OPEN Magazine 13 January 2014

NEW Year Double Issue

RS 35 1 3 Ja n u a r y 2 0 14

INSIDE Kejriwal, an inconvenient Chief Minister l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

THE Primitive Modern How we are rediscovering value in the ancient way of life

› The caveman diet › Milind Soman on

barefoot running

› Men, according

to prostitutes

› The urine drinkers

…and more

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor Manu Joseph managing Editor Rajesh Jha Deputy Editor Aresh Shirali Features and Sports Editor Akshay

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai associate editors Dhirendra Kumar Jha, Rahul Pandita assistant editors

Anil Budur Lulla (Bangalore), Shahina KK, Aastha Atray Banan, Mihir Srivastava, Chinki Sinha, Sohini Chattopadhyay Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra Assistant Art Directors Tarun Sehgal, Anirban Ghosh SENIOR DESIGNER Anup Banerjee photo editor Ruhani Kaur assistant Photo editor Ritesh Uttamchandani (Mumbai) Staff Photographers Ashish Sharma, Raul Irani Editorial Researcher Shailendra Tyagi asst Editor (web) Arindam Mukherjee staff writer Devika Bakshi Associate publisher Deepa Gopinath Associate general managers (advertisement) Rajeev Marwaha (North

and East), Karl Mistry (West), Krishnanand Nair (South)

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Ajay Gupta regional heads—circulation D Charles

(South), Melvin George (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Head—production Maneesh Tyagi pre-press manager Sharad Tailang cfo Anil Bisht hEAD—it Hamendra Singh publisher

R Rajmohan

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Volume 6 Issue 1 For the weeks 31 Dec 2013—13 Jan 2014 Total No. of pages 72 + Covers cover photo

2 open

Georg Bochem/ Corbis

KR Srinivasan

The arrest of Devyani Khobragade, India’s Deputy Consul General in New York, over a fraudulent visa application for her maid and discrepancies in wage payment, and the subsequent degrading treatment meted out to her like an ordinary criminal are unjustified and unacceptable (‘Can I Lie on My Passport Form Too?’, 30 December 2013). The public outcry is fully justified because it is the third such case where Indians were treated badly by US authorities on one pretext or the other. American America should stop authorities’ contention its discrimination that standard proceagainst India so that the dures were followed is a relationship between blatant lie. It is a known the world’s two largest fact that China, Britain, democracies does not Russia and other get strained European countries have been treated with kidgloves even when some of their citizens allegedly ran espionage activities detrimental to US interests.

When we have been far more liberal and generous in extending courtesy to US Embassy officials and their families in India, it is a shame that America has been treating Indian diplomats with contempt—and in violation of Article 41 of the Vienna Convention.

America should stop its discrimination against India so that the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies does not get strained.  letter of the week For Proven Performers

the sole reason people want Modi as PM is because of his proven track record of 12 years in governance (‘So, Do You Need Modi?’, 30 December 2013). For all his appeal, Arvind Kejriwal has no such experience. You must walk before you run. Without even running a village panchayat, Kejriwal cannot suddenly become a PM candidate. People reject Rahul Gandhi as a PM because he has no known governance skills or experience. It is harsh to say, but the same is true of Kejriwal.

Let him have one term as Delhi CM and see how he performs first. Then in 2019 he can be a real contender for the national stage. I will consider the AAP

option seriously in a few years after it has grown as a party, established its presence nationwide and got some experience in governance in Delhi—and elsewhere—under its belt. With elections due in a few months, the only real political alternative to another five years of UPA is a Modi-led NDA.  Gautam

the upa must go, but that doesn’t mean that Modi is the cure of all ailments, as projected. I find many genuine people who are more capable then him in his party. But leave that aside. I am optimistic about the future. I think Indian democracy is good, and

will come out strong. Yes, I’m placing my bet on parties like the Lok Satta Party (LSP) and AAP. I just want the status quo to be changed and politics to be more issue centric than personality based. I want all parties to be progressive like the LSP and AAP.  Brije sh Kumar

The Grease Game

this is a very old story with new names (‘The Dirty Eleven’, 23 December 2013). And much as Cobrapost might revel in having caught this ‘dirty 11’, we’ll do well to reflect if it is possible to do big business (I mean real big: petrochemicals, gas carbons, mineral extraction, arms and so on) without playing the grease game. And again we are kidding ourselves if we think this game is just played in our country.

Lobbying in the US, public relations in other parts of the world, and smooth ads elsewhere are all part of the same show. It is just that it’s fine-tuned to the point of perfection elsewhere.  Santosh Samuel

A Retrograde Ruling

the supreme Court’s striking down of the Delhi High Court’s 2009 ruling legalising gay sex among consenting adults is not only a blow to human rights activists but a retrograde step towards medievalism and barbarism (‘Right to Sexuality’, 23 December 2013). Further, this will only embolden lawenforcing agencies to harass, humiliate and punish homosexuals.  jitendra

13 january 2014

The Cross Ticks All the boxes revival

In an unlikely marriage between fashion and religion, a holy symbol becomes a style statement

I t ’ s o f f i c i a l —to be truly trendy today, you need a Cross to bear. The Christian Cross has become a big fashion trend all over the world. Major designers like Versace and Dolce & Gabbana may have paid their respects to the symbol over the years, but it really comes down to the masses when a high street brand like Forever 21 pays homage to it with accessories and clothes galore. Of late, the accessories stand at Forever 21 in Mumbai has been full of Cross earrings and neck pieces.

13 january 2014

You don’t need to be religious to wear them. As designer Tanya Sharma, who runs a label called GaGa) says, the Cross is actually a sign of rebellion. “You are making sure you wear it even though you don’t believe in that religion.

Isn’t that rebellion?” She adds that this is also about fashion coming a full circle and the Cross just being revived as part of a cycle. “Madonna was a Cross lover, remember?

It’s a statement accessory, and that’s why it works. It’s the 80s all over again.”

The big trend in Cross fashion has to be the sideways Cross necklace. Jessica Biel, Jennifer Lopez and Kourtney Kardashian all have been sporting the accessory. Some celebrities like Lady Gaga and Rihanna have also been seen wearing the inverted Cross, which has ignited some conversation. It has been suggested that wearing an inverted Cross means you are reaching out to Satanists, who use the inverted Cross to show their anti-Christian beliefs.

Recently, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, Rev Justin Welby, was quoted as saying in his first Lent book: ‘For those early Christians, it was a badge of shame. Today, it is more commonly seen as a symbol of beauty to hang around your neck. As a friend of mine used to say, you might as well hang a tiny golden gallows or an electric chair around your neck.’ But if you, like most of us, are a slave to fashion, , go ahead and wear that Cross around your neck. Or a lace Cross on your sweatshirt. n Aastha Atray Banan

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BROOKS WALKER/getty images

small world

contents

16

cover story The Primitive Modern

10

real india

Savile Row suits by Singh

16

12

26 22

news reel

Kejriwal: the inconvenient Chief Minister

36

basic

running

high

tonic

Let’s do as cavemen do

Barefoot with Milind

Taking Salvia in Dubai

The urine drinkers

NEW Year Double

And Enemies Closer Lalit Modi’s Twitter account was his only venting platform during his exile from Indian cricket. Now that he is expecting victory in the Rajasthan Cricket Association elections, the former IPL boss is tweeting with even more gusto. Most of Modi’s messages are links to his interviews in the media, but he also comments on political developments in India. One image he gleefully tweeted was of Rahul Gandhi and Co carrying a coffin inscribed with the word ‘Congress’. There are, however, reports of a falling out between Modi and his powerful friend Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje, also of the BJP. Modi and Arun Jaitley, another BJP senior, are not chums either. Considering this, Modi would do well to remember that it is good to have friends on either side of the divide. n

bipartisan

After promising to provide Mumbai free WiFi, the Shiv Senaled Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has gone back on its word and decided to make WiFi chargeable pinch

“Plans are afoot to provide a free WiFi network with a 512 kbps speed.

Some companies have expressed interest in implementing the project”

—Mayor Sunil Prabhu, Times Of India, 28 November 2013

turn

Enchanted Saif

l i t e r a t t e u r For someone who has projected himself as a reader, Saif Ali Khan seems to be taking quite a while to get through Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence.

In November 2009, asked by Mid-Day what he was reading, he replied, “The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie.” This November he told Bombay Times he was reading “Salman Rushdie’s epic saga Enchantress of Florence and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, one of our 6 open

oldest and greatest novels.” The hardcover edition of Enchantress is 352 pages long. The industry standard for hardcovers is about 400 words per page. It can be surmised, then, that the length of the book is approximately 140,000 words. There are two possibilities here. Either Saif is reading the book again, or, if it has taken him four years to get through it, he has been reading about a hundred words a day. Either way, he must really like the book. n

“The service might be charged or subsidised for a few years depending on the project cost”

—Additional Municipal Commissioner SVR Srinivas, The Indian Express, 24 December 2013

around

54

p

m media

58

The weariness of Khalid Mohamed

44

c

48 bugs

sex

Microbes and us

Men according to sex-workers

life & letters

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of Indian

polit

icians

■

F o r obscuring diplomat Devyani

Khobragade’s wrongdoing behind anti-US rhetoric When Devyani Khobragade, India’s Deputy Consul General in New York, was publicly arrested and made to undergo a strip and cavity search (the last charge was denied by the US government), Indian politicians across parties put their differences aside in expressing outrage over this “ill-treatment”. They ignored that Khobragade was arrested on charges of visa fraud and lying about the wages she paid her domestic help Sangeeta Richards. The diplomat is reported to have paid Richards less than the US minimum wage, and denied her other rights. In India, there are revelations of Khobragade owning property in the controversial Adarsh building.

Khobragade and her supporters are silent on these matters.

Nor is there a minimum wage policy for domestic workers in India. It is time India set its own house in order. n 13 january 2014

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Pallu, Pleat, Power

Issue

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cinema

The second life of Chunky Pandey

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

71

Kangana on the up

High Comedy in the Royal Court g o s s i p During the presentation of evidence at the ongoing trial of the alleged phone hacking scam at the one-time UK tabloid News of the World, a 2005 email from former NotW royal editor Clive Goodman to then editor Andy Coulson revealed that the Queen had been “furious” about the disappearance of snacks around the palace. She believed that royal protection officers had been helping themselves to the Bombay mix and nuts left out for her and her

guests around the Palace.

According to Daily Mail, palace officials had then sent a memo to royal protection officers warning them to ‘keep their sticky fingers out’.

Suspecting her staff, the Queen was believed to have begun marking the bowls to check if the levels were dropping. When the email describing the events was presented aloud in court, the judge was forced to shush snickerers. n

Big Brother’s Online Google recently updated its Transparency Report, which it has been sharing publically since 2010. Among other things, this report lists requests made by various governments to take down content and reveal user information.

According to the report, based on data from January to June 2013, requests from various governments to disclose user information have increased by more than 100 per cent. In a year that government surveillance has dominated headlines, governments across the world sent out a total of 25,879 such legal requests.

While the US government led this list with 10,918 requests, India came in second. The Indian Government made a total of 2,691 requests asking for information on various users.

Google complied with 64 per cent of these requests.

According to the report, apart from asking for user information, India also made 4,161 requests for user/account details. n

snoop-aid

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angle

On the Contrary

A Tale of Two Rape Cases And the questions they raise about the definition of rape where consent is given M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

O

ver two days this month,

two rapists in Delhi were sentenced to seven years in prison each by lower courts.

On 12 December, NDTV.com’s headline for an article on the first case was ‘Youth gets 7 years jail for kidnapping, raping 13-year-old girl’. In the sentence, the judge noted, ‘The convict [Chauhan] not only cheated upon his own wife, but also spoilt the life of a minor innocent girl aged about 13 years to satisfy his lust.’

We learnt that she had left for the market where she met her former neighbour and went with him after he offered to marry her. The man ‘performed a “sham marriage ceremony” with the girl at a temple and created an illusion in her mind that they were married and under the garb of consensual sexual relationship, he raped her for 12 days.’

After she returned home, her father filed a police complaint.

On the second case, the Zee News website carried a report with the headline, ‘MBA student sent to jail for 7 years for raping live-in partner’. It began: ‘An MBA student convicted of raping his live-in partner several times after promising to marry her was on Friday sentenced to seven years in jail by a Delhi court’. The girl had got pregnant. The man had refused to marry her, because his parents wouldn’t accept it.

And she had had to abort the child.

The judge noted: ‘In our society, when a woman enters into this kind of relationship, she has in her mind only a marriage in future. However, when such relationship ends abruptly, it means a lot to the woman… The intention of the accused, right from the beginning, was never honest and he kept on promising her that he would marry her.’

You would notice similarities between the two cases, but there is also a distinction that throws open disturbing questions about justice. But we must start with the caveat that media reports, especially when it comes to court judgments, don’t give us all the nuances of a case, quoting selectively from the ruling to crunch it into a few hundred word-long news report. But let us assume that the facts are as reported.

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if and only if Can consent be claimed as a conditional offer—given in exchange for a promise of marriage?

In both cases, consent was undeniably given. There was no force or violence as far as we can tell. There was an element of cheating, since the women were lied to or promised marriage in order to have sex.

No one can argue that the first case was not rape, because the girl was 13 years old, an age at which the law does not recognise her as having the mental maturity to give consent. Society puts the onus on the adult man to know that, and if he still has sex with a minor, all civilised nations in the world deem it rape. The consent, even if given, is not valid because she is a minor.

The judge’s logic is that live-in relationships must end in marriage because Indian women expect it, though many wouldn’t agree with that. To invert the convention would be to say that ‘if you have sex, it is obligatory that you then get married’

But if you accept that principle, how can you find the accused in the second case guilty of rape? The woman who had consensual sex with the accused over months was an adult. She was of an age at which she presumably understood the implications of her consent. That she chose to trust him was an error of judgment on her part. He is a cheat, but is he a rapist?

The judge’s logic in the second case, as reported, is that all live-in relationships must end in marriage because that is what Indian women expect. That is something many Indian women won’t agree with. The point of a live-in relationship is usually to test compatibility before marrying. This includes sexual compatibility.

To invert the convention would be to say that ‘because you had sex, it is now obligatory you get married’. And if the man shirks, a seven-year jail sentence might be waiting for him. If this is acceptable, any man in India in a live-in relationship has only two options—either get married or be a ‘rapist’ in retrospect. n 13 january 2014

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Faf du Plessis

The South African batsman Francois ‘Faf’ du Plessis, along with AB de Villiers, recently came close to accomplishing the highest successful chase in a Test match. Pursuing 458 runs for victory against India, the two put on 205 runs for the 5th wicket. Their performances ensured that South Africa, who finished at 450 for 7, registered their second-highest fourth innings total ever to draw the Test.

It Happens

Bespoke, Yet a Misfit A Savile Row quality tailor in Kolkata has few clients left A r i n d a m B a n dyo pa d h yay

swastik pal

real

After de Villiers got out for 103, du Plessis held the baton, facing 309 balls and scoring 134 runs before eventually being run out. Du Plessis is fast gathering the reputation of being a batsman with vast reserves of concentration. In his ten Test matches so far, he’s already scored three centuries, all of them in crunch times.

In his debut Test match, du Plessis batted for almost eight hours, often with tail-enders, to save a match

scott barbour/getty images

In his debut match last year, du Plessis played a historic innings against Australia in the fourth innings. He batted for almost eight hours, on a hot and humid day at Adelaide, with five different partners, one of whom could barely run.

Cramping and exhausted, he batted for a total of 376 balls scoring an unbeaten 110, often sheltering the tail-enders, to save the match.

Du Plessis is 29 years old. The son of a professional rugby player, he played county cricket for many years. When he was 21, Nottinghamshire, the county team he was playing for, offered him a deal with a conditional clause that would have mandated him to play for England. The cricketer refused the offer.

His childhood friend, AB de Villiers, became a successful cricketer with the South African national side, while he continued to toil in the domestic circuit.

Du Plessis got called up for national duty only in 2011. He now also captains the country’s T20 squad, apart from playing for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL. n

craftsman Only a patient man deserves a top quality suit, says 84-year-old Ajit Singh

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jit Singh is 84, and his hands shake occasionally.

But the moment he starts to cut a suit length, his passion, profession and stimulant for the past seven decades, the same frail hands turn into a magic machine.

Connoisseurs of sartorial exclusivity rate Paris Tailors in Kolkata’s New Market, which Ajit Singh inherited from his father Yaswant, on par with the very best in bespoke tailoring anywhere in the world.

Singh has been working at the shop since 1946, but his world changed following a visit to the famous Savile Row in London where he learnt the craft as an apprentice in the 1950s. He recalls his father telling him, “Kuchh karna chahte ho toh pahile accha tarike se seekh lo ( if you want to do something, you must begin with mastering it).” Since then, Singh has maintained the quality, cut and fit that have distinguished Savile Row’s tailoring. A New York Times columnist recalled in 2012 that a suit Singh had made for him fit better than far more expensive suits he had ordered from Savile Row. “We would not have enough time to have lunch… [we] used to receive 15-20 orders a day,” Singh says of the

global demand for his suits in the 40s and 50s. “But those days are gone forever… nobody has time anymore Everybody runs for the cheap thrill of a readymade suit.”

Only a patient man deserves a top quality suit, says Singh. To this day, he takes detailed measurements, including your armpit and muscle patterns. There could be more than one trial until he has satisfied himself that the product is worth delivery.

Unfortunately, his wizardry will in all probability die with him.

Singh learnt The neighhis craft as an bourhood, apprentice in once the finest Savile Row, in market of London, in Kolkata, has now turned the 1950s into an old bazaar with hawkers and nouveau riche shoppers.

The next generation of Singhs are in other professions.

His brother, Harbhajan Singh, however, returned from New Jersey recently to help him out. Harbhajan Singh says, “The shop is his son, his soul, you could say.” Ajit Singh has no complaints. He will keep making suits till his last breath. n 13 january 2014

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delhi

The Inconvenient Chief Minister Both the BJP and Congress want to see Kejriwal fail, but he has a trump card they dare not ignore mihir srivastava

is an inconvenient presence in Indian politics. A corporate leader calls him ‘the ghost of Che Guevara’. Some call his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) a ‘giant killer’. To the man himself, there is no contradiction between running a government and being a revolutionary.

Kejriwal’s electoral debut is the stuff of political legend. He demolished the incumbent Congress in Delhi, blocked a resurgent BJP, and gave both parties a severe case of jitters. But he is not a happy man. His party needed a majority in the Delhi Assembly to implement its 50-page manifesto. This is because the AAP insists on change, on an overhaul of a system that ‘both the Congress and BJP have been beneficiaries of’. raul irani It was the Congress that enticed a reluctant AAP to form Delhi’s government, after the BJP—with the largest number of MLAs but still short of the half-way mark—turned down the chance. The grand old party promised its legislators’ unconditional support, but Kejriwal insisted on conditional support: he dispatched an open letter to Sonia Gandhi and Rajnath Singh, presidents of the Congress and BJP, respectively, listing 18 points on which the AAP wanted support, including a Jan Lokpal for Delhi. In this way, Kejriwal made his party’s agenda loud and clear. Next, he threw the question open to his party’s supporters whether it ought to form a minority government. The answer was a go-ahead, and so he must now run Delhi’s government as the state’s first non-BJP/ Congress Chief Minister.

His predecessor, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress, is a worried woman. In her first

A r v i n d K e j r i wa l’ s

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public appearance after she conceded defeat, she qualified her party’s external support for the AAP as “not unconditional”. The Congress would support it, she said, “as long as they perform”. In other words, she wants to keep her options open.

However, after her electoral debacle, does she wield enough influence to make that call? Party Vice-president Rahul Gandhi, after all, is the AAP’s latest admirer.

All the buzz now is what the AAP may achieve at an all-India level. Both the BJP and Congress fear it could play spoilsport in the 2014 General Election. And both parties want to give Kejriwal an opportunity to fail. They seem to think that letting the AAP take power and stumble in Delhi

is perhaps the only way to contain its seemingly irresistible rise. The presumption here is that running a government is far more difficult than winning an election. It is a calculated risk the two parties are taking.

N

o matter what Anna Hazare may say, Kejriwal was the brain behind his India Against Corruption (IAC) movement that generated huge public support.

The UPA Government at the Centre failed to enact its Lokpal promise despite a unanimous resolution in Parliament okaying, in principle, the idea of a Jan Lokpal (even if this was intended to persuade Hazare to break his fast in August 2011).

Since then, Hazare and Kejriwal have parted ways.

While the former saw merit in Modi’s Gujarat, the latter focused on cleaning up the system. With corruption as his focus, Kejriwal decided to take the plunge into electoral politics. Hazare was opposed to this, and many thought it would be the end of Kejriwal.

However, at the end of it, the AAP has inherited the mantle of that movement.

The party’s success surprised Hazare too.

Hazare’s twists and turns over the Lokpal issue have not gone unnoticed. He had famously rejected the Government’s version of the Lokpal Bill in 2011 as a member of the joint drafting committee along with Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan; the UPA was represented by five Cabinet ministers led by Pranab Mukherjee (now President).

Now, however, Hazare has declared himself pleased with the Government’s latest 13 january 2014

version, which is not very different from the draft rejected by him earlier.

That was the version of the Lokpal Bill—an idea pending for 45 years— which was passed by the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha in two consecutive days of the winter session of Parliament. Hazare called off his fast in celebration. It also saw archrivals BJP and Congress join hands in a rare show of unity.

Kejriwal supporters, however, have a question of Hazare: why did he doggedly oppose that draft for so long? Some allege that this was a drama staged to rob the AAP of a potent election issue.

Pronouncements by Kiran Bedi, the celebrity cop of yesteryear and now a key aide of Hazare, have hinted as much: she said that the ‘Lokpal’ was no ‘Jokepal’— Kejriwal’s description of the Bill that was hurriedly passed. ‘Those who term it this way perhaps want to keep the issue alive and not want [to] get started against corruption,’ Bedi tweeted.

Today, Kejriwal shakes his head at what he sees as Hazare’s co-option by the system; Hazare, he says, is blatantly being misguided by people around him.

clear: he seems to mean what he says. This means that he will enact the Jan Lokpal bill, the IAC movement’s draft, not what the Centre has tried to impose. This could result in corruption cases being probed in depth, including all the bungles over the Commonwealth Games.

The mechanics of how Delhi’s electricity bills will be slashed by half are not yet clear, but Reliance and Tata Power are unlikely to be pleased by the AAP’s moves. Note that the AAP, powered by mass contributions, has not had funding from such corporations. Kejriwal is an IIT-trained engineer, as Delhi’s private power distribution companies are aware, and has a technical grasp of the sector. He

A

is also a former bureaucrat who knows how government processes work (and why they do not). He proposes an audit of power distributors in Delhi.

By all reckoning, Kejriwal is a sharp political thinker, too. His idea of Swaraj stems from working with the poorest of the poor over the past ten years. He is against Delhi’s exclusionist VIP culture of red beacon lights. And he is in no mood to compromise any of these ideals for power.

He will have to watch out, though, for dissent within his own ranks.

Once the Jan Lokpal bill is passed, an investigation of charges of corruption in various CWG projects will be on top of the AAP agenda. This spells trouble for Dikshit, if one goes by reports filed by the CAG and then a High-Level Committee (HLC) under former Comptroller and

fter the poll results, Rahul

Gandhi had praised Kejriwal’s model of politics. It was an expression of his threat perception, the clear and present threat that the AAP poses the Congress.

The AAP leader returned Rahul Gandhi’s compliment saying that he does not need a certificate from him.

The BJP has been on the offensive against the AAP. Kejriwal, says the BJP, is not an aam aadmi, since he has taken support of the country’s most corrupt party for a so-called clean government in Delhi. But then, the BJP’s idea of an aam aadmi is perhaps Narendra Modi, who began his career as a tea-stall vendor.

That the two main parties do not wish the AAP well is clear. If Kejriwal’s record of the past ten years of public life is of any indication, then another thing should be

Kejriwal is an IIT engineer, as Delhi’s private power distribution companies are aware, and has a technical grasp of the sector. He is also a former bureaucrat who knows how government processes work

Auditor General VK Shunglu—constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the promise of ‘zero tolerance’ against corruption and that ‘no one will be spared’. In its city infrastructure report, the HLC, among other things, held Dikshit responsible for decisions related to projects aimed at enhancing Delhi’s ‘city image’ that had huge cost implications. Dikshit’s government attacked the report as ‘shocking’ ‘blatant’ and a ‘product of paranoia’; it even objected to its ‘slanderous’ choice of phrases, such as ‘the stage was set for a restricted tender’, ‘subterfuge to share the spoils’ and ‘unusual interest’ with direct reference to Dikshit’s role. Delhi’s former Chief Minister even had an hour-long private meeting with the Prime Minister on 28 March 2011.

The HLC report was conveniently dumped. But with Kejriwal in power, it could yet return to haunt the Congress just before the General Election. This is all the more so because the Centre appears keen to streamline clearances for industrial projects, as seen in the exit of Union Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who The Economic Times reported was ‘sitting on’ projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore. As Rahul Gandhi said soon after: “This is what we face... in India. There are a lot of arbitrary powers.

The environment minister or chief minister can take any decision he or she wants.”

Given such ground realities, will the Congress really risk letting the AAP wield power in Delhi for long?

All said, this is a win-win scenario for Kejriwal. The AAP will push for clean governance, its agenda of empowering people, and will book the corrupt. If the Congress pulls the rug from under its government, the party’s political martyrdom could give it a heroic halo.

The Congress stance on AAP—drink till you can no more, then vomit till you’re empty—might be bad for the grand old party’s health. n

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Maharashtra

The BJP’s Tea Party R o a d s i d e chai has never held much importance for most of the state’s BJP leaders. With the threat of diabetes, many have stopped drinking tea at roadside stalls because sugarless tea is rarely on offer here. Moreover, there is a tea hierarchy: at the BJP’s state headquarters in South Mumbai, not everyone is offered a cup of tea. The offering of tea is an indicator of the visitor’s, particularly if s/he is from the media, standing with the party’s leaders.

But from the time that information about the party’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s days as a tea seller came to be known, BJP leaders have given roadside chai shops ‘high priority’ on their itinerary. It was a shock to tea sellers in South Mumbai when they were handed invitations to Modi’s 22 December Mahagarajna rally at the Bandra Kurla grounds. The party claimed that 10,000 tea vendors had been given VIP passes. Interestingly, they are not from across the state or even Mumbai; they are all from South Mumbai, from where former MLA Raj Purohit is planning to revive a sagging political career.

Party sources pointed out that it was difficult to ‘accommodate’ even the ones who turned up in the VIP enclosure as there was a shortage of chairs. BJP workers, who went around giving out the invites, cannot remember the name of a single chaiwallah they met. “We... gave invitations to all the chaiwallahs we saw. We do not know their names, or if they are voters.

But we know that after the invitations, they have become BJP supporters,” says Sanjeev Patel, who was part of Purohit’s ‘chai vyavastha’ team. The grassroots party worker has been assigned the task of converting every chaiwallah in his/her locality into a BJP supporter.

Jumping onto the chai bandwagaon, a female BJP worker has set up a NaMo tea stall in Malad in suburban Mumbai to “salute the chaiwallah”. This extra sweet tea is available in extra small cups for a rupee. Mumbai is a city of tea drinkers, who like it milky and extra sweet. In all likelihood, this NaMo tea stall will be 14 open

indranil mukherjee/afp

With the aid of Modi’s story of his days as a tea vendor, the state party unit has been wooing the chaiwallahs of South Mumbai in earnest haima deshpande

tea set Traditionally, chaiwallahs are Shiv Sena voters

emulated across the city.

Until Modi was anointed its PM candidate, the BJP in Maharashtra did not have much to talk about. A group of dispirited leaders tried to revive the electoral fortunes of the party from the long shadow of the Shiv Sena, its alliance partner of two decades. Caste politics, one-upmanship and groupism among BJP state leaders have taken a toll on the party in the state. The Modi factor has revived the Vajpayee faction; however, those in the Advani camp have maintained a distance from the revival plans.

Other parties have tried to claim autowallahs and taxiwallahs as supporters—having found leaders who have driven both. It has, thus, become important for the BJP to hold on to its chaiwallahs. Traditionally, tea vendors have never been BJP voters. Most of South Mumbai’s tea stalls are run by migrants from the Konkan belt, and they owe their allegiance to the Shiv Sena. Local Sainiks are not happy with the BJP’s ‘chai vyavastha’ programme. It is unlikely that the BJP will find political converts in this constituency because local Shiv Sena shakhas (branches) are more active, and by implication, of more help, than the BJP one.

Another group the BJP is keen to woo is

that of mobile tea vendors, who work from 9 pm to dawn. This group, known as Anna chaiwallahs, is of migrants from Tamil Nadu staying in slums across the city. They sell tea from steel containers mounted on cycles, and move around the city through the night. Traditionally, they are Congress voters.

Maharashtra’s political arena is not without its stories of leaders with aam aadmi backgrounds. Union Minister for Agriculture and NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who is a wealthy man, makes constant reference to his origins as a farmer. He has recently been facing flak for the increasing prices of agricultural produce. Chhagan Bhujbal, formerly a Shiv Sainik and an NCP heavyweight at present, says he was a vegetable vendor at the Byculla market in central Mumbai. He now owns educational institutions in Mumbai and Nasik. Few can remember his vegetable selling days.

Evidently, Modi’s reference to his tea-selling days has found resonance across the political sphere. Leaders, big and small across the political divide, are reworking their CVs to highlight their humble beginnings. Besides, 2014’s General Election has only quickened the need to ‘get’ backgrounds in sync with the aam aadmi. n 13 january 2014

Bernard Wis/Paris Match/Getty Images

basic

let’s Do as cavemen do John Durant promises to restore you to the pink of health, caveman-style Shruti Ravindran

I

t is noon on the coldest day of December, and

heavy snow lashes the sidewalks of Manhattan’s NoMad district. Everyone and their dog is hurrying past the snowdrifts dressed in fur-lined hoodies and Michelin-man swaddling, except for one young man with wild shoulder-length hair, dressed in track-pants and a white hooded sweatshirt, who lopes past them and disappears into a tall building.

That would be John Durant, one of New York City’s most popular Paleo leaders.

Durant began his journey to cult caveman status in 2010 with two big, splashy media outings. First, a New York Times profile entitled ‘The New Age Cavemen and the City’ in which he and his 3-foottall meat locker (containing organ meats and bits of a deer he’d shot himself) had a starring role. The piece chronicled his activities as the founder of Paleo NYC and ‘chieftain’ among East Coast cavemen, hosting Paleo potluck dinners at his apartment and going on barefoot—and bare-chested— runs with fellow cavemen across the Brooklyn Bridge in the dead of winter. This was followed by an appearance on The Colbert Report, in which Durant, sporting toe-shoes and an elvish ponytail,

jungle men A fitness course organised by MovNat, an exercise movement that involves swimming in rivers, sprinting through bushes, balancing on logs and tossing rocks, presumably at imaginary beasts open www.openthemagazine.com 17

regaled Stephen Colbert with his description of the ideal ‘Mrs Caveman’: “a healthy woman who’s a meat-eater, and, ideally, lactose intolerant with celiac disease.” As Colbert told the audience: “If you can’t process modern foods, this is your caveman!”

life of a hunter-gatherer in the wild is a genetically, evolutionary sound decision, one that will make allergy-prone, obese, sedentary modern-day folk happier, healthier, confident and active. Echoing Jared Diamond’s declaration that agriculture was ‘the worst mistake in the history of the human race’, he sees the transition from cavemen to settlers 10,000 years ago as a Fall of Biblical proportions, veryone might have laughed then, but the leaving us with rotted teeth, softer bellies, a shorter statPaleolithic trend caught on like a mammoth in a fire ure, allergies and poorer immunity. pit, as did foraging, slow-food, the locavore movement, Durant’s book The Paleo Manifesto, released in and artisanal butchery; all fuelled by a repulsion to over- September, has a chapter that tracks the Biblical Fall from processed industrial Frankenfoods chock-full of “mys- references in Genesis through Exodus in the Old tery ingredients”, as Durant is fond of saying. Now, blogs Testament. ‘These early herder-farmers had a memory on ‘Paleo cooking’ abound, filled with recipes for bunless that goes something like this: Life was good. We ate someburgers and flourless cookies, as do book deals. Since its thing we shouldn’t have. Now life is bad,’ Durant writes (italics his). The rest of his book inception in the 1960s, the Gabrielle Revere charts a detailed route to a ‘Paleo diet’ has defined itprelapsarian state of health, self best by what it forbids— through fitness, diet, sleepfoods of reputedly post-Paleing habits and thermoreguolithic provenance such as lation. This entails ‘primal’ grains and legumes like soy, exercise like barefoot runwheat, corn and beans, and ning, as if pursued by cave most certainly, processed bears, and exercise regimes sugar, dairy and sodium-satlike the wildly popular urated industrial snacks.

CrossFit, which emphasise Such proscriptions make strength, variety and functhe Paleolithic lifestyle espetional movements over the cially appealing to sufferers robotic narcissism of reguof diabetes, celiac disease or “I can talk about Crohn’s Disease. But Durant came to lar gyms. Durant is also an ardent evolutionary biology for follower of the French MovNat, an the hunter-gatherer lifestyle by a two hours, and the piece outdoor exercise movement which rather different route. While he was a freshman in college, a break-up left involves playful, natural movewill come out, making him low on energy and confidence, me out to be a barefoot ments—swimming in rivers, and with a constant, only half-litersprinting through bushes, balancloin cloth Tarzan,” al hungover feeling. His brother ing on logs and tossing rocks, presays John Durant, passed on an essay by Arthur De sumably at imaginary beasts. He Vany, an economist and advocate of also advises working at a standing founder of Paleo NYC ‘evolutionary fitness’, who eventudesk to remain alert and assertive. ally became a Yoda figure to modernA rough-and-tumble exercise reday Paleo buffs. gime goes with a high-protein, In the essay, De Vany pointed out that our present-day high-fat diet: eating pasture-raised meat or game you metabolism is a relic of our ancestral past as ‘adaptive op- hunted yourself ‘from nose-to-tail’, rich broths from leftportunists’, and reasoned that mimicking the eating hab- over bones, seasonal vegetables cooked in animal fat or its and activities of our hunter-gatherer forbears would coconut oil, fish, salads, nuts and berries. Durant also admake us thrive. ‘Learn to be a good animal’ and follow vocates fasting intermittently, like cavemen might do what you’re evolved to do, was De Vany’s advice. Durant from kill to kill. As his state of under-dress suggests, he gave it a shot, and found that being a good Stone Age-era also believes in relying on natural ‘thermo-regulation’: animal vastly improved his energy levels, motivation and bracing ‘Polar bear swims’ off Coney Island in the dead of immunity, and did away with his acne and excess weight. winter, and bouts of sweating it out in the Russian baths The physically and psychologically transformative expe- in East Village. rience inspired him to change more than his food habits.

“My habits might sound eclectic,” Durant says, “but a He ended up majoring in evolutionary psychology under common theme runs through them: adding a sense of cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. meaning to anything you do, whether it’s food, or exerSix years into the Paleo experience, Durant remains cise, or sleep.” We are at Manhattan’s biggest and oldest convinced that finding ways to replicate a return to the CrossFit Gym, where Durant is about to restore meaning

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13 January 2014

to exercise. It’s a sweaty, frenetic affair that takes place to angry rap music. “That’s one way in which it’s different from other gyms, which play pop or club music,” says Durant, bandaging angry purple calluses on his palms in preparation for pull-ups, which are part of the workout of the day (‘WOD’ in CrossFit parlance).

The gym is located on the second floor of a high-ceilinged loft with enormous windows. At the far end of the room, where a class for advanced athletes is in progress, a bearded ogre skips propulsively, sporting a hefty weight belt around his midsection, and a woman with exquisitely sculpted shoulders lifts a 45-lb barbell several times with practised ease. Durant’s workout today, ‘fight gone brutal’, is for intermediate CrossFitters. The instructor arrays them in rows of three: rowers, squat-leaps, pull-ups, box-jumps (skipping on and off a carton), and an upsidedown ‘wall-crawl’. The routine resembles a circle dance in structure: it’s the same sequence of activities, performed with progressively rising intensity until the end of an hour, when the corner of the room is a merry din of skipping ropes, rowing machines, and clattering cartons.

(CrossFit gyms haven’t exactly endeared themselves to their Manhattan neighbours. An Upper West Side attendee was briefly accompanied on a sprint by an irate elderly man who kept up pace to shout, “Your gym is awful!”)

Afterwards, we move to a nearby Chipotle for lunch.

Ordering Paleo-friendly meals is reputed to be a minor form of OCD, and Durant is determined to prove otherwise. The finished product is fairly fuss-free: it’s a salad made of chopped romaine lettuce and a bit of white rice, topped with steak and shredded beef, with lashings of guacamole and heavy cream. As he rapidly scarfs it down, he tells me he never wants to hear another caveman joke: “I get them all the time. They’re unending,” he says. “The two most common ones are about the caveman approach to dating—with a club, and then, anytime I use something [modern]—they go, ‘Cavemen didn’t have phones, or forks, or leather jackets.’” The jokes extend to his treatment in the press, he says. “I can talk about evolutionary biology for two hours, and the piece will come out, making me out to be a barefoot, loin cloth Tarzan. So anthropologists who read that don’t realise there’s more sophisticated thinking behind it.”

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arlier this year, the book Paleofantasies, by the evo-

lutionary biologist Marlene Zuk, took aim at the odd specificities of the movement’s foundational myths— what she terms ‘paleo-nostalgia’—asserting that there was no ideal time in evolutionary history in which ‘body, mind, and behavior was in sync with the environment’.

In a TEDX talk last year, Christina Warinner, a researcher in evolutionary medicine, emphasised that the Paleo movement’s ideas had “no basis in archaeological reality”. She pointed out that Paleolithic peoples’ diets were not uniformly meat-heavy, nor necessarily grain-and-leg-

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ume-free, and that what they ate varied dramatically according to season and geographical location. She added that 7 billion people could not live as foragers, and that in any case, all foods prescribed by present-day Paleo experts were the product of thousands of years of domesticated farming—like bananas, whose wild ancestors were riddled with seeds, or avocados and olives, which originally contained a bare minimum of fruit.

On Scientificamerican.com, Ferris Jabr, a science journalist and editor who writes on neuroscience and evolution, gave Paleolithic principles a thorough filleting in an article entitled, ‘Why the Paleo Diet is Half-Baked’. Jabr averred that the movement suffers from a bit of selection bias, only assimilating research that suits its hypothesis.

For example, it doesn’t address evidence that implies that hunter-gatherer groups suffered from so-called lifestyle diseases, such as a recent paper in Lancet in which paleocardiologists examining 137 mummies across four geographical regions and 4,000 years found atherosclerosis (fat-clogged, narrowed arteries) to be common in all four pre-industrial populations, including pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers. Nor does it take into account examples of rapid and relatively recent evolution that illustrate that our anatomy and genetics have not been set in stone since the Stone Age, such as lactose tolerance, which we evolved 7,000 years ago. Jabr concluded that the Paleo diet was ‘founded more on privilege than on logic. Hunter– gatherers in the Paleolithic hunted and gathered because they had to. Paleo dieters attempt to eat like hunter–gatherers because they want to.’

Whether due to choice or compulsion, nobody, least of all evolutionary biologists, would disapprove of a diet that eliminated sugary treats with no nutritive value or snack foods dosed with harmful amounts of sodium and preservatives. But the Paleo movement’s increasing popularity, influence, and self-assumed authority has attracted some concern among academics across several fields.

According to Durant, though, the idealised cavemen critiqued as mascots of a fad diet are mostly straw men.

Nor is he inordinately concerned with the impossibility of aspiring to an authentic Stone Age diet. Durant sees himself more as a zoo-keeper experimenting with his diet and habitat, like the captive gorillas in the Cleveland Zoo he discusses in his book, who were cured of heart disease, obesity and behavioural problems when zoo keepers stopped feeding them high-fibre ‘gorilla biscuits’ and gave them a diet of vegetables and greens, a store-bought approximation of what they ate in the wild. Or, better still, like a ‘biohacker’ performing a self-experiment, switching out what doesn’t work, and leaving room to accommodate new research. In his own words, “Waiting for scientists to reach a consensus is waiting for your own funeral. There’s no such thing as perfect—no perfect diet, no perfect exercise, no perfect lifestyle. Unconcerned with perfection, biohackers adopt smart rules of thumb that stand a decent chance of being more or less right.” n 13 January 2014

m e d i tat i o n

The Barefoot Running High Milind Soman and the spiritualism of running Aastha Atray Banan

I

t was in 1988 that Milind Soman stopped swimming.

He had been a national-level swimmer, but his tryst with sports had lost momentum. It would take 16 years for it to return. In 2004, the Mumbai marathon started. Soman had always hated running, but a marathon had been a childhood fantasy. He started with the half marathon, which he clocked in two hours and five minutes.

He slowly built it up and then ran the full marathon two years later in four hours and 50 minutes. His best time now is three hours 56 minutes.

“What worked for me was that I got into running gradually, and I ran daily,” says Soman, “I had always been fit, so that helped. That’s why I have never got injured— something that all runners talk about. I am very aware of how my body responds to a certain exercise. I listen to my body and also understand it.” That is also why he now only runs barefoot.

Barefoot running caught the world’s fancy after Christopher McDougall wrote Born To Run in 2009.

Suddenly everyone was talking about the Mexican tribe Tarahumara, members of which still run barefoot. The writer went to Mexico and met the fastest runners there.

He then set up a race between the best ultra-marathoners in the world and the best tribals.

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That was the book that radically altered Soman’s approach to running. “The whole book is so inspiring,” he says, “I don’t even remember now how that book ends, or who wins in that race, because that’s not the point. After reading it, I began to question if the way I was running was right. That book changed the whole business of running in the world. Vibrams—they are like socks with a 2-mm sole and toes but with no heels or arch—became popular because a character called Ted McDonald, also 13 January 2014

ritesh uttamchandani

soul runner Milind Soman runs near Shivaji Park, Mumbai

known as Barefoot Ted, runs wearing them in the book.

Born To Run made me start running barefoot.”

For walking, Soman uses footgear called Luna Sandals, invented by McDonald. “You have to prepare your feet for this kind of running,” he says, “Your skin on the sole is really soft as you wear shoes all the time and the nerves come right to the surface. When you start running barefoot, your nerves deaden or recede. The skin becomes thick and soft like a sponge. It will never become hard if 13 January 2014

you are running correctly. Hard is bad, as that breaks. You need soft and strong soles.”

Soman says that once you take off your shoes, you can feel the difference instantly, but it took him two years to fully understand the difference between running barefoot and with shoes: “Shoes make you weak. You run on a heel, so your weight is in front. It’s a completely wrong stance. The stresses in your body when you wear shoes are all unnatural.” open www.openthemagazine.com 23

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ike Soman, there are many other barefoot run- should run whatever age [they] may be. Just 20 minutes ners in India. One of them is Nilima Pai, a 38-year-old every day. You will feel the difference.” homemaker and part-time teacher at a law college. She says that after she took to barefoot running, she regretted ever wearing shoes. The daughter of a farmer originally n his 2007 book, What I Talk About When I Talk About from a village in Karnataka, Pai always had an aversion Running, author Haruki Murakami, an avid marathoto shoes and spent her childhood roaming about bare- ner, says, ‘Most runners run not because they want to live foot. She started running marathons in 2010, and after a longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If few more, realised that she missed feeling the road with you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live her feet. Now, she only runs barefoot, be it a marathon or them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I just a weekend run in her Andheri East neighbourhood. believe running helps you do that.’

“People think I am crazy, but I need to be one with nature Soman has his own take on why running barefoot and it’s such a natural thing to do. The only precaution I makes him a better person. “When you run barefoot, it grounds you. You are close to the basic truth. It makes you take is that I get a tetanus shot every six months.”

Pai likens the feeling of barefoot running to a spiritual think positive. It may sound spiritual, but it’s physical high—she can’t sleep for hours after she runs. “Every step and chemical. When people started wearing shoes, [they] you run barefoot is a different experience,” she says, “It lost touch with the ground, and thus lost respect for it. makes me happy, and has made me super energetic.”

I feel the easiest way to be simple is to walk barefoot.

An ardent promoter of this form of running, Soman is It’s not about not eating something nice, and not having often asked how anyone can run on Indian streets, given a phone, being simple. When you don’t wear shoes, it how dirty they are. His answer is just happens… life becomes simthat you have to find a good path for pler, you just don’t want anything “Shoes make you weak. anymore. So of course if you are yourself. “I looked for places to run barefoot. It was tricky finding it. I You run on a heel, so your running in India, there is shit and started with Worli Sea Face. It’s a phlegm on the road. Animals may weight is in front. It’s good flat surface. Concrete is the have died there. You can clean it all a completely wrong off. There is more dirt in your mind best surface to run on.” stance. The stresses in than on the roads. How will you Like Pai, Soman also speaks of it clean your mind?” as a spiritual trip of sorts. “When your body when you wear likens it to meditation. “Most your feet touch the ground, it’s a shoes are all unnatural” ofHe us are not intelligent as we don’t different experience,” he says, “I says Milind Soman respect our body. I have never, ever can’t help but sound like a spiritumet an unhappy runner. Running alist. When you run barefoot, the makes you happy, it takes away evenergy you get from the ground is erything. You get your own space. unbelievable. You never get tired.”

Most runners start running after 30 years of age, once At the same time, you can get in touch with other people. the fear of being unfit sets in: like 43-year-old Hitesh It’s a collaborative sport. We have evolved to run as a comVallabhdas Thakkar, who started two years ago in Powai munity. I have wondered why running is such a mass as part of a running group called Striders. He feels that sport. You can run in a marathon at whatever level you once you get over the fear of running on pebbles and may be. And amateurs and world champions run [alongstones, barefoot running takes you back to nature. side] each other.”

It is true that barefoot runners risk injuries, but that’s “Everyone needs to feel that.”

Soman says that unless one runs regularly, the muscles only if they don’t understand the principles of it. “The one needs to run tend to atrophy, left unexercised. And main thing is to have a quick stride. I have never got hurt barefoot running is much better for those who start late except the time I got a splinter. As I ran, it dug deep into in life. “You run with your walking muscles, like your my sole. I just came home and took it out with a pin, and shins, and that’s wrong. That’s why one gets injured,” he that’s the extent of all my injuries. People are worried says, “One has to develop your gluts, hamstrings and about tetanus and hookworm. We are anyway constantAchilles tendon. To develop those muscles, you need to ly inhaling the tetanus bacteria, and hookworm can be run barefoot and run very slow. When you start running transferred if someone splashes dirty water on you. I don’t barefoot, you will figure out the right stride. With shoes, worry about those things.” you run lazy. You run quicker when barefoot as your foot At the end, it’s a quest: looking within and working at doesn’t spend too much time on the ground. Your stride being better. “When you do a sport with passion, then it rate will double. You start using your running muscles. all comes together,” says Soman, “That space is special.

You never used your Achilles tendon when in shoes, so it Running gets you that space. I run to be in that space. I shortens. It takes almost a year to lengthen it. But people don’t need to be a champion.” n

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high

Divine Comedy On taking Salvia in Dubai TA

I

am not your typical drug user. I have no penchant

anirban ghosh

for hedonism, I’m not particularly inclined towards the idea of enlightenment, nor am I eagerly seeking a temporary respite from the dreariness of daily life. I am the epitome of normalcy—young, middlingly attractive, freshly independent and generally content.

Like most people in their twenties, I have experimented with marijuana, done a sparing amount of cocaine, and popped a pill of E at a rave or two, but that is pretty much the scope of my experience. This has as much to do with an intellectual fear of losing control, as with strict legislation against drugs in the city I call home, the land of skyscrapers and Sharia law, Dubai.

Regardless, I firmly believe that no amount of narcotic conditioning could have prepared me for what salvia had to offer. Researchers claim that salvia has the highest hallucinogenic potential per gram of any known naturally occurring substance. Its effects are profound, consciousness-altering and short lived (but not disappointingly so).

Quality is key, and what dealers won’t tell you is that the concentration of Salviatorin A, the active opioid ingredi-

ent in salvia, varies dizzyingly depending on how the plant is chemically treated, dried and smoked. I’ve encountered my share of people who found taking salvia underwhelming and, without exception, they were buying cheap and from the wrong people.

SPIRITUS MUNDI

On the surface Salvia looked perfectly innocuous: ashgreen leaves, with an odour that was difficult to describe—woody, with a whiff of earthy bitterness, like a mixture of nutmeg, honey and crushed neem leaves. I decided on my instrument: a slim wooden pipe the locals called a midwakh. It caught fire lustily, breaking into varicoloured embers, smoke hitting the back of my throat with a metallic coldness.

Within minutes, everything became much more of itself; curves were rounder, edges sharper, and colours occurred in gradients. The beam of my headlights falling on the tarmac gave the impression of faded denim at the centre, trailing off into an indigo blackness. My pores were widened, puckering wherever hair had been ripped out

by my eager beautician.

A warmth bloomed on my tongue; throbbing like an old wound, it squeezed downwards from the roots of my teeth to the meeting of my buttocks, lingered teasingly, before lowering itself into my groin, darkening and concentrating there, breaking my nerves into filaments of fire and song.

The truth of the universe is orgasm.

Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances.

Something hauls me through air— Thighs, hair, flakes from my heels.

I unpeel— Dead hands, dead stringencies.

Now I foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.

And I am the arrow, The dew that flies, suicidal, At one with the drive Into the red eye, The cauldron of morning.

Sylvia Plath’s lines burst through my mind as I, arms akimbo like an awkward but determined super-heroine, started tunnelling into the eye of the sun; underneath and around me nebulas swelled and glistened and my ears filled with the sound of invisible wings beating. I was ascending toward a one-dimensional point of energy, the nexus of all understanding.

I held between cupped palms the answers to existential questions that had evaded philosophers for centuries.

They were all horrifyingly simple, perfectly rational and absolutely indisputable. But even as I vowed to never let them slip through the amniotic seal of my fingers, they started to effervesce, and the silence came rushing in.

Throughout my ‘high’, the knowledge that I was seatbelted securely in a clichéd four-wheel drive, as it slouched along the winding back roads of Karamah, remained intact. My best friend sat quietly by my side, bespectacled, balding, naïve, and impossibly kind. I turned towards him, and mustered what I could of my now defunct enlightenment.

T: “Turn on the audio recording on your phone.”

H: “Are you sure you want to do this? We could get into serious trouble.”

T: “I need to save what I can, please, please!”

H: “Alright, go ahead.”

T: “If you sit down on a sofa in any given position, and stay absolutely still… if you don’t move a centimetre, a millimetre, a micrometer, don’t even breathe too heavily, just by virtue of gravity’s existence, you will sink in a tangential manner, and eventually fall to the ground. We are in perpetual motion, you see. Can’t you sense the pull of the earth? It feels like I am being dragged into its core, becoming part of its piston.”

13 January 2014

H: “I think it just hit you.”

T: “Actually, it’s already gone…”

H: “Take another puff.”

THE FIRST CIRCLE

H wanted to hug me again in the parking lot. I saw the longing stream out of his navel, and heard his hair crackle where our bodies met. My legs were shaking like a newborn calf’s, and I must have had the same innocent and bewildered expression in my eyes, because an almost maternal protectiveness flashed across his face. Overhead, the tube lights flickered and buzzed like fireflies. He wasn’t hungry, but I had ratatouille on my mind so we headed to La Petit Maison.

The doors opened and we found ourselves at the lip of a beefy fog. Nearby, in a silver plate, a pigeon gushed raspberry reduction out of its severed gullet. A recent convert to vegetarianism, flush with the self-righteousness only fresh convictions bring, I felt entitled to a soliloquy.

What we celebrate above all is our ‘consciousness’, but even those of us who believe in animal consciousness think of theirs as less so, a watered down derivative of our own. The truth is, at most points in life we are a compendium of very few things: where we are (not in a geographical way but in the sense of ‘truck to the right, Lexus to the left’), what we think (‘turn right at the signal’), what we feel (‘singular and overwhelming restlessness’), and what we sense (‘amid our body’s great vacuum of unawareness, two palms touching the steering wheel’). I am positive animals can manage at least that: one emotion, one thought, one sensation at one point of time. How then can we assume them less than us, in the quantum or spiritual sense of things?

I stopped mid-mental-harangue, registering both the chaos around me and the fact that it was greatly enhanced. I could sense dissonance—in lovers’ glances directed indiscreetly at their distant and unyielding objects of affection, the waiter’s thin stride and thinner greeting voice, the sea of feverish chatter that held in its bosom innumerable uncomfortable silences.

I was profoundly disappointed in the human race, so disappointed in fact, that I carelessly put the entire serving fork into my mouth and chomped on it greedily. The burnt-copper taste of blood jolted me out of my conceited reverie. Self-consciousness was the perfect catalyst to augment my strange, soporific aloneness.

Shit, don’t you dare blush, don’t you dare apologise. Distract yourself. Think about what you were re-reading today…

Gatsby? Gatsby! Don’t you think the real tragedy of it is close to that of Shaw’s Pygmalion? Not the selfishness of our desire and the emptiness of what it ceaselessly and unreasonably strives to acquire but the cruelty inherent in taking a man out from poor circumstances and educating him to consider himself beyond them while providing little means for him to truly rise.

But that’s what literature, art and cinema do—add nuance and yearning, making reality blander, while offering no solution or true alternative to it. I guess that is what dooms the creative— boredom. open www.openthemagazine.com 27

H looked amused, and a rare and precious violence rose within me; being otherwise naturally placid, the sudden surge of emotion felt wonderful. I wanted to hit him, but it was far too crowded. Then I remembered how deeply religious he was—how hypocritical, hell-fearing and insecure. I could give him a subtle ache to remember the evening by.

T: “Don’t you find it odd?”

H: “What?”

T: “The writer of Solaris said that the human imagination is pitifully limited by perception, and the failure of science-fiction lay in that we imagined aliens as extensions of ourselves, individualistic, communicative, mobile and humanoid. It amuses me that most believers view the divine the same way as most stargazers view extraterrestrial life. In the majority of religions, godly attributes are merely human qualities extended to great proportions, deeper but not more meaningful, grander but not more distinct.”

H: “You promised to stop being such an infidel around me.”

I stumblegrabgrunted down the stairs and got into H’s car, a smug smile stretching out the corners of my mouth to painful transparency. As he revved the engine, the philosophical symbolism behind motorised movement struck me.

Some argue the present is the only thing that exists, yesterday was yesterday’s today and tomorrow is tomorrow’s today, but this moment is happening much too quickly to be understood, so we look to the past as a lesson and the future as a beacon, in order to both escape and orient ourselves. Driving, after all, requires us to look out of the windshield and into the rear view mirror but not at our feet pressing the accelerator. Reaching somewhere requires knowledge of where we came from and where we are headed, our current location is mutable, incidental.

TOTAL RECALL

They stopped at a signal, and she reached for the pipe again. Her limbs quivered gelatinously, and it took Promethean effort to open her snuffbox without spilling its contents. She finally succeeded, and resting her head on the dashboard, looked toward a nearby bridge. It seemed different, sleeker, made entirely out of steel. They couldn’t have possibly changed the entire structure overnight.

We’re supposed to be at Maktoum, aren’t we?

Slapped across the side of a van on her right was an advertisement for ramen in Chinese. On the left, a taxi driver was involved in a heated debate with his veiled client.

The horizon was bisected; half the skyline had metamorphosed into a city both alien and oddly familiar.

T: “That black building with the Philips sign, was it there before?”

H: “What?”

T: “I think I’ve been here before. I think I have seen it all before.”

H: “What the hell? You’ve been living here for over 28 open

twenty years!”

T: “Oh my God, oh my God, its daylight across half the sky… now it’s spreading.”

H: “You’re scaring me. It’s midnight. Where do you think we are?

T: “We are in your car, which is absolutely the same as it was when I got into it, but believe me, outside isn’t Dubai anymore…”

09/2008: Suntec City

I was twenty, being shuttled around Singapore’s unity monument, as my guide monologued in a voice at once high-pitched and harmonious, her small, pale breasts beckoning from underneath a mousy-brown cardigan.

She spoke everything but the truth.

This spoiled-brat of a city, home to a teenage civilisation, having discovered delight, had been swept away with the ebb of misplaced enthusiasm. ‘Premature cultural ejaculation’, Bukowski would have called it. Artists and poets flung themselves against canvases and mikes, and their audience had nothing to offer except for a fickle and irreverent curiosity.

Manicured housewives colonised sidewalks and cafes, progeny frocked and suited in radioactive monotones and attended to in accordance with their birthdates. Here, solitude was impossible without actually being solitary; every decadence was manifest except for the luxury of slowness.

In the malls, at the train stations, people were congealed together and moving at a great pace toward nothing in particular. No one aged—breasts didn’t sag, hair didn’t thin, cheeks never hollowed out. Thousands lived and died having been nothing but beautiful and selfish.

03/2013: Mussafah

Her slight frame rammed into the cavalcade of aunts, their faces engorged with envy, teeth confettied with fragments of kebab and rocket leaves, eyes half-lidded in postprandial bliss. She was ready to start tearing at the centre of her throat till cartilage and flesh lay in tatters on the marble floor.

It was too much for one day; too many diatribes about decorum, marriage, servants and stilettos, too few smiles directed towards her gout-stricken grandmother in the corner. And the children! There were reams of them spilling into corridors, raucously denuding jasmine trees, and tragically poking fingers into the coal.

She pushed through their mass like a porpoise wielding his awkward torso and pummelling it against the waves. She was going to get away, and fast, from the heat and the intimacy, from the posturing and the vicariousness, from the fear of what she could become.

In a closeted space again, where conversation was impossible and variables limited, she felt safe enough to unbuckle her mind, let loose its bulging luxuriousness, allowed it to drive her off the highway into the labyrinth of 13 January 2014

Abu Dhabi’s largest industrial area.

Everywhere the grind of trucks and the flushed facades of old warehouses, the longing and surprised glances of labourers held captive by their poverty and her government, the pungent smell of sweat mingled with varnish.

This heavily oiled world had rickety joints and a sickness at its heart; it was falling apart in chunks, but would still outlast her.

09/2006: Ajman: Abu Dhabi Highway

The vast expanse of desert stretches into the horizon on either side. The road is aflame under the sun’s merciless glare. Arid air flows in through an open window and coats the seats with a thin film of luminescent red dust. The afternoon is dense with the promise of sandstorms and vultures. Occasional shadows of trees sweep across the dashboard.

I see my face mirrored in the silk of my blue gown. My father sits behind the wheel and is characteristically agitated, muttering vague incantations under his breath while fiddling with his prayer beads. Weak and jaundiced, my mother lies propped up on two thin mattresses thrown over the backseat to provide a semblance of comfort; every so often a small groan escapes her lips and is quickly drowned by the hum of wheels turning.

Red nails grab the throat of a pen forcing it to cough and scrape clumsily. The silence is shattered by the ringing of a broken cell phone. It’s the university accountant; she confirms having received the payment in full, and hangs up after a brief statement: “Congratulations dear, you’re going to become a Doctor!”

THE BEGINNING OF REASON

Slowly, the images that were thus far all-encompassing began to give way to dullness. I felt heavy and numb, became aware of the air-conditioner beating down on me in prickling waves, felt like an infant ejected from a warm womb—surprised and stilled, raw as a paper cut. It had been less than two hours since I drew in my first blue drag.

I couldn’t fathom why my brain was reconstructing, in such brilliant detail, moments that were completely inconsequential. The rational part of me, the empiricist medical professional, started questioning whether the neurotoxins surging through my veins were simply fabricating realities whose existence could neither be conclusively proven nor refuted. I wanted an explanation.

It was then I realised that the recollections were being triggered by purely physical stimuli. When the car moved at a particular speed, and in a direction that was perfectly synchronous with something my body had experienced in a vehicle before, I would be transported. I tried explaining it to H, who looked at me with concern and terror.

T: “Remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?”

H: “What about it?”

T: “Well, I’ve always held the opinion that each time I recall a memory, I change it; because perception and un30 open

derstanding evolve with age, because I am not at this moment who I was at the moment that memory was formed, my reliving it would indefinitely alter what it meant to me. Think of it this way: what up until yesterday were random occurrences, very much forgotten, are now illuminated and unforgettable.”

H: “Maybe you should try remembering something more significant.”

I closed my eyes and thought of my first love’s name, hungrily chanted it like a mantra, desperate to feel the reckless passion I had once trusted myself to possess.

Nothing happened. I tried to conjure my first childhood memory, remember something other than my mother’s yellow salwar-kameez, the cracked granite of the verandah, her face partially veiled by the pillowcase she was hanging out to dry, the remainder boldly displaying a large wet eye, and a red palm print across her high Iranian cheekbone, but failed.

T: “It isn’t possible, but I’m glad. I’d be tempted to interfere.”

H: “What do you mean?”

T: “Haven’t you experienced things that you’d rather were erased completely? I wonder if that would be possible, or if the entire exercise would be negated by my remembering that there was something I chose to forget.”

H: “Unless you deleted that too.”

I became silent, overwhelmed by the urge to visit my grandmother’s now derelict garden, climb the sapodilla tree as I used to, before the axes and the worms and the decades of neglect. There was nothing worse than the siren call of the past and its promise of rediscovery; of finely dissecting how you came to become what you are, and seeing your image distilled through the brutally honest perspective of a child.

THE LONG WAY HOME

Later that night, protected from scrutiny and possible incarceration by two locked doors and a hotspot shield, I researched the various aspects of my ‘trip’ with methodical exactness. Google images confirmed my visualisation of Suntec city, old photographs showed me wearing a turquoise jallabiya on orientation day, and my message history contained an exchange asking for directions out of Mussafah.

The smell of rotten apples in my bedroom formed a perfume of primal temptation. I had not eaten them or much else in days. On my desk, novels lay half read, capped pens ran dry, and a handful of wilting frangipanis drew their last breaths in a vase.

In the shower, the warm caress of water, urgent and sighing, cleared up the monkeys in my head. I followed the weak current until it was swallowed by the drain. I sat down to write, and whispered “in memoriam” out loud but softly. My world, once painted in greyscale, had become kaleidoscopic. I felt power surging through my veins. My fingers started to move on paper. n 13 January 2014

Jann Lipka/Nordicphotos/Corbis

D I S LO C ATI O N

The Old Country Everything that shifts in the move from small town to big city RAHUL PANDITA

T

he Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s father once When I came to the new country, I was very raw and, told him: “Rome is for people who know what like a mongrel, too much in need of love. It was hard to get. they want and are comfortable with it. New York is The new country was harsh. They called this harshness for those who have no idea what they want.” I suppose, ‘being practical’. Or ‘being professional’. I did not know in my case, I could draw the same comparison between the ways of the new country; I was not aware of its machinations. I spoke Hindi with an accent and sometimes Kashmir and Delhi.

Kashmir was the old country. It is where my father, and struggled to frame sentences in English. I was too tired of his brothers, and his friends knew what they wanted and translating sentences in my head. I had a certain idea of were comfortable with it. On a particularly harsh winter love. It came mostly from a book called Lust for Life. But in morning, Father would look out of the window and the new country, this idea did not fit at all. The new coundeclare that it was too cold to go to work. That was it. To try was where the colour of buses was changed, in vain, to the best of my knowledge he did not harbour any world- dissuade their drivers from running over people. The new ly ambitions. He was happy with the remuneration country was where Ranga and Billa had kidnapped and his job brought. He would then stay home and spend the murdered Geeta and Sanjay Chopra in 1978, and in the old day with his brothers, who would also have bunked country people talked about it even in 1983 as if it had office, reminiscing about their childhood days back in happened only a few days earlier. The new country was my grandfather’s village. During summer, when there where food was called ‘grub’. The new country was where was no cold to afford an excuse, an uncle might some- on a cold December night, while waiting for a friend on times let out a sigh and say: I wish curfew were declared the road outside her hostel, you found a woman staring at you from the inside of a white Maruti Zen, and you today for some reason. thought she was in distress until she drove closer, rolled When the curfew finally came, it brought exile.

I have now been more in Delhi than in the old country. down her window and asked: Excuse me, what is your Seventeen years have passed since I arrived here. I had no rate? And your ears turned red and you barely managed idea what I wanted then. I have no idea what I want now. to tell her that you were a journalist (Okay, a struggling I am not new country material; I was always old country. journalist) waiting for a friend.

May be a few things have changed. Of course they have.

Gradually the new country settled inside me. Or so Like Graham Greene writes someI thought. With my first salary, where: ‘Wherever you live, whatevI bought a book: the memoirs of Seventeen years have er the form of violence is there, it Safdar Hashmi’s mother. I learnt passed since I arrived becomes simply part of your life to ignore the dread and instead and the way you live.’ I had seen vicling to what could be salvaged. here. I had no idea olence in the old country. In the In those days there were no Café what I wanted then.

Coffee Days, but there was Wimpy. new country, I saw a different kind I have no idea what I of violence—violence that was not There were no malls, but the lawns physical but bludgeoned your inwant now. I am not new of the National School of Drama ner grain till it suffered alteration. country material; I was offered solace to lovers. There were no multiplexes, but holding the It battered me as well. But because always old country hands of your beloved in Chanakya of the old country, some things cinema would rid the heart of stayed. My core remained basic; it triglycerides. Mosquitoes would remained primitive.

13 January 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 33

Raul irani

UNMOVING A few years after the move to Delhi, friends considered me a new country veteran, but inside of me, I had that sprawling old country

still dread Tortoise coils.

But I still couldn’t relate to Led Zeppelin. And with no one in those pre-Google days could I share the joy of finding the entire lyrics of Gulzar’s ‘Ek hi khwaab kai baar dekha hai maine…’ in an old copy of Filmfare at a barber’s shop that I tore quickly and ran away without a haircut.

Not even with the young married woman who kept me afloat with her kisses and taught me what shoes to wear with formal trousers and even bought me a pair from the South Extension market. She was very kind. When she was no longer with me, I would try to find traces of her kindness in Sona Rupa, a bar on Janpath that always reeked of stale beer.

A few years later, I was considered a new country veteran. But inside of me, I had that sprawling old country. In the new country, I always tried to assure others, who like me felt unsettled here. So, every now and then a friend and I would check on Rama Kant Pandey, who lived in Ber Sarai, that civil-servant-aspirant ecosystem next to IIT-Delhi. He had topped the first year exam at a regional engineering college and then fallen in love.

It went unreciprocated. RK, as we called him, had taken seven years to finish his degree, and then come to Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services. That too would elude him as did love and the new country. We went to him to pull him out of despair—despair so dense that one night in a drunken stupor he climbed on to a BPL TV billboard near Nehru Place bus terminus and painted on it with grease: ‘Sab kucch adhoora reh gaya, Pandeyji’. To cheer him up, we would take Sandpiper beer with us, which we consumed in a field behind Ber Sarai, watching flights land and 34 open

take off from Delhi airport, and loudly singing ‘Hum pyaar mein jalne waalon ko, chain kahan, aaram kahan...’

Sometimes RK emerged from his despair, after which he would laugh and invariably tweak a line from that Sahir Ludhianvi song: ‘Kal aur aayenge nagmon ki khilti kaliyan chun-ne waale, tumse behtar kehne waale, mujhse behtar sun-ne waale.’ If he did not, he would look at the scoreboard in the field and say: “Boss, pyaar na diode hai; one way hai saala’.

Ultimately, RK went back to the old country where, last heard, he was running a computer institute.

I stayed back. My Hindi improved. My English did not do so badly either. But I stayed away from Led Zeppelin. I stuck with Lust for Life. And Sahir. And pyaar. I made friends—friends who sell plastic for a living and write poetry. Friends who have become parents. Friends who are diabetic. Friends who have witnessed neighbours killing neighbours. Friends, who after having too much alcohol, sing in Russian.

Sandpiper beer is no longer available. Many friends have moved on. Many lovers have moved on. Their memory has stayed. Their kindness, too. Sometimes you go to Facebook to check on them, to see how they are faring in life. From their posts and pictures, you get signals nobody else does.

At times, when the ways of the new country become too oppressive, you just sing. The same old songs with old meanings—old country meanings.

In ‘Ek hi khwaab...’, Chandan asks Teeku: “Kyun, chitthi hai ya kavita?” and she replies: “Abhi tak toh kavita hai.”

Abhi tak toh old country hai. n 13 January 2014

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ritesh uttamchandani

life of pee Sudarshan Dheer says drinking his urine cured him of a painful viral infection. He is the founder of the Water of Life Foundation in India

r e m e dy

Drinkers of the Body’s Tonic The community of people who consume their own urine every morning to boost their immunity Madhavankutty Pillai

S

udarshan Dheer, a 77-year-old south Mumbai res-

ident with a white bush moustache and ponytail, takes out a small bottle with a dropper and says, “I don’t know how old this is.” The bottle contains urine and Dheer has an interesting anecdote of it. About 20 years ago, he was watching television at home lying on the carpet. He dozed off and when he woke up in the morning, one of his ears had lost both hearing and sensation.

He went to a doctor who referred him to a specialist who asked him to perform a number of tests and at the end of it told him, “My friend, this ear is gone.” He said Dheer should be taking care of the other ear now and prescribed a medicine for it. Back home, when Dheer took it, he felt nauseous. He didn’t want to take any more. His wife reminded him that he had some old urine stored away.

“Why don’t you try that?” she asked. The next morning, Dheer boiled some water and put the bottle of urine in it to warm it up. He then put a few drops in his ear and soaked up the excess with a tissue. “I did it for two or three days and the sensation came back in my ear,” he says.

Dheer’s daily routine begins by waking up at 4.30 am and drinking a glass of his own urine. When he is afflicted by an infection or any other ailment, he increases the usage to three times a day—a glass an hour after lunch and dinner too. And while all this might sound unpalatable to many, Dheer is part of large community of people who believe that the consumption of one’s own urine gives a huge boost to immunity.

He heard about auto urine therapy (AUT), as it is called, nearly four decades ago when he had a painful viral infection that rendered his right hand almost immobile. “I couldn’t even sign a cheque,” he says. Somebody told him to read a book called Water of Life, the bible of urine drinkers written by John Armstrong. As the book advised, Dheer began to drink urine and his ailment came under control. Over the decades since, his faith in it has only increased. Dheer is the founder of the Water of Life Foundation in India.

M

orarji Desai, the late Prime Minister of India, was

a urine drinker who felt no coyness in talking about it. He was from Gujarat and this is a practice most popular among Gujaratis. There is even a monthly magazine called Shivambu, published from Vadodara, that is aimed entirely at urine consumers.

Dinesh Doshi, who is 80 years old, was introduced to urine drinking 27 years ago by a book written by another Gujarati, Raojibhai Patel. Doshi didn’t have any ailment but got interested enough to try it out. “I thought this is a free thing and if it is so good for health, why not try it?” he says. In the beginning, he felt a heaviness after drinking it, but he didn’t let that dissuade him. He continued and soon began to feel good. He also started reading up more on it, subscribing to Shivambu too. He says he felt a great increase in his immunity. “I was staying at Lokhandwala

13 january 2014

Complex in Andheri. The drinking water and sewage pipeline got mixed up. In every flat, one or two or three people were suffering [health] problems. My family has six members, two persons in each generation. Being the eldest, I should have been the first victim. But I was not.

My immunity was much better than other members of my family.” Doshi drinks a glass in the morning and sometimes at night. “If I have any problem, then I may increase my urine intake,” he says.

To those who drink it, urine is not a waste product.

According to them, the body produces useful chemicals like hormones, steroids and enzymes to keep itself healthy and do its repair work. But it does not need all of it all the time and the surplus is shed in the urine. When you drink it, you are thus merely reimbibing all those useful chemicals that have already been processed by the body and are in their most absorbable form.

While drinkers often cite research to justify their practice, when it comes to peer-reviewed studies published in credible scientific journals, there is little support for these claims. Like all alternative medicine, urine therapy too relies on faith, anecdotal examples and one’s own experience. It has had takers among curious categories of people. For example, prisoners tortured by policemen are known to drink their own urine to heal themselves.

Dheer takes it to a spiritual level. He says that the quality of urine is determined by one’s state of mind at the time it is processed. The best is produced in one’s sleep at night when there is no stress. “Whatever our condition of mind during sleep, is it possible to create the same condition when you are awake?” he asks. Yes, he answers himself, it is possible to do that through spiritual practice.

And the better your state of mind becomes, so also the quality of urine, consuming which leads to better health.

“Unless you handle your mind, your urine will be polluted. If you keep on drinking water from a dirty pond, what will happen? First we have to clean our mind,” he says. “Once you understand that, then you realise the need to take care of your mind, thoughts, inner self… so that it reflects in the urine. You will discover then a path to yourself. Then you are a free person.”

Dheer eats simple vegetarian food, meditates and does pranayam for two hours daily. He does not have red chillies, pickles and deep-fried food. “More the masaala you put, the more the taste of urine will be bad,” he says.

G

ujarat might have most of India’s auto urine thera-

py practitioners, but there are many others throughout the country. In Kerala, it was recently the subject of discussion on a popular talk show on Surya TV. According to RM.R Rajasekaran, managing director of a textile firm, RMR Silks Pvt Ltd in Karaikudi town of Tamil Nadu’s Sivagangai district, many people practise auto urine therapy in the region. ‘So also in Namakkal, Arakkonam, Vellore District,’ he says, in an email interview. open www.openthemagazine.com 37

abhishek srivastava

family therapy Millie Mitra also taught her daughter to drink urine

Rajasekaran is 63 years old ,and has been a urine drinker since he was 39. His introduction to it was a Tamil book, Sarva Roga Nivarani, by Swami Bhumananda. He was severely diabetic and looking to bring it under control. The book featured letters by people who had benefited from the therapy, with their addresses and phone numbers.

Rajasekaran contacted many of them. ‘Some of them were big people like judges, owners of reputed business houses etcetera,’ he says. Initially, for a few days, he used urine for external application. Then he started drinking it. His diabetes symptoms went away, and intriguingly, in his case, he says, ‘So also [my] fear of death, which was a constant companion for several years.’ He kept drinking urine from then on, but in between for three years, he did not do it regularly. He had started non-vegetarian food, alcohol and cigarettes; on days that he partook of any of these, he wouldn’t drink urine. But now, after giving up those vices, he drinks his first urine every morning.

In January 1997, Rajasekaran had a heart attack and believes that his urine habit was what helped him fend it off.

He even climbed a flight of stairs to inform his doctor, who refused to believe it. ‘He was laughing and said that in which case I would not have been able to climb the stairs. On my insistence, an ECG was taken, which confirmed the heart attack,’ he says. On seeing how beneficial it was for him, his family members also started drinking it. Usually, he says, people don’t accept it easily: ‘A lot of counselling is required. I have been able to convince many suffering people and convert them to AUT.’

M

illie Mitra, a 50-year-old Bangalore resident, got

interested in urine therapy after she became a mother in 1992. It was part of a larger quest to bring up her children as naturally as possible. She breastfed them for three or four years, did not vaccinate them and put her trust in homeopathy over allopathy. But because this was going against conventional wisdom, she also had to deal with her own fears of whether she was doing the right thing.

She was, therefore, reading a lot on natural hygiene.

In 1994, she was teaching at a school in south Mumbai.

38 open

One day, browsing through a second-hand book shop, she came across a small book on urine therapy. Intrigued, she went through more books on the subject. “I was fascinated that you can heal yourself with your own medicine and don’t have to depend on any external factor for healing,” she says. “It didn’t take me very long to take that first step.

It wasn’t repulsive. I put it into my mouth for a couple of minutes and then [spat] it out. I did that for two days and by the third day, I was drinking it. The changes I noticed weren’t anything dramatic. I definitely felt that there was a kind of physical cleansing. I felt a lot more energy.”

Mitra taught her elder daughter to consume urine and says she could notice the benefits. “She had none of the things that babies have—no colic, no ear pain, rarely even a fever. Whenever these things happened, I would resort to urine,” she says. When the child had an allergic cough that would come up at night, she learnt to “go to the bathroom, collect her urine and drink it”; “It would subside within 10 minutes or so.” Mitra didn’t try to hide any of this because she felt there was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, she also went about suggesting it to other parents.

Two or three years ago, Mitra was diagnosed with a thyroid problem and forced to take allopathic medicines. She therefore stopped drinking urine. The medicines have now been minimised and in a few months she expects to stop them altogether. She is then going to restart urine consumption. She however did notice something unusual when she stopped it. “As long as I had been having urine, my hair remained jet black. In the last two years, because I have stopped, I can see a lot of grey coming up,” she says. Urine, she believes, works like a vaccine. “The body has already created something that, when you put it back, stimulates your immunity,” she says.

Her daughter stopped once she grew up and became conscious of what she was doing. Yet, Mitra persists in telling her children to drink it. Her elder daughter, who is 21 years old now and studying abroad, recently called her to say that she had a bad throat. Mitra told her to gargle with urine. “She said, ‘Ma, can’t you stop it now,’” says Mitra.

“But I am certain she’d get instant relief if she tried it.” n 13 january 2014

s u st e n a n c e

Robert Dowling/CORBIS

Kill Your Own Food

Strangers to the wilderness around us, blind to landscape, unaware of seasonality and too squeamish to go beyond the limits of established ‘big food’, we are missing out DIVYA GUHA

“I can tell you one of the most surprising ingredients I’ve ever found. Perhaps five years ago on a beach I saw this herb that looked exactly like chives. I put it in my mouth and started chewing and, surprise, it tasted exactly like coriander”

the Neolithic age, which gave way to agriculture, after which, sadly, these edible wild plants were slowly forgotten. Until the late nineteenth century, when, with the birth of the science of nutrition, they were rediscovered and documented by Victorian health professionals.

But we need not dig up the archives of dead colonial —Rene Redzepi, chef at Noma (Copenhagen), who was voted ‘favourite chef’ by the world’s top dilettantes to see that inexpensive or indeed free prointernational chefs duce could provide a canny new way to eat. Even as recently as about a decade or two ago, it was not uncommon for people to rear pigeons on their rooftop terraces, ou can’t be a good cook if you are too afraid to and sometimes pick out a couple to cook—the fledgling kill something you will cook. My mother tells me were preferred. One friend who’d rather not be named she was gifted a tiny duckling at my eldest sister’s likes to catch these birds, twist their necks, skin and birth. The two hatchlings grew up together but the duck clean them and eat the meat deep fried and spiced with was soon taller than my toddling sister. It would protec- chopped ginger, red chillies and coriander roots, accomtively cover her with its wings when she bawled, waddle panied by a drink of Old Monk rum. around my mother, craving and ofGiven the tyranny of the packfering affection. But it went mysaged food industry, this act seems I wonder if one can teriously missing one Easter. And admirably transgressive but he that was the last pet my mother survive in a city without downplays his guerilla game-hunting because many people, includever dared have. grocers and butchers. ing his wife, see it as something of Setting aside sentimentality for How perverse that food an embarrassment. People associthe duck, which was probably eaten, I have always wondered if it lies just out of our reach, ate eating urban animals with were possible to survive in a city but my friend does it beand yet we must organise hardship, and feed oneself without the helpcause he likes a good snack and the ourselves around traffic, birds are, as it were, ‘sitting ful mediation of grocers and dirt and noise to get it butchers. I’d like to think of it as an ducks’—easy for him to catch. Still, act of rebellion. It is perverse that how many of us have the individuality to overcome our retail-led food is laid just out of our reach, conditioning and queasiness, and and yet we must organise ourselves around traffic, dirt and noise to get it. It has long set out traps for pigeons in balconies to slaughter them?

What is taboo and what not is a matter of perception, been an ambition to experience eating as immediately as our highly mediated lives will allow. Even if it meant socially determined, and can change over time. Lobster adopting caged chickens—a basic form of cheap pro- was considered poverty food among early American settein—and slaughtering them on demand, as I have seen tlers, for instance, until it became available at eateries in my Nigerian friends in Delhi do as a matter of routine.

Boston and New York. We habitually avail shopping faSocial scientists have a name for grub that can be for- cilities, forgetting there was a time when we thrived aged for nourishment gratis from our surroundings— without shops, were more independent and resourceful, ‘famine’ or ‘poverty’ foods—and we have a bounty of and so, in some significant ways, superior.

Celebrated Danish chef Rene Redzepi who uses these around us. Famine plants provide a competent alternative to food self-sufficiency projects such as the only locally foraged ingredients believes gastronomy Green Revolution, says Robert L Freedman, who studies can be simple and need not involve luxury items. He bethe socio-anthropological aspects of human food habits lieves that for cuisine to be good, it needs to be local, and at Purdue University in the United States. These are that involves not being ignorant about the wilderness plants hardy or hidden enough to survive drought. around us.

Knowledge of these plants, he says, probably peaked in To pay tribute, we may familiarise ourselves with

Y

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several trees found locally in Delhi: for example the jand, ing for vegetarian starter kits. found growing in the forest at Garhi Mandi in South With this in mind, I brace myself to witness my first Delhi. Its bark, when dried and powdered, is a famine lesson in chicken killing. Watching is underwhelming food, a type of flour that saved lives during the Great but not un-cruel (ask the chicken). A random chicken Rajputana Famine of 1868. Its fruit, called khejari, sangar too weak to stand up is plucked out of one of many cagor sangri, is good—when ripe—for curry and can be eat- es. Actually, no—it is the one in the penthouse of the en pickled or dried. stack of cages, the one not being showered with other Then there are jamun trees—the most commonly chickens’ poo. grown avenue tree in Lutyen’s Delhi—there are flowers The young fellow is held up by the wings so I have a such as chrysanthemum and rose that are edible and nu- clear view and the heavy butcher’s knife pressed against tritious; there is sonjna, also called the miracle tree, its neck is dragged a centimetre. This spots the chicken’s which is rich in vitamin A and calcium, its fruit, called white feathers a bright red. It looks and feels raw, like a the drumstick, great for stew. Such local alternatives to papercut. Neither the chicken nor I say a thing. I wonder if its voice box has gone with the slit. But I am wrong, becash crops abound around us.

Stories of hunger can emerge from unexpected quar- cause there is ample protest in the large blue plastic barters. A report on BBC radio recently had a child in rel into which Zubair, the friendly butcher, flings it to exEngland confess to being fed a rat by her mother when pire. I usually chuck paper balls into bins like that when the family had nothing to eat, a contingency caused no I’m bored—and miss.

“It cools down a bit in there,” he says pointing over his doubt by the economic recession. Consuming rat will never be anything but taboo, and tragic. But all poverty shoulder at the big blue thing, “otherwise it would jump all over and spoil your clothes.” I foods need not be seen in that deshake a little as I wonder if it is pressing light.

The meat industry’s bathing in its own and other dead There is the locust, which is strongly associated with plague horrors should make us friends’ blood in there. Soft sounds give way to loud and famine but recently rose in feel guilty. But if I don’t squacking flapping sounds, but soon, it is to popularity among international have the stomach for end. I picture the dying bird, its gourmands. In March this year, when Israel was in the grip of a lo- killing something I reared world turned red, caked and slipas its little bird soul slips cust invasion, Tel Aviv chefs were or consider it infra-dig, pery, painfully away, ending its short happy they could source freshly it’s only because I’m not miserable life in captivity. caught insects from the countryhungry enough side. They are said to taste different Another man arrives, plucks the depending on which crop they had bird out of the barrel and starts to fed on—and ones fattened on sesskin it. He hacks gently and quite ame seed, particularly, were much easily through what must be conin demand. On the other hand, there are stories of poor nective tissue joining the bird’s wings to its shoulders, West Africans feeding on locusts (that had eaten their pulling off the wings along with the skin and the rest of crops) when they were the only available source of nour- its feathers. Zubair confirms it is still alive, as if informishment. The Assamese have a chutney made of red ants ing relatives in a hospital; “bas dam todh raha hai (he’s and their eggs that is deliciously tart and high in protein. breathing his last),” he says.

Ultimately, packaged food is a fairy tale we tell ourThe meat industry’s horrors are now well-documentselves. There are food hackers in the world who chal- ed. Farm animals are subjected to violence and suffering lenge big food by detecting and copying the ways in that really should make us feel guilty about eating aniwhich, say, Coke or McDonald’s french fries are made. mals. But if I don’t have the stomach for killing someAnd they do this driven by their volition to decipher thing I reared, or consider it a bit infra dig, it’s only be‘codes’, pose a rebellion, and, if they are able to, cause ‘dis- cause I’m not hungry enough. ruption’, which is usually considered an improvement We ought to be able to bring chickens home, feed them well—preferably organic feed, though maybe not, on the status quo.

A few years ago, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay ran a because I can barely afford it for myself—let them run TV cooking series that aired footage of the slaughter of a around the covered verandah for a month or more, pet lamb in gory detail. Though it was a “grossly sani- so that all the antibiotics and diseases they inherited tised version of the horrors routinely faced by millions from the cages where they lived leave their bodies, and of lambs every year before they reach the dinner plate”, then slaughter them as humanely as possible in the said a PETA spokesman reacting to the show, there were kitchen sink. people among the millions watching who were disAnd so I go to hack my way into the industrial food tressed enough to give up meat and wrote to PETA ask- chain. It is not as heroic as all that, but at least it’s a start. n 42 open

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Martin Harvey/Corbis

the way things were The Human Food Project is studying tribes such as the San Bushmen of Africa to get an idea of how the ancient microbiome looked

immunity

Our Basic Bug Instinct

Modern diseases such as asthma, diabetes and Alzheimer’s are linked to changes in the hundred trillion odd microbes residing in our bodies. Excessive hygiene, antibiotics and our diets are to blame for these changes Priyanka Pulla

M

ost of us know about last century’s green revolution, when countries around the world multiplied their agricultural production manifold.

But the first recorded green revolution occurred about 10,000 years ago. Human beings, who were hunter-gatherers till then, began farming. They domesticated the first wild plants and animals and settled down in small villages, instead of wandering to wherever their search for sustenance led them. As a result, for the first time in human history, food was abundant.

But all this came at a price. Because humans began living in such proximity of one another and of farm animals, new infectious diseases afflicted them. Small pox, plague and measles crossed over to humans from domesticated animals and parasites like rats, and then swept unstoppable across populations. In response, human beings eventually developed antibiotics. We also realised that simple sanitation could keep several infections at bay.

This suppression of infectious diseases through antibiotics triggered a curious see-saw effect. As plague and typhoid disappeared, a new set of diseases took hold of us: auto-immune disorders such as asthma, irritable bowel syndrome and Type 1 diabetes, as well as heart disease and dental cavities. Even as we relegated one set of dreaded diseases to history, we ushered in other equally dreaded ones. Why did this tradeoff happen?

Research is now revealing that these modern diseases are all linked to the changing demographics of an invisible, hundred-trillion-strong population of microbes in our bodies, whose existence we didn’t know of till recently. These microbes are collectively called the human microbiome, and they pervade our bodies—from the oral and nasal cavities, to the ears, the vagina, the stomach, the intestines and the skin. They outnumber our own cells ten to one, which makes us more microbe than human.

It’s hard to tell where our bodies end and these microbes begin, because they lend a hand in several critical bodily functions: digesting food, absorbing and metabolising nutrients, and fighting off disease. Altogether, our microbiome measures a piddly pound or two on the scale, but it more than pulls its weight in function.

It is changes in this microbiome since the dawn of the Neolithic period, when the first green revolution happened, that seems to hold the key to many modern diseases. As a direct result of our growing affluence and our fight against infections using antibiotics, a smaller variety of

13 january 2014

germs exists in our body today. This means fewer good bacteria, such as lactobacilli, and less resistance to attacks by bad ones.

During the Neolithic revolution, we began eating more grain and carbohydrates, causing a shift in our microbial population towards bacteria that preferred such a diet.

Also, several disease-causing pathogens shifted to our bodies because it was so much easier for them to spread in closely-packed human settlements. Next, came the era of antibiotics. While these powerful drugs kill harmful bacteria, they have a carpet-bombing effect, and nuke the good ones as well. Today, research is showing that some beneficial bacteria that die during a course of antibiotics never recover fully.

Meanwhile, our diets have continued losing indigestible fibre steadily, to be replaced by industrially-processed flour and sugar, which now dominate our plates.

Alongside, the nature of childbirth and early-life care has changed. Fewer women give birth naturally, and the period of breastfeeding has been cut short from a couple of years to one. This means that newborn infants aren’t receiving beneficial bacteria from their mothers early enough. The deluge of changes, together with never-before standards of hygiene in our daily lives has turned our once robust microbiome, with a diverse species of bacteria, into a fragile oligarchy of a few dominant species.

Enter modern disease.

Missing in Action

Among the good bacteria that are absconding today is one called Heliobacter pylori (H pylori), made famous by the discovery of its role in gastritis and stomach cancer. In a 2011 article in Nature, medical researcher Martin J Blaser wrote that H pylori was the dominant microbe in all stomachs till the last century. But today,less than 6 per cent of American, Swedish and German children carry the bacteria in their guts. Antibiotics could be the culprit. From the point of view of stomach cancer, which is caused sometimes by H pylori, this is great news.

But H pylori has its uses, which is why it was so pervasive in our bodies in the first place. According to Blaser, people who lack these bacteria tend to develop allergies such as asthma and hay fever. Also, as H pylori has disappeared from our tummies, the rate of gastrointestinal reflux disease (GERD—in which stomach acid sloshes back up the oesophagus, gradually corroding its surface— open www.openthemagazine.com 45

seems to have gone up. Chronic GERD leads to a condition called Barrett’s oesophagus, where the cells lining the oesophagus grow abnormal. Barrett’s oesophagus is, in turn, a risk factor for esophageal cancer.

Could it be that with the loss of H pylori, we have traded off stomach cancer with that of the gullet?

The other disease in whose favour the scales have tipped is Alzhemier’s. In a study published in September this year, University of Cambridge scientists found that countries with higher levels of sanitation had higher rates of Alzheimer’s. In fact, rate of infectious disease seemed to be negatively correlated with Alzheimer’s: countries with lower rates, such as Switzerland and Iceland, had 12 per cent higher rates of Alzheimer’s compared with countries with high rates of infectious disease, such as China and Ghana.

The Cambridge researchers believe this study supports the Hygiene Hypothesis: reduced exposure to friendly microbes due to cleaner water, antibiotics and even paved roads, could compromise the immune system. When we are exposed to these microbes through contact with soil, faeces and domesticated animals, our immune system develops the appropriate responses. But as these microbes disappear from our environment, we become more vulnerable to faulty immune system responses such as neuroinflammation, which could be a cause of Alzheimer’s.

Gut Instinct

One place where the battle between good and bad microbes is at its most intense is the gut. Because many pathogens enter our body via the gut, a large squad ofimmune cells stands guard here. When things go off keel in the intestinal microbiome, it disrupts the immune function of our entire body. Auto-immune diseases, in which the immune system cannot tell our own body cells from external pathogens and ends up destroying the former, is one such disruption.

Both animal and human studies reveal that beneficial bacteria, such as lactobacilli, help the lining of the intestine carry out its protective function better, by preventing pathogens from entering, and keeping auto-immune responses at bay. Second, these bacteria may be helping T regulatory cells, a kind of white blood cell, proliferate.

T regulatory cells are important because they keep autoimmunity in check, ensuring our immune system doesn’t go overboard in its fight against disease.

This symbiosis between good bacteria and intestinal health is often altered in diseases such as Type 1 Diabetes, in which our body turns against its insulin-producing pancreatic cells. But how does it get altered? A 2008 study in the journal Diabetologiai provided a clue when it found that the risk of Type 1 Diabetes was higher in children delivered via Caesarean sections.

This could be because babies acquire their first set of beneficial microbes, such as bacteroides, bifidobacteria and lactobacilli, during passage through the microbe-rich 46 open

birth canal. When the short cut of Caesarean birth is taken, babies acquire these useful germs much later. Bacteroides and lactobacilli are known for their role in preventing harmful bacteria from colonising the intestines.

According to a 2011 paper reviewing research on the role of the intestinal microbiome in Type 1 Diabetes, the same mechanism has also been linked to auto-immune diseases such as Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel disease. Studies have shown that patients with Crohn’s disease have fewer and less diverse bacteria such as firmicutes and bacteroidetes.

Plaque just isn’t what it used to be

Disease-causing microbes are winning the war in our mouths too. In a 2012 study in Nature, a group of Australian scientists studied the bacteria calcified in the dental plaque of skeletons ranging from 7,500 to 1,000 years old. They then compared these bacteria with those in their own mouths. The study revealed that as in our intestines, microbial diversity has shrunk in our mouths as well. The composition of oral bacteria has changed markedly in recent times, possibly during the Industrial Revolution, due to carbohydrate-rich diets containing processed flour and sugar. From a predominance of healthy bacteria earlier, our mouths now harbour more cavity-causing bacteria, such as Streptococcus mutans. This probably explains our chronic tooth and gum problems today, compared to our distant ancestors.

Our hearts, too, can’t escape the influence of our omnipresent microbial housemates. In April this year, a study

by Cleveland-based doctor Stanley Hazen threw light on the unexpected role of microbes in the development of arterial plaque among red-meat eaters. Red meat contains a molecule called carnitine, which is suspect for its role in heart disease. Hazen’s study found that carnitine is digested to produce the primary culprit in heart disease, a compound called trymethylamine N oxide or TMAO, which causes the thickening of arteries.

But carnitine cannot be digested without certain gut bacteria. It turns out that the gut bacteria that are needed to digest carnitine are only present in the bodies of people who eat meat regularly. This means that if a vegan consumes red meat, the dangerous conversion of carnitine to TMAO doesn’t happen. This could explain the relatively lower rates of heart disease among vegetarians. It isn’t the red meat at fault, or even the carnitine; it’s the bacteria.

Searching for the Ideal Microbiome

Research so far has thrown up tantalising hints about the possible role of the modern human microbiome in disease, but there is still much that is unknown. To understand the full nature of the microbiome’s contribution, we need to know not only what bugs we harbour in our bodies, but also what their genomes looks like.

Altogether, the total number of genes in the human microbiome is 100 times the number in human cells.

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legacy of the gut Fewer natural births mean babies acquire their first set of beneficial microbes at a later stage. A 2008 study suggests Caesarean babies are at greater risk of Type I diabetes as well

In December last year, a group of American scientists published a paper that offered an even closer look into the extinct human gut. They analysed fossilised human faeces, known as coprolites, from between 8,000 to 1,400 years ago, dug up from sites in the southern United States, Chile and Mexico. While a few of the samples were found in soil, a couple were extracted from the intestines of natural mummies. The researchers then studied the six samples using modern DNA sequencing techniques.

They discovered that the microbiome of these ancient humans was vastly different from ours and contained bacteria such as Treponema that aren’t seen in the modern gut. According to the paper, published in the journal Plos One, Treponema may have helped extract energy from the fibrous diet of these ancient people while Curtis Studio Ltd/Getty Images also protecting against inflammation.

The link between fibrous diets and In 2008, the National Institutes of Health in the US be- healthy colons is a strong one, and explained by bacteria. gan an ambitious programme called The Human When the indigestible parts of fibrous foods—long Microbiome project, in which they are attempting to un- chains of sugars called oligosaccharides—enter the coderstand the composition of the microbiome and its ge- lon, they are fermented by bacteria, which thrive here for netic makeup. Taking this another step further is the this purpose. The fermentation process increases the Human Food Project: an attempt to compare the modern acidity of the colon, keeping other bacterial nasties at bay. microbiome with that of societies of hunter-gatherers, At the same time, the fermenting bacteria offer various who still live at the pre-Neolithic edge of urbanisation. miscellaneous benefits to the colon, keeping it healthy.

Is there a way we can go back to this golden microbiome One part of the Human Food Project is the American Gut Project, which collects samples from the faeces, skins and of yore? Is it worth going back to? mouths of Americans, together with details of their diets There is no denying that antibiotics have benefitted us and antibiotic-use, to tease out associations. hugely, fighting simple infections that killed people regAnother part is the study of the microbiome of tribal ularly before we discovered these miracle drugs. Childpopulations such as the Hadza foragers, San Bushmen hood mortality rates have plummeted while life-expecand Himba pastoralists of Africa, to understand how the tancy has spiked in large part due to the antibiotic revoancient microbiome may have looked. The Hadza people lution. And yet, it is high time we began scaling back on of Tanzania, said to be the earliest inhabitants of east the indiscriminate use of these drugs that are destroying Africa in the late Stone Age, have changed their ways very our friendly bacteria in insidious ways. Antibacterial little since then. They still forage for fruits and tubers, col- products like Triclosan, found in mouthwashes and hand lect honey and hunt down animals with poison-tipped sanitisers, are a big culprit too. Excessive use may be proarrows. Limited access to antibiotics, natural births and moting resistance among harmful bugs, but more imporproximity to nature ensure the Hadza microbiomes tantly, sterilising our environments more than necessary.

The case for more fibrous foods is an old one, but the haven’t been tampered with.

The particular mix of bugs in Hadza guts seems to have study of the human microbiome is making it stronger. its benefits. As Jeffrey Leach, the founder of the Human Good bacteria seem to thrive on indigestible starches.

Food Project, writes on his blog: ‘While the childhood Including more whole plants in our diets may help bring mortality rates among the Hadza people is about 20 per back some of these evolutionary allies.

But above all, it is increasingly clear that cleaner envicent, those that survive into adulthood have a good chance of surviving into their 60s, 70s and 80s. Such lon- ronments are not always better. More hand washing, vacgevity in a tribe with little access to modern drugs de- uuming and swimming in chlorinated pools doesn’t mean less disease. An occasional roll in the mud, swim in serves to be studied deeply.’

But the Hadza microbiome is just an approximation of the pond, or nuzzle with the pet dog may not just be good the way it once was. for your soul, but for your microbial friends too. n 13 january 2014

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John Stanmeyer/VII

sex

A primeval analysis endures

Men, T according to prostitutes

Chinki Sinha, Mumbai

he red of their lips was outlined in black. Kohl was

applied carefully to accentuate the lips, give them shape. But they looked exaggerated. Comical, yet tragic. Eyes that looked as if they’d lost their way to sleep.

But it is the lips that they protect the most. The body is up for sale. The black is ugly, they agree. But that’s to keep clients off kissing, and licking.

Sex workers in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red-light district, say they don’t like kissing. It is disgusting. Their 13 January 2014

michel sEtboun/getty images

the transactions (left) A sex worker with her client in Mumbai; a brothel on Falkland Road in Mumbai

Men with hollow cheeks and empty eyes sniffing whitener lurk in the background, drinking toddy. Once they have made enough to buy prostitutes for a few minutes, they unleash themselves on them. They stumble in, list out their desires, shell out the cash, haggle with them, and ask them to fulfil their fantasies.

mouths stink and they always want more, they say.

Business is down there, Puja says, pointing below her belly. That’s what she sells. “Do it, get your release, and off you go,” she says. “We don’t indulge men. They are chutiyas. Bhadwaas of the first order… randichod, they are.”

The women would like to think they are in a noble profession. Only the others look at them with disdain. They are saving other women on the other side from the vagaries of men’s desires. They are receptacles of all the world’s shit. Clients can piss in their vagina, shit in their bed.

That’s when it turns ugly. But they are nonchalant about this ugliness. It is part of their world. They didn’t choose it, but now that they are here, they have to make the most of their time, and their bodies.

13 January 2014

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uja and Seema sit on a staircase at Alexander Theatre

near Gulli No 14 in Kamathipura, waiting for customers. Business is not as usual. Most brothels here have been taken over by realtors. Kamathipura is fading. But in the afternoons and evenings, women solicit customers. They glitter like fireflies in sequinned saris; the powder on their faces makes them look like ghosts. Later, many of them will walk into small taverns here, buy beer, and drink to ease some of the pain. You never get used to it, Puja says.

Only a few hundred remain in these alleys. Pimps and customers hang out. Beyond the truth of exploitation, the women here have become dismissive of the men who visit them. “No, they won’t beat us,” Puja says, “Because then, we would beat the shit out of them.” But they have strange desires, she says.

Puja closes her eyes when she lies down. Never look open www.openthemagazine.com 49

them in the eye, she insists. “All of them are the same,” she explains, as she waits for someone to pick her up that afternoon. “When I switch off the lights,” she says, “I try to make him come in between my thighs. I try to block my thoughts. It hurts, but money is important. I have a family to take care of.”

She is from a village in Uttar Pradesh. When her husband abandoned her, she came to Bombay with a friend and started working as a prostitute. Her family thinks she works at an office. She sends money home for her son and parents. One day, she will return, she says. But it is a tough life for now. Her ‘madam’ is nice to her, and her room is like a hovel with a bed and some bit of floor. It is dark, and the smell of men lingers for days.

For three days, a man has been clinging to Puja, buying her bangles and clothes, but never giving her any money.

Her madam was getting impatient. “But I can’t jump on him,” she says. “This is what I am talking about. These men are idiots. They want this girlfriend experience. But it is too much work.”

Puja is in a net lehenga.

She has at least four of The ancient wisdom of them. Over the months, she has come to think brothels is that youth isn’t forever. Use it to earn that men only come to her when she is dressed money, don’t waste it on this way. She has a light men who come to prove complexion, with full their masculinity... In any lips and a slim body. She a lover, like many case, they become leeches has women here have; they hang on to them, drink beer with them, and talk of being together forever.

But once they are back here in this space, they laugh at men.

Sometimes, they cry. Over many things. Love and loss.

They drink Corex to stop thinking about so many things.

Customers. Permanent ones. And youth.

But the ancient wisdom of brothels is that youth isn’t forever. Use it to earn money, and don’t waste it on men who come seeking to prove their masculinity or discover themselves. In any case, they eventually become leeches.

Yet, many have fallen into that trap.

Zeenath Pasha, a eunuch who owns a brothel in Gulli No 14, says the men who walk up the stairs are not to be taken seriously. “There is no love here. Only sex. All kinds of sex,” she says, “There is no end to desire here. Brothels exist because we don’t judge. Money takes away that privilege. We are only providers.”

N

isha, another eunuch, says she got sentimental a few times with a man who would dress her as a bride, adorn her head with flowers, and pluck them out one by one. It was like in films, she says. “The sex was good.”

50 open

Orgasm is a word they don’t use. Instead, they say, ‘Mera sex aa gaya’ or ‘Mazaa aa gaya’.

“What do you call it in English?”

“Orgasm,” I offer.

Nisha laughs.

“We call it ‘paani girna’.”

She enacts a scene: “Abey bhadwe, tera paani gira kya?

Get off, you paid for only one session,” she says in Hindi, making a gesture of pushing a man off her.

But sometimes, they want to take it out on the world.

If they have a disease, they plot passing it onto someone else, Nisha says. That’s revenge. On men. Those who come here think they own us, but they don’t; here, we have mastered the art of keeping the body separate from the soul, she says.

T

hey order more tea. A middle-aged woman curs-

es everyone—mostly men walking by. She’s had too many beers this morning. Her sister had died leaving four children in her care. She has three of her own, and it’s difficult keeping them off the streets. “Men have used us, abused us,” says the woman, “We carry children of men we don’t know. They infect us. We tell them to wear condoms, but they manage to slip those off as they enter us.

They are disgusting. They want to urinate on our bodies.

They want to stub cigarettes on our bodies… useless creatures. But we need money. It is a strange life. We are in control. Yet, we lose ourselves in this.”

Zeenath says many women don’t live past the age of 30.

They contract illnesses because men do not use condoms.

For the money they earn, which is usually Rs 100 a session, they trade their lives. HIV/AIDS is common. She has lost many of her friends to it. Men, she says, stink.

On the floor sprawls a pregnant woman, her bump covered with a shawl as her son rides a bicycle nearby. It is difficult to have others enter your body, she says, in this state.

They don’t make love. And she says she doesn’t even know what it feels like—fucking with love. Here, all they have is dehumanised sex. Here, it is all about the basics. Pull up the sari, or maxi, and let them pull down their pants and open up. In a few minutes, it’s over. Insist on a condom.

But if they refuse, let them have their way. In the end, money is important. Men are bastards.

They call for more tea and start talking about some of the men who buy sex, laughing over their fetishes—like this man who would make them drink beer and ask them to piss in bottles so he could drink it. It is ridiculous.

Nandini, a eunuch, speaks English.“Golden shower,” she says, referring to a urination fetish. “Money is God. We charge extra. These men must be paid to pay for their stupid demands. We don’t bring sentimentality to this.” She speaks of other things. Things that would be described as ‘BDSM’ in a more sophisticated world. One man would tie the woman to the fan, spread her legs, and then get into the act. “She would say it’s fun,” says another sex worker.

13 January 2014

“But it is weird. We can talk about many such things.”

“They are strange, all of them. We have one rule: ‘never let them stay on’,” says Puja, “Because they will first patronise you and then eat off your earnings. In Kamathipura, such are the men who come to us. They want to do strange things. Some even want to piss inside you.”

S

eema is from Bengal. She came to Kamathipura af-

ter her husband abandoned her to live with his sisterin-law. She had a daughter, and a madam she ran into advised her to keep morality aside and sell sexual services to bring the child up. That she fell for a man who was her first customer is a story she recounts with nonchalance.

They married, and she had a son with him, but she carried on with prostitution because no man could be trusted. Her daughter is now living in another part of the city, studying so she can get her mother off the streets.

But for now, Seema has to suffer men with bad breath and idiotic preferences. “They want to lick, kiss, and it is not part of the deal. For Rs 100, they can’t have the world,” she says. “But these men are cheap bastards. They don’t want to wear condoms, and they always want more.”

In the other brothel, a eunuch says men are like children. They come here to play. They think they are too smart for us, she says. “But the truth is that we laugh at them.” She was once raped by ten men when she had gone looking for customers near Grant Road. They took her to railway tracks nearby and raped her. She fainted. The police refused to register a case. She cried, and was angry for a long time. She hates sex, but will do it for money.

Brothels don’t exist for men to just buy sex. These are places where they can play out their fantasies without any fear of reproach. Some of these men are sick in their minds, says Nandini. There is a man who visits with Amul butter, honey and jam. They call him ‘the shahadwaala’ (honeyman). He likes to smear their bodies with butter and jam, and lick it off them. “It is absurd,” says the eunuch. “The first time he started smearing it on me, I kept laughing.”

There are other fetishes they service. This one man would want to wash the clothes of menstruating women.

Zeenath Pasha would arrange for the garments, he would happily wash them, spread them out to dry, and leave. “I didn’t mind. It made him happy. I got the money without sex, and he did our laundry,” she says. “He comes sometimes.” There is another man who would come and ask them to take off their clothes. One by one, they would.

Then he would wear their clothes, and sit while they stood naked around him. After he was done with his little play act, he would pay and leave.

Yet another—a balding, ageing man—would decorate them, paint their forehead with dots, make them wear jewellery, have them look like brides, and then sit there drinking beer and gazing at them. An hour later, he would leave. They would laugh, drink the leftover beer, and 52 open

wait for other customers. “He had lost his wife, and he had this urge to remarry,” says Nisha. “But they are so ugly.

All of them.”

D

esire is primitive, and so is sex. And sex isn’t only about entering another. Or intercourse. These cramped quarters with their cages and berths are places where sex workers give men a chance of holding on to their sanity, before they are sent back to their world of morality with their urges taken care of. Their kinks are safe with the women. They may be ugly, even diseased, but they are customers and they need to keep coming.

“What are they to us but customers? We take them to the rooms, service them, take our money,” Puja says. “The problem arises when a customer becomes permanent.

Then, he wants your soul. That’s not for sale.”

Others refer to men as passengers who ride them. They come and go, that’s all.

Ruchira Gupta, founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide and field producer of The Selling of Innocents, says it is interesting how empowered women are in these situations, and yet so exploited in a way, agreeing to do almost anything for a few rupees. Apne Aap is an NGO that works with sex workers in Bihar, Bengal and Mumbai.

Gupta studied clients as part of her research. ‘Who were these men who bought sex? Why with young children?

And who were the men in the villages who let their daughters, sisters, mothers, lovers and friends fall prey to traffickers? What motivated them to collude in the exploitation of loved ones? Who were the procurers, corrupt border guards, agents, middlemen and pimps? How did they feel about living off this misery?’ she writes in her paper ‘The buyer­s: The masculinities project: Why do men buy women? What can we do to stop the demand?’

‘The clients who visit the brothels are students, daily wage earners, migrant workers, office clerks, even policemen—anybody and everybody… When making The Selling of Innocents, we were shown albums of women to choose from in many hotels in Mumbai. At a massage parlor, we were taken to a back room and girls were paraded for us—the youngest was five years old.’

On the motives of men, Gupta found plenty. Apart from the obvious need for sex, she found: ‘Curiosity’, ‘Desire for power and control’, ‘Peer pressure’, ‘Fear of losing virility’, ‘Desire for violent sex or to be violent’, ‘Thrill of having multiple partners’, ‘Preference for unequal relationship with women’, ‘Preference for sex with children’, ‘Social conditioning’ and ‘Seduction of commercials’, among others.

But the women at brothels have a basic view of them.

“Men are chutiyas,” says Puja, “Deal with them.”

In this world, the men are indeed passengers. They come and go. But in these purgatories, they are purged of their most primitive desires so that women on the other side, back in safe homes, can get to make love. n 13 January 2014

life & letters

mindspace

outfit Putting the Sari to Work 54

Out of Darkness

71

O p e n s pa c e

Kangana Ranaut Deepika Padukone

70

n p lu

Dhoom 3 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

69 Cinema reviews

Sony Alpha 7R Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Traditionelle Small Seconds Sony VPL-VW500ES

68

Tech & style

Girls Mature Faster than Boys Kids Grasp Large Numbers Pill to Kick Cocaine Addiction?

62

Science

The Second Life of Chunky Pandey Kerala’s Love for Kim Ki Duk

58

cinema

The Weariness of Khalid Mohamed

media

The Message in the Sari

54 72

PhotosIndia.com/getty images

anirban ghosh

life & letters

Pallu, Pleat, Power On the sari as a message of competence, maturity, professionalism and a new cosmopolitanism Sohini Chattopadhyay

T

he sari in the urban office space is a message: see, I can handle this extravagant, ancient garment without zippers and stitches and convenient buttons. I can wrap it round and tuck it in strategic places without looking absurd. I can walk around, climb up stairs, carrying yards and yards of excess fabric on my person, without tripping. I can battle the elements in an auto in this intricate garment of free-form material. I am a safety-pin snob so I leave the pallu free on my shoulders. I can do all this, and I can do it with splendid efficiency and humour. I can walk in beauty, I can work in beauty.

It means I can take what you will throw at me, so throw carefully. Take me seriously.

In a recent Facebook conversation, freelance journalist and writer Rohini Mohan, 31, writes that she makes it a point to wear the sari to ‘non-field interviews to meet politicians, government officials’. “It helps prevent the, ‘How many years have you been in journalism’ question,” says Mohan, who has reported for several years on human rights, hunger, politics and religion and maintains unseasonably, unreasonably youthful good looks.

“While working in Delhi, I realised it was something people noticed.

They assumed I was more mature, older, married, whatever. I wear it to nonfield interviews because it’s comfortable, I feel efficient, less pesky reporter

13 JANUARY 2014

and more confident interrogator. I feel, like my mom did, the determination of going to work,” she says.

The sari invokes a professional aura, a grown-up purposefulness. Mohan singles out Delhi when she speaks of the professional effect of the sari. In south India people even sleep in saris, she says. But this is probably true of a generation. My ma has to plead with my Bengali grandma to change out of a sari at night. Yet, Mohan has an interesting anecdote from Karnataka too.

“Once, in Karnataka, as a bunch of reporters, including sari-clad me, stood outside a hotel in which MLAs were being horse traded for the BJP, after a whole day they promised one-on-one interviews with the BJP president. I was not a full-time reporter in Karnataka, no one knew me, and I didn’t have a camera. Still, I was the first one called for the interview,” says Mohan. She is a consummate wearer of the sari and puts me to shame: she can “drive a Scooty, run up steps and belt a full thali in a sari”.

Freelance journalist Neha Dixit, 28, has similar stories about interviews with politicians. “I once wore jeans to an interview with Sharad Yadav [the Janata Dal-United leader]. He completely dismissed me. We were talking about women’s reservation, and he [said] what would a big city, highercaste girl like me know about women’s reservation. After that, I started wearing saris to office on reporting days.”

Dixit has been a fan of the sari since her college days in Miranda House, “We used to wear saris with sneakers and cloth bags,” she says, but the decision to wear the sari for assignments was prompted by the need to be taken seriously.

During her stint at a television channel, the sari became a point of conflict; the office wanted the corporate suit which has a ‘modern’ look, but Dixit stubbornly played the journalistic card of not being a corporate employee and dressed in saris and salwar kameez. For her recorded shows, too, she wore saris, and it led to some matrimonial rejections. “Some of my aunts were using my show as a matrimonial advertisement and a couple of guys thought I looked too old for them,” she giggles.

She was undaunted; for her the sari remains a much more potent form of power dressing than the corporate suit.

Supriya Nair, associate editor with The Caravan magazine, who initiated this Facebook conversation and has a one-sari-a-week rule, also invokes the sense of professionalism it bequeaths; she speaks of saris as workwear. “I think the sari simplifies things for me as workwear, in the same way as having six navy blue suits hanging in their closets makes life easier for some men.

I usually don’t have to worry about dressing up or down for a meeting or for dinner.”

I often wear the sari to office; I try to make this the day of the weekly edit open www.openthemagazine.com 55

meeting. The voice carries better in a sari, I find.

I first wore the sari to work after a defeat at the office; a request for leave was turned down and I was called, perhaps rightly, for running away. It punctured my self esteem and I felt the need to accomplish something. I decided to drape a sari on my own. It was my first time; I was a sari virgin. I pleated the sari slowly, painstakingly moving my hand back and forth like the back-panel of the harmonium. When I went in to work, nearly all my colleagues, several of whom observe Monday mourning rites and work in silence, came up to compliment me. If I had been a Facebook photo, I would have collected 108 likes in two minutes.

I worked with splendid efficiency that morning, supported by superbly helpful colleagues: requests were processed right away, calls were connected without delay, rounds of chaicoffee were offered. The workday’s dryness was smoothed out; it also seemed I was wittier in a sari—casual observations drew bona fide laughs. I felt a warm thrum of competence. Before the mirror, I drew myself up to my full height—five feet too few inches—and the effect is bracing. Has anybody else had the impression that the sari can gift a couple of inches to the wearer?

The fun had begun even earlier.

When I had stepped out of the gate of my colony, a gaggle of autorickshaws had slowed down to ask where I would like to go. Autos had never slowed down for me, or anyone I know, of their own accord. On the streets of Delhi, this is a rare tribute. But then, the young woman in a sari walking out unescorted has become a rare sight; most girls I know wear the sari only to their own or their best friends’ weddings.

A recent glossy advertisement for coffee shows Anushka Sharma sulking because it’s her cousin’s wedding and she doesn’t know how to tie a sari.

“Sari pehenna kisko aata hai?” she asks, voicing the annoyance of an urban cross-section. Her friend/boyfriend Imran Khan does, however, because he once played Sita in a college play.

The question is, would he know how 56 open

to tie a dhoti? The likely answer is that Sharma might know because she once played a character in a play.

A recent (and excellent) story on a Wall Street Journal blog titled The Rise of the Sari-Tying Class talks about the demand for such classes. This, too, evokes the sense of the sari as a fancy dress outfit, a special-occasion expedition for which you need help. Several of the

“When I stepped out of the gate of my colony, a gaggle of autorickshaws slowed down to ask where I would like to go.

autos had never slowed down for me or anyone I know of their own accord. On the streets of Delhi, this is a rare tribute. But then

A young woman in a sari walking unescorted has become a rare sight.

Most girls I know only wear the sari to their own of their best friends’ weddings

young women featured in the article were getting ready for their weddings.

Indeed, the sari on the young woman is sometimes seen as a costume.

Anubha Bansal, who has worked in the sales and marketing departments of corporations such as Reliance Broadcast Ltd and Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation, says that she has on occasion been

asked not to wear a sari to work.

“Clients are always pleasantly surprised to see me in a sari, though. I remember this one time, when a rather reserved and difficult client who only spoke business came up to me to compliment me. It opens up a point of conversation, so I often wear saris to client meetings,” says Bansal.

Yet, we are used to seeing an older generation of star women professionals—Chanda Kochhar, Kalpana Morparia, Naina Lal Kidwai, Meera Sanyal—only in saris. It might have been more a matter of course and less a conscious statement, as Dina Vakil, former resident editor of The Times of India, Mumbai, says about herself.

Vakil, who started working with the paper in the 1970s, has the reputation of never repeating a sari. “Young women today seem to want to invest them with meaning and mystique—they see saris as a form of power dressing, of conveying a sense of competence, an aura of maturity,” she says. Vakil found newsrooms in India rather relaxed about dress code, compared with New York where reporters were expected to go on assignment in suits. For her, the sari is more of a uniform.

“But there was the odd occasion at The Times of India when someone would come up with an uptight remark about a colleague’s dress du jour.

The cartoonist RK Laxman, for instance, once looked askance at a young woman’s free-flowing skirt and remarked acidly, “Is this any way to dress in an office?” He himself was always in uniform—black trousers, starched white half-sleeved bush shirt.

Come to think of it, I was in uniform too. By the time I became editor of The Times of India’s Mumbai edition in the early 1990s, the sari was my second skin, and I leaned towards a neutral colour palette—whites, off-whites and a hint of gold. I would hope Mr Laxman approved.”

Vakil, too, mentions the benefits of the strategically-chosen sari for the political interview. When I interviewed an Odisha chief minister some years ago, he immediately warmed to the fact that I was wearing a Sambalpuri sari— 13 JANUARY 2014

or a Bomakai, I forget which—and we got along famously after that.

S

ince I grew comfortable in a

sari, I usually wear one to the rare evening do that will have me. For some of the same reasons that the sari works as office wear, it works as evening wear.

It gives the impression that you made the effort to dress up, that you know what you are doing, that you walk in beauty. Of course, it is also true for me what they say about Sonakshi Sinha: I can only do the sari. I am too squat for dresses; besides, they are expensive. My saris are all legacies, hand-me-downs from my ma and grandma and other family folks.

There is another thing about wearing the sari to a party in Delhi: it confers affluence. A lot more people have started making conversation with me at parties. Some of this could be because of the noticeability that Mohan speaks of. But mainly, I think, a sari suggests that I have a car and chauffeur who have driven me to the party, and house staff to manage my laundry. For most people, the sari is a costume taken out for special occasions; they assume it cannot be worn in public transport— not by a woman of my age at any rate.

Presumably, I would not be driving in a sari either. I do nothing to discourage this impression, much as I take pride in being able to travel by public transport in a sari.

Managing a sari in an autorickshaw requires highly-developed motor skills.

The wind hurls the pallu away from you, and swells the bottom half of the sari like a toadstool. The consummate wearer knows the little tricks to handle these things, I have learnt with time.

Saris also confer that undefinable thing called culture, especially the kind of traditional saris I wear. The quiet, mousy, nerdy reporter-editor becomes the soft-spoken, affluent writer from a cultured family. Indeed, for Atreyee Majumder, a graduate student of anthropology at Yale University, the sari forms part of the new cosmopolitan identity. The message is, ‘I can do a paper in a heavy-duty conference, I can do

13 JANUARY 2014

chopsticks, I can do the sari.’ Her grad student schedule requires her to present papers at Ivy League campuses regularly, and Majumder enjoys making the statement of wearing a sari where everyone else is in expensive, sharplycut suits.

“I now feel it is the only form of formal attire in which I feel confident, intellectual, subtly aggressive, seductive, what-not,” she says. “Perhaps it is a way of re-appropriating the ‘Indian woman’ in me in a non-Indian milieu. Perhaps, it is knowing and doing the body differently. A Russian friend on whom I draped a sari, was very uncomfortable at her midriff being bare, though she would be comfortable in a bikini. In the East Coast intellectual geography that I inhabit, the sari is a ‘domesticated other’; it doesn’t invite the fear of the other that a hijab or burkha would.”

Dixit, something of a regular on the international press awards circuit, agrees with the cosmopolitanism argument. She recently wore a sari to an awards ceremony in London. “It is a way of claiming my identity,” she says, “which is closely tied up with my work”.

Within the family, too, the sari is something of a maturity cloak. Last year, when my cousin got married, I fully expected to be brutally waylaid by all kinds of aunts about my own nuptials. I wore a sari every day in the week I spent among the wedding revellers. I thought that would check the damage, but I didn’t expect it to work as beautifully as it did. I was told several times “you should be next”, but I wasn’t accosted like other girls, many of them younger than me, who wore jeans and skirts. I was the only one in my generation who could drape a sari by herself; the bride needed supervision, and this proved a powerful skill. I realised I had a reputation: ‘She can even tie a sari.’ It was another way of saying, ‘She’s got her life under control.’

I

t’s gone to my head a little bit: the

autos stopping, the colleagues listening and smiling, the family treating me like an adult. I have become a sari snob. Which is not to say that I can rec-

ognise saris and their weaves and regions, no—I’m not there yet. Only that I feel a warm thrum of accomplishment when I am the only woman in a grown-up—meaning handloom—sari and the other guests are in salwar kameez or jeans or Zara-Mango-Promod dresses, or Bollywood-style slinky saris, those chiffon-type things that are meant for tweens or young adults, far easier to walk in. (Bollywood tween sari versus handloom sari is the difference between Priyanka Chopra in Desi Girl and Madhuri Dixit/Aishwarya Rai in Dola Re.) I said this to the man I was seeing, but he was unimpressed. I spoke of the dexterity needed to keep an unpinned pallu on your shoulder, the dance of running up stairs gracefully, holding the pleats with the fingers of one hand, the trick of riding an auto in a sari, but he was unmoved. “I think you need to carry off a pair of jeans as much as you need to carry off a sari,” he shrugs. How, how?

Some weeks later, he speaks of how vastly different we are, I listen and the ‘differences’ sound like the sparks of a rich, rewarding relationship, long conversations that last several nights—I like Bhansali, he likes Tarantino, let’s talk. Then he speaks of my “old-fashioned saris that don’t fall well”. I usually wear heavy silks or crusty cottons, both of which have minds and lives of their own. “And that three-quartersleeved blouse, oof, it’s such a… curiosity,” he barks, in spite of searching for a word like ‘curiosity’ to be kind to me.

I am stunned. “Is that the deal-breaker, the clothes?” I ask. “No, no, not at all,” he says quickly, before excusing himself to go to the rest room. “I can change that,” I say, after he returns.

But later that night, I realise that it is a deal-breaker. I like my sari persona.

At the end of stories like this, strong, independent girls say they decided to do whatever it is that they decide to do for themselves; because it makes them happy. But my intentions are philanthropic: I have decided that I must wear the sari for the joy it brings to others: auto drivers, colleagues, bosses, strangers at parties, the family.

We must live in beauty. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

ashish sharma

media

fan boy Khalid Mohamed says that he used to be a ‘fan boy’ before public relations ruined the thrill of the exclusive

The Weariness of Khalid Mohamed In more than 30 years of showbiz journalism, Mohamed has seen it all.

The film critic and director reveals how movie stars became his surrogate family and why his new book is his last connection with the industry Shradha Sukumaran

A

s media editor at The Times Of

India (TOI), Khalid Mohamed was Filmfare editor and hosted its awards for nine years. He was influential too as the newspaper’s film critic for 27 years. Unsurprisingly, he formed deep associations with several movie stars, even seeing some of them as surrogate family. Among the books he authored was To Be Or Not To Be, a biography of Amitabh Bachchan, commissioned for the superstar’s 60th birthday by his wife Jaya. The critic, who also directed three feature films, Fiza, Tehzeeb and Silsiilay, reveals that at the time, he also shot hours of a documentary on Bachchan that was shelved by the family later. Today, Mohamed is no longer on speaking terms with the Bachchans.

It isn’t the only fractured friendship that Mohamed suffered over the years.

Our interview with him begins with Faction, his edited collection of 22 short stories by star writers such as Deepika Padukone, Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Karan Johar, Rishi Kapoor and Farah Khan. The conversation meanders to how movie stars modified their equations with Mohamed once he stopped being ‘useful’. The writer realised the only way he could deal with this change was by going through a ‘Bollywood detox’. “I felt violated,” he says, and adds that Faction is his last connection with the film industry:

What sparked the idea of Faction?

[Film critic] Deepa Gahlot asked me to contribute [for] a bunch of stories written by showbiz journalists. I gave one about a fading legend and my Sunday evening cognacs with him. That book 13 JANUARY 2014

didn’t work out, so I had an idea of asking stars to narrate stories. I first fleshed out a story with Akshay Kumar, then followed it up with Arjun Rampal.

The early ones were Rishi Kapoor, Ram Gopal Varma, Sonam [Kapoor].

How did you explain the concept to film personalities?

Most of them balked at the idea of a short story. I told them it was carte blanche. You could write a romantic story, about a friend, ghost, sci-fi, Kafkaesque, anything. Most gave their own

“Salman came up to me and said, ‘I’m going to break your other arm’, because he was going at Aishwarya...everyone had walked off and I had to handle it. It was Rishi [Kapoor] who actually pulled him aside” stories, except for Basu Chatterjee who had wanted to make ‘The Window’ into a film.

Who has a great story-telling style?

Rishi Kapoor. He was skirting some things when he was telling me the story, but [Rishi’s wife] Neetu was there, so she said, ‘Eh, why aren’t you saying that?’ Akshay narrated his on a chartered air flight back from Chandigarh.

He has many stories. One of them that didn’t make it was about his grandmother and the Paranthe Wali Galli in Chandni Chowk. Juhi [Chawla] spoke about her mother’s [fatal] accident. I would have liked Karisma [Kapoor] to

have been in the book. I’m sentimental about her and Hrithik [Roshan] because I saw them as kids and they were creating what I had written [Fiza]. They are warm when I meet them, but I’ve realised when a project ends, you leave.

You can’t get possessive about them.

Why did you need to detox?

I wrote reviews for 27 years. I left ToI because it wasn’t the same, and I wasn’t cut out for the [Filmfare] awards. They were death. Nine years. I would give all the credit [for the award] to [group president] Pradeep Guha, while I was the Kathakali dancer there, going mad.

The last year that I was there, in 2002, I had an accident [before the awards].

It happened because I went to invite Raakhee, my driver was upset that it was late, and boom [I had an accident]. I had to go through surgery and my arm was in a cast. My colleagues asked me to come for the function. What I had to do was cueing–this one is coming in, so that one had to be there. It all had to be politically right.

What happened at the function?

Salman Khan came up to me and said, ‘I’m going to break your other arm’, because he was going at Aishwarya Rai [Mohamed, in his role as editor, had stopped Khan from going up to Rai].

Her brother and everyone had walked off and I had to handle it. It was Rishi [Kapoor] who actually pulled him aside. Salman then told me, ‘Maroonga.’

It was horrible.

After the event, there was a Fardeen Khan party. I was sitting exhausted among a flood of people and... my arm was paining. All my colleagues open www.openthemagazine.com 59

had vanished. I suddenly saw myself in this long-distance shot, sitting there alone. I decided, ‘It’s not worth it.’ Nobody cared, though I’d done the whole bloody ballet—Swan Lake.

What do you think was your most memorable awards show?

1996, it was traumatic. The police turned off the power while Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Lucky Ali were performing, Madhuri Dixit was on the stage. Then, there was 1998 when Rekha performed to Umrao Jaan and we cut to Amitabh Bachchan—I thought that was quite clever.

While you were Filmfare editor, you continued being the film critic for TOI. How did you juggle the two identities?

I was a two-in-one system. If I wrote a bad review, then went to interview a film personality two months later, I would be spoken to like the critic was a third person. It was like having a split personality. I remember walking out of JP Dutta’s office. I told him, ‘You’re talking about me.’ For the stars, I was strange. I came across as Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde.

You were the most powerful film journalist for years. Did the stars fawn over you?

Once an editor asked me, ‘Don’t you miss the sense of power?’ It struck me then that I had power. I was blessed that I didn’t have to go through a typical journalistic struggle. My family went through hard times, but by the time I settled into journalism, I was okay. Journalism was pocket money.

Maybe, I was an odd kettle of fish for the stars. They would make all kinds of overtures for the reviews. At Evening News, I remember I was looking at the time once, and an actor told me to take his Rolex. I was like, ‘Yeah sure [sarcastically]. I have one at home and this one is better, it’s a Cartier.’

What about the accusations of bias in your reviews?

Yes, but I’ve always liked good people—Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol. It didn’t affect me if people thought I was corrupt. The agony and ecstasy I feel while watching a 60 open

movie transmits through the review. I wouldn’t have lasted as a critic otherwise. I felt happy I was writing on cinema. I was applying the knowledge I had since I was a kid... The sense of power was for my company. I wanted to get them exclusives, the best covers, the best star attendance. How could I have used the power for myself?

But many showbiz journalists love the access of walking into a superstar’s home or being a confidant...

I’m a fan boy. The first time I interviewed Amitabh Bachchan was in 1982 when he was shooting for Coolie in Bangalore. He wasn’t giving interviews then. It was in his cottage at Taj West End (hotel)…

Before the Coolie accident?

Yes, it was his last interview before the punch, so it became big. So when I went to this loo in his cottage, I

“When I moved to DNA, I was in a strange position. Karisma was having trouble in her marriage and since I’d made Fiza, everyone felt I should... get an interview. It doesn’t work that way” thought, ‘Amitabh Bachchan ke loo mein piss kar raha hoon.’ It was the kind of feeling you have on meeting The Beatles. Paul McCartney was the first interview in my life. I couldn’t top that.

I got the scoop when I was a trainee in 1977 at ToI because my friend knew someone in Qantas. The interview happened at the airport lounge and when I shook McCartney’s hand, I felt like a teenaged groupie. So there was an iota of that feeling for Mr Bachchan.

There is a fan thing, but as I grew older, I enjoyed few interviews. Brad Pitt, George Clooney. In those days, it was difficult to get access to a Hollywood actor. Now they are all over the place in PR-driven interviews.

That doesn’t excite me. I wouldn’t even go out to meet Robert DeNiro at one of these things. The thrill for me was

running after him in Russia and getting five minutes. It was about the exclusiveness.

What was your first Bollywood interview?

Raakhee (laughs), for a Filmfare cover story. To be a film journalist, you have to love the movies, you have to be a bit star-struck. Yet if I went to meet Raakhee, I knew so much about her, including her dirty dance in a film like Paras. I’d have this trivia in my head, so the stars would be kicked. When I first went to meet Raakhee, I was told that I couldn’t do the interview that day because she was standing on her head.

Yoga?

Yes. So the next day, I was called over to try her famous fish [dish]. Bosky [Meghna Gulzar] was a kid and quite the preener... Every star likes you when you meet them, but if you are enthusiastic at your job, they get threatened.

You can’t go to stars thinking they’re super-gods or that they’re dumbbells. You can’t be overawed. The only time I felt trembly was when I was a kid and first met Gulzar. I liked his films so much.

When did your equation with the stars change?

ToI wanted a certain attitude in reviews —pro, pro, pro. I’m not blindly pro.

The last review I wrote there was in 2002 for (Ram Gopal Varma’s) Company. Then I became Mid Day’s film critic. Until then, the readership didn’t dip at all. But when I moved to DNA, I was in a strange position.

Karisma Kapoor was having trouble in her marriage and since I had made Fiza, everyone felt I should be inside her room and get an interview. It doesn’t work that way.

Similarly, I knew Mr Bachchan’s family. He had landed in hospital and I was the only one who had access.

Pressured like crazy, I wrote a benign thing like how he was cracking jokes from his hospital bed. The Bachchans saw it as a breach of faith in our friendship. The day I walked into DNA when the report came out, it was like that scene in No One Killed Jessica when everyone in the newsroom claps for Rani [Mukerji]. Later, Mr Amar Singh called 13 JANUARY 2014

me from Abhishek’s cellphone and accused me of doing this and that. He said, ‘Now you have to rework your equation with this family.’

How did the Bachchans react?

Mr Bachchan didn’t say much but Jaya was obviously upset. She said, ‘You came in as a friend but did this.’ I said mea culpa. I later moved to Hindustan Times as its National Cultural Editor for two years. I left because Vikram Bhatt wanted to start a film with me.

In that period, interaction with my so-called friends in the industry ripped. I suppose it was because I was no longer (pauses) useful in any capacity... I thought, ‘Hey, they laughed at all my jokes, thought I was good company. Wasn’t I an individual?’

The classic example of knowing when you are not in the Bollywood favour list is by those wretched bouquets on your birthday. Bouquets shrink, so everyone from the elevator boy to your cook ask you, ‘Kya hua?’

You get a couple from your genuine friends, and maybe from those who have forgotten to strike you off the list.

You feel bad, but you can handle it.

Who stayed on as friends?

My genuine friends have been Rishi Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Manoj Bajpayee and Karan Johar. I’ve had a steady lovehate relationship with Ram Gopal Varma. But others who I imagined to be close, like Dimple Kapadia, said, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ The realisation that you weren’t a person to them is tough to take... and maybe, you’ve done it yourself. Suppose a star was popular and had skidded… But I feel I would have maintained the same friendship.

This feeling of not being considered as an individual by film stars comes from being too close to them.

Emotionally close. I’ve been through three tough breaks. Salim Khan was one, then Gulzar, then the Bachchans, Jaya, specifically.

Why did you become emotionally close?

Perhaps, because I didn’t have a family and was looking for a substitute.

There was an emotional lacuna. Actors give you that lethal line, ‘You are fami13 JANUARY 2014

ly, yaar.’ I looked for warmth and it was given. But it changed when I wasn’t useful. I’m being upfront. This is my point of view; who knows how the other side sees it. I felt violated.

I was brought up in a traditional disciplined way by my grandmother. Her philosophy was, ‘Never take a favour.’

If anyone gives you Rs 100 as an Eidi present, give back 200. I was always careful with my friendships. So I’m indebted to no one, from Mr AB to Z. And Mr Bachchan’s blog about serving me ‘exclusive and expensive’ wine was such a joke. The Bachchans owe me and they know that.

The detoxification took... nearly two years. I took long walks. I tried theatre, books and documentaries. I’ve not been satisfied even though I’ve done one play, two books, three documentaries... I am writing a novel now and I definitely want to make a feature film.

“I was always careful with my friendships. I’m indebted to no one... And Mr Bachchan’s blog about serving me ‘exclusive and expensive’ wine was such a joke. The Bachchans owe me and they know that” If you went through detox, why did you go back for a fix with Faction?

That’s why I said, ‘No sequel’. Faction is my last connection with this industry.

Among the stars you’ve known, which ones had striking personalities?

Well, they weren’t always successful—like Jiah Khan... She wrote poetry, made video films, worked for the UN. She was a disturbed soul. Do you mean a personality I’d enjoy travelling in a train with?

Or marooned on a desert island?

(Laughs) Shah Rukh Khan till he became an entrepreneur. Now you have to talk to him about the IPL and whatever else he’s doing. He’s a great conversationalist... See, there is a rule: actors are best during their struggling days.

The moment they reach the ‘we are

known’ stage, they don’t need you.

One girl I wish I’d known, but haven’t met is Pooja Bhatt. I met her father [Mahesh] many times, he’s quite a Bhatt-dose (laughs). You can be stuck on an island with Salim Khan. He’s a great raconteur. I’ve also enjoyed talking to Tabu and Shabana Azmi, though she drove me nuts during Tehzeeb. She’s made a difference to cinema. And Smita [Patil] who was in my college. She was very vulnerable.

Do you look back at directing as a mistake?

No, I’m damn good at it. My shot-taking, mise-en-scene are far better than what’s going on. I’m really proud of Fiza, then Tehzeeb. Fiza was important because it was a minority take. The reviews ended up being more about me than the film. Silsiilay had too many problems because of interference.

Journalism would have sucked me dry and I would have probably have jumped off a cliff if I hadn’t directed Fiza and written Mammo.

You wrote Amitabh Bachchan’s biography To Be Or Not To Be in 1999, but by 2008, both of you were exchanging verbal barbs. Few biographers have fallen out like this with their subject.

There’s Paul Theroux. Not that I’m Theroux, but well, maybe Mr Bachchan is as important as V S Naipaul. Fallen out? I don’t know. In any case, that’s a very long story.

What’s the status today?

When something breaks, it damages you. Till today, I’m wracked by nightmares. I wake up, yelling, ‘What the fuck? What were you dreaming about?

Stop it.’

If you ask me, I wouldn’t do [film journalism] again. It’s too demanding because you’re dealing with the real and unreal, a saga of sorts. I wish I had gone into academia and lived in Devonshire. That would have been fun, intellectually stimulating. n Faction: Short Stories by 22 Film Personalities, edited by Khalid Mohamed is published by Om Books International, Rs 395 open www.openthemagazine.com 61

ritesh uttamchandani

CINEMA

The Second Life of Chunky Pandey Leading man and the hero’s best friend in the early 1990s, Pandey went to Bangladesh when his career was on a decline and became a superstar. In the past couple of years, Pandey has made his way back to A-list Bollywood, albeit with silly films Shaikh Ayaz

C

hunky Pandey is famous, and it has nothing to do with his acting. He is famous because he hangs out with Shah Rukh Khan. And, because he is everywhere–a smileyfaced presence at private dos, success parties and store launches. Who can doubt his excellent PR skills? He can put his arms around an event photographer’s shoulder and persuade him to let him take a look at his camera: “Dost, yeh waala picture use mat karna.”

But this does not mean Pandey is vain. In fact, he turns up at events quite often in what look like non-branded clothes. Next morning, the popular celebrity website Pinkvilla will carry a picture of Pandey or not, depending on what he is wearing. Bandra export surplus stuff? Drop him.

Pandey is a good sport. He can take rejection and humiliation. He knows how to laugh, particularly at himself.

He once called himself “a national treasure” before apologising to say that he meant “a national disaster”. Recently, he complained: “After Housefull 2 and Bullett Raja, I thought fans will run after me for autographs. But nobody recognised me.”

Does it matter that Pandey has taken to puerile roles in low-rent sex comedies in which he shows up in velvet suits and synthetic rugs, mumbling, ‘I am joking’? Many see more hamming in it than humour. But, apparently, there is a smart reason for taking up such corny stuff. He explains, “Whatever character I now play should appeal to a five-year-old. All human beings have a child in their heart. If I can make that child laugh, then it means I have succeeded in reaching out.”

After nearly 80 films and 25 years, Chunky’s awaiting real recognition.

13 january 2014

He is counting on Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Dibakar Banerjee and “Stevenwa Spielbergwa” to take a cue from Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bullett Raja and tap his potential. “I bumped into Vishal and Anurag,” he says, “who had just seen Bullett Raja’s promos and said, ‘Chunks, you are fab. We couldn’t recognise you.’ I’m ready for this kind of cinema.” Working with Dhulia was an eye-opener for Pandey, who showed flashes of talent in Tezaab, Aankhen and other two-hero hits of the 1980s and 90s as the leading man’s friend.

With Bullett Raja, he was desperately hoping for a revival. “This guy’s dark,

“Whatever character I now play should appeal to a five-year-old.

All human beings have a child in their heart. If I can make that child laugh, then it means I have succeeded in reaching out”

funny and flamboyant. He’ll dance and make merry but, then he’ll go bam, bam, bam–start killing people. He’s that bad,” he says, talking about his character Lallan Tiwari who, some reports say, Dhulia wrote especially with Pandey in mind. “When he showed me his older photograph,” the director told The Times of India, “in which he sported a thin moustache, I told him that he looked like Salvador Dali.”

In hindsight, Pandey’s earlier films are more surreal than Dali—their songs, even more so. Tutak tutak tutiya (with Rajesh Khanna and Om Shivpuri making expressions totally unrelated

to the vibrant Bhangra beats) is something of a YouTube legend. The song Jhatka oh haay jhatka, though not as popular, has lines that go: ‘Gale mein aake atkaa.’ By far, his biggest chartbuster was Oh laal dupatte waali with Govinda and him, in matching outfits, demanding a girls’ name.

But somehow it was Tutak tutak tutiya that stuck in my mind. I was humming it all the way to Chunky’s house.

“People went to see the film only for this song,” he recalls. “There are two versions of it. By Bappi Lahiri, the God. It was picked—not picked, borrowed— from a Punjabi song. The film—it was Ghar Ka Chirag (1989)—was also not bad. It had me and Rajesh Khanna. I was, incidentally, the distributor of the film. So I know it did quite okay.”

Does he look back at his older stuff with horror—or fondness? The memory of those earlier films does something to him. He smiles in nostalgia: “Main Tera Tota, remember? And Saat Samundar Paar? When I go to clubs, they will sometimes play that song.

People still go mad. Do you remember So Gaya Yeh Jahaan from Tezaab? It almost got cut from the film. The producer and distributors felt the song was too slow. But director N Chandra said, ‘Nothing doing.’ He was right. People went crazy after Ek Do Teen but So Gaya Yeh Jahaan survived.”

He talks about his famous pairing with Neelam Kothari. “Me and Neelam.

Me and Sonam. Of course, Neelam was also Govinda’s heroine, but our pairing was special.”

Chunky, whose wife Bhavna is now “best friends” with Neelam, was a fan of the actress when he was starting out in the late 1980s. Chunky is 51 now.

She, 45. open www.openthemagazine.com 63

“When I signed my first film, I asked my producer, ‘Who’s the heroine?’ He said, ‘Neelam.’ I couldn’t believe my luck.” How he got that offer is a classic ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ nugget.

Chunky was at a party at the Holiday Inn hotel, “totally drunk”. He went into the washroom and emerged with a film offer. “I met this man in the toilet who said, ‘I am a producer. I just made Ilzaam with Govinda.’ Was I hallucinating? No, it was true. The man was Pahlaj Nihalani.” Nihalani gave him one of his career’s biggest hits, Aankhen (1993). The film established him as a comic star, an image he has had to fight all his life. After Aankhen, Pandey should ideally have been swamped with work. But that didn’t happen.

He was shocked to find there were no producers waiting outside his house to sign him. “I was offered hero ke bhai ka role and some shit. I said, ‘Boss, not happening.’”

He accepted whatever films that came his way for money. He became rich and proved to be wiser at investment decisions than career moves.

“Touchwood,” he says, his posture suggesting a deep satisfaction at achieving at least some kind of financial success.

“I invested in property which has appreciated over the years.” He was charging Rs 15-20 lakh a movie those days.

“At 20 lakh you could buy a two-bedroom flat in Bandra in 1989. Now, stars charge Rs 20 crore and still can’t afford a flat here. If you count inflation, we were better off.”

In 1995, he was offered his first Bangladeshi film. His running joke with his Tezaab co-star Anil Kapoor is: “You went to Hollywood. I went to Bangladesh. Hisaab barabar (we’re level).” Chunky was hailed as Bangladesh’s Shah Rukh Khan. “My films used to release on Eid,” he says. Bangladeshis were “excited and curious” to have an Indian actor in their midst. On his first day, he got a taste of Bangladeshi hospitality. “There was this one spot boy who was very excited. He asked me, ‘Sir, tea/ coffee?’ I said, ‘Tea, please.’ In his excitement, he mixed the tea and coffee together,” he laughs. Kidding, isn’t he?

Pandey pinches his throat, “No baba, I swear it happened.”

64 open

snapshots from a 25-year-old career (clockwise from top left) Pandey in a still from Housefull 2; with Govinda in Aankhen where he was second lead; and Bullett Raja

Bangladeshi films, like south Indian cinema, were full of attractive buxom women. He once had to lift a heroine who weighed 150 kg. “I’ll get a slipped disc,” he complained to the director and suggested they get a ‘crane’ to lift her. Between 1995 and 1997, he acted in six Bangladeshi films. When he returned, Bollywood had changed.

“The multiplex era had come in. Two generations of kids didn’t know who I was. Once, a little kid came up and said, ‘Uncle, are you an actor? What’s your name?’ That disturbed me.”

In 2003, he signed Qayamat with Ajay Devgn in the lead, but it was Ram Gopal Varma’s D that promised to use him well. “I remember asking Ramu, ‘Have you ever seen a film of mine? If you have, you won’t think of casting me as a gangster.’ He said he had seen Aankhen 30 times. ‘I believe in shock casting,’ he said. Thank God, people weren’t shocked.”

He misses working with his Aankhen co-stars Govinda and Kader Khan but sees Sajid Khan as their possible replacement in his life. “Don’t mind me saying this: Sajid is Kader Khan

aur Govinda ka baap,” he says of his Housefull series director. “He is very spontaneous. He’ll tell you something.

But once the camera is on, he’ll make you do something that wasn’t there in the script.” Of today’s actors, Riteish Deshmukh reminds him most of Govinda. “Like Govinda, Riteish is also good at mimicry,” he adds.

Chunky is friends with Govinda, just as he is friends with Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan. “Salman, I know from the time we were training [to be actors] with Daisy Irani. He is now related to me. My niece Seema is married to Sohail,” he says. He clarifies that his friendship with Salman and Shah Rukh is unconditional. “A friendship is never about what they can do for you. Once you start benefiting from them, then that’s not friendship— that’s an arrangement.”

He says he has never taken a ‘favour’ from his famous friends, though he agrees that he could have handled his career better. “No regrets, and still so many regrets because an actor’s life”—he pauses for the right word—“is so full of frustrations. We are all frustrated souls.” n 13 january 2014

CINEMA Kerala Loves Kim The unlikely popularity of one South Korean filmmaker among Malayalee cinephiles SHAHINA KK Dear Kim, I am one among the numerous fans you have around the world. I could be the only fan of yours who has not managed to see a single film of yours. I wonder if you have heard about Kerala, a South Indian state. You have a huge fan following here.

Internationally acclaimed film makers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Shaji N Karun hail from this place. I write this from Illikkunnu, a faraway village in one of the hilly districts of Kerala. I have read a lot about you and your films through magazines and newspapers. I have read in newspapers that your films draw huge crowds at film festivals in Kerala. Film festivals are held in cities far away from our village. Even though it is expensive to go for film festivals, a group of us plan to attend one every year. But when the time comes, something or the other comes in the way of our plans. This is because, as daily wage labourers, our lives are tied to the fluctuating market prices of ginger and pepper.

The audiences in the city are lucky. They get the opportunity to watch great movies.

I write this to tell you that your films do not reach the villages. The same is the case with Indian art house films. This letter is not an attempt to find a solution to such issues. I write this because of the disappointment I feel in not being able to see a single film made by you. We have been trying to access at least the DVDs of your films. We could not find any. Dear Kim, I request you to kindly send me DVDs of some of your films.

Kindly consider this as a plea by a village bred Kim Ki Duk fan.

Hoping that you are able to make many more great films, Ajimon KS

A

director Kim Ki Duk, their favourite filmmaker. Their leisure time conversations are all about cinema, the French new wave, and directors like Godard, Abbas Kirostami, etcetera.

They dream of film festivals happening in cities far away and plan to attend the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) every year. But, as the letter says, it never happens for some reason or the

jimon KS is not a real person.

He is the protagonist of the 2009 short film Dear Kim, directed by Binukumar PP, which is about three youngsters living in a remote hilly village in Kerala making desperate attempts to watch the films of Korean

13 january 2014

dark soul The ‘bad guy’ of Korean cinema had the humblest smile ever seen photos A. J. Joji

other. Once, they manage to get hold of a DVD of Kim’s 1997 film Wild Animals through a friend who visits Chennai.

To their disappointment, it turns out to be a porn movie wrapped in the cover of Wild Animals. Finally, they decide to write a letter to the filmmaker requesting him to send them a few DVDs of his films. They do not have either Kim’s address or email ID, and they hardly know how to send an email. The guy at the internet café, eager to get rid of the village folk who do not even know how to use a computer, deceives them and sends the email to a random address.

The three fans, unaware that their message was never received by Kim, live in anticipation of a response from the filmmaker.

Youngsters like Ajimon are not a rare breed in Kerala. They are a product of the film society movement that swept across the state in the 1970s and 80s, through which people were exposed to classics, French New Wave and Russian art house cinema. Writings on the lives and work of Russian legends like Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, Italian masters like Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and French stalwarts like Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais were plentiful in Malayalam literary magazines. So though the story of Ajimon is fictional, there is an element of truth in it. You can find Kim Ki Duk fans in Kerala who have not even watched his movies.

The sensation was triggered in Kerala in 2005, the year the IFFK screened five of Kim’s films in the ‘retrospective’ category. His films—the acclaimed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring,3-Iron, Samaritan Girl, Bad Guy and The Coast Guard—with their enchanting beauty in each frame, their blend of mysticism, spirituality, erotic desire and unflinching violence, were a scintillating experience for the audience. In the years since, Kim’s films, such as The Bow, Time, Dream, Pieta and Moebius have been IFFK’s best crowd-pullers.

Many who express a serious passion for cinema have ceased to be Kim fans, saying his recent movies have been increasingly mediocre, and are embarrassed to see this phenomenon of overwhelming crazy love for Kim. Some 66 open

critics suspect people are not really watching his films, just blindly adoring him.

T

he fandom around Kim Ki Duk is similar to that around superstars of popular Indian cinema. The filmmaker was terribly surprised at the way people embraced him in Kerala.

A guest at the closing ceremony of the 18th IFFK in December, Kim witnessed in person the craze around his name among festival-goers. On the morning of 11 December, the day after his arrival at Thiruvananthapuram, Kim was swarmed by people on the street— probably festival delegates—for whom the sight of their most adored director was a great surprise. Many competed to take photos with him. (I too had one

The day after his arrival for IFFK, Kim was swarmed by people on the street. A few heads peeped out of a passing KSRTC bus and shouted “Hello Kim Ki Duk!” taken, though I don’t belong to the fan club.) A few heads peeped out of a passing KSRTC bus and shouted “Hello Kim Ki Duk!” Later, in an interview, Kim said he had never received such a welcome anywhere in the world, even in his own country. In Korea, he is one of the most controversial filmmakers for the amount of violence in his films. He has been called the ‘bad guy’ of Korean cinema, and has often been bashed for outrageous misogyny in his films.

“Last January, I was invited to deliver a talk on Korean cinema and the Malayalam new wave at the Korean Cultural Centre in Delhi,” says Bindu M, a film scholar and teacher at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi. The discussion, followed by a screening of the short film Dear Kim, aroused immense curiosity and surprise among the audience. “During the tea [after the screening], the Korean Center director

expressed his surprise to me in definite terms. He said, ‘Why is it that Keralites like Kim Ki Duk so much? His films are thought to be very violent in Korea and we have other art cinema directors too.’”

What can we make of this strange moment of overwhelming, hysterical, hyperbolic fandom for Kim Ki Duk? Bindu is unsurprised. She thinks the root of this phenomenon lies in the strong desire for art house cinema that has existed in Kerala since the 1950s.

“But there is something else that is transpiring in the Kim Ki Duk fandom.

While clearly belonging to the domain of art cinema, Kim Ki Duk, as many have pointed out, explores the spiritual and materialist, the moral and amoral, the city and the rural. Leitmotifs of Buddhist religious practices are often obvious in his films. To me, the Malayalee cinephilia for art cinema and the quest for parallel modernities find their place in Kim Ki Duk.” There are many ‘Kim jokes’ that do the rounds among film lovers in Kerala. One is about a group of Kim fans who go to Korea to meet the director in person, but fail to find his house, as nobody in Korea knows where he lives. The group is tired and disillusioned and about to return without meeting the director when, finally, they find a house bearing a signboard that says: ‘Beena Paul Venugopal has blessed this house’. No further confirmation is needed; they understand that Kim lives there.

The joke plays on the signboards often seen outside Catholic homes in Kerala—‘Jesus Christ has blessed this house’—but to really understand the humour, you’d have to know who Beena Paul Venugopal is. She has been the art director and curator of IFFK over a decade and is a National Awardwinning film editor. The joke implies it was she who made Kim Ki Duk a phenomenon in and around the country.

“For God’s sake, please believe me, I am not responsible for this frenzy of love for Kim,” says Beena. “I met him for the first time when I went to Korea for an international editing workshop a couple of months [ago]. He was staying in the same hotel [as I was]. I met him in 13 january 2014

deity At the International Film Festival of Kerala, Kim Ki Duk was mobbed by fervent fans

the lobby and invited him to Kerala for the 18th International Film Festival. He could hardly follow English and only understood the word ‘Kerala’. He was very happy to hear the very name of our state and later his translator agreed to come to Kerala for IFFK.”

F

ilm scholar C S Venkiteswaran

has an interesting theory to explain Kim’s popularity: “For the Malayalee male youth, whose tunnel lives are severely limited by omnipresent surveillance by an ageing population and a highly moralistic society, Kim Ki Duk offers a free world of amorality. In his films, they are free to experience and explore the potential contours of all their pent up [impulses] without any moralistic or social hindrances. More importantly, Kim Ki Duk’s is an extremely ambivalent world; it is not just misogyny, violence, lust and power that they pursue to their extremes, but also silence, stillness, spirituality, tenderness, love and care. Maybe it is this dizzying oscillation between these luring extremes that fuels the irresistible fascination for Kim’s films.”

Venkiteswaran keeps himself away from the deluge of love for Kim. He loves some of his early films, but not the recent ones. “I find his recent films a little morbid to my taste, for one has

13 january 2014

seen many of these themes being dealt with in a much more sensitive, deeply humane yet incisive manner by the likes of Im Kwon-Taek and Bae YongKyun, etcetera.”

“I don’t mind [being] called a Kim fan,” says Praveen SR, a journalist who has watched most of Kim’s films. “I would rate him among the best in the business for his mastery over the craft, [and] also for pushing the limits in what can be shown on screen and using it as a [mode] of social commentary.” As far as Praveen is concerned, it is a surprise that Malayalees who frown upon even the slightest immorality on screen stand up and cheer for Kim Ki Duk’s films, where morality is in short supply.

“There surely is an element of hype behind the hysteria witnessed this time during his visit and the screening of his latest film. There was scant media attention towards Carlos Saura or Marco Bellocchio, who are equally or even more renowned filmmakers as Kim.” But despite the hype element, Praveen thinks a sizeable chunk of the audience is truly fascinated by Kim’s craft and the way he uses it to disturb and move viewers. For those living in a society known for its repressed sexuality, watching an expression of violent passion on screen as part of a packed audience might at least provide a false sense of breaking shackles.

Many seasoned film lovers rate Kim as mediocre. His films are simple and not hard to understand; they do not offer anything very complex. Kim tells universal stories of love, passion, violence and marginalisation, betraying hardly any clues about the cultural context of the story being told.

“Most Kim Ki Duk films are either visually pleasing or thematically provocative. They are mostly simple narratives that do not demand much training in understanding cinema,” says Roby Kurian, a Malayalee living in the United States who has a passion for cinema.

KR Manoj, a young film maker and winner of this year’s FIPRESCI award for the best Malayalam cinema for his film Kanyaka Talkies, points to the mix of erotic content, violence and misogyny iced with Buddhist spirituality to explain what makes Kim’s cinema gel with the Malayalee audience.

During the screening of his latest film Moebius—an outrageously violent film, featuring castration, rape and incest— at this year’s IFFK, two or three delegates fainted and had to be taken to hospital. Yet the hall was packed and had rung with applause at the end of the film. It seems that the critics of this crazy love for Kim are right: Malayalees love to watch whatever they pretend to oppose.

I

retired from watching Kim’s films

after a screening of his 2012 feature Pieta at last year’s IFFK. The violence and misogyny in it were too much to bear. When I met him on the road last week in Thiruvananthapuram, wearing a black jacket and trousers with the humblest smile I had ever seen, it was hard to believe he was the same Kim, the ‘bad guy’ notorious in South Korea for his arrogance both in cinema and life. “Why this kolaveri (desire to kill) toward women?’ I wanted to ask him.

I could not, for two reasons. First, because he hardly follows English and I would have been unable to make him understand what I wanted to ask. And second, by the time he stopped to pose for a photograph with me, he was surrounded by a group of fans. n open www.openthemagazine.com 67

science

counting A study by University of Missouri indicates that counting, which requires assigning numerical values to objects in chronological order, is important for helping children acquire math skills

Girls Mature Faster Than Boys Female brain networks start reorganising themselves around the age of ten, while this takes another five years in males

Kids Grasp Large Numbers

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According to study in Child Development, children as young as 3 understand multi-digit numbers and may be ready for more direct math instruction when they enter school.

In several experiments, researchers from Indiana University tested 3 to 7 year old children on their ability to identify and compare two- and three-digit numbers. They found that there was significant improvement in interpreting place value from age 3 to 7, and even the youngest children showed some understanding of multi-digit numbers. They say the findings are likely due to the fact that children today are bombarded with multi-digit numbers—from phone numbers to price tags. n s the saying goes, girls attain

maturity sooner than boys. But is there any scientific truth to such a claim? According to a new study, not only do girls mature faster than boys, it occurs because of a process of ‘pruning’ of the brain.

Researchers behind the study found that as men and women age, excess brain connections are edited away, while those transmitting long-distance signals, which are crucial for integrating information, are preserved. The researchers believe that this selective process of doing away with excess brain connections while preserving long distance ones explains why brain functions improve during such a ‘pruning’ exercise. The researchers also found that in the case of girls’ brains, this march through reorganisation and pruning occurs earlier than boys’ brains.

The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex by an international group of researchers led by a team from Newcastle University in England. This research is part of the Human Green Brain project, which examines human brain develop68 open

ment. For the study, the brain scans of a total of 121 volunteers between the ages four and 40 were analysed.

The scientists found that the reorganisation of brain networks in girls occurred as early as the age of 10, but for boys it took place between the ages 15 and 20. The researchers also found that females tended to have more connections across the two hemispheres of the brain.

In a press statement issued by Newcastle University, one of the researchers, Sol Lim, explained: ‘The loss of connectivity during brain development can actually help to improve brain function by reorganizing the network more efficiently.

Say, instead of talking to many people at random, asking a couple of people who have lived in the area for a long time is the most efficient way to know your way. In a similar way, reducing some projections in the brain helps to focus on essential information.’ The researchers believe that the earlier reorganisation in girls makes their brain work more efficiently and reach maturity faster for processing environmental data. n

Pill to Kick Cocaine Addiction?

A new study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests the possibility of a pharmacological approach to weaken post-withdrawal cocaine cravings.

Researchers used rats to examine the effects of cocaine addiction on nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens, a region in the brain that is associated with addiction.

They examined a chemical receptor CPAMPAR that is essential for the maturation of synapses—the structures at the ends of nerve cells that relay signals. In their experiments, matured synapses reverted to their immature states when the receptor was removed. The goal now is to develop medicine to produce long-lasting de-maturation of cocaine-generated synapses. n 13 january 2014

tech&style

Sony Alpha 7R The world’s lightest full frame camera yet with interchangeable lenses gagandeep Singh Sapra

4k resolution 4K is the moniker used to describe a video resolution that has at least 4,000 horizontal pixels. In the consumer electronics space, 1080p is currently the most common resolution for HDTVs and front projectors, but the gradual move is towards systems that offer a 4K resolution

Vacheron Constantin w Patrimony Traditionelle Small Seconds

Price on request

Rs 124,990 (Body Only)

A classic, this watch from one of the oldest Swiss watchmakers recalls the passage of time while marking a contemporary moment. This beauty in 75 numbered pieces has a unique ground pattern to the silvered opaline dial bearing the brand’s Maltese cross and a black-painted minute track.

The case is pink gold. It has a power reserve of approximately 65 hours and is water resistant up to 30 metres. n

Sony VPL-VW500ES

T

he latest launch from Sony,

Alpha 7R, is now the world’s lightest full frame camera with interchangeable lenses. It can record at 36.4 megapixels, features a fast and intelligent auto focus, has WiFi and NFC on board, charges itself using a USB power adapter, and is portable enough to go everywhere.

The number of control dials is impressive, but the camera still reminds me of Sony’s point-and-shoot RX100II. The specs said ‘near-to-life 2.4 million dot OLED viewfinder’, and I agree it is one sharp viewfinder, but you do miss an optical viewfinder. Sony has built a great interface that appears both on its tilt screen as well as inside the viewfinder; the displays are rich and all the information is visible.

I love its fast and intelligent auto focus and new engine inside the camera that makes processing faster. The 7R can shoot full HD videos with stereo sound. The camera can deliver an

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uncompressed 1920x1080 HD stream directly to your TV set over HDMI. With WiFi and NFC on board, you can use Sony’s Android and iOS apps to remote control the camera or upload a picture that you just shot with it on social media.

Sony has thought of giving all controls to the user, but at times I feel that it has gone overboard, especially with the ISO control dial that shifts at the touch of a finger. You often end up changing the settings unintentionally while shooting. I also hate the fact that if you change your exposure compensation, the camera overrides your shutter and aperture settings. And I miss not having two memory card slots, as with a professional camera.

Overall, if you have been itching to buy a great camera that manages an auto mode beautifully as well as gives you full control of what you are doing, the 7R fits the bill. n

Rs 799,000

The VPL-VW500E home cinema projector delivers a true 4K experience at a resolution of 4096x2160 pixels. It has HDMI 2.0 on board to accommodate 4K/60P pictures. Connect it to your full HD Blu-ray disk and the 4K Reality Creation upscaler will come into play to make pictures even more realistic. You also get a high contrast ratio of 200,000:1 that offers a picture deep tonal quality. A 206 zoom powered lens with a wide shift lets you get the picture well focused, and there is no need for installing it on the ceiling. The projector can project only at 1700 ANSI-Lumens, so you need to have a special room set up for it. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 69

CINEMA

the other dhoom Regul ar Vijay Krishna Acharya, who has directed the latest instalment of the Dhoom franchise, has been involved with the series from the start.

He served as dialogue and screenplay writer for the first and second Dhoom

Dhoom 3 A fun multi-star franchise that loses out because of its single-minded focus on one star ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 Director Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn cast Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James

Caan

Score ★★★★★

if, an, Katrina Ka Cast Aamir Kh Chopra ay Ud , an ch Abhishek Bach a ishna Achary Director Vijay Kr

I

t’s great when we have our own entertainment franchises like Race and Dhoom, with babes and dudes and wheels. But it is not so great when a movie star with delusions of grandeur turns up and spoils the party.

Aamir Khan has hijacked the third Dhoom film and it’s just not fair. In what has been, so far, a lighthearted action film series, this circus ringmaster turns up and turns the spotlight onto himself for three exhausting hours.

No other lion is allowed to roar. The film is about an Indian circus act in Chicago that went bankrupt a few decades ago with the owner (Jackie Shroff) killing himself. Part of his show were his twin sons. Everyone thought he had only one son, and by keeping this information secret he could pull off some spectacular illusions.

Sahir and Samar are now all grown up but they still keep their secret and they still run their father’s circus, only now the purpose is to ruin the Chicago Banker, Mr Anderson (Andrew

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Bicknell), who took over their father’s assets. Aamir Khan plays both twins, one sharp and the other mentally challenged, so that you get to see his great Indian rope trick. He works very hard at playing the two distinct characters, and the movie devotes so much time to it that Dhoom 3 could well be an acting workshop conducted by Mr Khan for the benefit of his co-stars.

These include Abhishek Bachchan, who plays a police officer from India called in by MrAnderson to solve the mysterious robberies that are destroying his bank, and Katrina Kaif, a dancer at the circus. The Katrina character is in love with one of the twins, but dates the wrong one, so was obviously not paying attention at the workshop.

This is a well-mounted film that looks pretty and goes nowhere. It has a script, but no directorial perspective.

From a series that worked essentially as multi-star entertainment, this third edition has been ground to a halt by its single minded focus on one star. n

This is an animation series that focuses on the two obsessions of it’s young audience—fast food and digital gizmos.

Both, of course, are a lucrative part of the corporate world. The series marries our fixations on food and technology with two characters—an inventor called Flint Lockwood and the CEO he idolises, Chester V, head of a food corporation.

In the previous film, Flint invented a machine with the acronym FLDSMDFR that could turn water into food.

Unfortunately, the devise developed operational problems that caused a disaster.

But it’s still a great invention and the ruthless Chester V is trying to get hold of it.

At the moment, Chester V has Food Bar Version 8.0, and like Windows 8 it is very disappointing. So, just like Microsoft, he wants to keep updating the same lousy product. Now, he wants to steal Flint’s FLDSMDFR, to juice up his flawed Food Bar. The parallels with Microsoft and Apple are amusing, but the entertainment value of the film is based on animated fast food that walk and talk, the most horrific being Cheeseburgers that supposedly eat people.

Food is disgusting, and that’s all you get to see for much of the film. Not very palatable. n ad 13 january 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

The Same Black Dress

Gone are the days actresses got into catfights or gave each other dirty looks from across the room if they turned up at the same occasion wearing similar outfits. At Deepika Padukone’s Black & Gold party last Saturday, held to celebrate her blockbuster movie year, Gangs of Wasseypur’s Huma Qureshi and Student of the Year’s Alia Bhatt reportedly burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles when they realised they’d shown up wearing the same black dress.

The two ladies complimented each other for their impeccable taste and sportingly clicked a cheek-to-cheek selfie that Huma later posted on her Twitter account: ‘Feeling like twin sisters and not ashamed! #samedress #selfie @aliaa08 and I..’

Meanwhile, this remarkably well-attended bash saw only a handful of A-listers missing, including the Bachchans, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif. Among Deepika’s gal-pals, only Priyanka Chopra, Sonam Kapoor and Vidya Balan didn’t make it because they were all shooting out of town. From Aamir and Shah Rukh to Ranveer and Shahid and Arjun, every other biggie stopped by to celebrate Deepika’s unprecedented success.

The Beautiful Collaboration

Kangana Ranaut, who told me in an interview recently that she hasn’t enjoyed 80 per cent of the film making experiences she’s had until now, revealed that she’s finally looking forward to a movie of hers. In Chillar Party director Vikas Bahl’s Queen, Kangana stars as a simple North Indian girl who ‘finds herself’ when she takes off solo for her European honeymoon after her marriage is called off at the eleventh hour.

It isn’t so much the part or character that she swears by, but the process and experience of making the movie that she insists she thoroughly enjoyed. “People didn’t treat me with a lot of respect on many of the movies I made,” she told me. “It was probably my own fault. I was a pushover, and I was always embarrassed and scared to put my foot down.” It was after the success of Tanu Weds Manu in 2011 that she began to be seen as a bankable star, which led to offers like Krrish 3 and Queen coming her way.

“When Vikas approached me for Queen, he didn’t have a script in place. He only had 13 january 2014

an idea and said he’d flesh out the script if I’d agree to do the film,” she recounts. What followed was a “beautiful collaboration”. Director and muse developed the script “organically”, she insists, explaining that Vikas allowed her to layer her character with quirks and emotions that came naturally, and even gave her a free hand to write her own lines.

When the film opens in February, Kangana will receive a dialogue credit for her contribution to creating this part. “I know this isn’t the usual way of working, but I felt empowered and responsible for my character for the first time in my career. And I can’t imagine not working like that anymore,” the 26-year-old actress says.

Taking Matters Into His Own Hands

This young male actor who burst onto the scene some years ago, showing considerable promise, appears to have realised that it’s a difficult world out there. After a rough patch recently where his films didn’t work, ambitious projects got shelved, and newer ‘more promising’ actors landed movies he was being considered for, our gentleman in question is now reportedly rebuilding his career by creating opportunities for himself. Once considered the great big hope for indie cinema, the actor shone in his early films with reputed indie filmmakers. But they moved on to more saleable stars who were willing to dabble in their kind of cinema for street cred.

That left this guy mostly jobless and bitter.

Smartly, he’s turned producer, has a new movie coming out opposite his actress girlfriend, and is currently involved in at least a handful of projects that he’s been developing himself.

At the International Film Festival of India in Goa last month, he could be spotted in meetings with international sales agents and studio reps, working out co-productions and exploring new opportunities. At least one project between his company and a UK-based film producer was announced during the festival.

Yet it’ll take a few hits before things begin to look up for him. Abandoned by the very directors who delivered their early successes with him, he’s said to be looking for a newer batch of filmmakers whose movies he could add value to. An Indo-American film he shot for, in which he plays second lead to a Hollywood B-lister, should also release soon. Perhaps a career revival is not a distant dream after all. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 71

open space

Out of Darkness

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

Fifty-year-old Yamuna Devi, a widowed mother of four children, sits in the sun in her village at Dhobi Ghat, Kirbi Place, Delhi Cantonment, which, according to residents, has not had electricity for the last 20 years. Locals say the area has been ignored by a string of elected officials of the Bharatiya Janata party, which has long maintained a stronghold in the area, but they felt they didn’t have a choice other than to vote BJP. Earlier, when the Congress was in power, locals say they would steal electricity from municipal poles in the area, but this resulted in deaths, and the supply of electricity to the area was cut off. After the Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate NSG commando Surinder Singh was elected to power in the recent Assembly polls, locals harbour hope that electricity will return to their slum again

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13 january 2014