OPEN Magazine 20 January 2014

Pakistan’s ‘Rat Children’

When a woman wins a sexual harassment suit

RS 35 2 0 JA N U A R Y 2 0 14

cyanide mohan Biography of a serial woman killer l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

Ayodhya shining A mysterious force is manufacturing low-intensity communal tension around Ayodhya

e v e r y

w e e k

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

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

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

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

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

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National Head—Distribution and Sales

Ajay Gupta regional heads—circulation D Charles

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

R Rajmohan

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Volume 6 Issue 2 For the week 14—20 January 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

20 january 2014

Chandrasekaran

This refers to the article, ‘The Inconvenient Chief Minister’ (13 January 2014). The Aam Aadmi Party, which was sneered at by both the Congress and BJP, steers Delhi politics today. The ire of the common man against corruption is on display. The BJP would have least expected that the gap between its CM candidate’s cup and lip would widen with the abrupt rise of AAP. The Congress may feel relaxed, as its archrival is kept at bay. It may also keep AAP on tenterhooks.

The Left’s strategy of But AAP, a nascent mobilising secular political party that had parties for a nontaken the wind out of Congress and non-BJP the sails of Anna Hazare, coalition may gain more has checkmated both. relevance now What voters want is clear now, and in the search of an alternative government, the Left’s strategy of mobilising secular parties for a non-Congress and non-BJP coalition may gain more relevance now.  letter of the week Plight of Prostitutes

extremely well written, well researched article (‘Men, According to Prostitutes’, 13 January 2014). I can’t say of other people, but I feel disgusted and disappointed of ourselves and the society we live in. It’s frightening to imagine the plight of these young innocent women having to live such a ghastly life, if we could call it that, and that too for mere sustenance. And to call prostitution ‘the world’s oldest profession’ is obscene.  Siddharth Khandelwal

if you want to explore ‘prostitution’ as a phenomenon, walk the road backwards, try researching it in countries where—against the usual/ stereotypical scenerio—men have to prostitute themselves.

Explore places where women hold social power. Explore cases where men have been forced into sexual acts for survival. And then work backwards to understand what prostitution is as an industry.

You’ll find a lot more insight

there. Otherwise, this is just another article. True journalism is about insight. Not sensationalism.  Pushkara j S Shirke

Once You Lose Power

i have read Khalid Mohamed’s film reviews over the years and continue reading his columns and find them entertaining; and you always learn something new (‘The Man Who Knows Too Much’, 13 January 2014). He knows his films, and he knows people in India’s Hindi film industry very well as an insider. Unfortunately, the people involved tend to be narcissistic with egos bloated from mass adulation and media attention. It does not go well for the less famous people in their orbit, especially those like Khalid with power to make or break their movies or help perpetuate their brand image. Once you lose that power, you are history.  R oope sh Mathur

khalid was a fabulous reviewer at one point and an even better

interviewer. But all that went astray after he developed directorial ambitions [of his own]. His biases were obvious and he thought his readers were oblivious to these. I choked on my sandwich when I read [him quoted as saying]. “I am damn good at directing.” If his film Fiza cured me of insomnia, Silsilay compelled me to slit my wrist. He was so overwhelmed by his ‘power’ over film stars that his massive ego could not digest the facts of this need-based film industry. Grow up—why should they be your friends?

You used to draw the ‘I-am-aprofessional’ card to write your scathing reviews. Can’t they say, ‘We were being kind to the man who represented a publication we feared, but we don’t care about you’?  Neil Rane

The Sari Is But a Dress

you wear a sari because you know that this country has a traditionalist society and so you feel that a traditional outfit is the way to the hearts of the millions around you (‘Pallu, Pleat, Power’, 13 January 2014).

I have met so many amazing women who don’t care much for saris and wear whatever they like. Being in a sari does not mean that you automatically get more respect. Your intellect is what should be getting you respect. People are liberated when they are able to free themselves from the fear of society and religion. Articles like these make some men generalise that women are silly and fussy about their clothes and appearance..  Nazrin Shihab

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openmagazine to 56070

The Knotty Issue of the Ambani Aston Martin whodunnit

About a month after the accident, the car is tied to a lamppost outside Gamdevi Police Station

Around 1.30 am on 8 December, an Aston Martin owned by Reliance Ports crashed into an Audi A4 and a Hyundai Super near Peddar Road, Mumbai. The driver of the Aston Martin fled, but not before he was spotted by the driver of the Audi A4, Forum Ruparel. She told the police that the driver was portly and that he was young, leading many to guess that the driver must have been Mukesh Ambani’s son, Akash.

The following day, a driv-

mumbai

20 january 2014

er employed by the Ambanis, Bansilal Joshi, told the police that he was driving the Aston Martin that night. Since then, as news outlets have reported, Ruparel claims she saw Joshi or someone resembling him, and now wants charges against the driver dropped. According to a Mumbai Mirror report, Ruparel received an Audi A6 from Reliance.

However, the case isn’t quite over. R Pawar, the investigating officer of the case, said, “The complainant may have made a

settlement, but we have decided to pursue with our investigation. We have got two clean fingerprints on the steering wheel of the car and sent them for examination. Once that report comes in, we will know for certain who was driving the car that night.”

The case apart, another question is vexing the police— the Aston Martin itself. It is parked outside Gamdevi Police Station, situated on a busy road in South Mumbai. The police claim they have to keep the car

in their custody until the investigation is over and are worried that thieves may try to steal the car. Pawar says, “The car is worth Rs 4 crore and the last thing we want is for the car or any of its parts to get stolen.”

Passersby often stop to look at the car or take pictures, making the police uneasy. So the police have wrapped the car in a grey plastic sheet, and, with the help of a rope running across the vehicle’s width, tied it to a lamppost. n Lhendup G Bhutia

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ritesh uttamchandani

small world

contents

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coal

Photo essay

The bicycle thieves of Jharkhand

Rape victims of Muzaffarnagar

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news reel

Maa, maati and megalomania

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30 pakistan

angle

Rat kids

cover story

Premarital sex, morality and courts

Ayodhya on the boil

Person of the Week Prashant Bhushan

‘Public-Private Partnership has built-in incentives for corruption’ AAP leader Prashant Bhushan says the party is not anti-business, but against unbridled privatisation and runaway populism mihir srivastava

You have stirred a hornet’s nest.

Deployment of the Army in Kashmir is not a bijli-pani issue.

There is a difference between Army deployed for external defence, and for internal security. If it is supposed to be used for the internal security of people, then should you not have the consent of the people [who live] where it is deployed? Any reference to a referendum shouldn’t be misconstrued to mean a plebiscite on Kashmir’s relationship with India. Kashmir is an integral part of India.

Is AAP devoid of ideological moorings?

We have a basic political outlook that you may call our ideology.

Those who get elected are servants of the people. They are not masters entitled to lord over them; this leads to [the] hijacking of decision-making, and creates grounds for crony capitalism. We are for participatory democracy, where the Government makes decisions based on the will of the people. In other words: decentralised direct democracy.

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The discoms, Reliance and Tata, are worried about their business interests in Delhi thanks to the new AAP government...

Selling power is a big money spinner. This so-called PPP (Public Private Partnership) model is a State-created private monopoly, which is supposedly regulated by a regulator. Inflating [the] power tariff by 50 paise leads to thousands of crore of profit every year. There is a big incentive to compromise for the regulator (Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission), to overlook [the] fudging of records to show artificial losses and inflate electricity bills at the expense of consumers. This model has created in-built incentives for corruption. Consumers are being made to pay more and more because they have no choice.

This has to change.

Is AAP anti-corporate?

No, we are not against business. We are for clean business. We are against unbridled privatisation.

Does the AAP support a greater role for the State, or some form of socialism?

Liberalisation was justified by saying that it [would] end the Licence-permit Raj and curb corruption. But that has not happened. Earlier, you could take bribes to the extent of the profits

the newly licensed businessmen could make from their business, which was, say, 10 per cent of revenues.

Liberalisation opened up any kind of business to [the] transfer of capital assets and natural resources from the State to private hands—land, mines, coal, water, even public sector units worth thousands of crore—for a song. Here, the profits are virtually unlimited. There was suddenly a quantum jump of a hundred times over the profits being earned earlier. Bofors was a Rs 64 crore scam— nothing in comparison with scams like 2G and Coalgate [worth] thousands of crore. ...A new class of businesses have grown making absolutely horrendous profits out of the transfer of capital assets from the public sector, or from the State, or from the people, to themselves. All monopolies were in the State sector, but in this liberalisation phase, we created private monopolies.

Is AAP employing populist means to garner votes? Is fiscal prudence not a consideration?

Is providing for people’s needs populist? This is absurd. The state of primary education and health infrastructure is in shambles. Public utilities are about to collapse. We want to follow a model of cross-subsidisation [the practice of charging higher prices of a richer group of consumers in order to artificially lower prices for poorer consumers]. It is not unbridled populism. Fiscal prudence is an important consideration. n 20 january 2014

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spectacle

When Christie’s comes to town

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p

cinema

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Farooq Sheikh’s heroines

c true life

cinema

The woman who won a sexual harassment case

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Akhil

esh Ya

dav

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f o r organising a lavish

Bollywood evening during the Saifai Festival At a time when thousands of people have been left homeless by the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh organised an expensive Bollywood show during the state’s Saifai

The Madhuri mantra

Festival on Wednesday.

Seven chartered planes were employed to ferry stars like Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit to Saifai, Mulayam Singh’s native village, even as the riot affected struggle for survival in inhospitable relief camps. Akhilesh Yadav also donated Rs 1 crore each to the films Dedh Ishqiya and Bullett Raja as they were filmed partly in Uttar Pradesh. Thumbing their nose at the mounting criticism of their regime, Samajwadi Party leaders also approved a 20-day overseas study tour for 20 MLAs. The party defended both its actions, saying the Saifai Festival promoted culture and the MLA tour was for ‘study’. Nobody is fooled, though. These actions are just further evidence of the SP’s callousness. n

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Sidharth’s secondary role?

Two days after letting Indian Made Foreign Liquor be sold at desi booze shops, the Madhya Pradesh government rolled back its policy in response to opposition stag g e r

“Only existing country liquor shops would be allowed to sell [IMFL] as we cannot presume that no one consumes IMFL in the state . We are not opening new shops” —Jayant Mallaiya, MP’s excise minister 7 January 2014

turn

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

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“The decision was taken from the head. But now we will roll back, listening to our hearts”

—Shivraj Chouhan, MP Chief Minister 9 January 2014

around

Top Maoist leader Gudsa Usendi surrenders several years, most press statements released by Maoists from their bastion Dandakaranya in central India carried the signature of one man: Gudsa Usendi. As the spokesperson of the Maoists’ Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, the middle-aged frail-looking Usendi would at times speak to select media persons, often joking about how far he had to walk to catch a mobile signal.

One of their top leaders, he is considered close to Maoist supreme commander

For the last

20 january 2014

Ganapathi. In a dramatic turn of events, Usendi reportedly surrendered to the Andhra Pradesh Police on the evening of 7 January. While it is not clear what led to his decision, his surrender is a big blow to the Maoist movement in the country.

Usendi is a big catch since he can provide

valuable details on the Maoist leadership to India’s security agencies. He is also believed to have knowledge of the attack on a Congress convoy in Chhattisgarh on 25 May 2013. That information could be crucial, since there are several mysteries— and consipracy theories—about the circumstances that led to the attack. Of late, Maoists have been under State pressure, with security forces having just concluded a week-long drive against them through the country’s ‘red corridor’. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

On the Contrary

Not Just a Moral Question On the anger prompted by a court’s observation that premarital sex is wrong M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

rape case where the man went back on his promise to marry a woman after having sex with her, a Delhi court observed that premarital sex was immoral. Dismissing the case, the court said that a woman should sleep with a man knowing what she was getting into.

That much would have been understandable, but the court also added that all religions forbade premarital sex and it was wrong. That observation probably angered you if you are an educated urban liberal. Your unambiguous position would be that premarital sex is moral. To you, a consensual act between two adults being immoral would be absurd.

A couple of years ago, this principle came up while I was interviewing Michael Sandel, a moral philosopher who teaches a popular course called Justice at Harvard University. He pointed me to a case in Germany where a man, Armin Meiwes, had advertised for a person he could eat alive and found a volunteer.

They went ahead with the consensual cannibalism. Meiwes was held for murder. Sandel asked me whether the principle that all consensual acts are moral would apply here too.

I said ‘yes’, but his point—that consensual acts can also be called into question—was evident. Having sex is, of course, not the same as eating a human liver, but once you accept the principle that consensus can be questioned, then you have to spell out why it is moral to have premarital sex. And that is an avenue to ever more complex questions, beginning with whether there is anything called ‘morality’ at all.

There is also the question of whether there is a difference between premarital sex being ‘not wrong’ and being ‘right’. If it is the latter, then you would expect parents and school teachers to actively encourage their children to have pre marital sex once they come of age; it would be a chapter in sex education. But this is not something you see anyone voicing, including those angry at the court’s observation.

The reason the judgment angers some 6 open

manjunath kiran/afp

I

n a recent judgment related to a

tyranny As political feminism decides policy and discourse, discussing rape gets difficult

people is not morality, but the encroachment on individual freedom. If it was about morals, then the other part of the judgment—that women who have consensual sexual relations should not cry rape—is far more important to debate.

In a climate where political feminism is deciding policy and discourse, rape has become a topic on which no discussion is possible. On Wednesday, 8 January 2014, The Times of India carried a news item reporting that the Mumbai Police is going to ask for death sentences for the men accused of raping a young photojournalist at Shakti Mills’ compound in August last year. But if you were to say the crime was not of the same degree as the rape and murder of the woman the paper calls

When a court passes a judgment on rape, the filing of false cases is not spoken about. It is just collateral damage in the war for justice. But there are always consequences when emotion replaces sound principles of law

Nirbhaya, that would somehow make you pro-rape. You would be thrown into that subset of patriarchal monsters who have no clue about the enormous travails that women in India undergo.

This is also why when a court makes a judgment on rape, the part that deals with the case itself is conveniently ignored because the filing of false rape cases is not something that should be spoken about.

It is just collateral damage in the war for justice, and society must live with it.

But there are always consequences when emotion replaces sound principles of law, as India has already experienced.

After dowry deaths became the great evil to be eliminated by any means, Section 498a was inserted into the Indian Penal Code ensuring that if a wife made a complaint, her husband and his relatives could be put in jail rightaway without bail. It ended up as a negotiation tool for lawyers in divorce cases. No one disputes the rampant abuse of Section 498a, not even the most extreme feminists. But you will still find them defending it as something sprung out of noble intentions, which, as we all know, is also one way to hell. n 20 january 2014

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Off-Piste Skiing

Major news developments often expose us to new words. When Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher had an accident while skiing in the French Alps a few days ago, a phrase that was commonly used in the reports was ‘off-piste’.

It Happens

Alphabet Soup for the Soul Which Bhagat Tarachand do you want to dine at: B,G,K,R or S? Omkar Khandekar ritesh uttamchandani

real

A piste is French for a designated ski run or path down a mountain for snow skiing, snowboarding, or other mountain sports. In England, the word is pronounced with a long ‘e’, so it rhymes with ‘feast’). The American pronunciation uses a short ‘I’, so it rhymes with ‘mist’.

Pistes are usually maintained using tracked vehicles known as snowcats to even out trail conditions, level moguls (small mounds of snow) ‘Piste’ is a or redistribute snow.

French term for Natural snow is often auga designated ski mented with snow making path for skiing, machines early in the seasnowboarding son or when the snowpack or any kind of is low. mountain sport

Alessandro Bianchi AB/acm/REUTERS

Off-piste is the opposite of piste. It refers to areas beyond designated skiing tracks. Schumacher was skiing in one such zone in the resort of Meribel in the French Alps.

Schumacher is an experienced skier, and his accident could be attributed to bad luck. He wasn’t even going too fast. He just happened to land on his head.

scare Schumacher got seriously injured in an accident

But off-piste skiing is deemed dangerous for even skilled skiers, especially this year since Europe did not receive much snow, leaving rocks exposed on mountain slopes. A spokesman for the company in charge of the ski area, Meribel-Alpina, said: “Michael Schumacher has been faithful to Meribel for many years and knows the area. He made the choice to ski offpiste and given the current circumstances, it is a choice that presents a number of risks. We have had low snowfall in recent days and the snow is unstable. The rocks protrude or are partially hidden. You can’t do whatever you want. Skiers should stay on the pistes.” n

family franchise The first of the five eateries was the K Hotel but now there is an S alongside

I

n the crowded lanes of Zaveri

Bazaar, Mumbai’s bling-street, it is easy to be directed to Bhagat Tarachand. The 50-plus year-old restaurant is a landmark in the area.

But once one enters the narrow Shaikh Memon Street, a diner has to make his question more specific, for there are five restaurants by the same name to choose from on either side of the lane, separated only by their initials—B, G, K, R and S. Hitesh Chawla, partner-owner of B Bhagat Tarachand, shares an interesting nugget about their co-existence. “My great grandfather K Tarachand opened this place in Karachi in 1895. After Partition, he and four of my grandfathers migrated to Mumbai.” Tarachand bought a plot at Zaveri Bazaar and opened the restaurant, what is now known as K Bhagat Tarachand. As their family grew, a single source of income proved insufficient.

“That time, competition was not a big thing. [They thought] I will stay near my brothers. If there is any emergency, I [could] always call him,” says Hitesh.

The Chawlas started with buying plots at a shouting distance of each other. Each of the restaurants was

given an initial as per the name of the son managing the outlet. Today, Hitesh belongs to the fourth generation of the 50-member strong Chawla family, all of whom are in the hospitality business in Mumbai.

Since it is located in the heart of a business hub, most of its customers are working professionals looking for lunch. Ergo, the Sindhi management of the restaurants The Chawlas, follow the Udipi who came pattern of from Pakistan sharing tables. post-Partition, While prices differ, the opened these restaurants joints near serve similar each other Punjabi fare.

Each of the restaurants has a loyal customer base. One such loyalist is Ketan Chougule, an imitation jewellery shop owner in his late forties working a few blocks away from the eateries. Ever since he moved to Mumbai from Surat about 20 years ago, he has been loyal to one initial and one meal. Once in every two days, as he likes to put it, “Apna thali fixed hai (I have a regular meal of a thali).” n 20 january 2014

business

F RAU D A Sebi-appointed committee has proposed new rules on insider trading that broaden the scope of those who’d be deemed ‘insiders’. The stockmarket regulator seems keen to address what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dubbed the “hard to define” problem of insiders who make unfair use of special-access information for stock trading gains.

The malpractice is rampant. Insider traders are hard to catch, and so sleuths on their trail need “additional powers like wiretapping and accessing emails” says Lalit Kumar, partner with J Sagar Associates, a law firm, “to better [their] record of securing criminal convictions for offenders”. Thus far, Sebi’s effort to check this menace has been restricted to the imposition of financial penalties.

Prison sentences, as in the US, would be a far more effective deterrent.

While there was little confusion on what constitutes insider trading, Sebi’s scanner has been on corporate executives.

By the committee’s proposals, anyone with any link to anyone in possession of ‘Unpublished Price Sensitive Information (UPSI)’ could face a probe. Thus, an insider could be anyone associated with the company in any capacity. It could be a contractual, fiduciary or employment relationship, even a bureaucrat deliberating a ‘proposed change in foreign ownership limit in specific sectors’, or anyone else in a statutory position ‘that allows such person access to UPSI’. Or any of their immediate relatives.

victor j. blue/bloomberg/getty images

Everyone in the Loop is an Insider Now

caught red handsetted Rajat Gupta gave away insider information of a deal he was privy to and paid the price

According to Deepak Kapoor, a Delhi-based corporate lawyer, “The legislative intent to broaden the definition of an ‘insider’ is a step If you have any in the right direction to access to bring the regulator’s unpublished oversight at par with price-sensitive international best pracinformation, tices.” Instructive here watch out is the Wall Street case of Raj Rajaratnam, who got early word of Warren Buffett’s deal with Goldman Sachs from Rajat Gupta over the phone; this call was tapped, and it served as clinching evidence in the case.

To nab offenders, Sebi will need to sniff around emails and calls. “The Government recently armed Sebi with powers of searchand-seizure and accessing call records, primarily to deal with Ponzi scheme [frauds],” says Kumar, “Sebi will use these powers to investigate insider trading cases as well.” Yet, Sebi’s snooping may raise questions of privacy invasion, even hamper the valid exchange of business emails. “Such sweeping powers should be allowed only in exceptional cases,” cautions Kapoor, “where the quantum of violation crosses a pre-defined materiality threshold.” n shailendra tyagi

Too Many Offenders Have Gotten Away ov

s

% s 2

eou

er

lan

ke

7%

cel Mis 8%

Ta Insider Trading

market manipulation and price rigging issue related manipulation

28%

55%

Of the 155 cases taken up by Sebi in 2012-13 for investigation, those of market manipulation and price rigging make up the bulk, while cases of insider trading were only a handful. This, despite the fact that the malpractice is rampant on Indian bourses Source: sebi annual report 2012-13 compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

20 January 2014

“Positioning Rahul as a leader and administrator who is quick to take decisions will be a priority, since his brand has taken a beating… He will need to work on the language that he uses, the tone and tenor of his voice and the decibel level at which he talks” Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consultants, offering an analysis of Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi as a brand in the market for Lok Sabha votes

news

reel

Maa, Maati, Megalomania Mamata Banerjee has pushed West Bengal to a new low

A

journalist once asked the Chinese Premier Chou En-lai what he thought had been the impact of the French Revolution. Chou thought for a while and replied: “It is too early to say.” In West Bengal, it may have been simply termed ‘poriborton’ (change), but when Mamata Banerjee made possible the rout of the 34-year-old Left government in 2011, it was considered nothing less than a revolution. However, less than three years later it has become absolutely clear that the revolution in West Bengal has come a cropper. The brutal manner in which a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped twice and then set afire in Kolkata’s Madhyamgram, and the way Mamata referred to it as yet another conspiracy against her government, is a stark reminder of how she has lost the plot. The West Bengal of Mamata Banerjee is autocratic, and the whole state machinery is susceptible to her whimsical attitudes.

In May 2011, after her party’s victory, a jubilant Mamata stood outside her Kalighat home and declared: “Only development, no autocracy.” Everybody believed her. People wanted change. They had grown sick of the Left. Even Leftleaning intellectuals like the writer Mahashweta Devi had pledged support to her. But soon, incident after incident of her huffy behaviour began to irk many.

Any question or concern would be dubbed as a ‘Maoist conspiracy’ by her with alarming regularity. During a TV show to mark one year of her office, Mamata became furious when a girl—a student of Presidency College—asked her a question on crime against women.

Calling the girl a Maoist supporter, Mamata walked off the show.

Through 2011 and 2012, when more than three dozen babies died in a government hospital in Malda, Mamata, who also holds the state’s health portfolio, blamed this too on the erstwhile Left government. In 2013, 16 infants died of malnutrition at the hospital. Last week, another 13 infants died in the same hospital. In the last three years, 350 children have died there. Healthcare facilities continue to be in an abysmal state, though Mamata claimed last month that the maternal mortality rate in the state had dropped by 20 per cent.

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anup ray

The dragging of Mamata’s name into the Saradha chit fund scam by an MP from her own party has also left the Chief Minister red-faced. Many rogue and criminal elements who owed allegiance to the Left government simply switched parties after Didi’s dismissal Mamata’s Trinamool of a recent gang- Congress came to rape as a Left power. They have been accepted by conspiracy the party, and confirms she with their has lost the plot continue activities just as they did under the Left regime. Prominent among these is the practice of collecting money illegally from households and businessmen.

Those who voted for the Trinamool Congress in 2011 at least expected some sensitivity on women’s issues from Bengal’s first woman Chief Minister. But

the rape and death of the girl in Madhyamgram has left them completely disillusioned. Instead of identifying the policemen who failed to do their duty, the Mamata government has so far shown no seriousness about taking action in such matters. Instead, her government wasted no time in getting a professor arrested for drawing a political cartoon and banning a film that was critical of her.

Political observers say Mamata is taking the people’s support for granted. In July last year, her party won an absolute majority in local Panchayat elections. In rural areas, she still enjoys tremendous support from people who are sick of Left rule. That is why people voted for her in spite of being not too happy with her.

But now, a new wave of opposition is building up against Mamata. And this time, her hawai chappal image may not save her. n Rahul Pandita 20 january 2014

Back to Their Old Games Political compromises in Karnataka before this year’s General Election

T

his year could well be the year of

the tainted in Karnataka. With an eye on the General Election coming up, both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party inducted leaders with questionable credentials last week.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah inducted two tainted MLAs as ministers: DK Shivakumar faces charges relating to illegal mining, and R Roshan Baig has been indicted in an alleged land grabbing case. Shivakumar and Baig are longtime legislators and former ministers. The former is expected to draw in Vokkaliga votes, and the latter, minority votes.

The BJP welcomed its former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa by merging with his Karnataka Janata Paksha.

Siddaramaiah, who took over as CM after the May 2013 Assembly polls, had promised clean governance after a BJP term ridden with scandals and corruption. He had successfully staved off pressure from the party old guard, and had, in fact, ejected Santosh Lad, a minister facing charges of illegal mining, in November.

Shivakumar and Baig’s induction has led to ignored MLAs petitioning Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh who was in Bangalore this week. Singh and Siddaramaiah defended their actions by stating the inducted ministers were only facing allegations and have not been charge-sheeted yet. “They are only private complaints with vested interests. Where is the chargesheet? Show me,” Siddaramaiah asked the media, in his characteristic belligerent style.

Shivakumar is a staunch supporter of Karnataka’s former Chief Minister and Union External Affairs Minister SM Krishna. He showed he cannot be ignored by pressuring the High Command to appoint him to a coordination panel keeping an eye on the CM headed by Singh.

He also used his clout to get a Parliamentary ticket issued to his brother, a political non-entity, and made sure he won.

Yeddyurappa, who was asked by the BJP to step down as CM in May 2011 after allegations of favouring mining companies and for possessing disproportionate assets with the promise that he would be brought back, eventually walked out and formed his own party. He then vowed to

20 january 2014

teach his former party a lesson. The fledgling party won six seats and more importantly got 10 per cent of the total vote. As the Lingayat vote was divided between Yeddyurappa and the Congress, the BJP was relegated to third position and the Janata Dal-Secular emerged as the principal opposition , getting a few more votes than the saffron party. Now, the BJP, with 46 Assembly seats after the merger, has put forth its claim to be the principal opposition party. Yeddyurappa’s homecoming also realistically helps boost the BJP numbers in the forthcoming Lok Sabha, as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, has embarked on a 272+ Yeddyurappa’s plan. Karnataka has homecoming 28 Lok Sabha seats and in 2009, the BJP may boost the BJP’s numbers had won 19, the in the 2014 Lok Congress six and the JDS three. In Sabha polls 2013-end, the Congress won both bypolls by dethroning the JDS. The Congress might have attacked the BJP on Yeddyurappa, but its own actions have undermined any such attack.

The Yeddyurappa episode has also led to the question of whether Bellary’s infamous Reddy brothers and their man Friday, B Sriramulu, who floated the BSR Congress and won four Assembly seats, will be welcomed back to the BJP fold.

As polls draw near, more compromises can be expected by these parties. n Anil Budur Lulla

A Tale of Two Brothers The feud between Alagiri and Stalin threatens to split the DMK

T

he Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) faced a new crisis on Saturday, 4 January 2014, with the dissolution of its Madurai urban district unit. The feud between brothers MK Alagiri and MK Stalin was back in the headlines as a temporary committee largely comprising Stalin’s supporters took charge of the Madurai district unit, traditionally Alagiri’s stronghold.

In a brief statement, party general secretary K Anbazhagan said that the DMK urban district unit, zonal and circle units were all being disbanded with immediate effect as their functionaries

were acting ‘against party discipline and orders of DMK chief M Karunanidhi’. No further word has emerged from the party headquarters, and for the moment there is stony silence on what the next course of action will be on either side.

The immediate provocation, though, seems to be the controversial posters put up by Alagiri’s supporters stating that the party’s general council meet would be held in Chennai on 30 January, Alagiri’s birthday. This, apparently, was seen as an attempt to undermine the importance of the DMK’s general council meeting held in December.

While the fallout of the dissolution is under speculation, The Hindu quoted G Thalapathi, a Stalin loyalist who has been appointed head of the temporary six-member committee for electing new office bearers in Madurai, as saying that the move will not in any way affect the party in the Lok Sabha elections.

However, the dissolution is being seen as a move to further alienate Alagiri and underline Stalin’s control over party affairs. Also, the decision may be meant to pre-empt any possibility of a rebellion against party decisions ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. In the backdrop of the simmering succession war between the brothers, the possibility of a split within the party and the likelihood of the Alagiri support- DMK going in for ers have been an alliance with Captain issued showcause notices in Vijayakanth’s instead of the past for ‘anti- DMDK the Congress, the party activities’ elections to elect new office bearers in Madurai will be a decider of sorts for the shape of things to come. Karunanidhi has distanced himself from Alagiri’s comments on Vijayakanth saying his comments were not only regrettable but also condemnable. In an interview to a private TV channel, Alagiri said he did not consider Vijayakanth a politician as he lacked ‘political decency.’

This is not the first time the party has cracked the whip on Alagiri’s supporters.

In 2003, the entire urban district unit comprising his supporters was disbanded in a similar manner. Alagiri supporters have also been issued show-cause notices in the past for alleged anti-party activities.

Although speculation of a split in the DMK has risen in the state, both brothers have chosen not to speak on the issue yet.

The party and onlookers are watching the bickering brothers closely for a sense of what the future holds. n Anuradha Nagara j open www.openthemagazine.com 11

s p ec u l at i o n

Death in Tollywood Is Chiranjeevi the reason for Uday Kiran’s suicide?

K Naresh Kumar

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controversy can engulf a pol-

itician when he least expects it.

Especially if it originates in the place where his stature was built. So it is with Chiranjeevi, erstwhile matinee idol, major Congress party leader and Union Minister of State for Tourism, who suddenly finds himself boxed in on two fronts at Hyderabad.

With his trusted group of about a dozen MLAs (most from his Praja Rajyam Party, which merged with the Congress in 2011) wanting to desert the grand old party, the one-time hero is now being pressured by the party High Command to keep his flock together. On top of which, the shocking suicide of Uday Kiran, a young actor in the Telugu film industry, has prompted detractors to point fingers and accuse him of being part of a mafia that throttles external talent.

The 33-year old actor who was found hanging on 5 January was a favourite of young people in the state, and had been called the ‘hat trick hero’ for three successful films—Chitram, Nuvvu Nenu and Manasantha Nuvve—between 2000 and 2003. A middle-class Brahmin boy with no filmi connections, Uday Kiran fit perfectly in the space vacated by earlier heroes—like Chiranjeevi, whose films had become unpredictable at the box office.

Trouble began for Kiran in 2003, when he got engaged to Chiranjeevi’s daughter Sushmitha, despite initial opposition from the senior actor. It is unclear whether the megastar’s daughter was already in a relationship with the young actor prior to this development. But for ‘mysterious’ reasons, as the local media puts it, the engagement was soon cancelled and offers began drying up for Kiran, as is evident from the fact that he has done only about 20 films in a career spanning more than a decade.

It is an open secret that the four families of Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna,

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Venkatesh and Balakrishna (the latter three are scions of yesteryear heroes and film producers) have held a vice-like grip over the Telugu film industry ever since it relocated from Chennai to Hyderabad two decades ago.

Between the four of them, they control nearly 700 theatres, about 60 per cent of all functional single screens in the state, and denying theatres to outsiders is a favourite tactic of theirs. Additionally, there have been many instances in recent times when even the successful films of others have had to make way for the productions of ‘Aa Naluguru’ (‘Those Four’).

Interestingly, if two films by different members of this closed group are released at the same time, theatres are divided evenly among them to avoid clashes with each other’s fan bases and to ensure their respective films get whopping initial draws.

Pongal is an auspicious time for film releases in the state and Chiranjeevi’s son Ramcharan Teja’s delayed venture Yevadu is to be out on 12 Jan. Mahesh Babu, another top star, has his Nenokkadine lined up too, but plans to release it two days earlier on 10 January to catch the first round of audience craze. In the midst of such turf protection, the industry has seen new faces tirelessly make efforts to break into the big league, with limited success.

Dasari Narayana Rao, a Central minister, Congress politician and industry heavyweight, has openly alleged that the “industry mafia killed Uday Kiran” and that his presence “was supposed to be a major threat to the big families of Tollywood”. A section of the Telugu media quoted a Chennai-based producer, AM Ratnam, who was shooting a bilingual film in Tamil and Telugu with the deceased hero, as saying that his film was almost 80 per cent complete but he was

pressured to “stop it from getting completed” by people said to be from the Chiranjeevi camp.

It is rumoured that the vengeful actor also blocked Uday Kiran’s chances by pulling a few strings in neighbouring Chennai when the dejected hero wanted to approach Tamil film banners. Though he managed to star in noted director K Balachander’s project Poi in 2006 (later dubbed in Telugu as Abaddham) and in a 2010 project called Penn Singam based on a novel by then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, he could not do anything significant.

At the young actor’s funeral procession, and as he was consigned to flames, angry fans raised anti-Chiranjeevi slogans. The cremation was largely ignored by the bigwigs of the film world, barring one of the four families, that of Daggubati Ramanaidu who was seen along with his actor son Venkatesh.

Notably absent was the Chiranjeevi camp. The actor-politician himself has not responded to the widespread speculation over his involvement in Kiran’s death.

Interestingly, Chiranjeevi’s second daughter Sreeja too eloped in 2007, marrying Shirish Bharadwaj, a Brahmin boy.

For a long time, the actor-politician had to lie low on this issue, as it was regularly played up in the local media.

Surprisingly, the girl filed for divorce a few years later, returning to her father with her daughter in tow, and all was forgiven. The reason for the tumult in the lives of both his daughters is alleged to be the same—marrying outside Chiranjeevi’s Kapu caste.

With competition from fellow Congressmen hotting up and his reputation under the scanner, Chiranjeevi, a clear aspirant for the Chief Minister’s chair in a split Andhra state, has a PR disaster on his hands. n 20 January 2014

c a m pa i g n

Ayodhya Shining

living in dread A family in Balua village, from where all able-bodied men have fled in fear of communal violence, leaving behind women, children and old men; (top right) Gorakhpur MP Adityanath, who made provocative speeches in Balrampur district; (bottom right) the Jinnati Masjid where a young man, Mohammed Danish, was found murdered on 20 December

photos sanjay sonkar

Political agents seem hellbent on stirring UP’s communal cauldron: a ground report Dhirendra K Jha, Faizabad

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lame it on the fast-approaching Lok Sabha elec-

tions or desperate attempts to keep the communal cauldron boiling, Faizabad and its surrounding districts in Uttar Pradesh have developed some ugly warts of late. Over the past couple of weeks, while all seem busy debating the Muzaffarnagar riots and its sordid consequences, these districts in the eastern part of the state have seen a series of low-intensity communal outbursts that have turned the region into a veritable tinder box, ready to explode.

The latest flashpoints, whether in Ayodhya or areas around it, are rather unusual insofar as they have mostly remained calm even during the most turbulent periods of the past. On 4 January this year, when Balua, a Muslimmajority village in Balrampur district, was attacked by a mob of communalists, none of its residents could recall a time when tensions ran so high. Yet, today, a pall of fear and silence has descended on a village that has had a long history of harmony.

“Not even in 1992 [when the Babri Masjid was demolished] did this happen here,” says Habibullah, an octogenarian resident of this village, his eyes full of terror.

“Where should we go [to keep ourselves safe]? Can’t they free us of elections?”

After posing these two questions, he turns silent, but his body language speaks volumes: despite the support of a walking staff, he visibly shivers—in the apparent grip of emotions that stir within him.

Balua village is located about 15 km from Balrampur town. Late on 3 January, there was a minor dispute involving some residents of this village and one Dhirendra Tiwari—an activist of a Hindutva outfit called the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV)—of a nearby village, Mahadeo Hariharganj. The next morning, a group of armed men from Mahadeo Hariharganj and a few nearby villages, including Bargadahi, Bagesar, Noagaon, Koyelara and Ranijot, mounted an attack on the residents of Balua.

Over a dozen people of both sides were injured in the clash. By noon, the police moved in to bring the situation under control, picking up men of either side of the confrontation for interrogation.

Late that evening, however, the situation took another turn for the worse after the death of a 70-year-old resident of Balua village, Wahid Ali, in Balrampur’s Memorial Hospital. Residents of this village claim that Wahid had been picked up from his residence by the police soon after they entered the village in the aftermath of the clash,

On 20 December, a bunch of miscreants damaged the mausoleum of Hazrat Shish Paigambar, a dargah in Ayodhya that local Muslims hold in esteem and that he died in police custody. According to Shirish Chandra, deputy superintendent of police of Balrampur, the officer who oversees law and order in the village, the force in khaki had nothing to do with his demise. Around five o’clock in the evening that day, he claims, he found Wahid lying injured in the fields and took him to hospital in Balrampur, where he died soon after.

“The police are lying,” says Tabassum, Wahid’s daughter, as she waits with other villagers for his body to be brought for burial to Balua after its post-mortem. Her mother Zainab would be accompanying the body.

Meanwhile, almost all able-bodied men have fled Balua in fear of another round of communal attacks or police atrocities, leaving behind women, children and old men in the village. Kallan, a resident of this village, arrived in Balrampur town early on 4 January, hours before Balua was attacked. I met him in the afternoon of 5 January as he wandered into the residence of a senior journalist of the town, Zakhamat Ali. “As soon as I reached Balrampur, I got news of the clash,” he says. “My wife and daughterin-law are the only two left in the village. I don’t know what will happen [now to us].”

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Kallan, a small-time farmer, remains uncertain. Neither is he able to muster the courage to go back to his village, nor is he ready to risk seeking police help. “What if they level some charges against me too?” he asks.

Indeed, in Uttar Pradesh, as in many other parts of the country, the police have developed a habit of lying—if not to hide their failures, then to cover up their wanton assaults on the defenceless.

I

n Balrampur, where public rallies and provocative

speeches by Gorakhpur MP Adityanath and the heightened activism of his HYV are being watched with anxiety by Muslims, there seems to be reason for the latter not to trust the local administration and police. At a meeting held in the village of Vahini activists on 29 December, a week before the Balua violence, Adityanath had declared: “Muslims consider terrorists their protectors… Hindus must unite and remain alert of Muslims wherever they live and confront them if the situation so demands.” At the same rally, the HYV’s state president Sunil Singh, announced: “In order to finish Islamic terrorism, Hindus must finish madrassas and mosques where training is given for terrorism… Shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’ whenever you hear the aazaan [the Islamic call to prayer]… Workers of the Hindu Yuva Vahini will not allow Muslims to live in Hindustan.”

Such rhetoric is new to Balrampur, a district created by the Bahujan Samaj Party in its last few months in power before the Samajwadi Party took charge of the state.

“Balrampur has always been a peaceful place,” says Zakhamat Ali. “Earlier, neither Yogi nor his outfit was visible here. But for past five or six months, they have become hyper-active in this district. Local officials touch his feet and take no action against him or his men. I have been doing journalism for the past 35 years, and I have never seen such a communal atmosphere in this area.

What you see in Balua may not be the end of it. If adequate measures are not taken, the situation may worsen by the time elections approach.”

Indeed, Balrampur is not an isolated case. Unusual developments have taken place not just in its surrounding areas, but in Ayodhya as well. On 20 December, for example, a bunch of unidentified miscreants damaged the mausoleum of Hazrat Shish Paigambar, a dargah in Ayodhya that local Muslims hold in esteem. The same night, a young man called Mohammad Danish was found murdered in a nearby mosque, Jinnati Masjid, located nearly 500 metres away from the dargah. Danish used to live in that mosque.

This was the first time since the Babri Masjid demolition of 6 December 1992 that a religious structure had been damaged in Ayodhya. About a week after this incident, the police claimed to have solved the mystery by arresting two young men, Mohammad Irshad and Azad Ahmad, from Haibatpur village, about 2 km away 20 January 2014

from the mausoleum and mosque. The police claimed that Irshad, the son of the muezzin of Jinnati Masjid, committed the murder with Azad’s help. In order to divert attention and make his crime look like an act of communal assault, asserted the police, Irshad demolished part of the dargah as a red herring.

Faizabad District Magistrate Vipin Kumar Dwivedi says Irshad has confessed to the crime in police interrogation.

But some local Muslim leaders as well as residents of Haibatpur have alleged that the entire episode was engineered by communal forces to disturb the peace, and that the police are trying to throw everyone off the trail of truth. According to Tanjim, sister of Azad Ahmad, “Our father died the night before [on 19 December], and was buried around 3 o’clock the next day. After that, all of us, including my brother, were busy looking after relatives who had come to attend the funeral. Do you expect that three hours after burying his father, my brother would have been in a mental state to participate in a murder, and that too, in a mosque—and then desecrate the mausoleum?”

This is not the only question that locals are asking.

Another big question, they point out, relates to the very manner Irshad is ‘being framed’ for killing Danish. “Even if Irshad had to kill Danish, why would he do it in a mosque being looked after by none other than his own father?” asks Khaliq Ahmad Khan, convener of the Faizabad-based Sampradayik Hinsa Virodhi Forum (literally, ‘forum in opposition of communal violence’). “The mosque is in the midst of a graveyard surrounded by a jungle,” he says, “Had he really wanted to kill him, he could have taken Danish into the jungle. The theory of the police is bullshit—intended to shield the real culprit.”

If the questions are many, so are all the strands of what happened. And they are so tangled that it is virtually impossible to disentangle them. According to the police, the Balrampur violence was a clash between two villages and the Ayodhya incident a mere personal attack. And yet, this belt of UP has seen communal tension rising by the day, with almost everyone on edge.

I

n places where incidents are not turning communal

on their own, extra efforts are being made to make them look so. Take the case of Tanda town in Ambedkar Nagar, another district near Faizabad. Over the past couple of months, this town has been witness to a series of HinduMuslim clashes, with periodic bouts of arson. Relations between the two communities nosedived on 4 December last year when a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, Ram Mohan Gupta, was shot dead at his chemist shop by unidentified gunmen. After the killing, activists of the VHP and HYV blocked traffic on the Tanda-Akbarpur road in protest. These activists, locals say, raised anti-government and other communally inflammatory slogans.

In March last year, Ram Mohan Gupta’s uncle, Ram Babu Gupta, also a VHP leader, had been killed in a 18 open

similar fashion, after which sporadic communal clashes had been reported from some villages near Tanda, forcing the administration to keep the areas under curfew for over a week.

After the death of Ram Mohan Gupta, local VHP and HYV activists sat on a dharna to protest what they claimed was the government’s ‘minority appeasement’ policy.

Soon, state leaders of the BJP, VHP and HYV came out in solidarity. BJP state president Laxmi Kant Vajpayee, who visited Tanda on 5 December, the first day of the dharna, said: “It is the appeasement policy of the state government at work, so the administration is unsuccessful in controlling crime by members of a particular community.”

In his own way, Adityanath, too, joined the agitation.

On 16 December, he held a meeting at Akbarpur, the district headquarters of Ambedkar Nagar, and issued a 15day ultimatum to the local administration: if the Samajwadi Party MLA of Tanda, Azim-Ul-Haq, was not arrested within this period, Adityanath said, he would lead a march upon Tanda.

Though the ultimatum period ended on 1 January, Adityanath is yet to reveal his plan of action. Meanwhile, the agitation against ‘local crime’, as it is being portrayed, has become a point to garner support for the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. A pamphlet being distributed to those who visit the dharna site is headlined ‘Hindutva ki Dharma Dhwaja ke Sajag Prahari’ and it features Hindutva slogans and photographs of Ram Babu Gupta and Ram Mohan Gupta, both before and after their death. On the top of these pamphlets are photographs of Modi, Adityanath and VHP leader Ashok Singhal.

It is quite clearly a campaign for Modi. While ‘crime’ is its ostensible target, it has an underlying political message. Local residents know this, and perhaps that is why the dharna site has such sparse local attendance. Worse still, the site is in the Aliganj area of Tanda, and that too, bang opposite one of the town’s main mosques, the Jama Masjid. Little wonder that most people in the area live in fear of another bout of communal violence.

This fear looms over this entire belt of UP, including the districts of Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Basti, Gonda and Balrampur. “As we move towards the 2014 elections, you will find more such incidents in the region,” predicts Acharya Satyendra Das, chief priest of the Ramjanmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya. “These days, any development here is ascribed to politics. There is a section of people who do not think about the consequences. To them, furthering their politics is everything, even if that means the killing of innocent people.”

Ayodhya, at the centre of this region, has long been one of India’s most tumultuous spots, a nerve centre of religious sentiments that tend to reverberate across the country. Right now, the town seems to be entering a period in which it could be even more volatile than usual.

As Lok Sabha elections approach, the danger may be worse than many think. n 20 January 2014

M U Z A F FA R N AG A R

IN THE CROSSFIRE The women who suffered the worst of the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar last September text and photographs by raul irani

O

n the morning of 8 September last year,

as violence spread across the villages of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in UP, many women were huddled in their homes for safety. Their husbands were either out on work or had fled rioters. From their rooftops, the women could see a mob of men armed with guns and kattas, a mob that would force its way into their homes.

Four women (pictured on the previous page) of Fugana village were attacked by groups of four to seven men each. One of them had her children with her when she was raped. Another was attacked at gunpoint, while yet another was threatened with death if she complained to the police.

At Jholiya Khera relief camp, where the four women were later rehabilitated, there lives another minor (pictured right) who was sexually attacked by two men near a brick factory on 1 October while on her way from her village to the camp.

So far, six FIRs alleging rape have been registered, all by Muslim women. There are 27 accused, but barring two in the minor girl’s case, no arrests have yet been made. The four women of Fugana have all filed complaints.

According to the police, complaints were also received from Shamli and other villages and tagged as molestation cases. Later, more such cases came to light. In villages visited by reporters, refugee families said there had been many other acts of sexual violence. Shahnawaz Khan, Samajwadi Party leader and husband of the pradhan of Hussainpur village in Budhana district, said five women who had taken shelter in his village spoke to activists, NGOs and state-appointed agencies, but would not approach the police to file FIRs because they feared social stigma and intimidation. n 22 open

photos r k bhatt

A schoolteacher by profession Mohan Kumar being produced at a Mangalore court. He taught children English, social science and mathematics

i n v e st i g at i o n

Cyanide Mohan The sexual predator and serial killer who fed his victims poison pills as contraceptives has finally been sentenced to death. His story Anil Budur Lulla Mangalore

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hen Anitha Bangera’s parents filed a ‘missing person’ complaint with the police in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, the cops on duty dismissed it as a case of ‘love jihad’. But nobody had a clue if she’d vanished with a lover of another faith.

Protests by villagers forced the police to intensify their search for Bangera. She 24 open

was found dead, and her killer turned out to be Mohan Kumar, a 49-year-old government school teacher who has since admitted to stalking and luring 20 other women for sex.

As sexual serial killers go, what marks Kumar out is his use of cyanide-laced pills couched as contraceptives to do his victims in, almost all of them women of low-

er-middle-class families. He would promise to marry them, and most left home for him dressed in wedding finery, sneaking away with jewellery and cash.

Police lethargy and lack of communication gave Kumar plenty of leeway. The women remained ‘missing’ in their records though many were found dead in the toilets of bus stands in other towns 20 january 2014

and cities within days of the missing complaints being lodged. Local cops passed these off as destitute deaths. Even if froth was found on the deceased’s mouth, a sign of poisoning, they put it down as suicide by an impoverished depressive. They made no effort to match the details of those reported missing with those found dead. This suited Kumar well.

It was only after the Bangera case was handed over to the Corps of Detectives, a premier investigating agency, that police investigators joined the dots through a pattern of phone calls. The killer, they found, would use one victim’s cellphone to call another, and had left a trail of calls. The detectives looked up the missing person files, examined the details of bodies found in bus stand toilets, and put all the clues together to crack the cases of 20 missing women.

Kumar was finally arrested in the autumn of 2009, and the only woman who survived has been a key witness for the prosecution. On 28 December 2013, he was sentenced to death for three murders—even while 17 other cases are at various stages of trial.

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nitha Bangera’s mother is dis-

traught. “How can I be satisfied with the verdict if my daughter will not come back?” asks Kusuma Mulya in Tulu, a language spoken in coastal Karnataka around Mangalore. “We had set aside nine paun (8 gm) of gold and Rs 5,000 in cash for her wedding. We had to borrow money for this and are still repaying the debt. We had to marry off another daughter and my son in the interim,” she says.

The gold Anitha took with her would be worth Rs 2.7 lakh at today’s prices.

The family’s village Barimaru is 40 km from Mangalore off the Bangalore highway in the Western Ghats; the roads are barely motorable. They have a small agricultural patch here. It was in June 2009 that Anitha left home with the gold, money and an expensive cellphone gifted by her brother Madhav. Kusuma was at work that day in their field. The others were away from home.

The 22-year-old’s disappearance shocked everyone in the village. When a police complaint was lodged, the policemen said she had likely been lured into a relationship by someone bent on con-

20 january 2014

verting her to Islam, the so-called ‘love jihad’ that Muslim men are alleged to be waging by right-wing propagandists who spy an evil design in this.

“The police asked us to keep our mouths shut,” says Anitha’s father, Duggappa Mulya, “They were not willing to listen, despite no one having seen Anitha talking to any person of [another] community.” That is how the case would have been treated had it not been for the pressure mounted by villagers, a local swamiji and Madhav over three months, demanding that she be traced.

“The pressure forced us to investigate,” admits a police officer who does not want to be named. The Bantwal Police examined Anitha’s call records and found she had made several calls. Examining these, they zeroed in on one person called Sridhar, a resident of Coorg, as a suspect.

Madhav, who was closely following the police leads, got wind of this from a constable, landed up at Sridhar’s house in

As sexual serial killers go, what marks Mohan Kumar out is his use of cyanidelaced pills couched as contraceptives to do his victims in Coorg with six fellow villagers to thrash him. When the police were called in, it was found that Sridhar’s sister Kaveri had also gone missing a couple of months earlier—along with his phone.

Kaveri, who worked in Kasargod, had vanished in February 2009 and her body was found in a toilet at Mysore bus stand that very month. Though her family had filed a complaint, they did not know that she had already been found dead. It was her phone, its SIM card registered in Sridhar’s name, that Mohan used to speak with Anitha, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance by then.

Intrigued, the police revised their suspicion and floated the theory of these women being possible victims of human trafficking. The call records they had examined led to calls terminating and originating from Darlakatte, a Mangalore suburb. “We were wondering if a prostitution racket was operating without our

knowledge,” says an inspector. It no longer looked like a case of a single person’s disappearance and the story started drawing media attention.

After Anitha’s death, Kumar threw away Kaveri’s phone and gifted Anitha’s handset to his nephew. As luck would have it, the 16-year-old started using this phone after a month with his own SIM card. The police traced the user, who claimed it was a gift from his uncle Mohan Kumar. When Kumar was questioned about this, he did not have a convincing explanation of how he came to possess the phone. A search of his residence yielded a plastic bag filled with jewellery, seals and letterheads in his name (and the aliases he used to pursue women with, the police later learnt). To impress his targets, he had been trying to pass himself off as an executive of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company, Malnad Area Development Board and other government departments.

It was under the subsequent police interrogation that Kumar admitted his crimes and revealed what he’d done to Anitha and Kaveri. He had killed them by having them swallow cyanide-laced pills.

Later, he confessed to luring and killing other women too.

Anitha’s parents did not get to see her body. She had been educated till Class VII and her parents were searching for a suitably boy for her to wed. They have no idea of how she fell for Kumar, nor any idea of whom she spoke with on the phone.

They did not even want to go to court to see their daughter’s killer. “We saw his smirk on TV whenever he was brought to court,” says the father, “But we were not witnesses, nor did the police ask us to come to court. Our only regret is that we could not see Anitha one last time.”

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hen he was arrested , Mohan

Kumar, alias Anand, was 49 years old. He had been married thrice. Having divorced his first wife in the early 90s, he was living with his second wife Manjula and third wife Sridevi in different towns, spending a few days with each. Manjula has two daughters, and Sridevi, two sons. Neither of the wives knew they were both married to the same man. And neither knew what he was up to, except that he was a government teacher on a open www.openthemagazine.com 25

the missing women (from left to right) Hemavathy, Anitha, Kaveri, Pushpa; (second row) Sharada, Nelyadi Vanitha, Leelavathy and Yashoda

transferable job. This is why they didn’t ask him too many questions about his frequent absences. Once they found out he was in jail, he forbid his wives from coming to see him. His reason: “Other men were eyeing them.”

Kumar’s mother Tukru has blamed an uncle called Govind Master, a tailor, for her son’s crimes. The allegation upset the uncle so much that he went to Kanathur temple in Kasargod, across the Kerala border, to ask the presiding deity for justice. This temple is famous for accepting written complaints on behalf of people who find their image tarnished by someone, and the pandits there like to issue summons calling upon the offender to come and explain. Tukru has not responded to the temple’s summons, says a family friend.

After Kumar’s arrest, the police claimed that 18 missing women cases had been solved as a result of his confessions. In all the cases, his modus operandi was similar. He would choose his victims by observing their routine, ascertaining their workplace and checking their social status. He targetted women who looked past marriageable age.

“How these women fell for him, don’t ask me,” says a policeman. “But, they always seemed to fall for his idea that they should be dressed in bridal finery to meet his parents, who he said would accept 26 open

very little dowry. Without confiding in any family member, these women would walk away with the gold and cash their parents kept aside for their marriage, travel with him to other cities to visit temples, and have an illicit relationship [with him].”

The police say Kumar would advise them contraception to avoid pregnancy, since they were not yet married, and hand them a cyanide pill at a bus stand just before boarding a bus for an onward journey. “It works best while travelling as we are not doing anything naughty,” he reportedly told them, suggesting that they gulp it down with water from a faucet in the bus stand washroom. Death would be almost instant.

‘Brought dead’ to hospitals, the victims’ post-mortem reports indicated poison consumption, and since no one was around to claim the bodies, they were disposed of by the authorities in accordance with civic norms. This left Kumar free to get on his way, pawn the victim’s gold with a gold-loan company, and spend the cash in pursuit of other potential victims.

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nother victim was Shanta Kumari,

a 32-year-old who was found dead on a road outside the famous Kollur Mookambike temple. The youngest of a family of six siblings, Shanta had a

job as an attendant at a Mangalore college. On 9 November 2006, she walked out of her modest home dressed in special clothes after telling those at home she was going to attend a function in college. When she did not return that night, her family called up her college, whose watchman said there had been no campus function; he also informed them that Shanta had taken half a day’s leave that day. Some days later, her elder brother Raju read a news report of a woman found dead on Kollur’s main road. “The newspaper report said the woman had died after an attack of fits, and that the police had claimed she was an AIDS victim,” says Raju, “She was buried in the town cemetery.”

Raju and his relatives visited Kollur and identified—to their dismay— Shanta’s ear-rings, blouse and wristwatch. They forced the administration to exhume her body, but the gravediggers refused to cooperate as she had been declared an AIDS victim. “We got the body exhumed, and after a protest by our community, a second post-mortem was done in a Mangalore hospital,” says Raju, “By then it was not clear how she died. She had taken 20 paun gold and some cash.

We went around the town’s lodges with her photo. An auto driver said he had dropped my sister and a middle-aged man at a lodge. The lodge people refused 20 january 2014

to confirm their stay, and the police did not enquire any further.”

On his arrest three years later, Kumar admitted to having taken Shanta to Kollur and killed her. He claimed he had talked to her at the bus stop and even visited her college and introduced himself as an official of the state education department. “She fell for his fake credentials and his demeanour, and probably believed that life had taken a turn for the better, but she was not ready to show her family the man she had decided to spend her life with, lest they disapprove,” says a policeman on the investigation.

Shanta was religious and would visit temples on special occasions. This worked to Kumar’s plan, since he had always made it a point to use temple visits as a way to gain his victims’ confidence.

“It really bothered us no end to think how a woman who’d leave home every day at 8.15 am to take a bus to her workplace and return around the same time every evening just disappeared one day dressed in all her finery,” says Lohith R, Shanta’s nephew, “She had taken jewels and money too.”

Both nephew and uncle are now determined to bring Kumar to justice: “She is victim No 16 in police records. But she is our loved one. We want the death penalty for Mohan in this case, too. Her soul will not rest in peace till this case finds closure.”

S

ujatha, 28, disappeared from

Bajpe near Mangalore airport after she borrowed jewellery from her neighbour for a special occasion, as she said. Once this case came to light, the court refused the jewellery’s original owner permission to take custody of the gold, despite the plea that they had an upcoming family wedding. “The accused pledged this jewellery with a finance company,” explains the neighbour’s lawyer HV Naik, “The company representatives and their records detail the loan given to Mohan on pledging these pieces of jewellery. They are part of the evidence and a crucial link to the chain of events in which Sujatha was lured and killed by the accused. Till the case is settled, the material evidence will be in the custody of the court.”

Another woman that Kumar admitted the murder of was Vinutha, a 28-year-old.

20 january 2014

She used to travel regularly from her village Bhaktakodi to the taluka headquarters Puttur for meetings with officials in pursuit of a house for her family under the government’s Ashraya Scheme. The police say Kumar met her on one of his visits to the taluka office, observed her routine and struck up a conversation with her. They became friendly, and soon, like the others, Vinutha was on her way to marry him without telling anyone.

An earlier victim was 22-year-old Nelyadi Vanitha, who was a member of a women’s self-help group in Uppinangadi town. She left home on 27 May 2004, never to return. Though her family lodged a complaint, the police could not trace her.

When her body was found at Hassan bus stand a few days later, the local police assumed her to be a destitute woman and buried her without an investigation.

The others met fates no different. On 23 January 2008, Sharada Gowda, 28, left home as usual to take a bus to Udupi,

Kumar would choose his victims by observing their routine, ascertaining their workplace and checking their social status. He went for women who looked past marriageable age where she worked at a private firm. She was found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days later. The local police concluded that this ‘unknown’ person had committed suicide in depression. They did not circulate her picture to other districts.

When Leelavathy, a 30-year-old resident of Vamana Padavu in Bantwal taluka went missing on 9 August 2005, the local police did not bother to probe it.

Instead, they insisted she had run away to join Naxalites, whose presence in the region had been noted for some time.

“What went against her was the fact that she was a Left activist,” says Bheemappa Shenoy, a villager in Bantwal.

“In the early 2000s, she had invited and hosted Gaddar from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to her village. This poet is known to inspire people by singing revolutionary ballads, and is identified as being in charge of the

Naxal cultural wing. This event alerted the intelligence wing of the state police, who later generated a report that Leelavathy, a known Naxal sympathiser, was missing and presumed to have joined a group of Naxals,” says Shenoy.

She was also found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days after she went missing; she was never properly identified.

Sunanda Poojary, who rolled bidis for a living, was another victim. She left home on 11 February 2008, and was found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days later. The police saw nothing odd about two women found dead in the same place within a fortnight of each other. Again, they thought her destitute and pinned her death on pesticide.

Shashikala of Balepuni was found dead at Bangalore bus stand on 14 August 2005. A member of a self-help group, she had taken a loan of Rs 90,000 right before she went missing. Filing their complaint, her family said that she was wearing a 50gm gold chain (this was never found).

Exactly a year after Shashikala, 32-yearold Kamala was found dead at another bus stand. On 25 September 2009, Yashoda was discovered lifeless at Hassan bus stand, but on a bench, not in the washroom; she was perhaps one of Kumar’s last victims.

Meenakshi, a 25-year-old of Alike, is still missing. Arathi, 22, went missing in January 2006, as did Baby Naik, a 25 yearold who lived in Udupi district. These women are yet to be traced, but since Kumar has confessed to poisoning them, they are presumed dead.

At one point in the process of identifying the missing women listed in the police register, Kumar claimed he was losing his memory and that he couldn’t recall where he last left them. “It was so many years back,” he told the police, though he did remember other sordid details—such as their ‘intimate parts’— of each victim.

K

umar chose his victims with care.

He went for women who looked well dressed and ‘easily impressionable’. “I always targetted women who would put their head down and walk. Though such women pretend to mind their business, they are easy to strike a conversation with,” Kumar is said to have boasted to an open www.openthemagazine.com 27

interrogator when asked how he chose victims who never told their families or friends of their relationship with him.

Mohan Kumar has had chargesheets of 20 cases against him being looked into by a Mangalore fast-track court. Late last year, announcing verdicts on three of these, the murders of Anitha, Leelavathy and Sunanda, the judge awarded him capital punishment and made a mention of how he showed no remorse for his deeds. The judgment was passed after an in-camera trial, with three witnesses—a woman who survived the cyanide poisoning, Ishwar Bhat, a priest whom Kumar had asked to perform a ritual to cleanse him of guilt, and Abdul Salam, an agent from whom Kumar procured his stash of cyanide.

During the trial, the prosecution relied on 49 witnesses to establish the chain of evidence on how Kumar had lured Anitha to Hassan, stayed at room No 23 in Sanman Lodge, later checked out alone, and pledged her jewellery with branches of two gold loan firms. His long absences from his job also went against Kumar, as he could not prove he was at work around the time his victims were killed. The state’s department of education had served him a suspension notice for being absent without authorised leave.

As a government school teacher, Kumar taught children mathematics, social science and English. At one time, he had written to the district administration for permission to teach undertrials in jail English.

Kumar, who served as his own lawyer at his trial, countered the claim that he killed his victims with cyanide arguing that no post-mortem report made any mention of this particular poison.

The police had a magisterial confession from Abdul Salam, a chemical dealer who testified he’d sold Kumar cyanide powder several times, thinking he was a jeweller and needed it for professional use. Salam was arrested too—for selling cyanide without a valid licence—and though he turned hostile as a witness later, his testimony on selling it to Kumar was upheld by the court as evidence.

The woman of Bantwal who survived was also a prime witness who offered clinching evidence. Kumar had lured her to a Madikeri lodge, but she had only licked the capsule and not swallowed it.

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the girl they lost Anitha Bangera’s parents at their home in Barimaru. Anitha, 22, was one of Kumar’s victims

She collapsed immediately in the washroom of Madikeri. Commotion ensued, and Kumar made a quick exit assuming she’d been found dead by onlookers. She recovered after five days in hospital, and returned home with the help of some money that her nurses gave her. She did not tell anyone about Kumar and her ordeal—and got married within months.

The police stumbled on her as a key link in the chain while studying the call records of one of the cellphones used by Kumar. “She had to be gently persuaded to become a witness,” says a policeman, “We promised her that her husband’s family would not know anything. She agreed to an in-camera hearing and was our star witness.”

The other witness that the prosecution relied on was Ishwar Bhat, a priest whose help Kumar had sought at Annapoorneshwari temple near Mangalore. Once Anitha Bangera’s case hit the media, Kumar had asked Bhat to perform a ritual that would relieve him of the sin of murdering a woman. At first, Bhat took him lightly, but when Kumar persisted, he performed a special aarthi to get rid of him, as he testified. It was later that Bhat saw photos of Kumar

splashed across newspapers, and that’s how he decided to inform the police of the killer’s request.

K

umar had once been arrested in

2003. This was in Dharmasthala after passersby heard the screams of a woman he was trying to throw into the fastflowing Netravathi river below. On that occasion, he was beaten up before being handed over to police. However, he was acquitted in that case on lack of evidence.

That was perhaps the beginning of his sense of impunity as he embarked on his career as a serial killer.

In his 91-page judgment condemning the accused to the gallows, BK Naik, the judge of the fast-track court, had this to say: ‘As [Mohan] has been denying [charges] without rebuttal, the sufficient evidence proves that he committed the acts intentionally.’

The police say Kumar had even mapped the fertility cycles of his victims.

“Even if one of them had refused to take the pill, they would have survived,” says a police officer, “But as none wanted an unwanted pregnancy, they paid the price.” n 20 january 2014

difference

All Shapes and Sizes On Pakistan’s ‘rat children’ OSAMA MOTIWALA

G

rowing up, one witnesses a number of interesting characters.

Sakina was one of those. She used to live very close to where I did; the only difference was she lived on the streets while I didn’t. It was easy to point her out in a crowd. There was something very distinct about her appearance: her head was uniquely small in proportion to her body. During the afternoon, an old man would escort her to different areas to beg.

She would return only in the evening and spend the night injecting heroin into her system. Needless to say, I was quite afraid of her. Although I saw her nearly every day, especially in the evening, I could never muster the courage to go talk to her. Nobody else did either, nor did anyone happen to know who Sakina was or where was she from.

One day, she wasn’t at her usual location. Even though it didn’t disrupt my life in any significant way, I often wondered where she had gone. A week later, I found out she had died of drug overdose. Apparently, she didn’t “matter anymore”. People had begun to talk about her for a change. We were told she was a chuhi (a female rat) and belonged to the city of Gujrat. In Arabic, Sakina means ‘serenity’. And come to think of it, she was indeed serene. Maybe it was the heroin. Maybe not.

But back to where she came from. On the banks of the river Chenab is a small city called Gujrat, where the fabled King 30 open

Porus once ruled. Today, the place is known for three things: high-quality furniture, electrical fans and Syed Kabiruddin Shah Daula. The Sufi saint lived in Gujrat a couple of centuries ago and was a disciple of Shah Saidan Sarmast, a faqir of the Suhrawardiyya order of Sufism.

An engineer by profession, he did a lot of social development in the area by building bridges across the Chenab.

Legend has it that women who were barren would get pregnant if they prayed

to Shah Daula. Parents who had healthy babies never came back to the shrine, but if they noticed their children had physical or mental disabilities, they’d come back to ‘return’ their gifts. A strange and intriguing set-up.

For centuries, it was the only shrine in the world where parents offered up their children. After all, Shah Daula himself would take care of the children who were left outside his house. The saint dedicated his life to feeding and taking care of little abandoned souls at his modest home.

20 January 2014

While none of these kids were normal, all of them shared one commonality: they usually had small heads disproportionate to their bodies. One thing is for sure—they were loved by their guardian.

Shah Daula would take them wherever he went. Because of their rodent-like appearance, people in the neighbourhood started calling them Shah Daula ke chuhe (Shah Daula’s rat children).

On my journey to the shrine, I didn’t see any chuhas on the streets, as the legend went. I didn’t see any chuha at the 20 January 2014

shrine, either—except Nazia.

Around four decades ago, a young girl was left at the shrine by her presumably disgruntled parents. The caretakers of the shrine adopted her and she has lived there since. When I went to meet her, I couldn’t help wonder how a person with an unusually sized head would feel in a society full of ‘normal’ people.

Nazia had a tiny head, too. Sitting in front of a gas heater, wrapped in a black shawl, she came across a desolate figure.

Gujrat was remarkably cold the evening

we met. I couldn’t help notice that she resembled Sakina strongly; perhaps a healthier version of her. At that moment, the two women marked two different decades of my life. I used to be secretly scared of Sakina but I wasn’t experiencing any such emotion with Nazia. On the contrary, I felt a connection with her, ironically, because of Sakina.

I walked up to the heater and warmed my hands. I didn’t have any lines in my head to break the ice. Or the chilly air for that matter. Looking at me balancing myopen www.openthemagazine.com 31

thomas l kelly

left behind Nadia, a 25-year-old who suffers from microcephaly, a condition that leaves its sufferer with a small skull

shelter The shrine of Shah Daula in the city of Gujrat, Pakistan, where parents leave their microcephalic children

self on my haunches, she trembled for a few seconds before bursting out in fits of laughter. It turned out she couldn’t speak and there was no way I could have facilitated a conversation with her.

I learnt that she was about 40 years old but blessed with a mental age of no more than three. However, there were a few encouraging factors about her existence.

Unlike thousands of her fellow chuhas in Pakistan, she didn’t beg for a living.

Also unlike others suffering from her condition, she was adopted by a generous family who treated her like one of their own children.

It was then that my cynical self learnt that not everybody had given up on those who don’t look like us. Or talk like us. Or are different in some way.

A

fter Shah Daula’s demise, four gen-

erations succeeding him made sure they took care of children like Sakina and Nazia. They were simply following a benevolent tradition, but it wasn’t to last long. There came a point when the organisation running the shrine started requesting parents not to leave their offspring on the steps because they were under threat by kidnappers. Clearly, things aren’t what they used to be during the time of Shah Daula.

Perhaps this explains the atmosphere of the three-day festival that takes place 32 open

FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP

annually in Gujrat in honor of the Sufi saint. During the festival, thousands of parents bring their children to pray at the shrine. After the festival ends, families go back to where they came from and no children are left behind. Nowadays, it’s a common practice among shopkeepers to sell cutouts of silver paper in different human body shapes, which worshippers can offer at the shrine.

According to a popular theory, children kidnapped from villages are forced to wear iron-caps that keep their heads from growing. Later, they are sold to people who use them to gain sympathy and collect considerable alms. Fortunately, nobody I met claimed to have ever witnessed such a mishap in action. Medical doctors I spoke to also dismiss this folklore as absolutely baseless. Their argument is plausible: if a head doesn’t grow physically because of an external barrier, it can result in death.

That said, children born with small heads are often kidnapped from villages and are later forced to beg in the streets.

There are thousands, if not more, of such beggars all over Pakistan. In scientific terms, they suffer from microcephaly, a condition in which a person’s skull is smaller than normal for their age and sex.

It is a neurodevelopmental disorder with which a child is born—it doesn’t strike suddenly after birth. If the skull doesn’t grow, it occupies the brain’s space in-

stead. This is why most microcephalics aren’t able to communicate, and, as a result, are stuck with the mental stage of a kid who never grew up.

Experts claim that children like Sakina and Nazia are a result of recessive mutation. Marriages between cousins, a common custom across Asia, augur genetic mutation. In a country where around 66 per cent of marriages are between first cousins, genetic disorders are bound to be common. A shrine can’t cure that.

Regardless, even to this day, women from all over the world visit Shah Daula’s shrine with a prayer on their lips. Their petitions don’t always restrict themselves to fertility. Today, devotees suffering from hepatitis, arthritis and cancer all seek refuge at the shrine. Locals say that it works. And by ‘it’, they mean faith.

Some of them even claim they’ve seen thousands of people healed without medication.

I met a shopkeeper in Gujrat who spoke zealously about an incident where another shopkeeper sold a small rock for a hundred rupees, claiming it was sacred! It’s a make-believe world where all shapes and sizes mingle. While some feed on their belief in a shrine, others scavenge on the business that visitors generate. If Picasso was right and everything one can imagine is real, then we must imagine a world where Shah Daula lived. n 20 January 2014

i n c r i m i n at i o n

Thieves on Two Wheels

photos shailendra pandey

The poor of Jharkhand depend on cycle peddlers for their coal—peddlers who, by law, are thieves Nigel Singh

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e meet Mahesh Munda at 2 am.

Five bikes are lined up under a tree, stars overhead. At a power station in the distance, white lights flicker. Barking dogs occasionally break the peace. In another few hours, sparse birdsong will announce the dawn, with the early rays of the sun outlining jute bags on the frames of bicycles pushed along

by Munda and his friends. Each cycle has about 250 kg of coal. And within the hour, hundreds of similar cycles would stream

the morning shift Coal cycle wallahs at dawn, Kathara, Jharkhand

past. It is rush hour on the coal paths.

Shailendra, a freelance photographer, and I are travelling Jharkhand’s coal roads to explore the depth of India’s coal dependence. This is a land where bicycle tyre tracks can be traced from collection points out in jungles to drop spots on the edge of steel towns.

We are in Kathara, 45 km from Bokaro Steel City in Jharkhand. Munda is a parttime farmer and coal peddler. ‘“Paddy, wheat and vegetables only give me money half the year. But I can make at least Rs 80-100 each coal journey, all year round,” he says, flanked by his neighbours.

They carry coal four times a week.

Munda is just one of an estimated 48,500 ‘coal cycle wallahs’ who peddle 1.4 million tonnes of coal by bike each year in Jharkhand alone. Men, women and children, coal cyclists typically push their coal loads on journeys that range from 30 km to 60 km. Ticking off the kilometres at a steady clip, they venture to villages and towns, selling this black rock fuel at around Rs 1 per kg, often delivering cutprice coal to the needy—some of them in industrial suburbs—for mothers to keep hearth and home together.

For many cycle peddlers, it’s a family trade: mothers, fathers and children are all involved in making deliveries. Our presence makes some of them nervous; they are worried we are undercover policemen out to bust them. They are reassured once we lend them a hand, helping them push their bag-laden bikes along.

What Munda and his friends do is illegal. They gather their loads of coal from a mine owned by Coal India Ltd, India’s state-run coal monopoly that supplies most thermal power plants, steel mills and other factories. Ordinary folk, however, rely on this vast network of cycle peddlers who don’t just keep families supplied with their bagloads, but also small-time brick kilns, sponge iron factories, dhabas and chai stalls.

According to one estimate, around 90 per cent of all coal traded illegally in India has been stolen from mines and coal washeries. The rest is dug by hand at mines no longer commercially viable— abandoned but still owned by CIL, the world’s largest coal miner.

Jharkhand looms large in CIL’s scheme of things. As a state, it produces a third of all the coal mined in India, and compa-

nies bid for truckloads of it—10 tonnes a truck—at a time through electronic auctions. Yet, everyday folk who need coal for cooking and warmth—who cannot afford liquid petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders or kerosene—have no official market access to any of this mineral wealth.

Kathara’s colliery lies concealed behind a hill next to the Damodar river. By mid-morning, women have waded across with coal baskets on their heads. The towering peak of a reject coal mountain overlooks the river bank, where—in small mounds—men and women use part of the ash to cook, thickening the air.

Sixty kilometres westward, at the Rajarappah Coal Washery of Central Coal Fields Ltd, a subsidiary of CIL, we trudge the mountainous reject piles of coal, careful not to trigger a mini landslide. But next to silos of freshly-laundered coal, where conveyor belts whir and thick black water is ejected, women in saris sift the rocks for hidden lumps of coal, heavy baskets perched on their heads. Each basket will fetch Rs 30 when sold to other Jharkhandis with bicycles.

But cycle wallahs are outlaws. Buying a bag of coal on a village or city street from one of these peddlers is illegal. All unofficial trade in coal—a nationally-owned resource—is proscribed by the Indian Penal Code, apart from laws governing forests and coal-bearing tracts. This makes these cycle wallahs the country’s largest criminalised community.

Coal is an important national resource.

Nearly 60 per cent of India’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power stations.

But CIL is unable to meet all of India’s coal demand. While the country is the world’s third largest coal producer, the Government spent $15.5 billion in 201213 importing 138 million tonnes of coal to fire a variety of industries. The Union Coal Ministry has long insisted that all coal be supplied to power plants and industry, effectively banning the sale of the fuel to households. For the past two decades, people have protested this inequity. But no one seems to listen.

The Aam Fuel

Half of Jharkhand’s coal cycle wallahs are Scheduled Castes and Tribes. In fact, Jharkhand—the ‘land of forests’—is tribal country. Many have lived off the forests as gatherers of food or cultivators of stray open www.openthemagazine.com 35

fuel supply A coal consignment at a dhaba in Ramgarh district

patches of land. But 40 years of mass displacement, as forests were cleared for coal mines, has left up to 70 per cent of these coal cycle wallahs landless. Of those who still farm, 20 per cent have an acre of land or less.

Most of this excavatory expansion came with the nationalisation of coal companies in the 1970s. Before that, many of today’s coal peddlers used the same land for agriculture. Cultivation was not easy, given the terrain. The slope of the hills would direct the flow of water to lower levels, leaving the higher reaches parched in the summer. Moreover, coal mining ended up ravaging the landscape, causing ecological disturbances that left the higher land drier still—and tribal cultivators at a loss.

Employment by the coal industry was meant to make up for that, but only about a fifth—far less, some say—of Jharkhandis who live in coal tract areas have industry jobs. The rest have to make a living through the illegal coal trade.

Back in the 1970s, the Centre’s promise was that “a male in each family would [be] given a job working in a coal field”, says Ram Prakash Chaudhury, MLA of Ramgarh, a district in Jharkhand. “But that stopped once [state-owned] coal companies started using diggers and machines,” he adds.

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Chaudhury was lucky. His farming family owned 100 acres, a rarity among SCs and STs (only 1.2 per cent of them have four or more acres). In 1989, Central Coal Fields needed land to expand, and he signed up. Given a clerical job at Rajarappah, he became a coal trader and did well for himself. But few of Jharkhand’s SCs and STs have gained anything from any of the changes. “They have been forced to swap the cow for the

“People could once buy coal from Coal India Ltd depots in small amounts. But now supplies only go to industry” ram prakash c h a u d h u r y, Jharkhand labour minister

cycle,” says Kuntala Lahiri Dutt of Australian National University, an academic on a visit to Jharkhand to study the phenomenon of more and more people turning into coal cycle wallahs. “Coal is now their cash cow.”

Chaudhury says: “People could once buy coal from Coal India Ltd depots in small amounts. Now supplies only go to industry. People don’t have an alternative

but to steal it.” A leader of the All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU), Chaudhury is also Jharkhand’s labour minister who says he has lobbied the Coal Ministry to revive the depots phased out by coal companies in the 80s once LPG gained popularity as a cooking fuel.

The poor, however, find LPG too expensive. Moreover, given the corruption of the public distribution system, they have no access to these cylinders anyway. Coal is all they have. Chaudhury’s verve in highlighting this has helped him win three consecutive elections, despite allegations that he has misappropriated government funds for district development.

“It’s crazy,” he says, “Why can you buy ten trucks in an auction but not a bag?”

Others have similar questions. “Is coal heroin? Is it morphine?” asks Dr Amitabh Kaushal, district collector of Ramgarh district. A few kilometres from the Rajarappah Coal Washery, we sit across each other nursing the obligatory china cups of sweet tea served to visitors of topbracket administrators.

Coal purchase permits remain the preserve of big firms. “Coal only goes to suppliers with an agreement with Coal India,” says Professor Raghu Ram of Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI) in Jamshedpur. As part of a study, he has been tracking the state’s coal cyclists.

20 january 2014

coal hungry Women and a couple of men look for loads of coal to carry away in Kathara; (below) Coal is delivered door to door in a Bokaro suburb

“Small players and ordinary people don’t get their share of this natural resource,” says Professor Raghu Ram. The Stolen Quarter

The unorganised sector is said to control 25 per cent of all the coal mined in India.

It is no secret that coal ‘mafia’ dons connive with corrupt coal company officials to ‘divert’ coal trucks: around 20 million tonnes of coal are estimated to be diverted each year.

Only a fraction of all the stolen coal can be traced to coal cycle wallahs, who have to routinely bribe the police. Coal theft takes place round the clock. Gates at large washeries are left open to allow endless rows of coal trucks to exit. One can drive in any time on a two-wheeler and rake in what one can. It helps that a large number of washeries and mines have dense forests by their side, which allows coal pickers to slip away.

Security guards face a losing battle. At Rajarappah, women gatherers scatter when a guard in khaki turns up to clear them, an attempt he makes thrice a day.

20 january 2014

As a threat, the guard stamps on an abandoned basket. With loads on their heads, eight women flee and head for a clearing where their husbands wait with bikes.

Serai Manji was once a domestic help; her husband Bisharma, a labourer. They are of the Munda tribe, who make up large numbers of Jharkhand’s landless.

Now Serai and Bisharma push off together, following cycle tracks on a thin bed of coal ash along a path through the trees.

We leave Rajarappah Coal Washery as the sun descends. The heat of the day has eased. Men and women push coal-laden bikes in a steady stream.

Bicycle Thieves

Jharkhand’s army of coal cyclists set their schedules by the heat. A mother-and-son team flip-flop along a dirt track off a tarmac road, heading home. Arms taut, the mother’s green sari is of cheap polyester, flower-patterned with a gold border. She pushes the bicycle from behind even as her son works the handlebars—in jeans, a shirt and open-toe sandals—to steer the load, the selling of which will sustain the

family for a week. Going downhill, the boy goes to the back as his mother rushes after, catching up as the bike stops. At the next incline, it’s a hard push upwards once again.

Holiya is in her early forties. “The work is terrible—I definitely don’t want him to do it for long,” she says, gesturing to Puneet. The father hovers around to help, occasionally, but mostly to watch in silence. I enquire if Puneet–a 13-year old– has taken over his father’s role in the operation. “My uncle got drunk,” Puneet replies, “There was an argument with my father. He hit him with an axe and it drew blood. Dad gets dizzy now when he pushes the bike. That was two months ago.”

Two hours of the journey lie ahead; neither can push alone.

We return the next day to a row of numberless stone houses. Holiya sits on the floor of the main room with her husband.

Holiya’s bicycle—the family’s only means of survival—is propped against a stone wall behind a calendar, a deity hanging above. Her wide-grinned eldest daughter Geeta stands by her. She is to be married in a few weeks. To raise money for the event, Holiya is abandoning their rest day between trips. At 150-180 kg of coal, Holiya and Puneet’s load is not the heaviest. But their journey of 40 km is among the longest.

Holiya agrees to let us follow a threeday round trip–to the mine and then on to Morhi, a small town, to sell the coal.

Their plan is to catch up on sleep by the roadside. “So far nothing untoward has happened,” she says, “but my husband used to be there to protect me– now I only have my son.” To reach the town by morning, they need to time their journey well: they are to sleep by 10 pm and wake up at 3 am to set off again.

When we return two days later to join them on their pre-dawn collection run, we find Holiya’s family has vanished.

A heavy padlock secures their wooden door and the rest of the village is asleep.

At the edge of the settlement, we speak to an elderly woman. She says that Holiya fears our presence may draw police harassment. And while the police rarely prosecute coal thieves, the family cannot risk any damage to their bike or having to pay a bribe. They need all their cash for Geeta’s nuptials.

Uttam Addi, a dhaba owner, serves omopen www.openthemagazine.com 37

high voltage A thermal station at Bokaro

elettes and poori sabzi near Anguwalli, an abandoned coal mine of Central Coalfields Ltd. As cycle wallahs eat, a digger moves rocks around in a ‘breaking yard’ next door. “The police often patrol the roads,” he says. Many had fled an earlier raid. But Sagar Das had already loaded up before they turned up. Aged 35, Sagar took up peddling coal a decade ago after he lost his job as a hotel assistant. “I am so frail now. My body aches,” he says, brushing his teeth with a neem stick. “I fell ill on a very hot day last year,” he says, over the sound of a conveyor belt. “I vomited. I had to sell my load at the same price I bought it because I couldn’t go on.”

The road is empty. Sagar figures the police won’t return and agrees to let us follow him, letting me push his load to check how heavy it is. I do alright for a while. But Sagar jumps in to grab the handlebar when the bike nearly topples, guiding me to the centre. He takes control again, and I push from the other side of the handle bar.

We walk in unison, scrub on either side, my breath matching his, against the sound of cicadas. Soon, I begin to sweat.

The soles of my trainers help me get a grip on the dusty path. Sagar is in sandals. I am aware that I would not be able to go on for even half the journey that Sagar makes three times a week. “I started with 100 kg in my first year. And over two years, I went up to 200 kg,” he says. “But countless times, the bike would topple.”

I keep a ear out for passing vehicles. I pull back from the bike as a truck goes by, not wanting to attract attention to Sagar if they see a gora pushing a coal cycle. I help him along for 10 km to a village, 38 open

where he tries to sell his load. But he has little luck. Soon we are joined by a phalanx of ten coal cyclists. The sale price of stolen coal tends to stay fairly constant.

But Sagar has to work hard for a sale because cycle coal is available in abundance, this being a regular route for peddlers. He ducks down a side street to find another door to knock on. I move to follow, but lose him.

Coal Reliance

Bokaro is known as ‘steel city’, and one presumes its cogs are oiled by steel profits, not illegal coal. But it is illegal coal that ordinary people here rely on. At around 8 am one morning, 50-70 coal cyclists gather at Bokaro’s Hafiamod drop site. They buy coal from other cyclists who have made the journey from the region’s coal mines.

“Poverty is a great teacher,” says Bhola, as he pulls one end of a strand of twine, looping it back through a small hole. “I was slow when I started. My friends had to teach me,” Bhola says, gesturing to fellow cyclists Phatik and Subash. Vehicles rush by as they walk the four-lane highway out of Bokaro.

After 15 km, they reach the suburb of Chas. Subash is in charge of brokering a deal. After some rejections, he enters a lane. He returns smiling. They will sell part of their load to a mother who lives away from the main street. Above her house, a sign reads ‘Chas Electronics’. Old TVs, radios and keyboards litter the small front room. Her husband is fixing a customer’s mobile phone on a counter top.

They use coal as cooking fuel.

After accounting for expenses, Bhola

and his friends have each made Rs 130, which is a reasonable rural wage for a day’s labour.

We stop at a dhaba, and the warm glow of illegal coal heats a blackened pot. As Vinodh pours tea into glasses, the bicycle that bore the coal stands propped against a tree. “We’d have to put up prices if we didn’t buy coal like this.” he says.

Without it, Jharkhand’s dhabas would shut down, not to mention brick kilns and small sponge-iron units.

It is all illegal, but coal theft sustains an entire micro-economy in these parts.

Busting the network would render thousands jobless and many more hungry.

India’s coal sector remains mired in inefficiency, with no new mine clearances and overall production insufficient to meet even the country’s large-scaleuse needs, leave aside those of common folk. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has blatantly been sitting on projects, even as mining legislation to speed up land acquisition has been delayed by myriad reasons—including the resistance of industrial developers to proposals for the welfare of local people.

Among the worst sufferers of the coal shortfall is the power sector, which has been forced to import its input fuel from overseas in bulk.

With few signs of any reform in India’s coal sector, this dismal state of affairs is likely to continue. Coal cyclists—and the coal mafia—will continue to plug gaping gaps in supply for domestic and smallscale use. Until something is done, this demand for coal will make thieves of people like Holiya, Sagar and Bhola. People in need of a livelihood. n 20 january 2014

s p ec tac l e

Getting Hammered When a Christie’s auction comes to town

photos Christie’s Images Ltd. 2013

Lhendup G Bhutia

the ringmaster Hugo Weihe, international director of Asian Art at Christie’s, conducts the auction house’s first ever bidding circus in India

A

group of people are consider-

ing a Salvador Dali painting in the luxurious Crystal Room of The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. Expectedly for a Dali, there are peculiar elements in this untitled work—a beach under a glorious sky, a woman in a red dress, figures on horses, and magnified commonplace items like a shoe, belt and scarf. The painting is supposed to be Dali’s comment on consumerism and fashion.

At the centre of the group looking at the painting is a woman in a bright sari—and in deep thought. She breaks the silence.

20 January 2014

“The ants,” she says. “Look at these beautiful ants.”

The rest of the faces strain their eyes and follow the direction of the woman’s pointed finger. In the left corner of the painting, they spot two tiny ants, perhaps the smallest and least noticeable figures in this work of art. Everyone nods.

“Ah,” they say, “what beautiful ants.”

This painting is being exhibited along with a collection of Indian artworks for anyone who drops by. Today is the final day for public viewing. Tomorrow, the Indian pieces will be pulled down and the hall will be converted into an auction

room. London’s famous auction house, Christie’s, is in town—amid much fanfare—to conduct its first-ever auction in the country.

It is remarkable that anyone can get within touching distance of these works by legends, even if it is only the usual crowd of art experts and art journalists who have turned up at the Taj to admire what’s on display. At various corners, men in sharp suits stand in dim lights and abnormal silence, coming alive only if people gather too close to any of the paintings. In one part of the hall, one of tomorrow’s auctioneers is speaking open www.openthemagazine.com 39

big bid The Tyeb Mehta work, Mahisasura, fetched Rs 17 crore. It was expected to go for a sum between Rs 7.5 crore and Rs 9.5 crore

animatedly to an interviewer, suggesting questions and asking for retakes whenever he is unhappy with his answers.

In this gathering of polished tongues and practised mannerisms, a loud coarse voice breaks out. All heads turn to see a middle-aged man who has brought his wife along to the exhibition.

“Look,” the husband calls out for his wife from one end of the hall, “this one is three crore!”

The couple moves from one painting to another, speaking Hindi in a Gujarati accent, tittering and amusing themselves with the tags on paintings (indicators of what they are expected to fetch).

Some of the visitors look to the attendants for intervention, but they look back helplessly, unsure of what pretext the couple could be turned out on.

After the couple leaves, one hears the auctioneer once again: “This is going to be an auction like no other…. Wait, wait, cut that out... This is going to be a historic moment for Indian art. We are ready.

Are you? ...Yeah, that sounds better.”

W

hen Christie’s comes to town, so does an email that lists dos and don’ts for journalists: ‘No roaming in the salesroom’, ‘No photos of clients’ and bidders’ faces’, ‘No approaching clients’, ‘No stand-up reporting during auction’, ‘ No flash photography’, ‘Only photos of auctioneer, staffers, and wide-angle back-ofthe-head-shots of clients permitted’.

The journalists, some of whom have enquired if there is a dress code for the auction, are escorted to the press area some 40 metres away from the auctioneer’s pulpit. Asked to report half an hour earlier, the journalists wait, eyes trained on the entrance to spot celebrities.

Indian art touched a highpoint in the years preceding 2008. Back then, artworks would routinely fetch astronomical sums, and galleries would host frequent parties and exhibitions. Art was seen as an investment by India’s glitterati. Once the West’s Great Recession struck the Indian economy, however, the art market has had an air of gloom and 40 open

When Christie’s comes to town, so does an email that lists dos and don’ts for journalists: ‘No roaming in the salesroom’, ‘No photos of clients’ and so on domestic sales have been sluggish.

No wonder, Christie’s decision to host an auction has been met with bewilderment. Just over a month ago, an art market research firm called ArtTactic released a report saying that ‘market confidence’ in Indian art, especially after the fall of the rupee, had declined by 13.6 per cent over the past six months.

According to Christie’s, however, Indian artworks have been fetching good sums of money in auctions in other countries.

“There are always indications in the market about when to come,” says Sonal Singh, who heads Christie’s in India and put together the list for this auction, speaking a day before the event. “We feel it’s the best time now. Indian artworks have big demand, not just outside India but within the domestic market.”

In the past few daysm there has been much speculation over how Christie’s will be received by the Indian market.

Will the pomp and ceremony of one of the world’s most renowned auction houses draw out the country’s fat cats, and more importantly, their wallets?

On the evening of the auction, Mumbai’s art collectors make quite a dazzling sight as they enter the hall. There are some dressed conservatively in business suits and saris, while others seem to have stepped out of an entertainment 20 January 2014

supplement. Some men are wearing colourful oversized jackets with tapering trousers. Several women are armed with clutches no bigger than their cellphones.

Those in small dresses shiver silently under the wrath of the air conditioning, while one woman appears asphyxiated walking around in a tight blue corset with a flowing white and blue gown.

There are industrialists, bankers, jewellers and well-known gallerists to be identified. And there are hangers-on who’ve come to watch the spectacle of it all.

The auction hall is soon full.

Latecomers are accommodated in a nearby room, while many crowd the passageways. Even in a crowd, the rich stand out—trying to keep their shoulders from rubbing with the hoi polloi.

Each bidder has been screened by Christie’s. They have been asked for bank details and identification papers, and also to specify what range they intend to bid in: up to Rs 30 lakh, between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 60 lakh, between Rs 60 lakh and Rs 1 crore, or above Rs 1 crore.

“3

0, 40, 50, 60…” the auctioneer races through these numbers, as paddle after paddle is swept up in the air with clockwork regularity and the hall’s LCD screens struggle to keep pace with the bids. Each of these numbers represents tens of lakhs of rupees. The painting being auctioned now is a Ganesh Pyne untitled abstract, estimated to fetch Rs 2025 lakh. But the bids have long left those figures behind.

One of the bidders is a tall young woman who speaks conspiratorially into her cellphone. She seems to be a surrogate bidder, a person who bids for an absentee.

Every few minutes, perhaps while discussing a sum with whoever on the phone, her hands cup her mouth as if to ensure no one lip reads her. She bids enthusiastically, but when her absentee bidder eventually pulls out, she covers part of her face as though in embarrassment.

The bids for the Pyne painting touch Rs 90 lakh. The auctioneer, his slickly combed hair and purple tie gleaming under the light of the Crystal Room chandeliers, leans forth theatrically. “Let’s round it up, will you? Let’s make it one [crore],” he urges a bidder.

A silence befalls the room. No one ex-

20 January 2014

pected the painting to sell for so much. A man in white gloves holding the painting for the audience wears a quizzical look, amused with the stares the painting, and by extension, he, receives. Just as the auctioneer is about to bring down the hammer, another paddle pops up and the room erupts in applause. “Oh yes,” the auctioneer says in a muffled tone, “Oh yes.” The untitled work eventually sells for Rs 1.9 crore and the auctioneer tells the room that this is a big day for Ganesh Pyne.

This is a marquee evening auction. In all the exhilaration under bright lights, you cannot tell if it is dark or bright outside. Excited bidders raise paddles high over their heads to place bids. The cooler ones, often making bigger bids, don’t even deign to raise their paddles up to their shoulders. Just a gentle two-finger paddle lift, and, if generous, a slight nod.

The auctioneer is like the ringmaster of a circus. He stands on a pulpit with a hammer, swaying his arms dramatically, almost like a traffic policeman on a busy Mumbai junction Each time a bid is topped or lakhs turn to crores, the audience cheers.

The auctioneer is like the ringmaster of a circus. He stands on a pulpit with a hammer, swaying his arms dramatically, almost like a traffic policeman on a busy Mumbai junction, often freezing his posture to wheedle a big sum out of a bidder.

He throws in humour to draw out reluctant bidders. When one friend bids a few lakh against another, one of the two auctioneers for the night, wearing a dark bandhgala suit and speaking with a slight German accent, says as he thumps the hammer: “You won’t be eating dinner with him, I presume. Sold!”

The auctioneer is flanked by two rows of tables, with around ten attendants on each side. These are specialists who take bids over the telephone. They speak animatedly and sometimes giggle on the phone as though they have known these bidders for years. Around the room, other specialists hover around, pointing out

bidders the auctioneer may have missed.

The paintings that fetch a few lakh are done away with without much notice, until the turn of the two most highly-anticipated works comes up, a VS Gaitonde landscape estimated to fetch between Rs 6.5 crore and Rs 8.5 crore, and a Tyeb Mehta, titled Mahisasura, estimated to go for between Rs 7.5 and Rs 9.5 crore.

Once the bidding for Gaitonde’s work starts, only a few in the audience work their paddles. Most of the bids are from telephone bidders. The figure soon balloons, each bid at least Rs 50 lakh higher than the previous one, until it almost magically hits Rs 20 crore.

The audience, which looked bored with low bids just a while ago, is now at the edge of their seats, recording the proceedings on cellphones. Only two telephone bidders now remain in the race, and the auctioneer asks if the figure of Rs 20 crore can be topped. A conversation ensues between the bidder and a phone specialist, during which the auctioneer armstrongs his voice in: “Remember sir, it’s a small step for you, but a big one for Gaitonde.”

Seconds turn to minutes. The hall fills with quiet anticipation. When the specialist emerges from her conversation, she has a nod and a smile. A few gasps are let out as the winning bid of Rs 20.5 crore is made. An additional sum of over Rs 3.20 crore will be added to this figure as a ‘buyer’s premium’ to make this work—at an eye-popping Rs 23,70,25,000—the costliest Indian painting ever sold in the country.

The next painting up for sale, Mahisasura, also fetches a huge sum: Rs 17 crore. At the end of both, the hall breaks out into raucous applause.

The auction has proved to be a grand success. News has already been made. As paddles get to work again, as many as nine more records for individual artists are reset. The auction house also doubles its pre-sale expectations and records overall sales of over Rs 96 crore.

It was expected to last an hour at most, but has stretched to almost four hours.

When it ends, triumphant groups make their way to the hotel’s Harbour Bar to celebrate. The disappointed lot hurry down the steps, through the revolving glass doors of the Taj, and disappear into the night. n open www.openthemagazine.com 41

between the sheets

Do It Like Gay Couples Do

In a relationship without gender norms, everything is up for discussion sonali khan

H

ave you ever been part of a conversation during

which you’ve wondered if the others were dropped on their heads as babies? I have. Every time an allegedly educated person suggests that decriminalising homosexuality will somehow make paedophilia acceptable at some future date, I have to physically restrain myself from leaning over and knocking on their heads to check if the portions responsible for logical thinking and reasoning have gone soft or are rotting.

So let’s do this one more time: Consensual sex = Nobody’s fucking business. Non-consensual sex = Illegal.

Raping kids = Non-consensual sex.

Anal/oral/sex involving any other orifice among consenting adults = Their business; not yours, the State’s, the courts’, the religious mafia’s or anybody else’s.

In a country where schools are still tiredly explaining to parents that sex education will not fill their kids’ heads with pornographic thoughts, arguing that homosexuality needs to stay outlawed because ‘how on earth will we explain it to the kids?’ is pretty idiotic. Not to mention phony.

Much has been said about Section 377 of late—furious editorials scribbled, heart-warming photographs of equal rights supporters posted, embarrassing tweets retweeted.

Amul hoardings have admonished us from our skylines, the legal system has been ridiculed and our skewed morality mocked ad nauseam. So what can I possibly add? Does the LGBTQ community really need another champion?

To be honest, my motive is purely selfish. I’m gunning for gay marriage because I love the idea of marriage without gender. I want a union so devoid of gendered assumptions that if a stranger read a pronoun-less account of our life, s/he wouldn’t know who the husband or wife is.

Theoretically, the boyfriend and I agree we both want this. But there are plenty of instances when we falter and slip into the roles we’ve been raised to play. And every time we slip up, we look toward two friends to nudge us back on track—a lovely gay couple in their late 30s. So here we are: a (mostly) straight woman and an undoubtedly straight man modelling our very straight relationship on a gay one. They’ve taught us that when the rules don’t apply to your situation, you get to make your own.

Since their relationship isn’t bogged down by the bag-

gage of heteronormativity, everything is up for discussion. Every decision—from everyday things like laundry, cooking and who pays the bills to life-altering financial and career choices—is taken by honest and careful assessment of what both partners want their life to look like five, ten and 20 years from now. Decisions are made depending on how each partner feels about things instead of arbitrary gender rules.

Sometimes, knowing your own mind is tough in a heterosexual relationship.

I often find myself wondering whether I do certain things because they’re not expected of me or because they actually make sense. Take cooking for example.

In my family, girls learn how to cook. I, of course, decided that I hated cooking.

From the time I was 16 till I turned 21, every summer vacation, our chef diligently tried to inculcate the art of rotimaking in me. After two months and countless cardboard-like rotis, Dad would angrily order me out of the kitchen. Until Grandma K shoved me back the next year. And the next.

This year, when the boyfriend and I started living together, we had to hire a cook because his work schedule doesn’t allow him to be free at meal times and my culinary skills are a threat to most digestive tracts. For the past few days, I’ve been keeping the vegetables chopped for our cook so she can get home early and help her daughter prepare for her exams. I’ve found, to my surprise, that slicing tomatoes has a therapeutic effect on me. Shelling peas relaxes me and cleaning coriander makes me believe I may actually develop a green thumb someday. It makes me wonder whether I actually hated cooking or the idea that a girl must cook…

I’ve realised that most straight relationships are about following rules or breaking them to prove a point. Being around gay couples has taught us that when the rules don’t apply to you, you get to experience the joy of making your own rules that apply only to the two of you. I want in on that fun. I want to organise my relationship like my gay, lesbian and of-indeterminate-sexual-orientation friends do. You’re unnatural if you don’t. n

Most straight relationships are about following rules, or breaking them to prove a point

42 open

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

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 20 January 2014

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61 Cinema reviews

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Why Jamaicans Are Fast Odour Receptors in Lungs Maternal Infections and Autism

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Which Was the Year’s Biggest Hit?

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Discovering Dubstep

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cinema

Is Indian Civilization a Myth?

Books

The Woman Who Took on an Institution

44 64

ashish sharma

victory at last Rina Mukherji fought a ten-year sexual harassment case against her employer, The Statesman, and won 44

true life

The Woman Who Took on an Institution Rina Mukherji fought a sexual harassment case against her erstwhile employer The Statesman for ten years, facing delays and defamation suits, until she finally saw a favourable judgment last year

I

joined The Statesman, Kolkata, as a Senior Reporter on 10 June 2002.

My career began in Mumbai where I worked for some leading media houses for about five years. That was followed by a move to Delhi for a PhD on a UGC fellowship. Then marriage brought me to Kolkata and I joined Business Standard until the arrival of my baby daughter pulled me out of full-time work for a while. I was, hence, particularly anxious to resume my journalistic career with a job at The Statesman.

The first couple of weeks were fine, with everyone making me feel welcome and part of the team. About ten days into the job, I noticed the news coordinator Ishan Joshi looking for opportunities to touch me. When I walked down office corridors, Joshi would dash into me and paw me as he walked past. He would also touch me whenever I was with him in his room. Technically, he was my boss’ boss; I reported to the Chief Reporter who in turn reported to the News Coordinator. I started avoiding him as far as I could. His moves only got bolder. He would try putting his arms around me even as he talked of work.

Pushing him away, as I always did, would not deter him.

There was also the kind of stare that seemed to bore into me and leave me numb. Very soon, he was not only pawing me in the corridors, but even 44 open

in the News Room, in full view of every one. His hands would always be on mine, if I happened to be within range, notwithstanding the presence of the Chief Reporter, News Editors, and sundry senior and junior colleagues.

I was unable to react immediately for two reasons. The experience itself was hard for me to talk about, especially in a new office and to insufficiently familiar colleagues. Secondly, I did not want to lose the job; it was the first step towards my professional rehabilitation. Joshi, on the other hand, enjoyed powers far beyond news coordinators elsewhere. He reported only to the Managing Editor and Editor-inChief and his word was law with respect to appraisals. I knew a complaint against the man was likely to result in my termination, especially since I was a probationer.

I hated it every single day, but there was little to do. My frustration had started telling on my temperament. I vented some of the rage on my little four-year-old every time she clung to me for attention following my return home. I wanted to explode but could not. I had no close friends at the office and I found it difficult to share my embarrassing experience with my husband at home.

Joshi understood by July that I was more resilient than he had anticipated. He gradually changed his strategy

and switched to demolishing my professional credibility. From July-end, I found some of my best efforts steadily filling the garbage bin. The number of rejected stories shot up in August and by September anything and everything I wrote was indiscriminately rejected. Incidentally, this was when the Chief Reporter went on holiday and the Officiating Chief Reporter had very limited powers. Joshi now literally enjoyed a free hand. I say this because sexually too the harassment assumed hitherto unprecedented forms.

By now some colleagues had turned into friends and I mustered the strength to talk to them about my daily harassment that they had seen and known anyway. Their empathy brought me around to lodging a formal complaint with the Managing Editor.

Meanwhile, Joshi tried his last ploy.

He asked me to resign, ostensibly because I was not quite ‘fitting the bill’. A spectacular turnaround, this, especially since he had been praising my work in private and public all along.

I managed to get an audience with the Editor about two weeks later.

Initially, I could not bring myself to speak about the sexual harassment and wondered how exactly to begin.

Soon enough, though, I discovered that Joshi had already confessed to his boss every explicit detail of this sordid affair. The Editor spoke to me in a very 20 january 2014

ashish sharma

An uncertain decade The defamation suits filed against me by Ishan Joshi and The Statesman in Kolkata and Delhi respectively had me shuttling for years between two cities and three suits

apologetic tone, sympathising with me and almost making me feel as if the ordeal was over. But he took my breath away with his final advice: that I settle for a ‘compromise with Ishan Joshi’.

I had reached the end of the road. I was given a month to resign voluntarily, but refused to comply. I certainly did not want to compromise. I had given 15 conscientious years to the profession and knew my worth well enough to refuse to budge from my principled position. I was determined to fight back, but I could see there was little else for me to do within The Statesman. My services were finally terminated on 12 October 2002, with no reasons cited and not even a day’s notice.

T

he first two weeks felt strangely

liberating, but depression hit home by the third week. I was publicly mo-

20 january 2014

lested and lost my job without being able to do anything about it. My professional reputation lay in tatters and my husband still did not know what had happened. My depression got the better of me, leading to severe medical complications, exposing my husband to the truth and setting forth the chain of events that led to my recovery.

I contacted Lifeline, an online counselling service, which in turn led me to approach Sanhita, an NGO specialising in sexual harassment at the workplace. The latter helped me get in touch with the Bengal chapter of the Network of Women in Media, India, and its coordinators Rajashri Dasgupta and Ananya Chatterjee. I spoke to my former bosses and colleagues. My immediate boss, the Chief Reporter, expressed sympathy, but pleaded helplessness and warned me against taking on someone like Ishan Joshi with a formidable genealogy and a family with

considerable political influence.

However, for every negative response, there were hundreds of encouraging overtures. The Class IV staff at The Statesman have supported me as much as some of the senior-most editors, finance, accounts, technical and other professionals. My written complaint was immediately followed up by the NWMI Bengal, eliciting a stinging reply from the Editor questioning their authority to speak for me. Posting the news on the internet ignited public outrage, and support was pledged by several media personnel, male and female.

The resultant negative publicity probably forced the institution of a sexual harassment committee by The Statesman in both its Kolkata and Delhi offices, a first for a media house in both cities.

My case was represented to the West Bengal Commission for Women, open www.openthemagazine.com 45

which directed The Statesman to investigate the case—to no effect.

Meanwhile, I also approached the office of the Commissioner of the state’s Labour Department challenging my illegal termination. However, The Statesman refused to co-operate with conciliation proceedings at the Labour Commissioner’s office, and as per procedure, my case was transferred to the Industrial Tribunal for adjudication.

Since this was a one-off case, a rare case of sexual harassment leading to illegal termination, it proved nearimpossible to get a lawyer to take it on. Senior lawyers were unwilling to handle a case that was not only difficult, but without precedent. This was when an activist friend helped me get in touch with the legal aid NGO, Human Rights Law Network. Thanks to HRLN’s Director, I managed to get a bunch of enthusiastic young lawyers to argue my case.

Making the rounds of courts was another harrowing experience. The dingy, dusty, depressing setting of an Indian court can make any complainant feel worse than an accused. Once a case enters a court, thanks to our judicial system, it can go on forever. Mine was no exception. For the first few months, their lawyers kept on postponing the hearings on various pretexts. Still more time was consumed by vacant courts. (‘Vacant’ refers to the status of a court of law when a presiding judge retires and another is yet to move in; during the intervening period, cases lie pending for want of a judge.)

Between 2004 and 2013, I lost more than three years due to the transfer or promotion of different judges.

Speaking up against a frustrating system can also work against a complainant. As a result, I have had to contend with two defamation suits—one civil and another criminal—filed against me by Ishan Joshi and The Statesman in Kolkata and Delhi respectively. This has meant shuttling between two cities and three suits, leaving me little time for work.

The Statesman and its lawyers did 46 open

their ponderous best to stretch the cases out until a judge had to leave on either promotion or transfer or retirement, leaving us high and dry for months. In fact, the moment I received an order in my favour, they appealed to the High Court against it. This made me lose precious time, although the High Court subsequently ruled

The Editor of The Statesman spoke to me in a

very apologetic tone, sympathising with me and almost making me feel

as if the ordeal was over.

But he took my breath away with his f inal advice: that I

settle for a ‘compromise with Ishan Joshi’ in my favour.

Victory finally came on 6 February 2013 when a judgment in my labour suit against the management of The Statesman, Kolkata, was delivered in my favour by the Industial Tribunal. I was awarded reinstatement with full back wages from the time of my termination in October 2002. Of course, I still have a long way to go.

The Statesman has challenged the judgment by the Industrial Tribunal at the Kolkata High Court. I have not yet received a single penny of the compensation and back wages due to me. The defamation suits too remain unresolved. I only hope 2014 proves a little more favourable in this regard.

A

few observations on the lessons

these years have taught me.

One, women professionals have both supported and questioned my credentials. Just as some wonderful women from the NWMI and HRLN supported and helped me legally, there were others who trashed my professional competence and rubbished my complaint. At the same time, there have been male colleagues who offered support and guidance.

Two, beyond the initial support, one must go it alone. Whether it is meeting the police, the Women’s Commission, or one’s lawyers, one has to balance one’s profession, family, fellowships and legal disputes with the finesse of a trapeze artiste.

Three, few will be ready to offer you employment the moment they realise that you have dared to take on a previous employer on sexual harassment at the workplace. Although I have continued to write as a freelancer, my options have dwindled drastically at the workplace.

Finally, I am grateful for the promptness with which the Kolkata Police and Women’s Commission responded when asked to testify in court. I particularly admire the commitment and enthusiasm with which my young lawyers managed to win favourable orders in a row, ultimately clinching a judgment in my favour. I applaud their approach to my case as an instance of ‘human rights violation’.

About the future of the media, I am not so sure. I do hope, though, that alternative media may yet bring back the spirit of independence that once characterised journalism and made it a noble profession. n As told to Anirban Bandyophyay 20 january 2014

Books Open India versus Closed India A book of essays that may help us grapple with the idea of being a civilisation ARESH SHIRALI

Is indian civilization a myth?

By Sanjay Subrahmanyam permanent black | 262 pages | Rs 595

N

o country has a history as

rich as India’s, one often hears.

It’s rich in irony for sure—with so many people out to clobber one another over it. Little else, it often seems, can be said without risking at least a partial lie. In the fog of this subcontinent’s past, the only clarity one can really afford is in rejecting what’s evidently false.

Enter History Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam of University of California at LA, a mythbuster who likes to arm readers with what it takes to bust myths: an agnostic approach to history, free of cultural clip-ons.

The title of his new book of essays, Is Indian Civilization a Myth?, grabbed me not only because we live in a land of tolerance that rarely extends to such audacity, but also—to be frank—because our nuclear button could yet end up under a regime whose idea of being civilised may perplex some of us.

Professor Subrahmanyam’s title essay is about the present as much as the past. It was first published in August 2001, but can still be read afresh as a delightful groan against our crippling lack of choice beyond a stale binary of two conceptions of Indian civilisation: the first derived from an Anglocentric education; and the second, a challenger dyed in saffron, which draws on a few divide-and-rule aspects of the first. ‘The central idea here is of India-as-civilization [perfected in the first millennium],’ he writes of the latter, ‘and it very soon becomes the same as the notion of a closed

20 january 2014

India.’ What he would have readers consider instead is an entire vignette of reality lost in all the modern mythmaking on either side of that false binary. Turns out, proper records exist only of the second millennium; that is, of India’s ‘crossroads’ phase of history.

Since this essay first appeared, the professor has appended ‘some afterthoughts’ on the legacy of the Raj, presumably prompted by Manmohan Singh’s speech at Oxford on 8 July 2005. This addition places in even sharper relief the perils of a past falsified to serve a political project.

Sure, alternate histories have always been around, but it’s rather sad how

No writer must be gagged if a valid idea of ‘civilisation’ is to prevail in India. We may have to suffer rabble-rousers, but it may eventually yield a consensus in favour of the truth lightly they are taken even by leaders who claim an eclectic grasp of India.

In other words, it could take ages before we achieve a view of our past that we can all share as a reasonable approximation of the truth.

Thankfully, the Aam Aadmi appears reluctant to let space for alternatives get squashed out of existence.

Another highly readable essay in Professor Subrahmanyam’s book is his impressive take on The Satanic Verses, which he places in a clash-ofcivilisations context. This piece first appeared on Valentine’s Day 2009 in The Guardian and remains relevant to our debate on civil liberty. He offers a review of the novel Salman Rushdie

will be remembered far beyond his life for, cites the novelist’s letter to Rajiv Gandhi in protest of India’s ban on it, and then explains what some of his fans may have missed: its broad historical context.

Hmmm. While I was enchanted

by Rushdie’s Shalimar and clowned

by Enchantress, I am still somewhat befuddled by what motivated him to write Verses. Going by Professor Subrahmanyam’s review of the novel, Rushdie’s influences could well be put to sharp critical scrutiny, perhaps sharper than what he attempts with his ‘desacralisation project’ (as some call it, and charitably at that, given his wanton use of slurs). ‘It is evident...’ writes the professor on page 153 of this volume, ‘[that] Rushdie drew on medieval and early modern European polemics regarding Islam…’

Again, as with this subcontinent’s history, too many motives remain too suspect to make up one’s mind one way or another. It’s fuzzy what Rushdie was actually up to, what he thought he’d achieve by being so offensive to so many, and what he may yet achieve—if anything.

All that’s clear is this: no writer must ever be gagged if any valid idea of ‘civilisation’ must prevail in this part of the world. This is not about some heroic bluster by Voltaire, a man with peeves enough to place him well beyond my liberal pale, but about ensuring space out there for everyone’s thoughts and feelings.

That could mean having to suffer the most uncivil of rabble-rousers; yet, it may also yield a consensus in favour of the truth some day. Luckily, it’s a subcontinent that has been agog with love stories ever since anyone can tell. And that’s a valid reason for optimism. n open www.openthemagazine.com 47

CINEMA photos indian express archives

An Early Exit Farooq Sheikh’s leading ladies on their fond memories of the charismatic actor DIVYA UNNY

D

uring a press interview, actor Farooq Sheikh once compared the feeling of being in love to the efforts that go into making biryani. “Raat bhar pakti hai, tarah tarah ki sajavat karte hain. (It cooks all night, it’s carefully garnished). Part of the fun is the cooking of it and the anticipation of it,” he had said. His costar and friend Deepti Naval, sitting right beside him, retorted with a twin48 open

kle in her eye, “Now when you put it that way, it almost seems like a good thing.” They share a laugh. The moment is inimitable.

“He had a way with words. It was disarming and frustrating at the same time. I could never counter him even in an argument,” confesses Deepti who is still coming to terms with the fact that she will never see her friend again. Farooq Sheikh’s sudden demise

has not just come as a rude shock to many of his friends and co-stars, but has left an irrevocable void. “I can still see him sitting next to me in his crisp white kurta, sipping chai and remembering old times,” she says.

To those who’d never met him, he was one of the most significant actors of an era—the hero of the middle class, the man who could win over his lover with a simple cup of coffee and bowl 20 january 2014

of tutti-frutti ice-cream.

But for those who knew him beyond the big screen, speaking about him in the past tense seems like an aberration of language. “Farooq invested in people. He touched hearts so effortlessly, that now it’s almost difficult to believe that he’s not around.

It seems like a grammatical error to say Farooq ‘was’,” says Shabana Azmi who worked with him in films like Lorie, Ek Pal and Anjuman. “He [never] appeared to have done any homework and never obsessed over his parts. He was a natural,” she adds.

M

any of Farooq’s co-actors can attest to his infectious energy and zeal for life. When he was in a room, nobody else would talk, everyone was busy listening. “He never demanded space for himself as an actor or a human being. I think that’s what made it so easy to pay attention to him,” says Shabana who remembers Farooq as the most popular boy in college. “We went to St Xavier’s together almost 40 years [ago]. I’d say Farooq was a stabilising factor in my college years. I used to get really nervous before my exams. Farooq used to sit up with me all night sometimes, helping me study,

20 january 2014

the art of artlessness Farooq Sheikh “never appeared to have done any homework and never obsessed over his parts,” says Shabana Azmi. “He was a natural.” (Clockwise from top) Sheikh with Poonam Dhillon in Noorie, with Deepti Naval in Kisi Se Na Kehna, and with Rekha in Umrao Jaan

filling ink in my pens, waiting outside the examination hall till I completed my paper.”

Though he took up law after college, Farooq’s passion for the arts was evident ever since he started the Hindi Natya Manch with Shabana and other friends at Xavier’s. “The money for

productions would come from him because the college ran an English theatre group and had no funds left for our efforts. I would be anxious and nervous before the curtains came up and he would be unrattled and cool as a cucumber,” she adds. It was an attitude he sustained throughout his open www.openthemagazine.com 49

career, one that separated him from most of his contemporaries, who were perhaps making too much of an effort to be heard.

Few who worked with Farooq escaped his astute sense of humour.

Supriya Pathak remembers falling prey to his pranks once too often: “Farooq would never let go of an opportunity to fool around. It kept us on our toes!” She distinctly remembers an incident that brought her to tears.

“Once, we were shooting for Bazaar in Hyderabad when I was informed by telegram of the fact that I was going to win a Filmfare award for best supporting actor for my role in Kalyug. I was very new then, and so was too excited to hear this news. I went around announcing it to the world. The very next day, someone came with another telegram saying it was a mistake and I was not winning the award. I was shattered. I did not know how to face people, and so I started crying. Farooq who was standing right beside me immediately burst out laughing and asked me why I did not check the address on the telegram. It was a local letter and I couldn’t believe he’d done that to me.

He then spent the rest of the day pampering me,” she says.

Sugar coating wasn’t Farooq’s strong suit and those who appreciated honesty cherished having him around. “He’d be mean to me all the time,” says Deepti. “He loved to get a reaction out of me. But he was so good with language that even a critique from Farooq never felt like one.” The two went on to do nine films together including masterpieces like Chashme Buddoor, Katha and Saath Saath. “My character Sandhya in Katha goes to bed with Bashu and during those times talking about pre-marital sex was a big statement to make.

Somehow we became the poster couple for new lovers,” she adds.

Deepti and Farooq first met onscreen over a bucket of cold water and a packet of Chamko washing powder in Sai Paranjpye’s Chashme Buddoor, a scene that has gone down as among the most romantic moments in Indian cinema. “He always said to me that I’m doing a better job [than him] and 50 open

he’d have to make [up for] it in the next film. But for me, there was something so organic about working with Farooq that I’d end up giving a good shot.” The comfort between them showed on screen.

“I was infatuated with him for a bit, but he was always a married man, you see (smiles). It was never like I’d call him at 3 am and talk to him about my problems. But still, Farooq just always knew if something was wrong. And the best part about him was he never overstepped the line. There are people who claim to be there for you, and those who don’t say much, but are always around. Farooq was of the second category.” They’d spend time on set exchanging Mirza Ghalib’s poetry or correcting each other’s verses if they came

“Farooq invested in people.

He touched hearts so effortlessly that now it’s difficult to believe he’s not around.

It seems like a grammatical error to say Farooq ‘was’,” says Shabana Azmi up with something on their own.

In 2013, after 26 years, they came back together in Listen… Amaya and nothing much had changed. “Every time I’d fall ill because of my bad throat, he’d bring a special kind of honey and he’d make sure I took it every few hours. I think I still have that bottle of honey with me,” she says.

F

or actress Sarika, who worked with him in his last film Club 60, time spent with Farooq was distinctive. “We spent almost a year working on this film and though this was the first time we were working together, there wasn’t a single moment I felt like I did not know this man. We shared very similar views on cinema and politics, both of which are volatile subjects. The set was always full of food and shayari, two strong passions of Farooq saab.”

Despite his love for his craft, he liked to live life at his own pace. “Farooq was quite lazy,” says Sarika, “We were in the thick of all the good reviews we were receiving for the film and all he’d say was ‘Ab toh aur bhi kaam karna padega!’ (Now I’ll have to do even more work).”

“I really felt that he had a very interesting second innings as an actor,” she adds. “With films like Shanghai and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, I felt like he wasn’t scared to touch upon his emotions anymore. Club 60 wasn’t exactly his kind of film, but the message of the movie resonates with the kind of person he was.”

For someone who was known as a good listener, there were very few with whom Farooq shared his own life stories. “In that sense he was a very private person,” says Deepti. “I remember he was going through a tough time with his business at some point. I immediately called [him] and asked what went wrong and why he hadn’t told me about it. He brushed it off saying, ‘Nahin, nahin, aisi koi baat nahin hai, main mazey mein hoon’ (No, no, there’s no such thing, I’m just fine). That was his weakness. He’d never bare his soul to others, but he’d always be there when another person was in trouble.”

Swara Bhaskar, who played his friend’s daughter in Listen… Amaya, remembers how he bought her and the film crew 25 kg of gulab jamun, when she merely asked for one. On her blog, she describes him as an insider who was equally an outsider; an actor, but also an observer. ‘He seemed to relish being able to step into the circus ring that is Bollywood, play his part and then step out, take his seat and watch the show with that knowing smile on his face,’ she writes.

Working till his very last day, he never wanted the curtains to close.

Says Shabana Azmi, “The last show of our play Tumhari Amrita was held against the Taj Mahal in Agra on 14th December last year. We got a standing ovation for it and I told Farooq that after 21 years of this play, this is a fitting finale. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘We are good to carry on for another 21 years!’” n 20 january 2014

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CINEMA

lisa maree williams/getty images

The Madhuri Mantra Madhuri Dixit claims she is boring and non-controversial in her real life but does not mind boldness in her roles. That is what drew her to Dedh Ishqiya Shradha Sukumaran

the dancer sublime Madhuri Dixit performs live at Sydney, Australia

B

ig wavy curls, flouncy dresses paired with tight waistcoats and oversized plastic hoop earrings—just how could Madhuri Dixit forget that phase? She was shooting a melodramatic love story 25 years ago with the nation’s heartthrob Aamir Khan in the same dusty Mumbai studio that she’s in now, talking about love all over again with her new movie Dedh Ishqiya.

This is a sleeker Dixit, in a bodyhugging black sheath that ends above her knees, seated on a swivel chair on Floor No: 7, a bare, soulless room at Mehboob Studios. “The first film I shot here?” The memory is hazy, the look in the 46-year-old heroine’s eyes faraway.

“I’ve faced too many questions today… difficult to remember. I don’t usually look back. It must have been Dil.” Dixit isn’t given to bouts of nostalgia. She’s forever moving forward, embracing change. The actress did a saucy dance number Ghagra with Ranbir Kapoor in 2013’s blockbuster Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, despite being his father Rishi’s heroine in Sahibaan (1993) and Prem Granth (1996). She wholeheartedly romanced 63-yearold Naseeruddin Shah in this month’s Dedh Ishqiya, even though her older costars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan are now paired with actresses half her age. Does it rankle?

“Yes, revenge of the women—we must start romancing younger men,” she jokes, then gives a prosaic answer. “It’s always been that way. Heroes go with what works for their projects. They also get paid more. It’s not just in films, though. You see discrimination in every field. Women have to work twice as hard and nudge others out of the way to the top. They have to make a place for themselves.”

Dixit has made her place again. It may not be the superstardom that she and arch-rival Sridevi once enjoyed in the 1990s, but she’s resuscitated her career. After living in Denver for a decade, Dixit shifted back to Mumbai in 2011 and got out of full-time mommyhood with a vengeance. Two successful seasons as a TV reality show judge in Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, two films in 2014, brand endorsements of Ayurvedic open www.openthemagazine.com 53

chyawanprash to toothpaste to anti-ageing cream, as well as an online dancing school. Thirty years after she made her debut in Abodh, Madhuri Dixit still sells.

Dixit’s work ethic, coupled with the fact that she’s always been very proper, have contributed to her success. She faces the media barrage with equanimity, flashing her singular smile when questions from television journalists tumble out together in an incomprehensible rush. When I speak to Dixit later, there’s a schoolmarmish, rehearsed manner with which she takes on questions, resembling the practised tone she had during our last interview a decade ago when she was on a visit from Denver. Her hands lie on her lap in a neat cross, and unlike other stars, she doesn’t fidget with her phone, discuss box office figures or gossip about who’s sleeping with whom these days.

“I’m a non-controversial, boring person,” she explains, “I don’t say bad things for effect. I like positivity in life.

I’m excited [while] acting and dancing.

Otherwise, I keep to myself and mind my own business.”

Dixit didn’t have the ‘ice maiden’ nickname that Aishwarya Rai sported, but she does reserve her emotions for the camera. Over the years, colleagues and journalists say they’ve scarcely seen her throw a tantrum. She barely lets even bad weather or lack of sleep get to her.

“She doesn’t behave like a diva,” says her 27-year-old co-star Huma Qureishi.

“Actors have those awkward moments when you’re waiting for the shot to get ready and you’re thinking of the scene, so you don’t want to chat. Madhuri would often be humming to herself.

It was like I had found a kindred soul.

We’d hum together.”

The star won the Filmfare Best Actress awards for both Dil (1990) and Beta (1992), yet her director Indra Kumar reveals that she was at an alltime professional low when he signed her on. Kumar remembers a more reserved Dixit, one who opened up slowly during the Dil shoot. Back then, the actress revelled in the dramatic scenes and dance numbers, and seemed uneasy performing comedy. “When I signed Madhuri for both films, people asked me, ‘Have you gone mad? This girl is jinxed. She’s had eight flops in a row.’ I just felt she was a brilliant actress. I began shooting both 54 open

films simultaneously—Dil from 14 October 1988 and Beta on 27 October.

Madhuri was never depressed by the flops, but she was determined to succeed. In December 1988, Tehzaab released, then Ram Lakhan in January 1989. Madhuri became a big star even before Dil released.”

She may be patient to a fault, yet Dixit confesses she’s grateful for the changes she’s seen in movie-making over the last 30 years. “There were no vanity vans and we sat in the sun for hours, under those umbrellas. Now there are bound scripts, costumes and storyboards so you can see how the film will be shot. And thank God for sync sound,” she exclaims, looking heavenwards, “We had to dub in a studio and it was like doing the entire film all over again. But we only did four interviews back then. It’s different now, there are so many distractions. You have to make a noise for your film to be heard over this din.”

Madhuri’s hands lie on her lap in a neat cross, and unlike other stars, she doesn’t fidget with her phone, discuss box office figures or gossip about who’s sleeping with whom It was the novelty of her character Begum Para that persuaded her to sign Dedh Ishqiya after a seven-year film hiatus. Dixit was taken in by Vidya Balan’s role when she first saw Ishqiya in 2010.

“She was so bold and there was no explanation for why she was like that, no ‘mera ek beemar bachcha hai’ excuses.

That was wonderful because it made her real. She wasn’t an avenger, a victim or just eye-candy. These are the three slots that we are often put into.

Ishqiya broke all that.”

Dixit and her cardiothoracic surgeon husband Dr Shriram Nene moved back to Mumbai because they wanted their sons Arin, 10, and Ryan, 8, to grow up with Indian values and culture. She has a deep devotion towards Kathak and reveals that there was a time when she learnt to read and write a bit of Urdu because of her fondness for the poetry of Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Qureishi says this filters down to her sons. “It was sweet to see her boys play tabla at a memorial for Madhuri’s dad [who passed away in September 2014].” The star says she was worried about whether her kids would miss Denver— the parks, skiing and snowboarding—but they’ve “settled down so nicely, touch wood”.

She’s amused when asked if they’ve grown used to Madhuri Dixit, the mom. “I like the touch of innocence that they have. They used to come running, yelling, ‘Mum, you’re on TV.’ Now they say (sounding bored), ‘Ma, you’re on TV’ and go back to what they were doing.”

You’d imagine that the greater adjustment has come from her husband Dr Nene, who now manages the couple’s online venture, RnM Moving Pictures. Apart from online classes where Dixit teaches various dance styles from Salsa to Navratri, the two plan to launch a health portal in 2014 that bridges the “patient-doctor gap”.

Yet it must have been difficult, giving up a life of anonymity, being mobbed so often. Dixit is embarrassed as I bring up the incident when she wrapped her face in a scarf on a visit to the Taj Mahal. “Oh that, it was funny. We went to the Red Fort in Agra, but were followed by thousands of people. So when I went to the Taj Mahal, I covered my face. I didn’t want to spoil the vacation for other visitors. We didn’t know that there was a cameraman, clicking away to glory. Jaane doh,” she says, with a flick of her hand.

Apparently, Dixit has struck a balance, even hammering out a comfortable working equation with the husband. She’s able to rattle off tips for a happy married life as if she’s given it enough time and deep thought. “No egos, lots of communication. Always remember that you are fighting for the same goals, happiness and prosperity. Have plenty of fun and forget small squabbles,” she says animatedly. In Dedh Ishqiya’s trailer, the seven stages of love are listed—attraction, infatuation, love, reverence, worship, obsession and death. I ask Dixit in which stage she’d place herself. She throws her head back in full-throated laughter and it strikes you as a wonderful sound. “Some people would say that after shaadi comes maut. [But] to me, it’s mohabbat—with your husband, kids, parents and friends.” n 20 january 2014

music

The Discovery of Dubstep Bangalore plays host to India’s first festival of this variation of electronic music, and surprisingly, as many as 2,000 people turn up Aastha Atray Banan

B

ritish Dubstep biggie Nero is on stage. They are playing their huge hit—Crush—and the trio, comprising Daniel Stephens, Joe Ray and vocalist Alana Watson, stand on a stage called the ‘cloud’, which looks like it’s a floating creation of cloth squares stitched together, shooting out rays of light and smoke. The crowd sways in tandem. As a Dubstep virgin, when I watched a few Dubstep YouTube videos the night before, I couldn’t get the charm of this music. But standing in Bangalore on a cold night, surrounded by young things throwing their heads and bodies around, I found myself doing the same. The beat got me.

India might have hosted its first Dubstep festival in Bangalore last month (sponsored by Smirnoff), but this variant of electronic music has been around for a while. It emerged in London in the 90s; along with being rooted in forms of music such as drum and bass and reggae, it is said that Dubstep owes its birth to Jamaican party sounds prevalent at the time. It is difficult to describe the music; in the words of music website Allmusic, it is ‘tightly-coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals’.

British dubstep producer Rusko, who was headlining the festival in Bangalore along with Nero, says that Dubstep is the craziest form of electronic music. “The bass line is the most important part of Dubstep. It makes your whole body vibrate.” Other acts that performed were Mode 7, Sulk Station, Sandunes, Squid Works, Dualist Inquiry, the Bay Beat Collective

56 open

and Vachan Chinnappa.

To my ears, it sounds like beats and bass lines being thrown like boomerangs, which then come back to you and reverberate like taut rubber bands. Sounds confusing? That’s what Dubstep does to you—it disorients you; you might lose your sense of place. Kay and Peele, an American sketch comedy TV show, once did a sketch on the two main characters acting like young kids trying to enjoy the new music sensation, Dubstep. The sketch ends with one of them throwing himself through the window, both their noses bleeding and their minds going crazy.

But the youngsters at the festival seem quite in sync with the music.

The 2,000-plus crowd, all above the age of 21, as alcohol is being served, is a smart, chic and affluent one. They are dressed in ‘music festival’ clothing, which is tiny shorts with cool graphic tees and floaty dresses for the girls (channeling Kate Moss at Glastonbury), and faded denims and black tees for the boys. They are all drinking vodka and beer out of fluorescent mugs, beakers and cups. They all have fluorescent glow sticks, which they wave as they scream.

The music takes you to a different place, feels 26-year-old Farzana Ashraf Arakkal, who has flown down from Bombay for the festival. The information security consultant has been listening to Dubstep for five years now, and says what she likes best about the music is that it makes her forget everything. “I had gone to Bangalore to watch the Indian act Dualist Enquiry.

I really enjoyed the show, the crowd

was good. The stage was great, too, and that enhanced the whole experience.” Another Bombay resident, who has come down for the festival, Arun Vishwanath, says that he started listening to Dubstep a year ago, and likes it because it has a nice pace to it and is perfect to work out to. He also feels that the crowd at the festival isn’t pretentious at all, as they all seem to be genuine Dubstep lovers. “I went for the Avicii concert recently and it was full of people who were just pretending to like this music as it is deemed ‘cool’. All the people here seem like they really love the music. They are all [actual] fans.”

20 January 2014

edelman india private limited

going electronic British dubstep producer Rusko says Dubstep is the craziest form of electronic music

The stage, designed by the firm Vita Motus, is proving a big draw too.

This particular stage set is the work of Heather Shaw and Alex Lazarus, who have designed sets for music festivals like Coachella, and shows like American Idol. This is the first time that 3D mapping has been done in India, and the result is a massive sound and light show that makes the music come alive. “We wanted to make a stage that was interesting during the day and at night. The cloud concept always works,” says Heather. Lighting director Alan Nathan adds: “It’s all about interpreting the music for the audience through lights and tricks.” The Vita 20 January 2014

Motus team is, in fact, taken aback to learn that India is listening to electronic music; that too, Dubstep. “We still thought that India only listens to Psy Trance, which Goa is famous for. But times have changed.”

Rusko, who brought the house down with his stage presence and music, is also surprised by the number of people who turned up for the event. “I started making Dubstep when it wasn’t even called Dubstep. I give it my own stamp by using real instruments, and not just making stuff on the computer.

India really surprised me. It was mad!”

He drops a bomb when he admits that he doesn’t respect electronic legends

Daft Punk, whose latest album Random Access Memories has done phenomenally well. “In the Electronica genre, we write and produce and do everything.

Daft Punk has a team to help them— and I don’t respect that,” he says, and then cheekily adds, “though the sound is pleasant enough.”

The defining visual of the festival for me has to be watching a bunch of friends standing in a circle and headbanging as Rusko delivers the beats.

And even though he doesn’t regard them too highly, it is Daft Punk lyrics that come to mind–everyone is losing themselves to dance, as the song goes. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

rough cut

Which Was the Year’s Biggest Hit? Nobody Knows Mayank Shekhar

Making sense of the arithmetic behind blockbuster movies after the mid-2000s

E

xactly at what point did regular film-goers like you deals he is likely to land or sustain. and I begin to express love, hate or indifference toMy knowledge of Bollywood business rivals Narendra wards films like a scoreboard?

Modi’s grasp of Indian history. Whatever little I’ve picked ‘Got out of theatre. Film will take 2-cr opening, 3.5-cr up is from guzzling Kingfishers in Versova with those in the weekend, 6-7-cr lifetime. #Fail’ said one tweet. Fail, why? dhanda—or, in one case, swigging vodkas with Ram Gopal You didn’t like? I didn’t tweet back. Clearly, they were talkVarma. Very roughly, this is how it works: ing about a low-budget film. If it had been a big-budget Typically, a producer, on the back of a male marquee name ‘event’ picture—Krrish/Dhoom 3—they would have been greenlighting a project (also known as a script), pools in reshouting from rooftops how the film would shatter all boxsources to make, say, a Rs 10-crore film. He sells it to a studio office records, months before its release. (or another producer) at Rs 20 crore. They spend a further 25 With films, as with humans, money is an easy barometer per cent or so on developing film prints and publicising the of success when there is no measure for quality. India has no film. Half the money spent on advertising, as they say, goes equivalent of the Oscars, where an award can instantly boost waste, but who knows which half? a film’s commercial prospects globally. Practically every The movie is now worth Rs 25 crore. It is sold to distribuBollywood film finds ‘critical acclaim’—three, four or five tors on varying terms depending on the ‘buzz’ around the stars from some reviewer, analyst, radio film or how ‘garam’ it is before its rejockey, numerologist, astrologer or the lease. Distributors across India are orother, which get plastered on the film’s Actor-producer Aamir Khan ganised by region, often named after prebillboards. I’m only surprised no one has suggests that the gains in Independence principalities: Nizam, started rating films beyond five stars yet.

Central Province Central India, stock prices from declaring Mysore, Box-office figures indicate the number Bombay Presidency, East Punjab, and a film a hit outweigh the of people who actually went to watch a so on. The distributors together spend, losses a studio may incur presumably, Rs 50 crore to pick up the film. If that’s huge, the general assumption is it must be a film worth going film. They pass it down to single-screen while making it for. Or at least worth watching on a TV cinemas and multiplexes. Whatever channel that shells out crores for ‘sateldeals are struck with the distributors, lite’ rights. Maybe things have always been this way. And if let’s say it works out to all theatres collectively spending I hadn’t spent half my waking hours on social media since Rs 70 crore to play the film. Now, for the movie to make the mid 2000s, I might have never known how obsessed we money for everyone in the chain, it has to rake in no less all are with a movie’s box-office numbers. than Rs 70 crore, so that, effectively, becomes the ‘budget’ of Using gold price as an index for the value of the rupee, a Rs 10 crore picture.

India’s highest-earning film is Mughal-e-Azam. I’m not sure This isn’t radically different from any product that sells how many people in 1960 knew exactly how much it had with a mark-up on its cost price on the street. Here’s the made. Yet, everybody knows the opening score of Bodyguard catch, though: Most single-screen cinemas are known to un(Rs 22 crore) and that Agneepath, with Rs 23 crore, beat it. der-invoice the number of tickets sold. Old-time producThe mid-2000s is also when top stars began to co-produce ers were prone to show lower earnings to dupe the taxman. films they would star in. Box-office numbers became media Even till the early 2000s, 90 per cent of films were supposed tools to ego cast themselves to ‘the masses’. Imagine Shah to have flopped, which would be odd, because who the Rukh Khan as a politician and the collections of RA.One as hell wants to invest in an industry with only a 10 per cent the number of votes he’s secured. It has nothing to do with chance of making money? the film, but it directly impacts endorsements and other So, what’s the other thing that changed in the mid-2000s?

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arif ali/afp

the biggest film Mughal-e-Azam is India’s highest-earning film, using gold price as an index for the value of the rupee

Corporates entered the picture. Most of Bollywood is now run by half a dozen companies, most of which are also publicly-listed. Actor-producer Aamir Khan suggests the gains in stock prices from declaring a film a hit far outweigh the losses they may incur while making it: “[My corporate studio] may have effectively lost Rs 20 crore [on a film]. But if my share prices go up, I may earn Rs 200 crore. What is Rs 20 crore, so long as I can keep that perception?”

I see the point. Surely Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela was a blockbuster. It’s still easy to sense how this announcement would have hugely (even if notionally) benefitted the stock of producers Eros, which debuted at the New York Stock Exchange only two days before the film’s release.

The studio/producer posts the film’s box-office revenues.

Independent reporters are supposed to verify the claim.

These are bona fide trade analysts by self-appointment.

Between them, something as factual as a number can turn into weekly debates. There is no consensus yet on whether Krrish 3 beat Chennai Express, or if Dhoom 3 really walloped both to become the biggest hit of the year. Distressed by the ‘fudging of numbers’ late last year, Bombay Times, The Times of India’s advertorial space for entertainment ‘news’, decided to drop its box-office column altogether. It is in their best interest to piss off no one in particular.

Back in the day, the Bollywood producer in a white safari suit with shady friends could release, at best, a film a 20 january 2014

year. Today’s studios can roll out a movie every few weeks.

Except that a big blockbuster can only be designed around all of five or six superstars. So there is competitive bidding between studios for that actor whose Rs 10-crore film made Rs 70 crore (merely breaking even), and he rightly doubles his fee, which is half the film’s budget anyway. And the new movie, which looks so much like the old one, now has to make that much more.

This is how this piece of turd called the 100- or 200-crore movie was created. Nearly all the members of this club are either remakes or sequels. There are enough screens to ensure whoever wants to watch such a film does so on the weekend it opens. ‘Blackiyas’ needn’t scalp tickets anymore. It’s the only major release playing on every multiplex screen. Its star and songs and promos have invaded your senses already. A film this ‘front-loaded’ could hurt your backside. Web trolls add salt to your wound if you hated the film, as if it’s your fault it did so well (‘Read ur review of Chennai Express, did 228 crore! Phat gayi? Lol’).

I’m sure Salman bhai’s fans are gearing up for Jai Ho’s release. I totally get the excitement for a movie. I’m just not sure how its crossing Rs 300 crore adds to the pleasure, bhaitard. You’ll be the one spending that money—and it’s not coming back to you. n Mayank Shekhar runs the pop-culture website TheW14.com open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

receptors Of a total of around 1,000 receptors in the human body, about 800 are G-protein-coupled receptors—half of which sense and translate aromas.

But only 27 taste receptors exist

Why Jamaicans Are Fast A new study concludes that their athletic success lies in their symmetrical knees

Odour Receptors in Lungs

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hat makes sprinters from

the Caribbean, especially those from Jamaica like Usain Bolt, so good? Their success is incredible given that in comparison with other countries, these Caribbean islands have so few people. A new study claims that what sets them apart from equally able sprinters of other regions is not really their physical strength or mental stamina. The answer lies in their knees.

The study was published by researchers from the UK’s Northumbria University in the journal PLOS One. The researchers found that children from Jamaica have more symmetrical legs than others do. And that among Jamaican children, those with the most symmetrical legs, especially the knees, tend to become better sprinters once they become adults, compared to others.

For the study, a group of primary school Jamaican children were followed from 1996 to 2010. In 1996, the children, numbering 288 with an average age of eight, were measured for body symmetry. These measurements included knee width, ankle circumference, finger length, foot length, etcetera. The researchers con-

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ducted a follow up measurement in 2006 and measured their sprinting speeds in 2010. Of the 288 children initially studied, 163 of them volunteered to sprint in 2010 (in 90 m and 180 m races).

The researchers found that participants with symmetric legs in 1996 and 2006, particularly knees, tended to volunteer for these sprints and also tended to be faster sprinters when tested in 2010. They also found that Jamaican children had substantially more symmetrical legs than children from the UK. According to the researches, sprinters from Jamaica appear to have been self-selected for greater symmetry. One of the researchers, John Manning, writes in the journal: ‘Symmetry of the legs (measured in 1996) was greater in our 2010 sample of volunteers in comparison to the non-volunteers of that year. This effect suggests that Jamaican children with high symmetry in the legs will readily take part in sprints when they are young adults... We conclude that high knee symmetry in childhood is linked to an ability to sprint fast in adult Jamaicans as well as a readiness to sprint.’ n

Scientists at Washington University in St Louis and University of Iowa have shown that our lungs have odour receptors as well. Unlike the receptors in our nose, which are located in the membranes of nerve cells, the ones in the lungs are in the membranes of neuroendocrine cells. Instead of sending nerve impulses to the brain that allow it to ‘perceive’ the smell of a burning cigarette in the vicinity, they trigger the neuroendocrine cells to dump hormones that make our airways constrict. This newly discovered class of cells—pulmonary neuroendocrine cells—might be responsible for the chemical hypersensitivity that characterises respiratory diseases such chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. n

Maternal Infections and Autism

According to a study published in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, hospital-diagnosed maternal bacterial infections during pregnancy are associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders in children. The study included 407 children with autism and 2,075 matched children who did not have autism.

“Though infections in pregnant women are fairly common, in this study most were not associated with an increased risk of autism,” says Lisa A Croen, PhD, research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and senior author of the study. “Only bacterial infections diagnosed in the hospital were associated with an increased risk.” n 20 january 2014

aakash tablet Aakash is the name given to the low-cost tablet computer being procured by the Indian Government to help enhance the quality of education in the country. The first version of Aakash, Aakash 1, was launched on 5 October 2011

tech&style

PlayStation 4 This avatar is faster, sleeker and powerful enough to last you till the next version gagandeep Singh Sapra

Chronograph Grande w Date

Price on request

Rs 39,990 Blancpain’s new Chronograph Grande Date houses Blancpain Calibre 26F8G, a mechanical selfwinding movement composed of 495 parts. The 38.6 mm diameter case in 18-carat red gold set with 40 diamonds is water-resistant to 3 bar. Its sapphire back provides an opportunity to admire the graceful femininity of the petal-shaped oscillating weight.

This model is available in white gold and steel versions. n

Datawind PocketSurfer 5

T

he first thing that you no-

tice about Sony’s PlayStation 4 is that it does not run any of the older games, so either keep your old console stashed away to play those games or sell it along with all those precious games. Though this may seem to be a downside, PS4 offers more detailed games and much higher resolutions.

The box sits nicely in a cabinet and even looks cool on the shelf. It has a 6-speed Blu-Ray disc, and the front slope hides 2 USB 3.0 ports. The design also makes it easy to press the power and eject buttons by just a feel.

At the back of the box is an HDMI, ethernet, optical audio out and a proprietary port for the PlayStation camera. What I like is that Sony has moved the power adapter inside the console, so all it requires now is a direct AC connection.

Inside the PS4 is a custom processor from AMD that has 8 Cores; there is also a next generation Radeon GPU and 500 GB hard disk drive. The PS4 can output full HD graphics at 1080p

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at 60 frames per second, and the builtin Wi-Fi lets you connect it to various web services. What I do not understand is why Sony missed out on 5GHz wireless and just put in 2.4 GHz, especially since the console is designed to last for a few years.

The home screen is redesigned and makes you get to your games easily; it also shows you where in the game you are, and you can use social connect features too.

Sony has also changed its wireless controller to DualShock 4, which has a number of new features; there is a colourful light bar and a clickable touchpad to navigate the screens.

The DualShock4 controller gives you both enhanced comfort and better control. The controller also features a micro USB port that lets you charge it with any charger lying around the house. The 3.5 mm jack, added to the DualShock 4 controller, lets you use any headphone or mono headset for a voice chat with other gamers. n

Rs 3,499

Demand for cheaper phones that can do most stuff you want is very high, and from the makers of Aakash comes this entry-level phone that features a huge 5” touch screen, though at a resolution of only 272x480.

It has a micro SD card slot to increase storage capacity, a micro USB port for charging, dual Sim connectivity and even has both front (0.3 megapixel) and back (2 megapixel) cameras. The phone supports only GPRS/EDGE connectivity. It uses back-end cloud servers to compress data and let you surf the internet. It also features an instant messaging client as well as a web browser. This one is for those who want a low cost handset with large screen. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

The director s scorcese directed The Martin Scorcese film The Wolf of Wall Street also stars three directors in acting roles: Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau and Spike Jonze. Two of them are credited roles, while Jonze appears in an uncredited appearance, going by the names on IMDB

The Wolf of Wall Street So good is its craftsmanship and acting that its lack of meaning is forgivable ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Mr. Joe B Carvalho Director Samir Tewari cast Arshad Warsi, Soha Ali Khan,

Jaaved Jaaferi

Score ★★★★★

o DiCaprio, Cast Leonard rgot Robbie Ma , Jonah Hill in Scorsese rt Ma r to ec Dir

G

iven a choice between celebrating hedonism and morality, Martin Scorsese almost always opts for self indulgence. As a significant American filmmaker and an excellent film historian, it is striking how obsessive and compulsive so many of his protagonists are. In too many of his mid and late career films, from Goodfellas to The Wolf of Wall Street, he places violence, greed and high living centre stage, without even a sideway glance at the moral dimension of his characters and subjects.

So when he makes a movie on the memoirs of Jordon Belfort, a stock swindler who cheated thousands of investors and was convicted in the late 1990s, he gives us three hours of entertainment, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing Belfort and swimming in an ocean of cocaine, quaaludes and hookers. You hear people investing their life savings on his promises on the telephone, you watch an FBI investigation closing in on his fraud, but not once in the movie do you see a scene with an 62 open

investor who has lost his life savings on this scumbag’s assurances.

Scorsese’s cinematic skill is in lifestyle presentation and in the astute understanding and direction of actors.

He is brilliant here, and the sequences of materialistic and hallucinogenic indulgences offer a compelling narrative in themselves. The best choreographed scene is when Belfort takes an overdose of quaaludes, a drug that, amongst other things, brings your motor skills to a virtual halt. His Ferrari is wrecked without him, the driver, even knowing it.

The thing about this movie is that so good is its craftsmanship and acting that its absence of meaning never really bothers you. This is particularly true of DiCaprio’s performance, and it is only on reflection that you realise that he has done this sort of role half a dozen times before, with only minor variations of contexts—most recently in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

This movie is inconsequential but great to watch. n

The title of this film is designed to translate phonetically as ‘Jo Bhi Karwa Lo’ (get whatever you want done), which must be interpreted as consent by its filmmaker to trash his movie. The movie is simply terrible, and doesn’t work on a single level of cinematic communication, but the openness to critical evaluation must be appreciated.

This is a comedy about a detective called Carvalho, and it has a pretty decent cast with Arshad Warsi playing the detective, Soha Ali Khan his girlfriend, and Jaaved Jaaferi and Vijay Raaz as comic villains. But the script, scenario and direction is so shockingly inept, it takes your breath away. The film is like a bad high school production that has somehow, in some incomprehensible fiddle, made it to a multiplex release.

The centre of activity in the film is Carvalho, but there is no focus on what he is investigating, for whom, and why.

One random scene just leads to another.

We see Soha Ali Khan in a police uniform, then in an ‘item’ dress and finally in a bikini, without the faintest idea of what the motivation is for her various presentations, or how it connects to the plot.

It is sad to say this, but this is the kind of movie that should be walked out of. n ad

20 january 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

The Birthday Party Without Exes

Days after it was learnt that John Abraham had married girlfriend Priya Runchal in Los Angeles on their Christmas break, Bipasha Basu brought in her 35th birthday with boyfriend Harman Baweja and her closest friends on Monday night. At a surprise party thrown by her sisters at her Bandra home, the Jism star, dressed in a pink blouse and green skirt, sporting a tiara on her head, blew out the candles on her red velvet cake as guests were treated to jell-o shots and a sumptuous Bengali spread.

Filmi attendees included Bipasha’s Bachna Ae Haseeno director Siddharth Anand, and her Jodi Breakers co-star R Madhavan, both accompanied by their respective wives.

Her closest pals Rocky S, Deanne Pandey and Dipannita Sharma turned up, as did Sophie Choudhary, and Harman’s Dishkiyaoon producers Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra, with Shamita Shetty. Conspicuous by their absence were Bipasha’s exes Milind Soman, Dino Morea and Shahid Kapoor, who’d all attended her Diwali party only months ago.

Her parents, who were present but kept a low profile, reportedly told her friends they approved of Harman, “because he treats our daughter right”. The young man in question, cheerfully mingled with Bipasha’s friends and encouraged guests to top up their drinks when he spotted empty glasses.

A Nineties’ Story Revisited

It appears that the Sidharth Malhotra-Parineeti Chopra starrer Hasee Toh Phasee, which releases in February, may be a modern-day rom-com version of the 1993 melodrama Aaina. Who’d have thought?

That film, about a pushy woman who makes a play for the man her younger sister loves, starred Amrita Singh and Juhi Chawla as siblings competing for the affections of Jackie Shroff. A showcase for the acting skills of its two leading ladies (who had been pitted as rivals in another triangular romance only the previous year—Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman with Shah Rukh Khan), Aaina famously offered no scope for Jackie to make his presence felt. And now there are murmurs that the same may be true of Hasee Toh Phasee, which was reportedly offered to Vicky Donor star Ayushmann Khurrana, before producer Karan Johar decided it 20 january 2014

would make a fitting second film for his discovery, Sidharth.

Ayushmann, who was approached for the film before Nautanki Saala bombed in April last year, has told friends he turned down the film because it was quite clearly a starring vehicle for Parineeti, and because it didn’t have much in it for him to do. The role of the second sister, meanwhile, is played

by Adah Sharma, who previously starred in two Vikram Bhatt duds (1920 and Phhir), and also last year’s washout Hum Hain Raahi Car Ke.

The Superstar’s Crisis Coach

It appears that this A-list male star has recruited the services of a ‘life coach’ recently to help him tide over trying times in his personal life. The superstar reportedly shells out Rs 5 lakh a month to the gentleman for his services; his mother and sister have also employed the coach to help them with their own ‘challenges’, for which he is paid separately.

A close friend of the star says the coach advises the actor “on how to keep his head clear and focus on what’s important”. He frequently travels with the actor on outstation shoots, flying business class on the star’s or his producer’s account. He is responsible for keeping the star’s mood elevated “during any and every dark phase” and creates exercises for the actor to stay perennially positive.

The actor’s staff and close friends have also noticed that the coach exploits his access to rich and powerful folk he encounters through his association with the star. On one occasion, when he was introduced to a leading Congress politician in Delhi while travelling with the actor, the coach spent the evening impressing the neta and succeeded in making an appointment with the bigwig and his wife the next day to explain his services.

When the actor returned from a personal trip to the US a few weeks ago, the coach—who hadn’t travelled with him this time—promptly showed up at his home just hours after his arrival, ready to resume his job. While the star appears perfectly content with the gentleman’s involvement in his life, his friends have allegedly been grumbling that the actor is being taken for a ride. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Instant Manifestos

‘As a direct response to neglect, content decided to disappear... like a spurned lover tried as a second option, the message will agree to be wooed only for the chance to slap you in the face. For when you face it, it will be empty. The spurned lover will leave behind a hologram of herself and when you address the hologram, it will burst like a balloon’ An exhibition curated by Himali Singh Soin brings together 27 aesthetic manifestos that reflect on art and are abstract objects of art in themselves. Each of these is on a single sheet of A4 size paper, which the artists were told to use as a studio standard. The lack of objects in the exhibition commands pause and reflection, as does Soin’s own poetic and rambling manifesto (extracted above) on the manifestos she has commissioned. Featured artists include Zuleikha Chaudhari, Neha Choksi, Raqs Media Collective, Sahej Rahal, Pors & Rao, Ranbir Kaleka, Aradhana Seth and Bharti Kher, among others.

We Are Ours: A Collection of Manifestos for the Instant Open 6.30 - 9.00 pm till the end of January 2014 at Clark House, 8 Nathalal Parekh Marg, Mumbai 64 open

20 january 2014