OPEN Magazine 15 September 2014

James Astill END OF THE CRICKET NATION

l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

Ian McEwan IN Conversation

w e e k

1 5 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 14 / R S 4 0

EXCLUSIVE THE games ranjit sinha plays

E R U T L U C T A B M O K

NEMA I C I D he HIN DOES ricature t t?

Ca -eas h t r no

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

Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai Associate Editor (Web) Vijay K Soni assistant editors

Anil Budur Lulla (Bangalore), Shahina KK, Mihir Srivastava, Chinki Sinha, Sunaina Kumar, Rajni George, Kumar Anshuman Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra senior copy editor Aditya Wig copy editor Sneha Bhura Assistant Art Director Anirban Ghosh SENIOR DESIGNERs Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh assistant Photo editor Ritesh Uttamchandani (Mumbai) Staff Photographers Ashish Sharma, Raul Irani photo Researcher Abhinav Saha Associate publisher Deepa Gopinath Associate general managers (advertisement) Karl Mistry (West),

Krishnanand Nair (South)

Manager—Marketing Raghav

Chandrasekhar

National Head—Distribution and Sales

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

All rights reserved throughout the world.

Reproduction in any manner is prohibited.

Printed and published by R Rajmohan on behalf of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd., 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad—121007, (Haryana).

Published at 4, DDA Commercial Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.

Ph: (011) 30934199; Fax: (011) 30934162 To subscribe, sms ‘openmagazine’ to 56070 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com Or call our Toll Free Number 1800 300 22 000 or email at: subscription@openmedianetwork.in For corporate sales, email ajay@openmedianetwork.in For marketing alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in For advertising, email advt@openmedianetwork.in

Volume 6 Issue 36 For the week 9—15 September 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

cover design

Anirban Ghosh

15 september 2014

arvindban

What I like about Modi’s style is his appetite for what is known in management jargon as ‘BHAG’—Big Hairy Audacious Goals (‘Tomorrow is another Big Day’, 8 September 2014). The PM’s Jan Dhan Yojna is a case in point. In less than 15 days of announcing it from the Red Fort, the Government launched it and enrolled 1.5 crore people on the first day. This sort of speed of execution is unheard of in our country.

Clarity of purpose and speed of execution are what set Modi apart from all his predecessors. ‘Incrementalism’ has done our country in.

Clarity of purpose and Modi knows incremenspeed of execution tal solutions will not are what set Modi work, given the distance apart from all his our country needs to predecessors travel. As the author has always maintained, India is changing. The young and restless people of India are no longer smitten by privileged surnames anymore. They want to see real progress on the ground. They want jobs to be able to live a life of dignity. One thing is certain, change in India is underway in a big way, and in the coming years it is only going to accelerate. I suspect Congressmen are going to be sitting on the sidelines for at least ten years, and its spokespersons will keep ranting on our TV sets, on how everything Modi is doing was initiated or conceptualised by the Congress. The fact is, how much ever we may like to be judged by our potential and plans, ultimately we will be judged by what we accomplish. Modi seems to know that and he happens to be the first PM in a long time who is demonstrating clarity of purpose and a constructive impatience to get things done.  letter of the week Checks and Balances

hundred days are not sufficient to judge any person or a political leader in office, yet it is found that the new Prime Minister is on the right track (‘Right and Radical’, 8 September 2014). Modi has the fire in him to change the political scenario that prevailed during Manmohan Singh’s rule and take the country forward. He has appointed the cream of officers

to assist him. Modi’s ten big changes mentioned in the article are noteworthy and will translate into good governance. But we also noticed that power has got concentrated with the Prime Minister only, with Cabinet ministers confined to their ministries and making fewer appearances before the media. A certain discipline on the part of ministers is necessary, but they need not be sidelined. The new

Government has had its own quota of controversies—the ordinance route taken to appoint Nripendra Misra as Principal Secretary to the PM, Smriti Irani’s qualification being questioned, scrapping of four-year undergraduate course, English taking back-seat in the CSAT examination, and 12 of 45 ministers having criminal charges against them, etcetera.

It is hoped that the Government will correct its steps, take fool-proof decisions that are welcomed by all, ensure peace and usher prosperity into the country.  my shariff

Killer Instinct

this refers to ‘The Rise of Ideological Jihadists’ (1 September 2014). Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, so on and so forth all have been killing each other from the day they began their existence.

Who are they? All are humans.

Each one of us has been trying to overpower the other by hook or crook and we give ourselves different names and to those we fight. The freedom fighters, the traitors, the Islamists, the Jihadists, the Taliban, the Communists, the terrorists, the superpower, the kingdom, the empire, the Caliphate, all are names we give each other, either to kill or conquer. Like killer bees, we are God’s experiment gone wrong—we are killer humans.

No matter where we live, in Iraq, Syria, India, USA or Israel, we kill each other and we are masters of justifying our killings too.  Danyal Syed

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

openmagazine to 56070

The Campaign Against Dual Lifetime Tax In Karnataka, some vehicle owners have launched an unusual online protest On 18 July, transport authorities in Karnataka seized 250 cars in a drive around Electronics City, an area that houses a large number of infotech companies. The crime? The vehicles were registered in other states. The drive netted a lifetime tax amounting to Rs 1 crore. Encouraged by this, the authorities have started barging into apartment complexes, even on Sundays, to seize vehicles with such registration plates. The one-time tax for a two-wheeler can be as high as

Bangalore:

15 september 2014

Rs 5,000 and for a car as much as Rs 1.5 lakh.

Perturbed by this, Waseem Memon, a techie with a jeep registered in Andhra Pradesh, posted a query on the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ Facebook page about the legality of the crackdown. The reply was that the move went against the spirit of decisions taken at a meeting of the Transport Department Council in October last year.

“It had taken a decision that no lifetime tax should be levied on vehicles plying in an-

other state for a period of three months. A non-Karnataka registered vehicle could thus be used in this state for 90 days, and non-Karnataka vehicles plying in the state that are more than two years old need not pay lifetime tax,” he says.

But the state transport department is not convinced and cites an amendment this January to the Karnataka Motor Vehicles Taxation Act which makes it mandatory for owners of non-Karnataka vehicles to pay lifetime tax in the state if the vehicle is used

for more than 30 days.

Memon made his finding public by starting a Facebook page ‘Justice for Non-KA Registration Owners’ and it already has 3,273 members.

Likewise, an online petition on Change.org has sought ‘rationalisation of road tax or allow paying annual road tax for non KA registered vehicles.’ It has more than 3,000 signatories and the group plans to submit a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee. n ANIL BUDUR LULLA

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

Aijaz Rahi/AP

small world

12

contents

10 open essay

The celeb photo leak locomotif

The jihadi chic

person of the week vijay mallya

H

Culture Kombat

18 The games Ranjit Sinha plays

End of the cricket nation?

38 lifestyle

Marriage maestros

24 ties

Modi in Japan

Flying Low How one bad venture can bring down a man who was once on top of the world Madhavankutty Pillai

ow do you become a millionaire?

Start off as a billionaire and then launch an airline. The copyright to this joke is with Richard Branson and he actually knew a thing or two about the aviation business. When he started Virgin Airlines, Branson had a highly profitable music business in Virgin Records. But then the airline bug bit him and he was forced to sell off the label for £500 million.

Branson actually put that money to good use in turning Virgin around. Vijay Mallya has not been so fortunate.

This week, United Bank of India (UBI), one of the banks in the consortium to which Kingfisher Airlines owes Rs 4,022 crore,named Mallya a ‘wilful defaulter’.

That makes it difficult for him to raise any more loans for any business. It also means that he might not be able to sit on the board of directors of any company.

Thanks to the Kingfisher debacle, Mallya has already had to sell his stakes and hand over control of his most profitable company United Spirits. He had continued to be chairman in it and that position is also under threat now. It is said that he might have to sell his stakes in United Breweries, the other major company of which he holds over Rs 3,000 crore in equity.

Mallya might manage to get a court stay to avert the immediate impact of being labelled a wilful defaulter, but the future doesn’t look promising. A man like Branson can survive near bankruptcy and bounce back because he is a serial entrepreneur. Mallya is a second-generation businessman who was handed over a

4 open

cover story

cbi

9

hurried man’s guide

30

thriving alcohol business as an inheritance. He did scale it up, but that called for a different set of skills. Scraping the bottom and then clambering up with one’s fingernails is not something that he has experience in. It is peculiar that when he ventured into the airline industry, no one considered it a misfit even though there was no synergy with his existing businesses. But the glamour associated with running an airline seemed to gel very well with his personal image and flamboyance. Kingfisher Airlines, in the manjunath kiran/afp

beginning, mirrored him in style and delivered more luxury than its competitors. There were, for example, monitors on every seat in which beautiful models showed safety instructions. But Kingfisher just didn’t make enough money because every airline was undercutting each other on fares and it had to keep prices competitive. As the airline sank, so did Mallya as he hocked his shares in profitable companies to keep Kingfisher afloat.

After UBI, other banks might also now declare him a wilful defaulter, staking claim on his other assets.

It is interesting to imagine what could Mallya have done differently. How could he have made Kingfisher a viable business? He would have had to be like a Marwari businessman and watch the pennies ultra carefully but it would have meant taking all the glamour out of the business. And then why would he get into it in the first place? Mallya was in trouble the minute he decided to enter a business where it takes extreme cost-control to stay afloat. He is now muted in the public sphere where he so lavishly exhibited himself as a patron of the high life. If the idea of an airline had never struck him, he would still be on top of life and business. But the idea did come, the airline did launch; it is dead now and its ghost will haunt him for many years to come. n 15 september 2014

48

m

p

music

54

A folksy choir group NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

63

b arts

What next for the spymaster?

on able Pers n o s a e r n U ek of the We ■

manis

ari h te w

books

Anu Malhotra’s debut exhibition

■

f o r raising pointless objections

on Twitter to the Prime Minister’s Teachers’ Day address Verbosity comes naturally to Congress leader Manish Tewari. Just because he is short of ideas does not mean he keeps shut. After having to eat humble pie for attacking Anna Hazare over corruption some time ago, the voluble leader is back to his usual

56

Interview with Ian McEwan

game of making preposterous statements again, this time taking potshots at India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his televised address to students on Teachers’ Day. Never one to exercise much restraint in the calmest of times, Tewari stooped to a new low in political debate on the micro-blogging site Twitter with this: ‘Heard class 1 to 5 have been exempted from Prime Minister’s pravachan (sermon) on 5th September. Is it because it would be a while before they are voters?’

He also had another question to pose that he assumed would be a burning issue of high constitutional relevance: ‘Why is the Prime Minister’s September 5 pravachan not made optional for all schools and all children?

Freedom not to hear is a fundamental right.’

Now that is something one could easily say of having to put up with his frequent fulminations over non-issues.

Please gain some gravitas! n

After appearing to have said that all Indians are Hindus, Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptullah claimed that she was misquoted i d e n t i t y LE S S ON S

“If some people called Muslims ‘Hindi’ or ‘Hindu’, they should not be so sensitive because it doesn’t not affect their faith... It is not about right or wrong. It is about history” —In an interview to Hindustan Times, 28 August

turn

44

assange

Sonam Kapoor’s bimbo moment

“I didn’t say Hindu, I said ‘Hindi’. Hindi is an Arabic world, when people from India go to the Gulf or Arab countries, they are known as ‘Hindi’”

—On NDTV, 29 August

around

A Cautious Haul Over the Coals

daniel berehulak/getty images

15 september 2014

N e w D e l h i The Supreme Court’s intervention in the coal scam cases has driven home the point that morally upright practices should be employed in economic decision-making. The bench is now expected to take a call on the consequences of its order on coal blocks allocated by successive governments. But there is merit in the argument that the court should keep in mind the implications of an en masse cancellation of coal blocks. A similar intervention, it may be recalled, had hit

hard one of India’s critical sectors— telecom. On its part, the Government has said that 46 blocks should be left untouched. These blocks have mining leases and functioning end-use plants.

With the country sitting on a power crisis time bomb, the SC decision on coal blocks could have serious ramifications. An acute shortage of coal has led to a 5,000 MW power shortage in India’s northern region alone. A prudent decision by the court can offer relief to the sector. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

Av e n u e s

NAYA RAIPUR: An Epitome of a World Class Capital City

W

hen Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh on November 1, 2000, the first choice for the state capital was Raipur.

Raipur has for decades been a vibrant marketplace in central India. Yet, with an already burdened civic infrastructure, it was ill-equipped to take on its newfound role as the administrative capital of a rapidly growing state, thus raising the need for a new capital.

After a series of extensive surveys, studies by planners and Naya Raipur Development Authority officials, a consensus was reached for the state’s new capital, located 20 km from Raipur. State capitals have been historically significant therefore, the construction of the new capital—Naya Raipur—is a landmark in Chhattisgarh’s history.

Naya Raipur, the dream project of Chief Minister Dr. Raman Singh, is the first Indian city to be developed as a Greenfield Capital City in the twenty-first century. It is India’s first smart city built on sustainability that showcases the modernistic vision for the State. The city is a reiteration of the growth path chartered by the dynamic Chief Minister and is a testimony and commitment to economic and

social development.

In November 2012, President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated Mahanadi Bhawan, named after the Mahanadi River, it houses the offices of the state ministries. Residential colonies in 26 sectors spread over 64 hectares are being developed for government officials as well as the general public on a priority. Of these, sectors developed by Chhhattisgarh Griha Nirman Mandal have been already dedicated to the public. All the buildings -- residential as well as official have been developed on the Green Building (sustainable development) concept.

The city has been planned with a target population of 5.6 million by 2031.

The new capital is set to become a knowledge hub with prestigious institutions establishing their centres. A sports village, city park, water sports complex and Central Business District are an integral part of Naya Raipur. Well designed water treatment plant and decentralised sewage treatment plants make the Chhattisgarh capital, envy to other such cities across India.

What sets apart the capital is that it has been beautifully planned and executed to perfection. Naya Raipur is a seamless blend of modern technology, infrastructure with ecofriendly, green features. It promises quality infrastructure, easy access to essential amenities and services and economic opportunities for all

“Naya Raipur will be the flag bearer of a resurgent Chhattisgarh. It will reflect the rich heritage and natural beauty of the state while marching ahead to become India’s best planned and modern city” Dr. Raman Singh, Hon. Chief Minister Chhattisgarh

NAYA RAIPUR: A NEW LANDMARK I ndia’s 1st Greenfield Capital City in 21st Century l Spread over an area of 20,000 acres, with over 27% green area l Over 100 acres central business district l Swami Vivekanand International Airport, has been awarded the Best Airport (Non-Metro-city) by Ministry of Tourism l 6 - and 4 - Lane Road Network, New Railway Connectivity, BRTS Network and specially designed Pedestrian and Cycle Tracks. 75km of the road has been completed and in the second phase 60 km of road is under construction l State of the art logistics park of global standards with custom clearance facility l Remote network controlled Water Supply, Underground Electricity, Sewage, LED Street Lights, Signalling and Surveillance l A knowledge hub for proposed IIM, IIIT, Hidayatullah National Law University and number of Medical, Engineering, Arts and Science colleges l India’s 2nd largest Shaheed Veer Narayan International Cricket Stadium with a seating capacity of 60,000. l Asia’s largest man-made Jungle Safari built over 375 acres and Botanical Garden across 150 acres. l

its citizens. It is the first city in the country with 500-metre wide green belt around it.

Naya Raipur has also been selected as a model city under the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) World Bank-assisted Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP). The new capital city project is being executed in a timely and phased manner. The 8,000 hectare new city will cater not only to administrative needs but also the educational, health, recreational, industrial

and commercial demands.

It is indeed a remarkable achievement that the city will not only serve as the administrative capital but also cater to the infrastructural needs of industry and trade. The urban design of Naya Raipur is a blend of the traditional with the futuristic.

The city is also expected to generate new employment opportunities due to the government offices, business district, educational institutions and entertainment complexes.

The plan also provides for light non-polluting industries like Gems & Jewellery, Apparels and Handicrafts etc.

SMART CITY

Naya Raipur is adorned with world-class infrastructure including roads, underground electricity distribution network, drinking water distribution and drainage systems. Underground power distribution network will rid the entire city of the web of wires that mar the skylines.

Designed on the lines of Malaysia’s hi-tech capital complex at Putrajaya, Naya Raipur will have a mass transport system by building an access controlled expressway from National Highway-6 and a short railway line to the new city from Raipur and integrating the two with an intra-city Bus Rapid Transport System (BRT).

The Raipur Airport, which is only 5-7 km from Naya Raipur has direct and daily connectivity to New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Nagpur, Bhuvaneshwar, Indore, Ahmedabad, Pune and Bhopal. The National Highway 43 is on the South-Eastern boundary, whereas the NH-6 borders the North. A new railway station has been proposed on the Northern border that will form part of the transport hub which will also have a modern bus terminal. Naya Raipur would be the first green field city in India to have a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in place right from the very beginning.

supply water to the city through a network of 51 km-long underground pipelines.

The city has been divided into six zones, which are independent and decentralized for the purpose of sewage treatment.

GREEN CAPITAL CITY

Twenty-five per cent of the power needs of the capital complex will be supplied with solar power for which a 1-MW solar power station is already functional. To keep power consumption to a minimum, the streets and roads will be lit up with LED lighting system. The lights will save up to 40% energy and will be controlled through GPRS via SMS and internet, which will automatically dim and brighten the LED’s as per requirement. So far an 18 km stretch of road has been lit up with LED lights.

Raipur will draw water from river Mahanadi which, described as ‘Chitrotpala’ in Vedic scriptures has been the lifeline of the region from ancient times. The raw water will be treated in a well designed modern treatment facility and supplied through a robust distribution system. The project will be implemented in the public private participation mode.

An anicut is being built near Teela village to supply water from Mahanadi River. 29 other water bodies in the city will be inter-linked to create a master balancing reservoir, which will

The catchphrase of this century is eco-friendly and energy efficient and the city of Naya Raipur has been planned and built in accordance.

Naya Raipur boasts of many firsts in urban infrastructure development in the country, the most prominent of which is the provision of 500m green belts, which will cover around 27 per cent of the total area of Naya Raipur.

5 lakh saplings have been planted in the last three years. Small forest areas like Chandan Van and Atal Van are being developed. This have been done to enhance the natural and unspoiled beauty of Chhattisgarh Naya Raipur is dotted with 55 beautiful water bodies that will help in water conservation and recycling and rainwater harvesting.

Rajdhani Sarovar, a man-made lake spread over 75 acres has been developed opposite Rajdham Complex. Built at a cost of Rs 34.14 crore, the lake can store up to seven lakh cubic metres of rainwater.

The storm water drainage will have gentle sloping catchment zones draining in to four major streams. These natural streams shall be preserved and protected. The roadside drains would carry city storm water to the water bodies inside layer I or II of Naya Raipur.

Rainwater harvesting and use of solar energy have been made compulsory in all buildings and residential areas.

Naya Raipur is the best example of phased development and is fast becoming the model for the best urban planned city. It truly embodies what Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis meant when he said, “When we speak of quality and desirability it is not the question of one unit, but of the whole system”. n

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to the celebrity nude photo leak Fantasies came true on Sunday when the internet was flooded with nude photos of Hollywood celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence.

Unlike morphed images, it soon became clear that these were the real deal, mostly selfies shot by the celebrities themselves. The site that first featured these photos was 4chan.org, a bulletin board with plenty of anonymous users. The images immediately got picked up by other websites like Reddit.

The photos, it is suspected, were procured after the iCloud accounts of these people had been hacked into— taking it into the amThe hackers are bit of a criminal violasuspected to have tion of privacy. Besides gotten into Lawrence, celebriindividual iCloud ties whose photos got accounts using leaked include Kirsten regular hacking Dunst, Kate Upton, methods Ariana Grande, Mary Winstead and many more. Lawrence said she was horrified and asked the authorities to prosecute those who had breached her privacy. Winstead said that the photos of her were shot when she was with her husband many years ago.

Lucas Jackson/REUTERS

Some people failed to realise at first that what happened was a crime. Blogger Perez Hilton reposted the nude photos of Lawrence and Victoria Justice and then pulled it down. He

Jennifer Lawrence at the 2014 Oscars

later put up a video of himself admitting that he hadn’t considered the repercussions of what he did. The FBI has begun an investigation. Apple Computer says that iCloud is safe and has no systemic problem; and that the hackers had got into individual accounts using regular password hacking methods.

All said, the scandal has frightening implications for the privacy of anyone on the internet. Ever since cloud computing has become de rigeur, all private information is backed up online. If hackers can get hold of it, then nothing about a person is safe from those with mala fide intentions out there. n

Life in the Housing Bubble Alarm bells should ring when the IMF says that housing prices in India have fallen by 9 per cent M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

W

hat is the biggest gamble that a middle-class Indian almost inevitably takes in his life? Not marriage, because we are talking of a real financial gamble—the kind of thing that people do at the races or the casinos. And what is interesting about this particular gamble is that the gambler is not even aware that he or she is gambling. The answer: buying a home.

This is how it has usually worked— after about five to ten years of his working life, a man manages to earn enough to just about squeeze in an EMI for a flat and then diligently keeps paying it for twenty years.

During that time he sees the value of his flat going up manifold and the EMI becoming negligible as a percentage of his salary, until finally, he is the proud owner of a piece of valuable real estate that he could never have imagined owning outright.

Essentially he took money that he didn’t own to buy the property, and underpinning this decision is the gamble that its price will keep increasing. No one considers this gambling because of the perception that property prices can never go down in a country like India where demand is so huge.Unfortunately, we are now told that it is going down.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently came out with data on global housing prices. It has a graph on its website about the year-on-year growth of house prices. The graph’s title says ‘Through The Roof?’ and a line below it reads ‘House prices have gone up for most countries’.

Countries like the United States, where the real estate sector has been battered, are seeing a resurgence.

But India happens to be the country in which prices have declined the

most, by as much as 9 per cent.

That India has a housing bubble has been evident for many years now.

True, that the demand is huge with millions aspiring for their own house.

But the plain fact is that except for a narrow band at the top, the overwhelming majority of salaried people just can’t buy a house in cities like Delhi or Mumbai. Prices of flats have far overshot the rate of salary increases. In a city like Mumbai, far-flung suburbs quote in crores for tiny flats whose walls leak.

Sales are just not happening, with builders and aspiring flat buyers ranged against each other waiting to see who will blink first. But That India builders also has a housing have loans to pay off to bubble has banks and they been evident keep for years. Prices cannot their inventoof flats have far ry perpetually overshot the unsold. The bubble has to rate of salary burst, but the increases. The big question is bubble has to when? It has burst, but the taken a long question is time coming and might be when? even longer, so long as the builders can hang on. Real estate is the favourite sector of politicians to park their funds and that is a long line of credit.

A crash, whenever it happens, will be drawn across years and it will be painful. Most people will at some point get used to the idea that they might never own a house. That is not such a bad thing. At present, for an EMI that a person pays on a flat, he can rent one of double or triple the size. It might mean a better quality of life. n open www.openthemagazine.com 9

lo co m ot i f

S PRASANNARAJAN

The Jihadi Chic

T The videotape jihad has been replaced by the YouTube jihad, and the geography of revolution has shifted from Afghanistan to Syria 10 open

he forbidding Hindu Kush as

backdrop, he sits there, staring at us from that grainy video image, his beard flowing as if he is an angry mountain Jehovah. He is in military camouflage, which merges perfectly with the craggy, monochromatic landscape, and a Kalashnikov, placed just in front of him at arm’s length, is his only companion as he addresses the world in resonant Arabic. The grammar of his sentences is hate; each syllable exudes revenge and remorselessness; and the invocation of a still hungry god makes his sanguineous soliloquy the testament of a man who has pitted himself against the fears and sorrows of a world scalded by an act he vows to repeat.

This is the new radical, a figure of control, calm and stillness, talking to you from Mount Jihad.

That was then, when Osama bin Laden, depending on the angle from which you looked at him, was terrorist, warlord, prophet, revolutionary, troglodyte, coward. From his adopted homeland of Afghanistan, the site of this century’s first American war, he, an exile from Saudi Arabia, whose unholy partnership with America he abhorred, made these periodic video appearances to pronounce judgments on a godforsaken world.

For the radical Muslim youth and for those perverted legions of “America-called-for-it” glee, he was Islam’s Che, and the caves of Tora Bora were his private Bolivian jungles. For them, the video image of the guerilla jihadi was as inspiring as Alberto Korda’s iconic photograph of Che, still immortalised on T-shirts and posters. He was, for them, an epitome of renunciation and subversion, and in his words merged anti-Americanism, a Quranic alternative, and medieval fury of a deranged mind.

Osama chic had a shorter shelf life. In the end, he, a fugitive, was denied the mythology of martyrdom. It was a subhuman finale, and the burial apparently a watery pastiche of Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal, without the suspense.

The videotape jihad has been replaced by the

YouTube jihad, and the geography of revolution has shifted from Afghanistan to Syria. There is no longer the jihadi-in-chief talking to you from Al Jazeera channel, the Emir with the Quran in one hand and the Kalashnikov in the other. Here is the new image of the jihadi chic, a click away on your computer screen: He is in black robes and black mask, a Halloween phantom of the desert, holding a knife; and kneeling on his right is a man in orange robes, the colour a tribute to those who are condemned to Guantanamo Bay, an American journalist, call him James Foley or Steven Sotloff, waiting for the inevitable. Before the videotaped execution, a ritual death in slow motion, the victim transfers the cause of his death to himself, his country, his president, his history. The victim is being forced to be the owner of his murder: “Obama, your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be for the preservation of American lives and interests. So why is it that I am paying the price of your interference with my life? Am I not an American citizen?” And before the execution, the killer, periodically wagging the knife in his left hand, and in the now familiar British accent, explains himself: “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant policy towards the Islamic State… So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the neck of your people.” Then he does it.

Who is this knifer in black, the newest embodiment of jihadi cool? Most likely, he’s not a brainwashed youth from the ghettos of Arabia, driven to the battlefield by the promise of a one-way ticket to paradise. In all probability, he is someone from the West—Britain or Continental Europe or the US—answering the call of radical adventure, exchanging the middle-class drabness of suburbia for swords, guns and Allah. He is, in many ways, different from the majority of Arabs fighting for the Islamic State because he comes from open societies where his Muslim identity has never made him a lesser citizen. He is not the persecuted 15 september 2014

Al-Jazeera/AP

or the outcast. There are reportedly 12,000 Western fighters like him in Syria for the realisation of the Caliphate. The romance of being the killer and the killed—the cult of battlefield martyrdom—is a beguiling ideal of the jihadi, and this one, lured by the action elsewhere in the desert, leaves the cozy banalities of his world for the war of god. It’s fun.

His jihad is different from Osama’s only in style. Osama, unlike today’s self-chosen Caliph in Mesopotamia, did not have a nation; he had only an idea of justice. The state of homelessness, the quest of the wandering prophet, his easy migration from the riches of Arabia to the trenches of Afghanistan, added to his radical aura. (Still, it must be said that the denouement of the Osama legend featured an ailing fugitive in disguise running for his life, from caves to frontier towns to a safe house in Pakistan to meet his American nemesis.) The new jihadi is at home; the Islamic State, which, comprising parts of Iraq and Syria, is as big as Jordan, with a population of around six million. In the Osama era, revenge, the provenance of which is as old as the Christian era, was a combination of the modern and the medieval— and spectacular. It was apocalypse as breakfast show. For the new jihadi, the hooded butcher, the dangling head of the infidel is the highest trophy.

(Remember the hanging body of William Higgins, an American marine captured and killed

by Hezbollah? So, they haven’t come a long way, after all.) Faith freezes conscience and strengthens the hand that wields the knife, for who else can kill with such rhythmic slowness catering to the so-called torture-voyeurs of the internet?

The old and the new, though, are united by the Great Shaitan that is America. Long before Osama, there was the founding father of the Great Islamic Revolution, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s choicest imageries were deployed for the demonisation of the Western enemy. For Osama too, history was an inherited lie, and only retaliation would repudiate it: “America is struck by Almighty God in one of its vital organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed.” The new jihadi too

An American journalist is the easiest prey for the Western jihadi in the thrall of a blood carnival in the most exotic location

15 september 2014

seeks blood for the sins of America. In the history of revolutions of all varieties, including the Caliphate fantasy of the Islamic State, an enemy is aprerequisite, and Christendom, reduced to America’s size for the comprehension of the idiot-killer, fits the bill. An American journalist is the easiest prey for, well, the Western jihadi in the thrall of a blood carnival in the most exotic location.

This carnival, brought to us by the videotapes we dread to look at, is still not as spectacular as what happened in New York 2001. The reality of the Islamic State has not sunk into the conscience of the free world—or the one who claims to be its leader. Once there was a war for freedom; today we watch in impotent rage the butcher’s video art. n

(Top to bottom) Osama bin Laden in an Al Jazeera broadcast; the last moments of captured American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff

open www.openthemagazine.com 11

open essay

By James Astill

IS IT THE END OF THE CRICKET NATION

?

India’s Test humiliation in England tells a bleak story of the future of a great Indian obsession

‘W

e remember not the score

and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination.’ To read Neville Cardus, the son of a Manchester prostitute and cricket’s great scribe, is to realise what magic has fallen victim to the game’s globalisation, with its 24hour TV saturation, relentless internaJames Astill tional tournaments and identikit styles of cricket talk and cricket play. The is the Political great, evolving drama of a long-awaitEditor and the ed Test series; the cultural clash that inBagehot ternational cricket once was, pitting not columnist of just nations but contrasting sorts of geThe Economist. nius against each other—much of that He is the author has been lost. The more cricket we have, of The Great the flatter and more forgettable it gets.

Tamasha: Cricket, Nowhere is this reduction more apCorruption and parent than in Indian cricket. That is not the Turbulent only because the saturation on Indian Rise of Modern television is so extreme or the memory India for cricket becoming so short. Ironically, perhaps, is because in India the magic that Cardus described was so intense. For decades, the results of India’s best cricketers were poor; yet their claim on the imagination of millions of Indians was huge. The two Vijays, Merchant and Hazare, Polly Umrigar, Salim Durani—they won only a handful of Test matches between them. Yet in the great series, or innings or, in Salim’s case, moments, they enjoyed, a nation danced.

In more recent times, Indian cricket fans have had a happier balance: great heroes, in Sunil, Kapil, Sachin, Rahul, Sourav, VVS, and much better results. When I left Delhi in 2011, after a cricket-steeped four-year-stay, India were ranked number one in the world for Tests and were newly-crowned ODI champions. There was, it naively seemed to me at that time, a sense of inevitability and perhaps permanency to that supremacy.

Based on the success of a new sort of cricketer, including Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, the Pathan brothers, born poor and hungry for success, we understood that India’s vast stock of cricketing talent was at last being exploited. Meanwhile, the stocks of other cricket countries were shrinking—including in England, as evidenced by its growing reliance on public schoolboys, sons of professional cricketers and foreign imports to make a national team. The great yell, of triumph and elation, that I had heard echo around Delhi, in the seconds after Dhoni bludgeoned the winning Six at the Wankhede, was, I felt at that time, a promise of a new age of Indian cricketing domination. A new cricketing superpower was coming into being and promised to rule, not for 10 or 15 years, as the West Indies and Australians had, but maybe forever.

This was widely thought at that time. The growth of the Indian Premier League had brought a surge of foreign cricketers, coaches

and cricket writers to India, forcing them to confront the enormity of India’s sports-media revolution, its rapid spread, and the tsunami of cricketing talent it promised to unleash. I remember sitting with Shane Warne, one balmy evening in Jaipur, and hearing him marvel at the zest, skills and number of brilliant new Indian batsmen coming into view—India could easily put out two world-class batting line-ups, he reckoned, maybe more. As a fan of the Indian game—and, moreover, one who had come to see in cricket a measure of national progress—I celebrated this. I worried, for sure, about all the usual bugbears—the BCCI’s chaotic management of the game and, especially, the effect of the IPL on the international programme.

Nonetheless, a strong Indian side would be more than an inspiration to millions; it would also guarantee that cricket, including Test cricket, would continue flourish.

H

ow absurd that seems now, in the wake of the most ab-

ject Indian performance I can remember. Truly, this summer’s 3-1 Test defeat in England seemed worse to me than the 2011 whitewash, which came shortly after that triumph at the Wankhede. Then, India’s humiliation was at least somewhat salved by the grace of the triple-centurion Rahul Dravid. And in the generous ovations that everywhere in England welcomed Sachin to the wicket was acknowledgement of India’s immense standing in cricket. The losses were embarrassing; but perhaps, as an unexpectedly long hangover after the World Cup, they would soon be redeemed. But this summer was different. The England team of 2014 was much weaker than the victorious one of 2011. And there were no heroes in India’s. It was a contest between two ordinary, mid-ranking Test teams, one of which fell apart. For fans of Indian cricket, it was simply embarrassing.

Forget it, some will say. Indians don’t care about Test cricket, so let it be. They care about the shorter formats, at which the Indian team, already 2-0 up in the ODIs in England, is again demonstrating its mastery and the English their ineptitude.

But that is not good enough. If India’s Test tradition dies, cricket in India and everywhere will be much poorer for it—in both imaginative and in the end, I believe, financial terms. It would be a calamity to end cricket as we know it.

The first Test, at Trent Bridge, was an anomaly—a tedious draw, dominated by one of the worst wickets ever prepared for a five-day game in England. It was as lifeless as baked sand, produced by the Nottinghamshire groundsmen, many suspected, to rule out any prospect of an early finish. That would be a potentially ruinous prospect in this series, because of the rack-rent fees the English cricket board had charged the Counties to host the games. It was a dismal start to the series. The match ended with Alastair Cook getting a maiden Test wicket, that of Ishant Sharma, with a Bob Willis imitation, which was as good as it got. But at Lord’s, for the second Test, the series perked up, in a splendid Indian victory.

Murali Vijay, with 95 in the first innings

If India’s Test tradition dies, cricket everywhere will be much poorer for it—in both imaginative and, in the end, financial terms

15 september 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 13

alastair grant/ap

The Indian cricket team lines up at the Oval cricket ground after losing the five-Test series 3-1 on 17 August

to follow his century in Nottingham, and Ajinkya Rahane, another Indian name on the honours board at Lord’s, were in fine touch. Their performances recalled recent talk of Dhoni, at last free of the long shadows of Sachin and Rahul, having vowed to leave a new world-beating batting unit as his legacy. But on a good green pitch it was the Indian seamers who won the game; Ishant Sharma’s 7-74 in the second innings was a marvellous reminder of his mislaid promise. Meanwhile England looked even more ordinary than many of us feared they were. “Sorry, but your spinner…” chuckled my friends in the Indian press pack. They all agreed that Moeen Ali was no good.

And it was all downhill from there for the Indians. A series they had looked well-placed to win degenerated into ignominy—a 266-run loss in Southampton, then an innings defeat in Manchester and an historic thrashing at the Oval, by an innings and 244 runs. It was India’s third biggest defeat ever, and so total that even ardent England fans saw little glory in it.

Reduced to 90-9 on a good pitch on the first day, India were so bad they would have struggled to stay in at Trent Bridge.

Only some angry hitting from Dhoni got them into three figures. And when they traipsed out to field they looked spent from the start. Their heads drooped, their

fielding was poor, their throws back to the bowler were lackadaisical. It is a funny thing, to see a talented side, on the face of it the equal of this English one, behaving so hopelessly. In the press box, Indian commentators cringed or, in the case of some past greats, seethed. “If you do not want to be playing Test cricket for India, quit,” snarled Sunil Gavaskar.

What had gone wrong?

Three things were obvious, starting with the age-old Indian story of weak leadership. In Sunil Dev, a Delhi fertiliser tsar, the touring party had, it must be conceded, a rather eccentric manager. I like Sunil; he is warm, helpful and amusing, with a wellworked here-I-stand, an-honest-man-amidthe-madness, schtick. But it is doubtful he provided the sort of calm support Dhoni needed on a gruelling tour. On the contrary, Sunil, who is rarely calm, seemed unduly concerned with more footling things—such as Virat Kohli’s decision to share a hotel room with his Bollywood star girlfriend or Dhoni’s to skip net practice in order to take a break on a shooting range. Duncan Fletcher, a withdrawn and seemingly marginalised coach, was no more help. Either should have sought to restrain the Indian captain from his ultimately pointless campaign to get Jimmy Anderson sanctioned for some idiot behaviour. Meanwhile, Dhoni’s on-field captaincy

In the press box, some past greats seethed. “If you do not want to be playing Test cricket for India, quit,” snarled Sunil Gavaskar

14 open

15 september 2014

was inept at times; so was illogical faith in Stuart Binny and distrust of India’s likeliest match-winning bowler, Ravichandran Ashwin. Only the captain’s inelegant, but effective, batting saved his reputation in England.

Many Indian commentators, including Gavaskar, suspected the Indians just didn’t care enough. There was probably some truth to that. It must be hard to earn $30 million a year appearing in sugary drink and mobile phone commercials, as we’re told Dhoni does, and still prepare, play and fight as Gavaskar did. Yet there were also clear exceptions, including, to my certain knowledge, Cheteshwar Pujara, who, from an early age, had dreamed only of scoring Test runs for India. When his hero Dravid told the Indian batsmen, at the outset of the tour, that to play Test cricket in England was the pinnacle of their careers, Cheteshwar believed him. That was why, at the end of the series, he arranged a short stint with Derbyshire. Yet Cheteshwar needed that, despite his dedication, because he had had such a disappointing series; his batting average of 22 was the lowest by a regular Indian number three in England.

The biggest reason for India’s underperformance was, palpably, the team’s abysmal lack of preparation. In agreeing, after much arm-twisting by the English board, to a rare five-Test series India’s cricket bosses had signalled they were serious about the game’s longest format. But sending the team, fresh from the crash-bash IPL, to play the Test games in tight succession with only two practice games to acclimatise to English conditions in advance, showed that they were not. What followed was to a great extent predictable. Muhammad Shami, a fine bowler in Indian conditions, was at sea in English ones; he had no idea how to control the swinging ball. Pujara had some experience of English greentops; yet his game was riddled with the corruptions that technically correct batsmen such as he pick up in slog-cricket and, given the relentlessness of the schedule, there was no time to iron them out. In short, whatever blame was attached to the players in this debacle, the administrators deserved their share.

The answer may not be in the affirmative, I fear, though it will reveal itself gradually. The fiction that India, the most powerful cricket nation, takes seriously its obligation to safeguard the game’s greatest format will endure for a while. But if India’s pampered celebrity cricketers, now reared, unlike Rahul or Sachin, to play the shorter-formats, are not reconditioned to prize Tests soon, India will suffer more embarrassments abroad.

And that minority of Indian cricket fans which prizes five-day cricket as it deserves, will become yet more depleted; until the notion of the Indian board spending time and money on a format which most Indians do not particularly like and at which India, abroad at least, rarely wins, will seem ridiculous. And what then?

One of the world’s great sports-cultural traditions, connecting Virat to Salim and CK Nayudu, would have been ended.

Because an Indian game no longer rooted in the technical rigour of Test cricket would be a poor thing. For what great spinners will emerge, once slow-bowling has been reduced to serving up run-saving T20 darts? And where will be the batsmen able to play on a sticky pitch—the modern-day Vijays—when T20 has obliterated the point of occupying the crease?

If this is what the new age of Indian suzerainty, off the pitch if not on it, promises, it is a bitter shame. Those Indians, including Jagmohan Dalmiya, who fought to break the EnglishAustralian patrimony in international cricket, were right to do so; but always assuming they did not bring anything worse to the game. And in the reckless commercialisation, the corruption, the fixing, the brute juggernaut of the IPL that has folphilip brown/reuters

Duncan Fletcher, the seemingly marginalised coach, was no more of a calming influence during the tour than manager Sunil Dev

T

BCCI’s error, and India’s losses, were far from unique. In 2013, only two of the 41 Tests played were won by the away side—both against Zimbabwe. And the same combination of packed scheduling and a paucity of practice games, against the backdrop of a surfeit of crash-bash T20 cricket, is to blame. It is killing Test cricket as a contest. If N Srinivasan, the most powerful cricket administrator of modern times, cares about this as he says, he must reverse it. Only he and his supporters at the BCCI can restore sanity to the international programme and Test cricket to its former pre-eminence. Very seriously, then, the Indian board needs to ask itself a big question: does India really want to play Test cricket? he

15 september 2014

lowed, it is hard not to conclude that they have.

How self-defeating this may prove to be. Because T20, I fear, becomes a pretty poor spectator sport, as fast games go, after a while. It is too structureless. Its run gluts are too meaningless.

It owes too much to chance. Football is a much better, more competitive and enthralling short game; perhaps so are tennis and basketball. And such intruders are increasingly coming to Indian television screens. Cricket’s monopoly hold on Indian sporting affections, we can be fairly sure, is coming to an end. It will soon have to do much more to justify itself to Indian fans.

And for that reason alone, I ask, is this the time to treat Tests, the most distinctive form of cricket, or any sport, so carelessly? n open www.openthemagazine.com 15

The Games Ranjit Sinha Plays Why the CBI director needs to be investigated

By PR Ramesh and Ullekh NP

I

n Delhi’s power circles, there is a

saying that the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) typically trisects his two-year tenure for three different functions. The first phase, that of thanksgiving, would see the chief of India’s premier investigating agency pander to the whims of the ruling party that has employed him, by coddling friends and harassing rivals. In the second phase of consolidation, he would develop some autonomy after having done enough dirty jobs for the regime.

The third phase is devoted to seeking a post-retirement posting, preferably in a Raj Bhavan. Sometimes, though, this leads to controversy, as in the case of former CBI director Ashwani Kumar being named Governor of Nagaland by the UPA Government last year.

“Since the CBI has become a political tool in the hands of the Government of the day, it is natural for its director to expect something in return for all things he does to keep them stable and happy,” says a senior intelligence officer, referring to controversies surrounding cases handled by the agency. “CBI chiefs end up being the crisis manager of the Centre,” he explains when asked how the UPA I—a minority government—managed to stay in power as though it was a majority government -- by twisting the arms of political rivals by “super-manipulating” cases.

“All this is an old story. There is nothing 18 open

new about it,” says a Home Ministry official about the current CBI chief Ranjit Sinha having initially pursued cases against BJP leaders such as Amit Shah and others and later having refused to play ball when it came to lassoing the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi in an encounter killing case. “These are various stages in the life of a CBI director. It is the same in almost all cases except for the difference in longevity of each stage,” he chuckles.

Times have changed. Under Sinha, CBI is more than a political tool for the coalition in power to batter opponents into submission. It has also become a powerful instrument to settle scores between corporations by vilifying opponents through cases. The most famous example is that of industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla. In October last year, the CBI registered an FIR against him and his company Hindalco for securing the mining rights of Talebira II coal block in 2005 through dubious means. In February this year, it rubbished reports that it was about to wind up the case for lack of evidence. The CBI had earlier alleged that Birla had entered into a criminal conspiracy with former Coal Secretary PC Parakh, who was also named in the FIR, to change the ownership of mining rights. All these came in the midst of a paralysis that has set in, hurting investor sentiment and the ease of doing business.

In the face of outrage and slide in government-business ties, the PMO was forced to come up with a statement that the allocation of two blocks in Odisha was “appropriate and based on the merits of the case”. A few days ago, the CBI dropped all charges against Birla and glibly issued a statement: ‘The evidence collected during investigation did not substantiate the allegations levelled against the persons named in the FIR.’ Then what were all the bluster and threats of last year all about?

Without doubt, the CBI has been allowed to be used by business houses for their petty games of one-upmanship and cover-ups. The plot has thickened with reports suggesting that he met representatives of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) at a time when the agency was meant to re-investigate charges against Reliance Telecom and Swan Telecom in the 2G spectrum allocation case. According to the visitors’ list seen by Open, two ADAG officials met the CBI director 50 times in 15 months at his official residence—2 Janpath Road—in Delhi. Sinha, according to the visitors’ diary, had also met alleged hawala operator and Kanpur-based meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi at his official residence at least 90 times in the past 15 months.

Reports have quoted the visitors’ diary at the CBI chief’s home. An NGO, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, one of the 15 september 2014

arvind yadav/hindustan times/getty images

Ranjit Sinha, Director of the CBI

PIL petitioners on whose plea 122 licences for 2G spectrum were cancelled by the apex court, also made similar accusations.

After facing heat over victimising Birla, for sending wrong signals to Indian industry and for lowering investor confidence even further early this year, Sinha came under sharp attack last month from then CBI special public prosecutor UU Lalit for attempting to derail a case against Reliance Telecom and three accused ADAG directors in the 2G spectrum allocation case. According to reports, he questioned the intentions of the CBI director and DIG in-charge of 2G investigations, Santosh Rastogi, for sending a ‘draft’ request to him, seeking further investigation of the case against Reliance.

Lalit came down heavily on the new CBI draft which said ‘Clause 8 of USAL (unified access service licence) guidelines should apply only to licences and not to the applicants’. He held that such a position would weaken the case against ADAG. This CBI draft was “tantamount to weakening of the case”, Lalit had said. The

Congress leaders had hatched a conspiracy to link Modi to the Ishrat Jahan encounter death case.

Sensing winds of change, Sinha refused to play ball Anil Ambani-led company reportedly used Balwa’s Swan Telecom to acquire licences and frequency beyond its permissible limit. The 2G allocation case involves the undercharging of telecom companies by the Manmohan Singh Government for licences bundled with airwaves used for services. Former Telecom Minister A Raja, DMK leader Kanimozhi, some former bureaucrats, corporates and their top executives were named in FIRs and chargesheets filed by CBI in the 2G case. Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India had in a report pegged a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore in this allocation—the UPA Government had contested this figure.

After these reports came out, lawyer Prashant Bhushan also hit out at the CBI

Kumar Mangalam Birla

scott eells/bloomberg/getty images

director and claimed that he had received the copy of the visitors’ register of the CBI director’s residence. He called the details “very disturbing”, especially because the visit happened at a time when Sinha made “attempts” to file an affidavit which sought to dilute the 2G scam charges against ADAG. Lalit, who has opposed the affidavit, is now a judge of the Supreme Court. Sinha contended that it was an internal note, and didn’t constitute the final view of the agency.

Other names on the visitors’ list at Sinha’s official home included Devendra Darda, son of Congress MP from Yavatmal, Vijay Darda, an accused in the coal scam along with his brother Rajendra Darda over allotment of coal blocks to Nagpur-based businessman Manoj Jayswal and others. “In fact, all this rapid closure of coal allocations cases by the CBI may be an indication of the intentions of the CBI director. There could be a reason,” says a government official. CBI has denied any wrongdoing in these cases.

The coal allocation scam, or ‘Coalgate’, which engulfed the UPA Government two years ago, involves allocation of 194 coal blocks to public and private enterprises for captive use in a non-transparent manner between 2004 and 2009, mostly under lobbying by politicians.

A CAG report which created massive uproar said the absence of a competitive bidding mechanism while allocating coal blocks led to windfall gains for corporate houses and a loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore to the exchequer, raising questions about crony capitalism. Lawyer Bhushan had also charged CBI Director Sinha, a 1974 batch IPS officer of the Bihar cadre, of scuttling the filing of a chargesheet against former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran in the Aircel-Maxis case. After much delay, the CBI filed a chargesheet

The agency has become an instrument to settle scores between corporations, and the most famous example is that of industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla 20 open

15 september 2014

against Maran and others last week claiming he and his family had received a bribe of Rs 742 crore for coercing entrepreneur C Sivasankaran to sell his telecom company Aircel to Maxis, promoted by Malaysiabased billionaire T Ananda Krishnan.

Kapil Sibal (left) with P Chidambaram mustafa Quraishi/ap

For Political Gains “The CBI director was the henchman for the Government in many of the highly controversial and much-reported cases in the two years in the run-up to the elections,” the Home Ministry official says, emphasising that “he was there in that position at that time and so he became a tool in the hands of the UPA regime. It could have been anyone else. He happened to assume the post in 2012 and was meant to handle the cases the government wanted to pursue to meet their goals before the 2014 polls”.

Incidents of the party in power using the CBI to meet its political goals are numerous in India. Since the return to power in 2004 of the Congress, it has used the CBI to come up with cases and close them

The CBI under Sinha tried to prosecute Amit Shah twice over his alleged involvement in one encounter death case ashish sharma

Modi (right) with Amit Shah

at whim. Ahead of any crucial test of its majority in the Lok Sabha, it was not unusual for the CBI to come up with disproportionate assets cases (or cases like the Taj Corridor one) to buy the silence of parties such as the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, two sworn rivals in Uttar Pradesh. In the crucial vote in the Lok Sabha after the Left parties withdrew their external support to UPA-I in 2008, the Congress-led alliance managed to get the SP on its side and ensured the Government’s survival.

Over the past 10 years, the UPA had zealously used the agency to corner rival parties. The most desperate case of such a wild chase was for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scalp when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat over various cases, including the 2002 riots case and several others, claim BJP leaders. “The key to targeting Modi was to get the head of his trusted ally, Amit Shah. The CBI has been at it for more than a year after Sinha assumed office,” says a BJP activist.

The CBI, for its part, had claimed that it 22 open

was only trying to bring the guilty to justice. When Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man who is now BJP president, was chargesheeted in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, the BJP had alleged a conspiracy to frame a political rival. This case, which involved the killing of underworld criminal Sohrabuddin Anwarhussain Sheikh on 26 November 2005, while he was in police custody, saw many twists and turns later. The CBI, which first argued that Sheikh was killed at the behest of the then state Home Minister Shah, later sought to prosecute him separately in the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case (Prajapati was the one who helped identify Sohrabuddin).

The decision incurred much wrath, as the two cases were being treated as separate to make sure that if Shah is acquitted in one of the cases, there would still be a chance to pin him down in the other.

Much to Shah’s relief, a bench led by former Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam scrapped the second FIR against Shah, saying the Prajapati case was linked to the

bigger Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing case and did not need to be separate. Legal experts agree that one person cannot be prosecuted twice for one case.

Sinha, who has had a not-so-remarkable career as a police officer, was the director general of the Railway Protection Force before he was named CBI director in December 2012. Besides, Manmohan Singh chose him as the CBI chief over other officers recommended by the Central Vigilance Commission. Singh had come under criticism for not following the collegiate system for choosing the CBI director. By mid-last year, sensing winds of change buffeting across the country, Sinha, who now claims that his visitors’ list is fake and that the latest media onslaught is an intrusion into his privacy, had begun to cultivate “some sense of autonomy”, says an officer close to the matter. “The dexterity he showed in pursuing the Sheikh encounter had disappeared by then. Which explains why he refused to play ball when senior Union ministers hatched a conspiracy to nail Modi by framing Shah in the Ishrat Jahan murder case,” says this officer.

Open was the first to report the conspiracy to entangle Modi, who the Congress perceived as a threat to its continuance in power, in the Jahan fake encounter death case. It involved three senior Congress leaders who wanted the CBI to carry out the dirty job. A meeting was called at the residence of a former Union minister.

Sinha’s deputy Saleem Ali was lured with a vice-chancellor’s post in Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia. The plans went awry when Sinha refused to turn up.

Obviously, he read the writing on the wall. “By then, it seems Sinha was in the second or the third phase of his life as CBI director,” laughs the police officer.

Maybe such calculations have gone awry this time round. Accusations abound that the CBI director’s role seems to have spilled onto a turf beyond politics—where he uses corporates and allows them to use him in return. Did he make himself a prime candidate for being under the microscope of the agency he has already devalued? n 15 september 2014

Now just tap to OPEN

OPEN Magazine is now available on your iPad

You can now read your favourite OPEN magazine on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. Or if it is an Android device you prefer, just go to openthemagazine.com/digitalmagazine

INNOCEAN-001/12

Tin Drum in F

or the Japanese imperialists of World War II, India was

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the inauguration of the TCS Japan Technology and Cultural Academy in Tokyo on 2 September 24 open

pib

the ‘bird of gold’ and their designs on the country then ruled by the British were well-known: they put prisoners of war to work building an unsuccessful railway network from Kyoto to Calcutta. The Japanese then thought India would be the launch pad for their expansionist dreams. More than 70 years later, the two nations—Asia’s second and the third-largest economies— have an entirely different spark for each other as their interests conform nicely: to join hands to drive economic growth and to combat neighbour China’s hegemonistic designs.

The five-day tour of Japan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought to the fore the mutual attraction between the two countries.

While Modi needed Japanese funds and technology to upgrade his country’s woeful infrastructure and to put a sluggish economy back on track, his counterpart Shinzo Abe, also a nationalist, also had similar interests: to revive a slumbering economy by identifying new export markets amid a souring of ties with China, especially over geographical disputes and attacks on Japanese businessmen in the Middle Kingdom.

Following a diplomatic coup of sorts—replete with warm hugs, twitter diplomacy, temple visits, music and fun—Modi returned to New Delhi to call his trip a huge success, referring to the 3.5 trillion yen ($35 billion) promised by Japan to India through public and private funding over the five years for various works, including the building of smart cities and cleanup of the Ganga. “There has been talk about billions and millions. But there has never been talk of trillions,” Modi gushed. The quantum of funding came in as a big surprise even for the Indian Prime Minister who has, in less than 100 days of assuming the post, emerged as a strong Asian leader who parleys on equal terms with the likes of Abe, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff. In fact, over the past several years, Japan

Modi’s visit under

lines why Japan and India need each other now more than ever by ullekh np

has invested more in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam than in India.

Besides, trade between India and Japan is less than a third of that between India and China. “Things are now set to change drastically. It is very visible in the chemistry that exists between Abe and Modi, two like-minded leaders who are also known as doers in their respective countries,” says an Indian diplomat. US military historian and author Edward Luttwak suggests greater emphasis on the quality of diplomats that New Delhi sends to Tokyo. “India’s diplomacy is severely under-staffed, but the Modi Government would have to do much more than just add officials while making sure that today’s high standards are preserved: it would have to add foreign-policy leadership, that precious commodity in which India has been lacking,” he proposes.

Renowned author and geopolitical expert Robert Kaplan explains the logic behind Modi’s euphoria on his return: “India and Japan are too far away from each other to threaten each other, and yet each is close to China, which is a rising great power. These geographical facts make India and Japan—both democracies—natural allies in the effort to balance Chinese power.” In fact, since the economic slowdown of 2008 that battered the US economy, China has been very assertive, raising claims on islands controlled by the Japanese. New Delhi, too, has often expressed concerns about Chinese troop movement and incursions along the border.

However, Walter Andersen, an India scholar and director, South Asia Studies programme at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, feels that Modi would like to avert any confrontation with China because his interests are purely economic. “Modi, as part of his larger Look East policy, is likely to try to develop closer relations with both China and Japan… I doubt if he puts it in a comparative framework (that is, by making one more important than the other).”

Andersen, the author of Brotherhood in Saffron, a definitive work on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, goes on: “India is engaged in a very smart policy of hedging, moving slightly in one direction or the other to keep both [Japan and China] engaged in what is something 26 open

kazuhiro nogi/afp/getty images

years including in areas like high-speed railways where China also has strong technology and is a competitor of Japan.

Aside from economic competition, the fact that China and Japan are currently going through a period of very poor bilateral relations due to historical and territorial issues casts an additional negative light on India’s increasingly close relations with Japan,” he says.

Z

toru hanai, pool/ap

Narendra Modi with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe (left) during their meeting at the Akasaka State Guesthouse in Tokyo

The Prime Minister visits a music class at an elementary school in Tokyo

of a competitive relationship to get good ties with India. Will increased arms (presumably from Japan) lead to an arms race in the region? I doubt it, as much of the arms will have a naval focus. Note the muted Chinese reaction to the arms deal and to Modi’s statement about assertive Asian powers. Also, note how the senior leadership in both China and Japan immediately extended invitations to him after his 26 May inauguration. I think they did this as they see a stable government in Delhi with a firm sense of Indian nationalism [as one] with whom they should have close ties.”

Michael Zhang, a Shanghai-based foreign policy analyst at China Market Research Group, a think-tank, disagrees.

He believes that Modi’s choice to visit Japan to enhance economic ties before doing so with China is viewed in his country as symbolic of the Indian Prime Minister’s priorities. “India and Japan have now signed trade and investment deals worth 3.5 trillion yen and Japan is set to double FDI in India in the next five

hang looks at the positives, too. He

is glad that Modi has so far treated the issue of border disputes with China cautiously. Not inviting the Dalai Lama to his inauguration was a smart move, he says. “However the border remains an unavoidable sticking point that can still damage relations. From Beijing’s perspective, it is hard to build additional trust with India without any progress on the border issue,” he elaborates. As two major BRIC countries, China and India share several interests, argues Zhang.

“China doesn’t want to lose the potential of selling to India’s huge market, nor potential opportunities to cooperate with such an important nation in the Asia region. What’s more, as disputes in the South China Sea become more of a focus for China, maintaining steady relations with India and putting some of the more contentious issues on hold becomes a better idea,” says the Shanghai-based expert.

Yet, there are concerns. Zhang notes that India’s proposed deal with Japan to buy 15 Japanese amphibious US-2 aircraft as well as potential military cooperation with Vietnam, including joint exercises off Haiphong, show its ambitions in the Indian Ocean and possibly beyond. All of this will be seen with suspicion in China, he says. “Right now, a question that is very relevant to China and Chinese-Indian relations is whether Modi intends to follow in the path of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who favoured a military build-up.

These deals with Japan and Vietnam suggest that he might be—and that could be another possible stumbling block to relations with China,” he avers.

A clearer picture of India-China relations, however, will emerge only when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits India later this month. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27

the hindu archive

IN MEMORIAM

Bipan Chandra 1928-2014

The Gandhian Marxist His relentless argument for a secular Idea of India will live on

by ADITYA MUKHERJEE

I

n the passing away of professor Bipan Chandra on 30 August 2014 the nation has lost one of its finest historians.

He was an activist scholar who was not satisfied with contributing only to rarefied academic circles but wrote popular books, which sold in the millions in English and several Indian languages. He was particularly proud of having written school level textbooks. In fact throughout his career, (including during his tenure as Chairman of the National Book Trust) he was instrumental in persuading some of the tallest scholars in India 28 open

to write for children and the common citizen. Through his own massive contribution over nearly half a century Professor Chandra made major breakthroughs, which changed the way we, from school children to senior academics looked at critical aspects of our modern and contemporary history. I will here highlight some of these as a tribute to his memory.

His very first book Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India which came out in the mid 60s led to a total revision of the way the early nationalists were looked at. He showed that the 15 september 2014

early nationalists or the so-called ‘moderates’ were not loyalist, petitioners before the British or ‘mendicants’, as a very influential scholar had once described them. On the contrary, he argued, they were among the first in the world to evolve a detailed economic critique of colonialism. Through intense intellectual activity over nearly half a century, using the press, pamphlets, books and speeches, etcetera, the early nationalists like Dadabhai Naoroji, Ranade, Gokhale and many others destroyed the imperialist argument that colonialism was beneficial to the colony and demonstrated that India’s economic ills were a result of political subjugation. Over time they performed the critical and necessary task of eroding the imperialist ideological hegemony over the Indian people deserving ‘a high place among the makers of Modern India.’ He also showed that the foundations that they laid of Indian nationalism were secular and based on the political and economic critique of colonialism as a system. It was not ‘cultural’ based on religion race or ethnicity.

Second, in his major work The Long Term Dynamics of the Indian National Movement included in his last work published in 2012 called Writings of Bipan Chandra: The Making of Modern India from Marx to Gandhi, Chandra demolishes the view among many colonial and post colonial scholars that the Indian national movement represented narrow prescriptive groups (such as upper caste Hindus, babus, elites, bourgeoisie, landlords or brown sahebs, etcetera) and not the Indian people, or that it was not genuinely anti-imperialist but compromising and sharing power with it (as some would put it ‘sharing a common discourse’ with colonialism). He forcefully argued that the Indian National Movement led by the Indian National Congress was as much a people’s struggle for liberation and had as much to offer to the world in terms of lessons in social transformation and bringing about change in the state structure as the ‘British, French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.’ He maintained further that the ‘strategic practice of the Congress-led and Gandhi-guided national movement [has] a certain significance in world history’ being ‘the only actual historical example of a semi-democratic or democratic-type state structure being replaced or transformed, of the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position being successfully practiced.’ This significance cannot be exaggerated: the celebrated Italian Marxist, Gramsci saw this ‘as the only possible strategy’ for social transformation ‘in the developed countries of the west’.

Chandra also made very important contributions in the sphere of economic history, particularly in providing a comprehensive and incisive critique of colonialism as a structure. He argued that colonialism did not lead to ‘partial modernization’ or ‘restricted growth’ and whatever little spurts of growth the colony witnessed during the colonial period were not a result of colonialism but were a product of the breaks or the ‘loosening of the links’ from the colonial stranglehold, caused by various

crises faced by the metropolitan countries such as the two World Wars and the Great Depression. Chandra’s constant warning that colonialism was neither the route nor a transitional phase to the emergence of capitalism, industrialisation or modernisation but that its overthrow was necessary is relevant even today in determining how India positions itself visa-vis the advanced capitalist countries, or the so-called core countries in the core-periphery continuum.

Apart from being a lifelong critic of colonial domination in all its avatars including contemporary ones Chandra was a relentless fighter against communalism and a communal interpretation of history, which he saw as the chief ideological weapon of the communalists. He minced no words in his critique of colonialism whether it be minority or majority communalism, Sikh, Muslim or Hindu. His major work Communalism in Modern India, became a standard text for anyone who wished to understand how and why communalism took root and grew in India beginning with the second half of the 19th century, and for those who wanted to struggle against it. In one of his more recent writings Gandhiji, Secularism and Communalism Chandra rescues Gandhi from the pervasive and ill-informed attacks of a section of the ‘secularists’ who saw his secularism as weak or even conducive to the growth of communalism. Chandra on the other hand argues that ‘it was because of Gandhiji’s total opposition to communalism and strong commitment to secularism that both Hindu and Muslim communalists hated him and conducted a virulent campaign against him, leading in the end to his assassination by a communal fanatic.’

Chandra brought fresh insight into our understanding of India in several other areas whether it be a re-evaluation of Bhagat Singh and the revolutionaries or critical issues in the making of India since independence, including the JP movement and the Emergency.

He was honoured widely; the Padma Bhushan, Emeritus Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, National Research Professor for life and so on.

Most important however is the legacy he left behind as a staunch fighter against imperialism and communalism and a defender of the Idea of India, an India that would be independent, secular, humane and pro-poor; an India for which millions of our people fought in our national liberation struggle.

While he will be sorely missed among those who cherish this idea of India, the enormous response generated all over the country to his passing away as seen in numerous newspaper reports in multiple languages and dozens of memorial meetings celebrating his life in various parts of the country from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh to Kakatiya in Telengana, suggests that his legacy will live on. n

In Gandhiji, Secularism and Communalism, Chandra rescues Gandhi from the pervasive and ill-informed attacks of ‘secularists’ who saw his secularism as weak

15 september 2014

Aditya Mukherjee is a professor of Contemporary History at the Centre for Historical Studies, and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University open www.openthemagazine.com 29

cult

Priyanka Chopra, who plays Mary Kom (facing page) in the eponymous film

k o m b a t

raul irani

ure

Does everything from the casting of Priyanka Chopra to the location where the biopic of the boxing legend was shot only bring out Bollywood’s ethnic caricature of North-Easterners? By Lhendup G Bhutia

S

everal years ago, I found myself in the apartment of a close friend, introducing myself on camera. I mentioned my name, what I did, and where I came from, as required, and then began to read from a prepared script. “No, no,” my friend said, after some time. “You are doing it all wrong. Read it with an accent… Do it in a Japanese accent.” She was helping a casting director look for an actor who could play a middle-aged Japanese businessman for a TV commercial, and since I have Northeast Indian features, she thought I could give it a go. But like my friend, I had never been to Japan, never even interacted with someone from those parts. So I worked out an accent that I now suspect was part-Chinese and part-imagined-Japanese, but with which my friend was convinced I had nailed the part.

I never got that role. Not because of the accent. They eventually decided to not have the Japanese character speak.

Also, the casting director felt I didn’t look old enough for the role.

A few days later, during a party at the same friend’s house, for some reason, we began reviewing the footage of the auditions. The contents of the audition tapes, plugged from the camera into a large flatscreen TV, made the room

reverberate with laughter. The whole affair of actors trying to imitate a Japanese man was hilarious. But as we jumped from one tape to another, as we thrilled over one helpless actor after another attempting the accent, I couldn’t help but notice how every single actor who had auditioned for that role was from a Northeastern state. By the time my friend explained to me that almost all Japanese or Chinese characters in Indian commercials are performed by actors from the Northeast, the party was engrossed in raucous mirth. In my unquestioning youth, in that attempt to fit in with the ways of a new city, I performed my rendition of the Japanese accent. More laughter ensued.

Back then, I never wondered why there is almost a complete absence of individuals from the Northeast on TV and in mainstream films. Why when you do encounter a Northeastern actor, it is always him or her playing a Far Eastern character. But I realise now, having lived in Mumbai and various other cities for long, how easily all of this fits in—Northeastern waiters in Chinese restaurants, Northeastern watchmen at building gates, and Northeastern actors as Japanese characters on TV. It’s not that type of racism where someone calls you names or whispers ians photo

‘Chinki’ in your ears. That happens too. But this is different. It comes from that same wellspring that fosters racist slurs and violent abuses. Except, this is less obvious and never questioned.

But now India’s largest cultural industry is interested in the story of one of the region’s greatest individuals. Bollywood is releasing a biopic on the famed boxer Mary Kom this week.

Titled Mary Kom, the movie does not just feature Northeastern actors playing Northeastern roles. The entire film is based around the story of a living Manipuri legend. How do we react to this? Should we celebrate the inclusion of this region by the nation’s mainstream? Or is this grand film, with one of the country’s biggest female stars and a top producer backing it, on one of the region’s most famous daughters, in its casting and portrayal, as indicative of the malaise that afflicts the rest of the industry?

I

n 2012, there was outrage among Indians across the world.

Ashton Kutcher had appeared in a US commercial playing an Indian character named Raj. He had painted his face brown, worn a large wig and moustache and spoke with a caricatured Indian accent. The outrage spilled from newspaper editorials and TV channels to social media, until the advertisement was deemed racist, its makers issued an apology, and the parts featuring the character Raj were pulled down.

Yet, save for the few protests by some individuals from the Northeast on social media, there has been no discussion over the casting of Priyanka Chopra, a Punjabi actress who with the help of makeup and perhaps some prosthetics plays Mary Kom. In the film’s poster, a close-up shot of Chopra in boxing gear, she squints her eyes, draws her nose back and juts her teeth out in a grimace to emphasise what appear to be worked-upon slant eyes, higher cheek bones and a prominent jaw. In the film’s trailers, she pronounces words like ‘save’ as ‘shabe’, ‘boxer’ as ‘bhoxer’, and ‘fighter’ as ‘phiter’ and speaks in that strange accent that many mainland Indians think Northeasterners speak in. The truth is no one in the Northeast speaks in that manner. Not even in Nepal. They don’t even call sahibji, saabji. If blackfacing and yellowfacing—the practice of using black and yellow makeup in Western theatre and films to make White actors play Black or East Asian characters respectively—is considered offensive and racist, it is difficult to imagine why Chopra playing Kom, with the aid of makeup, isn’t. How different is she and the film from many other Indians who pinch their eyes and say Northeastern Indians are Indians with their eyelids pulled back?

There are, of course, actors from the Northeast in the film. But they just hang around in the background looking Northeastern.

The director of the film, Omung Kumar, dismisses the grievances of those upset by the casting of Chopra as Kom, and says his choice was driven by reasons of commerce and talent.

He says on the phone, “Chopra is not just a fantastic actress. She is a big star who can draw in audiences to watch a film.” When I ask him if he ever considered casting an actor from Manipur or Northeast India, he says, “If I had done so, no one would have come to watch it.”

Last year, photographs of Chopra using prosthetics by makeOomung Kumar and Priyanka Chopra at the release of the trailer of Mary Kom 15 september 2014

ashish sharma

Priyanka Chopra and Mary Kom during a promotional event for Mary Kom in New Delhi

When

I ask him if he ever considered casting an actor from Manipur or Northeast India, Oomung Kumar, the film’s director says, “ If I had done so, no one would have come to watch it” up artists from the US to achieve Mongoloid features were suspiciously leaked on the internet. According to Kumar, this was part of the various looks Chopra was initially trying out on her own. “But none of those early attempts were working and we decided to stick to the makeup done by Uday Shirali. Those gave us the best results,” he says. According to an article in Business Standard: ‘In a process that took an hour to complete every day, [Shirali] started by adding a solution that makes the eye smaller and used three shades on the eyelids to give them a northeast-Indian appearance. He then lightened the eyebrows with bleach, used pinkish tones to replicate the famous “apple cheeks” of the hills and, somewhat inexplicably, decided to add freckles that Kom does not have.’

What makes the casting all the more disconcerting is the near absence of the Northeast or any actor from this region in mainstream cinema. The last time someone depicted a northeastern state was the Mani Ratnam film, Dil Se, where the lead actress, the Nepal-born Manisha Koirala—chosen, as Aishwarya Rai told Rediff, for her “small eyes”—plays a terrorist from Assam. The most popular Bollywood actor from this region is the Sikkimborn Danny Denzongpa. And he is mostly known for his villainous roles, with his most popular performance arguably being the role of Kancha Cheena in Agneepath. ‘Kancha’ means boy, in Nepali, and Cheena, Chinese. Those few actors who get to appear on screen usually always play an East Asian character.

Ask any Northeastern actor trying to make it in Bollywood and the TV industry, and they will tell you what countless filmmakers and casting directors have told them, directly or in a 15 september 2014

roundabout fashion. They don’t look Indian enough. But now with Mary Kom set to release, it appears Northeasterners are not good enough to play even themselves.

W

hen the news of Kumar wanting to make a biopic

began doing the rounds a few years ago, the news created much excitement among actors from the region. The talented Assam-born actor and filmmaker, Kenny Basumatary—who a few years ago made and secured a national release for an ultralow-budget martial arts film, Local Kungfu—wanted to be part of the film. Basumatary had so far only gotten to play small roles in Bollywood films like Shanghai and Phata Poster Nikla Hero, or that of Chinese characters in commercials or TV shows, and had himself harboured dreams of directing a film around Kom’s life.

“I have been following Kom’s life closely for several years. For us people from the Northeast, her story is inspirational. And I had wanted to make a film about her,” Basumatary says. “So when I heard Kumar had got the rights to the film, I knew I had lost my chance. But I still wanted to be a part of it. So I called Kumar and asked him if I could audition for the role of Onler (Kom’s husband). He told me he would get back later.” He got a message on Facebook from the casting director of the film more than a year later. She was looking for Northeastern faces on Facebook.

“I play Onler’s best friend now,” he says, when asked about his role. “I am funny guy; the comic relief in the film.”

The gorgeous Manipuri model and actress, Lin Laishram, who has appeared in countless commercials and walked the open www.openthemagazine.com 33

runway for some top fashion designers like Tarun Tahiliani, and even worked as an actress with Naseeruddin Shah in his Motley Theatre Group, also called up Kumar. The director asked for her photographs and was considering her for the titular role of Kom. But yet again, the call never came. She learnt later that Chopra had been cast from newspaper reports. Laishram was offered the role of Kom’s sparring partner and friend several months later when she was accompanying another friend to the film’s auditions. “Maybe he felt bad for me,” she reasons.

“When I first approached him, I thought they would want to make a realistic film and want to cast an actress from the Northeast as Mary Kom, if not Manipur itself. They chose Chopra instead. And I get that. It is a mainstream film and you want a star for the role,” she says.

Even if one agrees with the argument that Chopra would be a box office draw, how does one explain the casting of the male lead, Darshan Kumar, who plays Onler? Darshan, a Delhi-born Punjabi actor, is a complete newcomer. He, like Laishram, was a part of the Motley Theatre Group. If commercial clout was not a consideration for the role of Onler, which seems to be the case, could it not have been played by an actor from the Northeast?

Asked for an explanation, Omung Kumar says, “We had to keep Priyanka in mind. Darshan is a fabulous actor. And, you see, he looks a little pahadi (hilly-area resident) also.” Apart from Darshan, the role of Mary’s father is also played by a Delhi-based actor, perhaps to justify Chopra’s sharp North Indian features.

“We wanted to create a world,” says Kumar, “where Priyanka Chopra could fit wonderfully.”

T

he Sikkim-born actress Geetanjali Thapa, who won

a National Film Award for best actress last year for the indie film Liar’s Dice, once had to play a half-Indian, half-Chinese woman who runs a Chinese restaurant in Kolkata. The film, shot in Kolkata and Mumbai, and featuring Ranvir Shorey, was never released. “Today, I thank my stars [for it],” she says.

“I was young and I didn’t know the kind of films I was getting in.” After moving to Mumbai, she auditioned for many commercials and film roles, but was often told she did not look Indian enough. Eventually, she got her break with the indie film ID, which garnered a number of awards in the festival circuit. She began establishing herself as an actress in independent productions by following ID with Liar’s Dice, and, now, has just completed an international project, Tigers, with the Academy Award-winning director Danis Tanovic.

“I sometimes think of my first unreleased film, playing that half-Chinese girl with straight hair working in a Chinese eatery. I don’t think I would ever have gotten the kind of space I now find myself in, if I gone down that road.”

Films and TV are filled with Northeastern actors playing anyone but an Indian. Basumatary played a Chinese inspector on a TV show called Hitler Didi, before he began to play a Chinese businessman on a show for Channel [V] who specialises in creating rip offs (or rather clones) of popular Bollywood actors.

He next plays a Nepali character in an untitled Tigmanshu Dhulia film. Laishram’s future film projects include playing Prateek Babbar’s Nepali wife in an untitled project, and playing the jealous Chinese girlfriend of a villain in the Lara Dutta-

“For

us people from the Northeast, her story is inspirational. And I had wanted to make a film about her. I play Onler’s best friend; the comic relief in the film Kenny Basumatary ritesh uttamchandani

starring Chalo China, a sequel to Chalo Dilli. “In the film, my villain-boyfriend, who is also Chinese, captures Lara Dutta and begins to fall in love with her. So I feel jealous and try to imitate Lara,” she says of her role. It is only in one impending project, tentatively-titled Ticket to Bollywood, that Laishram plays the role of someone from an undecided northeastern region. According to this 5’10” tall model-actress, who also worked as a model in New York for over three years, getting work in TV and print commercials in Mumbai with a Northeastern face is more difficult than finding work in New York. Whenever she auditions for commercials, she ticks the box that says ‘foreign’ and not ‘Indian’ because, as she says, she will never be cast in an Indian role.

Many of the commercials she acts in are made by Indian production houses for Malaysian and Indonesian markets. “Indian ad filmmakers get to make a number of commercials of a single brand for many markets. They make a commercial for an Indian market with an Indian cast. And they make the same one for a Malaysian or Indonesian market by casting us,” she says.

“Here [in Bollywood] there is discrimination at every step.

When you audition for roles, they will tell you they want someone with large eyes, fair skin and sharper features. They will tell you on your face that you don’t look Indian enough. And 34 open

15 september 2014

A still from the film

funnily enough when you get to play something, it is either the role of a vamp or a Chinese woman,” she says. “I can crib about it, feel bad about it, and leave for home. Or I can take it all in and stick around. I have decided to do the latter. I want to see where all this gets me.”

This year, somehow, there has been a spate of commercials featuring Northeast Indians playing themselves. Call it a wellmeaning gesture of inclusion or an attempt to cash in on an issue. But something is usually amiss in them. Earlier this year, Tata Salt posters depicted Kom, along with another female boxer with the somewhat discomforting line, ‘Maine Desh ka Namak Khaya Hai’. Even in the latest Kaun Banega Crorepati advertisement, which has garnered much appreciation for featuring a young Northeastern girl in the hot seat asking Amitabh Bachchan and the audience if Indians feel Kohima is a part of India, you can’t help but notice how, apart from the girl and her family, every other Northeasterner depicted is either the stereotypical security guard, cook, or bullied boy. Just two years ago, when Bachchan wished Mary Kom on Twitter for winning a bronze during the London Olympics, he called her a mother of two from Assam.

The 22-year-old Jennifer Deori, who is a student at Tata 15 september 2014

Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, was one of the actresses who auditioned for the role of the Northeastern girl in the KBC commercial. The casting director had seen her performance in Local KungFu, where she had enacted a small role, and wanted to cast her. “When I read the script, she told me I appeared too confident. When I asked her to explain, she told me to remember that I was enacting someone from the Northeast, a shy cute village girl who has just come to the city,” Deori recalls. “None of the nearby auditioning actors, perhaps to be telecast in future KBC ads, were being asked to perform their roles in such a way. You might think I am reading too much into it, but I knew what was in her head that day.

She wanted me to play a dumb tribal girl who is scared and uncomfortable,” she recalls.

U

nderstandably, many from the Northeast are upset over

Chopra’s casting as Kom. Some are concerned about how in the buzz about Chopra deglamourising herself to play Kom, a racist standard of beauty is being perpetuated—about how the use of makeup and prosthetics, and the acquisition of slant eyes and eastern features, counts as deglamourisation. Some speak open www.openthemagazine.com 35

of the manner in which Chopra has used derogatory terms like ‘junglee bachcha’ as though in endearment to describe Kom. The writer-translator Aruni Kashyap asks, “If we were to go by the buzz around Chopra’s make-up and use of prosthetics to look ‘Northeastern’, I am afraid this film is only going to perpetuate the stereotypes that all of us have been trying to walk away for ages. I am worried the film is going to turn characters from the Northeast into mere caricatures.”

According to Richard Kamei, a Manipur-born student at TISS, the film is unlikely to touch upon issues that may alienate mainstream viewers. Kamei says, “There is likely to be no reference to the insurgency, to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the heavy presence of troops, or to people like Irom Sharmila protesting against the Government. Even seemingly smaller things, like the food consumed by the Kom community, which include beef and pork entrails, is unlikely to be depicted. You cannot tell Mary Kom’s story faithfully by removing Manipur from it.” When asked, Kumar claims the film will have little reference to the politics and issues of the Northeast because he has chosen to focus the film on Kom. V Laishram, who lives in Imphal and tweets as Sandrembi, says, “I read that there are over 50 NE people in the movie

playing some characters and background fillers. Perhaps the director felt throwing in some Mongoloid faces around PC will ‘soften’ her noticeably sharp north Indian features. Buddhists monks are lovely to look at but there are no Buddhists monks in Manipur who are seen running around in one of the songs.

There are some ‘Manipuri’ verses in a song (Chaori). The language used is Meiteilon, the language of Meiteis, and not of the Kom tribe to which Mary belongs. It looks like there has been a deliberate effort to make the film appealing to the majority—the mainland crowd in India, and Meiteis, who are the majority community in Manipur.” Laishram also points to how Manali and Dharamshala were chosen over any place in Manipur (or anywhere near) for the film’s location. “Just because there are hills, doesn’t mean it will look like the Northeast,” Laishram adds. “But they chose Himachal instead, a convenient place which a majority of the Bollywood crowd is familiar and can easily fall in love with.”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bhansali Productions, which is producing the film, has been careful to cover all its bases with Mary Kom, perhaps knowing full well the limitations of parading Priyanka Chopra around as a Manipuri. To quell any allegations of the cultural appropriation of a towering personality from a

“I

sometimes think of my first unreleased film, playing that half-Chinese girl. I don’t think I would have got the space I now find myself in if I had gone down that road Geetanjali Thapa raul irani

community of people who are already under-represented in popular culture, we’ve been told, through countless media interviews over the past few weeks, about how similar Chopra and Kom are. How both of them hail from small towns and brought fame to their country, Kom through her world boxing titles, and Chopra through her achievements as Miss World and an actress. And how Kom, not very different from her actress counterpart, loves to change her hairstyles and box with nail polish on her fingernails. At the music launch of the film, they had Mary Kom make an appearance for the press, with Chopra and the director Kumar goading Kom on to speak of how she felt about a Bollywood actress playing her.

But the truth is that however one may push these arguments, what makes Kom’s story fantastic is not just that she is a five-time world champion, a mother and someone who was not born to privilege, but that she comes from Manipur. You cannot obscure that fact by casting a North Indian actor and keep Manipur away.

You cannot ignore such a large number of citizens on the grounds that they don’t ‘look’ Indian, and yet defend the appropriation of the first popular success story that comes from that region with the argument that an Indian is playing another Indian.

When the Delhi-based Anannya Baruah was asked why she is making such a fuss about Chopra playing Kom on Facebook, she referred to a quote by the writer Junot Diaz, during a speech on racism at Rutgers University in 2007. Diaz had put it quite eloquently. “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.” n 15 september 2014

Marriage

Maestros

India’s famous big fat wedding now demands high end innovation.

These are the people who make it happen

By Aekta Kapoor

T

here’s a tectonic shift at work in the luxury services industry—and it’s all to do with Rahul and Seema’s Jaipur wedding this winter. Like tens of thousands of other high net worth couples, they have only one criterion for everything to do with their once-in-a-lifetime nuptials: “We want something unique. Something different. Price no bar.” And like a genie released from slumber, their wish has set the wheels of innovation turning in the minds of creative professionals and entrepreneurs across the country. Leaving their jobs or adding new wedding segments to their existing businesses, these whizzes have embraced the glitzy new shaadi challenge with aplomb. Weddings, they promise, will never be the same again. (Except that they will. And that’s the whole cha-ching idea, isn’t it?)

While weddings in India have always driven big-ticket expenses across socio-economic segments, the nation is getting younger and more wired than ever before. Fifty per cent of the population is below 29, so there are plenty more unions coming up—which only translates to greater development and demand in wedding-related services in years to come. And amongst the rich—who unarguably set the trends when it comes to keeping up with the Bhatias—wedding hosts have upped the ante for creative expression, leading to a sudden spurt of imaginative service professionals. So much so that even bigwigs from unrelated industries have jumped on to the band-baja-wagon.

Google the Goods

What’s the first thing a young urban couple does when they set off on their journey to happily ever after? They whip out their smartphones and Google-search everything they need to know—from wedding theme ideas, to gifts and favours suggestions, to bridal-wear designers, to the best planners and mehendi-walas in their budget. Here’s where wedding websites come in. From individual blogs to Indian offshoots of global giants with millions of hits per month, this is an arena no one’s getting enough of.

“The Indian wedding industry is estimated to be a staggering $38 billion—the economy of a small country—and growing at the explosive rate of 20 to 25 per cent a year. If there is one thing that’s entirely recession-proof, it’s the Indian wedding industry,” marvels Apoorv Kalra, founder of the popular portal BollywoodShaadis.com, which gets over 1.5 million visitors per month. An MBA graduate from the University of Texas, Dallas, Kalra founded the site in 2012, cashing in on the need of the hour “for a wedding planning portal that could 38 open

“A young bride is aware that no matter how exciting and diverse, a trousseau belongs to its time” Nisha Kundnani

15 september 2014

Sharik Verma for BridĂŠlan

An Indian wedding at the Bellagio, Las Vegas

not only help couples find the right vendors for their wedding but also keep them updated with top wedding trends in India.” No doubt inspired by the top search terms in Google Trends (‘wedding website’, ‘wedding shopping’, ‘wedding professionals’ and ‘wedding planning guidance’ if you must know), he has now tied up with over 8,000 vendors across the country who pay to be seen by the right ‘heavy-spending audience’—some have even earned contracts for over Rs 1 crore through visibility on the site. He plans to launch a US version of the site soon.

While Kalra gazes westwards, the West looks to India to spread wings.

In January last year, WeddingsOnline. in was launched as a sister concern to WeddingsOnline.ie (Ireland), which sees 5.6 million page views per month across the UK and Ireland. “New-age couplesto-be are flooded with ideas about how weddings should be; so much so that they 40 open

are clueless about what to do,” says John Kenny, director, WeddingsOnline.in. “This is where we come in to help. Our blog features real weddings with inspirational stories of real brides and grooms, where they shopped, the vendors and suppliers they used. We also help families with information about competitive rates and reviews about vendors,” he adds.

A similar business model is followed by popular Indian wedding sites WeddingSutra.com founded 14 years ago

by Parthip Thyagarajan and WedMeGood. com, the brainchild of Mehak Sagar Shahani, an ex-economist turned beauty blogger, and her MBA husband Anand Shahani. “We are a curated portal,” says Mehak, “so each vendor listed, each real wedding showcased, each image on our site has been carefully hand-picked. We try to feature stories and weddings across styles and budgets—from featuring the wedding of a bride who wore sneakers

on her big day to talking about minor elements that can help personalise one’s events without costing much.”

Weddings have gone digital in other ways as well. You’ll also now find sites to help you build your own personal wedding site—the online version of a wedding invite. These have easy-to-create formats to give your guests far and wide a complete run-down of your upcoming celebrations. Most of these are free but if you have Rs 10,000 to 50,000 to spare, you can also get the Times Group’s new offering: the Alive Wedding Card. This ‘augmented reality’ card turns your invite into a multimedia experience on mobile, and lets you add on videos, maps and reminders. If you want to go a step further and spam your guests all the way to D-day, you can get a politician-style voice recording sent out to them from time to time, or download one of the scores of mobile wedding apps created for photo 15 september 2014

Mili Ghosh/memories in motion

sharing and ‘guest management’.

Once the research is done, most families go happily insane selecting the perfect wedding invite. Just cards won’t do any more—and digital invites won’tappeal to the ammas and babajis in the family.

No, you need boxes in the shape of vanity drawers, cages with metal belts wrapped around them, heirloom textiles and embroideries, mint-flavoured Belgian chocolates, marzipan from Estonia. And there are people who’ll get it done for you, at a price. Vivek Sahni went from designing logos for MNCs to scrutinising personal art collections as inspiration for a client’s wedding invite. Ravish Kapoor injects humour on demand into his famous creations. EDC (Entertainment Design Company) appeals to royalty around the world, including Bollywood.

And Meerut-born NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) gold medallist Puneet Gupta brings an African safari to your home in the guise of a twofoot wide wedding trunk-invite.

“The wedding was being held in South Africa, hence the theme. It contained a pair of binoculars; you could turn the knob to view the different events. There was also a book detailing all the functions, and some food items,” smiles the Delhi-based designer, who has authored

puneet gupta invitations

“The invite is the trailer to the wedding—no one wants regular paper cards anymore. The price depends on the materials used. Some are made of silver” Puneet Gupta

India’s first book series of wedding-invite design trends. Gupta’s cards go from Rs 250 to Rs 1 lakh per card. “The invite is the trailer to the wedding—no one wants regular paper cards anymore. The price depends on the materials used. Some are made of silver, of course.” Of course.

The Bride Wore… Fuchsia

What will I wear? It’s the top question on any bride’s mind, more so when budgets are limitless, choices are flummoxing, and knowledge about the right styles is limited. What you need is a stylist or personal shopper. And fashion professionals are only too happy to help. Delhi-based fashion consultant Shirin Saluja and marketing maven Parul Gupta launched their styling consultancy Little Black Book in 2013, adding trousseau styling to their repertoire earlier this year. They curate and coordinate outfits for just about everyone in the family for every event. With a styling budget of Rs 50,000 onwards, they help brides get “something versatile that can be teamed with anything later. For instance, a lehenga skirt can be teamed with a tank top or a goldsilver choli in the future,” says Parul. “We advise brides on the little details people often overlook, such as not wearing a low-neck blouse since you’ll end up bending several times over the holy fire, or wearing comfortable platform heels and flattering lingerie.”

A similar tweak of profession took Nisha Kundnani from styling editorial shoots in fashion magazines to setting up Bridélan, a bridal styling service. “A young enterprising bride is aware that buying clothes is always a transitory thing and no matter how exciting and diverse, a trousseau belongs to its time,” says the Mumbai-based stylist, who often works with NRI brides. “I guide them to spend on smart pieces that can be used as separates. It is quite dated to give numbers to trousseau fragments—21 salwar suits, 51 saris. That doesn’t happen anymore. I also advise them not to overdo ‘Indian’ in their trousseau; a modern girl living in LA or Ludhiana realistically wears Indian once in a while and goes back to the boardroom and needs Western wear for her everyday work wardrobe,” she says. Kundnani is pleased that even conservative small-town famiopen www.openthemagazine.com 41

taj hotels, resort & palaces

Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur

lies have become more accommodating about what the bride wears. “I was once shopping in Mumbai with a bride from Surat. Her future mother-in-law couldn’t properly pronounce the names of designers and, yet, was so forward thinking that she let her daughter-in-law try out a fashionable midriff-baring crop top with a lehenga.”

The Plan of Action

If you’re really looking to one-up the Singhanias, you’ll definitely need the

services of a wedding planner. These aren’t your typical party organisers. These are large companies of event managers who take weddings from family events to grandly orchestrated Bollywoodian shows at castles and resorts around the world, with a star or two thrown in. Meher Sarid, who organised the Bachchan wedding of the previous decade and Gautam Gambhir’s wedding in this one, worked for several years in the hospitality and airline industry as trainer and designer before joining hands with her hus-

A stalwart in the arena for over a decade, wedding consultant Neeta Raheja chartered a special flight for 225 guests to attend an engagement ceremony in Phuket this year. According to her, wedding planning has evolved immensely since the early days. “Initially, people didn’t know what a wedding planner’s role was. The planner was the ‘outsider’ and outsiders weren’t very welcome in family affairs!” she laughs, adding, “Now, however, when family members are all working professionals, they pre-

Anand Gogoi

“Something versatile can be teamed with anything later. A lehenga skirt can be teamed with a tank top or a gold-silver choli” Parul Gupta

42 open

band Sunny to launch a wedding events company back in 1998. She now creates her own décor and floral art for some of India’s most opulent affairs. Ferns N Petals, India’s first chain of fancy florists, have now added FNP Weddings to their laterals, partnering with some of the biggest names in luxury wedding planning from around the globe. Sushil Wadhwa, founder of the Platinum World Group, plunged into destination weddings from MICE events when he realised it was definitely the more lucrative of the two. A sample service at one of his weddings includes an acrobat flying down from the sky suspended from a helium balloon to give the couple their engagement rings.

fer to save time by hiring wedding planners. It’s almost a necessity these days.” So lucrative is the industry that top fashion designers such as JJ Valaya, Rohit Bal and Ashima Leena have taken the plunge into wedding venue décor, and travel major Cox & Kings has set up a new segment dedicated to luxury camps for intimate weddings.

If you’ve got your wedding venue finalised, and if it happens to be one of the oldest names in the hospitality industry like the Taj, you are in pretty safe planning hands already. “We do not just facilitate weddings, we become a part of your life,” says Deepa Misra Harris, senior vice-president, sales & marketing, Taj 15 september 2014

As a wedding photographer, Sephi Bergerson wedding shoots range from Rs 1.6 to 2 lakh for the first day Sephi Bergerson/fotowala

Hotels, Resorts & Palaces. Their Timeless Weddings division specialises in bespoke weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries, renewal of vows, and even proposal settings at any of their 93 hotels around the world. The hospitality giant hosted the Vogue Wedding Show—a curated exhibition featuring the most luxurious wedding services—for a second time this August.

“The destination wedding market has matured,” says Harris, “and we have 110 years of experience in going beyond expectations.” That could mean fireworks going off on cue just as the girl accepts the boy’s proposal on a private ferry ride on Lake Udaipur. It could mean Sufi singers producing a diamond ring mid-song at Gol Bungalow, in the iconic Taj Falaknuma, Hyderabad, even as the gentleman asks the lady, “Will you marry me?” It could mean giving a complimentary suite for the harried bride to take a nap before the wedding (most hotels give one during or later). “We believe we are part of the family,” says Harris, mentioning a recent pat on the back she received from a bride’s father after a well-orchestrated sangeet. “I asked him why. Was it the opera? Was it the play based on the couple’s romance? Was it Sting’s performance? Was it the 150 bite-sized flavours of halwa hung in the air? The food was exceptional that night, I had to admit. But no. The bride’s father said it was the personal butler who stood by the groom all through the evening, holding his jacket, his champagne glass, his personal belong15 september 2014

ings, while the groom danced without a care. Jamai-raja khush, sab khush (if the son-in-law is happy, everyone’s happy).”

The Wedding Story

What is a wedding without millions of photos doing the rounds for days and years later? This is your one opportunity to be the star of your own show, and no fashionable couple worth their Pradas would miss the opportunity to be immortalised in a YouTube film. Enter the filmmakers and ‘candid’ art photographers.

They give you your 15 days of fame and make you a celebrity in Facebook and Flickr albums for posterity. You can run in slo-mo around trees if you like, and they will Photoshop all those acne marks too.

These people come from diverse backgrounds—none of them to do with weddings, really. Mumbai-based Vishal Punjabi went from working in Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment to making movies of real-life besotted couples. Delhi-based Yasmin Kidwai went from making international awardwinning documentaries to dabbling in shaadi stories. Chandigarh-based Aarti Kapur Singh went from print journalism to starting her own wedding film company. And US-based filmmaker Mili Ghosh teamed up with her husband Sid to capture opulent million-dollar affairs across the world for wealthy NRI families.

Israeli photojournalist Sephi Bergerson had just completed a book on the street foods of India when his friend asked him to shoot her sister’s wedding

in Kerala. And so, in 2007, he discovered the awe and splendour of the great Indian wedding, and has been hooked since. To date, the Goa-based photographer has shot dozens of Indian weddings around the world and is publishing a book, Behind the Indian Veil: A Journey Through Weddings in India, next year. With charges that go from Rs 1.6 to 2 lakh for the first day (the remaining days are cheaper), he’s now one of the formidable names in wedding photography, a list that includes Badal Raja, Prakash Tilokani, Vinayak Das and Mahesh Shantaram.

But even after hiring all these storytelling wizards, your wedding story doesn’t end here. You need trousseau packers like Vandana Mohan—those clever people with crafty fingers who create boxes with satin bows and organza ribbons and Swarovski crystals to pack all those gifts in. You need wedding choreographers like Shiamak Davar, who will teach the whole extended family a fixed set of moves for the sangeet or cocktail evening. You need food artists and caterers who do French hors d’oeuvres, Greek salad and Italian ciriola to perfection. You need pundits with stage presence who make a performance out of a puja. And you’ll need accountants to fix those books when all the give-and-take is done and over with.

Take a breath. You still have to plan the honeymoon. n Aekta Kapoor is a Delhi-based writer specialising in fashion and lifestyle open www.openthemagazine.com 43

freedom and the free What’s next for Julian Assange? By bennett Voyles

N

ext to 10 Downing Street, 3 Hans Crescent may be

the safest address in London these days, surrounded as it is by British police 24 hours a day, at a cost to the British taxpayer estimated at £4.5 million a year. Seven million pounds and counting might seem like a big investment to keep a 42-year-old Australian computer programmer off the streets, even if he is wanted for questioning by Swedish police in connection with two sexual assault investigations. However, it’s safe to say it wasn’t concern for the Ecuadorian Embassy’s neighbours in posh Knightsbridge that has led the police to keep such close tabs on Julian Assange.

Nor does it explain why two years ago Assange sought Ecuadorian hospitality rather than run the risk of a stint in a Swedish slammer—especially given that compared to life in the Ecuadorian embassy, Swedish prison life seems like a picnic, with its Ikea showroom kitchens, day passes, and a brisk sea breeze.

For both the prisoner of Hans Crescent and the Metropolitan Police Service, the reasons for the illustration anirban ghosh standoff appear to have next to nothing to do with any scandals in Scandinavia and everything to do with WikiLeaks—on the one side, making sure their quarry does not fly off to Ecuador, and on the other, keeping out of reach of the long arm of Uncle Sam. But the saga may end soon. On 16 August, Assange told reporters he is preparing to leave his sanctuary.

Always pale, he is supposed to suffer now from a variety of heart and lung ailments, including a Vitamin D deficiency from seeing too little sun.

He hasn’t agreed to turn himself in, but his attorney, human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, has not announced any deal with the British government, so presumably he would face extradition either to Sweden or, more seriously for him, charges related to his 2010 posting of a vast cache of US military and diplomatic communications.

It doesn’t take the talents of George Clooney, Alamuddin’s fiancé, to imagine various endings to this movie: close up of Assange and a Pacific beach sunset, announcing a new set of revelations; close up of Assange with cell door slamming shut; or maybe—if some right-wing American politicians get their wish—close up through the crosshairs of a Navy Seal sniper.

But it is also beginning to seem possible that something much less dramatic will happen, a fate even more horrible for 44 open

a publicity hound like Assange to contemplate: no close ups at all, just a fade to black. Some legal scholars have speculated that US prosecutors might have a tough time convicting Assange, given that the First Amendment’s guarantee to freedom of the press doesn’t include an exception for information it would rather not have see daylight.

If that’s the case, Assange’s real punishment may be just beginning. After two years offstage, with his site starved for funds (US pressure has made it nearly impossible to donate money to his organisation), the debate about government secrecy and surveillance now goes on without him.

Like the snowy white beard he now sports, Assange is now too familiar a figure. Always on the lookout for fresh news and fresh faces, the photographers have found a more congenial anti-secrecy poster boy—Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.

Why should Snowden, who is in Russia, earn more positive press than Assange, who wants to go to Ecuador?

One reason may be personal.

Assange clearly rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. As one journalist I know who specialises in national security issues told me, he thought Assange was “a hero and at the same time, a total prick”.

Among those who would probably agree with that assessment is his estranged ghostwriter, Andrew O’Hagan, author of a book he published as Assange’s ‘unauthorized autobiography’—basically, the book that he would have published as a memoir until he pulled the plug on the project on the eve of publication. In February, O’Hagen wrote a scathing account of his work with Assange in The London Review of Books, in which he describes Assange as narcissistic, unbalanced, and just plain odd: Who eats lasagna with his hands?

But O’Hagen also understood that Assange had brought something new to the landscape: At his best, he represented a new way of existing in relation to authority. He wasn’t very straightforwardly of the left and couldn’t have distinguished dialectical materialism from a bag of nuts. He hates systems of belief, hates all systems, wants indeed to be a ghost in the machine, walking through the corridors of power and switching off the lights.

I suspect it’s also part of the reason Snowden and not Assange is now the face of opposition to the surveillance state. Snowden 15 september 2014

lance spymaster is a great leaker, maybe the greatest of all time—a whistleblower who hacked the code of modern publicity more effectively than Assange ever did, parcelling out his revelations week by week, building their cumulative impact and forcing reporters to stay focused on his charges rather than his personal story, and offering very limited access to reporters.

He has also been less cavalier than Assange, taking care not to post the names of individuals, or compromise classified information that was not essential to his case. Where Assange seems to have always aimed to thwart authority generally, Snowden claims more modestly that he doesn’t want to change anything, he just wanted to give people a chance to decide if this was the kind of system they wanted.

Most importantly, Snowden is a more conventional kind of whistleblower, the kind of character that reporters are familiar with: someone who might break government rules, but still plays by the reporters’ rules. He is peddling his own secrets and presumably, once they are all told, he will be out of the secrets business.

Assange, on the other hand, tried to create in WikiLeaks a new kind of secret-distribution system, an institution he called ‘a democratic intelligence agency’ with no institutional restraints. At some level, he was not only publicising secrets, as journalists have always done, but trying to do to the front of the newspaper what Craig’s List did to the back—eliminate the middleman.

T

he direct access WikiLeaks promised was one fac-

tor that first attracted Swiss bank whistleblower Rudolf Elmer to the site. For several years before he published his material on WikiLeaks, which he said proved that his former employer, Swiss bank Julius Bär, was engaged in tax evasion for its clients through the Cayman Islands, Elmer had tried and failed to get anyone to pay attention to him. No Swiss tax authorities, Swiss NGOs, or Swiss or German newspapers were interested in publicising his charges. Even the global financial media “were too cozy with the financial industry during the years before 2008”, he says. WikiLeaks gave him a chance to make his case.

Whether WikiLeaks actually succeeded as a new kind of medium is open to debate. Functionally, the site may have simply served the same kind of role that tabloids and the more raggedy kind of gossip magazines have long played—as a way for more established papers to get hold of a story without actually taking responsibility.

For his part, Elmer believes the case he made on WikiLeaks would not have gotten any attention if the bank had not hired prominent Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Evan Spiegel to try to shut it down.

Other media watchers agree. One columnist at Infoworld

15 september 2014

described the stratagem as “stunningly stupid” in that it brought attention to an otherwise obscure case, linked the Bär name indelibly with money laundering, and insured that Elmer’s documents travelled all over the internet. ‘The documents in question, which might have been quickly forgotten alongside the 1.2 million others on the site, are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video,’ wrote tech columnist Robert Cringely.

However, at least when it came to the leak of US Army Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning of nearly 750,000 computer files concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US foreign policy—and most damningly, a video of US forces firing on Reuters employees they believed were carrying antitank weapons, not camera equipment—WikiLeaks arguably did change the way secrets made its way into the public eye.

The posting of Manning’s troves on the internet also offered an oblique critique of reporting on the brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the outside world. Unlike Vietnam, the media had let the Pentagon stage manage the event in a way that kept coverage highly favorable, such as offering access to active troops only to journalists who could be relied on for positive stories, with little of the kind of footage that turned the public against that earlier war.

Looking back, Elmer says he won’t defend everything that Assange and his partner Daniel Domscheit-Berg did, but he argues that they did accomplish something valuable. “WikiLeaks was a start-up company and start-ups make mistakes. That has to be accepted,” Elmer says. Still, he adds, WikiLeaks “changed the world of information access and management. Truth tellers have a better chance to bring their message across.”

This may be part of the reason that deep down, the Snowden story is attracting more coverage now even as Assange is derided as ‘a rock star on the skids’. In spite of itself, it’s a familiar movie in a familiar genre—the brave whistleblower, a few crusading journalists, and particularly at The Guardian, a damnthe-torpedoes editor.

In movie terms, the Snowden narrative takes us back to All the President’s Men, where the Fifth Estate is doing its job in restoring liberty, and away from Robert Redford’s paranoid thriller Three Days of the Condor, which ends when he tells a CIA operative that he is going to take his story to The New York Times, and the agent asks, but how do you know they’ll print it?

Meanwhile, for Assange, it also means that if he fails to make himself a martyr to free speech, the lights will continue to dim on the freelance spymaster… Unless, of course, you have a secret you’d like to share. n A US citizen, Bennett Voyles is a Paris-based observer of global trends.He was formerly with The Economist Intelligence Unit open www.openthemagazine.com 45

a rt

mindspace

Booker-prize winner Ian McEwan is back with another master work. The novelist in conversation 56

Divine direction

63

o p e n s pa c e

Sonam Kapoor Anurag Kashyap

62

n p lu

Raja Natwarlal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

61

cinema review

VanHawks Valour Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Sony Xperia C3

60

tech & Style

The link between genes and hangovers Cost of meat-heavy diet Going green boosts productivity

56

science

Interview with Ian Mc Ewan Aspyrus by Appuppen Raja Rao

54

books

Nagaland’s folksy choir group

music

Anu Malhotra’s debut exhibition Valsan Koorma Kolleri and Puneet Kaushik

48 64

Joel Ryan/AP

ART

Colours of Life Anu Malhotra’s debut exhibition shows the artist’s

obsession with journeys Ullekh NP

O

n the top floor of her Lajpat Nagar residence, Anu

Malhotra has converted a spacious room next to her colourful rooftop garden into a painting studio where three Boxer dogs greet you without a bark or sense of foreboding—they approach you one by one, expecting to be petted.

Even they seem to be under the spell of the splash of colours, or their smells. There are, of course, mostly bright colours: orange, green, yellow and red. “I like bright, happy colours,” Malhotra says.

Colours have always attracted her, and all the natural colours she has seen across India and elsewhere—thanks to hundreds of journeys she has undertaken as part of her work as a documentary filmmaker for decades—have inspired her to do her first art show of abstract paintings.

“Be it in Rajasthani attire that is so luminous that it blinds you or those in costumes used in Theyyam or Kathakali, colours fascinate me no end,” says the well-known filmmaker widely acknowledged for popularising local destinations among Indians through documentary films Namaste India and Indian Holiday in the 1990s, especially those in the Northeast and the south.This was, of course, before Google invaded the lives of our people with close-up images of streets and MakeMyTrip began offering travel tips, flight tickets, holiday packages, hotel reservations and spawned similar websites. “Those were the times when you had no emails, no mobile phones and the only good way to learn about a place was to go there and do all the ground work without knowing what to expect,” she says, emphasising that it was under rather tough conditions that she explored Ladakh.

The seasoned filmmaker who did the first ‘Incredible India’ campaign—which has since attained legendary status as a global ad campaign to showcase the country as a tourism destination—and who was a household name as a producer of TV serials before Saas Bahu dramas rewrote the rules of the game, expects to continue with her new interest, painting.

The debut show of her works, a riot of colour on canvas, is on at the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre from 2 September to 6 September. Malhotra intends to use the proceeds of the sales from her abstract paintings—close to 30 of them—to fund a Goa-based NGO working among the poor, Video Volunteers. Titled ‘Hue-Borne’, the show is curated by open www.openthemagazine.com 49

tractions to me.” Which is why she doesn’t think her new venture is too much of a departure from filmmaking. “You see a lot of colour in my home and a lot of paintings. I am very high on the design quotient. My sensibilities also extend to sets.

Painting, therefore, is just an extension of play with form and colour,” declares Malhotra, who has done close to 20 promotional documentaries for the Government of India to sell the country overseas.

The paintings in her show, which are classified under categories Flow dreams; Chimera; Lei mirage; and Primal Flux, are all made using acrylic on canvas.

Malhotra , meanwhile, says she is one for the journey and not just the destination. “For me the motto is that the journey is the destination. The process is the most important thing. A lot of people are destination people, I am not.

What they are missing out are those to enjoy,” she says, adding that she is bewitched by shamans. “They are there across the country, in almost all cultures.

It is just that not all of us know about them,” she avers. She had previously explained it extensively in an interview to Blouinartinfo, saying, “Shamanism is an ancient methodology that predates all known religions, psychologies and philosophies. The term ‘shaman’ itself comes from the Eveni language of Kishore Singh. After 6 September, Siberia and means ‘the one who knows’.

“For me the motto the show will travel to Art Alive Other general words for shaman are the Gallery at Panchsheel Park in Delhi.

Finnish ‘tietaja’, Japanese ‘munusu’, Bella is that the journey is Malhotra, who has earned a name Coola ‘kusiut’, Nahuatl ‘tlamatiquetl’, the destination. The as one of India’s best documentaand Quichua ‘yachaj’. In India, shamans ry filmmakers with docu-movies have existed since ancient times and still process is the most such as Shamans of the Himalayas, Himachali gurs, Sikkimese jhankris, important thing,” says do: The Konyak of Nagaland, The Apatani Arunachal Pradeshi nyubus and bhagats of Of Arunachal Pradesh and numerous Bihar et al. In fact, even today, India has livAnu Malhotra others, says that her obsessions with ing traditions and religious practices that colours are as old as her first memhave ancient shamanic roots. One of the ories. Daughter of an Indian Air Force officer, she has travremarkable things about shamanic elled and lived across the country—something that drove assumptions and methods is that they are very similar in her to explore India much further, and make it part of her widely separated parts of the world including such regions work. “All those colours I have seen on those trips have left a as aboriginal Australia, native North and South America, lasting impression,” she says referring to her abstract works.

Siberia, Central and South East Asia, North Europe, and Well, her works are not entirely abstract as certain figures South Africa.” are visible within her paintings.

From chasing shamans to courting royals and exploring The award-winning film director, screenwriter and proforests to taking in festivals, Malhotra has a favourite ducer speaks about colours as though she is possessed. “Even preoccupation: colours. This show is a testament to her the bougainvillea and flowers I see every day at home, carts obsession. n carrying fruit and vegetables, purple mountains, colours in ‘Hue-Borne’ is on at the India Habitat Centre till 6 September; it festivals like pooram, art forms like koodiyattam and others, will then be on display at Art Alive gallery in Panchsheel Park including colourful homes in the south and in Goa, colours from 8 September till month-end of the paddy fields, the sunset, and so on, remain great at50 open

15 september 2014

ART Return of the Prodigal Valsan Kolleri is at his subversive best while Puneet Kaushik plays with memories in a new show curated by Prima Kurien Ullekh NP

H

is obsessive-compulsive ways have not faded one bit, but Valsan Koorma Kolleri finally seems to have channelised all his angst and found some happiness.

A product of the ‘Chennai School’ in the 1970s, this brilliant sculptor had bloomed, earning fame and glory long before the boom years of 2004–09. Indeed, the boom brought him back to the art market, but the ‘difficult artist to work with’ tag stayed on. The Kochi Muziris Biennale changed all that.

It helped that the frenetic pace of his life and constant fleeing from circumstances haven’t rendered him a spent force.

When India’s first international biennale was taking shape in 2012 under much pressure—depraved and jealous artists zealously used social media and their links with petty politicians to raise flippant charges to nip a noble effort in the bud—Valsan decided to pitch his tent in Kochi, almost literally, and threw his weight behind the latest art initiative that is now showing signs of catapulting the southern cosmopolitan city as a destination for serious artists, especially the young ones, from around the world.

I Wish I Could Cry, a Valsan sculpture that has pride of place at Gallery Espace at the ongoing art show curated by Prima Kurien, is a tribute to that sense of overcoming, perhaps, his own inconsistencies and incongruity in a world that favours wine-and-cheese affairs with a lot of babble.

The work, made using copper wire and a copper pot and, by Valsan’s own words, “Kochi’s air”, is a tribute to the spirit of art and energy, and the last laugh, of all those behind the Kochi biennale now heading towards its second edition with much ease in December. “I Wish I Could Cry is not about any unrequited love or anger or deep frustration, but about tears of joy. That I finally found happiness,” Valsan notes. He emphasises a point Kurien announces in the show, titled The Shape Things Will Take, that the two artists in the exhibition, Valsan and Puneet Kaushik, have a “unique way of engaging with space and material, unbound by conventional art practice or the preconceived language of academic expression”.

Kurien’s effort at showcasing two multi-disciplinary artists from different generations is a celebration of raw talent from those two generations. She has brilliantly captured not only the differences but also the vast turf of common interests across generations, especially when it comes to experimentalism and the urge to seek, sometimes with reluctance and caginess, and sometimes without, 52 open

ashish sharma

unconventional ways of making art. While Valsan, who after Chennai went on to study at the Faculty of Fine Art, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, gets inspiration from the youthful, cosmopolitan air to come up with portraits (which nobody thought was up his alley), Kaushik, who was born a few years after Valsan went to art college, digs deep into memories to weave together works using threads.

He has been enamoured of threads since the time he saw his grandmother knit and weave to make products. The affable young artist based out of Delhi is intense and broody in his imaginative wanderings. No wonder then, there are several ‘hearts’ in Kaushik’s intricate works some of which use laundry tags, beads, fabric materials, among other ‘disposable’ stuff. In that sense, he is a manipulator of such raw materials and an experimentalist to the core. He says about his works on display at the show: “This is all more like an autobiographical work as I am a person who acts more 15 september 2014

“In the end, art alone would succeed” Valsan Koorma Kolleri from the heart than the mind.” Titled Indelibles, his work, Kaushik says, is part of a series he is planning in the next shows. An ardent admirer of Vincent van Gogh, Kaushik has taught art at the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to India. He has never been able to gel well with the urban splendour of the West which often tends to be a vulgarised chase for material wealth. “I found the life there not very compatible with my sense of thinking. Which is why I have returned.”

It will then be interesting to watch how he negotiates the unorganised world of Indian art where several galleries have mushroomed during the boom years only to disappear as soon as the economy hit the skids—many artists have complained of non-payment and inordinate delays in works they had sold at galleries.

15 september 2014

“But then in the end, art alone would succeed,” declares Valsan, digressing a bit to chat about India’s largely unregulated art market and also about a sculpture workshop, ‘Shilpa Padyam’, that he runs for students who don’t get admission in art schools. He returns to his exhibit at the show, the highlight of which is a portrait of the renowned artist-friend Jyothi Basu in his new avatar without the moustache and beard. Some of Valsan’s other untitled paintings are of people who had worked very closely with him at the Kochi Biennale.

But then it is that portrait of Basu—with Basu’s psychedelic painting in the background—that takes one’s breath away. n Curated by Prima Kurien, The Shape Things Will Take is on at Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony, till 20 September open www.openthemagazine.com 53

music

Folksy Harmony The choir group Nagaland Singing Ambassadors will represent India at a World War I commemoration festival in Belgium Sneha Bhura

A

t the closing ceremony of the 2014 Northeast Film Festival in New Delhi, something remarkable happened. The stage-curtains were drawn open to reveal a malefemale singing duo with an ensemble of around twenty singers in the background. The singing duo—Judi Honor as soprano and Emmanuel de la Rosa as the tenor—began what appeared to be a solemn opera set. The soprano then broke away from the duet to join the group of singers and launch into a sprightly, high-pitched rendition of Glory to God, alternating the prayers 54 open

with Naga folk tunes and hits by Abba.

The performance which wove in spirited acapella vocalisations and starred the bamhum (a Naga wind instrument made of bamboo) left the Delhi audience struck—as much by wonder as by the infectious music.

The Nagaland Singing Ambassadors (NSA) are a choir group that not many in India may be aware of. The group is made up mostly of students in their early twenties who will dazzle the world stage in November this year. They will represent India at the festival 1000 Voices for Peace—to mark

the hundredth anniversary of World War I—in Belgium. The festival will have 20 Belgian and 15 international choirs from around the world sing with the Brussels Philharmonic the newest composition of the celebrated Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. NSA would be the only choir representing India at the event.

The predominantly Christian states of Northeast India, like Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, have a tradition of choir groups and choral singing since the arrival of Baptist missionaries in the early twenti15 september 2014

Nagaland Singing Ambassadors perform in Delhi on 24 August with Rosa as the conductor

eth century. Yet, very few professional choir groups have caused a big stir outside the region, with the exception of Meghalaya’s Shillong Chamber Choir. With their debut performance in 2001, the Shillong Chamber Choir sprang into the limelight in 2010 when they emerged the unlikely winners of the second season of India’s Got Talent which was broadcast on Colors TV. Today, this multi-genre choir group’s re-arrangement of too many popular Bollywood numbers might endanger the disciplined moorings of classical singing that traditional choral music necessarily demands.

In order to gain a professional edge, most choral groups in Northeast India face a severe dearth of performance venues or studios for recording, editing and documentation. As Ricky Medom, Delhi-based pastor with the Naga 15 september 2014

Christian Fellowship, explains, “Every Baptist church is semi-autonomous, unlike other denominations, and thus every church has its own choir to fulfil local consumption. As of now, there hasn’t been much of an attraction to form full-time choir groups in the absence of corporate sponsorships and other kinds of infrastructural back-up.”

Most choir groups tend to disband post-performance and re-group as and when the occasion demands.

Governmental support to enable choir groups to gain greater professional finesse has been rather slow. Gugs Thishi Sema, project director of the Music Task Force in Nagaland, says, “Our basic thrust for now is music literacy. Our efforts have led so many individuals to go abroad to study music. Some have come back with their professional expertise to develop their home state.”

The NSA as a choir group was formed in 2010 as an initiative of Lipokumar Tzudir, a National award winning conductor and presently the director of North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur. Comprising well-trained and experienced musicians from Nagaland at the time of its inception, it had a successful run for two years, after which it was disbanded. It was later reborn as the performance wing of the newly set up school Nagaland Conservatory of Music, Dimapur, which offers a Bachelor’s degree in music. The Conservatory, set up in 2013 by Tzudir, serves to train aspirants in the quintessence of Western classical music, choral conducting and composition, apart from imparting high-powered training in violin, piano and guitar as part of a rigorous course spanning four years, the completion of which produces competent musicians ready to be employed in any part of the world.

It took Tzudir 12 years to realise his dream of setting up the Conservatory.

Scrambling enough resources to study in the Philippines and England to become a composer and conductor, Tzudir is acutely aware of the obstacles in his home state that eager

music learners face. “Music should be part of the school curriculum here.

But how can that happen without a pool of qualified and well-trained musicians? And how can everyone gather enough wherewithal to pursue music courses abroad? The school is the only one of its kind in the region to [impart] world-class music education,” Tzudir explains. Armed with a Master’s in Ethnomusicology from Sheffield University, Tzudir is an exponent of Naga folk fusion and encourages the integration of Tribal folk tunes to create original masterpieces through the medium of Western classical music. The NSA, in its concert in Delhi, performed a breathtaking choral rendition of the Naga song Mejemsanger Naro with one of the male singers striding forward at the head of the stage to play the bamhum, which added a deeply rustic touch, recalling an Arcadian vista of rolling mountains and verdant pastures.

Well known filmmaker Utpal Borpujari has extensively explored folk music revival in Northeast India in his documentary Songs of the Blue Hills, which will be competing in prominent international film festivals of Gothenburg and Washington. His documentary features the Nagaland Singing Ambassadors along with a few other choir groups that are incorporating folk music in hymns—a practice which was once forbidden. “It is only in the last two decades that the younger generation of musicians are bringing to the fore what was lost a century ago,” he says. Borpujari, as curator of the film festival, chose to invite the NSA to the closing ceremony as he is fully convinced of their potential.

It is important to bear in mind that the NSA is not a professional choir group today. Most of its members will graduate soon and be replaced by the next batch of students. But as Rosa states, “The quality of music education at the Conservatory is unmatched in Northeast India.” Going by the number of calls the Conservatory has already started getting for choir conductors, it seems like choral singing in India is set for an impressive revival. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

books ‘I feel like the same person. The world has changed’ Ian McEwan returns in top form with The Children Act. The novelist talks about mortality, the news cycle and the future of Scotland rajni george

I

n his crackling new novella of a novel The Children Act

(Jonathan Cape, 224 pages), Britain’s master storyteller is back in top form after less successful recent forays, with all the narrative grandness of Amsterdam (for which he won the Booker in 1998) and the emotional heft of Atonement.

In just 55, 000 words, Ian McEwan brings his classic boil of tragedy, suspense and human error to bear on the world we inhabit today; full of uneasy truces between modernity, convention and that ultimate truth of eventual obliteration. The multiple award-winning author of 15 books trades best in this kind of elemental confrontation, and like Amsterdam’s composer Clive Linley, Saturday’s neurosurgeon Henry Perowne and Solar’s physicist Michael Beard before her, leading High Court judge Fiona Maye hurls into the fray.

Admired for her sage judgements and keen intelligence, accomplished Fiona is feeling rather brittle; she is dealing with the fallout of unplanned but inevitable childlessness at 59 and a crisis in her marriage of three decades. Her tale begins with a confrontation with academic husband Jack, ‘padded in for an argument’ and asking for her permission to transgress and fulfill his lust elsewhere. As Fiona reflects, ‘sex was only one part of that fraction, and only latterly a failure, elevated by him into a mighty injustice’.

But she has stoppered up her passions, Jack reasons, not knowing that it is the physical vulnerability she feels which holds her body back from him; she has just ruled on Siamese twins who must be separated to preserve one’s life. Now, she must decide whether a child will live or die: Adam Henry, a beautiful young boy of 17, is refusing urgent blood transfusions because he is a Jehovah’s Witness and this procedure goes against his creed. Fighting between urges to save him and to remain impartial—as well as a fainter one that calls up the life left behind her and before her, sounding far offstage in the autumn of her existence—Fiona finds herself singing with Adam in his hospital room, even as her husband begins his intended affair.

Transgressions, we know, will follow.

“It began really with forming a very good friendship with a judge, Alan Ward. We have a shared taste in chamber music, and I started to read his judgements. They can be read online, and are superb to read: love, the end of love, destinies of children, fortune, illness, death. The humane character of a judge is crucial in any judgement,” says McEwan over the phone, from England. “Then, there was a famous case of a Jehovah’s Witness who was refusing a blood 56 open

transfusion on religious grounds, in 2000 and later on. The struggle between parents having to sacrifice a child and the court—there was a degree of tension here.”

Thus began the story of Fiona. “I began with an elderly judge, 60, and she had to be a woman; a childless woman. I don’t think childlessness affects men in the same way,” he explains. “Fiona doesn’t easily speak about emotion, she is self-contained. When she finally weeps... ” As she plays the ‘demanding fugue’ that begins when she visits the hospital to decide the young boy’s ability to choose his fate—and begins to receive letters from him, addressing her admiringly as ‘My Lady’—Fiona is full of surprises, and wonderful pronouncements. ‘She had squandered enough gravitas already’ she says, during her visit to the hospital, and on the subject of Melanie, the statistician Jack intends to bed: ‘Not so remote from the name of a fatal form of skin cancer.’ There are even funny comparisons of the couple’s toenails (hers tellingly fungal, his perfect), in one of those awful registers of intimacy that ring truest.

Most of all, Fiona is full of endearing doubt despite her steely manner. Writing a letter she will never post to Adam, who is questioning his faith for the first time, she pauses: ‘When she looked at her short letter a day later, it wasn’t the friendliness that struck her, it was the coolness, the dud advice, the threefold impersonal use of one, the manufactured recollection. She reread his and was touched again by its innocence and warmth. Better to send nothing at all than cast him down.’

Yet, the connection between two utterly different people persists, as faith, youth and ennui square off in a perverse duel.

Is she a favourite, and are there others? “Yes, her, and the narrator in Enduring Love,” says McEwan. “The central character in Black Dog mirrored many of my doubts at the time. Briony in Atonement, you see her throughout her life; she was born on the page, walked out of a mist.”

His characters are often contained, even phlegmatic people, fixated on a single undertaking or moral compulsion.

You may have to work to understand them, and they may inspire awe. “I don’t think Fiona has all the answers. She steps over the line. There is an investigation of the moral issue,” says McEwan. “The friends I like the most are the ones who reveal themselves slowly. It’s my English habit.”

McEwan, awarded the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2008, is indeed fond of his very British characters, principled figures unburden15 september 2014

mathiew boirgois/ap

ing themselves violently of the stereotypical stiff upper lip.

We met while he was in India in 2008, and he was full of wit, merry, about to go hiking in the Himalayas, a journey which he remembers now as “stunning”. Today, he is pensive, at times as solemn and wry as Fiona.

“I feel like the same person,” he says. “The world has changed. It is less private. The general noise is louder, and I am also addicted or I’d turn every machine off. Habits are too strong, they shape your consciousness and become part of the white noise, the 24/ 7 of the internet. There is a dark news cycle, and we have had a very dark summer; Ebola, Syria, Ferguson… ” He lists more recent events, moving on 15 september 2014

to the pressing issue of Scottish independence. “This could be positive or negative,” he says. “I’m very torn. I’m half Scottish and half British; I am the United Kingdom.”

As his kind of writer, he is of course also necessarily part of this cycle.

“There is a kind of unfolding story, a sense that we might be living in fundamental change that everyone feels in their time, a fractured dispensation.

I suppose everyone at some time imagines they are living at the worst time; but this doesn’t mean it is not.

And now, there is war on our eastern borders; old ghosts are returning in new form. All interesting literature pursues the human condition in adversity. If you want to know what joy is like, turn to poetry. We have to live our life through time and change; the novel does this. One puts one’s characters through trials and tests, explorations of the daily condition.”

Now on his sixteenth book, McEwan is well into an accomplished career and writing on. “It doesn’t get any easier, but it doesn’t get any harder either. When you start a new book, you know it’s going to be long, and you wonder, are you going to have the stamina and the inventiveness to get it done? But also, might you be on to something fresh and new that will energise you? I’ve been doing this 45 years. At half past 9, I’m at my desk with my second cup of coffee.”

While some of the themes of his morality tales—his ‘wilful narrative sadism’ as critic Catherine Taylor once called it—may seem too heavyhanded on repeat, McEwan is the master of the pivotal moment. A kiss can spin an entire story. The explanation around these brilliant juxtapositions is often almost beside the point; in Atonement, it stretched on for the length of a book. Here, the explanations are minimal (though some might have cut back even more). Back in the territory of early gems like First Love, Last Rites (1975, his first), McEwan is paring down.

In The Children Act’s penultimate moment, Fiona plays Mahler with stunning proficiency—the book is, typically, full of beautiful and beautifully rendered music—after receiving news of a tragedy she set in motion, managing to achieve ‘what was second nature to first-rate pianists and coax from certain notes above middle C a bell-like sound.’

Listen, and you will hear McEwan’s plangent music. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

books Much Hullabaloo Over Halahala Graphic novelist Appupen takes on consumerism in the third of his ambitious series. But is he part of the very system he is criticising? Amitabh Kumar Aspyrus

Appupen HarperCollins India | 168 pages | Rs 599

A

ppupen’s latest offering is his most ambitious yet.

When he first took us to Halahala in Moonward, we were introduced to the whimsical logic of his universe. It was a critique of the world that we lived in, our prevalent consumer culture and the desire machine that it sets in motion. At that point, I hadn’t come across such a comic about a shared reality within the Indian context. The second book, Legends of Halahala, took us a little deeper into this world, and we followed. I picked up Aspyrus to see where it heads to now.

The book is divided into three parts, and liberally sprinkled with short format ‘advertisements’. The first one starts with a dream being dreamt and the dreamscape that gets built around it; this section is about the dream growing and spawning an entire world of its own. The second is of the dreamer who is propelled by this desire machine through life, including starting a family. The third is about the dreamer being avenged by his daughter; an attempted climax to a book that ends up just a little ahead of where it started.

There is no central protagonist in this series to keep it together, nor a continuing chain of narrative; no names, even.

(The hero of the third chapter is called Mona and we know this only because of a name scribbled on a letter that is in the background, in one frame.) The projections we are taken through give us a sense of his world.

Appupen’s world is not a place, it is a condition, and there are various symptoms to that condition.

These are etched as graphic stories that render themselves extremely palely; in most persuasive graphic pieces, there is the possibility of finding some clue the artist has left us, hiding; there, in the corner.

The first reading of Aspyrus was unexpectedly fast. I went through it again, this time glossing over the details and trying to dig a little deeper. The cleverness of the format strikes you, but you begin asking yourself, could this have worked better as a serialised comic? What is holding this book together?

So, I read it again.

The formal project in this book is clear. It is not so much about the story that you are telling but how you are telling it.

It is about how a certain linearity of motion and time is reconstructed as a comic that was central to its form.

Moebius will nod in agreement; reading his Arzach series (a comic book collection of four short stories without text) is about soaking in the atmosphere of his own whimsical world. Going through the silent adventures of the hero through a terrain utterly magical and etched with great detail, the larger plot is secondary to its telling. With good comics it’s not merely about creating a sequential syntax, but playing with it; like the difference between speech and song.

And in this case for a song to be sung, Appupen (the pen name of artist George Mathen) needs to make a fourth book.

The meta narrative seems to meander towards closure, but by the time you get to it there are no details that remain.

Every structure has its own demand, and as much as the book is well designed, at no point can you recall the specifics of what you have just experienced. It always remains a little blurry, like a dream. An unwitting stroke of genius?

For a book that stitches together fragments of a fantasy world that we are still discovering, you wonder why we haven’t seen more of Halahala in the shorter format. There was the shorter Manta Ray piece that was effective; in parts some of the shorter narratives in the book shine through.

Within the infant history of the graphic novel form in India, this book is a milestone—in terms of pushing the form into territories other than that of a purely narrative function. Its publishers need to be recognised for their consistent effort towards promoting a wide and eclectic range of graphic literature in India. But, while celebrating this harsh critique on consumerism, we are left with a sense of irony. Would Appupen’s pen be moving to stranger songs if it were not for the commercial energies that a product such as this is ultimately part of? How much does this project really succeed in communicating its vision to the reader, not just as a graphic story but also as an object that is part of the same world that it is critiquing? For now, this beautifully produced tapestry about a dystopic world being overrun by corporation-led consumer mania costs only Rs 599 in paperback. n

For a song to be sung, Appupen needs a fourth book; we meander towards closure, but by the time you get to it, no details remain

58 open

Amitabh Kumar is a faculty member at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and founding member of The Pao Collective 15 september 2014

The Return of Raja Rao The reissue of the pioneer’s four classics brings to life his spiritual quest in all its vividness RAJNI GEORGE

O

ne of India’s pioneering great Indian writers is a man

many may not know today: Mysore-born, Sorbonneeducated Raja Rao, author of one of our more obscure classics, Kanthapura. The world of Raja Rao, deeply rooted in lofty Hindu and Brahminical ideas, is dense and outdated for a contemporary reader; yet, it represents a crucial historical moment in Indian writing we will do well not to forget. The New York Times lauded him for ‘conveying the distinctive cadences of his native country’; The Hindu declared: ‘More than any other writer of his generation [Rao] established the status of Indian literature in English’. Belatedly, his classics find their way to bookshops in a Penguin reissue with gorgeous covers; they were previously forgotten by small publishers and mostly out of print, their bindings coming loose, though he had won awards like the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Neustadt International Prize.

In Kanthapura (1938, 248 pages), hailed as the first major Indian novel in English, Gandhi’s struggle for Independence arrives in a casteist south Indian village, in a long oral account set down at leisure. In The Serpent and the Rope (1960, 488 pages), a young scholar, Rama, meets Madeleine at a French university, and the contrasts of East and West are played out in their marriage and his quest for cultural truth.

And in The Cat and Shakespeare (1965, 224 pages), a sweet tale of two friends, a philosopher clerk and his conservative neighbour, plays out in halcyon Trivandrum. The Collected Stories (240 pages) span village life and the freedom struggle, ranging from Rao’s early pieces to his mature narratives.

Rao, born in 1908, counted Mulk Raj Anand and RK Narayan among his peers, as fellow emerging Indian writers at a definitive moment; yet, he lost some of his readership as he was deified and experimented with new ground. He grew up speaking Kannada, but wrote in English; he itched against the constraints of the colonial language, yet revelled in his exposure to life abroad. Perhaps this accounts for what some see as more than customary floridness, even for someone writing at his time. Indeed, phrases like ‘a vocable of God’ abound, as do phrases like this one: ‘In that moment, for once Madeleine seemed to have intuited womanhood, as if the hair had grown rich and the belly had heaved high; as though Raja Rao the outer turning had slipped back

15 september 2014

inward, and she saw herself woman.’ (From The Serpent and the Rope, among the most slippery of Rao’s works. ) Yet, Rao also spoke to the truth we still deal with today: ‘We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us.’ (foreword to Kanthapura). He could be pre-eminently cool: ‘I was born a Brahmin—that is, devoted to Truth and all that.’ (The first line of The Serpent and the Rope.) And he wrote of rural India beautifully: ‘The rains have come, the fine, first-footing rains that skip over the bronze mountains, tiptoe the crags, and leaping into the valleys, go splashing and wind-swung, a winnowed pour, and the coconuts and the betel nuts and the cardamom plants choke with it and hiss back.’ Both stylist and stylised, Rao is best in this great south Indian story of self-realisation.

The seminal writer wrote 13 collections of stories, five novels and five works of non fiction, leaving four unpublished novels which may well be eyed next (among them are part of his Chessmaster trilogy). Also short stories, essays, poetry in French and correspondence with Indira Gandhi, Octavio Paz, and Andre Malraux, lists literary critic Nilanjana S Roy, in her forthcoming collection of essays, The Girl Who Ate Books.

‘Reading Kanthapura in college was a liberating experience.

It was the key to our own world, and to a wider world. The fierce discussions sparked off by Raja Rao’s novel of a village whose slow life-cycles are savagely interrupted by revolution led us inevitably to Manohar Malgaonkar, Bankimchandra, OV Vijayan. And Kanthapura also let us claim the work of other writers, outside both the Indian and the Western canon—like Mario Vargas Llosa’s early Peruvian novels,’ she says, in the book. Rao, who moved to the US in 1966 and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, made those kind of bridges, when they were important.

Seeing writing as his dharma, he chose a spiritual enquiry that lost some of us: ‘I think I try to belong to the great Indian tradition of the past when literature was considered a sadhana (a form of spiritual growth). In fact, I wanted to publish my books anonymously because I think they do not belong to me,” he told translator R Parthasarathy in an interview. Publishers, who his widow Susan Raja Rao courted for long in vain, have something else in mind. n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

food for thought On current food consumption trends, by 2050 cropland will have to be expanded by 42 per cent and fertiliser use increased sharply by 45 per cent over 2009 levels

Genes and Hangovers A person’s DNA accounts for almost half the chance of getting a headache after a booze binge

Cost of Meat-heavy Diet

erin patrice o’brien/getty images

science

W

hy do some people after an entire night of binge drinking suffer from little or no hangover, while others who have had the fewest of drinks need to call in sick?

According to a new study, it is all in the genes.

While factors like the pace at which an individual drinks, whether one eats while drinking, and one’s general tolerance towards alcohol also play a part, the study found that a person’s DNA plays a major role.

For this study, which was conducted in Australia and reported in Live Science, about 4,000 middle-age people from the Australian Twin Registry participated in a survey, reporting their experiences with hangovers and alcohol intake. The participants had to recount how many times they had gotten drunk in the past year, along with their ‘hangover frequency,’ and their ‘hangover resistance’ which was whether or not they had ever experienced a hangover after getting drunk.

Scientists found a strong link between identical twins in reports of hangover frequency and resistance, suggesting there are genetic similarities that play a part in determining 60 open

if a person will fall victim to a hangover. The results showed that genetic factors accounted for 45 per cent of the difference in hangover frequency in women and 40 per cent in men. This means genetics accounts for nearly half of the reason why one person experiences a hangover and another person doesn’t after drinking the same amount of alcohol.

Interestingly, the researchers discovered that people who possess the genetic variants involved in increasing the risk of suffering a hangover also tend to drink in excess more regularly than those lacking the hangover genes. The researchers suggest that genes which dictate how often a person is struck by a hangover may also control how frequently they get drunk; there may also be a genetic link to alcoholism, it seems.

Lead researcher of the study Wendy Slutske told Live Science, “With drinking alcohol, it is not ‘one size fits all’. People are different in their ability to consume alcohol without experiencing adverse consequences, such as having a hangover… We have demonstrated that susceptibility to hangovers has a genetic underpinning. This may be another clue to the genetics of alcoholism.” n

A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that as populations rise and global tastes shift towards meat-heavy Western diets, increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demand of what is expected to be 9.6 billion people—making it necessary to bring more land into cultivation.

The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3 per cent, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals. As humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and land cover conversion and releasing more greenhouse gases. n

Going Green Boosts Productivity According to a new study, plants in the office significantly increase workplace satisfaction, self-reported levels of concentration, and perceived air quality.

Findings suggest that a green office increases employees’ work engagement by making them more physically, cognitively, and emotionally involved. Lead researcher Marlon Nieuwenhuis of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology, says, “Our research suggests that investing in landscaping the office with plants will pay off through an increase in office workers’ quality of life and productivity. It directly challenges the widely accepted business philosophy that a lean office with clean desks is more productive. Simply enriching a previously Spartan space with plants served to increase productivity by 15 per cent.” n

15 september 2014

tech&style

VanHawks Valour A bike loaded with sensors and GPS-aided navigation tools for a safe ride gagandeep Singh Sapra

haptic feedback Often referred to as simply ‘haptics’, this refers to the use of the sense of touch in a user interface design to provide information to an end user. Haptic is from the Greek ‘haptesthai’, meaning to touch. As an adjective, it means relating to or based on the sense of touch

Pilot’s Watch w Chronograph

Price on request

$1,584

Seventy years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took off on a reconnaissance flight over France and never returned. IWC Schaffhausen commemorates the event with the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Edition ‘The Last Flight’, available with a crown, push-buttons and caseback in titanium, red gold or platinum, each in a limited series of 1,700, 170 and 17, respectively. n

m

ost technology developed

for the bicycle in recent years is mainly aimed at making it leaner and faster; not much work has been done on rider safety or navigation, and this is where Canadian startup VanHawks is trying to change things with its Valour, which will be available for shipping in March 2015, but is up for pre-order now.

In today’s world of devices talking to each other, the Valour is designed to talk to other bicycles to let you know which road is closed, which is potholed, and help you discover more of your city.

Whether you cycle for fun or to work, set up the location you are headed to on your smartphone, and the built-in LEDs on the handlebar will indicate the direction to take; and as it gets more inputs from other Valour bike users, it will also get you there faster.

To negotiate blind spots, ultrasonic sensors provide vibrating haptic feedback on the handlebar, letting a rider immediately know if there is a vehi-

15 september 2014

cle anywhere in the vicinity.

In-built computers measure time of ride, speed, best time, distance covered, and calories burnt; and this information synchronises well with your smartphone. If it’s not with you, the information is stored till you get to where your smartphone is. All this information is organised through a cloud-based application.

If you lose your bike, just mark it as ‘lost’, and your Valour will contact other Valours around, and alert you of the location of your bike via an app-based notification.

The bike comes with a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a speed sensor, GPS receiver, blind spot detection sensors and LEDs. There is a PD-8 dynamo to keep batteries on the bike charged. The bike comes with disc brakes and uses 700c 28mm tyres so you get great speed.

The bike will be available in small, medium, large and extra large sizes, and multiple colour options.

You have the option of a multispeed, fixed gear or single speed version. n

Sony Xperia C3

Rs 23,990

The Xperia C3 runs on a Quad Core processor with 1 gigabyte of RAM. It has a 5.5-inch display, is 7.5 mm thin and weighs just 150 gm.

Where it pitches itself is in this selfie crazy world with a 5 megapixel front camera that features a 25 mm wide angle 80° field of view.

There is also a front flash to give you soft light in difficult lighting conditions when you want to get that perfect selfie. The front camera features an 8 megapixel camera with a flash. This dual SIM smartphone handles both games and internet tasks easily. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

cross-border kissing controver sy The leading lady in Raja Natwarlal, r, is from Pakistan and is believed to be the highest paid actress there. Her kissing scene with Emraan Hashmi in the movie provoked outrage in Pakistan in the run-up to film’s release

Raja Natwarlal Although riddled with loopholes, this film is well-paced with some good performances ajit duara

current

o n scr een

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Director Jonathan Liebesman cast Megan Fox, Will Arnett,

William Fichtner Score ★★★★★

HMI, KAY Cast EMRAAN HAS H RAWAL KAY MENON, PARES DESHMUKH L NA KU r to ec Dir

T

his movie has plenty of holes in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, but it moves quickly and is entertaining. It also has a few decent performances by a good ensemble cast. The best thing about the film is the ascending degree of swindling that it displays. Starting off with two con artists working the streets, bars and hotels of Mumbai, it gradually moves on to larger projects, finally ending up with the biggest confidence trick of all, the buying and selling of an Indian T-20 cricket team.

Raja (Emraan Hashmi) and Raghav (Deepak Tijori) are soul buddies and partners in petty crime. One day, a regulation robbery goes wrong and they end up stealing the money of a Mafia Don based in Cape Town. Raghav is shot dead. Raja swears revenge and goes to Dharamshala to team up with the big daddy of confidence tricksters, a guru called Yogi (Paresh Rawal).

The duo find out that Mafia Don, Varda Yadav (Kay Kay Menon),

62 open

otherwise impregnable in his fortress in South Africa, has one weakness— cricket. He collects cricket memorabilia with an all consuming passion and would love to buy a T-20 team in India.

The problem is that with his shady finances, no one will sell him one.

The recent real-life cricket scams in India make the last part of the film seem credible, indeed plausible. Raja and Yogi bring Varda Yadav to the headquarters of cricket in Mumbai and sell him a lemon—‘The Ahmedabad Avengers’. The set-up looks entirely convincing, particularly the air of underhand dealing that permeates the administration of cricket. Ironically, this is what reassures Yadav. Also reassuring is the ‘auction’ of the team at a five star hotel—something right out of prime time news.

The plot of Raja Natwarlal has as many holes as a coffee filter. But with its excellent pacing, you may just smell the coffee and wake up later. n

Named after four great Italian Renaissance painters—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael— the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a lot to live up to. They were born in a laboratory experiment and escaped to the sewers of New York City where they grew into gigantic English speaking turtles who are experts in Ninja. Their benefactor, the little girl who helped them escape, is April O’Neill.

April (Megan Fox) is now all grown up and is a TV news reporter. She soon realises that the vigilantes that she has spotted doing good in New York are the same little turtles she let out of the lab years ago. She also realises that the ‘Foot Clan’ gang, now terrorising the city, and led by a creature who lives up to his name—‘The Shredder’—is going to tear her wards to pieces.

Unfortunately, this edition of the series is a particularly dull one. Apart from the occasional one-liners from popular culture that the Ninja Turtles have picked up in their teenage enthusiasm, the film has little by way of entertainment. It is packed with battles that go on forever and with New Yorkers—like the one played by Whoopi Goldberg in a walk-on part—who just don’t get it.

Neither do we. n AD 15 september 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

The Curious Delay

The minute Fox Star India announced it was moving the release of Anurag Kashyap’s jazz-age epic Bombay Velvet from its December 2014 release to May 2015, conspiracy theories began floating about the possible reasons for the sudden shift. Fox, for its part, had made it clear that the film’s extensive VFX work would not be complete in time to make the December release date , but gossipmongers insisted the film hadn’t shaped up the way it was intended to, and that a major re-edit was in the works. According to one story, the film’s leading man Ranbir Kapoor came out disappointed from a screening and had demanded that Anurag polish the film before putting it out for the world to see. Another theory is that Fox wants some ‘breathing space’ between Bang Bang! and Bombay Velvet as both are Rs 100-crore plus projects.

However, one man who has nothing but praise for the film is Oscar-winning Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic, who told me he’s seen the film and that it’s “brilliant”. Tanovic— whose debut film, the war satire No Man’s Land, beat Lagaan to take the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001—is in India currently, wrapping up post-production on his latest film Tigers, a whistleblower story set in Pakistan and starring Emraan Hashmi.

Tanovic has been a friend of Anurag for some years now, and was introduced to his leading man by the Gangs of Wasseypur director himself. Tanovic reveals that he watched a cut of Bombay Velvet recently, and says, “Anurag has made his most ambitious film yet.” He does add that “the film needs pruning” but believes that it’s “the most visually accomplished film” he’s seen in a while.

I Am like That Only

Sonam Kapoor admits she can be quite daft sometimes. Quiz her about that outrageous comment she made on Koffee With Karan earlier this year— you know the one: “People who’re not good looking are generally considered good actors”—and she sportingly accepts that it was “my bimbo side speaking”.

The Khoobsurat star, however, insists she didn’t get a chance to explain what she meant exactly. “I was trying to say that it’s such a stereotype that if you’re good-looking you’re not considered a good actor. But anyone who doesn’t fit the conventional definition of good15 september 2014

looking is usually labelled a good actor. It’s an unfair stereotype, not to mention one that isn’t even true,” she clarifies.

That careless comment got her flak from many quarters, including from Kangana Ranaut, who, hot off the success of Queen, was evidently offended. “What does Sonam mean exactly?” Kangana had asked. “Am I ugly, or not a good actress?”

While she’s willing to accept that she needs to be more careful so she’s not misunderstood or misinterpreted, Sonam also feels people shouldn’t take everything she says so seriously. “I’m clearly a misfit in this industry. I’ve been one since the time I came here.” She says everything about her is usually frowned upon, including her choice of films. “But I don’t know how to be any other way.”

Still Waters Run Deep

This young heartthrob star is notching up hits playing the strong, silent lover. He’s mostly shy and introverted off screen too. But those who know him closely reveal that “like any other normal under-30 bachelor, he enjoys playing the field”.

During an overseas awards weekend a few months ago, the ladykiller reportedly got lucky with not one but two pretty actresses. The first, apparently, is a classically trained dancerturned-heroine who’s had more success in ensemble movies than as a leading lady. The second is an art-house favourite. Eye-witnesses say both ladies flirted outrageously with the good-looking young man, and each was rewarded with some “private time” with the hunk.

Weeks later, while he was promoting a new movie he’d made, he bumped into one of the ladies again when she was hosting an event where he was committed to show up. It was an awkward encounter apparently, as neither had much to say to the other, and particularly because he wasn’t alone, but was accompanied by his female co-star from the film. Polite but uncomfortable hellos were exchanged before both slunk away embarrassed.

There have been other stories of his partying hard with firang visitors and leggy models, but for the most part the actor has managed to hold on to his ‘single’ reputation... never mind what goes on where prying eyes don’t reach. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Divine Direction

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

As Mumbai city savours the festive spirit of Ganesh Chaturthi, the owner of Vinayak Arts makes optimum use of all the space available. He sets up his idol making workshop by the corner of Ganesh gully in Lalbaug, annexing the footpath next to a road sign, leaving several motorists confused

64 open

15 september 2014