OPEN Magazine 17 February 2014

Decoding the zero-tax logic

How hot is the Indian art scene?

RS 35 17 f e b r u a r y 2 0 14

INSIDE Shakeela: the life of a soft-porn star l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

MY CARE, MY WAY The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, currently pending in Parliament, puts the patient in charge of his future care.

Is that wise?

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

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

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

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

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

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

Kesava Chandra

For the purpose of this essay, ‘The Elusive Tagore’ (27 January 2014), I wish the author had compared Tagore’s translations with those of other Bengali / Indian poets. Are they all bad? Is Nazrul Islam’s—the other great Bengali poet—work as badly translated (if at all)? Or are all Indian poets / Indian poetry simply mired in mediocrity? I think herein lies the key: poets writing in Indian languages are hardly translated into English. Tagore, and to I suspect translating some extent Iqbal, are poetry in Indian the only exceptions to languages into English this rule. Out of the has been rather three millennia of daunting. Either that, Sanskrit poetic tradior the 3,000 years of tion, for instance, I find Indian poetic tradition only Kalidasa being has been an exercise in bestowed with popular mediocrity English translations.

Even epic poetry such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata are mostly translated as prose (not the case with, say, the Iliad). I suspect this is because translating poetry in Indian languages into English has been rather daunting. Either that, or the 3,000 years of Indian poetic tradition has been an exercise in mediocrity.  letter of the week

R Rajmohan

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Volume 6 Issue 6 For the week 11—17 February 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

cover illustration

Anirban Ghosh

Rahul’s Tactful Move

unlike Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi who cannot take along their parties as team players, Rahul Gandhi has demonstrated that he does things democratically (‘Charge of the Youth Brigade’, 10 February 2014). In spite of opposition in local units, he has ensured that nominees to the Rajya Sabha (who are veterans) are elected. His young team is full of sons and daughters of veterans. This way, the youth has been brought into the [Congress], at the same time with the blessing of elders. This shows Rahul’s tact, long term vision and democratic virtues.  Fd souza

Not Sophisticated Enough

this is a very smart article (‘Mrs Sen and I’, 3 February 2014).

2 open

However, I failed to detect any urban sophistication in Suchitra Sen. Incidentally, in Pathe Hold Deri, the colour of her sari didn’t change as she entered and exited taxis. But it did change as she repeatedly turned corners while coming down a steep hilly path in Uttam’s company. The audience raved as it watched that scene. She looked gorgeous, but sophistication? I guess not. Once again, a smart article.  Dipankar Dasgupta

Much Ado About the Sari

it seems the writer believes that women should wear the sari as it conjures a more positive reaction in the workplace as opposed to jeans or a corporate suit (‘Pallu, Pleat, Power’, 13 January 2014). Any woman who wants to wear a sari and

enjoys doing so should go ahead and do it. But if we women wear saris expecting better treatment from society, there is something fundamentally wrong there. I am not at all a fan of the sari, because it is one of the most hassle-packed garments created in the history of mankind. To each her own.  Shashika Fernando

wonderful article. Wish I could wear my sari to work here in the UK, but as a teacher it would be too much of a distraction. But I make it a point to wear a sari on every possible occasion—formal or informal—and everyone loves it.  Gopali Chakrabort y Ghosh

Transaction Theory

this refers to ‘Men, According to Prostitutes’ (13 January 2014). Who is not in a ‘transaction’? The corporate woman with her boss for a promotion; an overly helping gay for a partner; you for readership of your articles selling stories of their miseries. Classes differ, but transaction theory remains.

Everyone has a choice of the kind of transaction one can bear and that can maximise one’s returns against limited means. They have made theirs against the means they have, you have made yours against the means you have. To balance this article that is skewed against men, you could also interview young men who are bought by elderly women to fulfill their desires.  Ale x

17 february 2014

Chasing Robert De Niro testimony

The police have spent over a month trying to get De Niro to respond in the Tehelka assault case

Since the alleged sexual assault of a colleague by Tehelka founder Tarun Tejpal last year, the police have been investigating and questioning a number of people associated with the case. Some have spoken to the police, while many have provided their statements in front of a judicial magistrate. One important individual associated with the case, however, has eluded the police—Robert De Niro.

The journalist in question was chaperoning De Niro at the Tehelka Think Fest, where De Niro was a guest, when

mumbai

17 february 2014

the alleged assault by Tejpal took place.

Crime Branch Inspector Sunita Sawant, who is the investigating officer on the case, says she has been trying to reach De Niro unsuccessfully for over a month. “De Niro’s version of events is important.

We want to build a water-tight case and the investigation will benefit from his response. But we’ve just not been able to get him to answer some questions,” she says. According to Sawant, they were first able to get through to De Niro’s attorney, whom she refuses to

name, on 7 January. “The attorney had then assured us that De Niro will provide all the necessary cooperation and asked us to email questions,” she says.

The Crime Branch prepared a questionnaire and sent it via email to the actor’s attorney. However, even after a few weeks passed, the cops did not hear from the actor or his attorney. “I understand he’s a busy individual and residing in a different country. So we sent him a reminder a few weeks later,” Sawant says. Even after the reminder, no response was forth-

coming. In the meantime, De Niro has been seen travelling to different parts of the globe, either promoting his latest film, Grudge Match, or advancing his businesses. If he was in Manila to announce the launch of the Nobu Hotel one day, he was at the Sundance Film Festival promoting a film on his late father the next.

Sawant says, “Late last month, we finally heard from the attorney. He told us De Niro was out of town and he will reply the moment he returns. Hopefully, he will.” n Lhendup G Bhutia

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

Santosh Harhare/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

small world

18

contents

22

cover story

32

My care, my way

rites

The Parsi crematorium debate

8

politics

16

Restless Pawar

28 angle

news reel

A thing of evil beauty

ideology

The third front

Person of the Week Satyapal Singh

The radical zero-tax proposal

‘Hinduism is misunderstood. I have no Hindu agenda. I am secular’ Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Dr Satyapal Singh has moved back to Meerut and joined the BJP, all ready for a new career in politics haima deshpande

D

r Satyapal Singh gave up his

high-profile job as Mumbai Police Commissioner to join politics. At a time when he was due for promotion to the position of Director General of Police—the highest police job—he called it quits. His decision to join politics, particularly the BJP, came as a shock to many, as he never wore his political leanings on his sleeve. Now that his new career needs a new CV, the former cop has moved back to Meerut to reclaim his rural roots. He says he does not ‘believe’ in Ramjanmabhoomi, that nationbuilding knows no colour and that he is a secular person.

You gave up your uniform for politics. Why? I have been in service for 33 years. As a person in uniform, my sphere of working was very limited. Now, my jurisdiction has increased. It is the whole country, the world. Plato had written long ago that if you want to clean up politics, good people must come in.

Good people are needed for the harmonious development of society. I can definitely contribute to that. Otherwise, 4 open

there is no point in complaining that politics is a dirty place.

How can you add value to politics?

I intend and am here to make a difference.

My intention is not to seek a post or power. The post of Mumbai Police Commissioner is a prestigious one known internationally. I have been there, so power is not important to me. I am coming with the clear intention that I want to do something for the nation.

What is your focus?

I can make a difference as I come from a rural agricultural background. I want to make a qualitative improvement in the lives of people, involve them in collective efforts for peace and harmony, improve the quality of education, provide employment, encourage them to compete for opportunities, etcetera.The Government has so many schemes the public is not aware of. These must be communicated to the people so that they can get the available benefits. I want to take up employment programmes which will keep the youth away from criminal activities.

Why did you join the BJP?

I come from western Uttar Pradesh where there is no Congress. [Over] the last 25 years, [this party] has gone away from here. I feel that I am

closer to the BJP ideology.

While in uniform, did you nurse a latent Hindu agenda?

I think that Hinduism is misunderstood. I have no Hindu agenda. If someone talks about nation building and saving your heritage, how can it be a Hindu agenda? I am a very secular person.

The BJP wants to build a temple at the Ramjanmabhoomi site. Do you endorse this ideology?

Absolutely not. I do not believe in Ramjanmabhoomi. My focus is nation building and that knows no colour. I believe in an ideology which can foster communal harmony.

You joined the BJP at Meerut with much fanfare. Local BJP leaders are not too happy that you will contest the Meerut seat. Do you not begin at a disadvantage?

I have not joined the Meerut BJP. I have joined the entire nation. So where is the question of beginning at a disadvantage?

You are used to the discipline of the uniform.

How will you fit into the chaos of politics?

All these years of disciplining does not go away in a hurry. I will not change, but I can change others and inculcate the value of discipline in them. I cannot be a part of the chaos. I will try to clean up politics, give it direction.

So politics is not a post-retirement fancy?

Are you in it forever?

I think so. It is a new career for me. n

17 february 2014

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NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

books

extract

46

Soft-porn star Shakeela in her own words

Tamil writer Perumal Murugan

63

Aamir’s sci-fi slant

a

true life

arts

The girl in the well of death

54

The India Art Fair 2014

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Shiv S

ena

■

F o r disrupting a Pakistani

band’s press conference in Mumbai On 4 February, members of the Shiv Sena barged into a press conference addressed

by Pakistani Sufi rock band Mekaal Hasan in Mumbai, demanding that the musicians return immediately to their home country.

The band was announcing a joint concert with Indian performers at the press

conference. The Sena workers, whose forced outrage was as usual comical to watch, carried placards and saffron flags.

The policemen posted outside the venue did nothing to stop the goons, Press Club officials later said. The Shiv Sena has a reputation for troubling Pakistani artistes performing in India. In the 1990s, it managed to stop a concert by ghazal great Ghulam Ali. Sainiks have also dug up the cricket pitch at Wankhede Stadium and protested the inclusion of actor Veena Mallik in the TV reality show Bigg Boss. Of course, in matters of greater relevance to the common man, like running the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the Sena continues to flop. n

Delhi JD-U MLA Shoaib Iqbal threatened to join expelled AAP leader Vinod Binny and bring down Kejriwal’s government, but was placated by a meeting with Delhi’s CM self correction

“We are setting a deadline of 48 hours for the AAP to fulfill our demands. I have asked Kejriwal that assurances given to the people of Delhi... be fulfilled”

“Kejriwalji has agreed to our demands and has promised that he will look into the matter—which includes 50 per cent reduction in bills, more free water and a women’s commando force”

— Shoaib Iqbal, in an interview on IBN-7 2 February 2014

— Iqbal, in a press conference 3 February 2014

turn

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of

around

Poverty in India on the Decline 269.3 million poor worldwide, 216.5 million are estimated to be living in rural India. But according to recent findings by India’s Planning Commission, poverty might be on the decline in the country. Rajeev Shukla, minister of state for planning and Parliamentary affairs, stated in the Lok Sabha this week that as per Planning Commission estimates, “The number of persons living below the poverty line in the country has declined

of the

17 february 2014

from [407.4 million] in 2004-05 to [270 million] in 2011-12.” The Planning Commission uses a poverty line based on ‘Monthly Per capita Consumption Expenditure’. In 2005, an expert committee constituted under the late Professor Suresh Tendulkar to review the methodology for poverty estimation recommended an MPCE of Rs 447 for rural areas and Rs 579 for urban areas as the poverty line for 2004-05, later updated to Rs 816 and

Rs 1,000 respectively. The latest data on household spending is from the National Sample Survey Organisation’s 68th round conducted in 2011-12. By the current findings, the states with the highest number of people living below the poverty line are Uttar Pradesh with 59.8 million and Bihar with 35.8 million. Over the past ten years, poverty in India has declined consistently: from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

On the Contrary

A Thing of Evil Beauty And yet, lingerie mannequins in Mumbai have a right to life M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

8 open

Rafiq Maqbool/ap

I

t was eight months ago that your correspondent noticed an intriguing social phenomenon in Mumbai and was compelled to comment on it in these pages. At the time, elected corporators of the Brihanmumbai Mumbai Corporation had taken a break from their regular duties of keeping a check on potholes and illegal constructions to turn their acid gaze on an evil unlike any this city had ever known— mannequins clad in lingerie.

Many reasons to eliminate them were put forward—they objectified and embarrassed women, aroused lust in men, confused everyone as sex toys—but the overriding one was that they led to rapes. These salient points found favour across party lines and a resolution was passed in the BMC Assembly asking for the extinction of this species.

That such a demand should come up might seem strange but it is not inexplicable. The Delhi gangrape had put sexual violence on top of the national consciousness, and by the time it filtered down to Mumbai’s corporators, all the legitimate causes had already been spoken for. These corporators thus had to find new causes and if they chanced on a scantily clad sensuous plastic body, then that was just the mannequin’s luck.

The lingerie industry was not pleased, but then everyone has to grin and bear it when called to sacrifice in the larger interest of society. But their travails did not end. It was argued that this was hardly a check: men could still be perverted by the sight of them through the glass front of a shop.

At this point, something finally came out in support of mannequins—the law.

Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte told MidDay last week that he was helpless: “The BMC allows neon signboards, commercial advertisements or signboards of shops with various terms and conditions, but there is no mention that types of statues or articles or clothes should not be displayed.”

Any mannequin that had daily prayed to God for succour must have felt relieved, but when it came to sexual violence, the Maharashtra government was not willing

plastic sensuality If a curvy plastic form can make a man a rapist, how powerful might real flesh be?

to show compassion. A report in DNA on 2 February said that there were plans to insert a clause into the Bombay Shops and Establishments Act, 1948, to deal with mannequins. This, according to Labour Secretary Arvind Kumar, was “to protect the dignity of women, so that they do not feel objectified… Once this is passed, the BMC can implement it effectively.”

There might actually be some convoluted merit in the objectification argument.

Developed societies seem to have considered it. Last week, AP reported that in many US cities, mannequins are fat and tattooed to make them as representative as possible. Some also have ‘pubic hair peeking through their lingerie’. This is not to turn on men, but so women can identify

The ‘objectification’ logic is the tactic of a bureaucrat forced to implement an idiocy. Objectification is hardly at issue. This is an incarnation of the idea that the female form should be hidden

with the mannequin. It is the direct antithesis of objectification, but you can take a safe bet of any amount on the labour secretary applauding this evolution.

The objectification logic is a bureaucrat’s shrewd tactic when forced to implement an idiocy. That women should not be objectified can be a value society encourages, but the corollary that anything that objectifies women should be banned opens up a road to unending absurdities. Why not ban movies with sexy actresses? If a curvy plastic form can make a man a rapist, then how much more powerful an influence is real flesh? Why not do away with industries that claim to protect or enhance beauty, like cosmetics, botox, plastic surgery or lingerie itself?

Objectification is hardly at issue here.

This silly exercise is just a new incarnation of the most medieval of ideas—that the female form should be hidden because it is responsible for corrupting the morals of men. The irony is that those who want the ban couch it in the language of female emancipation. That is why, even if lingerie mannequins are dumb, those with tongues must speak up for their right to life. n 17 february 2014

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died in New York after a suspected heroin overdose this week at age 46, was an American actor and director of repute. On Sunday morning, he was found in an unresponsive state lying on his bathroom floor with a needle stuck in his arm. Bags of heroin were also discovered in the apartment, located in the city’s trendy Greenwich Village area. Though aloof, Hoffman lived without the trappings of Hollywood success and was a common sight in the area, dropping his children to school, walking or biking, almost always in rumpled clothes.

It Happens

Loins in Winter The subject was the erotic Indian. And the speaker and his audience were senior citizens O m k a r K h a n d e k a r ritesh uttamchandani

real

Wrestling was Hoffman’s childhood passion.

But a neck injury forced him to give up the sport.

He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama in 1989 from New Hoffman’s York University’s Tisch childhood School of the Arts. passion was wrestling; he gave it up due to a neck injury

VICTORIA WILL/INVISION/AP

Hoffman played varied roles in several high profile films. His filmography includes Scent of a Woman (1992), Twister (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), Patch Adams (1998), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and Cold Mountain (2003). Critically-acclaimed films in his later years include Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), The Savages (2007),

Moneyball (2011) and The Ides of March (2011).

In 2010, Hoffman made his feature film directorial debut with Jack Goes Boating.

His biggest moment, of course, was when he won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in the film Capote in 2005. He was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actor award three times.

Hoffman is survived by his long-time partner Mimi O’Donnell and their three children. His battles with drug and alcohol addiction began in his college days. He had undergone rehabilitation, but could never really shake off his deadly drug habit. n

a treatise on desire A projection of Gurcharan Das at the Central Library in Mumbai

O

ne evening in the last

week of January, wading against the tide of humans retreating from south Mumbai, about 150 people gathered at the Central Library. The crowd largely comprised those in their twilight years: bespectacled men in loose shirts and women with bob cuts. Joining them was their comrade-in-age, the 70-year-old Gurcharan Das, who delivered a talk on the evolution of desire.

Long hailed as a ‘public intellectual’, Das could sense the dissonance between his age and the topic at hand. But he had an explanation ready. “You might say it is an odd time in one’s life to embark on a project that one ought to tackle when one is younger,” he said. “But I reckon that a person at the unlikely age of 70 might also have something to offer as he looks back at his life, or what his life might have been.”

And retrospect he did, going all the way back to the Rig Veda and Kama Sutra. Touching upon examples from his adolescence to the contemporary times, he underlined the evolution of human desire. While the talk was deceptively titled ‘Desiring Indians: Going Beyond Tarun Tejpal to Uncover the Nature of Indian Erotic’, Das

admitted that the Tehelka founder accused of rape presented himself only as a news hook. While this might have been a letdown for those hoping for Tejpal to act as the time-telling blade in the sundial of sexuality, Das’ viewpoints found much favour with his audience.

“Modern marriage combines three idealistic ideas: love, sex and family, which makes distinctive but unreasonable demands on the couple. In pre-modern times, men satisfied the three needs of marriage via three In pre-modern different individuals: the times, the wife gave birth lover fulfilled to children, a romantic lover fulfilled needs and the one’s romantic prostitute was needs and an accomplished there for sex prostitute was always there for great sex. This division of labour,” he said, taking a pause to accommodate the titters, “served men and the classes well.”

Making a liberal case for the difficulty of fidelity, he won himself rousing applause. The pontificator certainly did touch chords. A 75-yearold sitting beside me said between claps, “I wish I were 25 now.” n 17 february 2014

business

ENERGY India’s Government has tweaked its gas allocation policy to reduce prices for consumers who use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a fuel for vehicles and Piped Natural Gas (PNG) to fire kitchen stoves. Henceforth, city gas distribution companies would be able to rely entirely on indigenous gas (up from 80 per cent earlier) as a supply source, as declared by Union Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily. Imported gas is far more expensive, and so the extra allocation of local gas could result in consumer prices falling by an estimated 20-30 per cent. All this while, that quantity of cheap gas had been allotted to industrial users in ‘non-priority’ sectors that will now have to bear higher costs on gas imports.

“The intended beneficiary is the common man,” Moily has stated. As with the UPA’s recent scale-up of subsidised LPG cylinders from nine to 12 for each household every year (an added strain on the Centre’s finances), this gas move is also seen as a pre-poll giveaway. “It’s a populist measure,” agrees RS Sharma, chairman of Ficci’s Hydrocarbons Committee.

“The popular euphoria over price cuts is going to be short-lived,” says a Delhi-based energy expert. Local gas prices are set to double later this year in accordance with the Rangarajan Committee formula that seeks to align—to an extent—the State-fixed price of Indian gas with a sort of average price that prevails globally. The current price gap has caused plenty of heartburn in India before, and analysts say

Mahesh Kumar A/AP

India’s Gas Economy Gets Hazier Still

gas consumers get priority The Union Petroleum Ministry’s policy shift has cheapened LNG as a vehicle fuel

that even partial market pricing could resolve that problem. In this context, Moily’s latest move “contradicts the very objective the While voters Government wanted to may be pleased, achieve with this the Centre has formula: introducing confused India’s more market forces to gas market India’s energy sector”. reform agenda Lowering consumer prices now only to raise them sharply later may be foolhardy.

The gas market in India, analysts sense, may remain distorted by State subsidies

for longer than reformers had hoped. This would generate even more confusion; the lack of policy clarity could complicate cost calculations and investment decisions on gas-fired industries. “Sanity would have lain in using a clear-air argument to promote this cleaner fuel,” says Sharma.

The UPA, however, seems too busy with its election campaign to worry about those issues. Even its Aadhaar-based plan to transfer LPG subsidies in cash straight to bank accounts has been shelved, lest implementation failures boomerang electorally. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI

Business Anxiety Means an Investment Freeze Nearly two-thirds of this sample of businesses surveyed by Assocham would like clarity on India’s political direction before they commit themselves to further domestic investments Those who are optimistic about business prospects in India Contemplating Selling Businesses

23%

Christine Lagarde, managing director, IMF, on Indian inequity

2% 8%

Exploring Opportunities Overseas

67%

Potential Investors with Investment Plans on Hold right now

Source: ASSOCHAM compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

12 open

“In India, the net worth of the billionaire community increased twelvefold in 15 years, enough to eliminate absolute poverty in this country twice over”

news

reel

The Centre insists on death for Rajiv Gandhi assassins Argues convicts not traumatised, took part in cultural events

O

n 21 January, the Supreme Court had commuted the death sentences of 15 prisoners, three of whom have been convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. These three had challenged their sentences on the grounds of a delay by the President in disposing of their pleas for mercy, and the mental trauma they had undergone in the course of this prolonged wait. A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that an inordinate delay in the execution of the death sentence is sufficient grounds for commuting the same. However, the Central Government wants the convicts hanged; it has not only filed a review petition, but also raised objections to the petitions filed by the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

The Supreme Court has made it very clear that seeking mercy is a constitutional right that cannot be left to the ‘discretion or whims of the executive’. The court has also said that the nature of the case for which the person is convicted should not be a criterion in commuting the sentence.

The Government has submitted that this verdict would not be applicable to convicts in the Rajiv assassination case

because they are not suffering trauma in jail. As proof, it has said that the convicts have been educated in jail. They have also been participating in the jail’s cultural activities, which, the Government’s arguments goes, shows that they have not undergone any trauma.

The Supreme Court, however, reserved its verdict on the matter on 4 February at the conclusion of arguments on the petitions filed by the three death row convicts, Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan. The prosecution’s interpretation of the court’s observation on the trauma of convicts protractedly awaiting the outcome of mercy petitions, is unconvincing. Proposing that a deathrow prisoner’s routine activities inside jail—such as studying for a course or participating in cultural programmes—reveal that s/he is not suffering trauma, and that therefore this provides sufficient reason to execute him/her, sounds irrational.

It is also worth noting that the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case—its investigation, police chargesheet, trial and judgment by the TADA court—has not been free of controversy. Three policemen who were part of the investigation team have already confessed that there have been omissions and discrepancies in the investigation of the case. Recently, the former CBI SP V Thiagarajan, who was part of the investigation, revealed that he had not recorded any piece of evidence against Perarivalan, alias Arivu. The chief investigating officer of the special investigation team, K Raghothaman, made similar disclosures in an interview given to Open in 2012. Police constable

waiting for closure The mother of Perarivalan, a death-row convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case

J Mohanraj, another member of the team, later challenged the contradictions in the investigation before the Madras High Court (which the court refused to entertain for some technical reasons).

The Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA), a wing of the CBI constituted to probe an ‘international conspiracy’ in the assassination of the former Prime Minister, has not yet revealed any finding. The MDMA has not even concluded its investigation. Even the judge (Justice KT Thomas) who pronounced the death sentence in the case has made a public appeal not to execute the sentence.

Two judicial commission reports—The Jain and Verma Commissions—have raised serious doubts about the involvement of people like Godman Chandraswami and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. None of these findings by the commissions have been investigated so far. In other words, the grand design behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi remains an unsolved mystery fourteen years after the incident, leaving the impression that something is rotten in the state of our investigations.

The Government has so far made little attempt to address any of these shady questions. Instead, it seems in a hurry to hang three convicts who have already spent more than two decades in jail. n Shahina KK

Raj Thackeray berates Modi for Balasaheb ‘snub’ Criticises Gujaratis for giving nothing to Mumbai

I

n May 2009, addressing a rally in

Pune, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray had declared that there was no one more capable than Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to lead India. It was a forceful declaration, making many who were seriously thinking of a partnership with the MNS cringe.

One week ago, however, Raj’s fondness for Modi fell by several degrees. He was upset that the BJP’s mascot did not acknowledge the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray in his speech. Modi has addressed two political rallies in Mumbai, both at the Bandra Kurla Complex grounds located behind the Thackeray residence. Though the Shiv Sena has been an alliance partner 17 February 2014

of the BJP for more than two decades, the BJP did not invite the Sena to the rallies.

“When a person like Narendra Modi does not acknowledge Balasaheb, it is disrespect,” Raj thundered, addressing the audience at a programme he was invited to speak at. Claiming that it was Balasaheb who gave the BJP its strength in Mumbai by allowing an alliance, Raj berated Modi for ignoring such a ‘towering’ personality.

He also criticised the Gujarati community in Mumbai, and warned them that Mumbai is for Marathis and not Gujaratis. This is a deviation from his anti-North Indian stance, which involved issuing similar warnings to migrants from Bihar and UP especially. Raj declared that Gujaratis must respect Maharashtrians. “Gujaratis live in Mumbai but take away all that they earn back to Gujarat and make that state prosperous. So why live here? Go back to Gujarat,” he said.

Two years ago, Raj had gone on a nine-day visit to Gujarat to study Modi’s development model and visited the Surat Municipal Corporation. This had been prior to local elections of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). At the time, he had been all praise for Modi as he was keen on gathering Gujarat voters to his side in his battle against his cousin Uddhav Thackeray, president of the Shiv Sena.

In fact, Raj has been consistent in his endorsement of Modi’s leadership abilities over the past two years. But then, two years ago, Raj was trying to convert the strong resentment among BJP voters, a huge percentage of whom are Gujaratis, against the lack of leadership within the party to his advantage.

Now that a Lok Sabha election is around the corner, Raj has pulled off a complete U-turn. This time, it is Marathi manoos votes that he is keen on netting.

During previous years when the MNS unleashed violence against migrants from north India, Modi had invited them all to Gujarat. “This state is open to all, anyone can come here”, was Modi’s reply to the MNS stand.

It is unlikely that Gujarati voters will forget Raj’s diatribe against them. The majority of businesses in Mumbai are run by the Gujaratis. Unlike north Indian migrants, local Gujaratis are a well-heeled population; their contribution to Mumbai has been dynamic. Raj is well aware of the fact that Gujaratis stand to lose substantially if a ‘Mumbai for Marathis’ agitation gets going. Raj’s main grouse against Gujaratis is that they employ Marathi speakers to do menial 17 February 2014

work and accord them no respect. This has to change, the MNS leader now says.

Raj is, in fact, following in the footsteps of his uncle Bal Thackeray, who launched an agitation against Gujaratis in the 60s and 70s, and gave it up for an agitation against South Indians. n Haima De shpande

The Mumbai Police Flounder in this Murder Probe A month after Esther Anuhya’s body was found by her relatives, there is little headway in the investigation

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sther Anuhya, 23, was one of

several migrants belonging to Mumbai’s flourishing white-collar economy. A worker bee at a leading consultancy firm, Esther went missing after alighting at Kurla terminus in Mumbai on 5 January. Ten days later, her burnt and decomposing body was found by the side of an expressway. A month later, the accused continue to remain at large, and, after their initial reluctance to pursue the case, the police are nowhere close to tracking them down.

A native of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Esther had gone to her hometown to spend Christmas with her family.

She boarded the Vijaywada-LTT Express and landed in Mumbai around 5 am. Her last known movements were captured by CCTV cameras at the station that show her speaking on a cellphone as a man dressed in a white shirt, presumably a private taxi driver, walks ahead dragging her luggage.

“I rang [her up] around 7 in the morning,” says S Prasad, the father of the victim. “Her cellphone was ringing but she wasn’t answering.” He tried again at 11.30 am, and 3 pm, but there was no response. Towards the evening, he found the cellphone switched off. When Prasad contacted the Kurla police, they refused to register the complaint without proof that Esther had boarded the train. Prasad lodged an FIR at the Vijaywada police stating the same, and arrived in the city on 6 January.

In the days that followed, the father and his relatives, who poured in from Hyderabad and even Qatar, ran from pillar to post gathering evidence that might point them in the right direction. They procured Esther’s call records, which

revealed that the phone’s last known location was somewhere in Bhandup, in the northeastern suburbs of Mumbai. All the while, the police dragged their feet on the investigation, thinking Esther might have eloped. “It was like they were trying to avoid the case,” says Prasad.

On 15 January, one of the three search parties formed by the relatives found a charred body off the Eastern Express highway. While the body was in a state beyond recognition, they identified it from a gold ring on the middle finger of the corpse. The relatives headed to the Kanjurmarg police station to report the discovery. The family then left for Machilipatnam for the last rites. Soon after, then Police Commissioner Dr Satyapal Singh, who quit the force to join the BJP on 1 February, told a section of the media that the Mumbai Police had found the body.

“But we were on our own,” says Prasad.

According to reports, the Mumbai Police have since questioned over 1,000 people but have not found any significant leads. While Esther’s travel bag and laptop are still missing, the investigators found a bloodied shawl, slippers and a bag about 200 metres from the spot where the body was discovered. It is yet to be ascertained if these belong to the victim.

Experts at the forensic laboratory have reportedly rued the lack of urgency in the investigations that has made analysing the DNA test results more difficult.

Amid several protests online and offline, two teams of the Crime Branch and Railway Police Force joined the probe.

As the drama unfolded, some informers led the police on many a wild goose chase to serve their own agendas. “Some of the taxi drivers who gave us information had a dispute with other taxi drivers, and they wanted to put them in trouble. Another informer told the property cell of the Crime Branch that a taxi driver had taken a girl from LTT to Churchgate, and he had seen it,” a police officer reportedly told a city daily. The family members went all the way to India’s Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, even AAP ministers in Delhi, to ask for help in hastening the process, but little headway has been made in the investigation.

The incident, however, has brought the problem of illegal auto and taxi drivers back under the scanner. According to estimates, only 41,310 of the black-andyellow taxis of the 120,000 plying on city roads are registered. Taxi unions have repeatedly alleged that unauthorised drivers fleece passengers picked up at railway stations. n Omkar Khandekar open www.openthemagazine.com 15

news

reel

feasibility

Daydreamers’ Club Nitish Kumar’s efforts to cobble together a third front will likely go nowhere PR Ramesh newspapers and social media with their instant punditry are on an overdrive, predicting the potential of a ‘third front’ to queer the pitch for the BJP and Congress in the upcoming General Election. What has set off this round of opinion-spewing is Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s assertion that his Janata Dal United (JD-U) is approaching the polls as part of the secular column and that his forces would move in lockstep with Malayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S). Some of these over-enthusiastic commentators have

ashish sharma

T h o s e w h o l i tt e r

an impatient man JD-U leader Nitish Kumar and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi (on the other side of the car)

concluded that Nitish Kumar’s move will encourage ‘unattached’ political parties to arm themselves and take up offensive battle positions against the main contenders for the throne in Delhi.

Trained eyes, however, are unlikely to be distracted by Nitish Kumar’s hyperventilation over the imminence of this Third Front. For, past experience—from the first experiment in 1967 to the last in 1996—has shown that apart from ambition, an ideological glue and a wide geographical catchment area are critical must-haves in putting together an alternative front. In 1967, it was their

desire to take on a powerful Congress that saw non-Congress players converge on a common platform; in 1977 it was the in-your-face excesses of Indira Gandhi; and in 1996, it was their anxiety to arrest the ascendancy of the BJP that led to the formation of a third alternative called the United Front.

The latest attempt-to-be fails in all three departments. The three political leaders who have decided to float the platform are no longer unchallenged leaders in their respective states; they face stiff challenges of political survival on their home turf. Only a day before Nitish

Kumar made his announcement, two retiring Rajya Sabha members declined his offer to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. One of them, Shivanand Tiwari, went to the extent of saying that Nitish Kumar, who has “hubris as his calling card”, had a low approval rating as the CM of his home state. Besides, the resignation this week of his cabinet colleague Parveen Amanullah, daughter of Syed Shahabuddin, as minister and a JD-U member is a big blow to Kumar amid intense competition from Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for Bihar’s Muslim votes.

The other two leaders fare no better.

The SP, which won a landslide less than two years ago in the Assembly polls of Uttar Pradesh, is under siege in India’s most populous state with one of its main voting blocs—Muslims—distancing itself from the party. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, has been unable to assure voters of responsible governance; this makes the

party vulnerable to major losses in the polls due this summer.

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here cannot be any quarrel with the assumption that political compatibility will be an important question for the proposed Third Front to move beyond the trio of Nitish, Mulayam and Gowda.

Every recent electoral tracker has shown three chief ministers sending sizeable numbers to the next Lok Sabha: Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress from West Bengal, J Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK from Tamil Nadu, and Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) from Odisha. Apart from them, Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress is expected to do well in Seemandhra. Of these regional leaders, everyone has cohabited and shared power with one of the two national parties at some point or another, as has Nitish Kumar himself, and so his claim that the unattached “share the same values” stretches credibility.

Although Mamata and Naveen Patnaik have made claims of a ‘federal front’, they do not share the anxiety displayed by Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh to retain their political relevance Given that context, it was not surprising of Jayalalithaa to stonewall a query on her national posture after the General Election. After finalising an alliance with the CPM, Jayalalithaa clearly told reporters that the issue of this alliance’s PM candidate—and by extension, her party’s stand on the post-poll scenario— was yet to be decided. “This is not the time for anyone to discuss and decide who the next Prime Minister will be,” she said, “It is pointless for any political party to [address] this question now. It will be arrived at only after the election results are out.” Put simply, she has kept her options open, and her party’s stance will likely be dictated by the numbers that the principal contenders mop up.

Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik are in no hurry to bare their cards either.

Although they have periodically made claims of envisioning a ‘federal front’, they do not share the anxiety displayed

by Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh to retain their political relevance.

“What Nitish Kumar did was unveil a banner for proclaiming his relevance. His own partymen have begun doubting his ability to achieve much to become a

player on the national stage,” said BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad. One can’t be blamed for assuming that the Front proposed by Nitish Kumar is a group of losers simply because a third front can be relevant only if the four regional parties expected to perform well—the TMC, BJD, AIADMK and YSR Congress—stick together. And that’s not happening.

The YSR Congress, which is seen as a major force in Seemandhra, has made it plain that its future course will not be dictated by ideological considerations but by factors that aid the party’s growth.

“I am not against Narendra Modi,” Jagan Mohan Reddy has said, “We will back the party that will oppose the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.” For its part, the BJP has begun nuancing its position on Telangana—from its support for this new state’s formation, the party is now talking about ensuring justice for both parts of Andhra.

P

olitical observers too discount the possibility of a surge in favour of the so-called Third Front parties, especially with the Left Front appearing so weak in its traditional regions of influence.

“There is a discernible anti-Congress mood in the country and this was reflected in the recent state elections,” says Professor Badri Narayan, social historian and cultural anthropologist at Allahabad’s GB Pant Social Science Institute, “The Congress suffered humiliating defeats. This clearly shows that anti-Congress votes can be garnered only by a force arrayed against the grand old party.”

With Narendra Modi’s quest for prime ministership gaining traction, the polarisation of votes is sure to get sharper still. While the BJP is attempting to move beyond its core constituency and win over Other Backward Classes and newly-empowered economically weaker sections among them, several regional parties that operate in the field of identity politics are expected to face trouble.

Besides, Muslim voters, who are determined to exercise a veto of sorts against Modi, can be expected to back parties that are equipped to defeat the BJP in their respective constituencies. In such a scenario, a new front has no place, even though individual parties could. But then, India’s bigger regional parties have a record of placing their self-interest above issues such as authoritarianism, secularism and economic policy that have served as ideological adhesives in the past. n open www.openthemagazine.com 17

lo o s e c a n n o n

Restless Pawar The ageing Maratha stalwart has everyone guessing which way he will go Haima Deshpande

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harad Pawar’s facial expressions are not easy to read, especially not since a surgery for mouth cancer left his jaw contorted. But what he has on his mind has always been a subject of conjecture. With a general election upon the country, this game has reached yet another peak. All the more so because, for all his wily manoeuvres of the past that made him the stuff of state folklore and gave him his bargaining chips with Delhi’s power elite, his sway over Maharashtra politics is now seen to be on the decline.

Elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha a week ago, Pawar has categorically stated that the Lok Sabha is not his scene anymore. Dogged by illness—he is being treated for cancer—his hold on his party and Delhi’s political arena has been slipping. He may still be the chief of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), as also India’s Minister for Agriculture in the UPA Government at the Centre, and the Marathi media still projects him as the ‘Maratha Strongman’ he once was, but persistent charges of corruption—some levelled by Anna Hazare—have stuck and his credibility has taken a beating.

Even so, Pawar retains enough regional clout to count as a significant player for power. It’s just that observers across the political divide feel these polls are Pawar’s last chance of gaining the role he has long dreamt of: India’s Prime 18 open

Ministership. It’s now or never, they say.

How he rates his chances could influence his behaviour this electoral season.

Though an administrator of some ability with an acumen few others can boast of, his grand ambition has stymied him in the past. In a political career spanning half a century, he has shifted ideologies, moved camps, grown closer to some and distanced himself from others, and struck all manner of backroom deals. In the bargain, he has lost the trust of many.

“He has clearly changed his ambition.

It is no longer to be the Prime Minister,” says Vinod Tawade, the BJP’s leader of the opposition in Maharashtra’s Legislative

Council. “He probably wants to be President of the country and so the Rajya Sabha is a better route. It gives the impression of being apolitical.” There may be some truth in Tawade’s observation, as many who know him are surprised by his acceptance of a seat in the Upper House.

Analysing Pawar’s Rajya Sabha entry, Dr Neelam Gorhe, MLC and Shiv Sena spokesperson, says that this is no indication that the leader will keep out of active politics. “He will now have more time for manipulation and coalition politics,” she says. Some months ago, faced with corruption charges, Pawar felt that staying on with the UPA was a safe option. Whether 17 February 2014

open. He may be in a coalition government with the Congress, but he is already exploring the idea of a third front.” Joshi does not rule out an alignment between Pawar, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee of the Trianmool Congress and Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK. “Pawar never reveals what is going through his mind, nor does he provide explanations for his moves,” says Mahesh Vijapurkar, former chief of The Hindu’s Mumbai Bureau, who has reported extensively on the leader.

Many years ago, when a Marathi TV channel had interviewed the leader’s wife Pratibha, she had joked that she could never tell what went on in his mind. On another occasion, his daughter Supriya Sule had told filmmaker Jabbar Patel that her father was completely unpredictable. All that can be discerned of Pawar’s disposition right now is a certain restlessness.

inscrutable maratha Pawar’s move to the Rajya Sabha has prompted speculation that his gaze has shifted from the PM’s chair to the President’s

Manish Swarup/AP

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he still feels that way is now in doubt.

His disenchantment with the Congress has been apparent for quite some time. Rahul Gandhi’s elevation to No 2 status in the Congress was a blow to him, as he is opposed to any projection of the Gandhi scion as the UPA’s PM candidate. According to author and political commentator Prakash Bal Joshi, Gandhi’s aggressive posturing has alienated Pawar further still. Tawade agrees.

“It is like history repeating itself,” he says, “Pawar was forced to work under Sonia Gandhi, who was totally new to politics. Now it seems like his turn to work under Rahul Gandhi.”

17 February 2014

With that as a context, Pawar’s recent demand that questions over Modi’s role in the Gujarat riots of 2002 be put to rest has raised eyebrows and piqued curiosity about his political plans. Notably, Pawar issued his statement soon after Rahul Gandhi took potshots at the BJP’s PM candidate in a TV interview. And Congressmen recall other occasions in the past that Pawar has spoken in praise of Modi’s administrative skills.

Does this indicate a warming up to the BJP? Nobody is too sure.

Pawar, says Joshi, is one of the most unpredictable politicians he has ever met: “He is a leader who keeps his options

f Pawar is restless, some of it may

stem from a question of the NCP leadership’s succession. “His dilemma is that he has to decide who to hand over the crown to,” says Tawade, “His daughter [Supriya Sule] or his nephew [Ajit Pawar].”

Despite being a national-level politician, Pawar has been extremely reluctant to let go of his control of the NCP’s Maharashtra affairs. This has resulted in a clash of wills between the senior leader and his nephew on various issues. The years since Pawar’s surgery have not been kind. Questions over his leadership capacity—his recent loss of weight has been a subject of party gossip—have not been lost on his nephew Ajit, who stayed in his uncle’s shadow for decades before he took to asserting himself in state politics a few years ago.

It is an open secret in political circles that Ajit Pawar, as Maharashtra’s Deputy CM, has broken free of his uncle’s authority and tried hard to put his stamp on the NCP. Though other party leaders have kept Pawar in the loop on his nephew’s progress, the uncle has not been able to rein him in. If he lets his nephew lead the party into Maharashtra’s Assembly polls, Pawar may never regain full control of the party he founded along with Tariq Anwar and PA Sangma as a breakaway from the Congress in 1999 on the issue of open www.openthemagazine.com 19

Sonia Gandhi’s so-called ‘foreign origin’.

Ajit, as a parallel power centre to his uncle, has already played havoc with the ageing leader’s plans to have his daughter Supriya take over the NCP. Ajit has made it clear that he wants to be the state’s CM and has already begun work in that direction. He has sidelined all those who are his uncle’s loyalists and created his own set. Pawar’s announcement that he will not contest a Lok Sabha seat has only aided his nephew’s cause by sending retirement signals to NCP members. Many of them see no chance of Pawar ever becoming the country’s PM; the cascade effect of that ambition, which had been a rallying point for many, is now more or less lost.

“Pawar has exhausted all his non-political [opportunities] for political gains,” says Gorhe, who sees Ajit’s taking over the NCP as highly probable now. Other senior NCP leaders who have sat on the fence between the uncle and nephew now say that they are disappointed with the NCP chief. “Saheb does not look so powerful at the Centre either,” says a senior NCP leader anonymously, “He may not be PM; 2014 is his last chance. The NCP may not be that stronger thereafter.”

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uch may depend on how voters re-

spond to the NCP on ballots this time round. According to a leader who has known Pawar for decades, his best-case range is 60 Assembly and 10 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, that’s all. Tawade does not think Pawar has much of a chance either. “In the forthcoming elections, the NCP will do much more badly than the Congress,” says the BJP leader, “Their ministers are facing more corruption charges than the Congress. The NCP will find it difficult to win seats. What will then happen to Pawar’s PM dream?”

The Maratha leader is accustomed to controversy. Back in 2002-03, a statement by the then Maharashtra CM Sudhakar Naik set tongues wagging about his alleged links with criminals. Naik had alleged that Pawar had asked him to ‘go easy’ on Pappu Kalani, a criminal-turnedpolitician and MLA from Ulhasnagar, and tried to forge an association with Hitendra Thakur, another man with a dubious reputation. Naik’s allegations seemed to echo charges made by the then 20 open

deputy commissioner of the BMC, GR Khairnar, who, while taking on Dawood Ibrahim’s illegal constructions, had accused Pawar of defending dreaded criminals (even though he couldn’t prove his charges). In 2003, Abdul Karim Telgi, the kingpin of the Rs 60 crore Stamp Paper Scam, had reportedly named Pawar during a narco-analysis test as a politician involved; a livid Pawar sought a probe that revealed nothing.

Even as a UPA minister, Pawar has faced charge upon charge of graft. In 2007, the BJP sought Pawar’s resignation alleging his involvement in a wheat import scandal. In 2010, the leader’s family was alleged to hold a 16-per cent stake in City Corporation, which had bid for the IPL’s Pune franchise. Though Pawar and his relatives denied the charges, an IPL Board resolution reportedly contradicted his claims. Then came accusations of bending rules to favour Pune district’s

“Pawar never reveals what is [on] his mind,” says Mahesh Vijapurkar. All that can be discerned of his disposition right now is a certain restlessness Lavasa Project, in the developer of which Supriya Sule and her husband Sadanand had a stake of more than 20 per cent (later sold). In 2011, Pawar was accused of declaring assets—of Rs 12 crore—far less than his personal wealth.

Nor has the recent 2G Spectrum Scam left Pawar unscathed. When Shahid Usman Balwa, managing director of DB Realty, was arrested along with his partner Vinod Goenka for trying to secure out-of-turn airwaves to sell at a profit, Pawar’s name cropped up for his reported closeness to Balwa and Goenka. Pawar denied the allegations, but his reputation took another big hit. Can Pawar live all these scandals down? It is unclear.

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hat is clear is Pawar’s increas-

ing isolation from the Congress.

Signs of his disaffection were on public display once AK Antony was appointed No 2 in the Union Cabinet after Pranab

Mukherjee’s elevation as the President of India. Pawar had sulked and not attended office for a couple of days—until Sonia Gandhi held a conciliatory meeting with him.

However, much has changed since.

Pawar does not expect the UPA to win reelection this time, say those in the know, what with its prospects marred by raging inflation and a string of scandals.

What stands out in all this is Pawar’s ‘intimacy’ with the UPA’s principal opposition. This is not a new factor. After the Bhuj earthquake in 2001, Pawar was appointed chairman of the national disaster management committee by the BJPled NDA government. This led to increased interactions with the BJP, Gujarat and Modi.

Yet, a pre/post-poll alliance with Pawar is not a viable option for the BJP. The saffron party has levelled many charges of corruption against him, says a senior BJP leader, and an alliance with the NCP would erode its own anti-graft credentials. Even the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s alliance partner, is doubtful that Pawar will go with the saffron combine this year.

“We feel that he will not come wholeheartedly along with the BJP and Shiv Sena,” says Gorhe, “As a regional party leader, he is dependent on coalitions, but the Shiv Sena may not be a natural choice.” This, despite the fact that Pawar has been asked to plan and oversee the building of a memorial to Bal Thackeray, the late founder of the Shiv Sena. As a close friend of Thackeray and a mentor to his son Uddhav, it surprises none that Pawar was asked to do this.

In the 13 years since Pawar’s alliance with the Congress, he has hobnobbed with the grand old party’s ideological opposition, but not dared quit the arrangement. The alliance, he has stated over and over again, is held together by the duo’s political compulsion to keep ‘communal forces’—a reference to the BJP-Sena saffron combine—at bay.

Perhaps that logic still holds the NCP in good stead. Perhaps not. Either way, he wants to keep all options open. However, if neither the Congress nor BJP fare too well, and a third or fourth front needs anyone who can get a few odd seats along, Pawar’s career may get another lease of life. That, perhaps, is why he wants to keep everyone guessing. n 17 February 2014

self help

MY CARE, MY WAY

Bill Binzen/CORBIS

The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, currently pending in Parliament, puts the patient in charge of his future care. Is that wise?

Kalpish Ratna

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s a surgeon I’ve supp’d full of horrors, but I had the air knocked out of me last week.

A woman I knew slightly called me, worried about her daughter. She was an acquaintance, not a patient, and it took her a while to disgorge the story. She was worried that her daughter was unhappy, and she couldn’t think of any possible reason.

‘Can I meet her?’ I asked.

‘You’ll have to come home. Sarita doesn’t go out much.’

I didn’t know that was the literal truth till I got there.

Sarita hadn’t left the house in fifteen years.

She had just turned thirty.

‘We’ve done everything for her, AC, carpet, everything, but it doesn’t seem to be enough,’ her mother sighed outside the barricaded room where Sarita spent her life. ‘She was in tenth standard when the doctor said she had schizophrenia. What else could we do?’

The pity was that Sarita saw psychiatrists, off and on, but her protective family felt this life was the best for her.

‘We have to think of the family,’ Sarita’s mother said.

*** Ironically, I had started the day by reading the new Mental Health Care Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha in August 2013 and currently pending in Parliament. It contains an interesting clause: the Advance Directive that empowers a patient to decide on therapies. I read it with relief and approval, ignoring the rest of the document.

There were other issues, but only this engaged me. I thought about it all day. Now, as I watched Sarita’s mother lock her door again, the ‘advance directive’ seemed as flimsy as the paper it was printed on.

Who would explain this reality to me?

Pag ghungroo baandh Meera naachi re!

Log kahen Meera bhayi bawaree Nyat kahe kul naasi re!

Meera ke prabhu giridhar nagar Hari charanan ki daasi re!

17 February 2014

Meera sang that plaint in the 16th century. Five hundred years later, it sums up the tripartite dilemma of mental illness today.

Whose reality must we respect? Meera’s? Or her family’s? Or that of society?

Meera is a different person in each reality. To society, she is an oddity and a nuisance. To her family, she is an embarrassment.

But to Meera, she’s just herself.

Anybody who ‘treats’ Meera has to address all three realities.

If only her reality mattered, she wouldn’t need a psychiatrist at all. But she would remain the target of her family’s wrath and the crowd’s ridicule. And, in the 16th century that is exactly what Meera did. She stayed true to her own reality, and endured the rest.

Posterity would eulogise her as a mystic and a saint. *** What would Meera do today?

She would probably see a psychiatrist called in by her family. Whose reality should he address? It won’t do to let her be. He must protect her from her family’s ire and the crowd’s derision, even if he does not wish to engage with her reality.

He tries his best to strike a balance between the three.

The result, often, is very much like Sarita’s story.

In the 16th century, Meera was lucky. Even if she hadn’t been of exalted birth, she would have been endured. Her father may have evicted her from his house, but the crowd would have left her unmolested. A vaid or hakim might have ventured a potion or two. A pujari or faqir might have attempted to exorcise her. That’s about it. Medieval India hadn’t yet woken up to the European treatment of insanity.

Both Indian systems of medicine, which in the 16th century were complementary, had more compassionate measures of care for the disturbed mind. The dungeon, open www.openthemagazine.com 23

with ball, chain, shackles was meant for criminals, and insanity was never regarded a crime.

But in Europe, lunacy was not endured. It had to be cured or suppressed.

The history of mental health in Western medicine is curiously repetitive. The interludes of enquiry have been mostly philosophical excursions. For the rest, it is all coercion and restraint.

Even as the submerged mind was being explored by Freud and his pupils, the asylums in Europe and America began exploring the brain as the seat of insanity.

Three years ago, confronted with Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece The Cure of Folly at the Prado, I found it hard to believe it had been painted in 1480. It was so absolutely early 20th century. The neurosurgeon, so assured and intent in ‘extracting the stone of madness’ could have been António Egas Moniz lobotomising one of his early patients.

It had come to that: cut out the brain and madness could be controlled, if not cured.

Then, mid-century, chemistry took over.

The moon was officially exonerated. Lunacy was chemical. Sanity was now a molecule.

Since the introduction of the first antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s, psychiatry has undergone a paradigm shift.

Madness is no longer the focus. Coping with it is.

Ask most patients and they’ll tell you the shackles, the ball and chain, the dungeon—they’re all alive and present in that new strip of pills.

A psychiatrist who agreed with them was Thomas Stephen Szasz. He considered the right to selfhood central to any treatment of mental illness. He dismissed psychiatry as a conspiracy with the State to control and homogenise human behaviour. His fascinating work had one consequence that might change Meera’s life today.

The Advance Directive in the new Mental Health Bill introduces Szasz’s idea as necessary protection for Meera’s selfhood. To understand how that works, we have to go back three millennia. *** Reality TV, in Greece 3,000 years ago, was a blind man twanging his lyre in the agora. You could be on your way home with a basket of figs when his song stopped you in midstride. You stayed, rooted to the cobbles, the figs wilting in the strong Ionian summer. You were still there when the sun went down, still there by firelight, and there still by starlight in the long silence after the song was done. You would carry that song in you for the rest of your life. You were meant to do that, because the song was more than the hero’s story. It was your life.

We’re still listening to that story.

In fact, this bit of the story is something we’re now compelled to scrutinise. The speaker is Ulysses, and you’ll find the story in Book 12 of Homer’s Odyssey.

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Then, being much troubled in mind, I said to my men, ‘My friends, I will tell you about the prophecies, so that whether we live or die we may do so with our eyes open. First we are to keep clear of the Sirens, who sing most beautifully; I might hear them myself so long as no one else did. Therefore, take me and bind me to the crosspiece half way up the mast; bind me as I stand upright, with a bond so fast that I cannot possibly break away. If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still.

When we reached the island of the two Sirens, I stopped the ears of all my men, and they bound me hands and feet to the mast; but they went on rowing themselves. The Sirens began with their singing.

I longed to hear them further. I made by frowning to my men that they should set me free; but they quickened their stroke, bound me with still stronger bonds till we had got out of hearing of the Sirens’ voices. Then my men took the wax from their ears and unbound me.

It is worthwhile reading that quote before considering the new Mental Health Care Bill, soon to be passed by Parliament. *** In this proposed amendment to the standing statute, the Mental Health Act of 1987, the central thought, the Advance Directive, is meant to protect Meera. It puts her in the place of Ulysses. She has been informed of her ‘condition’. The exact diagnosis is irrelevant, but she is mentally ill.

Next, like Ulysses, she receives the prophecy: there will come a time when the illness gets the better of her, and robs her of free will.

Therefore, like Ulysses, Meera is offered the opportunity now, while she is still strong of will, to decide on what she would like to do in that eventuality.

Ulysses’ prophetess was Circe, a sorceress expert in magical potions and therapies. Circe was, in fact, just as qualified as Meera’s psychiatrists. Ulysses took Circe’s advice. It was an informed choice. He had seen Circe’s drugs turn his men into swine, but he had protected himself with an antidote. Besides, he had known Circe for a year.

Meera might be less trusting. Her psychiatrist may tell her the therapies needed if her disease worsens are safe, but she might disagree. She might consider such therapies unsafe or even wrong. She may object to them on the basis that they might distort her sense of self. ‘That’s not me’ is a complete rejection, even when it is based on perception and not experience. So Meera may reject such therapies, and say that she will not want them used on her in any eventuality. If and when the disease has robbed her of free will, this decision of Meera will hold.

Conversely, Meera might feel safer with the thought of those therapies awaiting her. She could say that if her disease worsens, she wants these used on her. If and when the disease has robbed her of free will, this decision of Meera will hold.

17 February 2014

The new Mental Health Care Bill gives the patient the right to state this ‘advance directive,’ called, in psychiatric parlance, the Ulysses contract.

It is meant, as I said earlier, to protect Meera.

But will it? *** The very idea has thrown up a flurry of protest from psychiatrists. They argue that it is premature and jejune.

Their arguments are based on the practical realities of treating the mentally ill. These arguments are also influenced by indignation that the State should intervene between the patient and her doctor, as if she needed protection from her doctor, rather than from her disease.

Perhaps, the fear is that such legislation presumes that psychiatry ignores the first Hippocratic rule all physicians swear by: Do no harm.

How valid are their arguments? Is their indignation justified? Does the law really put doctor and patient on opposite sides of the fence?

Disease, and the knowledge of advancing disease, is deeply coercive.

A decision made in the midst of suffering, or the dread of it, is one of expediency, not free will Before we consider that, here’s another question that’s moot: Is Meera’s situation comparable with that of Ulysses?

Yes, both of them know of a possible danger. Both have been offered a solution.

Ulysses had no other solution at hand. But has Meera?

Not just at the present moment, but will she have options, say, ten or twenty years into the future?

Again, Ulysses’ directive to his men was for one crisis.

He did not expect to go through that repeatedly, and with increasing terror and danger.

What about Meera?

She may have a mental illness that emerges periodically. There are some illnesses that pop up at intervals.

Others manifest when the patient forgets to take her usual medication, or as is common in our country, decides to skip it to cut costs. The cascade of events might be foreseeable, and Meera may have full knowledge of its escalation.

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Will that knowledge be cruel on Meera? Will it panic her into a decision she might not otherwise consider?

There is a lot of difference between knowledge and experience when it comes to suffering. That difference can be a manipulative tool. It is, after all, the core principle of torture. Disease, and the knowledge of advancing disease, is deeply coercive. Any decision made in the midst of suffering, or the dread of suffering, is one of expediency, not one of free will.

Also, Ulysses could rely on his men.

Whom can Meera rely on? Who will validate her wish?

Again, Ulysses’ decision was absolute. He did not ask his men for opinion or advice. His decision was also immediate, as the crisis was imminent.

Meera’s decisions can never be absolute. Whether she likes it or not, she is enmeshed in family and society, and therefore, she will have to consider their opinions and their advice. Her decision then will depend on how such advice conflicts with her own opinions and desires. It is a tough call to make.

And, what the hell, Ulysses was just a guy in a myth. But Meera? She might be me. *** If you return to Homer’s epic, you’ll notice a simple human need: …so that whether we live or die, we might do so with our eyes open.

To me this is the most poignant clause, the soul cry of suffering—show me the truth.

It is a plea no doctor can ignore, least of all Meera’s psychiatrist.

Rather than challenging the bond between patient and doctor, the Ulysses contract can be used by the intelligent psychiatrist to enhance communication.

But Ulysses also empowers his men to go against his wishes during the crisis.

How wise will it be for Meera to do that?

Ulysses was quickly rowed past those Sirens. Meera may have to live out her years bound to the mast hearing the Sirens sing, while her family rows on, deaf and oblivious, consoling themselves that they have carried out the wishes Meera made twenty years ago.

The Mental Health Bill has a safety net for all these doubts, but that’s just on paper. How will they translate in life?

What if Meera chose an advance directive to undergo Therapy A in case of deterioration? Say that takes 20 years to happen. By this time Therapy A is considered barbaric, and a Therapy B is available at a certain cost. But Meera’s caregivers cannot, or will not, bear that cost, and use the document she signed to impose Therapy A on her? Has the advance directive worked to Meera’s advantage?

The Bill has a provision that the directive can be over-turned if it is inimical to the patient’s well-being.

True, but that’s supposing someone wants to overturn 17 February 2014

it. Chronic illnesses generally follow the path of least resistance. *** Remote decisions seldom relate to what a person may want in the actual crisis.

Meera may have decided against electro-convulsive therapy in her directive a year ago. In a crisis, her inner feeling might be: Any hell is better than this one. But she may not be in a position to verbalise that. If her directive is implemented, will it increase her suffering?

To ask someone what will you do when you’re in agony? is either plain stupid or pure rhetoric—which is usually the same thing.

The only honest answer possible is: I won’t know till I get there.

This answer is not necessarily valid in the other group of patients likely to be offered advance directives— patients who are terminally ill.

Such illnesses can have only one outcome, and the patient can anticipate her end-of-life desires in a ‘living will.’

But Meera is not terminally ill. She expects to live productively, and happily, past the crisis. She must not have to pay through all the coming years for a decision she made in the past. So the decision in the crisis must be one that ensures the best outcome, not just in terms of relief, but also in terms of selfhood and quality of life. And who’s the best judge of that?

Meera isn’t, not in a crisis.

Usually, it is the psychiatrist who makes the decision.

What if his decision is different from Meera’s?

To disempower the psychiatrist in a crisis is not in the patient’s interest at all.

And so the Bill has a proviso of committees and review boards and whatnot, but hello, this is a crisis! You can’t sit out a crisis in a committee.

‘Emergency,’ as noted in the Bill, to the best of my knowledge, relates to life-threatening episodes.

Here the emergency may not be a threat to life, but it is an episode of great suffering. And suffering is all about speed, it’s got to be stopped now.

We had a demonstration of how courts view medical crises in 2012 when the permission to terminate pregnancy was refused to a mother carrying an anencephalic foetus—a condition where the cerebral lobes and the cerebellum (with the overlying skull) fail to develop, making it incompatible with life.

Many psychiatric crises are, for want of a better descriptive, bloody awful. Patients who speak about it in the aftermath are often at a loss for words: they just don’t want to go through it ever again.

The mind, so hazy in its location, is all pervasive in anguish. Its suffering outstrips all bodily pain.

If the psychiatrist is disempowered to address that anguish, who else can?

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The safety net of family and friends may be close enough to know Meera, but how informed are they about the therapy? Just as informed as the lawmakers. Good, but not good enough.

This leaves only one other option, to call in a new set of psychiatrists to review the old one. These worthies, mysteriously above suspicion, may be complete strangers to Meera and her life. How are they likely to act in her best interest? *** Haven’t you ever looked back and wondered how you lived through some moments in your past? Haven’t you felt you couldn’t live through them again?

I do, frequently.

I know, for instance, I lack the madcap dare I had at twenty. I’m also cool about things that used to terrify me then. My decisions are informed differently now.

Ten years on, they’ll be different again.

And yet, my values and my dreams haven’t changed much since I was five. But what felt right at twenty feels simply ridiculous now. Why shouldn’t it, to Meera?

Will the new Mental Health Care Bill make Meera’s life easier? I don’t think so. It’s too superficial in its understanding of Meera’s tripartite dilemma. Meera needs empathy to keep her life going, she needs nurture and respect. That can only come to her from log and nyat: other people and her own. The Advance Directive doesn’t take this nurturing into account. Instead, it might become an instrument of alienation.

It could work as it is supposed to if we were like the West in two respects.

First, if our society were structured to support an individual existence. It is not: in India, family is identity.

Second, if Meera could claim with dignity the basic human rights of food, income, shelter: for she may be denied all these by her family.

At present, even with the best of intentions, there is no way Meera can survive if she does not co-opt log and nyat.

If I wanted to give Meera a fair deal, I’d go about it in a very different way.

I would use the law to provide an infrastructure that offers her rights, freedom and safety. And that’s about it.

That security will be enough for her to seek out and nurture a support system of friends and relations who understand her. Such understanding can only come if the infrastructure provides for a closer communication between psychiatrists and families. This will engender awareness, and, one hopes, prevent rejection, ridicule and hate.

Science changes, therapies change. The only constant is compassion. Like trust, compassion cannot be enforced by the law. n Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan are surgeons.

They write together as Kalpish Ratna open www.openthemagazine.com 27

a x e e f f ec t

The Mindboggling Tax Cut A radical zero-tax proposal that was first mooted in interior Maharashtra is now a national point of debate Madhavankutty Pillai

O

nly death is certain; taxes can

still be eliminated. This is the subject of an interesting debate that India has been witnessing, of late, ever since some leaders of the BJP mooted the idea of replacing all direct and indirect taxes Indians pay with a single tax on every bank transaction. The germ of this radical suggestion goes back to the mid-90s, to the town of Aurangabad in Maharashtra. At an industrial estate there, Anil Bokil, a mechanical engineer running a precision manufacturing unit, began to notice that small vendors like fitters and turners were getting laid off or going out of business. This was the fallout of economic liberalisation and the competition it brought in. These men had skills, but no resources to get back on their feet. A group of over 80 such families found themselves bankrupt and Bokil stepped in to help them.

Bokil realised quickly that one of the main obstacles was their lack of access to credit; without documentation or security, banks wouldn’t give them loans. He organised them into a cooperative called Tiny Industries and they successfully set up a unique business model. Their website explains it: ‘Today [Tiny Industries Co-op Industrial Estate] houses 50 units 28 open

with combined monthly revenue of Rs 80 lacs per month…What appears like one workshop is actually a cluster of interdependent machines. Each machine operator is also the owner of that machine.

The job moves through the machines as per the operations required. In the larger picture, the job moves through various units within TINY in the same way. The customer does not have to go to multiple vendors and the TINY units get to share the job as well as the resources.’

Meanwhile, the experience had converted Bokil himself. He gave up his business and became a full-time social worker. He had had no interest in economics, but was suddenly curious about the economy. Why was capital scarce? How was it that only those who had capital got capital? Why did an economy have such anomalies? Such questions bothered him. After a few years of study and reflection, he arrived at a five-point solution to what he saw as fundamental problems of India’s economy. He wrote a Marathi paper on it and the first presentation he gave was to a group of close friends in Aurangabad. The next was at a forum in Nashik at the invitation of an economist who had heard of his ideas.

Since then, Bokil’s life has revolved

around taking those ideas to people. “I have given more than 2000 presentations,” he says. As more people, especially professionals like engineers and chartered accountants, got interested in his ideas, it led to the formation of an organisation called Arthakranti Pratishthan to disseminate them. In the political establishment, a section of the BJP, which includes Nitin Gadkari and Subramanian Swamy, has shown particularly strong interest in turning the ideas into policy.

Arthakranti, though, claims to be apolitical. “We have gone with this to leaders of every political party. We have no political inclinations. The idea was open to everyone. The BJP took it up,” says Bokil.

T

he ideas are now known as the

‘Arthakranti Proposal’ in popular parlance, and its five points of action are as follows: » India’s existing taxation system will be withdrawn completely. This means all direct and indirect taxes like Income Tax, Corporate Tax, Sales, Excise, VAT, etcetera, will cease to exist. The only exceptions are Customs and Import duties because they are needed to protect local trade.

17 February 2014

anirban ghosh

» The axed taxes will be replaced by a tax on all bank transactions, with the receiver having to pay. As an example, imagine its rate at 2 per cent. If someone gives you a cheque of Rs 100 and you deposit it in a bank, Rs 98 will be put into your account and Rs 2 will be deducted.

This will be credited to different levels of government automatically. Of the Rs 2, 70 paise will go to the Centre, 60 paise to the state, and 35 paise to the local government within whose jurisdiction the bank account lies. The bank will also get 35 paise as an incentive to be part of the process.

Arthakranti says all these rates and ratios are notional. The government of the day will decide them. » Cash transactions won’t be taxed. » High denomination currency notes of above Rs 50—that is, Rs 100, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000—will be withdrawn. » Single cash transactions will be restricted to an upper limit. If it is fixed at say, Rs 2,000, then transactions above it can be made but will have no legal protection. So, if you buy a phone for Rs 7,000 in Rs 50 notes, then you can’t go to a consumer court if it’s damaged. You can buy a Rs 1 crore house with Rs 50 notes, but the government will not register it.

These five points are it. They make up the proposal’s overhaul of India’s taxation system. It is so radical that many dismiss it. Some editorials have called it hare-brained, while one asked the BJP to move on to something serious.

Arthakranti says that almost inevitably all those who deride them focus on bits and pieces, and the proposal only makes sense if it is considered in its entirety.

“In debates, people are selectively picking one or two points, but we never speak in fragments. We say if all this happens, then it is going to work,” says Narendra Khot, a member of Arthakranti in Mumbai.

To understand the proposal, they say you have to first understand why it was necessary. Bokil makes an interesting argument. He asks you to consider how individuals and institutions chalk out their budgets. They look at how much they earn and then decide on their expenses.

But the Government does exactly the opposite. “First, there is the expenditure plan, and according to that plan, they chalk out a taxation or revenue plan. The Government can plan for any tax limit.

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So hypothetically no government should be in a deficit. So how has India been in a state of deficit for decades?” he asks.

“Something is wrong.” The problem, as he sees it, are leakages—both during tax collection and State expenditure (that is, black money and corrupt money, respectively). There exists a gigantic parallel economy which the Government simply can’t tax.

While it is impossible to assess the size of this economy because it is underground, one of the slides in the Arthakranti presentation indicates how huge it could be. It takes the year 2010-11 as an example when the total currency in circulation was Rs 9.5 lakh crore while demand deposits (money held in banks) added up to Rs 7.2 lakh crore. India is among the few large countries in the world where demand deposits are less than the currency in circulation. “The global average [of demand deposits] is four to five times the currency in circula-

A Bank Transaction Tax is only part of the plan, says Arthakranti; drawing people to banks and boosting credit are the proposal’s other aims

tion,” says Khot, “In the UK, it is extraordinary. They have 17 times. Here in India, the ratio is less than 1. It means that a huge amount of money is actually circulating outside the banking system.”

The sum of demand deposits and currency in circulation is what Indians use for day-to-day transactions. This is called ‘Narrow Money’, which for that year was Rs 9.5 + Rs 7.2 = Rs 16.7 lakh crore. The proposal, if implemented, hopes to make all that currency part of the banking system. This way, all Narrow Money can be taxed. “Considering a moderate assumption that 20 per cent of this Narrow Money moves only one transaction a day, you collect Rs 15.8 lakh crore for the Centre and State [that year],” he says. That is about Rs 4 lakh crore more than the Government’s total tax revenues of around Rs 11 lakh crore in 2010-11. Khot

says that these are conservative estimates; in reality, he believes, it will be much more.

The first two points of the proposal— replacing of all taxes with the BTT—are to simplify the taxation system at a point where taxes can be collected easily: banks. The money collected can be passed on instantly to the Government.

And since banks themselves get a share of it, they get abundant capital to lend.

The other three points of the proposal are to push everyone into the banking system. The elimination of all currency notes above Rs 50 is essential to the plan so that large cash transactions are not possible anymore—for example, in buying a flat, it is standard practice to pay part of it in black, but it is really difficult to pay Rs 10-20 lakh in Rs 50 notes. Large denominations, goes the logic, facilitate black transactions. Taking away legal security for cash deals above Rs 2,000 (or some such threshold) will also ensure that all payments are routed through banks. This would turn India’s entire economy white.

As for public acceptance, the argument goes that people would not mind a BTT of a low rate of 2 per cent or so. Also there is no effort required in paying it, even as the State makes more money than it does under the current system. The BTT also creates a trail for all transactions, and this would help catch criminals and terrorists. Banks, flush with cash, would be able to lend money to industry at lower rates—which would boost investment, economic growth and employment. This would create a virtuous circle. And bad money, which is what ails India, would become good.

N

ot everyone is convinced. Most

economists have criticised the proposal. Ajit Ranade is one of them. The Mumbai-based economist recognises that India’s taxation system needs drastic reform, but doesn’t think BTT is the answer. For one, he says, most Indians don’t even have bank accounts. “How can we depend on the BTT when half the population don’t have bank accounts?” he asks.

Also, he says, once the BTT is introduced, people will find ways to dodge it, and this might actually keep them from joining the banking system.

17 February 2014

The idea of a BTT also subverts the basic principles of taxation, Ranade adds.

Taxes are usually designed to serve a social-leavening purpose by their progressive rates of application. That is, they apply at higher rates to the richer lot who are better able to pay them, at lower rates to the less well-off, and at zero-rates to the poor. Direct taxes paid by people, such as Income Tax, are designed that way. Even indirect taxes on sales of goods and services—which are levied because direct taxation is too inefficient to fill up State coffers—can be imposed heavier on the sale of products and services used mostly by the rich. The BTT, however, does not take the tax burden bearer’s financial status into account. “The BTT taxes inputs,” says Ranade, “which is like an indirect tax.” Only, it is clearly regressive, since the rich and poor alike must bear this tax at the same rate, and losing Rs 2 on every Rs 100 would pinch those who live handto-mouth far more than those who have disposable money.

Apart from the poor, according to Ranade, exporters in particular will be harshly affected by BTT. “When you are exporting to global markets, you have a system of getting credits for the tax paid in the country,” he says, “The BTT system has no such provision for getting credit for exports. Our exporters can potentially be handicapped.” The economist believes the BTT’s biggest drawback is that it goes against the spirit of fiscal federalism, by which taxes should be collected at various appropriate levels of government—the Centre, state, municipality or panchayat. So, for example, property taxes are collected at the municipal level to provide services like local roads. “The BTT system is a national system,” says Ranade, “It completely takes away the rights of lower levels of government to tax local communities.”

In the future, once everyone has a unique identity like Aadhaar and access to a bank account, and transactions are mostly electronic, Ranade can see India move towards something like the Arthakranti Proposal. “In the current situation,” he says, “it is a bit too radical.” He however welcomes the debate it has sparked. “One must compliment them for bringing this idea of tax reform and unconventional solutions to our mainstream debate. There are lots of profes17 February 2014

sionals working on the details, but there are some conceptual difficulties as well.”

There are other criticisms too. In an Economic Times article titled ‘Arthakranti Doesn’t Work’, one of the points that the economist Bibek Debroy raises is that transaction taxes have failed in other countries. Sanjeev Sanyal, global strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in Business Standard that ‘most mainstream economists… feel that it is a simplistic and untested proposal that is bound to fail.’

Besides the usual arguments against it, he sees one more flaw. ‘The proposal does not account for the way corporations, individuals and other economic agents would change their behaviour in a BTT world. For instance, businesses would change their supply chains such that they internalise many activities rather than outsource them to external vendors.

This would reduce the number of financial transactions.’ With e-money transactions enabled by the internet, a parallel eeconomy may spring up in the deep web that would be hard for the BTT to touch.

A

fter Bokil first wrote the paper

in Marathi, someone bought it to Anil Paranjpe in Pune, requesting him to translate it into English. Paranjpe is a US-returned civil engineer who joined the software industry later. He had left his full-time job and was starting a consultancy and had time on his hands. He translated the paper and his interest was piqued. Like Bokil, he too now gives presentations on the proposal and has met a wide variety of politicians, economists and bankers over the past decade. Some years back, they decided to put these ideas in the language of economists. Paranjpe and another Arthakranti member spent two years poring over 2,000 plus papers related to banking and taxation. They then prepared a report on the proposal, with 70 of those papers cited as references.

Paranjpe is emphatic that the proposal is not just a tax correction. “That is only one-third of the solution. The other third is to get people into banks. The remaining third is that once [this happens], banks should be in a position to give good credit to everybody. All three need to happen for the full benefits to be realised.

Unfortunately, the topic got opened and

is being discussed as a pure tax reform.

What you want to see is for healthy money to be available to everybody including the Government.”

The premise of why it will work is that people are essentially honest. They avoid tax because it is complicated and irrational. Black money exists because people are forced to be dishonest—simplify it, and they will pay. If the proposal is implemented, it will mean a one-time amnesty for all black money so that it can be pushed into the white economy.

Paranjpe says they have cogent responses to the objections raised by economists. For instance, to the argument that BTT is regressive because it levies a flat rate on the rich and poor, their counter argument is that a rich man’s 2 per cent is far greater in rupee terms than a poor man’s. Moreover, the poor would still be able to resort to cash transactions under Rs 2,000 (or so) that attract no tax.

To the point that transaction taxes have failed elsewhere, Paranjpe says they were all add-on taxes, and thus added burdens.

The Arthakranti BTT would be the only tax to be paid, and at a low rate too, and so no one will grudge it. Companies would welcome it because it eliminates the army of employees they have to maintain for tax compliance. Plus, there won’t be any harassment by tax officials.

As a policy, argues Paranjpe, the BTT is eminently doable. “Has taxation been changed before? Hundreds of times. Tax rates reduced? Hundreds of times. Has currency compression been done?

Hundreds of times. In India, it was done in 1978. In the US, the Nixon government removed US $1,000 and $10,000 bills [leaving $100 as the country’s highest currency denomination], forcing everyone to go through banks.”

The Arthakranti Proposal clubs together several measures to make it consistent and logical, say its advocates. But it would require political courage. Even the BJP has not accepted the idea so far, with leaders like Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha unconvinced of it. Arthakranti says that objections arise mainly from looking at the idea from the existing system’s point of view. The proposal, however, seeks to overhaul it completely and create a new framework. “Can we go there and think in that framework? You will find your answers,” says Khot. n open www.openthemagazine.com 31

india Pictures

awaiting the final journey An artist’s representation of a dakhma, or Zoroastrian funeral well, in India

rites

A Burning Question Mumbai’s Parsis find themselves divided over a crematorium for those who’d rather not opt for the traditional Towers of Silence Lhendup G Bhutia

W

hen Dinshaw Tamboly was

about eight years old, he attended a Parsi funeral for the first time. His grandfather had passed away and his body was taken to Doongerwadi, Mumbai’s Towers of Silence, as the community’s traditional funeral site is known. Tamboly remembers entering this lush green area in Malabar Hills with the funeral entourage for the first time, before the corpse-bearers took the body away to the dakhmas, or wells. He recalls looking at the sky and seeing a ring of vultures flying in gleeful anticipation. Someone told the young Tamboly, pointing at the vultures, “The

17 February 2014

body will be over in half an hour.” Once the flesh was consumed and the bones bleached by the sun, in accordance with tradition, the skeletal remains would be pushed into the well’s central pit. Back then, all this only took a few days.

As the years went by, Tamboly says, he never gave much thought to this ancient tradition of disposing of the dead. In this day and age, the thought of feeding the lifeless remains of people to vultures might strike some as macabre, but to Tamboly, like other Parsis, it was their way. Sometime in the late 1990s, when Tamboly became a trustee of the Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP), the trust that governs Doongerwadi, he learnt that some people living nearby complained of a foul smell from the Towers. “They said they couldn’t bear to keep their windows open,” Tamboly recalls.

As a trustee, Tamboly had been given charge of the upkeep of the area, a 54-acre patch of land on the eastern slope of uptown Malabar Hills that is often described as a mini-forest. Despite the rule that no one but corpse-bearers can visit the three wells where cadavers are left for vultures, Tamboly visited them to investigate the matter. “What I saw was horrible,” he says. “There were piles of hundreds of corpses in different stages of decomposition, rotting in the open.

When I looked around, there was not a single vulture around,” he says. Asked, the corpse-bearers there told him that rather few vultures ever descended to the wells, leaving corpses uneaten for long periods of time. Other avian visitors such as crows and kites would sometimes fly off with and drop pieces of flesh on the terraces of nearby houses and balconies of buildings.

Tamboly asked other trustees to visit the spot to impress upon them the need to find a solution. “But very soon,” he says, “all of us realised that the entire system had collapsed.” As information of rotting corpses became common knowledge, he realised that many Parsis were increasingly turning to cremation.

In response, he urged other BPP trustees to build an electric crematorium within Doongerwadi, and if not, at least allow the families of those who had been cremated to pray for their souls in the community’s prayer halls. “But the high priests forbade any of that. They said

cremation was sacrilegious and couldn’t be permitted. Neither was a crematorium allowed nor the prayer halls opened to all,” he says. “They said the soul of the cremated would be lost forever.”

The issue has created a deep rift within the community. Zoroastrian high priests have strictly forbidden cremation and burial, branding all those who choose or advocate these as ‘renegades’; fire and earth are holy under the tenets of the faith and are not to be defiled.

Those who advise cremation, however, say the traditional method of disposal has failed, and so a pragmatic option is needed. They complain that the high priests have not only prohibited cremation, they have barred priests from performing funeral prayers for those who are cremated. According to Zoroastrianism, four days of prayers must be held after a family member dies. It is believed that this helps the soul reach and cross a mythical chinvat bridge that lies between the two worlds of the living and the dead.

Since the high priests would not hear of cremations and the BPP was reluctant to allow them space, about two years ago, Tamboly and some like-minded Parsis started negotiating with Mumbai’s municipal authorities to let them build a prayer hall for cremated Parsis. Last year, Tamboly formed the Prayer Hall Trust, and a few weeks ago, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corp allotted them space in a public crematorium complex in Worli to set up a prayer hall for all faiths. This hall is expected to cost about Rs 1.7 crore and will be ready in 15 months. The trust will employ priests to conduct prayers for those who opt for cremation. And while use of the hall will be open to all faiths, Parsis will be given preference at certain hours. The hall will also be open to those Parsis who marry outside the community and for their children, another contentious issue among Parsis, since the high priests do not consider children Zoroastrian unless both parents are by birth. “I don’t think the traditional-minded will be too happy,” says Tamboly.

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ndia once had one of the world’s larg-

est vulture populations. The country has one of the planet’s largest livestock open www.openthemagazine.com 33

populations; cattle slaughter is forbidden in most parts. For a long time, this helped the birds thrive. However, with the painkiller diclofenac being put to extensive use on cattle across the country, vultures began dying in huge numbers of poisoning. The drug, it was found, causes kidney failure among birds that feed on corpses treated with it. The veterinarian use of diclofenac has been banned in India but its use remains widespread. The BPP’s efforts to have doctors not prescribe the drug for Parsi patients, Tamboly says, was not successful either.

With a drastic fall in India’s vulture population over the years, the Parsi community has been searching for solutions.

At one point, the BPP approved a partherbal, part-chemical substance to hasten the decomposition of bodies. “The composition had to be poured into the orifices of the dead. It also led to sludge within the wells, where corpse-bearers often slipped,” recalls Tamboly, “It wasn’t pleasant at all and we had to stop it.” Later the BPP started using large solar reflectors to dehydrate bodies in the wells, a system which is still in use, before the remains are buried en masse within the area. Since each adult body takes at least about five days to dehydrate, concentrated mixtures of flowers are kept in a number of pots and ozone gas is frequently released to mask the stench.

Efforts to retain the classic funeral tradition have seen other forms of innovation, too. The BPP once flew down an expert in birds of prey from the UK, Jemina Perry-Jones, to help establish an aviary for vultures in the Doongerwadi area. The plan was scrapped because the BPP felt the expense of such a project would be too high. Some years ago, the captive-vulture plan was revived and help sought from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to set up an aviary within the Sanjay Gandhi National Park on the outskirts of the city (and a ‘satellite’ aviary within Doongerwadi).

Under the plan, by January 2014, vultures were supposed to be at full strength again, leaving no flesh on corpses placed in the wells. While Homi Khusrokhan, director of the BNHS, claims that the Society is still in talks with the BPP over the project, Muncherji Cama, a BPP trustee, says the idea has been shelved for the time being.

34 open

P

arsis who advocate alternate methods of disposing of the dead claim that Zoroastrian high priests ostracise and look down upon them for their beliefs. In 2009, the BPP, supported by the high priests—in a move construed by reformists as an attempt to warn them— banned two reformist priests from entering not just Doongerwadi, but also fire temples.

High priests have been held in high esteem down the centuries since Parsis migrated to India’s West coast from Persia.

They are involved in such rites of passage as Navjote initiation and marriage ceremonies. Those among the priests who have been welcoming non-Parsis into the community fold—say, by allowing children of mixed couples Navjote ceremonies—and performing prayers for the buried and cremated have been shunned by the traditionalists. Reformist priests,

Zoroastrian high priests have forbidden cremation and burial, branding those who choose or advocate these as renegades, fire and earth being holy under the tenets of their faith

cast out for their alleged sacrilege, took the matter to the High Court, which ruled in their favour, but the BPP has appealed to the Supreme Court. The apex court has appointed a mediator between the two parties but no breakthrough has been achieved yet. The two parties refuse to speak on the matter since the case is still in court.

While well-to-do Parsis rarely have difficulty employing priests to perform prayers for their dead, regardless of the method of disposal, the less affluent are in no position to rub the high priests the wrong way. “Many Parsis are willing to go against current beliefs and opt for cremation,” says Homi Dalal, a 69-yearold activist, “But they do not want to risk not having the final prayers done.”

Now with a prayer hall that is open even to those cremated, he says, more Parsis will opt for cremation. According to

Tamboly, around 750-800 bodies are brought every year to Doogerwadi. In comparison, some four or five choose cremation. According to a December 2013 survey by Parsiana, a community newspaper, 28 per cent of all respondents said they wanted to be cremated over the traditional method.

Dastur Mirza, a Zoroastrian high priest, is furious about that prayer hall.

“These people, the priests who work with them, they are all renegades,” he says over the phone, “Have they studied Zoroastrianism? Who are they to start a prayer hall?” With that, he disconnects the call in anger, only to call back later, asking me not to malign the community.

Meanwhile, the BPP’s Cama reckons that the current system is efficient enough, if not perfect. “Yes, there are no vultures. But Zoroastrianism never [places emphasis] on those birds, but the sun.

And with the help of solar panels, it is working well enough.”

I

n 2006, a Parsi woman named Dhan

Baria sneaked into Doongerwadi along with a photographer she refuses to name.

A few months earlier, after her mother’s death, her body had been taken there.

When she inquired a few days later, a corpse-bearer apparently told her about how bodies end up rotting in the open.

The duo—Baria and the photographer— took 108 pictures of corpses rotting in the wells. According to her, she approached the BPP with these pictures, asking them to set up a crematorium or burial space within Doongerwadi. When they refused, she distributed the pictures within the community.

The photographs stunned Parsis across the world. Dalal remembers how his wife, who had often rebuked him for his ‘reformist’ views, declared in response that she preferred to be cremated instead.

Baria claims that the BPP tried to ignore the outrage by questioning her faith and calling the pictures fake. Since then, Baria has set up the Nargisbanu Darabsha Baria Foundation, named after her mother, to help underprivileged children and HIV patients. “But even after all these years,” she says, “I can’t help but think when I took those pictures [that] my mother’s body was probably lying in that pile of rotting corpses.” n 17 February 2014

CO M P E T E N C E

School for Politicians

A civic leadership incubator programme in Bangalore attempts to teach future political leaders skills of governance. Priyanka Pulla attends a session to find out what it takes to educate a politician

I

n a tube-lit classroom filled to burst-

ing point with about 66 adults across age groups, Mukul Asher, professor of public policy at National University of Singapore is explaining the idea of hidden taxes—taxes citizens pay because of the government’s inefficiency or shortsightedness. He argues that bribes paid to government employees are a tax; they are, after all, a payment made to a person who represents the government and are, more or less, compulsory. “Lower income groups are extremely highly taxed,” he says, “but the money they pay doesn’t go into government coffers.”

When he throws the floor open to questions, there are several. Predictably, in keeping with the zeitgeist, there is a question about the Aam Aadmi Party. A student asks if AAP can afford to give away free water and subsidised power to the residents of Delhi. Asher’s response is a question. “In the 21st century, what is going to be the commodity that will be the scarcest?” he asks. There is a murmur of responses, then someone gives the right answer: water. “If something is very scarce, would you price it at zero?”

Asher then explains that although a free-water policy may appear to benefit households at the outset, it would eventually hurt them. As water becomes scarcer, the cost of supplying it will increase. Therefore the only way the Delhi

17 February 2014

government can afford to give its citizens water free is by finding an alternative source of revenue—it can either take money away from other infrastructure projects, or raise water prices for commercial establishments.

The first idea is obviously a nonstarter.

And if the government opts for the second, it would increase the cost of doing business in Delhi, forcing commercial establishments to move to other cities.

Such an exodus would come back to hurt

An analysis of the Aam Aadmi Party’s free-water policy makes clear to students in the classroom that public policies cannot be viewed in isolation households, because they are customers and employees of these businesses.

Further, Asher argues, at zero price, no one would invest in increasing the water supply to Delhi. Also, when something is given away free, there is no incentive not to waste it. Users tend to become profligate. “Look at Punjab,” Asher says, “A huge amount of water is used in farms because water is free.”

This analysis of AAP’s free-water poli-

cy makes one thing clear to all students in the classroom—public policies cannot be viewed in isolation. They trigger a complex web of consequences, all of which need to be considered by the legislators who make them. A policy cannot be made by grandstanding and playing to the crowd; it requires painstaking, hardnosed analysis, with inputs from economists, urban planners and other professionals. As Asher tells the class, “It doesn’t create headlines.”

The lesson is a crucial one for the students, all of whom are attending a Civic Leadership Incubator Program (BCLIP), created by the Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC) in partnership with the public policy think-tank Takshashila Institution. The programme aims to groom candidates for corporator positions in Bangalore’s 2015 municipal elections. As many as 62 per cent of the students come from political parties, and most of them intend to stand for elections. The rest do not have any experience in politics, but are here because they have a strong desire to improve governance and have already begun doing what they can.

The idea of BCLIP was first floated by TV Mohandas Pai, previously a member of the Board of Directors at Infosys and a member of the BPAC. BCLIP was to be an answer to the obvious lack of administraopen www.openthemagazine.com 35

BPAC

back to the blackboard Professor Mukul Asher conducts a session on municipal finance management as part of the Bangalore Civic Leadership Incubation Programme

tive skills among Indian politicians.

“Bangalore is performing under its capabilities, economically and on other dimensions, primarily because the government is not playing an enabling role,” says Sridhar Pabbisetty, a member of the BPAC. Pabbisetty who was previously chief operating officer at Bangalore’s Centre for Public Policy, contested the 2013 Karnataka Assembly elections from the Hebbal constituency.

The syllabus for BCLIP is eclectic. On one hand, students learn the basics of economics, finance and urban planning so that they can be efficient administrators. On the other, they learn strategies to break into Indian politics and contest against strongly entrenched, dynastic political candidates with deep pockets.

O

n a Saturday morning, the day after the session on hidden taxes, the lesson gets even more technical. The 36 open

60-odd students, who come from a wide range of educational and cultural backgrounds, are now grappling with the nuances of accounting. Asher is explaining to them the crucial difference between cash-based accounting and accrual-based accounting.

It turns out that most government organisations in India, whether the Indian Railways or the Bangalore Municipal Corporation, still follow the problematic method of cash-based accounting. This means that these organisations have no idea what their assets are, because cashbased accounting does not allow for the preparation of a balance sheet. The problem with such an information gap is that these assets can be potential money-spinners for these organisations.

“At the ward level, it is particularly important to know what assets one has,” says Asher. For example, a city like Bangalore could ask commercial establishments to set up shops over bus sta-

tions and earn much-needed revenue from this. Or it could put up eco-friendly lights and generate revenue under the Kyoto Protocol. “All well managed cities do this. And poorly managed cities don’t,” says Asher, talking about such small-scale but effective interventions to improve urban governance.

In all, BCLIP is a nine-month course, the first three of which consist of classroom sessions from public policy experts such as Mukul Asher, bureaucrats like retired additional chief secretary to Government of Karnataka K Jairaj, and politicans such as Pabbisetty. Most political leaders who will address students have a strong record of trying to shape public policy.

For example, Ashwin Mahesh, a climate-scientist who contested the Karnataka Legislative Assembly polls in 2013, is involved in several urban-development projects for traffic management, lake development, etcetera. Rajeev 17 February 2014

Gowda, a professor of economics at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a Congress spokesperson in Karnataka, has helped kick-start a string on civic initiatives such as Bangalore Needs You. But politics cannot be taught in the classroom alone. So, as part of the programme, students have had to walk through their respective municipal wards, meeting residents and officials in charge of public services. Next, they have surveyed the status of these services— roads, water, drainage, garbage management and electricity—to find the biggest pain points. By the end of the first three months, each student must develop a ward action plan to solve these problems.

Those with feasible ward action plans will receive Rs 60,000 each from the BPAC to implement them. “It is a very intense endeavour. The budget of it is about a crore, because we want to train 100 people,” says Pabbisetty.

A crucial part of the training also involves strategies for campaigning against established political parties. One such strategy is what Pabbisetty calls a ‘guerilla campaign’—a low-cost, unconventional drive to connect with voters, which can give traditional large-scale campaigns a run for their money. “What did AAP manage in Delhi? It was a guerilla campaign. We have a whole range of interventions like this. This is to say politics is out there and not necessarily how your party is imagining it today,” he explains. In 2013, when Pabbisetty contested the Karnataka Assembly polls from Hebbal he managed to snatch away about 5.5 per cent of the votes after a 37day campaign.

By spending about Rs 5 lakh, Pabbisetty says he received more votes that the Karnataka Janata Paksha candidate in Hebbal, who had about 200 people walking behind him every day for almost 20 days. “It is about communicating the right issues and touching the voter where [his/her] pain point is.”

A

few weeks after the session

with Asher, students receive a lesson on how important good planning is for infrastructure projects. They are on a field trip to the construction site of Bangalore’s CNR Rao underpass. This

17 February 2014

project, which was sanctioned in 2008 to ease traffic congestion, was scheduled for completion in ten months. Today, five years down the line, it is still incomplete.

Students learn that things went wrong at the planning stage itself. Planners did not take into account the fact that several public utilities, such as optical fibre cables for internet connectivity to the neighbouring Indian Institute of Science, lay under the construction site.

Plus, land had to be acquired from neighbouring institutions, and this wasn’t foreseen by the planners either. Even without all these problems, there were genuine engineering challenges to be surmounted—the CNR Rao underpass is the first of its kind in Bangalore, because it does not have a central beam supporting its broad archway.

To tie together the interests of so many stakeholders while solving unprecedent-

The idea is to make politics an attractive option for young and competent people again, says Sridhar Pabbisetty of the Bangalore Political Action Committee ed engineering problems takes political imagination, says Pavan Srinath, a policy researcher from Takshashila Institution and a BCLIP instructor. “It is the task of a politician to provide the right incentives to each of them and pursue the larger public purpose. Our aim is to teach students to think in terms of interests and incentives.”

The course has been an eye-opener for the motley mix attending it. Manjesh Jalahalli Cheluvamurthy, a 35-year-old resident of Vidyaranyapura in Bangalore and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is one of them.

Manjesh, who is an electronics engineer by profession, is bothered by the sharp contrast between the infrastructure and quality of life in India and in developed countries he’s had a chance to visit. “I want to see the infrastructure improve in our city, because that is the first question I get asked whenever I travel to Taiwan or elsewhere. So, I asked myself: can I bring

about some change?” BCLIP has given him an opportunity to tackle this problem systematically. “The syllabus has been outstanding,” he says. As part of the ward walkthrough exercise, he has identified road connectivity as the biggest problem in his ward. “I am working on understanding why we are not able to widen these roads. It is mainly a lack of will and lack of dialogue between elected representatives. Also, there is the issue of who gets credit for the work,” he explains.

Manjesh is hoping to run for the 2015 elections as a BJP candidate, but if that doesn’t work out, “I will look at other party options,” he says.

Fifty-nine-year-old Gayathri Sen’s ambitions were far less political when she joined BCLIP. “When I went for the interview, I had no intention of standing for elections,” she says. “I thought [that] by getting training from here, I [would] be able to do some type of social work.”

Gayathri comes from a family of academics and is herself in charge of libraries at PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore. “Coming from an academic background, we always feel that we should keep away from politics; that it isn’t clean,” she says.

But her involvement in civic issues slowly changed her mind. She has been fighting a case, together with other neighbourhood residents, against a neighbour who was attempting an illegal construction.Apart from this, she also works with an NGO that digitises books for blind people. “I have realised in the past few years that unless you get into the system, you cannot change it,” she says.

When I ask Pabbisetty how much of a difference such training can make to politics, considering that most governance failures seem to occur not because of a lack of training but of integrity, he says this is only one of several interventions.

“But if we don’t even try this, we will lose the opportunity to make any change through this process.”

According to him, the idea is to make politics an attractive career option for young and competent people. “You and I should equally aspire to be politicians. If we let go of that, we will be governed by inferiors. There is nothing wrong with being governed by inferiors,” he says, “just that we will be governed inferiorly.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 37

f i r st p e r s o n

second to silk Shakeela was at one time paid more than the leading ladies of regular South Indian cinema

arshad batheri

A Soft Porn Star’s Life

Extracts from the autobiography of Shakeela, South India’s celebrity soft-porn star who wouldn’t go completely nude

To understand how popular Shakeela is down South, you have to read the three-yearold autobiography of Surayya Bhanu.

Bhanu, a Chennai-born Commerce graduate, had developed a passion for cinema since childhood. She ended up on the margins of the Tamil film industry as a body double for porn stars unwilling to go completely nude. Like Shakeela. Bhanu filled those ‘gaps’. She exposed her nude body in bedroom and bathroom scenes in almost all Shakeela films. In the book, Bhanu talks about the South Indian porn market’s crush on plump women: Shakeela’s body type. Bhanu was slim when she began her career. Later, on realising the popular demand for well-endowed curves and heavy thighs, she put on weight and shaped herself to ‘industry standards’. It gave her the chance to play Shakeela’s double.

Recently, Shakeela put out her own autobiography in Malayalam. Published by Olive Publications and titled Shakeela: Autobiography, its cover line says, ‘I am not guilty but I am sad’.

In the book, she talks about exploitation by her family right from childhood and her experience of sexual abuse by male teachers. That pattern changed little after she entered the world of cinema. To Shakeela, acting is a thankless job, as miserable as real life.

Extracts from her autobiography:

W

hy should I write my autobi-

ography? Is there anything to learn from me? I said ‘no’ to the publisher who approached me with the idea of a book on my life. I am not Mother Teresa. Mine is an artificial life and so are the films I acted in. Then why do I write such a book? This was the initial thought I had. Later I changed my mind. I am a woman like any other; who wanted to love and be loved and to live a happy and peaceful life. No one knows what I am and what I went through.

No one knows how my name has become a synonym for erotic desire. I decided to write this book on myself because people should know how a Shakeela is formed and shaped.

17 February 2014

During an interview, a journalist once told me that I was the woman who embodied the sexual desire of Malayalee youth. When somebody is hungry, we have to give them food. Nothing else will make them happy. My cinema was nothing but the erotic display of my body. No one might have seen the woman in me and the actress in me. There was a time when I used to get remuneration that was much higher than leading actresses. I was flying from one location to another. I worked in films day and night, and there was a time when I hardly got a few hours

I saw that Silk Smitha was a very kind human being... She amazed me with her humility, dedication to work and punctuality to sleep. On several occasions, I fell asleep during bedroom scenes. People watching the movie would never have known that my eyes were closed because I could not control my sleep. They might have thought that I was performing an orgasm on screen. For everyone, I was nothing more than an erotic body. Nobody cared about exploring the actress in me.

M

y entry to this career was through

a film in which Silk Smitha played the leading role. She was an ever inspiring presence to me. I have never met any other actress as charming as Smitha.

The beauty of her body was transcended by her deep black eyes. Play Girls was a sex education movie in which I acted the role of Smitha’s sister. It was directed by RD Shekhar and produced

by Umashankar, a make-up man with whom I had an acquaintance.

Umashankar had promised me a good role in the film, and asked me to go to AVM Studio to meet the director. It was

like a dream come true. There was hardly any screen test. The director looked at me, asked me a few questions and told me to get ready for the shoot next day.

Later, I was told by Umashankar that the role that I had to do was that of Silk Smitha’s sister. I could not believe it.

I could not sleep that night. I was deeply confused. Do I really deserve this? Am I eligible to act with an actress of her heights?

I reached the studio in the morning, next day. I was asked to change my costume. I was given a mini skirt and a pair of stockings. I did not like that costume.

I was not feeling comfortable, but I did not want to object as it was the moment of a long cherished dream coming true. It was a pleasant surprise that my first shot was with Smitha. When she comes out of her room, I have to give her a cup of tea and tell her ‘Sister, please have a cup of tea’. Then Smitha would slap my face.

The shot was ready and the camera was on. I gave her the tea, and rendered the dialogue politely. As scripted, she slapped me. It was a real heavy slap. I was numb with shock. It was extremely painful. I could not control my tears. That was the only shot taken that day. I was crying and wanted to go back home. Smitha came and tried to hug me. She apologised and told me she had done it for the perfection of the shot. I couldn’t accept her explanation. I thought she did it only because she was a star and I was a beginner. Later, I changed my mind when I saw that Smitha was a very kind human being.

The next day she took me to her house for lunch. She amazed me with her humility, dedication to work and punctuality.

The news of her suicide was one of the saddest moments in my life. I don’t know what might have prompted her to do it.

It remains a mystery.

I

have no good memories of my mother. I never experienced love and care from her. It was my mother who spoiled open www.openthemagazine.com 39

southern siren Shakeela in the Kannada film Paatargithi.

She has acted in Malayalee, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Punjabi films

my life. I think my mother did not like me since my childhood. She often ignored me and cursed me. But one day, she appreciated my beauty. This was soon after my sixteenth birthday. Then she informed me that a person would come to pick me up. She asked me to go with him to a place where I have to ‘please’ a rich man who would help rid us of our financial constraints. She asked me to obey him, and do whatever he wanted me to do. I was shocked. I was grown up enough to understand what she was asking for. A stranger came to pick me up, I had no choice. I accompanied him. We reached a hotel room. That ‘rich man’, who was in his forties, was waiting there.

I was frozen with fear and sorrow. He undressed me, and raped me. But he could not penetrate me due to my resistance.

It was only a beginning. I was forced to sleep with many such ‘rich men’ thereafter. I experienced both pain and pleasure. I am not able to recollect when I lost my virginity.

I

f I want anyone to read this book several times, it is my elder sister Noorjahan. She is the person responsible for my going bankrupt. There was a period when I was the highest paid actress 40 open

in the South Indian film industry, but all my money has been stolen by my sister.

She was managing my accounts, and I trusted her completely. I did not expect her to cheat me because she had looked after me since my early childhood. It was too late by the time I realised that I had been cheated. At one point in my life I was fed up with the busy routine of cinema. The life of flying from locations to locations made me dull and unhappy.

We are not doing it in a private place. How is it possible to enjoy sex when you are watched by the whole crew?

I wanted to take a break. I informed my mother and Noorjahan that I wanted to get married and have a peaceful family life. Both of them were shocked. They looked at me as if I had done a crime. After a few minutes, Noorjahan started advising me not to take such a foolish decision.

I realised that they loved only my money, and had no concern for my future. I was furious. I told Noorjahan that I want all my money back. To my shock, she

said that all the money had been spent on the family.

I

prefer the company of women to

men while drinking alcohol. Men would make sexual advances after a few drinks. They think that I give them company because I want to sleep with them.

Poor men! They lack imagination. Their only motivating factor is sex. I have more freedom with women. I can hug and dance with them. If I do the same with men, they would force me to have sex with them.

‘H

ave you been really turned on

while enacting intimate physical encounters?’ This is a question I have often been asked. We are not doing it in a private place. How is it possible to enjoy sex when you are watched by the whole crew? Sex is not a mere physical act as far as a woman is concerned. If there is no emotional bonding, it is difficult to enjoy sex. Whatever I did was nothing but acting. I had never had arousal during a performance. n Translated from Malayalam

by Shahina KK 17 February 2014

multiply your money W

ith a bewildering array of products and packages on offer, we might be tempted to simply retreat to the comfort of financial instruments and strategies of the past years. All you need to ask is: how best can my money fulfill my specific requirements?

Take time out to map out your current finances against future finances. Look five, ten or even twenty years ahead. Your current needs can be provided for by future earnings, and future contingencies can be covered by tiny fractions of current income.

Obtain clarity on what you need now, but can pay for later; and what future circumstances can you prepare for right-away. And, the financial instruments best engineered for you become evident.

Invest in productive assets; look at what can be delivered annually without having to sell it off.

To be a long-term equity investor, for example, what you need is information on three counts: a company’s broad prospects, what an attractive price for its stock is, and what dividends you can expect.

For the first of these, you have to keep yourself aware of how a company is performing in its field of business. For price, see what it costs on the stock-market as a multiple of its earnings-pershare: the price-earnings or P/E ratio. The lower the ratio, the cheaper the stock. For the third, look out for the company’s dividend yield; the higher, the better. So long as the company is growing and the economy is faring well, this formula can serve

Av e n u e s

you well on a ten- or 20-year horizon.

Picking your own stocks is a risky enterprise.

It is advisable to hold about half your retirement funds in debt instruments. Here, you only need to check that your rate of return is higher than inflation over this period. India being a capitalhungry economy, there are many bonds available that deliver decent returns.

There is also the option of letting financial experts do your investment job for you. Mutual funds, if taken for the long-term, can deliver reasonable returns without your having to worry about the finer details. Before you commit your money, check the past few years’ performance of the fund in question.

After that, keeping track of it is a must, though shortterm fluctuations in net-asset-value should not be a reason to switch funds.

The needs of general investors are also met by several other i n v e s t m e n t schemes. Insurance companies have put together a wide assortment of retirement and other growth plans to suit a variety of risk-return profiles. These are mostly lock-in investments that you cannot switch out of very easily, so research the insurer and the scheme diligently before you invest your money.

The key is to have a variety of baskets for your nest egg, plan your investments with a proper timeframe and never over invest in anything.

The Pride of Karnataka K

arnataka Bank, completing 90 years on 18th February 2014, has 562 branches and 612 ATMS in 20 states and 2 Union Territories with a dedicated team of over 6,800 employees ably taking care of over 1.32 lakh shareholders and over 77 lakh clients.

Since 2000, its Core Banking Solution provides ‘Anywhere’, ‘Anytime’, ‘24x7’ banking services along with Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, Point of Sales, Debit Cards, MBB SB & Current accounts to its customers.

It is a JV partner with Universal Sompo General Insurance Company Limited and the corporate agent for PNB MetLife for life insurance. It has tied up with Times of Money for online money transfer ‘Remit2 India’ to NRIs, and an MoU with Reliance Capital, for co-financing MSMEs. KPMG Advisory Services is implementing ‘Project Tejas’ for high growth with superior quality.

On December 2013, Karnataka Bank had a turnover Rs 65,688 crore with deposits of Rs 38,683 crore and advances of Rs 27,005 crore. The net profit for the 9 month period ended 31st December 2013

was Rs 229,82 crore. The CRAR stood at 13.01% and the bank paid 40% dividend for 2012-13.

The awards for the current fiscal are IDRBT Banking Technology Excellence Awards (Small Banks) under the Best Bank Award for Managing IT risks and Best Bank Award (IT for business innovation).

Sunday Standard FINWIZ 2013 Best Bankers Awards under Best Bank for Customer Friendliness (Midsized Banks); Best Bank for Customer Orientation (Private Sector Banks); Best Bank for HR Practices (Private Sector Banks) and Runner-up, ASSOCHAM Social Banking Excellence Award for 2012 (private sector banks). The latest being the IBA Banking Technology Award for Customer Management Initiative for 2012-2013 (2nd Runner Up).

“These awards demonstrate Karnataka Bank’s customer centric initiatives aimed at offering state-of-the-art technology based products to suit the changing requirements of customers and to enhance the levels of customer service and satisfaction,” says Mr P. Jayarama Bhat, MD & CEO. n

Growth Through Trust C

anara Bank was founded by Shri Ammembal Subba Rao Pai, a great visionary and philanthropist, in July 1906, at Mangalore. Post nationalisation in 1969, Canara Bank’s growth was phenomenal, especially in terms of geographical reach and clientele segments. It has an unbroken record of profits and as of 31st December 2013, its global business was Rs.6.97 lakh crore.

During 2013-14, it opened 866 branches pan India and the tally of branches stands at 4,594 including 5 overseas branches. The bank has opened 1,441 ATMs during the year, expanding the network to 4,967. It has set up e-lounges across 71 branches with hi-tech banking facilities like ATMs, Cash/ Cheque Acceptor, Passbook printing kiosks, internet banking, online trading and telebanking.

As part of its innovative and customer friendly measures, several new products under ‘retail’ and ‘MSME’ advances have been introduced, with an online loan

application and tracking system for retail/ MSME/ Agri loans. It has also introduced online submission of applications for opening SB Accounts and value additions under internet banking, mobile banking and online trading.

It has nine subsidiaries/sponsored institutions/joint ventures in diversified areas of housing finance, asset management, and venture capital, mutual funds, insurance and software consultancy.

The Bank has taken many CSR initiatives like promoting rural development, enhancing rural self-employment through training institutes, etc.

Promoting an inclusive growth strategy is deeply rooted in the bank’s founding principles.

By pursuing global benchmarks in profitability, operational efficiency, asset quality, risk management and reach, it is all set to become India’s ‘Preferred Bank’.

Accordingly, BCG will help rejuvenate the bank by focusing on energizing branches, customer service, increasing sales from branches, growing a robust asset base and revamping the operating model. n

true life

mindspace The Cannon Girl

63

O p e n s pa c e

Aamir Khan Priyanka Chopra Ranveer Singh

62

n p lu

One by Two 12 Years a Slave

61 Cinema reviews

Nokia Lumia 1520 Ocean Tourbillon Jumping Hour Sony XAV-712BT

60

Tech & style

How Old Is Fairness?

Deadly Third-hand Smoke Caffeine Use Disorder

58

Sc i e n c e

Rest in Pieces, Sholay

54

roug h Cu t

The India Art Fair: Bigger, Better, Stronger, More

46

a rt

Perumal Murugan and One Part Woman How I Write: Vikram Chandra

Books

The Girl in the Well of Death

44 64

ritesh uttamchandani

well of death 20-year-old Pooja Rathod routinely risks her neck performing circus stunts—all for her independence 44

true life

That Girl in the Well of Death Twenty-year-old biker stuntwoman Pooja Rathod talks about riding on a wall and risking her neck for her independence

D

on’t try to be too smart.

That’s the only trick. Keep your pace, concentrate, and by God’s grace, it will be smooth sailing.

Once your motorbike has attained the right momentum, you are free to lie back on the seat. Or, take your hands off the handle. Or, salute the audience.

When you're a girl, even if you complete two rounds, it’s good enough.

After those 10 minutes performing, you are on your own. Just make sure you maintain your balance. They don’t call this a maut ka kuan ('well of death') for nothing.

I was 15 when I joined the mela, first

as a dancer, then as a stuntwoman performing in the ‘well of death’. Some people come to work in this well just for kicks. I came just so I could get away from my mother, and her insistence that I get married.

I have been providing for my family for about 13 years now. My father passed away when I was seven years old, leaving behind my mum, my twoyear-old brother, and me. I started as a part-time worker before and after school. I woke up at 7 am, and went to work at a steel factory. At times, I moonlighted as service staff at weddings. I dropped out of school after the

ritesh uttamchandani

The action usually starts in the evening.

Around 5 pm, Pooja retires to the tent to put on make-up—to line her eyes with kaajal and apply a coat of bright pink lip-gloss to go with her pink-rimmed glasses. She takes her place on top of the platform, ready to plunge into the 'well of death', a carnival sideshow where bikers and car drivers drive along the curved inside walls of a barrel-like structure—like a well. Before the show, it looks like a lit up fortress. The men start revving their bikes, from which silencers have been removed, creating a deafening racket. It works every time; a crowd gathers, asking when the show begins.

There is only one answer: “10 minutes”.

riding death Pooja Rathod performs a stunt on a car inside the 'well of death'

fifth standard. That’s when I learnt diamond polishing.

For five years, I made a decent living earning about Rs 12,000 per month.

But sitting bent over the machine for 12 hours, with a boss who makes sure you get up only for bathroom breaks, took a toll on my back. A distant relative asked me if I would like to be in a song-and-dance routine in a carnival.

By then, my mother’s marriage appeals were getting increasingly shrill. They offered me a monthly pay of Rs 15,000. I grabbed it.

In a carnival, there is no certainty about anything, not even your next meal. I have often gone days with only endless cups of chai. People have to go without a bath for 10 days straight; I always carry deodorant. I have travelled all over Gujarat, and sometimes around Mumbai doing around 3035 shows like I did last year. After the first one-and-a-half months of stage shows, Seema didi, the manager of our troupe, took me to the well. They were looking for a girl to liven up the show.

When people see a girl on stage, they walk straight in.

In our meeting, I spotted a bike and asked if I could ride it. I was already familiar with it, having ridden one on the highway back home. There was a time I used to get scared at the very sight of the ‘well of death’. Now I was riding round and round inside one, perfectly comfortably. Those who saw me said, “This girl needs to be here.

She will pick it up quickly.”

When I joined these artistes, they had only trained me to perform as a co-passenger in a car. Whenever I brought up my desire of being a biker stuntwoman, they waved me off: ‘What if you fall and die?’ The men around here have to prove their dedication to learn these skills.

In all my odd jobs, I picked up the needed skills quickly. I studied only till the fifth standard but I taught myself English from what I heard around me. Now, I can send an SMS in English.

Just the same way, I can ride a bike at a height of two stories without having had a guru. I had cried and fought, but the bikers refused. If not for 17 February 2014

Zakirbhai, the owner of the well who ordered the other bikers to allow me to use their motorcycles, I wouldn’t have been where I am. It took me about six months to learn to climb only the selembo, the steep incline before the walls get vertical. After that, for the next 18 months, I performed all the stunts easily. Three years ago, at my first show at the Mahim Dargah fair, the back tyre of my

Three years ago, at my f irst show at the

Mahim Dargah fair, the back tyre of my motorbike got punctured

and I crashed and went down... within seconds, my right side hit the beach sand.

The bike landed on top of me. The audience

started cheering motorbike got punctured and I crashed and went down.

Often, people ask me if what we do is nazarbandi (illusion). I tell them it’s not, but then we do carry out incredible feats. That December day, there were only 3-4 people watching the show and I was the only one performing. After the accident, within seconds, my right side hit the beach sand.

The bike landed on top of me. The au-

dience started cheering. It was the first thing they had seen that they could believe. But the show wasn’t over yet. So I tried getting up to salute the audience when a searing pain shot through my right leg. The jeans had torn open where I had fallen and a large part of my torso was bruised. Nothing strikes home as the sight of blood, and the people, on seeing my condition, started calling for help.

It was a drop of 20 feet. I felt fine, but the riders made me lie down and called for a doctor. That’s when I got scared. The one thing I was terrified about was that I might just be rendered incapable of performing again.

The next day, I took the bike, did another two rounds of the well and made sure the fall hadn’t made me forget what I had so painstakingly learnt all those months. Thankfully, it was a minor fracture. I went back home after everyone insisted I should. After three-and-a-half months, I was back to performing. My fall has since then become my claim to fame. Yesterday, a policeman at the adjoining chowki asked me, “You’re back? Aren’t you the one who fell down here?”

I have only seen two other female biker stuntmen in Gujarat. Girls are not too keen on joining the well. I would love to train a girl if she approaches me, but only after I get out of the business. What if popular demand for me declines if one more performer joins? I might quit after a couple of years, but till then, this is the only way I can provide for my family.

I am 20 years old; marriage is not in my scheme of things. I want to learn to ride a car, first on the highway, then in the well. I will look for a man only after I see my mother and brother settled. I have no checklist for an ideal partner, only that he shouldn’t be from this profession. If he is, neither of us could continue doing this to earn a living. My brother asked me if he could join the troupe, but I refused. I know the uncertainty in the business. Here, if you survive, you’re lucky. If you die, it’s inevitable. n As told to Omkar Khandekar open www.openthemagazine.com 45

prabakaran

Books

A Hidden Firebrand On the occasion of the publication in English of his novel One Part Woman, Tamil writer Perumal Murugan talks about growing up a reader in a family of farmers and getting into trouble writing about caste nandini krishnan

“M

y wife found it very

hard to deal with what Ponna does. She had to read it four-five times. Many people couldn’t accept the idea of that custom; that a woman could do that.” Perumal Murugan’s grin is triumphant. It may be because he had shocked his readers even in writing about a decades-old village custom.

Or it may be an author’s pride in his men and women—that they were real enough to disturb an audience.

Murugan’s wife had to deal with several things in his Mathorupagan (2010), whose English translation

by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, One Part Woman, has just been released by Penguin. Murugan was taking on a female protagonist for the first time, and had to think like a woman who yearned for children; the father-of-two also had to think like a man who was ridiculed for not producing heirs; and he had to bring to life a world from the 1940s.

One Part Woman has the distant romanticism of a gentler, slower, prettier world, but it is infused with a sense of immediacy. It was only towards the end, where there is a reference to British rule and to a ‘new’ Tamil film called Sri Valli (which was made in 1945), that I realised it was a period novel. The book is about Kali and Ponna, a couple who are childless ten years into marriage. We see

confidence and diffidence Murugan takes pride in his unconventional themes, yet he lowers his voice when speaking of his characters’ sexual appetites 17 FEBRUARY 2014

their intense, tender love, their constant craving for each other’s bodies.

This, apparently, is not enough to keep a marriage going. Everyone is preoccupied with their ‘failure’ to produce a child. We hear voices of reassurance, voices of accusation, voices of pleading, voices of mockery and voices of comfort. But the voices that linger are the cruel ones.

Murugan intricately examines the effect the pressure to have a child has

“On the days the postman came with a book for me, it was like a great calamity had struck. Everyone would walk about slowly and silently, as if they were in mourning.

They were mourning— mourning the money I’d wasted on the book” on their relationship. It all comes to a head during a temple festival, where the families of the two conspire to send Ponna ‘alone to the hill’ on the last day, when it is believed ‘the gods go back’. The idols of temple deities, brought downhill for the two-week-long festivity, would be carried back to the hill temple of Lord Ardhanareshwara, the fusion of masculine and feminine. On this day, another fusion of the male-female forms was permissible: it was believed that all men became gods at night, and one

would grant a barren woman a child— the old-fashioned way.

I

n person, the 47-year-old author dis-

plays a strange mix of confidence and diffidence. He has the commanding presence professors tend to acquire. Yet he has a cautious, self-effacing mien.

He greets me with an awkward smile, and isn’t quite sure how to react when I feel obliged to tell him my Tamil accent has become sort of awful from years of living away. When he eventually warms up, it turns out that, like most interesting writers, he’s keener to hear about my life than talk about his own. He is aware of his role as a craftsman, and his pride in the unconventional themes of his novels is obvious.

However, he involuntarily lowers his voice and searches for delicate words while speaking about the sexual appetites of his characters.

Murugan’s air of easy charm is complemented by his expression of permanent amusement—which may have been aided by suspicious hotel staff who kept opening the door to the waiting room where we were speaking, not entirely convinced by my explanation that I needed the door closed because I was recording an interview and the Tamil music they were playing at dangerous decibel levels was not conducive to the purpose.

His sense of irony, which characterises his writing, emerges often during the interview. “My biggest advantage when I decided to study Tamil and take up writing was that my family was uneducated, and had no clue what I was open www.openthemagazine.com 47

doing. They knew I was in college, and that was all they cared. That’s a good thing. You know how literature’s seen in this part of the world. People grumble that their children are wasting time on storybooks instead of textbooks.

When I was growing up, there were no book fairs like this one”—Murugan has travelled from his home Namakkal to Madras to attend the Chennai Book Fair, where his latest novel Pookkuzhi is being released—“and no book shops in our village. So you had to look out for advertisements for books in newspapers, and order them by VPP (Value Payable Post). On the days the postman came home with a book for me, it would be like a great calamity had struck. Everyone would walk about slowly and silently, as if they were in mourning. They were mourning— mourning the money I’d wasted on the book.”

Born into a family of farmers, Murugan isn’t quite sure how and why he found his love for the written word.

He muses that he was so introverted he had to create a world for himself.

“Until I was 20-25, I couldn’t speak in public; I was terrified of facing strangers, very reserved. I wouldn’t have been able to chat with you like this.”

He would listen to the radio, and read whatever he could lay his hands on.

As a child, he sent poems to a radio show, which were set to music and played on a children’s programme.

Soon, people began to seek him out to write customised cards for weddings.

His short stories were published in periodicals, and in 1991, his first novel, Eru Veyil (Rising Heat), created a stir.

Drawn from his own life, the novel describes a young man whose ancestral land is being sold to make way for urbanisation. It’s an issue Murugan feels strongly about. In his milieu, land is not just about wealth, but also dignity and social status. Owning a few acres of land is preferable to having crores of rupees in the bank.

“Agriculture is the biggest loss-making industry. It has the worst labour-profit ratio.” Formerly a Leftist, he is vocal about the need to make people aware of issues like the Vidarbha farmer suicides. He speaks passionately about the 48 open

way in which American companies have exploited Indian farmers, flooding the market with hybrid seeds. “Our old methods sustained us for centuries—no, for millennia. But ten years of using these hybrid seeds, and the soil is ruined; its fertility is gone. You become dependent on pesticide, on artificial methods.”

He’s pragmatic enough to say urbanisation—and modernisation—can’t

We see a couple’s intense love, their craving for each other’s bodies. But everyone is preoccupied with their ‘failure’ to have a child. We hear voices of reassurance, pleading, mockery and comfort. But the voices that linger are the cruel ones be stopped, and his views on farming have less to do with nostalgia than concern for a livelihood that may be permanently lost. “You need to plan things properly. Now, garbage from cities is dumped into villages. Sewage is released into ponds and rivers that supply villages.”

But he demurs when I ask whether he intends to write a novel focus-

ing on these issues. He doesn’t see writing as a campaign vehicle. His social commentary is subtle. His 2008 novel Kanganam (Resolve) talks about female foeticide and infanticide—but that’s the undercurrent to a story about a man in his thirties whose family has been searching for a bride for more than a decade. The novel begins with the man’s frustration that an 18-yearold boy from the ‘lower’ Chakkili caste has no trouble finding a bride. In his own Gounder community, the female population has been whittled down, so that there are only three women of marriageable age in a village with forty suitors.

“People think it’s poverty that drives the killing of the girl child,” Murugan says, “But, really, it’s the wealthier families who do it. They’re worried that their property will be lost to the girl’s family. They find devious ways to make the deaths look natural— like, they leave a newborn lying on its stomach for a few minutes. The baby will run out of breath, and can’t turn its face. People put the death down to complications at birth.”

Kanganam was the first novel that was set outside Murugan’s own experience. “I graduated from writing about my own life to writing about lives I knew, from what I saw to what I observed.” It took him thirty years to venture into writing about the experience of a woman.

M

athorupagan was conceived

when he was doing some research on the temple festivals of his native Thiruchengode and the myths around the hill. “This custom, of women being impregnated by ‘gods’ who were not their husbands, was fascinating.

I’ve seen the way people speak about childless couples. I have relatives who have been through this. I know a woman who wouldn’t leave her home for months on end because of the taunts, and the pity, which can be worse.

Look at the way fertility clinics have mushroomed across the country.

There are five hospitals in Namakkal alone which specialise in in-vitro fertilisation and treatment for sterility.

17 FEBRUARY 2014

People spend lakhs on this. They sell property so that they can afford it. The stigma, the pressure, has remained all these decades. We just have a different solution now.”

In the book, Murugan uses an interesting device to nudge his readers into rethinking the idea of progeny—he introduces a charming bachelor called Nallupayyan, a 60-year-old man who counsels Kali, setting out the advantages of not having children. Often, Nallupayyan makes wisecracks about his sexual conquests. When he gets contemplative, he speaks about how silly it is to live frugally in order to provide one’s children with a better lifestyle, and foster a circle of self-denial.

Like all of Murugan’s novels, One Part Woman is beautifully rooted in its setting. Murugan delights in description and Aniruddhan translates it ably.

What is lyrical in Tamil can get cloying in English, but Aniruddhan circumvents this for the most part. Often, the translation is literal, which brings out the cadence of Tamil to those who know the language. I’m not quite sure whether it would work as well for those who can’t imagine the dialogue in Tamil. I also have a personal quibble with the use of adjectives in English, while Tamil is dependent on them.

It’s the translator’s perennial dilemma—whether to be faithful to the word, or to take ownership of the novel. Maureen Freely’s translations of Orhan Pamuk and Philip Gabriel’s translations of Haruki Murakami read so well it’s easy to believe the novels were originally written in English. But then, one wonders how much of the flavour of the original is lost. I asked Murugan what he had made of it.

“I don’t know much English, so I only read the parts that corresponded to the ones I found challenging,” he says, “This novel was very hard to write. I usually finish a novel in one or two months. This took much longer. I had writer’s block for a month, just before I reached the crisisand-denouement. I thought that part really flowed in English. You know, I want my novels to be translated so they have a wider reach. It’s tricky, because English sometimes 17 FEBRUARY 2014

has no equivalent for the words I use. Even the title—Mathorupagan— isn’t exactly ‘one-part woman’. We have several words—umaiorubaagan, mangaipangan, ardhanareeshwarar, ardhanari—because the myth exists in our culture. But there isn’t a single word for half-man-half-woman in English.

Even so, I’m happy to be translated, because I think all writing contains a humanism that transcends language and culture and comfort zones. My Nizhal Mutram (published in English as Current Show) was recently translated into Polish, and I have had people from Poland tell me that they can relate to

“Sometimes, people ask, ‘How can you write this way about Gounders?’

They say I’m portraying the community in bad light. I have a tactic now—I tell them, ‘There are 60-70 subcastes within Gounders, so assume he doesn’t belong to yours’” this story, about a cinema theatre in the 1970s and 80s, where children sell soda and murukku.”

M

urugan’s new novel Pookkuzhi posed another challenge—it is set partly in a city that he is not familiar with, so he couldn’t rely on his memories and roots. “It’s another step in my growth as a writer,” he says, “This is about an inter-caste marriage set in the 1980s. I myself had an inter-caste marriage, so I have some experience of it. But compatible castes are somewhat acceptable. As soon as someone marries a Dalit, there is immediate ostracism. Look at the DivyaIlavarasan tragedy. Look at how little has changed in 2013.”

A court case over the marriage between Ilavarasan, a Dalit, and Divya, of the Vanniyar community, began to make it to newspaper front pages this year—Divya’s father committed sui-

cide in the wake of the wedding, sparking off caste riots that culminated in Ilavarasan’s body being recovered from a set of local railway tracks. A suicide note was found later, but the death remains murky.

Caste politics in Tamil Nadu, led by the Dravida parties, has been driven by an anti-Brahmin agenda. Since the mid-twentieth century, Brahmins have represented everything dislikeable, with their claim to Aryan ancestry, their Sanskritised Tamil dialect and well-paying government jobs. But the BC, OBC and MBC communities have strong political ties, and Perumal Murugan is among very few writers who have explored the relationship dynamics between ‘caste Hindus’ and Dalits.

“Oh, I got into some trouble over that,” he laughs, “In Eru Veyil, I spoke about caste and mentioned the real names of politicians. I was pretty sure no one would read the book, especially from my village. But a man with some clout in the DMK read it, and there was big trouble. For a couple of years, I had to sneak in and out of my village in secret. I would arrive at night, stay hidden at home throughout the vacation, and then slip off to catch a night train back. I changed the names in the next edition. Sometimes, people ask, ‘How can you write this way about Gounders?’ Like there’s a scene in Kanganam where a man is aroused by the sight of his own mother, in shadow.

They say I’m portraying the community in bad light. I have a tactic now— I tell them, ‘There are 60-70 subcastes within Gounders, so assume he doesn’t belong to yours’.”

As I prepare to leave, I ask Murugan whether he had any hideouts in the village, like the young men in his novels do—a little patch in the fields, hidden by crops, or a cave dug out of the inner walls of the village well. “I had lots of those,” he laughs, “I inherited some from my uncle. As a youngster, I was a firebrand, and would storm off when I got angry and stay away till they sent out search parties.” Then he deadpans, “Now, of course, I’m confined to the house, and it’s hard to make a secret hideout there.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 49

Books How I Write

raul irani

The Marathoner Vikram Chandra finds solitude annoying when he writes, but admits to not being a collaborative enough person to work on movies. He writes 400 words every day, adamant that writing is about a steady pace, not a stroke of inspiration aastha atray banan

A

fter spinning a magnificent yarn about a police inspector and the dark world of encounter killings in his 2008 tome Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra returns with a new book, this time about his love affair with computer programming. Mirrored Mind: My Life in Letters and Code explains the logic behind computer programming and

a writer in the world “I have always liked writing in places where I can sense the world around me”

how Chandra’s two passions—writing and coding—meet. Chandra tells Open why he doesn’t enjoy the craft of writing and why he insists on writing 400 words every day anyway. Excerpts:

Do you jot down every stray thought that comes to your mind?

I jot down everything. I carry a tablet and a notebook and I write down everything I want in [those]. I may be jotting down stuff I find in an archive library, or taking notes during an interview (even though I record those). The best thing about electronic devices is that when you work on a book for many years, archiving things you may be writing down gets really hard. I worked on Sacred Games for almost a decade and I was used to writing everything down in thick reporter notebooks, and by the end of it, I had 24 of those. If I

“Everyone has a story to write.

But the difference between a writer and a non-writer is that a writer writes. You have to treat it like a job. If you sit around waiting for inspiration, nothing will happen” had to fact check anything, I had to go back and search for the information. In a tablet, everything is retrievable, and it recognises your handwriting.

Your mother, Kamna Chandra, wrote Yash Chopra’s Chandni, among other films.

Growing up, what did you learn from her as a writer?

My earliest memories are of her sitting on the kitchen table and writing on large pieces of paper. At that time, she used to write plays for Doordarshan.

Writing and reading was always present in the house. It was because of that I knew that the stories you read in books are actually produced by real, living people. So you realised you can do that too. That’s why I started writing pretty early on too.

What did you first start writing?

My first published story was a sci-fi [story], when I was around 12. I was in the boarding school Mayo, and my story got published in the student-run magazine. Once it got published, it became attractive to do this, as people were actually reading my stuff. The feedback from people was the kick I loved.

Suddenly I wasn’t an anonymous little worm in a big boarding school. All the older guys would talk to me about my stories, and that was great.

What do you think about the notion that a writer writes best in isolation, like maybe on a deserted island?

It has never worked for me. I respect that some people need solitude to write but I find solitude annoying. I have a garage at the back my house in Oakland near Berkeley, and when I am there, it is quiet, but I can still hear the kids and the world. Before that I have always liked writing in places where I can sense the world around me, but still be isolated enough to concentrate.

I have tried going off to write but it drives me nuts, and I don’t feel like I have enough access to resources I may need.

A writer needs to be disciplined.

Everyone has a story to write. But the difference between a writer and a non-writer is that a writer writes. You have to treat it like a job. If you sit around waiting for inspiration, nothing will happen.

What’s your method?

When I can do it, I like having a schedule. I like to produce a set amount of words every day. I start as early as I can; I start working right after breakfast. I try writing 400 words every day, which is not much, a little over a page.

It takes me a lot of effort to write those, as I knock off stuff too. So if I have done 400 words, I have a holiday for the rest of the day.

What happens when you do it like that [is that] you can maintain a steady rhythm. If you write 3,000 words one day, it may happen that you have nothing to say the next few days. So my standard line about this is that ‘writing a novel is like running a marathon’. You just maintain a steady pace. open www.openthemagazine.com 51

There is nothing magical about the 400 words—just set a target, and do it day after day. I work six days a week, and then keep at it, month after month, and miraculously, one day, you have a book ready. It all keeps you away from distraction. The world is very tempting as a freelancer. The fridge is calling, or you want to check the news, and before you know it, the whole day has passed away.

produce a book that would have the same qualities as that.

Do you write differently in different cities?

No, I am lucky like that. I am not attached to places and rituals. I have written in airport lounges and hotels.

As long as I have a laptop, I can do it anywhere.

You may not want to seek inspiration, but what about the times you really need it?

Do you like the craft of writing?

What I mean by that is that even when you don’t feel like writing, you write.

But I read a lot, I watch movies, I listen to music—sometimes all that mixes together in your conscience. It’s like putting fertiliser in a field. Two days later, you will be in the shower, and something will pop up, and it will be a mixture of all that’s in your head.

Did you ever think about a writer you wanted to be like?

I was inspired by my mother. I always had an example of a writer in front of me, but she would be the first one to tell you that you can’t make a living by being a writer. I was always doing it since I was 11, but I didn’t know it was viable. I was just doing it for myself. Luckily the world changed, and I got [the scope to do] it like I do. But I would have always come back to being a writer. I get restless when I don’t write, and get short tempered. It’s an itch. I have to write.

There have always been writers I have admired. I discovered [Ernest] Hemingway when I was very young, and I wanted to get that feeling and depth you get when you read him, and that narrative. That’s what I wanted to do, and I did that. My absolute favourite book of the past few years is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. What she achieves in that book is a richly textured portrayal of an entire world.

These people are different from us and see the world differently, but at the same time, she makes that world vividly alive. I love how she encapsulates a very high level of dirty politics. That’s the stuff I admire. You write the stuff you enjoy. What I would like to do is 52 open

is so large that you have to think about what the audience likes, what works and what doesn’t. Who am I selling to, how much I am a budgeting, and who is my customer? It’s all about costing.

That whole world seems very foreign to me. Writing a screenplay is very different. It’s not art, it’s a blueprint. It’s a director’s medium. What works in a screenplay is very different from what works in fiction. You have to learn how to think in a different way.

I don’t think anyone does, it takes a lot out of you. I always quote a friend of mine, an American poet called Robert Hass: ‘Writing is hell, but not writing is hell. The only satisfactory state is just having written.’

What is the one question about writing you are often asked by your students?

“Writer Donald Barthelme... told people: ‘If you can manage not to write, then you should not be a writer.’ I don’t want to romanticise it, but it’s an urge— even writers don’t understand it”

People often ask, ‘What do I have to do to write?’ I just say, ‘Read a lot. Write a lot.’ One of my major teachers, fiction writer Donald Barthelme, always got this question—‘How do I know I am a writer?’ He always told people bluntly: ‘If you can manage not to write, then you should not be a writer.’ It comes from... compulsion. I don’t want to romanticise it, but it’s an urge—even writers don’t understand it.

What does your desk at home look like?

What do you know about writing that you didn’t know before?

It’s very untidy. It has three very large monitors. It’s like a geek thing. You can have your main document open on one, and your reference document open on the other. It makes you more productive. I have decent a sound system attached, so I listen to music.

During Sacred Games, I played a lot of Hindi music from the 1960s and 70s.

Nowadays—I don’t know much about Indian classical, but I am trying to listen to that now.

Did you enjoy writing Mission Kashmir?

My experience with film is positive but I am not a collaborative kind of person.

As a fiction writer, I am used to having complete control over the content.

Film and television both are industrial arts, and the amount of money put in

The more you do it, and the more you critically read other people’s work— and how people read your work is important. That’s why workshopping works—even if it’s just between three friends. Read something you love ten times and you can figure out what is working [for] that book. It helps you in your own writing.

Do you ever write plot points and character sketches before you start writing?

Never. I have images in my head. Like with Sacred Games, I had this image of a cop talking to a gangster in a concrete bunker. Then I started asking these questions—who is here, why is he there? I always start with hazy things and then grind through them to come to the other side. n 17 february 2014

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photos raul irani

arts

Bigger, Better, Stronger, More The India Art Fair 2014 was about art, yes, but no less about money DIVYA GUHA

I

t would seem that the life-affirm-

ing impetus artists in this country have needed has come at last. The India Art Fair held in Delhi was big this year—thanks to gallerists and art collectors, both individual and corporate.

One British exhibitor laments that

54 open

some galleries withdrew participation because of poor sales last year, peeved by the damage art works suffered while in transit and on display. Hectic Indian crowds rubbed shoulders with artists and curators, and sometimes their outsized handbags with artworks, inflaming exhibitors.

A very cross Mark Prime of Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai complains about this, too; and exactly on cue, before I can cry ‘racist’, he is knocked aside by a large ambling Indian flaneur too careless to apologise. Prime is standing guard over a beautiful sculpture by artist Rana Begum—a work 17 FEBRUARY 2014

aspirational art Housing Dreams by Vivek Vilasini on display at the Indian Art Fair 2014

consisting of diagonally-painted rectangular wooden poles that appear to move as you walk past them.

Fear of damage is a real problem at the fair, as the works that have buyers interested in them must remain on display. No sales are made on the premises of the fair, only ‘booked’ with a cash advance or on a well-acquainted collector’s word, and damage could result in a sale falling through.

Every inch of space in the 20,000-sqft venue is precious—the first fair was reportedly only 3,000 square feet.

An art work comes to be put up at a certain spot after several months of careful planning, not to mention the sweat and tears that probably went into its creation.

This is one way to understand why a piece of art is precious and must be guarded jealously, physically. But the lack of orderliness at the fair is a small price to pay if art is to be lifted out of the “intimidating walls of a gallery”, says the Fair’s young founder and director, Neha Kirpal.

Sounding unexpectedly relaxed on the phone, she says she is ‘handling a baby’ and would just ‘wrap up’ and call back. She hardly seems like someone who has worked for 360 days to make this mammoth event come to pass.

Kirpal emphatically clarifies that she is “not a businesswoman, but someone who is interested in art. My professional degree is in marketing and public relations.” She spent a couple of years in London and it was there that Kirpal saw glimpses of what a real art industry looks like. She then returned to India and started the India Art Fair after taking an initial private loan of Rs 60 lakh. It was as simple or as difficult as that.

While exact figures will not be made public, the feedback from galleries has been that 96 per cent reported ‘strong sales’. Organisers expected the Moderns, or the reliable mid-century Progressives—the Husains and the Souzas—to sell more, “but contemporary art also sold very well.

17 FEBRUARY 2014

After all, people relate more to the art of their times,” says a buoyant Kirpal.

The quality and turnout of collectors was far greater this year, she says, and works were lapped up in every medium: photography, mixed media, video, sound, you name it.

Kolkata-based contemporary gallery Experimenter’s co-proprietor Prateek Raja, an MBA, can barely contain his thrill: “I can’t believe our success. It came too quickly.” He says the gallery sold every piece of art it displayed this year—except one work on video—and though there is no way to check that, there is approval in the form of an art award from business magazine Forbes for ‘most promising contemporary gallery less than 10 years old’. Raja says he would be dismissed as a philistine if he were to display that award at his stall.

So while he accepts the compliment—

Mark Prime of Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai complains about the crowds; and exactly on cue is knocked aside by a large ambling Indian flaneur too careless to apologise because ‘why not?’—the thrill of being declared a corporate favourite is not really working for Raja. Money clearly has a complex relationship with art.

Delhi Art Gallery took the largest chunk of space at the venue this year, displaying 350 works through which it attempted to show a thumbnail of the history of Indian art. “I met a very pleased Ashish Anand,” says Kirpal, referring to DAG’s director, “who said we must let him bring a thousand works next year.”

Undoubtedly, the Indian art scene is really quite happening, and this isn’t an idle boast. “The fair has played a really good role in highlighting Indian art,” says Kirpal. “Sales and visitor figures prove there is a lot of curiosity, and foreign visitors, who came in large numbers, felt like they could navigate the Art Fair as a means to access a huge and complex country.”

The number of international collectors and the prices they will pay are soaring. Prajjal Dutta of New Yorkbased Aicon Gallery sold two Souzas and two Husains in the range of Rs 1.6 to Rs 7 crore, critical for bringing in revenue, but also four works by GR Iranna, a contemporary artist, in the range of Rs 10-17 lakh. He says he was pleased with the sales but couldn’t say if this would prove to be a “strong, secular trend” for the future.

One impressive bit of feedback came from Bangalore-based Tasveer Gallery, which sold more in the first three hours of its show opening than it has in the last two years. There is a new sense of hope and optimism, and the buyers—though mostly wealthy NRIs and Indians—include international collectors.

The buyers were indeed active and one spotted collectors such as the much-talked about Chinese collector Budi Tek, apart from Thomas and Ingrid Jocheim, Sangita Jindal, Poonam Bhagat Shroff, Pinky Reddy, Arjun Sharma, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, Shalini Passi, Rajiv Savara. A group of Christie’s collectors also made several enthusiastic purchases.

First-time buyers are not to be discounted, either. “The trend has been that each year, 40 per cent of the collectors are first-time buyers. I imagine it was the same this year,” says Kirpal. Gallerists reported a spate of ‘emerging’ collectors in their early thirties who are fresh to the market and investing part of their disposable incomes, largely in the affordable range of Rs 2-15 lakh, which includes a lot of contemporary works and few Moderns.

I

n its early avatar, the Fair was called the India Art Summit and portrayed as a platform for discussion of the arts.

The ‘summit’ evolved, became more international, and its commercial aspect expanded. The organisers strategically made the event about Indian art rather than a selection of popular or most preferred international works.

Their efforts at art education took a new trajectory, as did the event. open www.openthemagazine.com 55

accessible art The India Art Fair is intended to make art accessible, but easy access sometimes leaves art work prone to damage, with children and crowds bustling about; (above) Jitish Kallat’s Circadian Rhyme

Though they do want to keep their exact financial figures secret, Kirpal has a few shiny indicators that show how much the Fair might have grown: “We have had 400,000 visitors over the last five years and just under 100,000 this year alone.” Though return-on-investment was never their focus, Kirpal says gallantly, the Fair did break even in its fourth year and has made “a fair profit” since. Most of this money was made through space sales to galleries: “We have never had any interest in gallery sales, nor commissions,” she says.

In a blog for The Independent published the night the Fair closed, John Elliot said one unkind critic had turned up his nose at the show saying many displays by Indian galleries were ‘kitsch’. While dismissing this as a concern, Kirpal says the organisers will soon be in a position to include only those galleries that are ready to “up their standards” for the Fair.

Indeed, the Fair is already micromanaged to the extent that even corporate sponsors are cherry-picked.

Absolut, with its snob value as patron saint of artists; Panerai Watches, because watchmaking is undoubtedly 56 open

artistic; jeweller Nirav Modi, because his ‘pieces’ are inspired by Mughal miniatures.

Modi’s jewellery store took several attendees by surprise, and inspired more up-turned noses. Artist Olivia Dalrymple, who describes herself as an Indian artist, though a freckly Scottish one, says “The jewellery store seemed always packed, so from some perspective, someone got something right.” She is quick to add that her affordable prints sold like the scones at Elma’s.

Speaking of which, the food sponsors, too, were the top chichi bunch of Dilli’s urban villages—Elma’s, Chez Nini, Smokehouse Deli—and they helped with ad promotions through radio spots.

Yes Bank, which threw the weekend’s worst party at Le Meridien—the closing do—also offered some of its plentiful financial resources. There were media art partners as well—industry magazines and journals that boast high levels of exaggerated selfrespect, read as they mostly are by people who consider their tastes superior to those of others.

Their other business model is piecemeal corporate sponsorship. A very

small amount of revenue comes in from things like ticket and catalogue sales. The Fair has deliberately kept entry tickets cheap. “They cost less than cinema tickets,” says Kirpal. The idea, lest we forget, is to reach a large section of the Indian middle-class.

One might guess that the Fair has broken even so quickly because of how little is spent each year on putting everything together. “We spent Rs 10-12 crore on it this year. It takes a huge amount of international travel. We need to build our infrastructure; we have no exhibition venues in the country that can hold as many art works as we display,” says Kirpal.

So they build the entire venue only to break it down four days later, sort of like hippies at the Burning Man festival. This year, the Fair’s organisers assembled 3,000 works by 1,000 artists.

To illustrate the magnitude of the behind-the-scenes work involved, Kirpal says it is like putting together 100 exhibitions simultaneously under one roof and making sure everything works: power, light and floor plans—all of it taken care of in-house.

And this is still not all. A considerable amount of effort has to be put into the programming of talks, too. Because it’s 17 FEBRUARY 2014

not all art-art; a large part of the Fair is jaw-jaw.

Kirpal has just hired a new artistic director, Girish Shahane, who will devise future programmes of curated walks and talks. Her original staff of four increases to 15 in the run-up to the Fair each year. They are all non-financial professionals and Kirpal insists they keep it kosher: “We have an unbiased way of looking at the art.”

They also have institutional partners such as the rather respectable Asia Society and Asia House.

“My time is spent marketing the Indian art scene to international art fairs, making connections with galleries and artists, [and] talking at panels all over, from the Netherlands to Rio,” says Kirpal. “We start our marketing in early March, get applications from galleries over the early part of the year, and by September, a final list of exhibitors is prepared.” There were 90 galleries participating this year from 20 countries.

There is still more brandbuilding, as if there weren’t enough already, in the form of outreach roadshows leading up to the Fair—in Miami, New York, London, Paris, the lot.

P

hilip Dodd, a successful BBC broadcaster and cultural entrepreneur, brought an “important” group of 20 collectors from China, says Kirpal.

Dodd, in 1998, reached a turning point in his life. After a casual cultural visit to China over 17 years ago, when ‘Cool Britannia’ was all the rage, he evolved into a full-blown, unabashed Sinoevangelist, a passion that culminated in the creation of a UK-based company called Made In China.

Dodd says our neighbour is complex, huge, and its people “very, very smart”.

It is the UK-based company’s mission ‘to bring’—or take, depending on your geo-perspective—‘China to the rest of the world’. This, at a time when China’s government is massively encouraging creative culture, and its contemporary art scene booming.

If sales are any indication or validation, three works by two Cultural Revolution-bred Chinese fine art-

17 FEBRUARY 2014

ists feature in the top 10 most expensive art works ever sold by living contemporary artists. These include Sheepshearing by Zhou Chunya, the third most expensive, which sold for $4,799,812, and two works by Zeng Fanzhi in fifth and tenth place— Bloodline for $8,425,608 and Marriage for $6,209,126. Mega New York galleries such as Gagosian and Eli Klein are now proud to boast collections by emerging Chinese artists.

“China is building a museum a day,” Christie’s Asia Head Jonathan Stone tells a gathering at the India Art Fair’s Speakers’ Forum, armed as he is with some very bullish figures, such as the Chinese state commissioning 3,500 private museums by 2015. A panel is discussing the Asian (mostly Chinese) art market. Auspiciously, it is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Horse,

India’s lack of museum culture is evident when one finds the National Gallery of Modern Art’s cafeteria closed at lunch time on a sunny afternoon in winter, its pristine premises deserted and it rolls in at a time when the country’s administration is funding museum building—through free land grants, as the government owns all the land—at a good gallop. In 1949, says Stone, there were no museums in China.

This is what is hoped for in India, too, but in the mean time, it can aim to lure collectors from museums in China, or even the UAE, that have not started their acquisition cycle yet.

Though it cannot be said that India has no museums, its lack of museum culture is evident when one finds the National Gallery of Modern Art’s cafeteria closed for an hour at lunch time on a sunny Thursday afternoon in winter, and the place, though pristine, is deserted of visitors. The nearby National Gallery houses invaluable and ancient Indian artefacts in galler-

ies that become progressively more dusty and neglected through successive staircase ascents.

Getting bums on seats for artists, as it were, is no mean feat. And this is a large part of what Kirpal is doing.

Alienation of art from its audience is its foremost problem, says Kirpal, and for this, “we have a wider commitment for art not just to be available to collectors.”

Contacts made over the course of her unending international travels boost the publicity of the Fair, but there are also targeted publicity programmes to reach non-buyers who may become interested in art. To do this successfully, the Fair concentrates particularly on making art ‘not intimidating’ and widely accessible.

Kirpal mentions curated walks through the Fair for lawyers and doctors—those who may buy art from their disposable incomes, but not family or accumulated wealth. School and college groups are granted free entry. One exhausted gallerist said people started traipsing in at 11 am on the opening day of the Fair, as if that were entirely unexpected.

Of course, each participant—artist and gallery—contributes to publicity via his/her/its own creative and business agenda. A quick Google search on the appointed PR company reveals that some thought went into picking it, too—the firm has hipster written all over its official website, associating only with galleries, museums, auction houses and other international art fairs.

So Rana Begum’s endangered art work aside, everyone gains if more people attend the Art Fair. Shippers, restorers, buyers, sellers—everyone has an interest in working together and making it the India Art Fair the big crowded event full of hope, energy and artistic fervour that it seems to be.

Any way you look at it, the Indian art market has come into its own. After all the gloom of past years—“forget London”, as one Berlin gallerist said— the centre of gravity of the art industry is shifting to the east, and despite accusations of a corporate sell-out, no one seems to be complaining. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

rough cut

Rest in Pieces, Sholay Mayank Shekhar

S

Sascha Sippy, the grandson of Sholay producer GP Sippy, re-released India’s greatest story ever retold in 3D. How come so few went to watch it?

ascha Sippy runs a company called Sholay. The

to court demanding compensation of Rs 6 crore when only product in its inventory was manufactured 25 Reliance recently remade their 1973 blockbuster script. I years before the company was formed in 2000. That don’t know if they got a penny. product is a film written by Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar The last American screenwriter I met in LA, Anthony and directed by Ramesh Sippy, all of whom are still alive.

Zuiker, owned a private jet, besides Hollywood bungalows.

So how did Sascha, grandson of the late producer GP Sippy, He had come up with the idea of the TV show CSI in 2000. and son of a lesser-known Sippy (Vijay) come to own His bank balance has since been swelling every time any Sholay? For the same reason some of us believe in destiny. version or episode of the series plays on any TV set anyDuring the making of the film, when the cost of producwhere in the world. He is also an executive producer. tion was going out of control, director Ramesh apparentNow I have never met or spoken to Sascha Sippy. He lives ly decided to surrender his financial stake in Sholay. He in Dubai, is apparently a British citizen and is a wonderful probably didn’t want to share the losses that seemed immimystery to me. I approached him directly and through his nent. This was a view shared by several others when Sholay lawyer for this piece; he didn’t respond. So much the betopened in theatres on 15 August 1975. Trade Guide, a popter, because I can now retain my vision of him as a handular box-office journal then, famously termed it ‘Chholay’ some Hugh Grant kind of character in his late thirties who, (chick peas)—referring to its likely return on investment. as in the film About a Boy, chills out, chases women and has Enough has been said about how they were all miracuto do no work because he can forever live off the royalties lously proven wrong, and Sholay befrom his father’s song—or, in Sascha’s came inarguably the most memorable case, his grandfather’s film. It’s so Bollywood movie ever and arguably the The running joke in the film much cooler an inheritance to flaunt biggest commercial success in Indian industry is that whenever than factories or real estate. Women cinema, continually generating reveeven dig you for it.

GP Sippy’s coffers started to might nues from trademark and copyrights, I don’t know if Sascha has an alterempty, he would re-release nate profession. He has a team that television screenings over the years, Sholay in theatres and make spots and flags references to characters VHS sales, later DVDs, and now video games and mobile apps. During my a new film with the profits or dialogues from Sholay in any movvisits to two countries in the Eastern ie (lately, the Kannada Pawan KalyanHemisphere where you find few starrer Gabbar Singh) or ad (a Renault Indians—Egypt and Iran—locals have inevitably asked commercial currently under litigation) so he can claim the me about Amitabh Bachchan, and then Dharmendra. royalties that rightly accrue to him. I’d like to believe this Though I visited those countries only recently, the obvious affords him a decent lifestyle. The film remains just the connect is Sholay. way it was in the 70s. It continues to top any list of ‘greatest The running joke in the film industry is that whenevIndian movie ever made’ you’re likely to come across. er GP Sippy’s coffers started to empty, he would re-release Its American equivalent on nearly all such lists, Citizen Sholay in theatres and make a new film with the profits. I Kane (1941), was a significant technical advancement for first saw the film on the big screen in 2004 at Gaiety-Galaxy its time. It is a dated, cinematic bore now. This can’t be said in Bandra—a complex comprising seven single screen for Sholay, maybe because the performances in the film cinemas with supercheap seats that also serves as haven’t aged.

Bombay’s ultimate barometer for measuring subaltern If the current crop of actors were to play Jai and Veeru tastes. The hall was packed. wearing the same denim jacket and jeans, or Thakur Ramesh, I suppose, saw none of that money. Neither with a shawl covering the lack of his limbs, they would did the writers Salim-Javed. They were employees on the pitch their performances no differently from Bachchan, payroll of Sippys when they originally wrote Sholay. This Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar. This may not be true for wasn’t the case with Zanjeer, which is why they could go Dilip Kumar or Prithviraj Kapoor’s role in Mughal-e-Azam,

58 open

17 february 2014

arindam mukherjee

or Guru Dutt’s in Pyaasa: the other two evergreen hits that make it to Bollywood’s best-ever lists.

If anything, the women in Sholay—Basanti (Hema Malini) and Rama (Jaya Bhaduri), who is briefly shown to be happy in a flashback sequence)—seem too imbecilic for contemporary tastes.

Several directors—Subhash Ghai (Karma), Rajkumar Santoshi (China Gate), Shekhar Kapur (Joshilay), etcetera— have attempted their versions of Sholay. In 2005, Sascha stalled Ram Gopal Varma’s plans to call his variant Sholay’s official remake. Varma had to call it Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, christening his villain Babban instead of Gabbar (Bachchan played that part in a Halloween dress). My favourite reinterpretation in Varma’s Sholay was his bearded Thakur (Mohanlal). He said this is because a man who has no hands obviously can’t shave. Well. There are a lot of other things he can’t also do, no?

The way in which that picture incensed audiences nationally intrigued me, because if that many people had actually seen the film, it couldn’t have bombed so badly.

A remake is obviously unnecessary when the original is still around. Even I can claim to have grown up on Sholay, though it was released a few years before I was born. Lines from the film have turned into such popular proverbs that it is hard to assess if we really first heard them in the film—‘Ghoda ghaas se dosti karle toh khaye kya?’ (If a horse befriends grass, what will he eat?); ‘Loha garam hai, maar de hathoda’ (The iron’s hot, strike the hammer); ‘Saala, nautanki’ (Damn clown); ‘Jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya’ (If you’re scared, you’re already dead).

I knew relatives who had seen Sholay 20-30 times in theatres, which might be seen as a waste of precious lifetime.

This is from a world right before television. With each 17 february 2014

viewing, they would discover something new, and that is because the massive galaxy of characters in the film appears with their own side stories or short films—whether it’s the Hitler like jailer and his mole Hari Ram, Thakur’s man Friday Ramlal, or Imam sahib and his son Ahmed.

Every minor character, even if it’s the postman who appears for a few seconds, has a name you can recall him/her by. This is true of all epics.

Reportedly pooling in additional investment of around Rs 25 crore, Sascha decided to digitally restore and re-release Sholay in 3D this January, assuming a whole new generation would be curious about this modern national epic.

His uncle, director Ramesh, legally objected. There was no restraining order on the film’s release; the film is the producer’s property. The case is still in court.

When I went to watch Sholay in theatres yet again, there were hardly any people in my theatre. What happened?

Had the embers died down finally? Did the light go out of our life? I am told Sholay commercially flopped for the first time in 2014. The older audiences couldn’t care less for 3D. I watched most of the film without the glasses on. The post-91 young, with enough entertainment on their plate, could hardly spare half a working day (almost three and a half hours running time) to sit in a dark hall on expensive seats to watch a film from their father’s generation.

Like all epics, I think Sholay will live on through its mythological characters, situations and one-liners, dispersed through television, spoofs, commercials and games, where the attention span demanded is much shorter. It’s a phenomenal property. Sascha must continue to monetise it. n Mayank Shekhar runs the pop-culture website TheW14.com open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

third-hand smoke This is second-hand smoke—exhaled smoke and other substances from a burning cigarette—that gets left on the surfaces of objects and becomes more and more toxic

How Old Is Fairness? Researchers have discovered a skeleton in Europe with blue eyes but dark skin and hair

Deadly Third-hand Smoke

W

hen and how did Europeans

develop fair skin? As the explanation went, when humans migrated out Africa to the higher altitudes of Europe, they started developing lighter skin as a response to low UV radiation. The assumption was that dark skin prevents UV-ray absorption, which is the primary source of vitamin D. It was believed that this change in skin colour occurred soon after humans migrated to Europe some 45,000 years ago.

The findings of a new study, however, show that this theory needs revision. In 2006, two ancient skeletons were discovered in a cave in Spain. Using a tooth extracted from one of the skeletons, researchers were able to sequence the genome of the ancient man. Their research has now been published in Nature. They found that the individual, termed La Brana 1, lived only about 7,000 years ago. And strangely enough, while he had blue eyes, his skin and hair were dark. He was found to be genetically related closely to people living in Sweden and Finland.

According to the researchers, this mixture of African and European traits implies that long after modern

60 open

humans left Africa, their racial transformation was still in progress. Also, La Brana 1’s age means that he lived in the Mesolithic period that lasted from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago and ended with the advent of agriculture and livestock farming. The researchers argue that lighter skin came about as a result of a dietary change.

When Europeans started farming, which occurred about 2,000 years after the demise of La Brana 1, their cereal-rich diet lacked vitamin D, thereby causing Europeans to rapidly lose their dark-skin pigmentation. It was only when they switched to agriculture that they had to synthesise vitamin D from the sun more readily.

In a press release, Carles LaluezaFox, one of the researchers says, ‘The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin... Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European.’ n

A study of the effects of third-hand smoke conducted on mice found significant damage in the liver and lungs. Wounds in these mice took longer to heal. Further, these mice displayed hyperactivity. The results of the study, published in PLOS ONE, provide a basis for studies on the toxic effects of third-hand smoke on humans. “There is still much to learn about the specific mechanisms by which cigarette smoke residues harm nonsmokers, but that there is such an effect is now clear. Children in environments where smoking is, or has been allowed, are at significant risk [of] suffering from multiple short-term and longer health problems, many of which may not manifest fully until later in life,” says Manuela MartinsGreen, who led the study. n

Caffeine Use Disorder

A recent study published in Journal of Caffeine Research indicates that more people are dependent on caffeine to the point that they suffer withdrawal symptoms and are unable to reduce caffeine consumption even if they have another condition that may be impacted by caffeine—such as a pregnancy or heart condition. Based on this research, the author advises healthy adults to limit caffeine intake to no more than 400 mg per day—the equivalent of about two or three 8-oz cups of coffee. Pregnant women should consume less than 200 mg per day and people with high blood pressure, heart problems or urinary incontinence should also limit caffeine. n

17 february 2014

sony app remote This application safely connects a Sony car stereo and a smartphone with two-way source control. The latest version ensures even safer operability by introducing voice recognition and expanded text-read-out functions

tech&style

Nokia Lumia 1520 With powerful hardware and software, this Windows Phone leads the pack gagandeep Singh Sapra

Ocean Tourbillon w Jumping Hour

Price on request

Rs 46,900

The Harry Winston Ocean Collection introduces, for the first time, a combination of two sophisticated complications in this timepiece. The jumping hour complication, new for the Ocean Collection, adds its dynamic presence to a timepiece that is a showcase for Harry Winston’s calibre HW4401. Its black sapphire dial reveals the hour through an aperture—it jumps once every hour. n

Sony XAV-712BT

T

he Nokia 1520 smartphone weighs 209 gm, but feels great in your hand, thanks to its design and matte surface finish. Its full high definition 6-inch screen is sharp and bright and also features a third column for live tiles, giving you more screen real estate and more information at a glance. The device switches from regular phone mode to an entertainment device easily and is also good as an e-book reader.

The phone is fast and its Windows 8 phone operating system is a good upgrade from Microsoft’s earlier operating systems. Having Microsoft Office is a big advantage if you spend a lot of time working on Excel sheets while on the go.

The 1520 features a 20.7 megapixel camera with good optical image stabiliser. It can record images in RAW format, and also allows manual focusing. You can also do a full HD video recording and the results are great.

The camera also features a lens called 17 february 2014

‘Refocus’, which lets you change the focal point of an image after you have shot it, allowing you to blur some areas while sharpening other spots.

The 1520 also introduces the Nokia Beamer app that lets you share content with any HTML5 enabled device.

And the Nokia story teller app allows you to integrate pictures and location information into a chronological journey on a map.

The 1520 permits wireless charging, though you will need to buy this charger separately. Nokia claims a talk time of up to 25 hours. The battery is designed for video playback of 10.8 hours, so you can manage those transatlantic flights easily.

The 1520 has 32 gigabytes of internal storage and you can add a micro SD card of up to 64 GB to increase storage. Its 6-inch screen is supersensitive and works with gloves on, and even with nails just in case you have long ones. The phone comes in yellow, white, black and glossy red. n

Rs 33,990

The XAV-712BT from Sony is a beautiful car stereo system that features a 7-inch touch screen, 4.1 channel stereo sound, a virtual centre speaker, advanced sound engine and an amplifier that can put out 52 watts of power per channel. You can connect your Android phone to this unit and enjoy two-way connectivity—you can see who is calling you, play videos and audio from your phone, or use your favourite phone navigation apps. The 712BT can also read out calendar reminders, text messages and even your tweets.

This smart unit also works with Sony’s App Remote Version 2.0. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

cumberbatch’s atonement Benedict Cumberbatch, the English actor best known for Sherlock, has in the past acknowledged that his ancestors were slave-owners in Barbados, and said that his role in the 2006 film Amazing Grace about the abolition of slavery in the UK was intended as ‘a sort of apology’ for that past. His participation in 12 Years a Slave appears to have a similar rationale

One By Two A decent romcom idea on paper translates into an extraordinarily dull movie on screen ajit duara

current

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12 Years a Slave Directors steve mcqueen cast chiwetel ejiofor, michael k williams, michael fassbender Score ★★★★★

ol , preeti desai, Cast abhay de ti agnihotri y, lilette dube ra bhagat a vik r de to Direc

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mit Sharma is a boring guy with

a boring name who, on a date, predictably and unfailingly, orders Manchow soup, ‘one by two’. It’s one of the reasons his ex dumped him. Writer and Director Devika Bhagat takes this character and designs a script for him, formatting it so that Amit (Abhay Deol) meets the leading lady, Samara (Preeti Desai), only in the last scene. Then the camera tilts up to the moon—“Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. The future’s not ours to see”.

Great, it’s a decent movie idea, but the trouble is that this future is ours to see from about a mile away. The graph of the story has several near misses. Amit and Samara are both South Mumbai types living on the most expensive real estate, hanging out in the same bars and rocking to the same terrible music. He fiddles with computers for a living, but composes and sings for his soul.

She is a dancer and lives with her sin62 open

gle mother. They are bound to meet at some point and their paths intersect on at least three points in the graph, yet they pass their eventual destinies by like ships in a fog.

Meanwhile, they lead their ordinary lives, and this is the dragnet of the movie. All the characterisations, performances and scenarios are extraordinarily dull, and we are left tapping our knees and waiting for the deus ex machina. For an actor who has staked out a career and a reputation for doing offbeat roles and executing them inventively, the decision to do this film must surely have been a moment of madness for Abhay Deol.

Just one scene redeems him with his lady fans—when he rocks in his boxer shorts to put off the older generation.

The rest of the time, he tries desperately to look like the boy next door, a role which, at age 37, he should know better than to attempt.

A very disappointing movie. n

Based on an 1853 account of his horrific experience of being kidnapped into slavery in the American South, 12 Years a Slave recounts the story of Solomon Northup in episodic vignettes of blood and gore. We get the point about the White man’s brutality very early in the film, but director Steve McQueen just doesn’t let up.

Armond White, a Black American film and cultural critic, called the movie ‘torture porn’ and said it interpreted the documentation of a holocaust in American history with sadomasochism dressed up as installation art. He wasn’t too far from the truth. The casting and performances, of both Black and White characters, are flawless and the art direction is convincing enough to make you feel you are trapped in a land and time without human rights. Unfortunately, that’s the beginning and the end of the whole polemic. The film evocatively says that slavery is inhuman and effectively rests its case.

The cultural dialogue is then taken over

by White liberal discussion on how terrible it was to be a Black man in such times.

The film itself, as a statement on race and racism, on the twisted working of the human mind, on the social and economic conditions that can create a holocaust, says nothing. Perhaps the film was only meant as an expiation of guilt. n AD 17 february 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

The Pacification of Priyanka

Ranveer Singh and his Gunday co-star Priyanka Chopra may put on smiling faces and insist they’re thick friends as they do the rounds of television studios promoting their new film leading up to its release next Friday. But the pair reportedly got off to a rocky start when they began filming last year.

Turns out Ranveer—who describes himself as a method actor—was channelling his inner wolf for a scene that required him to rough up Priyanka on her first day on set.

The actor apparently got so caught up in the moment that he didn’t realise he had bruised his leading lady all over her arm while manhandling her for the required scene. A visibly shaken Priyanka, who barely knew Ranveer until then, is believed to have complained about his ‘behaviour’ to the director, and even threatened to leave the film if things were going to continue in this vein.

The next morning, unit hands noticed Ranveer was in full ‘damage control’ mode, apologising profusely to Priyanka for his sudden lapse of judgment, and even bringing her a rose and a glass of juice to appease her.

Sources from the set say the pair had no further clashes during filming, but that Arjun Kapoor, the second leading man in the film, was also quickly informed of the incident and warned to be at his best behaviour. Arjun, however, having known Priyanka since his days as an assistant director on Salaam-e-Ishq, in which she starred, had no such teething troubles with his leading lady.

Aamir to Travel Time

The buzz doing the rounds in film circles is that Aamir Khan has found his next film project. The actor, who delivered another blockbuster in Dhoom 3 recently, has already begun filming the second season of his television show Satyamev Jayate. He’s also wrapped principal photography on Rajkumar Hirani’s P.K., which is slated to release around Christmas time this year. Those in the know say he’d been meeting writers and directors for the past few months, listening to scripts and weighing offers. After considerable deliberation on 17 february 2014

his part, it seems Aamir has said ‘yes’ to a time-travel drama to be produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment. The film will be directed by first-timer Nithya Anand, and will likely go on the floors later this year.

It’s interesting to note that Aamir’s fascination for timetravel themes hasn’t diminished over the years. Few are likely to know that Aamir had signed a sci-fi film in the 1990s titled Time Machine that was shelved soon after the first schedule had been completed. The film starred Raveena Tandon opposite Aamir, and also featured Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha, and was being directed by Shekhar Kapur. Apparently the film’s producers could never get along with Kapur, and were concerned about the inflating budget of the picture, therefore pulled the plug on the movie before it could completely bankrupt them.

Ripe for Gossip

Everyone from the office boys to the big bosses at a reputed production company were a little bit surprised last week by the poor manners of the leading lady of their latest film.

The actress, who plays the titular role in this forthcoming movie, had dropped in at the company’s suburban office for a meeting with the marketing department to discuss promotional strategy and marketing plans for the film, which is only a few weeks away from release now.

As is protocol, the actress’ staff was asked in advance what she might like to eat or drink while she was at the office. “Fruits,” they’d been told. Dutifully, a variety of fresh fruit had been procured and laid out for the actress in the conference room where the meeting was to take place. Oddly, she seemed uninterested in the fruit and focused specifically on the job at hand when the meeting began, leaving the fruit untouched in the end.

When the conference room emptied after the meeting had come to an end, staffers swear that the actress’ spot-boy returned to the now vacant room, gathered all the fruit that had been laid out for her, packed it up, and proceeded to join the actress and the rest of her staff as they made their way out of the building. It was clear he had been acting on her instructions. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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The Cannon Girl

by a n ou s h k u m a r

Mughal Emperor Akbar donated a cannon to the Ajmer Sharif dargah of Moinuddin Chishti; since the emperor’s time, the cannon has been put to use during the month of Ramzan to mark Sehri (the start of the day’s fast) and Iftaar (the break of the fast). Until 2008, the act of firing the cannon was performed by men. But that year, Fauzia Khan became the first woman to be assigned the task. n

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17 february 2014

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