Open Magazine 29 July 2013

In conversation with Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna

Autistic children and the right to education

RS 35 2 9 j u ly 2 0 1 3

INSIDE The gay world of Grindr

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How do you sell this man?

Gujarat government documents reveal what a PR agency will need to do as the BJP bends backwards to create a larger–than–life Modi

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Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor Manu Joseph managing Editor Rajesh Jha Deputy Editor Aresh Shirali Political Editor Hartosh Singh Bal creative director Divya Saxena Features and Sports Editor Akshay

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram, Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai deputy political Editor Jatin Gandhi Books and Arts Editor Elizabeth Kuruvilla associate editors Dhirendra Kumar Jha, Rahul Pandita assistant editors

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Volume 5 Issue 29 For the week 23—29 July 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover illustration Pawan Tiwary

29 july 2013

Niyati

India is not a country for cyclists or pedestrians (‘No Country for Cyclists’, 15 July 2013). Siddhartha Gupta has brought to light this strange yet true fact about Indian roads and drivers who do not respect anything without an engine. Not just cyclists, but pedestrians too face a lot of problems on our roads. Crossing a busy road in a big city is often nightmarish and risky.

Smaller cities are no exception. While the West and other parts of the developed world are adopting ‘greener’ modes of What is required in transport, India, on the contrary, is stuck in a rut India is not just traffic and our already-cripsense and a system, pled road transport but also a great deal of system is getting worse. sensitisation towards Even if there are dedicatpeople walking or ed traffic lights (with a cycling symbol of a walking human) for pedestrians and an alarm, for example in urban Bangalore, the time granted for crossing a road is inadequate. Moreover, the one on the driver’s seat has the eternal right to honk at anyone and anything, and has everything in life except time to let anybody pass by, be it a pedestrian or cyclist or even a poor animal. What is essentially required in India is not just traffic sense and a system but also a great deal of sensitisation towards people walking or cycling. And let’s not just reduce air pollution but also noise pollution by not honking.  letter of the week Blessings in Disguise

in the article ‘Rogue Agency?’

(22 July 2013), the author states that an SIB chief has full support of the state CM in this paragraph: ‘An IB officer we spoke to, who has worked with Rajinder Kumar, said that the SIB chief keeps in touch with the Chief Minister, Chief Justice, Governor and top civil and police officials on a regular basis. “In fact it is important that the SIB chief has a good rapport with the Chief Minister so that he can seek ready support of the state administration and police,” said this IB officer.’ Does that mean that in all terrorism related encounters in which

constitutional improprieties, which are at the root of this crisis. They too played games and showed their lack of sincerity. Cry, my country, which has BJP on one side and Congress with the Left on the other. The nation does not matter to them.  Abhijit Mukherjee

the congress is afflicted with the foot-in-mouth disease. I guess Tharoor is also a victim of it. I Am totally appalled that he and his likes took on their duties as ‘diplomats’ with regard to Indian national interests, and mainly Kashmir issues. That could be the only reason why India failed to garner wider support from the rest of the world, while Pakistan was always backed up by the US, with the help of its lobbies established in Washington DC.  Mukunthan Iyer

the SIB supplies an input, the CM of the state is responsible?

Is the author also suggesting that Delhi’s Batla House encounter had Sheila Dixit’s blessings?  r ohan

Cry, My Country

while Jagmohan’s role has been praiseworthy, the BJP definitely contributed to the tragedy by taking no concrete step on the problem in its fairly long tenure (‘History Lessons from Mr Tharoor’, 22 July 2013). Congressmen will always be busy looting the country, but the BJP was expected to take bold reformative steps, like withdrawal of

Time to Cycle

there is literally no culture of people in the metros using cycles as a mode of transport to work (‘No Country for Cyclists’, 15 July 2013). So it is not surprising that there is no space for cyclists in our cities.

And whatever little space created for them is occupied by others. That’s why there are no specific measures for their safety. There is a serious need to promote cycling in our country, considering the kind of pollution level and huge expenditure on crude oil imports we have. In fact, corporates should incentivise their employees to use cycles as a mode of transport.  Bal Govind

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Achtung! It’s the NaMo Brigade! campaign

A pro-Modi car sticker that generated many Facebook ‘likes’ has given this group a cause

b a n g a l o r e ‘I want my nation to be Modified as a secure, prosperous and dignified nation. Do you?’ asks a car rear-window sticker in Mangalore. The brooding visage of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi occupies a good part of the sticker. What started as one man’s idea generated several likes on Facebook and culminated in the birth of the NaMo brigade.

The NaMo ‘brigade’ is quick to distance itself from the NaMo ‘army’, which laid siege to LK Advani’s residence in New Delhi during the re29 july 2013

cent Goa gathering of the BJP. Mangalpady Naresh Shenoy, the 35-year-old founder of the NaMo brigade and distributor of ayurvedic medicines, says: “We are a group of businessmen and professionals in awe of Modi. He is the only hope for the country. What distinguishes us is that we are not card-carrying members of the BJP. We have members from other political parties too.”

Shenoy designed his Modi sticker and pasted it on his Toyota Innova on 23 May. He took a picture of it and uploaded it on his Facebook page. He

says he got requests from all over India for the sticker. He ordered 10,000, of which 600 have been distributed.

Shenoy met Modi briefly at Mangalore airport in May when Modi campaigned for the state’s Assembly elections.

This and conversations with friends led to the launch of the brigade. Two of Shenoy’s close friends, Vedavyas Kamath, who works in the cashew industry, and Venugopal Shenoy, an insurance consultant, joined him in his endeavour.

“They suggested we call it Narendra Modi’s ‘army’,” says

Shenoy. “But I dissuaded them.

The term ‘army’ does not fit here.” The group was formally launched in Bangalore on 14 July. Announcements in other cities are expected to follow.

The NaMo brigade will also have a website with a ‘missed call’ alert facility. It plans to sell T-shirts online to raise money for pro-Modi awareness programmes. It also plans to distribute booklets in Kannada to farmers and others around Mangalore highlighting Modi’s ‘development efforts’ in Gujarat. n anil budur lulla

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small world

contents

14

cover story The Modi Mythology

22 27 Interview

12

Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna

Technology

Gay Grindr

news reEL

10

Modi and the mask

38 tattoos

opinion

Covering up the scars of love

Sacked coach Mickey Arthur tries to repair the damage caused by media revelations of details of a lawsuit he filed against Cricket Australia after his dismissal

Dirty Money, Jenny After investigating private performances given

by Jennifer Lopez over the years, the Human Rights Foundation claims she made ‘in excess of $10 million for serenading crooks and dictators from Eastern Europe and Russia.’ Trouble began last month, when Lopez sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the controversial leader of Turkmenistan. Lopez has also performed for Russian bureaucrat Alexander Yolkin, and at a wedding attended by controversial Chechnyan leader Ramzan

Patr onage

caught behind

Kadyrov. Lopez’s managers say that the singer was unaware of the Turkmen leader’s political leanings, saying, “Had there been knowledge of human rights issues of any kind, Jennifer would not have attended.” HRF President Thor Halvorssen responded: “The ‘Jenny-from-theblock-who-doesn’t-Google’ clarification may be credible in one instance, but it beggars belief in light of a pattern of repeated behaviour. This is not about ignorance, it’s about greed.”n

In legal documents procured by 7 News, Arthur claims ‘there was major tension between Michael Clarke and Shane Watson’ and that the former described the latter as a ‘cancer’ —legal documents submitted

by Mickey Arthur, as quoted in The Guardian

16 July 2013

turn

“I want to stress how important to me the members of the team were and still remain to me. The welfare of the Australian cricket team is utmost to me” —a statement released by Mickey Arthur’s lawyers, as quoted in The Guardian 16 July 2013

around

United Colours of Baggy Green Ashton Agar’s sensational debut in the first Ashes Test was a proud moment for Australian cricket. Not only did the struggling team find a new hope for the future, they found one who epitomised Australian cricket’s embrace of multi-culturalism. Agar, a left-arm spinner who made a record 98 runs batting at No 11 in Nottingham, has a Sri Lankan mother. Prior to Agar, Moises Henriques, of Portuguese descent, made his debut for Australia in their series against India early this year. Just a few days ago, legspinner Fawad Ahmed was granted Australian citizenship after he fled to the country from Pakistan in 2010 seeking asylum. He has already represented Australia ‘A’. n

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Photo illustrations tarun sehgal

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Ishrat and the patriotism test

29 July 2013

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Television

Primetime paranoia?

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Ravinder Singh

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

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Not camera shy

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My multicultural baby

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Zarina Wahab

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of t■ ■

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Wearing Mad Men

F o r allocating its Tribals

windowless homes without electricity The Khadia and Mankidia Colony in Kendumundi village, Mayurbhanj, Odisha was built in 1987 as part of a government effort to settle the nomadic Mankidia and Hill Khadia tribes; 38 families live there, but their homes almost uniformly lack windows, not to mention electricity. Residents who asked officials about the possibility of creating windows were told there wasn’t money enough in the budget. And though Santosh Mishra, special officer, Hill Khadia and Mankidia Development Agency, says he has fielded no complaints from Tribals living in the colony, one of them, speaking to The Indian Express, described his home as a cave. Odisha's Director of Tribal Development AB Ota seems to have had no idea of this, and while expressing his shock, contradicted the budgetary excuse.“We have lots of money,” he said. n 29 July 2013

After winning accolades for bringing 1960s fashion alive onscreen, Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant will helm a fashion design competition in the form of a TV reality show called Janie Bryant’s Hollywood. The show will be based on the influence of television and cinema on fashion. There will be ten contestants, and

suited

viewers will be able to buy the creations of the winner of each episode. Apart from setting a trend of Mad Men-themed parties across cities like New York and Los Angeles, the show’s sartorial success has also inspired men’s clothing collections launched by labels like Banana Republic, Michael Kors and Prada. n

Lather Up, Up and Away f a r - o u t Ever wondered how astronauts wash their hair in space? Astronaut Karen Nyberg has the answer. It boils down to a small bag of warm water, norinse shampoo, a towel and a comb. But it’s the technique, says Nyberg, that one needs to master. She is aboard the International Space Station and posted a video of herself washing hair on YouTube.

“Sometimes, the water gets away from you and you try

and catch as much as you can,” Nyberg says. “Then I just work the water up through to the ends of my hair.” Everything has to be done vertically, from the shampooing to the drying.

When the hair dries, the water evaporates to become humidity. This is drawn out by the air-conditioning system. The water processing system turns it into drinking water. Call it eco-friendly high flying. n

real

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Athletics’ Doping Scandal

Almost a year after the high of the London Olympics and weeks before the World Athletics Championships in Moscow, the credibility of athletics suffered a crushing blow. Tyson Gay of the US, the world’s fastest man this year (he clocked 9.75 seconds in the 100m at the US World Championship trials), and Jamaica’s Asafa Powell tested positive for banned substances. So did another Jamaican, Sherone Simpson, a silver medallist in the women’s 4x100m relay at the 2012 Olympics.

Gay failed an out-of-competition test taken in May. Powell and Simpson were tested at the Jamaican track and field championships in June. The substance Powell and found in Gay’s sample is not Simpson tested known. Powell and Simpson positive for tested positive for oxilooxilofrene, a frene, a stimulant that stimulant that speeds up fat burning. speeds up fat burning

peter klaunzer/afp

“I don’t have a sabotage story... I basically put my trust in someone and was let down,” Gay said, “I know exactly what went on, but I can’t discuss it right now.” And Powell said, “I want to be clear in saying... that I have never know-

cheat diary Asafa Powell (right) beats Tyson Gay to win a 100m race in Zurich in 2006

ingly or wilfully taken any supplements or substances that break any rules. I am not now— nor have I ever been—a cheat.” Gay and Powell join a lengthening list of sporting box-office hits, including Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong, who turned out to be cheats.

The revelations about Gay and Powell have left their rivals angry. Craig Pickering, part of Britain’s 4x100m relay team that finished third at the 2007 World Championships behind an American team featuring Gay and a Jamaican team possessing Powell, said, “I raced them lots of times and never beat them. If they have been doping [throughout their careers], I have lost out financially. In 2007, I would’ve been a world champion and that would’ve been a lifechanging moment.” n

It Happens

Being a Bully How Salman Khan got a blogger to pull down a post he didn’t like L h e n d u p G B h u t i a

T

prakash parsekar/dna

here are two versions

about Salman Khan’s nature.

He’s the lion-hearted superstar humanitarian (as he calls himself on Twitter). He is the brash and cocky ‘bhai’ who doesn’t mind working his clout or fists to get what he wants. Recently, and not for the first time, the latter avatar of the actor came to the fore. He bullied a blogger into pulling down a blog post that was not to his liking.

The blog in question, Bollywoodjournalist.com, is written by an entertainment journalist, Soumyadipta Banerjee, from Mumbai. In one post, he wrote about the mysterious case of Ravindra Patil, the police constable who was assigned as a bodyguard to Khan and was in the Land Cruiser that ran over four homeless people in Bandra. In his statement to the police, Patil claimed that Khan was behind the wheel and was drunk.

And that the actor had not slowed down despite Patil’s advice. This is a crucial detail. A sessions court judge relied on this to rule that the actor should be tried for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304. This could mean a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.

According to news reports, Patil was under pressure to change his statement. He went missing and was eventually discharged from the police force. He was located many months later, suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 2007.

In the blog post, Banerjee hinted that Patil was pressured by Salman’s well-wishers in the police and film fraternity. Salman wasn’t happy.

He sent Banerjee a legal notice, threatening action if the posts were not taken off. Banerjee has not spoken to the media. On 8 July, he wrote on his blog, ‘The last two days have been really excruciating for me.

I have received a communication from Mr Salman Khan. There I have been instructed to remove two

was he victimised? Ravindra Patil (left) at the Bandra police station in 2006

blog posts that I have written about him. Those articles have been removed from this blog. Here’s a public apology to Mr Salman Khan for writing two blog posts that he didn’t consider appropriate.’

Many are aghast at the The blog hints manner in that Patil was the under pressure which actor reacted. to change his Well-known statement film journalist Rauf Ahmed says infotech laws are often misused to target those whose views are not convenient to people.

“Salman had no right to threaten the blogger with a notice. He may not be able to take on a newspaper or a magazine for what they write. But a blogger is an easy target.” n 29 july 2013

business

The RBI’s Overnight Surgical Strike r u p e e re scu e

adnan abidi/reuters

Is India set for a big

issue of forex bonds? With dollars leaving Indian shores, the rupee in a slump, foreign loan repayments looming (mostly private sector ECBs) and forex reserves under threat, it would seem so. But first, policymakers have had the urgent task of arresting the currency’s free-fall (down 12 per cent since April). To attract inward dollars, the Government has declared that FDI limits in several sectors shall be raised: in telecom, for example, to 100 per cent. To curb speculation on the dollar-rupee exchange rate, the RBI has undertaken a surgical strike. It has pushed up overnight interest rates—by clamping the cash it lends banks via its liquidity adjustment facility—in the domestic money market.

Here, a quick buck could be made by borrowing rupees cheaply to buy dollars and rebuy rupees as the currency fell further. With a spike in overnight rates, this game gets harder to play. As expected, Indian bond prices have fallen, making them more attractive (vis-à-vis US bonds) to foreign investors and others who had offloaded these earlier as the rupee shook.

Easy-money seeking businesses are upset by the surgical strike, arguing that it spells tighter money overall, which could delay an economic recovery. This is a valid worry. But it could also stabilise the rupee, the gains of which may be felt sooner.

Would a global sovereign bond issue help?

“Sovereign bonds sound like a good option,” says Reena Rohit, a currency expert at Angel Broking, “especially when we’ve had an encouraging response each time such bonds were launched in the

Exchange games New rupee notes for old on Mumbai pavements may be okay but shorting the currency is not

past.” Since India declared its economy open, it has exercised this option only thrice, to mop up about $10 billion, mostly from NRIs. India needs dollars again.

According to Raghvendra Nath, managing director, Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt Ltd, a bond issue could “offset any potential outflows of foreign capital from [India]” but will work well “only if the quantum of the issuance is really large and its maturity extends to a longer term”.

One-off issues, others say, are a sign of India’s closed mindset of the past. It is time that the country had long-term dollar/euro

It may retard an economic recovery, but halting currency speculation is critical too

bonds participate in global markets, being traded the same way US Treasury bills are. Yet, offering a hefty coupon rate on a huge $25 billion issue, India may be tempted to sell it as a rare opportunity. It would make more sense, says Rohit, to keep the issue “open to a broad set of investors” instead of just NRIs. It would help if the sums to be repaid on maturity of the sovereign bonds are in dollars/euros too. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI

india’s Forex reserves: deceptively stable $292 billion

6 April 2012

29 July 2013

$280 billion

5 July 2013

The RBI still has the same stack of foreign exchange reserves as when the Great Recession struck in 2008. But rupee volatility, capital outflows and private dollar loan repayments coming up could threaten this cushion of comfort Source RBI compiled by shailendra tyagi

“I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before” Amar Gopal Bose, late founder of Bose Corporation, in a 2004 interview to Popular Science magazine

COMMENT flipside

The Other Side of Brazil What the country’s recent football glories conceal sergio mukherjee

euphoric street celebrations following football excellence, the Brazil of recent protests during this year’s Confederation Cup shows its government and the world that, far from being a tropical utopia, the country is in turmoil. What started as a localised movement for free public transportation quickly moved to encompass broader national demands against corruption, rising inflation and better use of public money—as in more public schools and hospitals instead of fancy football stadiums for next year’s World Cup. The grievances of this troubled Brazil have a long shadow. In my case, it started from day one.

Thirty-one years ago, I was born inside an ill-equipped public hospital in the state of São Paulo and struggled, after a premature birth, against the odds of a badly managed incubator and improper medical supervision. The miracle of birth in my case turned out to be a miracle of survival. With luck, I made it out alive, but was unlucky enough to become legally blind. Perhaps it was one of those purposeful misfortunes in life that serve as a perpetual reminder of the Brazil that is being targeted in the recent protests— an unjust and negligent one of health centres that let the sick die in its corridors, public schools with missing teachers, cities without sewage, streets without safety and corruption without end.

Growing up, I commuted long distances in crowded public buses to go to school and came home at sunset generally afraid of being robbed. Strikes were frequent. Price hikes even more.

Inflation was a concept that I understood in the process of buying candies at different hours of the day.

While hyperinflation has been tamed, poor social services have endured, despite the rhetoric of development, social pacts, promises of inclusion and some concrete action by recent governments to promote better redistribution through conditional cash transfer programmes. Those at the very bottom are indeed seeing some benefits through socio-economic assistance and political attention. It is the middle-class that feels left behind. They

More used to

8 open

fear the persistence of old injustices and take issue with the government’s plastic smiles during international sporting events. The protest messages, often written in English, are for both domestic and international audiences.

Among their many demands, the one for better schools has echoed throughout the country. While enrolment rates have gone up, what worries the middle-class is the systematic neglect of public schools in relation to the quality of education. My long daily commute to school was precisely for that—to bridge the quality gap separating my house and a decent centre for learning located many kilometres away.

The history of poor educational opportunities and outcomes in the country goes back several centuries.

Tired of being forgotten in a stack of different classes and a pile of priorities that excluded theirs, middle-class Brazilians on the streets show that their feet serve them better in protest than in football or the samba Colonial Brazil did not see a printing press until the 19th century and colleges were scarce even for the elite. Following independence, an elitist system was established, not dissimilar to the educational reality of post-independent India, another BRIC country struggling to promote general social wellbeing—another country, too, that favoured tertiary education for the few at the expense of basic schooling for the masses.

While many of the top universities in Brazil are public such as University of São Paulo (USP), State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and Federal University in Rio de Janeiro , students who gain admission come mostly from private schools or from extra-curricular—and often very pricey—preparatory classes for university entrance exams known in the country as ‘vestibular’.

Adding to the challenge, the average record of scholastic performance of Brazilian children leaves a lot to be desired in both global and regional comparisons. According to the triennial OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) given to 15-year-old students, Brazil ranked 53rd in reading proficiency and 57th in math and science among 65 countries, behind other large Latin American countries such as Argentina and Mexico.

Much has been said about the role of social networks as a key organisational tool during recent protests. Not much is remembered of the speed with which Brazilian youth have organised themselves on the streets in previous mass protests.

When I was 10, right outside my school, I recall seeing the outcry of the ‘movimento caras-pintadas’ (‘painted-faces movement’), marching loudly and in big numbers in the wake of corruption allegations that led to the resignation and impeachment of former president Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992. At that time, student organisations such as the União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE ) and União Brasileira dos Estudantes Secundaristas (UBES), pioneers in their call for free public transportation, led intense demonstrations demanding Collor’s removal. Collor ultimately resigned and was later impeached by the Senate and disqualified to hold a public office for the next eight years. If my first real-life economics lesson was on inflation, the first one in politics was on impeachment.

Almost 20 years later, the consolidated maturity of Brazil’s democracy finds expression in the very manner in which the growing middle-class channels its dissatisfaction. Tired of being forgotten in the middle of a stack of different classes and a big pile of priorities that excluded theirs, those on the streets show those outside the country that, other than in the enchanting footwork of football and samba, their feet are also capable of serving Brazilians up in protest at a time when all eyes are on them. n Sergio Mukherjee is a doctoral candidate in political science at University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the policies and politics of basic education provision in Brazil and India. He is a Brazilian of Indian origin. He was born in a public hospital in the state of Sao Paulo. After a premature birth, he was kept in an incubator to receive ultra-violet (UV) light therapy without being blindfolded. His hospital left him legally blind 29 july 2013

news

reel

Many say Patil has not been good for the entertainment business in the state. His opposition to IPL cheerleaders resulted in policemen sitting in on matches, keeping a hawk’s eye on them to check for nudity.

So when matches were played in Maharashtra, cheerleaders were ‘suitably’ covered—no arms, legs or midriffs bared.

Patil’s war with IPL cheerleaders was haima deshpande perhaps the most laughable aspect of his moral policing.

The 10 pm deadline for the use of loudspeakers and playing of loud music at acceptability of this ‘new’ business has E i g h t y e a r s a g o , Maharashtra public celebrations saw the death of the completely bowled him over. There will, Home Minister RR Patil, in an extremely city’s famed Navratri celebrations, which public stunt accompanied by much noise, however, be new players in the bar business, and underworld baddies will be moved out of the state—Ahmedabad in banned dance bars in the state. The Gujarat is now the hotspot for dandiya back big time. A corrupt police force will Congress-NCP led state government also raas. Many appeals were made from aid the business as in earlier years, and amended the Bombay Police Act to force there may be little the home minister can various quarters to extend the 10 pm those bars to close. However, there was a deadline, but Patil was adamant. Now, do about it. loophole: the state allowed the same Mumbaikars travel to Ahmedabad or It was middle-class support for the ban performances to go on in three- and fiveother cities in Gujarat to participate in the on dance bars which encouraged Patil to star hotels. It is this discrimination that festival there. venture into avenues that did not need has prompted the Supreme Court to lift The Maharashtra Government has been his intervention, such as Navratri the ban and endorse the rights of an put on the mat by a thundering opposicelebrations, New Year’s Eve dances and estimated 75,000 bar dancers to pursue tion in the ongoing monsoon session of even IPL cheerleading. their profession. the state legislature, with parties The ban was a big achievement for Patil, demanding that the government appeal who has since been the state’s unofficial the verdict and get ‘the evil’ (read: dance moral police chief. In truth, the ban The state’s legal team failed to bars) out of the state—though it is an barring girls from dancing in bars was justify before the SC bench that open secret that many politicians have more a gimmick. Though amendments were made of the required Act, the state a dance in a high-end hotel was invested in these bars and also patronised failed to pursue the case in its true spirit less ‘derogatory, exploitative or them, giving a fillip to the business before the ban. The problem with the state with the apex court. On 16 July, the state’s corrupting of public morality’ government is that the relevant departlegal team failed to justify before the SC than one in a low-end bar ments do not do their homework. bench that a dance permitted in a Ministers make announcements, high-end bar or hotel was not indranil mukherjee/afp then demand that bureaucrats ‘derogatory, exploitative or corruptbend the rules to make their declaraing the public morality,’ in comparitions stick. With public awareness son with a dance in a low-end bar or increasing, the courts are seeing hotel, which, presumably, was. an increase in lawsuits against the The Supreme Court verdict is a state’s decisions. Courts have not setback for Patil, who pursued the ban been kind to the Maharashtra as a personal mission. Post ban, the government. In many cases, government lost an estimated Rs 3,000 Mantralaya has failed to justify its crore annually. Prior to the ban, bar decisions, with many having been dancers earned as much as Rs 25,000 turned over by the Judiciary. per month, an income they could not No lessons appear to have been match once they had to stop dancing. learnt. With elections slated for early According to sources, a majority of next year, the state will have it tough these women became commercial sex trying to defend its moral posture. The workers—a profession arguably more legal department may have to be exploitative than bar dancing. jolted out of its slumber and made to Though Patil had initially received work for a change. But even so, the overwhelming support from the best legal minds will be hard-pressed middle-class, particularly women, the to justify what the state proposes. embarrassment of the state’s loss of The legal department is considered a face in the Supreme Court will be diffilousy posting. This tunnel vision cult to explain. may explain the failure of the Interestingly, many bar owners, government to defend its decisions in such as Manjit Singh, president of the courtrooms, but in this specific case, State Bar Owners Association, do not all the work by the law department want to return to the business. Singh will not be enough to justify a badly reopened his once infamous bar to the Thinly VEiled Dance bars were once a lucrative source of thought out idea. n public as a ‘family restaurant’ and the income for Maharashtra—and its politicians

moralism

So Much for the Ban

Maharashtra is unable to justify its 2005 closure of dance bars before the Supreme Court

29 july 2013

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opinion

H a rto s h S i n g h B a l

p r e p o st e r o u s

The IB Test Or the claim that patriotism is not about dying for the country but murdering for it S t u p i d i t y i s c o n t a g i o u s , but only rarely is the contagion dangerous. Today, we are faced with this rarity.

Prominent journalists and self-styled public intellectuals have come to believe that we need to set aside the very fundamentals of the Constitution, the idea of an independent judiciary and the Rule of Law if these in any way obstruct the functioning of the Intelligence Bureau.

In the context of the Ishrat Jahan ‘encounter’ and the role of IB officer Rajinder Kumar, Praveen Swami of Firstpost has argued, ‘Lawyers have numbers and words for these things: 302, 304, 364, 120B, the Arms Act, the Explosives Act. These are the laws India’s intelligence services break every single day— to defend the Republic. To comprehend this is to comprehend why India’s intelligence services simply won’t—at least in their present form—survive the Ishrat Jahan Raza murder investigation. Ever since their inception, the Intelligence Bureau and its sister-services have functioned without any legal mandate. This means authorisation for anything they do.’

Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, has made much the same argument.

Let us take the cynical, or, depending on where you stand on national security, the pragmatic view. Some of what Praveen Swami says is correct, but the success of these operations is also based on deniability. Across the world, whatever the intelligence agency, when agents make a mistake, they are left to fend for themselves. Rajinder Kumar did not even pretend to hide his tracks; the evidence is rather stark that he was one of the moving forces behind the encounter. Never does an entire agency endanger itself for the sake of an individual, so what exactly is going on in the Ishrat Jahan case?

The subtext in such writing is that those who question the IB’s role or hold it to account are harming the national interest.

Let us stick to pragmatism, because Swami and his ilk have made it clear they scoff at ethical and Constitutional arguments. We do know that a Punjab Police officer today can’t defend himself in a murder case by claiming that others in the force have committed a murder in the past, the same way an MP police officer can’t cite the example of dacoity to defend a murder today. And most of us, even though we cannot defend this on Constitutional grounds, will probably agree there is a difference between shooting down a dacoit in the Chambal ravines and murdering a 19 year old girl. And despite this distinction, if there is enough evidence, police officials will be tried and jailed in either case.

The IB ensured Ishrat Jahan was held in custody for a prolonged period in Gujarat in 2004. Let us ignore the question of her guilt and assume she was indeed named by David Headley.

But there was no existential threat to the nation, or even to a 10 open

village, from her once she was in custody. Apparently, the IB has forgotten any other way to act simply because the agency has never been held to account. It follows that Rajinder Kumar has to be defended by the IB and those who speak on its behalf, because he is no exception.

Which is why, if this investigation does unravel the framework (or its absence) that lets the IB operate in this fashion, then it is precisely what we need. Because to accept what is being argued on the behalf of the IB is to concede that its officers have the right to kill anyone, anywhere, on any pretext without any questions asked.

This discourse in favour of the IB is not just restricted to security hawks; it has already ended up damaging our wider intellectual life. In a recent piece in the Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta has argued, ‘First, the UPA came for the roads sector… Then they came for institutions. They always had.

The UPA coming for This has been Congress DNA the IB is not quite for four decades. They drew up the Nazis coming for a list of institutions that Jews. The analogy remained unscathed: Parliament, the IB, bureaucraPratap Bhanu Mehta cy and you name it.’ has used is not just There is much reason to stupid, it is deeply criticise this UPA government, offensive but the Ishrat Jahan case is not one of them. The analogy Mehta has used is not just stupid, it is deeply offensive. The original quote he has chosen to adapt goes: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This was said by Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor and public critic of Adolf Hitler, who spent several years in Nazi concentration camps. Does it even have to be said that the UPA coming for India’s IB is not quite the Nazis coming for Europe’s Jews?

Mehta had once written, ‘Liberalism places the freedom of individuals, their presumptive equality and claim to be treated with dignity at the centre of attention.’ Perhaps, he now thinks Ishrat Jahan is not an individual. Whatever his reasons, the nature of such public discourse only makes it clear that the defence of the IB is the real threat to the future of our republic. n 29 july 2013

HAUTE TIME

Search

for the Oldest Longines Watch in India

L

n 1832, Auguste Agassiz joined the world of watchmaking when he founded a watch trading office in Saint-Imier – this was the start of the Longines’ history. Protected since 1889 in Switzerland, the company’s trademark, comprising a winged hourglass and the name Longines, is the oldest (still active in its original form) in the international registers managed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Longines, the famous Swiss watchbrand, completed 180 years of nonstop craftsmanship, last year and its watch-making expertise reflects a strong devotion to tradition, elegance and performance. It has generations of experience as the official timekeeper at world championships and as a partner of

Pocket watch fitted with the calibre 20A, the first movement produced in the Longines factory, 1867

international sports federations. It was in 1878, that the first shipment of Longines watches entered India and from then on there has been no looking back.

Mr Walter von Kanel, President, Longines said “India is a country of tradition, culture and heritage. After successfully being held in China, Russia, Japan and Taiwan, India, where the tradition of passing wealth on to the next generation has been evident since decades, it is an ideal

To Apply

Watch owners must fill in the application form with all relevant information including the serial number of their antique Longines timepiece and submit it with multiple images of the front and back of the timepiece, clearly showing the serial number.

Application forms will be available at selected official retailers across the country. Participants also have the option of registering online on the dedicated website: www.oldestwatchindia.longines.com or call on, +91 8860532131.

After the collection of forms over a pre-assigned period of 5-6 weeks, experts at the Longines head office in Switzerland will carefully examine the information and make their findings.

The winner of the competition will get an all paid trip for two to Switzerland for a week and a chance to visit the Longines factory.

country to host this competition.

The purpose of this search is to bring out the ancient Longines watches in India that have been preserved and handed down for generations.

This search aims to track the footprints of Longines in India that are as old as 135 years. I wish the participants and the Longines office in India all the best for this competition.”

The Lindbergh Hour Angle Watch, a Longines watch designed by the US aviator, Charles Lindbergh, 1931

Av e n u e s

news

reel

image development

The Mask of Publicity Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has plucked the notion of power-with-accountability out of the political domain and planted it in a personalised celebrity universe chitra padmanabhan

has a significant episode set towards the end of the Pandavas’ exile in the forest. One by one, all four brothers of Yudhishthira die by a lake. Too thirsty, they drink its water before answering the questions of the yaksha of the lake. Yudhishthira is wiser.

Quelling his thirst, he answers all the questions of the yaksha (in reality his father, Yama, or dharmaraj) about the principles anchoring his universe—social, moral and metaphysical. Told he can save one life, he chooses his step-brother (whom he had staked first in the dice game) so that both his mother and stepmother would have one son alive. Satisfied by his sense of justice, Yama revives all four Pandavas. This episode is called the Yaksha Prashna, or Yaksha’s Questions.

Closer to our times, this profound story can be read as an allusion to the relationship between the political class and society as the bedrock of a functioning democracy. This relationship hinges on the willingness of politicians to face questions from society: Is their governance in sync with the dharma of constitutional democratic politics? Does it show a cognisance of principles such as Rule of Law, power-with-accountability and pluralism as a political expression of India’s vast diversity? Does it reveal a comprehension of democracy as the might of a majority, or as a negotiation of the interests of many?

In the face of uncoiling ‘whys’ and ‘hows’, most politicians in power use time-tested feints: spiels of obfuscation, opaque silences or raging offensives against opponents. The current government at the Centre, for one, seems to favour a surreal quietude. Whatever the feint, most politicians do not contest the centrality of the political domain that contours their existence, even if that space is fraught with probing questions.

One of the most noticeable exceptions to this convention seems to be Gujarat The Mahabharata

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ajit solanki/ap

Chief Minister Narendra Modi. His way of neutralising yaksha prashna is that he has simply plucked the notion of power-withaccountability out of the political domain, and planted it in a personalised celebrity universe. Since a celebrity is his own sole reference, with armies of devoted fans, where is the question of imposing ‘external’ yardsticks like Rule of Law? What drives Modi is a narcissistic self-image of an ‘iron man’ who stands head and shoulders above everyone, his own party and colleagues included.

But Modi the iron man, who has the ability to lacerate anyone with his sharp tongue, is extremely thin-skinned when it comes to questions perceived as unfriendly or verging on ridicule. That is why until now, he has usually preferred the safe-house format of one-way communication, such as speeches without question-and-answer sessions.

Simply put, how can an unquestioned leader be questioned, even in friendly settings such as Delhi’s Shri Ram College of Commerce? Even the interviews he gives are carefully calibrated to ensure soft landings; they, too, fall in the category of one-way communication.

This model of communication by a frenetic PR machinery underscores Modi’s concern about having absolute control over his image, and also shows his understanding of the power of projection. It is quite similar to present-day celebrity blogs where stars put out their ‘authoritative version’ in a bid to reach their fans directly. It helps them counter or bypass a critical media, and reinforces their hold over fans overwhelmed by this seemingly intimate bond. Modi’s carefully crafted soliloquies and website do just that. In particular, his website is his single-minded ode to himself for the mythology of power and omnipresence it creates around him, through the sheer multiplication of his image, his name, his views, his comments and the adjectives used to describe him. To feel larger than life and beyond any yaksha prashna appears to be a need stemming from his personality as well as the dictates of his ideological indoctrination.

In more than a decade of power, Modi has crafted various self-images as a meeting point between him and his fans in his alternate universe. In 2002, he won a state election as the ‘Hindu hriday samrat’, capitalising on communal demagoguery and gaurav yatras. In 2007, Modi became a manly father to all six being narendra modi A supporter of the Gujarat CM at a rath yatra in Ahmedabad 29 july 2013

crore Gujaratis (although, everybody knows parents love some children more than others). He also started using the word development; economist terms like ‘secular’ growth must have tickled him no end. Before his third state election in 2012, the Gujarat Chief Minister felt a great deal of religious ‘sadbhavna’, which together with development created an image of munificence for his fans.

Receiving Muslim leaders showed him as reaching out; simultaneously, the involuntary recoil to avoid wearing a Muslim skullcap proclaimed him to be ideologically pure at heart.

And now, as the BJP sarathi for the 2014 General Election, Modi has amplified his views about being an Indian first and foremost. Decoded, it means little more than being a ‘nation of 80 per cent’: as LK Advani explained at various hinterland stops during his 1990 rath yatra, the BJP was only seeking 80 per cent unity in India (taking minorities out of the

Modi the iron man, who has the ability to lacerate anyone with his sharp tongue, is extremely thin-skinned when it comes to questions perceived as unfriendly. That is why he has preferred the safe format of one-way communication calculation). But fans and gullible fence-sitters go soft-eyed at such pronouncements.

Modi has even started carving his lips in the semblance of a smile, although it is difficult for iron men to indulge in such vacuous pursuits. Certain gestures are a constant: the raised arm pointing a finger skywards, as befitting a prophet perhaps?

A perfect photo-op, this pose looks good in silhouettes too. Showing a muscular arm helps, especially when you want to tell your hardcore fans that apart from trying to stretch those darn facial muscles, you have also started pumping iron in your soul the way you did in 2002 to announce your star presence in ‘mera’ Gujarat. But since it is a question of ‘mera Bharat’ now, it is time for some performance enhancing invectives on the tongue in the same one-way format.

The communion between the star leader and his fan base is perfectly encapsulated in the saga of the man, the mask and the hologram. The state elections of the past decade were

characterised by Modi masks. A mask requires a face to wear it; to that extent the mask is dependent on the wearer. But the wearer, too, feels freer to express views or perpetrate acts considered unacceptable, for what the world sees is the mask, not the face hidden behind it.

The link between the leader and his fans gets cemented, and any attempt at a yaksha prashna is seen merely as an attempt to besmirch the leader, so complete is the identification.

Then, in the 2012 Gujarat elections, the low-tech mask was surpassed by the hologram. Modi’s image—and speech— was projected from the state capital on specially-erected screens in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat through 3D holographic technology and satellite link-ups. There he was all by himself, the chosen one, buoyed by the power and aura of technology. The instances of the election mask and hologram epitomise desires and aspirations working at various levels. The leader’s ambitions are projected on to his supporters; equally, the leader seems to be an embodiment of their aspirations. Both come together in a grand design.

In his iconic work Ways of Seeing, writer and art critic John Berger explained how publicity remains ‘credible enough’ to wield the influence it does: ‘It remains credible because the truthfulness of publicity is judged, not by the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer.’

Berger had one more significant observation on publicity, that it ‘turns consumption into a substitute for democracy—the choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society...’

The crux of the matter is this: on the one hand is a narrative of the celebrity leader and his adulatory core fan base rooting for an India that stands for the might of its majority. On the other hand, there are large sections of middle-class India today which nurse a sense of entitlement that is seemingly impervious to the interests of many other sections of society. The common thread in both narratives is an unwillingness to accommodate a range of concerns, or even to envision a society that has the courage to reflect on its own history and provide space for an entire spectrum of views and interests—some in affirmation, others in contradiction.

At stake is the recovery of the idea of India—and the spirit of yaksha prashna. n open www.openthemagazine.com 13

india today group/getty images

larger than life image Narendra Modi at his newly built four-storey office in Gandhinagar

spin

The Modi Mythology Manufacturing consent, saffron style jatin gandhi

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n a recent visit to Chandigarh, I met a lawyer well

known in Punjab for representing—often free of cost—hapless young women deserted by their NRI husbands. The discussion veered from the enormity of this problem to the next General Election and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s pitch for prime ministership. The lawyer was almost convinced of Modi’s vision and ability to lead the country because she had heard several stories in the past few years about the ‘Gujarat model of governance’.

But then, she said something spectacularly incredulous: Modi, she had heard, spends half an hour every morning on the internet solving arithmetic problems for IIT students. She said she had heard this from a senior police officer she had no reason to disbelieve. Both, it seemed from her conversation, were convinced of the BJP leader’s benign genius. While Chetan Bhagat’s achievements and ideas may have contributed to this impression of IIT students, what is amazing is how Modi’s mythology of superhuman accomplishments has penetrated the psyche of even those you’d expect would exercise a degree of scepticism when they hear something so fantastic.

Even a senior editor of The Times of India was ready to trust his sources who fed a story that was a bit too amazing. His report on Modi’s rescue of Gujaratis in Uttarakhand titled, ‘Modi’s Rambo Act, saves 15,000’ (TOI dated 23 June 2013) said, ‘Around 80 Toyota Innovas were requisitioned to ferry Gujaratis to safer places in Dehradun as were four Boeings. On Saturday, 25 luxury buses took a bunch of grateful people to Delhi. The efforts are being coordinated by two of the senior-most IAS offi-

29 july 2013

cers of Gujarat, one currently stationed in Delhi and another in Uttarakhand.’ According to this report by Anand Soondas, the 15,000 stranded Gujaratis were ‘rescued’ in two days. This, at a time when the Indian Army was struggling to get just a few hundred people to safety every day.

Almost every day, the Indian media—and sometimes the foreign media too—is tricked or influenced by Modi’s Public Relations machinery.

And ‘machinery’ is the right word for it. It is large and consists of multiple levers, chains and cogs at several lev-

According to a TOI report on Modi’s rescue of Gujaratis in Uttarakhand, 15,000 stranded Gujaratis were ‘rescued’ in two days. This, at a time when the Indian Army was struggling to get just a few hundred people to safety every day els of operation. Its command panel rests with the CM’s office in Gandhinagar, and it has been working without a break to conjure a larger-than-life public persona for the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Before the Bharatiya Janata Party decided to throw its weight and might behind Modi’s pitch for prime ministership, this machinery was external to the party. For half a decade now, the Gujarat government has had PR and advocacy agencies, both national and international, workopen www.openthemagazine.com 15

photos hindustan times/getty images

contract, held by Delhi-based Mutual PR, expires in a couple of months. The government’s international contract, held worldwide by Apco, an American lobbying firm, ended in March 2013; it was estimated to be worth Rs 13 lakh a month.

A look at the ‘Request for Proposal’ document, which is confidential (available only to bidding agencies), reveals the mammoth task that managing the Gujarat CM’s public image is. The document issued by the state government says it expects the agency to hard sell ‘positive growth and developments happening in the state at regular intervals, or as and when asked to do so by the Commissionerate of Information’. The stated objectives of the exercise are: ‘to help shape favorable media opinion for Gujarat Government, both nationally as well as internationally…and… to position hype force Supporters at an event organised by ‘Modifying India’—an initiative by Modi Gujarat as one of India’s leading states supporters to project him as Prime Minister—in New Delhi on 31 May across sectors by increasing visibility and enhancing ‘top of the mind’ recall so as to ing on contracts issued by it. Manufacturing consent make it an ideal destination among various stakeholdacross social media platforms, Modi also has teams in ers.’ The PR firm that wins the bid is expected to report to Bangalore and Mumbai. The BJP’s infotech cell, no less the state’s Commissionerate of Information and prepare well equipped, has now geared itself to augment that ap- ‘an effective Public Relations Strategy Plan for the paratus. Apart from that, there are ground forces in the Government of Gujarat with a vision for the next form of dedicated party cadres or Modi fan outfits (the year’ while making ‘all arrangements necessary for likes of ‘Modifying India’ and ‘Modi for PM’ as they are the media coverage of any event when dignitaries from Gujarat, such as the Governor of Gujarat, Chief called).

Minister or any other important dignitaries, on their visits to Delhi or any other part of the country or as and he Gujarat government is in the process of final- when asked to do so by the Commissionerate of ising a new contract with a PR agency. The current Information’.

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29 july 2013

The Request document states that the hired PR firm should ‘arrange for national and international media to visit Gujarat and attend various events organized by the different departments of the Government of Gujarat’. Further, that ‘The number of media personnel for any event shall be decided by the Commissionerate after deliberation on the scale of the event. It is the Firm’s responsibility to arrange for the visits of journalists to Gujarat, any other part of the country or abroad. The expenses for the same will be reimbursed by the Commissionerate of Information on the submission of actual bills.’

Sources in Gujarat reveal that the state government has already borne the expenses of scores of journalists, paying for their flights, travel within Gujarat and stay on assorted occasions (and multiple visits in some cases).

Senior journalists are usually assured of luncheon meetings with Modi, with seating plans drawn up to boost their egos. The current Indian PR agency has so far arranged meetings between Modi and a range of newspaper and magazine editors. Starting this year, the government also has a budget allocation for taking journalists abroad on Modi’s foreign visits.

Apart from acting as facilitators, the agency’s executives are expected to prepare press releases and articles, supply information to journalists for publication and telecast. This is par for the PR course, anyone would say, but while routine PR work does involve stiff targets, here is a list of what Gujarat expects, according to its Request document: ‘The firm should also strive to achieve the targets stated below: » Publication of at least 6 major stories from the State in a quarter based on the input provided by the State Government in national News Papers viz. HT, TOI, Indian Express, Hindu, ET, etc. » Publication of 6 major stories in regional newspapers in a quarter again based on the input provided by the State Government » Publication of 6 major stories in a quarter in the major vernacular Newspapers with widespread coverage viz. Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Oriya, Urdu, etc. » Publication of at least one major story in national magazines viz. India Today, Frontline, Outlook, The Week, etc. based on the input provided by the State Government » Coverage/ telecast of at least one major story every month in a major TV News Channel viz. NDTV, Times Now, CNNIBN, AajTak, Zee News, Star News, TV Today, etc.’

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R industry insiders say that while Indian clients usually insist on assured numbers, PR firms rarely promise these in contracts. For the Gujarat government, however, most agencies are willing to make an exception.

Mutual PR is said to have met its earlier targets successfully—a reflection on media gullibility if not complici-

29 july 2013

ty—and remains frontrunner among those vying for the latest contract.

Apart from achieving those targets, the PR agency is expected to follow the following practice: ‘Arrange for press conferences, one-to-one meets, roadshows or any other such BTL activities in consultation with the Commissionerate, or as and when instructed by the Commissionerate to do so.’

The devil is concealed in the details of objectives such as this: ‘Crisis perception management and informing the Commissionerate of Information about impending stories about Gujarat State / leadership.’ In effect, an industry insider reveals, this is where the dirty work comes in.

The ‘leadership’ clearly refers to Modi. From slowly working on journalists and feeding them stories, and, in some cases, doling out advertisements to their employers, the state government does it all.

‘Crisis perception management’ essentially kicks in at times when Modi goofs up an interview with remarks like the recent one he made to Reuters about a puppy under his car’s wheel. Or when he told The Wall Street Journal in June 2012 that malnutrition among children under five was explained by middle-class girls in Gujarat being

‘Crisis perception management’ essentially kicks in at times when Modi goofs up an interview with remarks like the recent one he made to Reuters about a puppy under his car’s wheel “more figure conscious than health conscious”.

The Request document clearly demands that the agency’s officials ‘monitor the presence of, and discussions about, brand Gujarat in social and political circles…This can be achieved through, among other activities, continuously monitoring and tracking all national and regional newspapers, magazines, TV channels, the inter-web, blogs and other channels of external communication at regular intervals.’

The government expects PR executives to ‘have close liaisons with correspondents, reporters, editors, photographers, think-tanks, critics, trend-setters and other such opinion leaders’.

A

mong the handful of agencies vying for the contract are Mutual PR and another Delhi based agency Avian Media. Executives at both agencies confirm they are bidding for it. “We are really too small to manage Mr Modi’s image,” says Kavita Datta, partner at Mutual PR, “We work for the government on creating awareness on open www.openthemagazine.com 17

development and social sector initiatives.” The targets set by the state government, Datta says, are not unusual: “When you are on a monthly retainership, you have to bring it down to deliverables.” Nitin Mantri, CEO of Avian Media, confirms that his firm is in the race for the account, which is expected to fetch around Rs 5 lakh per month. Of course, the contract comes with a Non Disclosure Agreement.

“The original contract [won by Mutual PR four years ago],” says another source in Delhi, “was a pink paper contract meant for hard selling Gujarat in the business papers, but sometime last year, the Commissionerate started asking the agency to focus more on political reporters and mainstream papers than on business papers. This was also the time when the focus of these stories became more [Modi] personality centric.”

At the Vibrant Gujarat summit earlier this year, a list of 20 journalists was drawn for a luncheon meeting with Modi. On this list was Madhu Kishwar, editor of Manushi and a fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Study of Developing Societies, who has turned from being a critic to an advocate of Modi. Internal communication accessed

by Open shows that the agency was wooing Kishwar, something she firmly denies. She says that she is writing a book on Modi: “I am going to include a chapter, I think, on the myth and reality of Modi’s PR. There is no PR. I have written angry letters to the CM’s office asking for information for which I have been waiting several weeks now.

They are so overburdened.”

With Kishwar claiming she is oblivious to the machinery at work, the Gujarat government nevertheless gave her special attention because she was seen as one of the lone voices emerging from the ‘the Left liberal space’ favourable to Modi’s policies with ‘captive column space available to her in The Hindu, DNA and Manushi…’

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odi’s team in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar is led

by his trusted aide K Kailashnathan, a 1979 batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer who was appointed chief principal secretary to the CM a day after he retired on 31 May. Earlier, before he was appointed additional chief secretary (a post he held till retirement) to Modi, he had been Commissioner of Industries and CEO of the Gujarat Maritime Board. He was the official in charge at the time that Gujarat privatised its ports.

In May, the charge of information and broadcasting was given to GC Murmu, a 1985 batch officer who had handled sensitive legal cases—including those related to encounter deaths—and forms a part of his core team. As home secretary of the state in 2004, Murmu was accused of ‘tutoring and coercing witnesses’ who appeared before the Nanavati-Shah Commission that probed the 2002 riots.

In Ahmedabad, the CMO coordinates PR efforts with the social media team in Bangalore put together by Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh, who have gathered a bunch of over 18 open

100 techies in that city. Both Modi and the BJP, reveals a party source, see social media as a game changer for the polls of 2014. Both Mahesh and Jain, contacted by Open, decline comment. “I don’t speak about it to the media at all,” says Jain, who is based in Mumbai. “I can’t comment on any of it,” says Mahesh, “Someone from Mr Modi’s office will contact you.”

Jain is also the founder of NitiDigital, a company that owns the website Niti Central, known for its Modi tomtoms. In June last year, on his own blog he put up a post titled, ‘BJP’s project 275 for 2014’. In this, he argued that the BJP would need a wave election and should focus on 350 winnable seats. ‘The last wave election was in 1984,’ Jain wrote. He seems to have more confidence in the BJP’s votecatching abilities than the party itself.

As Open goes to press, Modi’s Facebook page has over 2.3 million ‘likes’ while his Twitter followers exceed 1.9 million—no Indian politician has a higher count.

29 july 2013

namo spell Narendra Modi after casting his vote at Ranip during the last phase of Gujarat’s Assembly polls at Ahmedabad on 17 December 2012

A proportion of those are fake followers, who include bots. There exist sites that sift real followers from fakes, but there is no uniformity in their statistics. What is beyond dispute though is that among Modi’s social media fans, there are millions of fakes.

The response of the BJP to this fact is predictable. “These figures are all rubbish,” says Arvind Gupta, head of the party’s infotech cell and a close Modi aide who is expected to lead the social media campaign directly at Modi’s behest. He adds that different algorithms throw up different results. But he does concede “you can’t know how many of these followers are voters”.

The BJP’s social media strategy, which now converges on Modi’s own after his appointment as its Campaign Committee chief, appears to rely on the fact that between the 2009 and 2014 elections, India has added close to 100 million new voters. In the previous General Election, the estimate of first-time voters stood at 60 million.

29 july 2013

Among the most vulnerable to the elaborate PR machinery are members of the BJP itself. Their fascination with Modi has been evident ever since his elevation within the party. Spokespersons and leaders now defend Modi with the same aggression and ferocity that the Congress reserves for its first family.

Meenakshi Lekhi, spokesperson of the BJP, says that Congress attacks on Modi have increased after his elevation in the party, but the BJP has a plan to counter the Congress. This counter plan will surely focus on Modi.

Dissent within the BJP is at a new low as well. Thespian Amir Raza Hussain is the latest victim of the party’s new game; he was forced to resign as vice-president of the BJP’s Delhi unit after he praised LK Advani over Modi in a TV discussion.

Such a personality cult is not new to the BJP, but never before has the party fallen in line so meekly behind one man. n open www.openthemagazine.com 19

No room for modesty Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna has no qualms taking full credit for relief efforts in his state

i n t e rv i e w

“We were controlling the Army. I was their field marshal” One month after the disastrous floods in his state, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna speaks to Open’s Mihir Srivastava photos by raul irani

The last month must have been the toughest of your life.

We were facing the fury of nature. And it was unrelenting. Every day a calamity was taking place in some or other district of the state. It was difficult to administer the state in this hour of crisis.

The worst is over and we are on the path of recovery.

How long did your government take to understand the magnitude of the calamity?

You have to be practical and not biased.

Fair criticism is always welcome. But unwarranted criticism will not be in the right spirit. You see, Kedarnath is the safest place with respect to pilgrimage. What happened is that there was a lake in Kedarnath, which burst on account of excessive rains. Flash floods washed away the entire small town of Kedarnath and the entire valley up to Gaurikund. Connectivity was snapped.

Now you could not reach there even by foot. The only way to reach there was by chopper. [But] if the weather is bad, you 29 july 2013

cannot fly choppers. You cannot call it an administrative lapse.

My question is something else. How long did your government take to appreciate the magnitude of the crisis—a day, two days, a week?

I am coming to that. Let’s first deal with the fundamentals. There were two helipads at Kedarnath which were washed away. Makeshift helipads had to be used. How do you make them if you can’t reach there? So the Army, the Air Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the National Disaster Management Agency—all the agencies were switched into action and they have done a commendable job, rescued thousands of people. We could not save lives on the 15th and 16th [of June] because we could not reach there; 57 of our own government officials and functionaries have died. So you must understand, a calamity of this nature needs time to respond. How much time would you give the government to respond?

But were you aware of what had happened from day one? Because your secretariat was still trying to come to terms with what had happened three or four days after the calamity.

Immediately. On 16th and 17th [June], the government was aware of the crisis. We contacted the Army. [Since] there is no airbase here, choppers had to be requisitioned. Private choppers in the state were pressed into service.

Thousands of people were rescued.

Two civilian and one Army chopper crashed. Even today, we cannot go on foot from Gaurikund to Kedarnath.

If you can’t do it after 30 days when the Army, the ITBP and the NDMA are working there—how could you expect the state administration to reach there?

Can you say this to the thousands of people trapped there, wet and cold? Hundreds of tonnes of food were rotting at Jolly Grant airport for days. If you can’t rescue people, at least air-drop food for them. open www.openthemagazine.com 23

hour of crisis Posters of missing persons in Doon Hospital, Dehradun, where flood victims are still being treated after the calamity

Wherever people were trapped was safe. There was no threat to their lives.

There was food and medicine. There was shelter. Now the entire focus was to save people from the areas where there was no food, no shelter—that was the main area of Kedarnath. People from other areas—I understand their hue and cry, but they must appreciate the crisis.

And these other people were basically locals…

At least 7,000 sq km was washed out. I don’t have such manpower.

How big is your state machinery?

My total budget is Rs 35,000 crore [more than this was spent to host the Common Wealth Games in Delhi in 2010]. I don’t have a regular police in the hills. There is only revenue police, and that [has been] the case for the last 100 years because there is no law and order problem in these areas. The revenue police—patwaris and lekapals—are not competent to carry out a rescue operation. They themselves ran away to save their lives.

But the extent of damage and loss of life 24 open

could have been contained if the unregulated construction along the river and around Kedarnath had not been allowed. There is also no mechanism to monitor, let alone regulate, the flow of pilgrims and tourists.

There was no threat perception in the region. Now we realise that whatever we do in the state has to be done in a scientific and planned manner. All these buildings and small townships, hotels and the rest have been there for many years, not [just] during the last one year when I have been Chief Minister. Now we have to go for a very planned development. I have set up a statutory authority for reconstruction and rehabilitation. It will [include] experts in their fields and will put up infrastructure that will last at least another hundred years.

That might help. The shrine is the only building that survived in Kedarnath, perhaps because it was the only authorised structure there.

The temple is safe. There is a huge [amount of] debris around. The debris cannot be removed because we cannot take machines there. That area is isolated. Even the Air Force can’t reach there.

What will my government do?

Why was no account kept of the cars plying in the area and of the inflow of pilgrims and tourists? That would have formed the basis of any reliable estimate of the lives lost as a result of this calamity.

Each and every pony and dandiwala was registered with the Zila Panchayat. And when I am paying compensation, I will go by the records of the Zila Parishad.

The flow of tourists and pilgrims was not regulated. And I think it is not regulated in any place in India. Tell me a place where it is regulated?

At Vaishno Devi and along the Amarnath Yatra, to mention a few.

It’s correct. Now we will have to do it. I am not averse to the idea. We will have to control everything—flow of tourists, their stay and safety, the nature of buildings, advance weather warnings.

Everything, basically.

It took your government a calamity of this magnitude to realise these basic issues of governance.

Uttarakhand is a state that required serious attention. And the Government of India and the Prime Minister have taken a lead in that by constituting a subcommittee of the Cabinet, of which I 29 july 2013

am also a member. This has been done to ensure a better Uttarakahnd.

Are you saying that Uttarakhand was, so far, an ignored state?

No, not ignored. We are a prosperous state with [economic] growth of 10 per cent. We are a tourism-rich state. We are not a beggar state. We are an economically viable state. But now the tourism industry has been hit. Now we have to find a source of sustainable growth, [balanced] between the environment and development.

The implication of the fact that the inflow of tourists was not monitored is that we don’t know how many people were in the Kedarnath valley when the calamity struck and thus we have no reliable estimate of loss of life. The number of people who died is now a matter of popular speculation.

110,000 people have been rescued. We have not got the due credit, which we deserve. 110,000 people rescued without any law-and-order problem.

What law-and-order problem were you expecting from people who are dying, stranded for days, dealing with hunger and cold, hanging between life and death?

Why not? Law-and-order problem in the sense that people are stuck, local villagers are stranded. The rescue work is all about tourists. What about local residents? [The locals] could have played politics out there. They did not mind that the rescue work was directed towards the tourists and pilgrims. This can only happen in Uttarakhand. The credit goes to the administration.

The credit goes to the locals.

No. We made them understand. We are

in touch with them.

Your government says about 5,700 people died. NDMA puts the figure at 11,000.

Forget about the records. [The families of] people who came here know how many came. The number of ‘missing complaints’ is 5,648. The missing includes deaths. [If the missing are not found before 15 July 2013, they will be declared dead.]

This figure includes locals?

Yes.

The NDMA’s figure is 11,000 dead.

That was without basis. We have total-

“Now we will have to control everything—flow of tourists, their stay and safety, the nature of buildings, the advance weather warnings” ly rejected it. If there are 11,000, give us their names. I am not quarrelling, but give me the names.

It was a national disaster, but the response from the other state governments was regional. They were only bothered about relief for the people of their respective states—like Narendra Modi for Gujaratis.

I did not allow that to happen. There was an effort. There were proposals made by various governments [offering] choppers for the evacuation of their people, to which the Army and the administration politely said ‘no’.

Everybody was trapped, [be it] an Indian

or foreigner, and everyone was evacuated. [Other] state governments helped me. Whatever help they have given I have taken. [But] the rescue operation was done solely by the [Uttarakhand] state government.

The Army deserves the credit for this mega rescue operation.

We were controlling the Army. The Army was not controlling us. As per India’s Constitution and the rules of the land, we tell the Army what to do.

So the Army did excellent rescue work under your supervision. Is this what you are trying to say?

The Army and Air Force both. I was their field marshal for one month. I have the satisfaction of coordinating their effort.

Where is your uniform, then?

It is about [one’s] outlook and mental approach. (Laughs)

But, as per the field marshal’s own senior officers, there was no unity of effort in the rescue operation; it went haywire many times.

These officers were not in the picture of the programme, policy and action.

The roles were specific and cut out for the Army and ITBP. I was coordinating with three top Army officials: two lieutenant generals and one major general.

We were having daily monitoring meetings. I was personally monitoring the day-to-day activities of the forces. We told them: ‘You have to evacuate [people] from here and drop food there.’

VIP movement hampered the rescue work.

Since you were coordinating everything,

small relief A woman rescued by the Army arrives at Sahastradhara helipad, near Dehradun

why didn’t you stop it?

We did not allow VIPs to use helipads where rescue operations were going on.

In the Kedarnath valley, there were four helipads, which were being used for evacuation. We did not allow any VIP to land there. The Prime Minister did not land. The BJP president did not land.

The [Union] Home Minister did not land. [Narendra] Modi was not allowed to land. I was the only person, as Chief Minister, who was landing at various places.

What about Rahul Gandhi?

He came when the rescue operations were over. He landed when the helipad was not being used for rescue operations.

Or the rescue operation was stopped because he was to land there. Why was he accorded this special privilege that was not even given to the Prime Minister?

When he landed, no rescue work was being carried out from that particular helipad. And he landed at just one helipad. So the heavens would not fall [if he landed]. If I allowed media people to use helipads, and [similarly] if I allow a Member of Parliament, a vice-president of the party, to land at a helipad, then I think it’s a perverse criticism.

26 open

The point is that this movement of VIPs hampered rescue work. That happened when you were the ‘field marshal’.

The Army chopper was not used by a civilian. The Army choppers, because they are huge, only evacuated. The choppers which were hired by the administration, the civilian choppers... those were being used by local MPs, MLAs and ministers, because they had to be there.

When the Union Home Minister was here on an aerial survey, an Army helicopter, MI-17, accompanied the Home Minister to make sure the air space was clear.

Who told you that?

It is there in the Army records. My source is a senior Army officer.

He should be court-martialled. There was only one chopper. I was with him; the vice-chairman of the NDMA was also there. Just one chopper flew with the Home Minister. We had an aerial survey of Kedarnath and affected areas.

Last month, in Open, I reported that preferential treatment was given by your government to those who could curry favour.

Try to understand that this is human behaviour. Suppose your brother was trapped and you knew me. [Would you]

not phone me up? They were asking for preferential treatment. But we did not give them preferential treatment.

Was no preferential treatment given?

Yes. Only for those who were sick.

Facts suggest something else. A Bihar minister was rescued on the second day; he wasn’t sick. Then, one of the first to be airlifted was the District Magistrate of Rudraprayag.

He was not one of the first to be rescued. He was rescued on the second day.

He had a heart problem. His replacement was sent, [but] he got trapped, and reached only eight hours later. The replacement sent to Rudraprayag is a very senior IAS officer. My best officers are now in the field.

One month on, you seem to be satisfied with the way you dealt with it.

There will always be that feeling that more could have been done. I am a very honest person, answerable to my conscience. I am not answerable to the opposition. There will always be a feeling that ‘so many people lost their lives’.

But it was a very honest and committed exercise on my part and on the part of my government to reach out to the people and bring them relief. n

29 july 2013

photos ruhani kaur

s e xc a pa d e s

Rapid Action Grinder An app that helps gay men find partners. Quickly Chinki Sinha

‘Hi,’ the blue chat icon comes alive.

‘Hello’ ‘Where’ ‘My Bar’ ‘Ok for sex?’

T

hus goes the exchange on Grindr, a location-based internet app. The two men are 1.4 km apart as the app’s window on a phone informs Hillol Datta, who has just found himself a table at My Bar in central Delhi’s Paharganj area. Near the restrooms, but with a full view of the crowd. It is Saturday and the place is packed.

There is nothing to suggest that this is a gay bar. Metallica in the air. And the clinks of beer glasses every time a goal is scored in a soccer match that is playing on a large screen. But veterans of the scene know. It is a happy hunting

29 july 2013

ground. There is cheap alcohol and a good mix of men, some of whom are out looking for other men, fiddling with handsets, perhaps trying to lure dates.

Like Hillol. “See how direct it is,” he says, referring to the app that has galvanised gay dating across the globe.

Hillol is in a purple T-shirt on black slacks and has eyes lined with kohl. His gay friends call him ‘Muscle Mary’. A personal fitness trainer, he has a body he has worked on for years, sculpting his muscles. There are tattoos all along the length of his arm. Roses in red ink. At 33, he says he loves his life. He is feminine gay, he says, and a happy convert to Grindr.

Hillol is almost an addict. Grindring, he says, is best done at home. That is when he can do it properly, sift profiles and get chatting. But for an instant hookup, he prefers a bar. It allows him to

cruise online and set up a meeting in real time, almost.

‘Ok for sex?’ was too direct for his liking. He has other things on his mind right now. Drinks, conversation, dancing— and then sex, maybe.

He moves quickly on to the next thumbnail: a green glow. Someone else is online.

‘Load More Guys’ the screen tempts.

“Why not?” he shrugs.

He taps his touchscreen, and while Grindr loads more options, rather like an online shopping site, complete with offer details and terms, Hillol speaks of the old days when a palm caressed by a finger while shaking hands was the usual way to signal and respond to gay interest.

The arrival of the internet was a help.

But earlier websites, like the decade-old PlanetRomeo, did not offer immediacy of open www.openthemagazine.com 27

Young and Free Pranabes Dutta says he is tired of being hit on by ‘uncles’ on PlanetRomeo and wants to switch to Grindr so he can filter prospects by age

contact. Users of Grindr, in contrast, are in constant touch and there is always someone out there looking for some action. As Hillol says, it is a no-nonsense app. It gets straight—if you’ll pardon the word—to the point. It gets gays together in a jiffy. Its separation gap feature, for example, displays distances down to a fraction of a metre. It is GPS technology at the service of sex.

D

escribed in the Western media as ‘a

revolutionary dating tool’, ‘the scariest gay bar on earth’ and much else besides, this app for gay and bi-curious men first appeared in 2009. Since then, it has gained over a million users in more than 180 countries by making it easy for people of alternate sexuality to find dates, a challenge even in societies where they habitually wear visible markers, coded or otherwise.

Joel Simkhai, the Los Angeles-based man who designed Grindr, was born in Tel Aviv. He was a teenager when he came out, and that experience led him to the idea, as he said in an interview with The Guardian. Like any other lonely gay man, he would always wonder who else was in the same space.

At first, it was an iPhone and Android app, but is now accessible even to users of BlackBerry and other devices. In India, gay men started using it in 2010, but it has picked up only in the past year or so.

Once India has more smartphones, guesses Hillol, the app will become pop28 open

ular here. It would be especially useful in towns that have no gay bars and few partner options.

The app offers a vast variety of choices.

‘Top’ or ‘bottom’ is a basic option (as basic indicators of an active or passive sex preference), plus there are ‘hairy’, ‘filmi’ and other tags. It is entirely up to users to describe themselves in whichever way they like. It is also common to use pseudonyms that are dreamt up to excite a special kind of sexual interest. To add to the intrigue, the app’s icon looks like a mask, a little like the kind that Bane wears in the Dark Knight series.

The name Grindr, according to its website, embodies the idea of ‘grinding’ human beings together in the same way that a coffee grinder does beans.

But this analogy may be a mask in itself. A gay man who recently downloaded the app calls it a lazy attempt to sound intellectual about what is clearly sexual: a grind. This is what users are looking for, and they are not shy about it.

“T

he gay world is a little different.

We believe in giving space, and are looking to have a good time,” says the man who dismisses the coffee analogy.

He is looking for a serious relationship, but while it takes time to find such a partner—erudite, masculine and creative, as he hopes—he is not averse to playing the field. And Grindr lets him.

His phone battery is low, so he needs to move fast. Some who show up are

friends, and he skips those profiles. He wants novelty. That’s most fun.

On the top left corner of the handset, the app shows the presence of a user closest to him: it tells him how may metres away he is, and offers a few details (of the other’s choice of course).

‘Do you have a G-string?’ asks the closest man.

“Fantasyland,” smirks the coffee-analogy rejector, and moves on to ‘Load More Guys’. It is swift. No hard feelings, no misgivings and no judging of the other’s sexual fetish.

Of course, it is not perfect. And men do make mistakes in their hurry to seal the deal, as it were. Another man who does not want to be named found a date via Grindr, but both parties discovered they were ‘bottom’. “We had a drink, kissed and said ‘bye’,” he says. “What’s there to do? Such incidents happen.” Not everyone likes to indicate upfront whether they are active or passive.

He has had several other mis-dates in his short span as an online dater. He is picky, he admits. And Grindr is now an obsession he is trying to shake off. “It is so distracting,” he says, “I am always checking out who there is.” It is about sex and more sex. Even orgy offers. There are a few discussions as well, but mostly on traps and other fetishes.

O

ne fine Friday, as a research meas-

ure, I download the app on my own iPhone and sign up with the name 29 july 2013

‘Chunky’. I have no photo to market myself in this competitive cyberworld, but I do get a few ‘hi’s.

A man who goes by the Grindr name Mephistopheles, as in the character in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus who tempts the scholar to trade his soul for carnal pleasure, shows up.

‘Dr Faustus here,’ I type, cheekily.

‘Selling your soul, are we?’ he replies.

He suggests a goblet of wine to go with a round of soul trading. I back off.

The response of another user, to whom I reveal I am a journalist and a woman as well, is one of indifference.

‘Like, really?’ he says, adding. ‘Write something different. This one’s been written about.’

True. The American media has covered it in detail. But in India, it’s new.

Another man tells me he isn’t interested in blind dates. I ask him why he is on Grindr. He asks me if I know what a blind date means.

I say ‘blindfold’ and log off.

Another man pings me: ‘In India for a while,’ he says, ‘No Money Boys please ...’

H

illol has no intention to quit

Grindr. He is in a relationship of sorts, but says it is fun to meet other gay men on weekends for some fun. At My Bar, he has his own internal ‘gaydar’ working as well. A sixth sense, that is, a ‘radar’ that allows someone to spot a fellow gay. Some say it is mythical, but he says his works well for him.

“I can sense,” he says.

With that, he excuses himself, goes to the toilet, and returns to say there are a few men in there of some interest. He taps his phone inbetween speaking to me, and finds someone who suggests a meeting. Someone 169 metres away.

Hillol says he is generally wary of meeting those that don’t post profile photos, or those who use suggestive stuff like a bare torso or baseball tucked between the legs. ‘Eager profiles’ raise his suspicion.

It is safer and more convenient to size up a prospect at a public place like a bar.

“You can meet immediately, and then decide where you want to take it,” he says. “The gay scene on my side of town is generally dead.”

Delhi’s gay scene has largely been underground all these years. It was only in

29 july 2013

July 2009 that the Delhi High Court repealed Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code and decriminalised homosexuality. Before that, says a gay friend, secret parties held at farmhouses had to serve as hunting grounds. But these were small networks, and there was always the risk of a police raid.

Social attitudes have not kept pace with the change in law. Hillol recounts the episode of an attack a pool party suffered in 2009 soon after the court ruling.

Angry men had barged into the venue, Urban Pind, and stabbed a few men. He still has his scars. He was stabbed on his feet. Another man’s forehead was knifed.

“We have been through those days too,” says Hillol.

Given all this, Grindr has been a relief.

Except that the app’s server is not efficient enough. This is a common com-

Grindr is a no-nonsense app. Its separation gap feature shows distances down to a fraction of a metre. It is GPS technology at the service of sex plaint. In My Bar, it often takes rather long to ‘Load More Guys’. But Hillol keeps trying. On a Saturday night, he cannot quit so early.

A

nyone can download Grindr, and

unlike Facebook, one need not have a friend request accepted to gain access to any profile. The app asks if a new user if above 17 years of age, but has no way to verify this. In effect, the app is a freefor-all field. Which means there is a dark side to it too.

“One has to be very careful meeting people. I suggest one should have some conversation before inviting someone home or elsewhere,” advises Hillol. “A gay friend of mine was murdered last year. He used to meet men who he didn’t know for dates. Be very, very careful.”

T

he coffee-analogy rejector’s in-

itiation happened a long time ago, as a college graduate who would travel by

bus. That’s how he met his first crush— on a bus. They moved their hands towards each other on an overhead rod, clasped fingers, and exchanged glances: it was mutual consent. He started going to parties and was soon part of a local gay network. Now he is exhausted with the chase. Sex, he found in abundance. A lasting relationship, he didn’t.

Could Grindr help? Of the many dates he has stumbled upon, there is one person he thinks could assume a role of significance in his life. But in this space, it is sex first and the rest later.

While some users try to play down the sexual facilitation aspect of this app, that is what accounts for its success in a world where gay men—estimated to be one in every 20—have it so difficult. The app’s inventor Simkhai has made statements saying that Grindr is intended to serve as a precursor to sex and not sex itself. But that is just a play on words.

The coffee-analogy rejector is still at it, if only to fight boredom. There is this loneliness to kill, time to fill, he says. He is still hopeful of finding a partner.

The ardour of some is cooling off.

“There used to be those adventures in the city on a night out. Now, you can do it on the phone,” says another gay friend.

“Convenient, but not so much fun. There was a little rush in approaching a man in a party or in a park, and hoping he is gay.

Just like me. Technology simplifies everything too much.”

He first came across the app in 2011. He was party-hopping in a cab with a few gay partygoers in Delhi, and a friend’s friend downloaded it for him on his phone. He was surprised to see what options he had even in the wee hours of the morning. He got himself a date the very next evening.

“I had three men interested,” he recalls.

A

t my bar that Saturday night, Hillol

grindred for quite a while. On returning home, he called to say not much happened. But maybe next Friday…

The app is here to stay. And of course, other apps with similar features have come along. There is Bang with Friends for example, and also Blendr, among others, though these are for everybody at large.

After all, gay men do not have a monopoly on loneliness, as Simkhai has pointed out. I cannot agree more. n open www.openthemagazine.com 29

i m p e r s o n at i o n

Identity Crisis A man assumes his younger brother’s identity to satisfy the age criterion for a job. So began a decades-long saga that has left the younger brother anxious about his property ANIL BUDUR LULLA Gopalapura

E

very morning, when Gopalapura

Seenappa Shivanna wakes up, he looks in the mirror and touches his face. He wants to reassure himself that it is still his face, that he is still alive.

One can’t blame this 52-year-old farmer from a nondescript village 150 km west of Bangalore—his late older brother, GS Raghu, stole his identity.

Though Raghu is dead, Shivanna has been worried about it ever since he found out Raghu had used his name to get into the Army. Even Raghu’s death certificate bears Shivanna’s name. On paper, GS Shivanna is dead.

The elaborate fraud of Raghu passing off as Shivanna would not have come to anybody’s attention had there not been a family dispute when Lance Naik Raghu, honourably discharged from the Army, returned to settle down in his native village in Karnataka.

Tracing the fraud back through the years, Shivanna discovered that in the early 1980s, Raghu, the elder by three years, had applied for and received Shivanna’s seventh class certificate from Nonavinakere Government School, where both had studied. Shivanna’s certificate made Raghu eligible to join the Army as a driver, placing him below the age limit for enrollment.

“I checked the school records [recently] and discovered that Raghu had signed in his own name while receiving my certificate. Nobody guessed any bad intentions, as it was common for a family member to collect another’s certificate.

But instead of handing it over to me, he gave it to the Army recruitment office 30 open

and became ‘GS Shivanna’ in their records,” says Shivanna.

Through this simple act, Raghu passed himself off as GS Shivanna during the entirety of his 20-odd years of military service as a permanent driver in the Army Supply Corps (ASC).

W

hen Raghu told his family that he

was selected by the Army, nobody knew he had committed a fraud. Living in a village of only 20 families back then, they didn’t miss him, and he came home

“Now, as my brother is dead, the onus is on me to show that I am alive and my brother is Raghu and not Shivanna, as he passed himself off all these years” only a couple of times. After marriage, he took his wife along with him, and their kids, too, were born and brought up wherever he was posted.

Meanwhile, Shivanna settled down, tended to his land, got married and raised a family. He never approached his school for his certificate as he never needed it.

After Raghu retired from the Army sometime in the mid-2000s, he applied for the job of a security guard with the State Bank of Mysore, which was recruiting ex-servicemen. Once employed with the bank in nearby Tiptur town, Raghu

and his family—wife Mangalamma and daughters Usha and Mithuna— moved into their family home in Gopalapura village.

The house and land were both in the name of their mother Jayamma. The property had been informally divided among the three brothers, including the eldest, Rangappa. Jayamma wrote and signed the partition deed on a non-notarised white sheet of paper.

Though the property has been divided among the brothers, it has to be submitted officially on stamp paper, for which proof of identities is required, before the property can be registered in their names. “The police and the tehsildar have told me it is a grave matter and that it will be difficult for me or my family to inherit the property if this confusion persists,” says Shivanna.

Trouble began as soon as Raghu moved in and announced he wanted to sell a part of the land to raise money to build a house. Shivanna was confused, because Raghu tried to sell the land by posing as Shivanna. When he objected, things turned ugly and Raghu assaulted Shivanna, who promptly lodged a complaint with the Nonavinakere police.

This was when he first learnt of the identity theft. But village elders and even the police persuaded him not to pursue the matter against Raghu. They said Raghu had given them a written undertaking, promising not to threaten or harm Shivanna again. He even signed the letter as Raghu, but since no one asked him for any proof of identity, the matter was laid to rest.

29 july 2013

photos rudra rakshit sharan

who am i?

(Top) Shivanna stands with wife Siddagangamma outside his late brother Raghu’s house; (left) documents collected by Shivanna to submit as proof of his identity

A

year later, Raghu and his family moved into their new home, built adjacent to the ancestral home. Within weeks, Raghu fell seriously ill and had to be referred to Command Hospital in Bangalore, where he was diagnosed with kidney disease. He died in October 2011.

Now, a property dispute with Raghu’s wife has reignited the case, and Shivanna feels he may be cheated of his share.

Mangalamma has a death certificate in the name of GS Shivanna and is receiving pensions from both the Army and the bank.

When Shivanna dug a little further, he found that Raghu and his wife had been putting together a stack of documents to further the identity fraud. They saw to it that their daughters’ school documents listed their father’s name as GS Shivanna, as he was in service then, even though

29 july 2013

their daughters’ voter ID cards mention ‘GS Raghu’ as their father. Villagers allege that she has applied for an Aadhaar card where the husband’s name has been mentioned as ‘late GS Shivanna’.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Shivanna himself has an electoral photo ID card and a ration card with his photo and name correctly printed. The ration card also carries the names and photographs of his family of four—wife Siddagangamma, son Mahesh and daughter Deepashri.

This family has been able to lay their hands on a crucial piece of evidence: Raghu’s real voter ID card, with his photograph and name entered as ‘GS Raghu’.

He had applied for his voter ID after taking up employment with the bank.

“Now, as my brother is dead, the onus is on me to show that I am alive and my

brother is Raghu and not Shivanna, as he passed himself off all these years,” says a distraught Shivanna.

In 2012, after his appeals to the taluk office to clear the confusion got him no response, he filed a private criminal complaint in a local court. “I was worried after he died on 6 July 2011, so I went to court asking for relief under IPC sections 167, 177, 420, read with 34 [all related to assuming an identity, fraud, cheating and conspiracy].’’ The court has asked that an officer ranked no lower than Deputy Superintendent of Police file a report.

Officials in the DSP’s office had told Shivanna that the matter would be looked into only after the Karnataka polls in May this year. But even several weeks after the election, he has not been called for clarifications. When asked, police officials promised to look into the matter “within the next few days’’ as ‘sahebru’—a reverential Kannada term for a high-ranking officer—was busy with other police matters in the wake of the change in government.

Meanwhile, original documents showing Raghu up as a fraud, painstakingly collected by Shivanna, have been tendered in court. Shivanna shows us copies of the documents, starting with Raghu’s marriage invitation card, which reads ‘GS Raghu weds BK Mangala’. open www.openthemagazine.com 31

He also has a bunch of inland letters written by Raghu, while in service, to his aunt, then the only literate member of the family. The letters are signed as ‘Raghu’. In some of the letters, in the space for the sender’s name and address, there is no name but only his military service number: 138780068KP. Shivanna also possesses a money-order receipt from a time that Raghu sent Rs 45 to the same aunt in his own name.

Raghu and Shivanna were educated only up to seventh class. The year of birth on Raghu’s school certificate is 1958; on Shivanna’s, it is 1961.

Interestingly, not once has Raghu admitted, verbally or in writing, that he assumed his younger brother GS Shivanna’s identity. It seems he sought to keep the issues separate.

“He was known as Raghu to the family and villagers, and Shivanna to the outside world where he was employed. He managed to assume two identities and shuffled with ease between the two,’’ says another villager, Lance Naik (retired) GL Subramani, who was also a driver in the ASC .

S

hivanna’s wife, Siddagangamma,

an anganwadi worker in the village, points out an interesting fact: “If Raghu had died in the village itself, as an anganwadi worker, I would have had to issue his death certificate, which would have been entered as ‘GS Raghu’ and not ‘GS Shivanna’. But, as he died in Command Hospital, Bangalore, his death certificate has been [issued] in the name he assumed when he joined the Army. If he had died in the village, his wife could not have claimed pensions from both the military and SBM, as the name on the death certificate would have been different.”

She is fed up of the confusion.

“Tomorrow, to suit her purposes, Mangalamma may claim my husband to be the dead person, or she may even claim that Shivanna had two wives,’’ Siddagangamma fears.

Locals who support Shivanna allege the deceased brother’s wife played a trick by not printing a card to send friends and relatives, as is the usual practice to observe the 11th day after a person’s death.

The body, too, has been interred in their own six-acre agricultural plot, and the 32 open

grave remains unmarked. “If she had printed the name ‘Raghu’ on the card, it would have proved that his real name was Raghu and that ‘Shivanna’ was an assumed name. If she had printed the name as ‘Shivanna’, then she would have had to answer to other villagers. For the same reason, the grave too remains unmarked,’’ says Subramani.

Efforts to speak to Mangalamma, also known as Mangala, came to nought, as the lady refused to open the door. She stood behind a window and looked out at us all the while we were speaking to Shivanna. A framed photograph hanging on a wall inside her house, featuring Raghu in his Army uniform, can be seen if the window is fully open. Having been made a party to the fraud, she was clearly too uncomfortable to answer these questions. But police say they will question her too.

Mangalamma went a step further to ce-

Police told Shivanna that the matter would be looked into only after the state elections in May. But weeks later, he has still not been called for clarifications ment her husband’s name as GS Shivanna by getting a certificate from the local gram panchayat saying that a person called ‘GS Shivanna’ who resided in Gopalapura village had passed away, upon which she got some villagers to sign as witnesses. This rattled Shivanna so much that he makes it a point to look at his reflection in the mirror when he wakes up in the morning to convince himself he is alive.

To perpetuate the impersonation, villagers say Mangalamma needs a photo ID with her picture and name that records the name of her husband as ‘GS Shivanna’. For this, she has applied for an Aadhaar card. This will help her sell any property as late Shivanna’s wife. As of now, villagers say, in order to receive the pensions, she need not show anything other than her husband’s death certificate—which she has got.

Shivanna’s son Mahesh is confused

with the mismatch in documents and wants his father’s name to be cleared under the law, as the confusion will hamper his life in the future. “I don’t know what turn the controversy will take. The court should clearly restore my father’s identity. That will clear up a lot of things and make our lives easier,’’ says Mahesh, a class 12 student.

The two families are not on talking terms, and even the oldest brother, Rangappa, has sided with Raghu’s family, Shivanna claims. Rangappa walked away as soon as we arrived in the village, to avoid any questions, but has told villagers that Mangalamma should be left in peace as she has already lost her husband and bears the burden of bringing up two teenage daughters. Other villagers tell us he said it would not make a difference if she knows whether her husband’s real name is Shivanna or Raghu, as she has his service records and also a death certificate.

Shivanna has also complained to the taluk officer that the Nellikere mandal secretary, Kodandaramaiah, issued, on government stationery, a death acknowledgement under a false name, asking other villagers to sign as witnesses. “I have gotten him suspended for being party to forgery, as he knows I am Shivanna and I am very much alive. How can he issue a certificate that can be used as a document for succession so carelessly? He also knows my wife is an anganwadi worker and that her husband Shivanna [as I speak] is alive. He has no business issuing such a certificate.’’

The complications within complications make one’s head spin. It is bizarre that a simple attempt to meet the age requirement for joining the Army could lead to such a complex and long-running fraud. When asked why he was going to such great lengths to teach his dead brother and his family a lesson, Shivanna says he had thought about the matter for many weeks and concluded that it was an elaborate conspiracy on the part of his brother’s family.

“As long as I am alive, I can prove that I am Shivanna. If I die, there is a possibility that Mangalamma will come forth to claim she is my wife and deprive my family of their [property] share. Having seen her actions so far, I think she is capable of going to any extent.’’ n 29 july 2013

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i n c lu s i o n

The Boy Who Doesn’t Talk in Class

Dear Principal: do you have a problem with an autistic child in your school?

Lhendup G Bhutia photos by ritesh uttamchandani

O special intervention An autistic child undergoes physiotherapy at Dr Samir Dalwai’s clinic; a cutout (right) of a birdie

n a rainy June morning, a mother

in her late thirties sat on a chair in a school corridor trying to convince her five-year-old son to enter a classroom.

It was the boy’s first day in school. Aiding the mother was her elder son, a boy of less than 10, who had excused himself from class in the same school. Half an hour passed, but the younger one would not budge. Eventually, a peon had to forcibly carry him in.

Kick and scream, the five-year-old did not, but his mother had a single worry to 29 July 2013

battle the rest of the day: would her son adjust to school? The boy had been diagnosed with autism when he was only two. Until a little over a year ago, he did not speak. He would rarely communicate with others, or even respond to sounds.

With therapy sessions, however, his condition has improved remarkably. Like all applicants likely to be granted admission to the school, he was subjected to a medical test. In his report, the examining doctor made a note of the boy’s condition and told the parents—to their annoyance—that he should be enrolled in a school for children with special needs.

With the boy’s admission on hold, the parents tried to meet the principal but could not. The school did eventually admit him, though, after that delay.

Even so, his mother was anxious about what teachers might make of his behaviour and was relieved to see him smile and wave as he got off the bus after his first day in school.

T

Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, which instituted a committee of experts to observe the child’s behaviour in school for a month. After watching the child for 11 days, the committee suggested in a report that the child be allowed the help of a shadow teacher in class, but the school’s lawyers insisted that the child be monitored for another 19 days .

The school and parents declined Open interviews for this article. However, according to a source closely connected with the case, the school is not accommodative of children with special needs and remains reluctant to allow a shadow teacher—an educator to help the child along—in the classroom.

Some educationists say that while special children need to be educated in regular schools, the latter have so many students that they find it difficult to provide the one-on-one care that is often required for autistic children. In the words of MP Sharma, director, GD Somani

here is a strengthening belief in the

West that children with special needs are best put through regular schools.

This is in keeping with the ideal of inclusive education, by which children are not segregated from the rest—to the extent possible—on account of alternate abilities. It helps such children understand and engage society at large, while ensuring that regular children accept those who are not like themselves.

The broad principle also has its advocates in India. The Right to Education Act specifies that every child has the right to education in a neighbourhood school.

The debate, however, is over what is good for the education and well being of the differently abled: a regular school or one meant especially for them.

As you read this, the debate is being played out in the Bombay High Court.

The case concerns the expulsion of a seven-year-old autistic child by Jamnabhai Narsee, a school in Mumbai’s upmarket suburb of Juhu. According to the school authorities, the child, studying in class 2, has severe behavioural problems, cannot communicate with teachers, and that his continuing in school is detrimental to the education of his classmates and own self. The child’s parents argue otherwise.

They appealed to the High Court and

29 July 2013

Dr Samir Dalwai says children with special needs should be brought up with the support of mainstream schools, intervention centres and parents School, Cuffe Parade, “We have to be careful that inclusion is not isolation. Special children can be in a mainstream school but so isolated that their lives are miserable.” While he supports having autistic children in regular schools, he says, “For special children to get the right education in mainstream schools, the schools need to have the wherewithal: the right staff, experienced counsellors and special educators. Many schools fall woefully short there.”

That schools should turn children away in a city known for its accommodative spirit shocks many parents.

Lieutenant Colonel SK Tewari, a former officer, moved from Raipur to Mumbai in search of welcoming schools and then had his nine-year-old autistic son rejected by eight of them before he got admission to one in central Mumbai. “It’s a

good school. But we have to spend over two hours every day driving from Juhu to Lower Parel and back. We’ve been trying to see if any of the [closer] schools accept him,” says Lieutenant Colonel Tewari.

Otherwise, they might have to relocate to yet another city.

A special educator who works with various schools in Mumbai says that many schools which do admit such students often reverse their decision at some point.

He cites the example of an international school in a Western suburb of the city.

When it opened around three years ago, it accepted all students, but later started asking parents of special children to withdraw them. The educator says that a twoand-a-half-year-old boy he was treating for speech delay (the boy understands and follows instructions but finds it difficult to speak) was dismissed by a well-known school in the city. “According to the principal and [school] counsellor, the child should be enrolled in a special school. The parents did not pursue the matter since their elder son was a student of the same school. They got their special child admitted to another mainstream school.”

The special educator says that the outcome of the Jamnabai Narsee case will set the tone of the debate. “Whatever the decision, it will set a precedent for the right of a special child—or absence of it—to join a mainstream school.”

I

n another part of Mumbai, a fiveyear-old with shiny black hair and bushy eyebrows stands atop a chair attempting to thread a string with beads of assorted colours; the boy’s instructor, a young development therapist in her twenties, admonishes him often for failing to follow her instructions and picking the wrong colour. In another corner of the room is another behavioural therapist asking an eight-year-old to solve a picture puzzle of a man ordering a meal at a restaurant; while the girl arranges the puzzle correctly, she is unable to explain what the man is doing.

Both children are undergoing behavioural therapy sessions at New Horizons Child Development Centre (NHCDC), which helps children with special needs.

Outside, the season’s heaviest downpour so far leaves drains and roads clogged.

The parents of the two children stand unopen www.openthemagazine.com 35

for a regular life An autistic child being taught to hold a pen

der a roof nearby.

When he was about three, the boy was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a disorder characterised by impulsiveness, inattentiveness and hyperactivity with traces of autism. During his preschool days, his teacher reported that he never interacted with others and had difficulty adjusting with classmates (for instance, he would push other children if he had to share a common toy). “We were [unsure whether] he would get along in a regular school,” says his chartered accountant father, “But his therapy sessions have proved helpful.” Earlier this year, the boy was admitted to a regular school in Goregaon, though the authorities did say that he must learn to mingle. While he still keeps to himself and rarely talks to strangers, he has made a few friends in the two months he has been in school.

Two of his drawings are also on the walls of the NHCDC room. One is of a large colourful fish, the other of a bunch of fruits.

His father takes pictures of them with his mobile phone.

Dr Samir Dalwai, founder of NHCDC, is a development paediatrician. He says that it is essential for autistic and other such individuals to have regular lives in society. Figures for autism cases in India are not available, but studies in the US point to a rise in reported numbers. A 2008 study, conducted by the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found one in every 88 children autistic, globally. In 2006, it was one in every 110. In 2002, one in every 150.

This could mean more people being diagnosed as autistic or more such individuals in existence. Either way, the challenge of their education cannot be ignored.

Says Dr Dalwai, “Children with special needs should be brought up with the support of three pillars: mainstream schools, intervention centers [for therapy] and parents.” The puzzle-solving girl, who has been under the doctor’s care since last year, is making progress he says.

Earlier, her parents would find her notebooks empty even if she were seated in the front row of a class. Temperamental and aggressive, she would grit her teeth and clench her fists if confronted. Her teachers had warned that she would not be promoted (she’s in class 2) if her be36 open

haviour did not improve. Now she visits the centre twice a week and her teachers have noted signs of improvement.

M

any schools now have counsel-

lors and special educators on board.

Aditi Mehta, a special educator who started working with a school in Juhu about two months ago, says she and other teachers identified 60 children in the school’s primary section who needed extra attention. Of the 30 or so she has met so far, many have severe learning disabilities. “Every day when they are free, or after school, I sit with each of them and try to help them cope,” Mehta says.

That is not easy. The five-year-old who had to be carried to class on his first day, for instance, finds the zip-and-hook mechanism of his school trousers hard to figure out (he’d always worn elastic-band pants). Since he does not speak up in class either, this means he goes home with his

pants wet every other day. His class teacher says that he does not sit at his desk for long, a more pressing problem, to counter which they’ve allotted him a desk in a corner with a wall on one side and another student on the other.

The boy not only has sessions with a speech and occupational therapist, his mother spends two hours every day tutoring him at home. With the elder brother sent out to play and no distractions allowed, she shows him pictures and cards to identify images. Initially, the photographs were of family. “I would hold one of myself and ask him to identify it,” she says, “And many times, he couldn’t.” The child has now moved to sentence construction.

Recently, on a morning of heavy rain, the boy’s mother learnt while waiting for his bus with him that school had been called off. But the five-year-old refused to budge from the bus stand. “I want to go to school,” he insisted. n 29 July 2013

ashish sharma

tat to o r eg r e t

The Scars of Your Love The woes of those who want to erase from their bodies inky tributes to people they once vowed to love forever AANCHAL BANSAL

S

he winced in pain as her body quiv-

ered at the first prick of the needle. But the 22-year-old Delhi girl couldn’t hide her excitement. A regular electric tattoo machine drives the needle attached to it into the skin at a rate of around 80-150 times a second, puncturing the epidermis and inserting the tattoo ink. She describes it as a series of injections received at once. “It hurts, particularly when [the tattoo artist] stops to take a break and start again,” she says, sipping the cold coffee her best friend brought her from the Dunkin’ Donuts outlet nearby to beat the heat of a sultry July afternoon in Delhi.

This is her fourth tattoo; only this one is a cover-up, meant to hide the name of her ex-boyfriend, which she had had tattooed on her right shoulder when she was 18. They had decided to get each other’s names tattooed together. “He backed out, but I got it anyway. It is something I do if the person means a lot to me,” she says. She had her grandfather’s name tattooed on her wrist after he passed away.

She has another one—a butterfly—on broken wings Like love stories, body art too must be re-written after an unexpected break-up

29 July 2013

her ankle, which she got along with her best friend in a twin-tattoo pact.

She broke up with her boyfriend of four years last year and has now decided to move on. After hours of contemplation and discussion with her tattoo artist, she settled for one angel wing to cover the tattoo on her right shoulder. “Everyone gets two wings; I am different,” she says.

A 22-year-old aspiring actor who had two tattoos of an old girlfriend’s name covered up with eagle wings and a skull says his body art is costing him professional opportunities She recently completed a Masters in luxury brand management and is hoping to move to Hong Kong for a job soon.

W

hile ‘moving on’ has been relative-

ly simple in the Delhi girl’s case, her school friend, a 22-year-old aspiring ac-

tor, is having a tough time getting rid of two tattoos—one on his chest and another on his abs. He had his girlfriend’s name tattooed in both places as an 18-year-old, while still in school, and had them covered up after he broke up with her a couple of years later. All seemed fine till he won the reality show Superdude on Bindass, and decided to head for Mumbai to take up a career in acting. “I started missing out on opportunities during auditions because of the tattoos—eagle wings and a skull.”

He’s undergone two sittings of laser surgery to erase his tattoos, and has six more to go. “As if getting the tattoos and cover-ups wasn’t painful enough. This is worse,” he says, claiming he couldn’t kick himself enough for being so ‘silly’ at the time he got them. “But I did truly love her then,” he says helplessly.

As tattoos become increasingly popular among urban youth, with parlours mushrooming in every nook and corner of cities like Delhi, tattoo removals and cover-ups, too, are becoming quite common. Since it is usually young people, generally between the ages of 18 and 35, who opt for permanent markers, many come back regretting their tattoos. open www.openthemagazine.com 39

Rationales for the removal of unwanted tattoos vary from sheer boredom to professional trouble, but the most popular, say tattoo artists, is a break-up.

“Often, you have young people getting tattoos—college kids saving up on their pocket money or young professionals who have recently started working,” explains tattoo artist Lokesh Verma, whose parlour Devil’z Tattooz is among the most popular in Delhi. “Since tattoos are about getting something important inscribed onto your skin in indelible ink, most of them [wind] up getting tattoos of names or portraits of people they are in love with,” he says.

A 23-year-old of Gorakhpur was so in love with his girlfriend while they were studying in Bangalore that, despite being strapped for cash, he decided to have her name tattooed on his arm. “Since I had [little] money, I went to a friend who would do tattoos using needles used to inject insulin,” he says. Unhappy with the shoddy job and unbearable pain, he later went to a professional to get it touched up at a cost of Rs 34,000—only to find his girlfriend packing her bags and leaving for her hometown. “Her father had passed away and she wanted to go back. She somehow decided that we couldn’t be with each other. I could never show her the tattoo,” he says. While the tattoo, in Japanese, remains on his arm, he hopes to have it taken off after getting a job.

But it’s not just young college kids blowing up money trying to impress people they are in love with. Celebrities in the public eye, too, have had trouble grappling with break-ups and tattoos.

Actress Deepika Padukone was the first to make headlines in 2008 when she had an ‘R’ tattooed on her shoulder while dating actor and co-star Ranbir Kapoor.

They later split. Last heard of, actor Prateik Babbar was looking at ways to get rid of an enormous forearm tattoo declaring his love for actress Amy Jackson he had done during their short-lived whirlwind romance that developed while they were shooting a movie together—she got one to match.

Hollywood, too, has its share of tattoo stories. Johnny Depp famously had one of his tattoos changed from ‘Winona Forever’ to ‘Wino Forever’ after breaking up with actress Winona Ryder. Angelina 40 open

Jolie replaced a dragon tattoo on her upper left arm, a tribute to former husband Billy Bob Thornton, with the geographical coordinates of the birthplaces of her seven children.

“L

iving with an unwanted tattoo is

the most difficult thing to do, particularly if it’s related to an ex, which is why I often counsel my clients when they come to me with such requests,” says Mumbai-based tattoo artist Kevin Andrade, who runs Pro in Andheri’s Lokhandwala area. Because Andrade has witnessed people breaking down in front of him over an unwanted tattoo, he takes care to chat with his clients before doing a tattoo that involves a lover or love interest. The rules are simple: don’t get such a tattoo, but if you do, get one in a bold, prominent font. “Many a time, people get

Tattooist Kevin Andrade counsels clients not to have names tattooed, and if they must, to choose big bold fonts so they are absolutely sure about getting them at all a small initial in some obscure spot, often being unsure and doubtful. I tell them to be sure, and if they are, get it bigger. If they are getting it bigger, they should be absolutely sure of getting it in the first place,” says Andrade, who has a portrait of his wife on his arm. “I married her, so I am pretty sure,” he jokes.

His interest in counselling his clients, says Andrade, is prudential: why have to undo it? “They come back to me for a cover-up, which is doubly difficult because you have to make do with a design that is there already. It is restrictive and challenging,” he says, adding that he charges almost double the amount for a cover-up than for an original because of the sheer effort that goes into it.

Verma of Devil’z Tattooz agrees: “The cover up, too, has to look awesome because, as an artist, my reputation is at stake. People know us through our artwork and if a cover-up is shoddy, it

reflects badly on me. I have to make sure that the cover-up is beautiful and does the job of hiding the previous tattoo.

It is a new piece of work with several restrictions.”

One of the cover-ups done at Verma’s studio transformed the portrait of a girl on a client’s chest into a Guns N’ Roses emblem, complete with a skull. “Coverups are more challenging to do for boys,” says Andrade. “Girls can still make do with stars, flowers and butterflies, but we are always stuck with crosses and skulls for men,” he says.

The alternative to a cover-up is a laser surgery that can cost up to Rs 3,000-5,000 per sitting, depending on the original tattoo’s size and colours used. The laser procedure, done over several sittings, involves burning particles of pigment under the skin. Over the sittings, the tattoo gets lighter and lighter, and the particles eventually dissolve into the blood stream. “It is slightly painful and does leave a mark behind, [particularly] in the case of coloured tattoos,” says Dr Lokesh Kumar, a cosmetic surgeon at Apollo Hospital in Delhi. “The other alternative, of course, is a skin graft, but that leaves a prominent mark behind,” he says, noting that most of his clients are young girls about to get married.

Just the fact of getting a tattoo can sometimes backfire and cause a break-up, Andrade cautions from his experience with clients. “There was a case of a woman facing some marital trouble who had a tattoo done to re-assure her husband [of her love for him]. It backfired. He left her because he freaked out when he saw the tattoo,” Andrade says.

Something similar happened to a 29-year-old marketing professional in Bangalore, who has a 17-inch tattoo of his girlfriend’s name on his arm. “We had a long distance relationship because of our careers and I had one done just because I thought she would be closer,” he says.

“But when I showed it to her, she freaked out. She also had [some] religious views about it and felt it was a bad omen. Soon, she broke up with me.” He is now, like so many others, looking at options for getting rid of the tattoo. “It has remained with me for a couple of years now, and my ex is set to get married in a few weeks. It is a part of me, so I am taking my time to remove it. I will, eventually.” n 29 July 2013

Dn Brwn’s Infrno Know all you need to about the latest, in a jiffy, with the Hurried Man's Guide.

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The Hurried Man's guide is a comprehensive, yet concise piece on subjects in the news. So you can be informed and discuss these topics opics without having to read too much. From people, to events, from concepts to animals, nimals, this nifty little section gives you enough to make conversation, without putting others to sleep.

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Crime or Punishment?

Sony TV’s Crime Patrol Dastak has a loyal following. But while some viewers find the show useful, others say it has made them paranoid AASTHA ATRAY BANAN

S

ubhadra Thakur, 32, has just moved back to Delhi from Singapore, where her husband was posted for work. The mother of a fouryear-old, she isn’t scared of the city, even though she lives in much-maligned Noida. This, she says, is because she is always alert, ready for anything Delhi may throw at her, thanks to Sony TV’s Crime Patrol Dastak.

When we talk about a recent case in Mumbai, where a pizza delivery man

tried to rape a 25-year-old in her house, Thakur says, empathically, “That will never happen to me because I am a Crime Patrol watcher. I have a double front door to my house. If at all a vendor is at the door and I have to get money from inside, I always shut the door. I am super careful.”

Thakur started watching the show four years ago when she was living in Delhi. When she shifted to Singapore, she didn’t give up that habit and would watch it at 1 am, Singapore time, every

Friday, Saturday and Sunday with a cup of coffee in hand. Her reasons for loving the show are simple—the actors are believable and the re-enactments well-directed. She is also glad she knows that crimes she could never conceive of actually happen. “I’d rather be aware. People say, ‘Why do you want to know?’ Well, that’s like ignoring rape. And will that make it go away? I want to know.”

She was shocked when she saw an episode where a model killed her own par-

schadenfreude (Facing page and left) scenes from the sets of the show; (below) host Anoop Soni, known for his moral uprightness and charm among female viewers

ents who treated her badly because she was a girl child; or one where a Mumbai bank manager from Mangalore befriended two waiters from his home town, only to be killed by them for money. “We are used to trusting people from our hometowns. What a tragedy. But all this happens.” Thakur wants her son to watch too, provided it’s not too violent. “I want him to know that he can only go out with me, not a stranger. It will make him alert.

I have not become paranoid, but very, very careful.”

She likes the way the show’s host, actor Anoop Soni, offers advice on how a crime could have been avoided at the end of an episode, and it’s always about taking the moral high road. “He says that if one is maybe getting eve-teased, you should report it rightaway. Things like that help.”

It has reinstated her faith in the police as well, “because these are cases they have solved so well. [Else], we only get to know about the cases they don’t solve.”

Thakur remembers an episode where a lower middle-class woman is having an affair with an affluent man. She wants him to transfer his Lonavla property to her name. He agrees, but only if her daughter sleeps with him. She agrees, and the daughter has sex with the man, but he still doesn’t show any sign of transferring the land, so they get him drunk and dupe him into signing the papers. But they can’t get the property till he dies, so they kill him. “He was found in an abandoned car with his throat slit and a bag of veggies and a dupatta in the car. The police solved the case with just that little bit of information.” No wonder she says she also watch29 july 2013

Crime Patrol Dastak viewer Subhadra Thakur says it hasn’t made her paranoid, just “very, very careful...

It’s like a good crime novel with a sad ending” es it for its entertainment value. “It’s like a good crime novel with a sad ending.”

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rime Patrol Dastak has been on

air since 2003, and even though it’s just a dramatisation of real life crime cases in India, it has become a staple of many households. Now in its fourth season, the show has a huge audience across the country. There are also several other shows like it now—Life Ok’s Savdhaan India and Police Dial 100, Channel V’s Gumraah and Colors’ Shaitan A Criminal Mind. But Crime Patrol watchers swear by

its authenticity and execution, its effort to educate and spread awareness among viewers, and host Anoop Soni’s moralistic spin on the crimes.

My mother, Uma Atray, 55, who can watch the show for hours on end, even reruns, says the title itself is perfect. “It includes the word ‘dastak’, which means a knock. It’s as if they are forewarning us.”

She also says that it keeps her alert at all times, even when she is just taking a walk around her Gurgaon neighbourhood.

“We ladies take a walk every evening, and if I see a man standing idle for a long time at the same place, I get suspicious. I change my route. It’s better to be careful than regret it later.” When she travels in Gurgaon, even in a car, she doesn’t wear any gold around her neck and doesn’t carry any credit or debit cards. “Why should I become a target?” But she does feel that children shouldn’t watch the show—because it could have a negative impact on impressionable minds. open www.openthemagazine.com 43

Sad story Stills from a Crime Patrol Dastak episode about Sonali from Dhanbad (bottom right) who was the victim of an acid attack

That may also be a reason many people don’t appreciate it—but does it also give rise to an unnecessary paranoia?

Mumbai resident Sanghamitra Bhowmik, 34, watches the show for information and voyeuristic fulfilment. To her, the most interesting crimes are those committed for love. She recalls an episode where a girl helps her boyfriend kidnap her own brother for money. “Oh my God, the things people do for love!”

Bhowmik says. “We think youngsters don’t think of committing crime, but this show gives you a reality check. Various things motivate people and often decentlooking people plot crimes.” She feels that the show is a tamer version of other shows on TV today, and that it has a moralistic view on everything, an aspect she doesn’t really care for.

Marketing manager Sarah Aikara even watched the show in hospital as she recuperated from an accident. She feels it restored her faith in the system. But it also gave her too many negative thoughts.

“I don’t like watching Indian soaps, so there is not much [besides] reality shows,” says Aikara. “They create awareness, and it’s sort of like watching the news.” She eventually distanced herself from Crime Patrol Dastak, and would rather read a book in her bedroom than watch the show with her husband. “I want to stop the negativity. When you see a rape, it plays on your mind.”

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There are others like Aikara, who over time have turned paranoid from watching the show. My father, Bharat Atray, runs a school in Kharkhoda, a village in Haryana. A girl, barely six, walked into his office and asked to be taken home to her mother as she was sure she was being murdered at that moment. When the mother was summoned to the school, it was revealed that the family was an ardent watcher of Crime Patrol, and the child had seen an episode in which the

Marketing manager Sarah Aikara feels the show restored her faith in the system. But it also gave her too many negative thoughts mother gets murdered while the father is not at home. Even though it was explained to the child that it was just a show, she has been going home twice a day to check if her mother is indeed alive.

Savita Balakrishnan has banned her eight-year-old son Pranav from watching the show anymore. Savita watched it once and found it so gruesome, she couldn’t sleep at night. “I know it’s reality but why should it affect me?” she says.

She remembers an episode where a man

lets his brother rape his wife, and she was aghast. “What’s the need to dramatise it?

Kids can’t see the intricacies. News should be just read in newspapers.”

Host Anoop Soni, a big reason why people (read: women) watch the show— maybe because he is good looking or perhaps they like his no-nonsense advice at the end of the show—says that its makers never thought it would get so popular. “We were not even sure what kind of audience would watch it. We just wanted an honest approach to make people aware,” Soni says. He feels the show also works because it doesn’t deal with hardened criminals but with regular people who become criminals because of greed, lust and frustration, among other human susceptibilities.

“Most of these crimes could have been avoided,” say Soni, “ We analyse how that could have been done and people can use that in their lives.” Soni is often met by young working women at airports who tell him that as they travel alone, they stay alert thanks to his advice on Crime Patrol. “They say things like they text the number of their taxi to their parents or friends so that they feel safe,” Soni says.

“We always say that our motive is not to scare you—it’s to make sure you stay careful. It’s not just good for you, but for other people as well. Tomorrow, you may save the life of another [person]. How can that be a bad thing?” n 29 july 2013

Av e n u e s

Coffee and You M

illions of people around the world look forward to a cup of coffee whether at home, whilst on the move or at work.

The aroma, taste and the sense of feeling “refreshed” after a cup of coffee brings pleasure to many of us, as we go about our daily lives.

The coffee of India aren’t of any one single entity, they are distinctive coffees from 13 different coffee growing regions.

Some full - bodied, some mild, some sweet, some mellow…. all of them unique in their own way and they’re all deliciously Indian.

The coffees of India are grown in a symbiotic relationship with their environment. Nearly 50 different types of shade trees nurture our coffees in various regions, which prevent soil erosion and enrich the soil by recycling nutrients from deeper layers. Varying rainfall, elevation

and vegetation creates subtle yet exciting differences in our coffees.

Our coffees also provide a livelihood to the economically marginalized, by providing local tribes a sustainable livelihood.

Studies have demonstrated that coffee drinking appears to be inversely related, or protective, to alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.

People drinking four cups of coffee per day were at one fifth the risk of those who did not drink any coffee. Caffeine in coffee has been shown to have the ability to stimulate gallbladder contractionwhich could limit the risk of developing stones in the gallbladder. (Douglas et al. 1990; Lindaman et al. 2002) “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love,” Talleyrand (17541838); so how do you have yours? n

Your aspirations, Our inspirations.

M

uthoot Finance Ltd., the flagship company of The Muthoot Group and India’s largest gold loan company in terms of loan portfolio, has crossed a net profit of Rs 1000 crores. The company has further consolidated its leadership position in the gold finance market by becoming the first ever NBFC to join the ‘1000 crores net profit club’, thereby demonstrating its strong growth momentum.

The company has registered a growth of 13% in its net profit to Rs.1004 crore for the year ended March 31, 2013 as compared to Rs.892 crore of the previous fiscal. Total income for FY13 stood at Rs.5387crore, as compared to Rs.4549crores in FY12, a growth of 18%.

Muthoot Finance Ltd., has recently rolled-out a new advertising campaign

‘Prarthana’ with the tag line ‘Sapney Aapke, Prarthana Hamari’. The campaign reiterates The Muthoot Group’s legacy of 126 years of trust and presents itself not only is a facilitator that works to keep alive the dreams of people, but also as a trusted company that believes in praying for people’s endeavours to turn out successfully.

According to Alexander George Muthoot, Director, The Muthoot Group: “In today’s day and age of transactional relationship between the marketer and the consumer it was imperative for us to bring out the essence of our company - our essence of trust, of care and of being inclusive. The new campaign talks of how we care about your dreams essentially bringing forward the core thought of a loan from the heart.” n

between the sheets

that Disease Unease

Why aren’t we more open with our partners about sexual health? sonali khan

F

or 24 hours, I looked at the phone like it was a ser-

pent. Every time it rang, the ringtone would sound sibilant to my vexed ears. Of the 24 calls I received that day (I counted, yes), six were from The Boyfriend, three from the phone company entreating me to pay my bill, two to offer me personal loans at zero percent interest, and the remaining from an assortment of friends and colleagues. The Boyfriend, though convinced that I was overreacting, dutifully called every few hours to remind me to breathe. Somehow, no matter how safe you’ve been or how many times you take it, taking an HIV test isn’t easy.

Since I’m slated for a surgery this week, I knew the hospital would require me to take a fresh test once we booked the OT. I knew what was coming before the doctor scrawled the tests on his prescription. The Boyfriend often complains that I’m capable of being late to my own wedding, but to collect those reports, I was outside the laboratory before its doors had been unlocked. Logically, I knew that no phone call meant I was in the clear, but I needed to see it in writing.

Later that evening, as I jubilantly waved my reports in my unimpressed boyfriend’s face, a thought struck me: how was it that no one had ever, ever asked me if I’d gotten myself tested? It was flattering, their faith in my dedication to safe sex, but even I knew how naive that assumption was. Of course condoms are my dear friends, but there have been times when they’ve lain forgotten on the nightstand as clothes went flying in all directions. I can recount at least three instances when I’ve cut frantic deals with God in exchange for an all-clear ‘this one last time’.

When I thought about it some more, I realised I was being cocky. This wasn’t about me. No one I know can claim that their sexual activity has been limited to one person.

Even those friends who had made pacts with themselves and not indulged in coitus until the marriage certificate was photocopied, laminated and neatly tucked away, had found creative outlets for their sexual urges. And even if sexually transmitted HIV wasn’t a possibility for my fellatio-loving, virginity-toting friends, they could well be carriers of HSV or HPV. Then why isn’t anyone asking some tough questions? I’m an equal culprit here—the few times I’ve asked about my potential partner’s sexual health, it’s been limited to “When did you last get tested for HIV?”

Do we really care so little about sexual health? STIs are embarrassing (I’d rather swallow nails than submit STIrelated reports to claim insurance) and painful (try Googling ‘genital warts’). Some, like herpes, have no cure.

Others, like Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and trichomoniasis, may not show any symptoms at all. And yet, no one’s thinking of taking a test, or asking for one.

I asked my best friend, who is currently going through the rigours of meeting eligible bachelors lined up by her parents, if she would ask a suitor about his sexual health.

She nodded emphatically. “I’m not marrying anyone without an HIV test,” she tells me. “Especially the abroad-types,” she added with conviction. No, I’m not getting into the jayesh/getty images ‘abroad-type’ distinction; that’s for another day. But here it was again: the HIV blanket that seemed to encapsulate the entire gamut of STIs and STDs. I spoke to a few gay friends and spent some time going through their rather detailed profiles and chats on dating sites.

Unsurprisingly, the pattern continues.

Some go so far as to insinuate that they’d consider going bareback if their fuck-interest indicated a recent ‘negative as of…’ date. My friend’s hovering mouse-pointer on the said person’s profile made me dig into my browser history and pull up the most graphic representations of genital sores I could find.

Back home, I had my first long, upfront, honest conversation about sexual health and safety. So long, The Boyfriend’s eyes glazed over, much like a person waiting through eight seasons to see who the mother on How I Met Your Mother was. But he got the point. That weekend, we submitted ourselves to a thorough physical examination. It was jarring, the process of going through the whiteboard images of all the sexual diseases we’d ever read or heard of; but one by one, we checked them off our lists. As we lay in bed that night, I had an epiphany: of all the sex I’ve ever had, this is the most intimate I’d ever been with anybody. Who would’ve thought?

The next day, I paid my phone bill and registered for the DND service. n

Of all the sex I’ve ever had, this is the most intimate I’d ever been with anybody

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

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 29 July 2013

mindspace true Life

born across boundaries The beauty of life without a country 48

Gaul Swaraj

63

O p e n s pa c e

Imran Khan Ranbir Kapoor Katrina Kaif

62

n p lu

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag Shorts

61 Cinema reviews

Wacom Cintiq TAG Heuer Formula 1 CeramicGold and White Sennheiser Adidas PMX685i

60

Tech & style

Mammalian Sex Determination Native American Dogs’ Ancestry Death in the Air

58

Science

Zarina Wahab’s Tribulations

56

cinema

The making of a Celebrity Chef

54

food

Watching Global Art On a Mumbai Screen

50

a rt s

Ravinder Singh: India’s Most Popular Romance Writer

books

A Child Without a Country

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raul irani

true life

A Child Without a Country raul irani

Why being born inbetween cultures may not be such a bad thing Michael Edison Hayden

I

t is about four in the morning, the monsoon rains are beating against my window, and there is a small boy sleeping by my side. Despite being two months old, he owns things. He has the basket in which he sleeps. He has a vibrating green chair with a plastic monkey hanging from it. He even has a tiny bit of money; far less than the son of a politician, or a stockbroker, but more than the countless infants around the world who die in their cradles of malnutrition. One thing the boy does not have yet, however, is a country. Maybe a better way to say that is: no country, and no culture, has him.

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My son, Liam Satish Hayden, was born in Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital on 4 May 2013. It was an early afternoon C-section. When the nurses wheeled him out of the operating theatre, I chased after the boy, scared that someone was going to swap him for another one. When I finally tracked him down to the nursery, I realised that it would be a difficult mistake to make. Liam was the only baby on the floor born with blue eyes. His skin tone, which to an outsider could have possibly looked Kashmiri, could have also passed for Italian, Spanish or Arab.

In short, he looked human, but not

like any particular human.

A few days later, during check out, the head nurse, who pronounced his Western name with a delightful South Bombay lilt, gave me a series of forms to fill out for his birth certificate. They were in Marathi. I needed a line-by-line translation to get through them.

While filling out the forms, I mistakenly listed his current address as Mumbai and his permanent address as New York. Apparently, this discrepancy has temporarily shut the entire documentation process down. The people at the government office need more time, they tell me, to figure out exactly 29 July 2013

how to process such a peculiar thing.

So, for the time being, Liam Satish Hayden is nothing more than a generic citizen of the world. And that actually feels like an appropriate opening to the boy’s mostly unwritten story.

Liam’s mother Aadya is an Indian citizen, and I’m American. Aadya’s late father Satish, for whom Liam received his middle name, grew up in what is now Pakistan. Satish’s father fell in love with an Englishwoman while studying law in the UK, and when the woman’s family found out she was dating an Indian man, they apparently disowned her. The couple then moved to Lahore, where they had Satish.

When the bloodshed of Partition erupted, Satish was only seven, and the young, interracial family fled to safety. They hid in the home of a generous, politically impartial Muslim family on the road to India’s Punjab, where they ultimately settled. Years later, Satish met his wife Anjula in Jaipur while acting in a stage-play together, and fathered two daughters. The youngest of whom, Aadya, eventually became my wife.

Aadya looks Indian enough in a sari, but because of that light English skin she inherited, offset by her somewhat severe North Indian eyebrows, she could just as easily pass for Persian or North African. When we lived in America, she used to take on Middleeastern roles in stage-plays and television shows. In fact, I don’t ever remember her playing her own kind. The first time I met her, she was an actor in the graduate acting program at University of Iowa, and I was in a writer’s workshop, studying playwriting. The first words out of my mouth were, “Excuse me, are you Arab?”—to which she replied with an empty stare. Eight of every ten people you’d see on the streets of Iowa City had blonde hair, and I guess I was happy to find someone who looked a little familiar.

My own mother, Magda Antoun (now Hayden) grew up in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, Egypt. Part of an underreported Catholic minority, she was the firstborn of three siblings— a fourth child died in an accident as a 29 July 2013

toddler. My mom was 18 when her father and mother fled Egypt in 1968. A confluence of mayhem and violence had descended on the Antoun family in the year preceding their exodus.

The Six Day War with Israel had left a trail of bloodshed across the region.

Also, a radicalised Islamist revolution was brewing, and the homes of many Coptics and other Christians became targets of bombings. So, the Antoun family fled to Europe, but finally wound up in the New York neighbourhood of Woodside, Queens.

“In the broader scheme of things, if multiple nationalities have

diluted our cultural identities, how willing can we be to f ight in gory wars? If we

grow up in a family with multiple faiths, how eager can we really be to die for

some god or another?”

Six years later, my mother met my father, a White man with blond hair and blue eyes, of mostly English heritage. The Haydens were also Catholics who probably fled to America seeking freedom from some horrific religious persecution centuries earlier.

Looking at little Liam in his basket, it is difficult for me to view him in terms of any specific cultural identity. Because, while his Indian birth certificate will ultimately be filed and while I will undoubtedly switch it to

an American citizenship before we move back to New York one day, none of it will change the fact that he is born of parents with two different passports from two different parts of the world.

In terms of ethinicity, the boy is American/Indian/Egyptian/English, which is convoluted to the point of defying explanation. As far as religion goes, we are going to roll the dice on raising him simultaneously Catholic and Hindu, a compromise that defies the basic tenets of both faiths. Given the fact that both families fled death over religion, it seems like this is the only decent thing to do.

It is inevitable that the lasting legacy of the young men and women who have left their countries to work or study abroad, as my wife did in college and as I have done now, will always appear in the form of babies like Liam.

In fact, given the clichéd ‘connectivity’ of the post-internet world, and the accessibility of air travel, children can easily be crossed and re-crossed along innumerable national, ethnic and religious lines.

We live a time when cultures are shedding what once made them singular. Consider the ubiquity of Hollywood blockbusters, fast food, the chaotic struggle against global terrorism. It’s easy to see how deeply our greatest traditions are being eroded by similarities. That’s not to say that there won’t be religious fundamentalists, race supremacists or nationalists in the future. Look at my mother’s Egypt right now: when power is fought over, the voices of antagonism only grow louder. But in the broader scheme of things, if multiple nationalities have diluted our cultural identities, how willing can we be to fight in gory wars?

If we grow up in a family with multiple faiths, how eager can we really be to die for some god or another?

Given the cross-pollination of violence that brought Liam into the world—the fleeing, the translocation, the persecution—maybe the inevitable dilution of national, religious and racial lines might not be such a bad thing. In fact, maybe it’s the only thing that can save us from ourselves. n open www.openthemagazine.com 49

Books The Accidental Author One of the country’s most popular romance writers, Ravinder Singh is as unabashed about being a writer who doesn’t read as he is about being a male writer of romances DEVIKA BAKSHI

I

t’s possible you’ve never heard of

Ravinder Singh. Till a month ago, I hadn’t either. It might surprise you, as it did me, to know that he is Penguin India’s topselling fiction writer, with combined sales across all titles exceeding half a million. According to Anand Padmanabhan, vice-president, sales, Penguin India, pre-orders for Singh’s latest book, Like It Happened Yesterday, released just this month, were upwards

of 200,000 copies. Unsurprising, since his second, Can Love Happen Twice?, sold more than 250,000 copies in its first year of publication, becoming one of Penguin’s topselling titles, second only to APJ Abdul Kalam’s Ignited Minds. Singh’s first book, I Too Had A Love Story, was published in 2008 by a small Delhi press, Srishti Publications, and re-released in 2012 by Penguin.

Five years after its publication, it is still

among the most popular on Flipkart.

I Too…, Singh says, is “by far the oldest book to remain in the top ten— even after five years, it’s standing”. It is number six on Nielsen India Consumer Rankings’ list of the ten top-selling fiction books in India in May 2013 (the most recent available list). Occupying the first three positions on this list is Amish Tripathi’s mythological adventure trilogy, which re-imagines the life

he too has a marketing mind Ravinder Singh sees his books as his ‘babies’ and refuses to abandon them after the writing process

raul irani

of Shiva. Also populating the list are a couple of other myth-fics and the latest offerings from familiar bestsellers Jeffrey Archer, Paulo Coelho and Chetan Bhagat. Singh’s is the only one classified under ‘Romance & Sagas’— Archer, Coelho and Bhagat find themselves huddled together under the ‘General & Literary Fiction’ umbrella.

Singh’s books have frequently been described as ‘real’, ‘honest’, ‘simple’ and ‘touching’. Contemplating the neat stack of three on my desk, I realise they are also physically friendly. I notice that each has a little icon on its spine hinting at its theme: interlocked rings for eternal commitment; a cloudheart, like a puff of smoke, for the distant mirage of second love; and a heart-shaped balloon for childhood whimsy. The books are pleasantly consistent in size and design, instantly recognisable. They’ve begun to pop out at me everywhere: in bookstores, at magazine stands, in the hands of traffic-light vendors—even the unglossed rip-off versions, which are sometimes sold at a price 20-40 per cent higher than on Flipkart.

Singh seems visibly pleased that I’ve noticed the icons. He is very involved in cover design—from the visuals and fonts down to the placement of his name on the cover. He points out that his name has, on the cover of his most recent release Like It Happened Yesterday, been moved along with the preface ‘Bestselling author of…’ right to the top, above the title blooming diagonally in cursive across half the page, whereas on his earlier books, it lived at the bottom. “You are a big name now,” his publishers told him, explaining that his name should be the first thing people see on the cover. (This would also explain the soft white halo around his name on the newest one.) Not one to feign obliviousness of the value of his brand, Singh was apparently amenable to the suggestion, though still stressing the need to standardise the look of all three.

One of these carefully crafted covers—the one for his second book Can Love Happen Twice?—was victim to a preemptive rip-off. With equal parts weariness and bemusement, he 29 july 2013

recounts how he’d tweeted the cover ahead of the book’s release, only to find a copycat doing the rounds even before his book hit stores and stands. The copy in question—brattily titled Love Happens Only Once…Rest Is Just Life— is a hilariously transparent imitation of Singh’s cover, title, image, font and all. Singh says there have been several such instances of copycatting by other ‘mass market books’, citing them all, without a hint of pomposity as attempts to capitalise on his popularity.

A quick scroll through Flipkart throws up the (curiously familiar) thumbnail for a forthcoming book titled It Started With A Friend Request.

Based on a cursory glance at dates of publication and re-issue, it seems author Sudeep Nagarkar shares Singh’s trajectory of being first printed by Srishti Publications, then picked up by

He recounts how he’d tweeted the cover ahead of the book’s release, only to find a copycat doing the rounds even before his book hit stores. The copy was brattily titled Love Happens Only Once…Rest Is Just Life a bigger publisher, in this case Random House. It is fitting, then, that he be rebranded in Singh’s image, complete with cursive-laden covers featuring faceless couples in silhouette.

Singh is unperturbed. He published his second book as planned, confident his followers on social media know what’s what. His possessiveness and meticulousness are both manifestations not of self-importance, but of the pride he takes in his books, which he calls his babies. “No one can do justice to my babies [better] than my own self. I cannot just produce babies and give [them] to someone—it’s not a surrogate thing.” He is a hands-on parent, raising his ‘babies’ from manuscript to bookshelf. Indeed, the raising of them seems to interest him more than the birthing—he admits he enjoys the

marketing and publicity process more than he does the writing.

“My job doesn’t end with the last sentence of the book,” Singh says; in fact, that’s where the bulk of his work seems to begin. “He’s an extremely involved author and extremely easy to work with,” says Vaishali Mathur, Singh’s commissioning editor whom he describes as his go-to person at Penguin, “He is very open about suggestions, methodical and stays connected.” He seems just as concerned that the books be worthwhile ventures for his publisher as for him. “I am someone who always believes in return on investment,” he says, later adding, “I believe in numbers and volumes… I believe in statistics more than [reviews].”

Might this be a result of his business degree? He concedes that B-school grads probably understand the market a little better, saying “They have a bigger perspective, they see the big picture”, but that’s about as far as he’ll go with speculating about the recent crop of young MBA-laden authors. His insight, he says, is “specific to the mass market… I cannot talk about a Steve Jobs autobiography, there’s a different market altogether for that.”

“Mass market,” Mathur says, “is a simple formula—competitive pricing aimed at doing volume business.

The idea is to reach as many readers as possible, and therefore the writing and content is as accessible as possible. Simple, straightforward writing, from the heart as it were, with characters that readers can relate to.” For his part, Singh reasons mass market fiction is largely bought on railway stations and bus stops by people wanting to spend their journeys engaged in something more pleasant than failed attempts at sleep, so it must be light, not full of plot-lines and characters to keep track of. “I still forget many characters from Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter—they’re big series to me. I can’t read [them]. I just see the size and I say, ‘This is not my cup of tea’.”

Singh isn’t much of a reader, apart from the daily newspaper, which he reads from cover to cover. On being asked about it, he attributes this open www.openthemagazine.com 51

to having grown up in a very small town, but is otherwise not at all selfconscious about being a writer who doesn’t read—nor about being a male writer of romances. He sees this more as a challenge than anything else.

Walk up to any given railway station bookstall, he says, and you’ll find dozens of mass-market romance titles; the trick is to take one “to a level where the entire country salutes it”. Being the leading romance writer is something to talk about; else, there are lots of male authors writing romance. “Men have more sad love stories to narrate than women, is what I’m finding.”

Perhaps because he has already said he trusts statistics more than anecdotal evidence, he is moved to qualify that statement, explaining that he connects with many ‘wannabe authors’ via Facebook, and most of them want to write about their sad stories and college crushes. “I think it [is also because of] the screwed-up gender ratio.

When 1,000 men try to find [someone] where there are 800 girls… that could be a reason. But I think men are more vocal about beating their own drums, you know, ‘I loved her but she left me.’”

Singh has already helped many such aspiring writers find their feet in a collection of stories titled Love Stories That Touched My Heart, edited by him and published by Penguin. He has just launched his own publishing imprint, Black Ink, through which he hopes to launch new writers, this time by publishing full-length novels. This is his way of giving back some of the overwhelming support he says he has received over the years through fan mail and social media.

Singh’s Facebook page, which he manages himself, is followed by over 289,000 users. Each post gets hundreds of ‘likes’ and dozens of comments, mostly admiring and emotional, some solicitous of responses or visits to the commentor’s own town. On a recent post announcing an appearance in Kochi, a user named Azmath Unnisa commented, ‘Such aap ki story padh kar toh aankh num ho gaye (truly, reading your story brought tears to my eyes)’ and, as an afterthought, ‘shayad hi koi kisi ko itna pyaar karey (it is rare 52 open

for someone to love another so much).’

Sujit Kumar Mishra commented: ‘Ravinder, aap rulane ke liye nobel likhte ho (do you write novels just to make us cry)?’ More often than not, someone will comment asking him to please, please post a picture of Khushi.

Most of these comments pertain directly to Singh’s first book, which is not a novel at all but a memoir, written in mourning for his fiancé Khushi, who died in a car accident just days before their wedding. Singh says he wrote the book as a way of immortalising Khushi, of working through his grief after her death. Khushi has her own Facebook fan page, with 48,848 followers of its own. Singh hasn’t published a photo of her anywhere and doesn’t intend to.

He speaks about Khushi with great reverence, and his grief as a major piv-

Walk up to any given railway station bookstall, Singh says, and you’ll find dozens of mass-market romance titles; the trick is to take one “to a level where the entire country salutes it” ot in his life. A Sikh, he broke a taboo by cutting his hair after her death: “I lost my faith in God.” He matured, gathered the conviction to take his own decisions. Most of all, he wrote, and found a path forward. Trained as an engineer, Singh says he’d never been sure about what he wanted to do with his life. The immense support and encouragement he received from readers gave him a career. He hadn’t planned to go on writing, but readers urged him to continue the story and sent him their own.

In the years following the books’ release, Singh was able to move on himself. One of the fans who wrote to him, Khushboo, went on to become his wife. After they were married, she told him she’d said a prayer for him at Bangla Sahib: “This guy is a good guy.

Please get him a nice girl. He should really move on.” He laughs. They have now been married for three years. He keeps in touch with Khushi’s family, and Khushboo has met them too, often encouraging him to visit Khushi’s mother in Faridabad. He is tentative, but not in a way that implies unease.

It’s simply a tender, deeply private subject. “I have always got positive vibes from Khushboo when it comes to Khushi.” She understands. There is nothing more that needs be said.

His second novel—a fictional sequel to his non-fictional first published in 2011—draws from some of the stories he received. Some of these, he says, were dishearteningly defeatist, so the sequel was also a way to move his character Ravin’s story in a hopeful direction for his readers. He expresses something almost like disappointment in those who can’t make their love stories work, who give up too easily, or are flippant about their love. Compared to his own insurmountable obstacle, those faced by most who write to him must seem small, even petty. Singh opts instead to focus on the testimony of those who write in to tell him that his books, particularly the first, have saved their marriages and inspired them to hold on to and cherish their relationships, realising that their own troubles were not so great.

Though he promises to complete the romantic trilogy at a later time, with a book that tells the real story of his marriage, his newest release is a step outside Ravin’s romantic arc— heart-shaped balloon notwithstanding. Instead, it describes Singh’s years growing up in Burla, Odisha, where his father was a priest at a gurdwara. This book, Singh tells me, is in part an attempt to “undo the legacy that I have created”. He is, of course, referring to his professional legacy as a massively popular writer of romances. But this new book, possibly the best written of the three, is also a sort of unspooling of his story of himself—now that he has been able to live, and write, past the heartbreaking moment that defined his life, and thus even go back to before it happened and reassemble his life from the start. n 29 july 2013

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arts High Culture, High Definition The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai has begun screening recordings of inaccessible international performances of opera and ballet, using technology to give a lift to the city’s cultural calendar Bhairavi Jhaveri

T

paroma mukherjee

he mood is one of irony. On a

Tuesday evening, all set to watch one of the grandest cultural performances in the world—the Opera— enthusiasts flock to the Godrej Dance Theatre at the NCPA in kurtas and chappals, a few in shorts and football jerseys. No elaborate foyer, no luxurious silk gowns, no towering hairdos and no feather boas in sight. Huddled in the corner, chatting over simple cold coffee and chutney sandwiches, the small but discerning crowd is getting ready to watch the four-part Italian opera Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi, right here in Mumbai. It’s a fuss-free version of the real thing: a screening of a video recording of the opera, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York during the 2008-09 season. These opera screenings are taking place in Mumbai through The Met: Live in HD, an award-winning series of live high-definition transmissions to venues across 60 countries. This initiative is giving cultural aficionados in Mumbai an opportunity to be part of a global performance experience for the affordable price of Rs 500.

“The last couple of years, I haven’t been to the Met in New York, and sometimes tickets are difficult to get hold of, so this is a great opportunity to watch some of the latest opera offerings of the season,” says Gulshirin Dubash, 38, an acting teacher and classical music enthusiast who lives in Michigan and visits Mumbai every summer. She has already seen Carmen and Il Trovatore this month and is looking forward to catching a few more before she leaves.

Even for first-time opera patrons like Corinna Schmidt, 29, a German

54 open

Stepping out At a Monday evening screening of Il Trovatore

national living in India for the past two years, the screening of Aida was enjoyable. “All the good opera houses were at least two hours away from where I lived in southern Germany. I was always intrigued by the opera but never watched one. These screenings are a great way to promote Western classical performances in the city,” she says.

This is not the first time the NCPA has got such an enthusiastic response to film screenings of international events. Its earliest partnership began with the UK’s National Theatre to show live transmissions of plays through a series called NT Live, which commenced in June 2011 with the premiere of Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein.

Theatre director Rahul da Cunha, who travels to London every September to watch theatre, was one of the many discerning theatregoers present at this screening. “Along with Frankenstein I have also watched The Collaborators through the NT Live initiative. The films are fantastic, made especially for screenings, hence well-produced with great sound. Even though it may not replace the real thing, you get to see some great international work up close and personal,” he says, joking, “Sometimes even at the best auditoriums in the world, you could find yourself in a seat with someone’s head in the way.”

While it is true that watching a film of something we are accustomed to watching live, such as a play, can be slightly disorienting, theatre lovers find themselves engrossed in no time.

Nevil Timbadia, 29, a restaurateur and co-founder of a comedy and theatre production and booking agency, watched One Man, Two Guvnors a few months ago, and says the series is “a great way to witness the scale of international productions and the elaborate sets involved; it becomes a good benchmark and can encourage us to [undertake] bigger productions.”

The first NT Live initiative was undertaken right after NCPA chairman Khushroo N Santook visited London in 2010 and watched screenings of a few ballet shows and plays beamed into cinema halls. But before seeking permissions for even the first screening, 29 july 2013

the NCPA had to upgrade its sound and projector systems so it could provide a top-notch multi-sensory experience.

This, after all, was alternate cinema. It demanded as much. These technological advancements have been made at the 150-seater Godrej Dance Theatre, its dedicated auditorium for all screenings, which has been running shows for packed audiences composed of elderly opera buffs, first-timers, art students, theatre personalities and young patrons from assorted walks of life in search of a sophisticated cultural experience from overseas.

“We knew the NT Live screenings would be well-received, but we did not anticipate full houses for the opera and ballet shows. On demand, we have added repeat shows to the calendar,” says Deepa Gahlot, head of programming for theatre and film at NCPA.

While it is true that watching a film of something we are accustomed to watching live, can be disorienting, theatre lovers find themselves engrossed. The NCPA has upgraded its sound and projector systems to provide a rich sensory experience After introducing Mumbai’s audiences to NT Live and The Met: Live in HD, the NCPA decided to launch screenings of ballet shows staged by one of the oldest ballet companies in the world, the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow. This series opened in April this year with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, followed by other romantic classics such as Esmeralda, La Bayadere, La Sylphide and Romeo and Juliet.

In the same month, the NCPA also added another category to its screenings roster with the Exhibition series, films that showcase the best art exhibitions of the world, starting with Manet: Portraying Life, an exhibition at the UK’s Royal Academy of Art. Now, with a total of four offerings— theatre, opera, ballet and art—the

NCPA is covering a wide gamut of international shows that would otherwise be impossible for regular city patrons to watch over an entire lifetime.

A recent film, Munch 150, screened as part of the Exhibition series, is a good example of how elusive some art shows can be. The film is based on a special exhibit celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, best known for his painting, The Scream. The exhibition is currently running in Oslo at two venues— the Munch Museum and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design—and is regarded as one of the most comprehensive presentations of Munch’s art and its significance.

The film Munch 150 captures this journey through elaborate detail, a systematic survey of his work, interviews with critics and curators, and a thorough analysis of his personality and the way a few life events impacted his style.

“It is unlikely that you will be in the same city at the time it is curating a special solo exhibition like this one.

I travel overseas every year and visit many art galleries, but till now, I have only seen one solo exhibit up close, that of Andy Warhol in Hong Kong. So, these screenings are a great opportunity to learn so much about just one artist,” says Shagun Doshi, 28, a graphic designer and art lover.

With a duration of 100 minutes— less than two hours—the film left some art lovers at the screening longing for more, but was otherwise found rivetting and informative.

Mumbai Art Circle, a group of art enthusiasts that began on Meetup.com, a website for such huddles, centred its recent meeting around the Munch screening. Sumit Sabnis, 40, an art lover and pilot who heads the Circle and visits many art galleries while travelling abroad on work, says, “This was the first time I watched a film on an art exhibition. Sitting here, you could watch something that was running in Norway, [and that] is absolutely fantastic. We will definitely plan more events around these screenings, now that I have discovered them.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

food The Making of a Celebrity Chef Former model Aditya Bal has hosted popular television cookery shows and even has a recipe book to his name. But guess what: less than a decade ago, he did not even know how to cook gunjeet sra

A

ditya Bal, model-turned-television chef, makes you believe in the notion that anyone can cook.

As a student of English Literature in Delhi University—“because I did not make the mark for a B Com”—a career in food was never on the horizon. How could it possibly be when he didn’t even know how to cook?

During his university days, in fact, life took him in a completely different direction—he got a modelling assignment, his first, from fashion designer Ashish Soni. Without any specific plan in mind, he accepted, and soon, he was walking the ramp with the likes of Dino Morea and John Abraham.

Incidentally also designer Rohit Bal’s nephew, Aditya’s modelling career spanned eight years, during which time he worked on campaigns for brands such as Liberty, Maruti and Levi’s. Like any other model, he then tried to make a transition to Bollywood. “I did it because I didn’t know where I fit in. You want a career, but nobody really takes you seriously cerebrally. You want to do what you know best, be in front of the camera. So you kind of just go with the flow until you can make your own path,” he says.

In 2005, he bagged a film called Mashooka alongside Meghna Naidu, but it sank without a trace. On a particularly frustrating day when he felt nothing was working for him, Aditya turned to some recipe books.

Eventually, he found himself spending more and more time in the kitchen, and before long realised that he had an aptitude for cooking and that this is where his true passion lay.

“In the end, it’s all about how badly you want something. Bollywood was not something that I really wanted. I 56 open

was very fortunate cooking happened,” he says, sipping on beer at a Gurgaon restaurant. Aditya moved to Delhi a week ago to prepare for the launch of a world cuisine restaurant that he will now be heading. “All I can tell you right now is that it’s going to be produce-based and totally fresh and exciting,” he says.

Now that the 37-year-old has made the shift from modelling to being a television chef, that too one about to head his own restaurant, he feels that his career transformation has been odd but not altogether unbelievable. He had no formal training but so what?

Spontaneity has always led him in

Chakhle India—part travelogue, part cookery— involved his travelling across the country. The only glitch was that he had never cooked Indian food before.

“So I taught myself how to work with Indian cuisine” life. After he decided that he wanted to cook, he took off for Goa, where he worked at a friend’s restaurant for two years, honing his skills in Continental cuisine and also understanding the dynamics of the restaurant business.

At the end of his apprenticeship, he found himself back in Mumbai looking for a job. Hotel kitchens did not bother with him since he had no formal training. “Being a chef is almost like being in the Army. You need immense discipline; there are no 20 ways to work your way up.” In any case, Aditya had by then realised that restaurants did not pay too well.

He was right back where he started. That is when he turned to his friend, the celebrity television chef Marut Sikka, for advice. Sikka told him to approach a television network.

Three months after he auditioned with NDTV, Chakhle India, his own show, made its debut.

The show—part travelogue, part guide and part cookery—involved his travelling across the country. The only glitch was that he had never cooked Indian food before. “I thought to myself that since I was a cook, I should be able to cook anything. So I taught myself how to work with Indian cuisine,” he says.

Aditya is now so confident of his skills that he has started going with his own instinct while creating a dish.

“My time on Chakhle India and Kaccha Raasta was invaluable because it taught me how to watch and learn, to go with my instinct and follow my palate to come up with a dish.” Of all the cuisines that he experimented with, the ones he found most tricky were Mughlai and Chettinad since the flavours were alien to him. “But with time and patience, I taught myself well,” he claims.

Of the 200 odd episodes of Chakhle, for which he travelled across the country, his most memorable was the time he spent at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. He’s never likely to forget the images of the community kitchen, with its huge simmering cauldrons of dal and thousands of rotis, even as people sat around waiting and helping.

Though being a television chef looks fairly easy, Aditya says it is a job that requires a certain level of skill and spontaneity that is not for everybody. ”Not only is it a lot of work, we shoot in schedules, invariably in the 29 july 2013

raul irani

kitchen debut Aditya Bal, a Kashmiri by origin, has no formal training as a chef and taught himself how to cook only after his film career failed

summer months. Cooking and demonstrating [how to] on television requires discipline and method—it needs to be slower and less instinctive. Everything needs to be thought through. From the way you are going to tilt the pan at an angle to what you are going to say next,” he says.

The arrival of international channels and availability of options has also made the world of TV cookery shows somewhat competitive. “There is an influx of shows from across the world and to compete with them is big pressure. Food shows serve multiple purposes—they are travelogues, guides, help you learn to cook, introduce you to new cultures and places,” says Aditya. The culmination of his travel experiences while filming his shows are now part of his first cookbook, titled Chakhle India.

29 july 2013

A Kashmiri who spent the first 13 years of his life in Srinagar and Gulmarg, the kitchen and kitchen garden were his natural haunt. His fondest early memories of food are of his grandmother, a skilled cook and baker. “I remember hovering around her in the kitchen, helping her around or just stealing a bite of something she had just made.” His favourite dishes from home are tabahk maaz and yakhini, both mutton dishes, but with contrasting flavours, the first mild and the other spicy and pungent.

“But what I love most are Asian flavours. They are clean and simple.

They keep your taste buds alive without slaughtering them with spices, and as a chef I really need that. I could literally have sushi every day for the rest of my life.”

However, his obsession with cook-

ing is such that he now spends most of his time in his kitchen at home, shunning the restaurant experience as far as possible. Still, he admits that he does admire the impeccable fusion at The Indian Accent and Masala Art done by Chef Hemant Oberoi for The Taj Palace in New Delhi.

Having lived in six different states in his life—Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, where he studied, and later Maharashtra and then Goa, where he learnt to cook, and even Karnataka and finally Delhi—Aditya says that this is the first time he has relocated for work.

“Every other time I moved, it was for love… or when I went to look for food in places no one had explored. Not only was I made aware of our diverse culture, I was also exposed to the country in ways I couldn’t imagine. The language of food is universal,” he says. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

CINEMA Zarina Wahab’s Tribulations Once Bollywood’s girl-next-door, the actress has had several setbacks to take in her stride, not least her son’s recent arrest Shaikh Ayaz

O

n 10 June, Bollywood actor

hindustan times/getty images

Aditya Pancholi’s son, Suraj, was arrested by the Mumbai Police on charges of abetting actress Jiah Khan’s suicide. Jiah, who co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan in 2007’s Lolitainspired Nishabd, was unhappy in her relationship with Suraj, a budding actor himself. According to a 12 June report in DNA newspaper, the Pancholi family was worried that Aditya’s own reputation could hamper their case.

They thought it wise to replace him with wife Zarina Wahab as their public face, in a bid to counter Rabiya Khan, who the Pancholis felt was attracting all the sympathy as the deceased’s griefstricken mother.

The tactic worked. Zarina Wahab has since trumped Rabiya to become a figure of sympathy—and also, just by chance, a reality show-style celebrity. As widely reported by the media,

Zarina paid a courtesy visit to Rabiya at her Juhu home after Jiah’s funeral, sending out signals that she cares. Her dignified handling of the situation has won her kind words from unexpected quarters. ‘Sadly, in this terrible saga,’ Shobhaa De wrote in her newspaper column, ‘there’s one more mother to think about—Zarina Wahab… a sensitive actress I have always admired.’

Elsewhere, another columnist said, ‘In the unfortunate suicide of Jiah Khan, my heart actually goes out to the silent Zarina Wahab, a successful, wellliked heroine in her time (the 1970s).’

Amiable, warm and well-anchored emotionally—that’s the picture one gets of Zarina, her personality strikingly at odds with that of her muchyounger husband Aditya Pancholi.

Actor Kiran Kumar, a long-time family friend, describes her as a brave woman who put family and children

before her film career. Says Kumar, “She is a simple person at heart, someone for whom two and two is four, never five; she knows no manipulation. Even if there is a big problem, she always deals with it with a smile.”

As an actress, she is respected for her spontaneity and professionalism, he adds. At the peak of her cinema career in the 1970s, Kumar says, Zarina was seen as a girl-next-door, like, say, Jaya Bachchan or Vidya Sinha. Trained at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India, her career took off with great promise. One story goes that when she met actor-director Dev Anand, he didn’t even want to see a portfolio of her photographs, convinced at a glance that she was ‘photogenic’ and cut always thereZZarina Wahab with her son Suraj and husband Aditya Pancholi after Jiah Khan’s suicide in Mumbai

out for stardom. He gave her a spot in 1974’s Ishq Ishq Ishq, which became her launch pad.

Her big Bollywood breakout was Basu Chatterjee’s Chitchor (1976), in which she plays a demure village belle who falls for a city slicker (Amol Palekar). She paired up with Palekar again in Gharaonda. The song Doh deewane sheher mein, picturised on the couple house-hunting against the backdrop of a building being built, gave voice to an urban middle-class aspiring for a dream home.

In recent years, she has caught much attention playing mother roles, most notably in My Name is Khan and Agneepath. She is also quite a familiar face on primetime television, thanks to the popular Colors show Madhubala: Ek Ishq Ek Junoon.

Kumar says she could have done a lot more work and been far more successful if she so wished. “You have two options—you either have a domestic life or a career that can end anytime.

Zarina opted for security. She chose to settle down and have kids. It was a wise decision.”

Her marriage to Aditya aka Nirmal Pancholi, a faded star of the 1990s who has repackaged himself as a baddie in the past decade (Race 2 and Bodyguard), is best summed up as tumultuous.

Aditya, who married her in 1986, was of a film family. He was once clubbed along with Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt as industry ‘bad boys’—a reference to his knack for hitting headlines for all the wrong reasons. His drunken brawls with neighbours and run-ins with the media, followed by prompt messages of apology, hardly make news anymore. Recently, when it looked as if the dust was finally settling over the Suraj case, he got into a row with a neighbour and was booked under assault charges by the police.

Notoriously temperamental, he was once dumped by model-actress Pooja Bedi for allegedly raping her 15-yearold maid. “I made a logical decision that infidelity wouldn’t be part of my life,” Pooja Bedi had told the tabloid Mid-Day at the time.

Aditya’s philandering is not much of a secret. His affair with actress Kangna 29 july 2013

Ranaut was conducted in full media glare, for example. In 2007, she lodged a police complaint against him for allegedly ‘threatening and intimidating’ her. In many interviews, Kangna has expressed relief at breaking off the “physically abusive relationship”.

Though there is no evidence to suggest that Aditya may have physically mistreated Zarina, a shadow of doubt hangs over their marriage. “Has anyone seen him beat me?” she once retorted on being asked a question about express archives

A story goes that when Zarina Wahab met actorproducer Dev Anand, he refused to even look at her photographs for a role. He was convinced at first glance that she was ‘photogenic’ domestic abuse. “I earn enough to look after myself. If Nirmal was abusive to me, I would have left him long back.

But yes, Nirmal loses his temper very easily,” she said, describing his temper as ‘soda water’. Her argument, of Aditya being a good provider who’d given her a house and comfortable life, sometimes almost appears to condone his dalliances as something of a star privilege.

Some have always suspected Zarina of being a submissive partner, but she has never seen herself as one. The ac-

tress has not only taken everything in her stride, but also rejects anything said against her husband.

“When you marry a goodlooking younger man, you have to be prepared for him to stray...” she was quoted as saying in The Telegraph, referring to their six-year age gap. “I have a lot of freedom in this marriage to go wherever I want and to do whatever work I want,” she said in the same interview, “He is a good husband, never mind what he does outside the house.”

A friend of hers who insists on anonymity confirms that Aditya grants her ample latitude to lead her life the way she wants. She says that their marriage may look uneasy and traumatic from afar, but it’s not an unhappy one. “It’s true that Nirmal is a chauvinist,” discloses the friend. “He thinks a man can get away doing anything. You can call him ‘difficult’, but not ‘cold’. He cares a lot for Zarina.”

Concurs Kumar: “It takes two people to keep a marriage alive. Zarina is a strong and successful woman. If at any point she was unhappy with her husband, she would have moved out with her children.”

Despite everything, Kumar says the Pancholis have raised their kids well.

The couple also have a daughter, Sana; a Bollywood aspirant too, she was in the news in connection with a drug scandal a few years ago. “Both kids are honest, well-mannered and talented,” Kumar declares, “especially Suraj, who is about to start his career.”

Suraj, 23, is being groomed by Salman Khan for a remake of Subhash Ghai’s 1983 blockbuster Hero, a film still remembered for having featured Reshma’s classic Lambi Judaai.

The family, says Kumar, is more concerned about Suraj’s future than Aditya’s past. “He got the raw end; he was trapped in a situation... he isn’t to blame,” says Kumar, forecasting a bright future for Suraj. “People have short memories. When they see him on screen, they’ll forget all this.”

As for Zarina, Kumar urges the media to leave her alone. “She has never been very comfortable with the spotlight. Yet, she is fighting on. All she wants is to safeguard her family.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

breed ancestry A genetic study has found that the Chihuahua shares a DNA type uniquely with Mexican pre-Columbian samples, offering conclusive evidence of the Mexican ancestry of the Chihuahua

Oh Deer! Sex Determination Mammals try to pick their offspring’s gender so as to maximise their reproductive success

Native American Dogs’ Ancestry

S

ince the 1960s, there has been a suspicion among evolutionary biologists that animals can influence the sex of their offspring. According to this theory, mammals manipulate the sex of their offspring in order to maximise their offspring’s future reproductive success.

The hypothesis was supported by a 1984 study, reported in the journal Nature, where a researcher, TH Clutton-Brock from University of Cambridge, found that among wild red deer, dominant mothers produced significantly more sons than those deer that held a subordinate position within the herd.

According to the researcher, this was so because parents who were healthy or dominant or had other such traits invested more in producing sons.

The inherited strength and health of the sons would stand them in better stead while competing with other males for mates. In comparison, less fortunate parents preferred producing more daughters, since they select mates instead of competing for them. However, the study encompassed only two generations of wild red deer. Hence, it was unable 60 open

to show whether those deer that produced more sons also gained more grandchildren.

A new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, which tracked three generations of a number of mammals, found the hypothesis to be valid. The results came from analysing about 90 years’ worth of records for 40,000 mammals, ranging from primates to rhinoceroses, at the San Diego Zoo. The researchers found that females that produced the most number of males went on to have up to 2.7 times the number of grandchildren from those sons in comparison to those mammals that had even numbers of male and female offspring.

Nobody knows for certain how mammals manipulate the sex of their offspring. According to the authors of the study, it is possible that the mother is able to control the levels of glucose or fatty acids in the bloodstream, higher levels of which may make conditions hostile for female embryos. The researchers claim that it is the mothers, in all likelihood, who are determining the sex of their offspring. n

Once thought to have been extinct, native American dogs are thriving, according to a study that links these breeds to ancient Asia. Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm compared mitochondrial DNA from Asian and European dogs, ancient American archaeological samples, and American dog breeds. They traced the American dogs’ ancestry back to East Asian and Siberian dogs, and also found direct relations between ancient American dogs and modern breeds. The arrival of Europeans in the Americas was assumed to have led to the extinction of indigenous dog breeds, but the study has found that they are almost entirely preserved. n

Death in the Air manan vatsyayana/afp

mark newman/getty images

science

According to a new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, around 2.1 million deaths are caused each year by human-caused increases in fine particulate matter in the air that can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing cancer and other respiratory diseases. It also estimates that around 470,000 people die each year because of human-caused increases in ozone. A co-author of the study, Jason West, from University of North Carolina, says, “Our estimates make outdoor air pollution among the most important environmental risk factors for health. Many of these deaths are estimated to occur in East Asia and South Asia, where population is high and air pollution is severe.” n 29 july 2013

pressure play Wacom’s pressure-sensitive screen pens are compatible with the two dozen odd tools and brushes available in Photoshop, the famous image software package. One can adjust colour temperature, exposure, tone, contrast, etcetera, all by how lightly or firmly one presses the pen

tech&style

Wacom Cintiq A tablet for creative professionals that delivers top pen-onscreen performance gagandeep Singh Sapra

TAG w Heuer Formula 1 Ceramic—Gold and White

Rs 179,000

Rs 89,000

This timepiece for ladies comes with a diamond dial and white ceramic and gold-plated bracelet, and is a seductive mixture of delicacy and strength. Its 36 mm polished stainless steel case is adorned with 84 diamonds of 1.10 mm diameter each, and has polished stainless steel bumbers protecting the crown. This dependable timepiece is water resistant up to 200 metres. n

I

magine a tablet that has a large

screen—in a range from 13 to 24 inches—with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity that can display over a billion colours, equipped with a pen whose nibs can simulate an air brush, an art pen and even a classic pen, all this while it mirrors what is on your desktop’s screen. Wacom Cintiq is all that and more; this high-performance tool also lets you zoom, pan and rotate things, giving you a completely immersive experience, whether you are an artist who creates works from scratch on a canvas or someone who takes a photograph and modifies it to look like a masterpiece. You finally have a tool that can do it all.

So how does it work?

The Cintiq has an LCD screen that can work with the famous Wacom pen, or with pen and touch both, depending on the model. Connect it through the HDMI output jack of your computer, and power it with its adapter, synchonise the pen, install the drivers, and you get your desktop 29 july 2013

screen on the tablet as well. Pick your favourite creation tool, and, abracadabra, you are ready to rock and roll.

For me, there were a few downsides. My Apple iMac did not support an HDMI jack so I had to use a convertor cable, and the cables compromised the option of placing the Cintiq on my lap while drawing.

Though I understand the Cintiq is better used as a desk warrior tool than a portable device, I wish that Wacom does something about all those exasperating cables.

Overall, I was super impressed with the Cintiq. I love its 4-position stand that took the tablet from a flat to 50° inclination, apart from its light weight, which makes it easy to carry around in a backpack. I also like the fact that Wacom now includes a pen case that carries the pen, nibs, eraser tool and all the colour rings in a compact package. If you have had your creativity cramped by technological limitations, the Cintiq may help you break out. n

Sennheiser Adidas PMX685i

Rs 5,490

The lightest in its class at just 20 gm, this set of headphones from Sennheiser is built for maximum durability to take on all the sweat you can throw at it. An ergonomic neck band ensures a secure comfortable fit when you are working out or just enjoying your music.

Its reinforced cable uses an angled 3.5 mm connector for a secure plug to your phone or MP3 player. Its big control buttons ensure that you don’t slip up easily. It is also water resistant. Why, you can even wash it . n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

milkha singh’s one rupee deal Legendary Indian athlete Milkha Singh has said that he sold the rights to his life story to Bhaag Milkha Bhaag director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra for Re 1. Mehra has reportedly promised to donate Rs 5 crore of the film’s revenue to Singh’s charity, which serves rural women

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag Farhan Akhtar offers the performance of a lifetime in a film that moves one to tears ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Shorts Shlok Sharma, Sidharth Gupta, Anirban Roy, Rohit Pandey, Neeraj Ghaywan

Directors

Score ★★★★★

ar, div ya dutta , Cast farhan akht sonam kapoor a omprakash mehr Director rakeysh

A

t 189 minutes, the experience of

watching and thinking about this movie is going to take up half your day.

But since the film is about a young nation, split in two and recovering from birth by Caesarean section, it will not be time unwisely spent.

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a bio of our greatest living athlete, but the focus is entirely on the traumatic national history that he emerged from. Milkha Singh has a beautiful physique, but he is permanently scarred within, lost in the nightmare of a partition that destroyed his childhood.

Many survivors of genocide have often said the same thing—that they feel guilty all their lives for having survived, leaving the dead behind.

And, for all its many flaws, this movie moves one to tears for conveying the experience of such a human being, unable to erase memories of a dreadful history. Playing this supremely talented man is Farhan Akhtar, and it is the performance of a lifetime.

62 open

The next best actor is Divya Dutta, who plays his sister, Isri Kaur, having survived, like Milkha, and bonded with him for life. The loveliest scene is when Milkha comes to see her in his ‘India’ blazer and she fails to recognise him and respectfully asks, “Haan ji?”

Then he asks her to put the blazer on, as though it were her triumph, and in its pockets are his gifts to her.

The movie is also good at conveying Milkha’s magnetic personality and his ability to draw people towards him.

Natural athleticism has natural sex appeal, and Milkha’s brief relationship with a pretty Australian girl (Rebecca Breeds) in Melbourne has none of the awkwardness usually associated with such scenes.

The length of these two sequences is perfect. But most others continue endlessly. In truth, the shooting material is not excessive. The problem is that the director refuses to call ‘cut’ when a sequence, or even a small scene, is naturally over. n

Yes, it is wonderful that our producers, with the collaboration of the film distribution system, are now releasing collections of short films in select theatres. But two questions come to mind. How good is the quality of short films available and what exactly is the criterion for selection? This anthology of five shorts, put together by Anurag Kashyap, is hugely disappointing .

One film is good and two are watchable, but only just, and two are mediocre. The best film is Shor, about a couple from Varanasi whose marriage is being destroyed by the abysmal quality of life in the suburban hell of Mumbai. A cell phone conversation, she in a local train, and he wandering the railway tracks, in turns abusing and pleading with each other, unable to escape the trap of this metropolis, is evocative.

The watchable ones are Sujata, about a woman in a relationship of abuse, and Audacity, in Bengali and set in Calcutta, about a teenage girl who rebels by locking herself up in her room and refusing to open the door. Unfortunately, the one with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mehfuz, where he plays a man who disposes of the dead, is pretty lifeless, and the pun is intended. Bottom of the list is a cliched avant-garde exercise called Epilogue.

Frankly, one expected a better standard of this collection. n ad

29 july 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Angry Young Man 2

Imran Khan, next to be seen on screen clashing with Akshay Kumar in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara, will play the lead in director Vikramaditya Motwane’s follow-up to Lootera. Tentatively titled Bhabesh, the film is reportedly an ‘Angry Young Man’ story, in which in an Ordinary Joe gets fed up of the system and decides to take things in his own hands.

Motwane’s film is expected to go on the floors in September, after the release of Once Upon A Time…2, which the actor will promote relentlessly until its release on 15 August. He will also by then be likely done shooting the bulk of Punit Malhotra’s Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, for which he is currently on set with Kareena Kapoor.

Industrywallahs are saying that Once Upon A Time is an important film for Imran, who has been struggling to shed his chocolate-boy image and take on more mature parts. The dismal failure of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola earlier this year, in which the actor offered a nicely layered performance, has been a harsh blow for the star. But Once Upon A Time, if it works, could be exactly the kind of ‘massy’ commercial hit he badly needs.

No Fear of the Paparazzi

You have to hand it to Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif for not ducking cameras when they were spotted partying in Ibiza last week.

The actors, who have repeatedly denied they are dating, flew to Europe’s party capital to attend a David Guetta concert along with Ranbir’s friend, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani director Ayan Mukerji, and the 29-year-old filmmaker’s closest friend Aarti Shetty. As it turns out, they weren’t the only Indians there and ended up being spotted by a bunch of tourists who snuck photographs of the actor couple. Other fans asked to take pictures with the stars, and both obliged.

They were spotted together again in Dubai on their way back to India, and again a clutch of photographs have surfaced. When they arrived in Mumbai, however, Ranbir and Katrina stepped out of the airport separately, fully aware that the pa29 july 2013

parazzi had been tipped off about their arrival.

Unlike many stars who run for cover on spotting Indian tourists with cameras while enjoying overseas romantic holidays, Ranbir and Katrina made no effort to hide their closeness. The same appears true of Ranbir’s former girlfriend Deepika Padukone and her beau Ranveer Singh, who continue to attend parties together and go out for movies, unperturbed by the cameras that are invariably pointed in their direction. Neither will confirm that one is seeing the other, but they don’t turn away and make a dash for it when they’re spotted together either.

Not a Swell Job

Other actresses particularly, and plenty of others as well, have been sniggering about this female star’s botched-up cosmetic surgery. It’s evident in every photo session she does, and looks like it’s going to be hard to hide on the big screen too.

The star herself is reportedly devastated by all the unwanted attention, particularly because she was never fully convinced she should go ahead with the ‘enhancement procedure’. The story goes that she was advised by trusted friends that fuller lips and a more defined smile couldn’t possibly hurt.

Despite all the constant chatter about her ‘new look’, the actress has been diligently focused on her film and advertising assignments, making it a point not to talk on the subject, although it’s the only thing journos want to probe her on. Those in the know say all may not be lost; while the surgery isn’t reversible, the damage could be considerably rectified when the actress shows up next to have collagen pumped into her lips.

Currently wrapping up a coveted film project with one of India’s most respected contemporary male stars, she moves on to another mega film with a leading heartthrob actor.

Meanwhile, the promising young leading lady has apparently sworn off taking advice from others. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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Gaul Swaraj

by a r i n da m m u k h e r j e e

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been referred to as Bapu, Mahatma, Gandhiji, Father of the Nation. Add Gandhix to this list. Come October, Jean-Yves Ferri, who has been assigned the task of sustaining the Asterix comics series (after the death of Albert Uderzo; René Goscinny had died earlier), centred around a Gaul village’s resistance to the Roman Empire, has promised to introduce a new character inspired by Gandhi. Above is our staffer’s impression of Julius Caesar’s reaction to the news 64 open

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