OPEN Magazine 25 November 2013

The shady world of gold loans

Sting on sexselective abortions

RS 35 2 5 N ove m b e r 2 0 1 3

INSIDE What’s next for Sachin Tendulkar l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

J uv e nil e del i n q u en t s

w e e k

The Boy Gangs The dark world of underage criminals.

Should they be shown mercy?

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor Manu Joseph managing Editor Rajesh Jha Deputy Editor Aresh Shirali Political Editor Hartosh Singh Bal 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 Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra Assistant Art Director Tarun Sehgal 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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R Rajmohan

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Volume 5 Issue 46 For the week 19—25 Nov 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover photo

Gali Tibbon/AFP

akash

The golden age of American television is complemented by the internet. Most of its critically acclaimed as well as highly popular shows are also released to be downloaded and watched online. The best example of this process would be Breaking Bad. For its initial two or three seasons, though critically acclaimed, its viewership ratings were dismal. However, the creators released it on Netflix. Word of mouth and internet discussion forums generated such a buzz (of course the creators of the show The Indian version of maintained the quality) 24 too can be released that its final two seasons broke TV viewership on Netflix, Hulu, records. I guess the same YouTube or any other can be done for the online platform for a Indian version of 24 too worldwide audience (‘Cracker Trail Gone Damp’, 11 November 2013). They can release it on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube or any other online platform (even Torrent) for a worldwide audience. Indian viewers of the American show 24 had only access to pirated versions of the show online. Most of the millennial generation form their viewpoints from online forums, discussions and tweets. So, why not release Indian shows online too? If they like what they see online, they will surely come back to watch the latest episodes on broadcast TV.  letter of the week Doordarshan for News

this is unfortunately the truth about broadcast media: biased coverage is given to political parties as per editorial bosses’ affiliations (‘Modi, Media and Money’, 18 November 2013).

And it’s not just limited to a Modi. The Congress too has its set reporters and news channels. Truly speaking, the best channel, which actually gives unbiased news, is Doordarshan. It’s a government-funded channel but at least its anchors and reporters don’t shove in their opinions. They just state what’s happening, albeit in a monotonous voice. But at least it’s news and not commercial entertainment or biased opinion.  Shruti Kedia

25 november 2013

what i dont like is treating regional parties as evidence of a vibrant democracy. These regional parties are leeches and power brokers that put regional agendas over the nation’s. I would rather vote for a corrupt Congress than for these regional leeches.  Har sh VS

Lipgloss Feminism

a woman picks up a particular magazine from a variety because it appeals to her; in a way it is her friend who offers advice and direction. If a magazine has decided to offer direction to hundreds of women in understanding feminism better, what is so wrong with it? (‘Glossy Coat’, 18 November 2013). The current movement of

feminism has changed. It is no longer one of man-hating, angry women. There is no longer a need to be that aggressive. Currently, it is about average women who can easily say ‘I like fancy clothes, I like make up, but I’d also like my freedom and my right to equality.’ A woman can be obsessed with pretty-andtrendy glossy pages and be educated-aware-confident, ready to defend her choices. I think those are the women Elle is aiming at.  Nit ya Uppal

When the Lights Go Off

as a jat from the region, you cannot even imagine the pain I and many others like me feel at what is happening to both Jats and Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, UP (‘Why?’, 18 November 2013). The reason why Jats in the area did not celebrate Diwali is not because the panchayats said so, but because of their sadness at losing their people, and seeing how this riot, sponsored by the SP and BJP, has torn apart two communities that lived and fought together since the gadar of 1857. The panchayats were just reflecting that popular feeling—by not celebrating Diwali.  Gaurav Singh

Different Strokes

i’ve seen reviews where people quote passages to show how beautiful it is. But this is the first time I’ve seen anyone quote extensively to prove how crappy the whole thing is (‘Postponing the Punchline’, 11 November 2013).  Shovon Chowdhury

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The Truth About Campus Life insight

A survey finds almost all female and a third of male JNU students have faced sexual harassment

d e l h i For a university that has nurtured India’s feminist movement, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is the pits when it comes to sexual harassment on campus. A survey finds it to be so ‘widespread’ that only four per cent of female students said they had never been sexually harassed.

As many as 30 per cent of male students said they had been.

The survey was conducted online by Professors Ayesha Kidwai and Madhu Sahni to study gender relations on campus after a 23-year-old boy hacked his girlfriend to death 25 november 2013

in a classroom on 31 July. He later committed suicide by consuming poison.

‘Respondents identify a number of ‘hotspots’ of sexual harassment, with canteens or dhabas emerging as the main ones,’ the report states. Most respondents said that stalking, sharing pictures online without consent or making sexually suggestive remarks constituted sexual harassment.

Many male respondents also cited ‘forced sex in the boys hostel and creating [an] MMS’, ‘abusive messages and images inscribed on toilet walls’, and

‘false/true discussion about intimate relations by self or by others, violating the privacy of the concerned student’ as examples of sexual harassment.

The survey also looked at violence within relationships.

About 21 per cent of respondents reported that they have been in or continue to be in relationships involving physical and emotional abuse. Physical abuse was found to be directed mostly towards woman. Men’s experience of abuse was predominantly emotional. A few male respondents believed that ‘a woman’s rejection of

their advances’ was abusive.

The survey also found 63 per cent of respondents critical of the conduct of male teachers in dealing with women. A female student said, “One professor at my centre makes abusive derogatory comments about women in general and particularly about feminist scholars.” Another student says: “There is a faculty member in my centre who stares quite openly at women during seminars, and even if he sees me with my female friends outside or anywhere on campus.” n Aanchal Bansal

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ashish sharma

small world

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contents

angle

Varma’s selfplagiarism

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cover story Too young for punishment, too hard to reform

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sachin

foeticide

Now what?

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fashion

Those who can, blog

Sting operators

25 gold

business

Loan sharks

Reliance as defaulter

Notes

Think

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of de ■ r shin ■

While the sessions at Think 2013, the Tehelka event touted as the one stop shop for intellectual talk, were thought-provoking, the real action was offstage. The event’s star speaker Robert De Niro, for instance, refused to really speak, mostly just grunting or offering monosyllabic answers to questions, only becoming more of an enigma by the time he walked off stage. You might blame his reticence on the events of the night before his session, when he was accosted by enthusiastic Indians at a lavish party. After shaking his hand vigorously, they tried to hold onto him for pictures as he stormed off the hotel lawns.

sushil

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s o m e a n t ics

Other than that, there was director Shekhar Kapoor smiling sagely at every corner and actor Farhan Akhtar singing a duet with Remo which made us reassess his singing chops. But the strangest scene featured celebrity journalist and editor Tina Brown, clutching her purse and standing alone near a stack of plates as she animatedly polished off her dessert. n Aastha Atray Banan

Crowd Safety Safetipin is the latest of a spate of new mobile applications intended to enhance women’s safety.

While most such apps are designed around the concept of an automatic alarm informing family and friends in times of distress, this app, developed by a social researcher and entrepreneur in collaboration with NIIT, looks at crowd-sourcing information to mark locations as safe or unsafe for

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women. It runs on users uploading through their smartphones information about and photos of incidents of harassment, hazards and places of help—hospitals, police stations or emergency homes—at or near a location.

They can then collectively view all information relating to a neighbourhood. Each time something new is uploaded, a pop-up screen will alert the user to it. n Aanchal Bansal

F o r making a big show of a

Central probe of the alleged foreign funding of the Aam Aadmi Party After Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit questioned the source of nearly Rs 19 crore collected by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s said he would investigate whether AAP’s funds were from foreign sources. While it is true that the Centre has been directed by the Delhi High Court to conduct a probe of AAP’s funding based on a Public Interest Litigation filed last month, and while the Home Ministry’s Foreigners’ Division is conducting a probe focused on whether the AAP breached the Representation of People’s Act by accepting funds from sources forbidden under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, Shinde’s statement, coming in the midst of campaigning for Delhi polls, seems an obvious attempt to tarnish the AAP, now a serious contender. n 25 November 2013

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bhutan

An encounter with modernity

48

c cinema

56

Interview: Paul Schrader

p NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

63

Vidya and ‘Sid’

a true life

Double Speak Arvind Kejriwal’s liberal and secular credentials were questioned recently when he met with controversial Muslim cleric Tauqeer Raza Khan in a Muslim vote garnering exercise ahead of the Delhi elections. Meem Afzal, a Muslim face of the Congress party, had then been very vocal in his criticism of Kejriwal. But the Congress party now finds itself a little tongue tied after its General Secretary, Digvijaya Singh, shared a dais with the same cleric.

At a public function in UP’s Sambhal district, Singh even lauded Khan for bolstering Hindu-Muslim harmony by declaring a need to protect cows.

Khan, meanwhile, has been saying that he supports Kerjiwal’s fight against corruption and communalism and, if need be, will campaign for the Aam Aadmi Party. n

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arts

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A 3D printing party

After raising the possibility of an alliance with the BJP if it came to power in 2014, Dr Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, Kashmir General Secretary for the National Conference party, demurred i t was n ’ t m e

“Sheikh [Abdullah] sahib used to say that we have to sit with the government at the right side in Delhi.

If Modi becomes Prime Minister, the NC will support him in the interest of the people of our state”

“The news attributed to me that the NC will support Narendra Modi or the BJP at the Centre post the 2014 general election is wrong, and I vehemently deny having said that”

—Dr Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, quoted by KNS News Agency, 4 November 2013

—Dr Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, at a press conference, 5 November 2013

turn

The man who loves forts

around

Mihir Srivastava

Those Respectful Spies Pragmatism is the hallmark of Indian diplomacy these days—if a superpower does illegal things, just ignore it. What else explains India not expressing strong reservations on the bugging of our Missions by American intelligence agencies? Unhappy about India’s shaky stand on the issue, a senior diplomat confronted National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon at a Conference of Indian Envoys held last week in New Delhi. Menon’s wit, however, saved the day: “If they wouldn’t have been listening to us, you would have said we are not worth anything. At least this shows that we are important.” Is he implying we should be happy we’re big enough to be spied upon? n Mihir Srivastava 25 November 2013

photo illustrations tarun sehgal

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On the Contrary

Coming Soon: Satya 7 On Ram Gopal Varma’s propensity to leech on his own earlier movies M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

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bandeep singh/the india today group/getty images

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t might not be put down in black and white, but many journalists follow a ‘fair target’ code under which it is ethical to write about some people and unethical to write about others, even if both commit the same act.

So, for example, if Manmohan Singh is having an affair, then it is probably alright to report it on the front page of a newspaper. But if your neighbour is having an affair, then it is nobody’s business. Among other things, this is because your neighbour is just not important enough.

For the last half decade or so, Ram Gopal Varma’s fortunes have dipped so steadily that he is almost not a fair target anymore. To criticise him, you would have to acknowledge him, and that is becoming hard to do.

His movies appear and disappear like the mildest of ripples on still water. Film critics wearily dole out stars in their fractions while reviewing his movies, but it is almost certain that if Varma’s current creative course continues, even that will eventually stop.

However, since all men—even narcissists unable to comprehend their failings—want to survive, Varma has a counter strategy to remain relevant: leeching on his earlier movies. That is why Satya 2 was released last week.

Consider that it has zero connection to the original Satya in terms of either plot or character. It is called Satya 2 only for three reasons—it might make it easier for him to raise finance for the movie, make people curious enough to come to theatres, and make distributors interested enough to screen it. It is, in one sense, a marketing deception.

There might have been a time when this would puzzle or anger people; now, no one cares. Varma arrived at this tactic in 2006 by remaking a really bad movie called Shiva, the name of his first superhit.

Many people, after tasting enormous success, aspire to do something for posterity. Varma’s ambitions are the reverse: he already has a legacy, which he

resourceful Perhaps Varma was never the genius that he was assumed to be, just a good HR manager

is now in the process of destroying. He is a man sacrificing his past and future for a present. Satya is without doubt the movie he would have been remembered by after a quarter century, but when you have many shoddy Satyas, the original will become just one among them.

The only reason not to ignore Varma is that he is fascinating as a tragic character completely blind to his own tragedy. All filmmakers see their creative juices run out. The Yash Chopra who made Deewar was not the same man who made the silly Jab Tak Hai Jaan. But Varma’s fall is especially bewildering because it has been so complete. At least the market didn’t shirk Chopra; Varma has been

Varma’s ambitions are the reverse of most. He is a man destroying his own legacy, sacrificing his past and future for a present. The only reason not to ignore him is that he is fascinating as a tragic character blind to his own tragedy

abandoned by both critics and audiences.

All his movies now are badly constructed parts forced to fit together to create an awful whole.

Or maybe he never was the genius that everyone assumed and just a good HR manager. Maybe his biggest quality was keeping his door open for talent at a time when it was hard for intelligent filmmakers and artistes to do good cinema.

As long as there were brilliant people gravitating toward him, all he had to do was pick and choose from their brains.

And when all of them left to carve out their own kingdoms, his creative pool was left empty.

It is almost inevitable that there will be a Rangeela 2 now. He is already producing an Ab Tak Chhappan 2. There will surely be a Satya 3, as is promised towards the end of Satya 2. There will be a Sarkar 3 if he can get Amitabh Bachchan to act in it.

Another Shiva is not beyond imagination from someone who has already made two Shivas.

The only great story in all this is the story of Ram Gopal Varma himself, but some other filmmaker will make that film a few decades from now. n 25 november 2013

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Typhoon Haiyan

Typhoon Haiyan, which recently hit the Philippines, is the strongest recorded cyclone ever to hit land, with wind speeds of 313.8 kmph and gusts reaching 378.2 kmph, beating hurricane Camille, which hit the US in 1969 with wind speeds up to 305 kmph, killing 259 people and causing $1.42 billion in damages.

It Happens

Angry Men and Well-fed Birds A posh locality of Mumbai comes face to face with a pigeon problem A a s t h a A t r a y B a n a n ritesh uttamchandani

real

Haiyan originated on 2 November in a low pressure zone in the Pacific Ocean, a few hundred kilometres east-southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia. Travelling generally westwards and quickly gaining intensity, it hit the Eastern Samar region of the Philippines on 7 November. It continued west, sweeping through six central Philippine islands, and emerging over the South China Sea. By the time it struck Vietnam on 10 November, it had weakened to a tropical storm, but still caused at least 14 reported deaths.

Many evacuees were found dead as evacuation centres proved incapable of withstanding fierce winds

dondi tawatao/getty images

The typhoon has led to unparalleled death and destruction in the Philippines. An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in Tacloban city alone, with fears that the death toll will rise significantly. About 660,000 are estimated to have been displaced, though this figure too may rise as rescuers reach other devastated towns.

Many people evacuated before the typhoon were found dead, as the evacuation centres proved incapable of withstanding fierce winds.

The destruction across the Philippine islands leaves authorities to conduct relief operations on a scale exceeding any other in the history of this disaster-prone nation. According to news reports, many towns and cities are submerged in water, corpses are festering out in the open, and survivors are in dire need of water and food. There is talk of a state of emergency or martial law being declared in Tacloban, where survivors are fighting over and seizing food, water and goods from stores, homes and relief trucks. A large contingent of police has already been deployed to restore order. n

quandary A hoarding in Lokhandwala takes note of the neighbourhood menace

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n a city that’s home to as many pigeons as humans, a posh neighbourhood has decided that it’s all about the survival of the fittest. “I think the BMC is waiting for someone to die before they take any action on the pigeons in Lokhandwala,” says Ramesh Patil, founder member of the Old Lokhandwala Residents Association. “A cop told me the other day, ‘Sir, why do you bother making complaints? Just burst a few crackers and these pigeons will never dare return.’”

Patil has been leading a campaign to do something about the hundreds of pigeons that gather in front of Ashok Academy, a school in the neighbourhood, for quite a while. He says that residents of Lokhandwala, including businessmen and television stars, are tired of these dirty creatures—but nobody seems to understand their plight.

“Instead of flowers, trees in this region are full of pigeons and their shit,” he says. “Just a few months ago, there was news that a cop died because he lost his balance on [his] scooter [because] a pigeon distracted him. This was not in our area, but I think that’s what the BMC wants happening before

anyone takes any action.”

A common sight on the road leading up to Lokhandwala circle, in front of Ashok Academy, is that of people standing and feeding the pigeons dana. Patil feels this religious ceremony is at the core of the problem.

“There is a trader who gets discarded rotten grain from somewhere and then makes two of his guys sit next to the pigeon area and sell it. And all Jains stop, buy it and then feed the pigeons “I think because in the BMC is their religion it’s a good thing waiting for to do. But I someone to die before they have done research— take action” there should be designated spots for such kind of stuff. You can’t just do this on the main road.”

The residents of Lokhandwala, Patil reiterates, are not against anyone’s religious sentiments; it’s all a matter of hygiene. “Very soon, people are going to start falling sick,” he says. “What’s the point of putting up ‘Clean Mumbai, Green Mumbai’ hoardings when you can’t even clean up a road?”n 25 november 2013

business

g a s While it takes two hands to clap, it takes only one to slap. Riled by the mysterious fall in gas production at the Reliance-operated KG Basin gas field, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas has recommended that the private producer be treated as a ‘defaulter’ for its failure to stem falling gas output. The ‘geological complexities’ that Reliance cites as a reason for the choke-up have always had few takers. Ever since the CAG’s indictment in 2011 of the Centre for its dubious role in having tilted the relevant gas production contract in Reliance’s favour, the KG Basin has generated more controversy than gas for the energystarved country. The Government, stung by that criticism, stopped reimbursing the company its contractual dues on the grounds that it had fraudulently ‘goldplated’ expenses (as the CAG alleged). This triggered a tussle that is far from over.

Despite the penalty, some observers suspect that while Reliance and the Government appear to be engaged in a bruising battle of wills over the price of gas, scheduled for revision in 2014 (with the company looking for three times the earlier State-approved price of $4.2 per unit), the two combatants may ‘settle’ for a deal if a way is found for the country to bear a hike in price. However, since bulk users of gas include the largely State-run power and fertiliser sectors, a steep price hike could worsen the country’s fiscal

handout/reliance industries/reuters

Reliance as a Defaulter

hydrocarbon hyperpolitics As 2014 approaches, the stakes are high for both Reliance and the Government

blames all the temper flare-ups over KG gas to “lack of or bad communication both by the Government and Reliance”; “Hounding Reliance would do little to promote the private sector’s participation in exploring and [tapping] India’s scant hydrocarbon reserves,” he says, referring to the New Exploration Licensing Policy that had invited participants.

Energy experts feel that the KG Basin impasse may finally have to be resolved by the Judiciary, which is not a framer of policy, but could Constitutionally adjudicate in disputes over the use of natural resources. n shailendra tyagi

deficit. The Centre recently made a move to double the price in 2014, but this has been challenged at the Supreme Court as a giveaway to Reliance.

Analysts say that the size of the KG gas find in the early 2000s was exaggerated to begin with. It should have been audited properly. Several gas-based power projects got underway on great expectations of well-priced supplies but are now left in the lurch (or with higher costs).

RS Sharma, former chairman of ONGC,

The grand fight over KG Basin gas may finally have to be resolved by the Judiciary

The KG Basin Flame-out 60

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The Reliance-run D6 field of this offshore gas reserve has seen output fall year after year

58 55 51

50 45

All Figures are in mmscmd 36

compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

Source: Emkay research

infographic by tarun sehgal

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25 November 2013

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alliance

The NCP’s Waning Relevance Sharad Pawar’s inability to part ways with the party from which he split 13 years ago has diminished both his regional and national prospects haima deshpande

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“communal forces” at bay—referring, of course, to the saffron alliance in the state constituting the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet he has held on to his friendships with leaders of both these parties as a warning to the Congress that he could break away again. But he never has, staying on with the Congress despite the knowledge that his ally has not been kind to his ambitions.

The NCP’s biggest problem is that it is a party with too many leaders, each vying for his/her own political space. The

going to bed angry The spat between Pawar and Chavan reflects the uneasy relationship between their parties

express archives

I n t h e r u n u p to the 2014 elections, when the people of Maharashtra will elect two governments—Centre and state— pressure is rising in the political arena.

The otherwise calm Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan is caught in a heated exchange of words with Sharad Pawar, Union Agriculture Minister and President of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Statements and counter statements have trapped both leaders in a cycle of political one-upmanship, with both using the public dais to take pot-shots at each other and air their bitter rivalry.

Pawar may have made Chavan angry, but the NCP chief is the angrier man. In a recent public function, Chavan questioned the relevance of the NCP in Maharashtra politics, setting tongues wagging. In the CM’s opinion, since the NCP’s foundational issue—Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin—has wilted away in the years since its formation, the party no longer has any ideological relevance.

In response, an angry Pawar reminded Chavan that had he not broken away from the Congress, Chavan would never have become Chief Minister.

In the years since the formation of the NCP, Pawar has joined coalition governments with the Congress both at the Centre and state level. In fact, his coalition dharma first extended itself to the Congress barely a few months after he caused a vertical split and walked out of the party. In the state Assembly polls soon after the split, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra.

Had Pawar weakened the Congress or made it stronger? This has been a subject of political debate ever since.

In the 13 years of his party’s political alliance with the Congress, Pawar has never been keen to walk out of the marriage. He has hobnobbed with others, but has always returned to the Congress.

Time and again, Pawar has stated that the alliance between his party and the Congress is a political compulsion to keep

Congress, on the other hand, is bereft of mass leaders. Well, there is the Chief Minister, but he has attained his status as a mass leader only due to his position—it may be difficult for Chavan to win an Assembly seat. Even his constituency Karad, in Western Maharashtra, cannot be called a safe seat for him. Given such political dynamics, the continued alliance between both these parties is truly a compulsion.

Interestingly, Pawar’s own party men have lost track of the reason for the party’s

formation. They don’t talk of the Congress President’s foreign origin, they are working under a Congress Chief Minister, many of them are eyeing vacant leadership spaces within the Congress and many are unwilling to work under the aggressive Ajit Pawar, Sharad Pawar’s nephew and the state’s Deputy Chief Minister. In many ways, the NCP seems an extension of the Congress, and both party’s leaders speak the same political language. Given all this, Chavan’s outburst on the NCP’s relevance is not mere rhetoric.

Like his party men, even the NCP president has put his burning ambition—to become Prime Minister—on the backburner, an ambition he has carried through his days in the Congress and out of it. A realisation seems to have dawned that he may never make it to the PM’s chair. Senior NCP leaders who left the Congress with Pawar have also been impacted by his lost chance at becoming PM; they have realised that Pawar is unable to deliver opportunities for them to get government positions without the Congress. Some say that the NCP is a tested missile whose range is 60 Assembly

seats and 10 Parliamentary seats. In the years since his ostensible ‘split’ with the Congress, Pawar has been unable to prove that his party can go it alone.

The NCP has largely remained a regional party and has found it difficult to extend its area of influence beyond Maharashtra. Though not for want of trying, it has not managed to get its act together to emerge as a strong national party. In Maharashtra too, senior NCP leaders seem to have lost faith in Pawar’s ability to lead the party towards bigger gains. Many are now eyeing the Congress, and there could soon be some defections, sources say.

Even though the NCP has tried to eclipse the Congress within the state, its

The NCP has too many leaders vying for their own space. The Congress, on the other hand, is bereft of mass leaders. Chavan’s status as a leader is only due to his position; the CM may not be able to win an Assembly seat

attempts have been half-hearted. Since Chavan took over, he has brought all departments headed by NCP ministers under strict scrutiny. Scams have come to light and investigations ordered, yet the NCP has stayed on with the Congress. Ajit Pawar has been itching to go it alone in the polls but his uncle has firmly refused.

Many draw similarities between the NCP and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Like the NCP Chief, Thackeray too broke away from his uncle, the late Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena.

Raj has emerged as a spoiler for the Shiv Sena and is clear about his intent: to take crucial votes away from that party’s share. He is not confused about the course of the MNS; it has a single focus: to prove that Uddhav Thackeray cannot lead the Shiv Sena. Unlike the NCP, the MNS is not keen on an alliance with the Shiv Sena, as this will mean sharing seats, which Raj is averse to. Despite overtures from various quarters in the Shiv Sena suggesting a reunion between Uddhav and Raj, either by a coalition or merger of the two parties, the MNS Chief has never made any indication of his next move.

The NCP’s course, in contrast, is confused; its closeness to the Congress is inhibiting its march forward. For the Congress, it is as if a coalition with the NCP is a given, a guarantee. In these circumstances, Chavan’s questioning of the NCP’s relevance appears valid. After all, what is the identity of the NCP today?

It is certainly not a spoiler for the Congress, racing to offer the ruling party an olive branch when controversies arise.

The arrogance of the Congress is not lost on Pawar, but his extreme reluctance to move out of the heavy shadow cast by the ruling party is becoming a matter of concern for his own partymen. If their ambitions are to be realised, the NCP must move out of this shadow.

Many say that a coalition with the Congress is more acceptable to Pawar than the idea of his over-ambitious nephew leading the party in the state.

The NCP Chief may have conceded the Deputy Chief Minister’s chair to his nephew, but anything more is unacceptable. Going it alone for the NCP will mean the rise of the nephew as an unchallenged force, and this is an eventuality Pawar wants to avoid.

As the NCP goes with the Congress to the 2014 polls, it is with the knowledge that it faces a tougher challenge. There is much more to be done if it wants to widen its influence in Maharashtra state.

The party’s continuing relevance depends solely on its willingness to move out of the Congress shadow. n open www.openthemagazine.com 13

e n co u n t e r

‘The Arms Lobby Is Very Strong’

ashish sharma

General VK Singh has perhaps been India’s most controversial Army chief since Independence . For a year’s extension in office, he took the Government to court over a dispute on his age. Since his retirement in May 2012, he has been politically active.

He has taken part in political rallies, protests and dharnas, and even made public statements on an issue that conventional wisdom would consider a State secret. His autobiography, titled Courage and Conviction, has just been published. “Shoot!” he commands. “Shooting is your job, I just have some questions,” Mihir Srivastava of Open tells him. He laughs. They are seated in Room No 83 of the Annexe of India International Centre in New Delhi. Excerpts from an interview:

Why are you so motivated to tell your story?

David [Davidar of Aleph] motivated me.

There are two things I tell of in this book.

My DNA: the way my schools shaped me, made me what I am: absolutely forthright. Secondly, I have seen so much in my lifetime and reached a particular position. It will help youngsters learn suitable lessons.

Autobiographies are usually a retrospective justification of one’s actions. It is like arguing one’s case without the fear of being told to shut up.

(Laughs) See, I don’t want to lead a simple predictable retired life. I felt that I still have a job to do as a citizen of this country. I want to reclaim India. I strongly feel that we need some changes urgently to function as a nation if we are to prosper. The prevalent situation will only sink us deeper.

This book will make people in the Government and Army unhappy with you.

You present a grim picture of how the defence establishment functions.

That is a reality.

How strong is the arms lobby? Do they remote control the Defence Ministry?

The arms lobby is very strong. I can give you many examples. Do you remember that the Rafale file [the Eurofighter that India is likely to buy from a European consortium in a deal worth $12 billion] was found lying in some colony somewhere in Delhi? It is a top secret document. Government [information] percolates. [Arms dealers] know where a particular file is, who is handling it, what are the notings made on it. They would know when the files reached my office.

They know everything.

According to your book, you didn’t want an extension. Yet, you took the Government to court—the first time by a serving Army chief—to get your age reduced by a year so you could continue in office for a year more.

For 36 years, all my documents said that I was born in 1951. I made a mistake when I was fifteen-and-a-half years old while entering my age in a form. It was sorted out. The NDA, UPSC cleared it. This issue was raised to attack me.

Why were you so inconvenient to the 25 November 2013

Government that it was so eager to get rid of you?

In the Tetra deal [involving irregularities in the Army’s purchase of these all-terrain vehicles from Bharat Earth Movers Ltd], a lot of money was made. Sukhna [the scam] had shaken us to the core. I was for a full investigation and transparency.

You made many enemies in the Defence Ministry.

I took measures that created a phobia in people. The system was suffering. I pointed it out…

It seems to me that you had some reasons for orchestrating a coup, as was reported

by The Indian Express.

(laughs) The report said I moved two units of the Army without permission towards the capital. It was actually a routine movement. And why would I need to move two units [for a coup] when there is already a big Army presence in the capital? Can you [conduct a] coup with just 1,000 men in a country like India?

The Indian Army is far too [well] wedded to the Constitution of the land and to democracy. The Army does not think of a coup. [It] thinks of how best to defend the nation, to serve the nation.

So what did you do? Didn’t you call up Shekhar Gupta and ask what he’d written?

No. We issued a notice. Twenty days later, [the paper] carried an apology, hidden somewhere on page 8. No bold headline this time. (laughs) The Press Council also didn’t do much about it.

You are controversial because you spilt State secrets that embarrassed the Union.

You said the Army paid money out of its secret funds to J&K ministers.

Yes.

Six of your predecessors, Army chiefs since 1990s, have denied your claim.

They did.

Do you still stand by your statement?

Yes I do. There is no going back on it.

How did you react to the article?

Do you have political ambitions?

Who was the source of this story? Was it someone within the Government or Army?

It was a fairly detailed story.

You have been weighing your options, aren’t you? You were seen with Arvind Kejriwal and then with Narendra Modi. Your appeal rests in the embarrassment you have caused the UPA.

To be frank, I laughed. (laughs) The headlines were so bold—as if a holocaust had happened. I had met Shekhar Gupta [editor-in-chief of the newspaper] for lunch before the story was published. He invited me to his Walk the Talk show with him.

I didn’t say anything. His office called to confirm, I told them that I’d never promised. The [Indian Express] story was meant to discredit me and create an alarm.

I have mentioned it in my book. The sutradhar of the story was somewhere else. The source of the story was a high official in the PMO. It was all lies.

If I as PM had read this article, I would have called you and sought an explanation. Did you get any call from the Government after this story?

No, not at all. No one called. The Defence Minister [AK Antony] was clarifying to the media that there is no truth in it.

Given the grim state of affairs you have highlighted in your book, did the idea of a coup ever cross your mind?

I have not joined any political party. I could have joined any [of them], including the Congress, after I retired. Large segments of rural [India] have to develop. I have attended many farmer rallies. I want to highlight issues that I feel strongly about. I am for Gram Swaraj.

There is a desperate need for change, village schools, health. Development has to go to the villages.

You need good people in the political system.

Are you going to contest elections?

I haven’t decided so far. I am giving myself time. Let’s see. If people persuade me to contest election...

So you are open to persuasion?

I will take a call at that time. If you look at the constitutions of various parties, there is not much to choose from. They are all so good on paper. What needs to be seen is how much translates into action. n open www.openthemagazine.com 15

saul landell/getty images

JU V E NI L E D E L IN Q U E NTS

Too Young for Punishment …and too hard to reform Mihir Srivastava

S

anju is not his real name. He is infamous, though,

as ‘Sanju chor’ among the police—for more than 1,500 cases of theft and about a hundred of arson in the government colonies of Sarojini Nagar, Laxmi Bai Nagar and RK Puram in Delhi. He was arrested by the Delhi Police the day he turned 18 two years ago, and is now in Tihar Jail. His gang has disbanded, but some members are still operational.

One of Sanju’s gang, who once escaped with him from a ‘care centre’ for juvenile delinquents in Delhi and now runs a tea stall near AIIMS, calls Sanju a “genius and a brave man”; “He was always willing to take up a challenge,” he says, sounding proud of his association with him, “Nothing is really impossible for him.”

Sanju had been in and out of juvenile homes since he was seven and had escaped at least half a dozen times. “No one could stop him,” says the tea-stall boy, “He would announce his escape and run away with other inmates who he’d later induct in his gang. He would challenge the superintendent [of the home], saying he’d run away [the next day], and he would do just that.” His method was to create a ruckus in the juvenile home to distract the guards, and then make an exit.

Each time he was nabbed, he’d boast that his detention would not be for long. With Sanju as an inmate at a juvenile home, recalls the tea-stall boy, there would always be

25 November 2013

a regular supply of alcohol organised by his flunkies; sometimes, they would even get high on thinner. Out on their own, they would often sleep on rooftops and eat out together. Sanju’s father was an alcoholic; his mother died when he was young.

Of his own family, the tea-stall boy has no memory. An orphan, he claims he is 17 years old and has a dragon tattoo that crawls up his forearm with a woman’s name inked in Hindi. This is his mother’s name, as he was told by someone who claimed to know his parents back in Aligarh, which is where he is from. “I say ‘no’ to nothing that is an opportunity to earn money,” he says of his survival strategy. Not even crime? He claims he has never killed anyone for money and that he has given up crime.

Since he has never had a family of his own, he says, he would like to start one. He has a girlfriend who is in college. He wants to marry her. She is not sure. They often meet in his one-room house in a nearby slum. The house has posters of Salman Khan in police uniform and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator gear. There is an old TV, a disc player and radio set. The air is stale, as the only door to the windowless room is always kept shut. “It feels good to live the life of an adult,” he says, “Alcohol, girls, drugs, tattoos, designer clothes… some of us even had cars. I will take my girlfriend to Goa.” Sanju had many girlfriends, he says, who he would open www.openthemagazine.com 17

shower with gifts. Theft kept the gang rolling in cash, which they had to spend quickly. They often spent nights at a local red-light district. “Sanju has a huge hidden pile of money stashed away somewhere. No one knows where,” he says, “He will use it to start a new life once he is out of prison.”

At one time, according to a police sub-inspector who has been tracking Sanju, he led 10 different gangs, and had over 100 juveniles—some as young as 10—under his wing.

He called them his ‘crew’. They would burgle houses for jewellery, electronics (even air-conditioners) and other valuables, and then set the place on fire. Arson was his signature style. “He believes fire is auspicious as there is one burning in his belly,” says the tea-stall boy. “He had issued an open threat to burn down the house of journalists who wrote about him,” he adds with a mischievous smile.

As a devotee of Shani Dev, Sanju liked to operate under the auspices of Saturn. However, it was during a mundane burglary that his luck ran out. He robbed and burnt the house of an official of the Home Ministry. That is when it all went wrong for him.

happen again and pleads that the child be let off.

Many juvenile offenders do get turned over to the police, of course, and there are lawyers who represent them in children’s courts that operate under the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Children Act of 2000. By the principles of justice, minors cannot be considered fully responsible for their actions and this law lays down how errant children are to be dealt with.

Underage crime is a broader malaise than many think.

In 2010, Delhi’s Juvenile Justice Board under Principal Magistrate Anuradha Shukla took note of a worrisome pattern. The Board observed that ragpickers—usually homeless children without families or from dysfunctional homes—were getting hooked to drugs and being pushed into crime to pay for their addiction. They were being prodded to break the law by gangs that gave them shelter only to take advantage of them.

C

hildren in conflict with the law, as they are called,

may be placed in two informal categories. One: firsttimers who are usually under 14 years of age; and two: repeat offenders who are typically 15 elhi has several gangs that and above. The law makes no disAt one time, according use children, some of them as tinction between them, sending young as eight, to carry out petto a police sub-inspector them all to the same reform homes.

However, there is enough evidence ty thefts. One such, the so-called who has been tracking argue that contact with older Kabari Gang, is active in Old Sanju, he led 10 different to offenders tends to have an ill effect Seemapuri and most of its memgangs, and had over 100 on younger ones. bers are drug peddlers. Another There is a critical difference in begroup, the Thak Thak Gang, oper- juveniles—some as young haviour between the two. While ates by laying tyre-puncture traps as 10—under his wing. He the young ones appear shaken and for cars whose occupants they recalled them his ‘crew’ vulnerable, delinquents who are lieve of valuables once they stop above 15 appear to be proud of what to switch tyres. They also work at they do. Fearless, they appear to traffic signals, distracting drivers take their rights as minors as a by saying their fuel tank is leaking and then scampering off with a bag, shield of impunity. Sixteen-yearphone or laptop once they get out to take a look. olds “look at [juvenile law] as a two-year licence to indulge Earlier this year, a Delhi Police team under Assistant in criminal activities for money,” says Vishal Bhatnagar, Commissioner of Police Kulwant Singh made three ar- who runs the Delhi-based Shubhakshika Educational rests that led to the recovery of Rs 1 crore worth of jewel- Society, which educates and rehabilitates delinquents.

The observations of the tea-stall boy confirm this. lery. They were members of the Madarsi Gang, which is operational in Madangiri; well-dressed children would According to him, Sanju would recruit most of his ‘crew’ gatecrash wedding receptions, distract guests by spilling from juvenile homes, older teenagers under 18 who knew gravy on someone’s clothes and then pinch their orna- they could get away lightly if caught. Under the Act, ments with a practised hand. the harshest punishment that a minor may be awarded Another gang brings children from Bihar’s Sahibganj is a sentence of three years, and that too, only in excepdistrict to Delhi on the promise of employment and then tional cases (like that of the minor held guilty of the pushes them—often with a wink from poverty-stricken Delhi gangrape). parents—into grim lives of theft and drug peddling. The With all delinquents housed together, the young inchildren are trained not to utter a word if they are caught mates of a juvenile home are exposed to the attitudes of in the act. All they may say, if they must, is that they are the older ones. According to Anant Kumar Asthana, a hungry and want food. In the rare case that someone child rights lawyer, this can corrupt those who could comes to their rescue, it is usually a woman posing as otherwise be reformed. an apologetic mother who promises that it will never What worsens matters is the lack of clarity on the ages

D

18 open

25 November 2013

Arko Datta/REUTERS

no sign of reform A young inmate of a government-run juvenile remand home in Mumbai for children who have committed petty crimes

of arrested youth. Many minors end up in adult lock-ups.

It is only once families protest, presenting proof-of-age or asking for ossification tests to determine their age, that they are transferred to juvenile homes (in 2011, for example, as many as 115 juveniles were identified as minors and shifted from Tihar to various homes). By then, several have already been hardened and take their jail-acquired narcotic and sexual habits along with them.

C

onversations with minor delinquents reveal them

as hardened and naïve to varying degrees. Consider the case of this 14-year-old boy lodged in a Delhi juvenile home for the rape of his 4-year-old cousin. Due for release in about six months, he denies the crime flatly, his bulging eyes turned to the sky as he speaks. He says he is the victim of a conspiracy hatched by his relatives to take control of ancestral property. He alleges that the same relatives accused another of his cousins of raping the same girl five years ago. But the girl in question was only four years old, I remind him. “I have not done it,” he says.

Another teenager booked just a few days ago for murder seems quite at ease with his crime. Originally from Uttarakhand, he says he is 15 years and ten months old.

The son of a bus driver, he has been working as a bus ticketer since he was ten. He narrates his story with childlike 20 open

enthusiasm. There is a slash mark across his forehead—a childhood injury, he says, and not one acquired when he stabbed a man in his mid-forties to death. It all began when he met a lady and her daughter on the bus he was selling tickets. Since they were nice to him, he gave them concessional tickets. The mother took his mobile number. They would regularly talk, even meet every other week. He liked the 14-year-old daughter, and the mother encouraged the budding relationship. Within three months of knowing him, the mother made an offer: he could marry her daughter if he rid them of a big hurdle in the shape of the girl’s father. “Kill my husband,” she told him, he says, “It’s a small price to pay to marry my daughter.” After taking a couple of weeks to think it over, he says, he accepted the deal. He climbed their West Delhi home’s terrace one night where the father was asleep, and spent some time in contemplation before he planted a knife in his chest. “There were three stab injuries,” he says, “I stabbed him only once; the other two would be by the mother of the girl.”

After the deed, the bus ticketer says he had sex with the mother. Later, he ran away with the daughter to Uttarakhand, where they were nabbed by the police. The daughter did not know of the murder plot. “Love is blind,” he says, convinced that the girl still loves him, even though she knows of his guilt now. “Do you realise what you have done?” I ask, “You have killed someone.” His 25 November 2013

reply betrays no emotion: “I will never kill anyone again for any reason.”

Then there is the case of a 17-year-old held guilty of killing a contractor with a single blow of a rod to his head after the man assaulted his parents. He did it in a fit of rage.

His eyes have a focused glare as he talks about starting life afresh, finding a job and learning English. “To kill is easy,” he says, “and to convince someone to kill is not difficult either.” He is referring to agents who offer ready cash of Rs 35,000 for murder. He has been offered this sum several times, but says he rejects it since he is not a murderer.

He knows how it works, however. The agents provide a description and photograph of the target along with details of when and where to find him/her.

M

ost delinquents are teenagers who have had no care during a crucial phase of their lives, their adolescence. In a country teeming with ill-fed street children who face the rough realities of survival long before they attain the maturity to make big decisions, the problem of delinquency is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.

Statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau show the obvious that adverse socio-economic conditions contribute in no small measure to juvenile delinquency in India. Close to 57 per cent of all underage criminals have had extreme poverty as a circumstance of life; 55 per cent of them are either illiterate or have just had primary education.

These are minors who are out on the streets trying to fend for themselves. Such lives demand that they overcome their fears and this shapes their approach to the risks of crime. While juvenile homes aim to reform them so that they can lead responsible lives as adults, there is enough to suggest that the task remains a challenge largely unmet.

On 6 July this year, 33 juveniles went on a rampage at a home called Seva Kutir near Kingsway Camp in north Delhi, a facility that houses delinquents who are mostly in the 16-18 age group. They vandalised the premises for eight hours that night before they escaped. They exploded gas cylinders to destroy the superintendent’s office, medical room and entry gates, and then pelted stones at

the security personnel as they made a break for it. Not all inmates fled, though; 72 of the 128 were escorted out of their dormitories and they sat in a park nearby, watching the mayhem.

The attack left the remedial home in complete chaos.

There was no cooking gas to make any food for the minors left, no medicines and no support services. All the records had gone up in flames and the computers and CCTV cameras had been rendered dysfunctional. But no lives were lost. The juvenile rioters wanted to escape and not kill anyone.

Yet, staffers at Seva Kutir were left in a state of shock.

According to them, this was the act of hard criminals, especially the ‘grownups’, by which they mean those above 16. Many are allegedly in touch with crimClose to 57 per cent of all inal gangs outside. One underage criminals have of them, a 17-year-old repeat offender, was had extreme poverty found to have taken a as a circumstance of contract worth Rs 1 lakh life; 55 per cent of them to kill a caretaker, alleges are either illiterate or a staffer.

Officials at Seva Kutir have just had primary acknowledge that such a education home is neither remedial nor caring. Drugs and alcohol are all pervasive.

Young inmates are not only ragged, but often assaulted in unspeakable ways.

The police have reports of at least three cases of sodomy from Seva Kutir, but none of the victims has had the courage to press charges. Sexual exploitation is rampant and the younger inmates are its usual targets.

“How can you contain children behind four walls and [say] it is not a jail?” asks Anil Kumar, superintendent of Seva Kutir. Still reeling from the horror of the rampage that night, he was pulled up by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights for letting the media visit the site. “The Juvenile Justice Act should be amended to declare [those] 16 years and above as ‘adults’ in the eyes of the law,” he believes, “They are hardened criminals and we don’t have the facilities to deal with them.” n

MAKES SENSE? Mentoring son Arjun will likely feature among Tendulkar’s top priorities now

RETREA D IN G

What Next, Sachin?

Taking guard for a life away from the field AKSHAY SAWAI

S

portsmen accomplish Homeric

tasks on the field of play but a simple question stumps them when they retire. Former tennis player Ramesh Krishnan captured this condition succinctly in his biography without lapsing into the maudlin or dramatic. ‘What do I do with my day?’ Ramesh wrote of his quandary after laying down the arms

of sporting combat.

This is a question retirees in any field face. With athletes, the situation is trickier because the change is greater. The switch from gladiator to grocery-shopper takes some getting used to. Sportsmen lead intense lives in the public eye, a life involving travel and adventure. There are low moments but rarely dull ones.

25 November 2013

When you retire, you and your kit bag are off the bus in a town called Drearyland.

“Thank you for the memories,” everyone says. They love you. You’ve done well.

You have a name. You have a fair amount of money. A new life is ahead of you. But that bus ain’t coming back for you. That is why when retired athletes get a chance to play even a veterans’ match in a grand arena, they covet the opportunity. For instance, Pele was sorely disappointed when an exhibition match to commemorate his 50th birthday could not be played at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Homebound, without applause, with nothing to do, the retired athlete often finds himself restive. Writing in his memoir, Joseph Anton, about his incarceration under Khomeini’s fatwa, Salman Rushdie observes of his bodyguards, perforce shackled as he was: ‘These were men of action, their needs the opposite of those of a sedentary novelist trying to hold on to what remained of his inner life, the life of the mind. He could sit still and think in a room for hours and be content. They went stir-crazy if they had to stay indoors for any length of time.’ It’s a bit like that with sportspeople too.

The newfound availability of vast lengths of time, together with financial sufficiency and access to all thrills can wreak havoc on lives. Diego Maradona and Mike Tyson, prone to orgiastic decadence even in their playing days, went berserk. Boris Becker did not even wait a few days to spiral out of control, letting himself unravel just hours after his last match. A few drinks at a restaurant. An attractive stranger named Angela Ermakova meeting his gaze.

Eye contact, which minutes later progressed to brazen union on the stairs (not the broom closet, as widely believed). The rest is Tum-mere-bachche-ke-

baap-bannewale-ho history.

Sachin Tendulkar is far too sensible for such indiscretion. And while his famous love of cricket will always make him miss his previous life, he truly has had a full innings with little scope for regret.

Tendulkar played to his heart’s content, maybe a season or two too many. Like Forrest Gump he ran and ran, through varying terrain and weather. In a few days, he will stop. And when he looks back, he will see a 24-year-old Taj Mahal of a career, every brick and flourish, garden and pool in place.

But what now? “I have given 24 years of my life to the game. Now, it’s time for my family,” Tendulkar told the Sunday

In a few days he will stop.

And when he looks back, he will see a 24-year-old Taj Mahal of a career, every brick and flourish, garden and pool in place Mid-Day newspaper. He hinted at a vacation. “I need to get away once all this (his final series and the accompanying fuss) is over.” That apart, Tendulkar hasn’t revealed much. In a television interview before the Kolkata Test against the cast of extras from the Caribbean, Sachin’s brother and mentor Ajit Tendulkar said Sachin’s focus, for now, was on whatever was left of his cricket. Asked if he had advice for his younger brother on life after cricket, Ajit said, “He is 40 years old. I don’t think he needs anyone’s advice.”

At the time of writing, Tendulkar is still an active player, if with the diminished relevance of a lame-duck President of India. Besides, he doesn’t need to

worry about earning his livelihood.

According to Forbes, Tendulkar made $18.6 million last year alone. That can buy a lot of Bombay Duck. So it is natural that Tendulkar will take a long break before deciding in which career to take strike next. Recently, after the launch of Musafir.com, the travel portal in which he has a minority stake, he indicated he would like to travel with his family. He wants to see more of India, he said. He also likes to repair to London every summer, where he has a house in St John’s Wood, a shout away from Lord’s.

After he has paused enough, and when the need for routine and goals reawakens in his rested body, Tendulkar is likely to be involved in a combination of cricketrelated activities, business and philanthropy. Many in Indian cricket want him to be available as a resource person.

Sourav Ganguly said on air that the Indian cricket board should make use of his cricketing acumen. At the naming ceremony of the Mumbai Cricket Association’s Sachin Tendulkar Gymkhana Club in Kandivali, Mumbai, Javagal Srinath said in a recorded message that Sachin should involve himself in cricket administration. Srinath’s message was ironic, and timely, because it came during a poorly managed function hijacked by politicians masquerading as sports administrators. Irfan Pathan, currently far removed from the circus around Tendulkar but someone who has played many times with him, says Tendulkar would make an ideal coach.

‘He always told me to focus on my bowling action. ‘Never try to swing the ball, [it is] your action [that] will make it swing’,’ Pathan says in an email message through his agent. Tendulkar will also continue to be there for the Mumbai Indians, the franchise he represented in the IPL. Nita

Ambani told The Times of India on Monday, “Both Mukesh and I regard him as a founder of the team and there’s little doubt he will continue to be with us in a very significant role.” Many feel Tendulkar will be the right choice of coach for something as proximal as India’s World Cup 2015 campaign. He has played with MS Dhoni and shares a rapport with the team.

But to be with any team in an official capacity might mean travel, and that is something he is likely to avoid for a while. Commentary is ruled out too because he is not much of a talker, nor is he likely to find the job exciting. A foray into politics seemed on course once. He is nationally revered, ambitious and has over the past few years attended events of the Congress, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). He also accepted a Rajya Sabha seat. But he has also been disenchanted with politicians, and so, for now, politics is ruled out. Tendulkar is also reputedly a sensitive man, and the problems of India’s poor may well spur him into some form of public service, if quietly. “The Spreading Happiness project is close to his heart,” a friend of Tendulkar’s says. Backed by Schneider Electric and fronted by Tendulkar, the project aims to bring solar lighting to remote villages in India. Asked about Sachin’s approach to charity, the friend says, “Instead of donating Rs X himself, he will mobilise a lot of people to donate Rs X.” Tendulkar also wants to mentor son Arjun, an aspiring cricketer, but he is not the kind who will get on his case, the friend says.

He may also get the time to start one of his dream projects, a cricket academy that has been on his mind for a while. Marcus Couto, a cricket umpire and friend of Tendulkar, says, “Ten years ago, as per Sachin’s instructions, Ajit [Tendulkar] and I identified a few places in Mumbai to start an academy. We visited a particular spot in Wadala. But the local leader interfered, saying the academy must accommodate his quota of trainees. We said we would enrol them if they had talent. Eventually, it was preferred not to press ahead with the idea. Besides Sachin had this strict rule—if the academy was in his name, he should be present there for the maximum period. Sachin continued playing 24 open

and the idea was kept in cold storage.”

W

hat about Brand Tendulkar?

Early in February 2002, Harish Krishnamachar and R Chandramouli of TVS Motors sat in a room at the Taj Land’s End hotel in Mumbai. They were anxious.

TVS had recently separated from Suzuki.

And a high-profile deal with Tendulkar hung in balance after the cricketer’s agent, the typhoonic Mark Mascarenhas, died in a car accident in Nagpur. After a half-an-hour wait in the room, the door opened. Tendulkar walked in.

“It was a bit anti-climactic. There were no bugles or anything,” Krishnamachar recalls. Nevertheless, the meeting did bring music to the ears of the TVS men.

Tendulkar, who too was in a daze after Mascarenhas’ premature death, agreed to go through with the commitments. “It was a big relief,” Krishnamachar says.

Yesterdays, however glorious, don’t sell so well.

It is possible that Sachin’s 17 sponsors will reduce in number, or they may scale back their investment Krishnamachar is no longer with TVS. But his association with Tendulkar has continued. Krishnamachar is Senior Vice President and Country Head, India, of World Sport Group, which has been Tendulkar’s business manager since 2006. And now he and his team have the job of sustaining Brand Tendulkar after his retirement. Yesterdays, however glorious, don’t sell so well. It is possible that Tendulkar’s sponsors, 17 as of now, will reduce in number, or they may scale back their investment. But Krishnamachar says, “None of his contracts are linked to him being an active cricketer; they expire with differing terms.”

Krishnamachar says he and his team started to restructure Tendulkar’s deals from 2009, when Tendulkar was 36, in a way that the deals did not mandate his being an active player.

“Our job as managers began a couple of years ago to ensure that we built com-

mercial structures that were not wholly dependent on him playing cricket actively, and we have ensured that,” Krishnamachar says. “Normally contracts with players have clauses that require them to be in the team or a certain format of the game. Year 2009 onwards we revised the structures of [Sachin’s] deals. We did royalty-based deals for him, which are not linked to actual playing, but usage of his IP (intellectual property). Like the Sachin Tendulkar line of Adidas products.”

Asked what their strategy would be post-retirement, when Tendulkar will not command the same price as earlier, Krishnamachar says, “We believe his retirement will give us increased access to the most precious commodity—his time. We reached a stage in 2009-10 when we could not do anymore endorsements.

He did not have dates. I’m guessing that won’t be the situation now.”

Two much-reviled entities have made the transition to retirement better for Indian cricketers. One is the Indian cricket board, which last year paid former players a gratuity ranging from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore, depending on the level of cricket they had played and the duration of their careers. The other is the media, where players find gainful employment and a way to sustain public appeal. Over the years, most retired cricketers have been content to find livelihood in media or through BCCI assignments. Chief selector Sandeep Patil, for instance, earns Rs 70 lakh a year, with the committee’s other four selectors making Rs 60 lakh a year. But some do the odd selfless thing. Sunil Gavaskar may be guilty of blindly toeing the establishment line, but he also started the CHAMPS foundation, which supported needy ex-sportsmen of different sports.

Dilip Vengsarkar is a regular columnist and enjoyed a stint as chief selector but he also started the Elf Vengsarkar Academy, which helped mould Yuvraj Singh. The most exemplary life after retirement, of course, has been led by a man across the border. Imran Khan’s political views may be controversial, but he built a cancer hospital and a college for his people out of pure will, with nothing but his name and a truck to drive around asking for contributions. Over to Tendulkar now. n 25 November 2013

jens kalaene/dpa/corbis

a p p r o p r i at i o n

They’re Coming for Your Gold Why the gold loan boom should make everyone uneasy Divya Guha

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head —Warren Buffett

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wo half-page advertisements

in The Indian Express announce the sale of pawned gold jewellery left unclaimed by owners who could not repay loans. An auction of personal property of the poor, be it Hoshiarpur in Punjab or Ranchi in Jharkhand, sounds like a sad occasion. But Tarun Gupta of Ratan Chand Jwala Nath Jewellers in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk is expressionless when told about them. Cross-eyed in a daze of

25 November 2013

boredom, he thinks it implausible. An auction could result in gold sold at a price lower than the market rate. Is this really happening? He wonders. Is gold arbitrage, with money to be made on a price difference between two places of the same thing, even possible?

Auctions of pre-loved jewellery are real indeed. These are events that anyone may participate in for a ‘coupon’, or cover charge, of Rs 1 lakh. Only the rich attend: mostly jewellers. Under the hammer are gold ornaments, usually family jewellery, held at any of the lenders’ large network of branches across the country.

The newspaper ads carry not just the names of branches that had extended loans against gold as collateral, but also the numerical IDs of the borrowers who

have lost their possessions. Defaulters may attend the auctions to watch strangers bidding for their valuables; by RBI rules, these are held at venues—specified in the ads with dates and timings—within convenient reach of the branches.

Sitting at his 250-year-old shop in Dariba Kalan in Chandni Chowk, Gupta, a fourth-generation jeweller, refuses to believe that such an RBI-guaranteed windfall could be real despite being told about the ads. As a good salesman, he says, he occasionally sells gold at “a good price” to a customer, but picking up jewellery at a discount of, say, 25 per cent?

Unless it’s poor quality stuff, he says, it’s not possible.

But he needn’t worry about that either: all jewellery items pawned to gold lendopen www.openthemagazine.com 25

dhiraj singh/bloomberg/getty images

gold opportunism Gold lenders like Muthoot are almost minting the metal

ers such as Muthoot and Manappuram are tested for purity before a proportional cash loan—usually 60 per cent of their value—is extended.

Reluctantly, Gupta is moved to conduct a search on his smartphone. “A practical person would never go to an auction like this,” he mutters. How could anyone sell gold cheap unless it’s ill-gotten? The search springs a happy surprise. “Ah! The only thing that makes sense to me is if the gold [value] in a piece of jewellery is [worth more than what] the lenders need to recover…,” says Gupta, his eyes twinkling, “If a lender only has to recover Rs 60,000 from a piece of jewellery which is worth Rs 1 lakh, and I pay Rs 70,000 for it [at an auction], then I make a neat profit of Rs 30,000.”

Remember, the sums loaned are only a fraction of the pawned gold’s value. Until this September, under RBI guidelines, the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for loans against jewellery was 60 per cent. This may be raised. The central bank has already issued guidelines asking for reserve prices at auctions to be no less than 85 per cent of the previous 30-day average closing price of gold.

Even so, Gupta is suspicious of these auctions. “Most likely, [the RBI or lenders] will not allow me to… er, they would make their own people stand in to buy it back.” A moment later, he discovers that the auctions are conducted by independent if approved auctioneers. Despite public announcements, the auctions have a hush-hush air about them. Only coupon buyers may attend.

Spectatorship is not allowed. Muthoot Finance Ltd, one India’s biggest gold lenders, refuses to divulge details of its auctions.

Is the gold loan business more than just another banking operation?

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owhere is the lust for gold greater

than in India. According to the World Gold Council (WGC), a global trade and industry lobby, more than 20,000 tonnes of gold is thought to be vaulted up in Indian homes. As a market, the country’s demand for the metal has remained unaffected through the vertiginous global price rise since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. Internationally, gold is off its $1,800-plus-per-ounce highs of 26 open

2011, down to around $1,300, but prices in India have been kept high by a sliding rupee and rising import duty, apart from robust demand; its local price has risen from about Rs 28,000 for 10 gm in February this year to above Rs 30,000 now. Millions of families are worried about inflation eating away their bank savings, and this trend has enhanced the value they see in gold as an investment.

Deepesh Pillai, 25, a Delhi-based lawyer, narrates the story of his father who moved to Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh from his native Kollam in Kerala seeking a new life with his new wife. After 24 years of work, frugality and wise investments, his father was wealthy enough to buy 101 tolas (of 11.67 gm each) of gold for his daughter’s wedding, which took place four years ago. Such a going-away gift serves as a customary contingency fund for daughters who usually inherit little or no other property. Pillai has a family endowment too. He owns a lion’s claw he got from his grandmother, he says, that he wears around his neck on a thick gold chain that helps ward off evil spirits and could fetch him a lakh if he were in a tight spot. What he means is that he might raise cash by pawning his grandmother’s gift if the need arose. But it would have to be a pressing need, he says, because he feels ‘naked’ without it.

Turning gold jewellery over to lenders as collateral for cash is an activity that has risen by 60-70 per cent over the past four years, according to WGC data. Last year, this “eye-catching” expansion caught the eye of the Reserve Bank of India, says KUB Rao, chairman of the cen-

tral bank’s Department of Economic and Policy Research who led the research team that submitted a report this January on issues related to gold imports and gold-backed loans. The RBI noticed that while most such lending was being done by banks because of their market reach, corporate pawnbrokers—or Non Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs) as they call themselves—were muscling into the business fast, making profits that Mammon wouldn’t dream of in hell.

Manappuram Finance Ltd, for example, saw its revenues spurt from Rs 165 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 2,217 crore in 201213. Its last fiscal-year profits stood at Rs 208.4 crore. The company boasts of 3,295 branches across the country now and its gold loan portfolio accounts for 80 per cent of total assets under management (as of 31 March 2013 disclosed to the RBI).

Rao says he has been studying the lending practices of such NBFCs. “Interest rates on these [gold loans], usually shortterm loans that are raised by the poorest of the asset-owning poor, are [as high as] 15-24 per cent,” he observes, “In case of a default on repayment, the interest rate could rise up to 30 per cent.”

High rates are usually charged on loans that are not backed by any collateral—in the microfinance sector, for example, which, done earnestly, can indeed help uplift the poor. According to CGAP, an agency of the World Bank that campaigns for access to fair credit for the poor, high interest rates are justifiable on loans that leave lenders with nothing to reclaim in case of a default. But what justifies high rates on loans backed by gold?

25 November 2013

Most gold loans are of 30 to 90 day duration, and are usually taken by those in dire need with no other access to cash. In other words, these are hardship loans.

Also, they are not predominantly rural.

VP Nandakumar, chairman of Manappuram, told Firstpost.com this June that metros account for 40 per cent of its business, semi-urban areas 35 per cent and rural areas 25 per cent. The chairman added that lending spikes at times that parents want money for their children’s school admissions.

That the satisfaction level of borrowers is not high can be assessed by surfing Mouthshut.com. This online consumer forum is full of angry words for deals that people signed with corporate pawnbrokers. Interest rate structures are confusing, say borrowers, and often include obscure levies and administrative fees that raise the loan’s cost. Customers who have asked for separate statements on the ‘interest’ and ‘principal’ components of their repayment schedule have been handed vague calculations on rubberstamped blank sheets. Pradeep Kumar, a resident of Ghaziabad, for example, says he took a loan against a gold ring from an NBFC; he was refused a proper statement and only given financial tabulations on a blank piece of paper.

Irate customers also accuse gold lenders of auctioning their jewellery without sending them adequate notice (or any at all). Rude staff behaviour is another common complaint.

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he Rao-led RBI working group has

been unequivocal about having regular banks—regulated by it—undertake such lending, rather than NBFCs. Yet, it is players like Manappuram and Muthoot that dominate the market. Most of these

lenders are not subject to effective shareholder scrutiny either. While publicly listed on stock exchanges, India’s top gold lenders are closely held as private entities. Muthoot is four-fifths family owned, for example. The promoters of Manappuram own a third of the stock, with varied institutions holding a rather big chunk. International investors seem to have spotted an opportunity in India’s gold fixation and its possible spinoffs as a market for credit.

Demand for gold has surged since 2009, roughly when Indian inflation started sending savers scurrying to the safety of gold as a hedge against rising prices of everyday products. While the rest of the world has cooled off on its love of the metal, demand here has stayed steady.

It was roughly the time that Bollywood star Akshay Kumar appeared in Manappuram’s ads, this January, that the RBI began voicing concerns about the strange and sublime reality of India’s price-inelastic demand for gold—that is, demand that does not decline if prices rise—posing a threat to the country’s balance-of-payments. Almost all the gold bought in India is imported and it has used up far too many dollars in the past two years. Overall, the value of India’s imports exceed its exports vastly, which results in a scramble for dollars to pay for the former. Over the period 2005-2011, India’s import basket was heaviest with petroleum-related products, which made up 28.6 per cent of it. Next on the import list was ‘gold and silver’ that made up a chunky 11.5 per cent.

Of late, in response to the burden placed by gold imports on India’s external finances, policymakers have taken tough measures to curb imports. Import duty on the commodity has risen from 2 per cent in mid-March 2012 to 10 per cent

in August this year. In late July, the RBI mandated that a fifth of all gold imports be re-exported (as value-added jewellery for example). From a peak of 162 tonnes in May 2013 and a still-robust 47 tonnes in July, gold imports fell to about 3 tonnes in August before rising to 7.2 tonnes in September. The Diwali/wedding season this year has been dull, say jewellers reeling under a gold shortage.

However, there are signs that domestic demand is yet to be quelled and whispers abound that smugglers are back in business with a bang.

This, even as ‘gold banking’ of another kind makes a beginning. Temple treasure chests, said to be bulging with gold, could prove to be big depositors. The famous Tirupati Temple Trust is reported to have deposited over 2,250 kg of its holdings this summer with State Bank of India in exchange for interest payments on it. An industry body, Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation, is lobbying with the RBI and Nova Scotia Bank, a large RBI-authorised gold importer, to team up with jewellers to offer gold deposit schemes to a variety of customers. It hopes to draw the hoards held in people’s homes.

Some analysts feel that this would mobilise money for the larger good of the economy. Making productive use of the country’s vast reserves of private gold has long been a dream of policymakers. But whether those hidden hoards can be drawn out remains a big imponderable.

Though gold loans are booming, they are still probably worth only a sliver of the country’s GDP. These loans pose no systemic threat to the economy.

But it is the hapless poor who remain most vulnerable to predatory lenders.

They need cash... and are turning their gold over to get that cash. Like the Devil, human tragedy lies in the details. n

undercover Sanju Devi volunteered to use her pregnancy ultrasound to nab doctors who conduct sex-selective abortions

fo e t i c i d e

Sting Operators Handheld by an NGO, they are out to expose doctors who aid sex selection AANCHAL BANSAL photographs by ruhani kaur

still a long way to go A pregnant woman waits at an ultrasound clinic displaying the mandatory signboard that makes it clear that sex selection is illegal in India

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ith diwali barely a few days away, her chores seem to multiply by the hour. As she deftly plonks her two-month-old boy on the corner of a bed only to stop the other two— her two-year-old son and three-and-ahalf-year-old daughter—from dropping crumbs of Parle-G biscuits all around the room she shares with her husband and five children, Sanju comes across as a harried wife who grumbles about cleaning the house in time for the festival, smearing the mud floor with cowdung lipai, and frets about her husband’s state of unemployment in the same breath. “He has a double MA, but his elder brother refused to shell out the money needed to pay the agent for a government job,” she says unhappily, “He occasionally works as a daily wage labourer now.”

Sanju’s complaints veer towards the elder brother’s wife, who she alleges is too lazy to help with housework. “This is despite the fact that I had a vasectomy done barely a month back and the doctor clearly asked me to avoid heavy household 30 open

work,” Sanju says, her voice lowered, as she picks up the newborn for a feed.

The ‘lazy’ wife of the elder brother walks in with a toothy smile as Sanju begins telling me her story of the sting operation conducted by a doctor and his hospital in Jaipur. “I was five months pregnant then, but I had a lot of fun doing it,” says Sanju, recounting her role as an undercover operative. She had to make several trips, travelling three hours back and forth between Jaipur and her sleepy village in Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan, in the scorching heat of May this summer.

She was among several pregnant women of her village and others nearby who were asked to volunteer for a sting operation after a surprise visit by officials of Rajasthan’s health department charged with putting an end to the practice of sex-selective abortions in a state notorious for female foeticide. In the 2011 Census, Rajasthan recorded the lowest child sex ratio in the 0-6 age-group, of only 883 girls for every 1,000 boys, of all

states in the country.

The state health unit’s Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) cell was working in collaboration with a local NGO called Shikshit Rozgar Kendriya Prabhandhak Samiti (SRKPS), which is funded by Plan India, a larger NGO based in Delhi.

To expose criminal malpractice, SRKPS activists have been enlisting pregnant women—usually in their first trimester—from villages and slums, and then training them to play decoys to trap sex-determination and abortion clinics that have no qualms carrying out the deed to make a buck. The incentive for the pregnant women is a free sonography, medical care and a safe delivery assured at local government hospital. For women like Sanju, it is also a means of stepping out of the house and doing the world a good turn.

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nce ready for the decoy act, the

women and activists work together on fixing an appointment with a di25 November 2013

agnostic doctor for a sonography meant for sex selection. The pregnant volunteer shows up at the diagnostic clinic, asks for a sonogram, demands to know her foetus’ gender, and, if female, pretends to want a safai—an abortion. If the clinician reveals the sex and/or agrees, both of which are illegal, the NGO’s activist serves as a witness for a case against those guilty, who are charged with violation of India’s Pre-Conception and PreNatal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act of 1994. Spycam footage and audio recordings are gathered as evidence to be presented in court.

Sanju’s role in the sting operation led the government to nab one doctor and two touts involved in a racket of conducting tests on pregnant women to ascertain the sex of the foetus. She was accompanied by Pooja Kumavat, 24, an NGO activist who pretended to be her sister-in-law and did all the talking with agents and doctors. After a failed sting on a doctor who chased them away, Sanju realised that she had to appear more confident. “I was nervous the first time and fumbled in answering questions about my case,” she says. The next time round, she began by changing her attire. “I dressed up in a sari [as opposed to a ghagra-choli to look like a woman from Jaipur and not a village,” she says. “I partly grew up in the city, so I knew what Jaipur women look like.” But the task at hand was still not easy, as the second doctor was operating via a network of agents, one of whom was a midwife at a government hospital. “She was hard to convince,” says Sanju, “She took me to her house a couple of times without Pooja, and would grill me over every [falsely written] detail on the form.

She took us to the second agent in line only after she was convinced herself.”

This agent promised her medicines that she claimed would turn the foetus male

even if it happened to be female. “I stood my ground, kept calm and also taped all conversations on the recorder hidden in my blouse,” she says excitedly. It took about three weeks to have a diagnostic doctor conduct an ultrasound test, but this doctor walked out without saying a word. “The agent came back to me and asked me to buy him sweets as the news was good—I was expecting a boy,” she says, putting her baby aside on the bed.

While the whole exercise was recorded and videographed with a spycam hidden in a keychain, Sanju and Pooja had to shell out an additional Rs 2,000 for the ‘good’ news. They had already paid the agents and doctor a total of Rs 15,000 (a typical session of sonography costs between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,200). The money was later recovered from the three who are currently facing charges under the PCPNDT Act.

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he Act was amended in 2003 to turn it more stringent. Its provisions now allow for tabs to be kept on unregistered ultrasound machines, for example. While the amended act insists that ultrasound test records be kept for seven years (including the essential Form ‘F’ that carries data on 19 parameters about every female patient that the doctor receives), activists say that such documents only amount to circumstantial evidence in prosecuting the guilty. After all, the papers make no mention of gender.

“These are white collar crimes and the best way to catch a perpetrator is to catch him or her red-handed,” says Delhi-based gynaecologist Puneet Bedi, who has been an activist against sex selection for nearly three decades now, “The onus of proving innocence then lies on the doctor.”

Sting operations are a reliable way to

establish guilt. The first known operation against sex selection was conducted by journalist Seema Paul for The Telegraph in 1994. It was done in Delhi.

There have been a series of stings conducted since. Of the 21 stings conducted in Rajasthan in collaboration with the state government, 18 were done

by SRKPS and the rest by other NGOs and activists.

“There is a provision in the Act that allows for sting operations, wherein government officials of the PNDT cell can book a doctor,” says Bedi, “This has helped make things easier.” According to him, the records to be kept under the Act are restricted to ultrasound tests. “They do not keep track of OPD patients and that’s where most of the dealings happen. Sting operations are handy then.”

The modus operandi was also used to dramatic effect by TV journalists Shripal Shaktawat and Meena Sharma, who filmed doctor after doctor brazenly flouting the Act by doing sex tests in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Captured on tape in 2005 and 2006, the errant doctors escaped the law at the time, but once their cases got a burst of publicity through Aamir Khan’s TV show Satyamev Jayate, 21 of them were finally booked in Rajasthan. Prompted by a visit by the actor himself, the government swung into action, setting up a police station and fast-track court in Jaipur to deal specifically with these cases.

In an effort to encourage such exposés, the state government offers an incentive of Rs 1 lakh to anyone who brings the crime to light. “We are now planning to increase it to Rs 2 lakh,” says Kishanaram Easharwal, who heads the state unit of the PNDT cell. Of that sum, 20 per cent would be set aside for government officials participating in the raids, “as it takes a lot of effort to fight political pressure”.

The rest would be for the pregnant woman who volunteers as a decoy. “It will be given out in phases,” he adds, “to ensure that the witness stays with us till all court proceedings are completed.”

Yet, much more needs be done to generate awareness against female foeticide, says Rajan Choudhary, a journalist who started SRKPS. “We live in a biased society,” he says, “Jaipur has the lowest sex ratio [among Rajasthan’s cities] at 852 according to the 2011 Census. It is the medical fraternity that has to take responsibility. But doctors openly flout norms and exert political clout when we conduct such operations.” He recalls an incident in Navalgarh district where villagers and local politicians had gheraoed the team of officials who had come to arrest the guilty doctor after a sting operation. “We had to make sure that the pregnant volunteer was safe because such situations of stress can also lead to a miscarriage,” he says.

Of the 562 cases registered against doctors under the Act in Rajasthan since 2003, Easharwal admits that barring one doctor who was jailed for two months in March, most cases still await justice as they grind their way through the judicial process. “It is a bailable offence,” he says. Plus, “there is political clout to deal with, because we are going against the basic mentality of this society that places [enormous] importance on having a male child.”

There is some good news, though. “The fast-track court will soon get a magistrate to deal with the cases,” says Easharwal, “Once that is done, the judicial process should be faster.”

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itting in her rather sparse one-room

apartment that she recently moved into, Pooja Kumavat has a bundle of stories to tell of sting operations. Of how she once had to change her look by wearing glasses and heavy make-up, for example, and how she was spooked by the sonography room at a tout’s residence.

She has pulled off four successful traps since she joined SRKPS last year in a bid to escape marriage and lead a single’s life in the city.

Her last operation was her toughest— and most thrilling. “I nearly got caught because the officials were stuck in traffic 32 open

and we had to make sure that the clinician was caught red-handed in the act,” she says. “I kept texting and messaging them, hiding in the bathroom or balcony, apart from comforting the pregnant volunteer whose blood sugar was plummeting with stress mounting.”

Luckily, the officials reached in the nick of time and the sting worked out well at the end. “Now I know that I am capable of pulling off the toughest decoys well,” she says.

Pooja earns about Rs 24,000 a month and recently used her salary to have a Lasik surgery done and get rid of her glasses. Her job responsibilities include hunting for information and identifying suspects among hospitals and clinicians. “It takes months to find a clinic and establish a connect with them,” she says, “I often pose as an agent, promising to get clients on board for a commission.”

Each assignment means a new set of stories to fabricate, a new look and a new

The pregnant volunteer goes to a diagnostic clinic for a sonogram, demands to know her foetus’ gender, and, if female, pretends to want a safai—an abortion volunteer. She keeps an ear out and stays in touch with a network of friends and relatives to spot candidates. Of course, the family’s consent is a must.

Both the volunteer and her husband have to sign an affidavit promising not to abort the foetus in case it is not of the desired sex. Pooja then counsels and prepares them for the game. “We go through information down to the last detail, right from name to number of children, etcetera, so that [doctors and agents] don’t get suspicious,” she says. “Often, both volunteers have to ensure that the doctor reveals the sex of the child coherently for it to [be heard] on record. We need to think on our feet.”

M

unni Didi, as she is widely known

in Jhunjhunu, is a community volunteer who scouts for pregnant wom-

en willing to act as decoys. A community worker with government projects for several years, Munni keeps abreast of pregnancies in her network of about 10 villages in the area. “I keep tabs on young girls getting married, having babies or in need of gynaecological help.”

While her relatives keep her updated on their neighbourhoods, she spends a lot of time chattering with women of all ages. She says it helps to keep mothers-in-law in good humour just so that they let the daughters-in-law sign up as decoys.

While Munni Didi ensures that all women volunteers file proper affidavits promising not to undergo abortions, she admits that she often has to turn counsellor in case a woman who finds she is carrying a girl child is tempted to do exactly what the battle is against. Such things happen. She cites the odd case in Jaipur of a woman who wanted a male foetus aborted because she already had a son and was upset about having to find two daughters-in-law for her sons once they grew up. “The skewed sex ratio has placed a huge premium on brides in Rajasthan,” explains Munni, “Often, it is very expensive to source a bride for a son.

She was hoping to have a daughter and exchange her for a bride for a son later, when getting them married. We had to threaten her with a police arrest to prevent her from getting the baby aborted.”

Not just that, she says that they keep decoys under watch after the sting operation is over to make sure that they comply with court proceedings, as planned, and do not sneakily opt for a safai, as the local euphemism goes.

Most pregnant volunteers claim that they have joined the struggle for a good cause, with the incentives as fringe benefits, though they also admit they like the privilege of knowing their babies’ gender before they are born. Priyanka, 23, a firsttime mother, says that knowing the sex of the child gives her “tasalli” (reassurance) of the future. “When the doctor told me that my result was ‘negative’, meaning a girl, I knew that I had to try again for a child,” she says.

It was no accident that Sanju underwent a vasectomy right after the birth of her second son. She has three daughters, the eldest being eight years old. “It helped me make a choice,” she says. n 25 November 2013

mania

Sherwin Crasto/reuters

Parsis and the Art of Automobile Maintenance The intense relationship that the community shares with its cars explains the premium they command in the second-hand market Lhendup G Bhutia

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n 1970, an American economist

named George Akerlof published a paper on information asymmetry.

Titled ‘The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’, it examined the market impact of a situation in which one party has more or better information than the other during a transaction.

To illustrate such a scenario, Akerlof turned to the market for used cars. In such a market, a seller has all the relevant information on the true quality of the car s/he wants to sell, while the buyer has none. Unaware of how well the car has been maintained, whether it has had hard knocks and bears hidden problems, and thus afraid he might get ripped off, the buyer will pay less than what a truly high-quality car deserves. Average prices tend to rule, so dud ‘lemons’ are sold for what they’re worth or more, while good ‘peach’ cars are cheated of a fair resale price. If this is the case, then good cars will simply not find their way to the used car market, since their sellers can-

mad about cars Participants get ready for a vintage car rally in Bombay on 14 March 2004 25 November 2013

not get a good deal. And so all the cars on sale would be duds. Assymetric information, Akerlof argued, could result in a market failure. His work won him the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.

However, on the other side of the globe, Mumbai’s tiny Parsi community has been defying Akerlof’s theory for decades. The used car market in India likely has more lemons than peaches, buyers remain equally blind while making a choice, but one type of used vehicle fetches a premium over all others—one owned and maintained by a Parsi.

Here in the city, newspaper classifieds for used cars often state ‘Parsi-owned’ upfront, a mention almost always made ahead of the brand name and model of the vehicle. And popular internet portals like Quickr and OLX have reams of web pages with used cars on sale that highlight how they are ‘Parsi-owned’, how they are in ‘immaculate condition’ and how they are looking for ‘an owner to take care of their car’. A glance at these portals even reveals used cars that were once owned by a Parsi, have changed several other hands since and yet flaunt their ‘Parsi-owned’ label.

It all points to the extraordinary demand for cars owned by Parsis. While most vehicles collect dust for weeks before a buyer is found, these get sold within days of going on sale. Just what makes Parsi car ownership so special?

Freddie Turel, a Parsi well known for his passion of collecting cars, lifts his large right arm in the air, points his index finger to his head and proceeds to unscrew an imaginary screw in his head.

“Because,” he says by way of explanation, “we [Parsis] are mad about our cars.”

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ften noticed for their eccentric-

ities, Parsis love their cars so much, it’s hard to exaggerate the phenomenon.

Some say it goes with a manic need for orderliness, and the care they take of their automobiles has found portrayal in several commercials and Hindi films over the years. It all adds up to a higher sticker price.

Ayaaz Fazulbhoy, director of one of Mumbai’s largest and oldest used car dealers, the 1956-established Fazulbhoys Motors, says that every Parsi-owned vehicle brought to his dealership for sale

25 November 2013

undergoes a different valuation process.

He claims that a vehicle owned by a Parsi commands about 20 per cent more money than an equally well kept non-Parsiowned vehicle of the same make, model and age. “When buyers come, they want to see the vehicles first,” says Fazulbhoy, “When they zero in on a car, after looking at its condition and checking their budgets, they start inquiring about its past owners. Some even ask, ‘Is it Parsi owned?’”

Apart from such cars, according to Fazulbhoy, vehicles owned by doctors also fetch an equally good price.

According to another used car dealer, Saeed Rafique, manager of Evershine Motors in Andheri, people by nature are wary of the condition of used cars no matter what dealers say of their road fitness.

“In our world, there are no guarantees of quality or a warranty period,” he says, “There is just the word of a dealer or seller. Trust, here, becomes crucial. People are willing to pay more for a vehicle owned by a Parsi or doctor because people of these two communities are thought to be trustworthy and careful.”

But is all this just imagery? Popular culture has long celebrated the image of a Parsi gentleman polishing an already polished car, burying his head under a car’s hood to sniff out the faintest of noises, or swearing at others for failing to maintain road etiquette. Is it just another social stereotype?

On an earlier occasion, speaking over the phone, Turel had made the priority that Parsis accord their cars clear. “You see,” he had loudly declared, “we love our cars more than our wives.” This was before he dropped his voice to a whisper, “She is listening.” He elaborated on the theme a few days later at his Dadar residence. “It is like the case of the wife and the mistress. We marry our wives, but it is really the mistress we care for.”

Turel is popular among automobile enthusiasts in Mumbai. He collects vehicles, especially older cars, holds the position of vice-president of the Mercedes-Benz Club India, and at any given time, has at least a dozen vehicles in his possession. Just as he took over and expanded the dental care equipment business that his father set up, he has also inherited and expanded his father’s passion for automobiles. In his time, his

father owned a Pontiac Firebird, Peugeot 404 and a 1974 Fiat. As a boy, Freddie was not allowed to touch any of them, and some of his fondest memories are of older days when he was allowed to drive the cars to refuel. He would drive the car in need of fuel all the way from their home in Dadar to a filling station in Worli, and not any of the nearby ones because the owner of the Worli station was a Parsi, acquainted with the family, and thus trustworthy.

Turel often purchases neglected old cars, brings them up to scratch, and sells them when he wants to buy another.

More often than not, he gets a higher value for these than what he bought them for. For instance, in the late 1970s, he got about Rs 4 lakh for a Mercedes sedan a few years after he bought it for Rs 3 lakh and spent a few thousand to refurbish it.

“I know there are many who eye my cars,” he says, “but they don’t dare ask if I want to sell them.”

M

any Parsis, it appears, take a

quirky approach to car maintenance. Captain RH Buhariwala, a former pilot in the armed forces who works with the Maharashtra government, never allows anyone else into the driver’s seat of his Ford Fiesta. Nor has he ever employed a driver, who, he fears, might ruin his car. He gets his vehicle washed, cleaned and vacuumed religiously every day, even if it hasn’t been driven, and never with a shampoo or detergent, afraid that it might contain chemicals that will corrode its paint. He does not allow any eatable in his car, a rule he does not relax even for his two schoolgoing daughters.

Turel avoids visiting restaurants that have a valet service to park his car. If he cannot escape a valet, he asks the fellow to sit with him and show him the parking spot (and tips him anyway).

Captain Buhariwala has just listed his Fiesta for sale on OLX with a headline saying ‘Parsi owned car for sale’. When I turn up to meet him a little before noon in a spacious Parsi neighbourhood in Bandra, I find him inspecting his maroon car, already washed this morning, with a sponge in hand. Around him, old Parsi gentlemen circumambulate their cars under a hot sun, checking for faults to open www.openthemagazine.com 35

obsession Captain Buhariwala looks longingly at his well preserved Ford Fiesta that he has put up on sale

conversation, despite having confirmed the appointment. He wants to sell a Honda City that he has used since 2010 for Rs 6 lakh, he says, even though he knows most decently-maintained cars of that model would fetch only Rs 5 to 5.6 lakh. He oscillates his gaze between me and his watch and I realise there’s nothing more he has to say. What he has said, it seems, is already sensitive enough. As I begin to leave, he says, “Please, please be careful how you quote me.”

A ritesh uttamchandani

busy themselves with for the rest of the day, even as their wives seem to roll their eyes sitting in the cool shade.

“See,” says Captain Buhariwala, opening his car’s doors, “This is how you know whether a car has ever undergone an accident.” He is referring to that part of the vehicle where the doors meet the rest of the frame. Smash-ups are often masked by having the exterior reworked, he says, but these points reveal the damage.

Captain Buhariwala’s vehicle is over four years old and has been driven for 31,000 km. When he approached a dealer, he was offered only Rs 1.5 lakh for it.

Confident that he could get a better price, he went online with his sale notice. His asking price: Rs 3 lakh. He admits that the same model of the same age and mileage used by anyone else would sell for just about Rs 2.5 lakh. “I have sold two other cars in the past too (a Fiat and an Indica),” he says, “and I’ve always got the quoted price.” Earlier, he would put up a notice with the sign ‘Parsi-owned car on sale’ on his housing society’s noticeboard and someone would show up with an offer within days. Online, so far, since he put up his notice two weeks ago, he has gotten around 30 inquiries. Some would-be buyers have even come home to see his Fiesta. He plans to sell it towards the end of the month and buy a new Mahindra SUV. As I leave, he tells an unusual story of an old neighbour who owns an old Norton bike. This individual apparently parks the motorcycle in his bedroom.

36 open

A

mong other things, Parsis are no-

torious for their short temper and suspicious nature. It makes for unusual conversation. A Parsi owner of a Hyundai Verna in ‘immaculate condition’ has sold his 2008 car for Rs 4.1 lakh within two days of putting up an ad on Quickr. His wife informs me over the phone that he is out on an evening walk. Five minutes later, a gentleman who refuses to part with his name, no doubt the owner himself, comes on the line to say that both the owner and his wife have left the country.

Another Parsi who has his Tata Nano for sale online with the line, ‘Seeking buyer who will take care of my most prized possession’, refuses to talk about why he is selling his car.

“Why are you selling your car?”

“My wish.”

“Yes, but can you tell me a little so that I can write about it?”

“It is too personal to talk about.”

“Perhaps you can tell me if it’s true that Parsis get a good rate for their cars?”

“Are you well-versed in automobiles?”

“Not really. I was just curious about this…”

“Then it’s pointless. You won’t understand.”

The phone line goes dead.

Another Parsi, who deals in secondhand cars and also frequently buys and sells vehicles for personal use, wants the interview conducted at the doorstep of his house. After verifying my credentials, he reluctantly lets me in, but is unwilling to spend more than five minutes in

ccording to Turel, many Parsis have motives beyond money when they sell their cars. “We often also want someone who will equally love it.” In 1990, he was moved to see the condition of a 1947 Rolls Royce. It had once belonged to the Maharaja of Mysore. But when he came across it, it had been lying forlorn in a garage for 11 years. He bought the vehicle for a large sum, an amount he refuses to disclose, and spent an even larger sum getting it into shape. The sum of money he put in was burning a hole in his pocket and he had to sell it eventually.

A well-known industrialist in Mumbai sent his nephew to strike a deal for the vehicle. The industrialist agreed on a sum but cancelled a number of meetings with Turel. Eventually, he asked Turel to drive the vehicle to his Juhu bungalow.

Convinced that the industrialist had little respect for him, and hence would not care for the car either, Turel sold the Rolls Royce to someone else who offered less but appeared to appreciate it more.

Turel does not allow anyone but himself to drive his cars. It is a rule he’s adopted from his father. But several years ago, he found himself unable to turn down an acquaintance. This individual, now one of India’s wealthiest men, was then a relatively unknown youngster. “Like most Gujarati men—a terrible and rough driver,” he says of the experience of sitting in the passenger seat of his Fiat while this man drove the car. A few months later, the man spotted Turel while he was driving the car on Marine Drive. He shouted out for Freddie, but Freddie sped on with just a wave, afraid that he would ask for his car.

When I ask if I may mention the industrialist’s name, Turel says, “Please don’t.

How will (insert name here) feel?” n 25 November 2013

trend

Those Who Can, Blog

almost there (L-R) Sonu Bohra and Jasleen Kaur Gupta of Fashion Bombay say they are waiting for that one big boom in fashion blogging in India

A stylish new generation of fashion bloggers is making fashion personal, taking it off the glossy pages, onto the web and into the streets GUNJEET SRA

I

n December 1978, after fashion photographer Bill Cunningham photographed Greta Garbo in a chance photograph on the streets of New York, a selection of his candid photographs of fashionable people in the city was published in The New York Times Style section. It was the first time someone had ever published photos of ‘street style’.

The feature was received so well that the NYT decided to make it a regular—‘On the Street’. That, in a sense, was the start

of fashion blogging.

By 2002, fashion blogs had mushroomed in cyberspace, and when blogger Kathryn Finney of The Budget Fashionista was invited to the New York Fashion Week in 2003, it was clear blogging had arrived in a big way. By 2004, luxury shoe giant Manolo Blahnik had started a blog; by 2006, it was rumoured to be earning around $700,000. By 2012, fashion editors were leaving cushy jobs at magazines to venture into the open www.openthemagazine.com 37

sachin kadvekar/fotocorp

Suzanne Plunkett/reuters

style gurus (Above) Pernia Qureshi; (L-R) Bloggers for Singh Street Style Pardeep Bahra, Harmeet Saini and Mani Dhand at the London Fashion Week 2013

blogosphere—Nick Axelrod, for instance, quit Elle for Emily Weiss’s beauty blog Into The Gloss.

Initially, bloggers in India were, like bloggers everywhere else, at the periphery of the fashion world—second class citizens, a nuisance to designers. But the dramatic expansion in online readership combined with the emergence of street style in India, although still at a nascent stage, has made blogging an unexpectedly lucrative business for those with a penchant for style and entrepreneurship.

The recent launch of InFB, a website dedicated to bringing Indian fashion bloggers together and bridging the gap between bloggers and the fashion industry, is a signal that the times, they are achangin’. The website is designed as a community forum for fashion bloggers to share outfit inspirations, DIYs, blogging tips and trend updates among themselves. As blogging becomes more and more mainstream, it has begun diversifying, with specialised niches such as vintage, menswear and street style.

Bloggers are becoming the faces of 38 open

brands they endorse, collaborating with designers, offering style advice and becoming style icons in their own right.

“I

t’s not just about the clothes; it’s also about personal style.

People come to our blog because they want to read everything about us: our lives, what we do and how we do it,” says 30-year-old Jasleen Kaur Gupta of Fashion Bombay, a blog that docu-

ments personal style with DIY tips and whatnot. Five years ago, Gupta and her business partner Sonu Bohra were working at The Times of India as reporters. Both were interested in fashion from the start, and spent many hours doing free styling for in-house photo shoots. They then stumbled on the idea of outfit blogging and needed a space to showcase their work, and thus was their blog born.

“Ever since we started, we have been 25 November 2013

reading a lot on global blogging trends, and try to keep up with them. We realised early on that people responded better to us modelling our [own] work than anything else, so we stuck to it,” says Gupta who believes that even though fashion magazines broadcast trends, it’s really bloggers who create a consensus about whether something is going to work or not—because they communicate directly with consumers.

When they started Fashion Bombay, there was a dearth of Indian fashion bloggers, and initially, brands would approach them to review or endorse their clothes. “But now, we’re highly editorial.

We are more like brand consultants,” says Gupta. “People listen to us and believe in us, so we always try to keep that in mind when we review something.”

They claim to have turned down brands that they think don’t fit their style.

“Bloggers increasingly have to maintain a consistent identity and integrity because the audience that we deal with online is an intelligent one.” What makes their blog stand out is the effort that goes into making it look professional yet personal. Their experimental style is easy to emulate and can be characterised as gypsy-chic.

“We’re no la-di-da fashionistas in towering heels and the latest trends. We are realistic. We recycle. We believe in everyday fashion.” And everyday fashion, they feel, is only just starting to pick up in India. “A decade ago, the concept of dressing up meant putting yourself together only for social occasions,” says Gupta.

“Now people are more conscious and are starting to make that extra effort every day.” While Gupta and Bohra believe that Indian blogging is still to come of age, they are optimistic about its future.

“Internationally, brands now have blogger budgets,” says Gupta. “We are increasingly an important angle in the business of fashion and very hard to ignore. We’re waiting for that one big boom—and we’ll be there.”

W

hile many bloggers wait for

their big break, 28-year-old Pernia Qureshi is taking the fashion world by storm. A stylist, fashion writer and entrepreneur, Qureshi wears many hats and, with her new book, is en-route to claim-

25 November 2013

ing the mantle of a style-guru. “Style for me is all about expressing yourself,” she says. “Everybody has an inner personality that [s/he] wants to project to others, fashion just helps convey that personality through the way you dress.”

Her career in fashion began with a series of internships in New York City— with Elle and Harper’s Bazaar magazines and designer Catherine Malandrino—after she graduated from George Washington University in Washington DC. Though she studied law, she always knew that fashion was her calling. Her penchant for fashion can be attributed to her mother, who owned a clothes store in Delhi while Qureshi was growing up.

“Since the age of six, I was mesmerised by the beautiful clothes she would wear,” Qureshi says of her mother.

After her internships, before moving to India, she worked briefly as a stylist with designers such as JJ Vallaya and

Bloggers are becoming the faces of brands they endorse, collaborating with designers, offering style advice and becoming style icons themselves Tarun Tahiliani on their campaigns, fashion shows and look books. But it was the 2010 film Aisha that brought her centrestage. The film’s much talked about style may have got mixed reviews, but it made Qureshi a household name. “That is when the idea for the pop-up shop came to my mind.”

After only a year, Pernia’s Pop-Up Shop has become one of the most successful online fashion businesses in the country, making it India’s answer to the international Net-A-Porter. Earlier this year, Edward Lalrempuia, former fashion editor at Vogue India, joined Pernia’s as creative director, boosting its profile. The website also has a monthly newsletter catching up with Indian fashion and a blog that features big designers in the news and what’s hot .

Having rapidly become one of the most important figures in fashion today, Qureshi is now a published author, too.

Her book Be Stylish, recently out from RandomHouse India, is a sort of ‘style gospel according to Pernia’ that will help readers discover their signature look and guide them in choosing clothing and accessories to suit their body type. “I wanted to create a go-to handbook that girls can refer to in order to stay stylish,” says Qureshi.

N

ot everyone who blows up on dig-

ital media is actively looking for a big break. Pardeep Singh, a 22-year-old British literature student from Essex, had no inkling of the media frenzy he was inviting when he started posting pictures of himself on Instagram for fun early this year. Encouraged by their popularity, he launched a blog: Singh Street Style.

The blog documents the street style of Sikh men across the UK and quickly became something of an internet sensation.

Singh got interested in fashion when he started university in the heart of London, near the London College of Fashion. The strong fashion culture around him served as inspiration for his own style. His blog allows him to explore his passion for photography as well.

He began by shooting pictures of himself and his friends, and is now often approached by other Sikh men looking to be photographed. His only requirements for models are that they be dressed sharp and wear a dastar (turban), even if they don’t usually wear one. The result is an array of brooding good looks and slim silhouettes.

The men on Singh’s blog epitomise the Punjabi attitude of being bold and outgoing, blended with British culture. At the same time, they reflect an effort to stand out from the Punjabi community and be individualistic, even when it comes to how they wear their turbans—compact and colourful.

Singh believes that street style blogs are popular because, as opposed to magazines, they ensure that style is determined by the people and for the people.

He is indifferent to his celebrity, hoping only that through this blog, he has managed to reduce some of the prejudices against Sikh men, allowing them to display a style that is individualistic, uninhibited and classy. n open www.openthemagazine.com 39

doreen fiedler/AP

e vo lu t i o n

Trouble in Paradise The threats to Bhutan’s serendipitous identity Sathya Saran

T

imes change. Places change.

People change. Or do they?

In Bhutan, one can believe nothing really changes. That time is a soft breeze that blows through the country, winding its way between the high, evergreen mountains without upsetting or changing anything.

Three times now, I have visited Thimpu. This time, for the second year running, I am here for the Mountain Echoes Literature Festival. Something about the place and the people invests the festival with meaning, layering it with 25 November 2013

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

winds of change (Left) Children play in front of the wall of a house with a phallic dragon in Thimpu; Bhutanese friends enjoy some drinks at a local bar in the capital city

their life. Even the cars that travel singlefile on one-way streets seem disciplined.

Contrast this with the road rage or tenor of life in other cities across the world, and Thimpu truly seems in a time warp.

The jeep was dismantled and carried in pieces over abysses and through many mountain passes. Once all the pieces reached Thimpu, it was reassembled many shades—from the poetic to the dramatic, and I am repeatedly drawn to it.

Thimpu is a small idyllic town that passes off for a capital city. Smooth roads rolling up and down the undulating landscape, dollhouse like homes with wooden windows beautifully carved and painted fronts and a soothing abundance of green have charmed me each time. As have the men and women. Dressed in their traditional clothes, kira (anklelength dress) and wonju (long-sleeved blouse), they are well-spoken, polite and seem content with the way they lead 25 November 2013

Yet, it is not really so. Change has been coming over the years—slowly at first, then with quickening pace.

A

s late as the end of the 1950s, the

people of Bhutan would walk for a week through highlands and thick forests to reach the borders of India to enter West Bengal, where they went for trade. They braved thick fog, leeches, attacks by bear, leopard and wild elephant herds. In fact, Bhutan’s first motor vehicle, a Willys Jeep built in India,

was brought to Thimpu only in the late 1950s. The capital had no proper roads, nor was it reachable by any highway at the time (connectivity was still a work in progress). So it was driven up to the border town of Phuentsoling in Bhutan. The jeep was then dismantled and carried in bits and pieces over terrifying abysses and through many mountain passes.

Once all the pieces reached Thimpu, it was reassembled and lay in wait till an asphalt road was ready for it to ride on.

Even today, it is possible to encounter village children who have never seen a car and gawk when they see one in or around Thimpu. The villages of Bhutan, far flung and isolated by mountainous terrain, are still innocent of motor vehicles. The roads of Thimpu—which has one-seventh of Bhutan’s population— may now see traffic jams familiar to urban Indians, but that first Willys Jeep was greeted with a mixture of fear and awe. In her book, Treasures of the Thunder Dragon, Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wango Wangchuk writes eloquently of her first encounter with the vehicle: ‘My own reaction on seeing the jeep was sheer terror—at its size, its noise and the nauseating smell of petrol. It was with great reluctance that I climbed in, crammed at open www.openthemagazine.com 43

trappings of modernity A restaurant with a magazine ad in the city centre of Thimpu

the back with my sister and some cousins for the journey to Kalimpong.’ Later on, she writes that the experience was nightmarish, with landslides that they had to scramble over to climb into a vehicle waiting on the other side. However, she writes, ‘The 184 kilometre drive on the motor road to Phuentsoling had been like a journey to a new planet, introducing us to a world we knew nothing about.

Looking back, I see that journey as a turning point in our lives—it transported us from the medieval world straight into the 20th century.’

There is ample evidence that in the past half century, Thimpu has expanded and embraced things almost unknown before. Large numbers of students go to India, Australia and elsewhere to study, and development experts come to Bhutan to help build it. Tall buildings, bars and shops, hotels, including the Taj Tashi that hosts a segment of the Mountain Echoes Fest—the trappings of modernity are obvious. But parts of Thimpu seem to linger in the 20th century. The new structures sit beside old ones, including homes with dragons and flying penises painted on them, reflective of a way of life still steeped in the Buddhist tenets of non-violence, respect for life and veneration of culture.

Of the changes, perhaps the two most sweeping are the electronic media and the change in the structure of governance, and, like the Willys Jeep, both aspects inspire awe and fear. “My granddaughters are hooked to saas-bahu serials, I no longer spend my evenings with them but in another room where I can watch my sports channels undisturbed,” says Karma Tenzin Yongba, a former Superintendent of the Crime and Special Branch who is the founder of Bhutan’s first private investigation company, Top Secure. He has also written two crime fiction books. He sees the onset of the internet and television as the lifting of what could well be the lid of a Pandora’s box. “Earlier, no house in Thimpu would be locked,” he says.

“Theft and vandalism were taboo. Things changed once developmental initiatives began, and a contract understanding 44 open

“They air kiss instead of bowing, and for the first time the generation gap is truly wide,” says Karma Tenzin Yongba, a former police officer with Nepal resulted in droves of migrant labour coming in. A migrant would come in as contract labour, earn enough money to marry, bring his wife who would start a shop and a family, and he would become a contractor himself. He would buy some land, build a house. But his values were not Bhutanese.” The sacred pool, to his mind, was being muddied.

In the late 1980s, Bhutan saw an uprising of ‘outsiders’. As a measure to integrate those of foreign origin with its cultural ethos, the country implemented a policy of ‘driglam namzha’ (traditional values and etiquette), making the wearing of the gho and kira national dress

mandatory at government offices and official functions. Simultaneously, the study of the Nepali language was eliminated from the school curriculum. This enraged people of Nepali origin who saw in the policy a threat to their culture.

The situation had to be handled with firmness and understanding. The solution arrived at by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in which Karma Tenzin was actively involved as Superintendent of the Crime and Special Branch, brought peace back to Thimpu in 1989. But the climate had changed irrevocably. As a custodian of law and order, Tenzin has had a ringside view of the seamier turns of life in his city. “Crime got more sophisticated post the 70s,” he says. “Cross border smuggling, sex related crimes... every young man was a ‘dada’. Youngsters went outside to study and came back with attitudes non-existent in Bhutan. Taking a girl for a ride is now cool, even the way they drink tea is different... It is sad. They only pick up the bad things,” he says, 25 November 2013

EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

adding that gang fights were among the bad things. “Boys from the North of Thimpu will fix a time and place to fight those from the South... maybe because a girl does not like a boy who belongs to the other group but has taken a shine to her, or because they don’t like a referee’s decision in a football match.”

Thimpu now boasts of many liquor and dance bars that attract the youth.

“Consumerism has taken the young over,” Tenzin says. “Look around you in the evenings and they have all changed into shiny, figure-hugging clothes bought off the row of shack-like shops that sell cheap imported clothes. They air kiss instead of bowing, and for the first time the generation gap is truly wide.”

Drugs and alcoholism are other fallouts of changing norms, as is migration to Thimpu from villages. “In larger countries, such things can be wished away, but it corrupts a small population like ours,” Tenzin says.

Lily Wangchuk, Bhutan’s first woman 25 November 2013

to contest an election to the National Assembly—held earlier this year—and leader of the Druk Chirwang Tshogpa, a political party, agrees there is trouble in paradise. Migration to the capital is one big reason, she says. “When 100,000 live in a city that once housed 100, shortages are bound to happen. And corruption follows as everyone tries to grab things for themselves. For the first time now, Thimpu has some associations—of taximen, construction workers, tourism people. Luckily, there is no conflict as yet. But who knows?”

Wangchuk adds, “The social media, crowding due to migration from villages and the new TV culture have changed attitudes towards women. It is [tearing] up the social fabric. Youngsters chat on the net, meet... It can lead to misunderstandings.”

Cases of rape and female destitution, unheard of earlier, are now in noticeable numbers. Organisations like RENEW have had to be instituted by the Queen Mothers. Bhutan has four of them, sisters by blood, all wives of the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who dedicate themselves to various social service activities through foundations that each has set up. RENEW, short for Respect, Educate, Nurture and Empower Women, was founded in 2004 by Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck as an NGO dedicated to empowerment of women and girls in Bhutan, especially victims and survivors of domestic violence.

Perhaps the country’s biggest threat is from drugs. Caught unawares by the rising habit, the government does not know how to cope. Marijuana grows freely.

Harder drugs have filtered in. Lack of opportunity and isolation in the city away from their rural homes lead the young to addiction. There is no rehabilitation programme in Bhutan yet for drug addicts.

Y

et, all is not lost. The hold of Buddhism is still strong. Political ambitions have not yet created monsters out of those in power. Bhutan’s monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, as well as the elected Prime Minister Jigme Thinley, think nothing of cycling alone for exercise or to work on no-car days. A venerable elder who studies such things tells me with confi-

dence that while the individual living in Thimpu might be only ‘50 per cent happy’, the city may boast of ‘70 per cent of its people being at least 50 per cent happy’ by the parameters on which Bhutan measures its Gross National Happiness.

Tenzin is among those who have plans to correct the country’s balance before it tips too far off the middle path. He plans a project to engage the young in productive farming and reverse the migratory process through rural initiatives in self-sufficiency.

Lily Wangchuk hopes that her success in the next round of polls will bring a female perspective to a male dominated system that runs the city, and through it, the country. “Instead of looking at the National Happiness idea and fitting the individual into it, happiness needs to start with the individual,” she says. “To improve the National index, Thimpu must be able to guarantee every person food, health and shelter.”

Despite the country’s undeniable problems, I am hopeful about the future of this growing city. There are signs that the old order might never entirely be replaced by a new one. I see it in the long line of craft shops running along the Taj Tashi that bear the look of honey traps for rich tourists. The prices are blithely marked in multiples of thousand, even though there is no denying the quality of the products, raw material and workmanship. More heartening is to see these objects still in much valued use in homes across the country. Even in Thimpu, plastic has not replaced wood and wicker in the kitchen and elsewhere.

I see it too in the contemporary adaptations of the national garment. Like the sari, the kira and wonju have acquired new colours and designs in their weaves, but retain their grace. I see it in the bowing of city-bred heads as they pass a dzong or temple, in the flags fluttering over every hill in sight, in the lines of walkers toiling up the steep slope to pay their respects to the larger-than-life Buddha statue that overlooks Thimpu. And I see it with finality in the slow progress of the young monk in maroon robes, supine on the road, as he measures his way with his body up the slope to his monastery. It tells me that despite all the changes, Thimpu will be safe. It is the capital of Bhutan, after all. n open www.openthemagazine.com 45

between the sheets

From Shoes to Shaadi A meeting with the Boyfriend’s parents sonali khan

M

en, My 26 years of wisdom tell me, are horrible creatures. I’d agreed to meet the Boyfriend’s parents with nary a protest. I’d even spent an hour with our trusty neighbourhood caterer, carefully going over the recipe of the gajar halwa in the casserole I was carrying, should the Boyfriend’s mother feel the urge to quiz me about the opti mum carrot-to-maawa-to-sugar ratio in the halwa I claimed to have cooked. My own mother was harder to fool. When I turned up at her doorstep two days later carrying a smaller casserole, she asked but one question: “Where, dear child, is the dabba of ghee kept in your kitchen?” Damn it. But I digress.

He unlocked the door and we entered.

Three pairs of eyes swivelled towards us. In the week leading up to the meeting, I had asked the Boyfriend all kinds of questions about his family. I knew how his father felt about a certain family-owned media empire and that I was under no circumstances to mention my various stints there. I knew that his mother felt almost personally insulted when someone called Aishwarya Rai more beautiful than Sushmita Sen. I knew that their driver had two wives, one girlfriend and five children. I knew that Kaaki, his childhood nanny, not-sosecretly hoped that he would elope with her 16-year-old daughter. But I had forgotten to ask the most important question about an Indian household: do we take our shoes off before entering? There’s no one right answer. The permutations and combinations are mind-boggling—no ‘outside’ footwear in the house, not in the kitchen, not in the prayer room, all footwear is okay everywhere, only home chappals on the carpet... it’s a jungle out there. I stood there stupidly, waiting to take my cue from the Boyfriend. After waiting for me for a full minute to precede him—ladies first, like he’d been taught—he took my hand and strode right in.

First up was his mother. A five-foot-nothing woman who had to tilt her head upwards to look at us. He engulfed her in a bear hug while I smiled and muttered a weak, “Hello aunty.” In the many hours I had spent Googling ‘first meeting with the boyfriend’s parents’, men and women with great knowledge of the subject had waxed eloquent about the magnificent beast that is the mother of an Indian son. She is the Devil incarnate, not to be trust-

ed and never to be crossed—at least not until the marriage certificate had been signed, sealed and delivered. Since marriage wasn’t on the agenda, I was certain she wasn’t locking up the family solitaires in panic just yet. But I’d never met a woman who looked more petrified than the Boyfriend’s mother did at that moment. His father had patted me on the head by way of greeting, smiled broadly and proceeded to discuss Sachin’s retirement with his son, leaving the two of us to make our own conversation. Like I said, men are horrible, mean creatures.

“You are tall,” she said finally. I smiled and nodded in agreement. “I get it from my grandfather,” I told her. “Then why do you wear heels?” For one second, I was reminded of all the things her son had made me do in those heels. I wondered what would happen if I told her grinning at the direction of my thoughts.

“He likes heels. And tall women,” she said thoughtfully. That wiped the grin right off my face. No woman likes to think she falls neatly within her boyfriend’s ‘type’. I’m no exception. I wondered what was really going on here.

Was this just an honest, albeit tactless, admission? Or was it a subtle put-down, her way of letting me know that I shouldn’t get too comfortable in her son’s life? Or had my frantic research made me paranoid?

A friend had offered the most sensible piece of meet-theparents advice. “Even if she likes you, she’s bound to feel a little shortchanged. If you’re good for her son, she gets no credit. If you’re bad, you’re the evil wench who caused her/him pain. Plus, the Hindu-Muslim angle, dude.” I remembered my friend’s wise words and decided to try harder. Her attitude warmed substantially when I told her I’d interviewed Sushmita Sen a few years ago. A half hour later, as Kaaki was serving us lunch, she suddenly announced, “You will have tall kids,” and smiled broadly, obviously pleased with her ingenious way of letting us know we had her blessings.‘What’s this pair’s obsession with height?’ I remember wondering as I stared, shell-shocked, from mother to son. Marriage? Kids? Had I missed some very important memo? n

I stared shell shocked from mother to son.

Marriage? Kids? Had I missed a memo?

46 open

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

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 25 November 2013

true life

mindspace Pleading With the Enemy

63

O p e n s pa c e

Ranbir Kapoor Vidya Balan

62

n p lu

Thor 2: The Dark World Satya 2

61 Cinema reviews

Epson EH-TW8200 Zenith El Primero Original 1969 Lenovo Ideapad Flex 2

60

Tech & style

Gravity and Male Pattern Baldness Harvesting Microwave Signals Global Warming and the Sun

56

Science

Interview: Paul Schrader

54

Cinema

Manu Chao

51

music

A 3D Printing Party

a rt s

The Man Who Loves Forts

48 64

ritesh uttamchandani

obsession No man is a fortress but one man is all about them 48

true life

man on a mission Shridatta Raut looks out of the Gonzalo Garcia Church on the 110-acre premises of the Bassein (or Vasai) Fort

A

How I Became a Fort Conservationist An accountant by profession, Shridatta Raut has devoted his life to finding unknown forts in Maharashtra and conserving them. He even got married in one

ritesh uttamchandani

s a youngster , I was a bit of a drifter. I started working while studying in junior college, tried my hand at poetry and later started volunteering with a social organisation.

But I always, in a way, felt incomplete.

During my college days, I got quite involved in poetry. I lived in a small apartment in Bhayandar, on the outskirts of Mumbai, and wanted a quiet place where I could write. I also had no interest in the BCom degree I was pursuing. So a friend somewhat jokingly suggested I try Vasai fort.

I had never been to a fort before. On my first visit, I remember being awestruck by the isolation and loneliness of the fort. The walls, ramparts, remnants of temples, wells and tunnels— they all spoke of a glorious time. But now they were nothing more than neglected relics of a bygone era. I kept visiting this place. I started bunking college almost every day to spend the entire day at the fort. I wrote a bit of poetry, but soon I came to notice that I was spending a lot of time simply observing this strange and isolated world.

As this went on, I began to notice how neglected this space was. The only people who seemed to visit it were lovers meeting secretly and youngsters looking to drink, and often brawls would break out among them. No one was interested in the fort itself or its history. And almost every wall bore initials of lovers with hearts drawn around them.

That’s when I, with the help of friends, formed a group called Kille Vasai Mohim to clean up the place. We would spend every Sunday picking up garbage and refuse, clearing the choked water tanks and removing graffiti. But from an enthusiastic group of about 60, it petered out to about seven after a few weekends. I realised I needed to do something more. So I decided to provide free guided tours on weekends, the only condition being that people would have to spend an hour helping me clean the place.

The programme proved quite successful. But it also had another effect— I started getting drawn deeper into research. I started visiting libraries and open www.openthemagazine.com 49

archives in Mumbai and Pune to read about Maharashtra’s forts, especially those located in Thane district. This was also the period when I got a job as an accountant with an agency in South Bombaythat worked with mobile service providers. I would wrap up all my work by noon and sneak out to visit the nearby Asiatic Library. When I realised that most old texts on the area’s forts were written in the Modi script, which was used in Maharashtra in earlier times, before Devnagri picked up, I enrolled myself in a college-conducted course on Modi and later found a tutor to teach me. I also left my parents’ home and moved to a house in Vasai so I could live closer to the fort.

I slowly came to understand that there has been very little historical research on forts in Maharashtra. For instance, so far people have only been able to identify about 53 forts in Thane district, whereas according to a few accounts, there should at least be about 113. I started looking around for them.

I discovered one such fort on a hill in a village called Datiware. This was, according to my research, built sometime in the 18th century and was used by Maratha warriors as a stopover point on the way from Vasai fort to Kelwa fort. But now all that remains of it are a few steps and a water tank. Nobody, not even locals, knew of the fort or how the steps came to be.

Many times, I have had to face disappointment. A few years ago, I started searching for a fort in the Bhiwandi area. The existence of such a fort, built sometime in the early 18th century and used by individuals like Bajirao Peshwa, had been mentioned in some accounts. But nobody had been able to locate it or even knew if it existed. Last year, I found its remnants in a nearby village. All that remained of it was two large walls, and villagers were using this place to relieve themselves. When we went to check out the place, we were denied access to it by the locals.

We are still pursuing the matter and hope to change their minds.

We’ve also had some remarkable discoveries. We once stumbled upon an old, undated statue of Yamraj within Vasai fort. On another occasion, we discovered an official seal in the Mahim Kelwa fort that is supposed to have been made in the 16th century. Once while I was conducting a tour in Vasai fort and telling the group about how 50 open

old the fort was, a man said he had seen older items in his village. This man was in his eighties and I thought he was simply bragging. But a few months later, I checked out his village on an impulse. He lived in a far-flung area called Kiravali village. To prove his point, he took me to the village temple, where a stone tablet was being used to break coconuts.

I, along with a team, began examining the tablet. It was about 126cm in length and 56cm in width. It was ex-

In the village temple, an extremely old stone tablet was being used to break coconuts. Once we cleaned it, we found an image of

a donkey copulating with a woman carved into it. It dates back to 1268 AD, and was probably used to ward off intruders. “All this while

we thought the tablet was holy and were praying to it”

tremely old and seemed to have an image carved on it. The image was, however, faint and unclear so we began cleaning it with tamarind leaves and oil. Once we were done, we were shocked. The image carved was that of a donkey copulating with a woman. We later learnt that the tablet dates back to 1268 AD, the era of the Shilahara dynasty, which ruled a large part of Maharashtra. It was probably used as a warning sign to ward off intruders. The old man was amused

to learn of it: “And all this while we thought the tablet was holy and were praying to it.”

My focus, however, has mostly remained on Vasai fort. I spend every Sunday conducting a free guided tour of the 110-acre fort and delving into its rich history; how it was run by the Portuguese and later the Marathas. We also try to clean and conserve the area.

A few years ago, we decided we should try to restore the painting on some of its walls and objects. We decided to use organic dyes to do so, except none of us had the money. So we began a drive asking volunteers to visit Ganapati mandals, especially Lagbaugcha Raja, to fetch discarded flowers. We collected these flowers, and along with banana peels and sugarcane juice, created vegetable dyes out of them. As a result, we’ve able to restore the paint on many walls and objects.

Neither the government nor any other agency takes care of these forts.

Some, like Vasai fort, fall under the Archaeological Survey of India, but there is absolutely no maintenance work done by it. Many of these forts are rapidly disappearing and getting encroached upon. I’ve started documenting, keeping notes and preparing maps of various structures within forts. I’ve also published some of my work and discoveries. I do all of this because I realise that in a hundred years’ time, many of these structures will probably not exist.

This passion has also helped my personal life. A few years ago, I was conducting a tour of the Vasai fort for employees of a bank. One of the group members was particularly interested in the subject, and she kept coming to help in various conservation activities.

We decided to get married soon after.

Around the same time, a rumour began to spread. Locals began to talk about how the fort was haunted, and how we risked the wrath of evil spirits if we continued to clean up the space and thus destroy their peace. Some of my volunteers were also scared by this. Both my wife and I wanted to show this was untrue. That’s when it occurred to us— why not dispel their fears by getting married here? We got a priest, garlands and sindoor, and with a few friends as witness, got married in an ancient temple—by far our most special place. n

As told to Lhendup G Bhutia 25 November 2013

arts

photos vivek muthuramalingam

First, You Print the Shot Glass At a Bangalore art gallery, a printer spins 3D objects out of bright green plastic while an unopened bottle of vodka stands by DEEPA BHASTHI

G

eeksville would cheer.

I am invited to a party called ‘3D Print Party Flux Assemble Open-Hardware Kathe UM%hack*’.

I don’t understand what that means, though I suppose I can tell you what 3D printing is. A meeting with artist Fabian Hesse, the party’s host, has given me an understanding of his line of practice, but I still can’t pronounce the whole name of this party. Let’s stick to calling it the 3D print party.

Fabian Hesse is a visual artist from Germany, and is in Bangalore as a Goethe bangaloREsident@Jaaga, an artist-in-residence programme that the Goethe Institut organises in the city in association with local cultural bodies

25 november 2013

and arts organisations. His interest lies chiefly in the many layers of the Web world and his works explore the fundamental changes that occur in the world and society through information technology and ‘digitalisation’. One of the ways Hesse engages with the process of this ‘digitalisation’ is through 3D printing, using freely available open source software and hardware.

At the 3D print party in Bangalore’s Max Mueller Bhavan on a light winter evening, the room is illuminated by the shivering lines and patterns on a laptop screen, magnified and projected onto a wall. There is tea in a steel can, and some biscuits. All the action is around the printer on the floor, behind

porta-factory The 3D printer, brought in from Germany by artist Fabian Hesse, cost ¤1,200

which surreptitiously sits a tall bottle of vodka, waiting to become part of a ritual traditional among 3D print artists. A work week is only just ending outside the glass windows of the building and the party indoors won’t heat up for a few hours yet. A few people trickle in and the art talk begins.

T

he printer, the party’s reason

for being, sits in the middle of the room. It is a square box, open on all sides. There is a lot going on with it. A open www.openthemagazine.com 51

plastic loom An intricate iPhone cover takes shape in the printer (above) as its other products lie about, standing out in green against a red backdrop

little screen tells you how much printing has been done already, what the temperature is like and other numbers.

The nozzle of the machine is whirring back and forth, outlining a form in green—the only colour Hesse has added to the printer. Before the event, he had invited people to send in images of things they’d like to have printed; what’s being printed now, he tells me, is a sort of mini-bust, based on a photograph of a friend’s head and shoulders.

The way it works is that Hesse takes an image, uses open source software to convert it into a format printable in 3D, puts it on an SD card and feeds it to the printer, which then prints a figure based on the image. Even a small file takes hours to print; Hesse’s own works take between nine and fortysomething hours each.

The droning noise of the printer at work silences the conversations of 52 open

those who mill around it, peering in.

There is something about the monotony and repetitive movement of the nozzle that, like a micro-trance, holds your attention for several minutes— until you have taken a photo on your camera phone, until someone you know walks in, until your back hurts from bending over.

Walking by the printer every few minutes to check on its progress, I overhear the conversation: “I can’t get my head around these things. I am too old. I am fascinated

Objects are ‘printed’ using a polylactic acid, a kind of biodegradable plastic that comes in several colours— transparent, too. Today’s shade is bright green

by it but I can’t understand it,” says an observer.

“Oh, neither can I,” replies another, “I just like what it is doing.”

Hesse is explaining to someone that the printer, which he has brought with him from Germany, costs about ¤1,200. Across a long table are pieces of plastic, metal, nuts and bolts and tape that will make another such printer. With the help of some technical people from Electronic City, Bangalore, Hesse will assemble the second 3D printer right here. He hopes it will work; he and the people from Electronic City have reworked the nozzle a little.

Just then, the machine halts. Hesse doesn’t know why. The project in progress can’t be finished. Once the printer stops, it can’t begin again mid-project—the file would have to be printed again from scratch. Hesse uses a spat25 november 2013

ula to remove the half-formed figure from the surface of the printer. In its place, he loads an image of an iPhone cover. The girl who sent it in is mighty excited. The printer is restarted. The pattern printing now is intricate and the nozzle moves fast. As the cover begins to take shape, more people mill around the machine, including a man and his little daughter. While he seems delighted at the technological marvel, she doesn’t look too impressed.

An artist standing by is paying attention to the percentage of the printing already done, looking at the little monitor where the numbers are on display. It is at 12 per cent. Hesse is telling someone that he uses polylactic acid (PLA), a kind of bio-degradable plastic that comes in several colours—transparent too. Today’s shade is green.

“What is with the boxer shorts?” I ask, referring to a pair of printed boxers hanging from a hook against a red surface on one wall in the gallery.

Hesse explains that the shorts, printed with the alphabet—a jumble of letters layered over each other—are intended as “a nod to data security patterns that prevent transparency and by turn, data theft. Boxer shorts are a piece of private clothing; very few people see [them]. So this explores the idea of whether to have transparency or 25 november 2013

In his work, Hesse explores the role of data as a new currency. The materiality of data and its physical attributes are what he seeks to combine and highlight not. In this museum, institution-like set up, this was like a joke to me.”

Someone in the background is talking about being an artist, another about not being one but being in awe of art. Mutual acquaintances are being invoked after new introductions. Hesse is going back and forth between two laptops, saving files and tweaking things in each. On one sits a small white rabbit figurine, printed in 3D. A few other oddly-shaped 3D objects are in evidence, standing out in green against the red boards that cover the walls.

It isn’t time yet for the vodka bottle to be put to use.

T

he day before the party, I meet

Hesse at the cozy Courtyard Café at Jaaga, a space which describes itself as an ‘evolving community sculpture’, a sort of creative common ground that is hosting him. He speaks about how

he started out as a graffiti artist in his teens. In small town Germany, he and friends would stay out nights to “make the city ours”. That got him in trouble, but not before putting him on a path of art practice. He emphasises that he cannot make high end decorative pieces of art.

Through his practice and his work with Fablab, an artist collective in Germany where members pool together resources and exchange knowhow, Hesse explores the role of data as a new currency. The materiality of data and its physical attributes are what he seeks to combine and highlight through his 3D pieces. He once got hold of passwords of hacked Twitter accounts and printed them out in 3D. That work and many of his others are hard to transport around the world when he travels—the threads are fragile—but his emails go around the world several times in a matter of seconds. The irony of this, the contrast between his work and the ideas that he conveys through it, isn’t lost on Hesse.

He is a 1980s child; we spend some time talking of those days, of growing up without email and the web. Hesse doesn’t allow himself nostalgia of a simpler era, though: “You make the best of what you have.” For all his interest in the internet and how it blurs the lines between the virtual and real, he says he was left speechless by the NSA spying scandal in the US. “There was a moment when the internet was seen as Utopia. But it’s no longer ‘our internet’ anymore, and that makes me sad. I am an advocate of freedom of expression.”

The conversation drifts to Facebook and email—the virtual crowding of real lives. He says he finds himself exercising reserve in his emails these days, after the spying scandal broke. “Not that I have anything to hide, but still.”

At the party the next evening, his Twitter password work lies in a corner. Hesse told me the night before that it is customary among artists who work with 3D printing to print a small glass and drink a shot of vodka from it.

That is the ‘party’ part of the evening.

The ritual is observed in due course.

Printing happens too. n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

Mario Anzuoni/reuters

music

Don’t Mean To Bang On About Bongos Manu Chao, the modern Indian music fan and the banality of global music SIMRAN SINGH

T

he NH7 Weekender festival an-

nounced with a fair bit of fanfare that ‘world music superstar’ Manu Chao would be performing gigs across India this year. I wasn’t especially thrilled, partly because my working knowledge of him was as a French dude with dreads singing ‘…king of the bongo, king of the bongo…’ on MTV when I was 19.

Ignorant as I then was about the wider cultural connotations and camaraderie thus evinced with our Black brethren, this time round the lyrics reminded me, with a fair degree of consternation, of a certain UK Independence Party member’s unfortunate views on how Britain needs to stop sending money to ‘Bongo Bongo land’—by which he meant humanitarian aid to ‘third-world’ countries.

All this talk of bongos and White Rastas aside, Manu Chao acts as an interesting flashpoint. It’s not bongos I have a problem with. The new Arcade Fire has lots of bongos, and I venture it is all the better for it. What left me feeling bemused was the hysteria on social media over Mr Chao’s imminent performance in our country.

There are two simple reasons for this. First is that this superstar’s last seminal hit, the album Clandestino, was released fifteen years ago in 1998.

Second is the undeniable presence of phenomenally talented and extremely current local acts, EDM or otherwise—and I say with absolute honesty and a fair degree of pride that some of the best EDM I have heard comes from India—that are received with far less excitement and support from our urban upper middle-class audiences.

This begs the question: will young affluent urban Indians accept any sort of ‘global superstar’ (and I use both words with a degree of discomfort)? Harsh as it is, could one go so far as to say that the listenership in question is a culturally vacant, musically-addled audience

25 november 2013

of cosseted trustafarians?

I gave Clandestino a listen. It certainly didn’t strike me as the new Bob Marley, as some critics raved, but by no means was the album especially egregious.

Mano Negra, a now-cult band fronted

by Chao from 1987 to 1995, is a different story altogether.

Genuinely iconoclastic, their sound is a manic hybrid of punk, flamenco, ska, Algerian raï, salsa, reggae and African percussion, with a Gogol Bordello-esque approach to performance that demonstrates the dynamism that genre-pushing ‘world music’ could bring to the mainstream.

Boundaries have been pushed, sonically and geographically, with several projects such as the ‘Train of Ice and Fire’,

Chao’s last seminal hit was 15 years ago, and his solo stuff can’t match his work between 1987-95 with the genuinely iconoclastic, now-cult band Mano Negra Mano Negra’s tour of remote and hostile regions in several Latin American countries, including Columbia, which was then violence-ridden and at the height of its cocaine wars.

A German friend recalled seeing Chao at a festival in Europe in the early 2000s, backed by his subsequent and rather large band, Radio Bemba.

She rated it one of the most vibrant and spirited shows she had ever seen.

I wonder if his solo performance in Delhi could be so commended.

Chao’s solo work, commercially successful as it was, suffers in comparison, in spite of well-intentioned and indeed passionate narratives of political disenfranchisement and social alienation among those cast out and under the system. It lacks the earthy innovation and spiky energy that would

have made him the global superstar he should have been. Any fan of Mr Chao ought to give a serious listen to Bongo Bong, a rendition of a track on the Mano Negra album King of the Bongos, as it’s a full-on rock track with a seriously groovy hook. And bongos, too.

There is a certain irony that our wellheeled Dilliwallas are so enthralled by this self-styled musical troubadour with his outspoken views on Capitalism and unequal political systems. But that is a moot point, as music is, and should be, for everyone. The point here is not to call into question the musical integrity of Mr Chao, nor is it to mock the musical sophistication—or lack thereof—of your average Delhiite. The point is that, as audiences, we perhaps shouldn’t settle for half-baked (no pun intended) excuses of performances by artists who clearly have the potential and musical chops to put on a show like no other.

Equally, as people who love and enjoy music, creating a vibrant and artistfriendly scene that will attract the gigs we deserve starts with supporting local acts, not just the minimal-technoraver DJs and prog-rock ‘play your guitar like a sitar’ bands, accomplished as they no doubt are.

Some of the best music I have heard lately has been at small gigs in grotty bars and obscure venues, whether in London, Goa or Kampala. This makes me question the musical ethics of the global music industry at large, as it seems that nine of ten hit records are ersatz, banal and auto-tuned to death.

Which is why we, its global consumers, fall upon even a whiff of apparent authenticity, expressed by bands such as The Black Keys and Kings of Leon, which, even if not particularly original, are at least not Justin Bieber. And that’s another reason why local scenes in cities are important, if nothing else: as an alternative to a global conspiracy of bad taste. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA jeff vespa/wireimage/getty images

Charging Forth Paul Schrader, the mind behind some of Hollywood’s most seminal films, talks about cinema’s crisis of form, parting ways with Martin Scorsese, and Bollywood’s body obsession Nikhil Taneja

A

t 67, Paul Schrader, the screenwriter behind perhaps two of the most important American movies of all time—Taxi Driver and Raging Bull—is nowhere near done. If anything, he has a renewed vigour—the sort you might see in fresh-faced filmmakers who’ve just released their first feature. The reason for this new energy is The Canyons, Schrader’s 18th film as a director, written by American Psycho novelist Bret Easton Ellis.

The film might as well have been the duo’s first, considering the do-it-yourself manner in which it was made.

Crowdfunded (through Kickstarter), crowdsourced (with all actors apart from the leads cast through Facebook, and costumes and locations sourced on favours) and made on a microbudget of $25,000, the film finally released via video-on-demand before it got a theatrical release. Both Schader and Ellis invested $30,000 in the film, and female lead Lindsay Lohan put money behind it, too. The other lead, pornstar James Deen, may have been the only one to be paid up front.

Despite having collaborated with Martin Scorsese on some of the seminal films of recent cinema, and directed actors like Richard Gere (American Gigolo), Joseph Fiennes (Forever Mine) and Michael J Fox (Light of Day), Schrader doesn’t seem opposed to start56 open

persistence “I have the same tenacity as Martin Scorsese and so do a number of others”

ing from the ground up again, if need be, because cinema is the only way of life he’s ever known. Speaking over the phone from his home in Los Angeles, Schrader shares his thoughts on DIY filmmaking film, the state of cinema today and ‘Xtreme City’, his ambitious one-time project with Shah Rukh Khan and Leonardo DiCaprio that was ultimately scrapped. Excerpts:

Now that the noise about the movie has subsided, how do you look back on the process of making a DIY film? What did you learn from the process?

Well, I think I got very lucky with that.

We were doing something that hadn’t been done before. We were kind of exploring to see if we could do it. I look back and I realise that so many things that could have gone wrong didn’t go 25 November 2013

wrong. And in fact, we got very, very lucky. It was very exciting to do that for the first time, but I don’t know if it would be so exciting to do it a second time. So, I mean, I learnt that you could do it. I learnt that it was a lot harder than we thought. And the whole distribution system—VOD [video on demand]—is definitely real, but it’s not as organised or efficient as it should be.

And it’s got to improve if it’s going to be genuinely competitive.

film again. It’s obviously getting harder and harder; the budgets are smaller and smaller. It’s not a very healthy time in the film business, but I think the studio system won’t be around that much longer to attack. What’s going on now is that the executives of studios are basically taking all the money out of the safe in the Titanic. Because they know that ship’s going down. It’s bound to happen if profits are the only reason you are in this business.

Did the film make any profits? Can a well done, good looking, profitable film be made today bypassing the studio system altogether?

Would it be a good thing if that happened?

Yeah, the film has made profits and everybody has been paid. Lindsay got her deferment; we will all get money.

But just because it worked for us... I don’t know how [replicable] it is. It was a kind of special situation where Bret and I found ourselves in the same frame of mind, at the same time. I mean, at that point in our lives when we were ready to work for nothing, it worked out for us. I don’t know whether you can make it happen every time. I know a lot of people are trying, and it’s very, very hard to make a film that inexpensive and still have anybody notice it.

So to answer the second part of your question, I did make a film that way, but for it to happen again, it has to be a very special kind of film, which has to be a) a contemporary film, b) without any special effects, c) without any action sequences, d) one where you source practical locations for free and e) where people use their own wardrobe or hair. So it can only work for a certain kind of film.

Steven Soderbergh gave a keynote address at the San Francisco International Film Festival this year, where he lashed out at the studio system saying it’s now more about salesmanship than movies. Do you feel the same about the state of the industry today?

I’m neutral about this, actually. I began by making films for the studios, then I made independent films, now I’ve made a DIY film, and now I’m going back and making an independent 25 November 2013

Is it a good thing that we lost newspapers? Is it a good thing that we lost bookstores? Is it a good thing we lost CDs? I don’t know. But it happened.

And it’s going to happen to movies too. Things will change soon.

So is Kickstarter—which you used to fund The Canyons—the way to go if the studios go down? Do you believe it’s a viable source of funding in the long term?

It’s viable, but I think it has to change. I mean, I think you can only go so far in asking people to give you money and not paying them back. And so, at some point, they should be able to work out a system whereby when you put in money, if the film is successful, you get paid back.

If one of these Kickstarter films becomes wildly successful—like, The Canyons wasn’t wildly successful, just plain successful, but if a film made a huge amount of money—there would be a lot of antagonism about, ‘Why did we give money to this film’ or ‘Why do you give these people money just so that they can get rich?’ So it’s got to change.

Having said that, because of [Kickstarter], our film got bigger and better. At first, Bret and I were going to do it with our own money. Once Kickstarter happened, we had people volunteering and helping, [and] we got a house to shoot in Malibu through it.

At first, the film was just going to be an exercise but it ended up being a more or less real film because these things started to happen.

With the way the filmmaking process has reinvented itself, has your approach to

screenwriting changed too?

Well, a little bit, yes. I mean, there used to be some kind of rules of filmmaking, but there aren’t any rules anymore. You can try almost anything now. If you want to have a 10-page monologue, you can have one. If you want a do a film that’s one long action sequence—like Captain Phillips—you can have that too. You can do sort of whatever you want now. So, with both filmmaking and writing, there really are no real rules anymore.

Movies used to mean something to the young people of your generation as they were growing up. That doesn’t seem to be the case today. What has changed?

Well, that was because we had a ‘model culture’, which we don’t have any more. Everything is split in all parts— no one universally likes something today. So just like there won’t ever be a Bruce Springsteen or Michael Jackson again, there will be never be a film that sits at the centre of culture again.

I’ve said before that earlier we faced a crisis of content, and today we face a crisis of form. And the crisis of content was much more exciting, because the problem with a crisis of form is that movies are becoming something else and we don’t know quite what they are becoming yet. We only know that things won’t be what they used to be.

Are those Youtube videos movies? I suppose. Is Breaking Bad a movie? Yes, I suppose. The whole definition of a film is changing.

Even the great directors of that time— like Brian DePalma, Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin—haven’t managed to sustain themselves, except for Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg...

Well, everybody is working today, but in [Martin Scorsese’s] case, you are talking about someone who has spent his entire life managing his critical reputation; it didn’t just happen to Marty—I mean, I have the same tenacity as Marty, and so do a number of others, in the way that what you do is what you are. It’s more fun to keep trying and fail, than to give up.

In Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last open www.openthemagazine.com 57

Temptation of Christ, you and Martin Scorsese have collaborated on three of the most powerful films of our times. Why haven’t you worked together for almost two decades now?

That time passed, you know. In the last thing we did together, Bringing Out The Dead (1999), it was clear that we were both thinking like directors. And that really wasn’t how the relationship worked. I think those movies before that one just had to do with the times as much as they had to do with anything else.

Talented artists come from the times, not the other way round; they don’t make the times. And when the times demand and ask artists to step up, there are always plenty of artists that do. We lived in a moment where we had a very exciting supportive social situation— and we weren’t the only ones. A lot of good things were done. It’s not that the 60s or 70s had more talented people than today, there’s just as many talented people today. It’s just that the times are different.

Why do you think Taxi Driver has managed to outlast other movies of your time?

I’m not sure. I think we got lucky with [Robert] DeNiro, [and] Scorsese and myself being at the right place at the right time for the right movie—I mean, it was absolutely true to what we were feeling. We never really talked that much about the main character because we all knew exactly who he was.

But we didn’t think it would be very successful. We had jitters the night before it opened, and at that time, it was harder to predict what would happen, and we said, ‘Wow, we’ll see tomorrow. Nobody should be embarrassed, because the film is a real film.’ But it didn’t fail. (chuckles)

Would a Taxi Driver set in today’s times be relevant?

Well, not that film but a film like that, I suppose. That character is a part of the 70s, and when you move him 40 years later, he’s a different guy. He’s probably scarier today than he was then. Because today, he will find a group of people who thought just like him, and he would become some kind of... militant.

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Do you ever wonder if your scripts would have been any different if Taxi Driver hadn’t been so wildly successful at the beginning of your career? If they would have been better or worse?

It was great, actually… it was terrific to get [that] out of the way. I was fortunate to get that kind of gratification early on, and I could put that aside and continue. It’s a terrible thing when you go through your whole life without ever having that one moment where you realise that not only do you think that something is valuable but other people do too.

So what happened to ‘Xtreme City’, the film you were going to make with Shah Rukh Khan and Leonardo DiCaprio?

Well, in the end, I don’t think Shah Rukh wanted to make it. It was really up to him, and I just got the feeling

I just got the feeling that [Shah Rukh] was never going to be comfortable doing an international film that he didn’t control. You know that everything SRK does, he has total control over?

take it very far with Salman—because if SRK found that out, that would have killed it for SRK. By the way, how’s Salman’s health? I just read that he had cancer or something.

No, he’s absolutely fine. You seem quite knowledgeable about the Indian film industry...

I was intrigued about Bollywood for a brief period because I had flown to Delhi for a film festival and I had met some people there who asked me if I would like to work on a cross-cultural film. I just liked the idea of trying to combine an international movie with a Bollywood movie. I’m always interested in things that haven’t been done before. At this point, I only knew of Anurag Kashyap, and he was very exciting to me then. He has a new film out, I think, and although I haven’t seen it, I did get to meet him a few weeks ago.

What kind of role do you think Indian cinema plays in the larger world cinema scene?

that he was never going to be comfortable doing an international film that he didn’t control. You know that everything SRK does, he has total control over? So if he did something like this at an international level, he wouldn’t have that control. I think in the end he wasn’t that comfortable not being a hundred per cent in control. We did have a script, which was a hundred per cent paid for. We also had a meeting with SRK and Leo in Berlin, but neither of them actually ever committed. There was a lot of waiting—maybe they were waiting for each other to commit, but it never quite happened.

All the international cinemas are kind of coming together.

I remember that when I was in India five-six years ago, there was a craze starting here about these hyper developed bodies, with all the six-pack stomachs and steroids and all these kids who had very atypical bodies. They looked like gym rats, and I remember there was a young actor at that time who was really a wonderfully handsome kid who was obsessed with getting this new body. (tsks) He’s a star now. (pauses to think) Shahid Kapoor!

He was such a handsome young kid, and the next thing you know he has this body that looks like it came out of a comic book. I thought that trend was very silly at the time, and then two-three years ago, it went from Bollywood to America. I started seeing these young American actors who had these bodies that were implausibly fit. (laughs) So, I just sort of [figured] that world cinema is interconnected.

Were you ever interested in doing the film with someone else?

If you had any advice to give today to the kid you were in the 70s, what would it be?

I was interested in doing it with Salman Khan some years ago. I actually met with him, but I couldn’t really

I don’t know, because the way things are now, I wouldn’t want him to get into the movies. n

25 November 2013

Bald Fact Gravity plays a key role in male pattern baldness

Harvesting Microwave Signals

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hy do men lose hair at a faster rate than women? Why does male balding often lead to what is termed the ‘Hippocratic wreath’, where one begins to lose hair on the temples and vertex while retaining a rim of hair at the sides and rear end of the head? Over the years, various theories have been suggested to explain male pattern baldness. These range from genetic make-up to the environment and diet of the person.

A new study, published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, however, suggests that male pattern baldness could be caused by gravity.

According to the paper’s author Dr Emin Tuncay Ustuner from Ankara in Turkey, the “force of downward pull caused by gravity on the scalp skin” is a key contributor to progressive hair loss in men.

While studying bald spots of the scalp in male subjects, Dr Ustuner found high levels of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a form of testosterone.

He found that DHT appeared to have different effects on hair follicles for different parts of the body. While it caused hair follicles in the scalp to become thinner, in other parts, such as the genitals and underarms, the hormone promoted a thickening

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of hair follicles.

According to Dr Ustuner’s explanation, when men are younger, their scalp has sufficient fat tissue under the skin and is thus ‘capable of keeping itself well-hydrated,’ taking the pressure off hair follicles. But as they age, the skin and underlying fat become thinner, and the pressure on hair follicles increases. Testosterone contributes to the thinning of subcutaneous fat. In women, oestrogen prevents the thinning of these cushioning tissues. As the amount of cushioning fat decreases, the hair follicle works harder and requires more hormones for normal growth, resulting in a build-up of DHT in the scalp but not in the bloodstream.

This causes further erosion of fat tissue in the scalp. The hair growth cycle accelerates in response to DHT, but it’s often not enough to overcome the pressure of gravity. Over time, the hair follicle becomes progressively smaller, resulting in increasing hair loss.

According to Dr Ustuner, the force of gravity on the scalp thereby leads to male pattern baldness. The ears, however, help resist the effects of gravity, thereby limiting the hair loss on the sides of the head. n

credit: Duke University

free recharge Power-harvesting metamaterial could potentially be built into a cell phone, allowing the phone to recharge wirelessly by harvesting energy from a nearby cell phone tower

feel through your eyes/getty images

science

Researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering have designed a power-harvesting device that captures and converts microwave signals to direct current voltage capable of recharging a cell phone battery or other small electronic devices. It operates on a similar principle to solar panels, which convert light energy into electrical current. But this device can harvest the signal from other energy sources, including satellite signals, sound signals or Wi-Fi signals, the researchers say. They used a series of five fiberglass and copper energy conductors wired together on a circuit board to convert microwaves into 7.3V of electricity. By comparison, USB chargers for small electronic devices provide about 5V. n

Global Warming and the Sun

According to a new study, the combined contribution of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays to global warming is less than 10 per cent of the warming seen in the twentieth century. Professor Terry Sloan of University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale of University of Durham found that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its role in blocking cosmic rays, could really be a significant contributor to global warming. For their study, they compared data on the rate of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere with past records of global temperatures going back to 1955. n

25 november 2013

thx certification THX defines quality and performance for the world’s premier movie theatres. THX Certified cinemas adhere to specified standards and best practices for architectural design, acoustics, sound isolation and audio-visual equipment performance

tech&style

Zenith El Primero w Original 1969

Epson EH-TW8200 This projector is perfect for those who love watching 3D movies gagandeep Singh Sapra Rs 233,599

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he TW8200 handles 3D movies exceptionally well, making the images vibrant and lively. No wonder, this home projector is THX certified.

This projector from Epson also features a high dynamic contrast ratio of 600,000:1, thus making the picture more realistic and immersive. Just in case you have no 3D material available, you can also use its onboard ‘2D to 3D’ convertor to watch content in 3D, though this may not be as impressive as original 3D content.

The TW8200 has a full native resolution of 1920x1080 that can handle full HD movies; it also has a built-in zoom of 2.1x that lets you get a razorsharp focus for your images. The projector has an intensity of 2,400 lumens that handles both lit and dark rooms pretty well, but if you are to enjoy your movies, my suggestion is to have the room unlit.

The problem with home projectors has been finding that perfect levelled table; whatever you do, something or the other shifts the balance. With a 47 degree horizontal shift built in, the TW8200 increases its placement possibilities, so whether you are placing it on the table or hanging 25 november 2013

it from the roof, you can adjust the image easily and tweak settings that your contractor got wrongly fixed.

Epson uses a 480Hz panel to deliver the images. This ensures that the motion quality is maintained and swift visuals such as that F1 race are perfectly reproduced and smooth in motion quality. Whether you dig sports, or are a big fan of the Wachowski brothers and their moves in The Matrix, action is all quite realistic.

Epson uses an internal colour calibration on each picture that it puts out, enabling a vivid cinema experience, whether it is a home movie you are watching or a Bollywood production. There is also a picture-inpicture mode just in case you like to watch two things at the same time, just like Elvis did, or have a split screen to watch two programmes simultaneously, though personally I find this awkward. But in case you do like watching two programmes, one on mute and the other with sound, go ahead. You can move the inset to any corner of the screen, or watch both side by side. n

Price on request

The Zenith El Primero 1969 notably includes the legendary threecolour dial, interpreted here through counters entirely set with blue sapphires along with black and grey diamonds. This sparkling face is further enhanced by baguette-cut diamond hourmarkers. In all, some 3.60 carats of precious stones adorn the dial, the bezel and the white gold case. In keeping with the signature features of the first 1969 El Primero chronograph, the case measures 38 mm in diameter and the date appears between 4 and 5 o’clock. It has a power reserve of 50 hours. n

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 2

Rs 42,250

The IdeaPad Flex is the first dual-mode notebook, and comes with Windows 8 and features a 14-inch 10-point multi-touch screen.

It can flip up to 300 degrees, so you can stand it like a tent and use it as a full tablet. The Flex also features Dolby Advanced Audio certification for its stereo speakers, and has a voice control system too. The Flex runs on a Core i3 processor, and has wireless, Bluetooth and even Ethernet. You can custom order the machine (up to a Core i7 processor). The only downside is the Flex weighs nearly 2 kg. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

chicks in flicks Sweden has become the first country to grade new releases according to the Bechdel test.

Invented by graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, the test is passed if a film features at least two female characters who are seen talking to each other about something other than men. As Ellen Tejle, the director of one of four Swedish Theatres to adopt the rating, points out, all the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies, and all but one Harry Potter film, fail this test

Thor: The Dark World Except for a climactic showdown set in Greenwich, this quasi-mythological film is a bore ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Satya 2 Director Ram Gopal Varma cast Puneet Singh Ratn,

Anaika Soti

Score ★★★★★

worth, Cast chris hems n ma rt po ie tal na lor Director Alan tay

T

hor is a huge figure from Norse mythology. Though he is associated with thunder, and his hammer with lightning, the Vikings turned him into a warrior and he became their mascot in battle. So powerful a symbol is Thor’s mjölnir (hammer) that miniatures of it were once worn around people’s necks, like crosses.

In this film, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes down to London, circa 2013, and, on entering a home, with due respect to British tradition, hangs his mjölnir on a coat rack. Later, he takes the Tube at rush hour, in full battle regalia, and politely asks a nonplussed passenger if Greenwich station is next.

These attempts to throw in humour and make light of gods don’t quite work in Thor: The Dark World—mainly because the film’s character development is so poor.

For example, back home in Asgard, Thor’s adoptive brother, the slippery Loki (Tom Hiddleston), is in jail for war crimes. He is the polar opposite of 62 open

Thor: inclined to evil and keen to grab the throne from Odin, King of Asgard (Anthony Hopkins). Yet the uneasy relationship between the siblings fails to evoke interest, and what you get from the actors is just a sense of one trying to upstage the other, as in amateur theatre. In fact, even the movie’s central conflict, between Thor and the villain Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), has no edge to it and you really don’t care who gets possession of the ‘Aether’, a weapon that can destroy the universe.

The only interesting idea in the film is the ‘convergence’, a pseudo-astronomical event that takes place every 5,000 years and brings the ‘9 realms of the universe’ into perfect alignment.

Naturally, the exact point of convergence is Greenwich. Thor goes there

by Tube, as mentioned, while the villain uses more updated transportation.

They both reach the Meridian and we have a wonderful view of their battle from the Royal Observatory.

Apart from this, Thor is a bore. n

Satya 2 stands on its own as a relatively low budget Mumbai Underworld film. It does not have the verisimilitude of location and character that Ram Gopal Varma’s early films had, but it does have a few ideas of its own.

A recent migrant to Mumbai, jealously protective of information on his past, Satya (Puneet Singh Ratn) arrives in the city to counsel dons. Many of them have been eliminated in police encounters over the past decade, but Satya encourages those who are left to unshackle themselves and go on a rampage. So they unleash fear on the city with a daring set of murders of an unholy trinity—the Police Commissioner, a leading industrialist and a newsreader.

Interestingly, the murdered newsreader, given his name and TV Channel, sounds like he’s modelled on Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN. As justification for these murders, Satya says that an alliance of big money, a fascist police force and a media sympathetic to them, has to be smashed. He argues that such a terror tactic will enable the emergence of a ‘Company’ based on ‘ideas’ rather than personalities.

What are these ideas? Surprisingly, a radical left wing ideology creeps into Satya 2. And for this, if nothing else, the film keeps you watching. n ad

25 november 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

How Kareena Got Katrina’s Koffee

Karan Johar began filming a new season of his celebrity gabfest Koffee With Karan earlier this week, and he reportedly invited star cousins Ranbir Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor to be his first guests. But, the story goes that Karan was unsure of the relationship dynamics between the Kapoor sprogs, and was keen to avoid any unpleasantness or awkward surprises that might crop up while canning this episode. So the filmmaker-cum-talk show host reportedly threw an impromptu dinner at his Khar residence the night before to gauge their chemistry and prepare them for the shoot.

To join Kareena and Ranbir at dinner on Sunday, Karan invited Ranbir’s girlfriend Katrina Kaif, his best friend and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani director Ayan Mukherji, and actors Aditya Roy Kapoor and Siddharth Malhotra.

Away in Assam until Saturday, participating in Kiran Rao’s 40th birthday celebrations—where the only two people he knew on Kiran’s mostly non-filmi guest list were her husband Aamir Khan and Ayan, who was also invited— Karan made sure he was back in the familiar company of his closest industry friends as soon as he got home.

Meanwhile, industry insiders say Ranbir Kapoor has decided to keep a low profile in the media after his recent Besharam debacle. The actor is currently beefing up for the next schedule of Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet, which he resumes filming in January and in which he will play a boxer. The actor has apparently turned down all requests for interviews and public appearances, but couldn’t say ‘no’ to an appearance on Karan’s show. A source working on its production, however, reveals that Ranbir did tell Karan he wasn’t ready yet to appear on the show with Katrina and take their relationship public. Which is when Karan came up with the idea of pairing him up with his equally famous cuz.

Would Smell Just as Sweet Vidya Balan, who’s had a relatively quiet year aside from the box-office unfriendly Ghanchakkar, which she was nevertheless terrific in, will follow up that comedy with another light entertainer. Her next release is Shaadi Ke Side Effects, a post-marriage romantic-comedy in which Farhan Akhtar plays her hapless hubby.

As it turns out, Farhan’s onscreen character in the film goes by the name—wait for this—Sid Roy. 25 november 2013

Nope, Vidya didn’t demand that Farhan’s character be named after her own real-life husband Siddharth Roy Kapoor. In fact, the actress revealed to me earlier this week that she was attached to this project well before she ever met Siddharth and the character had that name all along. “The project was in development for a few years. It didn’t get made immediately after I signed it. And then recently, when it was finally a ‘go’, I was looking at the script to prepare for the role and I noticed the character’s name: ‘Sid Roy’. It was a happy coincidence, nothing else,” she laughed.

An Assault Utterly Uncalled For

At the opening night of one of Mumbai’s most popular theatre festivals recently, a debutante actress who made a powerhouse debut earlier this year in a unanimously acclaimed film got a taste of vintage Bollywood boorishness. The actress, who was seated at the same table as a mostly retired senior actor and director (who also happens to be the eldest son of a legendary actor-filmmaker), made polite conversation with the veteran before he launched into a verbal assault on her film, leaving the poor lady visibly shaken.

First the senior actor praised the young lady’s work in the film, then proceeded to dismiss the performance of both her male co-stars, insisting they delivered nothing one hadn’t seen before. But he reserved his choicest adjectives for the film itself, which he insisted was “slow” and “boring” and “moved at the pace of a snail”.

Referring to a recent controversy involving the film’s failure to be selected as India’s Oscar entry, the senior star reportedly chided the by-now-horrified actress for all the “bickering” and “complaining” on part of the film’s makers in response to their failure to make the cut. “Why must be care about the Oscars? What’s the big deal?” he bellowed in full view of other guests at the star-studded event.

The veteran, known to enjoy a drink or two (or three or four) every evening, had clearly had a little too much by now, and once his grumbles grew louder, the traumatised actress politely excused herself on the pretext of needing to use the restroom... never to return. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Pleading with the Enemy

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

Human rights activist, journalist and writer Zulfiqar Shah and his activist wife Fatima Shah are refugees from Pakistan’s Sindh province who have applied for asylum in India. As of 12 November, they have been sitting outside the Press Club of India for 28 days in protest of their alleged persecution by the Pakistan High Commission in India. They have accused the PHC of interfering with their attempts to seek medical treatment at various institutions in Delhi, and have also accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of attempting to poison them in December 2012, when both were living and working in Kathmandu, Nepal. They demand that the Indian Government step in to prevent PHC interference, claiming that since they were granted asylum by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Nepal, they are now no longer under Pakistan’s jurisdiction

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25 november 2013