OPEN Magazine 30 December 2013

A Custody Battle Over Two Orphans

Gujarati Muslims Out To Save Holy Cows

RS 35 30 December 2013

INSIDE Let’s Rethink The War on Bacteria l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

do you need modi?

The Aam Aadmi Party changes many things

AAP

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

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

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Volume 5 Issue 51 For the week 24—30 Dec 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover illustration

Anirban Ghosh

30 december 2013

Kishan

The law of averages will catch up with Arvind Kejriwal (‘The Man They Did Not Get’, 23 December 2013). Currently, he is a freak phenomenon. Yes, he and his team campaigned hard with a clear strategy that has paid dividends. However, it would be difficult for the AAP to expand beyond the immediate surroundings of Delhi and sustain its campaign in Delhi in the future. All its volunteers will eventually have to return to their jobs, the fervour will die down, and either the AAP will be in The AAP has taken the opposition or form on very powerful Delhi’s government. If it enemies—political forms the government, parties and corporates— expect the party to face and all these forces will stiff resistance from the unite to bring down bureaucracy and other their common enemy internal services. The higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. The AAP has taken on very powerful enemies—political parties and corporates—and all these forces will unite to bring down their common enemy. And they know that all they need do is twiddle their thumbs and wait till Kejriwal makes a mistake. It’s not just money and influence over the media that can be used to throttle the future of this new political party.  letter of the week Rahul’s Chosen Ones

rahul gandhi is a reminder of the adage ‘Empty vessels make the most noise’ (‘Rahul Gandhi Versus the Old Guard’, 23 December 2013). He is used to making tall promises that are at complete variance with the reality. His ‘inner party’ democracy is nowhere even after years of sloganeering on the same. Elevation of party leaders is largely based on his own recommendations and/or his mother’s and not those of [any proper selection] committee or by consensus. Worse, most of the ‘new generation’ of leaders his party is promoting are scions of political dynasties like Rahul himself: Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Sandeep Dikshit, Jaiwardhan Singh, Jag Parvesh Kumar, etcetera. And most of these men are hardcore

been gracious in not adding cows and buffaloes and pigs to the list.  Santosh Samuel

Men, Women and Exceptions

family loyalists. These are the future of the Congress under Rahul Gandhi’s ‘inner party democracy’.  gautam

Rough Actions

the author is spot on when he says issues like a boy kicking a cat ought to be dealt with in a manner that is proportionate and mature (‘Who Exactly Is Cruel Here?’ 23 December 2013). Was the kicking stupid (cruel, insensitive, barbaric: take your pick)? Yes. Was the uploading of the video stupid?

Yes. Were the subsequent actions—the police complaint, dharna, shaming of the boy—stupid? You bet they were. The boy at least had age to cite in his defence. And again the chicken comment is a valid one—the author has

this refers to ‘Why Men Are from Mars and Women from Venus’ (21 December 2013). To start with, statistical analysis done on the data provided in the paper suggests that while the difference in brain wiring is statistically significant, it is not substantiative. What this means is that if you use the fMRI technique used here to construct brain wiring diagrams of a large sample of men and women, you will find a few men and a few women whose diagrams will show the differences they cite in this paper. With the sample size they have taken, this number was enough to prove mathematically that the differences are not because of random chance. What this does not mean is that all men and all women have ‘fundamentally different’ wiring. Secondly, the average differences are shown to be heavily overlapping. This means that my woman-brain could look more like a man-brain than the average man’s. Another worrying aspect of this paper, and the press releases that followed it, is the fact that the authors have not done any experiment to correlate the areas of differential activity with their alleged functions.

Neither have they done any experiment to study the behavioural differences between the sexes.  Swati Balakrishnan

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

openmagazine to 56070

In Worship of a God Who Loves Gay People inclusivity

The Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association works to excise the stigma on homosexuality

In the past three years, in the riot of colours that is every Mumbai Queer Pride March, one man stood out.

He was a baby-faced person in his late teens, wearing a white bandi and dhoti, his forehead marked with ‘U’ shaped paste, shouting slogans with enthusiasm. Ankit Bhuptani, now a 21-year-old who represents the Indian chapter of Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association (Galva), is used to people gaping at his traditional Hindu monk-like appearance, especially since it is a general belief that every re-

mumbai

30 december 2013

ligion is against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) cause, a perception reinforced by the Supreme Court’s re-criminalising of all kinds of ‘unnatural sex’ on 11 December.

Led by Vaishnavites, Galva has been steadily campaigning to lift the stigma on the LGBT community by spreading awareness of ancient Hindu scriptures. Their message: ‘Everyone is equal in God’s eyes’. Galva, a cyber community, was started by Amara Das Wilhelm, a Hindu monk with the Iskcon sect, in 2001.

Hinduism, Wilhelm says, has no dictum calling for discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation.

It was brought to India by Bhuptani in July 2012. After starting a Facebook page, he decided to launch regular activities to spread the message on various online forums and debunk religious misconceptions about sexual minorities.

Since last December, he has been organising workshops in retreats like Matheran.

“Often, something that is accepted by the law may not be accepted by the general pub-

lic. But when something is accepted by religion, it is directly accepted by society,” says Bhuptani. After all, he adds, “Hinduism is about supreme acceptance.”

According to various essays and articles on Hindu mythology on the Galva website, various representations of transsexuals, transgenders and crossdressing exist. One of the examples frequently cited is that of Lord Ayyappa, born of the union of Shiva and Vishnu in the form of the seductress Mohini. n Omkar Khandekar

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

mousam pattnaik

small world

14

contents

cover story Do you need Modi?

angle

road trip

bacteria

Time for a rethink

6

But why did our diplomat lie?

40

22

Two men in a car

10

32

news reel

Modi and Muslims

The Case of Exploding Volvos t i n d e r b o x After two luxury air-conditioned Volvo buses of the same model met with accidents that reduced them to burnt shells, killing 52 passengers, the governments of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have belatedly admitted several lapses. Both buses had grazed against highway medians at high speeds, leading to sparks that started fires that engulfed them. The buses had no emergency exits or speed governors. The authorities have asked operators to fit them immediately and play a safety video demonstrating where the exits are located. Zameer Ahmed, a legislator and co-owner of the bus involved in the second accident, admitted that private operators don’t fit emergency exits as it means fewer seats. Only Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation offers emergency exits and speed governors on Volvos. Sohandeep Randhawa of Volvo says the manufacturer is still analysing the two accidents and looking at how to improve design and safety standards. n Anil Budur Lulla

maneaters

Should rogue tigers be shot dead?

After ruling out support from either the Congress or BJP in Delhi, Aam Aadmi Party head Arvind Kejriwal sends both an 18-point set of conditions on accepting support reconsider

“The BJP and the Congress are both corrupt and incite riots. So, they should join hands and form the government in Delhi”

—Arvind Kejriwal, at a rally in Delhi 11 December 2013

“If the two parties respond the way we want them to, then we don’t mind forming the government”

—Arvind Kejriwal, at a press conference, 13 December 2013

around

turn

Pirate Ploys O n e o f t h e biggest woes faced by torrent websites, which facilitate the illegal sharing of copyrighted material, is that they have to constantly move their servers around the globe in fear of a studio or government crackdown. Just a week ago, Pirate Bay moved to a new country for the sixth time this year: from the Ascension Islands to Peru.

However, the website is now on the cusp of solving this problem. The Pirate Bay team is currently developing a browser that will enable users to store 4 open

and share files without central hosting, eliminating the need for a domain name. A Pirate Bay source told the website Torrent Freak, “They should wait for our new PirateBrowser… Once that is available, then all links and sites will be accessible through a perfectly legal piece of browser software and the rest of it will be P2P (peer to peer)…”

This browser will apparently grant users access to censored websites, and can also be installed as a plugin on other browsers like Firefox and Chrome. n 30 december 2013

44

50

Web

The how-to superstar

m media

58

Tinkle goes on

p

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

63

Hrithik loses Sussanne

b books

true life

54

Rugby on a wheelchair

Anees Salim

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ■

th Sin Rajna

gh

■

FOR calling homosexuality

By upholding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which makes punishable ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’, the Supreme Court has, in effect, re-criminalised homosexuality in India. In an expression of support for the judgment, BJP chief Rajnath Singh has made explicit the judgment’s implication. “Gay sex is not natural and we cannot support something which is unnatural,” he said.

While other BJP leaders had sidestepped the issue in the aftermath of the verdict, Singh stated that the party would oppose any move to nullify the Supreme Court’s ruling. Other limbs of the Sangh Parivar such as the RSS and VHP have since echoed Singh. With the Supreme Court leaving the fate of Section 377 to Parliament, the BJP’s stand could mean the law is unlikely to be revoked in the near future. n 30 december 2013

arindam mukherjee

‘unnatural’

A Monarchist Holiday bitter memory

Ninety-one-year-old Utharadom Tirunal Marthanda Varma, the successor of the last Maharaja of the princely state of Travancore, chairman of the trust running the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple and patron of many charitable institutions, passed away at Thiruvananthapuram recently, leaving behind a small political controversy. As a show of

respect for the head of the royal family, the Kerala government declared Monday a local holiday. VT Balram, an MLA of the ruling Congress party, was the first among those who protested this decision.

He termed it an ugly expression of subordination to the King, something a democratically elected government has no business doing. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5

angle

On the Contrary

Can I Lie on My Passport Form Too? Devyani Khobragade was arrested in the US for lying on her visa application form; maybe that’s a privilege all Indians should claim M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

6 open

saurabh das/ap

T

here is a certain joy in seeing someone stand up to a bully; that is evident in the glee with which the Indian Government’s retaliatory moves against the United States have been greeted.

In the popular imagination, this is the case: the US arrested and humiliated Devyani Khobragade, a diplomat unfairly obliged by US laws to pay her maid even more than she herself earned. And therefore it is in the fitness of things that we should scare American diplomats by removing the barricades outside their embassy in Delhi, revoke ID cards and special passes, stop their alcohol imports and get details about what they pay their domestic staff so we can expose their double standards. These are all privileges that US diplomats enjoy here. And by the principle of reciprocity, we are entitled to treat them just as they have treated us.

There is only one small issue: Khobragade has been arrested not just because she didn’t pay her maid the minimum wage stipulated by the state of New York, but because she wrote in her visa form that she was paying it. She lied deliberately and there is no getting around it. Does that merit a strip search and sharing a cell with drug addicts and sex workers? Maybe not. But to get to that point, we have to first accept that a representative of India committed a crime of visa fraud purely for the luxury of having a servant.

It is curious that we are not willing to admit that. Our position is that a) the poor woman paid her maid what she could afford; b) it is alright that she put in a small lie in a visa form because it’s just paperwork; and c) she cannot be arrested for it because she enjoys diplomatic immunity.

But diplomatic immunity comes with the caveat that if a crime is committed, the accused diplomat’s home country will address it. India’s position so far has been that she should not face any consequences whatsoever. And if that is true, then the External Affairs Ministry, for which Khobragade works, has no moral right to take action when an

tit for tat At a Delhi protest, dummy Obamas are subjected to the kind of treatment Khobragade suffered

ordinary Indian lies on a passport form.

But they do take action, and we have an entire Passport Act as a basis for it. You can be jailed for up to two years for lying in a passport application.

It was extraordinary to hear a former ambassador on television say that what Khobragade did was not unusual and that all diplomats take a maid or a nanny along when they are posted in the US. So why don’t ordinary Indians do that?

Because they can’t afford it. Why can’t they afford it? Because there are minimum wage laws in the US. And unlike,

Why did we award privileges to American diplomats in the first place? Where was ‘reciprocity’ then? Did we think: ‘Our Consul staff can live without special IDs but the poor Americans coming to this wretched country deserve better’?

say, India’s child labour laws, which are flouted on every street corner, those laws are enforced. In effect, all these diplomats have been enjoying a privilege that arises from the poverty in India by circumventing US laws through diplomatic immunity. They have managed to ‘adjust’.

It is this same ‘adjusting’ on display as privileges are revoked for Americans here. Someone needs to answer why they were granted those privileges in the first place if they were not given to us in the US. Where was ‘reciprocity’ then? Did we just make an informal policy: ‘Our Consul staff can live without special IDs but the poor Americans coming to this wretched country deserved better’?

We should also keep in mind that Manmohan Singh, the most silent of politicians, was at his loudest, even willing to gamble his government, while pushing for the Nuclear Deal, just to make the US happy. It is a little too late to suddenly realise the object of your adulation is a bully just because he is serious about the idea of law. n 30 december 2013

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide to Reliance Retail’s Veg-only Decision

The Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Retail recently announced that it was discontinuing Reliance Delight, which sells non-vegetarian items. About 100 Reliance Delight stores used to sell a range of fresh and frozen meats and seafood. According to a statement issued by the firm, some customers are hesitant to shop at these outlets because of the availability of nonvegetarian food items. Thus, they will now stock only vegetarian offerings.

According to media reports, Ambani took the decision after caving in to the demands of a section of vegetarian shareholders of Reliance Industries who claimed that Reliance’s ‘non-vegetarAbout 100 stores ian’ business hurt their religious sentiments. A called Reliance former Reliance Retail exDelight used to ecutive told Economic stock fresh and Times, “The Gujarati comfrozen meats munity, which is predomand seafood inantly vegetarian, and to whom the Ambanis belong, was also critical of the sale of non-vegetarian items.”

sam panthaky/afp

A few months ago, media reports said that Reliance was tying up with a UK-based meatprocessing company, 2 Sisters Food Group, to launch a non-vegetarian fast food chain like Kentucky Fried Chicken called Chicken Came

First. Many were then surprised that Ambani, believed to be a vegetarian, was planning such a deal. Apparently, when this news broke, a number of Reliance shareholders including groups like PETA protested this move. This pressure reportedly triggered the decision to withdraw non-vegetarian offerings.

Reliance now says that news of a KFC-style fast food outlet was false. In the closure statement on Reliance Delight, the company said, ‘We wish to clarify that we have not tied up with any foreign partner for quick service restaurant business and also categorically state that we are neither planning nor desirous of setting up of any such processing plant’. n

It Happens

The Curse on the Wodeyars The Mysore king died heirless on 10 December and some say it was because of a 17th century curse A n i l B u d u r L u l l a afp

real

final service Royal priests perform the last rites for Srikanatadatta Narsimharaja Wodeyar

O

n 10 December, when the scion of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wodeyar passed away, he left no progeny, like half the kings who preceded him. Many put it down to a myth that the royal family has been cursed when it comes to a clear line of succession.

The curse dates back to 1610. The folklore goes that the governor of Srirangapatna, then a part of the Vijayanagar empire, came down with a mysterious illness. He was asked to offer prayers at a temple in Talkad. In his absence, his wife Alamelamma was in charge. Raja Wodeyar, the then Mysore maharaja, received complaints that she was swiping the temple’s jewellery. It led to war and he chased her to the banks of the Cauvery at Talkad. With the king in pursuit, Alamelamma crossed over to Maalangi on the other bank, threw all the jewels into the river and cursed him thus: Talakadu marulagali / Maalangi Maduvaagali / Mysore doregalige makkal illade hogali (May Talkad turn a barren expanse/May Malaangi turn into an unfathomable whirlpool / May the Mysore Maharaja not have children for all time to eternity). By the legend, she then jumped into the

river. Since then sand has buried Talkad, the Cauvery is witness to flash whirlpools and the Mysore royal family has frequently been without issue.

Historians debunk the myth.

KN Ganeshaiah of the Bangalorebased University of Agriculture Sciences, who studied the ecological phenomena of the curse, says the temples got buried because after a water channel was built, sand had been accumulating along the river banks. Being a seismic zone, Legend goes undercurrent that in 1610, activity and the king was constant water pressure leads cursed by the to whirlpools. thieving wife On kings being of a governor issueless, he says most male heirs died before marriage and with adoptions of genetically close relatives, it led to consanguineous marriages and in-breeding.

The Wodeyar couple were believed to be close to adopting a family member last year, but no formal decision had been taken. Virchus Raje Urs, one of Wodeyar’s nephews, says a final decision will be taken by his aunt, Pramodadevi, on the question of nominating a successor. n 30 december 2013

business

p ol i c y “Though it is widely accepted that monetary policy is an instrument to contain inflation, a rather blunt [one]… it is also widely accepted that it has little impact on food prices.” So Finance Minister P Chidambaram had recently said, exhorting the RBI to prioritise growth over inflation. His hint: reduce the policy rate of interest. However, the RBI, in its mid-quarter policy review of 18 December, did what its own analysis dictated. It kept its repo rate unchanged at 7.75 per cent. While assuring observers of its vigil on the prices front, the RBI has justified not raising the rate (as many expected) by arguing that current inflation is led by its food component, which may soften in the near future. If it does not by the next round of data releases, then the bank is ready to act (‘including on off-policy dates if warranted’ as the RBI says) to stabilise inflationary expectations.

Many believe that the RBI may have to fulfil that promise soon. According to an India Rating & Research report, historical data shows that consumer price inflation—which the RBI now tracks closely alongside wholesale prices— seldom tends to dampen in the run-up to a General Election. One is due in April-May next year, and the report suggests that this makes further rate hikes highly probable over the next few months.

Ever since Raghuram Rajan took over as Governor in September 2013, the RBI has twice hiked the short-term borrowing cost of funds for banks in response to inflation

adnan abidi/reuters

The Reserve Bank’s Interim Relief

mission price stability Governor Raghuram Rajan wants the Reserve Bank to regain its credibility on inflation

both at the wholesale and retail levels.

Year-on-year, these two touched 7.5 and 11.24 per cent respectively in November.

Will they go higher?

The RBI has held Much depends on food its key rate of prices, containing interest static, which is not really but this relief within RBI control, for businesses given that it is supply may not last constraints doing most of the damage. Perhaps the only way to keep a lid on prices is for the Centre to help supply catch up with robust demand. This would mean keeping hoarders out, farm yields rising and

WPI Inflation

(%) 8.0

7.3

7.0 6.0

Repo Rate

(LH Scale)

7.3 7.75

7.00

5.0

6.75

7.5

7.1

5.7

4.8

4.6

7.5

5.9

7.25

CRR

(All RH Scale)

7.0

6.5

4.0

Reverse Repo Rate

supply efficiency high. With hope, this might draw overall inflation down to a level within the RBI’s stated comfort zone of 4-4.5 per cent, wholesale, and help the central bank regain its credibility on this vital macroeconomic objective.

As for the RBI’s interest rate policy, inflation is not the only factor that goes into it. In fact, monetary policy may soon be needed to defend the rupee, says Deep Mukherjee, a corporate ratings analyst with India Rating & Research. He expects rate hikes “of upto 200 basis points in the next twelve months to keep the rupee attractive”. n shailendra tyagi

7.0 7.75

9.00

7.5

8.00

6.75

5.2

7.00

6.5

6.25

6.00

3.0 2.0

5.00

4.25

1.0

(%)

4.00

4.00

Though the RBI has maintained status quo on its key policy rate, electoral spending and an external threat to the rupee may force a rate hike soon

30 December 2013

Dec -13

Nov -13

Oct -13

Sep -13

Aug -13

Jul -13

Jun -13

May -13

Apr -13

Mar -13

Feb -13

3.00

Jan -13

0.0

4.00

Why Money Will Not Get Cheaper

Source: Mospi, RBI, Angel Reseach compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

open www.openthemagazine.com 9

news

reel

posture

Modi and Muslims With his eye on 2014, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate is reaching out to Muslims like never before rahul pandita

Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Jammu. It was a routine Modi speech. He spoke of his association with the state of Jammu & Kashmir and invoked the names of its leaders and other prominent figures. He

punit paranjpe/afp

Earlier this month,

indulged in a bit of Nehru bashing and paid a glowing tribute to the Jan Sangh patriarch Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, who he had less than three weeks ago at a gathering in Gujarat confused with the nationalist Shyamji Krishna Verma.

It was Modi as usual.

But then, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate spoke of the controversial Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

What Modi said was not what his supporters expected. He called for a debate

over whether Article 370—which grants J&K ‘special status’ assuring it some autonomy in legislative matters that other states do not have—was beneficial at all for the state. This was a big departure from the BJP’s demand for complete abrogation of the Article. In fact, revoking it has long been one of the party’s three major points of contention with Congress policy—a Rama temple in Ayodhya and a Uniform Civil Code being the other two— that aided its rise in Indian politics in the 80s and 90s as a successor of the Jan Sangh.

Soon after Modi’s speech, his spin doctors rushed to defend his softening of the Sangh Parivar’s old line by attributing his remarks to the ‘democratic’ fibre of the BJP. But the PM candidate’s words on the issue, as also his multiple mentions of Gujjars, Bakarwals and Shias in his

pivot Modi’s days of refusing a skullcap are over. He recognises the role Muslim votes could play in his achieving power

Jammu speech, hardly came as a surprise to those who have been following his trajectory since he became his party’s PM hopeful.

Modi’s days of refusing a skullcap proffered by a Muslim cleric or referring to Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf as ‘Mian Musharraf’ are over.

In the cold arithmetic of electoral politics, Modi recognises the role that Muslim votes could play in fulfilling his dream of addressing the nation on Independence Day from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

This has resulted in a remarkable shift in his public posture vis-à-vis India’s largest religious minority.

M

odi’s Jammu speech was just one

among many others that were at least partly meant to woo Muslim voters. In Jammu, among the 10,000 Muslims said to have attended his rally, 4,000 were from Kashmir Valley. An earlier sign of his new stance was noticed at a rally he held in

In July, a group of Islamic clerics and scholars met Modi and raised concerns. He is believed to have told them that the construction of a Rama temple at Ayodhya was not on his agenda Patna, where he addressed Muslims as ‘Mere Musalmaan bhaiyyon’ (My Muslim brothers) and said that their enemy was not Hindus but poverty.

Over the past six months, a lot of backstage work has gone into Modi’s effort to attract Muslim opinion-makers and turn them into his ambassadors within the community.

In July, a group of Islamic scholars and clerics met Modi, one of many Muslim delegations Modi has met in recent months. According to a businessman who was present, the Muslim delegates raised several concerns and Modi addressed them in a frank manner. Among those at the meeting was the influential Islamic scholar Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi. On the Ayodhya issue, Modi is believed to have told the delegation that the construction of a Rama temple at the site was not on his agenda. “Vajpayee ji could not construct it in his tenure of six years,” he reportedly asked, “how can Modi do it?”

On 30 June, just before a BJP youth enclave in Gandhinagar, the Gujaratbased entrepreneur and Modi supporter Zafar Sareshwala received a call from

Modi’s office asking him to ensure that the enclave had enough Muslims in attendance. Sareshwala picked 35 youngsters of his religion from areas as diverse as Lakshadweep and Kashmir to join the gathering of about 175. The entrepreneur asked Syed Zafar Mahmood, former Officer on Special Duty with the Sachar Committee, to deliver a sort of keynote speech on behalf of Muslims. “He put two conditions,” says Sareshwala, “One: he will say whatever he wants to; and two: Modi should be present during his speech.” Modi agreed. In his address, Mahmood attacked BJP policies and pointed out to Modi that while his disaster relief efforts in Uttarakhand were laudable, he also ought to pay attention to the condition of Muslims in his own backyard. Modi is reported to have listened to him in rapt attention and promised to act on all the points he raised.

Most influential Muslim supporters of Modi say they have had bitter experiences with the Congress and resent being held hostage to its politics. “We had become slaves of the Congress party,” says Qasmi.

“For years, they used the fear of Narendra Modi to make us vote for them. But not anymore.” Qasmi has set up a platform called the United Muslim Front (UMF) that campaigned against the Congress in the recent Assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan. “The Congress has been in power in Delhi for so long and yet their record on minority schemes is abysmal,” says Qasmi. “In Delhi schools, we found out that 73 per cent of Urdu teacher posts are lying vacant. No grant has been given to the Wakf board and the funds given to the Urdu Committee were spent on hosting Iftaar parties,” he claims.

The UMF sent out over 1.5 million SMSes in Delhi, urging people not to vote for the Congress. It also reached Muslim voters through ads in Urdu newspapers.

Qasmi claims that a day before the Delhi polls, a key aide of the then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit called him up, requesting him to stop his campaign. “He asked me to give them 3-6 months to set things right. But if they haven’t been able to do it in 15 years, what would they have done in a few months?” asks Qasmi.

An internal report of the Congress suggests that the party lost more than 70 per cent of Muslim support in Delhi.

“Modi has become soft,” says Qasmi. “He talks about development and Muslims want that development.” However, he remains cautious of the implications of his movement. “Ultimately,” he says, “we will have to create a political platform of our own.”

Disillusionment with the Congress, say open www.openthemagazine.com 11

news

reel

raul irani

amit dave

switch-hitters (Left) Islamic scholar Aijaz Arshad Qasmi; (above) Asifa Khan, national executive member of the BJP Minority Morcha

Modi’s Muslim supporters, is a natural fallout of the party’s neglect that has reduced them to a community of committees and commissions.

Sareshwala remembers a time when he along with his filmmaker friend Mahesh Bhatt went to see senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid, who was then the Union Minority Affairs Minister. “He made us wait for three hours outside his office even though we had been granted an appointment,” says Sareshwala, “And finally when he met us, he did not hear me out for even three minutes.”

O

ne big coup for the Modi camp has

been the switching over of Asifa Khan from the Congress to the BJP. A former journalist who joined politics at the behest of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel and was considered his protégé, Khan was appointed spokesperson of the Gujarat Congress in 2009.

As a journalist, Khan says, she had reported extensively against Modi during the 2002 riots in Gujarat on his watch as Chief Minister. In fact, she says, it was she who gave the whereabouts of Zakia Jafri, wife of the slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, to some top journalists covering the violence. “But while in the Congress,” she says, “I realised I could not even address the basic grievances of people from my community who came to me.”

Khan switched over to the BJP just before Gujarat’s Assembly polls in 2012.

Modi himself had asked her to. She is now a national executive member of the BJP Minority Morcha. “I realised that though Modi never won on a Muslim plank, he did more for [the community in Gujarat] 12 open

than the Congress [had],” says Khan.

She adds that Muslims began engaging Modi after they realised he was serious about development. She cites the example of the Vagra Assembly constituency in Gujarat where 31 per cent of Muslims voted for a Hindu candidate put up by the BJP against a Muslim candidate.

The BJP candidate won by a margin of over 14,000 votes. In February this year, the BJP swept the polls in the state’s Salaya municipality where 90 per cent of the population is Muslim. A Congress

“Though Modi never won on a Muslim plank, he did more for them than the Congress [had],” says Asifa Khan, erstwhile spokesperson of the Gujarat Congress who switched in 2012 bastion until recently, the BJP put up 24 Muslim candidates in 27 seats and all of them won. “Let us be clear: Muslims are voting for Modi, not for the BJP,” says Khan.

M

odi’s new friends know that the

examples of Vagra and Salaya do not mean anything for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Some analysts speak of a pattern of captive ghetto votes, where vulnerable voters safeguard their interests by going with the tide. However, there is evidence of a jump in Muslim votes for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan too, which is good news for the party.

Yet, it is states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that will determine Modi’s fate in 2014, especially UP. In 2009, the BJP fared poorly in this state by winning just 10 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats. In the 2012 Assembly elections, it gained some Muslim vote share. After the recent Muzaffarnagar riots in western UP, there are clear signs of a Jat consolidation in favour of the BJP. But Modi is not leaving it to that alone. In western UP, Muslim voters can sway over 20 seats, while in eastern UP, they play a decisive role in at least 12. A BJP insider speaks of how Modi’s office has systematically approached clerics and workers of madrassas in Bihar and UP who come to Gujarat to collect zakat (charity given by Muslim individuals) asking them to take his message back to their constituencies.

All said, Modi is trying hard to convey to the Muslim electorate that their future lies with him. In his speeches, he claims that Muslims have a better deal in Gujarat than anywhere else. Recently, The Economist hailed Modi as ‘a man of action and an outspoken outsider in a political system stuffed with cronies.’ The London-based publication also advised him to reach out to Muslims.

That, Modi is already doing. But the stains of 2002 may be too difficult to wash away completely. In 2002, sitting next to Modi, then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, responding to a reporter’s question, said that his message for Gujarat Chief Minister Modi was that he should follow his Raj Dharma (duty of governance). To which, Modi said that that is what he was doing.

In 2014, Indian voters, especially those who are Muslim, will let Modi know whether they agree with his idea of Raj Dharma. Or if they are at least willing to forget it. n 30 december 2013

raul irani

politics

So, Do You Need Modi?

The arrival of Arvind Kejriwal eliminates the need for the urban educated middle-class to negotiate a compromise with its own values Manu Joseph

T

he Namo Power Pepper Spray comes with the image of a visibly potent Narendra Modi with his strident hand raised, index finger pointed. And his comment, ‘If women feel unsafe, we shouldn’t call ourselves ‘MARD’’ MARD, for the benefit of some South Indians, is a North Indian man in capital letters. The Namo Pepper Spray, with a discount of 60 per cent underwritten by Modi’s election campaign, is ‘easy and ready to use’ and can be used in various situations that include ‘Absence of male members in the house’ (and probably the presence of an assailant), and against ‘dog attacks’, and men in the ‘workplace’.

The pepper spray constituency would have normally laughed away a man who endorsed such a product, worse a man who is accused of being responsible for riots in which thousands died, or were maimed or destroyed in other ways. Yet, Modi is rising in stature among them, as he is among the rest of the refined educated urban class.

They have set and are setting a case for him to be Prime Minister. He is rising among them because morality, at its very core, has the quality of an argument and practicality, of resolution.

The Namo Pepper Spray protects women from ‘Attackers, rapists, kidnappers’. The packaging of the spray has an elaborate list of situations it can be used in but does not mention a practical use—against thugs charging with swords and trishuls, too, during “spontaneous riots” to use Modi’s expression. Yet, the Namo Pepper Spray has important reasons not to be so ashamed of the word ‘riots’.

After all, the Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court has clearly said, after years of investigation perhaps, that there is ‘no evidence’ that Modi had anything to do with the riots in Gujarat over a decade ago.

Considering the mountain of undisputed facts, the evidence the Team was looking for was probably incontrovertible proof that Modi stood on a table and ordered his officers to facilitate riots. There is no such evidence, there will be no such evidence.

In 2002, Modi’s former home minister, the late Haren

30 december 2013

Pandya, who disliked Modi, told me in an interview on the condition that I did not name him, that he had deposed in secrecy before a tribunal and stated that there was a late-night meeting on 27 February that year, before the riots broke out, in which Modi had told senior government officers that they should not come in the way of a Hindu response to the Godhra carnage. But the details of that meeting have now become contentious. Three years ago, on the sidelines of an award function hosted by The Hindu, I met RK Raghavan, who was then the chief of the Team, and I told him Pandya was not present at the midnight meeting. Raghavan said, “He was not present?” It was a surprising statement from the head of the SIT because Pandya never claimed he had attended the meeting.

“You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t know that,” Raghavan said. “Who told you that he was not present at the meeting?”

“He told me.”

“I am so relieved. My conscience is clear now.”

W

hatever human conscience might be, its purpose is to get ‘clear’. The combination of this need for cleansing and the relentless force of practicality has resulted in a middle-class view that the co-founder of Infosys, NR Narayana Murthy, recently summarised: that Modi should be allowed “to show a sense of contrition” and “to move on”. “Otherwise,” he said, “we will argue on this till the fire freezes.” Penance and closure. Because Modi, to millions of Indians, appears to be a more useful leader than the sofa-cum-bed leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The perception is that Modi is tough, articulate and has ideas. Even though he is 63years old, and Rahul Gandhi 43, it is Modi who is perceived as the youth and Gandhi the relic.

But the sensational rise of Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party, which has terrified both the Congress and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), eliminates the need for millions of Indians to sacrifice their right to moral judgment for practical considerations. Kejriwal, even open www.openthemagazine.com 15

for direct democracy It started as a street agitation and then reached out online

Altaf Qadri/AP

media operates. He listens with such care that the speaker is often led to believe he is saying something extremely brilliant.

A few months after the encounter, when his game was up and most of the media had abandoned him, Kejriwal entered electoral politics, even stood in direct contest against the powerful former Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit. He went to parts of Delhi that the government never reached in any substantial way. According to Open’s Mihir Srivastava, who spent several days on campaign with AAP candidates, Kejriwal, between the scores of daily meetings with the poorest of the poor, would eat in the car—fruits, vegetables and salt lassi, which was held in a large stainless steel container. One old villager who listened to Kejriwal said, “He is like us.” That is not true, but it is a triumph of perception.

Delhi is a city where the elite move from one island of reasonable comfort to another, where they do not walk the streets for reasons other than exercise, where an overwhelming majority of them do not take public transport, and where political observers are part of the elite. No surprise then that these observers completely dismissed him.

What Kejriwal would soon make near-obsolete was not only Delhi’s ancient style of politics but also political commentary.

though he is attired in an odd cap as if he has lost a bet, and oversized shirt and trousers, is almost everything that Modi is believed to be without the stains. Also, what Delhi has shown is that in this season, clean is the new saffron.

The Economist, this week, sounded like a vast section of middle-class urban India when it wrote: ‘Much about Mr Modi appeals to this newspaper too. He is a man of action…’ But then, Kejriwal has proved to be that in a more exhilarating way this month. ‘…and an outspoken outsider in a political system stuffed with cronies.’ This sounds more like Kejriwal than Modi.

‘In contrast with the pampered Mr Gandhi… Mr Modi comes from a low caste and a modest background as a tea-seller; his success is down to drive and ambition. And in a system shot through with corruption, he seems pretty clean.’

This, again, but for a few details, is a better description of Kejriwal. From the oblivion of activism, he engineered a mass movement using an old man as a masquerade, broke away after gaining enough attention, stayed in the spotlight by feeding dramatic stories to journalists that shamed powerful people, stories that journalists could not have reported on their own because their organisations would not have allowed that. It is not odd that Mukesh Ambani sent legal notices not to Kejriwal but to several television channels, taking offence to the coverage of Kejriwal’s press conferences—Ambani’s counter attack was spot on.

Last year, at the Times of India literary festival where Kejriwal revealed the ‘Swiss bank’ account numbers of Anil and Mukesh Ambani, I met him in the speaker’s retiring room. I asked him how long, in his opinion, the media would give him play. Instead of trying to achieve an answer, he started asking me questions about how the 16 open

T

axi-driver journalism, which is the spurious art of

engaging such a driver in a casual conversation to convey a cute point of view, is a tired charade. But in the case of Kejriwal, reporters who did speak to taxi-drivers (and autorickshaw drivers) about the man did gain insights that were unavailable to television studios. Kejriwal eventually decimated the Congress, and on Monday will reveal if he wants to form the government in Delhi.

The Economist, like Modi’s new sophisticated urban fans, wrote that Modi needs, ‘to show that his idea of a pure India is no longer a wholly Hindu one’.

Kejriwal, on the other hand, has no need to ‘show’ such a thing. He has nothing to ‘show’, nothing to hide. Despite his frequent vows of silence, and these days a convenient but real sore throat, he has no reason to fall silent. Modi is silent on allegations of snooping into the life of a young woman, and on the misdemeanours of his industrialist friends and many other questions. Modi is silent on the legality of homosexuality. The RSS took its time to break its silence. (The Congress, meanwhile, in an insinuation that makes seasoned journalists smile, wonders why).

The BJP has deemed homosexuality ‘Western culture’ and ‘unnatural’. Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party are unambiguous about their position on homosexuality: ‘All those who are born with or choose a different sexual ori30 december 2013

entation would thus be placed at the mercy of the police.

This not only violates the human rights of such individuals, but goes against the liberal values of our Constitution, and the spirit of our times.’

A similarity between Kejriwal and Modi exists, and it is odd—an affection for Baba Ramdev, probably the only man in the history of humanity who has appeared in woman’s clothing in full public glare to deem homosexuality ‘unnatural’ and even proffer a ‘cure’ for it. About Ramdev, Kejriwal told me in an interview, “He is also fighting against corruption… in his own way… I think I shouldn’t comment on any individual…”

Also, when compared to Modi, the crucial question is if Kejriwal, the amateur, can indeed govern. Moral indignation is good for mass movements and even election campaigning, but is useless in governing. He has not yet had a chance to prove himself as a ruler.

Also, there is another crucial question. Is he good for commerce? He has laughed away claims that he is a ‘socialist’, but the question remains.

“He is not against business.” This answer comes from Prashant Bhushan, for long a crusader against corruption in public life, the secret source of some of the greatest news stories of modern India, a vital member of the AAP and a man who by instinct is suspicious of the business community. Just as Indian cricket commentators cannot use the word ‘odious’ without the prefix ‘comparisons are’, Bhushan is hardwired to prefix ‘capitalism’ with ‘crony’. Not surprising then that the man sitting beside him in his Noida home is Binayak Sen, a sympathiser of Naxalites, who was atrociously jailed for sedition. When I ask Sen for his views on Kejriwal, he joins his palms and requests that he be asked nothing at all.

A few hours ago, the AAP’s core group and its new Members of the Legislative Assembly had met to decide if the party must accept the untrustworthy Congress’ offer of support to form the Delhi government. In an unprecedented but politically shrewd move, the party decided to ask its voters to give their opinions through text messages, phone calls and the internet. “Kejriwal is game,” Bhushan says, “He is fine with forming the government, but he wants to know if people share his view.”

Bhushan and Kejriwal are believers in what Bhushan calls “participative democracy”, where people’s views are sought not only for elections but for “policy matters too”.

The reasoning is that India’s Constitution was influenced by, among other factors, the technology of those days.

Now that people can relay their opinions more easily, their views can be taken more frequently. (Though, surely, Bhushan will be horrified if all of India is asked its opinion on Kashmir.) At the time of going to press, AAP reports that hundreds of thousands of people in Delhi have responded to the party’s question on whether it should form the government.

Bhushan is amused by the media coverage of Hazare’s fast and his support for the Lokpal bill, a bill that AAP and 30 december 2013

Kejriwal maintain is impotent as the institution it would create would be only a more famous version of the toothless Central Vigilance Committee. “Cosmetic Lokpal,” is what Bhushan calls it.

“Anna gets surrounded by all kinds of dishonest people,” Bhushan says, “He gets influenced easily. One of his advisors now is Santosh Bhartia, a known history-sheeter and a political fixer.” Bhushan says that Hazare has been played by major political parties to get his endorsement.

In his bitterness against the success of Kejriwal and his haste to usurp credit for the Lokpal, he has “given his approval to a toothless bill.”

AAP is plotting its plans for the General Election next year. “Maybe 100 seats,” Bhushan says, “We may contest 100 seats, chiefly in urban areas. It is so tough, so tough to contest elections. A party can grow only over a period of time.” I argue that the only way AAP can grow is fast, hysterically, dramatically, like a ‘spontaneous riot’. “We do not rule that out,” Bhushan says, “We do not rule out the possibility that AAP will be more ambitious, but it is so tough. Running a political organisation is so difficult.

“Arvind’s political acumen is unmatched.

He has this instinct, amazing instinct. He knows the pulse. He knows how to fight politicians.

And he is not afraid,” says Prashant Bhushan Checking the backgrounds of people who are coming to you is so difficult.”

Compared to politics, he says there was something sweetly simple about mass protests. “But mass movements have limitations. The political and business classes are okay with some alms for the poor, they are alright with that, they even support that. But policy changes?

That frightens them.” He says that the RTI (Right to Information movement, which Kejriwal and Bhushan were a part of, and which pressured the Government into enacting one of the most important legislations in modern India), “was possible because Sonia Gandhi had no clue. She had no clue how big the RTI was going to be, otherwise she would not have let that happen.”

He has no tender feelings towards her, but concedes that in comparison with Modi, “At least she, she and her son, they do not have fascist tendencies.”

Kejriwal is an equal match for Modi, he says. “Arvind’s political acumen is unmatched. He has this instinct, amazing instinct. He knows the pulse. He knows what to do. He knew the [broom] symbol was right, he knew the name was right. He chose them. He knows how to fight politicians. And he is not afraid.”

And, like Namo Pepper Spray, Kejriwal’s nozzle ‘always points towards the attacker’s face’. n open www.openthemagazine.com 17

i n eq u i t y

The Great Betrayal of Bihar’s Landless It may yet return to haunt the country, this failure of Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan land reforms Dhirendra K Jha Araria and Supaul

N

obody living in squalid huts of split bamboo and thatched roofs on the banks of a deserted canal on the outskirts of Araria in Bihar will say it, but they are victims of one of the most eulogised land reform experiments carried out in India. This was an exercise led by Acharya Vinoba Bhave, a Gandhian far more effective as a leader than the present-day Anna Hazare.

Those of us who still read in history books of the famous Bhoodan (‘land-gift’) Movement of the 1950s and 1960s—a moral call to large landowners to donate some of their holdings for distribution among the landless—may find it difficult to believe how this experiment turned into a fraud that has left the intended beneficiaries its hapless victims.

“This is a nightmare. I want to go back home,” says Jagni Devi, an 80-year-old widow who lives in one of these huts, having fled her one-room tenement built on a small plot of Bhoodan land she had received nearly two decades ago. On 1 November this year, a local land mafia had demolished her house along with those of nine other Bhoodan beneficiaries—all of Scheduled Caste families—at Ambedkar Nagar, a locality of Araria.

While some of the victims have sought refuge in makeshift huts along the banks of a closeby canal, others have left the area in fear of a fresh round of attacks by thugs who want to grab their land.

“The threat is real,” says Jagni’s son, 18 open

Nathuni Mehtar, “but the administration is with Ajay Jha, who got our houses demolished.”

Ajya Kumar Jha is a local BJP leader and prominent contractor who operates in this region. Dalits of Ambedkar Nagar allege that it is Jha who is trying to grab their land. Despite several attempts, he could not be contacted for his comments for this article. Jagdish Sharma, district secretary of the Bhoodan Yagya Committee (BYC), the Bihar government’s wing that looks after the distribution of land that Bhave persuaded zamindars to turn over to the poor, minces no words in expressing his frustration.

“Everybody knows that it was the handiwork of Ajay Jha, but the administration is not ready to take any action against him,” he says, “I am really frustrated by the way the Bhoodan movement has gone haywire.”

A

mbedkar Nagar is home to some 74

Dalit families, all settled on Bhoodan land. During the late 1990s, the state government built one-room pucca houses here for 24 of these families under the Ambedkar Housing Scheme. Till recently, this Dalit locality was rather far from Araria town, but over the past decade or so, the town has expanded towards it, pushing up land prices. “For some time, Ajay Jha’s men kept telling us to vacate the land and go somewhere else,” says

Dilip Mehtar, another victim. “But, as we refused to leave, they started threatening us. On 1 November, a JVC machine came and demolished ten houses as well as Ambedkar Nagar’s community centre.

We went to the police, but they refused to register an FIR against Ajay Jha.” It was only on 13 November, once the CPI intervened and started staging dharnas at the district headquarters that the local administration swung into action and imposed Section 144, declaring the locality’s land a disputed area. “Even this action was half-hearted, and was aimed at protecting the crime’s perpetrator rather than providing justice to victims,” says Dr SR Jha, district secretary of the CPI. 30 December 2013

Though the local administration is yet to file an FIR against Ajay Jha, a deadlock has persisted with the CPI organising protest demonstrations relentlessly at the district headquarters.

“Not just Ambedkar Nagar, more than half the land of Jaiprakash Nagar [of which Ambedkar Nagar is a part], settled on 174 acres of Bhoodan land, is under the occupation of those with muscle power,” says BYC district secretary Sharma. He even submitted written complaints to the district administration in a specific case of occupation-by-force of over one acre by Parmanand Rishidev, the BJP MLA elected from Raniganj constituency in this district. “I gave my com30 December 2013

plaints as early as April this year,” he says, “But not even a notice has been issued to the occupier of Bhoodan land.”

It is amply clear that in Araria, land reforms have gone into reverse, far removed from what the original movement hoped to achieve. This district, however, is not an isolated case. Vinoba Bhave’s vision has come crashing down in most parts of Bihar, a state where the idea caught on back in those days.

Indeed, after Independence, few Gandhians in India have generated a movement with an effect as far-reaching as Bhave’s. The land acquired from landowners was supposed to serve as the basis for Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of

Gram Swaraj—or ‘village republic’.

Starting in the early 1950s, Bhave had walked all across the country asking people with land to donate a portion of their holdings for the sake of the landless.

Many people responded to the call, but it is now becoming clear that not all of them were earnest.

In an interim report on Bhoodan land, the Bihar Land Reforms Commission, set up by the state government in 2007 under the chairmanship of D Bandhopadhyay, refers to an instance in which the Hathua estate of Saran tricked Vinoba Bhave by donating 100,000 acres of land by virtue of a simple letter, without any other formalities seen through. open www.openthemagazine.com 19

photos ravi s sahani

of no fixed address Jagni Devi, 80, has had to flee her oneroom tenement built on Bhoodan land in Ambedkar Nagar of Araria district

‘That it was not folklore was confirmed by [the] District Gazetteer of Saran, published in 1959-60, which reported this incident,’ says the report.

It is no surprise that of the total figure of nearly 650,000 acres of Bhoodan land in the state, over 300,000 acres has turned out either unconfirmed (as in the Hathua case) or unsuitable for redistribution. “Of the remaining land, the Bhoodan Yagya Committee issued utilisation certificates to nearly 350,000 families,” says Bihar BYC Chairman Kumar Shubhmurti.

“Of these, nearly 150,000 families still remain dispossessed [of] the Bhoodan land earmarked for them.”

The story of Bhoodan is not just of an experiment, but also of a scam of mega proportions, signifying the death throes of a movement that had once galvanised the rural landscape of Bihar.

“The bureaucracy failed this movement,” says Shubhmurti. “The Bhoodan Act of 1954, under which the Bhoodan Yagya Committee was formed, gives us only the right to distribute utilisation certificates to the identified beneficiaries. Neither do we have the power nor wherewithal to ensure that beneficiaries get control of the land earmarked for them. That is the responsibility of the bureaucracy, which is always apathetic to our demands.”

In its report, the Bandhopadhyay panel also noted that in different parts of the state, a constant complaint was that a number of grantees of Bhoodan land who had parchaas (utilisation certificates) did not have possession. ‘It came out in almost all the thirteen Jan Sunwais (public hearings) held in different parts of the state. It is one of the major causes of social tension which might aggravate itself into social unrest,’ the report says.

By no means is that the only reason for this Gandhian land reform experiment ending up as a fraud. At many places, the BYC itself acts more like a land mafia than an agency for rural empowerment.

Take the case of Danapur, a village that is named so because it is on Bhoodan land (dan means donation). The Gandhian leaders associated with the Bhoodan Movement had thought that this village in Marauna block of Supaul district would emerge as a role model of Gram Swaraj. Today, Nirdhan Mandal, an 80-year-old who was one of the founder 20 open

Death of a dream A demolition site in Ambedkar Nagar in Araria; (below) Nirdhan Mandal, one of the founding leaders of the village of Danapur in Supaul district, envisioned as a model of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj

leaders of Danapur, has given up all hope in the vision of this village. “For long after it was settled in 1963, Danapur was frequented by prominent Gandhians of the time,” says Mandal. “All of them thought that this model village would act as a beacon to achieve Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj. Back then, the gram sab-

ha of Danapur used to meet every fortnight and settle all internal disputes amicably. The very year Danapur was settled, Vinoba Bhave came to Supaul and directed us on how to run this model village. It all seemed a dream come true. But the same people who were supposed to help the village actualise 30 December 2013

sioned are its residents that nobody wants a reminder of that legacy. “Hardly a day passes without an eruption of a feud related to Bhoodan land,” says Chaupal. “Land is our life. If the situation is not controlled, something really serious may happen any day.”

Rambalak Choudhary, Supaul district secretary of the BYC, blames Bhoodan farmers for the demise of the land experiment. “The greed of Bhoodan farmers is the basic reason for its failure,” he says.

“We don’t have any real power. Instances of forcible occupation of Bhoodan land are common among these farmers, but we can’t do anything to [evict occupiers].”

As in Araria, the forced takeover of Bhoodan land is rampant in Supaul. “Not just in Danapur, most of the Bhoodan

The landless of Bihar are restive. Nitish Kumar may harp on getting ‘special status’ for the state, but in the absence of redressal measures for the landless, it signifies nothing the dream turned greedy and ultimately ruined Danapur.”

Laxmi Chaupal, a Bhoodan farmer of Danapur, says: “Only bribery works in the Bhoodan Yagya Committee office. I paid a bribe of Rs 6,000 to obtain a true copy of my certificate, which I had lost.

Many Bhoodan farmers in the village do not have any papers with them simply because they have lost them and are unable to pay bribes to obtain true copies.

That is the norm in the Committee office.

You pay them a bribe and they issue a Bhoodan certificate in your name. The Committee has become a mafia.”

Today, Danapur stands as a mockery of Bhave’s idea. At one time, it was a village at one with itself. Now the village is wracked by mutual distrust. The fortnightly meetings to settle internal disputes are long forgotten. The office of the village level committee that used to oversee local affairs in Danapur wears a deserted look. It doesn’t even have a signboard in memory of the village’s foundational ideals. Perhaps so disillu30 December 2013

land in Koni and Chandragarh (neighbouring villages) is occupied by the landlords of these villages,” says Nirdhan Mandal. “Koni village has over 50 acres of Bhoodan land that was distributed to landless farmers, but none of them could get possession. Similarly, nearly 100 acres of Bhoodan land in Chandragarh was distributed thrice, but the village landlords never let the identified beneficiaries till the land.”

B

ihar is simmering. There is enough

reason to fear the worst. Hunger, poverty and frustration among Bhoodan farmers may lead to social strife, which, mixed with rampant corruption in the BYC and local administration, may fuel violent outbursts. The irony is that preventing such tension was one of the original aims of the redistribution idea. “Bhoodan was a Gandhian movement that, in some senses, prevented a Communist movement from taking shape in Bihar,” says Hridaya Narayan

Choudhary, president of Darbhanga District Bhoodan Farmers Union.

“Unless there is a fresh people’s movement, Bhoodan is doomed.”

BYC Chairman Shubhmurti says things would have changed had the state government been sincere in implementing what the Bandhopadhyaya Comm-ission Report called for. “One of the prominent recommendations of the Commission relates to the survey of Bhoodan land,” he points out. “The government has remained silent ever since the Commission submitted its report, fearing that it would upset the status quo in rural areas. Only now, four months back, did I get a letter from the state government asking the Bhoodan Yagya Committee to conduct a survey of Bhoodan land. How can we do that? We have neither the funds nor the machinery to conduct such a vast operation. So we are silent.”

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar may keep up his sound and fury on getting ‘special status’ for the state, but in the absence of redressal measures for the landless, it signifies nothing. The CM’s flip-flop on the Bandhopadhyay Commission, which he had set up in 2007 and whose report he consigned to the dustbin fearing a backlash of landowners, has proven that he is no different from his predecessors in this incapacity to offer a real solution for a real problem.

He raised the expectations of the landless only to crush them, and this has had an impact on the countryside that cannot be ignored. The landless of Bihar are restive.

Realising how they have been cheated, many are speaking up in response to a call for a renewed land reforms stir issued by the Left parties. Yet, the failure of Bhoodan is not just a story of Bihar. That it fares no better elsewhere was confirmed by Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh a few months ago. Talking to mediapersons in September 2013, the minister expressed concern over the missing records of around 2.4 million acres of Bhoodan land in various states—particularly Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. He also pointed out anomalies in the distribution of this land, saying only half of the total 4.8 million acres of Bhoodan land had so far been redistributed among the landless poor. It’s a sorry record indeed. n open www.openthemagazine.com 21

V e r s c h r ä n ku n g

The War on Microbes Y

esterday, like that celebrated feline, Erwin Schrödinger’s Cat, I found myself in two states at once.

I was at the Haffkine Institute, standing in the exact spot where man had declared war against microbes a century ago.

It was July 1897, and this corridor was a makeshift plague hospital. Six months earlier, Waldemar Haffkine had prepared his ‘prophylactic against plague’. Nearly 8,000 people had been vaccinated, and very few had developed the disease. Here, walking up this very corridor, was Pasteur’s celebrated pupil, Alexandre Yersin, the man officially credited with the discovery of the plague bacillus, armed with a ‘curative serum’ meant to treat the disease. Four patients received the injection that morning. It inaugurated an era. Just round the corner were magic molecules that would bombard microbes out of existence.

Today, a thriving mosquito farm occupies that plague ward. I walked past a nursery of rambunctious Culex larvae.

A wire cage entrapped an angry anopheline whine: these malarials were hungry, straining for release. Rice plate was ready: a guinea pig blinked hopelessly in a box just slightly bigger than itself.

With only a few turds for company, it existed for the sole purpose of being bitten once a week.

The young entomologist buzzing about cautioned me cheerily as he tapped the Anopheles cage. “Ever had malaria?” he asked. “Yes? Better watch out for bites, then!”

I thought I hadn’t heard right. But he repeated the witticism with exiguous impatience.

The truth sank in.

If I had Plasmodium in my blood, mosquitoes would find me irresistible.

And all along I had thought the shoe

22 open

It is time to call a truce—and get to know the microscopic animals inside the zoo that’s the human body KALPISH RATNA

was on the other foot.

“That’s just half the story,” he corrected me.

Certainly, Plasmodium had infected my blood stream through a mosquito bite, but what was next? It needed to widen its horizons. Finding a new host could be an intelligent career move. Also, a neat scheme for going about that would be to make my sweat madly attractive to the Anopheles.

For the first time in half a century, I felt uncomfortable in my skin. I realised I might be oozing the mosquito equivalent of Chanel No 5. All on the orders of—

Throughout the last century, science was drunk on conquest. We had drugs for every ill. We zapped the most horrific bugs with bigger, better antibiotics what?— the malarial parasite? A tiny vacuolated blob of protoplasm lunching on my blood cells and burping away my haemoglobin? I hadn’t expected my body to take orders from a microbe.

“Happens all the time,” my new friend assured me with a grin. “Better get used to it.”

Behind us, on the landing, busts of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch were still standing, unperturbed. The oil painting of Haffkine vaccinating a crowd had not yet dissolved into teary smears. If Yersin had looked up, he might have exchanged a sly wink with them. Their moment had lasted more than a century.

One hundred years of sheer luck was the way I saw it now. For fifty of those,

I had been indulged and sheltered and nourished by it. We were alive, I was alive, because of our war against microbes.

Now here I was, being pushed around by a scintilla of protein practically devoid of mass. All my weighty inheritance of science counted for nothing. It was a nullity, an illusion, no more. And yet, the moment I was confronted with a sick patient, it was my only reality.

The superposition of two completely different truths was difficult to grasp.

The body was trapped in this entanglement, a biological verschränkung. How was I to come to terms with it?

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hroughout the last century, sci-

ence was drunk on conquest. We had drugs for every ill. We zapped the most horrific bugs with bigger, better, antibiotics.

When I was a surgical resident in the early 1980s, typhoid perforations, staph empyemas, and deep abscesses were all common emergencies. Burns always meant sepsis. Pus was everywhere; we mucked about in it, elbow deep. But we still wore a superior sneer, because, by then, tuberculosis was tamed. We used to pop into the TB Ward sometimes: it was a museum of failed therapies from an older time. Our parents narrated hapless tales of friends and relatives who had died coughing up blood in sanatoria.

Panchgani, where I grew up, was dotted with these melancholy bungalows: they still wore a mephitic pall twenty years into the Age of Streptomycin.

Five years later, things got even better.

Common surgical infections became uncommon. Complications, even rarer.

But by then AIDS had us worried—and we haven’t stopped worrying since then.

30 December 2013

illustration Anirban Ghosh

We’ve woken up to new emerging diseases, pandemics some of them—and more than 70 per cent of these are zoönoses, diseases that properly belong to a different host species, and are now infecting humans.

Not that any of the old diseases have gone away. They’re all baring their teeth anew. And fallen by the wayside are our trusty antibiotics, a new one is jettisoned every day.

W

e stand at the end of the antibiotic

era. There are new monsters ahead, and the older monsters we fought now turn out to be friends. The newest science urges us to rethink the body.

What is sickness? What is health?

What does the body look like in this new understanding?

Is it individual or is it legion? And if so, who is for us and who against us?

A

ntibiotic resistance is the worst of nightmares, and every doctor faces it today. Of course, we’re beating ourselves up over this, blaming our shotin-the-dark therapies, our ill-informed choice of molecule, our lack of science in diagnosis.

Last August, an eclectic mix of the country’s medical associations met in Chennai to form a strategy to review and respond to the crisis of anti-microbial resistance. The ‘Chennai Declaration’ calls for a complete overhaul in antibiotic usage. The road map for the projected seven-year timeframe has several intelligent signposts. Most crucially, it has not overlooked a critique of the medical curriculum. It reads well, and every doctor must hope it pays off.

But hope has no place in science.

What if, instead of looking for more complex weaponry, we chose, instead, to end the war?

The idea of a malarial parasite tweaking my sweat glands to hitch a ride out of my body was just a theory. It could be matched with a trillion other requirements of the gazillion other microbes— bacteria, viruses, protozoa, prions, even nematoda and insecta—that inhabit me.

I haven’t yet faced up to the fact, but that’s what I am. That’s what every human body is. It is an ambulant zoo. Talk of self24 open

JEAN-MARC BOUJU/AP

hood! Where, in this Rushdie-an ragbag of selves, is me? Let’s face it, even my DNA isn’t mine—my mitochondria are souvenirs of ancient liaisons with bacteria.

How ancient? About, say, 1.45 billion years old. However back in time we eukaryotes go, the microbe has an edge on us. A substantial edge, considering bacteria are almost as old as the planet. The recent sequencing of mitochondrial DNA from a 400,000-year-old skeleton from Sima des los Huesos in Spain may tell us much more than just where this ancestor fits in our family tree. Read differently, it might reveal the kind of world he lived in. Perhaps that isn’t possible just yet, but we’re getting there.

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he body is a vibrant and sentient in-

formation network that functions quite independent of that old autocrat, the brain. All this time, while we’ve been hooked on puzzles neurological, microbes have been laughing up their lipoprotein sleeves.

Think of it: at least 6 taxonomic families of bacteria have squatters’ rights on the human skin. These are commensals, literally supping at the same table; convivial fellows we’ve invited into our every crease and chink and crevice ever since we left the womb. They like the quiet life, and we don’t notice them until they pack up and leave. Then we erupt into messy skin diseases.

It is good for the soul to consider these bacteria a workforce toiling ceaselessly

for our welfare, but the truth might be just the opposite. They’re here because it suits them. We’re providing board and lodging and ensuring orgiastic frenzies of reproduction. What do we get in return?

Health, evidently.

Our much vaunted exoskeleton won’t perform at optimum without its resident population of microbes, the skin microbiome. Texture, odour, colour, elasticity, all the sensuous delights of the skin are nothing more than the right microbe in the right place. There are different microbes that colonise different areas of the skin, and apparently, there isn’t much difference between people.

At least, that’s what we think now.

For all we know, inter-personal relations might be no more than the silent chatter of microbiomes. From first love to vendetta, everything might, quite literally, be skin deep.

And that’s just the gift-wrapping.

Our visceral truths are far more disturbing.

The human gut carries about 100 trillion microorganisms. Most of the time, they’re nice to us. They help us digest and absorb food, they ward off nasty microbes and maintain the highway when traffic comes hurtling down, after every meal, with a complex array of chemical signals. So helpful are they that in recent times, the end-of-the-road treatment for severe colitis is a faecal transplant.

That’s exactly what it sounds like. It generally appears with a fancier label— 30 December 2013

FMT, Fecal Microbiota Transplantation.

The entire gut microbiome of the patient is replaced with donor faeces whose bacteria will now colonise the patient’s intestine. This is easier to understand when you realise that the patient got sick in the first place because his gut microbiome was depleted or altered.

And the commonest cause of this is— antibiotics.

Without question, antibiotics tinker, tweak, and often injure the microbes in our intestines. Sometimes that can be disastrous, leading to super-infections by super bugs. While the immediate, and obvious, consequence may be diarrhoea or even a dangerous colitis, the more startling effects are now becoming evident.

The gut microbiome does not merely regulate the food industry in the body.

It seems to be a major stakeholder in the brain.

That’s not as bizarre as it sounds. The moment of exit from the womb marks the beginning of the most frenetic year of life. No matter how adventurous the years that follow, nothing can quite match up to the achievements of that first year. During this time, two events occur in tandem: the gut acquires its microbiome, and the brain develops at a staggering pace. Why shouldn’t the two events be connected? Evidently they are.

Colitis of several varieties is associated with a slew of psychological illnesses— anxiety, depression, behavioural problems generally lumped together as stress disorders. What if stress is a microbial state?

The gut-brain axis is being avidly explored now, mainly in terms of neurological events. What if we looked at it from the microbe’s point of view?

What must alter in the gut microbiome before something alters in the brain?

In Parkinson’s Disease, brain cells contain a blob of abnormal protein called the Lewy body. The same anomaly is seen in nerves of the intestine in an early stage of the disease. The Lewy body is believed to be caused by oxidative stress. Genetic factors and environmental toxins conspire to produce it. The intestine is a serpentine sponge with a complex wiring of nerves close to its absorbent surface.

So, could Parkinson’s Disease begin in the intestine?

30 December 2013

Medicine has thrown up stranger truths in the past. Still, there might be no end to the surprises in the next few years.

Bacteria are socially wired. They exchange information all the time by a nifty ‘horizontal transfer,’ which means they can transfer genes without hooking up.

The microbiome is a social medium that we still have to understand, but it is frighteningly sensitive. The bug in your mouthful of paani puri is on a blind date, but by the time it reaches the small intestine, it knows exactly where to set up shop. It has learnt all about you on the way. There’s simply no privacy in the microbiome.

Commensals can bite, too. Much of their behaviour depends on the body’s own response. In immuno-compromised people—who may have any illness from malnutrition to AIDS—the

We’ve wasted a lot of time thinking that we’re the good guys and the microbes are badass savages that must be exterminated or controlled good guys turn traitor. They’re still the commensal microbes they were, but now the body’s response renders them pathogenic, and they produce serious, often debilitating, disease.

We’ve wasted a lot of time thinking we’re the good guys and the microbes are badass savages that must be exterminated or controlled. That view is about as dated as the imperialist regimes that invented it, and we all know what happened to them. That tells the story, really, and it should end our war against microbes. We’ve been living too long with the enemy for apartheid. Time now to examine what makes our peaceful coexistence with microbes go wrong.

I

magine sitting down to dinner with a silent companion who ignores you.

Wouldn’t it make you mad? The Greeks probably invented deipnosophy, the gentle art of table talk, as much to avert enmity as to enhance the pleasures of the pal-

ate. Trillions of microbes sit at our table, waiting to be noticed. It is time now for conversation.

Actually, we have conversed before.

But with the arrogance of new information, we’ve ignored or forgotten those exchanges. Recent discoveries should make us re-examine them.

For instance, the gut microbiome has three or four different varieties or enterotypes. Most people fall into these categories.

The bacterial profile of each enterotype is distinctive. This is exciting news for the evolutionary biologist. Should it also thrill the doctor? What does it mean in clinical terms? If the gut microbiome defines how many body systems work, what are the characteristics of people with different enterotypes? How do we recognise them?

Sound familiar?

It should. Especially in a country with a 3,000 year memory of defining prakriti as vata, pitta and kapha. All ancient and medieval systems of medicine recognise these humoral identities.

A medieval physician wouldn’t dream of prescribing the same medication for ten people with the same disease. It would upset his very ethos. He was expected to prescribe as dictated by the ‘type’ his patient was; the natural state or prakriti was assessed not just by physical characteristics, but by personality traits as well. Shakespeare used this to remarkable effect in his plays where ‘choler’ and ‘phlegm’ have stellar roles.

Modern medicine dismissed these ideas airily the moment we discovered microbes. Perhaps that was exactly when we should have started looking more closely at them.

It is time to rethink the body.

It is time to rethink selfhood. And this time, with more latitude.

If our body is an ambulant zoo, we need to know its animals better. Or its animalcules, as Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the Father of Microbiology, preferred to call them. n Kalpish Ratna is the nom de plume of Bombay surgeons Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan. Their book Once Upon A Hill is an itinerant history of Andheri’s Gilbert Hill. Their novel The Quarantine Papers is now available in paperback open www.openthemagazine.com 25

oddity

Out to Save Holy Cows After police turned up with VHP activists to arrest local butchers for slaughtering cows, a Muslim group in a Gujarat village launched a cow protection campaign Omkar Khandekar Bharuch

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here is going to be a speech,”

observed one of three youths outside a mosque, leaning against his Hero Honda. In an adjacent lane, plastic chairs were being arranged in two rows facing each other. A nearby vendor supplied tea for the gathering. Though unsure of why the village square was abuzz, the trio hung around.

The evening of 2 December wasn’t typical of Nabipur, a village in Gujarat’s Bharuch district. The chill of November had receded for a brief while, ready for a colder return. As people emerged from the mosque after their last namaaz for the day, few made their way home. They waited in twos and threes in the narrow alleys around the masjid, the bigger of two in this Muslim-majority hamlet.

At the heart of the hubbub, Haji Dilawar Yakub, resident of Bharuch city,

readied himself for his much-rehearsed speech. Even as he smiled through the empty courtesies with village elders, 48-year-old Yakub was conscious of the fact that word of the event hadn’t got round as well as he’d hoped. It was a hastily put together addressal, a letdown after the previous day when a crowd of over 2,000 had gathered at Valan village chowk.

At around 8.20 pm, Yakub’s associate Ibrahim Baji cleared his throat to speak. Slowly, a hush came over the crowd of a hundred-odd men. A woman in hijab emerged with her daughter onto a balcony overlooking the street, and mohalla shopkeepers peered through curtains of shampoo sachets and chip packets, or leant over their counters, for a better view.

“Friends, we know of what happened

negligence “Most gaushalas (cow shelters) across the country are ill-equipped... Several shelters themselves give away cows they cannot accommodate” photos amit dave

in Sansrod village on Eid,” said Ibrahim, referring to a communal scuffle set off by an incident of cow slaughter in the village 13 km down the highway. “We are here to ensure that such episodes don’t happen again.”

A day after the Sansrod incident, every newspaper in Gujarat had reports of a violent mob clashing with armed cops.

The write-ups had disturbed Yakub. He rang up some of his friends and acquaintances with his concerns. Together, they decided to visit the hamlet and examine the tension at its source. At Sansrod the next day, an eerie silence awaited them.

Policemen stalked the streets, knocking on every door, demanding answers and explanations. Several men had fled the village, they were told, and their wives and children were refusing to open doors.

“There is a [reference] in Macbeth,” Yakub tells me later. “It’s called ‘Coming Events Cast their Shadows Before’ [a la Thomas Campbell]. In the days leading to Eid, I had felt increasingly anxious at reports of Muslims transporting cattle being harassed by gaurakshaks (cow-protectors). After coming back to Bharuch, we decided that there was only one way to end the constant harassment.”

On 26 October, after much deliberation, they formed the Gau Hifazat Samiti, a 15-member committee of Muslims with Yakub at its helm. Ever since, they have been hopping from village to village and educating people on the consequences of cow slaughter (undertaken for beef consumption).

Since their first ever session in Pariej village of Bharuch, the Samiti has come a long way. The talk in Nabipur was its 37th, and it was Baji who spoke first, introducing himself and his fellow members: Mushtaq Gaurji, Maulvi Lukman Bhutia and Samiti President Yakub.

They had a one-point agenda, he said: to promote harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

“You cannot please Allah by hurting those around you. Hindus consider the cow a holy animal. Even if we don’t sacrifice a cow, we have alternatives in goats and buffaloes. All we say is, ‘Don’t eat, don’t sell and don’t slaughter’,” said Yakub, wrapping up the speech. “Now I would like to know what you think about this...”

30 December 2013

T

wo months earlier, on the morn-

ing of 16 October, a loudspeaker on a minaret in Sansrod sprang to life. Clerics of the only mosque in this village in Vadodara district had begun their Eidul-Azha prayers. There was an air of festivity all around as locals hugged one another and prepared for their traditional feast of meat. Not far from the mosque, off the opening of a lane leading to Sansrod, a slaughterhouse was all set for qurbani—the ritual sacrifice in commemoration of Prophet Ibrahim’s own.

Roughly 20 km from Sansrod, in a part of Karjan taluka, about 40 policemen assembled in the courtyard of the local police station. Two teams led by 24 armed cops then set off down National Highway 8 for the festive village. Tailing their vehicles was Jatin Vyas, a self-appointed gaurakshak of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

The raiding team reached Sansrod around 9.30 am and the policemen

“Nobody is interested in cow protection,” says one human rights activist.

“Organisations like the VHP try to extort money in the name of gauraksha” marched straight to the slaughterhouse.

They didn’t have to look too hard for what they’d been tipped off about. At the entrance lay the carcasses and entrails of two calves. The police stormed in and took the butchers into custody.

According to newspaper reports, a livid mob clashed with the cops, six of whom were injured even as one of their vehicles was torched. At the end of the mayhem, 76 cows were rescued and 125 villagers booked for rioting, claimed the reports. The village was combed for the next couple of days for troublemakers.

In the official version of events, the defiance of locals would appear to be the cause of the violence.

Most agree on what happened up till the point that the butchers were taken into custody. Beyond that, however, the narrative differs depending on who you speak to.

Sudarshansingh Vala Karjan, circle

police inspector, tells me that the police took utmost caution not to injure anyone, even though the villagers attacked them with ploughs and swords.

Abdul Quiyum, an elderly ‘masterji’ who is general secretary of the Gujarat chapter of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, an organisation that works for Muslim welfare, says that “things soured once the mob spotted Vyas” (of the VHP). “When the police reached the slaughterhouse, the policemen dragged the butchers out and rained lathi blows on them,” he says, “A few villagers returning home happened to see this. They moved closer to take a stock of the situation. The police hit them too.” As tempers flared, an alert villager of Sansrod informed Quiyum, a resident of a closeby town called Palej.

Within minutes, he had kicked his motorcycle to life and rushed to the village.

That cows had been slaughtered was not news to the villagers, claims Quiyum, but when the police started beating some of them up, it provoked anger. Word spread that the policemen were roughing up even innocents, and the Eid mood was replaced by the rage of a swelling mob. The police lobbed tear gas shells to disperse them, but the mob was furious with the VHP’s role in the raid. “A few days earlier, Vyas had himself sold about 160 cows to the butchers,” alleges Quiyum, “People know of his reputation. That’s the strategy of gaurakshaks, to make money and target Muslims at the same time. He makes deals seated in an auto on the highway, and then comes to ruin our festival, [protesting] cow slaughter.”

The Jamiat leader hands me a folder full of letters he has written to various government authorities and law-enforcement agencies of the state and Centre. The letters are rife with incidents of the harassment of Muslims on the pretext of cow slaughter, apart from the involvement of gaurakshaks and Hindu right-wing outfits like the VHP and Bajrang Dal in such activities.

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ime and again, the practice has been used to stoke communal sentiments across India. It is an issue that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has often raked up in his rhetoric over the years. Whether at a BJP ralopen www.openthemagazine.com 29

protection (Above) Haji Dilavar Bhai, president of the Muslim Gau Hifazat committee at a cow shelter in Bharuch; (right) a cow shelter in Migayam

ly in Mangalore in May, Nandgaon of Rajasthan and Khandwa of Madhya Pradesh in November or Gandhinagar in February, the saffron party’s battlecry rings much the same: of a Congress trying to bring about a ‘pink revolution’ to appease minorities.

For Modi, it has long been a point of ideology, and Gujarat’s attitude to the practice has been particularly stiff for decades. Right from 1954, the state has had a complete ban on cow (and calf) slaughter under the Gujarat Animal Preservation Act. In August 2011, a group of Maldharis staged massive protests against the continuance of the practice. Maldharis—literally, ‘owners of livestock’—are an indigenous tribe of Gujarat, and they had alleged that culling was taking place in cahoots with the police. In October that year, after two months of their agitation, the Act of 1954 was amended to raise a six-month sentence to seven years, hike the top fine from Rs 1,000 to Rs 50,000 (on a scale depending on the gravity of the offence) and ban the transportation of animals for slaughter.

Its impact on cow slaughter, however, was observed to be minimal. “Nobody is really interested in cow protection,” Ram Puniyani, a prominent human rights activist, tells me over the phone.

“Organisations like the VHP and 30 open

Bajrang Dal try to extort money in the name of gauraksha. When the law was passed, religion was only used as a pretext. There were a range of political and economic reasons behind it.” He says that Gujarat’s reduction in cow slaughter has not been more pronounced than in any other Indian state.

According to Puniyani, who has extensively researched the issue, there have also been instances of Muslims being accused of killing cows that were simply found dead. Word-of-mouth propaganda and pamphlets on bovicide allegedly committed by minorities is used to polarise the electorate. “It’s a case of vote-bank politics,” he says, “Most of the gaushalas (cow shelters) across the country are ill-equipped. A person running one once told me how several shelters themselves give away the cows they cannot accommodate. But these communal

forces only target Muslims. As a result, they are always on the defensive.”

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scrap dealer by profession, Jatin Vyas has had a chequered past.

Accused in a couple of cases of extortion and kidnapping, he is best known for his stance against cow slaughter. As far back as 2002, three days before the Godhra riots, he had accompanied the police to arrest cow slaughterers in a village called Tankaria. That, too, was on the eve of Eid. “Before you ask me anything, tell me, are you going to take a positive or negative angle?” Vyas asks over the phone. It’s the third week of November, and I have only introduced myself and the scope of this article. “I ask because people speak to butchers and print wrong things,” he says, citing a regional newspaper.

30 December 2013

Based in Vadodara, Vyas has been active on the issue for the past 15 years. To him, gaurakhsa is a voluntary activity motivated by the goodness of one’s heart. Most vehicles with animals being ferried to their death enter Gujarat from Rajasthan, he says, which is why most crackdowns take place on highways near the state border. It’s a common practice for volunteers to tip the police off on any lead they get and accompany them to the spot, claims Vyas. “The police stop the trucks we [point out].

Almost always, we find that there are some 20-40 cows packed in these vehicles.” The rescued cattle are then escorted to animal shelters, panjrapols.

“But how do you know they are being carried for slaughter?”

“But this is still a case of animal cruelty. Then we ask the drivers if they are taking them to a qatalkhana (slaughterhouse). They say, ‘yes’. That’s how we know.”

I express disbelief at the ease of the exercise. “Try coming to the field and you will know,” he replies.

Vyas denies any possibility of a racket in which the police, cow shelters and gaurakshaks are hand-in-glove, calling this calumny against those working for the cause. “There might be corruption in other areas, but there just cannot be any when it comes to cows,” he reasons, “A cow is a mother.”

For all his denials, numerous locals and activists say that the modus operandi of the racket is ‘common knowledge’, even if few efforts have been made so far to document it. “I have received numerous complaints from activists of gaurakshaks being involved in such incidents,” says Deputy Superintendent of Police Sandip Singh, who oversees rural Vadodara. “While our investigations are ongoing,” he says of the Sansrod case, “the application has been filed based on hearsay. With Jatin Vyas, we are taking his criminal past into consideration.

However, the petitioners don’t have any proof to back their claims.”

Over the years, DSP Singh has acted upon numerous cases of cow slaughter.

In recent times, he says, the number of cases filed has shown a significant decrease. “One of the reasons such incidents take place is ignorance of the law,” he says, “Those involved are mostly low30 December 2013

er middle-class. Their livelihood is based entirely on such activities. So when there is a crackdown, they resist it.”

The police officer denies any knowledge of gaurakshaks secretly egging the practice on.

O

n the banks of the River Narmada, Bharuch lies adjacent Vadodara district. Though famous for its salted peanuts, it’s an industrial town that houses a population of over 400,000. On its outskirts, Dilawar Yakub runs a scaffolding business in a nondescript building near a noisy railway intersection.

For my first meeting with the Gau Hifazat Samiti president, I find him waiting for me with four other members, all dressed in skullcaps and kurtapyjamas in varying shades of white.

They are professionals, working for insurers, at municipal schools and so on.

They let Yakub do most of the talking, with a nod or murmur of assent every now and then. An engineer by qualification, he is visually impaired. This does not keep him from reading and occasionally quoting some shayari or Shakespeare to make a point.

“It’s no secret. In Gujarat, the ban on cow slaughter is only as effective as the liquor ban,” he says. “This issue remains pertinent because no matter which quarter supplies cows for slaughter, there is always a Muslim at the end of the supply chain. The community of butchers are almost all Muslim. Our religion regards beef as halaal (legitimate), so there is always a market among our community folk.”

In rural India, cow and bullock ownership has been losing its economic rationale ever since the Green Revolution.

Cattle-owners have traditionally been farmers who use cows for milk and bullocks for transport and land-tilling. As tractors and trucks took over the latter jobs, the value of bullocks fell to what slaughterhouses would pay.

Locals say that cow slaughter is not just about blatant disregard of the law.

On a visit to Panoli, a village 30 km away from Bharuch, a 36-year-old farmer called Hanif Haslot tells me that it’s a simple case of a mismatch in demand and supply. Muslim households are under a religious obligation to sacrifice an

animal for Eid. In Gujarat, using a goat, bullock or buffalo is the standard practice. These are in very high demand for the occasion and their short supply results in festive prices peaking. Cow meat is illegal but cheap—a temptation for some. “During Eid, goat meat is available for Rs 400 a kg. On the other hand, bullock and buffalo meat come at Rs 120,” says Haslot. “You have to pick between breaking the law of the state and breaking the codes of religion. It’s not always an easy choice.”

The Samiti’s sessions, however, steer clear of placing the issue in the context of either economics or a racket. “That’s not the point of the sessions,” says Yakub. “The racket is common knowledge but we don’t have any evidence to prove it. We tell people what they should do, what they shouldn’t, and why it is for their own good.”

Have they ever tried to gather evidence beyond the verbal testimony of locals?

Yakub smiles wryly: “Mera munshi bhi qaatil hai, kya faisla dega woh mujhe?”

(What kind of justice can I expect if my protector is a killer himself?)

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t the Nabipur gathering, Yakub finishes his address by inviting other opinions. The village sarpanch seated in the last row stands up. “If [cow slaughter] happens, we will make sure that we call the police to take [the guilty] away.”

There are murmurs of approval and a round of applause.

A day after the session, we are at his office again discussing the previous night and the way ahead. I ask him about sentiments palpable in the audiences he addresses. “The main problem is that Muslims are still afraid,” he says, “those who aren’t guilty, even more so, for they fear they might be picked up for something that wasn’t their fault to begin with.”

“Every now and then, people walk up to us and congratulate us for the message we are trying to spread. Often, they come from neighbouring villages and want us to come to theirs. We tell them it’s not possible for us to visit each and every settlement. When we go to a place, we expect those in attendance to tell ten more people, till it becomes a movement and Gujarat becomes a model state.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 31

dilemma

To Catch a Tiger The tale of a maneater that has provoked outrage and revived a debate on man-animal conflict in Karnataka Anil Budur Lulla Bandipur

photos ravi shankar

“D

xxxxe of the people xxxaved’s star turn as scriptwriter for movies like Deewaar has of Hindi film folklore like Deewaar

o you see that line of trees?

That is where the tiger killed Basava,” says Mallikarjuna Swamy, pointing at the horizon. Basava was his neighbour, a man working in his fields at the time. Swamy does not dare venture any further in that direction though the maneater has been captured alive three hours earlier. For those who live in Chikkabaragi village of HD Kote taluka on the fringes of Karnataka’s Bandipur Tiger Reserve, straying too far from familiar areas could be a matter of life and death.

Basava, found dead on 3 December, was the maneater’s third victim. A week earlier, on the evening of 27 November, it had attacked Basavaraju, a tribal from nearby Seegavadahaadi, while he was herding his cattle home. On 29 November, Cheluva, a 35-year-old tribal was killed in broad daylight while he and his friends were grazing cattle on the fringes of the Moleyur forest range. The tiger gouged his eyes out.

After the attack on Basava, enraged villagers set on fire a forest department guest house in the village along with a jeep and two motorcycles, forcing officials to launch a massive operation to capture the tiger. They were angry because Basava’s life could have been saved: the department had botched up a chance to catch the tiger three days earlier, the day it killed Cheluva. The animal had returned for the body and department officials had spotted it. The veterinarian with the team took four shots at it with a 1980-model tranquiliser gun. He missed twice. The other two darts hit the tiger but the sedative did not work because the gun was not loaded properly. The tiger slunk away into the forest.

The next day, the search was called off in that part of the forest because a senior official did not expect the predator to come back. But it did—and claimed Basava. His family members, worried that he hadn’t returned home even after 7 pm, gathered other villagers and went looking for him. All they found was one leg and part of what looked like his scalp.

According to MP Bhavanish, a neighbour, the tiger must have attacked him in the paddy field—just 200 metres from the edge of Chikkabaragi village—and then dragged his body into the neighbouring forest. open www.openthemagazine.com 33

flaming fury The forest department guest house in Chaikkabargi village that was beseiged by angry villagers with the jeep that was set ablaze

“The first task was to find Basava’s body,” says HC Kantharaju, director, Bandipur Tiger Reserve, “We found the torso without the leg the next morning.

We found the severed head later. The tiger had not eaten the flesh, as locals alleged. We removed the body and mounted an operation to capture the tiger.”

hree attacks by a suspected maneater in the same vicinity is a rare occurrence. The villagers compounded the confusion by alleging that it was a tiger that was caught earlier this year and released back into the wild. They say that it had got used to chicken and meat in captivity, which is why it began attacking cattle and humans.

By now, the attacks had taken on political overtones. At the ongoing state legislature session in Belgaum, Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah promised to issue ‘shoot-at-sight orders’ against the tiger. That the CM cannot issue such an order vis-à-vis a protected national animal was not a point anyone brought up.

“There was a lot of pressure on us to capture the tiger at the earliest,” says a forest officer. “We had already spent three or four nights camping out and trying various methods to trap it. A cage with a dog in it was kept as bait, hoping the tiger would return to the spot of the earlier attacks... but it did not. Then, we tied cattle to trees and waited on treetops. That, too, failed. In the meanwhile, it attacked the third victim. The pressure was so much

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34 open

that everybody—politicians, bureaucrats, conservationists and even journalists—gave us ideas to try.”

One lady member of an erstwhile royal family who runs a resort in Bandipur had seen a documentary on a wildlife TV channel where a human dummy propped against a tree and sprayed with goat blood was used in Africa to entrap a lion. On her insistence, this was given a try too. It did not work.

Tiger conservationist K Ullas Karanth has surprised everyone by arguing that tigers venturing beyond their territory ought to be killed The department put more vets and field staff onto the job. It also borrowed an advanced rifle from Bangalore’s Bannerghatta Biological Park to transquilise the animal. To locate the tiger, they set up camera traps every 300 metres in a circle. They also brought in camp elephants that are trained to help capture wild animals.

On the night of 4 December, the tiger was spotted by a police party that had arrived to investigate the burning down of the forest guest house but could not resist joining the hunt. In their enthusiasm, the cops opened fire at it. “In all, they

fired 29 shots at the tiger,” says the forest officer, “Thankfully, none of the bullets hit it.”

The next morning, the tiger was cornered by three elephants, but its menacing behaviour scared them away. One elephant called Abhimanyu was sorely missed in this operation because it has a reputation for holding its nerve when faced with a tiger. “Abhimanyu is a 45-year-old tusker known for charging at wild elephants and tigers,” says another forest officer, “Normally a tiger’s roar scares away our elephants, but Abhimanyu is the only one that will charge directly at a tiger without fear.” So Abhimanyu was requisitioned from Hassan, Karnataka, a six-hour road journey by truck.

The next morning, they managed to locate the tiger again, and by 1 pm, one of the vets who managed to get within a few yards fired four doses at the animal. He missed thrice, but the fourth dart struck.

Cautiously, the field staff crept towards the striped cat. Weak and malnourished, the cat tried moving away but couldn’t get far; the tranquiliser began to take effect. They flung a net around the animal and dragged it into a cage.

The doctors who examined the tiger found quill injuries and deduced that it had tried to kill a porcupine. It was a bad choice of meal; the quills had pierced the tiger’s jaw into its mouth, while one had stuck in its tongue, making it difficult for it to eat or drink. Hungry and thirsty, it had perhaps strayed over to the 30 December 2013

periphery of the forest in search of easy prey in human habitations.

It was now safely behind bars.

Abhimanyu, the fearless elephant, had to be taken back to Hassan; it had arrived too late. A sharp shooter from Hyderabad known as Nawab Saab, who was flown down specially for the job by a well-wisher of the forest department, also had to return without seeing any action.

he tiger had been caught, but the drama was not over. On hearing of its capture, the villagers of Chikkabaragi demanded proof. After officials hauled the tractor into their sight to present the caged tiger in flesh and blood, they ranged themselves around and demanded that it be shot dead. “It has no right to be captured alive after what it did to our fellow villagers,” said A Narayanappa, a villager, speaking for all, “There is a shoot-at-sight order by the CM, so the officials should shoot it dead.” The bereaved family of Basava was especially vocal, with the dead man’s niece raising a loud cry for justice in the form of a death penalty.

With a mob of about 400 people baying for blood, it took the police two hours to disperse them before the animal could be taken to Mysore Zoo (it had to be tranquilised again as a result of the delay).

A raging debate has begun over how to deal with tigers who menace human life.

Noted tiger conservationist K Ullas Karanth has surprised everyone by arguing that the lesson of Chikkabaragi is that tigers venturing beyond their territory ought to be shot dead. He says the location of the attacks suggest that this tiger was pushed out of its range by an aggressive rival. Forced to the edges of the forest, it began preying on livestock for survival and ended up attacking humans as well. “Such deliberate stalking and killing of humans is rare in this region, despite a large tiger population of 150,” says Karanth, “The last proven case of man-eating was in 2006 by a 13-year-old tigress that killed two humans in the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.”

After the second killing, says Karanth, it was no longer clear if attempts to capture the animal alive were justified.

“Dozens of tigers, and possibly a larger number of leopards, reach this stage in

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30 December 2013

life in Karnataka every year and get into conflict situations,” he says. “It may not be a practical long-term option to capture them all and house them in zoos beyond their maximum lifespan in the wild.

Also, delays in addressing the threat generate great anger among local people.

This may undermine the public support we need for the conservation of tigers.”

The Wildlife Conservation Society, led

by Karanth, has a photographic database of tigers that reveals that the Chikkabaragi tiger (BPT-117) was cameratrapped first in March 2004. “From its size and appearance at that time, it was assessed to be about three years old,” he says.

BPT-117 was camera-trapped 10 times after that, and the last photographic capture was on 11 May 2013. “This evidence shows that this tiger’s territory was 33 sq km.”

Forest officials also say that it’s a logistical nightmare to trap rogue tigers alive.

Says an officer, “Sometimes, the operation takes days and since it is deep within forests or on their fringes, it’s difficult for us to arrange food for the men and elephants involved in the operation. In addition, we are also in danger of being attacked by angry villagers.”

hikkabaragi village is part of the 880 sq km Bandipur Tiger Reserve area. Leopard attacks, straying elephants and foraging wild boars are dangers no less stark around here. “In fear of wild boars, we can’t walk around after dark,” says Narayanappa, “They are known to attack without provocation and every fortnight at least one villager reports them trying to gore them.”

Sudha Narasappa, a villager, displays a new fence in her backyard. She points to a wooded area in the near distance; three nights ago, she says, elephants came from that direction and helped themselves to her stack of hay. “My husband went out to check on the commotion because the dogs were barking,” she says, “He was taken aback to see three or four elephants in our backyard. We made several requests to the forest department, but they didn’t bother. The elephants went away after we burst crackers. But we fear they will return.”

But there is no terror like that of a maneater. In recent years, the area has been thick with stories of tiger attacks. Ravi

C

Shankar, a Mysore-based photographer, will never forget the morning of 17 January 2013. The previous night, he got information of a tiger attacking cattle in Taraka village, a few kilometres from HD Kote town. The forest department had mobilised its staff to chase it back into the forest. He set out from Mysore with a group of photographers.

Ravi Shankar remembers that encounter with the tiger in detail: “We reached the spot where the tiger was believed to have spent the night in a wooded area.

There we saw that officials assisted by villagers were bursting crackers and beating drums. They were all walking towards the tiger. We followed them and took some pictures, but could still not see the tiger. The department staff fanned out in a large semi-circle. We followed them in a jeep. From a safe distance, we were taking pictures when some of us decided to get out of the jeep and walk a dozen yards on foot for a better angle.

Suddenly loud crackers burst close to us.

A crouching tiger jumped out of a patch of green and came straight at me. I knew it would go for my neck.... I straightened up and held my neck with one arm and the camera in the other. The tiger’s teeth clamped my hand, which was protecting my neck, and wouldn’t let go.”

Ravi Shankar struggled with the beast for 88 seconds, as recorded by the timer of a video taken by another photographer.

The tiger lunged for his back, trying to wrestle him sideways for a better grip, and punctured his forearm and upper arm in two places with its teeth. It let him go only after it was shot with a tranquiliser gun by a forest department official.

The photographer spent weeks in hospital, recovering. “I was very lucky that my neck, spine or face was not mauled. It punctured my hand. That was the only injury I had. I lost a lot of blood, but survived,” he says, rolling up his right arm’s sleeves to show the marks.

The area remains dangerous. On 30 November, while a hunt was being mounted for the Chikkabaragi maneater, another tiger is believed to have attacked and killed D Suresh, a forest staffer who had stepped out of his post deep inside Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, 30 km away from Chikkabaragi.

The last of this debate is yet to be heard, it would seem. n open www.openthemagazine.com 35

vivek muthuramalingam

home is where the court says The brothers, 8 and 6 years old, at the Vathsalya Charitable Trust in Bangalore

c u sto dy b at t l e

Between Periamma and a Home in Italy Two orphaned boys found a home in Italy when their children’s home in Bangalore put them up for adoption. Soon after, the boys’ maternal aunt and her husband lodged a case, protesting they had not been consulted Anuradha Nagaraj Mysore/Bangalore

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he Child Welfare Committee

(CWC) of Mysore meets twice a week on the first floor of a government-run girls’ home in the city. On 23 November, as they dealt with cases and complaints, two brothers sat on a bench waiting for their turn to be heard.

Holding on to their little bags, they sat quietly. When their names were called, the eight-year-old older boy started crying, while the six-year-old clung to his brother’s sweater tightly. The boys were asked to settle down and stop crying.

The next time they were called, 15 minutes later, the two stood up and hesitantly walked into an adjacent room quietly.

They were surrounded by adults—CWC officials, social workers from their orphanage and an uncle and aunt—all saying they knew what’s best for them. As the adults argued, the two boys watched, nervous and teary-eyed.

For the past few months, the brothers have been at the centre of an adoption row that has put a question mark on their future. Cleared for adoption in 2012, the boys were due to be adopted by an Italian couple within a few months. But the boys’ maternal uncle and aunt approached the CWC in Mysore opposing the adoption; the adoption case is being heard in a Bangalore district court.

The ongoing battle to find the ‘ideal home’ for the brothers has put the entire adoption process under the scanner, and the two young boys who ‘like painting, eating pizza and reading’ in the spotlight.

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He search for a home for the boys began in 2008, when the boys’ mother Chamundi was sexually assaulted and murdered by upper-caste men near her village on the outskirts of Mysore. A couple of days later, consumed by grief, her husband committed suicide, leaving the siblings orphaned. The boys were three and one-and-a-half years old at the time.

Chamundi’s distraught sisters took the boys to the Deputy Commissioner and asked him to take care of them. In an August 2008 report, the Deputy Commissioner named the Social Welfare Department the caretaker of the orphaned boys, stating that the immediate family was not in any financial position to give them a good home and education.

30 December 2013

The report added that the Department should ‘rehabilitate them and put them in a bal mandir or ashram (governmentrun or affiliated children’s home)’.

“We didn’t know what else to do,” says a distraught Neelamma, Chamundi’s eldest sister, clutching a photo album full of family pictures. “Our financial position was not good and we didn’t want the boys to grow up listening to stories about how their parents died. We felt we were doing the best for them, that they would get a much better life than what we could have given them.”

In accordance with their wishes, the siblings were sent to Bapuji Children’s Home in Mysore, which was declared a ‘fit institution’ by the Karnataka government in 1977.

“The process was initiated only after the guardians failed to visit the boys for over a year.

And we made sure we had crosschecked everything legally before approaching the CWC with a request for clearing the children for adoption. We have been doing this for years. We know the issues involved—and the law” an official of bapuji children’s home, mysore

“We were happy that they were there,” says Neelamma. “The rest of the family was not very involved, but my husband and I visited them off and on. We were always told to observe them from a distance. We didn’t mind because we knew they were being taken care of.”

Neelamma’s other sister, who had initially taken the boys to the Deputy Commissioner with her, has since not been involved in the lives of the boys.

The boys spent two years at the Home after which the management thought about finding a ‘family’ for them.

Reluctant to speak on the issue, they say that “everything was done in good faith”.

“The process was initiated only after the guardians failed to visit the boys for

over a year,” says a Home official. “And we made sure we had cross-checked everything legally before approaching the CWC with a request for clearing the children for adoption. We have been doing this for years. We know the issues involved—and the law.”

The management of the Home adds that they had discussed the possibility of adoption with the guardians. “We talked to them about it in 2009, but they said ‘no’ and we didn’t go ahead,” a member clarifies. “It is only after they stopped visiting that we explored the possibility again.”

“We couldn’t go and visit for a while because my wife was sick,” says Nataraj, Neelamma’s husband, a group D employee with the Alanahally Gram Panchayat in Mysore. “That doesn’t mean we don’t care. We just couldn’t manage to go and visit them, and while we were struggling with sickness and financial issues, they transferred the boys to Bangalore and arranged to give them away.”

The adoption process was initiated in 2010. It started with an advertisement in the Kannada newspaper Prajavani on 20 June 2010. As per guidelines of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), the newspaper notification was followed by a radio announcement to trace the ‘parents or biological family’.

Reports filed with the CWC by Bapuji Children’s Home indicate that there was no response to either. The family tree submitted for the records mentions only the paternal side of the boys’ family. It mentions one paternal uncle who is still alive, and says that he has not come forth and made any claims till date.

“But why didn’t they just call us?” asks Nataraj. “They had our contact details.

They should have told us. After all, the boys are our nephews.”

The inquiry report and a report by the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights set the grounds for the brothers to be cleared for adoption. In the inquiry report for each of the boys, submitted to the CWC in 2011, the probation officer states: ‘In spite of all efforts nobody has come to claim the male child…’

The state Commission report says: ‘So the priority of Bapuji Children’s Home shall be to find suitable adoptive parents in the present case since the children are orphans.’ The report further suggests open www.openthemagazine.com 37

that the aunts be given a chance to reconsider their decision on the custody of the children, and an opportunity to bring up the children. It also suggests counseling, explaining to the aunts the ‘importance of the children’s right to a family’ and the option of visiting rights.

“Everything has been done,” explains NT Venkatesh, chairman of the CWC Mysore. “Even today, the guardians are not willing to take the boys home and bring them up. They want the state to take care of them and put them in a boys’ hostel in Mysore. They are opposing adoption, but are not willing to take the children home either. It is in the best interest of children to grow up in a family and our mandate is the best interests of the child.”

“We are family,” argues Neelamma. “I named both the boys when they were born. It is just circumstances. We are basically scavengers and we don’t want the boys to grow up to be the same. But we definitely don’t want them to be given up for adoption because we know that over a period of time, we will cease to exist for them. The new family will become their family. That is not okay.”

CWC members, however, point out that as per CARA guidelines, it is okay.

The guidelines state that ‘in case of surrendered children, if the reclaim period of 60 days is over, the particular agency shall approach the Child Welfare Committee for declaring the child legally free for adoption’. Accordingly, in September 2012, the boys were declared legally free for adoption by the CWC, with instructions to ensure that they are not separated and must be adopted together.

F

inding no takers for the children in

India, Bapuji Children’s Home then sought to transfer them to the Vathsalya Charitable Trust in Bangalore, the only organisation in the city that does intercountry adoptions. “We found prospective adoptive parents for them almost immediately,” says Mary Paul, executive director of the Vathsalya Trust. “We have worked with this Italian agency for years and placed a number of children in Italian homes. Everything was done and the prospective parents had even sent photographs of their home to the boys.”

38 open

While the boys were sent to a foster home to accustom them to the idea of living with a family before the Italian adoption came through, Neelamma and Nataraj visited Bapuji Children’s Home sometime in June. “They told us the boys had been sent to Bangalore and it made us very nervous. We came to the CWC to check, and they told us that the boys were being adopted. The thought scared us.”

The couple approached a Bangalore district court, where the case is now underway. “The judge has asked them to bring proof of their relationship to the boys by 20 December, the next date of hearing,” says advocate N Balaji, who is representing the couple. “We want them to be made a party in the ongoing case and the court to hear their side of the story.”

“I named both the boys when they were born. It is just circumstances. We are basically scavengers and we don’t want the boys to grow up to be the same. But we definitely don’t want them to be given up for adoption... n e e l a m m a , the boys’ aunt

Paul says that the family’s entire argument is flawed, since the boys, too, are keen on adoption. CARA guidelines also state that ‘no child of the age of seven years or above, who can understand and express his or her opinion, shall be declared legally free for adoption without his or her consent’. In this case, the older boy has informed the CWC that they are keen on being adopted.

“But they are just children,” pleads Neelamma, very upset that the boys refuse to acknowledge her presence. “I understand that they have been cared for by someone else, but I am still their periamma (aunt) and I want them to call me that.

We want them to come home for festivals and spend time with us. Family ties cannot be broken so easily.”

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eanwhile, in Italy, a couple in the

process of getting their home ready for the boys is now unsure of whether the adoption will go through. Waiting to adopt since October 2008, the couple were finally matched with the boys on 13 December 2012.

“The prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) in Italy accepted these children as their sons, presented a dossier of papers, and renewed this dossier twice according to rules of the Indian court,” says Gabriella Demicheli, who is in charge of adoptions in north Italy for the organisation AIPA (Italian Association Pro Adoptions). “Also, the psychologist approached the children at the Vathsalya Charitable Trust and they expressed their willingness to become sons of these PAPs.” In an emailed response, Demicheli also states that the couple agreed to adopt the two boys because ‘all the papers were regular and showed their abandoned situation,’ adding that the Italian couple is ‘shocked to know that these children could suffer again because of the attitude of these two persons’.

For the moment, after much deliberation, the CWC has decided that the boys shall continue to stay at the Vathsalya Charitable Trust. ‘They are in the middle of their academic year, and have clearly told us that they don’t want their education to be disrupted. Till this matter is sorted out in court, the boys will be in Bangalore.’

This decision comes in spite of protests by the aunt and uncle, apart from the Ambedkar Adi Dravida Sangha. They have already staged one protest in Mysore and have threatened more if the boys are not sent back to Mysore.

“This was done without our knowledge, and that is wrong,” says Nataraj. “We want the boys in Mysore, and we will fight for it.”

Demicheli says that the Italian couple doesn’t ‘accept the claims of the adults (the uncle and aunt) and will ask for a meeting with Indian authorities to clarify if the best interest of these children is to stay with persons that for so long did not claim them and now want them back for the aim of exploitation’.

The boys have withdrawn. For them, the future has just got more uncertain.

And the wait for a normal home, longer. n 30 December 2013

Bernard Annebicque/Sygma/Corbis

basics

Two Men And a Car A road trip across Germany, Belgium and France Mihir Srivastava

M

y friend Jan Peters is a landscape

ecologist. He invited me on a road trip across France when I was his guest in Germany. Our road trip across Germany and France began on 23 July 2013 from Greifswald, where Jan lives.

It’s an old coastal city of young people in the northeast of Germany. It was an important city of the Prussian Empire two centuries ago, Jan tells me, while we are standing on top of the 50-metre high steeple of Dom St Nikolai Church. From here, Greifswald appears to be a small city with red slanted roofs. Beyond, there are green open fields where huge threshers tirelessly paint the landscape husky brown.

Beyond that is the harbour, the sea a radiant blue in the bright summer sun, a part of the sky.

We drove westward along the Baltic Sea, and made a halt at a nude beach in 40 open

Weststrand Darss to soak in the sun without the interference of clothes. Though there is little scope for me to tan, the temperate sun turned me a dingy brown. We travelled for hours after this, and late in the evening parked our car in a residential area in the city of Dagebül by the North Sea. We walked barefoot on the seabed to reach Langeness, almost a 10km walk. Twice a day, for about six hours, when the tide is low, the water drains out and you can walk from the mainland to the island.

There was ankle-deep water with thousands of sticky, white, gelatinous, mushroom-like objects all over the seabed. I concluded they were jellyfish, waiting for the water to return. There was hardly any wind, the conditions were ideal for walking. I was told that I am damn lucky to get this weather. When we were half-

way there, the mainland behind us was a bright line, bisecting land and sky. On the other side, the island was still hidden.

The sun had set, the sky was deep blue, the water on the ocean floor reflected the sky. A deep blue infinity surrounded us.

We stood in the middle of this emptiness like inconsequential dots. We stayed on the island for a day and a half; we walked back to Passy early one morning and found ourselves with a parking ticket.

We drove inside a tunnel near Hamburg underneath one of the busiest harbours in Europe to Jan’s family home in the town of Oldenburg in western Germany. I was told it is a city of rich old people. Jan spent his childhood here.

Our road trip was interrupted for a week when I flew to Finland. A week later, I was back in Oldenburg and stayed here for two days, listening to stories 30 December 2013

MARTIN BUREAU/AFP

that summer in france A couple kisses on the Sacre Coeur basilica esplanade in Paris; (facing page) a night view of Noirmoutier Island

from Jan’s childhood. On 3 August, we resumed the road journey; over the next ten days we travelled 3,500 km across Germany, Belgium and France.

The main protagonist of this story is Passy—a 1994 model Volkswagen Passat Variant. She’s a low, flat, long and broad hatchback; white in colour, hardworking, solid, basic by German standards, age has touched her but she remains competent at her job. Passy is witness to Jan’s life; she has accompanied Jan on memorable trips; ours was just another one.

We dumped our luggage, sleeping bags and two crates­—one full of beer, the other full of bread, cheese and fruit—in the car. On the back seat, we kept my camera, laptop, and chocolates, a water bottle, a Tetrapak of buttermilk with berries that Jan loved, soda bottles that Germans call Mineralwasser and drink like water.

30 December 2013

J

an is in love with Passy. I fell in love

with her over the next few days. This is how it happened.

There is no speed limit on German autobahns. Speed thrills, but diminishingly so when high speed is a constant. There was no perceptible change in the scenery.

I did a lot of talking to prevent Jan from dozing off. My incessant chatter evoked several yawns from him. It was difficult to maintain a reasonable balance.

Passy showed no signs of exhaustion during the long stretches of high-speed driving. We would, more often than not, sit quietly, staring at the road. Jan would break the silence by asking, “Can I have some buttermilk?” and then, we would start talking. We talked about his life, my life, our respective careers, his stay in India, my stay in Germany, his hobby of bird watching, my hobby of

sketching nudes, about girls, nudity and anything and everything that came to our mind.

When we were not talking, I observed the humongous trucks on the roads.

“Everything in Germany is bigger than in India,” I would joke with Jan, “People, cattle, even the trucks.”

Life is fairly predictable and convenient here; Jan stops me to add “boring as well” compared to India where, according to Jan, “anything can happen, anywhere, any time”. I missed the dhabas, the tea stalls, the street dogs, the stray cattle and people crossing the roads—a long list of miscellaneous events that can happen on Indian roads and may be described by one word: ‘suddenly’.

What I didn’t miss was the honking; the silence on the autobahns is like the thick mist that descends on a valley. open www.openthemagazine.com 41

W

hen we crossed the border into Belgium, the quality of the road deteriorate noticeably but not enough to render the ride bumpy. It was getting dark and we had been driving for a good five hours now. I wanted to drink beer, but abstained out of solidarity with Jan who was driving. We had noticed a big lake on the map near Keerbergen city, and decided to camp along the shore. We took a diversion from the highway, drove south for an hour or so, crossed many villages and towns, but there was still no lake. Passy was tired and getting cranky.

It was nippy. Soon there was the jaundiced light of street lamps. After an hour of vagrant driving, we found a spot to park near a cornfield. We parked Passy such that the trees were baldachin. She creaked as Jan pressed the break for the last time that day. I thought it was her sigh of relief.

I woke up early and took a walk in the farm; the crops stood shoulder high and were somewhat defiant in allowing me passage. Sitting on my haunches, I defecated in the open. I strolled for an hour in the wilderness. Jan was up by the time I returned.

In two hours, we were in Brussels. We had breakfast at an Indian cafe called Kapoor’s, which looked like a hideout for Third World migrants. I insisted on speaking in English when the host, a bearded young Punjabi brat, spoke a few sentences in pure Hindi. we put our luggage on the front seat, and folded the back seat forward. It made a perfect queen-size bed where we slept in sleeping bags. The sleeping bag Jan gave me could keep you warm even in subzero temperatures. We would open our eyes to the soft morning light sieving through the green canopy above us.

I was supposed to make arrangements for our stay in Paris through my friends, but nothing worked out. For ten days, Passy was our home. We would lock her doors and pull up the windows, leaving one window ajar for fresh air. Passy felt like a womb, pregnant with twins. Every day, we would take new birth.

W

e drove past Paris’ arterial ring road on our way to Orleans. For the first time in Europe, I heard cars honking. Jan had been militant about avoid42 open

ing Paris. He loves being out in nature.

I struggled to find the right exit out of the city; the map we had was in French.

I blamed the map: “It’s not detailed enough.” We got irritable, but we found highway N20 after straying a bit.

The plan was to follow the river Loire, do some sightseeing, stop at cafes, take walks in the city, and reach Noirmoutier Island in two days. That night, we crossed Orleans, drove along the Loire, crossed the river by a hanging bridge, and found a spot to park Passy. We sat facing the river for a long time: the bridge looked like an art installation, the castle on the other bank was forbidding. The breeze rejuvenated our tired bodies. We finished the leftovers that Jan was carrying around in glass jars. It was, perhaps, the

two are different languages.”

In Europe, everything is so expensive for an Indian that I quickly stopped converting euros to rupees. But when I bought beer or wine, I felt rich: beer in Germany is cheaper than in India; a beer can cost less than a water bottle. One of the reasons for their economic boom is that they have got their priorities right.

Jan is streetsmart: he would avoid highways in France because you have to pay for passage. He would check out petrol rates every time we passed a gas station, and fill up his tank where fuel was cheap. We spent about ¤500 on Passy’s supplies.

Passy was our space under the sun, the moon and the stars; oh, what stars and how they glittered! After long walks in

paris people A boy plays football in front of the Sacre Coeur basilica in Paris

FRANCK FIFE/Getty Images

best site we camped at.

In France, the only alcoholic beverage we allowed ourselves was wine. We went to the supermarket everyday and bought local wine. Till this trip, wine had tasted like the fermented juice of sour grapes. I could now appreciate there was more to it. But chilled beer remains my favourite; the flavours of local beers change every hundred miles in Germany, like dialects in India. I could settle in Germany for my love of beer, despite not speaking German. This could easily lead to an existential crisis. I realised this on many occasions. I joked with a friend of Jan’s, “German is all Greek to me.” She looked anguished and replied in English: “The

the city, by the river, or on the beach, the sight of Passy was reassuring. Passy was our home. I didn’t feel like a tourist, I felt I belonged.

For the next week or so, we would lead a primitive life in the most developed part of the world. Sleep in Passy’s womb, shit in the open, bathe in the river, eat by the river or on the beach, drive every day (the only non-primitive thing). I’d often wonder: have I come to Europe for this?

This life is exotic for Jan. I enjoy it, too.

But for millions of Indians, it is a reality they have not chosen; basics like drinking water supply and sanitation facilities are nonexistent for many.

Castles of varying vastness loom over 30 December 2013

the river Loire. They are static witnesses to time, with the river symbolic of the passage of time. The castles are reminiscent of the violent past of the region where big and small principalities fought one another to assert control over territory. But then Europe realised, after paying a huge price in the form of two world wars, that conflict leads only to misery. The biggest enemies of the past are now the best of friends: Germany and France. They assert their national identities, yet there is mutual adulation, laced with just a bit of suspicion. Jan’s favourite dessert is Pain au chocolat—sweet phyllo stuffed with chocolate flakes. “French make it the best,” he would say every time we had it.

I would drink deep from the taps of the ‘WC’—the water closet. At most places, unlike India, they have one WC for both sexes. I would divide my time inside the WCs between urinating and drinking as much water as I could from the tap. I felt like a camel. It is safe to drink tap water in Europe, I had to tell myself every time.

Bottled water was so expensive that the idea of paying for it quenched my thirst.

I was fascinated by old ladies on bicycles. They were immaculately dressed in tunics with floral prints, hats as wide as umbrellas, riding shakily yet exuding the confidence of being in control. I would wonder how long it takes them to dress up. Their sagging lips had layers of red lipstick. Do they have help? Does it keep them distracted from their loneliness when they need support most? Jan told me his paternal grandmother’s story: she was confined to bed for years before she died.

Near Ancenis, between Angers and Nantes, we dined one evening on wine, goat cheese and sausages by the river.

A French couple walked up to us for a chat, and we shared dessert and booze, and smoked pot together. My perception of reality became sharper that evening.

The couple slept in a translucent blue tent ten metres from Passy; I could see their silhouettes dancing in embrace till they switched off their solar torch.

We passed a nuclear reactor in Chinon near Saumur, one of four nuclear plants in the Loire valley. There were three thick, serpent-like clouds arising from a coolant plant. It looked like a direct passage to hell. More so after Jan’s animated 30 December 2013

talk, explaining that nuclear power is not a green source of energy. He has participated in student protests against nuclear power on many freezing nights. In the hope the reactor hadn’t contaminated the river, not far from it, I took a dip.

W

e reached Noirmoutier Island, driving on the ocean floor during low tide. It was a Friday afternoon. On the island, there was a traffic jam but no one honked. It took us a good hour to find a suitable place to park Passy. A five minute walk along a sandy track took us to the beach. On the left of the beach was a long bridge that connected the island to the mainland. Speed boats came from that direction every half an hour to ferry tourists to a nearby island hidden over the horizon.

The beach was very windy. Jan would set off on birding walks with his binoculars. Thousands of migratory birds, identified by Jan as Sanderling, would gather on the beach picking insects. Then they would all fly away in a formation, like a huge kite, casting a shadow on the beach.

They would leave millions of triangular webbed foot marks on the beach that would be washed clean by waves sweeping the coast.

I would go for a jog every now and then.

Rest of the time, I would sit and sketch.

We brewed coffee in the mornings, sipped wine in the evening, watching the sun set. Several times in a day, we would go swimming. We would dive on top of a soaring wave that foamed on hitting the coast. Nudity was not on display here.

The winds were so strong that our wet clothes looked like flags at full mast.

The sun would go down the horizon reluctantly, turning the sky crimson.

W

e were to drive about 1,500 kilome-

tres from Nantes to Berlin. We started on a Sunday morning, and the plan was to reach Berlin by Tuesday evening. We reached the suburbs of Paris on Sunday evening. Instead of entering the city, we reached a farm, drove into the middle of a wheat field as long as the muddy road with tall grass would allow us. Jan checked to see if there was any board prohibiting driving on the road; there wasn’t any. We parked Passy where

the road curved to face a barricade at the tip of a forest. Passy stood under a tree.

We went for a walk. It took us more than an hour-and-a-half to walk around the wheat field, along the forest and come back to Passy. She stood unperturbed in the middle of a lush green agriculture field and thick forest. I wore my boots before dismounting Passy in the darkness that night to empty my bladder. It was a surreal dark silence that was petrifying.

I stood firm for a while, as if resisting being swallowed by a black hole.

We drove to Paris early on Monday morning. It took us a good hour to find a free parking spot. Jan is skilled in doing this. He saved us at least ¤100 in this way.

We took the Métro or Métropolitain and did the ‘touristy’ places. The Arc de Triomphe and Louvre Pyramid were overwhelmed by East Asians. I felt like I was in Shanghai. We had coffee, and roamed around. Jan wanted to get out of here.

Before we climbed the hill to reach the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur, (which translates to ‘holy heart’), in Montmatre, we had a well-earned lunch of beefsteak and wine. When I was done, it didn’t take me long; I felt like a python that had swallowed an antelope.

We left Paris at five in the evening. In three hours, we had reached the French border. A few miles before we were to enter Belgium, a constable stopped the car to conduct a breath-analyser test on Jan. He’d had a glass of wine in the afternoon.

He held his temper and forced a smile; he also passed the test.

In three more hours, we crossed Belgium and reached the German city of Aachen. It was well past midnight and we parked Passy under a tree not far from the road. There was another car parked in front of us. This was the last night we would sleep in Passy’s womb. I went to sleep with this thought in mind.

We drove for a good part of next day to reach Berlin. We stayed at Jan’s brother Florian’s apartment in Frankfurt. I wanted to continue sleeping inside Passy.

Her womb gave me a sense of security that Florian’s couch didn’t. The next two days, we cycled around Berlin, ate Turkish food and bar-hopped. I was the last one to board the flight to Delhi on the late afternoon of 16 August. I had a lump in my throat. n open www.openthemagazine.com 43

Wilbur Sargunaraj

madurai man Wilbur Sargunaraj

sta r d o m

The YouTube Guru of Small Things Meet Wilbur Sargunaraj, the man who showed the world how to use the Eastern toilet Omkar Khandekar

L

ate in the morning of 1 December, at a postcard-perfect bayview restaurant in Mumbai, a young mother walked over to a man a few tables away. Her son’s a big fan of his, she said.

Would he allow a picture? “Of course,” the tall man with a French beard beamed.

Together, they walked over to a side of the patio and posed for the camera-phone.

One could see that the kid looked more flustered than happy. His mother, on the other hand, looked delighted. It was difficult to say who the real fan was.

On seeing this, a woman having a brunch of Caesar salad with her husband at the table next to mine turned to me.

“Who is he?” she asked curiously.

He was a man I had been following for almost three years, a man who has one of the most popular YouTube channels run by an Indian. The answer should have been on the tip of my tongue. But how does one condense the hysteria accumulated over years of online presence into a line or two?

“That is Wilbur Sargunaraj,” I said. “He is the man who teaches you how to do your business on an Indian toilet.” It was an honest answer, but I had to reassure her that I wasn’t joking.

My answer is perhaps not a unique introduction. And to field exactly such queries, he has made a helpful video titled, ‘Who is Wilbur Sargunaraj’.

30 December 2013

“Is he just the toilet man who shows people how to use the Eastern latrine on YouTube?” the voiceover asks.

The voice refers the internet surfer to one of the most popular videos Wilbur has made and starred in: ‘How to use an eastern latrine’. It features a 33-year-old Wilbur, his pants well up to his waist, entering a typical Indian potty and demonstrating the right way to squat, wash and clean. “We take some water, we take the left hand and then we pour,” he says with a deadpan expression.

‘How to use an eastern latrine’ features Wilbur, his pants well up to his waist, entering a typical Indian potty and demonstrating the right way to squat, wash and clean Its success is evident in over 1.3 million views, not to mention the inspired spinoffs that describe the correct way to use European and Japanese toilets. Some of his other videos are titled, ‘How to tie the lungi’, ‘How to eat with the hands’, ‘How to light firecrackers in India’, ‘How to do the shaving Tamil Nadu style’ and ‘How

to drive Aston Martin car in Oman’.

A native of Madurai, Wilbur, now 36, knows where his appeal lies. The only child of a couple working for an NGO for the elderly, Wilbur was schooled in several cities including Varanasi, Darjeeling and Kolkata before he settled in Madurai.

It was back in 2007, during a stint in the hospitality industry, that he started releasing a series of videos that he clubs under the tagline, ‘Making the common extraordinary’. It’s a broad term and Wilbur has made a career of it. In his repertoire are tutorials that teach you how to ride a bullock cart, pluck a coconut and even carry a baby like Africans do (“The baby is folding!” as he puts it).

Then you have Wilbur’s music videos, ranging from the wacky to those bordering on the sublime, like an ode to ‘Chicken 65’ or his irreverent ‘Love Marriage’, each honoured with more than a million views on the internet.

Auto-tune plays a considerable role in Wilbur’s success. As does coconut oil.

S

tring all that together and you

could find yourself at Artisans Centre, an intimate art gallery in south Mumbai, where I found myself catching the premiere of Simple Superstar on a November evening, a biopic that is part autobiography, part road-trip and part open www.openthemagazine.com 45

instructional-video. It was an eye-opener.

They say a camera always adds a few kilos. In our simple superstar’s case, it was the opposite—unlike the lanky man in his videos, I was face-to-face with someone well-built and broad-shouldered at the screening. Yes, the bushy moustache was still there. He was dressed in a white shirt, dark sunglasses and trousers ending in a pair of chappals. He had traded his black trousers for what he called ‘lungipants’, a pair of pyjamas with a texture typical of a lungi.

“Everyone was calling me a superstar,” Wilbur explained. “I wanted to do away with this notion. What is a star? A person who is different from a common person.

So I said, call me a ‘superstar’, but realise that I am a simple person—and that simple is the new cool.”

Cinematically, the biopic is not something to write home about. Starring Wilbur Sargunaraj as himself, it’s a journey of a man who has built an identity for himself by reconnecting his roots and helping others in the process. Up to that point, be it his music or instructional videos, with Wilbur, what you saw was what you got. This movie, however, is a departure from his wafer-thin style of narration and attempts to pick on bullies and the pan-India obsession with fair skin, climaxing with a feel-good message of following your own dreams.

He is no Oprah, but the Wilbur package comes with helpful nuggets on life.

My favourite is his spontaneous discourse in a video released last year that probes poverty. After trawling through slums and sewage canals, speaking to everyone from roadside shopkeepers to pavement dwellers, Wilbur lands at the house of a farmer in a small village. But this time, he is not interested in vox pop.

“Many people are striving to be very very rich. Even poor people want to be rich.

The rich want to be richer,” he begins, before the camera faces a couple of goats tied to a pillar, bleating merrily. “But in life, you should be content as these two goats. See how content they are. They are happy with their life, happy with their food, happy with their house right here.

So be like a goat.”

It’s not easy to put a finger on why Sargunaraj attracts such a vast following with his thick accent, amateurish videos and lyrics that usually take a line and flog 46 open

it throughout the song (the track Please Check My Blog repeats this plea 62 times over four minutes). But it doesn’t matter in Wilburville, where everything is ‘very very first class’, be it the lives of people living in slums or the Mediterranean cuisine he has had for breakfast.

I

n person, Wilbur is nothing like the

buffoon one is led to picture by his antics on the web. His fortunes took to the sky when he decided to go online. Since then, he has accumulated over 29,400 followers on his Facebook page. He is, of course, a YouTube view millionaire.

Outspoken and articulate, he underlines the mantra to his success lucidly: “I really don’t think too much.”

“Nothing gets shelved,” he says.

“Something will just hit me and if I think I can do it, I will. If I look at a theme and go, ‘Oh, that’s funny’, I go ahead and do that. It’s all about having fun.”

Wilbur is an auteur of sorts—conceiving ideas, editing footage, composing music and posting videos, albeit minus a team of minions to get him his filter coffee shaken not stirred

This results in random flights of fancy leading his way. When he thinks of a concept, he sees it through. There is no script to his self-help videos, only the seed of an idea. That’s how he decided to make a video on how to tie a veshti (the Tamilian dhoti), a “tube-like structure”, in the middle of Times Square in New York.

The idea of juxtaposing rural Indian life with hi-glam Western modernity was irresistible, and he flew to the Big Apple to execute it.

His tutorials are the products of one man flying solo. But who manages the camera? “Common people on the street shoot the videos. I randomly go up to them, put [the camera] in their hand and say, ‘Please shoot them.’ I don’t even have a tripod. My mother shot ‘How to eat with hands’. She had to hold the camera for six minutes.” Apart from being a one-

take artist, Wilbur is an auteur of sorts— conceiving ideas, editing footage, composing music and posting videos, albeit minus a team of minions to get him his filter coffee shaken not stirred.

It would be misleading to say Wilbur makes a living of peddling Exotic India.

He also uploads clips with instructions on how to navigate an aeroplane or negotiate some mean Michael Jackson moves.

A cursory glance at his YouTube channel reveals people crowding his comments box with criticism for perpetuating Indian stereotypes. For Wilbur, however, it is about adapting to a new life without losing pride in one’s identity.

“It’s not like I have set out to take Tamil Nadu to the world,” he says, “My roots inspire me to write the songs I sing. In my childhood, I used to visit coconut plantations. There used to be lots of cobras there. That’s where I got the song Cobra Cobra from. Then one day I thought of making a video on climbing such trees to pick a coconut, so I did.”

Robert Stephens, a friend and the coproducer of Simple Superstar, is a Canadian architect who now lives in Mumbai. It took all of three hours for Stephens to decide that he wanted to fund the biopic. It was an investment without any hope of financial returns, he confesses. “Wilbur Sargunaraj is a nobody,” he says. And yet, Stephens dipped into his life savings to fund the entire post-production process. “Before I met him in person, all I knew of him was through his videos. I didn’t know the script of the movie. But I knew that this man had a message that can change a life, a confidence that is out of this world.”

It is a confidence that has taken Wilbur from his debut concert atop a truck in Madurai to packed auditoriums in Toronto. And throughout the journey, he has kept up his campaign to promote cultural intelligence. Years after he made his most famous video, it’s common for people to approach him and ask how to use an Indian-style latrine.

‘What if we are left handed, Wilbur?’ said a recent comment on his ‘How to eat with the hands’ page. Trick question.

Wilbur has already said that it’s impolite to wash yourself with your right hand as that’s what you use to greet people. Pat came his reply, ‘Use the gloves ;)’, smiley wink well in place. n 30 December 2013

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between the sheets

How to Spot a Good Guy Step one: travel with him sonali khan

J

ust like a child gives birth to a mother, the mere idea

of matrimony gives birth to a bride. And just as each mother has a unique parenting style, each bride is different. There are terrified brides, hurricane brides, feminist brides, budget brides, no-frills brides and bridezillas.

And then there’s me—the ravenously hungry bride. In a world of women who go on near-starvation diets even before the wedding date has been set, I’ve been stuffing my face like food is going out of fashion. Bring on the curly fries. Don’t hold the mayo.

If the Boyfriend is hoping I’ll grow into the role of the blushing-and-breathlesswith-excitement bride, he’s in for a long wait. The mere thought of being a married woman results in panic attacks.

I have to admit, the Boyfriend has taken my un-bride-like behaviour in his stride without batting an eyelid. But while he’s happy to pass me the ketchup as I dig into my mountain of fries and wake up in the middle of the night to tell me, for the nth time, that I won’t be a horribly unsatisfactory wife, there’s one thing he won’t let me do—he won’t let me travel alone. I was surprised by the vehemence of his ‘no’ when I announced my travel plans for the next few months.

“No?” I asked, shocked. “You’re not going anywhere alone.” For a second, the single girl in me blazed.

‘I am a woman, hear me roar’ and all that. But then the woman in the relationship took over. I reined in my anger and said breezily, “Then come with me.” He was delighted.

A word of advice to women everywhere: think long and hard before marrying a self-employed man. His spontaneity erupts at the most inconvenient times.

The last couple of months have been a whirlwind of cities, airports, train stations and bus stands. Vacationing together, even for short periods of time, has never been easy for us. I’m a mountain girl and he’s a beach bum. And here we were, talking about a two-month-long expedition.

Minimum distraction of work, poor internet connectivity and no one else for company. Travelling with the Boyfriend made me realise a few things about him and remember some things I’d promised myself earlier this year.

I’ve realised that the Boyfriend is a Good Boy. A really, really good boy. I can say this with such certainty because I’ve dated the other kind. Of the vast catalogue of Y-chromosome mediocrity, I have always, unerringly,

honed in on the shittiest of the lot—popularly known as Bad Boys. More specifically: degenerate gamblers, chronic drinkers, pathological liars, nymphomaniacs and financial pile-ons. My last one was the prize jewel that finally turned me around. After years of dating losers of all stripes and thriving on the emotional drama, the thrill of staying one step ahead, of being impervious to their charms and playing the player, I finally missed a step and got taken in.

All the clichés—the ambiguity of the relationship, the constant rationalising of incongruent behaviour, the ambivalence and emotional posturing, loving and giving too much—came true. And then, as everyone had predicted, I got my heart trampled on. The good thing was it made me realise that since I wasn’t always going to win, I had to stop playing with my heart. Kicking my bad-boy addiction was a lot like kicking my smoking habit. I knew that if I went back for even one last fix, I would never get out. It had to be cold turkey.

And then, I met the Boyfriend. For starters, my friends were massively relieved to see me with someone closer my age than my father’s. He did what he said he’d do and when he’d do it, and when he promised he wouldn’t do something, he didn’t. After a long time, I was with a guy who I trusted enough to leave alone with a child—or a parent, for that matter. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a relationship where you weren’t constantly wondering if the other person really valued your happiness.

He was a shock to my system. And the thought of being the Miss Wrong to my Mr Right was petrifying.

In the last two months, the Boyfriend and I have discussed many things that somehow never get said back home. He admitted that his sudden refusal to let me travel alone was because he was feeling vulnerable and needed me around. A friend had once told me that to know what a person is really like, travel with them. And the thing about a good guy is, when you wake up in the morning after an overnight journey, with a constipated tummy and hair crackling with friction, he will still be there. n

My Good Guy was a shock to my system.

The thought of being Ms Wrong to Mr Right was petrifying

48 open

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

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 30 december 2013

true life

mindspace The Modi Medicine

63

O p e n s pa c e

Hrithik Roshan Abhishek Bachchan

62

n p lu

What the Fish Jackpot

61 Cinema reviews

Nike+ Fuel Band SE El Primero Lightweight Voyager Legend CS

60

Tech & style

Variations in Ageing New Strain of Bird Flu New Catalyst to Split Water

58

Science

Tinkle Keeps Going

56

media

India’s Short at the Oscars

54

cinema

Anees Salim

books

Rugby on a Wheelchair

50 64

going strong Even after decades, Tinkle is nowhere near out of steam 58 ack media/tinkle

true life

Rugby on a Wheelchair

ashish sharma

Six years ago, school swimming champ Riya Gupta dived into the shallow end of the pool by mistake, fractured her neck and was paralysed neck down.

She had no control over her bowels, her fingers were limp, she lost touch with her friends. During sessions of physiotherapy and relearning how to write, she was introduced to Quad Rugby played on wheelchairs. A dozen even got together to form the Indian team, on which she is the only woman. And she made new friends

N

umbness is a feeling I didn’t

know well. I was first introduced to it six years ago. It was 5 September 2007, seconds after I dived into in a swimming pool on hearing my coach’s angry call. As soon as I dived in, my head hit the floor of the pool. I felt something in my neck. It had cracked as the entire weight of my body had fallen on it. I tried to move as I thought I was going to drown. I couldn’t turn and I could barely feel my arms. My friends outside the pool thought I was fooling around, that I was up to some underwater antics. I could hear them call out to me. But no one pulled me out. I then remembered our coach’s instructions to move our legs as if cycling in water, to avoid drowning. I tried moving. Nothing happened. I could not feel my legs.

I had been a swimming champion in school and I knew all the four strokes.

I was in Class VIII when the accident happened. There was an inter-school championship in a week’s time, and my coach wanted me to practise well.

Our school didn’t have a swimming pool, but we would hire a pool close by for practice. We also had a social studies exam the next day. I remember

one of a kind Riya is the only woman on the Indian Quad Rugby team 30 December 2013

feeling unwell, not really up to either. I tried my luck with the coach, requesting an exemption from practice that day. He refused. In the dressing room, I was praying that the exam be cancelled, and was rather muddled in my thoughts when I stepped out.

I heard my coach asking me to jump angrily. I dived straight into the pool, without noticing that I was at the shallow-end of the pool and the water was barely three-feet deep.

When I came to, I was in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital. My friends and coach pulled me out of the water and took me to a hospital nearby once they realised I was injured. My parents were informed by the school.

I had a fracture on my neck, which had damaged cervical vertebrae C-5 and C-6. The nerves around these vertebrae, called cervical nerves, are extremely fragile, just like noodles, and cannot be operated upon. The accident left me paralysed neck down. I had no sensation in my torso, arms and legs.

My fingers had gone limp and I had no control over my bowel movement.

This disability is called quadriplegia. My life changed within a few seconds of that dive. At the age of 13, I was bound to a wheelchair for life.

I was in the hospital for 23 days, before I was sent home. The school paid partially for the expenses, but my par-

ents didn’t know what to do. None of us had really processed what had happened, I had thought of it as just another injury from which I’d recover soon. We were in denial, and my mother took me for all kinds of treatment.

We tried homeopathy, ayurveda, even acupressure. My youngest brother, Dhruv, was barely two years old at the time, and my mother would have to leave him with our relatives. My younger brother, Aditya, was ten and my parents had to put him in a government-aided boarding school because there was no one to take care of him.

My father worked with a property dealer and his salary could not pay for my treatment; the school refused to help us after we left the hospital. We decided to put out a request for monetary help through a helpline number.

A doctor responded to this and came forward to help. He explained the nature of the injury to us and told us that all our efforts to find a ’cure’ were futile. We had to stop running around like headless chicken. He asked me accept the fact that I would never recover, and referred me to the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) in Vasant Kunj, Delhi.

In the meanwhile, my father decided to move court as the school refused to provide any monetary help. He filed a case through Delhi open www.openthemagazine.com 51

High Court lawyer Ashok Aggarwal; in 2012, the High court ordered the school to pay damages worth Rs 8.5 lakh. During this period, I lost touch with most of my school friends. Due to the case in court, our teachers had forbidden them from contacting me.

The school authorities had threatened to fail them if they did. Most of them gradually got busy with school and exams and I was left alone, missing school and friends.

We first went to ISIC in 2008. I started taking physiotherapy sessions to strengthen my muscles. That was also a time when I had started feeling sorry for myself, but walking into ISIC always felt different. There were people like me—most of them were wheelchair bound. Some would be happy and cheerful while some would be depressed. I heard stories of how they landed there, in the waiting hall of the centre, just as I did. Suddenly, my problems didn’t feel so bad at all.

At the Centre, I learnt how to operate the wheelchair. It had become an important part of my life after the accident but I dreaded it. I learnt to ‘be friends’ with it and now it functions like a limb for me. I learnt how to reconstruct a new life and be more independent. I learnt how to change my clothes and turn around while lying down. Since my fingers had become completely dysfunctional, I had to relearn how to write. I can now write by holding a pen with both hands and do most of Aditya’s project-work. No one can tell that it has been done by a quadriplegic patient.

It was here that I was introduced to Quad Rugby. Also known as Wheel Chair rugby, it is a Paralympic sport meant for people with limb-related difficulties. The sport involves two teams; each team has up to 12 players.

However, only four—two ‘attackers’ and two ‘defenders’—from each team can play at a time on court. The defenders have to carry the rugby ball to their goal post, dodging the attackers who ‘wedge’ their wheelchairs in the defenders’ wheelchair to prevent them from doing so. It is a pretty rough game, like normal rugby is. I am a ‘de52 open

fender and the youngest on my team.

I was introduced to the sport by American filmmaker Jonathan Sigworth, who became a quadriplegic after he was injured as a unicycler in Mussourie. He was at the Centre in 2008, and told us about the sport,

in 2012, the Delhi High court ordered the school to pay damages worth Rs 8.5 lakh.

During this period, I lost touch with most of my school friends.

Due to the case in court, our teachers had forbidden them from contacting me. The school authorities had threatened to fail them if they did

which is very popular in the United States. A bunch of us got interested and started practising with him. I also made a group of friends—all boys and older than me. When we realised that the sport was part of international

championships, we formed a team and started playing seriously. Twelve of us, with members from cities like Delhi, Ghaziabad and Pune, now make up the Indian team. Jonathan, who shuttles between India and the States, has made a film on us. It is called More than Walking.

We played our first demo match with Brazil in Delhi and visited South Korea in November to participate in the Paralympic Games held there. It was my first international trip, and I made it without taking any help from my family. They are extremely proud of me. Since I am the only girl on my team, everyone in South Korea recognised me from the film. There are very few girls who play this sport in Asia.

The best part about playing Quad Rugby is that I have made a new set of friends. We meet at the Centre every Saturday and practise the game.

Sometimes, we plan trips like lunch at a mall or a picnic at India Gate. I love watching movies, but the last movie I saw was Salman Khan’s Ready in 2011.

Very few of our theatres have facilities for wheelchairs; the ones that do are very expensive; tickets can be priced at Rs 1,200 on a weekend.

I am trying to complete Class XII through open school, and I am hoping to go to college soon. I am 19 and most of my friends are already through their second year of college. But I am wary of planning ahead now. Sometimes I still wonder what happened six years ago. Most of my friends at the Centre talk about how their past bad deeds or thoughts may have caused their injuries. I don’t know what I did to be like this.

My mother has plastered one part of a wall in my room with pictures of deities, believing that they will look after me. I feel I wouldn’t have been like this if the gods were looking out for me, so I have decided to keep them at a distance in my life. I would rather have posters of Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan in my room, but my mom will not allow this. n As told to Aanchal Bansal 30 December 2013

Books ‘Writers these days write to be seen, not read’ For years, Anees Salim nursed his introversion and dealt with rejection by starting new novels. This year, four of them found publishers AKSHAYA PILLAI

A

sivaram v.

nees Salim’s office resembles

a blank page. The walls are bare, the desk uncluttered, and there is a comfortable silence, unbroken even by the door’s swinging open. It is 10 am and Anees Salim has just made his 10 km drive to work. On Facebook, Salim has 2,274 friends and often a quirky status like: ‘The first get-together of Cochin Club of Introverts happened last evening. As expected, nobody turned up.’ In real life, he is invisible. And until a few weeks ago, no one really cared.

But now, Roy, the office boy at ad agency Draftfcb+Ulka Kochi, is busy making tea for visitors at odd hours.

Salim describes himself as a recluse.

“Writers these days write to be seen, not to be read.” Salim isn’t one of them; he hasn’t done one book reading, hates literary fests, and doesn’t attend parties or weddings—anything except funerals. At a funeral, where he can lurk and eavesdrop without being forced into conversation, he is at ease. “There is a scene in Vanity Bagh where I have described the ornately lit house of a boy who has committed suicide. [That] is from an old memory of a funeral.”

Vanity Bagh tells the story of a young man named Imran Jabbari. Confined inside a prison cell, away from all things familiar, Imran recounts memories of his hometown as he binds notebooks day after day. When Imran recalls his life in a Muslim mohalla, he sees, on the blank pages he is binding, words that had once been uttered by someone from his neighbourhood.

These are often quotes from the ‘mad lady outside the masjid’, Salma Aunty, a random defence lawyer, or from a member of the protagonist’s family.

Some are in the form of conversations that take place at a local poetry club.

“I just wanted to convey... that even an ordinary person like your sabziwala is also worth quoting,” he says.

30 december 2013

I’d read The Vicks Mango Tree when it first came out, having heard the story of his finding publishers for four of his books almost simultaneously. With its emotional range and loony characters, Salim’s debut novel was a page turner.

The characters come back to me swiftly.

Especially Rabia Sheik—noting down recipes that flowed from the transistor, having conversations in her mind with a radio jockey, writing long letters to her mother despite receiving no replies, staring for hours at a patch of moss on the wall outside her window, diligently taking notes about freedom and the Emergency from pamphlets.

Set in the Emergency years, The Vicks Mango Tree looks at the lives of five inhabitants of an apartment complex.

“The Emergency was a topic I had always wanted to write about. I was about five when the Emergency was proclaimed. I heard people talk about those who never came back from captivity. Those reports stayed with me...

On a personal [level], I was scared of Mrs Gandhi as a child,” he says. Salim rarely smiles, and when he does, it is involuntary, perhaps even crafty.

The manuscript for the book did the rounds of publishing houses, but always came back to him. Salim had already learnt to reject rejections. “Every time I was rejected, I started writing another book. That’s how I killed the pain of rejection. Soon I realised that it was the best way to stay focused.”

Waiting in the Kochi airport for a flight to Mumbai in 2009, Salim noticed a woman behind a coffee machine.

Purdah-clad and shy, she served coffee, sorted change and stared at suitcases as flights took off above her into the clouds. He wondered about the irony.

“She watches people march in and out of the airport, hiding her nervousness.

She can see it all but [is still] a world apart. So I decided to write her story.”

He created a virtual identity for ‘Hasina Mansoor’, fleshing her out through Facebook status messages.

Many concerned her daily activities or exchanges with family members: ‘Just back from a family picnic at the beach. Had lots of ice cream and cotton candies. Built a very nice sandcastle with a cute tower.

When it turned warmer Papa ventured 30 december 2013

into the sea, swimming fast and growing smaller and smaller. Then a bloody wave brought him back!’ Others helped established her naiveté: ‘Nita Pilla’s grandpa died on his birthday. And only I had the presence of mind to stand by his body and sing Happy birthday to you!’

People befriended her, mistook her for real. Writer-activist Meena Kandasamy applauded her: ‘girl you are dope! or whatever addictive things there are, out there! can’t seem to pull myself away from your status messages.’

Then Salim wrote to a literary agent under her name: ‘My name is Hasina Mansoor, and I have been a part of the Indian aviation industry for the last couple of years. No, I am neither an airhostess nor someone you will find behind a check-in counter. You will find me somewhere between the workplaces of these two. I am a sales girl at a

“I grew up in solitude. I was not familiar with Kerala... so any place was fine to write about, but in my imagination I lived in a land known for its mangoes. In that sense, Mangobaag is my hometown” tea vending machine. The immediate neighbour of this vending machine is a well-stocked bookstall, and the sight of books has inspired me to write. Tales from a Vending Machine is my life story, though I sincerely wish it happened to someone I hate. Would you like to read a few chapters?’

What he hadn’t been able to achieve in over a decade, Hasina managed in mere minutes. Kanishka Gupta, the agent, wrote back immediately, requesting chapters, and ended up selling four of his books in a single year. Tales… and Vicks Mango Tree were picked up

by HarperCollins. Soon after, Vanity Bagh was signed by Picador and The Blind Lady’s Descendents, out early next year, by Tranquebar. But Salim says he isn’t happy with Tales…: “It was a commercial novel and I am not doing anything of that sort again.”

Salim provokes comparisons with

RK Narayan. Satirical, imaginative and innocent, his books are a step removed from reality. His narrative of a lifetime in jail comes not from firsthand experience so much as imaginative speculation: “My uncle worked with the jail department, and I stayed with [him] for some time as a boy. We stayed in the prison quarters opposite the jail and those days some of the prisoners would come over to our place to do some gardening.”

There seem to be insinuations of a Hindu-Muslim divide in all his books.

This, he says, is not a misreading.

“Ours is a pseudo secular country and I am convinced that there is a Hindu-Muslim divide. They mock each other on a daily basis. I think there is something very nice about this pretence. Most of my novels are set in fictitious places that are similar to the Muslim colonies of Hyderabad or Delhi.”

Indeed, all his published books are set in imaginary towns and quaint mohallas. “I was 16 when I read Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris,” he explains, “Ever since, I have fancied places with big names, names that have a character.” Mangobaag is a recurring name in two of his novels. That, he says, has to do with the fact that he “grew up in forced solitude”: “I was not very familiar with the landscapes of Kerala either. So any place was fine to write about, but in [my] imagination, I lived in a land known for its mangoes.

In that sense, Mangobaag is my hometown. But the next [of my novels] to be published is set in Varkala, which is my actual hometown.” He is referring to The Blind Lady’s Descendants, a suicide note that runs for 300 pages. That will be his fourth novel. After that, he plans to revive a manuscript he completed at the age of 20.

During the seven years he worked on The Vicks Mango Tree, Salim’s greatest fear was of dying with a tower of type-written sheets by his side—a fear he channelled into the book through Teacher Bhatt, who grows old with a tattered manuscript, waiting for Fame.

“Now, my biggest fear is dying halfway through a manuscript,” he laughs— out loud this time. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

CINEMA India’s Short at the Oscars Twenty-two-year-old Bombay native Subhashish Bhutiani has always wanted to make films. Now, his short film Kush is in the running for an Oscar omkar khandekar

S

hubhashish Bhutiani is anxious at the prospect of talking about himself for 90 minutes.

“What do you want to know?” asks the 22-year-old filmmaker. “Seedha saadha ladka hoon main (I am a simple guy).” It has taken nearly two weeks of email exchange to pin him down to a date and time. Shubhashish has been flooded with screening requests from film festivals. He has also been coordinating with cast, crew, festival managers and his producer parents to get his debut film Kush maximum visibility.

Being shortlisted for an Oscar does that to you, I suppose.

Speaking over Skype, I can see the exhaustion writ large on his face; the contents of his white coffee cup having to work extra hard to keep him going. It is the second week of December, and Subhashish is in New York City at an apartment he shares with a friend. He has had a long night at the South Asian Film Festival, where Kush premiered the previous evening. As we speak, he admits counting the days till he is back in Mumbai, his hometown.

“I wanna just read a book or something,” he says. “Maybe watch a movie.

I am tired. Maybe I will just go to Goa.” A much-deserved break for a guy who has spent every vacation since the age of 16 working on a film set.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he studied filmmaking for four years, Shubhashish has devoted the better part of the last year-and-a-half to the single-minded pursuit of perfecting his 25-minute thesis.

Set in 1984, Kush is a time capsule of the turbulent period that saw widespread violence against Sikhs after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Lavishly shot and crisply edited, the bittersweet drama unfolds in the hills of North India, the 56 open

geography established only by the accents of characters. It is the tale of a teacher struggling to shield the 17 children she has taken on a field trip from the communal frenzy endangering the life of her only Sikh student, Kush.

Kush is a true story, says the director, based on the experience of his economics teacher. She had mentioned the incident in passing during one of her classes at Woodstock School in Mussoorie, and though it had lodged itself in his mind then, it was only a year later, in his final year at school, that Shubhashish realised the story’s cinematic appeal. Since then, he had been chewing on the idea, always one step short of taking the ambitious project head on.

Kush is about a teacher’s struggle to shield a Sikh student from violence in 84.

It is based on the experience of Subhashish’s high school economics teacher Shot on the fringes of Mumbai and Lonavla, the shoot took all of five days in January earlier this year. The next five months were spent at the chopping board, putting the film together. “We were rolling all the time,” says Shubhashish, which is why the editing was a gargantuan task.

All that effort seems to have paid off, however. Kush has made it to the final ten films in the running for an Academy Award for Best Short Film.

O

n a bookshelf in Subhashish’s

sparse room in New York, between an 8 mm film projector and what looks like a small treasure chest, is a type-

writer. “Sometimes, I do it for fun,” he says on being asked if his approach to writing is old school. “I feel cool when I do it.”

He is at ease with himself, admitting he is as much in awe of the works of Wong Kar Wai and Asghar Farhadi as he is of the chick-flick Mean Girls. “I love Mean Girls. I can quote Mean Girls.

It’s great filmmaking,” he says, and you know he’s not just being gallant.

During his time in the United States, the running joke was to associate him with whatever Indian stereotype was the flavour of the season. Over the years, he has answered to all kinds of names—Slumdog, Pi and now, Miss America. “All of us are the biggest racists with each other,” he laughs, referring to his college friends. All bases were covered during their graduation ceremony when the speakers burst into the song Jai Ho. Having been a writer for several years, filmmaking was a natural progression for Shubhashish. At the age of 16, Vishal Bhardwaj took him under his wing for a brief while on the sets of Kaminey. The sheer amount of work was an eye-opener, shattering his romantic notions of filmmaking. But this only spurred him on, and a year later, in his final year of school, he directed a cast and crew of 100 people in a stageadaptation of Peter Pan. Seeing this, his parents began to think differently about his career trajectory.

“My dad said, ‘Math toh aata nahi hai, science nahi kar sakta, history mein kuch kar nahi sakte, economics mein duba dega. Filmein bana’ (You can’t handle mathematics, science, history or economics. Go make films),” he chuckles. “But honestly, it’s all I have known.

Every time I have spoken to my dad, even when I was I was a kid, we used to talk about movies. I like working with people. So it was right up my alley.”

30 december 2013

ritesh uttamchandani

stereo what? During his college years in New York, Subhashish has answered to ‘Slumdog’, ‘Pi’ and ‘Miss America’; “We’re the biggest racists with each other,” he laughs

Shubhasish doesn’t think much about all the aces his film has been scoring. Kush has festivals in Moscow, Tokyo and Milan lined up for the next two months, but Subhashish shrugs all that off: “I’m just lucky right now.”

“I have seen the movie so many times. Last night I saw it again at the festival. I couldn’t watch it. I saw so many mistakes in it. If you ask me what I was doing yesterday, I was editing the film. I do that because if I see flaws, I don’t want to ignore [them].”

Back in school, Shubhasish would never have imagined he would find himself at the geek table. But college changed that. “Everywhere I went, I had a backpack with me. I had a laptop. I had two books at all times. I could be bored of one book but I’d have another option. I’d always have five or six DVDs. That was like my woman’s bag with all the essentials in it. That’s what New York provided me—I didn’t have to think of anything but movies,” he says.

It took him almost two years to write Kush, while simultaneously battling other demons—not just budgetary constraints, but also the logistics and sheer scale of the movie. He was bent on getting everything right, but he was still short of a cinematographer to complement his vision. A month into his thesis, he found the perfect fit.

30 december 2013

“One day, I was moving from the dorms to my first apartment in New York. I had packed my suitcases and it started raining. The apartment was five or six blocks away. The bags were heavy, so [I was going to drag them] all the way because paise bachane hain taxi ke (to save money on a taxi). Then I saw a car pull up in front of the dorm.

[Inside] I [saw] this guy who I [knew] from the elevators. I said, ‘Look, I will give you 10 bucks or 20 bucks or two beers or something, can you drop me to my apartment?’ He looked irritated but dropped me to my place.”

“That’s the first time I met Mike Sweeny,” says Shubhashish. “He is the man I call on a rainy day.”

“T

he first time he told me the

story, I told him we should abandon it,” says Sanjay Bhutiani, owner of Red Carpet Moving Pictures, producer of Kush and Subhashish’s father. We are sitting in the living room of his seventh floor apartment in Jogeshwari.

The winged lion trophy Subhashish won for Best Short Film at Venice looks regally down at us from the showcase, along with various other awards his son has won for direction and acting.

Shubhashish is looking resolutely away, visibly awkward at the full-throttle praise his parents have been lavish-

ing on him all through the meeting.

“I loved the script. But if we were talking of so many people, we couldn’t afford it,” explains Bhutiani senior.

But Shubhashish was bent on making it happen. It took three grants from his cinema school and a generous contribution from his grandfather for the project, budgeted at around Rs 10 lakh, to unfurl.

When his son started landing the grants, Sanjay had a change of heart.

The prospect of flying Sweeny down from the US, hiring a lighting technician from Sweden and assembling a cast and crew of over 60 people was taken in stride.

With parents who have matched every one birthday wish over the years— from a Walkman to a portable DVD player to an iPod to a camera and finally, his labour of love Kush—it is little surprise when Shubhashish says, “I am very fortunate.” The most substantial obstacle to his passion was in high school, when his hostel warden would repeatedly confiscate his portable DVD player. “That’s my struggle story,” he grins. “It was an endless Tom & Jerry [show] going on.”

So far, it’s been smooth sailing. But now, the family’s focus is locked on 16 January 2014, 5 pm IST, when the final five Oscar nominations for Best Short Film will be announced. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

media

Neverending Tinkle Times Old favourites Suppandi and Shikari Shambu are still around, but the 33-yearold magazine also has contemporary characters like the vampire who’s lost his fangs Aastha Atray Banan

R

ajani Thindiath, editor of

Tinkle, talks about one of the magazine’s most-loved characters, Suppandi, almost like he is a real person. “You know you might be mistaken to think he is a buffoon, but he is not–he is just simple. He takes everything literally.” We all remember Suppandi as the servant who goofs up with the simplest of tasks. Ask him to get a box of matchsticks that are the best quality, he will light each one to check and then hand it over to you.

But, those who have not revisited the magazine since their childhood will be a little shocked to know that Suppandi is no longer just a servant. He has already played characters like a copywriter and an archaeologist’s assistant.

In the 33rd anniversary issue of the children’s magazine, he appears as a brand ambassador for a Visa card.

Tinkle turned 33 recently and remains a popular children’s magazine in India. Manas Mohan, the CEO and publishing director of Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd, which owns Tinkle, claims it sells almost 300,000 copies a month, making it the highest selling English comic in India. Founded by the late Anant Pai in 1980, popularly known as Uncle Pai by young readers, Tinkle gathered readership due to the appeal of characters such as Suppandi, Tantri the Mantri and Shikari Shambu.

The emphasis in the magazine was on learning in a fun way, and wholesome clean stories with a message that kids could take home.

Not much has changed in the magazine’s philosophy over the years. The editor says, “There is no need to change something that’s not broken.”

58 open

There are some aesthetic changes, and a host of new characters have made their debut. The animation is funkier and the colours are brighter. The characters are also keeping up with the times–there are the Super Weirdos, who all have weird super powers, and the heroine is Aisha, whose super weird power is that she starts jiggling when she is near a person with another super weird power. There is also a series called ‘Dental Diaries’, where a young vampire loses his fangs when he attacks his dentist —after that, there is nothing for him to

They follow a few basic rules: the story has to be enjoyable, there can be no violence (not even a drop of blood may be shed), it needs to reflect the modern child’s world in deed and language do but look for his fangs, and all his adventures arise out of that problem.

Even the older characters have undergone some changes—Suppandi now plays awesome characters, Shikari Shambu has turned into a conservationist, and Tantri the Mantri is now using modern gadgets to still try and kill King Hooja off, but, as before, without much success.

Thindiath and her team of writers sit down every month and decide what their characters will do this month.

They follow a few basic rules: the story has to be enjoyable; there can be no vio-

lence (not even a drop of blood may be shed); and it needs to reflect the modern child’s world in deed and language.

Much like Archie and its slang, Tinkle has it own slang. Sample, ‘Blooming jalopies’. “We invent our own words,” says the editor. The stories also need to have a message. “In the older issues, the message was clearly spelt out at the end, but we sort of embed it in the stories so that a child can choose to adopt it if [s/he] wants. For example, the message behind Super Weirdos is that it’s okay to be weird or an oddball, that’s who you are. Everyone has a role to play in the world despite however weird you are,” she says. There is also no space for superstition and religion in the magazine. “We are completely secular. Even our names like Aisha and Kabir can be from any religion. Tinkle is all about inclusiveness.”

Once the stories are done, the art team takes over and characters are sketched and coloured. “It’s all such a fun process. As writers, we are not just writing, but we have to see the whole story in our head. What is the reaction of a character—does she wince, does she smile?”

Abhijeet Kini, a freelance illustrator who has worked with Tinkle ever since 2004, remembers his interactions with Anant Pai. “I used to always draw big expressive eyes, and one day, just to mix it up, I drew dots as eyes, and Uncle Pai was like ‘Nooo, kids will never get this. Go back to drawing expressive eyes.’”

Uncle Pai created the original characters, which got Tinkle tremendous popularity. As you walk into the magazine’s Mumbai office, you see his char30 december 2013

ack media/tinkle

the old and the new (Clockwise from top) The vampire from ‘Dental Diaries’, Shikari Shambu; the Defective Detectives and Supandi

acters on each wall and are instantly reminded of your childhood. Thindiath says, “I remember he once wrote ‘good’ on a script I had written and I was happy all day. He was always ready with a kind word and a shloka, he knew many by heart. He was a disciplinarian as well and always wanted things to be done the right way.”

Other Tinkle legends include founding editor Subba Rao, who created ‘Anwar’, which is about a young boy and his antics. He based the boy’s behaviour and actions on his own four30 december 2013

year-old, Siddharth. He also adapted Suppandi from the Tamil folk character, Chappandi. There is also artist Vasant Halbe, who was the man who decided that Shikari Shambu’s eyes would be perpetually hidden by his hat.

The people most important to Tinkle are the children who read it and write in. “Uncle Pai used to answer every letter, and we try to do the same,” says Thindiath. Almost every page has a letter by a child on the top margins, as the magazine doesn’t want to disappoint any of the kids who have writ-

ten in. The most popular attractions among children are Suppandi, Shikari Shambu, Dental Diaries, Tantri the Mantri and Super Weirdos, in that order. The Anniversary issue also has a story written by an ardent reader, Rohit, a tale about the sisters Ina, Mina, Mynah and Mo, who always ask their father for something he never wants to splurge on. Manas Mohan says, “The new Tinkle is less straitjacketed and very well developed. It’s through the children who read us that we move along with the times.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

science

bird flu No vaccine is currently available to prevent H7N9. In the absence of a vaccine, antiviral drugs are the only means of defence for patients who are infected with new strains of the flu

Variations in Ageing Various plant and animal species age differently; some in fact grow stronger and more fertile

New Strain of Bird Flu

A

s the popular perception of

ageing goes, humans and animals are strongest when they are young. As they age, they start becoming physically weak, their fertility declines and their chances of dying increase. In short, ageing follows a fixed pattern: mortality increases with age, while fertility decreases.

However, according to a new research study, this is not the standard pattern of ageing in nature.

The research, which was published in Nature, was conducted by a group of Danish-led scientists to better understand the process of ageing in nature. They studied 46 species of animals and plants, including mammals, vertebrates and invertebrates.

This is considered one of the widest ranges of species ever studied to examine the process of ageing. Most previous research work has concentrated on mammals and birds.

According to the findings, animal species age, reproduce and die following such staggeringly different patterns that there does not appear to be a single coherent theory to explain the process of ageing. In addition to showing that some animals have a decreasing risk of dying as they age, 60 open

the study also shows that other species, such as the freshwater polyp hydra, exhibit constant mortality throughout life. These species are found to remain as though biologically immortal, experiencing no bodily decay with age, and reproducing with the same rate over a lifespan.

They die usually when consumed by predators. Others, like the freshwater crocodile, are seen to become more fertile with age, while the desert tortoise becomes less likely to die as it ages. The researchers found that humans are unique in exhibiting a relatively short period of fertility followed by a relatively long period of life.

Explaining that ageing remains a poorly understood phenomenon, the researchers write in the journal: ‘To understand the evolution of ageing, age patterns of mortality and reproduction need to be compared for species across the tree of life. However, few studies have done so and only for a limited range of taxa... Although it has been predicted that evolution should inevitably lead to increasing mortality and declining fertility with age after maturity, there is great variation among these species.’ n

Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reported that a virulent new strain of influenza—the virus that causes the flu—appears to retain its ability to cause serious disease in humans even after it develops resistance to antiviral medications. Mutations usually come at a cost to the influenza virus, weakening its ability to replicate and spread from one person to another, but investigators found that a drug-resistant H7N9 virus (an avian strain of influenza A that emerged in China last spring) retained its ability to replicate itself in human respiratory cells and was comparable to a non-resistant form of the virus in producing severe illness in animal models. n

New Catalyst to Split Water

According to a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at University of Houston have found a catalyst that can quickly generate hydrogen from water using sunlight, potentially creating a clean and renewable source of energy. Photocatalytic water-splitting experiments have been tried since the 1970s, but this was the first to use cobalt oxide and also the first to use neutral water under visible light at a high energy conversion efficiency without co-catalysts or sacrificial chemicals. The idea has potential as a source of renewable fuel, but at a solar-tohydrogen efficiency rate of around 5 per cent, the conversion rate is still too low for commercial viability. n 30 december 2013

fitbit inc ...is an American company known for its products of the same name, which are activity trackers, wireless-enabled wearable devices that measure things like the number of steps walked, quality of sleep and other personal metrics

tech&style

Nike+ Fuel Band SE This gizmo tracks how often and how intensely you move

Elw Primero Lightweight

Price on request

gagandeep Singh Sapra $149

Issued in a 100-piece limited edition, Zenith’s El Primero Lightweight model teams a titanium and silicon movement with a sporty carbon case. Equipped with a sweep seconds hand making ten jumps per second and a complete turn of the dial every ten seconds, this chronograph measures and displays tenths of a second with extreme precision.

The inner structure of its case is made of ceramised aluminium. n

T

hough Nike’s second generation Fuel Band SE looks and feels exactly as the original that was released nearly two years ago, Nike has managed to tweak a few things to make it more interesting. The first thing you notice about the Fuel Band SE is its colour trims; you can choose full black, total crimson, volt or pink foil. For an additional $20, you can go for the limited edition rose gold variant.

With the original Fuel Band, one had to spend about a minute going through various menu options to get the time. With the SE, one just have to double-click the home button.

The SE’s dotted LED display changes brightness with the ambient light and is bright enough to be read in broad daylight.

The problem with the original Fuel Band was the need to recharge every second or third day. The SE takes care of that bother by increasing the battery life to over a week. Nike has also introduced Bluetooth Low Energy that allows the SE to communicate

30 december 2013

with your iPhone in real time, so no more pressing buttons or waiting for it to sync.

What has also changed with the SE is its software; now you can divide your workouts into sessions; so if you ran 5 km in the morning followed by a session of squash, the software can track each session, thus giving you better analysis on how you burn your calories and what works best for you.

The social side of the app has also changed; you can now put your friends in groups: say, a group for your tennis buddies and another for your weekend cycling friends. You can keep track of how you are performing with your friends.

The Fuel Band SE is water resistant like the first edition, but you still can’t go for a swim wearing it. And it still lags other devices on the sleep monitoring bit, on which Fitbit has managed to excel.

This device, which measures whole-body movement, is available in three sizes and is still one of the best looking wearables around. n

Voyager Legend CS

Rs 12,000

This Bluetooth headset system is designed for the upwardly mobile office worker.

The Voyager Legend CS blends all the features of the Voyager family—from its precisely tuned audio, smart sensor technology and intuitive voice enabled controls—with connectivity for both your mobile phone and desk phone.

When your phone rings, you can either bring the headset to your ears or pick the phone: the system detects which unit you are using.

The headset also allows you to roam up to 10 metres away from your phone and features seven-hour talk time, with 11-day standby time. The headset features a precision tuned triple-microphone with enhanced DSP for superior noise cancellation. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

open www.openthemagazine.com 61

CINEMA

the k apadia sister s Dimple Kapadia’s younger sister Simple is an actress, though better known as a costume designer. Indeed, she worked on 15 films as a designer while her acting credits extend to only three films. Another sister, Reem, is also an actress; she acted in a film called Haveli

What the Fish It starts out breezy with some laugh-out-loud moments but gets clichéd pretty quickly ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Jackpot Director Kaizad Gustad cast Naseeruddin Shah, Sunny Leone,

Liam Hemsworth Score ★★★★★

dia , anand Cast dimple kapa hi, sumit puri ris nu ma i, ar tiw et singh Director gurmme

T

hough it strangles itself with

too many characters, What the Fish starts off as a breezy film with a few laugh-out-loud moments. We go down the ‘Punjaban Delhi’ comedy trail with a story about a fish called ‘Mishti’.

Senior citizen Sudha Mishra (Dimple Kapadia) is going out of town for a while and needs someone to feed her fish and water her money-plant. So she leaves her Vasant Kunj home in the charge of Sumit (Sumit Suri), the fiancé of her niece.

Though Sudha was apparently married at some point, we don’t actually see the husband, dead or alive. The fish is her focus. She baby-talks ‘Mishti’ and counts her spots, even as she harangues every creature of our own lesser species.

She leaves home, with strict instructions to Sumit on feeding frequency and water changes. But he is a fuzzy brained drifter who throws a wild party on the first day he is left alone.

Thereafter, it’s open house for anyone

62 open

who needs a place to ‘crash’.

Poor ‘Mishti’ is doomed. She is a friendly parrot fish, but every new resident at the house causes her sad demise, and then callously replaces her with an exact copy from the neighbourhood aquarium fish dealer. When Sudha returns, she senses that the spots don’t add up. How could they?

This is the fourth avatar of Mishti.

Up to a point the film is funny, but the serial occupiers of the house get progressively vulgar and demented, and there are just too many of them.

The upwardly mobile ‘Delhiwalla’ started off as an amusing character in Hindi cinema some years ago, but s/he has now become as caricatured as the tipsy Goan and the mad Parsi of earlier times .

The Sudha Mishra character is written as over-the-top, but Dimple Kapadia is a very fine actress who lets us understand that Sudha’s eccentricity is probably put on, a defence mechanism to hide her loneliness. n

Kaizad Gustad has his casting coup in getting Naseeruddin Shah to co-star with the remarkable Sunny Leone, but little else.

He hasn’t bothered to write a script. All you have in Jackpot is a casino on a boat called Jackpot, owned by a Don called Boss (Shah). He struts around in outlandish clothes, brandishes a six-shooter and is accompanied by a well proportioned lady flunky called Maya (Leone).

The idea is to present Goa as this idyllic paradise with a dark underbelly. The film is shot in Goa during the monsoon; the sea is rough, the skies are gloomy and it is windy and wet. Foreign ‘investors’ are hovering around, waiting to put money in a ‘Disneyland in Goa’. Boss is the conduit for funds to the project, because he knows where land is available and because he is friendly in a kick-back sort of way with the sleazy Chief Minister of the State.

So the idea is decent enough for a thriller, but there is no coherent story to back it up. Maya and her lover Francis (Sachin Joshi) try to hoodwink each other to get Boss’ money, and, frankly, you really don’t care who does. The film just drifts aimlessly till it runs out of gas.

Director Gustad needs to get his act together as a filmmaker and Naseer needs to be much more selective about the roles he accepts. n ad

30 december 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Asking for His Own Encore

Twitter can be a harsh place, as Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra have realised since the campaign for Dhoom 3 unfolded a few weeks ago. Catty tweeters have made innumerable jokes about Abhishek and Uday’s diminishing prominence in each of the Dhoom movies, and their likely insignificance in the latest installment, which stars Aamir Khan as the antagonist and Katrina Kaif as his leading lady.

So much so that Abhishek made it a point to assert his position and role in the franchise during a recent interview, in which he was quoted as saying that “Dhoom is my film and I am the hero. Nobody can take that away from me.” Referring specifically to the fact that each film in the series has added more popular stars to feature alongside Uday and himself (John Abraham, Hrithik Roshan & Aishwarya Rai, Aamir & Katrina), Abhishek added: “You can be the biggest or the smallest star, but Dhoom is about Jai and Ali. It’s as simple as that. If the characters of Jai and Ali are not in Dhoom, the film won’t be there.”

Ouch! An actor scorned…

The Big Bollywood Break-up

The news of Hrithik Roshan and his wife Sussanne’s separation—announced last week by the actor in an official statement—couldn’t have come as a surprise to filmwaalas, who’d been murmuring about their troubled marriage for months. The cracks became clear for all to see when word got around that Sussanne had, in fact, moved out of Hrithik’s home some months ago, or when she arrived for father-in-law Rakesh Roshan’s 70th birthday party with her parents and sister, and posed reluctantly with Hrithik for pictures.

In the US undergoing treatment for his still-not-fully-recovered cranium when he released the statement, Hrithik was reportedly keen to make the facts known before his upcoming thirteenth wedding anniversary. If anything, fans and industryfolk alike were surprised by the tone of the actor’s statement, in which he makes it clear that the split was his wife’s choice.

‘Sussanne has decided to separate from me after our 17 year 30 december 2013

relationship...’ the statement begins.

Sussanne, who quickly issued her own statement the following day, insisted that both her husband and she were committed to ensuring that their two sons were raised with love, and repeated Hrithik’s plea to the media asking for them to be allowed their privacy during this difficult time.

When some tabloids attributed the breakdown of her marriage to her alleged closeness to Arjun Rampal, the D-Day star wasted no time in issuing his own statement rubbishing such rumours.

Family Failures

A TV star-cum-sometime film actor has turned director in order to relaunch the acting career of his son, whose first inning in the movies was as unmemorable as the films he’d signed. After a botched romantic relationship with an older, more famous female star and a string of unimpressive duds, the young man found himself suddenly out of work, out of sight and, as a result, out of mind.

No wonder Daddy Dearest put his own acting assignments on hold and decided to make a movie to showcase what his son had got.

Problem is, Daddy’s no professional filmmaker, so the film’s reportedly turned out bunkum and no studio wants to touch it.

Worse still, it’s not just the beta who has a starring role in it; Daddy’s made sure he features in the film quite prominently too. Easily in his late 50s, Daddy got himself spruced up and all buff for the role, so those who’ve seen the film haven’t stopped laughing about the wannabe impression he leaves. The son hasn’t improved too much either, say those who couldn’t escape a preview.

No wonder baap-beta are releasing the film themselves, hoping for a miracle to turn their fortunes. They’ve been enquiring, apparently, about “cooperative” critics who might throw a few extra stars their way in exchange for fancy gifts. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

open space

The Modi Medicine

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

‘NaMo Power’ pepper spray was officially launched on 16 December 2013 by Modi Flying India, a group that supports BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, in honour of the 16 December gang-rape victim. It is priced at Rs 195 for a 35-gm can. The spray contains natural chilli concentrate, which is 20 times stronger than the chilli usually used in the kitchen. The range of the spray is 5-7 feet. It is meant to instantly disable the attacker by causing severe eye irritation. The effect is expected to last 30-45 minutes. The spray can be bought at all Delhi Metro stations 64 open

30 december 2013

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