OPEN Magazine 30 June 2014

ECONOMY THE

l i f e

INHERITANCE OF RUINS

a n d

t i m e s .

INFoSYS BURDEN OF LEGACY

e v e r y

w e e k

3 0 j u n e 2 0 14 / R S 4 0

digital ETERNITY A NEW SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE INTERNET

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Volume 6 Issue 25 For the week 24—30 June 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

cover design

Anirban Ghosh

30 june 2014

KR Srinivasan

While the AAP’s people-centric politics has the energy to identify problems and raise issues, it is unfortunate that lack of patience and failure to govern effectively after coming to power in Delhi saw the fall of the party after a meteoric rise (‘Is AAP Withering Away?’, 23 June 2014). For a party fighting corruption, key founding members leaving the party in disgust due to lack of internal democracy shows that AAP needs a catharsis to get over the devastating effect of the Lok Sabha polls where it As a first step, the AAP could win only four needs to reinvent itself seats. The party’s and grab the opposition political space has space vacated by the shrunk drastically. Even Congress and Left Front the party’s national executive meeting, held recently, could not come up with any specific plan or strategy for revival of the party. However, AAP still holds promises, and as a first step, the party needs to reinvent itself and grab the opposition space vacated by the Congress and Left Front. Despite its flaws and lack of experience, AAP cannot be written off summarily because the party’s core strength lies in the loyalty of its followers, who would certainly regroup themselves to take the party forward under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal. Let us hope AAP emerges as the principal opposition in good time.  letter of the week Tests of Leadership

this refers to ‘Can Rahul be Reborn?’ (23 June 2014). Harish Khare may be a very senior journalist, but has he ever personally spoken at length to Sonia or Rahul Gandhi? Or has he observed these two leaders speaking coherently about any serious social, political or economic issue, without the help and guidance of a written text? Indians have not been privy to what kind of vision these leaders have, as they have never heard them engaging in any cogent conversations so far. And that clearly makes them fail the fundamental test of being leaders. Any assumption about their nonexistent leadership skills and abilities is only a figment of journalistic

imagination. The truth is, Sonia’s and Rahul’s right to lead has been invested in them by their family connections and nothing else.  Maddy Singh

the congress’ rout in the recent elections did not surprise many. Rahul, a highly unimpressive leader and a non-player in governance could hardly captivate the voters. Nehruvian socialism had been a thing of past for the Congress. Voters gave the UPA a fitting reply for the soaring prices and mushrooming scams. As efforts of the Left parties to forge an alternative proved futile, Modi had a cakewalk, cashing in on the negativism of the UPA and the ire of the public. And the

media pulled all stops to facilitate his entry into North Block. Now it will be Modi’s innings that will decide Rahul’s rebirth or the emergence of an alternative political alliance.  Chandrasekaran

Reclaiming the Ganga

i read the article ‘The Sacred and the Profane’ (23 June 2014)

by Professor A Damodaran.

The analysis here clearly indicates what the new government should do to clean the Ganga. As the author suggests, let us reclaim our prestige by incorporating a more scientific approach, enforced by behavioral change to maintain the integrity of sacredness. Social enforcement will take some time to gain acceptance, but strict penal clauses to prevent the dumping of industrial effluents into the Ganga will be an effective beginning.  Sandeep Rai

Tickle Me

this is a great article (‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr Funnyman’, 16 June 2014).Humour is one scarce commodity in India and hence most of the youth look West for a laugh. Also, the point that the writer made about stand-up comedians being afraid to offend somebody is the core issue here. For that to happen, the country needs to come of age and be able to take a good joke on the chin. Unfortunately, our pathetically unfunny TV shows, films and other media are making things worse.  Zubin Vaishnav

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fOR THE LOVE OF CHAI Raman Misra at his tea stall in Bandra with his wife

The Coming of Tea-Commerce online adda

An unusual e-commerce venture in Mumbai takes the neighbourhood chai vendor online

e-commerce has jumped an orbit when it brings the neighbourhood tea stall under its ambit. Raman Misra was just another roadside tea vendor in the suburb of Bandra when he was approached to be part of shop.chotuchaiwala.com. “They said that these days, everything sells online— shoes, clothes, you name it.

So why not tea? In the beginning I thought it will be a difficult task. But it’s quite simple. I don’t have to operate a computer. I just get an SMS from the website guys and we get the tea

Yo u know

30 june 2014

delivered,” says Misra.

The online tea shop is that subset of e-commerce sites that capitalises on local vendors. Another example is www.chandnichowkfood.com which has partnered with famous food vendors in Chandni Chowk to deliver their signature dishes across India. Last year many online grocery stores popped up, but a cup of local tea is still the most interesting.

Right now, the business is a month old and limited to Bandra. Customers sign up

for plans which are weekly or more. They are charged a delivery fee plus the cost of the tea itself. Currently, five tea vendors have tied up with the website and received 70 new orders between them.

The pace is picking up. “We have a boy who delivers in the distance of two and two-anda-half kilometres. I send tea in a flask so that it stays hot.

We have had a standing order of at least ten cups a day for a month now,” says Misra.

The e-commerce website development firm www.zepo.

in, which is behind the venture, plans to expand soon to office localities like Lower Parel. Delhi might also be on the cards.

Varun KR, marketing executive at www.zepo.in, says their main customer base is officegoers and shopowners.

“Many people have been talking about us on Twitter and Facebook. While most think it’s a great initiative, some think there was no reason for such a service to get an online presence,” says Varun. n AASTHA ATRAY BANAN

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ritesh uttamchandani

small world

10

contents 6 ANGLE

8 locomotif

Squabbles of the rich

20

story 28 cover Digitally immortal

36 bihar

Anatomy of a mystery epidemic

Infosys

open essay

Living in the past of others

Westward ho!

The burden of legacy

14 budget

Arun Jaitley plans ahead

organisation of the week islamic state in IRAQ AND SYRIA

The Face of Fear A post Al-Qaeda Islamist group in Iraq has the potential to cause serious global economic disruption Madhavankutty Pillai

F

orty Indians have been abducted

by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Mosul, a city that was captured by the terror group on 10 June 2014. What happens when victorious militants set about to govern? Iraq is yet to fall completely to the ISIS but an indication of how they would go about ruling can be seen in Mosul.

ISIS came out with a charter for Mosul where they introduced themselves as soldiers of Islam, responsible for reviving the glory of the Islamic Caliphate.

Women were told to dress appropriately and remain inside homes. Shrines would be destroyed, tobacco and alcohol completely banned. No gatherings or flags except that of the Islamic state would be permitted. The earlier government’s soldiers and policemen were told to repent with special places set up for it.

Those who stole would have their hands cut off. It seems like the Taliban all over again, taking civilisation back to a medieval age.

As an independent group, ISIS is not even a year old but ever since they have been on the march in Iraq, one city after another have come under their control and they are now within Baghdad’s reach. After Mosul, Tikrit has fallen and they are about to take control of Baiji, which has Iraq’s largest oil refinery. Earlier ISIS was a part of the Al-Qaeda but they have now severed ties with each 4 open

other. This was after ISIS expanded to Syria and unilaterally co-opted another terror organization there.

The man who is responsible for this victorious new avatar of ISIS is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a PhD in Islamic studies.

When the US occupied Iraq, he was part of the resistance movement that Al-Qaeda launched and became a key figurehead.

He was arrested in 2005 and spent four years under US custody. When Iraqi government released him in 2009, he rejoined the Islamic State in Iraq, as the Al-Qaeda was known then in the country, and the very next year became its leader.

A number of political events came together to aid the ISIS. The US pulled out of Iraq leaving a weak government made up of the Shia majority. The ISIS exploited the Sunni insecurity to build its ranks.

Syria too erupted in civil war and the

group went over the border to capture territories there. That was when its name changed from Islamic State in Iraq to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Having consolidated power in Syrian territories, it began the Iraq offensive. As cities fell, it used resources like arms, money and people from those fallen cities to fuel further offensives. Their numbers range anywhere from 6,000 to over 10,000.

What seems obvious is that ISIS has evolved to being more than a terror group launching suicide attacks. An article in The Atlantic reported that even though they summarily execute people for apostasy, in Manjib, a Syrian town under ISIS control, they had institutions like a Consumer Protection Authority office that ‘forced shops to close for selling poor products… ISIS has also whipped individuals for insulting their neighbors, confiscated and destroyed counterfeit medicine’. They fill potholes, operate post offices, install power lines and most importantly are ‘able to offer a semblance of stability in unstable and marginalised areas, even if many locals do not like its ideological program.’

Now they are on the brink of creating enormous turmoil across the world. If Iraq falls, the price of oil will go for a tailspin since it holds the second largest reserves in the world. And that means global inflation and its cascading effects. n

Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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b books

north-east

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The advent of new flavours

The bad girls’s guide to Delhi

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Diplomacy 101

cinema

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

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The indie magic of Kanu Behl

pe ■ l l e r ■ Pe a footb gese

portu

f o r the defender’s absurd

headbutting that has seriously jeopardised Portugal’s World Cup campaign Most football games which involve Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo end up with him becoming the talking point because, after all, he is regarded as the best player in the world.

That was, however, not the case in Portugal’s Would Cup match against Germany in which it was the defender

Hrithik’s PR overdrive

Two months ago, Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha called BJP politician Subramanian Swamy a CIA agent on twitter, only to apologise this week following a legal notice S P Y W AR S

BREAKING NOW: So confirmed by Wikileaks what has often been suspected so far; BJP’s@Swamy39 is a CIA agent.

—on Twitter, 25 April

turn

on able Pers n o s a e r n U ek of the We

Pepe who was in the news. In a World Cup that has been relatively free of violence and foul play, Pepe became the first player to get a red card for violent conduct. In a needless altercation, the defender headbutted the 24-year-old German forward Thomas Muller. He was visibly cheesed-off with Mueller after the latter fell down following an innocuous-looking tackle.

Pepe then rushed towards Muller—who was on the ground holding his chin—and violently thrust his forehead against the German’s. Pepe was then instantly dismissed in the 37th minute of the game. How one player’s conduct can impact a team’s chances became instantly evident in this match. When Pepe was sent off, Portugal was two goals behind but still fighting. But after his exit, they just seemed to crumble, eventually losing 0-4. Not only did Portugal get a drubbing, Pepe is now most likely to face a three-match ban for violent conduct. n

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The impugned tweet of the undersigned... was not intended to be any such allegation that Dr Subramanian Swamy was a CIA agent...

—Statement of Apology, 16 June

around

Why Can’t They Just Go? from the Central Government to UPA-appointed governors to vacate their posts have come under sharp attack from the Congress with a few leaders even terming it “vendetta”. Those hitting out at the Centre cite the 2010 Supreme Court order which said that sufficient reasons should be furnished for shunting out governors. There should not be any quarrel with the apex court’s observation. But the anti-NDA side is wrong when it uses the SC argument to

The nudge

30 june 2014

Maharashtra Raj Bhavan, Mumbai

buttress the case for several governors to continue to hold on to their jobs. For, the Supreme Court did not go into the issue of who should be occupying the post of governors. The occupants of Raj Bhavans across the country were not selected for their impeccable credentials, but for the services rendered to the previous dispensation as politicians, bureaucrats and intelligence officers. Besides, the UPA, which is now seething with anger, had earlier removed governors appointed by the BJP government. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

A Hurried Man’s Guide

On the Contrary

to an Incredible Heart Delivery in Chennai On the evening of 16 June, a ‘green corridor’ or a route made free of red-light stops was created in Chennai, so that the heart of a donor could be transported from one hospital to a recipient in another hospital. The heart was transported in an ambulance behind a patrol vehicle, from Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital to Fortis Malar Hospitals in Adyar, across 16 traffic signals, a distance of 12 kilometres which normally takes a minimum of 45 minutes. The ambulance was able to deliver the heart in a little less than 14 minutes.

The donor, a 27-year-old male named Loganathan from Kancheepuram, had been left brain-dead after a road accident on 11 June. The recipient was a 21-year old The speed of the college student from ambulance is said Mumbai named Hvovi to have touched Minocherchomji, suffer100 kmph, ing from dilated cardiomaking the 12 km myopathy or a swollen journey in less heart. than 14 minutes

the times of india group

Although a human heart can be preserved for up to four hours, the chances of a successful transplant increases the sooner the procedure is completed.

According to media reports, the decision was taken early in the morning. The help of the

SAVING LIVES An ambulance being led by a police escort

police was then sought to facilitate a quick transfer. Police personnel were stationed at various intersections, with the pilot vehicle constantly radioing their location to the control room and the police teams on the route. The speed of the ambulance on occasions is said to have touched 100 kmph. The journey, however, took about four minutes longer than the planned nine because of the many speed breakers en route.

The transplant operation, which was carried out almost immediately after the delivery of the heart, was conducted successfully. Loganathan’s family donated not just the heart, but also his two kidneys, eyes, liver and skin to different hospitals. n

Ordinary Lives of Famous Others On the vacuous spectacle of the Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia quarrel M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

C

onsider the strange

predicament of the policemen investigating the Preity ZintaNess Wadia case. On 17 June, the Times of India quoted one of them as saying that there were five CCTV cameras on the stand when Wadia is accused of having abused Zinta and that they have gone through two of them. Normally in a cricket match, you look at the field; this might be a first, an audience for what happens in the stands.

It began with Zinta’s police complaint becoming public. It spoke about how she had been repeatedly humiliated by Wadia, and instantly, the issue went beyond the personal sphere. After headlines that screamed molestation, there followed a surprising clarification from Zinta’s lawyer that there was no sexual abuse alleged—when there is a PR war on, one doesn’t expect such nuances, especially from the aggrieved party. It was either a very gracious act or the beginning of a negotiated peace.

From Wadia’s side, there were leaks to newspapers about how Zinta was jealous because he was in a serious relationship with someone else. And uniquely, in an environment where for every atrocity against a woman there are instant protests on the streets, this time there was an orchestrated agitation against Zinta by workers of a hospital owned by Wadia. They said she was misusing the IPC section that makes outraging the modesty of a woman a crime. They might even have had a point—the section is a nebulous anachronism—if not for the fact that it was none of their business.

Also consider that among the many sections charged against Wadia is one that states that he insulted Zinta so that her reaction would result in a breach of peace and force her to commit a crime. AnExpress report now says that the police are exploring stalking charges against him.

To add another dimension to the imbroglio, there are now unconfirmed media reports of an out-of-court settlement. The settlement that is spoken about is Zinta wanting to sell her stake in the IPL team that she and Wadia co-own. The problem seems self evident—they can’t stand each other but have joint holdings. Usually this is something that happens with marriages that turn sour; in this case, it seems to have jumped a step.

Does one categorise this as a dispute between former lovers, or between current business partners? Were Wadia still her boyfriend, would Zinta have still refused to make space for his family in the front row? If Squabbling Zinta was an over seats like estranged male commuters, business partner who he being nasty couldn’t to those they stand—all love, able to other things find closure remaining only when equal—would embarrasment Wadia’s or humiliation reaction be any different? force it upon These them questions should be pointless for ordinary Indians because it does not make an iota of difference to their lives. And yet, this is a drama that they find themselves engaged with because of the personalities involved. It excites them to have such a ringside view of a personal affair. There is the schadenfreude of seeing how ordinary the lives of the rich and famous are once you are allowed a peek into it. Squabbling over seats like commuters in a local train, being mean and nasty to those who they once loved and cherished, and able to find closure only when embarrassment and humiliation forces it upon them. n 30 june 2014

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S PRASANNARAJAN

Westward Ho!

I

Zones and the other wonders of social capitalism lurks an n his engagement with the world, Prime Oriental beast that is never satiated, looking for the deviMinister Narendra Modi began with a courteant who defies the limits of happiness. The paranoia of the ous note. The presence of our neighborhood leadPeople’s Republic knows no bounds, best illustrated by the ers at the Inauguration was a measure of his interever-expanding Chinese gulag. Lately, the republic that still national priority: India’s regional preeminence resists what the dissidents call the Fifth Modernisation (deneeds to be reaffirmed—and played out with less mocracy) has come to enjoy some benefits of the freedom the friction. The Big Brother behaved with sophistiapparatchiks have: corruption. India can do without China cation, and the message was appreciated in such envy, but it needs to make use of democracy with more vigour. problematic capitals as Islamabad and Colombo.

And that is what India expects from Prime Minister Modi.

He followed up the gesture with his first international trip There is only one thing the prime minister can learn from as Prime Minister: Destination Bhutan fit perfectly into the script of Romancing the Near Abroad. The Buddhist Kingdom China in dealing with south Asia: diplomacy is economy.

China pursues this motto with ruthlessness. India, in spite of has always been a good friend. Unlike some others in the rebeing the only fully evolved democracy in the region, still has gion, Thimphu has shown no hesitation in treating New to try hard to assert its supremacy, and some bilateral relationDelhi with respect and gratitude. Modi, in his maiden speech ships are far from smooth. The best of India’s best of diplomatfrom a foreign capital, acknowledged the special relationic efforts in south Asia have yielded minimum returns. As a ship; and he was pretty statesman-like in his speech in the regional organization, SAARC is not only a poor men’s club.

Bhutanese parliament.

It is also a travesty of regional cooperation. Its members are So far so good, and the symbolism of it all has been dissecthardly there for each other; in the age of multilateralism, it ed in detail by aficionados of the so-called Look East policy. has no global influence. It may end up as a worthless effort for Much has also been read into the hidden Chinese aspect of Modi to build on a grand south Asian plan. India’s neighbours the visit: how India intends to contain the dragon that conhave a long way to go democratically before they can even astinues to expand its spheres of influence as salesman, builder and bully. Beijing, on its part, is not unnecessarily bothered by pire to be players in an interconnected world.

Some other parts of the world demand Modi’s attention. It its critics from the democratic West, who just can’t comprehend the way the Chinese strike a perfect balance between na- is part of the Nehruvian legacy that India continues to look tional interest and extraterritorial terror. It is too late for India at the West with suspicion. The remnants of the socialist state are still alive in the minds of our policy establishment. to ‘contain’ China, in its neighborhood or elsewhere; singleAnti-Americanism is a necessary nationalist trait not only mindedness, stealth, paranoia, a nationalistic urge to outperin places such as Caracas and Havana; it has not been fully form its enemies and a state answerable to none are not exexorcised from Delhi either, no matter that considerable actly Indian, which is good even though we could have done improvements have been made since the Atal Bihari Vajpayee better in the national interest department. government. For the first time, India has a right wing governThat said, it must be hoped that Modi won’t be another ment that can stand on its own—and a Indian leader suffering from a China illustration Anirban Ghosh leader who means business. It is his complex. He is apparently a great admoment to start a meaningful conversamirer of the Chinese model of develoption with the world. He was so good ment, and there is much to be admired at talking to India. His visit to the about the Chinese growth rate, Chinese United States later this year could be roads, Chinese buildings, Chinese railthe beginning of a confident India talkway and Deng Xiaoping (in spite of ing to its natural ally. India needs to be Tiananmen.) Modi the modernizer has heard, but India on the global stage reason to be inspired. And there is much hardly comes out with the right words. to be ashamed about things Indian in Modi has the mandate—and should above categories. Still, the Indian obhave the words. session with “Why can’t we be like the It is still a big bad world, and fresh acChinese?” is a silly one, which in part is ronyms of terror and fear are spreading. perpetuated by the tea leaf-reading inThe leader of the world’s largest democdustry of the seminar circuit. racy has to look far beyond the East. n Beyond the glitz of Special Economic 8 open

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open essay

By SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

THE REMAINS OF THE REVOLUTION Living in the past of others

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nything seems possible in the fading splendour of this fantasy house. One might even believe that Zhou Enlai really did declare “It’s too early to say” when asked about the impact of the French Revolution 183 years after the event. That comment has been broadcast ever since as evidence of a sagacious Chinese preSunanda K mier’s ability to pierce the mists of time Datta-Ray and uncertainty and pronounce prois a columnist foundly on what French scholars call and author the longue durée, the long view of history in which structures matter more than events. We now know it was nothing of the kind. Nevertheless, the revolution goes on in subtle ways that were beyond a Chinese revolutionary’s comprehension, as the de Taillac family illustrates in its 400-year-old château of Luxeube not far from the ancient Roman town of Auch in south-west France.

Chas Freeman, the American diplomat and interpreter at Zhou’s meetings with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in 1972, says that when Nixon and Kissinger spoke of the “French Revolution” and “Paris Commune” Zhou at once recognised terms that the rampaging Sorbonne students also glibly mouthed. He thought he was being asked about the student riots in Paris in 1968, not the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

Such confusion isn’t confined to the beautiful but harebrained actress who, hearing the “Judgment of Paris” mentioned, burst out, “No one goes to Paris nowadays. New York is much more chic!” According to the irrepressible KP Unnikrishnan, Rajiv Gandhi also thought of Sharmila

Tagore when he heard of Tagore, while Marx didn’t mean Karl to him but the brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho. True or false, the witticism probably sealed Unnikrishnan’s future in the Congress.

Zhou probably knew too little history, not too much.

He would have expected a pile like Luxeube to be stripped to the bone or reduced to rubble by France’s successive waves of social turmoil. But storms seem to have left untouched the stately pink stone edifice with its massive central tower where I am in constant danger of breaking my neck since the stairs to the bedrooms curl round its inside wall. Despite its crenellations, the tower wasn’t built for defence but to keep an eye on the field hands.

The family has moved with the times in ways that would be considered revolutionary. Alain de Taillac worked for a petroleum company in Libya. His son Pierre who has inherited the estate and who studied at London’s Kings College with Deep, my son, lives in Normandy and edits military histories in Paris. His sisters are prominent in fashion and design. One, Marie-Helene, makes exquisite jewellery in Rajasthan. Their multinational spouses, including an Indian, a Japanese, a Moroccan and a solitary Frenchman, are high-flying globetrotting businessmen.

Pierre shows me the only scars of revolutionary turmoil the house bears. A pair of ornate lilies has been erased from the bureau in his mother’s bedroom. Lilies matter. France might have had a king today if the royal claimant, the Comte de Chambord, hadn’t insisted in the 1870s that the tricolour would have to be replaced by the white and gold fleur de lys as the national flag.

Pierre doesn’t know if a righteous mob stormed Luxeube to guillotine the lilies or if the owners prudently did the job themselves. That would have been like the nineteenth century

Bettmann/CORBIS

EAST MEETS WEST US President Richard Nixon (second from left) with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (second from right) on 21 February 1972 30 June 2014

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Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images

the revolt Engraving by PF Germain of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1798; (facing page) Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (1774-1792)

Bengali writer who wore a dhoti over his trousers during the Indian Mutiny and kept a sharp lookout for the winning side.

The de Taillacs may not have been as calculating. One member lost his head during the Revolution. Another joined the 10,000-strong Armée des Princes, the counter-revolutionary force raised in Germany in 1792 under the aegis of the ill-fated Louis XVI’s brothers. But despite past royalist sympathies, they don’t use their titles of Marquis and Count. “We’re descended from a fictional character,” Pierre laughs instead. Fiction has an underlay of fact. His ancestor, Isaac de Porthau (1617-1712), scion of an ancient Bearnese family ennobled in 1674, was the original of Alexandre Dumas’ generous if simple giant Porthos, whose ability to wolf down enormous quantities of food greatly impressed the Sun King during a banquet at Versailles. The gourmand also yearned for social acceptance and was rewarded in the novel with the resounding title of Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds. Isaac de Porthau was also a Musketeer, like his brother. He succeeded his father as secretary of semi-independent Bearn’s parliament.

The visitor might be forgiven for assuming, from the abundance of family portraits in tarnished gilt frames and the chipped monogrammed crockery, that the de Taillacs have been here for centuries. But the lion rampant inlaid in the hall floor isn’t their symbol. Their device is a fish plunging 12 open

across a band carved on the dining room mantelpiece. It is repeated in a more formal heraldic setting surmounted by a coronet on every piece of gleaming silver. The de Taillacs moved from château to château until Pierre’s grandfather bought Luxeube in the twenties. But a family that weathered the Revolution to remain relevant two centuries later carries its own continuity with it wherever it goes.

Such consistency gives the lie to stereotypes that other apocryphal sayings reflect. My favourite is of the courtier—he may even have been a de Taillac collateral—rushing to inform Marie Antoinette that that the peasants were revolting. “Yes, aren’t they!” was the queen’s imperturbable reply. Father Paul Turmes, the Luxembourgeois Jesuit priest at Calcutta’s St Xavier’s College who briefly and unsuccessfully tried to teach me Latin, added “Et tu brute” to the list. He dismissed the notion of a dying Caesar punning on Brutus being a brute.

History’s most famous apocryphal comment was also famous as the shortest letter in the world—Napier’s “Peccavi” (“I have sinned” in Latin) after annexing Sindh. The historian AJP Taylor is credited with inventing the letter. Another account says a teenage girl, Catherine Winkworth, coined the term and sent it to Punch, which published it as fact.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi said much that was wise and witty. But, apparently, he didn’t say “I think it would be a good 30 June 2014

idea” when a journalist asked what he thought of British civilisation. There are several versions of what he did say before and after his historic tea with King George V and Queen Mary in 1931. The most fanciful pre-tea comment is that, asked if he would really see the King-Emperor in a loin cloth, Gandhi replied, “Yes, and if he doesn’t concede swaraj I’ll take off even that!” Asked afterwards if he felt comfortable in his scanty garb, the “rebel fakir” (the king’s term) replied, “The king had enough on for both of us!” Delving into myth again, Geoffrey Moorhouse claimed, in Calcutta: The City Revealed, that there is no basis for the fond Bengali belief in Lenin’s prediction that the road to world revolution lay from Peking to Paris via Calcutta.

Zhou’s cryptic reply wasn’t innocent of politics. China’s Cultural Revolution was still rumbling murderously in 1972, and Zhou wouldn’t have dared to pass judgment on the French Maoists and risk being branded “renegade, traitor and scab” like State Popperfoto/Getty Images President Liu Shaoqi or being killed in a plane crash in Mongolia like Lin Biao, Mao Zedong’s designated successor. An enigmatic answer that had everyone guessing buttressed the speaker’s prestige and China’s reputation as a far-thinking, patient civilisation.

This is not the only time a misinterpretation of a remark by a Chinese leader has mistakenly entered mainstream parlance. There is no evidence that Deng Xiaoping, who launched China’s market reforms, ever actually said, “To get rich is glorious”. But Zhou wouldn’t have been far out even if he had been speaking of the right French Revolution: the continuing flood of Muslim immigrants who demand the Revolution’s pledge of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and the French government’s reaching back to the secular ideals of the same event, to forbid overt displays of faith, give a new twist to an old tale. It’s too early to tell how this saga will play out.

Pierre left this morning for a meeting in Bordeaux and then back to Normandy and his wife, leaving Luxeube to Deep, Sumita and me. It’s a strange feeling to be alone with someone else’s past. The innumerable mementoes of that past are not only historically priceless but intrinsically valuable. There are no telephones that I can see. A tall pylon jutting out through the trees with loops of electric cable sweeping away into the distance, erected despite Pierre’s vehement objections, is the only sign of intruding modernity. The sounds are mainly of birds. A cloud of pale yellow butterflies flutters past the drawing room’s French windows. The rutted drive from the front door winds for nearly two kilometres between stalwart sentinels of plane (platanus in French) trees before it reaches the village road.

Pierre’s tenant farmer next door beams goodwill without a word of English. From time to time his dogs gambol playfully all over us. A wild boar in a cage in his backyard snorts loudly.

30 June 2014

It isn’t wild enough any longer to survive in the wild. Peering through the mesh, the boar must envy a brown hare leaping through the grass. The gentle undulation of gold and many shades of green beyond, the harvested fields sloping up to hilltops where clumps of trees stand like a boy’s Mohawk hairdo, indicate a landscape shaped by man’s loving hand.

The house is silent with its carved and gilded furniture and treasure house of memories. The many beds, the enormous grate in the kitchen and the huge cooking dishes, cupboards crammed with crockery and cutlery, pantry and laundry room, confirm it’s a house meant for grand occasions and the bustle of a hundred people. I read in W magazine of the drama when Pierre’s sister Victoire married Ramdane Touhami. “Accessories designer Corto Moltedo was stuck in Mexico, but at least his father would attend. Artist Philippe Parreno couldn’t make it, but

My favourite apocryphal saying is of the courtier rushing to Marie Antoinette with news that the peasants were revolting. “Yes, aren’t they!” was the queen’s imperturbable reply he promised to stop by the day before. And Lola Schnabel was on the phone from Charles de Gaulle, where she had a threehour layover: Was that enough time to cab it into Paris and collect a pair of shoes from Azzedine? Or should she go barefoot?

Was it a ‘grassy’ château?” The writer rightly adds Luxeube “is indeed grassy—and lovely.”

The winds weren’t right for a parachutist to hand-deliver Touhami’s speech during the reception dinner. The donkey polo match planned for the next day had to be cancelled because of the rain and hangovers. But Victoire was philosophical. “It doesn’t matter if something doesn’t work out, because people don’t know what you had planned. Over the years I’ve realized that the party always goes on.” So does the revolution. To improve on Trotsky’s “change alone endures”, it endures longest when revolution rejects the bad and preserves the best, as the de Taillacs have done at Luxeube. n open www.openthemagazine.com 13

BU D G E T

The Inheritance of Ruins After ten years of the UPA regime’s fiscal recklessness and figure fudging, writes PR RAMESH, Arun Jaitley has his task cut out for him: take the economy to the next level of growth

W

hen the news of Iraqi cities

Mosul and Tikrit falling to terrorist outfit Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) broke out, American President Barack Obama, the man who pulled out US soldiers from that country, said military intervention was possible again in the West Asian nation, but that there would be “no boots on the ground”.

This is a luxury that India’s new Finance Minister Arun Jaitley can ill-afford— he cannot afford not to get his feet wet.

Jaitley is facing the toughest challenge of his political career: to deliver on the promise of the aspirations his party gave to the nation in the run-up to the general elections, while dealing with near empty coffers. In effect, this budget will be as much about the fiscal math as it will be about its political management—presumably why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has opted out of a planned visit to Japan, so as to provide all the political firepower his FM will need next month.

Mindful of the daunting task, the Finance Minister has—even before settling into his portfolio—begun to ready the nation for the tough choices ahead.

On his Facebook account, Jaitley candidly acknowledged how India must pre14 open

pare itself for “tough measures”, especially given the current trend of “low and jobless growth”. To strengthen his case, he warned that the failure to generate jobs had “serious social implications”, especially since it was occurring against the backdrop of high inflation and economic slowdown.

“Short-term disciplining till we reverse the present trend will give us long term benefits,” Jaitley said, pointing out that there was need to move towards an era of fiscal discipline with the intent of tamping down on inflation in the economy; not only will it bring relief to millions of households across the country, it will also improve the competitiveness of Indian manufacturing.

A report put out by Moody’s, the international rating agency, on 19 June, emphasised that the primary objective of the finance in the budget would be to rein in the fiscal deficit. Implicitly fingering the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the rating agency said, “Wide budget deficits have kept India’s inflation high and contributed to a widening current account deficit between 2011 and 2013, which heightened exchange rate volatility and result-

ed in higher domestic interest rates.

These trends have exacerbated the slowdown in GDP growth since 2011.”

Clearly, there are no more free lunches ahead, following a dismal record by the UPA in managing financial troubles.

Worse, the policy paralysis that forced a rapid slowdown in the economy from a high of 9 per cent-plus growth to less than 5 per cent—in the span of less than four years—has meant that revenues to the exchequer have fallen even while expenditure levels remained at elevated levels.

What would be particularly worrying to Jaitley is the kind of expenditure compression that his predecessor P Chidambaram effected in his bid to stick to his committed fiscal targets. The brunt of it was borne by capital expenditure at a time when investment levels in the economy are at their lowest in a decade.

Not only did Chidambaram (and his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee) miss the targets, he has also jeopardised future growth in the economy by short-changing on federal investment spending.

However, the one thing going for the new Finance Minister is the high level of trust that the BJP has managed with the 30 JUNE 2014

illustration anirban ghosh

Indian electorate. With the UPA, the trust deficit was so high that even achievements were dismissed as spin.

So when Modi first, and Jaitley later, claimed that the Centre’s coffers were indeed empty, their statements did not invite scorn and criticism, but attention.

What they do is provide crucial political room to the finance minister, to allow him to undertake tough economic decisions. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has already signalled that there is 30 JUNE 2014

no subject that is untouchable.

The feisty Chief Minister from Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, has embarked on reform of labour laws that are more than half a century old. As if on cue, the Union labour ministry has sought comments from the public on similar amendments to its own set of laws. At present, the labour laws are very rigid and do not recognise the changes in contemporary India—which today is an impressive $1.8 trillion economy. As a re-

sult, they are less friendly for employers, forcing them to employ back door techniques like contract labour hiring, as opposed to tenure jobs. The changes initiated by Rajasthan and later proposed by the Union labour ministry have not—largely thanks to the personal credibility Modi currently enjoys as a non-nonsense doer—drawn the sharp response any such previous attempts usually elicited.

“In fact, candidness and honesty, underpinned by the immense trust that the open www.openthemagazine.com 15

electorate placed in Prime Minister Narendra Modi could prove to be Jaitley’s biggest boon: the people of India expect honesty, however stark, from both the PM and his FM. They are well aware that tough decisions and belt tightening could be called for now, agar achhe din ko aana hai [if good days are to come],” points out a colleague in the government. Both Modi and Jaitley, taking a cue from the electorate, have therefore minced no words in underscoring, quite early on, that people will have to bite the bullet first in order to work towards a booming economy.

G

Succession Issues

iven that restoring balance

to the fisc is the primary task of the Finance Minister, it is clear that he will have to address the receipts side of the budget—this is because expenditure is given and very difficult to turn around immediately. Ministry of Finance officials have indicated that Jaitley may pass over on the option of hiking tax rates, and instead focus on non-tax revenue sources such as disinvestment.

On the expenditure side, the Finance Minister has to deal with the sleight of hand performed by Chidambaram in adding up figures to meet targets. A large chunk of the spending—one estimate pegs it at Rs 1 trillion—has been shifted to this fiscal: an inheritance that can be a nightmare in any year and more so in one when the economy is buffeted by chilly winds of uncertainty and slower growth.

This apart, there is also an overhang from previous actions of Chidambaram, who has routinely undertaken off-balance sheet accounting practicing, as in the case of fertiliser subsidies; handing out long-term bonds to fertiliser companies in lieu of their dues, clearing his own books out in the process and putting the squeeze on the ability of fertilizer companies to buy fresh stocks of raw and finished material without exposing themselves to high interest rates from banks.

Not surprising, therefore, that the former FM has come in for sharp criticism for the latest episode of “window dressing” accounts; primarily in order to show fiscal deficit targets for financial year 2014 as having been met.

However, Chidambaram has rejected the criticism over subsidy payments 16 open

Across departments, the new government faces the daunting task of setting things in order

Fiscal Trouble Problem Growth is at a decade low, with GDP at below 5 % for two consecutive years; revenue growth is not sufficient to fund developmental programmes and capital spending All this is being seen as fallout of the UPA government not rolling back financial stimulus measures in time.

Pranab Mukherjee went against the advice of experts. The result: fiscal deficit rose to well over 6% After Chidambaram returned as FM, a committee headed by Vijay Kelkar was named to work out a road map to reduce fiscal deficit to 3 % of the GDP by 2016

Solution The new government will have to raise prices of diesel and urea and take a call on procurement prices. The UPA government consistently raised MSP, which affects farmers during higher inflation It could revisit futures trading of essential commodities; calibrate MSP rates with market prices; set up a price stabilisation fund and an APMC Act; unbundle FCI operations into procurement, storage and distribution

Land Acquisition Problem Critical infrastructure projects are blocked for

want of new laws

Solution The government will have to find ways to skirt restrictive clauses and give enough elbow room

to industries to go ahead with projects

30 JUNE 2014

Environment Problem

Solution Better coordination between multiple ministries will go a

An estimated

5000 projects

are awaiting environmental clearances

long way in speeding up the process

Problem

Taxation

Solution

Retrospective taxation effected by Pranab Mukherjee has hurt the country’s investment culture badly

The new government will have to address this and offer clarity and

stability on taxation without losing out on revenues

Allocation and pricing of natural resources

Problem

Solution

Done arbitrarily and without transparency,

The government will have to evolve mechanisms to ensure

accountability and transparency

the UPA’s measures on this front led to infrastructure projects getting choked

A

Institutions

Problem The UPA government had insisted on RBI placing political expediency over monetary policy, leading to a standoff between the finance ministry and the central bank. The

situation improved after Subbarao was replaced by Raghuram Rajan

Solution

Leave RBI alone 30 JUNE 2014

rolled over into the current fiscal, maintaining that it was normal and routine for the subsidy in the last quarter of the previous financial year to be paid out in the first quarter of the new financial year. This, in fact, is believed to have been reiterated by Ministry of Finance officials to a disbelieving Jaitley, when he asked for clarifications on fiscal deficit numbers.

Significantly, some time earlier this year, news reports in a section of the media suggested that the Revenue Wing of the Ministry of Finance had stopped all refunds in March. North Block swung into action quickly to deny the reports.

Oblivious to the developments, some officers had gone ahead and issued tax refunds, even to individual tax payers.

They were immediately chastised and pulled up by their seniors. The unwritten order in March, in Chidambaram’s official quarters at Raisina Hill, was categorical: no payments should be made, including tax refunds to individuals. The bill of pending payables alone quickly added up to a whopping Rs two lakh crore. This is in addition to unpaid food, fertiliser and fuel subsidies.

It was a stroke of genius: Chidambaram had managed to juggle his figures and pretty up his fiscal deficit target numbers for financial year 2014, leaving the real mess for the new government to deal with.

As FM, Mukherjee had also lashed out at SEBI, attacking its

chairman CB Bhave

for not “bailing out” corporates such as Sahara

mong the Finance Minister’s biggest worries is fuel subsidy, which has proved to be the fastest-growing expenditure head during the 10 year stint of the UPA. Compounding matters, the government doubled the original cap on subsidised cylinders to twelve annually, primarily at the behest of Congress party Vice President Rahul Gandhi. Although the government swore by targeted subsidies for the very needy, most of the subsidy continued to be cornered by the vocal middle class and even the rich. To boot, the much-vaunted direct cash transfer programme was a non-starter, eroding the credibility of the strategy to shift to a cash transfer system.

On the external sector, stability was brought about by clamping down on gold imports. Yes, it has improved the current account deficit, but Chidambaram has in open www.openthemagazine.com 17

the process ended up incentivising the smuggling of gold into the country. So, a balance sheet item has now gone off balance sheet without really solving the problem.

Food inflation spikes persisted at regular and seasonal periods over the years, primarily affecting essential goods such as fruit, vegetables, milk and poultry.

A focused pulses production programme notwithstanding, annual imports from Canada, Myanmar and other countries ratcheted up as the government bought at high import prices to cater to the consumer at home. Several projects to ameliorate the situation remained at the blueprint stage, including fruit and vegetables hub creation outside metros and incentivising fruit, vegetables and poultry farming in rural and semiurban areas to boost income and cut transport overheads to consumers in cities—thus containing chances of any rapid price hikes and possibilities of hoarding.

Similarly, the plights of efforts to enhance warehouse receipts as negotiable instruments, creating a chain of state-incentivised, temperature controlled warehouses countrywide, languished.

Again, as with the European Union and Alphonso mangoes earlier this year, mismatched phytosanitary standards and the lack of awareness around these meant consignments of Indian food products were held up with regularity; allowing much smaller countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, and even more distant ones in South America such as Brazil and Columbia, to score with timely exports to importing nations close to India.

The crucial banking sector, too, wasn’t allowed to function at optimum efficiency. Some of India’s senior bankers in state-run banks have horror stories to tell of how the UPA regime functioned.

Those bankers, who were selected to senior positions, would be approached by middlemen claiming that they could influence their postings to some of the better banks. Those who refused to play ball had to wait longer and settle for the smaller banks. Banking secretary Rajeev Takru, as head of the Department of Financial Services, would lord over even the most senior of bankers. At one meeting, he is believed to have pulled up a se18 open

nior banker for attending a meeting chaired by him, saying he would want only the chairmen of banks to attend meetings, not their juniors.

Some bankers note that it was Takru’s attitude that led to a standoff between him and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) top brass at a meeting in Kashmir. The relationship between the previous central bank head, Duvvuri Subbarao, and the government led by Chidambaram, at one point, soured so much that the outgoing governor on his last speech, a day before his term ended, took a dig at his minister.

“I do hope finance minister Chidambaram will one day say, ‘I am often frustrated by the Reserve Bank, so frustrated that I want to go for a walk,

Chidambaram maintained it was routine for the last quarter’s subsidy to be paid out in the first quarter of the new financial year.

This is said to have been reiterated to a disbelieving Jaitley even if I have to walk alone. But thank God, the Reserve Bank exists,” Subbarao said, in his last public lecture as RBI governor.

A month or two after this bitter parting, officials prevailed upon Chidambaram to host a formal farewell at the Delhi Gymkhana for Subbarao, saying that such public spats were unhealthy from a public policy perspective.

During this period of acute acrimony, senior bankers and other officials who approached the then PM for succour, were told by an impassive Manmohan Singh: “But what can I do?”

What made the relationship between the central bank and the government a difficult one was the influence which

Chidambaram, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and the PM—himself a former governor—sought to exert subtly on interest rate management and offering banking licences. The RBI was strongly opposed to giving licenses to new banks, especially the ones promoted by corporates. Subbarao’s digging in his heels left the triad infuriated. It was left to his successor, Raghuram Rajan, to announce two new licences: to Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) and Kolkata-based microfinance firm Bandhan Financial.

In 2012, with global headwinds, an economic slowdown and the urgent need for lowering the fiscal deficit, a top official of the Cabinet Secretariat was busy sounding out stunned policymakers on another fiscal stimulus. The gaffes continued.

After Pranab Mukherjee was elevated to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, one of Manmohan Singh’s earliest moves was to handle the issue of retrospective taxation for corporates and related issues. But nothing came of his promises. A meeting was chaired by Pulok Chatterji of the PMO to discuss the matter and arrive at a decision. Officials who attended the meeting recall that no decision was taken to improve the investment climate of the country.

Things didn’t end there.

Whistleblower KM Abraham, who wrote to the PM that pressure was being exerted on Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) by then FM Pranab Mukherjee, was issued a memo, flouting all norms issued by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on whistleblowers.

He escaped suspension, sources contend, only because Mukherjee moved to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, but had to pay a price nonetheless: not being empanelled as Additional Secretary despite his sterling record.

But he was hounded by the tax authorities during that period with notices from three jurisdictions. Similarly, two others, SEBI Chairman CB Bhave and another member, MS Sahoo, also received tax notices. Officials maintain that this was primarily because the regulator was did not respond “promptly” to instructions from the finance ministry.

There are no easy options for Jaitley. n 30 JUNE 2014

TRANSITION

THE BURDEN OF LEGACY Outpaced by competitors and weighed down by its glory, India’s pioneering software services company struggles to find a life beyond the sheltering shadow of its founding father. Can the new CEO, Vishal Sikka, save Infosys? Ullekh NP reports from Bangalore

A

t the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) in downtown Bangalore where Thomas L Friedman’s bestseller The World is Flat begins, there are no signs of the ‘New World’ that the New York Times columnist dwelt upon in gushing narrative in 2005.

Watching local golfers and Kannada-speaking caddies over idli-sambar and kaapi, it is tough to conjure up images of the world going flat or to conceive of this Indian location as country-neutral. Perhaps Friedman, standing on the first tee, was exaggerating; or, he may have been out of his depth about what ‘Indian’ is. Or, perhaps things have changed since the American’s visit. Friedman— whose book’s title was inspired by then Infosys Technologies CEO Nandan Nilekani’s pithy remark:

Deepak G Pawar/The India Today Group/Getty Images

FOUNDING FATHER NR Narayana Murthy at the Infosys campus in Bangalore

“The playing field [in global business] has been levelled”—also referred to the Bangalore-based information technology (IT) services provider as one of the jewels of the local IT industry. Which it was. Just as Friedman’s loud talk of (in his own words) his “Columbus-like voyage” to explore modern India looks a bit laughable now, his jewels of the IT industry have lost their lustre, notably Infosys.

Plagued by slow growth in clientele, startling jumps in attrition and slumps in sales and profits, the multinational has for the first time brought in a non-founder as CEO to set things right.

Until the nomination of German software company SAP AG’s former senior official, Vishal Sikka, only co-founders of the 33-year-old company had become CEOs, starting with the natural leader of the group, NR Narayana Murthy himself. This practice has, over time, inspired much heartache among a lot of senior employees who were not lucky enough to have been founders— the most famous being TV Mohandas Pai, the former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Human Resources chief of the company that was once the bellwether of India’s $100 billion-plus IT outsourcing industry.

“Yes, the ‘founders-only’ CEO policy was a mistake and has hurt the company,” Pai told Open, without elaborating. It was this policy which cost Pai the top job when SD Shibulal, much respected for his “COO [Chief Operating Officer] skills and as a nice human being” according to several Infosys employees that Open spoke to, became CEO and Managing Director three years ago. On 1 August, Shibulal will relinquish the CEO post— to which he was appointed just three years ago (Murthy was CEO for 21 years till Nilekani took over in 2002 for five years, and S Gopalakrishnan served for four years) —to 47-year-old Sikka.

How exactly has the founders’ legacy hurt the $8.4 billion company?

There aren’t any easy answers. But the behemoth that was once the employer-of-choice for young techies and fresh computer science graduates is now grappling with massive attrition rates, which are higher than average industry figures. As revenues and profit grow less quickly than those of Infosys’ competitors—Tata Consultancy Services Limited 22 open

THE NEW BOSS Vishal Sikka speaks during a press conference in Bangalore on 12 June

(TCSL) and New Jersey-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation— the brightest of the lot now prefer other organisations over Infosys. Thanks to the raft of senior executive exits over the past year, at least three company workers surveyed by Open say they are worried about their career prospects. “This was not our dream when we joined this once highly reputed company. Infosys is no longer what it was,” says an employee based out of its headquarters in Bangalore’s Electronics City.

Sipping tea in a restaurant not far from the campus, he avers, “Murthy’s return to Infosys did inspire confidence. But that was short-lived. There are those who believe he has put the company back on track. I am not yet convinced.” At Infosys, the pay hike announced in April for its local employees was an average of six to seven per cent; rival TCS offered an average of 10 per cent and Wipro Limited managed eight per cent. Global financial consultant UBS, who changed Infosys’ stock rating from “buy” to “sell” recent30 June 2014

Aijaz Rahi/AP

“He (Sikka) is very much actionoriented, always likes to try out new things one after the other and never gives up” Ramakrishna Yarlapati former SAP executive

ly, has warned that the attrition levels at Infosys—now at 18.7 per cent—will rise further.

Mixed Signals

As someone who has zealously campaigned against 60-year-old-plus executives clinging on to executive level positions of power in tech companies— someone who stepped down from dayto-day activities of the company before he himself turned 60—Murthy seems to have taken an about turn. The veteran IT 30 June 2014

industrialist showed no hesitation in returning from retirement to the Infosys fold at 66, with the aim of refurbishing the company that he helped found with a seed fund borrowed from his wife Sudha, back in 1981.

“The sad thing is he himself doesn’t seem to believe that he is authoritarian,” says a former senior company executive, who emphasises that co-founder and former CEO Nandan Nilekani alone managed to argue his way through Murthy’s defences. “In those years I was there, I re-

“IT services companies such as Infosys, according to me, are going through a structural crisis, not a cyclical problem caused by the slowdown” Sharad Sharma co-founder, iSPIRT open www.openthemagazine.com 23

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP

THE OLD GUARD Nandan Nilekani, Srinath Batni, Mohandas Pai, NR Narayana Murthy and S Shibulal at a press conference on 13 April 2004

Murthy always dominated discussions at Infosys. He is known to have had an authoritarian streak, listening to very few people with the exception of successor Nandan Nilekani, who never shied away from a healthy argument with him alised he hardly listened to anyone else though Shibu and Kris (co-founder and former CEO S Gopalakrishnan) managed to do a balancing act, once Nandan disagreed with Murthy.”

The former executive reasons that times were different then, however; perhaps centralised command was necessary at the beginning of the ascent, when the company was planning for a big leap and there were many divergent opinions.

But he insists that Murthy abandoned all corporate governance values by making a return a year ago with his son Rohan as executive assistant, promising to bring about an organisational turnaround in the company. After the company trailed 24 open

industry earnings figures and failed at a mission to widen focus areas and to move higher in the value chain—popularly dubbed ‘Infosys 3.0’—Murthy was invited by the Infosys board in a surprise decision last year to return as executive chairman for the rev-up. The initial euphoria caused by Murthy’s comeback triggered rapid rise in stock prices but the excitement on the bourses soon died down. Still, the company managed to secure a few large bread-and-butter deals, in addition to cutting costs.

Having Murthy at the helm didn’t necessarily mean that the company won more clients and retained talent, leave alone surpassing competitors

in sales and profit. Also, 13 very senior company officials quit, raising speculations that they may not have found working with a young Rohan Murthy easy. There were other rumours afloat as well. Officials who left the company included Basab Pradhan, head of global Sales and Marketing, who went on to join Hexaware; Sudhir Chaturvedi, senior Vice-President and head of financial services, Americas, who later joined NIIT; Ashok Vemuri, Director and Chief of Operations in the Americas, who joined iGate; Humberto Andrade of the Latin America BPO, who was picked up by Capgemini; Kartik Jayaraman, global Sales head-BPO of the energy/ 30 June 2014

utilities/services industry, who joined Accenture; Paul Gottsegen, Chief Marketing Officer, who was hired by Mindtree; and so on. The rest of the 13 included Stephen R Pratt, Subbu Goparaju, V Balakrishnan, Chandrashekar Kakal, Nithyanandan Radhakrishnan, BG Srinivas and Prasad Thrikutam.

Exit Strategy for a Re-Entry

No doubt a huge attrition rate is a problem in normal circumstances. But what if they were planned to make way for a new leader, ask a few devil’s advocates.

A senior IT executive close to senior Infosys officials posits that, in hindsight, Murthy’s efforts to lay the foundation for future growth have shown initial success. “It is noteworthy that 13 of the senior execs left without making a noise. The only noise was that of the media speculating. Mind you, this is not unusual in US corporate circles where senior executives, most often the highest-performing ones, leave the company ahead of a major hire. It is meant to give a free hand to the new leader.”

“There is no evidence to poke holes in the theory that these exits were planned and intentional,” he argues, having watched Infosys and competitors closely and over a long period. “There is at least equal probability that they left of their own volition because none of them hit out at the company when they left. If they were sacked there are contractual options to buy their silence because the goal was to hire a new honcho.”

This industry insider shares the views of at least two senior Infosys officials: that Murthy’s return was a success in that he managed a near-smooth transition from Infosys as a founders-dominated entity to the one in which professional leaders with no “company legacy” are at the helm. Sikka’s takeover completes this transition, with Murthy as midwife. “Murthy’s greatest achievement is to hand over the reins to professionals picked up through a search, who can steer the company in whichever direction they want.”

“Murthy’s task was to ensure the transition to steer the company to new heights, since by now he is convinced that the company has outgrown the founders. So he deserves credit for ending the era of the founder, though one 30 June 2014

could say it should have been done earlier,” says a senior Infosys official. Cofounders Murthy and Gopalakrishnan have already stepped down as executive Chairman and executive Vice Chairman, though they will continue on the board till 10 October 2014; as non-executive Chairman and non-executive Vice Chairman, respectively. Shibulal, another founder, steps down from the board on 31 July; so will Srinath Batni, whole-time director. Rohan, whose appointment was coterminous with the executive chairman’s, has left the company and returned to Harvard.

Pai, who is currently Chairman of Manipal Global Education, isn’t impressed with the praise Murthy has lavished on Rohan for assisting him in kickstarting the next level growth engines for the company. “I think his statement is surprising. It is a large global company which has great talent,” he told Open. Pai has often attacked IT behemoths such as Infosys that have struck gold in India’s Silicon Valley for not doing enough for Bangalore. “The big issue is that many people have created enormous wealth from the IT industry in Bangalore and have been residents of the city. People are looking for big institutions from them as (Wipro Limited founder Azim) Premji has done.”

Pai is happy with the new developments, however, and pleased Sikka will now steer Infosys: “I am enamoured of his global enterprise experience and exposure.”

Infosys was on to the cloud and mobile revolution first ... our business and revenue models are different (from those of others) and take time to fructify” S Gopalakrishnan former CEO, Infosys

To Shift or Not to Shift

A section of the Indian IT industry offers the view that the trouble of attrition, decline in sales, fewer clients and concomitant troubles at Infosys are symptoms of a structural problem and not a cyclical one. “We [India] went through the natural resources era soon after freedom, by exporting our natural resources for driving the economy. Then came the services era, which saw companies like Infosys hitting pay dirt. Now is the era of products. [The plight of Infosys] is similar to what AOL [the American multinational mass-media corporation previously known as ‘America online’] faced decades ago when it refused to believe that dial-up was destined to be outdated,” says Sharad Sharma, co-founder and govern-

“Yes, the ‘foundersonly’ CEO policy was a huge mistake and has hurt the company badly” Mohandas Pai former CFO and HR chief of Infosys open www.openthemagazine.com 25

ing council member of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT), a lobby group formed by some 30 software products companies of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). Sharma suggests that Infosys just happened to catch a cold first.

“TCS, Cognizant and others will follow,” he forecasts, adding that IT is on the threshold of a phenomenal change where customised delivery alone won’t fetch profits. According to him, when faced with a business juncture as crucial as AOL’s, companies such as Vodafone and Telefonica managed to cope in the late 1990s by expanding through inorganic growth, something that British Telecom didn’t do and ended up paying a huge price for.

IT services company officials beg to

differ with this assessment. Pai refutes such statements, saying, “This is not a structural issue at all. Companies like IBM Global Services, Capgemini, too, are service companies. The big issue is the fight for market share in a stagnant market and the need for consolidation.

This is not a tectonic tech shift. Services have not ended and will always remain.

The established base of software is reckoned in trillions of dollars. Even enterprise products like SAP and Oracle have multiple services behind them.”

At least two Infosys officials admit that with small and medium firms availing of ‘readymade’ software products that do not require customisation, business opportunities for companies such as Infosys may shrink further. However, one contends that big companies will certainly need firms such as Infosys to

Aijaz Rahi/AP

THE SCION NR Narayana Murthy (centre) with his son Rohan (right) and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Venu 26 open

keep customising software products.

He also noted that making acquisitions of software products may not be a bad idea, going ahead.

Former Infosys CEO Gopalakrishnan refused to comment on the need for a “business shift” at Infosys. He noted that Infosys was on to the cloud and mobile revolution first. “But the business models and revenue models are different and take time to fructify,” he said.

The Power of Two

Quite a few Infosys officials are relieved that investors will start looking up to their company as a professionally run enterprise managed by a world-class executive. Sikka will continue to be based out of Palo Alto, California and will have shared responsibilities, like COO UB Pravin Rao, whose appointment was announced at the same time as Sikka’s.

Both emerge as power centres and will carry out different functions, and the company seems to hope this “power of two” will augur well. In the past, Nilekani and Kris and later Kris and Shibulal performed successfully within such an organisational structure.

But worries persist in Infosys because IT vendors expect any future growth to be driven by infrastructure services and Social, Mobile, Analytic and Cloud Services (SMAC); these are sub-segments where Infosys, according to experts, trails its competitors. Murthy has said it would take a few years before Infosys gained significant ground in the domain of SMAC. Infosys’ annual revenue, tallied this March, rose by 24.2 per cent; lagging behind the growth of 29.9 per cent at TCS. “Sikka is a good choice considering IT services are increasingly becoming software-driven or have software-like characteristics in the digital or SMAC age,” said Viju George, in a JP Morgan report. “Having been the Chief Technology Officer at an innovative software firm, Sikka can probably appreciate the changing technology paradigm and articulate business models therein, which is a positive.”

A former Infosys executive says that Sikka could be in for a culture shock at Infosys, however, where the work culture is very different from SAP’s highly globalised work culture, with its flexible work hours. “But he will have a free 30 June 2014

Infosys seems to be betting on the “power of two” policy which will see the CEO and the COO functioning independently. This model was earlier successful with Nilekani as CEO and Kris as COO, and later with Kris as CEO and Shibulal as COO DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP

hand. The situation looks tailor-made for him to act and take the company to the next levels of growth.”

When Sikka, a Gujarat-bred Punjabi, quit SAP, there were rumours that he was looking for a promotion and didn’t get it.

Sikka hit out at such reports dismissively in his blog. “It [the report] is governed by base motivations one can only speculate upon, perhaps under even baser influences. What makes it truly irresponsible is that it is articulated to the world under the guise of a legitimate publication—a gross abuse of journalistic duties”. The blog also contains nostalgic memories of Delhi, from a visit late last year: ‘Delhi, India. I shouldn’t say Delhi. I should say Dilli. I found myself here with a few free hours today, out of an incredibly hectic week.

So I went by some old spots, Bengali market, Hanuman Mandir, Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar... The brain is immediately drawn to the sights, so different now, yet still familiar. The colours, the haze, the crowds, the structures, the spaces. And beyond the sights, the sounds, the tastes, and, especially, the smells. The smoky, dusty, musky air.

The fragrance of flowers being sold and foods being cooked, and the foul smells of garbage.

All mixed into an unforgettable reminder of the ephemeral present, that is also, yet, timeless. More than any other sense, the smell takes you back. But back where? I remember being here 30 years ago, shortly after Delhi had seen a great renewal, in preparation of the Asian games in 1982.’

The India connection seems strong for the Stanford PhD who is settled in Silicon Valley and well-respected there, who knew Murthy for years, before he was chosen to play saviour. Ramakrishna Yarlapati, a former member of SAP’s senior leadership team, vouches for Sikka’s abilities to spot opportunities.

“He is very action-oriented, always likes to try out new things one after the other and never gives up.”

As soon as his name was announced for the CEO’s post by Infosys, Sikka, 30 June 2014

GOOD TIMES S Gopalakrishnan and S Shibulal at the Infosys headquarters on 13 January 2010

who also studied at Vadodara’s Maharaja Sayajirao University and Syracuse University in New York, tweeted that he was humbled by the offer. A return tweet from Murthy proclaimed that Infosys was in capable hands.

Will Sikka, play the role of a rainmaker for a company weighed down by its own legacy? Indications are positive, for the

time being. Infosys, once a darling of the stock markets, has risen in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex, after a bad spell for months now. If he manages to remote-chaperone India’s second-largest information technology company into past glory from across the seas, he will certainly level the playing field in global business. But the world isn’t flat yet. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27

O N L I N E I M M O RTA L I T Y

THE PLEASURES AND HORRORS OF THE

DIGITAL

AFTERLIFE Some people don’t log out even after they shuffle out of this mortal coil.

LHENDUP G BHUTIA on the ethics, business and eerie effects of the digital spectre

W

e mostly either burn or bury our dead, falling

back on centuries-old rituals and procedures laid down by religion and law, to respectfully mourn our deceased. We leave behind, either through legal wills or social convention, our material possessions to our heirs. But what happens to our digital presence—the heirlooms that are social media accounts, emails, online avatars and blogs? What happens to the 24.1 million tweets that get sent out on a single night of Super Bowl? What happens to this ocean of data, surging forth every day as images on Flickr,

videos on YouTube, blogs, selfies and status updates? Unlike our ancestors, we spend a large part of our lives on the internet, building a lifetime of experience and memories, engaging in conversations, developing and sharing memories, creating and conducting businesses, archiving moments, and making friends and even enemies on the internet. What happens to all that after we die?

There will most certainly be no attic full of relics or shoeboxes of memorabilia for our grandchildren to forage through. There will be no photo albums documenting fam-

Raul Irani

never-ending story Kongposh Bazaz maintains the Facebook account of his deceased son, Yousmann Bazaz, who was 19 at the time of his death in 2012

ily history, no letters or journals through which our descendants will attempt to piece together our lives. They will all be online and password-protected. What becomes of these digital footprints after death isn’t just a philosophical wrinkle of modern life, because we have created an internet version of ourselves that is arguably no less real than the lives we lead offline.

It is a strange twenty-first century question that emerges from this wired world—when we shuffle off this mortal coil, will our digital personas forever haunt the World Wide Web like spectral beings, or will we arrive at a solution that will allow us to log out respectfully?

T

he news of Sunil K Poolani’s death from cardiac ar-

rest in July 2011 came as a shock to many of his friends and acquaintances. A former journalist who had founded a publishing house, Frog Books, he was only 41 at the time of his demise.

Poolani lived alone in Mumbai, having separated from his wife. According to friends, he was a loner and an alcoholic with a large circle of friends on Facebook (numbering over 2,000). The night of his death, his friends say, his 30 open

brother from Kerala was visiting him. Like most others, Pradnya Malushte, a friend of Poolani’s, learnt of his death a few days later when people began to share the news on Facebook. “I had never met him. Just spoken with him on the phone for work and exchanged a few conversations on Facebook. But it was very depressing to hear the news.

He was too young to die this way,” she says. About a month later, Malushte, who runs a cosmetic consultancy called Sparsh Organics in Pune, awoke one morning and logged onto Facebook to find a message from Poolani. “I was too shocked to react for a few minutes. I don’t recall what that message said, but I remembering feeling creepy,” she says. She replied to the message asking whoever it was posing as Poolani to respect the dead and to stop doing so.

It was not just Malushte. For the next few years, until last week when his Facebook account mysteriously disappeared—in all probability deactivated or deleted— Poolani’s Facebook account sent out messages to friends, posted status updates, ‘liked’ and commented on posts.

The writer and poet John P Matthew, who was a friend of Poolani, says, “I thought his death had been a prank when I started seeing him active on Facebook. But then when 30 June 2014

you read the status updates and posts, you could tell it wasn’t Poolani. Someone was misusing his account.”

Poolani’s Frog Books was a vanity publishing house, where authors paid to get their books published.

According to Matthew, a few months before his demise, Poolani told him that a few authors who had published their books with him were upset that their books had had poor sales. Matthew believes that one or a few of them might have hacked his account and started using it in spite. “Otherwise it makes no sense. Poolani lived alone, never shared such details with friends or family. It must be one of them,” he says.

Poolani’s digital afterlife might have been hacked into, toyed around for several years, with scant respect for the dead, before suddenly getting deleted and along with it all forms of remembrances—without, in all probability, the permission of a family member. His other online presence, on Twitter and his blog, where he prolifically wrote either book reviews or author interviews, apart from promoting books from his publishing house, still remain.

None of them bear any acknowledgement that the author has passed away. “If only,” Matthew says, “Poolani had left behind his user name and password to a friend or family member, we could have done something.”

These concerns about the afterlife of an individual’s online footprint may appear trivial. Why, one might ask, must we offer such importance to our online activity, when much of it appears to be nothing more than a frivolous accumulation of a lifetime of digital debris and rubble? Who cares about the updates or the likes?

But as Poolani’s case shows, the digital afterlife matters very much. In the case of the internet, and especially social media, where users are ageing and more seniors are increasingly joining, the issue of the digital afterlife becomes more pressing. According to some estimates—for instance Randall Munroe’s popular What If blog—based on the site’s growth rate and the age breakdown of users, there are at least between 10 and 20 million dead people with Facebook profiles. By 2065, it is estimated that the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook.

What makes the issue complicated is that some of the most popular internet services don’t quite encourage users to think about these subjects.

Policies vary widely, and often they lie deeply hidden in Terms of Service agreements. As these internet services increasingly face this issue, and learn how inept their policies are, the Terms of Service agreements are continuously reworked and amended.

Currently, Facebook allows friends and family to either ‘memorialise’ an account—which ensures that such

profiles do not emerge as friend suggestions on Facebook or list out birthdays, instead converting the page into a place where friends can grieve and post recollections— or delete it altogether. No family or friend is provided the password, and sometimes when family members have somehow acquired it, there have been reported instances of Facebook deleting the account of its own volition. Earlier, Facebook ensured that privacy controls of memorialised accounts were reset, so that an account and its content were visible only to friends, but earlier this year they altered it making the visibility of a person’s content as-is, or in the manner the individual last used the account. In a post on 21 February this year, Facebook explained this decision, stating, ‘This will allow people to see memorialized profiles in a manner consistent with the deceased person’s expectations of privacy. We are respecting the choices a person made in life while giving their extended community of family and friends ongoing visibility to the same content they could always see.’

Google, on the other hand, started the Inactive Account Manager feature last year, which enables Google users to either delete their account or nominate individuals who will gain access to it if they die or are incapacitated.

However, in case people don’t sign up for this feature, a long drawn out bureaucratic rigmarole begins, where an individual has to request for his/her family member’s account by supplying among others the death certificate, proof of relation, and an order from a US court. The likes of Twitter and Yahoo, when they learn of a deactivated account, immediately shut down the account. Facebook and Twitter refused to comment for this article. Google India’s spokesperson Gaurav Bhaskar says, via email, “This feature (Inactive Account Manager) was launched last April to help people to get thinking about planning for their digital afterlife, just as they would for their physical assets in the real world. The feature makes it easy for users to tell Google what they want done with their digital assets when they die or can no longer use their account.” A Facebook post in 2009 explains how the company decided to introduce memorials. In 2005, when Facebook was still a small company of only about 40 employees, one of them died in a bicycling accident. Max Kelly, the author, Facebook’s then designated security chief, wrote, “The question soon came up: What do we do about his Facebook profile? We had never really thought about this before in such a personal way. Obviously, we wanted to be able to model people’s relationships on Facebook, but how do you deal with an interaction with someone who is no longer able to log on?

‘Every time a person dies, gigabytes of content are lost with him. In the past three years or so we have seen a few people creating digital wills’

30 June 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 31

When someone leaves us, they don’t leave our memories or our social network.”

Many individuals, however, do not trust companies to make the right decision and prefer holding the account of a deceased family member by themselves. Kongposh Bazaz, the director of Kongposh publications, which offers a bouquet of pharmaceutical publications, maintains the Facebook account of his deceased son, Yousmann Bazaz. Yousmann, who was 19 at the time of his death in 2012, died near his college premises when a vehicle hit him. Kongposh uses his son’s account to put up pictures and status updates so his friends and relatives can continue to remember him. “It is something Yousmann would have liked done,” Kongposh says.

During his lifetime, Kongposh remembers, Yousmann never accepted his father’s Facebook friend request. Later, as Yousmann lay in hospital for over a week, certain of not making it through, and too incapacitated to speak, Kongposh learned of the outpouring of grief on Yousmann’s Facebook account. Kongposh wanted to speak to his son’s friends, on his behalf, telling them to remain strong. But he remained unsuccessful in his attempt to find his son’s Facebook password, until a friend whom Yousmann had shared his password with, passed it on to Kongposh.

“I’ve maintained both my son’s Facebook account and his BBM (Blackberry messenger service).

These two help those of us who were close to him remember him,” he says. Among Yousmann’s list of Facebook friends, one can now also see Kongposh.

‘We recommend that individuals take an inventory of their online accounts and plan a way for their heirs to access the most important ones’

I

n India, as the concern over one’s online presence

grows, a growing group of people now include their digital assets as part of their wills. The likes of Sandeep Nerlekar, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Terentia, a Mumbai-based estate planning firm, advises clients to draw up a digital will and to appoint a ‘digital executor’ who is entrusted with a list of logins and passwords, and to outline explicit instructions in their estate plans on who has access to what accounts.

According to Nerlekar, most of those who have created digital wills are corporate heads with large online assets.

“We draw up a digital will for them, along with a regular succession will. And digital wills secure not just important corporate data and contacts stored in their computers and emails, but also their social media accounts and personal emails,” Nerlekar explains.

32 open

According to Pavan Duggal, a cyber law expert in Delhi, “Every time a person dies, hundreds of gigabytes of data and content are irretrievably lost with him. In the past three years or so, as people have come to realise this, we have seen people creating digital wills. But this is few and far between.” Duggal acknowledges that very few potential customers are forward-looking enough to see how valuable, financially and sentimentally, their digital assets can be. So far, he claims, he has helped draw out digital wills for a number of corporate heads, writers, musicians and software professionals, many of whom have stored away valuable work on the internet and the hard drive of their computers.

Gurpreet Singh, the managing partner and internet law head of Delhi-based Amarjit & Associates, however, points out that digital wills have no legal precedents in India. “Some people in India have started creating digital wills, which is all good, but neither the Information Technology Act of 2000, nor the inheritance laws (Hindu Succession Act, 1956, and Indian Succession Act, 1925) makes provisions for digital wills. Also, so far, there have been no cases in an Indian court of law where such a will has been deliberated upon,” he says. “It is a good option to plan such a will but nobody knows if it has legal sanctity. Nobody knows what will happen when a will clashes with the providers’ terms of service. What happens when the digital executor is in one country and the data in another?”

In the US, however, a number of litigations have emerged that are making both internet services and lawmakers reconsider their policies for the dead online. The most famous among them being the case of the family of Justin Ellsworth—a US marine killed in Iraq—who took Yahoo! to court in 2004 because the internet giant refused to give the family access to the deceased’s email account.

Eventually, the court ordered Yahoo! to give the family a CD of Ellsworth’s e-mails. In the US state of Virginia, the unexplained suicide of a 15-year-old boy, Eric Rash, in 2011, and his parent’s search for answers, including seeking access to their son’s Facebook account, has led the state’s lawmakers to frame a law that allows parents of a deceased child to gain access to the minor’s online accounts. Facebook had famously denied the Rash family’s request to access their son’s Facebook account. Currently, a handful of US states like Idaho have in place ‘digital asset laws’ that govern the inheritance of online assets like blogs, e-mail passwords and other digital accounts.

Evan Carroll, the US-based co-founder and author of The Digital Beyond, a blog that fashions itself as a think tank for digital death and legacy issues, says over email, “In the future, I anticipate that we won’t have to pay special attention to digital assets as a part of the estate planning process. As our social norms and laws catch up to our digital lifestyles, dealing with our digital afterlife will be much like dealing with our tangible property, in that everyone understands how to handle it properly.”

30 June 2014

illustration anirban ghosh

Explaining how the blog emerged in 2009—after the founders, John Romano along with Carroll, realised how the mementos we cared about from our families were very different from the digital ones we were creating— and later developed into a book, Your Digital Afterlife, Carroll says, “We believe it’s important for individuals to plan what should happen to their digital assets, including online accounts, once they’re gone. We recommend that individuals take an inventory of their online accounts and make sure that they’ve planned a way for their heirs to access the most important ones... Sometimes a simple conversation with them can be sufficient. Other times you might want to use an online service… to store your passwords and pass them along when you’re gone.

You may even feel the need to incorporate power over your digital assets into your will.”

There has also emerged in the West, a whole new category of entrepreneurs trying to build new businesses around digital-afterlife management. Digital caretakers like Legacy Locker and Entrustnet allow users to nominate an ‘executor’ who will act out their digital wishes after death, including passing on account information to designated heirs. Life.Vu offers online memorial pages for those who have passed away and Deathswitch sends personalised messages to pre-selected contacts. There is also Eterni.me, an under-development service that stores data from social media sites and e-mails, allowing the user to add to this material, which when the user dies contacts a list of pre-selected individuals and gives them access to his account. This service will also reportedly include a 3-D digital avatar, designed to resemble the user, 30 June 2014

and that will, from the data of stored information, emulate the user’s personality and communicate with his friends and family.

T

he internet is in many ways still very new, and our lives on it, even more recent. Estate laws and internet services are just now beginning to consider the topic of our digital afterlives. And even while we, as a society, might have somewhat developed the customs and mores necessary for online co-existence, we are yet to fashion those on how to deal with death online.

In the case of Nimesh Tanna, a talented 22-year-old photographer whose dead body was discovered on the railway tracks in Mumbai in 2011—dead possibly from an accident—his Facebook account has come to be managed by his mother and a few close friends. Apart from starting a trust in his name through which they distribute food to the underprivileged in Mulund and Thane suburbs of Mumbai, and a few Facebook pages through which they share his work, his mother and friends use his personal account to post his pictures. Facebook rules, as vague as they are, do not allow this. And many find this disconcerting.

Tanna’s mother, Damyanti Tanna, however, who probably has most say in this matter since she was closest to her son, and because he shared his password details with her, says, “I think he would have wanted his Facebook page to go on, for people to share his work and for his friends to remember him.”

Some of Nimesh’s Facebook friends, like Ankit Mehrotra, who finds the use of a dead individual’s open www.openthemagazine.com 33

illustration anirban ghosh

account upsetting and has raised this issue on Nimesh’s Facebook Wall, says, “Perhaps those using the account have their reasons, and in all probability theirs is more valid since they were closer to him, but I found the whole idea of assuming his virtual persona disturbing. You feel very strange when you log on to Facebook and you read Nimesh speaking through his Wall. It freaks you out.”

Currently, Damyanti is going through Nimesh’s data stored on his computer and on CDs, trying to locate his work. Damyanti says, “He left behind his passwords but I don’t know where all his work is stored. He would have wanted us to find his work and to share them with his friends.”

In the case of Humaira (name changed on request), a manager with a multi-national bank, after her husband died in 2011 to a cardiac arrest and a family dispute erupted where she was asked by her in-laws to leave the house, some started using her husband’s Facebook Wall to write about the treatment being meted out to Humaira.

“Until then I was fine with the presence of my husband’s Facebook profile, much of which was being used to grieve. But I didn’t want any of this to be out in the public,” she says. She went though her husband’s diaries and journals to find if he had left behind the password, until eventually a friend of her husband who knew the password shared it with her. “He wanted me to delete it. And I thought I would delete it too. But I just couldn’t get around to doing it. So I changed the settings to ensure that no one can write on the wall,” she says.

Achuthan Kannan, a digital media consultant, says, “There is lot of confu-

sion over who owns what people say or do online—do Facebook and Google own it or does the user? There is no clarity on what they will do with this content when we die. In such a situation, it is best to write down one’s online assets and passwords and provide it to the next of kin.”

I

n the last three years, three of my friends, whom I

knew since childhood, have passed away. These three just lie dormant on Facebook occupying a vague piece of digital real estate, completely forgotten until someone tags them in an old undated photo when they were alive or in a mirthful comment about how they pine for the monsoon. Their Facebook Timelines begin with their birth, feature their various career and personal achievements, put out their various photographs and likes and preferences, but there is no mention of an end. No stating that this timeline has now closed and its owner is no more. Sometimes people wish them happy birthday, and sometimes you realise people don’t even know, or have forgotten, that the individual is long gone.

What do you do with them? What will happen to them? Is this what they mean by immortality? I reported one of the accounts, whose owner died three years ago, for his account to be memorialised. But a week has gone by and neither has Facebook memorialised it nor cared to explain. And I know, through other friends, that this dead friend is still being shuffled around through Facebook’s social algorithms. n

‘There is lot of confusion over who owns what people say or do online. There is no clarity on what Facebook or Google will do with this content when we die’

34 open

30 June 2014

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MOTHER AND CHILD Two-and-a-half-year-old Ameen, struggling to survive Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), lies wrapped in wet cotton cloth to cool her fever, in Muzaffarpur’s KDDKM Hospital

outbreak

The Fever in Muzaffarpur As a mystery epidemic kills children in Bihar, CHINKI SINHA chronicles the horrors of the dead and the living from outside an Intensive Care Unit

T

here is a moment in the makeshift

pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at the Sri Krishna Medical College Hospital (SKMCH) in Muzaffarpur when all cardiac monitors show no digits. They go blank. There are dots, and beeps. Gasps and cries of the children inside. They are all gone, and you dread being there.

They let you in. They didn’t stop you when you walked in through that door with its blue curtains on this hot and humid June afternoon, the sky blasted white: a typical summer day in these parts. In the 1930s an earthquake altered the topography of this region, turning it into a bowl, a receptacle for water, filth and every other residue.

They even offered you a stool to sit on, and chronicle the deaths of children. In registers, the nurses have scribbled ‘expired’, as they did for Sujeet Kumar, who passed away on 16 June. The details are scanty: ‘He didn’t improve.’ That’s all there is in the last paragraph of that page in the register.

Every year, hundreds of children die.

The symptoms vary. A fever, and then convulsions begin early morning. Their eyes unblinking, they stare into space, and then their eyes roll and the limbs become rigid. There is a seizure, and many die before they are able to reach a hospital. All they can be given is anticonvulsant drugs and fever medicines, depending on symptoms So far, the

30 June 2014

official toll has crossed 111.

In three days, more than 60 children have died, say the report books of the nurses in the four PICUS at SKMCH and the intelligence collated from Krishna Devi Devi Kejriwal Maternity Hospital (KDDKM) and other medical units also in Muzaffarpur. But there are many more deaths. All too often, they take place outside these temporary PICUs. This district recorded 44 deaths in 2011, 121 in 2012 and around 40 last year. The PICUs are full of small children who have been diagnosed with the working term AES (Acute Encephalitis Syndrome).

“In 1995, AES was first detected, but it was sporadic then,” says Prabhat Kumar Sinha, deputy director of the

Bihar’s variation of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) is more severe than Japanese Encephalitis (JE), sometimes killing children in just a few hours

Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Science, in Patna. “Since 2008 on, the number of cases started to rise phenomenally.”

Since 1995, the mystery illness has constituted an intermittent yet nightmarish epidemic, with an average mortality rate of 30 per cent. It returns every year before the monsoon. The administration started to take note of the mystery fever and the media started to report it only about five years ago. In 2012, there were 420 deaths overall. In 2013, there was a decline; 60 deaths. But this year, the fever has struck again with all its might.

Japanese encephalitis (JE), which is different, has been recorded in Gorakhpur post-monsoon, since the 1970s. It can be found in the Malda district of West Bengal and 50, 000 children have succumbed to it in the city of Gorakhpur, in Uttar Pradesh. But Bihar’s variation of the illness is different. Both strains are incurable and feature convulsions, but Bihar’s is more acute; sometimes killing children in just a few hours and affecting the brain directly, working neurologically. Experts don’t even know if it is metabolic (related to hygiene, filth or malnutrition) or viral. The lethal health threat is speculated to be a vectorborne disease (relying upon organisms such as mosquitoes, ticks or sandflies transmitting a pathogen), causing inflammation of the brain. open www.openthemagazine.com 37

“The JE virus is identified, but AES is a generalised term that covers more than 300 viruses,” says Sinha. “The issue is that you are dealing with an unknown disease. With JE, a victim is never completely cured. With AES, he can recover fully.

Both start with fever and convulsion. In AES, we are detecting less sugar levels [hypoglycemia] and elevated sodium levels [hyponatremia], which makes it even more confusing. If it is metabolic, vaccination and spraying could help. But we don’t know. We have not been able to find out. In Gorakhpur and Muzaffarpur, JE and AES are dreaded epidemics. Here, the virus is yet to be identified.”

The disease, previously restricted to Muzaffarpur, has spread to six more districts. Unfortunate residents are waiting for rain, when the epidemic might subside. This year, 300 children have been diagnosed thus far. Our National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) is clueless. In the USA, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia has not been able to locate the virus. Seven Indian agencies—the National Institute of Virology in Pune, units of the Indian Council of Medical Research such as Patna’s Rajiv Memorial Research Institute (RMRI), Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College, as well as the NCDC and CDC— are trying to decode the fever, which roams the wards of this hospital, the fields and the homes of the oblivious poor, hunting and preying. They say it is the wrath of the gods.

Y

ou watch the monitor. It doesn’t make sense. The nurses tell you it marks the pulse rate, and arterial pressure. At any rate, both are too low in the case of three-year old Mani, who is heaving as she goes. Her father Ram Bharose, who works in a brick kiln, stands next to her, preparing for the inevitable. He didn’t have enough money to pay a random car they hailed to get them to the SKMCH from nearby Motihari. The child was foaming at the mouth, and convulsions were racking her body; he knew it was time. He went to the moneylender, borrowed Rs 3,000, and eventually got his youngest daughter to the hospital.

He paid most of his loan, Rs 2,200, to the driver. But the doctor says it is too late.

38 open

Gopiraman Mishra

LAST EMBRACE A father from Sitamarhi district takes his child to the hospital

Downstairs, the superintendent, Dr GK Thakur, says the same.

Once the death is confirmed, this man will get compensation: around Rs 50,000 for each death. Now, Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Minister of Food and Consumer Affairs, says this must be declared an epidemic. Compensation will be upped to Rs 10 lakh.

What can a poor man do? Ram Bharose knows his curse. His wife isn’t here. She is in some part of this strange hospital with its ramps sprinkled with white chlorine powder, its corridors full of sick people with their exposed wounds. A daily labourer, Bharose works in the brick kilns during the season, and was planning on going to Punjab to find a job when the fever struck. On days when he works, he gets Rs 150 per day. There are four children to feed. Most days, the children run around the litchi groves, gathering and eating the fruit.

Although doctors say there is no connection, Dr Rajiva Kumar of KDDKM Hospital says there is a cumulative effect.

“The fruits that fall are picked up by these dispossessed children, and have some-

thing to do with the epidemic that returns every now and then, ravaging the poor and killing their children,” he surmises. But experts have said the litchi has no connection to the virus. We do know that it afflicts only the very poor and that the convulsions start early morning, part of the given set of data they are working with at the moment.

They’ve found a name for the anonymous disease, here in Muzaffarpur. They call it chamki, literally electric shock; referring to how its victims’ limbs grow rigid as they start to get shocks.

T

his is the time of the epidemic. The hospital is an inferno. The strong smell of chlorine gives you a headache.

Ram Bharose is resigned to his fate. The cardiac monitor oscillated between hope and despair. From the sixties, it would dip to the twenties, then pick up again— though never crossing the 80 mark.

Dr Arvind Kumar, who is also assistant professor here, says normal would be above 90.

“Your child is serious. She may not 30 June 2014

live,” he tells Ram Bharose. In the other corner, a grandmother is applying a wet cloth all over her granddaughter’s body.

Professor Kumar talks about early days of his medical college. They were made to sit in the morgues for a week. In those days, if they couldn’t find soap, they would just wash their hands with water, and eat.

“In medical colleges, they tell you to sit next to dead bodies,” he goes on.

We both glance at the nine cardiac monitors. The numbers show in red.

There’s a constant beep sound similar to what a cheap phone might emit when its battery is dying.

“When we were young, we were emotional. We saw how valuable the child would be to the parents, and we would cry. Now, we don’t cry. So many years have passed,” he says.

Mani continues to gasp.

“If you gasp, what are the chances that you will live?” I ask.

“Not much,” Professor Kumar says.

He gets up to check on Mani. He orders the nurse to inject more anti-convulsion medicines.

“We are doctors. We become insensitive to death. You see 10 or 100, you’d still feel bad. But not when you see hundreds,” he goes on.

A team of eight doctors has been dispatched in addition to 14 other doctors who have stationed at various primary health clinics (PHCs). They work round the clock. They can be found anywhere between the two floors, running between the four PICUs. They hardly sleep. They have saved 40 per cent. Another 40 per cent have perished. A doctor says the mortality rate here in 35 per cent. At KDDKM Hospital in the town, it is 20 per cent.

The finger strip comes off Shobha’s 7-year-old hands, and for a moment, the monitor goes off.

“The convulsions are not stopping in her case,” the doctor says. He directs the nurse to check who are critical out of the nine charges in the ward.

“All could die,” she says. “This is ICU. You know what it means.”

Meena Devi is crying. Hot tears on her granddaughter’s feverish body. Her grandson Nitesh is admitted in the PHC at Motipur where they are from. The brother and the sister got the fever the same morning. The brother was 30 June 2014

rushed to the PHC first. The sister had to be referred to SKMCH. She won’t live for too long.

Meanwhile, Mani’s cardio meter shows 19/86.

“In the beginning, I used to think like many others that it was because of litchis.

Today, I have my doubts. It is a cumulative effect,” says Professor Kumar.

“Whatever the cause is, it is hidden. We have saved 40 per cent of those that were brought here. Another 40 per cent have expired. Earlier, the challenge was of expert doctors. Now, we have got doctors from PMCH and other medical hospitals across the state.”

The first case this year was reported on 11 April. “We have seen this disease many times. It used to be highly sporadic. We used to call it encephalitis,” he says. “I first saw it in 1995. Children used to come, and die here. Rajbala Verma used to be the DM then. She opened the state coffers, but children continued to die.

Hospitals can’t do everything. This is a socio-economic problem. They don’t have toilets. They have very poor hygiene.

They are so poor they can’t feed their children.”

In the same room, a mother refuses food. Her child is critical.

That night Mani dies. Early next morning, Shobha passes away. Others have died and are dying in other wards.

I

n Sendhwari, about 20 km from Muzaffarpur, on this side of the highway, there’s a dilapidated additional PHC with two doctors who are wiping the sweat off their faces as they work.

The air is heavy. Even the leaves don’t stir. Children play outside the building with overgrown grass. There are no beds, no fans, no lights. Nothing that could save a life.

Dr Dashrath Chaudhary says Shobha was brought here, and that he referred her to SKMH. There was an ambulance that took her there. But even when he was trying to send her to the bigger hospital, he knew the chances were slim.

It is like an inferno here. He sweats profusely. The other doctor, who is on deputation until the epidemic subsides, fans himself. They both live in Muzaffarpur, and there was no electricity last night.

“It is so bad that I sweep the floor here.

111

children have succumbed to Acute Enchephalitis Syndrome (AES) already; more than 60 in the last three days

420

succumbed to AES in 2012. In 2013, there was a decline: only 60 deaths. This year the fever has struck hard again

40

per cent of AES victims perished, while another 40 per cent were saved, at various PHCs

open www.openthemagazine.com 39

Gopiraman Mishra

DEATHS FORETOLD A victim of AES with her mother, aunt and neighbour

There are no funds. There is one chair where we treat the ill,” he says. “It is so bad that I fear I will get sick here.”

He says the mystery aside, the fever gains strength only because the children, malnourished as they are, can’t fight it.

“Have you seen a rich child suffer with it?”

On the way to Shobha’s house, there’s a National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) mobile medical unit van parked on the side. A nurse wields a thermometer and takes down the temperature of the children that have surrounded her. They first made the announcement, and out came the mothers and the grandmothers with the children. For the last three days, the state government has deployed the mobile units to counter the spreading of the fever by checking the temperature of children, and telling them about AES. Pratima Kumari is insisting the children should keep calm, and the mothers hold them so she can insert the thermometer and check their temperature. She can then write the prescription and dispatch them to PHC if they show symptoms of AES. Children are dying by the dozen, she says.

She came to these parts on June 13 from the district of Araria. “Since this morning, I have checked almost 60-70 children in these clusters,” she says. “We found five cases. Two have been referred to SKMH, and three were treated at the PHC.” In the cluster of hutments, children 40 open

with the golden hair and bloated stomachs of malnutrition run around. Nineyear-olds look shrunken, and shrivelled.

They don’t grow. They have nothing to grow on. It is a dalit village, and most families are BPL; below poverty level.

Ranjit, the elder brother of the deceased, says the body was cremated this morning. The grandfather lit the pyre.

This is the first-ever AES death in this village of Sendhwari in Motipur.

Shobha passed away at 5:30 am on Monday morning. On Sunday evening, her brother was taken to SKMCH because his condition had worsened.

“She was so clever. She was beautiful,” Meena Devi says.

Daini Saini, the grandfather, tries to seem stoic. But he can’t hold it in for too

Malnutrition makes poor children in Bihar’s crippled rural areas vulnerable to AES; they have nothing to grow or thrive on

long. There is a moment when he wipes away the tears, and looks away.

There are no keepsakes. Just a ration card with a small photo of the grandmother with her five grandchildren. It was renewed this year. Shobha stands in the lefthand corner in a pink frock. You would have to strain your eyes to see her face.

On Juran Chapra Road, there are too many hospitals, nursing homes and clinics. Towards the end of Road No 2, and past too many clinics, lies the KDDKM Hospital, the only other institution that can provide some treatment for the sufferers of the epidemic.

It is like a bazaar out here. Inside, a compounder is trying to maintain calm.

This is a charitable hospital, and upstairs, there’s a dedicated AES ward. The hospital was set up in 1960 by the first chief minister of Bihar. It is a 300-bed hospital, and according to Anirudha Mehra, the administrator, the only other one that has the courage to admit high mortality AES cases in the region.

“It is a natural calamity,” he says. “27 children have expired here. Since 3 June, we admitted 136 cases. The mortality rate is very high. It is spreading. To Champaran and to Begusaria where we recorded a death yesterday, and Sitamarhi, Vaishali and beyond.” He too says it is not the litchis.

Last year, the hospital adopted a village where AES cases were reported. The staff 30 June 2014

cleaned up the village, installed toilets and conducted workshops on hygiene.

This year, no AES cases were reported from the village.

“We can only speculate. The government is panicking and doing all kinds of things. They are trying to do their bit,” says Mehra. “They announced this immunisation program but implementation remains a problem. There is no infrastructure, no monitoring, no awareness.

Vaccination isn’t the solution, and there are not enough doctors. What is sad is that only the poor suffer; 50 ambulances are not enough. We have three, and we need to cater to other patients too. We operate with limitations.”

He pauses. “Loss is best explained with poetry,” he says. There is panic in his ward, and the strange calm of resignation.

In the AES ward, Dr Rajiva Kumar repeats the same theories about the suspected causes, listing the litany—“No food, no hygiene, poverty, filth”—as he moves around the ward.

On a bed, Samina Khan is sitting and applying wet towels on the prone body of her three-year-old daughter, Guliyana.

“Two children died,” she says, and points to the corner where there are empty beds. “I am afraid. I am very afraid.”

O

n Monday evening in SKMCH’s PICU 3, nurses are waiting for shift change. A frail woman in her twenties sits and presses her six-month-old daughter’s feet. Rinku Devi is careful not to touch the needles that are pierced into her daughter’s body here and there. Nandini is gasping. By the bed next to her, a man has fallen asleep at the feet of his daughter. Both cardio monitors are still dismal.

Prabha, a nurse, says it is difficult. They are mothers, and they understand the loss. They can imagine its magnitude, and its threat.

“We feel sad when they die. We are not like the doctors. They are different. Our training tells us to provide care, and consolation,” she says.

They also provide hope. “Many more children will come. You should take care.

Ek gaya toy doosra aayega,” (If one goes, another will come).

That’s what they repeat.

But Rinku Devi lost her eldest son to AES three years ago. Her husband is a mi-

30 June 2014

‘The government has equipped the PHCs to treat children. There are ambulances, and about 24-25 PHCs in the zone are on full alert with doctors working 24x7’ grant worker in Imphal. He knows but he can’t come.

She is here with her mother-in-law. Her other three children are in the village that is 20 kilometres away. The child had fever for the last four or five days. Only on Sunday morning, she started to experience convulsions, and slipped into unconsciousness. At KDDKM Hospital last night, they said to take her to SKMCH because Nandini could die.

“It’s like this electric current. We treat on basis of symptoms. We are trying our best. But we don’t know what we dealing with,” says Dr Raju, one of the eight doctors called in to assist.

They say more children have died. On Tuesday morning, a woman mourns her loss with a song. The guard outside the PICU 3 wields his stick, nudges the woman, who is wailing, and pushes her away.

“I have to sit,” he says.

The husband, who sits motionlessly, looks up, and shifts slightly.

Inside the ward, a man is cleaning the remains of a life. On a lone bed, the child is lying. Dead. The father’s brother lifts her up. Her eyes are unshut. The father totters behind. Outside, the mother is still singing.

Kajal was brought in on Monday morning. That morning she woke up with high fever, and the mother fed her milk. The convulsions started soon after, and she was unconscious. But she heaved, and on and off her little body seemed to jolt as if they had plugged in a wire. They took her to a private hospital, and then got her here, before she died this morning.

She was her mother’s only child.

In this sanitised space, the poor father

of an ailing child looks like an anomaly.

He is easily half their size. The bones of the poor aren’t covered with layers of flesh. And the poor are also, necessarily, too grateful for what is their right.

“Medical science can’t solve all the mysteries,” says Dr Thakur. “We can only figure out three or four viruses in India.

There are almost 150 that remain. We can only give symptomatic treatment. If you bring the children on time, we can treat them. But if you delay, we can’t do anything.”

The hospital has a poor record management sections. A high-powered committee submitted its report last year, and there is a protocol of treatment. The government, he says, is running an awareness campaign in the villages.

“The Asha workers have paracetamol tablets,” says Thakur. “This year, the government has equipped the PHCs to treat children. There are ambulances, and about 24-25 PHCs in the zone are on full alert with doctors doing round-the-clock duties. We are even reimbursing the fare of the vehicle in case the family had to hire a car to get the child here.”

I

n Ward No 2, an emergency ward on the ground floor, there are people all over the floor.

On a blue tarpaulin sheet, Nandini is gasping for breath. The mother looks on.

They were asked to shift her Monday night. The doctor visited once in the morning, and the nurses don’t listen.

Nandini is dying, she says. Nandini is shifted to PICU 1. She is critical.

A girl is sitting on the bed. The oxygen mask has been removed, and she dips a piece of bread feebly into an almost empty glass of tea, and puts it in her mouth.

Her mother holds the glass for her. She also smiles. Perhaps, she will make it.

Her mother stands outside. On the first floor, the two men are still doling out the coarse rice, the watery dal and the potato curry of the last three days. Each family is entitled to food for two people. It is measured carefully and frugally, and is then hurled onto the shiny steel plates.

Only the poor and the dispossessed come to government hospitals. The doctors tried their best. Silently, they take the bodies and walk to the vehicle that will take them home. n open www.openthemagazine.com 41

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CINEMA

Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing

by Mira Jacob A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor

books

Nagaland’s Tetseo Sisters

44 64

A still from Titli

ashish sharma

CULTURE Northeast Central The soft power of the region has given its new cultural entrepreneurs an increased presence in food, music and fashion Sneha Bhura

N

agaland’s Tetseo Sisters are

daintily pretty in their traditional chi pi khwu, the shawl of merit.

We are sitting in an elegantly designed Naga-themed restaurant, Dzükou, relaunched in Hauz Khas market (earlier it was a small Hauz Khas village fixture).

The large hall, soothingly lit, resembles a traditional Naga hut, complete with bamboo and cane carvings. This Friday evening, it is buzzing with a hundred odd well-heeled diners who are cooling off with a mix of cocktails and pork chops; very few are from the Northeast. Most are here to listen to The Tetseo Sisters, a quartet of folk musicians hailing from the state’s Chakhesang tribe. They sing the ‘Li’, the traditional song of their tribe, in their dialect, Chokri, combining words with grunts and sighs to produce strongthroated vocalisations. Ancient legends and myths, stories of star-crossed lovers, the joys and sorrows of farmers, the hopes and aspirations of the Naga people: all form an integral part of their songs.

“Raja mirchi and pork momos are the best in our state,” says Mercy Tetseo, one of the band’s four singers, on their break. People plead with the sisters to get back on for an encore, and they return to showtime.

Their Facebook page, which has registered more than one lakh likes, represents their numerous performances across India and abroad, showcased on their website.

Christine Manfield, celebrated Australian chef and food writer, is among the audience; she is moving around the kitchen, taking down notes as she learns the Naga way of cooking in Dzükou’s kitchen.

The beginning of change has been brewing steadily for some time. The cultural ambassadors of Northeast India are gradually connecting with urban spenders in

Shining bright The Tetseo Sisters (top left), radiant during a performance; Chubamanen Longkumer, coowner of Nagaland Kitchen (bottom left) 30 June 2014

major metropolitan cities over the sheer breadth of local flavours the region offers; especially with respect to food, fashion, design, music and tourism. Importantly, they are replacing the public narrative of insurgency, displacement, violent conflict and environmental disasters that have so far been perceived as newsworthy.

At the forefront is what Sanjoy Hazarika, Director of the Centre for North East Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia University, calls the soft power of Northeast India. “Writings from the Northeast, both original and in translation, are becoming part of the curriculum in literary studies in major universities of India. Also, there is a huge surge in the media industry of the region.” Young entrepreneurs from the region have become culturally assertive, making the unfamiliar valuable in a society where the culture of consumerism is growing. While researchers agree there has been an upward trend in the demand for fabrics, motifs, food and folk music from the region, this demand is limited to a small set of people in cities: the elite. The trend is driven by the restless metropolitan class, who are in search of the unknown and the unexplored: exoticism at its commercial best.

It is well known that people from the Northeast have to endure endless racial slurs and deal with thoughtlessly inane and offensive appellations on a day-today basis. The lynching and subsequent killing of 20-year-old Nido Taniam from Arunachal Pradesh last year was a chilling reminder of a country stuck in a dangerous time warp, as do recent incidents of violence. However, even though the status quo may seem to remain much the same, people are now also talking about the fashion designers from the region as trendsetters in the fashion industry. Most broadsheets now report on Northeastern culture regularly; the interest has definitely transcended the realm of academic-anthropological obsession.

T

here are five major restaurants in

New Delhi dedicated to exclusively serving Northeastern cuisine: Rosang Cafe, Dzükou and Nagaland Kitchen, in addition to Bamboo Hut and Gharua Exaj, which are still marginal players.

Governmental establishments like the stalls in Dilli Haat and the state bhavans are more popular, and smaller eateries are on the increase. Other metros like Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata have also witnessed an upsurge in the demand for food from the Northeast; including Zingron and The Naga Kitchen in Bangalore and Naga Reju in Chennai. Raw materials are sourced from hometowns to retain the distinct local flavor for homesick students and working people who popularise them, as much as the informed gourmands who have started to join them in upscale outlets in big numbers.

Nagaland Kitchen is considered a pioneer in introducing Naga cuisine into the fine dining format, opening in 2010 and struggling for a year before it made a mark in the culinary landscape of Delhi.

Chubamanen Longkumer, who co-owns

These new ambassadors of the Northeast are gradually connecting with urban spenders in major cities over the sheer breadth and variety of local flavours they offer

ashish sharma

When arunachal met turkey Jenjum Gadi displays a sample from his latest collection, ‘Turkish Delights’, in his Shahpur Jat work studio in New Delhi

the restaurant with his two sisters, has introduced exciting cocktails like Raja Mirchi with Bloody Mary which is supposed to crawl over your senses with a slow, snail-like effect compared to Raja Mirchi Vodka Shot which, the owner warns, is for the more daring. The Naga Wild Apple Vodka Shot is another drink Longkumer highly recommends.

Rosang Café’s Mary Lalboi is a former school teacher from Manipur. She migrated to Delhi with her family so that her children could have access to better education. The presence of a large number of students and working professionals from the Northeast prompted her to open a small outlet in 2003 to cater to their homesick taste-buds. “Our clients then were mostly people from the Northeast, unlike now. Seventy per cent of our customers today are non-Northeasterners,” says Muan Tonshing, her husband and coowner. Rosang is perhaps the only restaurant in Delhi which serves food from all the eight Northeastern states under one roof. Lalboi believes in the power of food 46 open

diplomacy. “I honestly believe that food and culture will bridge the gap between Northeast and mainland India. We are promoting the face of Northeast via our unique venture in a very positive way.

In the past, people had only heard about the food from the region. People are actually getting the real taste of our food now.” Since Rosang Cafe opened in Green Park this January, it has already garnered an unprecedented level of popularity.

Karen Yepthomi, Dzükou’s co-owner, has always wanted combine her love for cooking with her enterprising spirit. She glamourised Naga food through her décor and hired Khublei, a cultural consultancy firm, for public relations.

Launching her project in the modish Hauz Khas Village was a smart decision, as a wide demography of people, including innumerable foreign tourists, came to visit. “Customers were surprised the food from Nagaland does not rely on oil. If a house in Nagaland buys a litre of oil, it can last up to 6 months easily,” says Yepthomi.

T

ourism in the Northeast is also wit-

nessing change. The Ministry of Tourism reports state that Nagaland has experienced an upsurge of over 40 per cent in domestic tourist arrivals, with Arunachal Pradesh just behind it; up by a lakh or so in each case, from 2011 to 2012. These numbers are only increasing, trends suggest. Hoinu Hauzel, a Manipuri ex-journalist and author of the only existing comprehensive guide on the region’s cuisine, The Essential Northeast Cookbook, began a unique initiative in 2010 by launching a travel website, Northeast Odyssey.com, which is a one-stop directory for hotels, restaurants and homestays spread across all eight states of Northeast India, carefully selected to ensure credibility and comfort. It serves as an up-to-date guide on the best deals and offers, leading tour operators and destination managers, along with nifty bits of historical and cultural trivia that feature more substantially in Hauzel’s e-magazine, NEtravelandlife. com. Hauzel believes the concerted promotional efforts of the Central Government 30 June 2014

have combined with personal interest to get more people there. “Just giving money won’t help,” she also contends. “For tourism infrastructure to improve in the region, there has to be greater centre-state coordination and more accountability.”

The region is experiencing a very slow but steady revival of folk and indigenously-inspired music through popular folk-fusion acts of artistes like Rewben Mashangva and Papon (Angaraag Mahanta). Nagaland’s government-mandated Music Task Force (MTF) has brought to the forefront local musicians and singers. The number of performance venues in the Northeast is otherwise woefully inadequate, and local artistes find it hard to acquire sponsorship or proper promotional avenues. Three years ago, Anup Kutty started the Ziro Festival of Music in Ziro, one of the oldest towns in Arunachal Pradesh. With every subsequent edition of the festival hosted in the scenic valley, the number of music enthusiasts attending from around the world has only grown. “We curate the festival in a way that there is a lot of bonding between the local and the visiting bands,” says Kutty. The upcoming edition of Ziro in September will be spread across four days, and will feature a dedicated slot for folk musicians from the Northeast.

Alobo Naga & the Band is one of the region’s prominent rocks bands. Their debut EP, ‘Painted Dreams’, was released in December 2011 and the song soon scaled music charts to figure fourth in VH1’s International Top 10. The band’s frontman, Alobo Naga, has tremendous pride in the musical tradition of his hometown.

“In fact there are few of these folk, fusion and indigenous artistes who are doing better than contemporary or secular musicians both at the national and international festival circuit. Abiogenesis was nominated twice for the Grammy’s,” he excitedly points out. Naga was his own manager and promoter when he started out. The band recorded ‘Painted Dreams’ in a friend’s bedroom, and Naga did his vocals inside a Godrej almirah, in the height of summer. Things may have gotten bigger since those bohemian days, but it’s not so easy to escape the box. “Even people in metropolitan cities don’t know about Northeasterners. A few days back, a boy in Mumbai asked me if I was from 30 June 2014

China. When I said am an Indian and from Nagaland, he again asked if Nagaland is in China or Nepal. I studied in Delhi and I know how it feels to be like an outsider even in my own country.”

P

to these tracks, the Northeast has made steady inroads into the world of fashion and design through stalwarts like Atsu Sekhose and stylist Edward Lalrempuia. In a sign of renewed cultural pride, fashion designers and stylists from the region who are influenced by a predominantly Western aesthetic are using local fabrics and motifs with a contemporary twist.

Designer Daniel Syiem, who has been featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, is on his way to becoming a name to reckon with in the fashion industry. His spring/ summer collection was launched at the Couture Fashion Week in New York this February. He is currently working on a collection which will be exhibited at the Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto food conferences this October in Turin.

Largely self-taught, Syiem’s life took an about-turn when he realised he could use Meghalaya’s ryndia (a rare, versatile heritage fabric) to promote the rich weaving traditions of his home state. “I think Northeastern chic is already a genre,” says Syiem. “People have a unique style here and street fashion is uber chic and trendy.

Fashion is a huge part of our lifestyles. I feel, there is also a positive shift in the way arallel

Jenjum Gadi, another promising fashion designer from Arunachal Pradesh says, “People are tired of the regulation chanderi and malmal. They want newer designs”

people perceive Northeast Indians.”

Thirty-year-old Jenjum Gadi, another promising fashion designer from Arunachal Pradesh, has trailed quite a journey from a remote village called Tirbin to a sleek fashion studio in Lado Sarai. His breakthrough moment arrived when he was offered a job by Rohit Bal, who was taken with his college grduation ceremony showcase. Today, some of Gadi’s high profile clients include actresses Sonakshi Sinha and Neha Dhupia.

Gadi is deeply influenced by the remarkable colours and beads of his native tribe, Gallong. He has showcased his collections in a number of prominent national and international fashion events. “People are really tired of the regulation chanderi silk and malmal,” he says.

Researchers are cautious when they talk about change; perceptions have been misguided for so long, optimism always seem presumptuous. The question is not about the level of participation of Northeasterners in the mainstream, rather the respect and place they occupy in these industries. They ask why the mother of all soft powers—Bollywood— is not visible in this ostensible counternarrative. Celebrating strangeness is not the same as accepting and making one’s own, they believe. That is why one often comes across media stories of harassments in these very cities that seem to know the Northeast. Although Bollywood has failed to embrace those from the Northeast with open arms, the advertising industry has begun featuring people from the region in socially relevant ads, as was indicative in McCann Erickson India’s Nestle ad about adoption, released three months ago, apart from utensil detergent Vim showing Mizoram’s largest family, in January this year.

The increase in visibility is what is heartening and indicative of change, however slow this change might be in coming.

Yepthomi is amongst many who still has to encounter surprised reactions once in a while when her fellow passengers in public vehicles learn she is from India. She, however, is not unduly affected by these bizarre episodes. “A certain level of hostility is experienced by all migrants in big cities,” she says. “I developed a thick skin long time back. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been where I am today.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 47

books Memoir as Manifesto America’s former Secretary of state gears up for a presidential campaign with a muchanticipated autobiography that ticks some boxes but ultimately fails to convince Shashi Tharoor Hard Choices

By Hillary Rodham Clinton Simon & Schuster | pp 635 | Rs 999

I

’ve always liked Hillary Clinton. I first met her just after the 1992 election, when her youthful and brilliant husband Bill had just won the Presidency, and I met with her several times thereafter at the Renaissance Weekend retreats where the Clintons let their hair down every New Year. At first I was hugely impressed by her brilliance and somewhat intimidated by her ice maiden reputation, but over the years I got to see the softer side to her, most poignantly when seated next to her throughout New Year’s Eve dinner in 1998, the painful year of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. For all my respect, however, I couldn’t bring myself to support her 2008 campaign for President against the history-making claims of the next youthful and brilliant candidate, the son of an African immigrant, Barack Obama.

Obama triumphed in 2008 and again in 2012, but his second innings is already in its final stretch, and America is turning its political thoughts to succession. Hard Choices arrives in that context. The book is obviously an exercise in political branding: it is about reviving the Hillary image in time for the 2016 election. But it is also about reshaping it; from the hardnosed and somewhat abrasive figure caricatured as the embodiment of entitlement, ruthlessly attacked in the 2008 campaign, to a likeable woman who can be funny as well as smart, has emotions as well as brains, and whom you wouldn’t mind seeing on your living room televisions every evening for four— or maybe even eight—years. As Time’s Washington bureau chief Michael Scherer put it: “She must convince voters both within and without the Democratic Party that she is a real person people can believe in”. Hard Choices takes a huge step in fulfilling this objective. As a serious work of international affairs, however, it falls considerably short.

Hillary Clinton anticipates that much of the election campaign against her will be devoted to attacking her record as Secretary of State in the first Obama Administration, and so she has conducted what armchair generals in the Washington Beltway are all so fond of: a pre-emptive strike on her potential adversaries, by laying out her version of events well in advance. What is disarming and endearing about the exercise is that she has admitted to mistakes and failures— such as voting for the Iraq war and failing to persuade Obama to arm the Syrian fighters against Assad—discussed them 52 open

frankly, and yet, emerges as a strong, confident and mature leader who has learned from experience.

Hard-headed observers of foreign policy will find less to enthrall them. Hard Choices is largely a fairly safe account of her tenure at the State Department, without any especially surprising revelations or insights. Pakistanis looking for disagreement with US drone attacks, for instance, will be disappointed that she merely says that the attacks raised ‘profound questions’, but that it is ‘crucial that these strikes be part of a larger smart power counterterrorism strategy that included diplomacy, law enforcement, sanctions, and other tools’.

That’s what Americans would call Diplomacy 101, not ideas for a serious analyst, but you could hardly expect anything more candid from a potential presidential candidate.

An even more blinding statement of the obvious comes in her discussion of the perennial tensions between liberty and security: ‘Without security, liberty is fragile,’ she writes.

‘Without liberty, security is oppressive. The challenge is finding the proper measure: enough security to safeguard our freedoms, but not so much (or so little) as to endanger them.’ That’s the kind of explanation we would praise in a high school essay, but from a stateswoman it leaves you cold.

Her feistiest contribution to a discussion of contemporary world affairs is rejecting the criticism of her handling of the Benghazi attack that cost the lives of a US Ambassador and several diplomats: ‘I will not be part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans’.

But this is a book written not to offend, provoke or upset its readers, the most important of whom are the potential voters Hillary will face in the run-up to the 2016 election. That effort succeeds, but such a book is not going to excite, inspire or uplift its readers, either. It won’t get her into trouble, but it won’t be nominated amongst the most memorable memoirs you’ve read.

Still, there are moments that reward the faithful Hillary fan. Her admission of being devastated by the 2008 election defeat is startlingly human and moving, and her account of the awkward first meeting with President-elect Obama is affecting, as is her description of her enduring love for her husband Bill, despite all he’s put her through. And it is hard not to like her for confessing to us that she has a habit of digging her fingernails into her hand when she gets sleepy at meetings. Or to sympathise when she describes the physical toll of travelling some 2,000 hours by plane around the world to 122 countries in her four years as Secretary of State. Hillary also wears her American patriotism on her sleeve in a way that we Indians are not used to (but may learn to become accustomed to in the Modi era).

30 June 2014

Franck Prevel/Getty Images

FIRST LADY FOR PRESIDENT? Hillary Clinton arrives before a crisis summit on Libya in Paris, in 2011

However, there is no gossip, very little by way of spicy asides or tart observations, no self-deprecating humour and nothing really headline-making, other than her confession that the Clintons were ‘dead broke’ when they left the White House— an assertion many Americans have sneered at, as her definition of ‘dead broke’ clearly doesn’t match that of people without multiple houses, bestselling memoirs with multi-million dollar advances, highly paid speeches and the limitless moneymaking opportunities available to a former President. Still, it’s interesting to learn about President Putin’s private passion for wildlife conservation—from Siberian tigers to Arctic polar bears—and of former President Sarkozy’s stream-of-consciousness Gallic monologues. And for policy wonks, she waxes eloquent about several global issues, from cooking stoves to human trafficking, and expresses politically correct concern about everything from climate change to inequality.

But what about India? We largely don’t figure. There’s an unexceptional (and unexceptionable) four-paragraph account of her 2009 visit, with no insight worth repeating.

There are no revelations or even discussions about Richard Holbrooke’s controversial attempt to hyphenate India and Pakistan again in his pursuit of an ‘Af-Pak’ strategy, or the US role in promoting better trade relations with Pakistan, both of which occurred on her watch. Even her references to our growing middle class and our energy security needs occur only in a general discussion of China and other emerging 30 June 2014

countries. Her only quotable line on India is itself a pointer to the inadequacy of her analysis; Hillary discusses our reluctance to reduce our dependence on Iranian oil as a case of a nation that ‘simply hated being told what to do’. Of Iran’s geographical proximity, our geopolitical congruities over Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the suitability of Iranian crude for our refineries, there is not even a mention.

On the whole, the book’s length is not matched by its depth.

Hard Choices is skimpy on Hillary’s future policy objectives and plans, which is probably wise, in light of the vagaries of electoral politics. In her epilogue Hillary says, somewhat disingenuously, a paragraph after celebrating her impending grandmotherhood: ‘Will I run for President in 2016? The answer is, I haven’t decided yet.’

Which provokes the affectionate response from this reviewer: Frankly, my dear, I don’t believe you. I was reminded of her own prologue instead, in which Hillary describes her guiding principle in simple words: ‘Just try not to make the same mistake twice’. It isn’t too far-fetched to suggest that Hard Choices is a cleverly constructed 635-page version of the same message— to the American voter who made the ‘mistake’ of not electing her the first time around. n Shashi Tharoor is a Member of Parliament and author.

His latest book is Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century open www.openthemagazine.com 53

books A Passage to America A warm IndianAmerican debut suffers the narrative pitfalls of mental illness but finds safe harbour RAJNI GEORGE The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing

By Mira Jacob Bloomsbury | 512 pages | Rs 599

A

mina Eapen— accidental wedding photographer, assimilated Indian immigrant and woman interrupted— is one of the most endearing characters you may meet in recent diaspora fiction. Mindful of the extended family her parents left behind, she has assimilated generational conflicts, dramatically played out in an opening flashback to Salem, Tamil Nadu in 1979, entitled ‘Book 1: What Happens in India Does Not Stay in India’. She does not scorn the little cousin who picks at the trappings of foreign presents, remembers water that tastes like ‘hot nickels’, trips over the ‘argada-argada-argada’ of Malayalam. Elegantly, she calls forth the motherland in unpretentious passages that avoid the mango-cardamom-chicken curry sagas the blurbs might wish upon it; Gary Shteyngart loves it partly because it is ‘stuffed with delicious chapattis’. (Luckily, the Indian publisher plans to take the rotis out of the roll-out.) Yet, despite this placid exterior, the commentary is nicely apt. Even worthy of the critical, homegrown Suriani:

‘thousands of years of obsession with a Christian God in a subcontinent of more dynamic religions had petrified the Syrian Christian community, turning them into what she alternately called ‘the stalest community on earth’ or ‘India’s WASPs’.

Amina is a fluent exile in Seattle—where we meet her in the late nineties—as much as her family’s strife is located in Indianness. Her parents would never have been together of their own volition, she suspects; her lovable brain surgeon father Thomas buries himself in work partly because of his refusal to return home; his domineering mother and dipsomaniac brother Sunil were unable to accept his abandonment of India, and by extension, of them.

There is more that binds the generations than they might admit. Uncle Sunil is a sleepwalker who sets the family home on fire and Akhil, Amina’s late brother, dies as a teenager in an accident caused by the narcolepsy he refused to confront. Akhil’s death is 54 open

pivotal, sparking a kind of emotional catatonia inside Amina and her parents. When she grows up and photographs Bobby McCloud, a Tacoma Indian who plunges to his death off the George Washington Memorial Bridge in 1992 after accepting a government settlement, it all comes back. Amina hears Akhil, a fiercely liberal young man when he passed, saying “Blood money for blood money, huh?”, in one of her frequent ‘visions’ of him. This ‘falling man’ is fictitious but Associated Press photographer Richard Drew’s captured one of 9/11’s casualties and was pulled; Jacob takes on the issue of responsibility here in a clumsy, ill-fitting side plot.

Meanwhile, Amina is undone by the calamity—and the fact that she helped deliver it to the media—on his behalf.

Her career in photojournalism is shelved for wedding photography, New York replaced with Seattle. Finally, when her mother Kamala calls and says Thomas is seeing dead people, Amina rushes home to Albuquerque—where she encounters high school flame Jamie Anderson of the oddly attractive womanly lips—and emerges from a stalled life and career. That Jamie’s sister was Akhil’s girlfriend only connects the two loners further. His Afro long gone, lover boy is all grownup, and Jacob masters passion even in the back of a car, in some cosy love scenes. The sexual tension lifts this moving yet somewhat plodding family story. For, the reader tires of Thomas’ segues into apparent dementia—soon identified as a brain tumour but allowed to persist because Thomas believes its communications take him to Akhil. Sofas stray onto lawns and the house falls into disarray, as the madness spills a 100 pages over the stylish novel it might have been.

Yet, the enjoyable narrative and prose relieve the tedium, as do the characters. There is a happily-ever-after quality to the near relatives of the Eappens’ recreated family, worthy of a Malayali Meera Syal spinoff. The cool aunt who hasn’t had kids and the uncle who cooks are a refreshing departure, though Kamala is too close to the typical nagging Indian mom. And Dimple, Amina’s wicked cousin, is delicious, unsparing of samosas, ‘Cadbury couture’ work wear and boys they grew up with. Her cutting one-liners keep it real: ‘“So what, you’re going to take up the Suriani habit of drinking yourself into a nasty middle age?”’

Mira Jacob charms in this intuitive and often funny debut that reads like a screenplay, despite the yawns. If you read just one Indian American novel this year, let it be this one. n 30 June 2014

books The Bad Girl’s Guide to Delhi A first novel offers sharp visuals and flashes of insight into the city but falls victim to the very banality it projects onto its hapless subjects Faiza S Khan A Bad Character

By Deepti Kapoor hamish hamilton | 240 pages | Rs 499

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dha, the 20-year-old protagonist of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character, has always been an odd bird; rather sensitive, an overthinker one might say. As a child, she visits a butcher with her mother and, presented with chicken for dinner, she contemplates ‘the alchemy of this, the life made out of death’.

Following her mother’s death, she moves in with her housewife aunt and accountant uncle. She suspects she’s somehow different, a rebel in a conformist world. Her defiant soul is why attempts at socialising with peers failed: ‘I have my own ideas about things and a couple of times having coffee with the girls, I’ve ventured some thought close to my heart only to receive blank looks in return’. I can imagine, especially if she opened with this chicken-alchemy-death-life business.

One day while hanging about at a café in Khan Market thinking deep thoughts about her waitress (‘the kohl around her eyes looks like rebellion, around mine it is a prison’), Idha meets a man who changes her life. (The novel, which is told in flashback, opens with his body being recovered on a highway.) He informs her that she is ‘a blank slate, a lump of wet clay’ that he plans to mould. I’d have killed him myself. She, however, is won over by his bad boy demeanour and atrociously hackneyed lines. He appeals to the mutiny she seems to think is raging within her: ‘his entire way of being, makes me think of someone who’s …wandered out of the forest’.

Perhaps he knows how to spot edible plants—who can say.

He’s not the sort of boy one takes home to meet the foster parents. For one thing, he’s dark. ‘It’s the years of conditioning’, Kapoor writes, with more than a touch of didacticism, ‘that make me think his dark skin is ugly, poor, wrong’. The two finally make love on the ‘1st of May. A day for the workers’. This mystifying socialist thread isn’t expanded upon further. Then, they spend some very slow-moving pages exploring Delhi, having philosophical conversations and watching obscure Resnais and Truffaut films. He teaches her ‘how to say charcuterie, from the French, obsolete: char for flesh, cuite for cooked’. Imagine all of Adrian Mole’s pretensions with none of his endearing warmth or humour and you’ve pretty much got it. At one point, he buys her outfits telling her to try them on and, ‘Fall in love with yourself’. It’s Fifty Shades of Grey meets Maine Pyar Kiya. Together, they are one of literature’s least endearing couples, and this isn’t helped by the

30 June 2014

Deepti Kapoor

complete absence of momentum; the tale is told in fragments, like author’s notes that aren’t written into proper scenes.

There are insightful moments—few and far between, alas—about a woman’s experience of the city, of life: the gas station attendant who strokes her hand while giving her her change, the Rapunzel-esque girl in the flat next door under her alcoholic father’s control, Idha’s wondering what decisions based on desire ‘will finally say about me’.

Unfortunately, the author mostly has as little sympathy for women as the rest of society, portraying fellow students as brainwashed drones and her perfectly pleasant aunt as a vapid fool given to husband-hunting and gossip; the poor woman, perhaps tired of her supercilious charge, reasonably suggests she look for a job and a flat if she doesn’t want to marry.

The worst dehumanisation though, is reserved for Muslim women living in Old Delhi: ‘in the place where lives are spent behind walls’, which may come as a surprise to some of them—where ‘a man will make love to them, beat them for a look or a word, for no reason at all, will despise them, ignore them, be blind to them ...buy gifts to appease them, make them smile, coax a laugh from their lips from which love trickles like a brook’. Right then.

It’s all a terrible shame because Kapoor really can turn a beautiful phrase when she feels like it. She sometimes has a poet’s control of language and an undeniable gift for visuals, putting down one sharp, vividly realised image after another: ‘tree-tangled temples’, calls to prayer that ‘leap into the sky’, Delhi’s ‘sulphurous dark’. But journeys of self-discovery don’t work all that well when the protagonist turns out to not be terribly interesting after all. n Faiza S Khan is a critic and editor based in New Delhi open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA

The Unconventional Gaze The wave of young indie Hindi filmmakers has a new player in Kanu Behl, whose debut Titli has found the approval of international critics SUNAINA KUMAR

“P

laneloads of people from

Mumbai visit Cannes every year, I wonder what they do there,” observed master filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. He was commenting on the embarrassing tradition of droves of A and B list stars descending on the red carpet—where none of our movies were to be seen. In the three years since, the conversation about the Indian contingent at Cannes has begun to shift from gowns and coif-

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feurs to actual movies. After Miss Lovely in 2012 and The Lunchbox in 2013, this year Titli (which showed in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section for emerging directors), produced by Dibakar Banerjee and Yash Raj Films and directed by debutant Kanu Behl, has become the most raved about film from India.

“Indian indie Titli was the most exciting film I saw in Cannes, a breath of steamy air from the slums of Delhi,” wrote Jason Solomons, film critic, in BBC News. The story of a family of pet-

ty criminals and their youngest son who wants out, the film is a remarkable debut teeming with raw energy, passion and amazingly confident storytelling. Watching it was like seeing Mean Streets or City of God for the very first time—you really feel this could be the start of something big, just the kind of new voice and style of Indian cinema we’ve been waiting for.”

Variety recognised “the rising profile of Indian indies on the international scene” in “Kanu Behl’s grittily impres30 June 2014

film as yet; the filmmakers are keen to get maximum mileage and word of mouth from the international festival route, before releasing it to a primed audience in India. This method worked for The Lunchbox last year.

But, comparing the two is probably redundant. Titli, documentary in style and gritty in subject, is far from the sunshiny, audience-pleasing world of The Lunchbox. It is the world of Scorsese’s Mean Streets, and a far cry from Yash Raj Films’ mega Bollywood productions.

The film, portions of which he shows us on his laptop, explores the life of the eponymous character Titli—his two older brothers, played

by Ranvir Shorey and Amit Sanyal— and his father, played by Kanu Behl’s father, actor Lalit Behl: an all-male household of carjackers in Delhi, prone to extreme violence. When Titli tries to escape the oppression of his daily life and his ‘family business’,

ashish sharma

sive noir debut”.

Kanu Behl, 33, is a bespectacled, bearded, earnest-looking man, with modest manners and an air of quietude that contradicts his age. He bides his time between Mumbai, his place of work, and Delhi, his home city and muse. We meet at his parents’ flat in IP (Indraprastha) Extension in East Delhi. The narrow and poky contours of the house were an inspiration for the setting of Titli, he later reveals.

No release date has been set for the 30 June 2014

“There is a kind of anger within me in terms of the films I want to see made.

There are filmmakers who want to find a voice for a cinema that is Indian and not Bollywood” such as it is, he is hemmed in, not just by members of his family, but also by the patriarchal structure of our society and the extremities of life in our cities.

Films set in Delhi tend to be caged by the Punjabi-inspired, big-fat-happywedding stereotype. The last big Delhi film, Queen, though endearing and fresh in spirit, pandered to the above.

Not Titli. If you are from Delhi, the film comes as a rude shock, a punch to the gut. Accustomed as we are to a candied form of cinema, it shocks

us out of our complacency. Behl does not shy away from telling it like it is.

Titli’s older brother Vikram (played by Shorey) works as a security guard in a typical glitzy mall, the sort of ubiquitous place that dots the landscape of the city. His own life is lived in deep urban squalor, in the slums on the outskirts of Delhi. It asks: do we really have a choice when our life is lived between two such different worlds, between aspiration and deprivation, power and powerlessness?

“He works in a shiny world and comes back to an almost-forgotten world, a place that is stuck in a time warp. What else can he feel apart from anger, violence and frustration?” asks Behl.

Behl’s handling of his characters is so sure and sympathetic that a grotesque scene where Shorey ends up beating out the brains of a car salesman with a hammer leaves the viewer both on the edge of their seat and firmly on the side of Shorey, the wrongdoer. A brilliant actor whose career betrays the tragedy of Hindi cinema, where great actors are more often left out in the cold, Shorey says good scripts like this one are difficult to score.

Titli ends up challenging every stereotype we know. Behl’s biggest risk is in taking on what he calls the holy cow of Indian cinema: the family. The film shows us the circularities and the claustrophobia within families.

When Titli (played by first time actor Shashank Sharma) looks to escape his brother’s oppression, he finds his brother is himself a victim, oppressed by his father, who in turn was oppressed by his grandfather. Behl drew on his own experiences of growing up in a patriarchal North-Indian family. He went through several drafts of writing, before arriving at the formulation, which is the basis of his script, that, we all end up mirroring our family and that oppression runs in circles.

Behl read psychoanalyst RD Laing’s The Politics of the Family to deepen his understanding. “Growing up, my relationship with my father was not easy.

It’s the template for families, especially in north India, where someone oldopen www.openthemagazine.com 57

er ends up stamping his authority and presuming to run your life for you.”

In a way, filmmaking is his inheritance. His father, Lalit Behl, is an actor and directed some well-received telefilms on Doordarshan in the late eighties and nineties. His mother, Navnindra Behl, is a writer, director and stage actor who most recently appeared in Queen in a minor role.

Behl senior was keen his son take up acting; the young man caved in and joined Barry John’s theatre group for a few years, but he was “atrocious”, he says. After earning an undergradu-

they got talking and decided to work together in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Love, Sex aur Dhoka.

When he pitched his first idea to Banerjee, something of a mentor, he was advised to go back to the drawing board. “With my first script, I was trying to play director. I didn’t know any of the characters. I had to ask myself why I wanted to be a filmmaker.

It is: to tell stories that are true to me, that have come out of my own experience.” Titli is a result of nearly two years of writing.

Behl has developed a vocabulary all

(The Lunchbox), Umesh Kulkarni (Deeol), Nagraj Manjule (Fandry).

“Titli is a very difficult first film. It shocks and shakes you. I find it liberating and exhilarating that the film does not hold back, it’s uncompromising,” says producer Dibakar Banerjee.

The editor of the film, Namrata Rao (Behl’s ex-wife), whose work has been lauded for bringing out the tautness of the script, echoes Banerjee. “It is about family and relationships and how people relate with each other, there is a universality in that.” Rao, who grew up in Delhi and understands a thing

Titli ends up challenging every stereotype we know.

Behl’s biggest risk is in taking on what he calls the holy cow of Indian cinema: the family GRITTY STORYTELLING A still from the film Titli

ate business degree in Delhi, he went to study at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata. “I went to film school to understand the history of cinema. Once I discovered world cinema, I had something to aspire to.

I wanted to spend some years forming myself correctly. It’s where I learnt that I’d rather fail and tread on new ground,” he says.

In film school and for a few years after, he made a string of hard-hitting political documentaries that would shape his voice as a feature filmmaker.

He ended up in Bollywood purely by serendipity; while delivering a package for a friend to Dibakar Banerjee, 58 open

his own. It is very different from that of his adopted home, Bollywood. “The state of Indian cinema is very reductive. And, there is a kind of anger within me in terms of the films I want to see made. There are filmmakers who want to find a voice for a cinema that is Indian and not Bollywood. The way countries like Korea and Iran have achieved it.” No wonder one international reviewer found the film “gives a strange look into India... the land of Shah Rukh Khan”.

Behl mentions the wave of young, independent filmmakers on the cusp: Ashim Ahluwalia (Miss Lovely), Anand Gandhi (Ship of Theseus), Ritesh Batra

or two about patriarchy, crushing violence and the status of women in our society, says she did not need any persuasion to come on board.

The film may have created the strongest buzz recently enjoyed by an indie, but Behl fears the hype. “It often happens with me as a late viewer, where I feel, ‘Oh, the film is not as great as it was made out to be’, I just want people to see it without knowing anything.” Such is the state of Hindi cinema, it rarely gives us a chance to celebrate brilliance, when it does, it is difficult to miss it. Behl will have to live with the burden of expectation. n 30 June 2014

rough cut

Me, You and Everyone We Know—on Facebook Mayank Shekhar

Are there any private moments left for us?

F

ilmmaker Kiran Rao, who comes from a middle class It’s common knowledge that Facebook started out as a home, says very little about her life has changed since college platform to rate women as hot or not, much like she married Bollywood star Aamir Khan. Except that Tinder, currently a popular dating app. Therefore, it is she has become more conscious of how she dresses in pubnot surprising that unlike films, Facebook is favourably lic, knowing that she will be photographed when she steps skewed towards female lead characters. The rapidly rising out for an evening or an event. number of ‘likes’ as a woman changes her profile picture “I couldn’t land up in Bata chappals,” she tells me. In my seem like coins jangling once you’ve hit jackpot on head, I’m thinking, isn’t this true for all of us right now, the slot machine. This sort of instant validation could surrounded by snapperazi with smart phones, hooked to sobe addictive. cial media, turning most moments into ‘events’ with family, You would earlier seek a photographer for this vanity friends, and above all, with self? Only the numbers consumfix; with the selfie, you can keep clicking yourself until ing those images might differ. you’ve captured the perfect frame to upload, and then lie It’s hard not to accidentally photo bomb even when you’re back, relax, and read the onrush of witty comments online: at the local coffee shop, because somebody is getting #cap‘Wow,’ ‘So pretty,’ ‘That is hot’, ‘Woohoo’. If I was a woman, puccino #truelove with #BFF #RandomMonday. The grey I would do this all day: when in doubt, round your lips, and T-shirt you wore last week that you repeated last night, the pout. All timelines are a series of the same selfie poses, garzit on your forehead and the bad hair day— nering a minimum 100 ‘likes’ each. all of it was reproduced for posterity’s sake The ‘usie’ (a group selfie), of course, Facebook is skewed and sartorial scrutiny on Facebook, and is looks no different from the large set of towards female currently being watched by hundreds of party snaps with anonymous folks I people you may not even know. would endlessly scroll past on my wall leads. The rapidly Pop psychology has a term for all sorts when I first got addicted to Facebook. rising number of of mental allergies—ombrophobia (fear of Technically, I wasn’t being voyeuristic, ‘likes’ as a woman rain), triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number since the access was by invitation. These changes her profile 13), arachibutyrophobia (fear of peanut butpeople sharing the time of their lives were picture seem like ter sticking to the roof of the mouth). Yet, my Facebook ‘friends’. coins jangling once there is no word for someone’s morbid Provoked by the Fear of Missing Out aversion of being photographed. I suffer (#FOMO), I decided to attend the real life you’ve hit jackpot on from it, like many others who can’t hold party of the most happening singles’ club the slot machine a pose or fake a smile for too long. I’ve had on my timeline, because y’know, You Only to seek self-cure, because frankly there Live Once (#YOLO). The party wasn’t half is no escape—unless you wish to perenially be a thorn in as exciting as the carefully timed photos on Facebook. After the company of friends and acquintances who are keen on the mad poses, the guests would un-freeze and return to a stashing each public/ private moment into an appropriately dull night at the bar. large online folder that serves as PR pap for what all they’ve Over time, I realised that nobody is as hot or happy as they done, where all they’ve been, and who all they’ve met. appear on Facebook. It is merely their public face, because Within a decade, Facebook became a republic of a billion that’s just the way we are, whether we like it or not: famous plus. The modus operandi of its younger residents, for the for 15 minutes on someone’s timeline. most part, is still not vastly different from the platform’s In the offline heterosexual world, men size up women original intent. Of course, by now, families and grannies (regardless of how they’re clothed), and women check out have joined the social network; it’s a matter of time before other women for what they are wearing. It can’t be too kids will find another room. different on Facebook. I guess I’m safe then. What choice To be fair, we’re all central characters of a movie named does one have but to feel so? I can’t do without the chappals after us. Existence on social media could turn some people and one can’t avoid getting clicked anymore. n into competing blockbusters. But if you’re a guy, it’s a Mayank Shekhar runs the pop-culture website TheW14.com checkmate, buddy.

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open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

red alert For each additional 50 gm in daily consumption of processed meat, the risk of heart failure incidence increases by 8 per cent and the risk of death from heart failure by 38 per cent

Face Value Our faces evolved because of the millions of years of fistfights our ancestors have been involved in

Warning: Processed Red Meat

W

hy are male and female faces different? Why is a man’s jaw more robust than a woman’s? Could it have been that as humans evolved, the face evolved too, with slight variations between men and women?

So far, most scientists have theorised that the beefy faces seen among men today and that first originated in our early ancestors were the result of the need of having to chew hardto-crush foods like nuts. But new research claims that male faces are the way they are not because of the food they consumed, but because of the millions of years of fistfights our male ancestors have been involved in. According to this research, the robust jaws seen in men have evolved so as to minimise the damage caused during fights.

The study, published in the journal Biological Reviews by researchers from University of Utah, focused their research on the bone structure of australopiths—a species of apelike bipeds, who are the immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo.

While examining the fossils, researches realised that the strong, 60 open

sturdy faces appeared roughly at about the same time when australopiths’ hand proportions had evolved to allow them to form a fist. In a fistfight faces are usually the primary target, and while we can survive a fractured jaw today with modern healthcare, a broken jaw millions of years ago could mean being unable to chew and thus starving to death.

The researchers also found that australopith faces and jaws were strongest in just those areas most likely to receive a blow from a fist.

These bones are also those parts of the skull that show the greatest difference between males and females in both australopiths and humans. The researchers theorise that if our hand proportions evolved to allow us to fight with our fists, one can expect the primary target, the face, to have also undergone evolution to better protect it from injury.

The study also indicates that unlike the presumption that ancient humans by and large lived peacefully among themselves, our ancestors were violent and this drove key evolutionary changes. n

According to a study in Circulation: Heart Failure, men who eat moderate amounts of processed red meat may have an increased risk of incidence and death from heart failure.

After almost 12 years of follow-up, researchers found: men who ate the most processed red meat (75 gm per day or more) had a 28 per cent higher risk of heart failure compared to men who ate 25 gm per day or less, after adjusting for lifestyle variables. “Processed red meat commonly contains sodium, nitrates, phosphates and other food additives, and smoked and grilled meats also contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, all of which may contribute to the increased heart failure risk,” says Alicja Wolk, lead author of the study. n

Genetic ‘Barcode’ for Malaria

A new genetic ‘barcode’ for malaria parasites has been found which could be used to track and contain the spread of the disease, according to new research led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Lead author Dr Taane Clark says, “Being able to determine the geographic origin of malaria parasites has enormous potential in containing drugresistance and eliminating malaria. Our work represents a breakthrough in the genetic barcoding of P. falciparum, as it reveals very specific and accurate sequences for different geographic settings. We are currently extending the barcode to include other populations, such as India, Central America, southern Africa and the Caribbean”. n

30 june 2014

brake fluid Hydraulic brake systems contain many seals that are compatible with a specific hydraulic fluid used in a system. Mixing even the smallest amount of other types of fluid can damage these seals, which will seriously and permanently affect performance and function of the brake

tech&style

Leaos E-Bike A futuristic electric bike that combines style with state-of-the art technology gagandeep Singh Sapra

Oris w Aquis Red Limited Edition

Price on request

¤4,980 onwards

Water resistant to 300m and limited to only 2,000 pieces, the new Oris Aquis Red Limited Edition is a tribute to the Red Sea’s wondrous depths and a call to arms for the preservation of its tropical marine life. This stunning timepiece is the ideal diving companion for those looking for an eye-catching aesthetic underpinned with an environmental consciousness. It is presented in a special set, which includes a waterproof torch. n

Lytro Illum

I

f you have been considering cy-

cling, but want a bike that a discerning gentleman or lady might ride, the brand new luxury e-Bike from Leaos is a fitting piece of equipment, a dream bike to own.

Designed to be unisex, this handmade e-Bike comes in carbon black and white, with two frame sizes— one for those up to 170 cm tall, and another for those taller than 170 cm.

You can choose between a 25 kmph and a 45 kmph version as well.

This Italian bike comes with a 11.6 Ah lithium ion removable battery that can be recharged on and off the bike. And on a single charge, this pedal-assist electric bike can run for up to 2.5 hours. The display on the handle bar shows battery charge levels, and a digital display mounted as a centre console lets you get to other parameters of the bike.

The monocoque body, handlebar and mudguards of this 22 kg bike 30 june 2014

are made of sturdy carbon fibre that looks very elegant. Though there are no visible suspension systems, the bicycle rides smoothly over all bumps and pits on the road, thanks to its carbon fibre forks and special balloon tires.

The bike uses an MPF 36-volt midmotor with 10 levels of pedal assist which deliver up to 50 Nm of torque, as well as a NuVinci Harmony automatic shift system and advanced controller for smooth riding through the streets. And just in case of emergency, the hydraulic disc brakes will ensure you don’t hit someone.

There is a lighting system built into the front handlebar to light up the road ahead, and brake/safety lights are built into the stem tube. You can also have a smartphone holder, a GPS tracker, and a carbon rack installed on the bike. The only maintenance Leaos says is necessary is to oil the chain every two to three months. n

$1,499

Unlike standard cameras, the Illum from Lytro uses technology that allows you to choose the focal point after an image is taken. The camera comes with an F/2.0 30 to 250 mm zoom lens, a body that looks like an SLR camera and a 40 Megaray customised sensor that not only captures an image but also captures the direction and intensity of light rays, giving you a brilliant canvas to create. It also has a state-of-the-art four-inch touchscreen that lets you control the camera and change its focus points. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

Ring to reel Boxing champion Vijender Singh made his Bollywood debut with F*Ugly. Honoured with several prestigious awards including the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and the Padma Shri, he represented India at the London Olympics in 2012.

F*Ugly A film that underlines the ugliness of Delhi’s underbelly, but fails to make a cinematic impact ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Grace of Monaco Director Olivier Dahan cast Nicole Kidman, Frank Langella,

Parker Posey, Tim Roth Score ★★★★★

er ergill , Vijend Cast jimmy sh i an adv singh, kiara bir sadanand Director Ka

O

n an aesthetic level, F*Ugly— ‘fight against the ugly’—does not work too well. It is a Delhi-based movie that reflects a generalised angst towards politicians, molestation of women in the city and corruption in the police force. However, it has a few things going for it. The language used, a fairly crude Haryanvi Hindi, is authentic, as is the portrayal of the lawlessness that pervades certain parts of Delhi. The other asset the film has is a wonderful, strangely under-rated actor in Jimmy Shergill.

Shergill has the kind of persona Scorsese would love. He is a director’s actor, playing character roles with passion and conviction, but never trying to alter the balance of a film in his favour. He plays a terrifying police officer called RS Chautala. Rotten to the core, Chautala manipulates politicians, murders for personal profit and has no scruples when it comes to blackmailing youngsters.

Four friends—a girl and three guys — 62 open

hang out together in Delhi. One day a leering shopkeeper grabs the girl (Kiara Advani) from behind, has a good feel, and then instantly turns the tables, declaring to all and sundry that she is a trouble-making kind of modern girl.

So the friends wait till it is night, lock the molester in the boot of the car and drive out of Delhi, planning to give him a thrashing in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, en route they meet the deadly Chautala—and he just puts a bullet in the shopkeeper’s head and blackmails the four friends. While they are trying to get the money to pay him off, director Kabir Sadanand splits his film into several sub-plots that reveal political skullduggery, transactional sex and corruption that is so in your face, it shocks you. The harder the friends struggle to get hold of the money required to get rid of the deadly cop, the deeper into this cesspool of corruption they sink.

This is not a very good film, but somehow it rings true. n

This is not a biopic, but the expectation against all evidence that it is, has seriously damaged the film. Perhaps it is the movie’s title that is misleading. The film is about a traumatic period of Monaco’s history that is seen through the perspective of a Hollywood actress. It is not a fairytale about the daughter of a bricklayer from Philadelphia who married Prince Rainier III and became a princess.

The film takes a thin slice of politics— the conflict between Rainier and Charles de Gaulle in the early sixties on the issue of Monaco’s revenue. The tiny country is dependent on European aristocrats and gamblers for its income, and the Fifth Republic wants its pound of flesh. Rainier (Tim Roth) is trying to wriggle out of the blackmail and desperately needs the moral support of Grace (Nicole Kidman), who is still in the process of making the emotional transition from a famous actress to a royal consort.

The film plods along, gives a few history lessons, and only briefly touches on Kelly’s Hollywood past when Alfred Hitchcock turns up to offer her a film—Marnie.

Kidman is a fine actress, but sadly, she is horribly miscast here. The idea of feminine beauty in mid-century Hollywood was very different and, tall and gangly, she is not convincing in this role.

The cinematography is excellent, but the fact remains that production values alone do not a movie make. n AD

30 june 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Love’s Labour Lost

It’s hardly any secret that Deepika Padukone is visiting her beau Ranveer Singh in Europe, where he’s filming Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do. The actress even posed for pictures with fans who spotted her out and about in Capri, shopping or just taking in the local sights and sounds. Still, unit members on the set have reportedly been told not to take pictures with DP and have been specifically asked not to post them on social networking sites. A production assistant who apparently uploaded a picture with Deepika on Instagram was asked to immediately take it down when the photograph went viral, and began showing up on celeb gossip blogs earlier this week. Too late unfortunately!

Turns out Deepika has no problem being spotted traipsing around Italy and Spain, but doesn’t want to be filmed on the set, thereby directly linking her to Ranveer. Those wondering why Bollywood’s busiest and most successful female star would follow her boyfriend around on a shoot might do well to remember that Zoya’s film also stars a certain Miss Anushka Sharma who, in case you’ve forgotten, happens to be Ranveer’s former flame.

Deepika, who famously hooked up with Ranbir Kapoor while they were shooting for Bachna Ae Haseeno in Australia, knows a thing or two about on-location romances—and probably wants to keep an eye on Ranveer to make sure the exes don’t rekindle their spark. But turns out Anushka’s own boyfriend, cricketer Virat Kohli, joined her when the unit arrived to film in Barcelona.

That’s one too many nervous partners on a film set… no wonder buzz is that Zoya and her producers aren’t thrilled with all the ‘guests’ showing up, and wish their cast would just focus on filming.

Anything in the Name of PR Camp Hrithik Roshan is in overdrive mode. Possibly to deflect attention from his imminent divorce and personal crises, the actor’s PR machinery made sure a battery of photographers were present outside a Mumbai hotspot where the actor and his family was dining with The Fast and The Furious director Rob Cohen recently.

But when asked if there might be a collaboration in the works, the star’s father, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan, has said nothing of the sort is true. Roshan Sr has revealed that Hrithik 30 june 2014

and Rob got to know each other when his son was filming Kites in Los Angeles some years ago. Cohen and Hrithik also have a common friend in Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, who cut an international version of Kites for the American market—which sadly sank without so much as a trace.

While Cohen was in town, Hrithik reportedly showed him a few action scenes of his still-in-production Bang Bang, itself a remake of the Tom Cruise dud Knight and Day.

Fatal Attraction

A much married actress and former beauty queen who’s more or less retired from the screen is not surprised by another actress’ recent allegations that she was verbally and physically abused by her ex, an industrialist scion. The former beauty queen, now happily married and a mother, once dated the same wealthy big shot and reportedly endured similar temper tantrums during their tumultuous relationship.

Her friends have revealed that she had a harder time with said industrialist because she was only starting out in her career at the time. On one occasion, he allegedly locked her up in their love pad and left her with limited food supplies, not returning to release her for a few days. Years after they’d broken up, when his company used her photograph to promote a beauty pageant they’d organised, the actress—spotting an opportunity to get back at her ex—reportedly sent a legal notice to the company asking them to refrain from exploiting her image without her consent.

Although there’s no love lost between both ladies, the former beauty queen has told friends she’s happy that the actress has exposed the industrialist’s abusive and high-handed ways.

Meanwhile, a third actress and former model is also cheering as the big shot gets his just desserts. The model apparently had a fling with the gentleman recently, while she was engaged. She was subsequently dumped by her fiancé when he discovered she was fooling around with said Richie Rich. The big shot, however, did not want to make a serious thing of their relationship when she went to him after being dumped, revealing that he was already committed to an Italian heiress he’d been introduced to by a family member. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

Powerless in the City

by r au l i r a n i

A retired 76-year-old government officer, LD Chopra, breathes through an oxygen mask at his residence in New Delhi. For Chopra, an asthmatic patient, life depends on uninterrupted electricity supply. An unconscious Chopra was rushed to hospital on 31 May when thunderstorms disrupted power supply to his oxygen concentrator. Like Chopra’s residence in the east of the city, much of Delhi suffered long power outages after a spike in demand and damage to power lines caused by thunderstorms overwhelmed the grid.

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30 june 2014

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

Thom Richard is one of the few pilots in the world to possess the talent, experience and courage required to compete in the final of the famous Reno Air Races – the world’s fastest motorsport. Less than ten champions are capable of vying with each other at speeds of almost 500 mph, flying wing to wing at the risk of their lives, just a few feet off the ground. It is for these elite aviators that Breitling develops its chronographs: sturdy, functional and ultra high-performance instruments all equipped with movements chronometer-certified by the COSC – the highest official benchmark in terms of reliability and precision. Welcome to the Breitling world.

BREITLING.COM

CHRONOMAT 44