Final pdf for web 2nd sep13

Why people run

How a rhino found his mate

RS 35 2 September 2013

INSIDE The life of a smuggling town l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

Guess who can see your tax data

The path has been cleared for a single private entity to access India’s entire tax data

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Volume 5 Issue 34 For the week 27 Aug—2 September 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover photo Maartje van Caspel/

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2 september 2013

Zermelo

The article misses the most important point—‘Rape by deceit’ laws are medieval, not because of misuse but in their very conception (‘Cry Rape’, 26 August 2013).

More than hurting men’s interests, they actually demean women by denying their sexual autonomy.

The implicit thinking is that for a lady, sex is legitimate only if she has been duly assigned as a particular man’s spouse (aka marriage).

More than hurting Her own consent (at the men’s interests, ‘rape time of the act) is by deceit’ laws actually deemed irrelevant just as a child’s consent is demean women by ignored (quite rightly) denying their sexual in cases of statutory autonomy rape. This last parallel should establish that our laws treat women as juveniles incapable of real choice over their bodies. The other side of this coin is the incomprehension many people express at the idea that there is such a thing as marital rape. Or the idea that it stops being rape if the perpetrator marries the victim. It’s unfortunate that feminist groups don’t take up the issue and even critical articles miss the point. The argument takes the form that the unfairly accused man was in a platonic relationship not involving sex. So what if they did have sex? Even being a jerk is not the same as being a rapist. That trivialises a far more serious crime and is yet another example of how patronising our laws are towards women.  letter of the week Losing our Values

just the other day, I read an account by an American woman, who, unable to deal with gawking sex-repressed Indians, ended up being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Then I read this article, ‘Rejecting Home’ (26 August 2013) that seems to point out the best parts of India—the warm hospitality, the remnants of an ancient civilisation... I have come to this conclusion: human problems are simply that— human problems. What the EU has been witnessing is the result of avarice among its top bureaucrats. The same situation exists in India with

rampant corruption at all political levels. East or West, as long as there are humans, there will be human problems.

It only saddens me to remind myself how many Indians are failing to embrace their human values, succumbing to forces of modernism and consumerism. Is there hope?

Yes. As long as there is even one individual who is willing to stand up for universal values of truth, honesty and justice, there is hope.  Santhip Kanholy

When Sex Is Rape

i think, to charge a man with rape for not carrying out a promise to get married after

having a consensual sexual relationship is ridiculous (‘Cry Rape’, 26 August 2013). What crime would you accuse a woman of if she breaks up with a man to marry or be with another man who offers her more happiness? The answer is ‘none’, as it should be. So should be the case with a man with respect to a woman as long as he does not engage in forced or non-consensual sex. I am not arguing against stronger laws for rape here, but making a specific point that nonfulfilment of a promise of marriage is unfair grounds to arrest a man on charges of rape, and could be misused grossly. The broader point I would like to make is when you always equate sex with marriage, you reinforce a patriarchal structure where marriage is given more importance than the individual aspirations and independent minds of women.  Akhil

Go, Take a Royal Walk

i don’t think the money the Arakkal royal family got in the 1950s was meant to go on in perpetuity (‘Royal Absurdity’, 26 August 2013). It was probably a means for them to tide over while they started fending for themselves.

Expecting the state (and taxpayers) to support them at current prices 60 years on is greedy and parasitic.

Whatever money they are getting presently should also be stopped immediately—60 years is a long time to have found alternatives.  mani

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

openmagazine to 56070

Green Light for Shariah Finance sukuk

A state-promoted finance company based on Islamic principles finally gets a go-ahead from the RBI

After years of legal tangles and political negotiations, a finance company based on the principles of Shariah law has finally got a go-ahead from the Reserve Bank of India.

Cheraman Financial Services Ltd (CFSL), floated by the government undertaking Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, will be the first of its kind in India.

“It is primarily an equity finance company with a share capital of Rs 1,000 crore.

KSIDC will hold 11 per cent of it and the rest would come from the NRIs of Kerala,” says

kochi

2 september 2013

Mohemmed Haneesh, an IAS officer who has been deputed as CFSL’s managing director.

It will initially invest in equities and later expand to development projects, including infrastructure development and manufacturing. It will keep away from sectors taboo in Islam like liquor, tobacco, gambling and pornography.

Islam prohibits usury and, strictly interpreted, all kinds of interest charges and direct money-making off money itself. When the idea of CFSL was first mooted by Kerala’s previous LDF government,

right-wing groups like the Hindu Aikya Vedi alleged that this was ‘Islamisation’ of the banking sector. Subramaniam Swami, a BJP leader now (and Janata Party chief then), had challenged the proposal at the Kerala High Court, alleging that it was undue promotion of a specific religion by the state government and a violation of secularism guaranteed by the Constitution. The court stayed the company’s launch in 2010 but then vacated it. It also dismissed Swamy’s plea, ruling that it would do no harm to India’s secular principles.

An Islamic bank per se is still a no-no in India. “Here, Islamic banking is not possible unless the Banking Regulations Act is amended,” says Haneesh, “RBI regulations are based on the principle of interest.” So CFSL is classified as a non-banking financial company. The CPM’s Dr TM Thomas Issac, finance minister in the previous LDF government, says the NBFC will attract both investors and customers . “There are a large number of Muslim NRIs who do not want to deal with interest because it is unIslamic,” he says. n Shahina KK

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

stefano de luigi/vii/corbis

small world

14

contents

cover story

Taxation privatised?

angle

30

smuggling

marathon

Our porous border with Nepal

6

Licences for Journalists?

Why not politicans too?

22

Why people run

10 26

news reEL

Jammu’s Village Defence Committees

mining

Gold rush at Juhu beach

Languages Lost The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), conducted by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre based in Vadodara, Gujarat, over two years starting in 2011, recently revealed that India has lost roughly 20 per cent of its languages in the past five decades. Ganesh Devy, writer and lead coordinator of the PLSI, says 220 of India’s 1,100 languages (as of 1961) are now extinct, most of them belonging to nomadic communities. He added that were these languages still in existence, they might have been spoken by 3-4 per cent of Indians—about 50 million people. Reasons cited for the loss were community displacement, a lack of recognition of and of livelihoods for speakers, and prejudice against ‘under-developed’ mother tongues. The PLSI found 90 languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, almost double the number spoken in the second-most diverse state, which was Assam, with 55. n erasure

LiLo Admits Addiction w w o d ? So Lindsay Lohan has finally admitted to being an addict. It took Oprah Winfrey to make her say what celeb-watchers have known for a while.

As she sat with Oprah— and cried a lot—LiLo said alcohol was her main addiction. She said she did cocaine only because it made her drink more and that she often wanted to go back to prison just so she could “get some peace”. Oprah advised Lindsay to cancel her trip to Europe as she was fresh out of rehab.

And two days after 4 open

the taping of the show, LiLo did indeed cancel. When Oprah gives you advice, you take it. n

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ohe , k in Lu r e’s Pa na Peopl ovince, Chi r P Henan

■

■

F o r attempting to pass off a dog as a cat—the biggest cat

A zoo in China’s Henan province had to shut down— temporarily—after a patron and her child discovered the creature in the cage marked ‘African Lion’ barking. Indeed.

The lion was, in fact, a large, fuzzy, amber Tibetan Mastiff, and the young boy was unfooled. An official of the People’s Park claimed the lion had been sent away to be bred, though most reports, local and international, attribute the switch to the zoo having insufficient funds to support exotic animals. This seems the more likely explanation, seeing as several other animals were discovered to be counterfeit. Most news reports agreed on a fox stand-in for a leopard and a canine understudy for a wolf, but while some said rats had replaced snakes in absentia, others reported giant sea cucumbers had that pleasure.

2 September 2013

36

Freight

The 34-yearold virgin

40

b

p

books

43

Amartya Sen on Bihar

p photo essay

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

Biryani behind bars

Imran’s loss, Shahid’s gain?

63

54

true life

The bizarre marriage bazaar

Photo: Ossory, Laois, and Leinster

Perfect 4,000-Year-Old Skin

The Samajwadi Party has secured the maximum possible political leverage from the uncertainty around the UPA’s Food Security Bill, first denying support, then extending it pivot

“If need be, we will vote against the bill”

A 4,000-year-old body of a man has been found by archaeologists in Ireland—with its skin intact. According to the science website LiveScience.com, the body was found in a bog whose cool waterlogged conditions created an environment perfect for preservation. Most other fossils of bodies discovered have been shrivelled skeletons. “All that was visible to start with was a pair of legs below the knees and a torso,” said Eamonn Kelly, an archaeologist at the National Museum and lead excavator of the project in the report. As the body seemed to have been viciously attacked, the team said the young man must have been killed as part of a ritual sacrifice. n

a n ti - a g e i n g

—SP leader Naresh Agarwal, 4 August 2013

“We will support the Bill when it is put to vote. But the party has decided to move amendments to make the scheme better”

—an SP MP to PTI, after an SP meeting held to discuss the party’s stand on the bill, 20 August 2013

around

turn

Tw e e t After Death Worried about your social media presence coming to a screeching halt at your death? Rest in peace! LivesOn, a new service with the tagline: ‘When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting,’ will soon be available to those interested in live-tweeting their afterlife. The service analyses your croak

2 September 2013

original Twitter feed to learn about your syntax and tastes, and even allows you to name an executor to your LivesOn will, to decide whether or not to keep your account live when you no longer are.

Post-death tweets will appear with the hashtag #LivesOn, distinguishing them from your flesh-and-blood wit. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

On the Contrary

A Licence to Enter Politics If Manish Tewari wants licences for journalists, then why not for politicians?

M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

N

profession in India. The standardisation it out is an effete, morally compromised, has created is in the art of perpetually especially those who don’t have a characterless group. People with high IQ and a good memory can clear these exams delaying a case, bribery as a legal strategy very good record at it. Most jourand the fleecing of clients. nalists come under this category. but it guarantees nothing in terms of It is unclear who exactly Tewari and either integrity, efficiency or common You might have the odd IIT-IIM pass-out in the profession, but by and large this is a sense. Both Katju and Tewari were lawyers Katju want to filter out among journalists when they say that there should be a and it is probably the Bar Council exam fraternity that will be nowhere near minimum qualification. Almost every cracking a CAT or even the preliminary of that they have as a model. Which makes an IAS exam. We are an average IQ breed. It what they propose even more ridiculous if new entrant in mainstream English media has a journalism degree. Do they is no wonder, therefore, that there are zero you consider the state of the legal want to sanitise vernacular journalism? It takers among journalists for Information is true that many of those news channels and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari’s amusing suggestion that there What the licence provides is the are more entertainment than news. But then, what English editors and anchors should be an examination for people to power to revoke it. What the like Arnab Goswami do is just a different enter the profession. And that we must power of revocation provides form of melodrama and sensationalism. hold a licence to write.

This is the reason why Tewari and Katju The most obvious retort to Tewari is is control. Despite the rot in are interested in ‘standardisation’—what that journalists will do what he suggests journalism, there is no single the licence provides is the power to revoke the day he has to take an exam to become a controlling entity and that is it. What the power of revocation provides politician. We would all like to see an is control. Despite the rot in journalism, answer sheet on which a Sadhu Yadav will what keeps it thriving there is no single controlling write an essay on any of these virendra singh gosain/HT/getty images entity and that is what keeps it three subjects: a) good thriving. There are so many governance without rape; b) interests, pulls and pressures— the importance of brothers-ingood and bad—that it is law in politics; c) how to get something of a salutary free for elected for three terms by the all. For every two editors same people whose sense of law sucking up to the Congress for a and order you destroy daily.

Rajya Sabha ticket, there will be Politicians can decide the fate of one wooing the BJP. Journalism billions of people without an is all the things Katju and exam and licence, but if Tewari Tewari say and more—corrupt, were to call for these measures biased, sensational, insensitive, for his brethren, members from malicious, a den of plagiaboth sides of the Well of the rists—but a licence will be only House would, for once, be one more to this list. united in their laughing fit.

India is at a seminal moment The exam and licence for in its constitutional history. All journalists is couched as a of Parliament is coming measure for the benefit of the together to amend the profession. It comes on the back Constitution so that convicted of the Press Council of India criminals have the right to Chairman, Markandey Katju, contest elections. All geniuses floating a similar proposal in that august House, from some months ago. Both are Manmohan Singh to Manish symbolic of our great faith in Tewari to Arun Jaitley, with the question papers despite IQ to pass any exam, are overwhelming evidence that it holding hands to force this is possibly the worst way to disgrace upon this country. create an institution. IAS and Someone has to point this out IPS officers, the frame that rules without fear of his licence India, are selected on the basis being revoked. n of one exam and what it churns press control I&B Minister Manish Tewari in a visibly combative mood

6 open

o one likes to take an exam,

2 september 2013

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Bolt’s 10 WC medals

The Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt has become the most successful athlete in the history of the World Championship in Athletics.

The 26-year-old won three gold medals in the recent tournament, triumphing in the 4x100 m, 100 m and 200 m. He now has a record total of 10 World Championship medals, eight of which are gold, just like the American sprint legends Carl Lewis and Allyson Felix. But Bolt has nudged Lewis and Felix past in the record books, having also won a pair of silver medals.

The other two have a silver and a bronze.

Apart from his World Championship golds, the Jamaican sprinter is also a six-time Olympic champion. During his first appearance in the World Championship tournament in Osaka in 2007, he won He now has a two silvers in the 200 m record total of and 4x100 m competitions.

10 World Since then, he has won Championship only golds in all following medals, eight of World Championship tourwhich are gold naments in Berlin, Daegu and Moscow. In the current championship, he completed the 200 m race in 19.66 seconds and the 100 m in 9.77 seconds.

alexander hassenstein/getty images

Considered the fastest man in the world and nicknamed the ‘Lightning Bolt’, he

the fastest man Usain Bolt

has broken a number of records so far.

He is the only individual to hold world records simultaneously in the 100 m and 200 m since automatic times became mandatory in 1977.

He achieved his best performance in the 100 m category when he completed it in only 9.58 seconds in the World Championship in Berlin. The second fastest record in this category is also Bolt’s (9.63 seconds). He also shares the third best time recorded in 100 m with two other sprinters (9.69 seconds).

During the Berlin World Championship in 2009, he also broke the record of the fastest in the 200 m category. He did this by clocking 19.19 seconds. n

It Happens

Timekeeper of Mumbai Meet the man who maintains the city’s iconic clocks Lhendup G Bhutia paroma mukherjee

real

keeping it ticking BK Jadhav winds the clock at the facade of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

A

round four years ago, a large clock on the façade of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus broke down. The clock, built by the firm Lund & Blockley, has been part of the railway station ever since the latter’s completion in 1888. It is 10.5 metres in height, operates with an apparatus of six pulleys and steel cables and a large cylindrical weight of 175 kg, and twice every week has to be wound like any mechanical clock.

It was the first time that the clock had given any major trouble. It started to slow down at first. Then one morning one of the cables snapped and the 175 kg of weight came crashing down into the room below. The room was empty and no one was injured. However, the repair work that ensued—fixing a new cable, hooking the weight back, and changing some malfunctioning parts—was to take around a month to complete. During this time, the clock was to remain non-functional.

However, one Central Railway employee wouldn’t let that be. BK Jadhav stationed himself behind it every day. Every five or 10 minutes, he would manually move the clock’s hands so that people would not realise it had broken down. “How could I let it be? It’s never stopped working,” he says.

Jadhav is a TCM or Telecom Maintainer by designation. TCMs look after the maintenance of railway phones, station announcement systems, telegraph lines, etcetera. Apart from the clock on the façade, he has another Lund & Blockley clock, even larger (14 feet in height), under his charge. There are also 22 smaller tall-case clocks, made by the firm John Walker, some as early as in 1857, in Every five or 10 the minutes, he would chambers manually move of Central the clock’s hands Railways officials. so that people Jadhav would not realise it winds the had broken down long-case clocks every morning and the two larger clocks twice a week. Whenever he is free, he climbs up to the attic that houses the clock on the façade and spends hours there. Jadhav is due for retirement in another four years. He has heard that after his retirement the maintenance of the clock may be handed over to a private entity. “But I think I will ask [the authorities] if I can continue to work here,” he says.

Last year, he was also given an honorary award by Central Railways for ‘maintaining heritage’. n open www.openthemagazine.com 7

BUSINESS

Thumbs Up for Shareholder Activism SMALL SHAREHOLDERS

GAUTAM SINGH/AP

CL ASS AC T IO N

in Indian companies have had a bonus handed out by the Companies Bill 2012 that awaits a presidential nod to become an Act of Parliament. On paper, their stature has been enhanced. Instead of helpless spectators, they can soon be active watchdogs of the companies they own part of. The Bill has a provision for class action suits to be filed against errant firms. This gives stakeholders a legal right to collectively voice grievances against the management on failures of corporate governance and suchlike.

If shareholder activism begins in India, it will “force corporations to reckon with the collective force of shareholder power” says Deepak Kapoor, a corporate lawyer, “thus making Indian companies behave with a lot more responsibility and transparency”. The intent of the policy is “not only to stop gross examples like Satyam Computers” says Vivek Sharma, executive director at Ernst &Young, but ease the prosecution of “any breach of legal obligations by the management”.

This means that not only will financial irregularities (as committed by Satyam’s promoters) land top executives in the dock, says Sharma, but also the flouting of other laws that shareholders object to.

Class action suits are legion in the US, where one such against Microsoft is in the news. Last week, small shareholders sued Microsoft for hiding from them the poor sales of its Surface RT tablet that was launched late last year. What the defendant knew but failed to disclose was that ‘Microsoft’s foray into the tablet

STATUS UPGRADE Minority shareholders can’t be ignored by company promoters and managers for much longer

market was an unmitigated disaster’, claims the lawsuit, arguing that this has adversely affected the judgment that shareholders exercise in deciding to stay invested or sell their holding.

According to Veluvali Parimala, assistant professor at Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies, Pune, raising the awareness of Indian investors so that they insist on high levels of transparency “would require a parallel campaign by regulators and the Government to educate small stakeholders on how they can use their new power [under the Act]”.

But the money needed for class action suits could still hold back Indian

shareholder activism.

Unlike in America, where law firms bear the trial costs of shareholders so that they get part of a financial payout if they secure a victory, Bar Council rules in India do not permit such a ‘success fee’ on the argument that it could be misused as a tool of blackmail. Even so, Indian shareholders do need to turn active, even if it raises the expenses of their own companies that are forced to buy insurance cover—as in the US—for potential payouts. n SHAILENDRA TYAGI Under the new Companies Act, shareholders can haul errant companies to court in India

The Rupee Rollercoaster’s Dizzy Decline ` 50

Rupees vs Dollar (inverted scale) 54.33 2 APRIL 2013

55

58.27 13 JUNE 2013 64.09 21 AUGUST 2013

60

65 8 OPEN

The rupee’s resistance to policy measures to stop its slide saw India’s currency hit a lifetime low of 64.52 to the US dollar on 21 August in intra-day market trading (before the day’s close) SOURCE RBI (REFERENCE RATE) COMPILED BY SHAILENDRA TYAGI

‘We view capital outflows and the depreciating rupee as an indication of weakening investor confidence in India ... If the uncertainty continues, business financing conditions could deteriorate further and investment growth could slow further’ senior director, sovereign and international public finance ratings, Asia-Pacific, Standard & Poor’s, on the Indian economy, explaining the rating agency’s negative outlook on India’s BBB sovereign credit rating KIM ENG TAN,

news

reel

militancy

Shields Against Terror Village Defence Committees have played an important role in containing militancy in the Jammu region rahul pandita

The me ssage was cle ar : a group of terrorists would strike Lihota anytime. The Muslim watchman had travelled miles to convey this to his friends in a tiny hamlet in the foothills of the Himalayas in Jammu & Kashmir’s Doda district. It was July 1999, and not very far from there, a war was on in Kargil between India and Pakistan.

Lihota had only a few families, 39 people in all. Some of them had earlier been given guns by the Government. They were part of what had come to be known as Village Defence Committees (VDCs) in the Jammu region of the state. It had not taken much time for militancy to spread to these parts from the Kashmir Valley. By 1993, militants had struck at several places in Doda and other areas, attacking members of the Hindu minority. The terrain was rugged and densely forested, and hamlets like Lihota were at least a day’s journey away from the nearest Army or police camp. That is why the few VDC members in Lihota always kept their .303 Lee Enfield rifles by their side.

That day in 1999, it is not clear whether the residents of Lihota tried to get some help during daylight. But as night fell, nine VDC members took position in a picket overlooking the narrow path leading to Lihota. At about 9 pm, they saw heavilyarmed men climbing up. They opened fire.

But their weapons were no match for the automatic weaponry the terrorists had. In no time, the picket was overrun and some VDC members were killed. But still, the others persisted and put up a brave fight against the terrorists, who were forced to retreat. In all, almost half of Lihota’s population was wiped out that night. But had it not been for the VDCs and their guns, perhaps Lihota wouldn’t exist on the map today.

In the wake of the recent Kishtwar violence, with the Valley’s separatist groups and some mainstream political parties making a fevered pitch to disband VDCs, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of militancy in the Jammu region.

10 open

I

n the 1990s, militancy first reached

Doda because of its proximity to the Valley. About 40 per cent of Doda’s population is of Kashmiri origin. While militancy burst out in 1990 in the Valley, it took about three years to pose a threat to the people of Doda, especially its Hindu population. As early as October 1991, militants had kidnapped a French engineer Silva Antonia from the Dul Hasti hydroelectric project site in Kishtwar (which was then a part of Doda district). In August 1993, terrorists stuck at Sarthal in Kishtwar, killing 17 Hindus. In January 1996, in another massacre, 16 Hindus were gunned down in the region. By the mid90s, militancy had spread to other regions of Jammu as well, including Poonch and

Right from the beginning, VDCs have had an effective role in deterring terrorists. Says Khoda, “Terrorists realised that if they have to create a fear psychosis, they would rather do it in a non-VDC village” Rajouri. Between April 1998 and February 1999, more than 150 people of the Hindu minority were killed by terrorists in these two districts.

Fighting terrorism in these areas was a challenge for the Government. Deploying troops in a difficult area like Doda was a daunting task. Spread over 11,961 sq km, the district had 651 villages, and troop deployment here in the mid-90s was less than that in Baramulla district in Kashmir Valley. Terror attacks had triggered off an exodus similar to that from Kashmir Valley, where 350,000 Pandits had to leave their homes in the wake of an Islamist insurgency. Thousands of people began to arrive in Doda and Kishtwar town from villages in the region’s upper reaches to live in temples and other such communi-

ty-owned buildings.

Initially, the administration sent them back along with a police party that would then camp with them in the village. “But this method had two [problems],” says the former Director General of the J&K Police, Kuldeep Khoda, who was then DIG of Udhampur-Doda range. “One: the force was getting sucked in permanently and we didn’t have an unlimited supply; two: such a measure was only taken once a massacre had already taken place.”

That is when the decision to involve civilians in this fight was taken. Initially, many were reluctant to take up the Government’s offer of arms and training, fearing reprisals from terrorists. But soon, many elders in villages, especially Army ex-servicemen, opted for it.

R

ight from the beginning, VDCs

have had an effective role in deterring terrorists. Says Khoda, “Terrorists realised that if they have to create a fear psychosis, they would rather do it in a non-VDC village. They started avoiding villages with VDCs.” The formation of VDCs also put an end to the exodus of Hindus. They felt secure and continued with their lives in their villages. But the VDCs had to pay a price for their resistance. In November 2000, VDC member Satish Kumar did not let terrorists enter his village Khala in Kishtwar. In his effort to fend off a massacre, he was himself killed.

Terrorists would target family members of VDCs—largely Hindu—as well. In December 2000, four children of a VDC member Gyan Singh were killed by terrorists in the Mahore area of Jammu.

Between 1996 and 2007, at least 128 VDC members were killed by terrorists.

The gravity of the situation can be gauged by the fact that despite counterterrorism measures such as VDCs, many massacres of Hindus still took place. In June 1998, 25 Hindus who were a part of a marriage party were killed in Doda. In July, 2 september 2013

amit gupta sd/tw/reuters

ring fence Muslim women training for a Village Defence Committee in Kulali village, 260 km from Jammu city, in December 2004

16 others were killed in two villages. In July 1999, they stuck at Lihota, killing 15, but the bravery of VDCs prevented a bigger massacre. In August 2000, 11 Hindus were killed in Doda. In 2001 as well, the spate of killings continued, prompting the Centre to bring this entire region under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

In Poonch and Rajouri, the local Gujjar population was initially wary of taking up arms against militants. Though some of them acted as guides for militants trying to cross the Line of Control, they hardly harboured any anti-India sentiments. Through the mid 90s, terrorists perpetrated several massacres of the Hindu minority, including one during Vajpayee’s Lahore Bus Yatra in February 1998 in which 20 Hindus were killed in three incidents. But by 2001, there were several cases where terrorists of Pakistani origin, owing allegiance to groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, began to harass and intimidate Gujjars, especially their womenfolk. That is when several of them took up the Government offer and joined VDCs. 2 september 2013

Here, a few all-Muslim, all-women VDCs were formed as well. During a major operation launched by the Army in Poonch in 2003, codenamed Operation Sarp Vinash, to weed out terrorists who had infiltrated Indian territory, information supplied by a VDC led to the busting of a major terrorist hideout. Here too, VDCs had to pay a heavy price. In Poonch in February 2001, 15 members of a VDC, all Muslim, were burnt to death by terrorists. In June 2004, another ten (again all Muslims) were gunned down by terrorists.

I

n recent years, some cases of VDC

highhandedness have been reported.

But security experts say they are few and far between. Often, VDCs have been compared to the Salwa Judum, Chhattigarh’s anti-Maoist militia of civilians. But that comparison is silly.

One, in Chhattisgarh, Maoists do not indulge in massacres of a particular tribe or community. Two, VDCs do not go out hunting for terrorists. That is why there is no possibility of civilian casualties that

has almost been a norm in Salwa Judum operations. Three, the Salwa Judum mostly comprises of young men, some of them in their teens, which is again not the case with VDCs. “Comparison with the Salwa Judum is ridiculous,” says MM Khajuria, former DGP of J&K. “Those who do it are either uniformed or playing to the separatist gallery.”

In the coming days, the pitch for the disbanding of VDCs will only grow louder in a state where mainstream politicians are in competitive secessionism with separatist groups. Khoda feels that the VDCs ought to stay, especially along the LoC and in areas close to Kashmir Valley. But he says in other areas, where there has been no incident of militancy in the past five years, there needs to be a review of VDCs. “It had already been happening silently,” he says.

“In several cases, the VDC members opted out themselves since they got a job elsewhere or turned old.”

But now, with a real threat of the migration of the region’s Hindu minority looming large, these VDCs, it seems, will only have a larger role to play. n open www.openthemagazine.com 11

news

reel

fold of social reform. Those who knew Dabholkar say he wanted quick results and was unwilling to convert to an opinion that diverged from his own.

Many say his opinions were far too radical for most people.

A glimpse of this can be gleaned from a press conference Dabholkar held in the haima deshpande mid-90s at the Patrakar Sangh in Pune, close to where he was recently gunned down. “Why should women wear mangalsutra and sindoor on their foreheads? It will not increase the lifespan of side of him or get into an argument.

O n t h e m o r n i n g of 20 August, a Born on 1 November 1945, the youngest their husbands. They should just stop couple of hours before rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar fell victim to bullets among ten children, Dabholkar, a resident wearing both,” Dabholkar had told the media. Predictably, women did not take in Pune, a more popular figure, astrologer of Satara in western Maharashtra, was a kindly to such a radical thought and the general practitioner of medicine. In his Jayant Salgaonkar, died of old age-related cause died a natural death. health complications in Mumbai. Though family, as in many others, religious Dabholkar’s biggest battle has been Salgaonkar had a much bigger fan follow- practices formed an important part of trying to get several Maharashtra ing—including renowned journalists and life. His questioning of religious rituals governments to pass the Superstition editors—the media chose to give his death within the family did not begin until his just a passing mention. Few media houses late teens when he urged his family to give Eradication and Anti-Black Magic Bill which would have brought under its wanted to be caught on the wrong foot on it all up. His impassioned pleas earned ambit a host of religious practices, rituals him the reputation of a rebel in those the day a rationalist was killed. and related acts as forbidden by law. formative years.

Salgaonkar, the founder of the Marathi Though the bill was brought in for seven Though Maharashtra was going almanac Kaalnirnay, a must-have in every consecutive sessions of the Maharashtra through a period of social change, Maharashtrian household, was no friend Legislature, it did not even come up for Dabholkar’s task—ridding society of of Dabholkar. They represented two discussion. The political class, with its superstition—was not easy. Like India’s diametrically opposed viewpoints, each strong affiliation to various spiritual first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, believing he held an edge over the other. gurus and fondness for magic stones, Dabholkar too believed that the future Yet, when both died on the same day, it talismans and charms, hated both the bill belonged to science and those who made wasn’t surprising to see an otherwise and Dabholkar. Since many believed their sought after Salgaonkar fade away silently. friends with it stood a better chance. political careers were intricately woven There were takers for his belief, but they Such was Dabholkar’s personality. As with the ascendency of stars and predicwere outweighed by those who believed the founder of the Maharashtra tions of gurus, antagonising them was that the Universe is a creation of a god Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an ruled out. Dabholkar was easier to offend. who controls every event on Earth. anti-superstition movement, he eclipsed His worst opponents were those from Followers were difficult to come by and the powerful and well-connected. So the BJP, Shiv Sena, the Warkari sect those there were lacked the intensity to forceful were his arguments that there (followers of Dynaneshwar and were few who could match his reasoning. help him bring in change. Until 1983, he practised medicine. His patients were the Tukaram), Sanathan Prabhat, Hindu And even among these few, there weren’t Janjagran Manch, Patit Pawan Sanghatana first people he decided to bring into the many who wanted to get on the wrong and Bajrang Dal. They collectively felt that the bill advocated by Dabholkar man of reason Dabholkar was easier to dismiss than the godmen who offered politicians guidance would adversely impact Hindu culture, customs and traditions. He had been warned, threatened and attacked many times by activists of these outfits.

Interestingly, he was also closely associated with Christian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku, who is in forced exile in Finland, in hiding from Christian fundamentalists in India.

There is nobody else of Dabholkar’s stature in Maharashtra who can encourage constructive analysis of religious traditions and customs, who can agitate against harmful superstition and its practitioners and suggest alternatives.

Dabholkar’s death is a setback to those like actor Sriram Lagoo who used the rationalist’s platform to debate the need to retire God. Dabholkar’s home state Maharashtra perhaps boasts the largest number of godmen in India. n

reason vs religion

Up Against Godmen

nitin lawate/ap

Narendra Dabholkar’s assassination leaves a legislative battle unfinished with no one to take it up

12 open

2 september 2013

exposĂŠ

Guess who can see your tax data Believe it or not, it has been turned over to a private firm

moodboard/corbis

Hartosh Singh Bal

A

few months ago in April, a number of news re-

ports announced that the Government has ‘decided to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to provide information technology support to various stakeholders under the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST)’. The GST is a value-added tax that is expected to replace all indirect taxes on goods and services imposed by the Centre and Indian states. The SPV, termed the GST Network (GSTN), is seen as an important step in ushering in a little understood but much touted reform, because it will make it possible to bring together taxation data from the Centre and states that was so far processed separately.

But the innocuous language hides the fact that we are soon headed for an entirely different paradigm as far as our tax data is concerned. The GSTN is already in place as a private limited company despite strong opposition by senior officials of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), and Naveen Kumar, former chief secretary of Bihar, has been appointed chairman. The body will control all new indirect tax data from the Centre and states and will have access to past data as well. The charges it will impose for processing this data will be the revenue that sustains its operations.

Since the Finance Ministry has recently directed the CBEC and Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to sign an MoU for the sharing of data, GSTN will be able to access and process the entire tax data of the country, both of direct and indirect taxes. Obviously, this should have been a matter for far more public debate than it has evoked, but the actual process of setting up GSTN is far more alarming than this broad outline. Since it will have to be in place before the GST is rolled out, the Finance Ministry has asked the CBEC to hand over the processing of data for tax surveillance to GSTN, which would ensure it a revenue stream as soon as it takes over these functions.

As a result, this innocuous sounding body will be the sole information hub for linking and processing all of India’s tax data, something that has never been attempted by the Government, leave alone a private entity. And this approach appears to have no parallel anywhere in the world. This is being done in the absence of any security or privacy provisions in place. In fact, no serious discussion or planning of any sort on security or privacy implications has been undertaken. Some of the most sensitive financial data in the country—for individuals, firms and the Government—will soon be in the hands of a private entity which has not even conceptualised its approach to data security.

HISTORY

In January 2011, the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects (TAGUP) headed by Nandan Nilekani recommended the setting up of five infotech intensive financial projects—for the Income Tax Department, National Pension Scheme, Reserve Bank of India, and for tracking 2 September 2013

Some of the most sensitive financial data in the country—for individuals, firms and the Government—will soon be in the hands of a private entity which has not even conceptualised its approach to data security

government expenditure and GSTN for the GST. A similar structure for each of the five was proposed, a not-forprofit Section 25 company, with a self-sustaining revenue model, where the Government’s holding would be restricted to 49 per cent and private institutional holding set at 51 per cent.

While Nilekani did not want to go on record on the issue, I did meet GSTN Chairman Naveen Kumar at Hotel Janpath in a room at the end of a long corridor that serves as GSTN’s office premises. He was quite open about the need for such a private body: “We are basically an IT company. We will build infrastructure, operate and maintain it. This sector requires very high salaries and we can hire the best people from the sector. Then there is the question of the number of rules and regulations in government.

Financial management norms have to be observed. These are quite time consuming. Doing anything takes time. We need to make records, observe rules, follow procedures, follow tendering methods, undergo vetting by the CAG, CVC and be under the CIC. Here we are not bound by rules, we can work faster, be more efficient.”

Whatever the efficiency argument, the not-for-profit structure means that before the company can sustain itself by levying user fees, it needs funds to hire the staff Kumar needs. Private investors—Housing Development Finance Corp Ltd, HDFC Bank Ltd, LIC Housing Finance Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd and NSE Strategic Investment Corp Ltd—have no incentive to provide the necessary money.

Thus, GSTN has been set up on equity of just Rs 10 crore and the Government has provided it a one-time grant of Rs 315 crore. Effectively, then, the Centre has funded a start-up that it does not even have majority control of. open www.openthemagazine.com 15

CONTROVERSIAL FUNCTIONS

Despite the money, since GSTN is already in place as a self-sustaining body, it needs sources of revenue other than those that would be eventually generated from receiving and processing GST data. These according to the [Empowered Group on IT Infrastructure for GST headed by Nilekani ], will include registration—‘…there is an urgent need of national ‘Unique and Shared’ Tax Payer registration database. For this purpose, the existing registration details kept at various tax systems can be shared using one existing identifier i.e. PAN. The use of PAN as a common identifier will go a long way in inter-linking various tax systems and in ensuring higher compliance and increased tax revenues’—and a Tax Payer Profiling Utility (TPU) which would ‘leverage registration information based on common PAN’ to offer such services.

In November 2011, when the CBEC was brought fully into the picture, Sheila Sangwan, then Member (Budget and Computerisation), had summarised the problems with the EG’s proposals: ‘…a meeting was held on 14/15 November 2011 in the Chairman’s office to discuss the structure and functions of the proposed GSTN… Dr Nandan Nilekani has mentioned as minuted that there is need to go in for the SPV even without GST being introduced. He further stated that it is based on PAN data and inter-departmental sharing of return data which will generate substantial additional revenue because of cross matching of data. He mentioned that the data matching between the Maharashtra VAT department and that with CBEC has generated additional revenue of about Rs 500 Crore. Here it is important to mention that the successful Tax 360 is a pilot initiative implemented in house by the Directorate of Systems, CBEC where data on registration, returns and payments was collected from the Central Excise, Service Tax, Customs, Income Tax and Commercial Tax Departments of the State of Maharashtra. Having implemented a successful Tax 360 programme, which has detected an evasion of about Rs 500 Crore, it is but natural that the Department of Systems can claim the capability to undertake Tax 360.

Besides this, Tax 360 is a core function of the Tax Departments. There was unanimity amongst the officers present that the sovereign function to be performed by the tax administration should be kept out of the purview of the GST.’ ‘…If the purpose of setting up the proposed structure for this SPV with the proposed equity is to give operational and financial independence, it is suggested that this operational freedom could be better achieved for a Government SPV through appropriate legislation… There are certain concerns regarding the privacy of tax payers’ data if the proposed GSTN as a private entity were to be made a national repository of data including direct and indirect taxes. The Chief Information Security Officer for CBEC has expressed reservations about the national repository of tax data resting in a private entity, should the GSTN be designated to perform the analytics of data from all agencies including the income tax and Customs… Across the 16 open

tax administration in the world, the privacy of taxpayer data is accorded utmost priority and it is the practice to house this data in Government hands …Specific attention is also initiated to the fact that the Directorate of Income Tax (Systems) is proposing to create a SPV in the public sector given the sensitivity of their Income Tax returns and payment data.’

Sangwan was pointing out that if the CBEC could implement the pilot project by outsourcing computation functions to vendors of its choice, there was little reason for GSTN. Much the same could be done through a government-controlled body that would outsource computing requirements but would not lose control over the data. This would have the advantage of retaining the security and privacy safeguards and legal controls that already exist for such data.

The apprehensions of senior officers of the CBEC at the time were set aside by its then Chairman SK Goel, who did not address the essential question of who would be the repository of the data, and instead wrote that, ‘With regard to the concern of IT Security, it is not connected to the ownership of the management—Government or nonGovernment. In fact, the level of security is dependent upon the standards, safeguards and control processes that are put in place by the management. The GSTN could be asked to build necessary safeguards for ensuring the security and privacy aspects…With regard to the legislative route to set up SPV as Government entity, it is in complete contrast to the decisions taken in the past and it would jeopardize the consensus achieved so far and bring the discussions back to square one.’

In other words, security at GSTN was really someone

GSTN has been set up on equity of just Rs 10 crore and the Government has provided it a one-time grant of Rs 315 crore. Effectively, then, the Centre has funded a start-up that it does not even have majority control of

else’s worry, and since no one had earlier objected to private control, it was too late to do so now, whatever the apprehensions.

SECURITY IMPLICATIONS

The same TAGUP that conceived of GSTN while discussing the Tax Information Network (TIN) for the Income Tax Department had conceded that ‘The Department holds the personal and financial data of taxpayers in a fiduciary capacity and carries out a sovereign function of the State. Therefore, it needs to have control on strategic assets including the software, hardware and the databases as well as exclusive control over use and dissemination of data. It is recommended, therefore, that TIN should adopt the best practices for transparency and privacy as discussed in this report.’ It is difficult to imagine that the same principle does not apply to indirect tax data, given that this is sensitive information too. But the structure and functioning envisaged for GSTN implies that neither the CBEC nor CBDT would retain exclusive control over the use and dissemination of its data.

To ensure there was no misunderstanding, I asked Naveen Kumar about control of the data. For the GST, he said, “We will start from scratch with our own servers and beginning with a list of dealers we will start building a database of transactions on our system. For this, we do not need additional data from the Customs or any other department.” Clearly then, this data would lie on GSTN servers. They would not be a processing house for data that would be eventually stored on CBEC servers.

What, I asked, if tax profiling was also to be carried out

by GSTN? “We could allow each state and the Centre to access our data and connect it to the data they already have.

This would mean that we would need 30 different procedures. That is not efficient, we can do much better. In practice that would mean that we have access to their data.”

Earlier this month, the Revenue Secretary directed the Member (Computerisation) of the CBEC and the Additional Secretary (Revenue) to work out a date by which phase II of the pilot project mentioned by Sangwan in her letter is handed over from the CBEC to GSTN. This includes business data profiling—in other words, control over indirect tax data has to go over to GSTN. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the sharing of data between the CBEC and the CBDT has already been approved by the Finance Minister and an MoU is shortly to be signed.

Asked how issues of security and privacy are to be dealt with in such an eventuality, Naveen Kumar said, “Security will be set up and rules will be put in place. As for which government laws and legislation or other controls will apply to us, that will be part of the GST legislation.” It is not clear when the GST legislation will be passed, but it is clear that tax profiling and surveillance will be handed over to GSTN within the next few months.

Because of the sensitive nature of such data, the EG 2 September 2013

We seem to be heading towards a regime where the country’s entire tax data—yours, mine, the Tata Group’s, Reliance’s et al—will be accessible through a body which will be in no position to guarantee security standards

report on the GSTN had a separate section on Security which states that ‘various international standards and best practices may be customized to define a comprehensive certification framework for GSTN SPV. The certificate may include ISO 27001, ISO 15048 (Common Criteria) and BS 25999, which may be made mandatory for GSTN SPV under the agreement between the Government and GSTN SPV.’ However, in another 2011 note, Sangwan had said, ‘Any new agency which is going to be set up will take time to evolve security systems across people, processes and technology. CBEC’s ISO 27001 certification process began in 2008 and the final certification was awarded in July 2011.

ISO 27001 is an assurance to all stakeholders that CBEC follows a formal information security management process. It took three years for the security paradigm to be in place. It is therefore likely that there is going to be a considerable time lag before such an agency would be in a position to guarantee security standards for such data.’

Clearly then, there seem to be two options: one, that GSTN as a private entity dealing with the processing of all tax data as envisaged now should be set aside till the matter is discussed in detail and the requirements of security and privacy are adequately dealt with, or that we are heading towards a regime where the country’s entire tax data—yours, mine, the Tata Group’s, Reliance’s et al—will be accessible through a body which will be in no position to guarantee security standards. The latter is the choice the Government seems to have made. It is a frightening prospect, but it does not seem to worry this government, or, for that matter, the opposition. n open www.openthemagazine.com 17

r e f l ec t i o n

The Ghosts of Exile A Kashmiri filmmaker visits his homelessness through the story of a schizophrenic refugee Rahul Pandita

camp on his behalf alone. He also does it on behalf of Sushil Kumar Kaul. Or Bota, as he is called in Rajesh’s most recent film 23 Winters.

M

life in exile A scene from the film 23 Winters

W

henever he can, award-win-

ning filmmaker Rajesh S Jala visits a building in Delhi’s South Extension area. He has been doing this for 13 years now. Earlier, he would make these visits at least twice a week. Now, he is unable to visit so frequently.

Rajesh usually takes along a packet of biscuits. These he offers to the five or six dogs that live in the building compound.

It is a community centre that served till a few years ago as a camp for Kashmiri Pandit refugees. Rajesh lived here for almost a decade—he was the last person to

2 september 2013

arrive here in the early 1990s. It was at the time home to 27 families consisting of their 104 members. Though Rajesh was registered as a resident of the camp, he says there was no space for him there.

Space was precious and often the camp inmates would fight among themselves if a family moved its bed as much as an inch. So, for about a year, Rajesh would take out his folding bed to a park within the complex and sleep there.

Rajesh visits the camp to remember those days, which, he says, shaped him as a filmmaker. But he does not visit the

asjid Moth, named after Moth ki

Masjid, which was supposedly built with money raised from a harvest of lentils (moth), is a rambling world behind the miasma of Uday Park, a posh colony in south Delhi, quite close to South Extension. It is like a snapshot of the chaos Hollywood filmmakers sometimes portray India as: Honda cars competing for space with rickety autorickshaws and bulls in heat, vendors selling hair pins and cloth clips and lemon squeezers on wheel carts, housewives in their nighties haggling with vegetable sellers.

In between a line of shops, there is a turn and suddenly one enters a square-shaped compound where the outside chaos almost comes to an abrupt end. It is dark here, and as you look up, all you can see are facades of narrow apartment buildings and their water tanks and electrical wiring and dish antennas. It is the sort of place where pigeons will come fluttering out of crevices if you shout at night.

On the top floor of one such building is a small flat that Rajesh uses as his office.

In one room, there is a computer on which he rough edits his films. The other room is occupied by some of his friends—struggling editors, cameramen or filmmakers like him. There are no fixed responsibilities. Someone will get up to make tea. Someone will open a cupboard and take out a homemade snack. A friend may bring over a bottle of rum, and if Rajesh is in the mood, mutton will be got and he will make rogan josh. Like most in exile, he is deeply attached to dishes from back home.

Rajesh has made a few films in the past, including the critically acclaimed Children of the Pyre. But 23 Winters is as much a film about his meditations on exile as it is about Sushil Kumar Kaul aka Bota, the film’s protagonist, a middleaged Kashmiri Pandit refugee suffering from schizophrenia, picking up shards of mirror on a rooftop and throwing them one by one up to 23, signifying the number of years he has been away from home.

When Rajesh made the refugee camp open www.openthemagazine.com 19

his home, Bota was already living there with his parents and two brothers and a sister. The Kauls came from a village in Bandipore close to the Line of Control in north Kashmir. Bota’s father could not bear the uprooting and died not long after they came to the camp. Bota continued working his small job at the J&K Handloom Department till one day he could not do it any longer. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

It was a tough time for Kashmiri Pandit refugees. Medical studies revealed that many had fallen prone to depression and stress-induced ailments like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. A majority of them, especially in refugee camps, suffered from anxiety, panic attacks and sleep disorders.

While Bota battled with his inner demons, his brothers decided to move on.

They built a small house in an upcoming Kashmiri colony in west Delhi and shifted there in the year 2000. Bota and his mother moved there as well, but mother and son soon returned to the camp. It was hard for the brothers to cope with Bota’s illness. Bota’s mother took care of her son till she passed away at the camp one day in 2004.

By 2006, there was only one family and Bota left in the camp. Everyone else had left, including Rajesh. But he kept visiting the camp and looking up Bota. Rajesh says he felt some kind of affinity with 20 open

ashish sharma

the uprooted (L-R) Filmmaker Rajesh S Jala and his protagonist Sushil Kumar Kaul

Bota. “In a way both of us had been discarded by our families,” he says.

Rajesh has had a difficult childhood himself. He grew up at his maternal grandmother’s house, among other places in Kashmir Valley. Around the time Bota took ill, Rajesh had decided to learn filmmaking, but his family was opposed to it. Rajesh was just 18 months old in 1971 when his father crossed over to Pakistan and was arrested there. This was his sixth or seventh trip, but this time he was caught. Roshan Lal Jala was a spy, sent by Indian intelligence agencies to gather information in Pakistan. Rajesh’s mother did not take her husband’s incarceration well. After a decade of heartbreak, she passed away in 1982. Rajesh had no memory of his father.

By the time Senior Jala returned from Pakistan in 1987, Rajesh was 18. There was a lot of pent-up anger in him. Both son and father tried their best to salvage what was left of their relationship, but it was hard to mend. Roshan Lal Jala left for Delhi to spend some time there.

Meanwhile in Kashmir, the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was about to begin.

In February 1990, on the day of Shivratri, Rajesh’s paternal grandmother was standing at the main gate of her house in Rainawari locality when a Muslim mob passed through the area shouting anti-Pandit, anti-India slogans.

She rushed inside and collapsed. “Her

heart was beating fast. She kept mumbling that the mob would come and attack us,” recalls Rajesh. Before they could think of anything, the old woman died. She had had a cardiac arrest. Roshan Lal returned for his mother’s last rites.

But on the advice of a neighbourhood milkmaid, the Jalas left soon after.

Roshan Lal’s name had appeared on a militant hitlist.

Roshan Lal went elsewhere, while Rajesh landed up at the refugee camp in Delhi.

In 2006, Rajesh finally held Bota’s hand and brought him to his Masjid Moth office. The only remaining family at the camp had been complaining about his behaviour. It is here that Rajesh renewed Bota’s treatment. With the help of a doctor at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rajesh made sure that Bota had his medicines on time, that he ate well and that he was looked after. It was not an easy task. As a doctor told Rajesh, for a schizophrenic, his caretaker is his biggest enemy because he insists on keeping the patient at an optimum level of ‘normalcy’, which the patient utterly dislikes. Every three or four months, Bota would go to his brothers’ house, but he would return to Rajesh’s office within days.

In 2010, Rajesh was making a trip to the Kashmir Valley. He asked Bota to come along. “I told him vehemently that he 2 september 2013

should come with me since I was going for long,” says Rajesh. “But Bota said he couldn’t because his name was on the militants’ hitlist—he was hallucinating about it.” It is around this time that Bota began to insist that Rajesh capture him on his camera. “He would say that I film the whole world except him,” Rajesh recalls.

In the summer of 2012, Rajesh finally took his camera to the rooftop of his office building where Bota would spend time with his radio. He began to shoot Bota while he smoked, or just lay on his belly mumbling to himself, or counting the years he had spent in exile. There is a poignant scene in the 32-minute film where Bota intones poet Nida Fazli’s lines: Doh aur doh ka jod hamesha chaar kahan hota hai Soch samajh walon ko thodi naadani de Maula (Two and two do not always add up to four Lend some ignorance to the intelligent, Maula) In September, Bota left one day to visit his sister. He stayed there for two days and left to return to Rajesh’s office. He left in the morning and should have reached in a couple of hours. But he didn’t. For ten days, Rajesh looked everywhere he could 2 september 2013

think of, but Bota was not to be found.

About 15 days later, Rajesh received a call from a Kashmiri Pandit in Bandipore who had stayed back. Bota had reached his village and was staying in a temple there. Rajesh says he felt that finally Bota would be at peace with himself.

But that was not to be. At Bandipore, Bota’s mental health deteriorated. He had stopped taking his medicines. Since his brothers did not care, the Pandit families in Bandipore called up Rajesh. They

Rajesh says he felt some kind of affinity with Sushil Kumar Kaul aka Bota. “In a way both of us had been discarded by our families,” he says said they were finding it difficult to handle Bota. But more than that they felt he might be putting them and himself in grave jeopardy. “They called up and asked me to take Bota back. They said terrorists might think he is a spy feigning mental illness,” says Rajesh. This was December. Rajesh immediately packed his bag and left for Bandipore. He took his camera along.

In 23 Winters, the first shot of Bandipore shows an exhilarated Bota

bathing in the temple compound in harsh winter, steam rising from his body.

He addresses the temple priest, asking him repeatedly to open the temple gate for a darshan. Then with a few neighbours and Rajesh and his camera in tow, he walks hurriedly to show them his house. It is falling apart, the windows secured with planks nailed to the frame.

Unable to pull them out, Bota picks up a stone and breaks a plank to enter his house.

There is nothing inside except rubble.

Who knows what gems Bota collects here? He lapses into English, like old eccentric professors would long ago in Kashmir: “This is my motherland, after all. I was born here.”

Rajesh took Bota to Srinagar, where he was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric diseases. He stayed there for a month and when he stabilised a bit, Bota’s sister and brother-in-law brought him back to Delhi where he underwent another round of treatment at AIIMS. Bowing to pressure from neighbours and relatives, Bota’s brothers are currently letting him stay with them. Rajesh keeps in touch.

Rajesh and his father have been talking to each other a lot. Recently, Rajesh tried to record some of his father’s experiences in Pakistani jail, but after a point they had to stop. Roshan Lal Jala couldn’t go on.

But Rajesh says he will try again. n open www.openthemagazine.com 21

free trade

A Smuggling Town

decoys Women carrying petty goods across the border often serve as a distraction from bigger consignments

Life around Sampurna Nagar, on the border between India and Nepal, revolves around illegally—and creatively—moving goods between the two countries GUNJEET SRA photographs by raul irani

S

Dummy has long rejected the concept of organised religion. For them, xxxxxx secularism is not just a word. They also treat each other as equals xxxxxxx

ampurna Nagar is at the farthest

end of Uttar Pradesh’s largest district, Lakhimpur Kheri, which borders Nepal. The town is isolated in acres of nothingness, surrounded by wetlands and a river that threatens to pillage its outlying villages every year. Twenty years ago, it was a traders’ hub, with a bustling bazaar and cinema hall. Now, the hall stands abandoned and licensed fertiliser shops line the road, most of them with their shutters down.

Some 15 kilometres from the town are villages perched on the edge of India and drawing their life breath from that geography. “Almost 80 per cent of inhabitants here survive only through smuggling,” says Chamkaur Singh, a local farmer who has volunteered to act as tour guide. “They might be middlemen in the trade, suppliers, distributors, or even carriers. But everyone here does it because it’s the easiest and quickest way to make money.”

As we make our way through the town, Singh is excited because the biggest ‘trader’ in the area might be coming to pay a visit. “He moved to Nepal a few years ago as he is a wanted man in this region,” Singh says, before hopping into a car and instructing the driver to take us to Khajuria. It is a village on the edge of a road, surrounded by fields and an open border with one Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) check post. One can take several alternative routes from there to Nepal undetected.

Farm vehicles, mainly large trolleys generally used to transport sugarcane, line the edge of the road. They serve multiple purposes and are often used to transport smuggled goods across the border.

“If a person owns more than three trolleys in the region, it is a sure-shot sign of his being involved in smuggling.

There is no other reason why you would need so many of them,” says Singh.

“Trolleys serve a better purpose in the trade than trucks. They look less threatening and are mainly perceived to be farm vehicles used to transport lightweight foodgrain etcetera.” open www.openthemagazine.com 23

On the other side of the border from Khajuria lies its mirror image, the small town of Bellaury. One can usually walk freely into the town. There is a stream right at the border demarcating the two countries. A few children, seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck, are charging people Rs 100 to take them to and fro on wooden boats. A light breeze is in the air and the SSB guards are sipping on their tea, oblivious to the many Nepalese on their way home with neatly tucked-in packages of everyday goods, from bicycles to sugar and oil.

Bittu Bhatia, the biggest ‘trader’, comes standing on a boat. The large, portly middle-aged man is unremarkable looking for a smuggler, save for a white bandage on his left arm. A red hatchback is waiting to take him to a doctor for his monthly dialysis in Palia Kalan, a village an hour-and-a-half’s drive away. Bhatia is in no hurry. Introductions are made. He doesn’t consider himself a smuggler.

“We are a Hindu nation; I am just supplying goods to another Hindu nation. It makes me a social worker because Nepal is extremely poor and has nothing. If I make a little profit in the process, how does that make me a bad person? It’s merely tax evasion and I am not the first person to be doing it,” he says laughing. Bhatia’s family were cloth merchants in the area before they turned to the business. It was only after the murder of his brother a decade ago in a gang war that he moved to Nepal and established a safe base.

24 open

Last year, in May, a consignment of red sandalwood from Andhra Pradesh, hidden under sacks of cement, was caught at the border. It was intended for delivery to Bhatia in Bellaury, later to be smuggled into China via Nepal. Ever since that seizure, life has been a little difficult for Bhatia. His godowns in Sampurna Nagar were subsequently sealed. He now uses other people to conduct his business of smuggling goods.

Take, for instance, Manoj Aggarwal, a

Bittu Bhatia, a wanted smuggler, hops the border calmly. “We have no orders to hold him; we don’t know what he looks like,” says an SSB guard, while he looks on co-accused in the red sandalwood case registered against Bhatia because the cement was bought using his TIN number.

Aggarwal got a clean chit from the Crime Branch in Pilibhit. “Bhatia obviously took the fall for him,” says Chamkaur Singh, who also works as a police informer.

The main goods smuggled are food grains, fertilisers—especially urea—betel nuts, cement and wood such as sheesham and sandalwood. “The demand for fertilisers is very big in Nepal since they don’t produce any of their own. Although China has recently start-

ed supplying them, they still prefer what comes from India,” says Bhatia.

Supplying fertilisers is good business, and not just for big fish like Bhatia. Even petty smugglers thrive on it. Ram Kumar, a labourer in the region, says that selling one sack of urea across the border can get him Rs 300-400. “Why would I want to do anything else?” he says.

Kanji Maheswari, an SSB guard posted at Khajuria, says that the open border makes it difficult to catch smugglers. Add to that the fact that most neighbouring villages of Nepal rely on these Indian towns for basic necessities. “We don’t bother checking everyone that passes through. It is done on a random basis. If we act too tough, the villagers give us a tough time.”

That Bhatia just crossed the border calmly despite being wanted shows how completely indifferent the guards were to his being a smuggler. “We have no orders to hold him up and we don’t know what he looks like,” says Maheswari sipping on tea in his tent while Bhatia looks on.

“The border pillars demarcating Nepal from India have been removed from many areas surrounding the town to confuse authorities,” says Rajesh Thakur, commanding officer, SSB, Kheri. Even if smugglers are caught, they manage to escape. “There have been many instances where the SSB involved the local police but the police refused to make a case.

They usually take Rs 35,000-50,000 and 2 September 2013

shadowy lines (Left) Palia Kalan, an unremarkable village near this Indo-Nepal smuggling corridor; (facing page) people pass from India to Nepal through a stream at the border

let the person responsible go free,” says Chamkaur Singh.

T

he border town of Baisehi is anoth-

er smuggling haven, bustling with activity because the only Roadways bus from the region to Delhi starts here. “It makes loading and unloading easy for smugglers,” says Gangu Ram, a shopkeeper in the area. “Everything from human trafficking to trade in hashish and tetracycline is rampant. All you have to do is show up and get on the bus. If you look ordinary enough and have a good cover, you will find yourself with smuggled goods in the capital,” he says.

Samsher Lal, another trader in the area, says that though it’s relatively easy to smuggle goods, there is no foolproof way of doing it. He gives the example of the 35 kg of hashish recently seized while being peddled by a 16-year-old local: “The boy had been doing it for three consecutive days. It was only on the third day that he was caught. He was using the regular passage. He could have gone through any of the alternative routes but he was naïve and unwilling to share [the profits].”

When we reach Baisehi, the village is full of Nepalese women with bicycles who have walked across the three kilometre border to buy goods for an upcoming festival. “These women are usually used as baits for SSB and other officials,” says Lal. Whenever there is a huge consignment that needs to pass through,

2 September 2013

women are sent in droves as decoys with petty goods to distract officials. Once the border gets busy, the goods to be smuggled are transported through alternate routes in the area.

Baisehi borders a forest that, a decade ago, was dense with Rosewood. Now, there is only shrubbery and the occasional tree. “All the rosewood was cut up and smuggled to Nepal,” says Singh. Before the SSB took over, the local police handled checkposts in the area. “Since those people had given a free rein to all smugglers, the situation is a little hard for us to control now,” says Thakur.

At the Baisehi forest check post there is a line of Nepalese women patiently waiting for the SSB to let them pass through.

There is a tractor and trolley full of wood and two large steel containers used normally to store food grain. It is evident that the guards and the person on the tractor know each other. They exchange greetings and are allowed to pass through. The Nepalese women, however, are frisked, held back and later released after the petty goods they carry have been confiscated. Sanjay Mukhiya, a guard posted at the border, says he let the obviously large consignment pass through on the basis of a letter issued by a Gram Panchayat head stating that the goods be allowed to be taken through.

With time, the nature of the business is changing. Now, automobiles and fake currency are being taken across.

Intelligence officials say this is thanks to

Munna Khan and Pappu Khan, two brothers running a poultry farm by day and smuggling by night. “We don’t have any proof of it right now, save for one case last year,” says Akhilesh Pratap Singh of the Intelligence wing of the Uttar Pradesh Police, headquartered in Lucknow. Rumours of an arms trade are also doing the rounds. The Khans are relatively new to the business, less than a decade old. Like most of the smuggling businesses in the area, theirs is also a family concern with seven brothers split between India and Nepal.

“Even the MLAs and MPs of the region are party to smuggling or turn a blind eye to the trade, just citing it as harmless,” says Shamsher Lal. This laissez faire attitude keeps this trade thriving. Rajesh Thakur says that smugglers have everyone on their payroll here. If the officers act tough, the smugglers get creative. Lal says that in 2004 when the SSB chief conducted a crackdown, the smugglers got the SSB’s cook on their pay roll. “Every time the officers were in the mess, the cook would dial his friends and they would carry out their business,” he laughs. The SSB has registered 142 cases of smuggling in the last year.

SRL Verma, a Customs officer in Kheri, states that many smugglers hire labourers on low wages to transport goods across the border. “If one or two get caught, it is no big deal. The blame doesn’t ever [get pinned] directly [on] the person who orchestrated the plan.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 25

gold water High tide at Juhu is high-yield for jewellery divers

s co o p

The Juhu Gold Rush

In the rains, young fishermen who live around this Mumbai beach go out to sea in search of lost jewellery and coins Shubhangi Swarup

photos ritesh uttamchandani

frolic in the waves. Even if they are quick to realise it, it is impossible for them to chase their loss in the moving currents.

Given the Indian obsession with gold, most jewellery is made of this precious metal and adds up to a sizeable quantity lost at Juhu beach every year. But the tide also throws back much of what it takes, and the monsoons are the closest the sea comes to returning things. The worse the weather, the higher the chances of valuables being swept within reach of retrieval.

The phenomenon results in an unusual treasure hunt in the rains, with the best swimmers risking their lives in the choppy waters for a glint of gold.

S

J

uhu is a 24-hour beach. Despite at-

tempts by the police to have it vacated at night, people never leave. Each weekend, by one estimate, as many as 8,000 to 10,000 people visit this strip of sand along north Mumbai’s seashore. On Eid, more than a million were expected to turn up, according to a nervous lifeguard who I spoke with a week before that day.

The police, lifeguards and civil defence

2 September 2013

personnel have to stay alert, working together not only to keep people from drowning, but also to minimise cases of theft, chain snatching, sexual harassment and other forms of crime. Yet they are helpless when the sea claims people’s valuables. Picnickers are often unaware of the water’s tendency to glide rings, bangles, earrings, lockets, chains and other jewellery off their bodies as they

haitaan paani —literally, ‘satanic water’—is how fishermen describe the Arabian Sea in the monsoons, says Chandu, a 26-year-old resident of the north Mumbai fishing village of Moragaon. The waves are usually monstrous and turbulence the only assurance. “Yeh paani bali maangta hai,” he says—the sea demands a sacrifice. His village has had its coastal hutments battered to rubble by the waves this monsoon, the sea level having risen almost 5 metres on several occasions Despite the dangers, Chandu and his friends look forward to the season, especially the hours of dangerous high tides.

Under the cover of 2-3 am darkness, they leap across the ropes that bar human entry and wrestle the waves till the early morning, sieving the sand raised by the surf’s underbelly with a contraption called a ‘fuk’. Traditionally used to trap crabs, it looks like a circular sieve made of a fishing net.

Operation Fuk is dangerous but the boys see it as a risk worth taking. Since the government doesn’t let fishing boats ply in the monsoon, the area’s fisherfolk are left to rely on low-paying temporary jobs for four months, a period during which the temptation to strike gold is hard to ignore.

Ajay, a 19-year-old, is a regular beachcomber. During the day, he hides the sieve in his T-shirt and hunts for treasure in the stormy waters of Silver beach, a part of Juhu beach known for its strong currents and many ditches. He dives into waves far larger than himself, surfacing open www.openthemagazine.com 27

a few metres ahead. At times you see his legs sticking out of the water. Often, only his hands—balancing the sieve. He has to time himself well. When a big wave hits the shore, it momentarily churns up layers of the sandy bottom, exposing rocks and throwing up buried items, and Ajay must sieve the sediments before they settle down again. If he nets something of value, he pops it into his mouth.

On an average day, Ajay finds coins that add up to Rs 20-30. But despite having done this since early adolescence, he is yet to find any gold. This monsoon, he found a one paisa coin with a layer of green patina, dated 1952. He has it on display at home.

Their sifting may be a nuisance, but these boys are also known to rescue others. Mahesh, a 30-year-old fisherman, is a hero among Manghelas, a fisherfolk community, for having saved more lives than anybody else. “To become a lifeguard, I need to be tenth pass,” he says, “but to save someone, I need no pass.”

19-year-old Ajay hunts for treasure at Silver beach. If he finds something of value while sieving the sediments kicked up by the waves, he pops it into his mouth

glitter litter The swarms of tourists who visit Juhu beach every day leave more than trash behind

A

ccording to the lifeguard I speak

to, most of those who drown at Juhu are males aged 15 to 26. “Women don’t go in the deep unless they are suicidal,” he says. “Children stay in the shallow. It’s the boys who don’t listen.” What about the daredevils who sift for valuables?

“Oh, they are expert swimmers,” he replies. “They don’t drown even when they are drunk.” But they do make the ground more dangerous by sifting in ditches, deepening and de-stabilising the sands.

The lifeguard has written a letter highlighting this problem to his higher ups, but nothing has come of it.

28 open

He is lucky with gold. He once found an earring stuck to his foot. He doesn’t count the items he finds, just as he doesn’t count the number of lives he has saved (or corpses he’s retrieved). Finding gold is just a matter of luck, he knows, and is aware that luck can run out.

Unlike his friends, Mahesh doesn’t sell the gold he finds. He will need it for his sister’s marriage (and his own). It is a security cover. If he falls upon hard times, he may need it to sustain himself. “If I go to sell this gold, I can do it easily,” he says, “But if I want to buy the same jewellery, I cannot afford it.”

Though such gold trinkets can be sold via informal deals, it is easy to get duped.

This season, Chandu sold a chain and ring that he found for Rs 13,000, but has no clue of the jewellery’s actual value.

Sometimes, the boys sell their retrieved items to bystanders. But they do have a regular customer in a jeweller who visits Moragaon on weekends on his bike to buy their catch. The local boys know him by face but not name—a detail they fear could land them all in trouble.

If the seasonal search for gold were better organised, it may have had the makings of a little cottage industry by the sea.

But it remains one of Juhu’s best kept secrets, and even if word of it gets around, the boys need not fear much competition. The risks are enormous and the odds of spotting gold so steep, few would dare join them. What keeps them jumping into the sea is the dream of finding that five-tola gold bangle. Just last season, a fisherman found one.

Jewellers do not admit to buying such jewellery of dubious origin, policemen and lifeguards claim not to endorse this activity (let alone seek a share of the catch), and even the boys themselves innocently claim that lost coins are all they are looking for. But when you ask anyone, even a hawaldar, what he would do should he come across a mangalsutra washed ashore by the tide, he would claim it as his own ‘samundar ki dain (gift of the sea)’. And the greater the turbulence, the greater the sea’s generosity.

C

handu recalls Mumbai’s cloud-

burst of 26 July 2005, a downpour that submerged large parts of the city. Along with his friends, he ferried people across the flooded Juhu Circle with the aid of a large slab of thermacol that he used as a rescue raft. They even helped Hrithik Roshan, he claims. Chandu recalls that episode as three days of hard work, helping people by day and searching for lost items by night. On the night of 26 July, he found five items—a bracelet, earring, jhumka, chain and payal—on Juhu beach.

He sold it all to a local jeweller and made a cool Rs 38,000. Everyone found something, he says. Even sofas, chairs, drums and buckets were up for grabs that night.

All that could be found on land had washed ashore from the sea. n 2 September 2013

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m a r at h o n

Why People Run The motivations of common people who run distances that most others can’t even walk Akshay Sawai

B

hasker Desai exports garments

but seems to have an imported accent. His pronunciation is a hotchpotch of Gujarati and Western styles. “It is a fake accent,” he says with a grin. “To impress the ladies.”

Desai is a trim man in his sixties with a nascent grey French beard. He is a longdistance runner. He started running for health reasons. Around 2006, his triglycerides were over 900. He also runs for his ‘angels’. Who they are, he won’t say.

When asked again, he reveals they are his deceased wife and son.

We are at Marine Drive at about 8 on a cloudy Sunday morning, among hordes of runners practising for the marathon season, which begins with the Hyderabad marathon on 25 August. A little away from us is Anil Ambani, doing stretch exercises on the parapet. Not far from him is a poor but strong young man in a sleeveless vest and jeans, doing squats. There are also several running groups that have finished their workout.

Members of one group eat greasy mawa cakes out of a big cardboard box. There is a lot of noise and bustle. But when Desai mentions his bereavement, everything seems to go quiet for a moment.

The sea and sky over Marine Drive are grey. However, the runners in their fluorescent running gear provide a bright foreground, as if fighting the gloom of the elements. There must be about a thousand people at the Nariman Point stretch of Marine Drive alone. Others are on their way here, from Chowpatty, Malabar Hill, Dadar or Bandra. It can also be presumed that there are more runners at Juhu beach, on the forest trails of Aarey Milk Colony and indeed all over Mumbai. What would be the number of 30 open

people running in the city at any given time on weekends? 50,000? Twice that figure? Even more? No one has really counted, but it is a lot. Spots in the Mumbai Marathon take only a little longer to fill up than Chhagan Bhujbal takes to colour his hair. (The 65-year-old politician, rarely seen without a dye job, is the patron of the event.) Running has well and truly taken hold of the city. On weekends, Marine Drive feels like Everest Base Camp. It’s the same explosion of mass interest in a so-far specialised activity, the same ambition to scale a peak, although one of another kind.

But while the common motivation for people to run is the promise of health and extended youth, some do it for other reasons. Desai, emotionally rudderless after his loss, seeks solace in his running group at least for those two or three hours every other morning. The running fraternity has embraced him. “No marathoner worth his salt will not know of BD,” says a running acquaintance of his from Bangalore. Desai is the joker of the bunch as well as its cranky old man (in his own words) whose command cannot be disobeyed. During breakfast after the run at Stadium Restaurant near Churchgate Station, he teases Simta Jha, also part of the group, that she runs because she is in love with someone.

Desai has delegated the day-to-day operations of his export business to others.

This enables him to focus on running and shorten the time he clocks to qualify—within his age group—for elite marathons around the world. He was at the Boston Marathon earlier this year when the blasts happened. He has run in Athens and Washington DC. It was in Washington DC in 2011 that he met

American running legend Bill Rodgers, who advised him on what to wear for the cold weather race. He also gave him an autographed card that said, ‘Desai, let’s run forever.’ Says Desai, “Being Indian I got greedy and asked him to sign my bib as well.” Rodgers obliged, writing, ‘Desai, see you at Boston.’

he next Sunday, at another end of the city, Kripa Sagar, 47, wakes up at 4 am in her house in Nerul, New Bombay.

She drives 30 km to Nere, near the base of the hill station of Matheran. From Nere, Sagar and about 50 runners run in the direction of Panvel, covering a scenic undulating route and encountering only the

T

2 September 2013

photos ritesh uttamchandani

Limbering up Mumbai’s runners often describe their experience as a boost for health and happiness

odd State Transport bus, cow or stray dog.

At one point, it starts pouring. “I felt like a child,” Sagar says.

Running helped Sagar banish from her life the Benson & Hedges Lights that she once could not do without. She had started smoking in college. Attempts over the years to give up were abortive. A mother of two and a businesswoman dealing in electronic instrumentation for metallurgical industries, she had settled into a groove of work, family life and five or six cigarettes a day. She says the only act of physical labour she subjected herself to those days was working the TV remote control. Life changed with the visit of a cousin in December 2010.

“She was training for the marathon. I 2 September 2013

asked her ‘Should I come?’ I ran 1.4 km. It was the first time I had run that much in my life,” Sagar says. “I dreamt of running for the longest time, but something always held me back. First, the kids were small. Then there were social inhibitions. Or people would be worried about pollution or stray dogs chasing me or a car knocking me down.”

Sagar, however, stuck with her new hobby. She lost weight and her posture improved. “My body started to mean more to me,” she says. And on 10 May 2011, in a move reminiscent of the film This is 40, she junked the cigarettes. She says she hasn’t smoked since. Now a seasoned runner who competes in 11 races a year, including full marathons, Sagar is

launching a campaign called ‘Take a Breath of Fresh Air’. It will encourage people to stop smoking and take up running. Starting with the Hyderabad marathon, Sagar plans to run a race every month in each state and Union Territory of India and is looking for sponsors of the project.

“Usually smokers are miserable when trying to kick the habit, but it is possible to give up cigarettes and be happy,” Sagar says. “There is a direct link between running and smoking. You smoke because nicotine releases chemicals in your blood that give you a high. Running releases the same chemicals. That’s the runner’s high.”

The desire to lead a healthier life also open www.openthemagazine.com 31

made 28-year-old corporate law firm associate Vinay Butani slip his tired feet into running shoes. Butani works 12-13 hours a day. On Saturday nights, he would party with friends at High Street Phoenix, not far from his office. “We would be out till 2 or 3 am and wake up late on Sundays,” Butani says, eating his post-run no-butter-please egg bhurji at Stadium Restaurant. “It did not feel healthy.” He participated in the Mumbai Marathon in 2012, finishing the 21 km half-marathon in 3 hours and 17 minutes. Blood tasted, he wanted more.

Hyderabad followed. He did 21 km in 2 hours 40 minutes. In this year’s Mumbai Marathon, he was home in 2.07 hours. His target for the 2014 Mumbai Marathon is a common dream among amateur-yet-serious runners who run

started training. The one hour of running helped her get fit and vent her frustrations. Listening to music—the title song of the film Lakshya was one of her favourites—as her feet pounded the earth, she recovered her determination to deal with the challenges of the day.

If Kripa Sagar uses running as a vehicle to drive home a message about smoking, Dalvi is doing the same with autism. And she is back to 50 kg. Asked how running changed her life, she says, “It got me into shape. It made me feel strong emotionally and physically.” Life is still tough for Dalvi. She lives in Mulund. Her son’s school is in Govandi and has therapy sessions in Andheri. Her day starts at 5 am and ends at 11 pm. “I have made sacrifices. I hardly socialise. But I’m happier.”

Writer Haruki Murakami (one can’t

going strong Sixty-something Bhasker Desai began running to cope with the loss of his wife and son

the half-marathon: a ‘sub-two’. Roti, kapda and a sub-two are the basic necessities of this breed. “My friends have disowned me,” Butani says, “but my boss takes me seriously.”

The factors that precipitated Sayuri Dalvi’s adoption of the practice were more serious. Her ex-husband was alcoholic and abusive. Her eight-year-old son Vihaan is autistic. For a while, she sought respite in food. A petite woman of 50 kg, she bloated to 70 kg. “My father said ‘enough is enough’,” Dalvi says. With three months to go for the marathon, she 32 open

avoid bringing up Murakami San on this subject) is a running enthusiast and also a beer aficionado. After the last yard of the 42.195 km marathon course is conquered, he likes nothing better than to submit himself to the simple pleasure of a cold beer. Ram Venkatraman’s story is somewhat similar. The 51-year-old, 5 foot 8 inch company secretary from Mumbai loved beer. He also was partial to dessert.

His wake-up call came not from the shrill bell of a clock but from the quiet condemnation of a weighing scale. His indulgences had puffed Ram up to 84 kg. This

was around 15 years ago. To reclaim his health, he started running. Just five to ten minutes at first, and then more later.

Today, he is a serious runner who brushes off 21 km a few times every week. His weight is down to 67 kg. The sweets are under control. There are phases when he can’t resist his beloved slabs of Dairy Milk chocolate, but they last just two or three days after which he compensates with hard training.

aibhav Jain, a marketing manager with Aircel, had a sobering experience when he was overtaken by a much older man during the 2008 Mumbai marathon. “I was just 22 at that time, and he was over 50,” Jain says. “He was running barefoot and very slowly, but at a consistent pace. I overtook him once, but eventually he passed me. The next day, he was written about in the papers.

I was inspired and also realised I had to run better.”

Having been a sprinter at school, it did not take long for Jain to rebuild his stamina. Running also pushed him to undergo a surgery for sinusitis. “I was living with, but wanting to improve my performance was the incentive to get the surgery done,” he says. Prior to long distance running, the 5 foot 6 inch Jain’s weight was 72 kg and waist 34 inches. Now it is 62 kg and 30-32 inches.

There are some people who have shifted the focus of their careers because of their love for fitness and running. One of them is trainer and runner Raj Vadgama.

“I’m a Gujarati Portuguese,” he jokes as he sips tea after a run one Sunday, a film of cream draped over the edge of the cup.

The 46-year-old Vadgama, who is also an expert at martial arts, has been in the fitness industry for 27 years. He is also an interior decorator. But he derives more satisfaction from helping people get into shape and teaching ladies techniques of self-defence in this country of louts. So he has scaled down his interior decoration business to spend time on that.

Vadgama is not content doing just the half and full marathons. He also participates in ultra-marathons, which involve running (or walking) beyond the 42.195 km length of the classic marathon. Be it cars or legs, to Indians, it’s about getting maximum mileage. n

V

2 September 2013

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p i r ac y

Cash for Notes iTunes is selling music in India at very affordable prices.

But can the Indian listener be persuaded to pay?

TUSHAR MENON

W

hen a favourite band of mine

streamed the lead single from its forthcoming album, I scoured the internet for a download of any sort, safe in the sanctimonious knowledge that I would buy the album when it came out. A Google search led me to Apple Computer’s Indian iTunes store where the song was available for Rs 15. I was convinced there was a mistake, but I signed in and downloaded the song.

I tested the selection available by searching for a few stock obscure albums, much like my father taught me to test a new dictionary by checking for words like ‘anent’. What surprised me more than the impressive selection of albums, many of which are either out of print or practically impossible to 34 open

acquire, was that every single album I searched for cost no more than Rs 120.

These are the same albums that are priced $8-15 at the American iTunes store. The difference is startling to say the least. iTunes arrived in India quietly last December with a revolutionary aim: to change how music lovers acquire their music—specifically music that is created and copyrighted outside India, since distribution channels for Indian music are often quite different and rather complex. With this development, music distribution in India is poised to change.

I

llegal downloading of music from

outside India is so much a part of our

culture that the idea of paying for it is seen as exceptional. When the Swedish rock band Pain of Salvation headlined IIT-M’s Saarang Festival in 2011, a large portion of the 7,000-plus crowd sang along with most songs, despite the fact that until then it was impossible to buy the band’s albums in India unless they were specially ordered from elsewhere.

Drummer Leo Margarit told me that the situation is similar in South America, where the band regularly plays to passionate fans whose numbers are far larger than Pain of Salvation’s total album sales in the region.

Digital media—and music in particular—is at the forefront of the debate on intellectual property because it was the first commodity (to put it crudely) of 2 September 2013

which exact copies could be made without the expense of further resources or the original being diminished.

Psychoacoustic theories allowed for the compression of music files with a loss in quality that most human ears could not sense. This made it possible for songs to be distributed over the internet even when speeds were nowhere as high as they are today. And this is how musicians, not filmmakers or artists, became unwitting guinea pigs.

The iTunes experiment is in a position to reveal something deep about urban India’s attitude towards music from overseas. Initial signs are far from promising, especially in light of the closure of Flipkart’s Flyte service, which cited music piracy as the primary cause of its demise.

Unlike services like Nokia Music and Sony Music’s Jive service, iTunes does not require any special purchases or subscription. It runs on virtually any computer, and at worst, you will have to convert music from Apple’s proprietary m4a format to the mp3 format, something that can be done within iTunes itself. It is simple and requires no commitment.

For years, the pro-illegal-download lobby has relied on the argument that limited availability of legal sources of music necessitates less ethical alternatives.

Music retailers in India made available only the most popular rock and pop bands’ albums. In order to listen to anything more obscure than Michael Jackson or Sting, one had no choice but to find alternatives in the back-alleys of the internet.

As more albums became available in the form of imports, there was an issue of pricing. A tag of Rs 1,000 was deemed exorbitant for a CD, so scruples be damned, it was back to the back-alleys.

As a result, these and many other albums disappeared off store shelves with depressing efficiency.

Whether the real issue was the price itself or the notion that music should be paid for at all is a question that will certainly be addressed by the iTunes experiment. In India, it has the advantage of a vast existing library that it can tap and on which it can offer huge discounts, unlike Flyte, which effectively had to start from scratch.

2 September 2013

T

he ubiquity of free copyright-pro-

tected music has also led to attempts at justifying these illegal downloads on ethical grounds. While it is often unfair to attack a stance based on its most extreme adherents, I must briefly bring up the ‘Free Music Philosophy’— as compiled by Ram Samudrala of University of Washington in Seattle, USA, a long-time proponent of the free distribution of copyrighted music— simply because it presents a systematic collection of many of the ideas that masquerade as arguments against intellectual property rights.

Samudrala puts forth several reasons why freeing music of copyright is ‘ethically the right thing to do’: ‘Limiting your creativity to specific audiences, especially based on monetary reasons, is shirking existential responsibility and destructive to society as a whole.’ This is an argument that has been presented in various forms before. If all creative endeavours are achieved as a

Music is a luxury, not a right.

Downloading it illegally is not civil disobedience, it is theft. No amount of verbal calisthenics will change that fact result of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, then, according to Samudrala, no one has the right to derive any remuneration from one’s own contributions—a patently absurd suggestion. By extension, no human endeavour is deserving of any form of monetary compensation.

He continues: ‘in order to prevent “illegal” copies from being made, a tremendous burden… must be placed on all individuals to circumvent human nature.’

This implies that laws of any description should be abolished, since they are all in place to circumvent some aspect of human nature.

Samudrala goes on, with no compunction, to say, ‘the greatest reward musicians should have is their own music and nothing else.’ It is extremely easy for a tenured academic to extol the virtues of art for art’s sake at the expense of income.

Some musicians may decide to forgo

monetary rewards in favour of artistic fulfilment, though the two are in no sense mutually exclusive. No one, however, has the right to demand that this be the case for all musicians. The reality is that many artistes make the best of a deteriorating situation by making their music available free so that it is heard, hoping that the exposure will eventually result in people paying for their music.

This does not amount to a tacit approval of this state of affairs.

In a paper published in Journal of Business Ethics, entitled ‘Ethical Issues in the Music Industry Response to Innovation and Piracy’, Robert Easley draws attention to the perception that circumventing copyright laws is a form of civil disobedience ‘designed to protest the excessive scope of copyright protections, and attendant limits on distribution and price gouging’.

Once again, this is absurd. Music is a luxury, not a fundamental right.

Downloading music illegally is not civil disobedience, it is theft. No amount of verbal calisthenics will change that fact.

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debate is already raging, most

recently reignited by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, anent the company Spotify’s subscription-based model.

Spotify offers a subscriber unlimited access to its database of millions of songs for a monthly fee of around $10. Artistes receive royalties on their songs based on the number of times they are played, according to an algorithm that is obscure and far from generous.

The Spotify debate, however, is one that will only become relevant to India if the iTunes experiment succeeds. With prices as low as they are at this online store, a similar debate on the compensation received by musicians is likely.

If iTunes can demonstrate that given the opportunity, Indian consumers will pay for music, it will pave the way for India to be seen globally as a legitimate market—bringing with it, among other things, the advantages of having a voice in such a debate.

If not, then the message is either that musicians are not considered worthy of remuneration or, more likely, that most people are just indifferent to the problem of piracy. n open www.openthemagazine.com 35

lo n g h au l

The Relocation of Shiva

The challenge of moving a 2,500 kg rhinoceros across 1,400 km for a mate Lhendup G Bhutia photographs by ritesh uttamchandani

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n a rainy Wednesday morning, a ramshackle Premier Padmini taxi enters Veermata Jijabai Bhonsle Zoo in Byculla, Mumbai. The cab is a mess. Its doors creak, the paint is wearing off and its engine often sputters to a halt. But what is of particular interest is the vehicle’s cargo: heaps of sugarcane on the carrier above and large bundles of leaves and bananas on the seats beside and behind the driver.

Like every Wednesday, the zoo is closed to outsiders. But old men in white sneakers and young lovers have sneaked in for a walk. The cab moves through these groups of morning strollers, struggling under the weight of its load, and disappears into one of the zoo’s many gravel lanes.

What the taxi is carrying is a day’s feed for Shiva, the zoo’s only rhinoceros.

Shiva is soon to leave Mumbai for Delhi Zoo, where two suitable mates have been found for him. They are Magesgwari and her daughter Anjuka. Magesgwari, 18, lost her male companion, Raja, eight years ago. But how does one drive a truck 1,400 km on a highway, a journey of at least four days, carrying a 2,500 kg rhino?

Shiva is a large grown-up rhinoceros of about 34 years. That is old for rhinos, who usually live up to 40 or 45. He’s even larger than he seems in photographs. He is also slothful. He walks dragging his feet, as though he’d rather not perform the Herculean task of lifting his limbs. His keepers claim that Shiva can charge at a target when he is in the mood, but this seems implausible.

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hiva was brought to the zoo in 1985, when he was six, from a zoo in Guwahati. Since then, zoo authorities have been looking to have him mated but have proven unsuccessful. Most female rhinos in other zoos already had a male companion, or their authorities refused

2 September 2013

to part with them citing the Mumbai zoo’s poor record of animal upkeep.

In 2005, Ranchi Zoo had a single female rhino available and a decision was taken to send Shiva there. It took three days of effort before Shiva budged—or allowed himself to be. His cage was lifted by a crane onto a lorry. But a group of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers appeared, claiming the rhino as a symbol of the state’s pride and saying they would not allow his transfer. The plan had to be shelved.

In the years that followed, a new story started making the rounds that Shiva would be shipped to a Thailand zoo. It did not happen. He was left to cut a lonely if bulky figure as the sole occupant of his zoo enclosure. Twice, he developed a murderous fit, resulting in human fatalities. Once he kicked and gored his keeper. On another occasion, a visitor’s shoe fell in the rhino’s enclosure. On entering it to retrieve the shoe, this man suffered the same fate as the keeper. Shiva’s veterinarians say that the absence of a mate could explain such aggression.

Now that Shiva is at an advanced age, zoo authorities are trying to have him mated once again. “We don’t know what will happen. We don’t even know if he’d be in the mood to mate,” says Dr Sanjay Tripathi, the zoo’s veterinary officer, speaking a day before the animal is to be moved.

This morning, five keepers are tending to Shiva’s enclosure. One shoos away crows perching on the rhino. Three others clean up the cage adjoining the enclosure. And one more is just around to supply stories of the rhino. The zoo’s director, Anil Anjankar, has already apprised the media of how momentous the proceedings are going to be. Journalists, photographers and cameramen keep showing up throughout the morning. At some point, the director makes an appearance.

Wearing a crisp white shirt, his hair

neatly parted at the side, he rehearses his answers before answering actual questions on camera.

Minutes turn to hours. The rhino refuses to enter the cage, to which a trail of leaves has been laid from the enclosure.

The animal refuses the lure. Leaves have also been placed inside the cage—11 feet in height and six feet in breadth and width—to trick him into seeing it as an extension of the enclosure. There are also sugarcane rods and bananas to entice him. But the rhino doesn’t oblige. He just roams around the enclosure, marking his territory by shooting powerful jets of urine. Jokes on urinary incontinence are cracked. Later, when two crows start picking on his nether regions, a large elephant trunk-like phallus descends—almost to the ground. Jokes follow on his state of arousal.

The cage is covered with plywood on all sides. At times, the rhino places one foot into the cage but takes it off at the sound of a plywood creak. On another occasion, he half enters the cage. Two men suddenly jolt into position to shut the cage’s gate. Shiva’s keepers cheer him on.

Television journalists train their cameras on him for the grand entry. But the rhino simply turns around.

More food is placed in the cage. The water level in his enclosure, where he likes to laze around, is lowered. A veterinarian produces an injection. Its content is shot into bananas that he is fed through the grills. People ask if he is being sedated.

But these only turn out to be medicines for a wound he has on his horn, inflicted by a nasty rub against a wall. “If we sedate him, how do we carry him?” the vet asks and laughs at her own joke. Even if they did manage to tranquilise and get him into the cage, the stress could possibly incite violent behaviour once it wakes up.

By the time the Delhi Zoo team reaches Byculla, most journalists have left. The team, which specialises in animal transopen www.openthemagazine.com 37

fraught freight (Overleaf) Shiva, the reluctant traveller; and (left) his cage for the truck journey to Delhi

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port, is led by Dr Paanneer Selvam, a vet, and includes five Delhi Zoo employees.

One of them says they have moved leopards, tigers and deer, among other animals, from various Indian zoos to Delhi.

Dr Selvam, who has a habit of punching his chin in contemplation, intervenes to say something. “But,” he says and pauses, punching himself harder, “never a rhino.”

Two vehicles are to be used for this transfer to Delhi. Four people will travel in a truck with the rhino, while Dr Selvam and a driver accompany it in a Toyota Innova. The journey will take at least four days, since the truck must be driven at a speed no more than 50 kmph, lest Shiva suffers motion stress, though rubber tyres will be placed under the cage as shock absorbers. The party has identified government guest houses along the route where they can put up for the night, leaving the rhino in its cage.

However, in case they are unable to make these destinations, they say they will have to make do with roadside hotels.

Zoos along the route have also been alerted of the plan, in case they need help.

Some food for the rhino will be taken along, some will be bought on the way, and some will be gathered on the spot by the group. One of the workers shows a cleaver with which they hope to chop grass on the way. Shiva, his keepers say, consumes 50-60 kg of food everyday.

38 open

As members of the Delhi team discuss the plan with their Mumbai counterparts, there is an air of a wedding under preparation. Dr Selvam, who has overheard Dr Tripathi expressing worry over whether Shiva will adjust to life in Delhi Zoo, has father-in-lawish words of reassurance. “Don’t worry,” he says, “We will take care of him. He will be one of us now.” It’s comical, but they all mean what they say.

When a hotel manager asked what was in the truck and was told it was a rhino, he apparently replied: “Haan, aur aapke room mein haathi hai” If this is an arranged marriage, then the matchmakers are at India’s Central Zoo Authority (CZA). Anjankar, who claims he had given up hope of Shiva’s ever finding a mate, says he received a notice from the CZA a few days ago asking for Shiva’s transfer to Delhi Zoo, which was in search of a male mate.

For all the jokes about Shiva’s arousal earlier in the day, he seems reluctant to act in his own sexual interest. As day turns into evening, he obstinately stays away from the cage.

he next day, the same routine is fol-

lowed, but Shiva still does not budge.

Friday too passes by. By Saturday, Dr Selvam is jittery. It has taken longer than expected and some of his men have asked if they should give up and return.

“Rhinos are temperamental animals,” says Dr Selvam, “It depends on their mood. We have to be patient.”

On Saturday, apart from leaves and other food, the cage is also smeared with Shiva’s dung. Zoo authorities have done this so that Shiva is tricked into thinking of this space as just another part of his enclosure. But apart from the occasional one step, the rhino keeps away.

On Sunday morning, a zookeeper notices that the rhino is lurking around the cage. Messages are sent to the other keepers. For almost a hundred hours now, his keepers have been reducing food availability in his enclosure and stacking it instead in the cage. Hunger, they hope, will eventually draw him in.

At around 11 am, the rhino enters the cage. Everyone is relieved and ready.

Once Shiva senses the gates shutting behind him, he throws a fit of anger that lasts a few minutes. He kicks a water trough in the cage, but then appears to calm down. A crane that has been on standby since Wednesday is summoned.

The cage is lifted and placed on the truck at around 1 pm. By 4 pm, the two vehicles depart for Delhi.

By Monday noon, the two vehicles have trundled past Baroda. They had to halt for the night at a highway hotel near the Maharashtra-Gujarat border. Over the phone, Dr Selvam says the hotel manager asked what they had in the truck.

When he was told it was a rhino, the manager apparently replied, “Haan, aur aapke room mein haathi hai (Yes, and there’s an elephant in your room),” Dr Selvam recounts animatedly. “The journey has been smooth so far. Shiva doesn’t appear stressed. He is eating and drinking normally. We should be in Delhi by…”—he pauses, perhaps for a few chin punches—“…day after morning.” n 2 September 2013

true Life

mindspace Among the Monks

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O p e n s pa c e

Sunny Leone Mallika Sherawat Imran Khan Shahid Kapoor

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n p lu

Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara The Smurfs 2

61 Cinema reviews

Sony Vaio Pro 13 Ocean Sport Chronograph Acer P3

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Tech & style

Near-death Experiences Check Your Coffee Intake Too Young for Soft Drinks

54

Science

Making of Jail Biryani

52

p h o t o e s s ay

Shoojit Sircar: Canned Conscience

50

cinema

Confessions of an Amateur Cook

43

food

The New Bihar The Art of Joy

books

Arranged Marriage Adventures

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ritesh uttamchandani

a photo story Freedom Biryani, made by the inmates of Kerala’s jails 54

true life

‘Let’s Share The Cock’ Prospective grooms say the darndest things. Nandini Krishnan gathers stories of hilarious adventures of women in the bizarre world of marriage arrangement

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here are some women, and I

must include myself in this lot, who believe that a groom hunt can be a series of traumatic experiences. Of course, one knows sensible people who have had arranged marriages to each other, but sometimes a good match can seem like something that only happens to other people. Most women I know have had at least one terrible encounter. The good thing about these is that they’ll give you plenty of stories to tell.

The gentleman missed-caller

While I didn’t meet anyone in the arranged marriage circuit face-to-face, I did consider a proposal from someone I had met through work. I was 22 years old, and had just got a well-paying job after returning to India with a Master’s degree. When the person in question told me he was in love with me—at our third work-related meeting—and wanted to marry me, I told him to speak to my family, since I was neither attracted to him nor put off by him. That state of affairs would change when I came out of the studio one day to find seven missed calls from him.

When I called back, apologised for missing the calls and asked what was wrong, he replied, sounding puzzled, “No, no, those were meant to be missed calls. Journalists get reimbursed for their phone calls, no? I have to pay my own phone bills, so I thought we’ll communicate this way.”

Locked-in

Manisha Bhave was doing her MPhil, 40 open

when a family friend tried to set up a match.

“He had passed out of some random management institute in Ghaziabad.

I was only 23, and I had no plans of looking for a groom. Apparently, she didn’t even tell my mom this was a ‘ladki dekhna’ or ‘meet karna’ party, so I was clueless. But I could sense something was wrong. Suddenly, this family friend pushes me and this guy into their bedroom, so we can ‘talk’! I was so spooked out. The guy gave me his résumé as an introduction. I found it really odd that we couldn’t talk in the main hall—and this is aside from being angry at the way I’d been entrapped—so I decided to get out of the room. I realised only when I couldn’t push the door open, and had to knock, that the latch had been drawn and we’d been locked in!”

Manisha’s mother was horrified when she realised her friend had locked the girl in with a stranger.

“Mom tried to tell herself the friend was being helpful, though she didn’t like the locking-in part at all. I swore I wouldn’t step into that friend’s house ever. It shouldn’t happen to anyone!”

The shaadi mandi

When Akanksha Mehra heard the mother of a prospective groom was coming to meet the family before the couple would be allowed to meet, she decided to stay out of the way. “I found it somewhat strange that she wanted to come and meet the family before I met the guy. Obviously, my intention was to let my parents do the talking,

and to stay in my room. Suddenly, she asked to see me, and it took my parents by surprise, so they didn’t think [they could] say I was out.”

When she went downstairs, the mother of the boy looked her up and down, and asked her height.

Apparently, her son was tall, and had said he would not marry anyone who was shorter than 5 feet 6 inches.

“Then, she asked if I usually tie my hair up or leave it loose. I was like, is she going to want to count my teeth next?” Akanksha says, with a shake of the head. “It felt like one of those sabzi mandis, where the aunties break the ends of the bhindi, toss the tomatoes to test them and smell the onions.”

The Malayali Frank Zappa

Shreya Gopal’s first meeting with a prospective groom was in 2007. She refused to wear a sari, and her parents settled for a salwar-kameez. “I think they were relieved I didn’t insist on sitting there in shorts and a T-shirt. But anyway, there was this pennu kaanal [‘bride seeing’ in Malayalam] atmosphere, and that’s how the madness started. My house was spring-cleaned and spruced up, and all the stuff that was considered junk was packed away and stuffed into the balcony, and everything else that was considered unsightly was stuffed under the bed. Basically, all excess fat was trimmed. The house looked spic and span, but you look under the bed or the balcony, and you would see everything that went into making a disastrous house.”

Ironically, this would become a met2 september 2013

randy olson/national geographic society/corbis

aphor for her interactions with the boys who were uniformly ‘tall, fair, good-looking, highly qualified’, and often turned out to be podgy men with soft stomachs and oil dripping through wisps of hair.

The first pennu kaanal started off on a sour note. It was May Day, and Shreya had just started working. So she and her colleagues had planned a fun day out, to be topped off with a movie. She was resentful about having to cancel on them. Her brother, who had made his own plans with college friends, wasn’t happy either.

“So both of us were sulking about how this had been sprung on us. The bell rang. I, of course, don’t know how to be coy, so I opened the door myself and went, ‘Hello, how are you?’ My mother is standing and wondering what was wrong with her daughter.

And I’m wondering what was wrong 2 september 2013

with my family. This guy had a FrankZappa-style seventies’ handlebar moustache, and he was dressed up really strange—shiny formal shirt with jeans, and really shiny formal shoes.

And I could smell the coconut oil on his hair from where I was standing. I was like ughhhhhhhh . . . so, I went to the kitchen, and said, ‘Thankfully, he’s taller than me, at least.’”

They were asked to get to know each other. “There was literally nothing about him that I could get excited about. His idea of reading was the newspaper. And his idea of partying was, ‘I party, but only with boys’ and I’m like . . . what?! And then he looks at me and goes, ‘Your eyebrows have a really nice shape. Do you go to the parlour, like every day or every week or something, what’s the story?’”

The shape of her eyebrows altered at that question, and Shreya told him it

was none of his business.

“Then, he said something about how he doesn’t like to talk, his mother’s the talker in the family, and he would rather be left alone. I’m like umm, maybe you shouldn’t marry a girl like me if you just want to be left alone? So I kept asking him questions, and he gave me monosyllabic answers, and finally he comes up with, ‘See, when I marry a girl, she has to have one hundred per cent character.’ I have no idea what he meant by that.”

It turned out he had already met his idea of the perfect bride. He went on to describe her to Shreya, emphasising her ‘one hundred per cent character.’

“And I’m thinking ‘Why didn’t he just marry her, what is he doing in my house?’ Then I realised she must have rejected him too, because he’s boring, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t read, he doesn’t watch TV, and he doesn’t open www.openthemagazine.com 41

know what not to say either. I mean, he suddenly saw my brother sitting and laughing with everyone else, and Sigmund Freud went, ‘Hey, your brother’s a bit of a flirt, right?’ And I’m wondering, ‘Where the hell did this come out of?!’ I’m trying to steer the conversation to neutral territory, about whether he reads, and what he likes to do, and here he is, asking if my brother’s a flirt. I gave him this one look, and just then my aunt called me in from the kitchen to serve the tea. The kitchen, of course, was the hub of all the conversation. As soon as I went in, she said, ‘That weirdo is not becoming a son-inlaw of this house.’ I was so glad there was at least one person who was on the same page as I. Because they came through a family friend, and everyone wanted it to work out—he’s such an intelligent boy, and so good-looking, and this is a match made in heaven and blah blah blah, and I just wanted to say to everybody, ‘Have you, like, met him?’”

Shreya knew she would have to spend the rest of her life justifying to herself why she’d married him, and she didn’t want to do that.

The Coke-and-Bull story

Shreya had no intention of entertaining any more prospective grooms at home. And so, her father arranged for them to meet at a club.

“I kid you not. He was two inches shorter than me. I was wearing flats, and he was wearing those sidey platform heels. So, when my dad said, ‘You guys talk, I’m going for a swim’, I was like oh, no, please don’t do this!

Anyway, the waiter came up, and this guy ordered two Red Bulls. I’m like, excuse me, I’d rather have a Coke, thank you for asking.”

When the drinks finally arrived—by which time Heels had asked her about her hobbies—he realised the Red Bull wasn’t cold enough.

“I’m sipping my drink, and suddenly, I hear this voice going, ‘Let’s share the cock’. I nearly choked. And then I saw he was pointing at my drink.”

Shreya doesn’t remember much else from the encounter, except for her relief at her father’s return. However, 42 open

they weren’t rid of Heels yet. It turned out he expected them to drop him back.

The deformity theorist

Next, Shreya was registered [at] a marriage bureau which asked for a full-length photograph. Since she wasn’t likely to agree to dress up for a studio photograph, her father seized the opportunity at a wedding they had gone to. Half-amused and half-annoyed, she posed.

“So, we sent off this picture. And

Everyone wanted it to work out—

he’s such an intelligent boy, and so

goodlooking, and this is a match made in heaven and blah blah blah, and I just wanted to say to everybody,

‘have you, like, met him?’

I kid you not, the father of a groom wrote in, asking whether I was hiding a deformity. Apparently, my arm was folded. That’s the level of scrutiny to which some families subject brides. I had to stop my dad from calling this guy up to give him a piece of his mind.”

Photoshopped into America

Since the marriage bureaus usually sent couriers addressed to ‘Father of Shreya Gopal’, she and her brother got into the habit of opening the packages

and scrutinising the proposals.

Their efforts paid off when they found a photograph of a boy wearing a sherwani, with his arm around his mother.

“They were obviously at a wedding.

But the background is this industrial place, with a hip-looking bus stop.

We found it weird. And then I noticed this was a flash photograph of the boy and his mother. And then you have this background in broad daylight. So, basically the parents wanted to convey that he was in the US right now, and so they’d Photoshopped an American background into this. And it was... umm... well, we laughed our heads off.”

The mute witness

Devyani Khanna says one of the weirdest encounters she has had was with a man who simply wouldn’t talk. “It makes you paranoid. When you take time out of your day to meet a potential partner, you hope for a pleasant meeting—or, at the very least, an interesting one. You aren’t prepared for stony silence.”

This is what happened. “So, I went and sat. We said hi-hello. And then, he wouldn’t talk. He simply wouldn’t talk.

When he had to answer, he’d mumble something, and I had to strain my ears to hear. It was literally like sitting across a stone. I tried talking to him for two minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes, and then I gave up and decided, go to hell. We each ordered our food, and then I sat silent.

Finally, he asked one or two questions.

In half an hour or so, our food was done, we didn’t talk at all, and we left.

I was so pissed, I didn’t even say nicemeeting-you or whatever. That sort of scars you, because you’ve taken some trouble for this day, applied for a day off, some of your friends know, your family knows, it’s an emotional investment, it’s an investment of your time, and then you meet someone like this.

It pisses you off.” n Extracted from Hitched: The Modern Indian Woman and Arranged Marriage

by Nandini Krishnan, Random House India 2 september 2013

Books The Value of History There is a lot that Bihar can learn from its glorious past to solve problems currently plaguing the state amartya sen

begin by noting, is an extraordinary part of India. It is exceptionally distinguished in its past—its stellar role as the centre of Indian civilisation for over a thousand years.

If Bihar was the most progressive part of India from around the time of Gautama Buddha for a millennium or more, it is notable, in a very different way, in its present state of social backwardness and unusual poverty. And

there is a third bit of extraordinariness in the determination of Bihar to conquer its present misery by focusing directly on economic and human development. The future of Bihar may not be a repeat of its past glory but nor would it be, it seems reasonable to predict, a continuation of its present state of underdevelopment and deprivation.

Bihar is, it would appear, quite extraordinary in its past, in its present, and in the promise of its future.

...Perhaps it is right that we should begin with recognising the fact that Bihar’s history includes its dramatic role in uniting India. The first all-India empire, the Mauryan Empire, was based in Pataliputra, which is now Patna, and it established some uniformity of law and order across much of the country. That an emperor’s work is not done until he or she has established command over the bulk of the Subcontinent of India is an idea that

time for optimism In the past few years, there have been several indications of economic and human progress in this otherwise neglected state

sheldan collins/corbis

B

IHAR, WE MIGHT as well

forward looking Bihar’s challenge now is to enhance current efforts

took shape in Pataliputra. It is to complete that establishment of a united command that Emperor Ashoka waged a war in Kalinga— modern Orissa—and it is the violence of that war that took him towards Buddhism and to his extraordinary social commitments to peace and to the well-being of all.

In addition to Bihar’s role in uniting India, some of the early achievements of Bihar include the following: Development of education: This includes the remarkable record of Bihar in having the oldest university in the world, Nalanda, along with a number of other exceedingly old universities, such as Vikramshila, which flourished as global institutions of higher learning from the fifth century BC to the twelfth century AD. Pioneering work in mathematics: When the great Indian mathematician Aryabhata moved to Kusumpur, in Patna, in early fifth century, to be closer to the community of mathematicians, he gave recognition to an intellectual pursuit that was already beginning to flourish in Bihar. This teamwork was central to further development of mathematics in India (and through that in the Arab world), and it was also critically important for the pursuit of astronomy in India, as well as in ancient China, where Indian trigonometricians had a leading role in astronomical analysis and calculations.

Advancement of public health care: The trail-blazing tradition of free medical service for all in Pataliputra, which so impressed Faxian (sometimes written as Fa-Hsien or Fa-Hien) in early fifth century separates out Bihar from much of the world at that time. Later, in the seventh century, Yi Jing, a student at Nalanda, would make a systematic comparison between the practice of medicine and of public health care in China and India, in which Bihar received particular attention.

Government by discussion: The tradition of taking social decisions on 44 open

daniel berehulak/getty images

the basis of public discussion was particularly promoted by the Buddhist global councils, the first of which took place in Rajagriha (present-day Rajgir), in Bihar, just after Buddha’s death, the second in Vaishali, not far away, a century later, and the third—the largest—occurred in the capital city of Pataliputra, hosted by Ashoka, in the third century BC. Decisions on religious and social matters were taken after extensive public discussions, with exchange of information and opinions.

In the process, major contributions were made to the possibility of ‘government by discussion’—a phrase made popular more than 2,000 years later by Walter Bagehot (in a line of analysis that John Stuart Mill made clearer).

Rule of law and governance in the interest of the people: Bihar also contributed to the development of theories of governance, particularly through the treatise Arthashastra, by Kautilya, and in a less punitive form

by Ashoka, which was elaborated in the stone inscriptions that he placed around all of India—and beyond.

These theories were, to varying extent, put into practice by the Mauryas and other regimes based in Pataliputra, and they would serve as points of reference to later kings of India as well.

The building of physical infrastructure: Sher Shah, whose large empire in early sixteenth century was centred in Bihar, was visionary on constructing infrastructure of roads, bridges, etc., across India, including what later came to be known as the Grand Trunk Road, crossing the entire country.

Resistance to inequality and exclusion: Buddhism itself can be seen as the first pervasive protest against castebased hierarchy. The exclusion of women from major roles in society and in the family has also been resisted in Buddhism. Interestingly, even though Buddha was opposed to the ordaining of women as priests, his teachings gave active and major roles to women (as his disciple Ananda was particularly keen on emphasising).

Many of the later rebellions against traditional hierarchy in India have also originated in Bihar.

These ancient contributions demand examination not only because of their historical value, but also for their relevance to current problems that have persistently plagued contemporary India in general and Bihar in particular—including high illiteracy, frequent medical neglect, sharp economic and social inequality, low development of 2 september 2013

infrastructure and high incidence of social disorder. There is a lot that Bihar can learn from its own past and its own older traditions.

What we learn from these early achievements of Bihar helps us address and conquer the persistent disadvantages that are restraining Bihar in the contemporary world. We cannot bury ourselves in the past, but the past of this exceptional region of India offers both inspiration and guidance.

How bad is the position of Bihar in India today? It has to be acknowledged that the extent of human deprivation has been exceptionally high in Bihar, not just in global terms, but also compared with the bulk of India. Looking at the latest comparative figures that can be relied on, it appears that around 2005, Bihar had the second lowest per capita income among all Indian states (marginally ahead only of Orissa), the second highest share of the population below the miserably low ‘poverty line’ in the country (again a little behind Orissa), the second lowest ratio of female literacy (marginally above Rajasthan alone), absolutely the lowest proportion of children aged 6–14 years who went to school, and also absolutely the highest proportion of adult women with clinically low BMI (body mass index). Not surprisingly, Bihar was placed worst in terms of the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2005 and also had the highest proportion of the population with ‘multi-dimensional poverty’ also in that year.

Have the comparative figures changed since 2005? It is not easy to have comparative tables of similar reliability for more recent periods, which is rather unfortunate for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar since he came to office only in that year. However, there are many indications that things are moving, both in terms of the efforts deployed and in terms of accomplishments. For example, if we break down the growth rate of GDP in Bihar over the last decade, we see a rate of growth of 2 per cent annually in the first half, and about 10 per cent annually in the second half. The fact that in the recent expansion, the growth of agricultural production has played a very large part 2 september 2013

is a reason to expect that there will be considerable impact of the fast economic growth also on reducing poverty and deprivation in this extraordinarily deprived state. The abysmal extent of deprivation that Bihar had cannot, of course, be reversed overnight, but the breakdown of the previous model of stagnation and persistent deprivation must be seen as hugely encouraging signs.

Turning to other things, the expansion of primary education in Bihar has been a necessity for a very long time, and yet the signs of progress were rather rare—almost absent—through a long period of stagnation and decay.

From the ancient times, when Bihar was the centre of Indian civilisation, and when its educational achieve-

Bihar’s history includes its dramatic role in uniting India. The first all-India empire, the Mauryan Empire, was based in Pataliputra, and it established some uniformity of law and order across much of the country ments were the envy of the rest of the world, there has been a very long history of neglect and complacency about the growing educational backwardness of this state. It is with the recent efforts to plan—and to powerfully execute the planned programmes—that progress is, at last, reaching the resistant mass of Bihar’s sluggish school education. A recent report prepared by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) provides ground for much optimism.

There are certainly many signs of change. The number of schools has jumped forward; the shortfall of teachers has come down sharply; attendance of students is definitely up; and the enrolment ratio has reached the comfortable figure of 98 per cent.

The ADRI report can be seen as an informed celebration of the success that is at last being achieved.

And yet it is also a report on how much more needs to be done.

There is still a substantial incidence of teacher absenteeism; the number of teachers, especially of well-educated teachers, is still much below anything that can be called satisfactory; the school inspection system remains severely incomplete; and the participatory arrangement of Vidyalay Shiksha Samity (VSS) has become rather dysfunctional. There are other gaps and deficiencies to which this report draws attention, including the wide prevalence of reliance of primary school students on private tuition, outside the school—a fairly strong indictment of the quality and reach of the education that regular schools provide.

To say that we have ‘some good news and some bad news’ would, however, be an oversimplification.

We do have that mixture of good and bad, of course, but no one expected that the long-standing problems of educational neglect in Bihar would disappear instantly. We have to see the extent to which the ‘bad news’ is being noticed and addressed. There are some real sparks of hope there, and these need to be applauded. Along with that appreciation should also come encouragement to the educational authorities of Bihar to do more—indeed much more—than they have been able to do so far.

Progress not only calls for wellplanned efforts, it also demands sustained commitment to try and enhance what has been achieved. The need for that commitment is the central issue today. Grounds for optimism must be seen not only as reasons for celebration, but more importantly as a demand that the good work must continue—and move even faster. If the glory of ancient Bihar provides encouragement for this forward-looking commitment, that is surely an entirely fitting way of bringing history into our lives today. n Extracted from The New Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development, Edited by NK Singh and Nicholas Stern, HarperCollins open www.openthemagazine.com 45

Books

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The Joys of Sex More than three decades after it was written, Penguin publishes the ‘thinking woman’s Fifty Shades’. But it fails to live up to its reputation sonali kokra

The Art of Joy

By Goliarda Sapienza Translated by Anne Milano Appel penguin | 670 pages | Rs 1,299

I

heard of Goliarda Sapienza and

The Art of Joy from The Guardian.

A few weeks before it made its debut in the English literary world, The Guardian gave the book a pre-release write-up that made me mark its release date in my planner, leave requests at the neighbourhood bookstore and secure a review in Open. It’s not everyday that a publishing house ‘braces itself for controversy’ before the release of a book. Particularly for one that was written 37 years before a publisher decided to pick it up. The Guardian informs me that long before Fifty Shades of Grey became the poster-child for mainstream erotic fiction, Penguin Classics had decided to take the bold step to translate and publish Sapienza’s Italian masterpiece. It’s just that Anne Milano Appel took two years to translate the 700-odd pages of the thinking woman’s Fifty Shades of Grey, because the sex is offset against the history, politics and philosophy of Italy in the 20th century. Reason enough to be excited? You bet.

In the time it took me to go through the book, I realised a pretty basic truth about reading and writing—readers love good stories. And sometimes, the authors’ own make up for all that is lacking in their books. And I have to admit, as far as background goes, it doesn’t get more compelling than Goliarda Sapienza’s. Born in 1924 to fiercely anti-fascist and Mussolini hater parents, Goliarda spent a childhood 48 open

being home-schooled by her parents to shield her from fascist influences.

She spent most of her teens and early adult years as an actress, most notably her widely acclaimed portrayal of

Pirandello heroines; but by her thirties, having scored nothing more substantial than a minor uncredited part in a Visconti melodrama, she went into therapy and gave her writing 2 september 2013

career a serious shot. Her first book, Open Letter (Lettera Aperta), was a memoir about her days as a young girl in Sicily. Her second, The Meridian Hour (Il Filo de Mezzogiorno), was a fictionalised account of her sessions with her psychoanalyst. In 1967, she started work on The Art of Joy, her self-proclaimed masterpiece, and it wasn’t until 1976 that she finally managed to finish the Sicilian saga that packed in everything from rape, incest, murder, ambivalent sexuality and deviant nuns to fascism, communism, opportunism and feminism. By the time Goliarda died in 1996, she was penniless (with a stint in jail for stealing her friend’s jewellery) and heartbroken, given that no publisher was willing to touch the book, thanks to its exhausting length and the chaotic blend of subjects.

Two years after her death, her husband, Angello Pellegrino, an actor himself, managed to muster funds to self-publish 1,000 copies of the book for posterity—propelling it towards its destiny as a literary sensation in Europe, despite a renowned critic dismissing it as a ‘pile of iniquity’.

In the foreword of its English avatar, Pellegrino, given his theatrical inclinations, writes, ‘Goliarda will not see her Modesta in bookstores. But I know that the sorrow is no longer hers; it’s all mine for her.’ It is difficult to ignore such sweeping sentimentality, and in a world where Donal Ryan makes the Booker long-list after facing 47 rejections from publishers, JK Rowling is given an advance of a meagre £2,500 for the first Harry Potter manuscript and Paul Harding’s Tinkers remains obscure until it suddenly wins the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, Goliarda has everything one hopes for from a posthumously celebrated writer: an intriguing back story, the trials of poverty while relentlessly pursuing publication and a manuscript that licked the dusty bottom of a chest in an attic for 20 long years before being rediscovered.

There’s plenty of material within The Art of Joy to make it a desirable conversation-starter and lubricant at cocktail parties. But does that translate into an actual inclination to pursue Modesta’s destiny through 670 exhausting pages?

2 september 2013

I would be very surprised if it did.

The Art of Joy is the story of Modesta, conveniently born on 1 January 1900.

Everything that can possibly happen to people living in Italy and Europe— and for that matter, on planet Earth— over the course of the next six decades or so, happens to Mody. Her story begins explosively: soon after discovering the confusion and illicit thrill of self-pleasure, the ironically named Modesta is raped by a man who claims to be her father, who then torches her house and kills her mother and mentally challenged sister. The orphaned but curiously unaffected Modesta finds a home in a convent, where she discovers her love for words. Within the first 100 pages itself, Mody has turned into the remorseless murderess of the Mother Superior at the con-

Despite Mody’s multiple relationships, unrestrained by considerations such as age and gender, The Art of Joy isn’t really about sex.

Anyone looking for a dirty book would be sadly disappointed vent she lives in. From there it’s on to the wealthy Brandiforti estate, where she marries Ippolito, a man-child, to consolidate her power and position in the clan and bears him a child she secretly conceived with another man.

All this, while carrying on an affair with Beatrice, her muse within the Bandiforti family.

Curiously, despite Mody’s multiple relationships, unrestrained by considerations such as age and gender, The Art of Joy isn’t really about sex. Anyone looking for a dirty book would be sadly disappointed. Despite the occasional forays into dialogues that are more suitable for a mediocre bodice-ripper—‘Surrendering to her, I left behind that inferno of qualms and bands and lava walls. The convent receded when I stared into her eyes. It collapsed behind me and I could see the stars again.

Was that what paradise was: love?’—

The Art of Joy largely has sex as a tool that Modesta uses to assert the freedom of her thoughts. While the sexual boundary-breaking might be what attracts a large portion of the book’s readers, the truly gripping parts of the story are the ones where its untarnished Italian-ness shines through.

The autobiographical way in which Sapienza makes her Modesta grapple with fascism accounts for the truly page-turner moments in the book.

Did I read every one of the 670 pages that take the reader through the sometimes erratic, sometimes excruciating details of Modesta’s life? I did. Had it not been for this review, would I have abandoned the book mid-way in the sheer exhaustion of following a woman who’s life is almost schizophrenically dramatic? I probably would have.

Why? Somewhere along the way, it gets tiresome to see Modesta greet each new person in her life as a probable passion. Despite the rich historical and political setting, it becomes harder and harder to believe in a character who kills many times over, feels jealousy for the first time in her middle age and is grappling with the concept of love until the very end. It is, perhaps, due to these contrived pretensions that Sapienza uses liberally while developing Modesta’s character that it becomes almost impossible to look past the obvious repetitiveness of her sexual misadventures and focus on the more layered political considerations of her timeline.

While in some ways time itself is Sapienza and Modesta’s greatest ally, in many ways, it is their greatest undoing. While everyone wants to champion the cause of a writer who didn’t get her due in her lifetime, one can’t escape the fact that we live in a world of internet over-share. What chance does a story, completed almost four decades ago and relying mainly on the shockand-awe value of its protagonist’s sex life, have? What can she possibly have experienced that someone somewhere hasn’t already spoken volumes about in the consequent decades? Not much.

As far as characters and their stories go, I’d pick Goliarda over Modesta in a heartbeat. n open www.openthemagazine.com 49

food Confessions of an Amateur Cook Experiments in the kitchen while reading Michael Pollan’s Cooked Madhavankutty Pillai

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he first time I made chicken

curry it came out burnt and nasty. Before that the only other dish I knew to cook—something I perfected in my early teens—was to dunk cubed

potatoes into a cup of boiling oil in a kadhai, throw in salt and every powdered spice within reach, and wait till it became oil-soft, fiery and golden. I still make it. Accompanied by curd rice, it is

art bank/amanaimages/corbis

delicious homemade junk food and has ‘heart attack’ written all over it.

Cooking held little interest for me; the chicken curry happened late in life, around my mid-20s. It was the unmitigated disaster that made me persevere. It took a year or so until I got something I was satisfied with. During that period, at different times, I pounded whole spices for the masala, added first and second pressed coconut milk, a variety of marinades and many other things picked up from recipes. What I arrived at finally was simple—in oil, sweat onions, fry ginger garlic paste, add chilli powder, turmeric power, a specific chicken masala powder of a company called Eastern, add the cut chicken, add tomatoes and then let it simmer on a low flame for 25 minutes.

Don’t add a drop of water. After about 10 minutes, the gravy starts bubbling; water leeched from the chicken and tomatoes gives the curry something rich and spectacular. I also learnt a few tricks along the way, which I don’t use in the chicken curry but have applied in other dishes like fish masala. I am not beholden to subtle flavours. I like controlled explosions. So, for example, I deliberately go overboard with spices and chillies and then calm it down with cream, taming it.

For some time now, I have been thinking about onion. Why is it that almost every Indian curry begins by shallow frying it? What would happen if you eliminated it altogether from Indian curries? Jains do it and they look pretty well fed as a community.

I recently read Michael Pollan’s book Cooked, a culinary and philosophical insight into the merits of cooking. He divides the book into four parts: Fire, Water, Air and Earth. ‘Fire’ is the direct application of fire to meat. This was how mankind began its tryst with cook2 september 2013

ing. ‘Air’ is baking and he mostly talks of bread. ‘Earth’ is fermentation or the use of micro-organisms like bacteria and fungus to make cheese or yoghurt or sauerkraut or—what would be of particular fascination to many—beer.

I found the section ‘Water’ most relevant because it refers to curries (or sauce as the Western world would call it). The question that I am nibbling over regarding onions is something Pollan has considered. He describes the phenomenon of starting with the vegetable as common all over the world: ‘...if you start with a dice of onions, carrots and celery sautéed in butter (or sometimes olive oil), you’ve made a mirepoix, which marks the dish as French. But if you begin by sautéing a mince of diced onions, carrots and celery in olive oil… you have made soffrito, the signature of an Italian dish.

However, a “sofrito”—when spelled with one “f” and one “t”—is a dish of onions, garlic and tomato in place of celery, and identifies the dish as Spanish,’ he writes. Asian, Cajun, Far East, all have versions of this combination of onions plus aromatic plants.

After a couple of pages he again wonders, ‘Why is it that onions are so widespread in pot dishes? After salt I can’t think of another cooking ingredient quite as universal as the onion…What do they do for a dish?’ To find out he asks one of the chefs who is teaching him and gets the cryptic answer that it’s a chemical reaction. They then ask a kitchen-science writer who is ‘uncharacteristically vague on the subject’. Ultimately, to my disappointment, Pollan does not get an answer.

He has a few hypotheses which include onions turning the food safe by acting against dangerous bacteria. But a theory is just that—a theory.

At some point, when I develop enough culinary gumption, I plan to do away with onion altogether and to see what happens. Between onions and its co-ubiquitous brethren, tomatoes, I am very clear on what is more substantial in a curry. In a salad, I hate tomato because its insipid insides seem to give it no character, but once turned to pulp along with meat or vegetables, it is dynamite at what it does. It adds both 2 september 2013

sourness and sweetness to a dish, but never overwhelms it. Often, I take a recipe and double the amount of tomatoes specified and the dish comes out laughing gaily.

I

t was only recently that I tried my

hand at baking. By assiduously following a recipe, I managed to get a barely edible sponge cake and immediately realised that this was never going to be my thing. Baking requires a level of precision and care that few possess.

It needs the concentration of a watch repairer. Make a mistake at any of the multiple stages of prep and the cake or bread ends up as something else.

Pollan takes the idea of baking to a metaphysical level. The infusion of air is at the heart of baking. He begins by

Cooked is a first class insight not only into what happens biologically and chemically within ingredients as they transform into food, but also what happens within us psychologically and socially when we cook trying to find out the secret of the best bread he has ever eaten, Tartine bread by a baker named Chad Robertson, describing it thus, ‘…a big country loaf shot through with holes the size of marbles and golf balls—easily more air than bread. It had a tough hide of a crust, very nearly burned, but held inside a crumb so tender, moist, and glossy it made you think of custard.’

He goes to Robertson to learn how it’s made. He is told not to use readymade yeast but instead to make his own culture. This Pollan proceeds to do and, after some failures, finally manages to get the bread right. He doesn’t stop there. Tartine bread uses white flour and Pollan has a problem with that because it has no nutrients or fibres. He goes to another baker-philosopher, Dave Miller, who ‘for the past seven years… has tripped his vocation down

to its Thoreauvian essentials: one man, some sacks of wheat, a couple of machines, and an oven.’ Likewise, almost all of Pollan’s culinary explorations lead to an age before industry started doing what human beings did in the kitchen.

This is the crux of Pollan’s cooking. It is a bid to understand how modernity destroyed the ability of human beings to cook in homes and what we have lost by it. And also to appreciate the reverse—that by cooking according to home traditions, we can again capture some lost piece of ourselves. Cooked is a first class insight into what is happening biologically and chemically within ingredients as they transform into food. But it also shows what is happening within us psychologically and socially when we cook.

Pollan is a purist time-travelling into an ideal cooking universe. He devotes a large number of pages citing anthropological studies that suggest humanity evolved from apes because of cooking.

Chewing and digesting takes a lot of time for animals. By cooking, food became ‘more energy-dense and easy-todigest’ allowing our brains to expand and stomachs to shrink. ‘Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body… Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture,’ he writes.

I don’t believe it. It just sounds farfetched and there are hundreds of other theories on why man made the jump from apes, including aliens coming and bestowing consciousness upon us. To really know the truth of it, someone will have to go back a million years. And then it might be nothing like any of us can imagine.

There is plenty to be got out of cooking. There is something mystical about transforming what is raw into the engine of life. But that’s only if you are thinking about it while reading or writing a book on cooking. The rest of the time, something good to eat, and, after that, fed to others to show off, is all I ask of what I cook n open www.openthemagazine.com 51

CINEMA Canned Conscience Shoojit Sircar sees it as his responsibility as a filmmaker to make fresh, intelligent, unbiased films, regardless of commercial success Nikhil Taneja

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rolific adman Shoojit Sircar made his directorial debut in 2005 with Yahaan, a politically charged love story set in Kashmir. He followed that up in 2012 with Vicky Donor, a brave and unconventional comedy, which tackled the taboo subject of semen donation with remarkable poise and went on to become a blockbuster hit, winning him a National Award for Wholesome Entertainment. Sircar’s new film Madras Café is a political spy thriller set in the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war of the 90s. Here, Sircar speaks about his political beliefs, his responsibility as a filmmaker and how cinema can change society:

After Yahaan, Madras Café is your second film on a political issue. Are you a political person? Are you aligned Left or Right?

No, I’m a socially conscious person.

And I can’t be aligned either way, because I’m a filmmaker and it is my responsibility to be in the middle. If I go Left or Right, I will go wrong. I’ll be biased and [making] a judgment. I prefer putting the facts out there instead, and letting people introspect and decide for themselves. In the case of Madras Café, I had been following the Tamil issue and Sri Lankan civil war for many years and it has affected me a lot. At the end of the day, between the politics, human lives are lost and that’s what I wanted to show. People do ask me why a Bengali who’s grown up in Bengal and Delhi is making a film on Tamil sentiments. It’s because as a patriotic citizen of the country, any political issue will bother you as long as it has larger [relevance] for the country. And then, the issue transcends the politics and becomes personal. I just hope that this film will educate or inform some people and others relate to it. There are many more such issues I want to make 52 open

films on, and I don’t know if this lifetime will be enough. (chuckles)

Were you always socially conscious?

My father was in the Air Force, so at some level, like it’s said in Hindi, it’s your sanskaar (values). He has fought in many wars and, growing up, I’ve seen his commitment and passion for serving the country first hand. During the 71 war, when I was around 4 years old, we were living in an Air Force camp in Bagdogra in West Bengal. I remember how, for an entire month, the lights would go off at night and sirens would [sound] across the city, and the entire family had to take shelter in an underground bunker at night—in case of a bombing.

When the Khalistan issue was going on, Piyush Mishra, Manoj Bajpayee, Ashish Vidyarthi and I went to Punjab with a harmonium and a dhol and sang patriotic songs in front of crowds (Smiles) I’ve seen these times and I’ve always believed that it’s important to serve your country—and you don’t need to be in the Army for that.

As a filmmaker, I should definitely entertain people, but I can also serve my country by making such films.

What started this journey? Was it a love of the arts or passion to make a difference?

For me, theatre was the starting point. I was a footballer who worked at a hotel after my graduation in Delhi, but I was bitten by the theatre bug. I think somewhere during that time, because of the environment in 93-94, and because of

the ambience and people I was with, I crossed over and started getting affected by the country’s issues.

I was part of Safdar Hashmi’s Jana Natya Manch group, and we did a lot of street theatre. As you know, street theatre was basically started not as an entertaining medium but as a revolutionising one. Theatre gave me an objective understanding of society, and whatever my discipline, my consciousness, my conscience, and even my love for film— it all stemmed from my days with this group, and, later, with Act One, the group I started with Piyush Mishra, Manoj Bajpayee and Ashish Vidyarthi.

Do you remember the first political play you were part of, or the first issue that got close to your heart?

We did a play called Jab Sheher Hamara Sota Hai, an adaptation of West Side Story, about the rivalry between a Hindu and a Muslim street gang, and that was a very strong political statement about religious differences [made by us]. But we didn’t stop at plays.

When the Khalistan issue was going on, Piyush, Manoj, Ashish and I went to Punjab with a harmonium and a dhol and sang patriotic songs in front of crowds. Many people objected, but in those days, we did what we had to do for society.

But if you specifically talk about the first issue that grew close to my heart, it was the Kashmir issue. Yes, Partition bothered me, the Lankan issue has bothered me, communal differences have bothered me, but I had many Kashmiri acquaintances, both Pandits and Muslims, and on getting to know them, I was shocked at how we treat citizens of our own country. Kashmiris couldn’t live inside Kashmir and felt threatened outside of Kashmir, because we’d treat them like foreigners or 2 september 2013

paroma mukherjee

the introspector “As a patriotic citizen of the country, any political issue will bother you as long as it has larger relevance for the country”

terrorists. That’s why I wrote Yahaan too, because I wanted to present the perspectives of the youth of Kashmir.

How did cinema affect your politicisation?

In those days, Delhi used to [host] the International Film Festival of India, which is now held in Goa. It used to happen in the peak of winter, in January. The cream of India’s intellectual filmmakers would come. But the tickets used to be really expensive. So my friends and I, who were always phukkads (broke), used to wait for the evening shows, which very few people would attend because of the mist and cold. The festival would screen documentaries at those times. We would jump over the barriers and sit in the corners to watch them. One such documentary, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, changed my whole perspective of cinema. It was about the letters these American kids, who died in the war, had exchanged with their parents during the Vietnam war, and it was the most moving and mind-blowing experience of my life. Another similar film that affected me was Oliver Stone’s Platoon. After that, I started discovering European and Iranian cinema, and, of course, the cinema of Satyajit Ray. All of these influenced me because they were about human lives.

2 september 2013

When Yahaan didn’t do well, and your longin-the-making film with Amitabh Bachchan, Shoebite, which was also socially conscious, didn’t work out, did you at any stage consider making commercial cinema and moving away from social and political films?

Never. Not once. That can never get out of me. I’ve never had a plan B. Plan B wasn’t even an option. (smiles) You know, when Shoebite didn’t release, I was down and depressed. It was my wife who told me that whether or not my film works or releases ultimately, I know how to write and I know how to make a film, and nobody can take that away from me. Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood, two old men who tirelessly continue making films they believe in, also inspired me.

And then I decided that no matter what happens, I’ll continue making films for whatever years I have left.

Even if no big film works out, I will take whatever lakhs [of rupees] I have left, take my 5D camera and make films on my own. (laughs) Because I could easily make a commercial love story, but I have this keeda (bug) to only make films I believe in. The fact that filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Raju Hirani were doing well gave me hope that the audience was evolving, so even after Yahaan and Shoebite, I decid-

ed to make a film about semen donation, because I believed in my writer Juhi Chaturvedi’s script. I’m lucky to have had John Abraham, who is a man with immense integrity, back me on it but I’ve always believed that, as part of the film industry, it is my responsibility to [deliver] fresh, new and intelligent films to the audience, because that’s the only way things will change.

Do you believe that cinema has the power to change society and youth perspectives, especially in times like these when most Indian youngsters don’t even care to vote?

Yes, I do think so. I agree that kids today are less aware than before. I was surprised to [learn] recently that some Mumbai kids don’t even know that there’s an India that exists beyond Thane! But I think it’s a matter of time. Even during the time of our freedom struggle, only 20 per cent of the [country’s people] were fighting for freedom. The rest were still going about the daily course of their lives and working for the British. They had no clue what Bhagat Singh or Khudiram [Bose] were doing. It’s the same today, but I feel, because of social media, they are slowly getting opinionated and conscious. And trust me, it’s these young people who are going to set things in the right place. Let’s have faith. n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

photo essay The Making of Jail Biryani A hugely successful enterprise run by prisoners in Kerala Text by sHAHINA KK/photographs by RITESH UTTAMCHANDANI

T

here have been precedents of prisons preparing and selling food to the outside world, but Kerala has a new item on its takeaway menu—biryani. Called Freedom Biryani, it was pioneered by the Viyyur Central Jail in Thrissur. Recently, the central jail in Thiruvananthapuram has also started selling the dish. Both have attained bestseller status.

Alexander Jacob, ADGP of Jail Administration, says, “In 2011, there had been a debate in the Kerala Assembly on the escalating prices of 54 open

food items in hotels. It led to the idea of making food in jails using the labour force of prisoners. On an experimental basis, we started the production of chappatis in Viyyur Central prison. It was a grand success with 35,000 chappatis a day being sold there.”

The making and distribution of biryani started last year. Despite the success of other items, the jail authorities were reluctant to add biryani because of the logistics. “There are 36 [ingredients] used in it. We have to account for every one of them. That was the rea-

son officers in other jails were reluctant. But we were ready to take up the challenge,” says MK Vinod, superintendent of Viyyur jail. About 500 packets of biryani are sold at its food sales counter every day at Rs 60 each.

Chappati, chicken curry, egg curry and vegetable curry are other prisonermade dishes on offer. Altogether, the Prison Department of Kerala makes an annual Rs 13 crore selling food. A prisoner who does jobs related to cooking and food processing gets Rs 112 a day. n 2 September 2013

the preparation (Facing page) Prisoners weigh chicken delivered at the Thiruvanthapuram jail for biryani; (left) after a wash, a major portion of the chicken is kept aside for the biryani and the rest is used to make chilli chicken; (below) The preparation involves a degree of teamwork and prisoners often share each others’ work

the tasting (Above) Rasheed is the masterchef here. He used to work as a professional cook before being sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder.

Under the shadowless boundary wall, he keeps a close watch on a steaming pot of rice, while a policeman strains to take in the aroma of the fried chicken to be used for biryani; (left) Rasheed first seeks the approval of a senior inmate, but moments later, he asks the police officers to taste the gravy

the packing The packing of the biryani occurs under the watchful eyes of a police officer, while elsewhere a prisoner leans on an inmate’s shoulder to wipe sweat off his brow while packing the curry

2 September 2013

open www.openthemagazine.com 57

the selling Packets of biryani being stacked up; while an inmate cleans the cooking pots; Baby, serving a life term, mans the counter at the entrance of the jail.

Eager and hungry customers queue up before the food packets arrive; Some customers don’t even bother to take off their helmets. The biryani is ironically called Freedom Biryani

dark coffee— Its consumption can be harmful because of caffeine’s potential to stimulate the release of epinephrine, inhibit insulin activity and increase blood pressure and levels of homocysteine

Near Death Experience It is essentially an increase in electrical activity in the brain once the heart stops

Beware Too Much Coffee

timothy a clary/afp

science

I

s there any truth to near death

experiences? Why do many neardeath survivors report having seen a distant light, or had an out-of-body experience? or even conversations with divine beings?

According to a new study, these near-death experiences might have a scientific explanation. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that in dying rats, there is a surge in electrical activity or brainwaves at the point of the animals’ demise. In humans, this could lead to a heightened state of consciousness.

For the study, researchers at University of Michigan induced cardiac arrest in nine anaesthetised rats.

Within thirty seconds of their hearts stopping, the mice experienced a surge in brain activity that exceeded the brain level activity found while they were conscious and well. When rats underwent asphyxiation, similar results were observed.

The researchers write in the journal: ‘The brain is assumed to be hypoactive during cardiac arrest. However, the neurophysiological state of the brain immediately following 60 open

cardiac arrest has not been systematically investigated. In this study, we performed continuous electroencephalography in rats undergoing experimental cardiac arrest and analyzed changes in power density, coherence, directed connectivity, and cross-frequency coupling. We identified a transient surge of synchronous gamma oscillations that occurred within the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest and preceded isoelectric electroencephalogram’. Gamma oscillations are high-frequency brainwaves, also common in humans.

According to the study’s lead author Jimo Borjigin, if near-death experience stems from brain activity, neural correlates of consciousness should be identifiable in humans or animals even after the cessation of cerebral blood flow. She told The Telegraph: “This study tells us that reduction of oxygen or both oxygen and glucose during cardiac arrest can stimulate brain activity that is characteristic of conscious processing. It also provides the first scientific framework for the near-death experiences reported by many cardiac arrest survivors.” n

Drinking large amounts of coffee may be bad for under-55s, according to a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. A study of more than 40,000 individuals found 21 per cent increased mortality in those drinking more than 28 cups of coffee a week, with greater than 50 per cent increased mortality among both men and women younger than 55 years of age. No adverse effects were found in heavy coffee drinkers aged over 55. However, researchers emphasise that further studies are needed in different populations to assess the detailed effects of long-term coffee consumption over time on all-cause mortality in general and cardiovascular disease mortality in particular. n

Too Young for Soft Drinks

A new study of young children by a team of researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health finds that aggression, attention problems, and withdrawal behaviour are all associated with soft drink consumption. The study, which assessed around 3,000 five-year-old children, found that 43 per cent of them consumed at least one soft drink serving per day, and 4 per cent consumed four or more. Any soft drink consumption was associated with increased aggressive behaviour. Children who drank four or more soft drinks per day were more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights and physically attack people. n 2 september 2013

usb 3.0 Also known as SuperSpeed USB, it has a maximum bandwidth rate of 5 gbps (gigabits per second). That translates to 640 MBps (megabytes per second)—ten times faster than USB 2.0 (aka Hi-Speed USB)

tech&style

Sony Vaio Pro 13 One of the world’s lightest ultrabooks, it weighs just over a kilogram gagandeep Singh Sapra

Ocean Sport w Chronograph

Price on request

Rs 74,990

Carved in Zalium™—an alloy that is light, non-allergenic, harder than titanium and extremely corrosion-resistant— that is unique to Harry Winston in watchmaking, this timepiece features a deep blue smoked sapphire dial that reveals a sophisticated skeletonised chronograph module. This timepiece has a power reserve of 42 hours and is water-resistant to 200 metres. n

Acer P3

T

he Pro 13 runs on a Core i5 pro-

cessor, and Sony also has a version that runs on Core i7. This ultrabook’s features include: Windows 8, 4 gigabytes of RAM and a 128 GB solid state disk. Its touchscreen has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 that allows full HD display and is very responsive to touch.

Sony uses unidirectional carbon fibre with a hexa-shell that makes the machine durable and yet light.

The built-in battery grants about 9 hours of operation. There is also an optional battery pack that can extend the battery life to 19 hours, so if you are a businessman on the move, you don’t need to take an adapter along for an overnight trip.

The Pro 13 also features a high definition web camera on the front, which is clear and sharp for video calls. The dual microphones are sensitive and its inbuilt speakers are good for multimedia content or just

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listening to music. The keyboard is very well laid out, with 82 keys, and is comfortable to use. The backlight on the keyboard is bright enough to work when the lights are out.

The Pro 13 has a full HDMI port so you don’t have to worry about using convertors when you make a presentation, and just in case you get stuck with a VGA port, Sony also includes an HDMI to VGA convertor. The model has two USB 3.0 ports for high speed data transfer, a combined audio port, and an SD card slot, assuring you full expansion capabilities.

The machine is powerful enough to take care of your day-to-day needs, though I would have loved to have a more powerful graphic adapter than the standard Intel HD Graphics 4400 on board.

I end by saying that the Pro 13 is the prettiest, and yes, the lightest Windows 8 machine I have come across in a long time. n

Rs 54,999

This all-in-one tablet comes with a case that has a built-in keyboard that gets linked to the tablet via Bluetooth and needs to be charged separately. So what you get is an 11.6 inches high definition display based tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard that also acts as a cover. This tablet’s features include: Windows 8, Core i3 processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 60 GB solid state drive, speakers optimised for Dolby Home Theatre V4 enhancements, a 5 megapixel rear camera and a high-definition front camera for all those video calls. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

reliving his Godfather days Whatever the verdict on the film, the trailer for Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbaai…Dobaara! at least won an illustrious admirer in Hollywood: Gangster legend Al Pacino, who is said to have been impressed by it. Pacino was reportedly shown the trailer by his business associate Barry Navidi, and said it “brought back some fond memories from my Godfather days”

Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara The sequel has lost the charm of the original film ajit duara

o n scr een

current

The Smurfs 2 Director Raja Gosnell cast Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris,

Jayma Mays

Score ★★★★★

, , sonakshi sinha Cast imran khan r akshay kuma luthria Director milan

A

sequel for a retro movie is a bad

idea if you don’t have the original cast available. The first film worked because both Ajay Devgn and Emraan Hashmi fit in well as Haji Mastan and his ruthless prodigy Dawood Ibrahim.

They were familiar with speech patterns of 1970s Hindi movies and are decent actors, though, of course, the best actor ever to play Haji Mastan was Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar (1975).

Dobaara has got good art direction and an actress, Sonakshi Sinha, who could be credible as a 1970s aspiring star, even though her look is more 1950s. What is interesting about both the original and the sequel is how it ties the underworld and the movie business in Mumbai into a Gordian knot that, perhaps, was untied only recently. In the first film, the Mastan character, depicted as a romantic soul despite his sordid profession, falls in love with an established actress.

In this movie, the Dawood Ibrahim character, Shoaib Khan (Akshay 62 open

Kumar), has no redeeming features whatsoever. He promotes the girl he likes in the film industry purely as a transactional favour. When Jasmine Mirza (Sonakshi Sinha) refuses his advances, he destroys her career, rampaging through the movie set she is on and then presenting her with an offer she dare not refuse. This is why the film, despite its reasonably well created atmosphere, does not work. With the central character so one-dimensional, he loses all audience empathy.

Shoaib’s henchman, Aslam (Imran Khan), on the other hand, is ‘Goody two-shoes’, and that, for a gangster, can be pretty unprofessional. He and Jasmine are completely naive and though it is true that the 1970s was not the age of cellphones and Facebook, it seems unbelievable that they are completely unaware of the triangular relationship they share with their dreadful mentor. That said, one song and its picturisation is memorable—Ye tune kya kiya by Javed Bashir. n

Smurfs are generally little blue males, not to be confused with little blue whales.

A female smurf is a Smurfette and she is the heroine of this movie. Smurfette is kidnapped at the start of The Smurfs 2

by Gargamel, the evil magician, now the Wizard of France, a star attraction at the best theatres in Paris.

Gargamel needs to get his batteries recharged, his magical powers enhanced by a dose of ‘Smurfe Essence’, and for that he needs the secret formula that Smurfette knows so well. She can recite it by heart and Gargamel is bribing and blackmailing her towards that end. Only sensitive humans, symbiotically connected to Smurfs, can rescue Smurfette from the clutches of this evil sorcerer.

Enter New Yorkers Patrick Winslow, his wife Grace and his stepfather, Victor Doyle. The trio travel to Paris after receiving a distress call from Papa Smurf and his allies. The Human/Smurf interaction is the most interesting part of this film, and the movie plays on this dynamic combination with live action and animation to create a universe that kids can identify instantly with.

For a child, little blue creatures in a very adult world are real. But for us, only Azrael is convincing. He is a talking cat, the only one who can backchat Gargamel. n ad

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Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Sunny Days on Television

If the producers of Ragini MMS 2 bite the bait—which they probably will, this is Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms we’re talking about—there’s a good chance we’ll see Mallika Sherawat and Sunny Leone share the same platform.

The television channel that’s producing Mallika Ka Swayamvar (a Bachelorette-style reality show in which the Murder star will be introduced to roughly two dozen suitors) wants to pull off a coup by inviting Sunny to appear on an episode with Mallika. The idea is to bring in the IndoCanadian porn star as a friend of Mallika’s so that she can help her pick one from among the string of men vying for her affection. Reportedly, the channel has already spoken to Balaji about the possibility of bringing Sunny on board, and has pitched the plan to coincide with the studio’s promotional campaign for the sex and horror sequel Ragini MMS 2, in which Sunny has been cast as the lead.

More than likely, those who came up with this idea are patting themselves on the back for finding a way to bring together Bollywood’s most bindaas starlet and California’s most famous export since sundried raisins. To be fair, it will be interesting to watch the dynamics between them. Given Mallika’s snooty reputation and her tendency to snub anyone who even remotely resembles a threat, don’t rule out the possibility of fireworks.

Mix and Match

Imran Khan’s loss is likely to be Shahid Kapoor’s gain. The Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara star will no longer play the lead in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Milan Talkies, which he was not so long ago considerably excited about having bagged. But there are reports now that Shahid Kapoor is being seriously considered for the project. There’s very little clarity on Imran’s exit, with some insiders saying the actor was dropped from the film, while sources close to him reveal that he may have intentionally made himself unavailable for the project when he gave away those dates to the Vikramaditya Motwanedirected film Bhabesh that he recently signed.

And although Shahid is closest to taking his place in Dhulia’s film, it appears that 2 september 2013

no concrete casting decision has been taken yet. Meanwhile, there is also some talk that Priyanka Chopra, who had been signed up opposite Imran, could also be replaced. So all those thrilled about a possible Shahid Kapoor-Priyanka Chopra reunion on the screen needn’t get their hopes up. Sonakshi Sinha, who worked with Dhulia on his Saif Ali Khan-starrer Bullet Express, could be his leading lady in Milan Talkies too.

The film is reportedly being sped into production in October, since Dhulia—who is juggling more films than Imran, Shahid, Priyanka or Sonakshi—now has an empty slot in his otherwise relatively packed schedule, what with his Hamlet adaptation starring Hrithik Roshan having moved from its original start date because of the actor’s recent surgery and recuperation.

Another Sort of High

You’ll never believe which diva seems to have a drinking problem. Industry insiders say the signs were all there, but it is now no secret. A popular female star, not in her twenties, has reportedly raised eyebrows recently for her evident fondness of the bottle. Not only was she visibly tipsy at a celebration thrown in her own honour recently, there were reports not so long ago that she couldn’t attend the funeral of a close family member because she was out cold, having had one too many.

While cradling a drink at a New Year’s Eve party some years ago, she allegedly grabbed her husband’s face and proceeded to make out with him in full public view, much to the embarrassment of the poor fellow and everyone around—who had to turn away. Bitchy co-stars insist that two falls she had recently could also be pinned on her drinking habit.

Her family, however, has dismissed these as baseless rumours, attributing them to jealous rivals. Pointing to the actress’ success and popularity, they have rejected the drinking charges, insisting she could never get so much done professionally if she were indeed dependent on alcohol. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Among the Monks

by s h o m e b as u

Three years ago, a group of Buddhist nuns from the Amitabha Drukpa nunnery in Nepal were on a pad yatra or long march from Sikkim to Kathmandu. At Bodhgaya in Bihar, a black mongrel joined them. Initially, the nuns ignored the animal, but the dog continued to follow them through their walks through forests, on highways and causeways and along rivers, all the way upto Kathmandu. Finally, they embraced the persistent dog and took him in on reaching their nunnery near Kathmandu. One of them, Karuna, named him Pincho.

This expat dog now protects the 300 odd members of the nunnery. It participates in prayers, lunches with them and keeps out hooligans. Pincho has apparently not learnt much about compassion, though. At night especially, he tends to display an aggressive disposition towards outsiders. Many of the nuns have started to regard him as a divine incarnation come down to protect them. Some of the nuns also point out that Pincho has a better life in Nepal as compared to India, unlike many Nepalese citizens who cross the border into India

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2 september 2013