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INSIDE The Maoist Threat to Wildlife

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An ungainly balance

Modi dithers over his Ayodhya trip as enemies take aim

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Volume 5 Issue 25 For the week 25 June—1 July 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover illustration Pawan Tiwary

Megha

It is heart-breaking to see how women are doomed anyway—either they are abused by their own men folk or by outsiders (‘A World Without Men’, 24 June 2013). They’re doomed if the men are there, doomed if not. The men drink themselves to death, their women suffer. They don’t work or contribute a penny to the home, their women suffer. They die of drowning because the morons are too drunk to see clearly, In terms of crime against and the women suffer. women, I can see Kerala It’s sad. It makes my becoming the next heart churn in rage. The Delhi, UP or Haryana, Kerala government had only much more better hurry up with potently dangerous alcohol reforms. In terms of crime against women, I can see the state becoming the next Delhi, UP or Haryana, only much more potently dangerous. Left to alcoholics, even God won’t be able to save His Own Country.  letter of the week News and the Media

why just blame the media for [letting the Congress spin the news]? What about the main opposition party BJP? (‘Remote Mindset, 17 June 2013). Did they ever take advantage of allegations against Robert Vadra? What about Subramaniam Swamy’s allegations against Sonia and Rahul? Except for that trivial 2-day disruption of Parliament which served no purpose, I never really heard Sushma or Jaitley speaking against the first family of the Congress, or I never really heard them complaining of the media being Congress-friendly. If this is not a conspiracy of silence, I don’t know what is. If at all there is any opposition to this, it is only from BJP internetsupporters. The BJP has to learn a lot from its supporters.

Lastly, I respect Arvind Kejriwal in this regard, despite his juvenile political style.  KS Winche ster

a very bold from-the-heart article. Sandeep Bhushan deserves praise for his honesty 1 july 2013

reporting with analyses, rather than TV debates with the same set of faces, everyone speaking at the same time, no one listening, and plenty of shouting—often by the anchor himself/herself.

Where is your sense of balance?  Anu

Way to Go

to his profession. A recent incident highlights the subject matter very graphically. After Headlines Today exposed the fraudulent land deals of Robert Vadra, Times Now took it up and made a big show of “exposing” the “Nation’s Daamad” and brought on Mr Khemka, the so-called whistleblower honest officer of Haryana. After assuring him that he will not be forgotten, Times Now promptly forgot all about Vadra, DLF, Khemka, Hooda, land grab, etcetera. For that matter, all the other channels too have blanked out such memories.  SHENOY BV

when i surf private Indian news channels, they invariably carry the same story. And nine out of 10 times the venue is one of the metro cities. I guess the media thinks that India only lives in these metro cities. Surprisingly, it is BBC, Al Jazeera and our humble Doordarshan which provide more news about India than the private channels. Buck up guys, do some proper

what to say to someone who states in public (in India) that she lost her virginity at 19 and also spent some time looking at her vagina? I wonder (‘Great Expectations’, 17 June 2013).

Anyway, good for you. All this is not obvious stuff to a lot of females out there. Well, I don’t know about the lot growing up right now, but in my time, most girls (I mean, young women aged 16-25) didn’t know where their clitoris was or what to do with it. I know because I asked a few of them back then; it really was the stone age. Now, in such information-overload times, I really don’t know.  Anna Palmer

Arrogance Doesn’t Pay

this refers to ‘A Girl Like Me’ (10 June 2013). As you grow, your youthful arrogance calms down. You realise your ‘everything is mine and I am supreme’ attitude doesn’t work. There is a huge social support system run by men that helps women enjoy the freedom they crave. An illusion of freedom and independence without courtesy and a sense of responsibility is useless. Time teaches everyone lessons.  Abhi

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small world

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LYING LOW After Sreesanth’s arrest, cricket bookies have changed their numbers and switched off their mobile phones

An Odds Thing to Happen betting

Gamblers and bookies disappear around Delhi while Goa’s casinos experience a spurt in traffic

Once upon a time there was something called a dabba in Gurgaon. This was a facility a bettor could purchase from a bookie at a cost of Rs 4,000 a month. The dabba came with a dedicated phone line. Put on speaker mode, it transformed into a live radio in which a man blurted out in thick Jat accent: “Ball chaaloo hone wala hai ab…

India par doh ka paanch… (The match’s about to start... 2/5 on India)”. You could hear live cricket commentary with current betting rates on it. Many bettors would share one dab-

new delhi

1 july 2013

ba and place bets through a separate phone number of the bookie. In the IPL final of 2012, the dabba told the gamblers that the odds were Rs 1.22 for KKR and 83 paise for CSK. That meant that if a person bet on CSK and it won, he got 83 paise for every rupee. The dabba, alas, is now no more, thanks to the recent spot-fixing arrests.

“After the Sreesanth scandal, the dabba has suddenly gone silent,” says an infotech professional in Gurgaon who loves to punt. There is an atmosphere of fear and the usual systems have disap-

peared. He wanted to bet during the match between India and Pakistan in the current ICC Champions Trophy, but could not locate his usual betting sources. Mobile phones have been switched off and numbers changed. “Some [bookies] were arrested after the Sreesanth case. The rest have downed their shutters and disappeared. My friends who love to wage bets are taking it easy till the crisis passes,” he says.

A bookie, who also runs an underground poker club in New Delhi, says that both his

cricket-betting and poker businesses have gone down. “IPL6 was a dream run. After the scandal, people are just scared.

It’s not that they have gone away, but it is very difficult to find a reliable bookie and place bets on a cricket match now.

You can try online,” he says.

Meanwhile, traffic at Casino Royale in Goa has increased.

“Before the scandal, we had only one poker table running.

Now, there are at least three running every day. The weekends are even bigger,” says Dheeraj, a manager at the casino. n Arindam Mukherjee

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news reel

Disastrous floods in Uttarakhand

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38 CINEMA

cricket

Life and work with the Deols

What will Dalmiya do?

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letters

The telegram’s last days

My unwitting spouses

cover story

An ungainly balance

Insect A La Carte c r u nc h Rising population and food prices are forcing scientists to look at alternatives to traditional foods, alternatives which, er, don’t seem too palatable. According to The Guardian, the threat of food scarcity is making entomophagy—or the concept of eating insects—a more realistic option for the future. A list published by the food wing of the UN, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) last year included more than 1,900 edible species of insects. The European Union also offered its members $3 million to research the use of insects in cooking. The reason for all this is that insects,

Internet Balloons s k y - h i g h Google aims to bring the internet to two-thirds of the global population through a project of loony ambition. Google’s Project Loon is, in its own words, a ‘Balloon Powered Internet for Everyone’. The project will use high altitude balloons to make the internet accessible across the world. The Google website explains, ‘Project Loon balloons travel around 20 km above the Earth’s surface in the stratosphere. Winds in the stratosphere are generally steady and slow-moving at between 5 and 20 mph, and each layer of wind varies in direction and magnitude. Project Loon uses software algorithms to determine where its balloons need to go, then moves each one into a layer of wind blowing in the right direction. By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network.’ The pilot test saw 30 balloons launched from New Zealand. China and Iran, watch out. n

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on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ■

when compared to livestock and other popular foods such as fish, are available in abundance and a much more sustainable food source.

Munching on locusts for a snack might still be far-fetched, but we’d better get ready for some creepy meals. n

Charl

tchi e s Sa a

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F o r brushing off physical abuse

of his wife as a playful tiff When pictures showing the former advertising mogul Charles Saatchi gripping his celebrity chef wife Nigella Lawson’s throat several times in a London restaurant were splashed across various newspapers, one would have expected silence from Saatchi, or something smarter, like an apology. Instead, he brushed off what was clearly physical abuse as a “playful tiff”.

Saatchi told a London newspaper that the two were having an intense argument about their children and that he gripped her throat to emphasise his point during a debate about their children.

Lawson certainly didn’t seem to think it was very playful— the pictures show her in tears.

Saatchi attributes his wife’s tears to the fact that they “both hate arguing”. Lawson has previously described Saatchi as “an exploder”. n 1 July 2013

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b books

52

lace

The poetry of Irom Sharmila

Lingerie and the Indian woman

c cinema

true life

Kamal Swaroop on Dadasaheb Phalke

A scantily clad actress posing seductively with Christian religious symbols has led to some trouble for the upcoming Sanjay Dutt starrer Policegiri. One of the stills of the movie reportedly has actress Kavitta Verma posing provocatively with a rosary and cross.

This has led to protests by some Christian groups. Within days, father-son producer duo TP and Rahul Aggarwal met representatives of the community and assured them that Policegiri had no such stills or scenes. The blame was put squarely on the young actress for committing the blasphemy in

a bid to promote herself. A demure and fully covered up Verma sat in on the meeting and tendered a signed apology to Joseph Dias, founder of The Catholic-Christian Secular Forum, which led the protest.

Verma wrote that she ‘made a mistake’ and promised ‘to use religious objects in a reverential manner in the future.’’ n

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Who wants to dance with SRK?

North Korea rattled its nukes when its nuclear tests earlier this year were met with US sanctions. But recently, it has sought to reopen talks with the US s t r a t e g ic r e t r e a t

“We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating US hostile policy toward the DPRK... will be smashed by the... diversified nuclear strike means of the DPRK” —Spokesman, General Staff, Korean People’s Army to Korean Central News Agency 14 April 2013

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Improper Prop h e ll n o

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

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Twins on Everest

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“We propose seniorlevel talks between the authorities of the DPRK and the US... on defusing military tensions... and the building of a ‘world without nuclear weapons’ proposed by the US” —Spokesman, National Defence Commission, DPRK, to Korean Central News Agency16 June 2013

around

A Lost City, Found s a y w h a t ? Airborne laser technology has led to the discovery of a network of roads and canals near the 1,200-year-old temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, under the forest on the holy mountain Phnom Kulen, meaning ‘Mountain of the Lychees’. In a paper released by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it was revealed that the laser produced a map of what is considered the lost city of Mahendraparvata, complete with highways and many more temples. Researchers have suggested that the civilisation at Mahendraparvata had declined because of deforestation. But they never thought they would actually find it. In a video interview with Australia’s The Age, Sydney-based archaeologist Damian Evans, the study’s lead author, said: “So instead of this kind of very long gradual process, you have this kind of sudden eureka moment where you bring the data up on screen the first time and there it is — this ancient city very clearly in front of you.” n 1 July 2013

Photo Archaeology and Development Foundation - Phnom Kulen Program

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angle

On the Contrary

The Outsiders If migrants are responsible for crimes in India’s cities, why are they always from the labour class? M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

esting and amusing to watch Himachal Pradesh’s Director General of Police, B Kamal Kumar, on Headlines Today. The issue in question was his statement that migrant labourers were responsible for most crimes in the state.

He wanted I-cards for them and their antecedents verified before they were allowed to work in the state. In the clip where he made these suggestions, Kumar can also be heard saying that migrants from Nepal and Bihar were the main culprits. As the channel’s anchors got ready to pummel him, he had a sudden insight into geographical conditioning and made quick amends by saying that migrant-criminals were independent of region. And then, as both a contradiction of what he had just said and an illustration of it, he added Punjabis and Haryanvis to the list.

Kumar is in the long line of politicians and policemen who are convinced about migrants making crime uncontrollable in big cities. The corollary to this is that if you address migration, you will address crime. In January 2012, after the rape of a Manipuri girl, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said just as much. Raj Thackeray has made a career out of holding Bihari migrants responsible for everything under the sun, including probably the dispute between North Korea and the United States. In one TV interview, he was asked for evidence showing their link to crime. He retorted that the interviewer just had to ask any policeman informally.

Thackeray was probably not lying. The Mumbai Police would think like that.

Decent intelligent people would be a little confused about how to react to such statements. At one level, anecdotal evidence seems to show that it is self-evident and true. It also seems inherently distasteful to make that connection.

There is, however, a way to approach the issue so that both hold true—allowing that migration increases crime but also its being venal to highlight it.

Let’s begin by moving away from regular crimes to something bigger like unimaginable corruption. In the past few

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t was somewhere between inter-

migrant from maharashtra Suresh Kalmadi, from Pune, was based in Delhi during the CWG scam

years, you would therefore have the case of A Raja who is alleged to have made a few thousand crore out of illegally selling airwaves that didn’t belong to him. There would also be Suresh Kalmadi who, as president of the Indian Olympic Association, is alleged to have used India’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games to enrich himself. Raja is a man from Tamil Nadu who was based in Delhi when he saw the opportunity. Kalmadi is from Pune and was also in Delhi as a Member of Parliament while organising the Games.

Both are, therefore, migrants. After these scams broke out, you did not hear Manmohan Singh or the CBI chief saying that corruption has increased because of migrants from Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra. Or take government departments where transfers are frequent,

Anyone silly enough to control crime in cities by controlling migrants needs to come up with another definition for a city.

Any city that exists today is a creation of migrants

like Excise or Income Tax. Corruption is institutionalised in them. But on the rare arrest of any IT officer whose native home is somewhere else, the Finance Minister does not say it is a migrant problem.

When it is said that migrants increase crime, they therefore always mean those at the lower end of the social scale, a threat to the nice happy lives of the middle and upper middle-class. When a policeman or a minister wants migration regulated, he or she essentially wants one particular class sanitised. In the process, they will make rules for the 95 per cent in that class who are honourable hardworking men.

Anyone who is silly enough to control crime in cities by controlling migrants needs to come up with another definition for a city. Any city that exists today is a creation of migrants. If you stop them, you stop its growth. The standard of living will go down because labour will become expensive or non-existent. The large numbers that come into a city are like veins carrying blood and oxygen into its heart. If they want to change the complexion of Indian society for something that normal competent policing can do, then good luck and God bless. n 1 july 2013

real

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide

It Happens

Bird Speed

Recently, during a Champions Trophy cricket match with Sri Lanka, England was accused of ball tampering by a few former players.

It was sparked off by James Anderson being able to reverse swing the ball fairly early in the game. The batsman facing the English attack, Kumar Sangakkara, complained about the condition of the ball. Although Alastair Cook protested, the on-field umpire found the ball out of shape and had it replaced.

The culture of pigeon-racing in Old Delhi is a remnant of a Mughal era practice A a n c h a l B a n s a l mohit gupta

to Ball Tampering

visage

This is not the first time that England has been accused of ball tampering. In 2010, Anderson and Stuart Broad were found to have rubbed the ball on Rahul Dravid was the ground with their spikes in a Test match once fined for against South Africa. Ravi rubbing a Bopara, who is the desighalf-eaten nated ball-shiner in the lollypop on a ball team, has been accused of scratching the ball in a domestic game in New Zealand.

Reverse swing, achieved with a deteriorating ball, where one side is smooth and the other rough, has always been viewed with suspicion. Pakistani bowlers were one of the earliest exponents of this. Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis rough cut Pakistani players all swung the were among the first to deploy old ball long reverse swing distances.

They alleged that racism was behind the balltampering charges they faced.

Players have been found using various means to make old balls swing. In the 1970s, English pacer John Lever was rumoured to use Vaseline to polish the ball. In the 1992 EnglishPakistan Test series, many claimed that Akram and Younis used soft drink bottle caps to rough up one side of the ball. English batsman Marcus Trescothick admitted in his autobiography that he used mint-laced saliva to shine the ball during the 2005 Ashes. Rahul Dravid was once fined for rubbing a half-eaten lollypop on a ball. Even Sachin Tendulkar (!) was suspended in 2001 for allegedly picking the seam of a ball. n

up up and away Once a week, pigeon owners gather at a specific terrace to race their birds

T

he winding lanes of Chitli Qabar, near Jama Masjid in old Delhi, might be crowded but it is not hard to find 30-year-old Mateen Qureshi, even without an address or telephone number. He runs a 55-year-old sweet shop known as Shireen Bhawan. This is the only known shop in the capital that serves aloe vera halwa, but only in winter. He is also one of the few pigeon rearers, known as kabootarbaaz, in Old Delhi and owns the largest collection of pigeons in the area.

“I have at least 500,” he says, leading the way up a narrow flight of stairs to the terrace of a four-storeyed building in the area. The air is heavy with the smell of bird droppings and ittar. Qureshi says that perfume is sprinkled on pigeons not to douse the stink, but to help identify pigeons of different owners in the city. This is handy during competitions held on the terraces during summer evenings.

Kabootarbaazi was introduced in 17th century Delhi when the Mughals set up Shahjahanabad. It began as a communication system between spies and officials of the court. But all that is history. Its enduring remnant now is a local contest held every week in which

the pigeon that flies the farthest and returns to its owner wins.

“We gather on specific terraces at least once a week and let our pigeons out,” says Abdul Mohammad, another pigeon owner from Matia Mahal. The birds follow a rehearsed route within the walled city along areas like Daryaganj, Turkman Gate and Jama Masjid. Several enthusiasts are stationed at specific points, taking stock of how far each pigeon has flown and within what time. The first pigeon that completes the Perfume is route and sprinkled on returns to the pigeons to starting point is identify birds the winner. “It takes a lot of of different effort to train owners them. I could have had more, but I pursue this as only a hobby,” says Qureshi, whose forefathers were professional pigeon rearers.

Training involves making pigeons recognise their owner’s voice while also teaching them the charted routes. This is done by dropping grains of food along the route while feeding them. One has to follow them, running or driving, during their flight along the designated route. n open www.openthemagazine.com 7

business

c i n e m a India makes more movies than any other country. But screening films is no easy business. Since 70 per cent of a film exhibitor’s revenues come from ticket sales, drawing audiences into halls is a make-or-break issue, and this depends on the appeal of products made by others—filmmakers. “Exhibitors are at the mercy of [film] content,” says Jehil Thakkar, head of KPMG’s media and entertainment practice. “It’s a crucial factor over which they have no control.”

To mitigate that risk, modern exhibitors have been trying to “diversify their revenue streams”. One way is to emulate the American model, where overpriced— and fat-margin—food & beverage (F&B) servings account for half their sales. The Indian theatre average is just 20 per cent right now. But with so many players focusing on well-off viewers who shell out almost Rs 500 per head on a film-cola-popcorn outing, that figure will probably rise.

Global players like Cinepolis have entered India, and domestic multiplex firms such as PVR that are keen on this model want to enlarge their screen presence.

With fewer malls being built because of India’s real-estate slowdown, acquiring existing halls is part of their agenda.

Ownership of a large number of screens could enhance an exhibitor’s bargaining power vis-a-vis film producers. Amit Patil of Angel Broking says that market leader PVR has taken a financial hit lately only because it “decided to borrow heavily to expand its screen clout”. In its quest for scale, the company acquired Cinemax (about140 screens) late last year, and aims

raul irani

There’s a Scramble for Screens Out There

multi-flex formula Hit Hindi fims are usually aimed at a diverse audience and not just the metropolitan rich The more screens an exhibitor has, the greater its bargaining power with Bollywood

to raise its screen count from the current 350 to about 500 by the end of 2014-15, says Patil.

Big players also have it easier garnering revenues from in-theatre advertising, since they can offer advertisers considerable reach through a single-window deal.

Analysts say that such ads make up only a Other exhibitors like tenth of an average exhibitor’s topline.

Big Cinema and Inox, On the whole, however, what the which have about 250 screens each, are making industry needs are hit films. The past year efforts to keep up. Bollywood is watching. saw several of these, helping exhibitors Now that almost two-thirds of a major film raise ticket and F&B prices to up profits. release’s box office total is generated by the Yet, what India needs even more is a screen 1,600 odd multiplexes in the country, film expansion effort that draws in millions of more film fans who cannot afford producers are already under pressure to multiplex prices. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI part with a larger share to big exhibitors.

india’s missing moviegoers India is a famously movie-crazy country but its number of screens per million people remains extremely low in comparison with that of countries where small-screen watching is much less popular and piracy is not so rampant India 8

China 31

europe 81

usa 117

screens per million people

‘When women are insufficiently represented in the workplace, we lose out on 50 per cent of the talent pool. In an environment where human capital makes all the difference between success and failure, this is a massive loss which countries and corporates can ill afford’ Cyrus Mistry, chairman , Tata Sons, on the need for gender diversity in business, addressing TGB shareholders

Source: multiple sources

1 July 2013

compiled by shailendra tyagi

news

reel

disaster

Still Counting the Dead Unexpected torrential rains have caused devastating flash-floods and landslides in the state of Uttarakhand. Tens of thousands are stranded in and around religious pilgrimage sites in the state’s upper reaches, even as the death count increases by the day

ap

holy water (Clockwise from right) A caved-in patch of road on the Rishikesh-Mana highway near Joshimath district in Uttarakhand; an oft-seen image of a Shiva idol now neck-deep in water in Rishikesh; Indian Army personnel help pilgrims stranded in Govind Ghat, one of the region’s worst affected by these rain-caused floods

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aFp

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take premarital sex

Letters to My Unwitting Spouses Remember me?

SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI

‘Couples who have premarital sex to be considered ‘married,’ says Madras HC’ —Indian Express, 18 June 2013 You might have forgotten me. However, I still remember our sweat-soaked tryst on BEST Bus No 231 Juhu-Santa Cruz. You got in at the stop across from Mahesh Lunch Home. I was on the second level, on a ripped faecalbrown rexin seat. It was, I’m pretty sure, a dark and stormy night. Owing to our persistent physical attraction you decided to give me a hand job. “Just to take the edge out of the storm,” you said, winking though your eyes were watering profusely from conjunctivitis. I was grateful, as that very day my electricity bill had come in the post; it was monstrous, and I’d been inconsolable. Your hand job was the best thing to have happened to me since second grade when Mrs Sequira, the teacher who routinely punished me, suddenly died (tumbling off her St Paul’s Road balcony, smoking, apparently, a pack of Classic Whites). I want to tell you we are now officially married. It appears from my Google search that you are presently a grandmother—boy, you sure move fast. But I am still waiting for you where you left me, on the faecal-brown rexin seat of Bus No 231, second level— ever the randy bach. How does the title ‘Mrs Shanghvi’ fit in with your present name? (If your husband objects, tell him: It’s the bloody law!) Finally, tell me one more thing, and I really don’t mind if you did, but I had a small red Swiss Army Knife with me in my left pant pocket that night—did you steal it? I used it to kill my corns, so I hope you did not use it for cooking purposes!

Dear J_____: Hey dude, wassup!

Remember me? We were in boarding school in that Godforsaken valley, where the power outs had the Bajaj fans flying off the wall. One night, you came and sat on my semen-slathered bunk bed and

Dear R_____:

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asked if I’d read Auden. I looked you square in the eye and said, “Dude, that stuff is way homo for me.” Offended, you had launched yourself on me, and we had what I recall as violent but satisfying non-consensual sex. “I’m not gay,” you told me longingly, slipping your copy of Auden under your arm. “I just like to deep throat a whole lot.” You had tried to repeat the incident but I was wary: I had stopped bathing with soap bars in the shower by then. As it transpires, having indulged in sexual gratification, we are now legally wed. I understand this might

I had accidental intercourse with your mother (now deceased) in 1973.

She was insatiable, and I was eager to attend a lecture on Semiotics and the Sublime Silence at the Habitat Centre (I am one-fourth Bengali) complicate your life somewhat—you had assumed that you had one present wife, one in the past, and here I am making a claim on you as your third (partner, spouse, boyfriend—take your pick, dude, I ain’t no fussy fag). I was thinking: What’re you doing in the fall? Shall we head out to Spain or France and have a little wedding thing on a vineyard? Just so this is totally legit? Then I won’t feel guilty about having broken the law in India. If it’s okay with you, my wife and

kids will come along—I think they’d appreciate the break. I’d also like my wife to give me away, in a break from tradition, because my dad’s dead, and my wife’s been raring to give me away for a long time.

Dear T_____ and D_____ and F_____: I had accidental intercourse with your mother (now deceased) in 1973, the Summer of Lust, in a certain far-flung suburb of Delhi. It was an emotionally scarring experience: your mother was insatiable (bless her soul) and I was eager to attend a 10 am lecture on Semiotics and the Sublime Silence at the Habitat Centre (I am one-fourth Bengali).

Anyway, the whole sexual craving thing was over quickly. Years went by. Things happened. Now I am writing to tell you that you are all my children, and that I love you very much. Moreover, I feel responsible for you, as you must for me, although your responsibility toward me is greater. You see, I have a serious disability that involves food pipes, adult diapers, and an oxygen tank. On 7 July 2013, I will move in with you, T_____, as your home is well staffed and has great beach access (I will need twenty-four hour surveillance since I am out on bail).

Following this, F_____, I will stay with you for one year. I understand that your husband is a pathologist with Lilavati Hospital. (Can he bring back some of those little plastic bottles from his lab?

To dunk my gutka.) Thereafter, so that your mother, my wife (deceased) does not feel I’m playing favourites, I will spend a year with you, D_____ (remember that I only take Ashok brand chai masala, and we recycle my adult diapers).

You might all be thinking this is some crazy old man speaking—and chances are you might be totally and completely right. In any event, the Crazy Old Man has spoken, and he has said I am your father, once removed. I will see you all next week. n 1 july 2013

politics

dilli door ast

A

s the JD-U firmed up its separation from the BJP,

Narendra Modi’s decision to quietly cancel his proposed visit to Ayodhya did not get the attention it deserved. This change of mind, which became known to the rest of the country only after it became a big talking point in Uttar Pradesh, was a clear pointer to the troubles that lay ahead for Narendra Modi even as he was trying to placate LK Advani in New Delhi.

Mahant Ntrityagopal Das, president of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas Trust, had invited Modi to participate in his birthday celebration—billed as an ‘Amrit Mahotsav’—organised in Ayodhya by the Sangh Parivar and sundry sadhus affiliated to it. Planned as a four-day event, the Gujarat Chief Minister was scheduled to visit Ayodhya on 19 June, its first day. Besides participating in the Mahotsav, Modi was also scheduled to offer prayers to 14 open

1 july 2013

Dhirendra K Jha.

troubleshooting Modi emerges from the BJP headquarters during a Delhi visit where he sought to placate doubters within the party

raul irani

Nitish’s exit from the NDA forces Modi to shy away from Ayodhya and exposes him to a dilemma that had once dogged Advani

Lord Rama at Ayodhya’s disputed site, according to Kamal Nayan Das, disciple and heir apparent of Mahant Nrityagopal Das. “My guru had personally talked to Narendra Modiji and he had said that he would attend the function,” Kamal Nayan Das tells Open on the phone, “But later [Modi] called back to say that he won’t be able to visit Ayodhya.”

On the face of it, the 16 June split of the NDA and the cancellation of Modi’s Ayodhya trip may appear unrelated. But the sequence of events matters, with the decision coming at a time JD-U leader Nitish Kumar was accusing the BJP of pursuing a “divisive agenda”.

As Kamal Nayan Das has indicated, Modi was tempted to visit Ayodhya, given the central position that UP with its 80 Lok Sabha seats occupies in the BJP’s strategy for the next parliamentary polls. His close aide and BJP General Secretary Amit Shah, who is in charge of this crucial state, has been quietly stepping up efforts to polarise UP’s votes.

Merely a week ago, while responding to a VHP resolution demanding a law for the construction of a temple in Ayodhya, he said, “The construction of a Rama temple in Ayodhya was never off the BJP’s agenda.”

A visit to the town by Modi—merely days before the launch of the BJP’s nationwide jail bharo stir against the UPA Government’s policies—would have been a natural

Modi can still reschedule his Ayodhya visit, but his telephone call to Nrityagopal Das has made one thing clear: blending Hindutva with the rhetoric of development is not easily done corollary to the groundwork being done by his pointsman in UP. For the Hindutva icon widely seen as the perpetrator of Gujarat’s worst ever communal carnage that took place a little over a decade ago, there could not have been a more apt way to start the party’s campaign for the next General Election.

Yet, as Nitish geared up to announce the termination of the JD-U’s ties with the BJP, Modi dialled Nrityagopal Das to politely refuse his invitation. Clearly, Nitish had put a spanner in Modi’s plan to quietly push ahead with his Hindutva agenda even as he pushed into motion a highdecibel campaign based on rhetoric of the so-called ‘Gujarat model of development’. This blending of the two is how Modi’s strategists see him winning the Lok Sabha for the party. The strategy, which would have been rolled out with Modi’s Ayodhya visit, has now been temporarily shelved following the developments in Bihar.

Modi can still change his mind and reschedule his visit, but his telephone call to Nrityagopal Das has made one thing clear: blending Hindutva with the rhetoric of development is not easily done. To harp too strongly 16 open

on Hindutva is to raise concerns about communal strife in the country and remind people of the events of March 2002 in Gujarat.

The JD-U’s exit from the NDA has underlined how the two agendas are mutually exclusive. The message of the split has even more gravity because it has come not from an opposition leader or party, but from a party that has so far been the BJP’s largest ally. The need to underplay the BJP’s Hindutva plank, which was flagged by Nitish Kumar as the reason for his party’s exit, was evident even in statements made by BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who, addressing his own press conference once JD-U leaders had made their divorce declaration on 16 June, called the Gujarat CM an individual from a humble background who belongs to a backward caste. “There are some who fear that for the first time an individual is emerging who is not from dynastic politics, who hails from a humble background and is from a backward class,” said Bihar’s former deputy CM. But if the jolt that Nitish Kumar’s exit gave Modi has forced him and his supporters to go slow on Hindutva, any prolonged attempt to do so would annoy saffron cadres and supporters in whose name Modi was given charge in Goa of the party’s electoral campaign as a signal of his ascent to its top.

The dilemma has already started rearing its head in UP. Sangh hardliners like Ashok Singhal, Praveen Togadia, Yogi Adityanath and yoga guru Ramdev have started arriving in Ayodhya well in advance, not just to participate in the Mahotsav but also pressure Modi to change his mind once again. For two days after Modi cancelled his visit, there was considerable confusion over the issue.

After a news agency ran a story, quoting a VHP spokesperson in Ayodhya, that Modi would indeed visit the holy town, the Chief Minister’s office in Ahmedabad issued a clarification on 18 June saying that on 13 June Mahant Nritya Gopal Das had called him and invited him to take part in the proposed Amrit Mahotsav but he declined the invitation citing a busy schedule. The same day, the VHP spokesperson too issued a statement claiming that he was misquoted by the news agency and that he had never said Modi would visit.

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he excitement that Modi’s proposed visit to Ayodhya, despite his silent U-turn on the issue, has generated among Sangh hardliners is not difficult to understand. Modi, after all, is the ‘best Hindutva face’ they have had in independent India. From their point of view, a return to the Ramjanmabhoomi issue—once the BJP’s core political agenda but pushed into the background in recent years as it appeared inconvenient for the smooth functioning of the NDA—is what they expect at a time when all eyes are fixed on the 2014 polls. And in a way, it is also critical to any hopes the BJP has of doing well in UP, without which the party would have no hope of a big 1 july 2013

rueters hindustan times via getty images

potent symbolism Advani, seen here at Ayodhya, is down but not out; Modi’s aide Amit Shah has been quietly stepping up efforts to polarise UP’s electorate

jump in its overall Lok Sabha tally. The party won 41 Lok Sabha seats in that state in 1991, 49 in 1996 and 52 in 1998.

In the 1999 General Election, as the party softened its position on Ayodhya in response to coalition compulsions, the BJP managed to win 29 seats, although it was still the top party in the state. Ever since then, the BJP’s tally has kept falling in UP: it won less than a dozen seats there in 1 july 2013

the subsequent Lok Sabha polls of 2004 and 2009.

But a revival of the Ayodhya issue would not only make things difficult on the development front, it is also the worst thing any prime ministerial aspirant looking for allies can do. For much of the 1990s, even as the BJP was gaining electorally in UP while Advani laboured to polarise votes with various yatras, it was Vajpayee who kept open www.openthemagazine.com 17

bihar photo/prashant ravi

minorities matter Nitish Kumar needs Muslim votes, which account for over 15 per cent of Bihar’s electorate, even at the cost of short-term losses

away from this effort and became the Prime Minister of India. That happened simply because the Hindutva card had made Advani unacceptable to the BJP’s allies.

However, by the time Advani realised this, it was too late for him. It was to undo this taint that Advani went to the extent of praising Jinnah’s secularism, little realising that it would lead to a loss of support from the hardliners who had till then been his hardiest supporters. The dilemma that did Advani in is what enabled Modi’s rise, but it has not disappeared. Today, it is not Advani but Modi who faces it.

While it is true that the JD-U’s exit has given a free run to Modi in the BJP, it comes with a rider. If he fails in these polls, it could result in a dramatic regrouping of the party’s anti-Modi forces Without support from a number of allies, the saffron party cannot think of making a serious bid for power after the next Lok Sabha election. For now, the BJP is merely left with two allies and both of them are numerically insignificant—the Akali Dal and Shiv Sena. Nitish Kumar’s action has thus made a Modi-led NDA look like an impractical proposition. This crucial fact had been underlined by a senior BJP leader in a private conversation 18 open

with some reporters in Delhi before Modi was appointed the chief of the party’s campaign committee. “Modi can never act like a magnet, which is such an essential trait for any leader in an era of coalition politics,” said the BJP leader, a member of Advani’s camp.

While it is true that the JD-U’s exit has given a free run to Modi in the BJP, it comes with a rider. If he fails in these polls, it could result in a dramatic regrouping of the party’s anti-Modi forces. The JD-U’s exit has made it imperative for Modi to show his magic. Each of his moves will now be watched closely, and each of his failures would aggravate his problems. The anti-Modi forces within the BJP and whatever is left of the NDA would then blame it all on the Hindutva poster boy.

Not just that. Modi’s woes are unlikely to end even if he leads the BJP to the status of the next Lok Sabha’s single largest party. The 2002 carnage in Gujarat, which is sure to trail him along his campaign path, will not disappear even after the polls. The Shiv Sena and Akali Dal may not have problems in accepting Modi as their PM candidate, but in terms of numbers, these parties would hardly have much to add to the BJP’s tally. Most potential allies with significant number would object to Modi as India’s Prime Minister.

That would then turn Modi vulnerable within the BJP. And there is no dearth of those in the saffron party who want to play a Vajpayee. Advani is certainly on top of this list, but then there are many others who would like to turn Modi into Advani. That also explains how delicate 1 july 2013

the Gujarat CM’s position may become in either case—if his magic works, the question of forming an alliance may wreck his chances, and if it does not, he would be blamed for all that afflicts the BJP. In any case, Advani, who at present appears to have been completely swept away by Modi’s wave in the party, is down but not out yet. The BJP’s war with itself has merely been postponed. In the best or worst-case scenario (depending on one’s viewpoint), the BJP could be faced with the choice of assuming power with Advani as PM and Modi smarting on the sidelines.

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here does all this leave the JD-U? While the party

has created trouble for Modi and the BJP, it has not made things easy for itself. Nitish Kumar, the face of the party, is not of a caste group with a large numerical presence in Bihar. The state’s Chief Minister, therefore, has over the years been cultivating a support base among ‘Mahadalits’, Muslims and ‘extremely backward castes’ (EBCs). The state has 22 Dalit castes that account for over 15 per cent of the population. Of these, Paswans, who constitute the core vote base of the Lok Janshakti Party of Ramvilas Paswan, are the most numerous, making up a little less than half of Bihar’s Dalit population. In an attempt to carve out a vote base for himself, Nitish Kumar has been nurturing all other Scheduled Castes, having declared them ‘Mahadalits’ (or the poorest among Dalits) and announced a series of packages for their upliftment.

Initially, Nitish had grouped 18 Scheduled Castes under this term, keeping Paswans, Passis, Dhobis and Chamars out. But later, his list of Mahadalits expanded to include the last three of these too.

The CM has spoken of their empowerment. But, come election time, these voters are still susceptible to local pressure and need a social alliance with one or another dominant caste that would give them confidence to emerge from their homes to cast their votes. As a group, the Kurmi caste that Nitish belongs to does not have the numbers to play such a role, and by parting ways with the BJP, the Bihar CM has lost the possibility of getting such support—not to mention votes—from BJP-supporting ‘upper’ castes and even EBCs to an extent.

The 2 June Lok Sabha bypoll in Maharajganj exhibited how vulnerable his Mahadalit voters are in Bihar. It is widely believed that in this contest between Thakurs (supporting the RJD’s candidate) and Bhumihars (the JDU’s), the two dominant ‘upper’ castes, the constituency’s Mahadalit voters could not muster the courage needed to venture out to polling booths.

No less nervous is Nitish Kumar about Muslim voters, who account for over 15 per cent of Bihar’s electorate.

Wooing the relatively backward among them, ‘Pasmanda Muslims’ as they are called, has been a key part of his winning formula. In the RJD’s heyday, it was Yadavs and Muslims who kept Lalu Prasad in power, and Nitish’s ability to split and claim a section of the latter is seen as one of

1 july 2013

the main reasons for the RJD’s rout some years ago.

Despite his party’s alliance with the BJP (now snapped), the CM has been consistent in his efforts to keep Muslim voters from drifting back to the RJD. In fact, during seatsharing talks with the BJP before Bihar’s last Assembly polls in 2010, it was primarily because of the JD-U leader’s plans to expand his party’s base among this minority group that he traded some of his winnable seats—offering them to the BJP—for those in the Muslim-dominated districts of Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia and Katihar. In the 2005 state polls, these seats had been contested by the BJP. The Maharajganj bypoll of result, however, indicates that the JD-U, despite all its efforts to win over Pasmanda Muslims, remains precariously placed vis-à-vis minority favour. In this byelection, the majority of Muslims are

From Nitish’s point of view, the risk that he has taken is worth it. Several leaders in his party believe that he has secured the next Assembly even if he fares badly in the Lok Sabha election said to have voted for the RJD candidate Prabhunath Singh, who emerged victorious by a huge margin. A realignment of Yadav and Muslim votes is the last thing Nitish Kumar would want in his state. It would be the end of his politics. But, given the trends, this is the combination that would have taken shape had the JD-U accepted Modi’s leadership of the BJP (and thus NDA).

Modi’s ascent in the BJP had already started pushing Muslims towards the RJD. Even before the bypoll result, in the past couple of months, Nitish had sensed the setting in of anti-incumbency against his government.

Crowds at Lalu’s rallies had begun to swell, and although they are not yet large enough to pose a threat to the incumbent government in Patna, they could herald a shift in Muslim vote preferences.

For Nitish Kumar, much hinges on whether Muslim votes, now that he has moved away from Modi and the BJP, return to the JD-U, whether Mahadalits actually come out and vote in the Lok Sabha polls, whether he is able to wrest the support of EBCs and ‘upper’ castes, and also whether the Congress aligns with his party (over Lalu’s).

What is certain is that had the Bihar CM not terminated his ties with the Modi-led BJP, the secular polarisation in the state—particularly between Muslims and Yadavs—would have been so intense that his fate would have been sealed not just in the General Election, but worse still in the next Assembly polls scheduled in 2015.

From Nitish Kumar’s point of view, therefore, the risk that he has taken is well worth it. Several leaders in his party believe that he has secured the next Assembly even if he fares badly in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. n open www.openthemagazine.com 19

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Return of the Board Warrior What will Jagmohan Dalmiya’s interim appointment as BCCI chief mean for Indian cricket? Probably not much reuters/jayanta shaw

Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Arindam Bandyopadhyay

I

n November 2005, after beating Jagmohan Dalmiya to become BCCI president, it took Sharad Pawar just three months to hound him out of Indian cricket. This included foisting criminal cases of financial misappropriation on him. Many saw it as the end of Dalmiya as a cricket administrator. For nearly eight years, he stayed out of sight, patiently working his way back in. He first took charge of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), which gave him a toehold in the Board. Earlier this month, he returned in spectacular fashion to take charge of the BCCI after a beleaguered N Srinivasan was forced to step aside because of the IPL betting scandal.

Dalmiya’s sudden elevation evokes

two contrasting responses. The Economist patronisingly called it a display of staggering chutzpah, conceivable only against a background of ‘venal, personality based’ politics that characterises the Subcontinent. The piece claimed that global cricket was administered in a ‘gentlemanly fashion’ by England and Australia before Dalmiya turned the International Cricket Council (ICC) into a mean machine. Indian cricket watchers, on the other hand, are stupefied, scratching their heads and comparing him with an old fox slowly mending his fences and waiting to pounce on his tormentors. They cannot work out why he settled for something as insignificant as a nameless position (he has no official

As ICC president, Dalmiya had quipped to a British aristocrat: “Once Britain ruled the waves, but now it appears that it waives the rules.” He has always portrayed his actions as defending a principle designation). Many suspect he is a dummy stand-in for Srinivasan, who, despite having stepped aside, is reportedly planning to represent India at this year’s annual ICC conference, which begins on 25 June in London. (Whether he will is still not clear as Open goes to press.)

Does Dalmiya want to keep the Board out of his main rival Sharad Pawar’s control at all cost? Is his reappearance part of a plan for a longer innings before a final showdown with Pawar? Some say that Dalmiya is neither a buccaneering bully nor cunning old fox. Instead, he is a proud businessman trying to maintain a clean public image for himself and his idea of what global cricket commerce should be.

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hose who know Dalmiya might be surprised but not shocked at the turn

resurrection? Dalmiya’s fall from grace was swift, but he has a chance to redeem his reputation

of events. The man has made many turnarounds during his administrative career of four decades. BN Dutt, the man who Dalmiya considers his mentor in cricket administration and who brought him over to the CAB back in 1977, recalls the first time he spotted the man in action. Sometime in the mid-1970s, when Dalmiya was running the Rajasthan Club in Kolkata and Dutt was chief of the Indian Football Association (IFA), they met in a courtroom. The IFA had suspended Rajasthan for withdrawing its football team for a match. Dalmiya challenged the suspension in court, and during one hearing, to the surprise of everyone present, he initiated an impromptu conversation with the judge. He argued that the team was withdrawn on account of ‘unplayable conditions’, a legitimate reason. An alarmed Dutt saw the judge look convinced and went up to him with his own arguments. But Dutt also spotted the promise of the young man and took him under his wing. Kishore Bhimani, a cricket commentator turned novelist and Dalmiya’s former associate, recalls his first meeting with Dalmiya in the late 70s under similar circumstances. In an article that appeared in The Statesman, Bhimani had been critical of the lack of transparency in ticket distribution to local clubs and raised suspicions of manipulation of the CAB’s books. Dalmiya called Bhimani over to his office, offering him access to all the account books to protest his innocence. “Although I was not wholly convinced by his arguments,” says Bhimani, “I could not in all honesty fail to acknowledge his charm... the man certainly knows how to project himself as above reproach.”

That Dalmiya, spotting the power of a massive fan following in a fast-emerging economy, brought money and power to Indian cricket is widely acknowledged.

It is why the BCCI is the ICC’s richest associate today. He was the first administrator to realise how India’s audience could spell lucrative sponsorship and telecast deals. The two most crucial decisions he took in the early 90s to enrich the Board were a five-year sponsorship contract with Pepsi and a TV rights contract with Trans World International (TWI). Still later, Dalimiya and his friend-turned-foe IS Bindra closed the disparity in what foreign teams travelling to India and open www.openthemagazine.com 23

afp/sebastian d’souza

Indians travelling abroad matches on TV. “DD has were paid. the money... they owe the public an explanation, not He is also an excellent negotiator. Jayant Lele, his the Board,” he said. former associate in the That the BCCI saw itself as a business was never BCCI, recalls in a published essay an instance in more obvious. Still later, 1999-2000 when Dalmiya Dalmiya regaled journalhiked a sponsorship deal ists with stories of how, with Pepsi from the proas ICC president, he once posed Rs 75 lakh to Rs 85 pulled up a mischievous British aristocrat with the lakh for every Test match quip that “once Britain (he told Pepsi India’s CEO ruled the waves, but now that he had a rival Rs 80 it appears that it waives lakh offer, as the story the rules.” In each case, goes). This, when he was he always portrayed his the ICC president and not actions as defending a technically a party to the deal. Dalmiya’s modus opeprinciple. Just a few days randi is a cocktail of backago, he challenged Bindra to go to court when the latroom negotiations and ter disputed the legality bold public posturing. of his appointment as The extent of one or the other in a particular move interim chief. is determined by the naDalmiya is also a master ture of the challenge. Tales of the tactical retreat, seen of his successful backin the way he withdraws room intrigues are hard to himself from the public verify, but some stand out arena when a crisis hits for their audacity. him. In an interview to Bhimani recalls an examTehelka in mid 2007 after Brutus Pawar engineered Dalmiya’s excommunication from cricket administration ple shortly before the several legal victories when in power, but the NCP leader’s present unpopularity has helped bring Dalmiya back against the BCCI, he spoke Reliance World Cup of of how no one except fam1987. The office of then ily members and lawyers Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an energetic anti-apartheid cam- they went to South Africa not in support had access to his central Kolkata office paigner, expressed reservations over the of apartheid but as a protest to teach chil- for more than a year. “I never called anyvisit of three English cricketers who had dren of all colours cricket. By this version one, never interfered, never asked and been part of a rebel team touring South of events, Dalmiya’s back channel ma- never gave interviews,” Dalmiya said. He Africa in 1982. The PMO reportedly noeuvre managed to defuse a potentially used a similar tactic in a recent interview wanted a signed letter from the cricket- serious diplomatic row. Bhimani, who is to NDTV: quizzed on the precise nature ers—who’d already served a three-year no longer an admirer of Dalmiya, still and scope of his authority within the suspension and were re-eligible for selec- says that it is unfair to call the man a BCCI, he did little other than reiterate his tion back home—regretting their deci- backroom ‘manipulator’. resolve to improve the image of Indian sion and undertaking not to visit South Dalmiya is not known to shy away cricket. He didn’t divulge any details Africa again until apartheid was lifted. from a public slugfest, especially if he about his position and immediate plans.

Since the issue could not be taken up via spies potential dividends in it. In 1995, When I phoned him for an interview, he diplomatic channels, the PMO mounted he had no hesitation in confronting took the call, but said, politely but firmpressure on the BCCI; Dalmiya des- Doordarshan on TV rights. Cricket was ly, that he would not speak to journalists patched Bhimani, who had studied poli- aired free on DD, and he wanted the na- before ‘next week’. tics and diplomacy at London School of tional broadcaster to pay ESPN, to which Economics, to meet Raman Subbarao, the BCCI had sold exclusive broadcasting ntil Dalmiya says or does somechief at the time of the Test and County rights. He cited the principle that comthing, it is hard to say how his tenCricket Board (later renamed England mits Doordarshan to pay filmmakers a and Wales Cricket Board), for a solution. royalty to air their films. It was not the ure—if that’s what it is—as BCCI chief After several meetings and a stream of tel- BCCI, he argued, but the broadcaster could impact cricket. There are at least ex exchanges, the two agreed on a state- that had a responsibility to ensure that three theories floating around on what ment from the players to the effect that citizens at large could watch cricket his return augurs for the future of crick-

U

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1 July 2013

et in India. The first, and most obvious, suggests that, as a man hungry for power, he has staged a comeback by taking advantage of political realignments within the Board; he capitalised on Srinivasan’s exit and a resentment of Pawar common to most officeholders. This is fair, some say. “Being ambitious is not particularly suspicious behaviour, especially for capable men,” says senior cricket writer Gulu Ezekiel, “and there is no reason to believe someone of Dalmiya’s stature and success enjoys any special immunity from this universal trait.”

Others sympathetic to Dalmiya are inclined to consider a more ambitious agenda—that he has accepted the rather thankless task of standing in for Srinivasan solely under the temptation of a possible opportunity to effect major structural changes in cricket governance in India. For example, the inadequacy of India’s legal provisions in dealing with match fixing. A CBI report on match fixing had admitted a decade ago that the evidence it had did not add up to make a watertight case of either cheating or corruption against the accused cricketers under the existing provisions of law.

There is reason, therefore, to believe Dalmiya is going to try persuading politicians to pass legislation that would criminalise match fixing and prescribe tough penalties for those found guilty. In addition, it offers him a chance to both stake a claim to immortality as a cricket administrator and steal a march over Pawar without appearing petty.

This is not as farsighted as it might seem. India’s Law Minister Kapil Sibal has already promised a standalone law

by July or August, putting in place a definition of ‘dishonest practices’ and covering corporates, players and bookies

under its ambit. If politicians keep their word, all that would be left for Dalmiya is to claim credit for outlawing offences that can currently be tried only indirectly in a court of law. The more important legal question is perhaps how the BCCI or Government is going to respond to a February 2011 Supreme Court ruling that brings officials of cricket boards within the scope of the term ‘public servant’ (as understood in the context of the Prevention of Corruption Act, since they perform a public service such as the selection of a state or national team). The position of the BCCI on this is unclear. So

There is reason to believe Dalmiya is going to try persuading politicians to pass legislation that would criminalise match fixing and prescribe tough penalties for those found guilty too that of the Centre. But it has the potential to discipline the functioning of the BCCI and other state boards, long reviled for their opacity and internal games of intrigue.

The third theory portrays Dalmiya as a last-minute consensus candidate pitchforked to a position of uncertain authority by force of circumstances rather than by any plotting on his part. No one knows for sure what really transpires within closed-door BCCI meetings or how such decisions are arrived at. One could assume that those calling for Srinivasan’s resignation after the IPL scam broke ei-

ther did not have the numbers with them or had other reasons not to force the issue. Since a majority of current office holders wanted to keep Pawar out, Dalmiya emerged as a consensus candidate to look after ‘day to day affairs’, while Srinivasan nominally retained his position as president.

Dalmiya, in this scheme of analysis, was just lucky. His functional autonomy is anyway limited to the whims of a powerful lobby within the BCCI that neither threw Srinivasan out nor wants Pawar in.

Dalmiya has told a Kolkata-based journalist that he had not expected his selection and that he has no immediate objective except to clean up the image of Indian cricket. Left to himself, he reportedly said, he would like to put the IPL on hold for a year, although he was unsure if he had the requisite authority to do so. His subsequent announcements, including the abolition of IPL cheerleader teams, have largely been cautious and cosmetic.

More than two weeks after Srinivasan stepped aside, the former president still appears keen to call the shots on such matters as India’s stance at the ICC meeting. Even if Dalmiya dissuades him, he has failed to restore clarity to the Board’s decision-making process. For a body whose functioning has always been opaque, that does not augur well.

Senior cricket observers suggest this is not the Dalmiya of yore, who brooked no resistance once he’d made up his mind.

However, the earlier Dalmiya was also a man who kept his moves to himself down to the very last moment. Even though his immediate prospects do not look terribly bright, the BCCI’s original gameplan-maker may yet step out of his crease for a big hard whack. n

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p ot s h ot

Green versus Red The future of conservation in some of India’s most resource-rich forests hinges on how battles shape up between rebels and the State Jay Mazoomdaar

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he first time I entered the Indravati National Park in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, I had only a village youth who I met barely an hour ago for company. Lakshminath Nag, the lone beat guard manning the Farsegarh chowki on the park boundary, had refused to accompany me. To be fair, he did offer to take me on a “brief walk inside”, but would not venture into the park in my car. “I was beaten up very badly [by People’s War Group cadres] inside the park before I sought this posting. This chowki is not safe either and no forest staffer other than me will stay here overnight. I really don’t know why and how far you want to go inside,” reasoned Nag. His words had an immediate effect on my driver. “Your men made me drive on cycle-tracks inside the forest [to avoid 1 july 2013

all for its horn A rhino killed by poachers in Assam’s Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary

landmines on the road], and I did,” he said, “But I will not cross this boundary.”

My men in question included the local contact I picked up from Jagdalpur and the ‘more local’ contacts he picked up along the way: a villager revered in the area for the quality of his homemade brew, and an electrician who was welcome to the Red Zone for his skills.

At this point, a local youth emerged with his motorbike who claimed he was no stranger to Maoists and agreed to give me a ride—after I had rehearsed my answers thoroughly for the imminent ‘interview’. Apparently, these Maoists would isolate us for a grilling session and unwise answers could result in my ‘punishment’.

The previous evening, I had met escort Murugan, then field director of Indravati, at his Jagdalpur office 200 km from the tiger reserve. He had explained his predicament thus: “Our chowkis have been demolished. Naxalites don’t allow road maintenance, so the park is inaccessible by car. Our men try to go in on two-wheelers and foot. Villagers may not see us because we avoid them unless necessary.”

So were the forest and wildlife safe?

Sub-divisional officer SG Parulkar took over from his boss: “Naxals have already banned hunting and tree-felling here.

Even the month-long annual hunting festival of Tribals—paradh—is under check. We are happy that Naxals are doing our job. You can take the data from us.” His helpless smile did not explain how his men had conducted a tiger census of a 1,250 sq km area without vehicular access to it.

My young escort drove me on his motorbike for over an hour through fairly dense forests, whispering over his shoulder every now and then that we were being watched. But I was struck by a more sinister possibility. The undergrowth and canopies around us did not stir even once. Forget animals, I could spot only a few birds. Minus the engine, the silence and stillness was overbearing.

As we pulled up next to a wooden idol of a buffalo deity at a hamlet, a patriarchal figure surrounded by children approached us gingerly. He was the village 1 july 2013

teacher and happy to see us. The last time this hamlet had visitors was during the 2004 General Election, when armed choppers flew in a couple of poll officials with a ballot box, that too just for an hour or so.

Soon we were joined by a handful of village women who made us tea. As shadows lengthened and we continued our conversations, I could not avoid asking the question. Did they hunt? The ladies looked away, but the old man threw up his hands: “What is left there to hunt?”

Before I could latch on to this lead, my cautious escort intervened to explain that Maoists did hunt occasionally for meat, that there were few wild animals left anyway when the PWG enforced its hunting ban, and that wild animals could still be seen deeper inside the reserve.

So when did any of them last spot a tiger? There was no answer.

watch. But for ivory, his men butchered so many elephants that it triggered a genetic response. The average weight of tusks in the region dropped from 20 kg to 10 kg and the number of makhna (tuskless by birth) males shot up.

A look at Project Tiger’s census data reveals an obvious pattern. All six tiger reserves—Valmiki in Bihar, Palamau in Jharkhand, Indravati and UdantiSitanadi in Chhattisgarh, Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh and Simlipal in Orissa—that fall in the Red corridor record very poor tiger numbers. The fate of a few other reserves—such as Buxa in West Bengal, Manas in Assam and Namdapha in Arunachal Pradesh—affected by other insurgent groups is similar.

What explains this? Have militants been poaching these prized animals?

Large stretches of forest along the Bihar-Andhra and Bengal-Maharashtra Red axis, and in the Northeast and Jammu & Kashmir still remain inaccessible to the concerned state forest departments That was 2005. Not much has changed in the eight years since. Large stretches of forest along the Bihar-Andhra and Bengal-Maharashtra Red axis, and in the Northeast and Jammu & Kashmir still remain inaccessible to the concerned state forest departments. Just how badly wildlife is affected depends on the extremist outfit in control, the extent of its ground control and the proximity of the area to an international border.

ost guerilla outfits in India follow the uncomplicated modus operandi of Veerappan, the late brigand. He and his band of dacoits needed the forest cover to dodge or ambush security forces.

So, barring sandalwood trees, the forests of Sathyamangalam were never more secure than while under Veerappan’s

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It is not easy to smuggle out wildlife products from the Indian heartland while waging a war against the State.

Veerappan was doing that through southern routes with the help of the LTTE, but he was not fighting for sovereignty or socialism alongside. Forests close to international borders, however, offer multiple opportunities because arms, narcotics and wildlife are trafficked through common routes.

For example, a prime source for Chinese weapons is Myanmar, where operators push consignments into Nagaland, usually under the supervision of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). Caches of arms also enter India via the eastern Indo-Bangladesh border, for which Chittagong is the smuggling hub. The third route is via Nepal, where local Maoists control the trade. open www.openthemagazine.com 27

The two busiest wildlife trafficking routes from India are to Tibet via Ladakh and Nepal, and to Myanmar via Manipur and Nagaland. Kashmiri militants have been using the Ladakh channel to trade narcotics and wildlife contraband such as shahtoosh. A drastic dip in tiger numbers in forests close to Nepal such as Valmiki and Buxa make experts suspect that poaching syndicates here have bought protection from outfits such as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation.

While there is no evidence that Maoists in the Red Belt of central India are engaged in commercial poaching—except perhaps in the Srisailam and Nallamalai forests of Andhra Pradesh during the 1990s—sources claim that militant hideouts are frequently used by poachers for the safekeeping of skins and tusks for a fee. Maoists also back local tribes to continue with traditional hunting festivals in many areas, such as Odisha’s Simlipal, where the CPI (Maoist) is still fighting for a firm foothold.

Given their sway over vast tracts of forests from Navegaon in Maharashtra to Jangalmahal in West Bengal, it is, however, unclear if Maoists have been tempted to actively enter the trade themselves since they developed contacts with arms suppliers in Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam—all prime markets for wildlife products.

Other than its distance from international smuggling routes, what may have discouraged Maoists from poaching in central India is the absence of the most lucrative species in the region. “To generate the kind of revenues that would interest militant groups, huge volumes of tiger and elephant derivatives have to be smuggled out, which is very challenging logistically,” says an undercover antitraffic agent, “Per unit of weight or volume, tiger skin and bone, or ivory, is much cheaper than rhino horn.”

Rhinos are easier to kill and a carton of horns fetches as much as a carload of tiger derivatives or tusks would. This had lured insurgents groups of the Northeast to opt for ‘cashless arms deals’. Operators in Myanmar have been more than happy to barter weapons for rhino horns.

In the process, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) wiped out the entire rhino population of the Burachapori 28 open

forests, even as the National Democratic Front of Bodoland emptied Manas.

Ironically, the ULFA in 1989 killed a prominent rhino horn trader and had a stated policy against harming ‘the pride of Assam’ till its cadres joined the loot.

While Manas has recovered significantly since the Bodoland Accord, a number of former militants, along with members of the Karbi People’s Liberation Tigers and Kuki People’s Army are now targeting the Kaziranga populations.

Local and Bangladeshi Islamist groups such as the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, Harkat-Ul-Jihad-alIslami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh have also joined the rhino trade. The ULFA had a change of heart again, but its recent warnings to rhino poachers did not prevent the killing of at least three dozen animals in and around Kaziranga since last year.

It was also provincial pride that moved underground groups in Manipur to ban the killing of Sangai, the brow-antlered deer endemic to Loktak Lake, and even chop off a poacher’s arm a few years ago.

In Kashmir, the decade-long unrest nearly exterminated the Markhor (spiral-horned mountain goat) populations in the hilly forests along the LoC. The mighty goats have made a comeback since the Indo-Pak ceasefire of 2003, though. A threat to the Markhor’s future today is the new Mughal Road that connects Srinagar to Rajouri. Seven years ago, the project refused to make a minor change in its alignment to avoid cutting through the Hirpora sanctuary. Such infrastructure projects were never easy to implement during the peak years of militancy.

n 2009, FICCI published a report on National Security and Terrorism.

Terming Naxalism Indian economy’s biggest party-pooper, it said: ‘The growing Maoist insurgency over large swathes of the mineral-rich countryside could soon hurt some industrial investment plans. Just when India needs to ramp up its industrial machine to lock in growth and just when foreign companies are joining the party—Naxalites are clashing with the mining and steel companies essential to India’s long-term success.’ Added the report: ‘Anxious to revive

I

their moribund economies, the poor but resource-rich states of eastern India have given mining and land rights to Indian and multinational companies. Yet these deposits lie mostly in territory where the Naxals operate.’

The same year, a committee appointed

by India’s Ministry of Rural Development submitted its draft report on land reforms and equity. Long before the Supreme Court banned the Salwa Judum, this report noted that the ‘open declared war [between Maoists and the Judum] will go down as the biggest land grab ever… being scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel who wanted 7 villages or thereabouts, each to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India’. On what it called ‘massive transfers of agricultural and forest land for industrial, mining and development projects’, the report went on to note: ‘Though constituting only 9% of the country’s population the tribal communities have contributed more than 40% to the total land acquired till so far… due to connivance of the Government machinery… [and] a political economy growing around the tribal lands.’

Depending on which side of the growth-versus-green debate one stands, the Maoist insurgency can be viewed as the biggest obstacle to India’s economic growth or the most effective deterrent to the ‘connivance’ of State power with big money that seeks to destroy the last of India’s great forests still in Tribal custody.

In 2007, the ninth Unity Congress of the CPI (Maoist) identified ‘projects like Posco, Kalinganagar, bauxite mines etc in Orissa, Chargaon and Raoghat in Chhattisgarh, bauxite mines and Polavaram project in AP, massive iron mines, and uranium projects in Jharkhand’ and called on ‘all forest dwellers to resist till the end the massive displacement taking place and protect their land and forests from the robbers and looters’. This April, the Maoist party urged supporters to ‘fight unitedly for the withdrawal of the proposed [Land Acquisition] Bill and… for their inalienable right over Jal, Jungle, Zameen’.

But for such Maoist threats, major chunks of Chhattisgarh’s remaining forests would have been axed because they stand on one-fourth of India’s iron ore deposits and a lucrative bed of coal.

For the same reason, few MoUs have 1 july 2013

actually borne results in Jharkhand. The flare-up in West Bengal’s Lalgarh stymied the JSW Steel’s $7-billion project to set up a 10-million tonne steel plant at Salboni. In Odisha, officials see a Maoist hand in every mass movement, from Dhinkia to Niyamgiri, against displacement of locals for big projects.

But corruption among Maoist ranks has also let a number of mines and factories buy peace for hefty sums. For many years, illicit katha-khair traders were the main source of funds for the militant Left, particularly in Jharkhand. Many paper mills and timber merchants got unhindered access to bamboo and teak after paying off Maoists, who have also supported mass encroachment of forestland by local communities in several districts.

To enforce any ban on tree felling, Maoists need to be in firm control of a forest area. But the power equation in a few pockets resembles that of Sathyamangalam under Veerappan or Abujhmaad (Indravati) under the PWG. In many areas, desperate to gain ground support, local-area Maoists have backed attempts by the local population to break forest and wildlife laws.

In Andhra Pradesh, for example, local communities have encroached vast tracts of forestland in Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam districts, but the poorest of the poor in the region remain landless. Tiger reserves such as Valmiki, Simlipal and Palamu have suffered similarly. In West Bengal’s Jangalmahal, villagers backed by Maoists started felling trees to block roads. It did not take long for the timber mafia to step in. The upshot: long stretches of forests disappeared.

In Assam, since the beginning of the Bodo insurgency in the late 1980s, the leadership encouraged its people from all over the state to shift to the proposed Bodoland areas to ensure a Bodo majority. In the process, all 81 sq km of the Naduar reserve forest and two-thirds of Biswanath and Charduar reserve forests were wiped out. Balipara, Sonai-Rupai and Behali forests also came under the axe. But the wilderness along the state borders with Arunachal is fiercely protected by militants who are against felling so that they retain the operational advantage of sneaking in and out of Assam under dense forest cover.

1 july 2013

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he presence of militants in for-

ests legitimises the deployment of security forces in large numbers. But, unlike local militias, jawans of the central forces are mostly outsiders with little understanding of these forests. “In hostile conditions, they easily open fire and kill wildlife. They also collect huge volumes of firewood to keep their camps going,” says a forest officer who served in Jharkhand’s Palamu where forest guards were barred from entering the reserve by the forces.

A few years ago, the commander of an SSB camp in Bihar’s Valmiki defended— off-record—his men for “hunting occasionally” to compensate for their “limited rations” while posted in forests. In Simlipal, where four CRPF battalions are camping, it is difficult to ignore the telltale absence of wildlife near forest roads

three principal natural resources.

In fact, as a former sympathiser of the PWG wonders, India’s militant Left is probably indifferent—even hostile at times—to conservation. Unlike Marx, who in Das Kapital described human societies as earth’s ‘usufructuaries’ who ‘like boni patres familias… must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition’, Mao emphasised the need to conquer nature, put into practice through a series of disastrous adventures in China.

“It’s important to resist top-down big development,” argues a veteran rights activist and conservationist, “but that can’t legitimise the politics of violence.

The solution lies in decentralisation of growth, in small-scale efforts to promote crafts, sustainable agriculture and enterprise based on minor forest produce.

In West Bengal’s Jangalmahal, villagers backed by Maoists started felling trees to block roads. It did not take long for the timber mafia to step in.

The upshot: long stretches of forests disappeared that the forces use for patrolling. In Assam, Army units have even encroached upon elephant forests and set up shooting ranges.

“It is not easy to stand up to the security forces because our field staff depend on them for protection. Anyway, [Army] officers try to brush aside our objections,” rues a former divisional forest officer in charge of Assam’s Sonai-Rupai sanctuary.

“Nobody bothers about conservation in the time of conflict.”

Maoists are no exception. While their resistance to State agencies may have delayed large-scale loss of forest cover to mega development in some areas, this apparent gain for conservation is perhaps incidental—because the Maoist agenda seems to have nothing substantial on the sustainable use of ‘Jal, Jungle aur Zameen’—water, forests and land, the

Unless we have thousands like MendhaLekha [the first village to have the right to harvest forest bamboo in Maharashtra], both people and conservation will continue to suffer.”

Be it minerals, timber, wildlife or just real estate, the last remaining forests are India’s biggest assets. As long as guns blaze in this wilderness, as a forest officer laments in Chhattisgarh’s Kanger Valley, conservation will be the ultimate casualty. “When Maovaadis gain ground, villagers clear the forests like there is no tomorrow,” he says, “When the sarkar takes control, it opens up every little patch for miners.”

In the final analysis, India’s tragedy is this: a fair settlement of forest rights and an ecologically sound land-use policy do not seem to suit either Maoists or the State. n open www.openthemagazine.com 29

h av e n

Home Not Alone

Easy to lead and never lonely: that’s life inside a retirement colony Anuradha Nagaraj Coimbatore photographs by Vivek Muthuramalingam

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esides the drone of the TV set, there is no other sound in the threebedroom villa—no pressure cooker going off in the kitchen, no honking from the street outside, no doorbells rung periodically. On the first floor of the villa, 75-year-old R Radhakrishnan’s desk has a clutter of papers and audio cassettes.

This is where the man who retired as managing director (Asia Region) of Tata

McGraw Hill Book Company spends most of his time, either tracking the stockmarket or patiently digitising his collection of Carnatic music cassettes.

Unlike their Delhi home, where the Radhakrishnans initially settled after he retired, this villa on the outskirts of Coimbatore is far from the hustle of city life. Radhakrishnan calls his residence “resort like”. It is located in a gated colo-

ny called Soundaryam nestled in a coconut grove and with a view of the Western Ghats. Once you pass through the colony’s arched entrance, the outside world practically ceases to exist. You see rows of neatly laid out villas, each with a little sitout and garden. They all have one thing in common: their residents are 55 plus.

“Living in a city like Delhi gets tougher as you grow older,” says

easy living (facing page) Playing carrom at the recreational centre of Brindavan Paradise; (above) residents chat up outside their homes at Brindavan Hill View

Radhakrishnan. “There were concerns about living in a smaller place and in a colony where interaction with younger people would hardly be there. And of course, there was great resistance from the children. But the benefits of living here far outweigh the negatives.

Moreover, at this age, we don’t miss the glitter of a big city.”

An increasing number of senior citizens seem to agree. Across Coimbatore, which has India’s largest concentration of such ‘assisted living’ enclaves, residents vouch for how it works like a ‘welloiled machine’. Such housing projects are usually aimed at the upper middleclass, and houses can either be bought or taken on lease for, say, 20 years. Some also have houses for rent. Every colony is professionally maintained, with a package of services—ranging from food, healthcare and security to social engagement and concierge services—offered on a monthly payment basis. The idea is to ease the lives of the aged. A common kitchen serves hot meals in a dining hall or delivers them home in tiffin boxes. A lounge doubles as a reading room and provides common space for discussions 1 july 2013

Every elderly colony is professionally maintained, with a package of services— ranging from food, healthcare and security to social engagement options on politics or religion. The scenic surroundings inspire brisk walking. In some cases, bank officials even make monthly trips to these colonies for residents to do their bank work at home.

“What more does a 75-year-old need?” asks Radhakrishnan.

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recent report by Jones Lang LaSalle on the senior/assisted living sector in India estimates that by 2025 ‘there will be 173 million seniors above the age of 60 compared to the 76 million today’. It places the country’s current demand at about 300,000 units. Worldwide, senior housing is a $25 billion market, and the Indian market is expected to form an expanding slice of that pie in the years ahead. Already, there are about

30 senior living projects across the country, and another 30 or so are reported to be coming up.

By way of choice, a buyer could opt for a modest 500 sq ft studio apartment or spacious 2,500 sq ft villa with three bedrooms. Their prices range from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore. Maintenance charges are typically calculated on a per sq ft basis and can vary from a monthly Rs 3,000 to Rs 20,000 per person. By one estimate, daily food charges in Coimbatore’s colonies average Rs 100 per person.

According to the LaSalle report’s author, B Sridhar, national director of the real-estate agency’s social infrastructure practice in India: ‘The entire structure of senior living today is designed keeping in mind the requirement of seniors. The layouts of units, architectural aspects such as grab-bars in bathrooms, anti-skid tiles, low-height shelves and servant rooms in bigger units indicate a conscious shift in the development community towards the needs of seniors and growing size of this industry.’ The report states that while most projects are aimed at the market’s ‘affordable segment’, demand for luxury housing is also emerging. open www.openthemagazine.com 31

tension free (Clockwise from right) 79-year-old widow Radha Vanchinath in her puja room at her home in Serene Shenbhagam; notice board outside the dining hall at Brindavan Hill View; the porch at Serene Soundaryam is a venue for many conversations

The sector, which was pioneered in India by small companies and trusts, is now seeing the entry of large developers.

Tata Housing recently announced plans for Riva, its first retirement colony project in Bangalore. Bahri Estates is midway through the construction of Anandam, a retirement colony in Kodaikanal.

Wellness Commune is developing a 300 cottage colony near Sriperumbudur.

Condominiums are coming up on the outskirts of Kochi, and retirement villages are planned in Mumbai and Delhi as well. Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Chennai, 32 open

Panaji and Jaipur are other cities where similar projects are expected to lure the ageing and aged to come and live.

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V Ramaswamy, a 78-year-old retired

Unicef official, began toying with the idea of something “beyond an old age home” in the early 1990s, right after he took voluntary retirement from a job that saw him travel the globe. “I don’t belong to Coimbatore, but came here on the insistence of a dear friend who was a childcare welfare expert,” re-

calls Ramaswamy. “I used to spend a lot of time at Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s Annaikati ashram. I would see a lot of retired people from all walks of life coming here on vacation. And I realised that in your old age, even if you have money, you can’t manage [life] alone.”

And so Ramaswamy came up with the blueprint of a gated community and formed a trust in 1999. He called it Vanaprastha and built 50 dwelling units.

“All of it sold out on the first day,” he says.

The project’s success inspired him to start three more such colonies and even 1 July 2013

live in one of them. “There are a few primary concerns that the elderly have and we make sure they are taken care of,” says Ramaswamy, who is often consulted by builders that want to start such projects of their own. “We have a clinic manned by doctors from morning to evening, our food is basic but nutritious, and we ensure that everyday chores don’t become a burden for the elderly.”

In Vanaprastha, which primarily caters to Hindu vegetarian residents, life revolves around walks, meals and bhajans.

During festivals, the auditorium hosts music recitals and dance performances.

In Santosham, an open air theatre screens regular Tamil and Malayalam movies.

Yoga classes are organised as well.

Ten years after Ramaswamy first thought of an all-needs-met enclave for the elderly, Colonel (retired) Achal Sridharan felt the need to move from a “typical real estate and construction company” to building and maintaining retirement communities. “The need was felt around Y2K, around the time of the information technology boom, when a lot of children were moving out of their homes and leaving their ageing parents behind,” says Sridharan, who volunteered to work at an old age home after his retirement in 1995. “I sent out a questionnaire to an egroup I had created asking friends what they thought of a senior citizen’s colony.

There was a lot of response, and unlike in the movie Baghban, we realised that the 1 july 2013

middle-class [elderly] like their independence and don’t necessarily want to stay with their children.” Sridharan chose to sell the houses he made and then set up a separate company to oversee the running of these properties.

Says M Sudhagar, estate manager of Shenbhagam Estates, a colony built by Sridharan’s Serene Retirement Communities: “I have become ‘the son’ for residents of the 73 villas here. My job is not just to make sure that meals are ready on time and housemaids work efficiently. It also includes listening to residents, taking care of their health and trying to sort out all the disagreements over the menu.”

The meal menu is a major point of discussion in almost every colony. For an average Rs 100, residents get tea or coffee, breakfast, lunch and dinner. “Food is a very contentious issue,” admits Sridharan. “Food committees exist with residents on board, but you will always hear things like ‘This food doesn’t taste like my wife’s cooking.’ Over a period of time, we have devised menus that are acceptable to a majority. But in the early days, my wife had to go and sit with the ladies and sort out complaints.”

Over a lunch of fried rice, chapaati, dal, rasam and curd, one can still hear the odd grumble. “The chapaati should be softer” and “Why fried rice with rasam?” are part of the lunchroom banter. The attendant responds only with a smile.

All houses come with a small kitchen and residents can cook something extra if they want. But this is usually discouraged. “We have had cases of people forgetting to switch off the gas sometimes,” says Sridharan. “We are looking at other options—like induction stoves—in our newer projects.”

Radha Vanchinath, 79, doesn’t mind the food. “I never liked cooking,” she says.

When she was looking for a place to settle down after her husband passed away, she had one specific requirement. Besides the finances, locality and design of the house, she was also looking for a place that didn’t have long dining tables. She didn’t want to sit in a row and eat like she used to as a child in her school hostel. She found the dining hall she was looking for at Shenbhagam Estates. It has no long tables, and she gets to eat in what she describes as a “restaurant like” atmosphere.

“Having spent most of my life in Mumbai and Bangalore, I was looking for a place that would give me the support I needed in old age and also let me keep my individuality intact,” says Vanchinath. “I have no children and didn’t want to live alone in Bangalore. This little villa is my home and all the residents of this colony are my extended family now. Time just flies here.” She couldn’t be happier.

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esidents of these gated commu-

nities will emphatically tell you that these are not old-age homes. They will tell you how long it took to convince their children and relatives that they were going to a happy place, not a depressing one. “Most people who are unaware of this concept expect us to be huddled together and sitting sadly. Even our children initially thought we were moving to an old-age home,” says Leela Krishnamurthi, who retired from the Reserve Bank of India in Mumbai and chose to settle at Brindavan Hill View in Coimbatore. “But we are not, and moreover, we are here because we choose to be here. We were running a race in Mumbai.

It tires you. What could be better than living in a place with a spectacular view of the Western Ghats and good company?

Also, I don’t have to cook.” She occasionally does miss Mumbai, but a group of Hindi-speaking neighbours more than makes up for it. n open www.openthemagazine.com 33

fa r e w e l l

The Last Days of the Telegram They say even the Great Indian Uprising of 1857 failed because of the telegram. As technology gallops onward, a 150-year-old tradition bites the dust Lhendup G Bhutia photographs by ashish sharma

all but over What is left of the 140-year-old telegram office in Mumbai

case: ‘REPORT TO DUTY IMMEDIATELY WITH WRITTEN EXPLANATION.’ Borse is a slight 55-year-old telegraphist at the CTO in Mumbai. After adding the recipient’s address and area code to the text, he considers the message. A grim smile appears on his face. Around him are at least a dozen vacant counters, and only around five are occupied. He stretches his arms and gets up on his feet to see if there’s any more work. There is none. When a peon enters the room with a bundle of telegrams that a bank needs to send its customers, Borse is not on his seat. He is standing by a window with his colleagues, contemplating the rains.

Last week, like many other telegraph offices, Mumbai’s CTO received a pagelong note from the service’s head office in Delhi declaring that telegram operations in India would be wound up by 15 July. “That’s it,” Borse says, “all the history, all the memories, everything. Just one letter… and that’s it.”

In 2008, there were over 22,000 employees working with telegraph services across the country.

Today, the figure is less than 1,000

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O

n a rainy weekday evening, peo-

ple walk huddled under black umbrellas to Mumbai’s Churchgate station. Nearby, at the Central Telegraph Office (CTO), Pradip Borse sits on a wooden chair in a decaying chamber of an ancient building, typing out what is surely one of his last few telegrams. Referring to a slip of paper, he writes on a computer whose monitor blinks frequently with overuse. The letters are in upper

1 July 2013

umbai’s CTO is almost as old as the

telegram itself. Built in 1872, it is a grey stone building with large brown windows and arched passageways that has seen thousands of individuals send taars (literally ‘wires’ in Hindi) of all kinds down the decades. Till the 1980s, it is said, this office alone sent at least 3,000 telegrams daily. Now, with quicker means of communications available, the numbers are abysmal. In 2009, the cost of a telegram was raised from Rs 5 to Rs 25 for every 30 words. In the face of free email and cheap SMS services, it didn’t stand a chance. On a recent visit to the office at its closing time of 8 pm, I learnt that only 19 telegrams were sent that day.

The counters at the entrance still appear well-maintained, perhaps because a large section of the office is designated

for the use of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s mobile and internet services. But most of the building’s interiors are empty and dilapidated. Some staircases are broken, ceilings are ridden with soot, and walls crawl with lizards and insects.

VA Kardhakar, who works as a public relations officer with BSNL, says everyone in the telegraph department knew that the service would close down one day. BSNL has been handling telegraph services ever since the postal department was divested of the service in the 1990s.

“Apart from a few institutions and some old individuals who still seem to like sending a telegram, very few use this service. But when the letter came [announcing its end], we all still felt shocked,” she says, seated in a room so large it seems like an anachronism.

Over the years, the department has been fighting to stay alive. All recruitment was stopped in the 1980s. So, barring the few who were hired on compassionate grounds (such as a job moving to the next-of-kin in the event of a death of a BSNL employee), much of the staff is on the verge of retirement. Many have been moved to other BSNL departments.

In 2008, there were over 22,000 employees working with telegraph services across the country. Today, the figure is less than 1,000.

R

ama Nair, who works as the chief section supervisor at the phonogram department of telegram services, recalls the CTO as a hub of noisy activity. A phonogram is a telegram dictated over the phone via a local call made to the CTO, with its charges added to the customer’s telephone bill. “In the 1980s and before, once you entered the office, you could hear the continuous noise of teleprinters, of hundreds of fingers working on noisy keyboards,” she says, “There was always work; we were extremely busy, but we were happy.”

Nair guards the telephone as she speaks. When it rings, she takes the call and jots down the number in a large logbook. She then asks a junior staffer to return the call and take down the message for a telegram. “All of this,” she waves across the empty room, “and the floor above was filled with people.” Nair is from Kerala. Many years ago, she was open www.openthemagazine.com 35

in Mumbai on a visit to her sister and stayed back on getting the job of a clerk in the telegraph department. “At that time, it was a prestigious job,” she reminisces, “One at least needed a first division in one’s matriculate examination. I had 75.5 per cent.”

The CTO’s old staffers have bagfuls of stories to share of their experiences.

During Borse’s early days at the office, he received a message for the Maharashtra Governor’s office. It read: ‘Payment not received. Starting.’ Borse’s boss was worried that the person concerned was starting for the Governor’s bungalow to collect his payment. When they checked again with the telegraphist who had sent the message, they learnt that Borse had misheard the Morse code. The sender meant ‘starving’, not ‘starting’.

A few months ago, Borse was unsure if he should let a telegram pass. A woman from Uttar Pradesh, who had lived in Mumbai, had written to a police station in the city citing obscene words that an abuser was harassing her with. Borse couldn’t decide if he should strike it down as ‘objectionable’. “I consulted a few colleagues,” he says, “But since she was writing about an experience, we let it through.”

There have, of course, been many messages that the office has spiked: abusive telegrams for political leaders, for example. These, the staff would dutifully not pass on. A few years ago, Borse flagged down a telegram that was trying to warn a thief that the police were looking for him. “You see,” he says, “we don’t just blindly send anything. We make decisions too.”

I

ndia’s telegram chapter began in 1850 when the East India Company strung up the country’s first 27 milelong telegraph line between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour, located on the periphery of that city. It was set up by William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, who worked as a surgeon with the Company and taught chemistry at Calcutta Medical College. According to the book Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India by David Arnold, O’Shaughnessy conducted his own prior trials with electric telegraphs in 1839. He then built a 21-mile-long experimental line 36 open

A few years ago, Borse flagged down a telegram that was trying to warn a thief that the police were looking for him. “We make decisions too,” he says near Calcutta. To protect the line from heat and humidity, he used cables that were thicker than in Europe and North America, and covered them with an impervious layer of cloth and pitch.

Writes Arnold: ‘From a few miles of line in 1851, telegraphs had extended over 4,250 miles of India and linked forty-six

receiving stations by the end of 1856…

By 1865 there were 17,500 miles of telegraph lines, rising by 52,900 miles by the end of the century. By 1939, India’s 100,000 miles of lines carried 17 million telegraphic messages a year.’

After submarine cables between India and Britain were laid in 1870, telegraph services proved a vital link between the Subcontinent and the British Empire’s command centre in London. It was a political imperative for the Raj, which needed reliable and quick transmission of information over vast distances.

One of the first uses of the telegraph, Arnold writes, was its carriage of the news of the fall of Rangoon during the 1 July 2013

proached the Union Ministry of Telecommunications to ask if the Centre would subsidise telegraph services, but was turned down.

Of the millions of telegrams that were sent and received daily across India in the not-too-distant past, the all-India traffic is estimated to have fallen to less than 5,000 messages a day. Most of these are messages sent by institutions like the Army, apart from banks and courts that still stick to their old processes to convey information to individuals.

The day after the announcement, the main workers union of BSNL sought to have the decision revoked. A day later, realism struck, and it has toned its demand down. All the union now wants is that telegraph staffers are not transferred to BSNL’s faraway centres.

I

final dash Come 15 July, all the tools and manpower that help connect the dots and dashes of telegraphic messages will cease to function

second Anglo-Burmese war to Lord Dalhousie in Calcutta in April 1852.

According to an oft-repeated saying, perhaps exaggerated, India’s 1857 Uprising failed because the British had the advantage of telegraphic communication. The colonialists, it is said, got wind of revolts in various parts of the country through telegrams.

The telegraph, however, came to be adopted by Indians and the English alike in time to come. ‘… by the early twentieth century,’ Arnold writes, ‘neither government officials [nor] nationalist politicians seemed able to function without a daily diet of telegrams.’

The dependence on physical wires ended only in the early 1990s, according to Shameem Akhtar, senior general manag1 July 2013

er of telegraph services at BSNL. That was when India adopted the SFMSS (Store and Forward Message Switching System), which switched to airwave transmission towers for the relay of messages. In 2006, the technology was switched yet again, this time to the web-based telegraphy message system (WTMS), which has been in use since.

According to Akhtar, the telegraph department was bound to shut down, considering the losses it was making. Last year, according to BSNL, it lost a little more than Rs 135 crore. Since 2006, the department has piled up losses of over Rs 1,400 crore. “Save a handful, who uses telegrams these days?” Akhtar asks.

“People hardly even use PCOs (public call offices).” Akhtar claims that BSNL ap-

is evening and Jawaharlal Kannanjiya is seated at a counter marked ‘Telegrams’. Three other counters with the same sign are empty.

Opposite him, BSNL’s mobile services counters are humming with activity. At 7.30 pm, like every evening, Kannanjiya’s friend Manohar Chavan arrives with a few telegrams.

Chavan writes and posts telegrams for others and runs a small agency called Yogesh Tarwala. For each telegram, he charges a commission of Rs 10. The agency was started in 1958, a time when it would sometimes get requests for as many as 2,000 telegrams a day. It charged its customers 20 paise a message back then. Now, although he doesn’t get more than 20 requests a day—mostly from traders in Mumbai asking for goods from other parts of the country—and earns most of his livelihood from a pest control agency that he runs, he continues to send telegrams for others.

Chavan and Kannanjiya exchange pleasantries. And by the time Chavan leaves, Kannanjiya’s table has 19 fullyfilled-in telegram forms. As the office is about to shut, two youngsters walk in, asking for the telegraph counter. They want to send their first ever telegram to mark its demise. Even as the clock strikes 8 pm and all counters shut for the day, and as the torrential rain outside gathers strength, Kannanjiya helps the two fill their first and final telegram. n t

open www.openthemagazine.com 37

jatin kampani/people

threesome

Father and Sons The unique life-and-work model of the Deols of Bollywood Shaikh Ayaz

some trio and get chimped,’ announced the publicity material of Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 (YPD2), the Punjabi-flavoured comedy featuring the three Deols—paterfamilias Dharmendra with his boys Sunny and Bobby. Those who walked out of the theatre on 7 June were more than just ‘chimped.’ “I felt cheated,” says Bharathi S Pradhan, editor of The Film Street Journal who has chronicled the Deols over the decades. She describes YPD2 as an ‘ego trip’ and as one of those ‘home movies’ best viewed, well, at home. In her column in The Telegraph, she served the senior Deol a reality check.

“He is no longer the cute Dharmendra of Sholay,” she says. “You can’t have him and a chimpanzee pull off the Sholay motorbike stunt and think that’s comedy.”

Pradhan, however, reserves her bluntest words for Bobby, the youngest Deol: “Bobby was never known for his acting abilities and you give him a double role… who are you kidding?”

Though the film has bombed—it got off to a lukewarm start and was quickly eclipsed by the youthful appeal of Ranbir Kapoor’s Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani—even their most trenchant critics, counting Pradhan, are unwilling to write them off yet. There is a reason for it. For starters, Dharmendra has had a success profile of over 50 years in Hindi cinema. In an industry where respect is bought, he has earned it. When Dharmendra comes calling, no star worth his or her salt can refuse his invitation. Proof: the YPD2 music launch event. In a single packed room, it had Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and several other top stars in attendance. Later, the Khans did a little jig with their beloved Dharamji, as sons Sunny and Bobby floated in the background. For most of their lives as celebrities, the Deols have maintained a low profile. Their women, even more so. But that part of the story comes later.

T

photos express archives

‘J

oin the madness with the awe-

he story of the Deols begins, as it

must, with Dharmendra. Especially, the story of his early years, oft-told but renewed as a riveting tale each time it is narrated by the man himself. Here’s how it goes: A talent contest discovers a boy from

1 July 2013

all in the family (Facing page) Dharmendra readies for a mock arm-wrestle with Bobby as Sunny looks on; (inset) a young Dharmendra in Ghar Ka Chirag; and with second wife Hema Malini in Sholay (above)

Sahnewal in Ludhiana, Punjab. The boy overrides his father—a school teacher with no patience for filmi fools—and confides in his mother, telling her of his big screen aspirations. “Initially she was shocked,” the actor said in an interview to Tina Ambani. “When she realised how much it meant to me, she came around.

She asked me to send applications to directors in Bombay—she was so naïve she thought you could just apply to become a star! Filmfare magazine announced a

In an industry where respect is bought, Dharmendra has earned it.

When he comes calling, no star worth his or her salt can refuse his invitation talent search along with United Producers. I went to the barbershop, asked them to style my hair like Dev Anand and sent in my photos.”

Like Dev Anand, Dharmendra is a charmer who swings between playing the affectionate elderly guardian and a saucer-eyed prankster, depending on the occasion. His rustic innocence sets him apart in a profession awash with superegos (“Ego is a disease,” Dharmendra once said).

“True-blue sons of the soil,” is how

Pradhan describes the family. When you see a Deol, you know you have seen one.

“The Kapoors,” says Pradhan, “are also Punjabis but they are more sophisticated and perhaps more Bombayite. They have travelled far from their roots. But Dharmendra is still the same.”

Writer-lyricist Niranjan Iyengar, who has interacted with the family during his days as a journalist, agrees. “Dharamji still looks at the world with wonder in his eyes,” he says, “All the experiences in the film world haven’t corroded him.”

The Deols, he adds, don’t take their stardom seriously. “While they find the spotlight exciting, they are still at loggerheads with it.”

One popular story of Dharmendra goes that as a starry-eyed new entrant, he was smitten by the Kapoors, billed as Bollywood’s first family. ‘If only,’ he would wistfully wonder, ‘I could establish my very own acting dynasty someday.’ And though he has been close to the Kapoors, he chose to align with Dilip Kumar, practically the opposite of the Kapoors in that the ageing thespian has no dynasty to speak of. “Dilip,” he told me in 2011, “is my brother from another mother.”

Dharmendra shares a love of Urdu with his idol. “Dharamji is a terrific poet.

I hope someday he will compile his work into a book of verse,” says director Sriram Raghavan, who gave him his most worthwhile late-career role in Johnny Gaddaar. open www.openthemagazine.com 39

monkeying around YPD2 has bombed, but at 77 Dharmendra shows no sign of slowing down

“One day, we were passing by Natraj Studio [in Mumbai], which was being demolished then. It’s a studio where he said he had shot many memorable pictures.

Later, he wrote a touching poem about it,” says Raghavan.

For long, Dharmendra was reluctant to share his poetry with the public at large.

It’s also a miracle how for years he managed to keep his personal life away from prying eyes. “It’s an ordeal for them to appear before the press,” says Sangeeth Sivan, director of YPD2, expressing both surprise and delight over the family’s aggressive canvassing for the film. “They did more than was expected of them.”

The Deols put up a formidable presence at YPD2 promotional events. That’s the way they are, says Sivan. Despite being such a close joint-family unit, each has little in common with the other—except the surname. While the glib Dharmendra enjoys the limelight and Bobby appears indifferent (even a bit ‘lost’ as one of his friends notes), Sunny remains painfully reticent. If there were ever an award instituted for the ‘Most Enigmatic Male Actor’, Sunny’s name would figure top-most. But those who know him say he is quite the opposite of his screen persona. Beneath his tough exterior, the hand-pump-uprooting fits of rage (Gadar), loud bawling, jingoism and dhai kilo ka haath (his 2.5-kg hand in Damini), Sunny is a softie who breaks down at the merest mention of his father. On Dus Ka Dum, a game show that 40 open

once had Dharmendra and Sunny as guests, host Salman Khan had this to say about his Jeet co-star: “I have always wondered you are so soft-spoken, but when you get angry in a scene, where does the anger in your voice come from?” While asking him this, Salman turned to the audience and said, “I’ve never seen him lose his cool.”

In that episode of the show, talking about how introverted Sunny was, Dharmendra recalled the making of the popular Betaab number Badal Yun Garajta Hai, featuring him and Amrita Singh. “The song spoke about thundering clouds and rain-drenched lovers,” said the father, “I didn’t know how to tell him that it’s a romantic song and he must

embrace Amrita passionately. We had to do a number of retakes because he just wouldn’t move. Main hota toh ladki ke andar se nikal jaata (If it had been me, I’d have hugged her hard enough to go right through).” Sunny hadn’t changed since, Dharmendra added. “Nature badalti nahin (does not change),” he told Salman puckishly.

B

y most accounts, Sunny has a wry sense of humour. Some of which was on display in a recent episode of Koffee with Karan, where he appeared with Bobby. When host Karan Johar asked Bobby what he would do if he were offered films like Murder and Julie, Sunny 1 July 2013

Pradhan points to another difference of the Deol dynasty. “The Bachchans are a mixed family where the women are allowed to go out and work,” she says, “It’s not just Amitabh and Abhishek who work, but also the daughters-in-law [Jaya and Aishwarya], as opposed to the Deol women who have kept themselves off-limits.”

I interjected: “He would murder Julie!”

Despite being so different from each other, be it their personalities or career arcs, the media tends to slot them all in a one-size-fits-all bracket. For the audience at large, they remain Bollywood’s Last Action Heroes even though all of them— particularly Dharmendra with films like Chupke Chupke and Guddi—have displayed a flair for comedy. Even Sholay, Dharmendra’s biggest ever hit, has more goofiness than action. Sriram Raghavan says unlike his public image of a bumpkin of sorts, Dharmendra is a man with a keen understanding and knowledge of the world, especially cinema. “After the Johnny Gaddaar narration, he asked me if I had heard of Purple Noon. He said [my film] reminded him of that film.

Incidentally, Purple Noon is one of my favourite films,” says Raghavan, who feels it’s about time India recognised the actor’s contribution to Hindi cinema.

In an essay on the actor in Outlook, Mukul Kesavan lists enough reasons why Dharmendra’s talent was overlooked by the film industry. Kesavan blames it on those Greek god looks: ‘Hindi film critics tend to see actorly ability as a compensatory talent: thus histrionic ability is granted to actors who are either unconventionally attractive (Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah) or positively plain (Sanjeev Kumar, Om Puri).

Dharmendra, light-skinned, rugged, with the perfect Colgate smile, didn’t fit the mould.’ Kesavan rates Dharmendra’s performance in Satyakam (1969), which the actor himself considers his finest effort of all the 250-plus films he’s done, as ‘arguably the most affecting and power1 July 2013

ful’ by any male actor that decade.

Rachel Dwyer, professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, says that Sunny is also underappreciated as an actor. “He was one of the most important actors of the 1980s-90s.

His genre of the wounded hero and nationalist fighter is not popular today, but he has acted in the classics of that time, including Ghatak, Ghayal and Gadar,” she observes.

Waiting in the wings now are Sunny’s teenage sons, who are expected to honour the family legacy as actors in their own right Bobby, the more outgoing of the two, however, hasn’t been quite as successful as his father and brother would have expected. He started off on a promising note with Barsaat. “Maybe it was the other frills around the business that he wasn’t able to cope with,” Iyengar says.

T

aken together, the Deols’ contri-

bution to Hindi cinema is no less than that of the Bachchans and Kapoors, dynasties whose fame has reached mythical proportions today. But such comparisons are unwarranted, says Iyengar: “If you use the same yardstick to define Irrfan Khan’s success as you do Shah Rukh Khan’s, then that would be unfair to Irrfan.”

n the 1990s, nosy movie reporters had

a field day with ‘scoops’ on the Deol women. These tales were mainly about Dharmendra’s first wife Prakash Kaur and Sunny’s wife Pooja, on whose idea YPD2 was reportedly based.

When it comes to women, Dharmendra remains old-school, says Pradhan. She recalls attending the wedding reception of Sunny’s sister and being requested by Dharmendra “not to write about it”. Even Esha Deol’s decision to join Bollywood was frowned upon by her father at first. “Once, I asked him if his [other] daughters Vijeta and Ajeeta will ever get into films,” says Pradhan.

“He said, ‘Please, don’t even write that you asked me such a question’.”

Iyengar feels not enough credit is given to Hema Malini—Dharmendra’s second wife and an echt Deol—for bringing up her babies Esha and Ahana largely independently. “She is the Tamil version of the kind of innocence that Dharamji represents,” Iyengar says. “While the Deols can be flamboyant, Hemaji is restrained because of her discipline as a dancer.”

Emotionally if not physically, she is as tough as the Deol men. “You cannot take liberties with her,” he adds.

Perhaps the most radical Deol is somebody who has not been mentioned yet: Abhay Deol. “His ideas of life are different and so are his performances,” says Iyengar of Dharmendra’s nephew.

“Sunny and Bobby still have a bit of Dharamji in them, but Abhay does not.”

Waiting in the wings now are Sunny’s teenage sons, who are expected to honour the family legacy as actors in their own right. Not that Dharmendra, at 77, shows any sign of slowing down. “He wants to keep his most stunning performances for the very end,” says Sivan. “He once said, ‘All my dreams are accomplished. Now I am ready to enter the best phase of my life.’” n open www.openthemagazine.com 41

photos ashish sharma

contour control Foreign brands must adapt to Indian market realities

emergence

Sheer Laciness

Emergent India’s market for premium lingerie is buoyant, no doubt, but here is how it could boom Aastha Atray Banan

S

uman Nathwani has been design-

ing lingerie for 26 years now. She remembers how she got started—her cousin was getting married and they had been scouting for something sexy for her to wear on her first night. “I had something very specific in mind... like a baby doll,” she says. A baby doll, according to Wikipedia, is a short négligée with cup formations—called a bralette—for cleavage, and is trimmed with lace, ruffles, appliques, marabou fur, bows and ribbons.

It is made of sheer fabric like chiffon or silk. Nathwani was introduced to baby doll lingerie by the Mills & Boon stories she devoured.

They searched high and low in Kolkata, but could not find one. Finally, at her sister’s insistence, she set about stitching one herself. “I went shopping for lace and material, which was also hard to source. Then I found a tailor and had to explain it all to him. I created some cutwork designs, which later became my specialty,” she says. “I guess it was my destiny to design sexy lingerie. I did a few more for my family members and finally launched my own label.”

In the two-and-a-half decades she has been at it, Nathwani has seen some shifts in India’s market for lingerie. “White was equated with virginity back then. A girl who wore white was nice and sweet, while wearing lace or bright colours was considered loose,” she says, “Red was reserved only for the first night, and black if you wanted to seduce your husband.”

Now when she sits down to design a set, she has to keep a variety of things in mind, starting with which age group she is designing for and what customers want. “So many women in their forties walk up to me and ask for sexy lingerie tips to dress up their figures. They don’t want to be shy anymore. I advise them to wear funky prints but in more supportive fits as they need to take care of their breasts.” She finds that animal prints and neons go well with Indian skintones and are usually in demand. “You can mix and

1 July 2013

match them. Leopard and zebra prints are also such a draw.”

Advice on sexy innerwear is always at a premium. Ask Deepa Mahadik of Unhooked, a lingerie blog, who answers all sorts of questions every day, ranging from ‘What kind of lingerie should one carry on a honeymoon?’ and ‘What looks sexy on a curvy body?’ to ‘What looks sexy on a thin body?’ and ‘What is conservative yet sexy?’ Those asking these questions span a wide spectrum of ages, from teenagers to women above forty, and are usually middle- and upper middleclass women in conservative joint families who want to enhance their sex appeal behind closed doors. “In Bombay, look at the different types of women who are shopping for lingerie,” says

“Innerwear can also be seen as outerwear: your bra straps show if you wear spaghettis, you flaunt lace bra if you wear sheer tops,” says Cloe’s Neha Kant Deepa, “Many actually go to stores with pictures torn out of magazines looking for that exact bra. Everyone needs to feel pretty and sexy.”

The Indian lingerie market is doing very well at the premium end. In 2012, by the time the iconic push-up brand WonderBra was launched in India, all its pre-launch stock on display was sold out.

Nearly 100,000 women from across the country had pre-booked their orders online. A year earlier, the consultancy Ernst & Young had estimated the Indian lingerie and nightwear market at about $2 billion and projected expansion of an annual 15 per cent till 2015. Several other brands have made their debut since, and online lingerie stores like Pretty Secrets and Zivame are gaining popularity.

T

he question, however, is of how well lingerie marketers are adapting themselves to the Indian market.

Foreign brands like La Senza have been making efforts for some years now. Neha Kant, CEO and co-founder of Cloe, a new brand that retails online and focuses on 25-30-year-old working women in relationships, says that the company’s prelaunch research offered interesting market insights. For example, Indian women like push-up bras, but they still retain some conservative values. So Cloe offered the option of a light push-up.

The opinions of boyfriends and husbands count, too. A 22-year-old fashion blogger says that she got an important lingerie lesson from her boyfriend in school during a make-out session. He told her wearing white undergarments was a no-no because everyone, from mothers to domestic helps, wore white.

He wanted her in black lacy stuff instead.

“Till date, I never wear white,” she says, “To me, sexy will always be something black, lacy and see-through.”

According to Kant, ‘sexy’ now means lace, colours and prints. “Basically, innerwear can also be seen as outerwear now—your bra straps show if you wear spaghettis, [and] you flaunt lace bra when you wear sheer tops. It’s not something we hide anymore.”

Rajiv Grover, COO, Genesis Colours Pvt Ltd, which markets the brand Bwitch, says that its primary target audience of 15-25-year-olds is open to new styles.

“The younger generation wants to flaunt innerwear,” he observes, “There was a time when bra straps were hidden as much as possible. Now women love to show them off. Lingerie has become a fashion accessory and is not a need-based product anymore.”

A 27-year-old writer says she has just three pairs of ordinary underwear— “granny pants”—for days she only wants to feel comfortable (or is unwell).

Otherwise, she wears corsets, thongs and push-ups—even under a regular jeansopen www.openthemagazine.com 43

age of cleavage Online retailers report brisk sales of push-up bras

ure section, which caters to curvy women, is its bestselling one. “We have products going up to J cup [an extremely large bra size], which is unheard of in the offline world. The push-up bra is the most popular style of bra selling on our website.” Karan Behal, founder and CEO of PrettySecrets.com, corroborates that observation. His website also sells “more push-up bras than minimisers” and “more bikinis than one-piece swimsuits”.

Market watchers believe that the internet has liberated the market and finally allowed latent demand to translate into actual purchases, and so even if the overall sales numbers are low, online trends are valid pointers to the future.

Y

and-sweater get-up. She first discovered lingerie on her 18th birthday, when a senior girl in school stuffed a black thong in her pocket and told her to try it on when no one was around. Today, she has multiple grades of lingerie—from sexy to super sexy. Earlier, she would tell relatives staying overseas to bring her bagfuls of lingerie. Now she gets all she wants right here in India. “Obviously, the big brands have it all,” she says, “But even underground markets like Lajpat Nagar have some great stuff.”

Easy availability of lingerie has helped boost demand too. Conservative women who would find it too forbidding to shop for lingerie in the brick-and-mortar world now simply go online and order what they want. Richa Kar, CEO of 44 open

There are many lingerie myths: that underwire bras are carcinogenic, that buxom women cannot wear padded ones. But the big problem is size confusion Zivame.com, a multi-brand curator portal for lingerie, says that offline bra shopping involves such discomfort that it has been reduced to a chore, something to quickly be done with and put out of the way. In contrast, online shopping works well since it lets women understand their needs, browse styles and get sizes right without any embarrassment—in the privacy of their home. The website’s full-fig-

et, an old problem still lingers.

Most Indian women still don’t know their right bra size or what kind to wear.

Deepa often gets questions like ‘How do I measure my cup size?’ and ‘What does 34C mean?’ apart from the occasional ‘Do underwire bras cause cancer?’ She is surprised that women still don’t know all this. “Now, 34 is your band size, which is the underbreast [measure around your torso], and C is your cup size,” she says.

According to her, apart from the one about underwire being carcinogenic, there are many other lingerie myths— like the belief that buxom women can’t wear padded bras. “It actually adds to your shape and makes you look nicer, as no sagging or spilling happens.”

A 30-year-old business analyst complains that every brand has different sizes. “I bought a bra from Triumph that was perfect. But I have never been able to find that style again… To find the same level of comfort, I have to switch brands and go through that size-finding routine again.”

It would be well worth the trouble, lingerie marketers would assure her. As swimwear designers Shivan and Narresh say, other than a swimsuit, nothing quite has as much impact on a woman’s perception of her body as innerwear. “What most lingerie brands get wrong is fit and sizing,” they say, explaining the principal challenge, “Indian women have a unique body type that cannot be measured on the basis of standardised UK, US or European sizings.”

That, then, is the secret of success in this market—and it’s not Victorian. n 1 July 2013

between the sheets

The Darwinian Penile Code What I am still learning about men

A

sonali khan

irene chan

few days ago, The Boyfriend

and I had our first big fight. It was almost a relief. I’d started to wonder if I was dating an alien life form or an unheard-of genetic mutation at the very least, considering the vast reserves of patience this man seems to have at his disposal. Every eccentricity of mine, and I know there are plenty, is met with a goofy grin and infuriating logic. The efficiency of our relationship was driving me crazy. I needed a fight. A good old screaming match, the kind that ends in slammed doors and impatient makeup sex. I needed to ruffle those feathers. It wasn’t easy, I’ll have to admit. ‘He’s stubborn, this one,’ I found myself thinking on more than one occasion, ‘Nothing seems to faze him.’

He loves food and I have a strictly functional relationship with all things edible. He loves cooking and I feign interest in whatever he packs in my dabba on the mornings we wake up together. He loves music and I don’t even like it. He reads on the iPad, which can always be found in one of its three designated spots. I read multiple books at the same time and leave them lying about. He sleeps like the dead and I wake up at the slightest sound. He has a monogamous relationship with shoes, while I have two overstuffed cupboards dedicated to the pursuit of leather. He routinely has to move my stuff to get to his pyjamas in his cupboard. If I were him, I’d be throwing hissy fits. But not Mr Manifeststhe-Patience-of-a-Saint.

But last week, I saw some real fire. It was well past midnight and we were returning from a friend’s party. It was my turn to drive, and about halfway home, he asked me to pull over. I gladly obliged, pleased that he couldn’t wait the 15 minutes it would take to get home and into bed.

The moment I parked, he hopped out of the car, found a secluded corner of the road, and turned his back to the world in that age-old stance of a man threading the darkness with his piss. A few seconds later, he returned, hugely relieved and primed for a long make-out session.

Of all the things I’m anal about, the toilet seat isn’t one of them. When my women friends complain about men being insensitive brutes—“Why else don’t they put down the toilet seat?”—I only hope I can look sympathetic.

Because, frankly, I don’t get it. Apart from hollering from the bedroom that it would be quieter if he did it sitting

down when he lumbers off to pee in the middle of the night, I don’t really care how he chooses to conduct his business.

But I’ll be damned if I knowingly let a man touch my face seconds after he’s taken a leak. Whether or not he puts the seat down in deference to my ample posterior, a man must wash. That’s nonnegotiable.

All my emotions on the subject converged into a singular sound as he leaned in anticipation of a long welcome-home-honey kiss. “Ewww,” I said.

“What the fuck?” was his response.

I chose to pick that moment to lecture him on hygiene and sanitation. He listened to me in stony silence. When we reached home, he made a production of scrubbing his hands and towelling them dry. Needless to say, I didn’t get any that night.

Who would have thought? We’d breezed through the horror or action film debate without raising our voices.

We’d discussed Modi versus Gandhi without losing our cool. We’d even survived the make-or-break argument in a reading couple’s life—Chetan Bhagat’s contribution to literature—without resorting to blows. But he’d gone from the Dalai Lama to the Incredible Hulk in defending a man’s freedom to pee standing up. The tap, shake or wave was not to be encumbered with considerations like wiping and washing. Almost as if it’s an inalienable right, an instinct so deeply embedded in his DNA that in its absence, a man is incapable of feeling like a Homo sapien.

‘Trust men to pick a penile function as their defining evolutionary milestone after millions of years of evolution,’ I thought. Since my brain-to-mouth filter goes AWOL with him around, the thought came tumbling out when he asked me to pass the dal that night. “Oh, there’s a lot more than that to being a man. You’re going to find out when one isn’t around.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked incredulously.

“No.” “Then?”

“You’ll know what I mean, soon.”

Over the week, I found out exactly what he meant. n

I needed a fight, a screaming match, the kind that ends in slammed doors and makeup sex

46 open

Sonali Khan was holding on to her virtue, and then she fell in love...with several men.

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 1 July 2013

mindspace true Life

Poems on News Anchors IV

63

O p e n s pa c e

Shah Rukh Khan Hrithik Roshan Kareena Kapoor

62

n p lu

Man of Steel After Earth

61 Cinema reviews

Garmin nuvi 2568 LM Calvin Klein’s CK Eager Apple AirPort Time Capsule

60

Tech & style

Does Geography Impact Language?

Cheetahs Reach 93 kmph Toddlers Know Their Grammar

56

Science

Kamal Swaroop’s Phalke Obsession

54

cinema

Last Days of a Theatre Doyen

52

a rt s

Irom Sharmila the Poet

books

Yet Another Everest First

48 64

irom sharmila, the poet A woman trapped in her own image 52

ruhani kaur

true life

Yet Another Everest First The first twins to climb Mount Everest, Tashi and Nungshi Malik, on negotiating the death zone in pitch darkness and why their achievement is worthy of attention Mihir Srivastava

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here have been many firsts on Mount Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached its peak in 1953. This year, there was another: the first twins in the world to do so, Tashi and Nungshi Malik. It was Tashi’s dream all along to climb the world’s highest peak.

And on 19 May, at 7.30 am, her sister and their Pakistani team member, 22-year-old Samina Baig, helped her realise that ambition.

The glory of an Everest climb may have faded somewhat with the number of successful ascents over the past many years. In fact, the week the Malik sisters reached the top, there were as many as 670 others attempting the climb, and a crowd of mountaineers swarming close to the zenith. But the 21-year-old twins insist that more and more people conquering the summit every year does not mean the climb has become any easier. This, they say, is the impression of people who have never reached the top, never faced this true test of human endurance and spirit over the extreme vagaries of nature.

The twins’ achievement, though, cannot be seen merely as a mountaineering success. Their father, retired Colonel Virender Singh Malik comes from Anwali village in Sonepat district of Haryana, where the birth of female children is not exactly a cause for celebration. After the birth of his daughters, Malik decided to get a vasectomy 1 July 2013

the conquest Tashi and Nungshi Malik at the last phase of their climb (left) and right on top of the peak (right)

done so that his family wouldn’t pester him to try again for a boy child. Before the meeting with the twins, Malik asks, “Would you prefer to talk to the girls alone?”, the words ‘the girls’ resonant with pride.

It was Malik and his wife Anju Thapa Malik, a Gorkha of Nepali origin, who were instrumental in ensuring that their daughters set out on this expedition, dipping into their personal savings to arrange the Rs 40 lakh needed for both of them. Malik knows that he cannot afford another expedition like this for the girls. “This was the cheapest category,” he says. But he has now busied himself with looking for sponsors for their next climb.

They had already scaled the highest peak in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, in February last year. And now they want to climb the highest peaks in every continent: Mt McKinley in North America, Mt Aconcagua in South America, Mt Carstensz Pyramid in Australia, Mt Elbrus in Europe and Mt Vinson Massif in Antarctica. The family is committed to make that happen.

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he everest ascent was a slow expe-

dition. The girls stayed at the base camp, 18,000 feet above sea level, for 40 days to get acclimatised. The next 20 days were dedicated to scaling the peak, making halts at four camps, at 21, 23, 25 and 27 thousand feet above sea level, respectively. After Camp 4 comes what is known as ‘the death zone’, where they need to fend for themselves, and no help can come if they get into trouble. There are so many variables that can go wrong, mainly in terms of the weather, and can easily become life threatening.

The twins say that it took them 20 hours non-stop to trek from Camp 4 to the peak and then back. While these were the most gruelling hours of their life, parts of it were also some of their most euphoric moments.

The three girls started the ascent at

1 July 2013

8:30 pm on 18 May, in pitch darkness.

There was no looking back after that.

All they could see was the climber just in front of them. Or sometimes, other climbers crawling at some distance

They passed several

dead bodies by the side of the track, staring blankly at them.

Some were fresh, their clothes intact, face down. Others had been

mummified in ice, witness to other mountaineers’ quest

year after year

with lights fixed on their forehead, almost like moving ghosts.

But in those hours, at that height, all they could think about was the next step they had to take, and then the next. Each step forward seemed to be a fresh challenge. They started to suffer from the ‘tunnel effect’—a problem amplified by the monotony of their surroundings, with darkness covering everything like a thick blanket—causing them nausea, confusion and fatigue. It was harrowing in many ways.

All they kept reminding themselves, like a lifeline, was to take the next step.

They passed several dead bodies by the side of the track, staring blankly at them. Some were fresh, their clothes intact, face down. Others had been mummified in ice, witness to the mania of other mountaineers, year after year. In the past six decades, more than 300 people have died in their quest to conquer Mount Everest.

The girls were lucky that the weather remained stable during their climb.

But Nungshi struggled to keep pace with her sister. Tashi would wait for her to catch up, but after every step, her sister had to stop for several deep breaths before she could go on. The Sherpa guiding them advised her to turn back, but Tashi was adamantly open www.openthemagazine.com 49

the descent is tougher It took the twins 20 hours step by step to reach the peak and get back to camp

against this. The Sherpa stomped off fuming, but returned five minutes later to see why Nungshi was having such trouble breathing. It turned out that the regulator of her oxygen cylinder was not functioning and had stifled her oxygen supply. The Sherpa gave his oxygen cylinder to Nungshi, and thus their tryst with Mount Everest continued.

“There were three times when we thought we had reached the zenith,” says Tashi. But they were told, ‘still more to go’; it was frustrating. It took them 11 hours from Camp 4 to finally reach the top on the bright morning of 19 May. Those last few steps were testing. Tashi reached there first, but didn’t want to take the last step till the other two had joined her. The three finally took the last step together.

The extreme exhaustion that they had felt till that point disappeared. Filled with euphoria, they hugged each other and yelled in joy. The sky and the land seem to merge there. Other peaks seemed to look up at them in submission.

The three girls placed the national flag and stayed on the big flat surface, large enough for 50 climbers to stand on, for 20 minutes. “You can’t stay 50 open

there for long,” says Nungshi. Their partner Samina was later congratulated on the phone by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who was gracious enough to extend the courtesy to the Indian twins.

As euphoric as their moment on top was, their return journey was excruciating. At some point on their way back, near Hillary Step, Nungshi rested her head against a rock, her mind dissolving in hallucinations. “I thought I was dead. I was in heaven. I could not feel or see anything,” she relives those moments, her eyes dilating. That’s when she was jolted awake by a fellow traveller, an NCC cadet. “Get up and walk,” he yelled into her ears. She was catapulted back to reality, enough for her to concentrate on that next step, and then the next.

A week later, they were back at the base camp, where they met their parents.

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he twins’ mother thought it was a joke when they first told her about their decision to scale Mount Everest. It took her two years to agree. “I wanted them to do girly things,” she says with a smile.

“It was entirely their decision,” Virender clarifies, who looks as if he would have liked to have joined them, except “I don’t have that kind of money.” He knows mountaineering is his daughters’ passion. He got them trained at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi and shifted to Dehradun to support their passion. They were called ‘the Everest sisters’ right from their early days in the institute. The instructors saw early on that the girls had in them the will, skill and grit to scale that peak. As for training, “we go for daily walks”, say the girls.

They order some coffee. “Cold coffee with an extra dose of ice cream,” Nungshi says. “We are supposed to eat a lot,” she adds. And that’s exactly what they have been doing ever since they returned. On a diet of mushroom soup, energy gels and noodles during the climb, they have lost nearly 12 kg each, a fifth of their body weight, over the past two months. “Perhaps their mother needs to scale Everest too,” jokes Virender.

The girls are dressed in similar clothes—jeans and a T-shirt underneath an open shirt—in different colours. They argue that mountaineers’ insistence on not carrying supplementary oxygen on an expedition like this doesn’t make sense. “If climbers are open to using clips, ladders and ropes that make negotiating peaks so much easier, then why not oxygen?” asks Tashi. There is no bravery in it, they feel. The sisters have already lost a friend and a veteran climber from South Korea, the 34-year-old Sung Ho-Seo, to the mountain. He died on his way down the peak, at Camp 4, because he had decided not to take supplementary oxygen. “It was like losing a family member,” say the sisters.

A few days earlier, celebrated Russian mountaineer Alex Bolotov died near Camp 1, very early on in the expedition; he had slipped and fallen 300 m down a ravine filled with rocks. This year, three Sherpas and a Bangladeshi climber died too. “Novice climbers, seasoned climbers die. You can never be sure,” emphasises Tashi. n 1 July 2013

Books

ruhani kaur

trapped Irom seems to have become a prisoner of her own sacrifice

Will the Real Irom Sharmila Stand Up? The political activist’s poetry suggests that in many ways, she is now a victim of her own sacrifices chinki sinha Iron Irom: Two Journeys

By Minnie Vaid and Irom Sharmila Rajpal & Sons | 136 pages | Rs 175

Today is Tuesday, my birthday…

Right now my mind doesn’t indulge in bowels So, I’m stealing time from ‘leisure’ It frightens me when I muse over the reason of birth and death When I ponder over the way I’m passing my time from morning till night Irom Chanu Sharmila 52 open

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hus starts Birth—1,000-line ‘prose poetry’, as its translator Tayanjam Bijoykumar Singh describes it, published in the second half of Minnie Vaid’s book, Iron Irom: Two Journeys. Singh has said that the poet in Irom Sharmila, who has been fasting for the repeal of India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act for over a decade now, cannot be restrained despite her being kept in solitary confinement.

This genesis of this poem can be traced to when Deepti Mehrotra, the author of Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur, gifted her a notebook with a pink and

blue cover and white sheets. The revolutionary promised that she would use the book to write a very long poem, a poem of 1,000 lines. “I will write about society. I will write about my experiences since childhood. I will write about what I have seen,” she had said.

However, the poem, written in ‘stream of consciousness’ mode, is not easy to read. All poetry must dance.

There can be no excuse for a lack of rhythm, or flow. This ambitious poem, which seeks to tackle the existentialist crisis of birth and death, fails to draw you in either by exciting your curiosity, or by the sheer beauty of its language 1 july 2013

or range of emotions. What comes through is the image of a lonely figure, a tube fixed to her nose, writing in her notebook in an isolated room.

Loneliness is Irom’s muse, and so is memory. Confined to her room in Imphal’s JN Hospital, dealing with hours that threaten to not dissolve easily, Irom started to write and paint. Her fast-unto-death had started in 2000 after the massacre of civilians by the armed forces in Malom in Manipur.

Revolutionaries are intriguing people. One wonders what makes them stand against the might of authority, or sacrifice the pleasures or comforts of things that consume our lives and imagination. Minnie Vaid writes in her half of the book—a short journey through Manipur’s volatile history and an interview with Irom—that once when granted an audience with Irom by the State, she asked her what motivated her to write poetry. “I like to report on society through my writings, it is only a means by God...” she answered.

And truly, the long poem has touched upon everything, from the ownership of land and industrialisation, to feuding tribes and the rising cost of education. Yet there isn’t a story here. There isn’t enough to make the reader see her world the way she sees it.

That Irom is a victim of her own image is evident in the way she attempts to write on universal truths and dilemmas. Irom ponders the questions of birth and death, wonders about the duties of man, chides man for being selfish, for digressing from what the Lord had said, and wonders about the purpose of life.

If born one is sure to die One should rather be proud of doing something for the society One should be satisfied of performing the duties given by the lord ...

Obviously, there are limitations to what she can express. A revolutionary, too, is a human being with wants and desires and an urge to love like any other. But more than anything, Irom is the symbol of a protest. And it seems that for the greater good—what human rights groups and sympathisers have 1 july 2013

stamped her fast’s aim as— it is best to deal only in grand thoughts. For symbols of peace and larger-than-life characters like her, free expression has the inherent danger of distracting us from their ‘grand sacrifice’.

That Irom Chanu Sharmila would have the urge to explore the meaning of her life, and of a struggle that is in its thirteenth year without food, a tube fixed to her nose, her bones brittle and her hair thinning, is understandable.

But mere expression by a revolutionary who is widely venerated is not a reason for adulation.

Irom is child-like in many ways, and that is preserved in the poem. There is wonderment at her own purpose in life, in this world.

Why did He send me to this world He has put me amidst relatives, enemies

This ambitious poem, which seeks to tackle the existentialist crisis of birth and death, fails to draw you in either by exciting your curiosity, or by the sheer beauty of its language or range of emotions and friends But ‘in what form of guise’ is what I’m interested to know...

There is existentialist crisis. There are insertions of her own grand endeavour, her sacrifices, references to her own life as a public figure, who has given up food, water and love out of choice. Choice is what sets her apart.

She wasn’t forced to fast; she wanted to.

But over the years, especially after she fell in love, she seems to have become a prisoner of her own sacrifice. For this fast cannot be broken over something as paltry as ‘love’.

One of the important problems with the poem is that it may also have been lost in translation. The translation comes with the disclaimer that Singh had only hoped to convey ‘larger elements’ of its style and imagina-

tion and narrative form. This is why he probably fails her. As we read the poem in English, it is bereft of soul and passion. ‘Her lines run freely, without any punctuation marks at times. It is however tolerable in verse,’ the translator writes, as if in apology mode.

As per Singh, Irom has done a ‘comparative study of two persons, one an indolent and the other a hardworking one... She has painstakingly painted a picture of an ideal world where men can live as friends. Characters of different personalities as she sees in the present-day society are sketched with meticulous care.’ But there are no characters. There are lines where she hints at her own experiences.

Segregation of my motherland from other country Only when man has lost the greed for land Countries would start loving one another All would be able to ‘reap’ together real happiness devoid of killings ...

She also speaks about the songs of ferrymen when they break the ‘tranquillity across the water surface...’. She gives us the sounds of her land, the ‘torong torong’ of the oars as boats glide across the water, parting the surface with melodies. Such lines are difficult to find, tucked away as they are in between tedious lines where pontification is mixed with lament.

I, a human, love my own self and wish to attain higher stages Do not wish to cause trouble to loved ones, rather would accept anything Others will love me as I love myself...

Grandness in thought and writing is sometimes tedious. But that’s what makes Birth a poem of her life—not because she writes about herself, but because she doesn’t. That would make her commonplace. Irom isn’t to be blamed.

For she is trapped in her own image.

Nothing short of ‘grandeur’ and ‘universal’ can be associated with her. Lost in translation, and lost in the narrative of her sacrifice, there she is, the frail woman with the tube in the land ‘where the abnormal is normal’. n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

arts The Last Days of an Artiste Achyut Lahkar, pioneer of Assam’s legendary mobile theatre, lies penniless and forgotten in his old age jyotirmoy talukdar mobile, or Bhramyaman, theatre.

It is important to start with Lahkar’s memory of Rabha’s last days because he too faces the same fate today. The man who in 1963 founded Nataraj Theatre—which paved the way for the huge mobile theatre industry in Assam, with more than 60 troupes performing every day for nine months a year—now sits alone in the verandah of his small house near Pathsala in Bajali, clad in a vest and gamosa. He looks on nostalgically at Station Road in front of his house on which, incidentally, is the home stage of the popular Awahan Theatre, and which turns into a sea of humanity when the group performs. Most people who come here do not recognise this frail, scantily-clad

old man. The few who do walk up to him, take stock of his health and move on. “Axomoyot moi jotei goisilu tat xomaj hoisil (There was a time when a crowd formed wherever I stood). These evenings were mine once. I never thought I would have to spend them alone and forgotten,” Lahkar says, speaking slowly but in immaculate Assamese.

He often points out that his contemporaries—the firebrand Marxist playwright, actor and lyricist Bishnu Rabha, actor Braja Sharma and musician Bhupen Hazarika—had often warned him of the notoriously short memory of the state government and the people, and of the chances of his dying penniless. Rabha in particular, using his own life as an example, dhruba dutta

“I

was shocked to read in the newspapers one morning [in 1968 or 1969] that Bishnu Rabha, doyen of the arts in modern Assam, had been diagnosed with cancer. I immediately sent him Rs 500 by money order and a telegram asking him to start treatment, assuring him that I would soon arrive with more money. As promised, I collected some second show earnings and generous donations from my troupe and reached Bishnuda’s place. He said, ‘I did get your telegram. But I committed a grave crime. You know Lahkar, we are in penury. So, with the money you sent for treatment, I had a nice meal after quite a few days. Do you mind?’” recalls Achyut Lahkar, the father of Assam’s

recalling the glory days Plays by Achyut Lahkar’s Nataraj Theatre ran to full houses for 40 years till his health started failing

advised him to leave theatre “when there’s time left in life”. Lahkar had replied, “I did not take this path to leave it midway. I am here to correct the history of the many Braja Sharmas dying on hospital verandahs.”

Today, he admits that he has become another Braja Sharma. “Rabhada was right. One, I am deep in poverty. Two, many new producers of big Bhramyaman groups today do not even know who this industry’s father is.

What can be sadder?” Lahkar sighs.

Bhramyaman is not just entertainment in the state. It provides employment to thousands of people and aids infrastructure development in the places it visits. A Bhramyaman producer traditionally donates some part of its profits to the panchayat of the village it performs at. According to Bhramyaman Theatreor Itihaas, a book by Kishor Kumar Kalita on the theatre’s history, since its modest beginning in the evening of 2 October 1963 at Hari Mandir in Bajali of Barpeta district, at least 120 more such troupes have been born.

Among the 60 odd ones active now, some perform across the state, while others are confined to either Upper Assam or Lower Assam. Usually, a local organisation invites a troupe to perform, paying between Rs 50,000 and Rs 60,000 for every show. In three days, a troupe generally performs three different plays, at least one show each day, but often more on public demand.

Before the start of each season in August, every troupe producer finalises the schedule for nine months in such a way that not even a single day misses a performance. So for those nine months, they work, rehearse, act and travel constantly, often delivering extra shows late into the night.

Since Assam’s film industry has all but been killed by political strife, most prominent actors have signed contracts with different theatre groups, reportedly getting paid anything between Rs 12 lakh to Rs 60 lakh a year by an industry dependent on villages and small towns—not only for the tickets they buy, but also the goodwill and hospitality they show them. Many people happily open their homes to the actors, letting them stay as guests, often 1 july 2013

even taking the trouble to whitewash and repair their homes in anticipation of a visit.

But Nataraj, Lahkar’s group with which all of this started, shut down in 2003 after 40 productive years. With Lahkar’s health failing with age, he was unable to manage the group for months on end, and it ran into heavy losses. Head over heels in debts, Lahkar finally sold the group’s lights, projectors, vehicles, furniture and costumes for a sum of Rs 1.5 lakh. “I would never have imagined that things that needed to be kept in museums as symbols and memories of the first Bhramyaman theatre troupe would be sold in a bazaar.

Now there is no tangible sign of Nataraj Theatre left. I too have to look towards others for my treatment, even for my daily needs,” Lahkar laments.

“There was a time when a crowd formed wherever I stood. These evenings were mine once. I never thought I would have to spend them alone and forgotten” Lahkar’s plays are still remembered by those who watched them. Lahkar claims that his play Beula, based on the popular myth of Beula-Lakhindar, is the longest running play in the world, having been staged all 40 seasons of Nataraj’s existence. Lahkar attributes its success to two reasons. One, Beula is a story written on the life of a sati and the audience always has a weakness for mythological satis. Second, Beula saw the first mobile theatre experiments with lights. Lahkar’s other successes included a play called Allah-Ishwar that had Akbar as its protagonist and called for religious tolerance, and Arena, influenced by Naxalite movement in West Bengal. Lahkar calls it his best protibadi natok (protest play).

The state government has often been approached to recognise Lahkar’s achievements. “A Padma award is the least the Union Government can bestow upon him,” says Dr Sammujal Kumar Bhattacharyya, leader of the

All Assam Students’ Union. Ananta Mohan Sharma, a leading social activist in the Barpeta district, recently made a documentary on Lahkar, which was screened at Assam Sahitya Sabha and other events, and made a strong case for Lahkar’s national recognition.

Ratan Lahkar, the producer of the successful Kohinoor Theatre, which also performed at the IGNCA in New Delhi in 2010 at the invitation of the National School of Drama, is more vocal: “Actor Dharani Barman, whom Achyut Lahkar mentored, won the Sahitya Academy [award] in 2006. I am not saying he should not have got it. But Achyut Lahkar has trained countless Dharani Barmans. Why does not he get considered? Awards are politicised.”

Sanjib Prabin, better known by his nom de plume Alex Figo, must be thanked for taking dictation for six months from Achyut Lahkar, editing it and ensuring the recent publication of his touching autobiography, Bhramyaman Theatre. Figo blames Lahkar’s state on the irresponsibility of the Assamese intellectual class and believes that before trying to get him a national award, Assam must be made to understand the legend’s worth.

Bhramyaman will celebrate its golden jubilee this year. Exempt from entertainment tax by Assam’s Prafulla Mahanta government and loved by an audience that cuts across caste and class, its prospects are bright. But the one who pioneered it lies on his deathbed. Come 9 July, he will turn 83 and a small number of admirers will visit him, perhaps sing a Bhupen Hazarika number on defying age, and the older generation will proudly remember being part of Nataraj on its travels to Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. But largely, he will be forgotten.

Once playwright Atul Chandra Hazarika met Lahkar and asked him to continue with theatre until his death so that Assam does not become ‘a dead tree’. Lahkar asked him, “Are you asking me to be an incense stick?”

Hazarika did not understand, and so Lahkar explained: “An incense stick burns itself to give others fragrance.”

And that’s what Lahkar believes he has actually become. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA Phalke’s Alter Ego Maker of cult indie film Om-Dar-Ba-Dar, Kamal Swaroop has spent the last 23 years zealously researching Dadasaheb Phalke’s life Shaikh Ayaz

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till to sell 650 copies. Order.

Order,’ wrote Kamal Swaroop on his Facebook wall in May, urging friends and acquaintances to pick up a copy of Tracing Phalke, a limited edition coffeetable book on Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema. Conceived of and written by Swaroop and printed by NFDC, Tracing Phalke—his “talisman” as he likes to call it—can be seen as a culmination of its author’s two decade-long obsession with Phalke. Few in India know Phalke’s life and times as well as Swaroop, who has made several short films and documentaries and penned a comic book on him, besides giving lectures and conducting Phalke-related workshops across India. What’s more, he has also created an online database 20,000-pages long, which claims to cover Phalke’s entire life.

So how did Swaroop end up taking the idea so much to heart?

You could start in 1990 when he came across a 15-page monograph on Phalke, whose life he thought was “full of twists and turns”. “I said to myself, ‘This has the potential for a great script’,” recounts Swaroop. Before long, what began as a potential script idea had turned into a lifelong project.

Before he stumbled upon the monograph, he knew precious little about Phalke. Born in Trimbakeshwar in 1870, Dhundiraj Govind or Dadasaheb Phalke was raised in an orthodox Maharashtrian household. Abandoning his family profession of priesthood, Phalke sold his wife’s ornaments, pledged his life insurance policies, and, in 1913, created history by directing Raja Harishchandra, commonly acknowledged as India’s first film.

A Renaissance man, he was an artist, photographer, draughtsman, magician, printmaker, writer and filmmaker.

Describing him as blessed with 56 open

the “Lumière brothers’ realism and Georges Méliès’ illusion and trickery”, Swaroop says Phalke was not only an architect of Indian cinema but also a magnificent storyteller. “Phalke took mythological characters but he treated them with humanism, giving them ordinary character.” Under the auspices of magician Carl Hertz, Phalke picked up illusion tricks that helped him master special effects. Swaroop says, “There is a scene in Kaliya Mardan (1919)”—his favourite Phalke film—“of Krishna’s encounter with kaliya, the snake. It’s remarkable how he achieved the visual effects, simply by covering one half of the frame with a black cloth.”

Phalke used cinema to make political

“We wanted to get the audience in and then lock the door from outside. This was done to give them what we wanted to give them, not what they wanted to be served...”, says Swaroop statements. “If Tilak encouraged the swadeshi movement politically, Phalke pushed it through cinema. His idea was to create fully home-grown images. In fact, there was an image war going on between the West and him, in the sense that if they were printing 1,000 copies of [the] Bible, he would counter it by publishing 2,000 copies of [the] Bhagavad Gita.” Though he lauds Paresh Mokashi’s Harishchandrachi Factory, a 2009 Marathi period drama depicting the adventure behind Phalke’s first film, for being entertaining, Swaroop says it cannot be seen as an assessment of Phalke’s life. “It dealt with only a small part of his life.”

Swaroop sympathises far more with Phalke’s later years. While Harishchandrachi Factory portrays the young Phalke as a man with a sense of humour, in his old age he was morose and grumpy. He died at 73. “He became a megalomaniac,” Swaroop says. An anecdote from 1936, when Phalke went to Kolhapur at the invitation of the Maharaja of Kolhapur and decided to make a film, Gangavataran, about the river Ganga’s descent to earth, is particularly telling. “It was too expensive to shoot in the Himalayas. So how do you transport the snow-clad Himalayas to Kolhapur? He painted the whole mountain range white. Everybody said he had lost it.” Unfortunately, all the effort went waste as the paint washed away in the rain.

In many ways, Phalke’s life, though eventful, was a nightmare for his biographer—full of professional courage and exciting travels but also of personal tragedies such as the death of his first wife and child in Godhra in 1898, and his temporary loss of vision in 1912.

Swaroop found a way to simplify his research: “I drew a timeline of his life and started studying one year at a time.

Once the grid was created, things started falling into place.”

To access rare material, he met Phalke’s family members and visited all the towns in which Phalke had lived and worked, including Godhra, Trimbakeshwar, Baroda, Bombay and Pune. “There were 165 characters in his life, including his wife and eight children. In order to know him better, I had to know the lives of those 165 characters.” When Swaroop began, there was no internet. He had to do things manually, relying upon the “old scrapbook method of cut-and-paste”.

Most researchers find paucity of funds a major stumbling block.

Swaroop was no different. He had to 1 july 2013

ritesh uttamchandani

the filmmaker’s fan Kamal Swaroop is best known for his only film, a disorienting, Dadaist cult-classic called Om-Dar-Ba-Dar

rely on the occasional grant. And when he failed to obtain funds, he expended personal money. “Here’s how it works: if you earn a few bucks, you can plough it back into the research,” he says. Swaroop says the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, from where he graduated in 1 jujy 2013

1974, prepared him for a life of frugality. “When we decided to enter films,” he says, “we were not thinking about money because we knew that coming into this field was itself an act of suicide. We were quite used to financial insecurities and uncertainties.”

After 23 years of living Phalke’s life,

Swaroop’s devotion to him has diminished somewhat. He hints at perhaps coming to the end of his Phalke journey. In the works now is another project. This time, his subject is the 1920s filmmaker Baburao Painter, whom Swaroop regards as India’s first auteur. “Phalke was a technocrat, even a open www.openthemagazine.com 57

trickster, but Painter was a traditional craftsman. Painter created other filmmakers like V Shantaram and Fateh Lal Damle, and his influence over South Indian cinema is unmistakable.”

At some point in their careers, Phalke and Painter, who was 20 years younger and once a distributor of Phalke’s films, became professional rivals.

“When Phalke emphasised making swadeshi films, Baburao said, ‘There is no way you can make authentic swadeshi films because your camera is imported.’ So he developed his own indigenous camera,” says Swaroop.

Swaroop started out in the 1980s, collaborating with avant-garde filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Mani Kaul.

In 1988, he made Om-Dar-Ba-Dar, his only film to date, which has placed him in the ‘one-film wonder’ category.

The film, which was never released and wasn’t seen or heard of until a screening at the British Council in Mumbai in 2004 sparked fresh interest in it, has acquired a cult following since. That 16-mm print was subsequently lost. Fortunately, noted film archivist PK Nair commissioned another print to be developed from the negative at his personal expense.

Eventually, Om-Dar-Ba-Dar landed where all ignored classics inevitably do—the internet.

Swaroop’s reputation and legacy rest entirely on his one film. A Dadaist take on the futility of conventional values, it is a film of many ‘firsts’. It has been called India’s first surrealist film, was the first Hindi film to experiment with non-sequitur dialogue and with lyrics as quirky as ‘Bablu babylon se, Babli telephone se’, and featured the industry’s first on-screen frog hunt.

Narrated in a non-linear style, OmDar-Ba-Dar is set in Ajmer and revolves around an adolescent named Om. His father (Babuji) is a retired government servant-cum-astrologer. His sister, the first of India’s sexually liberated heroines, is an oddball who watches movies in seedy local theatres with predominantly male audiences. One day, Babuji’s client, a local businessman fearing an approaching war, hands him some diamonds to hide. Babuji stashes them in the sole of his shoe, 58 open

which Om inadvertently wears and scoots off. Some of the gems slip out on the businessman’s land and are swallowed by frogs, which then show up at a biology lab in a girls’ school. When the businessman returns to claim the diamonds, Babuji convinces him they were crushed and fed to him, and advises that he defecate on his land to retrieve them. Meanwhile, Om becomes a media sensation at Pushkar for a breath-holding stunt, and the schoolgirls discover the diamonds during a biology practical, prompting a

pioneer (Above) Dadasaheb Phalke, the maker of India’s first film, Raja Harishchandra (below)

frog hunt. In the end, Om’s sister is shown pregnant with her boyfriend’s child. They decide to commit suicide, but not before finding out what KCN (potassium cyanide) tastes like. The boy consumes it and utters, ‘gobar’ (‘cow dung’). Better sense prevailing, the girl abandons the idea of suicide.

This sense of irreverence defines OmDar-Ba-Dar. Movie geeks suggest that ‘gobar’ alludes to the belief that life is without meaning.

It is said that Swaroop still gets fan mail with the subject line, ‘Sir, I loved Om-Dar-Ba-Dar’. But Swaroop himself is uncomfortable talking about the film. It almost seems as if it has done him more harm than good—his Citizen

Kane, marking him for life.

One avid blogger has called the film a ‘satirical representation of Indian life as a whole’. But Swaroop doesn’t quite agree, insisting that one must not read meanings where none exist.

“Satire is a low art form. In satire, you ridicule, but in Om-Dar-Ba-Dar there is a balance between ridicule and [the] sublime.”

Swaroop is also aware that some of the ideas and meanings expressed in the film remain abstract to most viewers. “It was conscious,” he says of the film’s esoteric nature. “We wanted to get the audience in and then lock the door from outside. This was done to give them what we wanted to give them, not what they wanted to be served. People said, ‘Some things don’t make sense.’ But the moment anything makes sense, it’s a dead thing.”

The frog hunt is one of his favourite sections of the film. It was inspired by an old Rajasthani dictum: Heh mhaari leend hai (‘land is my shit’). “Leend is goat’s shit. In Hindi, you call it lenda,” he explains. In Swaroop’s words, Om-Dar-Ba-Dar combines two of his lifelong preoccupations: “science and mythology”.

Among those greatly influenced by this cult film are Anurag Kashyap and Piyush Mishra. There are echoes of Om-Dar-Ba-Dar in Dev.D, Gulaal and Gangs of Wasseypur, particularly in their sense of music and dialogue.

Swaroop sees this more as homage than influence. Personally, he enjoys Kashyap’s films, especially their stylistic treatment. “There is something about them,” he says, but is also quick to point out that Kashyap is his very antithesis—more “organised, comprehensible and media-savvy” than he ever was. “Also,” he says, “I wasn’t a full-time filmmaker like him. I was competing with painters and authors.

I never wanted to belong to the film culture, whereas Anurag seems perfectly at home here.”

Swaroop doesn’t regret not having made more films. Though he feels vindicated at Om-Dar-Ba-Dar’s fanzinefuelled second life, he isn’t entirely stunned or surprised. “I knew it,” he says. “I knew it has value.” n 1 july 2013

speed The acceleration capacityof cheetahs is four times greater than that achieved by Usain Bolt’s world record setting 100 metres sprint, and about twice that of racing greyhounds

Does Geography Impact language?

Yes, the lay of the land has a bearing on verbal communication

Cheetahs Can Reach 93 km/hour

christopher futcher

science

W

hy do languages vary? Can the environment and topography of a certain area have a bearing on the language spoken? A new study in Science shows for the first time that geography influences the sound of a language. The study shows that languages containing ejective consonants—words that are spoken with rapid and intensive bursts of air—are spoken mainly in regions of high elevation. As the height of an area increases, so does the use of ejectives in the language of that area.

The research was conducted by Caleb Everett, an anthropological linguist at University of Miami, US. He examined close to 600 languages across various continents, 92 of which contained ejectives. He found that out of six major high altitude regions where people live, ejectives were used in languages spoken in and nearby five of these regions.

The high-altitude regions where 60 open

ejectives are used include the North American Cordillera; the Andes and the Andean altiplano; the southern African plateau; the plateau of the east African rift and the Ethiopian highlands; and the Caucasus range and Javakheti plateau.

Ejectives are absent in the languages of those living on the Tibetan plateau and surrounding areas. While no explanations on why those living on and near the Tibetan plateau do not have ejectives in their language has been offered, earlier studies have shown that Tibetans have uniquely adapted to high-altitude life. They breathe at a faster rate than most other humans and can make efficient use of sparse oxygen in the air.

This perhaps may have a bearing on the absence of ejectives in their languages.

According to Everett, ejectives have emerged in these areas because it takes less effort to produce them in these parts. He writes in the journal, ‘We suggest that ejective sounds might be facilitated at higher elevations due to the associated decrease in ambient air pressure, which reduces the physiological effort required for the compression of air in the pharyngeal cavity... In addition, we hypothesize that ejective sounds may help to mitigate rates of water vapor loss through exhaled air. These explications demonstrate how a reduction of ambient air density could promote the usage of ejective phonemes in a given language.’ n

According to a study published in Nature, researchers at Royal Veterinary College, London, have captured the first detailed dataset on the hunting dynamics of wild cheetahs in their natural habitat. Using GPS and motion-sensing collars, Alan Wilson and his team were able to record remarkable speeds of up to 93 kmph. Overall, the team recorded the data of 367 runs by three female and two male adult cheetahs over 17 months. The study finds that wild cheetahs that are either stationary or moving slowly usually break into a run with a burst of acceleration, and reach high speeds before they decelerate and manoeuvre themselves to capture prey. The average run length: 173 metres. n

Toddlers Know Their Grammar

Research by a Newcastle University expert has shown that toddler speech is far more advanced than previously understood. Dr Cristina Dye found that two to three-year-olds are using grammar far sooner than expected. She studied 50 French speaking youngsters aged 23-37 months, capturing their utterances.

Dr Dye says, “Many of the toddlers we studied made a small sound, a soft breath, or a pause, at exactly the place that a grammatical word would normally be uttered. The fact that this sound was always produced in the correct place in the sentence leads us to believe that young children are knowledgeable of grammatical words. They are far more sophisticated in their grammatical competence than we ever understood.” n 1 july 2013

gps The Global Positioning System (GPS) is actually a constellation of 27 Earth-orbiting satellites (24 in operation and three extras in case one fails). The US military developed and implemented this satellite network as a military navigation system, but soon opened it up to everybody else

tech&style

Garmin nüvi 2568 LM Its new guidanceuser interface helps one search for destinations at ease gagandeep Singh Sapra

Calvin Klein’s Ck Eager w

Rs 24,200

Rs 16,990

This polished and brushed stainless steel timepiece is portrayed as a ‘form of empowerment’ by its maker Calvin Klein. Available in mid-size or gents options, the watch comes in a grey dial with a silver toned stripe, or silver dial with grey toned stripe, which creates a day/night effect on the satin finish surface. Its technic textile strap is secured by four screwed rivets that echo push buttons. It is water resistant up to 10 bar. n

O

ver the years Garmin has managed to stay ahead with some great maps, a brilliant interface and products that get better with every year. Of the models that were announced in 2013, the 2568 nüvi is available in India.

In a day and age that navigation is part and parcel of your smartphone, why should one buy a portable navigation device? Well, after you use the 2568’s interface, you wouldn’t want to go back to a smartphone.

A brilliant matte finished screen makes the device perfectly readable in the dark as well as in bright sunshine. And its predictive text search works so quick that you wish your smartphone had it.

With the 2568, Garmin has also managed to pull off a few more tricks; a tie-up with Zomato allows users to search for restaurants, not only by name but by cuisine too. So if you want vada sambar in Chandigarh, or are in the mood for tandoori chicken while travelling down Bangalore to Coorg, the nüvi will help you find it 1 july 2013

in just a jiffy.

The Voice Guidance has also been adapted to Indian accents: the road names are pronounced pretty correctly, though it does make a few errors. Overall, it has improved over the years. The software has had upgrades that make search easier, keeps a record of searches, and creates a shortcut list so that you can search faster. With the growing problem of parking space, the nüvi also helps you find nearby parking spots.

An interesting feature of the nüvi 2568 is the photoReal Junction View, where you see actual picture of junctions that makes identification easier.

Features such as Lane Assist, which guides you to the proper lane for navigation; Advanced Highway Mode that tells you of exits on the highway; and a new House Search algorithm, plus two Bookmarks and Go to Office/Go Home options, all make up the great package that the nüvi presents. And it supports nine Indian languages too. n

Apple AirPort Time Capsule

Rs 25,900

If you are a Macbook or an iMac user, you know the value that a Time Capsule adds, and for those not on Apple yet, it is a backup device that works wirelessly for Apple users.

This new version of the Time Capsule has a 3 TB storage, and there is even a cheaper variant with 2 TB of storage. It also features a brand new 802.11ac radio in it that allows you to transfer data at speeds as high as 1.3 gigabytes per second, but you will also need to upgrade your Mac for that, though. The AirPort Time Capsule has 3 Gigabit LAN ports, 1 Gigabit WAN port, a USB port and a power port at the back, and is 6.6 inches tall. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

supervill ain superman Superman was not always the ho-hum ‘man of steel’ we know him as. His creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, as high school students in 1933, first envisioned him—in a short story titled The Reign of the Superman—as a bald telepathic villain seeking world domination

Man of Steel Why is Christopher Nolan hellbent on turning superhero entertainers so political? ajit duara

o n scr een

current

After Earth Director M Night Shyamalan cast Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Sophie

Okonedo

Score ★★★★★

, amy Cast henry cavill annon sh el ha adams, mic er yd sn ck za r to Direc

I

n a sense, Superman is an illegal immigrant to the US. He turned up as a baby in Kansas, sent all the way by space capsule from the planet Krypton. He was dispatched by his father because the family lived on an ageing planet with an unstable core that was close to destruction. Man of Steel is about the discovery of Superman’s status as an illegal alien and the subsequent process of his naturalisation.

In this film, he has to answer the most vital and intellectually stimulating question posed to all immigrants from unstable parts of the world: “Are you with us or against us?” Sure, he was born in Krypton and has unusual physiological attributes that were hidden from the FBI by his adoptive parents, but his heart clearly beats for mankind. Unlike other Kryptonians who turn up later in the film, Superman (Henry Cavill) is culturally and socially human. He is a ‘moral’ individual, not just a product of ruthless evolutionary biology like General Zod 62 open

(played by Michael Shannon).

Earlier Superman adaptations could be taken as entertaining comic strips on film. Sadly, superhero films are increasingly turning political, particularly under the tutelage of Christopher Nolan. He is the producer and story writer here, and like he turned Batman into an allegory on capitalism, law enforcement and the State, he has turned part of this film into HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, where imperialist invaders turn up to colonise the planet.

A tripod-like alien craft, as in Wells’ novel, settles over the city, and this causes buildings around to collapse, astonishingly like documentary footage of the Twin Towers collapsing, with corrosive dust and paper flying around and a haze enveloping the metropolis.

So, unfortunately, the daft idea of turning a comic strip into a contemporary political reference turns Man of Steel into complete mishmash, neither comic strip nor science fiction, nor intelligent politics. n

This an unusual and fascinating work of science fiction about a future when our beautiful blue planet, abandoned because of environmental degradation and apocalyptic events, is suddenly revisited by a father and son. It works on two levels—one as a study of the sheer beauty of nature and the crime of abusing it, and, two, the notion of passing on knowledge and wisdom from one generation to another, and about how, because of our dependence on a virtual world, we have completely forgotten how to do it.

Cypher and Kitai (Will and Jaden Smith) are the only survivors of a crash-land on Earth. Cypher is badly injured and he has to depend entirely on his son’s training and instincts to send a distress signal to their mother planet.

M Night Shyamalan’s gift, which he used very effectively in The Sixth Sense, is the use of silence. He interrupts that silence with the human voice, and it works like a dream, the tone and intonation of speech conveying nuance. In a sense, this is the gift of a writer, not a filmmaker.

But Shyamalan uses it in film, and here, Cypher, guiding Kitai by voice alone, is explorer, narrator and protector. After Earth is an underrated film that has excellent visual and sound design. It is an absorbing and rewarding watch. n ad

1 july 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Wanted: a Dance Partner for SRK

Shah Rukh Khan starts filming Happy New Year in September, but director Farah Khan and he haven’t found a leading lady yet. Apparently the duo considered everyone from Parineeti Chopra to Katrina Kaif for the part, but Shah Rukh eventually decided they needed a fresh face.

The role is that of a bar dancer from Bhandup, and Farah reportedly wants a girl who is pretty but not particularly glamorous, and one who can act and dance too. Tall order, eh? Turns out her assistants have been screen-testing hopeful candidates for over three months now, but they haven’t come across anyone that both Farah and Shah Rukh agree on.

It’s not just the heroine who is proving to be a tough find.

According to sources, Farah still hasn’t found her fourth male lead. Boman Irani, Shah Rukh and Abhishek Bachchan will play three male protagonists in this musical comedy about four men, each cursed with two left feet, who form a team to participate in a world dance championship.

Reportedly, Dev Patel, Ayushmann Khurrana and Siddharth Malhotra were considered for the role. But rumours from Shah Rukh’s Red Chillies office suggest that Farah and SRK have zeroed in on Vivaan Shah, Naseeruddin Shah’s younger son. The 20-something kid made his screen debut two years ago, playing an aged Priyanka Chopra’s young admirer in Vishal Bhardwaj’s ill-fated Saat Khoon Maaf.

Happy New Year is expected to kick off with a roughly 40-day non-stop schedule at Dubai’s Atlantis Palm Resort & Hotel. Previously slated to go on the floors in June, the movie’s shoot was pushed to September when Shah Rukh injured his shoulder and had to undergo emergency surgery, but also because Atlantis wouldn’t open its doors to the unit during its busiest season. Apparently the filmmakers have now booked the entire (sprawling) resort for the duration of the shoot. Now all they need is an actress who can match steps with Shah Rukh Khan.

1 july 2013

Shadow of Hrithik’s Past

Also all set up but with no heroine attached is the Hrithik Roshan-starrer Shuddhi, which will go into production just months from now. Agneepath director Karan Malhotra has made no secret of the fact that he wants Kareena Kapoor to be his leading lady, but insiders are still speculating whether Hrithik and Kareena will bury their past and work together again after all these years.

This hasn’t stopped other actresses from pitching for the project. For one, Deepika Padukone’s agents have reportedly been talking to producer Karan Johar about casting her.

The filmmakers, it is learnt, are waiting patiently for Hrithik to wrap Siddharth Anand’s Knight & Day remake Bang Bang, so they can involve him in the decision.

Twice Rejected, Won’t Be Shy

Having now twice turned down films with one of Bollywood’s most respected female directors, this young A-lister has prompted industry insiders to wonder if there is, in fact, more than meets the eye.

With her first film, she wowed critics; with her second, she proved that she could woo the box-office too. Yet, this credible filmmaker couldn’t convince the country’s young superstar to sign on for her next film. The actor reportedly said he liked the idea she had in mind for the film, but insisted he would commit himself only after a full script was in place. When he went on to sign a bunch of films that would keep him busy for the next two years—without making room for her project—the director reportedly decided to move on, and signed another up-and-comer in the young heartthrob’s place.

It’s common knowledge that she had approached the star for her previous movie too, a three-hero buddy film that he had turned down. This second rejection raises speculation that the actor might have personal reasons for his decision to stay away. Some are even hinting that the star has never been too fond of the filmmaker’s actor-director brother, whom she cast in both her previous films. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Poems on News Anchors - IV

by m a d h ava n k u t t y p i l l a i

Barkha Dutt Ye destitute widow, acid attack victim Forgotten spy, despairing cripple Who was once trapped in rubble And ye burnt in a stockmarket bubble This comforting hand I lay on your shoulder Timed to the pan of the camera’s girdle Give me your grief just for a moment Let us spread it before We The People Some would say why I would say Some would say for what I say But know me You The People Not by my late tribulations But by my fine emulations A career of honed expressions My hysterics have drowned howitzers My voice can be louder than bombs I have a naughty glint to start The motors of the Bollywood mouth A furrowed brow for the minister For every novelist two paras by heart

vivek thakkar

I am the tallest poppy Mistress of every beat Battler of troll and twit Editor, intellectual, analyst Anchor, correspondent, critic And and and and and Some would say that’s a lot of me But all ye upstarts Why don’t you just let me be

64 open

1 July 2013

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