the cleaning. Though now, of course, we are expected to do the cooking and the cleaning and the working.”

According to Taproot’s Padhi, the Airtel commercial was an effort to move away from the stereotypical couple and tell a story about new relationships that open www.openthemagazine.com 37

d on

Ra ym

‘I am the Evolved Complete Man’: A young working couple, where the husband stays home to take care of the baby as the wife rushes off to work

reflect a changing India.

The small changes that have come in advertising take stock of the fact that more women are in the workplace. But, it’s not just Indian advertising that has been loath to portray women at work, it is no less true for Western markets. As a recent article that appeared in The New Republic noted, ‘For decades, academic studies have documented the tendency for advertising to portray women in subordinate roles. One recent meta-analysis of 64 studies (in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science) noted that women are more likely to be depicted as product users, not authority figures, and three times more likely to be placed at home, rather than at work. A 2010 study found that in the U.S., women were portrayed as professionals in only 5.4 percent of ads, while men were depicted in professional settings nearly three times more often.

When ads included images of housekeeping, men were virtually non-existent, showing up in only 1.4 percent of ads studied, while women were shown in housekeeping roles in 32.4 percent of the ads.’

38 open

A

ll this leads back to the question:

can advertising alter perceptions?

Advertising professional R Balki, who heads Lowe Lintas, says that good advertising has to be intuitive of change in society and not just go about following it. Lowe Lintas created a clutterbreaking campaign for Havells, which is all the more surprising since the category is mired in stereotypes. Its series ‘Respect for Women’ shows several stories in which women tell men that they will not be identified as kitchen appliances. In one of the spots on air, the wife tells her husband to iron his own shirt; in another, the husband orders

“It’s taken for granted that women will cook and work in the house. It has worked well for a brand like Havells to say this should not be so” R Balki Lowe Lintas

fresh juice from his wife, who dumps the juicer on him and goes off for her jog. “The thought behind the campaign was simple, that we cannot equate women with kitchen appliances. It’s taken for granted that women will cook and work in the house... we don’t even think about it. It has worked extremely well for a brand like Havells to say this should not be so.”

Not all brands are ready for this leap.

The pressure cooker brand, Prestige, which has had the same tagline since the 1980s, ‘Jo biwi se kare pyaar, woh Prestige se kaise kare inkaar’ (He who loves his wife, how can he say ‘no’ to Prestige?) has a new commercial for the festive season with Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

As they unpack all their newly purchased ware on the kitchen counter, Aishwarya tells him that he will be doing the cooking. But, it does not strike a new note, there is a sameness to it, as if the brand acknowledges that it is not politically correct to tie down the woman alone to the kitchen, but the old tagline is louder than the new storyline. The wife will tease the husband, but she will cook for him. n 10 november 2014

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FOOD

Taste of the Sea

India exports octopus in large quantities, and now the cephalopod has begun to feature on the menus of upscale Indian restaurants. But will you eat it?

By Lhendup G Bhutia

E

arlier this year, after consuming a bowlful of human predator instinct.

Naengmyeon—a type of Korean noodle broth which to I had supposed the octopus would be less popular in India, my surprise arrived chilled with ice floating in it—at a if not completely unavailable. But it turns out that it is not just restaurant in New York’s Koreatown, I found myself, a week abundantly available off the Maharashtrian and Keralite coasts, later, in the grim neighbourhood of Chinese immigrants in it is exported to the Far East and Mediterranean countries in large Flushing, Queens, at yet another Korean establishment trying quantities, and is also widely available in many local restaurants. something even more outlandish. In front of me on a bed of Every day, except at high-tide, fishing trawlers leave the green vegetables and large mushrooms, with dipping sauces coast of Mumbai, and return with fish, prawns and cuttlefish. as accompaniments, were small scissored pieces of live, slimy Now there is a new catch—the octopus. In the past, fisherand wriggling octopus tentacles. men, unaware that the octopus could be sold or eaten, tossed The more adventurous customers at other tables ordered back what came up with the trawler’s shrimp catch. According whole pots of seafood that along with noodles, clams, shrimps, to Sujit Sundaram at the Central Marine Fisheries Research molluscs and other types of sea creatures, came topped with an Institute in Mumbai who wrote a paper about octopus-fishentire living octopus of significant size. The octopus, simmered ing off the Mumbai shore, some exporters started exporting but alive, crawled around the pot of its frozen octopus in 1988. “It was more of dead ocean brethren with its eight long an experiment. And a batch of 72 kg of tentacles as customers employed knives, octopus was sent to Japan, and 19,480 kg fingers and even their teeth to tear off to Greece,” he says. “Then in the 1990s, piecesofit.Often,thecustomershadtoseek more export houses, chiefly those help, and an obliging cook would appear based in Kochi, Mumbai and Gujarat, with a pair of scissors. started sending more supplies of the I had seen with delirious mirth the cephalopod. And today, India is one of the key exporters of octopus worldwide.” scene in the South Korean cult film Of the 300 known species of octopus, Oldboy, where the lead, played by Choi according to Sundaram, around 38 are Min-sik, consumes a large octopus; and found in Indian waters, with the Octopus also the YouTube clip of the filming of vulgaris being the most common. With the scene, where the actor, a Buddhist, more demand, the prices have also shot consumes a number of octopuses each up. “In 2001, it used to be available for time saying a short prayer to get the scene right, but the sight at the restaurant Rs 13 per kilogram at the landing site,” Octopus meat at The Table in Mumbai was macabre and ghastly. I tried catchhe says, “Now, you can’t get anything for ing the moving pieces on my own plate a less than Rs 60.” few times. But even if I picked just a tiny Realising that the octopus is badly affectpiece or cloaked it in lettuce and cabbage, ed by exposure to sunlight, fishermen the sight of something wriggling at the now carry tanks of chilled seawater other end of my chopsticks completein their boats to better preserve the ly put me off the dish. I settled for some creature. Most of the octopus is taken other seafood, something cooked and to processing units within four to six hours of being brought ashore, where it is unmoving, instead. My companion, gutted, processed and exported to the Far however, was less squeamish. Squiggly East and Europe. Some of these perhaps piece by squiggly piece, sometimes come back to the city after being cleaned slurping and sometimes chomping, he and cut in those foreign lands, through polished off almost the entire plate Sujit Sundaram the local restaurants that order their with the thrill of what I then suspectResearch Assistant, Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Mumbai octopus from those countries. ed was some deep-seated primordial

“In 2001, octopus used to be available for Rs 13 per kg at the landing site. Now, you can’t get anything for less than Rs 60”

10 november 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 41

PHOTOS Ritesh Utamchandani

(Clockwise from above) A dish featuring octopus meat served at Spices, a pan-Asian cuisine restaurant at JW Marriott, Mumbai; a seafood platter; octopus cold cuts

T

he octopus, as one would expect, tastes of the sea. It

is tougher than most other meats, since it has no bones and is filled with muscles that support each other, and isn’t particularly easy to cook. Even if it is slightly overcooked the meat becomes rubbery and chewy. Most preparations involve tenderising the meat through a combination of massage, braising, blanching, and blunt force. In Greece, where the octopus is widely consumed, fishermen are known to beat it against the rocks to tenderise the meat. Some say that cooking the meat with a wine cork helps. Most others, however, either dip it in boiling water several times or boil it for more than an hour, depending upon the octopus’ size.

Shumu Gupta Rai, who runs FishVish, an online store that sells seafood including octopus to locals and restaurants in Pune, regularly uses it in salad or a stir-fry. “To me, it’s a beautiful meat. Its texture is nothing like that of any other animal or seafood,” he says. Gupta usually boils small chopped pieces of the octopus—which he procures in frozen form from export houses in Kochi before it is shipped out—for at least an hour and a half, before trying to cook it. “It is not for everyone, I get it. But more restaurants

want to serve it and they procure it from us,” he says. According to Gupta, FishVish sells between 200 and 300 kg of octopus every month, most of it to various restaurants in Pune.

Some people say frozen octopus is preferred as the meat arrives somewhat tenderised. When I asked Mandar Madav, the Executive Sous Chef of JW Marriott’s pan-Asian restaurant, Spices, if that is why the restaurant buys its octopuses from Japan, he replies: “People in Delhi say the mutton in Jaipur is better than theirs. And those in Jaipur say the mutton in Delhi is better. The reason is that freezing helps the carcass of the animal loosen up after rigor mortis.

The same with the octopus. It doesn’t tenderise it. It just loosens it up.” According to him, like many other restaurants, they order their octopus from foreign shores because of the assured quality.

Fine dining restaurant The Table in Colaba, Mumbai, serves a grilled octopus, which comes balanced on saffron potatoes and celery, and topped with salsa verde. When the restaurant opened in 2011, it procured its seafood from the nearby fish market. The restaurant’s chef Alex Sanchez claims that if fish, especially octopus, is exposed to the sun for too long, its exterior often gets damaged if it

In Greece, where the octopus is widely consumed, fishermen are known to beat their catch against rocks to tenderise the meat

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10 november 2014

L Alfonse/ Getty Images

doesn’t go bad altogether. The restaurant now has its own supplier who gets it the best catch available. Often, however, satisfactory octopus pieces are not found and the restaurant does not serve the dish. “We, as a principle, always work with fresh seafood. So if good pieces are unavailable, we just don’t serve it,” Sanchez says. When it does get good octopus, oftentimes the octopus is alive and moving when it is brought to the kitchen. “So we just bash it on its head,” he says.

Madav claims that octopus is a tough sell. JW Marriott’s Spanish restaurant, Arola, where he worked earlier, has discontinued its octopus stew Pulpo, because of poor sales.

“We would land up throwing whatever Pulpo we cooked in the morning,” he says. “Very rarely was anyone eating it.”

Spices, where he now works, serves octopus sashimi and nigiri. “But the people eating it are usually Japanese guests or locals who want to Instagram pictures of the dish,” he says.

When I ordered the sashimi and nigiri, nothing, fortunately, wiggled. The octopus slices in both dishes were slightly boiled, unlike how it normally features. The octopus slices in the sashimi Mandar Madav Executive Sous Chef at Spices, did not flap around, and the JW Marriott, Mumbai octopus atop the sushi rice in the nigiri stayed glued to it. Bolstered by the sight of unmoving octopus, and the certainty that nothing, not even an octopus, could survive the journey from Japan to India chopped up and frozen, the slices— dipped in dark vinegar, and with a touch of wasabi— disappeared into my mouth.

It wasn’t bad actually. It’s not something somebody could eat every day, at least for people from these parts.

But it’s not something sludgy and despicable that the ocean threw up either. As long as it isn’t alive, I suppose.

“The people eating octopus sashimi and nigiri are usually Japanese guests or locals who want to Instagram pictures of the dish”

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n our way back from dinner in the subway in New York, my companion, refusing to tell me what live octopus tasted like, had fallen silent. I thought he was struggling to keep his dinner down. As I started dozing off, I felt a slight nudge. It was him. “You know,” he said, “it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend. She had this habit of twirling her tongue in my mouth.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 43

a rt

An appeal by the sea

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OPEN SPACE

Raveena Tandon Shahid Kapoor

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n p lu

Happy New Year

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cinema review

Dynaudio Xeo 6 Parmigiani Bugatti AĂŠrolithe Lenovo Yoga 2

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tech & style

Early sex Toxic mould in herbal medicines One for the sixties

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science

The international round up Ten Kings: Dasarajna

by Ashok K Banker Blue: Tales of Reddumone, the Two-Faced by MR Sharan

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books

The Manganiyars of Rajasthan

music

VS Gaitonde

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mindspace

The NonObjective Genius VS Gaitonde’s retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York 46

Untitled, 1974, Oil on canvas, by VS Gaitonde

ART

The Painter of Silence Why the work of Gaitonde, the artist who defied language, feels so much at home at New York’s Guggenheim Museum Rollo Romig

T

here was never much written about

Vasudeo S Gaitonde, the great abstract painter born in Maharashtra in 1924.

He didn’t make it easy to put his work into words. The artist Baiju Parthan has said that Gaitonde “defies language”. Even the paintings themselves he mostly left untitled.

Fame was never Gaitonde’s forte; he lived simply in a one-room rental apartment in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin East for most of the years in which he produced his most celebrated work. But over the past decade, Gaitonde has quietly cemented his status as one of the most important Indian artists since Independence. Last year in Mumbai, at Christie’s first ever auction in India, a Gaitonde painting sold for Rs 23.7 crore—an all-time record for an Indian artist. And now, 13 years after his death, the Guggenheim Museum in New York has mounted the most extensive retrospective of his art to date, gathering 45 varied works produced across five decades.

Had he lived to see it, Gaitonde would likely have viewed all the fuss with a certain detachment. He was often described as a recluse; Sandhini Poddar, the curator of the Guggenheim show, prefers to say that he “tended toward solitude”. He was a small man, but stocky, peering out at the world through thick glasses, unshakably confident yet seemingly free of ego. He cut ties with his family as a young man, leaving no heirs or estate. Zen Buddhism was a lifelong

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shalini saran

Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde

fascination, and he saw painting as a phenomenon that has meaning only when experienced entirely in the moment, for artist and spectator alike.

“Everything starts from silence,” he told the journalist Pritish Nandy in 1991.

“The silence of the brush. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife. The painter starts by absorbing all these silences. You are not partial in the sense that no one part of you is working there. Your entire being is.”

Like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky—two looming influences on his early work—Gaitonde saw painting as a fundamentally spiritual practice. Beyond his interest in Zen, he found inspiration in a trio of Indian sages: Sri Ramana Maharshi, who was known for his ‘silent teachings’; Sri

Nisargadatta Maharaj, who emphasised non-duality; and Krishnamurti, who sometimes gave lectures at Bombay’s Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, where Gaitonde studied until 1948. The Guggenheim show includes several examples of his work from the 50s, when he was still experimenting with representation. Some tend toward Cubism; others are downright whimsical, such as a small, charming watercolour of a woman flying a kite.

The first big shift came in 1959. He traded his brush for a roller, often also employing a palette knife to add and subtract paint, and abandoned his easel in favour of working flat on a table. He never again made a representational work. He was now interested, he said in 1962, in “pure painting—painting

David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

which has detached itself from the world of objects to explore its own endlessly exciting possibilities.” But this detachment from objects wasn’t meant to imply some kind of total break from the physical world. ‘The study of ‘Zen’ has helped me to understand nature, and my paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature,’ he wrote in an artist questionnaire for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). ‘I want to say things in few words. I aim at directness and simplicity.’ Throughout his career, he produced only five or six paintings each year. “I don’t work, I relax and wait, and then I apply some paint on the canvas,” he told the artist Pramod Ganpatye. “The most important aspect of painting is waiting, waiting, waiting, between one work and the next.”

Gaitonde didn’t call his work ‘abstract’.

His own word for his painterly philosophy was ‘non-objective’. It’s a distinction that’s difficult to explain in plain language, not least because both terms have eluded universally agreed-upon definitions even among those fluent in art-speak. But Gaitonde’s insistence on ‘non-objective’ does place him firmly in the lineage of the Guggenheim, a museum that in its first incarnation was called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which explains in part why his work feels so at home there.

Gaitonde lived and worked in India his entire career, and he’s always been far better known in his home country than he is in America. But if the Guggenheim has proven to be the most natural place to host the most extensive

exhibition of his work, it’s tempting to ask: how Indian is his art? But such geographic quibbles do a disservice to Gaitonde’s global appetite for inspiration. He was as fluent in Chinese calligraphy and Indian miniatures as he was in Abstract Expressionism or European Modernism. And as Poddar illuminates in her catalogue for the show, Gaitonde’s career can be seen as an important segment of a longtime intercontinental conversation that in fact began in the East, with the Theosophists’ interest with Eastern religion, particularly Hinduism, which inspired the European avant-garde, including Klee and Kandinsky. ‘That they in turn,’ Poddar writes, ‘inspired mid-twentieth-century artists working with abstraction and nonobjectivity in

both America and India is a noteworthy incidence of early transnationalism and the global circulation of art and ideas.’

The major transnational experience of Gaitonde’s life came in 1964.

Gaitonde’s artist friend Krishen Khanna recommended him to Porter McCray, a MoMA official who administered a cultural-exchange grant called JDR 3rd Fund. Gaitonde spent the year in New York City. MoMA acquired several of his paintings, and he struck up a crucial acquaintance with Mark Rothko, who at that time was deeply involved in his black-on-black paintings. But McCray wasn’t pleased. “I’m very disappointed in your friend,” he told Khanna. “He spends all his time looking at films, at the cinema.” Khanna explained that Gaitonde’s eclectic interests were central to his artistry. He was a genuine omnivore, interested in everything from music to poetry to movies to literature. “He was a truly civilised human being,” Khanna told Poddar.

Another shift came around 1968, when he began to favour large vertical canvases. He invented a technique he called the ‘lift-off’, in which he applied paint to canvas using torn pages from newspapers and magazines, spread the paint with rollers, then erased some of it with palette knives. None of the paper remains on the canvas, only the oil paint. You might call them ghost collages. But something deeper shifted, too—he’d learned to achieve a frightening complexity in his use of colour, and all of his innovations and experiments started to gel into something singular.

His work from the 70s and 80s is the vital heart of the exhibition. The range of media he conjures using oil paint alone is astonishing; sometimes it bleeds like watercolour; sometimes it splotches like sponge. Many of these works experiment with the techniques and principles of calligraphy, offering glyphs of his own invention in oil that flows like ink. “His actual work is the trace of the elements with which he chooses to start a painting,” Khanna told (Facing page) VS Gaitonde’s paintings on display at Guggenheim Museum, New York; (left) Untitled, 1955, Oil on canvas,

by VS Gaitonde open www.openthemagazine.com 49

Poddar. “He chooses, say, two colours, he makes his ground absolutely perfect, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to paint… I think that’s his big contribution, they’re happenings actually. He’s doing it, and he can’t do it again, it can’t bear repetition. In his whole repertoire you won’t see the same colours again, even the same shade of red.”

These images can seem to straddle the second and third dimensions: up close, the paint is often so thinly applied that every thread of the canvas is distinct, yet from a few paces back the oils glow from the frame, the ‘lift-off’ segments seeming to float atop a haze of subtle tonal contrasts. His palette in these works takes earthiness to the point of decay: filthy browns, nuclear yellows, toxic oranges, mucky greens, and sun-bleached whites; trickles of rusty

red; splotches of mouldy black. The 70s paintings in particular bring to mind some ecological disaster, or at the very least the dankest natural processes of organic rot: the underside of a stone, or the walls of a flooded house just after the waters have receded. In several early 70s canvases, perfect circles emerge from the murk, like eyes or suns or beacons of warning. It’s in these works that Gaitonde’s vision comes most fully to life, and their message seems to have something to do with death.

Of course, these are only my private reactions, the thoughts that surfaced in the actual moments when the canvases were in front of me. My immediate impressions can’t in any way explain what Gaitonde’s paintings ‘mean’ to anyone else. But as many non-objective artists see it, the experience of the

In his whole repertoire you won’t see the same colours again, even the same shade of red Krishen Khanna, Indian artist and VS Gaitonde’s friend

moment is the entirety of what a painting means to an individual spectator. Kandinsky contended that the ‘contents’ of his abstractions are “what the spectator lives or feels while under the effect of the form and colour combinations of the picture,” and Gaitonde, too, Poddar writes, ‘would stress the place of the spectator, and his or her own experience of the work, over any inherent directive or objective to his paintings.’ An exhibition isn’t about the artist anymore. It’s the viewers’ turn to live for a moment under the spell of the work and alchemise it into whatever they will.

In 1972, Gaitonde and his friend Ram Kumar both won the Padma Shri award from the Government of India, and Gaitonde moved into his one-room flat in Nizamuddin East. For years Kumar’s wife sent him a daily tiffin lunch to eat in his dusty room. Then in 1984, Gaitonde was badly injured in a car accident in New Delhi, and for the next several years he was unable to continue his work on large canvases. Instead he turned his attention to small ink drawings on paper—with a special focus on calligraphic forms and techniques that had long fascinated him. (It’s interesting that an artist who’s so difficult to write about found such inspiration in letterforms throughout his career, unreadable as they may be.)

Some of the examples on display from this period look like impossible blueprints etched with taps from a sharp stone; others resemble Japanese prints viewed through a squint.

“I’m still learning about painting, because I believe that the process is constant,” Gaitonde said in an interview forART India in 1998, three years before he died. “Painting is a struggle—you have to inquire, you have to have a thinking mind... I could never stop painting, but even if I do stop, I will continue to talk about it. Painting and Gaitonde are synonymous.”

VS Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life is on display at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, until 11 February 2015

Untitled, 1989, oil on canvas, by VS Gaitonde

Rollo Romig is a New York-based freelance writer 10 NOVEMBER 2014

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music

Bards of the Desert Rajasthan’s ambassadors of folk music are going global—and making it bigger at home RAJNI GEORGE

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lmost 30 musicians of various

ages fill the stage at Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh Fort, instruments aloft and hands extended as they build to that grand crescendo particular to every great song. The various wind and string implements of the Manganiyar community throb—the dholak, dhol, khartal, morchang, murli, shehnai—and the audience appears to approach Sufi-worthy ecstasies. World music writ large, literally; superimposed over the fort’s crenellated walls are the faces of some of these same beturbanned men, the voices of popular music event Rajasthan International Folk Festival (RIFF, the acronym by which it is popularly referred to).

“I have done this since I was a child,” says folk singer Kheta Khan Manganiyar. “This is all we know how to do. If we were businessmen we would do that I suppose. Where the music is good for my work, I will go.”

He will play first with members of his troupe, and later with Shooglenifty, themselves a contemporary Celtic folk band, in one of the traditional jugalban-

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dis RIFF encourages. The Manganiyars, a community of court musicians who converted from Islam hundreds of years ago, are practitioners right from the beginning, passing their trade from one generation to the next, through songs that form an oral history. There are old stalwarts like 75-year-old singer Hazi Khan Bhutika, from Jaisalmer’s Bodana village, among the most knowledgeable artists of the Manganiyar community, with a large repertoire that includes jaangda, Sufi kalaam and Sindhi poetry—unable to accept countless invitations to perform abroad as he is afraid of flying. And 71-year-old Hasam Khan Manganiyar from nearby Betina, who plays the kamaycha and loves Raga Sorath, another wizened virtuoso who helps make up the knowledge bank of their profession.

And how they have travelled. “We have played in Japan, France, everywhere. We have many fans, our names are written big on posters all over Europe,” says Kheta. “And we enjoy playing with all kinds of musicians; all of it is about making music.”

Kheta is a commanding druid of a singer, possessed of a powerful voice and considerable stage presence. Part of one of Rajasthan’s most contagious cultural exports, he is at once manager, musician and cultural curator, as well as the current leader of the Manganiyars. Combining influences ranging from Persia to Punjab, they are rustic yet infectiously accessible— and highly marketable. Hailing from Jodhpur, Barmer and Jaisalmer, that haunting last frontier of the desert, they are spoken of in the language of cultural curation as a tradition that needs to be preserved—yet they persist in the mainstream through forums like global music festivals; Royston Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction, an international touring theatre performance featuring 40 Manganiyars; and Amarrass Records, a Delhi-based world music label which leans heavily on the Manganiyars. In fact, Abel’s new The Manganiyar Classroom has already moved the focus on to the next generation, featuring children who are musicians.

10 November 2014

Manganiyars at the 2014 Jodhpur RIFF held in early October photos kavi bhansali/jodhpur riff

‘The Manganiyar splits notes into improbable fractions, keeps beat with his eyes, shifts tempo as suddenly and effortlessly as a gust of desert wind moves a dune,’ says the Amarrass site, described as the effort of two city-dwelling 30-somethings who wanted ‘to make traditional folk music cool enough for India’s urbane’ (Motherland). The patrons have indeed changed, from old royals to young hipsters around the world; moved from durbars to auditoriums. The stars of festivals like RIFF, run by Jaipur Virasat Foundation (JVF), a charitable trust which works with traditional artists, these folk musicians are the laal maas (a local Rajasthani mutton dish) which accompanies every other offering; last year, they gave a virtuoso joint performance, almost spontaneous, with the Gypsy Allstars, musicians who are part of the renowned musical group the Gipsy Kings. Several Desert Music Festivals (run by Amarrass since 2011), RIFFs and many international performances later, what do we make of the presence of Manganiyars in the world music scene?

“Not all Manganiyars are at the same level as, say, Gazi Khan, Gewar or Kutle Khan—these guys are still the exceptions, yet their successes lift up the reputation of the whole 10 November 2014

community,” says Georgie Pope, press officer for the Glastonbury Festival and an acoustic harp player who takes tourists around Rajasthan’s musical landscape through her travel company, Sound Travels. She has known the Manganiyars for years, and curated little concerts at nightclubs and private gatherings—importantly, taken groups of villagers directly to the musicians’ hometowns. “‘Modern’ audiences love them. The Manganiyars, as well as Langas, Naths, Bhils, and various other communities who are reaching out to new, non-traditional patrons, have been clever. They foreground rhythm for ears not accustomed to Rajasthani melodies; they extend alaaps and show vocal dexterity for ears that don’t understand the language.

Musicians have always had to adapt

Now we can eat, survive, which is what we struggled to do.

Our children have a future. We would not have been able to keep playing” Kheta Khan Manganiyar

their music to suit changing patronage, and the Manganiyars have been particularly successful in doing so.”

Part of this is moving with the trend.

“You didn’t have Sufi festivals earlier, or Coke Studio. Whatever else is going on, the changes we have had; you see the same changes mapped along with the Manganiyars. Records have been released for 30 odd years, going back to the early 80s,” says ethnomusicologist Shubha Chaudhuri of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), whose Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology has recorded radio programmes with the Manganiyars on community radio and produced a research-based series around them. “Only a fraction of that community, however, performs on the global stage. Traditional music is still threatened, in local spaces and amongst other musical communities in India.”

This, of course, makes them valuable to festivals and cultural platforms.

“They are a big part of RIFF. Every year they are an essential part of programming,” says Divya Bhatia, RIFF’s festival director, who speaks of Rajasthani collaborations with Celtic Connections in Scotland, the Forde Festival in Norway during the Commonwealth Games, at WOMEX in Spain later this year. Chief among the local artists, of open www.openthemagazine.com 53

Members of Shooglenifty, a contemporary Celtic folk band, play with Manganiyars at the 2014 Rajasthan International Folk Festival in Jodhpur

course, are the Manganiyars. Their formula has found success into the festival’s eighth edition. Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur-Marwar, one of the RIFF patrons along with rockstar Mick Jagger, welcomed festival attendees this year with a statement that ended: “Roots, folk and world music are becoming hip.” Even the former patrons have given their charges over to the world.

Concertgoers are a mix of laypeople and devoted fans who attend the festival’s Living Legends sessions at sunset and stay up all night till sunrise to hear these indigenous musicians in prime slots. Even late at night, when the more contemporary music is usually played, you will find Darra Khan Manganiyar and Kachara Khan Manganiyar singing the exquisite compositions of poets like Bulleh Shah in a trendy-sounding session called ‘Desert Lounge’.

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ome are wary of easy packaging,

others acknowledge it as part of the show. “I think there are a lot of different things happening now. Kutle Khan has gone all sexy and MTV-ish, Abel is still putting musicians in boxes, Kheta Khan and the Hamira Manganiyars are presenting themselves in huge orchestras, beautifully dressed and musically coordinated, and some Manganiyars are still struggling away playing away on the floor of roadside 54 open

hotels,” says Pope, calling their performances ‘Mozart moments’. “I just tell people they are about to see the most amazing musicians alive on the planet.” She describes a collaboration she worked on last year with the Manganiyar musician Lakha Khan, French cellist Vincent Ségal and a group of Hamira Manganiyars: “World-famous Vincent was standing ready with his electric cello, and Lakha began to demonstrate a raag on the sarangi.

Vincent didn’t play a note until Lakha had finished. He was spellbound, but of course Lakha was totally unfazed by all our admiration. He’d played more international venues than I’ve had hot dinners. It took much longer for Vincent to elicit a (deserved) ‘wah’ of approval from Lakha!” The incorporation of indigenous music into mainstream commercial music is usually fortuitous and also inevitable, for physical survival. “Now we can eat, survive, which is what we struggled to do,” says Kheta. “Our children have a future.

We would not have been able to keep playing or living like this.”

At first glance, the classic simple folk musician Kheta is deceptively canny about the business. Well-travelled and knowledgeable about music, he breaks into French and discusses parallels between Rajasthani gypsy music and Spanish flamenco. What did he make of The Manganiyar Seduction, wherein

43 musicians perform individually in a grid of cubicles, curtained and lighting up as the corresponding musician plays—likened to ‘the visual seduction of Amsterdam’s Red Light District’ (the University of Michigan) and ‘a gospel Mass or a slow-building rave’ (the Irish Independent)? “It was something new.

Everyone sees something differently,” says Kheta. “But there was no connection between the idea of us playing and the idea of a market in Amsterdam. We don’t have any idea about that, we are just performing our music.” (Abel had not responded at the time this article went to press.)

Now, the musicians take the next step every modern artist seems bound to take: self-directed self-promotion.

Kheta plans a new cultural institution opposite Jaisalmer’s Sam, a music village where visitors will come to hear Manganiyars play—a living museum of sorts which will commemorate their talents. “I will call the programme ‘Manganiyar Traditional Music’ and people will come to us for concerts,” he says. “There are hundreds of musicians living there and we will play twice a week.” Remarkably, despite the necessity of patronage from various modern patrons, it looks like the packaging, this time round, will be the province of its subject. One point for agency over legacy, within the complicated power dynamics of global music. n 10 November 2014

Books The International List

Fall Fiction The return of a Latin American literary idol, a Holocaust morality tale, pre-WWI England, stories from the shadowlands, a Victorian saga of closeted lesbians and a gay parallel narrative in seventeenth-century Amsterdam rajni george

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Sarah Waters is back with a compelling if uneven tale of 1920s repression, in her sixth novel, The Paying Guests (Virago, 566 pages).

Frances, her stubborn heroine of fading post-war south London, is a marvel of British gumption, rolling up her sleeves to keep the venerable family home intact—even making time for a quick spot of self-pleasuring, between the chores. The entry of two working class paying guests, Len and Lily Barber, taken in to help sustain Frances and her mother, will change everything. The household shares its most intimate spaces, and Frances begins to dream of real love, as she didn’t with an old flame. Her affair with the almost unwittingly seductive Lily—precious yet clearly appealing—almost survives the obstacle of her husband. But as events take a terrible turn, Waters asks many questions, chief among them the real nature of love; are the two bound only because they have colluded in an awful secret: ‘[W]as that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?’ Waters’ deft touch—most rewarding in The Little Stranger—is missing in the more lurid action. So, the details triumph, more than the big idea. Yet even a bath, overheard, is rich with potential in her able hands: ‘There came the splash of water and the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub. After that there was a silence, broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap’.

The suggestibility of these characters echoes in those still yet restive drops. Brilliant in her examination of class and the smoky trails of earlier eras, Waters is, as always, a reader’s writer in this subversive sendup of both domestic and Gothic novels.

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Roberto Bolaño ’s

posthumous collection of stories, The Secret of Evil (Picador, 164 pages)—just out in the UK and India—has been exciting for fans. These 19 stories range from the typically elliptical return of Arturo Belano (Bolaño’s alter ego) in ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ and ‘The Days of Chaos’, to ‘Scholars of Sodom’, a hilarious twopart account of a visiting VS Naipaul, who worries over the prevalence of sodomy in 70s Argentina. This last tale, a strange bird even for this writer, ends, predictably, in a pronouncement about literary Argentina: ‘But, for better or for worse, Argentina is what it is and has the origins it has, which is to say, of this you may be sure, that it comes from everywhere but Paris.’ Alternately short and feverish (‘Sevilla Kills Me’) and self-indulgent (‘The Colonel’s Son’, a zombie saga), these are pale echoes of the weird but trippy The Savage Detectives and 2666—but echoes nonetheless. The Chilean superstar might not have wanted it like this, but read this one as a companion volume; a corollary of the master work.

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There are those who love the latest offering of maverick novelist Martin Amis , and those who cannot stand it.

Interestingly adventurous at this point in his career, Amis’ 14th novel, The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Cape, 320 pages) is a challenge to finish. Set against the Nazi haze of 1942, the story is told by Golo, a promiscuous officer of the Reich who lusts after the commandant’s wife, among many others.

The full ‘meteorology of first sight’ unfurls when he falls for Mrs Hannah Doll, and some of the novel’s most ripe passages stem from the pairing of these characters, rather than the exchanges between the evil men of Kat Zet I, the eponymous ‘zone’. Though the treatment of evil and prejudice is acute, almost hypnotic in its steely perversion: ‘With its disgusting and hysterical emphasis on the carnal predations of the Jewish male, Der Sturmer, I believe, has done serious anti-Semitism a great deal of harm. The people need to see charts, diagrams, statistics, the scientific evidence—and not a fullpage cartoon of Shylock.’

Amis pursues his usual obsession with ‘the new unpleasantness’ (as his predominant theme was famously termed) in this book, the anti-hero. Yet, the evil is cloying. Perhaps novels about Nazis have to face an unusually high bar, but this one flails nevertheless.

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It is difficult to admire Margaret Atwood, that ‘quiet Mata Hari’ (Michael Ondaatje), that formidable yet playful queen of contemporary literature, and not like her new collection of stories, Stone Mattress (Bloomsbury, 280 pages).

These nine fables are as wonderfully dark as those she gave us in masterpieces like Alias Grace, with hints of the fiery charm of The Edible Woman (1969). Yet, the spark goes out in places, forty books into her career. In ‘Alphinland’, the widowed fantasy writer who is haunted by her late husband feels too trite a playing field; in ‘Dark Lady’, there is overkill in the account of morbid Jorrie, who reads the obituaries religiously in a veritable ‘tapdance on the graves’.

Likewise ‘The Freeze-Dried Groom’ and ‘The Dead Hand Loves You’—all those fantastic Atwood-ian titles!— beg to be loved but mostly leave you cold. Would-be vampires, a billion-yearold stromatalite, imaginary people: lots to enjoy for those who are not faint of heart, but not so much for the literary reader.

Gothic thrills are promised in the closeted and newly affluent 17th century Dutch world of The Miniaturist (Picador, 448 pages), yet never fully delivered.

When eighteen-year-old Petronella van Oortman travels to her new bridal home, a grand house in the plushest neighbourhood in Amsterdam, she is greeted by Marin Brandt, her moody sister-in-law, and a sense that all is not well despite their riches. Johannes, her mysterious husband, gives her a wedding present, a cabinet-sized replica of her home that becomes her new obsession, as a miniaturist begins to fill the house with tiny imitations of her reality. Nella longs both innocently and morbidly for the ‘hot rod of pain’ that is to accompany her wedding night, but her curiosity is perpetually postponed, for Johannes seems to have other desires, which will soon endanger them all. Where does Otto, the Brandts’ servant from Surinam, fit into all this, and will the miniaturist ever show Nella her true designs, or help her with her prophecies?

As magical as the ride is, there are too many missing answers and a sagging plot results. Written with the rich period detail of the time, an era of forbidden fruit run by burgomasters, Jessie Burton’s first novel is an enjoyable historical read, as slight as it ultimately remains.

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‘No one thinks the herring girls will come this year, but there’s nothing the fisherman can do without them, someone has to gut the silver darlings, as they call them, and soon the girls are flooding off the train, in a long crocodile behind their pastor, and making their way into the already overcrowded town.’ Mr Mac and Me (Bloomsbury, 304 pages) has the implacable rhythm of novels set in the cosy, prelapsarian world of preWorld War I England. Its protagonist Thomas Maggs is the crippled son of a publican, his life full of fishing, farming and daytrippers who visit the Suffolk coast during the summer.

His new friend, eccentric Scottish architect Charles Rennie Macintosh—or Mr Mac—sees him through the new order, as soldiers travel through en route to Belgium. When he comes under scrutiny, things begin to unravel. Lacking the drama of Esther Freud’s early novels (Hideous Kinky), the book is still a nice quiet read.

A monthly roundup of the best of international publishing

open www.openthemagazine.com 57

books Dharma Drama In their retellings of India’s ancient past, these writers fall somewhere between shallow revisionism and ponderous pontification ADITYA WIG

T

TEN KINGS

Blue : Tales of Reddumone, The Two-Faced

Ashok K Banker

MR Sharan

MANJUL PUBLICATIONS | 348 pages | Rs 250

HarperCollins India | 256 pages | Rs 350

he Itihasa—the ancient Sanskrit history of India

which includes the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—offers a great deal of material for the storyteller, and happily, even more for the philosopher.

Being tales of dharma, Indian epics and their retellings are simultaneously fantastical legends of devas and asuras and the mortals caught in between, as well as philosophical arguments for a particular way of life. Modern storytellers, then, are faced with several rather delicious dilemmas: How does one retain the glorious sweep of semi-divine history, while still retaining the subtle philosophy that is Itihasa’s bedrock? How does one separate fact from exaggeration, given that the events spoken of took place at a time well before recorded history? And finally, how does one re-interpret the morality of the past for the world of today, without offering offence to those who went before? After all, the last time such tales were told, a deva had to sacrifice half a tooth to keep up with the telling; and if Nietzsche is to be believed, God is (now) dead.

Happily, devas or no devas, there are still some willing to take up the challenge.

Ashok K Banker, a well recognised writer of mythological fiction, has already earned a great deal of both critical and commercial acclaim for his retelling of the Ramayana. Ten Kings, his latest, extends his range somewhat; while the story is still based on textual history (a shloka found in the Rig Veda), it tells of an ancient battle that was possibly responsible for the founding of the city of Harappa. In that sense, this novel breaks new ground; most modern writers of mythological fiction tend to restrict themselves to the clearly established ‘literary history’ of India rather than venture out into the less documented archaeological arena. In Banker’s novel, a vastly outnumbered King Sudas and his 6,000 ‘Trtsus’ face off against an alliance of 10 kings and their 60,000 soldiers, to determine the fate of the

‘Panch-ab’, the land of five rivers—and this, in 3,400 BCE. Complicating this battle is the fact that both sides are led by sages of immense eminence; Sudas is guided by the sage Vashishta, while Anu, the leader of the ‘ten kings’, is advised

by Vishwamitra. Banker, known for being a stickler for accuracy, takes pains to point out in the author’s note that while his research is based on the Rig Veda, ‘it’s impossible to tell whether this Vishwamitra and his counterpart Vashishta, Sudas’s guru, were the same brahmarishis whose legendary feud appears in other puranic works’. This is both Banker’s strength and weakness; when it works, the historical accuracy he infuses his writing with adds a great deal to the flavour of his novels, but it can occasionally make the prose dry and cumbersome.

Banker’s novel is populated by any number of rajas, Kshatriyas and Arya tribes, and also makes full use of the philosophical tropes of the time. “The Age of Kali is nigh”, says the sage Vishwamitra, as the war becomes inevitable.

“In this coming age, only those who understand the language of iron shall survive and thrive. Iron has no dharma. Iron cuts through flesh and shatters bone. And without flesh and bone, even a dream of dharma cannot be sustained.” Of course, Sudas’ preceptor Vashishta is no less eloquent. “Those who split the world into us and them, you and me, Trtsus and Bharatas,” he says, “...fail to see that by waging war against one another we only risk setting fire to and damaging... the one great wagon in which we all ride together, fellow-journeyers in the endless caravan of existence... Your conflict is with the demon that you have created and named your enemy... You fight because you wish to fight.”

“The Age of Kali is nigh,” says the sage Vishwamitra.

“In this coming age, only those who understand the language of iron shall survive and thrive. Iron has no dharma”

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harma and adharma , watchwords of the Itihasa, are not merely arguments for and against war, however; they are the ideas at the heart of all morality, and give 10 november 2014

adeel halim vm/reuters

Ashok K Banker, the author of Ten Kings

rise to truths of their own. In the Ramayana, these two ideas come together to forge another of history’s most beloved tropes—that of the ‘good king’. MR Sharan’s debut novel, Blue: Tales of Reddumone, the Two Faced, examines the ancient journey of Prince Rama, looking at it from the perspective of a Lankan spy sent to Ayodhya. Reddumone— officially known as Teertha, a spy in the employ of Kumbhakarna—is somewhat implausibly welcomed with open arms into the court of King Dasharatha, where he makes his acquaintance with the brother-princes of legend.

His tale looks at the Ramayana from a fly-on-the-wall perspective. But while Banker is known for being sparing with his own perspective, Sharan redraws the world as he sees fit, changing the story in his retelling.

In Blue, Lakshmana is in love with Sita; Shatrughna, his brother, begins the tale on the verge of abandoning his family and royalty for the ascetic life; and as for the king of Ayodhya, Dasharatha, whose almost blind adherence to dharma is the cause of Rama’s banishment in the original tale—why, nothing is sacred. “In fact,” says king Dasharatha, “I am beginning to believe that the concept of dharma is highly overrated and ill-specified. Dharma is being good to others. Dharma is doing what you think is right, having thought about it in as rational a manner as possible. The rest of it is mere big talk.”

Perspectives like these might sound far more evolved than those originally laid down in the Ramayana, but this sort of revisionism unfortunately does both the epic and the reader a great disservice. In the original tale, there is a visceral reality to the crisis that queen Kaikeyi causes by demanding that her son Bharata ascend the throne in Rama’s 10 november 2014

place. This crisis is only meaningful in the context of a king who is wedded entirely to dharma, who therefore will not break a vow, regardless of the cost. Dasharatha, as described by Sharan, would have no such moral dilemma to deal with; if dharma is only a guide, and an ‘overrated and ill-specified’ one at that, then surely the question of succession would not have been so fraught.

A part of Rama’s stature, and the stature of the Ramayana itself, comes from the fact that Rama obeys his father despite this cost (and the fact that Dasaratha himself dies of grief). It is these sacrifices which make the Ramayana a story of more than just a war against Lanka.

From today’s perspective, the sort of relativism that Sharan favours certainly does appear to solve the problem of difficult moral choices, but does so by making the question itself irrelevant.

While this makes for several crowd-pleasing passages, it unfortunately also seems to imply that a shallow amorality is somehow more sensible than paying a heavy price to keep one’s word.

The other alternative— a slow exposition of the intricacies of morality, as Banker favours—might both sacrifice pace and demand more from the reader, but to this reviewer at least, a cumbersome truth is more appealing than a slick quickfix. While Ten Kings might leave one wishing for a little more pace, especially in the early parts of the novel, Blue feels as though it was written with the presumption that the morality of hard choices is just is a step short of foolishness.That said, any retelling of the ancient epics is fraught with risk.

If one chooses to stay true to the original, one runs against the modern market’s demand for punchy, quick and slick tales; but if one indulges in revisionism, it is almost certain that it will invite criticism.

Perhaps this is why, in the original telling, it was a deva who did the writing while a rishi did the thinking. n

“I am beginning to believe that the concept of dharma is highly overrated and ill-specified,” says king Dasharatha.

“Dharma is being good to others”

open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

herbal growth An estimated 64 per cent of people use medicinal plants to treat illnesses and relieve pain. The herbal medicine market is worth $60 billion globally, and growing fast

Early Sex The planet’s first acts of copulation, discovered in an ancient species of fish, were performed sideways

Toxic Mould in Herbal Medicines

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ast year, an Australian palaeontologist stumbled across a strange single fossil bone of placoderms, a species of ancient fish believed to have existed some 385 million years ago, in Estonia. This strange grooved bone, belonging to the Microbrachius dicki, from the antiarch group of placoderms, was unlike anything he had ever seen before. With a group of researchers, the palaeontologist examined previously discovered fossils in museums, and found more instances of such bones attached to the body. Writing in Nature, the researcher has revealed his discovery: the bone was a sex organ, its most primordial example.

About 8 cm long, Microbrachius lived in ancient lake habitats in Scotland, as well as parts of Estonia and China. According to the study, the male members of this ancient species developed bony L-shaped genital limbs called claspers to transfer sperm to females. The females, it was found, developed small paired bones to lock the male organs in place for mating. The male’s organ was nearly as long as his body and rigidly fixed, and it used its small jointed 60 open

According to a new study in Fungal Biology, herbal medicines such as licorice, Indian rennet and opium poppy are at risk of contamination with toxic mould. The study was carried out in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where most people use herbal medicine. They found that around 43 per cent of the plants were naturally contaminated with toxins, produced by moulds that could be harmful to human health. Thirty per cent of the samples contained aflatoxins, which are carcinogenic and linked to liver cancer, and around 26 per cent had ochratoxin A, which is toxic to the liver and kidneys, and can suppress the immune system. n

arm-like appendages to achieve the appropriate mating position. The fish are believed to have mated sideways.

The discovery means that sex with internal fertilisation evolved much earlier in the history of vertebrates than previously thought. Since the oldest bony fishes, which follow placoderms in the evolutionary chart, show no evidence of internal fertilisation, the researcher concludes that at some point the internal fertilisation method got lost, before some of their descendants ‘re-invented’ such organs for a similar function.

For instance, modern sharks and rays have claspers along the inner part of their pelvic fins that they use to deposit sperm in females.

In a press release put out by Flinders University, Long says, “Placoderms were once thought to be a dead-end group with no live relatives but recent studies show that our own evolution is deeply rooted in placoderms, and that many of the features we have, such as jaws, teeth and paired limbs, first originated with this group of fishes… Now, we reveal they gave us the intimate act of sexual intercourse as well.” n

One for the Sixties

According to a new study in American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, for people 60 and older who do not have dementia, light alcohol consumption during late life is associated with better episodic memory—the ability to recall specific events. This study used data from more than 660 patients in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort. The researchers found that light and moderate alcohol consumption in older people is associated with stronger episodic memory and is linked with larger hippocampal brain volume, a brain region critical for episodic memory.

Other findings from animal studies suggest that moderate alcohol consumption may contribute to one’s hippocampal volume by promoting the generation of new nerve cells in that part of the brain. n

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tech&style

Dynaudio Xeo 6 These high-end wireless speakers boast an advanced digital sound processing system gagandeep Singh Sapra

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rom inventing the loudspeaker to building the best possible studio monitors, the Danes know their sound in and out, and nothing proves this better than an experience of listening to your favourite tracks on the Xeo 6 from Dynaudio, a perfect mix of modern technology, superb sound, and great engineering that makes these floor standing speakers worth every cent that you spend on them.

If you are an audiophile, chances are you want to stay as far away as you can from wireless speakers, but Dynaudio has been one of the few manufacturers that have managed to go wireless without any loss of sound quality. The Xeo 6 and its coupled transmitter, called the

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Xeo Hub, can now decode digital files at 24 bits or $4,000 96 kilo hertz, ensuring you have the best sound when you want it.

The Xeo Hub features three digital inputs, an optical, a coaxial and a USB input so that you can push out content from your sources, and if you are the analog types, there is even a set of RCA connectors, as well as an Aux input. The Xeo Hub uses both 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency to connect to your speaker, and can do this up to a distance of 20 metres. Each Xeo Hub can have 3 IDs (A, B and C) and uses a standard micro USB to power the Hub. You can use the remote control to choose the source, and just in case you have only one source running, the Xeo Hub chooses it automatically.

A new Speaker Position EQ allows you to optimise the sound quality according to the speakers’ placement in the room.

The Xeo 6 offers its remarkable quality of sound using 2 X 50 watt woofers and a 50 watt tweeter all facing the front and a bass port at the back to ensure you have both the lows and the highs taken care of while focusing the soundwaves on your ears.

The Speakers are available in white or black and weigh about 14.7 kg a piece. At 33.6 inches, they stand tall and mark their presence.

With the Xeo 6, a must-purchase is the Xeo Link that costs an additional $175. This unit allows you to wirelessly connect a subwoofer or a headphone or any other peripheral piece of equipment to the Hub, enhancing flexibility. n

bugatti aérolithe Shortly after it was unveiled at the Paris motor show in 1935 by Ettore Bugatti, this single model vanished from the face of the earth, leaving behind just a few photos and sketches—and the memory of its enigmatic pale green colour

Parmigiani Bugatti w Aérolithe

Price on request

In line with the racing car that it represents, the Bugatti Aérolithe timepiece is equipped with a flyback module, which is offset at 180° to make it easier to use.

Thinner than Parmigiani’s other watches, the case of the Bugatti Aérolithe has a redesigned, more slender, more elevated profile, echoing the captivating curves of the car. Available in Abyss Blue and Crème de Menthe dial. n

Lenovo Yoga 2

Rs 20,990

The enhanced kickstand of the Lenovo Yoga 2 allows you to hang it in your kitchen or bedroom or prop it up on your dining table while you catch the news on your favourite video streaming site. This 8-inch Android tablet has a Windows version too. At 1,920 x 1,200 resolutions, its display puts out some crisp pictures and videos, and its Dolby audio master HiFi codec hardware pumps out sound that is among the best in a tablet of this size.

The Yoga 2 runs on an Intel 4th generation Atom processor. There is an 8 megapixel camera at the back, and a 1.6 Megapixel front camera. Its battery lasts nearly a full day. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

the star son who aims for the star s For Vivaan Shah, who plays a hacker in Happy New Year, the multi-starrer drama has been a “life-changing experience”.

First seen in Vishal Bhardwaj’s 7 Khoon Maaf, Vivaan Shah is the younger son of Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah. Next up is Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet

Happy New Year Even if you ignore the inane antics of an ageing star, this film is too sneery by half ajit duara

Khan, Deepika Cast Shah Rukhhek bachchan, boman Padukone , abhis , vivaan shah irani, sonu sood Khan Director Farah

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ozing with contempt from every

pore, this film looks at the Hindi film audience as the largest gathering of duffers on the planet and then salivates. Lock them into a theatre on a Diwali weekend, it sneers, give them three hours of junk, and those grateful retards will give you a hundred crore for the exquisite pleasure of watching an ageing movie star pick up speed as he rolls downhill.

It is sad to say this, but both the director and the star know exactly what they are doing in this movie, and Happy New Year is not a film that has gone hopelessly awry whilst in production. It is a deliberately scripted, choreographed and designed film, shot exactly as planned, based on an

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understanding of the essential appeal of Shah Rukh Khan and a comprehension that acting skill or plot originality is not a criterion of excellence when it comes to selling the Khan.

As with Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om, the previous collaborations between director Farah Khan and this star, the film is contemptuous of anything remotely intellectual or artistic and instantly satirises it, should it

The film is based on an understanding that acting skill or plot originality is not a criterion of excellence when it comes to Shah Rukh Khan

wander across its peripheral vision.

This includes the movies it is supposed to be a takeoff on. As it turns out, Happy New Year is not a grand heist film or an Indian version of Ocean’s Eleven. That was just the publicity trumpet.

The movie is about a bunch of jokers who want to rob some diamonds from the organiser of a world dance competition. They turn themselves into a team of dancers who con and blackmail their way to the final round so that they can get close to where the big shiny rocks are locked in a safe.

Charlie (Shah Rukh Khan) doesn’t want the diamonds for the money, but to destroy the Don (Jackie Shroff) who has ruined the good name of his Dad (Anupam Kher) and sent him to prison.

He needs loyal allies and professionals for the job. The usual suspects are rounded up. These include a safe cracker (Boman Irani), who also happens to be a crazy Bawa from Colaba’s Khusro Bagh. Then there is a hacker (Vivaan Shah) who can rig things whenever the voting for the dance competition begins, a bomb disposal expert (Sonu Sood) for the heavy-duty stuff, and a clown (Abhishek Bachchan) for comic relief. Along the way, they add a bar dancer (Deepika Padukone) to teach them the basic moves. She is also a vernacular nationalist who believes that good days are here for India.

The film is a comic strip with an unending series of set pieces, mostly gags and Hindi film dances. The big screen is used like a television monitor and apart from a few establishment shots, the film looks like several episodes of a TV serial compressed into a threehour jamboree. The theme tells of how a bunch of ‘losers’ turn into ‘winners’, thanks to a cool dude called Charlie.

Abraham Lincoln once reportedly remarked in a speech: “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time”. In Hindi cinema, apparently, you can—all in the space of one Diwali weekend. n 10 november 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

The Haider Effect

Shahid Kapoor is apparently so thrilled with the response to Haider and to his own performance in the film that he’s already begun badgering Vishal Bhardwaj to put Kaminey 2 into production at the earliest. The actor and the filmmaker are also feeling vindicated that their approach to making the film—deferring their salaries to keep the film’s budget down in exchange for a slice of the film’s profits—has yielded positive results for both of them, and for UTV, which bankrolled the project.

Last weekend, Shahid took a break from filming Shandaar (with director Vikas Bahl and Alia Bhatt) in the UK, to travel to the Rome Film Festival where he was joined by Vishal for a screening of Haider. The duo soaked in the appreciation as the film took the People’s Choice Award in the World Cinema category, becoming the first Indian film to land that honour. It was in Rome, apparently, overwhelmed by the continuing raves the film was drawing, that Shahid urged Vishal to get moving on his Kaminey sequel. The director is believed to have responded that he was very close to cracking the script.

No Ma or Bhabhi Roles, Please

Raveena Tandon, who turned 40 last week and sportingly embraced the milestone, has admitted that she’s very flattered to still be considered a sex symbol long after she gave up an active acting career.

Asked in an interview recently to name the songs that put her on the map, she picked Mohra’s memorable rain song Tip tip barsa paani in which she famously swayed her hips, dressed in a sheer yellow sari, along with former boyfriend Akshay Kumar. “I still have boys coming up to me and telling me how that song ushered them from adolescence to maturity,” she explained, before adding cheekily, “I’m not sure what they mean, and I don’t want to know. But I’m going to take it as a compliment.”

Some months ago the actress performed an item song in Anurag Kashyap’s jazz-age epic Bombay Velvet, and she recently signed on for a key role in My Brother Nikhil director Onir’s new film Shab, when Sangeeta Bijlani dropped out after committing to make 10 november 2014

her comeback with that part.

Raveena has also reportedly completed a Bengali film whose release she’s awaiting, and has spread the word among her filmi friends that she’s open to working more frequently. But she won’t play the typical sister and bhabhi roles, she has warned them. A source tells me she was also approached to star in Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do, and while she wasn’t against the idea of playing Anil Kapoor’s wife, she didn’t exactly fancy playing mother to Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh.

So much for embracing her age!

When Chemistry Beats Fidelity

Unit hands who recently returned from the outdoor schedule of their latest film have been chattering incessantly about the chemistry between the film’s lead pair. Both attached— one married, the other in a (supposedly) committed relationship—the actors nevertheless threw caution to the wind and made their fondness of each other very public.

The crew didn’t read much into their ‘closeness’ initially; the actress is well-known for sharing very friendly vibes with all her male co-stars in a usually platonic way.

But the gossip really intensified when it became known that the pair was secretly hooking up after pack-up. The personal staff of both the actors were the first to figure out what was going on—as they invariably are—when sleepovers in each other’s rooms became hard to hide. Before long the entire unit became aware of the couple’s off-hours shenanigans.

The discussion among unit members quickly shifted to matters of fidelity, and the teeny-weeny issue that both actors were in relationships with very loving partners. But, as someone pointed out rather accurately, at least one of the two partners concerned has been through the exact scenario before in a previous relationship… foolishly used as a cover-up to hide a much bigger betrayal that was only unearthed much later.

Some people never change. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

An Appeal by the Sea

by r i t e s h u t ta m c h a n da n i

Sagar Pawar watches patiently as a man jogs past him on Marine Drive, Mumbai. Pawar works as a bus driver with Rizvi Springfield School in Bombay. His father works in the conservancy department of the municipal corporation as a cleaner. Recently, Sagar was informed of an ancestral house the family owns in Ratnagiri, near the picturesque coastal village of Ganapatipule. Pawar wants to convert this house into a shelter and school for homeless kids. With his meagre salary, minuscule savings and some jewellery, he can only muster a sum of about Rs 100,000. It’s insufficient. Hence, on weekends he sits with a flex banner at Marine Drive or Pedder Road or other spots seeking donations for the same. “If people don’t have faith in me or don’t want to give me money just like that, I can offer them my services as a driver or as a masseur— I have done a course in that too. They can even ask me to run errands for them or finish their daily chores like sweeping their house, etcetera, and I shall do so without shame or ill will,” he says.

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10 november 2014