Final pdf for web 8st july 13

Man Interrupted: A sex change story

The exile of an atheist

RS 35 8 j u ly 2 0 1 3

Serial killer The spectre of the Stoneman haunts Kolhapur l i f e

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Journey through the valley of death 17 June, 7 a.m. a 10-foot-high wave of water, a kilometre wide, swept down the Ganges river system from Kedar Dome. Our reporters made their way through the ensuing destruction to bring you a comprehensive account of a once-in-a-thousand year disaster

RNI NO. DELENG/2009/27862

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Volume 5 Issue 26 For the week 2—8 July 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover photo AP

8 july 2013

Davion Snoddy

I support the movement, but taking legal action against Facebook is not at all the answer (‘The Man Who Wants to Sue Facebook’, 15 April 2013). I can clearly see that the technology behind this problem may not be understood fully. It was mentioned that pornography sites do not allow child porn, and if they can do it, why can’t Facebook? It’s simple! Pornography sites are usually run by a limited number of people that control 100 per cent of the content. There is little or no outside influence Rather than attempting on the content of the to take legal action website. Facebook, against something however, is a social media website that that is not logical, I allows any and everywould suggest a better one to post content to verification process the website. They and more reporting of clearly [say] in their suspicious activity ‘Terms and Conditions’ that they do not approve of/allow such posts, but there are not too many measures that can be taken, beyond those that have been tried, to prevent these posts from appearing. Imagine trying to personally keep tabs on a billion people. Even a world government wouldn’t be capable of that. Rather than attempting to take legal action against something that is not possible, I would suggest a better verification process and more reporting of suspicious activity.  letter of the week In Support of Lahkar

achyut lahkar’s innovative methods applied to Nataraj Theatre’s plays have been the hallmark of his followers. His contribution to mobile theatre should not fade into oblivion (‘The Last Days of an Artiste’, 1 July 2013). There is no denial of the fact that artistes in Assam have been largely neglected by the government.

But public memory is also short. We will continue to watch plays on the Bhramyaman stage without even thinking once about the pioneer, his contribution, and his present status. If he is facing financial hardships, it’s our collective responsibility to

stand by him. And I believe we can come up with a solution that will give this living legend a respectable life. The All Assam Mobile Theatre Producer Association and the Bhramyaman Theatre Darsak Forum, Assam, can take proactive measures in this regard.  Sanjib Kr Baishya

Future of Healthcare

this is a well-researched and informative article (‘The Fault, Dear Brutus, Lies in the Genes’, 24 June 2013). Genetic testing followed by personalised medicine is likely to transform the current landscape of healthcare as we move into the

future. It would replace the one-pill-cure-all approach and customise it to fit the health requirements of the patient.  Saloni

Make IITians Pay

this refers to the article ‘The New IITian’ (17 June 2013). I wonder if the IITs are even maintaining a proper database of how many go abroad to live the ‘American Dream’ in various American suburbs.

Considering that IIT education is subsidised by the people of India, if the IITians just get a degree at IITs and then go on to earn millions at Goldman Sachs, we might as well make the fees at IITs equivalent with fees at private Ivy Leagues.  Sachi Mohant y

What Kids Need to Know

i know that my teenaged granddaughter has closed her Facebook account because of the porn posted on her page (‘The Man Who Wants to Sue Facebook’, 15 April 2013). She doesn’t know how to set security settings and these predators just love kids like her. Folks, be proactive in your child’s life. If s/he has a Facebook page, show him/her how to use the security settings and how to refuse a ‘friend’. Some of these kids think that having hundreds of friends is some kind of a personality contest. They need to be very selective in who they accept as a friend. Even I don’t accept those I don’t know and we need to teach kids to do so as well.  Stephanie Snyder Staker

open www.openthemagazine.com 1

openmagazine to 56070

Knot a Sensible Thing to Do child marriage

Kerala govt in trouble after arbitrarily lowering marriage age of Muslim women to 16

The Kerala government has just brought down the minimum age of marriage for Muslim girls to 16. A circular stating this was issued in response to the director of the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) demanding clarity on whether marriages of Muslim girls below the age of 18 should be registered. KILA had been getting a number of complaints from Muslim parents about local authorities unwilling to do so.

Registrars and panchayats were within their rights to not register such marriag-

new delhi

8 july 2013

es. Besides the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act of 2006, there is also a Supreme Court judgment that states that 18 is the minimum age of marriage for women, no matter what personal laws say.

There are a number of reasons speculated for such a regressive order being passed.

Some say this is a move to shift attention from a sex scandal involving two of the chief minister’s personal staff members. They had been removed after allegations of bestowing favours on a woman who runs a company that sets up

solar panels.

The Opposition has predictably demanded the withdrawal of the order, but even ministers are unable to explain the rationale behind it. “The responsibility of this order lies with the law department,� says MK Muneer, leader of the Indian Union Muslim League and Minister for Social Welfare. He, in fact, holds the view that the age of marriage should be revised to 21 for both sexes. But he does not oppose this order, saying that the law is ambiguous in this regard. The Prohibition of Child

Marriage Act of 2006 does not explicitly say that all marriages under 18 will be considered illegal. A marriage is void only under certain circumstances, like using deceitful means or force.

Surprised at the uproar, the state government has already started working on damage control. Sources say another circular will soon be issued instructing local authorities not to consider the previous order. But how this can be done without cancelling the earlier order, no one can explain. n Shahina KK

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ajit solanki/ap

small world

6

contents

angle

Sex, lies and gossip

12

cover story Journey through the valley of death

26

34

mystery

Stoneman of Kolhapur

persecution

Love in the time of caste politics

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news reEL

Gold continues to glitter

City Rise d i s c o v e r y Archeologists have discovered an ancient Mayan city in the jungles of Mexico’s Campeche province. It was recently spotted in aerial photographs taken some 15 years ago and prompted a team of archeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History to cut a 10-mile way through the dense jungles. They have found pyramids and ball courts, indicating that this was quite an important city. Researchers are hoping further study will tell them about why the empire fell to decay. n

contagion

New scary virus

After an editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna said it wasn’t right for Modi to gloat about Gujarat’s role in Uttarakhand’s disaster relief, the party backtracked in two minds

‘It is detrimental to take a stance that he only thinks for the people of Gujarat.

In times of disaster, one has to have a national thinking and not parochial or regional views’

—Saamna editorial, 25 June

‘Modi is not our enemy. What we have said should not be distorted.

Modi is doing very good work, but some actions of his publicists may boomerang’

—Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray talking to reporters, 25 June

around

turn

After the Vampire c a s t i n g Who is going to play Christian Grey in the movie version of 50 Shades of Grey? For some that’s a question of international importance and rumours are that our favourite vampire Robert Pattinson may just be the hero here again.

Writer of the hugely popular erotic book EL James was spotted at a party at Pattinson’s home in Los Feliz. There are various other rumors too—some say America’s number one hipster Ryan Gosling is in the running and so is Vampire Diaries’s Ian Somerhalder. But Pattinson could have a real shot as the books were first written as Twilight fan fiction.

Our pick for the strange Grey has to be Christian Bale—with those steely eyes and sex appeal, he would be a perfect Grey. n

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sex change

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The half man

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Re-articulating masculinity

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The last tweets of former RAW chief B Raman

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of ■

e US gov

nt rnme

■

F o r expecting Russia and China to handover Edward J Snowden

After Edward J Snowden, the self-proclaimed whistleblower who disclosed the email and telephone surveillance programs that the US was running, left Hong Kong for Moscow, the US government reacted sharply against the Chinese and Russian governments, warning them of consequences. Taking umbrage against Russia, John Kerry pointed out that the US in the past two years had transferred seven prisoners Russia had sought. But the thing is, Snowden isn’t exactly a US prisoner and he isn’t being held in a Russian jail. The US action is plainly hypocritical. They want Snowden to be arrested so that he can be made an example out of. Russia and China have an abysmally poor record when it comes to individual liberties. But in this instance the US seems to be faring even worse than them. n 8 July 2013

Rendezvous with a character

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

63

Saif Ali Khan for Sajid Khan’s Humshakals

Don’t Bet on Winning This Prize q e d Mathematics has a way of keeping its patrons indulged for ridiculously extended periods of time, on problems that are incredibly easy to state.

June 23 marked the 20th anniversary of Andrew Wiles’ proof of the Fermat’s Last Theorem (FLT), on which he spent six years of his life. FLT states that An+Bn=Cn has no solutions for n>2, where A, B and C are positive integers.

Ironically, no sooner had Wiles announced his proof, a banker by the name of Andrew (double irony) Beal, while studying the generalizations of the theorem, made a conclusion in the same year which we today know as Beal’s conjecture, and which to-date remains

unproved and unchallenged. Beal’s conjecture states that if Ax+By=Cz, where A, B, C, x, y, and z are positive integers with x, y, z > 2, then A, B, and C have a common prime factor (a factor which is only divisible by itself and 1). FLT can be restated as a special case of the Beal’s conjecture with x=y=z.

American Mathematical Society (AMS) has now announced a prize worth $1,000,000 for a proof or a counter example to the Beal’s conjecture. It took 358 years’ worth of effort for the ghost of Pierre de Fermat to finally find peace, after the final and complete proof of his conjecture was published in 1995. How long will Beal, who is 60, have to wait? n S i d d h a r t h a Gu p t a

Nocturnal Plant Calculations g r e e n m a t h s Believe it or not, plants might actually be performing accurate arithmetic problems at night. A report in Science Daily, which quoted a study, said the calculations help them use their starch reserves in a consistent way until the dawn. “This is the first concrete example in a fundamental biological process of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation,” said mathematical modeller Professor Martin Howard from the John Innes Centre.

According to the researchers, at night time, mechanisms inside the leaf measure the size of the starch store and estimate the length of time until dawn.

Information about time comes from an internal clock, similar to our own body clock. The size of the starch store is then divided by the length of time until dawn to set the correct rate of starch consumption, so that, by dawn, around 95 per cent of starch is used up. The research will be soon available in the open access journal eLife. n

angle

On the Contrary

Sex, Lies and Gossip Besides gossip, just what exactly does anyone have to show that Shah Rukh Khan got a pre-natal sex determination test done? M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i

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omewhere in the late 1990s, there began a rumour that Salman Khan was HIV positive. During the same time, it was said that Shah Rukh Khan was bisexual. One reporter was even brave enough to ask him that in an interview. There were also things said about Amitabh Bachchan which were so salacious that they cannot be repeated. All such gossip met their predictable end as other new startling information took their place.

Some of these make it to the gossip pages. Film stars don’t get upset because it is a familiar evil, the price of fame. They don’t worry about it being true either. If ever there was any grain of reality in it, it was lost long back in Chinese whispers.

Gossip, however, has its rules. It is in that vague territory between fact, fiction and fantasy. It could be any of the three or all three together. It is often strategically exploited by publicists to promote a movie. Sometimes it is deliberately spread by enemies. So long as everyone accepts it as gossip, the game can continue without complaint.

The rules changed slightly for Shah Rukh recently. A newspaper ran an item saying that he and wife Gauri were expecting a boy through surrogacy. They didn’t name Shah Rukh but left enough indicators to make it clear who they were talking about. Gossip items, especially those involving superstars, also share the characteristic of being shamelessly picked up and regurgitated by other publications. This, too, was lifted and he was now named. Someone noticed that the child was not born and the sex had been mentioned. Then it was just inference that there must have been pre-natal testing done, which is illegal in India. An activist who runs a NGO campaigning against sex determination tests filed a complaint with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. She claimed to have proof obtained through sources that the tests were done at Jaslok Hospital. BMC officials went to Shah Rukh’s residence.

What they were hoping to do there besides taking an autograph is unclear. He was not home and they returned. The

chinese whispers The first newspaper item to mention the surrogacy did not even mention Shah Rukh Khan

Indian Medical Association and the Indian Radiological and Imaging Association have made statements condemning Shah Rukh. A fatwa has been issued against him. Newspapers abroad have also written about it. From a tidbit about a rumour, it had made its journey into legitimacy.

When writing on gossip, the normal rigours of journalism—attribution and substantiation—don’t apply. That is why they never make it to the front pages, no matter how juicy the news. For example, just before the stories about Shah Rukh’s third child, there was gossip floating about that he had left his wife for Priyanka Chopra. That is big news by any measure.

But no one printed it because the probability of it being false is huge. There is however a substantial difference in how

Organisations like the Indian Medical Association should consider their own conduct in taking as gospel truth what most people instinctively understand to be banter

the surrogacy story is being treated. Even if there is no evidence, substantiation or attribution for the pre-natal testing, the hysterics around it seems real and loud.

And so it makes its jump to becoming proper news. It is like a self-fulfilling slander—because medical bodies and NGOs are protesting, it must be true.

So long as there is nothing to show pre-natal testing was done, it is just common sense to assume innocence. That is why organisations like the Indian Medical Association should consider their own conduct in taking as gospel truth what most people instinctively understand to be banter. Or at least they need to make enquiries and get some proof before jumping into the cheap-publicity bandwagon. Meanwhile, Jaslok Hospital and the IVF specialist accused of conducting the test have said they have had nothing to do with Shah Rukh. The activist is yet to produce the proof she claimed to have. That this should happen is not surprising. How often have we seen this farce playing out, and not just with superstars—hurl a wild accusation at someone and then make it his or her onus to prove that it is false. n 8 july 2013

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide

to Salman Khan’s Hit and Run Case Salman Khan, who was allegedly driving a Land Cruiser that ran over and killed one individual and injured four others in 2002, will now be tried under Section 304, Part II, of the IPC. This section deals with ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’ and carries with it a maximum punishment of 10 years. Prior to this, the actor was being tried under the lesser charge of ‘causing death by negligence’ (Section 304A of the IPC). This charge at most carries with it a punishment of two years’ imprisonment.

punit paranjpe/afp

This decision to enhance charges against Khan came about when a sessions court upheld a magistrate The section under court’s order to do so. which Khan will be After examining the wittried carries with nesses associated with it a punishment of the case, the magistrate, 10 years VS Patil, stated that the actor had the knowledge that driving and speeding in a drunken state could lead to death. Thus he should be tried accordingly. He then transferred the case to the sessions court for a retrial.

TRIAL AND ERROR Khan was initially being tried on the lesser charge of ‘causing death by negligence’

The case dates back to 28 September 2002, when the actor allegedly rammed his vehicle into the American Express Bakery on Hill Road, Bandra. The victims were sleeping on the footpath outside the bakery. The incident occurred early in the morning but Khan surrendered only around eight hours after the accident took place. The case was built around a statement given by the now deceased Ravindra Patil, the police bodyguard who had been deployed for the actor’s security and was accompanying him during the time of the accident. Patil initially claimed that Khan had driven rashly and later admitted that he was also drunk.

The actor’s lawyer, Ashok Mundargi, told The Times of India that they would assess their next step soon, which includes challenging the order before the Bombay High Court.

The case will recommence under the new charges on 19 July. n

It Happens

No Country for Slender Loris This cute and tiny nocturnal primate is being mutilated for black magic rituals A n i l B u d u r L u l l a dibyangshu sarkar/afp

real

dying breed The slender loris is an easy victim because it moves very slowly

I

f you look at the slender loris,

it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to harm them.

They are cute tiny creatures that move slowly, as if in slow motion.

Even a fully grown one would hardly be 10 inches in height when upright.

They have long, thin arms, small tails and large eyes. Found in dense forest areas, they only come out in the night because they can’t stand sunlight. Increasingly, these animals are being found with slash marks on their bodies, a sign that they are being used in black magic rituals.

Recently, People for Animals, an animal welfare organisation, found one with its left arm slashed. “Its limb had turned gangrenous and had to be amputated,” says Rajesh C, a PFA representative. Every year, two to three cases of abandoned lorises with such wounds are noticed.

“The number of cases involving witchcraft are increasing. There is an urgent need to protect these primates,’’ says BV Gundappa, a school teacher from Tumkur in Karnataka, who volunteers his time educating villagers to help in the conservation of the species.

The slender loris is native to India and Sri Lanka. Their known habitats here are forests south-west and west of Bangalore around

Devarayanadurga and Tumkur.

Forest officials confirmed the witchcraft mutilations, but say they are helpless in identifying the culprits. “Normally the creatures are high up in the trees or in thickets.

People who poach them must be observing their habitat and climbing trees at night to bring them down,’’ says an official.

The objective of the black magic ritual is to cause bodily harm to enemies. Those who torture the lorises believe the same The objective that will get transmitof the black ted to their magic ritual targets. After the rituals, the is to cause lorises are bodily harm left to die. to enemies However, that is not the only danger they face. Many also get run over by fast-moving vehicles. A number of them are also succumbing to electric shocks while trying to move between trees using electric wires in farmlands. Gundappa says they are easy victims because they move slowly. “These primates are also meat for tribals who have a superstitious belief that eating them would improve their eyesight,” he says. n open www.openthemagazine.com 7

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POLL TALK

Left Seeks to Bring Together Regional Parties Learning from the 2009 experience, Left leaders propose a policy platform and shy away from any talk of a third front dhirendra k jha

often make for charged politics, but decisions taken at such times produce results that may not always be what a party intended. This is especially true for the Left parties, who have learnt the lesson of moving slowly after the heavy price they have paid for mistakes committed almost five years ago. Taken in then by their own third front rhetoric, their decision relegated them to the margins of Indian politics.

In 2009, ahead of the previous Lok Sabha elections, when the air seemed to be charged with debate over the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat, along with Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party and some other regional allies, tried to prop up a third front. Leading the Left parties, Karat declared that the time had come to throw out both the Congress and the BJP. The result, however, was quite the opposite.

Not only did the Left’s strength in the Lok Sabha fall drastically, that third front adventurism, many argue, pushed the

Charged times

prakash singh/afp

Congress party into the arms of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, thus creating the ‘Mahajot’, which ruined the Left’s chances in the subsequent Assembly elections in the state.

Though it is true that a series of factors contributed to the Left’s decline in West Bengal, of which the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government’s faulty industrialisation and land acquisition policy was certainly one, the unity of opposition votes in the state was triggered primarily by the political line pursued by CPI-M leaders in Delhi.

This time around, in the run up to the next Lok Sabha polls, the Left parties have been moving rather cautiously on a similar track, vowing to build an alternative policy platform and declaring in the same breath that this has nothing to do with a third front. Instead of asking non-Congress secular parties to enter into a pre-poll alliance, the Left has called on these parties to support a policy platform that would provide an alternative to the course being pursued by the country’s two major parties.

For this purpose, the Left parties will hold a national convention in Delhi on 1 July where a declaration concerning their approach to an alternative policy direction is likely to be made. “On the basis of this declaration, we will appeal to all non-Congress, non-BJP secular democratic forces and parties to support and work for an alternative policy trajectory for the country,” CPI-M politburo member Sitaram Yechury told Open. Asked whether the Left would take the initiative to forge a front comprising those parties converging on the alternative policy platform, he said: “Fronts will not come out of the atmosphere. There have to be alternative policies on the basis of which parties will gather together.”

The move is vague—the Left is wary of the idea of a third front before the polls, but it wants to come together with the regional parties outside UPA and NDA on a common platform. Yechury pointed out that in a fast-changing political scenario, in which the Congress is bereft of all major allies except the Nationalist Congress Party, and the BJP is left with only its two little friends the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal, there is a clear opportunity for such a policy platform.

It remains to be seen which regional parties the Left is able to attract, and backfire The 2009 attempt to erect a third front failed to gain political traction, and only ended up harming the left 8 july 2013

whether these parties will remain committed to the policy platform after the polls. The fact is, most of the regional parties the Left is eyeing today have, at one time or another, been part of an alliance with either the BJP or the Congress and would once again be susceptible to such a possibility, depending on their own political considerations after the election’s results.

Yet the Left’s move is still significant. In essence, the Left is seeking to develop a “common minimum programme”—as CPI-M politburo member and former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee put it a few days ago—and trying to have it endorsed by some of the secular regional parties that remain unattached to the Congress or the BJP. This would stop short of evolving into a third front, which has always proved to be temporary in nature and which, in the 2009 polls, was blamed for dividing the secular vote. Such a move, says a senior

“We will appeal to all nonCongress, non-BJP secular democratic forces and parties to support and work for an alternative policy trajectory for the country,” says senior CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury, adding parties will only gather around a policy alternative Left leader, would be even more counterproductive at a time when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is leading the charge of the BJP. Left leaders also expect the move to help them score over their arch rival in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. On the eve of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s break up with the NDA, Banerjee had appealed to all non-Congress, non-BJP regional parties to come together and float a federal front for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. After the initial enthusiasm shown by the Janata Dal-United and the Biju Janata Dal, there was no further forward movement to form such a front.

After parting ways with the BJP, Nitish Kumar has suddenly developed a liking for the CPI. Speaking at a seminar in Patna on 24 June, Nitish went to the extent of saying that “the proposed federal front is not a political formation.

It is, rather, an economic agenda to ensure

compensation for states left behind owing to the policies of the centre.” Navin Patnaik, for his part, seems to have preferred to wait and watch instead of jumping onto Mamata’s bandwagon.

This, despite the fact that Nitish and Navin are at one with Mamata on their demand for special status for backward states. The Left parties are not averse to this demand, and the issue is likely to figure in the declaration they are due to adopt on 1 July. The agenda is intended to be broad-based, instead of restricted to a single-point charter for a front.

Moreover, as the move is devised to remain a policy platform and not a front competing with the Congress for votes in next Lok Sabha elections, the Left will also have the advantage of keeping the grand old party in good humour. This is necessary in order to prevent the Congress in West Bengal from gravitating once again toward the Trinamool Congress. There is a growing feeling inside the CPI-M that if it has any chance at regaining even a little of the ground it has lost in the state, it is only if the Congress and the Trinamool do not come together again.

For this reason, despite the Left leaders’ meetings with important figures from the JD-U, Samajwadi Party and BJD in last couple of days, there has not been any talk of an all-India front. On the contrary, Left leaders have used every opportunity to declare that their initiative must not been seen as a move to cobble together an electoral front. “The Left parties are aiming at changes in social, economic and political policies,” CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat told reporters in Thrissur on 14 June, just when Mamata’s call for a federal front had captured headlines. The same day, politburo member Brinda Karat told media persons at Palakkad that her party viewed “alternative policies and politics” as more important than forming a third front.

“Evolving alternative politics and policies against the Congress and the BJP is our goal and that is important,” she said. Yechury and the party leaders in West Bengal have also repeatedly stressed this same point.

That leaves open the political conundrum—which may seem remote now but could become real in case the next Lok Sabha election throws up a divided House—of what the Left would do if its support were critical to keep the BJP out of power. “That would be the acid test for us,” says a senior Left leader, preferring to remain anonymous. “The decision that we take then would decide the fate of the Left and secularism in the country.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 9

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investing

Gold Continues to Glitter Despite Chidambaram’s counsel, people continue to invest in gold because it makes sense to do so shailendra tyagi S o m e t i m e s , i t p a y s to go by conventional wisdom rather than what financial gurus exhort us to believe.

India’s huge penchant for gold is one such case, where people have ignored the advice of financial experts not to invest in the metal.

Many argue that investment in gold in a developing country like India is unproductive, as it enriches individuals at the cost of the nation’s economic growth.

Just recently, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram urged people not to buy gold. Financial experts say that since India’s humongous appetite for gold is met entirely through imports that need to be paid for in dollars, Chidambaram’s appeal to the people is reasonable.

“India’s ability to earn sufficient dollars through its exports to settle its imports is severely constrained due to the global economic slowdown,” says Raghvendra Nath, managing director of Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt Ltd. Gold is one of the key components of India’s imports, he says, and the country’s cultural affinity for the metal has damaged its finances.

India runs a huge current account deficit, which suggests that the inflow of dollars through exports and inward remittances is far less than the required outflow. Being the largest consumer of gold, India paid above $50 billion last year to import about a thousand tonnes of gold.

But can Chidambaram’s appeal really persuade people?

Analysts are not very hopeful, saying it is difficult to change this culture overnight, especially since simple economics suggests buying gold is a sensible course of action. “While culture does adapt to changed socio-economic realities, the economic rationale for doing so has never been presented before the people to divert their saving away from gold,” says Phani Sekhar, a fund manager with Angel Broking.

Not only does the country remain grossly under-banked, interest earnings from sources such as fixed deposits and saving certificates are swallowed by higher inflation, which, according to Nath, is a “reason why the savings rate in 10 open

people. Since wholesale inflation has descended from its elevated levels of last year, the government has preferred to choose wholesale over retail inflation, as that limits its obligation. But unless the government pegs these bonds to consumer price inflation, which is still in double digits, the objective—channelising savings towards developmental activities—would be defeated.

With consumer price inflation yet to be tamed, the government is aware that natural demand for gold can’t be regulated. It has instead been using gentle nudges to dilute speculative demand, like hiking import duty in small successive steps to 8 per cent and restricting gold imports by banks. These measures are yet to yield results, and experts feel they may even prove counter-productive. Such measures might curtail some demand, but if they are strengthened further, it could Notwithstanding the strain on encourage smuggling, besides affecting the government, investment in the livelihoods of about 3 million people in the gold industry. gold has earned people returns employed Nath explains that recent suggestions far above the rate of inflation. by the US’ central bank to scale back its liquidity support—which will, among Moreover, unlike any other other things, make loans at nominal rates investment, buying gold does difficult to obtain—has caused gold prices not require a Pan card or other to crash from $1,900 to $1,300 per ounce (31 grams), but such gains are not fully identity proof. reflected in the rupee prices of gold.

“Import duties and the rupee’s depreciaWhile Indian investors, too, benefitted tion have artificially taken up the rupee price of gold, thus giving an impression by joining the hype in international gold markets, the Indian state became a victim that gold prices would never come down, as was expected by its recent fall internaof their appetite, left with the clerical job tionally,” says Nath. of arranging dollars to satiate this The best way to take the zing out of gold, demand. Notwithstanding the strain on experts say, is to contain inflation. Till that the government, investment in gold earned people returns far above the rate of happens, the gold hype will remain intact.

Globally, many feel that the withdrawal of inflation. Moreover, unlike any other investment, buying gold does not require stimulus by the US Federal Reserve could derail the apparent recovery seen recently a Pan card or other identity proof. in the US economy. In such an event, the The Indian government has recently central bank would either continue its tried to offer alternatives to gold by launching inflation indexed bonds (IIBs), cheap money policy (depending upon its where returns to investors are kept above residual firepower), or the prolonged bout of recession would persist. Either of these the rate of inflation. But linking such returns to wholesale inflation defeats the scenarios would help gold to scale new purpose, because it is inflation at the retail heights, making it still more attractive to the average Indian buyer. n level that actually matters to ordinary

the country has fallen significantly.” In situations where high inflation accompanies a slowdown in growth, people flock towards gold.

“In the last seven years, people have been proven right,” Nath says, “because gold in this period has outperformed almost every asset class.” Even in advanced economies, people have turned to buying gold in recent times, since the recession has eroded their faith in capital markets. Policies being followed by central banks there ensure loans at nominal rates of interest, helping people borrow cheaply to buy gold, thus increasing the speculative demand of the yellow metal. This rush of money has helped the metal appreciate by 500 per cent in the last ten years, making it even more attractive to Indian buyers.

8 july 2013

Journey through the valley of death

After the deluge A woman, along with her six-year-old son, waits for her husband to cross over the river with the army’s help at Govind Ghat 12 open

8 july 2013

Ruhani kaur

8 july 2013

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Va l l e y o f d e at h

Anatomy of a disaster

How a 10-ft-high, kilometre-wide wave of destruction was formed Mihir Srivastava

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uttarakhand photographs by raul irani

n June 17, like every morning for the past seven

years, Raj Kishor, a thin, sprightly man of 52, was up well before 6 am. He owned a small shop in the bustling bazaar near the Kedarnath temple where he sold idols of various deities, and gemstones prescribed by astrologers as cures for ill-fortune and a host of nebulous ailments. The throng of devotees at the temple—one of the 12 jyotirlinga temples in the country—formed early, and he had to be on time to catch the morning rush. Because it was raining hard, as it had been for days, the rush was less than usual, even though the number of people in town far exceeded what was normal even by the standards of June, the peak of the pilgrim season.

The mule owners had been on a partial strike since 12 June, the day the rain had started. They were protesting the increasing use of helicopters by pilgrims to travel from Gaurikund to Kedarnath. The 14 km land journey on a non-motorable track was arduous, and mules were the only source of transport used by pilgrims unable to walk the distance till private helicopter firms started operating in the area. Now there were ten such services and the mule owners were losing business. Wary of the strike, helicopter services had also been curtailed, but even so, new pilgrims continued to pour into the town. By the evening of 16 July, the number of people in the town, including those enroute from Gaurikund, was believed to be in the tens of thousands.

The rain had intensified on the evening of 15 June. By the next day, the level of water in the Mandakini river had risen and had begun spilling over into the Kedarnath valley, a flat expanse in the midst of snow-clad mountains.

Scientists believe this was a lake bed hundreds of years ago, as is apparent in an 1882 photograph of the shrine available at the Geological Survey of India website. The shrine stands in splendid isolation among the peaks, surrounded by a few thatched huts, with no sign of the pilgrim town as it stood on 16 June, with its thriving bazaar and the dozens of rickety hotels that had sprung up in defiance of any environmental or architectural concerns.

The rain did not deter the pilgrims; many of them were following the footsteps of their ancestors. Before turning in for the night, some called or texted back home to let their family or friends know how they were doing on the eve of the darshan. Uma Devi Mishra, a sixty-year-old woman from Hardoi called home at 9.30 pm just before she was to take a mule ride to reach the vicinity of the

14 open

shrine. “It’s raining,” she said “but I have to go.” She was part of a group of 19. Gauri Lal Meena, a constable in Rajasthan Police, was with his wife when he last called home at 10 pm on the 16th from Ramabara, the last halt on the trek to Kedarnath before the track starts ascending. He said he would be visiting the temple in the morning. None of these people have been heard from since their last call.

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pstream from Kedarnath lies the Kedar Dome,

a mountain clearly visible from the town. Along its flank lies a natural lake called the Gandhi Sarovar, perched at the edge of one of the snouts of the Chorabari glacier, the source of the Mandakini River. The lake, also called Chorabari Tal, was named after Mahatma Gandhi when some of his ashes were immersed here in 1948.

Legend has it—and almost every geographical feature in the vicinity of Kedarnath has been embraced by legend—that this is the lake from where Yudhishthira began his ascent to heaven, as described in the last parva of the Mahabharata. A travel website describes the lake in the most beguiling of terms: ‘The lake presents an awesome scenario of nature, which would definitely mesmerise any visitor. The ice perched on the surface of this lovely lake makes an enthralling effect. Its tranquil ambiance coupled with the gentle cold breeze heals all the worldly worries.’

But on the morning of 17 June, something very different was unfolding at the glacier-fed lake. Anil Kulkarni, a glaciology expert at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, describes the sequence of events. The rain falling from 12 June, apart from accumulating more water in the lake, would have increased the melt off from glaciers and ice-capped mountains by a factor of three or four because it was so much warmer than the snow. Then, on the night of 16 June, the rain turned into a cloudburst, a phenomenon that can bring down an immense amount of water in a very short span of time. Dehradun recorded 370 mm of rain on that single night. The figure was, in all likelihood, higher at Kedarnath. To put this in perspective, this is more than half the rainfall Delhi receives in an entire year.

Images taken in early June by RESOURCESAT-1 (see facing page), a remote sensing satellite with a resolution of 20 metres built by the Indian Space Research 8 july 2013

citadel of faith The devastation around the jyotirlinga temple at Kedarnath

Organisation, show two arcs of water winding down in a necklace towards Kedarnath from the lake with a huge pile of debris separating the two arcs, which probably served as a natural dam to the lake. Perhaps, Kulkarni suggests, with so much water accumulated in the lake, a breach could have been caused by an ice avalanche crashing into the lake. Whatever the final trigger, images from 21 June show a third arc of water descending from the lake into the town, the pile of debris now no longer visible.

What is clear is that sometime after 6.30 am, on the morning of 17 June, the lake burst, and a wall of water headed down to the town. The pile of debris, including massive boulders weighing over a tonne, was swept along with the flow. In the centuries-long history of this pilgrimage, no event of comparable magnitude has been recorded.

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aj Kishor was walking towards his shop when he

saw a dark wall of water, descending fast onto the rear of the shrine, swelling on the horizon, threatening to engulf the entire town. From his hospital bed in Dehradun, with the horror still palpable on his face, he compares the sound to the roaring “of a thousand lions”. The wave hit and shook the whole valley. He knew instinctively he had very little time. He saw some people run to the higher reaches of the mountain, but he ran towards the shrine whose entrance faced away from the lake. He was thrown in through the open door, as the water, against the flow, forced its way into the shrine. He recalls nothing afterwards; he fell unconscious for a few hours. When he regained his senses, he couldn’t walk; his leg was fractured.

It was late in the afternoon. The town had been decimat-

8 july 2013

photo isro; imaging down to earth

ap

Before

After

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1 2 3

3

4

4

5

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1 Water comes from the glacier in a single stream 2 A large amount of debris lies in the path of this water 3 Water splits into two streams 4 Water continues in thin channels 5 The Kedarnath settlement

1 The water channel is now broader 2 The debris has disappeared, suggesting it was carried down by the water 3 A third stream has been formed 4 Water is flowing in from all directions 5 Devastated Kedarnath

ed and a silence had descended over the debris. “Sab barbad ho gaya,” he says.

The first pictures of the devastation taken by the army show water marks three metres above the ground on the few buildings that survived the deluge. An army officer coordinating the work says the wave, about a kilometre wide, spread across the valley like the wings of an albatross, and flattened everything in its way. The shrine stood firm as the deluge passed. “[It] was where the survivors found refuge. The tempest could not breach the citadel of faith,” says Naresh Kukreti, 34, a priest at the Kedarnath temple. The truth, however, was more prosaic, if equally remarkable. TV footage shows that a huge boulder, among the largest in the debris, had landed a few metres open www.openthemagazine.com 15

hoping against hope Photos of pilgrims who have gone missing, mostly from Kedarnath, are displayed on a wall at the entrance to the Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun

Hotel, 100 metres south of the temple. Mukesh Bigani of Indore, in his mid-30s, called his brother at 7.10 am, immediately after the deluge had passed. He told his brother that a toofan (‘tempest’) was underway, and the strong water current was shaking the foundations of the building. There is nowhere to go, he told his brother. The hotel manager, he said, was resigned to their fate. There was nothing that could be done to shift to a safe place, he added, as there was water all around. In the worst case, the owner had said, they would all will “die together”. The call got disconnected. After that, there was no response.

Bigani was one among a group of 17 staying at the hotel.

They are all missing. The hotel is now just a mound of rubble. Many such hotels, where people stayed in large numbers, were flattened and their occupants are missing, though no list has been prepared

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from the rear of the temple, splitting the flow of water and protecting the rear of the shrine from much of its fury.

Inside the temple, Kukreti heard an explosion before the deluge hit. He says hundreds of people rushed inside—an exaggerated figure, but certainly scores of people did seek refuge there. The outer door was open but somehow the inner door of the shrine slammed shut.

That did not prevent the water from forcing its way even within the sanctum sanctorum. It reached a height of six feet, he says, flowing over his head, before the pressure forced open the western door of the temple. The wave had passed and the water flowed out, reducing the level inside. Even so, many of Kukreti’s friends and several of the other priests are missing. “Since it was raining, the temple was not very crowded. Mostly the devotees were in the 50 to 60 guest houses in town,” he explains. After the deluge there seemed to be no one alive outside the shrine, only rocks and rubble piled up around the temple.

The guest houses in the vicinity of the shrine had come up not long ago. They were unregulated and mostly unregistered. One such guest house was the New Tewari 16 open

s the flash flood made its way down along the

course of the Mandakini and then the Alkananda river, the valley shrunk, and the water level rose by as much as 10 metres, causing heavy destruction en route.

About three kilometres downstream, at Rambara, “a boy yelled ‘water’,” says 60-year-old Saudam Singh of Indore. “I turned around to see a wave like a mountain rushing down towards me.” He was swept away like a twig in a whirlpool. He got entangled in a tree and water rushed past him. He could hear the frantic cries of people being swept away, some calling out “har har mahadev”. He saw mules, people and trees carried off by the current. He does not remember anything after that. He was part of a group of five people; the other four are missing. He regained consciousness when someone shook him and told him to climb uphill. The torrent had passed, virtually erasing Rambara, with its dozen or so guest houses, from the face of the earth. Shops, people and a vast number of mules had disappeared. Just the marshy landscape remained, reminiscent of quicksand. He was drenched.

Those who survived covered themselves with plastic sheets. It was cold and wet. “It was like hell there. Yahi thi Mahadev ki marzi (‘This was Shiva’s’s will’).”

Rakesh Lal, a mule owner, was preparing his mules for the day. Some friends had come to visit him. Because of the strike he was under pressure not to go to work. “I last saw my friends when they swam past me,” he says. His brother corrects him: “when they were swept away.”

Rakesh had a miraculous escape. His right leg got stuck between two boulders and was twisted and turned by gushing water. He has multiple fractures, nerve-damage and no feeling left in his leg. At the Dehradun hospital, he looked dazed. “There were some who survived, mostly those who managed to climb the hills. Some held on to the floating bodies to prevent themselves from drowning,” he said, adding, with a note of urgency, “send the rescue team to the jungles. They will die of the cold.”

Within hours, 60 km downstream in Kakragad, the 8 july 2013

Mandakini Magpie Bird Watcher’s Camp was swept away. Its owner, Yashpal Singh Negi, had left the camp the night before. Afraid of flooding, he had spent the night in a mountain village. When he returned, only two rooms remained. The lower reaches of the hill had been washed away. “I have never seen such a torrent in the river in my entire life,” says Negi.

A total of about 13 km of road has caved in at a hundred different places along the river, ensuring it will be months before any semblance of a road link is established. At every bend in the river’s course, the earth on the bank was carved away by the water. All that stood above—buildings, hotels and roads—collapsed and disappeared.

Landslides occurred at 110 locations and nine bridges collapsed. The tragedy was not man-made but everything else that humans had done over the past few decades in these hills—unregulated construction, the lack of a building code, the disregard for environment and safety—has contributed manifold to the final toll, which will only be known months from now, if ever.

The Uttarakhand secretariat prepared a list and the instructions were to first air-lift those whose names were on it. Priority was given to people who could curry favour at the secretariat Seven hours later, the impact of the wall of water was felt near Rishikesh, almost 250 km away. In the capital city of Dehradun life seemed normal. It was only in the evening when army helicopters flew over Kedarnath that they saw the devastation and informed the rest of the world of what had happened. Raj Kishor and Kukreti were airlifted on 18 July.

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n 20 July, the magnitude of the crisis was finally understood in the corridors of powers. At the Uttarakhand Disaster Mitigation Centre (UDMC), located in the premises of the state secretariat in Dehradun, Executive Director Piyush Rautela says, “The problems are only going to get bigger.” He is referring to the thousands of missing people. “We have nothing to tell the people asking about them.” The disaster management effort so far has consisted of airlifting survivors and dropping food packets. A list of 1,800 survivors was prepared and pasted on the outer wall of Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun. Those not in the list are considered missing.

There is no way the government can arrive at a figure of people who died or are missing. Most of the hotels in Kedarnath were unregulated and unregistered. There is no government interaction with pilgrims who arrive here, no registration, no count kept of those entering the shrines, and no health checks are mandated. Piyush 18 open

Rautela has no idea what the government plans to do about it. He is worried, and the government will soon have to start taking measures to deal with the issue of dead bodies. “The spread of epidemics is a distinct possibility,” he says. The government’s plan of a mass cremation at Kedarnath is perhaps the only answer he has to the thousands of queries about those who are still missing.

Neither has the UDMC been able to create a mechanism whereby help—food, blankets and medicines—pouring in from various places could promptly be sent to the thousands stranded in the hills. Hundreds of tonnes of food are rotting in the Jolly Grant Airport as it could not airlifted for “technical reasons,” says Rautela.

Such apathy dogs the relief and rescue operation wherever the civil administration comes into the picture.

Inside the secretariat, on 20 July, regular meetings were taking place at the chief secretary’s office to deal with the situation. As we waited, a minister in the Tamil Nadu government with IAS officers met Bhaskaranand Joshi, secretary to the chief minister and the nodal officer of all the rescue work, in his chamber. Bhaskaranand offered them tea and assured that their relatives would be airlifted the same evening. A minister in the Bihar cabinet was rescued the day before on a priority basis.

This was on a day when some 15,000 stranded people were looking to be airlifted. The priority list was being prepared at the secretariat and instructions given to airlift only those whose names were on it. While survivors jostled to get a seat in the helicopter, priority was given to the people who could curry favour at the secretariat.

Bhaskaranand refused to be drawn into a discussion of how some influential people were being given preference, ignoring objective criteria such health, age or gender. “The media can write whatever they want to. I have no time to discuss this,” he reacted.

As instructions were passed on from the civil administration, officers coordinating the Army work reacted with disgust in private. They had already been mortified by the interruption caused to the relief work by the VIP visits which have continued despite Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde issuing an alert: “We advise all VIPs not to visit Uttarakhand now...such visits hamper their work.’’ It is another matter that two days before issuing the alert Shinde toured the flood-hit areas and a 24-seater MI 17 helicopter along with a civilian helicopter was diverted for the whole day. It was always unlikely that tragedy, however outsized, could jolt the civil administration into showing some consideration for ordinary people On the way back, when we stopped to visit Raj Kishor again at the hospital, we found him lying on his bed, his plastered leg crossed over the other. “All is well,” he said, betraying no emotion. What are you going to do now that nothing remains of the town, I asked. He thought for a moment and said, “Mahadev ki marzi (‘It is Shiva’s will’).’’

Under the circumstances, in Dehradun, it was the only possible answer. n 8 july 2013

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shutters down A ceiling fan dangles from the roof of a collapsed guest house at Govind Ghat

va l l e y o f d e at h

On Destruction’s Trail A 900 kilometre journey through death, pain, ruins, heroism and anger Chinki Sinha 20 open

Govind Ghat photographs by ruhani kaur 8 july 2013

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he chopper dives in, slants and rises again. We are

in between two cliffs. Below, the Alaknanda gushes, swollen and angry. The day before, a rescue chopper had crashed in Gaurikund and burst into flames.

“Why do you want to go there?” the pilot says into the microphone.

“To see what used to be,” I say.

“It is all gone,” he says.

Fighting vertigo and trying to focus on the destruction below seems difficult. There is no guarantee we will be flown back. There are only assurances, and a few names— Sushil, Rohit—of those in charge of the rescue efforts.

Mobile networks are already gone in Govind Ghat, a town in Chamoli district destroyed by the floods.

A road just ends into the river. Collapses into it. The river cuts the sand underneath the road like it did in many other places along the 300 km stretch for which we followed it. Alaknanda, Mandakini, Bhagirathi. Hundreds of cars and buses are stranded. There are half-houses, and teeming masses of people queuing up on the other side of the river. Beyond, there’s the river bed—white rocks and sand. They said it would rain soon. In this land of extreme weather, you never know.

Saturday afternoon, as the weather gets tricky, we are let off the chopper onto a makeshift helipad on the river bed. A few army personnel are lining people up to be airlifted to Joshimath. A three kilometre stretch of road is broken in this region, isolating one side from the rest of the world.

It is white. White sand, white rocks. Water gushes forth, brown and thick. The sound is like that of a helicopter drone. It drowns everything around it. The cries of a child who wants his father brought to him. The wails of women waiting for their husbands, refusing to leave unless they are ferried to this side of the raging river. Women and children are a priority. And the sick and infirm. Men can manage for a while.

“This wasn’t the river bed. There used to be a parking lot here. A multi-storey parking lot,” a soldier says.

Up ahead, there is a rope bridge. A little boy stands on this side crying, waiting for his father to come across. He is inconsolable. His mother refuses to leave without the father. They were stuck in different places along the narrow trek to Hemkund Sahib, a Sikh pilgrimage site associated with Guru Gobind Singh’s previous incarnation as Dusht Daman. Tying a rope around the waist and gliding across the hungry river, ready to swallow anything thrown in its path, is difficult. Hence, the army has to go through the painstaking task of flying the men, women, and children from one side of the river to the other. From there, they can cross more mountains to safety.

Last night, the army had built a temporary bridge with wooden planks secured by ropes. The river washed it away, just like it had the iron bridge that once connected the two banks. A part of the bridge is deposited on this new river bed. There are also other things there— desks,

8 july 2013

chairs, clothes and rotting vegetables. Leftovers of past lives. We try not to think of the bodies that might be buried under. Perhaps we are standing on a graveyard.

Captain Gulati, piloting a private chopper, patiently airlifts four or five people at a time, and flies them to this side. For two hours, he does this. There are reunions and tears. There are stories of horror, of lives and limbs lost.

On this side, the army personnel tell the pilgrims to trek upwards, get to the road, and then take the narrow mountain paths to where cars would bring them to Joshimath.

In between, there are mountains, and landslides. Time is running out. They need to cross three mountains.

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ovind Ghat, at a height of 6,000 feet, lies on the way

to Hemkund Sahib. Only accessible between June and October when the snow has melted, the shrine—around 15 km up, with a stopover at Ghangharia, also the gateway to Valley of Flowers—is reached on foot over a journey of two days from Govind Ghat.

A facade of half-buildings stand exposed to the view; sunglasses are stacked as if still on display. These were shops. While part of the building is gone, the front stays, untouched. These buildings came up after the year 2000, Parveen, a young local, says, “Earlier there were jungles here. That’s what our parents tell us.”

There’s a reception desk that was uprooted from its place and washed away. A few registers lie on the rocks a few feet away. In a pink notebook that belonged to Hotel Suvidha there are entries—“Boer, Dutch, 16.7.2012”.

Part of the Govind Ghat Gurdwara was also washed away. A few men go up to the building to retrieve bags they had left behind on their trek toward Hemkund Sahib. A few offer water bottles and snacks to others.

They had walked for hours on a treacherous path with the river on one side to reach here after the army announced they should all come down to be rescued. “It was scary. The width of the path was only a foot. We had elderly men and women, and children. It took us almost 10-12 hours,” says Tejinder Abohar. Eleven in his group had been in Hemkund. They heard the army announce that the weather would get worse on 24 and 25 June and decided to walk down. “It was tough. We carried the weak on our shoulders. There was the river raging below us, and the mountain looked like it would fall anytime,” he said.

We stop by what used to be the Jyoty Guest House. The banner survived the fury. It flutters in the wind. There is an unusual calm about the place. The welcome sign is still there—two folded hands, and the type in bold. But everyone’s leaving this place.

Gurpinder Singh doesn’t want to believe anyone died.

“Nobody dies here. This place is blessed,” he says. “We can’t blame it on the gods.”

It is reassuring. Perhaps everyone is in denial. Two fire department personnel come down the path and ask everyone to leave the river bed. open www.openthemagazine.com 21

“Go up. It’s going to rain,” constable Virendra says.

A few drops fall. The river rises again, foaming and frothing.

“I am scared of mountains. So many villages have been destroyed. There was one that was three kilometres up the hill. The river ate it up,” he says.

“Was that Pulna?”

“It is all gone now. You can’t tell if there was once a village,” he says.

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hey installed an iron bridge two years ago in Pulna.

Before that there used to be a wooden one, with no railings, and the villagers would take it down when the river threatened to dismantle it. It connected the villagers to the Shamila forest, where they grazed their cattle.

On the morning of 15 June, Hemanti Chauhan saw the bridge cave in. It had been raining heavily since the previous night. She was on the phone with her friend who was asking her to leave the area. The clock had just struck

They paid a price for haphazard development.

Land was leased out to builders.There are now too many hotels. Too many guest houses.

Too many tourists. Too much greed. eight. That’s when the roar came and the bridge crumbled. It fell diagonally across the river and split into two halves. The river came towards the village.

“It seemed it was galloping,” she says. “I ran inside to see if I could gather some jewellery and money, but the river had leapt up. We ran out, and started climbing upwards.”

Located in the Valley of Flowers, the twin villages of Pulna and Bhuyndar were destroyed by the floods.

Women were evacuated and brought to Joshimath. Two days had passed and they were still waiting for their husbands and children, who were still stranded with the pilgrims in the valley.

On Saturday, as each chopper landed, they would run towards the fencing to see if their people were there. In between the landings and take-offs, they told me about their village.

“It was beautiful. Flowers bloomed everywhere,” said Yashodhara, who married when she was 17 and came to live in Pulna. They had just reconstructed the temple there, put in marble flooring and tiles. A Ramlila would be staged during the festival season and the women would dress in their best clothes.

“We had houses that had three floors. We were a wealthy village,” she says.

Laxman Ganga tumbled down by her hamlet, and later joined the Alaknanda river three kilometres downstream where the water wasn’t so tumultuous. They 22 open

hadn’t anticipated the river betraying them.

She is confused, and almost in denial. She can’t say who died and who survived. Rajendra Bhandari, the MLA of Badrinath, says he had been to these villages but men don’t want to leave. The women crowd around him, asking him to bring them back.

Hemanti is tired of promises. It wasn’t their fault the cloud burst happened in Bhuyndar and the river swept away Pulna. In an ordinary instant, everything was altered forever.

“If you saw it you’d know. The river parted in two. Half came to us. We were running, and when we turned around, the water was following us,” she says. “We are refugees now. We got here three days ago, and have nowhere to go.”

These twin settlements, home to 100 families, had been around for almost a century. Pulna was their winter residence, and Bhuyndar, their summer abode. Hemanti says the elders used to speak about torrential rains causing some destruction 70 years ago. But the village survived.

Then, development started to happen. Land was leased out to builders to construct rest houses and hotels.

Ghangharia, which is in the Bhuyndar valley, was to be the site of a road that could ferry pilgrims and tourists.

Villagers wanted their stake.

Landslides are common in this area. Boulders stick out of the mountains, ready to fall at the slightest tremor.

They paid a price for haphazard development. There are too many hotels. Too many guest houses. Too many tourists. Too much greed.

Bhandari had run into an argument with the Chief Minister the day before.

“There are thousands of stranded people and only 80 helicopters, thousands of bodies and nobody to pick those up,” he says. “I have been going to these areas and asking them to leave. Men don’t want to leave their land. There is no land. It is all water.”

But the women are upset.

“Let’s get the children out,” Bhandari says.

People queue around him. They drop names.

“I am a member of the local BJP outfit. My people are stuck. These are the names,” a man says, as he hands over the slip of paper to Bhandari.

“By evening I am hoping to get 2,000 people out,” Bhandari says.

“Please note down ‘Trilok’,” Hemanti says.

But Ram Niwas Vohra pushes forward.

“I am a BJP member,” he says. “I also know the district magistrate.”

“It is a gentleman’s promise. I will get your people out,” Bhandari says.

“I want to snatch the guns from the army and shoot myself. What is this idea of saving at least one person per family. How do we live?” Hemanti says, as she retreats from the group. “They only want to get the tourists out first.

They say the locals know the terrain. They will manage.”

The villagers had climbed up the narrow path to find 8 july 2013

faith on hold A gurdwara damaged in the flood

shelter on a mountain road. Hundreds of pilgrims were stranded here. Everyone wanted to get out. When the chopper came, a fight broke out. The pilot flew off to Ghangharia saying the tension should be resolved first.

Finally, two villagers and two pilgrims were the combination agreed upon. That’s how the rescue began. It’s not over yet, she says.

But resources are scarce.

“If it rains again, and it will, there will be more destruction,” Bhandari says.

The women start weeping.

“Please give them food,” Yashodhara says. “At least do this much.”

In the cacophony of the choppers, her voice trails off.

W

e first encountered the disaster on our way up

to Rudraprayag on Friday, almost a week after the tragedy first struck. In Srinagar, you couldn’t tell the difference between what was being constructed—a dam, a reservoir—and what had been destroyed.

At Rudraprayag, a small helipad had been set up to airlift stranded people from Badrinath, and other devastated areas. A lone helicopter was ready to take off. They had loaded it with cartons full of food and water bottles. The pilot gave the thumbs up and the chopper flew away.

There were thousands still stranded in isolated parts and till they were rescued, the army and the IAF were dropping off food.

The terrain was difficult, almost unrelenting. There was limited space for landing helicopters, and preparing helipads was a difficult task.

At Gauchar the other day, Air Vice Marshal SRK Nair, said no disaster is the same. The hills present a unique challenge. The IAF, which stepped in later, set up focal points at various places, including a mini air base at

8 july 2013

Dharasu where the first C-130J ‘Super Hercules’ aircraft from the Hindon Airbase landed. The 1,300-foot long base was created by winging down army personnel who cut the jungles and cleared the ground.

“We flew in a mini hospital of sorts, got doctors there, and 15 commandos to guard the area,” said Nair. “We are just running short of time. There is a lot of work to be done.”

On Tuesday, an Mi-17 V5 chopper of the Indian Air Force crashed in Gaurikund, the second to crash in the region. Man can only do so much. “The weather takes you by surprise,” Nair said.

T

here is the muddy river—Alaknanda—that roars

its way toward the plains. Dark and pregnant with all it is carrying—bridges, gas cylinders, houses, memories, bodies.

As we move up to Shivalik, nestled in the Himalayas, cars zip past us on narrow mountain passes carrying relief materials. Buses tumble down carrying survivors.

Several states have arranged for free transport services to carry pilgrims back to their native places.

The dusk settles, and the driver points to what seems like the middle of the river.

“There used to be a house there. There used to be a bridge, too,” he says.

This is in Chamoli, one of the worst-affected regions in Uttarakhand.

There are shrines dedicated to gods along the way.

At Helang, a man grins at us. The weather is sunny. The mountains look calm, but it is an illusion.

In Karnprayag, water lines have been destroyed. We keep climbing up, eager to make it to Joshimath. They say you can drive up till there, and then assess the situation.

Previously, the road was broken. But they have fixed it open www.openthemagazine.com 23

now, given the urgency of the situation.

At Pipalkoti, there are a few men watching news in a hotel. At Le Meadows hotel, there are no guests. We are ushered into a room, and spend the night in the quiet town.

I draw the curtains. The mountains look scary.

A

t Joshimath, choppers fly in and out. This is where

the Ibex Brigade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) have a base. Rescue operations are in full swing.

There are vans and jeeps and SUVs that have been arranged by the state government to ferry survivors to Dehradun and Rishikesh. There are relief camps and phone stations, and television crews who are flying with the army to shoot footage of the destruction. Logistics support was provided by 5009 Company ASC, which directly helped the civilians with food, water and fuel. They fed more than 10,000 people between 15 and 21 June, says Col. Avinash Tripathi.

“After that, we lost count of how many,” he says. “This is one of the most challenging and complex logistics operations carried out as people were stuck and had to be provided relief and food. Lots of disruptions in rescue, and it is a prolonged affair.”

We are asked to wait. We don’t want to hamper rescue operations. Two seats in a chopper for us translate into no rescue for two stranded people who might be injured.

“If you can get us there, it would help us see what was lost, what the river took,” I say.

Col. Sukhdeep Singh says the river took it all.

“If we get you there, we can’t guarantee we will bring you back,” he says.

A woman in a head scarf is munching on snacks. She says her name is Mahamandeleshwar Durga Giri Ma. Her ashram wasn’t swept away when the deluge came.

But others disappeared one morning. She gathered her belongings and flew in a rescue chopper from the Badrinath area to Joshimath.

“We predicted this. On ekadashi, we had got the signal.

We had alerted everyone. God had told us,” she says. “Sins have increased. The sadhus are raping young women who are sanyasins. So many of us have cried, banging our heads against the shivling.”

A woman watches her. Her name is Baby and she is from Jhansi. She has been here in Joshimath for three days waiting for her brother to be rescued from Badrinath.

“My family is telling me to come back. But I won’t go without him,” she says. “Please tell the army to take me there. If they can’t find him, I will search for him.”

The sadhavi dismisses Baby’s story. She says the army didn’t get her bags. Baby looks at her, and walks away.

“We were praying to the God to show his might against all the sins that have been brought upon the holy men and women,” she continues.

“Why would you pray for disaster?” I say.

“At least sins have been wiped away. In a few days Badrinath will meet the same fate,” she says.

24 open

I leave. There’s enough to deal with already.

“

You might have to stay the night there,” says Brigadier Devinder Singh, Vice President, Northern Region of Deccan Aviation, a private chopper fleet, which has been pressed into service to aid the rescue efforts.

“There’s a hotel there. It is being used to house the evacuees. You can stay there.”

Ruhani Kaur, Open’s photo editor, who is travelling with me, is worried. I make a few calls, tell my mother we are going to Govind Ghat. Alert my editors.

And we fly.

We land in a different area. There’s no hotel here. No Bhandari Guest House, no langars, no habitation.

Only destruction.

T

he next day at Gauchar air base, one of the focal

points of the rescue operations, local women are busy frying puris. These will be air dropped. Several NGOs have come to aid in the rescue efforts.

SRK Nair is here. In one corner, he is briefing the IAF pilots, congratulating them on their efforts, their innovative approaches to rescue efforts.

He tells me how Captain Nikhil Nair spotted a couple stranded on a hilltop and winged down an ITBP personnel who then lifted the two one by one.

“He couldn’t have landed the chopper there. But this is how we are doing it,” he says.

There are many such stories, he says. But this isn’t the time to recount all of those.

Operation Sahayata it is called. There are 60-odd photos of army personnel carrying out rescue operations in different sectors—Harsil, Tawaghat, Joshimath, Kedarnath. Phases of operations are compiled on a sheet and pasted on a map of the region.

Ph I—Provide succour. Ph II—rescue. Ph III—evacuate. Ph IV—sustain. Ph V—consolidate. Ph VI—repair.

Men from the gurkha regiment are waiting to be air dropped into the Kedarnath area. But operations in that sector have been suspended due to rains on Sunday.

Roshan Chhetri is among the 12 men who are crouching on the floor, ready to run to the aircraft. The backpack he is carrying contains Maggi packets, a burner, a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, some first-aid materials, a compass, a water filter, and biscuits. He is also carrying a photo of his family in his wallet.

The plan is to drop them off for combing operations to find people stranded in isolated regions in Kedarnath sector. Already, around 40 members of the gurkha regiment are in the forests looking for survivors.

“We are to stay for three days. But even if it six months, we will be okay. We are hill people. We know the terrain.

We will manage somehow,” he says.

But there’s fear, too. He tries to hide it. When the water 8 july 2013

up in the air An old man rescued from one of the affected areas is rushed to a first-aid camp

comes, no terrain is familiar.

There are around 6,000 people stuck in Gaurikund near Kedarnath. That’s a difficult area to reach. That’s where on-foot rescue needs to be done, I am told.

A

man is carrying a printout of a family photo featur-

ing his brother. He approaches each one of the survivors that have been brought from Gaurikund to ask if they have seen him.

Suraj Kanwar, an old woman from Tonk district in Rajasthan, says she might have. He is hopeful again.

She is here after being stuck for nine days.

“I did char dham (‘four shrines’),” she says.

Lunch is served, and they are led to buses that will take them back.

The other day, a man boarded a bus to Rishikesh. He had been walking with his wife when she got swept away.

There are many stories.

An old man is led to a chopper by army personnel. His feet are bandaged. He slowly stretches out, and grabs the shoulder of an officer. A pilot takes the other side.

Together they carry him to the chopper.

I

n Birahi in Chamoli, as we descend, we see the River

Resort sign. Last time we had been here, we had asked the Tapovan Resort across the road for a room.

“Everything’s shut,” a man had said. “There’s no electricity. Besides, who knows how long we have.”

The River Resort, a Garhwal tourism building, was washed away on 15 July. All night, the water kept rising.

The guests were evacuated early morning. Soon, the resort just crumbled into the river. Two rooms have sur-

8 july 2013

vived. They sit forlorn. The land juts out, but cracks appear.

“Don’t go further,” a local tells Ruhani. “It can go down any moment.”

“Why do you live here? Mountain on one side, river on another,” I ask.

“This is home. Where else will we go? We run each time we suspect there will be a landslide, or a flood,” he says.

“How can you spend your lives running away?” I ask.

On the way to Srinagar, there is another landslide. I have already lost count of the number of landslides we have seen.

It will take five days to clear the road. We take the detour, up via Khirsu Kherakhal, on kutcha roads. In each hotel where we stayed, we were the only guests. They switched on the lights, gave us tea, served us dinner, and spoke about the tragedy.

In Srinagar, late into the night, we see people wearing masks. There’s a stench. Of bodies, they say. They say there will be epidemics soon. The worst is not over yet.

The stench lingers on through the descent. The river turns calmer.

The next day, we stop at a local eatery on the river bank near Dev Prayag.

A man is standing on the balcony watching the river. It was blue once. Now, it is brown, thick and unfamiliar.

“Did you see?” I ask.

“What?”

“Bodies,” I say.

He looks away.

“There will be many of them,” he says.

After 1,400 km into the hills, trying to get to places— Kedarnath, Guptkashi, Badrinath, Gaurikund—we are tired. Ashamed of our own voyeurism. n open www.openthemagazine.com 25

m yst e ry

The Stoneman Returns A serial killer is on the loose in Kolhapur and the police have probably arrested the wrong man Haima Deshpande KOLHAPUR

A

photos anil velhal

fully clothed male mannequin

stands outside the railway station area of Kolhapur city. It is clad in unkempt clothes and looks more like a scarecrow than a model. The rain has not helped; the mannequin gets dirtier with every downpour. The teeming crowd in the station area walks past it. Most don’t give it a second glance. It is too dirty to be a trader’s ploy to attract customers.

As one stops before the mannequin, the owner of the nearby makeshift shop edges near. Other shopkeepers too pause in their activities to stare. Strange. As if in response to an unasked question, one ofthe traders volunteers information about the mannequin.

It was placed there by the Kolhapur police to catch a serial killer after 10 dead bodies were discovered over four months, all with their heads smashed.

The mannequin looks like a beggar and is a bizarre trick to catch a serial killer. By the police’s logic, the killer will think this a real beggar and try to kill it. They will then nab him. The police say the killer has either used a large stone or a cement brick in all his killings. No weapon has been found at the sites of the murders. Those murdered were beggars who slept on the dimly lit pavements outside the railway station. The modus operandi in all the cases is identical. All the killings have occurred in the wee hours of the morning, according to post mortem reports.

The killings are reminiscent of what happened in Mumbai in 1985–87, Kolkata in 1989 and Guwahati in 2009. In all these instances, stones were used by a 26 open

hunting for clues (Facing page) Police collecting a victim’s bag; (left) looking for clues with a sniffer dog after a woman was found murdered

serial killer to murder pavement dwellers. For four months, the Kolhapur police had failed to make any headway in the current killings. A source in the department said they had not found even a shred of evidence leading to the killer. Yet interestingly, within hours of the state’s Deputy Minister for Home Satej Patil demanding results, the police caught someone who confessed to two of the murders. And after months without leads, they found a witness who saw one of the murders.

Patil belongs to Kolhapur and has faced severe criticism for the serial killings not being solved. As fear spread in the city and surrounding areas, he parked himself in town and ordered Vijay Jadhav, SP Kolhapur range, to find the killer. Patil is said to have threatened to transfer Jadhav to the naxal infested Gadchiroli district if the killer was not caught within 24 hours. As it turned out, the deadline was met effortlessly.

Dilip Lohariya, the alleged ‘Stoneman killer’, hails from Chhattisgarh and is said to have owned up to the murders at the station area bus stand and at Parikh flyover. Lohariya was produced in court with his face shrouded in a black cloth.

He was limping and it is suspected that he was badly beaten in police custody.

RTI activist Dilip Desai, who has been tracking the case, claims to have all the post mortem reports, which show the police have been fudging the numbers of those killed. He says they have caught the wrong man. “There is definitely a serial 8 july 2013

killer on the loose. They have not found the murder weapon yet. The police are also hiding the number of deaths. I have got the post mortem reports of nine beggars who were found with their heads smashed. The police have simply registered many of the cases as accidental deaths,” said Desai.

Meanwhile, beggars have left the city after the police started rounding them up for interrogation. Some in the station area didn’t want to leave. They are being forcibly evicted by the police and sent to other districts like Satara and Sangli. At

The serial killings in Kolhapur are reminiscent of what happened in Mumbai in 1985–87, Kolkata in 1989 and Guwahati in 2009 night, it is now difficult to spot a beggar in Kolhapur or its surrounding areas.

Though only beggars have been targeted so far, there is widespread fear among everyone. Few venture out after dark and the business of shops and restaurants have been affected.

It is contradictory that the police continue to patrol the streets after dark even though they have caught the serial killer.

In fact, the number of policemen patrolling at night has increased, lending credence to Desai’s accusations. The police’s

dependence on mannequins to help in the investigation is patently absurd. “We have only got a confession for two killings. We feel that the murders could be the handiwork of a mentally unstable person. This person will think that the mannequin is a beggar and try to attack it. We want to catch the person in the act of attacking the mannequin,” said Jadhav.

T

arachand Teli, a small time trader from Miraj, a town in Kolhapur, likes to walk down the station road late in the evenings when he visits the city. He stopped doing it after news of the murders spread. “I am scared now. The killer is out there,” said Teli.

He echoes the sentiments of many others who come to the city to visit its famous Mahalakhsmi temple. They would travel from rural areas and neighbouring towns and stay the night to sightsee or relish the food in the eateries. Those who could not afford hotels or lodgings slept on the pavements at the railway station or bus terminus. But now they try to reach Kolhapur early in the morning and return home immediately after darshan.

“Mera beta tuition ko jata hai. Late hota hai shaam ko. Woh akela aata tha, abhi nahi.

Uske papa ya meh jati hu laneko (‘My son goes for tuitions. It gets late in the evening. He would come alone but not anymore. Either his father or I go to fetch him back’),” said Vasanti Patil, a home maker.

Women, especially, are confining themselves to their houses. People who open www.openthemagazine.com 27

doubtful claim Police taking the alleged serial killer Dilip Lohariya to Shahupuri Police Station

stay near the station area do not even walk around in the compound of their housing societies after 7 pm. The once bustling station area wears a deserted look at night.

In the absence of any scientific profile of the killer, many have started to believe that it may be connected to black magic.

“It is easy to kill someone sleeping in the open. The skull is very important in black magic as it is the root of all evils. All evils grow in the head,” said Sunil Joshi, a pujari. “All the bodies have been found with their heads smashed. It is definitely connected to black magic.”

Kolhapur’s temples have seen increased visits by the city’s residents.

Some have conducted havan puja to keep their families safe. Sales of raksha sutra, the red or black thread worn around the wrist, has increased manifold. It is believed to keep the wearer safe from evil spirits. Prior to the murders, a 15 cm thread sold for Rs 2, now it is priced at Rs 5. Business has been brisk, says Shivam Gangurde, a vendor.

The Mumbai Crime Branch is helping the Kolhapur police in the investigation.

State Home Minister RR Patil announced this recently but the Mumbai police is not really pleased about being dragged into it. For the Kolhapur police, unused to rigorous field investigations, serial killings are an unknown territory. “When policemen do not go out to investigate cases they do not develop investigative skills.

The Kolhapur police lack the capacity and potential to investigate this case,” said a Mumbai crime branch official.

28 open

Stoneman killers have been one of the most elusive and mysterious entities in the history of Indian crime. Whether it was in Mumbai, Kolkata or Guwahati, the police found no clues. To date, the police in those regions do not know whether it was one man or woman or a group. What seems disconcertingly similar is the manner of the killings, a blow to the head either with a stone or a concrete block.

In the absence of any scientific profile of the serial killer, many have started to believe that it may be connected to black magic From 1985 to 1987, 12 pavement dwellers were found in Mumbai with their heads smashed. The killings happened in the central suburbs of Sion and Matunga. Then too, fear was so pervasive that people stopped leaving their homes after 7 pm. Like the 10 Kolhapur victims, all the 12 pavement dwellers in Mumbai were killed in the early hours of morning while asleep. They were rag pickers and beggars who slept alone in dimly lit streets. There were no witnesses. The similarities do not end there. The victims could not be identified as they did not have family members or relatives. The killer used a heavy stone to crush the head of his victims; a 30 kilo stone was found

near all the dead. Sniffer dogs turned up nothing. There were no fingerprints.

The Mumbai killings stopped as abruptly as they had begun. Then in 1989, it was the turn of Kolkata, where ten persons, all beggars, were found dead with their heads smashed. Investigation inputs were shared between the Mumbai and Kolkata police but no evidence was found to confirm that it was the handiwork of the same killer. Only the manner of the killings was the same. In Kolkata too the killings stopped suddenly. In 2009, nine beggars were found dead in a similar manner on the streets of Guwahati. The murders stopped within a few months.

Mumbai police sources say that, during the 1985-87 killings, there were many profiles drawn but never anything concrete to nail the killer. One of their profiles suggested the killer was someone acting on the instructions of a tantric with the aim of attaining a spiritual goal.

The Kolkata police profiled the killer as ‘a well-built tall person’. The profiling ended there because of the absence of forensic evidence.

Even in 1965 and 1966, the eastern suburbs of Mumbai had seen pavement and hutment dwellers being killed. About 19 people had been assaulted with a blunt object and nine had died. A homeless man was found suspiciously loitering in the area and arrested. His name was Raman Raghav and he spent five years in prison for robbery. The police had to let him go as no hard evidence was found against him. In 1968, when people were again getting bludgeoned to death in Mumbai’s suburbs, the police started looking for Raghav. He was found and confessed to killing 23 people in 1965-66 and a dozen in 1968. He died in prison in 1987.

A movie was made out of Mumbai’s Stoneman murders by Manish Gupta. It starred Kay Kay Menon and Arbaaz Khan. According to Gupta, he was intrigued by the killings right from his childhood. “When I was a student I was told by my family that I should not hang around after school or the Stoneman would harm me,” said Gupta. It is an order parents in Kolhapur are giving their children today. n 8 july 2013

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

INNOCEAN-092/10

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

openmagazine to 56070

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Our Recurring Nightmare

The MERS-CoV virus, closely related to the coronaviruses found in bats, has moved from the Middle East to other parts of the world. The WHO’s Director General calls it her greatest concern Kalpish Ratna

afp

afp

fabrice coffrin/afp

VIRUS VERSUS MAN (Clockwise from left) A Saudi health ministry official visits a patient infected with the new coronavirus in al-Ahsaa; test tubes at the infectious diseases unit in Tourcoing Hospital, France after cases were reported there; MERS-CoV being discussed at the World Health Assembly, Geneva in May

I

t is a short walk between the parking lot at Mumbai Airport

and the Arrivals lounge. Yesterday, at 2 am, it seemed like the thin edge of a Mass Extinction Event.

The whole wedge? Seven billion and counting, desperately short on food and water.

Today’s extreme weather is Robert Frost’s clichéd prophecy: fire or ice, take your pick, the world’s going to end anyway.

The oceans aren’t exactly boiling yet, but very soon they’ll be offloading CO2 and hydrogen sulfide by the megaton.

Beneath the raging Arabian, the continental shelf cracks up clathrates and blows off methane every time the floor shifts and sea levels change.

On my brief walk, I had a foretaste of these several scenarios of doom. A fair fraction of that 7 billion milled about the split-level parking lot, sheltering from the torrential rain.

Nearby, a gutter had erupted in a flood of sewage that belched out pure methane.

That gutter was once a river. It was choked with concrete to

8 July 2013

build the airport 50 years ago. Over the last decade, rising sea levels have caused it to burst free every monsoon.

The extreme weather had also sent several millions racing to the urinal. The acrid reek of ammonia made every breath a punishment.

Doom, at 2 am, was deafening. No, it was not the drone of multiple Pratt & Whitney engines. The city was hard at its favourite pastime—razing the past and building the future. In floodlit lots all around me, Caterpillars drilled right down to the craton, ignoring fault lines.

Despite the noise and the miasma, I had hope.

The last stretch of my walk was trellised with Rangoon creeper. Its pretty red and pink flowers shed fragrant linalools into the night. With daylight, there would be enough photosynthesis for the planet to mainline on oxygen again.

As I waited beneath the buoyant peacock-feather canopy, I noticed, just beyond the restraining rail, a bonsai banyan tiptoed in a terracotta basin. It seemed perfectly at home within the constricted urban biome. It was biology, not art. It looked more like speciation than a human shot at wabi-sabi.

Speciation? Aren’t we already changing in ways we haven’t even begun to examine? Isn’t it dystopia right now?

My favourite in wacko science is Peter Ward’s Medea hypothesis which blames earlier Mass Extinctions (the Big Five) on a microbial coup. As oceanic oxygen levels fall, anaerobic microbes take over and release a fug of hydrogen sulfide to snuff out life. While I’m not buying into the hypothesis, microbial coups are certainly being pulled off every which way.

Perhaps the takeover will be silent and insidious. We won’t notice it because words like extinction and pandemic have lost their edge. We have seen this scenario unfold so often in 3D at open www.openthemagazine.com 31

the Multiplex that life itself has become just another Game Boy. The desensitisation to disaster is so universal that perhaps the next contagion will silence us even as we’re leaning forward to refresh our Facebook page.

I

’m at the airport to see if I can spot any evidence of our newest pandemic.

Flights from the Middle East have landed, four of them.

There’s nothing to suggest they have arrived from a new Ground Zero. The lounge rings with welcome as laughing families eye the loaded trolleys, and welcome home weary travellers.

If anyone of these people develops a pneumonia within ten days, it could turn out to be the newest bogie, MERS-CoV. As of June 2013, MERS-CoV has claimed 61 lives. The first case of Middle East Coronavirus Respiratory Syndrome was diagnosed in the summer of 2012 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This novel coronavirus was isolated from a patient with pneumonia and renal failure. In September, the same virus was isolated in a patient in England who had recently spent time in Saudi Arabia. Backtracking led to a cluster of similar cases in April 2012—this time in Jordan. Some of these patients died.

Most cases on record so far have originated in the Middle East, justifying the tag ‘Middle East Respiratory Syndrome caused by Coronavirus’—MERS-CoV for short. In recent cases, in April and May, from Al-Ahsa in Eastern Saudi Arabia, there is evidence of person-to-person transmission.

But how did the disease emerge?

The jury is still out on that, but as the coronavirus is widespread in nature, it has been possible to find a close relative.

Genomically, MERS-CoV’s closest relations are a couple of coronaviruses found in two types of bats.

That’s enough evidence to state that MERS-CoV is a zoonosis.

It infects animal species other than our own. Bats, yes, but where does it travel to from the bat? Probably to an intermediary host X—and propinquity with this host X produces the hu32 open

fayez nureldine

control without cure King Fahad hospital in Saudi Arabia, where a number of patients afflicted with the virus have been admitted

man infection. As yet, host X has not been identified.

How, then, can we be certain these sporadic infections in different countries are a developing pandemic, and not sheer coincidence?

The detective work that’s needed to establish the chain of events is challenging—and not very different from the leap of faith that anecdotal observations demand.

Anecdotal observations also refresh information by zooming in on time and place. For example, an angry teenager once gave me a two-minute update on the urban reservoir of bubonic plague. I doubt if she had even heard of the disease.

She was grumbling about the frequent building projects around her home. So what had upset her? Was it the noise? The dug-up road?

“The moment those demolition guys arrive, rats take off and head right over as if we’re their only refuge. Eeek! One dived right in through my bedroom window last night.”

An epidemiologist would know exactly what she meant. The rat is the reservoir for the plague bacillus. Disturbances in habitat upset the delicate balance of co-existence between host and microbe. As the rat explores new housing, the bacillus too is faced with the necessity to adapt. And when a microbe does this, it spells trouble. It comes out of sanyas, flexes its muscles, and bops the host with a virulent attack of illness.

A sick rat full of fleas is the starting point for a pandemic. Even as I write, the plague bacillus is leading a quiet life in reservoirs all over the planet, waiting for the opportune moment to bare its teeth.

Like this teenager, people notice local events that trigger illnesses—even if they don’t always make the connect. During the Bombay Plague of 1896, while researchers were still two years away from cracking the rat-flea-plague nexus, locals had already connected the dots between ‘rat-fall’ and the new killer fever.

When a mysterious new illness strikes, it’s important to ask the people at Ground Zero what caused it. The untrained eye 8 July 2013

can see so much more than the tutored one.

What is the story on MERS-CoV? How did the first patient fall sick? What sign-post marked the onset of his illness?

Nobody seems to know.

To the two people intimately concerned with disease—the patient and the physician—the data on tap is woefully sketchy.

Any of those passengers who left the airport last night might report to me next week with a respiratory illness. How will I know it is not MERS-CoV? I will be informed by what I find, and try to match that against what I know. The facts on MERS-CoV are still too few and too general. There are many pulmonary illnesses that cause respiratory failure, and any rapidly progressive disease that causes a system to fail carries a high mortality rate. I need to know more before I can yell ‘pandemic’.

about a lot. 80 per cent of viruses, 50 per cent of bacteria, 40 per cent of fungi, 70 per cent of protozoa and 95 per cent of parasites have had careers in various other species before infecting us. So what kind of animals have they colonised?

Livestock would be the first guess. Domestication means intimate contact. The natural barriers inherent to traditional farming disappear when urbanisation and commercial exploitation take over, and a historically safe co-existence becomes a potentially dangerous one.

Does this mean that these reservoir hosts should be constantly monitored? Will that help us anticipate, and perhaps, prevent a new disease from emerging?

Think of the size of such a project—5,000 species of mammals and 10,000 species of birds under scrutiny. Even if it were cost effective, such a plan would be scientifically jejune. The known population of pathogens runs into a few thousands, not even considering the undiscovered, the unexperienced and the unhen a disease emerges, its pattern of emergence can be known. Paranoia on such a grand scale is impractical even for worked out with hindsight. a wealthy nation—so what about us?

Where did it come from?

This doesn’t really help me when my next patient walks in. I It led a peaceful life in a reservoir host till this co-existence cannot afford to let the pursuit of the extra-ordinary distract me was threatened by a drastic change. This change could be envi- from the ordinary. What I need to do instead is to re-examine ronmental or a direct threat to the host. It could be natural or the ordinary and the everyday with an improved understandinduced by human activity. ing of the origins of disease.

The Nipah virus emerged in Malaysia, Every morning as I leave home, I drive in 1997, when intensive pig-duck farmpast a fish stall next to a garbage dump.

There are potential paning was introduced in the natural habiIn trees overhead, alabaster white tat of fruit-bats. The fruit-bat is the natuagainst dark foliage, egrets wait to demics all around us, but ral reservoir of the virus, and when the swoop down on the chance tidbit. The it’s plain good sense, not bats fed around the pig sty, the virus acMunicipality will not back me on this, exoticised science, that’s complished the species leap. but what I see is a ticking bomb, zoonogoing to prevent them Changes in land-use force uneasy proses waiting to explode. pinquities. The new neighbor will beThere are potential pandemics all come the new host. Very likely it is a new species—unused to around us, but it’s plain good sense, and not exoticised science, the microbe and therefore more susceptible to illness. that’s going to prevent them. All we can manage is the here and Microbes, and in particular, viruses, are constantly evolving now and the everyday. Isn’t that a sensible place to start? and acquiring newer traits of virulence. When this newly in- Policymakers are very slow to implement the scientific discoveries they fund and endorse. Hasn’t the political brouhaha in fected host is human, a new disease has emerged.

Why was this first patient infected? Was he in close contact Haiti shown us that? The prevention of pandemics shouldn’t with the animal host? Was there a vector that carried the infec- be left to bureaucrats. tion between them?

What is the story of MERS-CoV? What happened in the oases When a new zoonosis emerges, at first the numbers infected of Al-Ahsa? Its date palms are celebrated in song and legend. are few, while the spread occurs between the animal host and What species of bat nest in these palms? Bats are the largest resthe human. As the microbe gains in virulence, the chain of ervoir of coronaviruses. Are the bats of Al-Ahsa sick?

We should explore the origins of the illness and not leave its transmission becomes shorter, and the disease is transmitted between humans. This isn’t always sustainable, and the out- control to panicked airport authorities. There was no pretense at surveillance last night as relieved travellers happily reunitbreak maybe limited to a few clusters of cases. ed with their families. They had come in from MERS-CoV This is where speed steps in.

Before air travel shrank our planet, journeys took time. It hotspots. Was the virus lurking among them?

In the coming months, the strategy should change. Ramadan could take weeks for an infected host to reach his destination.

During this time his illness could subside, or else, kill him. The is two weeks away, and the Hajj follows. Three million people chances that he would be infective when he reached his desti- from every corner of the world will congregate at Mecca. nation were much smaller then. Today, one can zip across the That confluence should not become a failed lesson in globe in a day. epidemiology. n

W

M

ost human diseases aren’t exclusively human because

pathogens are fairly eclectic in their reach. Our bugs slum

8 July 2013

Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan are surgeons who write together as Kalpish Ratna. Their last book, Once Upon A Hill, tells the story of Bombay’s Gilbert Hill open www.openthemagazine.com 33

p e r s ec u t i o n

Love in the Time of Caste Politics

vivek muthuramalingam

For Divya and Ilavarasan, eloping meant sparking off forces beyond their imagination SHAHINA KKI

T

here was nothing extraordinary about their romance in the beginning. The boy’s name was Ilavarasan, the girl’s Divya. Both were from Vellalappatti Panchayat in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district. Ilavarasan was pursuing a degree in Computer Science and Divya was in her final year 8 july 2013

as a BSc Nursing student. They travelled by the same bus to college and, as often happens, fell in love. They anticipated resistance. She belonged to the Vanniyar community, a caste officially categorised under Most Backward Classes. Ilavarasan was a Dalit, an Adi Dravida. The couple eloped and got married last year. After some time they returned to the boy’s parents. A few days later, the girl’s mother, Thenmozhi, accompanied by relatives, came to the house. They pleaded with Divya to break up the marriage. She refused. That same afternoon, her father, Nagarajan, committed suicide.

Carnage followed in Naikkankottai, Ilavarasan’s village. Media reports say that immediately after Nagarajan’s death, a group of 200 Vanniyar men gathered there. They blocked roads and pelted stones at vehicles. The crowd then suddenly swelled to around 1,000. They forced Dalits out of their homes. Sixty houses were razed, over 250 looted and damaged. No lives were lost but three Dalit colonies—Natham, Anna Nagar and Konampatti—were burned down.

In most homes, assets like motorbikes, cycles, refrigerators, television sets and almirahs were destroyed. A fact-finding team headed by Mumbai-based writer and civil rights activist Dr Anand Teltumbde found that this was organised mayhem. Their report said the marriage was just a pretext. The violence was designed and executed by the political party Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) to strengthen its base within the Vanniyar community.

The couple, both 21 years old, went into hiding, running from one place to another. Seven months later, Divya appeared at Chennai High Court and submitted that she had chosen to return to her mother. On 1 July, she has to tell the court whether her decision is final or not.

That is when the stamp of defeat will finally be put on this love story.

T

his is the context in which I went to Dharmapuri. The district, in the north western corner of Tamil Nadu, has a history of caste conflict. According

price of love Ilavarasan’s father Ilangovan shows an article about the couple in Kumudam magazine 8 july 2013

to a study done by Evidence, an NGO in Madurai working for Dalit rights, there have been 18 incidents of violence against Dalits in the district since 1995.

I called up Ilavarasan before setting off.

He spoke in a frightened whisper, agreeing to meet me. Divya’s lawyer had already said she was under terrible stress and would not see journalists. Once I reached Dharmapuri, Ilavarasan stopped picking up my calls. Laxmi, a Dalit activist in Dharmapuri who had helped me make contact with Ilavarasan, said he had fled to a neighboring state. I had his father Ilangovan’s number. He told me that his son was not in town and that the situation remained volatile. He agreed to meet me after repeated requests. I was told to take an autorickshaw to a particular point in town and from there, to walk to his address.

Divya’s family wanted her to go with them. She was adamant about staying with her husband. Hours later, it was found her father had hung himself It was a tiny two-bedroom rented flat on the first floor of a building. Ilangovon, an employee in a government hospital, and his wife Krishnaveni looked hapless.

They too had practically been in hiding.

He welcomed me, saying I was the first visitor to that home. They had come here after their residence at Natham Colony was set ablaze. The flat was also occupied

by Divya and Ilavarasan for a few days after their marriage.

Like most fathers, Ilangovan had had no clue that his son was in a relationship.

“He went missing one day. He had just completed the physical fitness test to join the Tamil Nadu police force and was waiting for his appointment,” he says.

Ilangovan filed a missing person’s complaint with the police. After a few days, he got a call from his son. “He said that he had got married. He cried and apologised.

He told me they had been in love for two years. He said Divya’s parents had arranged another alliance for her and she would have committed suicide if he had

not married her. What can we do in such a situation? I could not throw the children to the street. We asked him to come over with the girl,” he says.

A

fter they returned, Ilavarasan went to the Deputy Inspector General of Police to tell him that he was not missing. The DIG referred him to the Superintendent of Police, Dharmapuri, who informed Divya’s parents about the marriage. “I came to know that her father Nagarajan refused to come to the police station, saying his daughter was dead.

The cops told us that whatever was done was done and advised Ilavarasan to focus on his career,” says Ilangovan.

The marriage was solemnised in a nearby temple. After some days, a group of people came to visit them. Among them were Divya’s mother, aunt and community leaders from both sides. The Vanniyars demanded that the marriage be broken up. They wanted Divya to go with them. She was adamant about remaining with her husband. Hours later, Nagarajan was found hanging from the neck in his home.

Police say the rampage started immediately after the body was discovered. A group of Vanniyars started pillaging Dalit localities in the village. In the days that followed, the police charged cases against 300 Vanniyar youths. Half of them were arrested.

Ilavarasan, his parents and Divya had to run away from Dharmapuri. Their relatives were not well off and no one could host them for too long, so they kept shifting. “We stayed at a relative’s place in Chennai for a few days. Then we shifted to Bangalore, then Chittur [Andhra Pradesh],” says Ilangovan. It was only three months ago that they managed to rent this house.

Divya was saddened by her father’s demise, but was otherwise content, says Ilangovan. “She was not very expressive, [but] we knew she was under tremendous strain. We tried to keep her happy,” he says. “We bought a carrom board, chess board and laptop [he meant a tablet] thinking that it would help her to pass time and overcome the distress.”

On 1 May, Divya’s mother, Thenmozhi, came to their home again, this time with two sarees and sweets for her daughter. open www.openthemagazine.com 35

vivek muthuramalingam

Ilavarasan brought her on his bike.

Thenmozhi was there for a reason; she needed Divya’s signature on a document.

Nagarajan had been a junior clerk in a cooperative society. According to a scheme, his dependent was eligible for a job there.

As the eldest daughter, Divya had to certify that she had no objection to the job going to her younger brother. “She spent more than an hour here. She was very nice to us. She asked us to take good care of her daughter. I had the feeling that she had almost accepted Divya’s marriage,” says Krishnaveni.

Divya, she says, was a good daughterin-law, willing to help with household duties. “I wanted her to take her own time to overcome her trauma. I am sure that her mother also had no problem with us,” says Krishnaveni.

On 4 June, Ilavarasan, accompanied by his brother Balaji, went to his college to collect his transfer certificate because the college authorities had said that he could not study there any longer. Ilangovan was in office and Krishnaveni went to meet one of her son’s teachers to ask for help so that Ilavarasan could at least write the examination. When she returned, Divya was missing. The door had been left open.

36 open

Her clothes and other belongings were there but not her sandals. When Ilavarasan came back, he said that Divya had called him to say she was going to visit her mother who was unwell and admitted to a hospital. Divya never returned.

Krishnaveni and Ilangovan can find only one reason for this. “She might have been forced by her mother and relatives.

Divya was not able to resist the pressure.

She used to talk to her mother for almost an hour everyday on the phone,” says Krishnaveni.

I interviewed Ilavarasan over the phone. When Divya told him she was going to meet her mother, he asked her to wait so that he could accompany her.

After a few minutes, she called again to say that she was on her way to the hospital. After that, Divya stopped taking Ilavarasan’s calls. “Her mother took my call after some time. She told me that Divya did not want to come back or meet me. They switched their phones off after that,” he says.

Ilavarasan believes all of them—Divya, her mother and his parents—are victims of a political conspiracy. “Even though there was the anguish about her father’s death, she was happy with me,” he says.

C

aste-based violence is not new

to Dharmapuri. Vanniyar attacks on Dalits have been a regular phenomenon there since the ’90s. Scholars like MSS Pandian view this as an expression of the weakening power of Vanniyars over Dalits. In Nayakkankottai village, most Dalits have better living standards than the Vanniyars. Many Dalit youths have managed to get higher education and employment in cities like Bangalore and Coimbatore. The organising of the Vanniyars into a political group began late in Tamil Nadu, as compared to communities like the Thevars.

The Vanniyar Sangam was formed in 1980 by Dr S Ramdoss. Since its inception, there has been a series of clashes between Dalits and Vanniyars. The Sangam later metamorphosed into the PMK, a political party driven primarily by caste hate. Ramdoss tried to bring all intermediate castes under a single umbrella against Dalits, but by the late 90s, the PMK started becoming irrelevant in Tamil Nadu politics. The violence following Divya and Ilavarasan’s marriage is thought to be PMK’s attempt to regain its waning base among Vanniyars.

Resisting inter-caste marriages is right at 8 july 2013

evidence, madurai

victims of caste conflict (Facing page) Divya’s mother Thenmozhi at a juice parlour in Dharmapuri; (left) A dalit stands in front of her home, burnt down by a mob

the top of PMK’s agenda. Two months before this issue erupted, Kaduvetti Guru, a PMK MLA who heads the Vanniyar Sangam, publicly announced that Dalits marrying Vanniyar girls deserve to be hacked to death.

Caste was inconsequential for Ilavarasan and Divya. “Caste has nothing to do with our lives. It has never been a problem between us. We had discussed the possible consequences of an intercaste marriage since the very beginning of our relationship. But even in our worst dreams, we did not expect such a brutal exploitation of our situation by caste organisations and political parties,” says Ilavarasan.

He still believes Divya loves him. He does not blame her mother either, saying she’s a helpless woman. “They are scared of their community leaders and local PMK politicians. Both of them are in their custody,” he says.

Ilavarasan has no respect for Dalit organisations either. “I have not approached any for help and they have not offered either. Nobody helped us when we were running from one place to another in search of shelter. Everybody is only interested in using this issue for their benefit,” he says.

I

met Divya’s mother Thenmozhi af-

ter several rounds of discussions with the local PMK leaders. Saravanan A, the party’s district assistant general secre-

8 july 2013

What was striking about Divya’s mother was her absence of ill-will towards Ilavarasan and his family.

She refused to say anything negative about him tary, agreed to bring her to a fruit stall near my hotel. Beside him, her 16-yearold son also accompanied Thenmozhi.

A woman in her early 40s, she looked fatigued. We sat down, and after a formal introduction she told me she had not forced Divya to break up her marriage.

She was, in fact, beginning to accept it.

“But Divya was shattered after my husband committed suicide. We used to talk on the phone frequently. She used to cry saying that she was responsible for her father’s death. She was burning with guilt, but I did not blame her. I could do nothing but cry,” she said.

Thenmozhi says Divya broke up the marriage for the sake of their families.

They were living as if in prison because both of them could not appear in public.

“I discouraged my daughter from breaking up the marriage. I was scared that the people in my community would kill her.

Over the last two months, Divya expressed her wish to come back a couple of times. I did not have the courage to accept her. On 4 June, she herself took the decision to wind up her marriage,” she says.

I asked her about the reason for her

husband’s suicide. She remained silent and instead Saravanan launched into a political pitch. “Dalits are responsible.

Nagarajan had been mentally tortured by a policeman of their community. He was threatened with a case if he opposed the marriage. Besides, the local leaders of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK, a political party with a Dalit base) took Rs 5 lakh from him, promising to get his daughter back.” VCK leaders say these allegations are just PMK’s attempts to tarnish Dalits.

T Senthil Kumar, a Times of India correspondent and native of Dharmapuri, says Nagarajan was intimidated by the Vanniyar Sangam. “There was a panchayat meeting on 4 November [at] which hundreds of Vanniyars gathered. They aggressively demanded that the girl must return. I don’t think the Dalits in the locality are responsible for Nagarajan’s death,” says Senthil.

Thenmozhi neither agreed with nor opposed Saravanan’s story. She seemed unable to speak freely in front of him. In what she did say, what was most striking was her absence of ill-will towards Ilavarasan and his family. She refused to say anything negative about him. She just blamed their society and its deeprooted caste divisions.

She says there was no untruth in the story of her being in hospital the day Divya left her husband. “She hugged me and said that she wanted to nurse me. I did not know what to do and where to go with my daughter. I did not have the courage to go back to my village. We went to a relative’s place in Dharmapuri town and stayed there for a day. The next day we went to Chennai and presented ourselves before the court.”

She had earlier filed a habeas corpus petition for Divya and its hearing was due. On 13 June, Divya told the court that she did not want to go back to Ilavarasan.

The court has now given another date, 1 July, for a final decision.

The media have not been able to reach Divya. Local journalists assume that she is in the PMK’s custody. Ilavarasan is confident that she will change her mind and come back. Thenmozhi gave no hint of what Divya would tell the court on 1 July.

She could yield to her community’s pressures or return to Ilavarasan. It’s not a choice any girl should have to face. n open www.openthemagazine.com 37

limbo

The Half Man

Born with a female body, he underwent a mastectomy as part of his sex change.

Now he struggles to gather the money for the surgery to complete the process CHINKI SINHA photographs by raul irani

W

hen he gently taps on the glass

jar, the goldfish leap toward him and then move away. He is careful with them. He points to a small motor to pump in oxygen.

“They would die otherwise,” he says.

“Mine died one night. Just like that,” I say.

“Only the goldfish understand,” he says.

He is a person in a half-half body, assigned a gender at birth that didn’t match with his soul. He was born a girl and over the years realised he didn’t feel like a woman at all. He is now 26 years old, and has reclaimed some of his gender through surgeries and hormone pills, gradually making the journey to becoming a man. There is still some way to go, and money is needed to reach the destination. His job as a real estate agent isn’t his best bet. By his calculations, if he were to save two-thirds of his salary, it would be another ten years before he would be able to get his body ‘fixed’.

He is without a past. He was born with another name, a girl’s name, but now has a male name. He does not want it revealed; we shall call him D. D is from Model Town in Delhi. Everything that indicated he was born a girl—old photos, the little pieces of jewellery his mother gifted him, the clothes—has been annihilated. “I was reborn the day I went to the hospital to get my breasts removed,” he says.

Besides the goldfish, he shares his tiny two-room flat with his mother, younger brother, an aunt and a cousin. They moved here a few years ago. He has no friends from the past. He likes to live in anonymity. We agree to meet somewhere in the city because he is careful about the truth.

He walks awkwardly, his feet parted, with a swagger. He is still trying to make

self-imposed exile He has no friends from the past.

He likes to live in anonymity 8 July 2013

order out of the chaos of his own body. He doesn’t like asking for help, he says. But at the last mile, he can’t give up.

“Can you help?” he asks me.

D

struggled with his female organs for years; the scars that crisscross his back are proof of that. When he had been a girl, he had cut up his denims and sewed the cloth together to wrap around his chest and make the swell of his breasts invisible. The coarse fabric cut through his skin but he refused to remove it. He would rather suffer it than acknowledge the breasts. Three years ago, he decided to get a mastectomy done. The family advised him to think it through. They didn’t accompany him to hospital. He didn’t want them to.

He has been saving to have surgery since school: “I have been struggling. I can’t see myself in the mirror.

It is like looking at a freak.

Who wants to be a freak?”

That he was born a girl is not unusual.

Many like him are trying to cross over, but access to sex reassignment surgeries (SRS) in India is limited. In 2008, Tamil Nadu became a pioneer, announcing that it would sponsor sex change surgeries— but only for males to become females.

Female-to-male is a more difficult procedure. Doctors say the reconstruction of male organs is usually far from perfect, and the hormones have side-effects. Each time he injects himself with testosterone, D experiences mood swings.

Sex change comes at a great cost. In India, private hospitals charge up to Rs 2.5 lakh for it. But that’s if you find a genuine specialist. In India, only two integrated centres—Sitaram Bhartia Institute

in Delhi and Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai—perform this procedure. They have a team of experts, including surgeons and a psychiatrist. But even this is no guarantee.

For instance, a man who approached Dr (Col) SV Kotwal of Sitaram Bhartia Hospital demanding a sex change was refused because he wasn’t suffering from Gender Identity Dysphoria (GID), a medical condition where a person experiences a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity. People often view GID as a birth defect, or as a lifestyle change. In developed countries, there are support groups to help friends and family members become aware of the condition. In India, there is nothing.

D

worked odd jobs to collect money for his double mastectomy. He now needs to undergo a phalloplasty to reconstruct an artificial penis at the site of the vagina. With a monthly income of Rs 7,000, it will be many years before he can get a male organ. He has tried approaching NGOs for help but nothing has worked out. His mother understands, or so she pretends. She wants him to be happy. But with her job as a staff nurse at a private hospital, she can’t rescue him. “There is never enough money for anything,” she says.

Early in the morning at their house, she is busy cooking for her sons before leaving for work. At 8.30 am, she will report at the private clinic for an almost 12-hour-long shift. Overtime is important in their lives. She works seven days a week. In the last three years, she has only taken three days off when she was ill. “That’s no way to live,” says D. “I was very happy when my daughter was born. I was 22 years old at the time.

Her head was small, and she was so fair.

She was fragile,” D’s mother says.

D’s father left them when the children were young. He was an abusive alcoholopen www.openthemagazine.com 41

tenuous balance As a child, he went through the motions— playing cricket, hanging out with the boys—all the while biding his time

ic. He doesn’t know that his daughter has crossed over. He loved her long hair and combed it often when D was a teenager.

D announced he was a boy as he entered his teens. He started wearing pants, though that wasn’t so unusual. But when he came home after his Class 12 examinations, his mother was shocked—he had chopped off his hair.

“She said she wanted to be a boy,” D’s mother says. “I blame nobody but myself for this. I was always away. I would lock the house and go to work leaving her inside. While they were growing up, their father wasn’t around. I thought maybe that had something to do with his desire to be the man, to take care [of us].”

Sometimes, she has a slip of tongue and addresses her son by the name he was given at birth. All hell breaks loose. “Even I don’t recognise my son sometimes. If I were to see him in the market, I would not be so sure,” she says.

Apart from her family in Kerala, not many know she has a daughter who became a man. She is afraid of intolerance and ridicule. Some remember she had a daughter; others know she has two sons.

She can’t help matters. “I tell God that he should take him away before I die. I don’t know what will happen to him after I am gone,” she says.

D was born in Kerala, but his family moved to Delhi when he was still young.

He has grown up a quintessential city person, battling crowds, making space 42 open

for himself to live, to breathe, and to express. In his family’s small apartment, one room is shared by D, his younger brother, and their mother. In the other room, his aunt lives with her children. He went through the motions—playing cricket, hanging out with boys, all the while biding his time.

“I thought when I turned 18, I would break free,” he says.

He waited a long time before he started to negotiate his freedom. It came in spurts. First, he cut his hair. Then, he decided to forgo college. Someone had told him about surgeries that could fix his body, and he took up a job at McDonald’s to start earning. At Rs 22 per hour, it was going to take a long while to save up enough to transform himself. A girl who became his confidante brought him a newspaper cutting with details of sex reassignment surgeries.

“I have been struggling. I can’t see myself in the mirror. It is like looking at a freak,” he says. “Who wants to be a freak?”

W

e are in a car. He is quiet for some

time, then asks what if it had happened to me. “What if everyone called you Rahul or something? What if your reflection in the mirror was something you didn’t identify with?”

He looks out of the window. We don’t talk for a few minutes. The long term effects of the hormones that D has been

prescribed are unknown. The drugs make him irritable. He has a tendency to slip into depression and it often takes days for him to crawl out and live normally again. His mother is afraid of him.

Her two sons don’t talk to each other.

She understood that her daughter was slowly turning into a man in 2009.

“I noticed she wasn’t menstruating.

She had never told us she was taking the pills but we could see the changes,” she says. Before his birthday in 2010, D took the definitive step of doing away with his breasts.

In 2012, in the classifieds section of a newspaper, tucked between matrimonials and old car sales, were the words: ‘…after sex reassignment surgery and this shall be valid for all legal and judicial purposes…’ It was the announcement of his name change. “I planned the surgery in a way that my rebirth happens around the time of my birthday,” he says. He has to take hormone injections every two weeks. The dosage will decrease, but it is a lifelong thing.

H

e is in love. He checks his phone fre-

quently, showing me the photo of the girl. While he had been employed in a call centre, she had called for some work and they had started talking. They then met and liked each other. He even thought they could get married.

On his last birthday, she got him flow8 July 2013

ers, a watch, and candies. He shows off the watch. It is large on his wrist but he loves it, and wears it every day.

“That was my best birthday,” he says.

“We went to a club. We danced. We had dinner.”

Not long after, he told her he used to be a woman. She stopped taking his calls. He is still wondering why it had to be this way. He had been honest. He could satisfy her sexually. He would not be able to help her conceive, but there were options for that—sperm donors, etcetera. He is still hoping she will come back.

“I love her,” he says. “I know she liked me. I didn’t want to feel anything, because that would mean more suffering. I wasn’t capable of love. My heart was.

My body wasn’t. I told her everything.

She was crying. We met. I held her hand.

But I knew it was going to end. That feeling when you know you can’t help anything.”

In the photo he shows me, she has her head on his shoulder—an attractive girl, with long hair and dark eyes.

“I said I would need time,” he says. “I showed her videos of sex change operations. I kept saying it would be alright.

But while I said all this, I was a two-body person. It is like I have lost control. Like I have lost the plot. By this age, people are settled. They think about a career. Here I am, fixing my basics. I am still trying to find myself.”

D

r Kotwal, who has performed more

than 80 SRS, says science can help correct gender mismatch, but never erase it.

Before every intervention, he tells his patients that they shouldn’t look for miracles. He will try his best, but perfection is an illusion. Those who come to him are also not looking for perfection, he says.

They are looking to cross over.

He remembers one patient who wanted everything done in a single sitting.

The operation, in 2007, lasted for 14 hours. When he regained consciousness, the patient was relieved. His girlfriend was standing next to him and they knew they had run the last mile.

I got in touch with that patient. He told me over the phone that his girlfriend’s family had tried forcing her to marry someone else. They were appalled by the idea that their daughter wanted to marry

8 July 2013

him. They had both dropped out of college and started working to collect money to get his SRS done. He came from a middle class family. His father had passed away, and he lived in his grandmother’s house with his aunts. He is estranged from his family now, having told them about his decision to change sex. His mother moved away and they didn’t talk for years.

He took up a small room, and started the process of reclamation. His mother passed away last year. He wishes he could have reconciled with her and seen her one last time, but he couldn’t. He says he is happy with his wife, who stood by him throughout. When they eloped, the girl’s family lodged a complaint and sent men to look for them. Now the couple have returned to live in Delhi. He has started a business and his wife has taken up a job at an NGO. “I have hope that I will be able to produce a child, too,” he says.

“I love her. I know she liked me. I didn’t want to feel anything; that would mean more suffering. I wasn’t capable of love. My heart was. My body wasn’t” Such happy endings are rare.

Dr Kotwal speaks of many instances where gay men, in an impulsive state of mind, have approached quacks and been operated upon. And such changes are irreversible. Many countries, such as Israel, Cuba, Brazil, and even Iran, provide SRS as part of the government’s health policy. In the United States, some insurance companies cover it and 36 universities have introduced SRS as part of their student insurance programs. In Iran, it is a way to address the problem of homosexuality. By assigning the other gender to gay men, the country is eliminating its gay population. There are many cases of gays transitioning in order to escape the government’s ire.

In India, it is still viewed as a lifestyle change. Dr Kotwal speaks of a recent instance when two women approached him. They were in the paramilitary forces and wrote to the authorities seeking

permission for a sex change. Permission was granted—they are now undergoing training as male commandos.

Gender reassignment therapy is legal here, unlike in Pakistan where there are still cases of people who desire a sex change being imprisoned. However, India suffers from a lack of information.

Even in medical institutions, there are no courses that teach surgeons SRS. Dr Kotwal educated himself, following up with training and conferences abroad.

A petition on Change.org claims almost 40 per cent of transgender people in the US have attempted suicide. This figure was arrived at through a poll surveying over 7,000 transgenders. In India, there is a reluctance to even admit these issues exist.

“I don’t feel like killing myself anymore,” says a woman in a video that Dr Kotwal plays for me. She says earlier that she would wonder every morning whether she should be alive. In a pink blouse, with kohl-lined eyes, the woman narrates her journey from male to female. The video’s next sequence features a Muslim male who was born a woman.

A smile stretches wide on his face. “I was reborn,” he says.

D

says he is in that state before birth

and death. “Ten years I have been trying to change,” he says.

Every morning and evening, he goes to a temple and prays. Faith is an anchor, but it doesn’t always help. “I have cried a lot. Even now, when I bathe, I don’t look down. It scares me. I don’t remove my underwear while I shower. I am tired of controlling everything—emotions, desires.

Surgery is my only hope,” he says.

We are quietly sipping our iced teas.

Except for when he smiles while speaking about his lover, he is always sad. “I want to be myself. I have my own imagination. I want to be manly, masculine, complete,” he says. “I don’t want to live this hybrid life.”

That he wants to be in love, I understand. That he wants to be done with the trauma, I understand. In fact, I try and understand all of it. There are those that say people like D want to show only a certain side of themselves because they need money. I think I understand that as well. n open www.openthemagazine.com 43

S c i e n c e V S FA I T H

An Atheist in Exile After he exposed a ‘miracle’ in Mumbai, multiple FIRs were registered against Sanal Edamaruku under a blasphemy law.

Expecting arrest, he fled the country and has now lived abroad for a year LHENDUP G BHUTIA

I

n one of the many lanes off Mumbai’s SV Road—that all-important artery connecting the city’s central region with its western suburbs—there exists an otherworldly place. Five minutes into Vile Parle’s Irla Lane, all the traffic disappears. There are no plush offices here, no towering buildings. Instead, large banyan trees line the sides of the roads, small crosses at intersections remind residents of their faith, and people live in small single floor homes with sloping roofs. This is a village of East Indians, the original inhabitants of Mumbai.

A little over a year ago, for a span of a few days, this sleepy hamlet transformed

into nothing less than a carnival. People from various parts of the city, from a cross-section of religions, thronged the area for days, waiting to see a sign of god.

The feet of a statue of Christ had started to drip water. For five days, water oozed out of Christ. In the glare of media channels transmitting this miracle live, people started collecting what they termed holy water. (Later, when their stock was running out, they increased it by adding ordinary water.) As the crowds increased, tarpaulin sheets were set up to shelter the faithful, chairs were organised for the elderly, all-night vigils began to be held, and, as with all good miracles, myths be8 july 2013

ashish sharma

first drop,” she says. Even after the dripping stopped, villagers had strangers knocking on their doors asking if they could share a few drops with them.

D

elhi-based atheist and rationalist

Sanal Edamaruku was contacted by a television news channel on the evening of the miracle’s first day to offer a rational and scientific viewpoint. Edamaruku, who heads Rationalist International, a group devoted to promoting rational thinking and a scientific temper, has spent more than 30 years travelling across India to debunk myths and superstitions. He stated on the channel that the alleged miracle was likely to have a scientific explanation—that, for all one knows, a hole might have formed at the top of the cross from which water was now seeping into the torso of the statue.

Furious Catholic groups challenged his views and Edamaruku visited the spot a

For a few days, a year ago, a sleepy hamlet in Vile Parle transformed into a carnival. A statue of Christ had begun to drip water— it was called a miracle denial Catholic groups in Bombay were angered

by Edamaruku’s claim that the miracle was false, construing it as an attack on the church

gan to bloom. It was said that a few years ago, a tree fell at the spot, and while houses nearby were damaged, not a scratch befell the statue. People were said to have been magically cured of a variety of illnesses by the water. Two women over 60 years of age, one from Wadala and another from Khar, came hobbling on crutches, residents said, and after a sip went home with their backs ramrod straight.

The ‘miracle’ was first noticed not by a Catholic, but a Hindu woman. This pious lady, Sharda Parmar, always started her day by bowing to the statue. “Nothing was there when I reached that morning.

It was when I was praying that I felt the 8 july 2013

few days later to investigate the matter.

According to him, the day he arrived at the site there was no water dripping.

However, priests from the nearby Our Lady of Velankanni church were conducting a mass, and distributing from a bucket the ‘holy water’ they had collected, mixed with mineral water. On TV the same evening, he explained that the statue is located close to a manhole and a drain. There is a wall that lies between the statue and the drain. According to Edamaruku, water from the drain made its way up the cross through capillary action and leaked out through the nailed hole in the feet. Capillary action is the scientific term for the ability of liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of external forces like gravity.

Often, this ability manifests itself in opposition to gravity, as Edamaruku suggests occurred in this case. Various Catholic groups on the television show’s

panel were furious. Like many TV debates, it spiraled out of control and the topic turned to Christianity and the superstitions associated with it. When Edamaruku refused to apologise for his comments, one panelist threatened to file a police case against him.

Edamaruku recalls that after the discussion was over, the news channel suggested he remain in the studio for a while.

Those on the panel had reportedly gathered a number of people outside to beat him up. He left late in the night from a back door and switched off his phone till he reached Delhi the next day. As promised, two FIRs were soon lodged against Edamaruku. They were both filed under Section 295A of the IPC—India’s blasphemy law, which punishes anyone who outrages a religion or the religious beliefs of another individual. It is a non-bailable offence and carries a maximum punishment of three years, plus a fine. A few years ago, an Andhra Pradesh author and translator with the pen name Krantikar was arrested under the same section for translating some of the works of Taslima Nasreen into Telugu. Another incident occurred late last year when, under the same section and Section 66(A) of the IT Act (related to sending offensive messages through a computer or communication device), two girls in Mumbai were held by the police for questioning the shutdown imposed during Bal Thackeray’s funeral.

According to Edamaruku, he started to receive threatening calls from a policeman in Mumbai on a daily basis. These calls were always late in the night and from a mobile phone. He applied for two anticipatory bails—one in a lower court in Delhi and another in Mumbai’s High Court—but both were thrown out on technical grounds. During the Delhi court hearing, lawyers representing the Catholic groups argued that his case had to be tried in Mumbai. In Mumbai, the High Court decided that his case should first be heard in a lower court.

Meanwhile, according to Edamaruku, friends in Mumbai closely connected with the Church and Catholic groups, told him there was talk of getting people to forcefully bring him to Mumbai to get him arrested. He was also afraid that a fanatic might try to murder him.

Edamaruku went into hiding. open www.openthemagazine.com 45

subodh sinha

disbelief Edamaruku has spent his life debunking myths and superstitions, but says he has never faced a situation like this

He spent the next month and a half living in student hostels and various friends’ homes. He stopped driving his car. While he was hiding in a post-graduate hostel, he would live in a room with the door latched from outside. When it became likely that he would soon be arrested, he flew to Helsinki in Finland.

Edamaruku has now spent over a year in Finland. “I have travelled to some of the most backward and rural areas of India to expose myths and superstitions.

But I have never faced a situation like this. One would assume that people in Mumbai would be more sensible and tolerant,” he says on the phone from Helsinki. He says he wants to return to India but as the situation stands, he will get arrested without bail here.

The church in Mumbai, on the other hand, has refused to get involved. The archbishop of Mumbai issued a press statement last year, stating that the Cardinal was out of the country when the issue of the Irla cross surfaced and that he was in no way connected with the filing of the FIR. However, he did make an appeal. Not to the groups to withdraw the FIR, but to Edamaruku to issue an apology for his comments. After this, he suggested, the FIRs should be withdrawn.

Judith Monteiro, a public relations professional who holds the position of secretary with the Association of Concerned Catholics (AOCC), one of the groups that filed an FIR, is adamant that they will not withdraw it until Edamaruku issues an apology. “Yes, he has freedom of speech and expression. But we also have the freedom to express our faith,” she says.

“When someone comes to stab you, won’t you act against [them]?”

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AOCC has, in the past, taken film producers to court for objectionable scenes depicting the Christian community.

They got Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal to delete a scene which showed a Catholic priest dancing with a garland of lottery tickets around his neck and the church in the background. They also took on the makers of Kya Super Kool Hai Hum for showing a Catholic priest solemnising the marriage of a dog and a bitch, and reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water

Rationalist Edamaruku angered Catholic groups by explaining the miracle, but refused to apologise even when slapped with FIRs and threatened by police upon two dogs while they mate.

According to Monteiro, what upset them was not Edamaruku claiming the miracle was false, but his attack on the church.

“We won’t tolerate it,” she says.

E

damaruku was born in Kerala to a

Christian-born father and a Hinduborn mother. They were both rationalists and had adopted the name of their village—Edamaruku. His father was excommunicated from the church for questioning the concept of Immaculate Conception in a book he wrote. When his mother was nine months pregnant, she had been invited to his father’s house for the birth. There, his family tried to convert her to Christianity. Edamaruku’s

parents left the house, even though it was raining and his mother had gone into labour. Edamaruku was born outdoors.

This, however, was not the reason that he became a rationalist-activist.

That came about when he was around 15 years of age. A young girl in the neighbourhood who was known as an athlete had developed blood cancer. Her family, despite pleas by various individuals and newspapers, refused medical treatment and instead tried to ‘cure’ her with prayers. “Her death completely shook me. I resolved to do something about it,” he says.

Now, having been forced to escape the country, Edamaruku says he has found a larger audience for his message. He has been on lecture tours, speaking against superstitions across Europe. When he spoke in Belfast during the last week of November 2012, a group of atheists invited Edamaruku to visit the village of Ballinspittle to explain the case of the famous ‘Moving Mary’ statue. The statue was first reported to have moved in 1985.

Over the years, the spot has attracted large numbers of pilgrims, and reports of its movements have continued to surface. Armed with a laser beamer on a tripod directed at the statue’s head to see if any movement occurred, Edamaruku recorded the proceedings. No movement was observed. According to Edamaruku, such ‘movements’ occur because of an optical illusion. “If you stand still in darkness and fix your eyes on an object some distance away, and count, say, up to 3,000, it is likely that you [will] find that fixed object swaying,” he explains. “But you know what was most interesting?

Nobody took offence.” n 8 july 2013

between the sheets

Roles and Rules

I only realised how much of a part men too must play when The Boyfriend stopped playing it sonali khan

W

hen The Boyfriend and I walk into a room, he

gets the door. Whether he’s firing orders at his team on the phone or kissing me as we tumble into the house, he always gets the door. Without thinking. When it rains and the thunder sounds like it’s going to swallow the city whole, he drives. He has to circle a few lanes to bring the car to the front gate, but he does it so I can jump in without worrying about a raincoat. When we’re out, he offers to drive us back so I can drink. When we go out for movies, he gives me the aisle seat and sometimes misses the start of the film because he’s getting me my popcorn. When we go out for dinner, he pays. Whether we’re digging into burgers and comparing toys, ordering in, or at a restaurant where women wear makeup and men wear jackets to pick at bite-sized portions of dubious-sounding food, he refuses to let me pay.

Last week, after our fight, when he told me I’m going to find out what not having a man around meant, I thought he was going to pull a disappearing act.

I wasn’t too perturbed. After my last trainwreck relationship, I’d wisened up.

The first time I had to deal with a blown fuse, I curled up on the sofa and cried. It was 1 am and I’d never felt more alone in my life. My first thought was to call the ex, because even though he was the biggest asshole I knew, he was a known asshole and I still hadn’t quite gotten used to life without him. My second was to go back to the parental abode.

I couldn’t do this. Being independent is so much easier with a functional geyser, hot water just a flick of a switch away. The next morning I made a list of emergency numbers—an electrician, a plumber, and the grouchy fellow at Bharat Gas without whom there literally wouldn’t be food on my table.

Somewhere between deciding on my domestic help budget and measuring my new bed to go mattress shopping, I became comfortable with my singledom. I could do this.

But The Boyfriend didn’t disappear. Instead, he started subtracting from the person I knew him to be. We were going to a café when it first happened. It took me a second to realise the door wasn’t going to open itself. I hammered the push bar and we entered; a first for us. After our coffee, there was no customary wrestle for the bill. I paid, he smiled his thanks and we left. Another first. The changes

were inconsequential, but they felt weird. Not unpleasant, but unnatural. I hold doors open for people all the time; I just never expected to do it for him.

This continued for the rest of the week. I waited in line for my popcorn while he sat in the theatre watching the trailers he is so loathe to miss. At a bar, a friend looked pointedly at him and commented on how unappealing she found stingy men. I was mortified. Not for having to pay, but for the easy assumption that since I was with a man, he should have.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated the social expectations that come attached with a vagina. Walk, don’t strut. Don’t sweat, glisten daintily. Never burp or fart. Fold yourself into smaller spaces. Pluck, john bolesky tweeze, epilate, depilate, bleach, wax or laser. I care so much about how sexism hurts women—from economic inequality, to gross under-representation in politics, to actual physical and mental abuse—but I rarely ever think about how rigid gender roles affect men.

Sexism screwed us over big time. But it undeniably screwed the Penis Club as well. He belongs to a generation entrusted with the unique responsibility of looking great while not caring about how they look at all. Real Men are gentle, sensitive and non-violent, but they should be equipped and willing to punch the living daylights out of another Real Man if need be. Tough job, that.

In a way, The Boyfriend’s intended punishment backfired. Once it stopped feeling unnatural, I started enjoying it.

As a type-A personality, I like being incharge. I love making money, and I love spending it on my partner even more. It made me think of my financial future, independent of the Y-chromosomes in my life. I think the experience was interesting for him too. He’s been raised to protect, provide for and pamper the women in his life; not doing it is like rewiring his hardware.

The next morning, it rained so hard, we thought we’d lose windows. He brought the car around and I made a mad dash for it. Inside, we both laughed.

Relationship: 1, Rules: 0. n

Sexism screwed us over big time.

But it undeniably screwed the Penis Club as well

48 open

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

She drinks whisky, not Cosmopolitan 8 July 2013

mindspace true Life

Certified Copy

63

O p e n s pa c e

Shah Rukh Khan Sajid Khan Saif Ali Khan

62

n p lu

Raanjhanaa World War Z

61 Cinema reviews

BlackBerry Q10 Gucci Interlocking Collection BioLite Camping Stove

60

Tech & style

Did Men Cause Menopause?

Cheese Prevents Dental Caries Converting CO2 into Methanol

58

Science

The Man Dibakar Banerjee Based His Character On

56

cinema

Peter Cat Recording Co.

54

music

A Male Ant Has no Straight Antennae

a rt s

Living with Cancer

50 64

soumita bhattacharya

what it is like to be a man A contemporary Indian dance on masculinity 54

true life

living with cancer The former head of the counter-terrorism wing of RAW succumbed to cancer on 16 June. His tweets over the past five months, as he watched his body being laid waste by the effects of his illness and radiation therapy, document his fears, hopes and determination to emerge the victor Siddhartha Gupta

B

ahukutumbi Raman liked liv-

ing in Chennai. He hoped to die there too—though he did wonder if Chennai’s mosquitoes would get to him before his cancer did.

Raman, one of the founders of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) and former head of its counter-terrorism division, died on 16 June 2013 at the age of 76. The cancer in his body, which was first detected in October 2009, had spread from his bladder to his liver.

Raman was a prolific writer, even during the time that he was valiantly fighting his cancer. His blog (http:// ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.in) has tens of entries every month for the past five years. He wrote about China and its foreign policy, and India’s foreign policy with respect to China; he wrote about Pakistan, the ISI and al-Qaeda; he wrote about issues concerning the US, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Rahul Gandhi, riots and the Indian government. He even wrote about Salman Rushdie.

A spymaster for most of his working life, Raman retired as additional secretary with the Cabinet Secretariat. After he retired, he headed the Institute for Topical Studies in Chennai. Raman recounts his days at RAW in his memoir, The Kao-boys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. It helped that his memory was almost encyclopedic.

50 open

getty images

Raman also tweeted regularly #sorbonne75, sometimes several times in a single day. His tweets show him to have been fiercely independent, a workaholic and incredibly positive. He never married, but in the past few years, he actually started to crave solitude. One of his favourite songs was Ma Solitude by the French singer George Moustaki. What he missed the most after his cancer was detected was his daily dose of Scotch and soda— two large pegs every day and three on Saturdays.

Over the past five months, Raman shared even the most minor update in his battle against prostate cancer. It helped to ward off depression and fight the cancer, he claimed.

Raman didn’t go down without a fight. His tweets between January and May 2013 on his battle with cancer, which are reproduced here, are a testimony to that.

14 January: All set to leave for my 9th radiation therapy session after 3 days’ rest 16 January: 10th session of radiotherapy over. 23 more to go. Tomorrow (7-30 AM), 2nd blood transfusion & 11th session 16 January: Lost 4 kilos since radiation began on Jan 2. Still 4 kilos over weight.

Do not have emaciated look of typical cancer patient 16 January: Many buddies call on me to enquire abt my health. I am touched. I welcome it. But don’t stay for too long. I do feel tired 18 January: 12th radiation session completed this AN. 21 more to go. My haemoglobin level which came down to 5.9 on Dec 3 has gone up to 10.2 25 January: Three & a half weeks of radiation therapy completed sans major side effects so far. Three more weeks remain 25 January: During my hospital visits met many cancer patients from WB & Assam.

They have come to Chennai due to poor medical facilities in home state 25 January: Urinary bladder—recurrence after 3 yrs 31 January: Side-effects of radiation start.

8 July 2013

Nausea. Weakness. Loss of 5 kilos. Loose motions 1 February: 2. A 4-yr-old sweet child from WB is brought by its parents every day for radiation. It had a brain tumour that cld be only partly removed 4 February: Cancer may affect the quality of your life, but let it not affect your interests in life & people 11 February: 28th radiation session over.

CT scan shows 80 percent of tumour has

The cold winds from the North have come to

fetch me and take me to where I came from. But

I am not yet ready to leave.

I am not yet prepared to walk into

oblivion.

The cold winds have to come back when I will be ready to leave

dissolved. Advised to have a few more sessions. Will know t’morrow 12 February: I wonder whether when death ultimately comes to me, it will come from my cancer or from Chennai’s mosquitoes 15 February: 4th booster radiation session over. 4 more next week 16 February: Trying homeopathy to cope with side effects of radiation therapy

17 February: Hopefully last four days of booster radiation which is nothing but torture 17 February: Many journals grade hospitals on basis of prof inputs. Imp to get inputs of patients too. R hospital & docs patient friendly?

18 February: Apollo’s radiation machine was out of order whole of yesterday.

Hope it is OK today. 4 more sessions before I complete the radiation therapy 18 February: Am very much in Chennai.

Hope to die in Chennai 18 February: Some of the best oncologists in India r in govt & military hospitals. Conservative, non-aggressive, patient-friendly 18 February: Many of my friends who went to Govt hospitals recovered. Many who went to private hospitals died 18 February: My late nephew who was a doc in US used to describe many private docs as carpenters than docs 19 February: 5th booster radiation session over. 3 more to go. Apollo’s radiation machine broke down today too. Was set right & recalibrated causing delay 22 February: 1. Cancer: Last booster radiation session over. radiation therapy over too—36 sessions at 15 minutes per session from Jan 2 to Feb 22 22 February: 2. cancer: have been asked to report again end April for post-radiation review. Am told side effects of radiation will subside in abt 20 days 22 February: 3. Thereafter will start picking up strength. Luckily, did not develop any fever or infection during the radiation 22 February: 4. cancer. Back in circulation

by March 20 22 February: 5. cancer. Thanks for the good wishes & moral support of all of you. You kept me going despite the radiation being a torture in last 3 weeks 24 February: 1.The cold winds from the North have come to fetch me and take me to where I came from 24 February: 2.But I am not yet ready to leave. I am not yet prepared to walk into oblivion open www.openthemagazine.com 51

24 February: 3. The cold winds have to come back when I will be ready to leave 25 February: Discomforts of post-radiation recovery start. Managed to take two small walks yesterday despite them.

Meeting my urologist today 27 February: Still facing difficulty in coping with post-radiation discomforts 27 February: Hoping to have my post-radiation eye checks today 27 February: According to my DOC, the tumour was only in the urinary bladder & not in prostate. CONTD 28 February: Had a preliminary eye check after radiation. Doc said nothing calling for intervention. He will examine again after a week 28 February: I have been slowly increasing my daily measured walks. Have spells of fatigue still in the evenings 28 February: Planning to visit barber today. First visit after I was diagnosed with fresh tumours in my urinary bladder on Dec 1 last 28 February: 1.Love brought us together. It divided us furtively. We r left with memories & pains. That’s all we inherit from love 1 March: One week of post-radiation recovery over. Side effects subside very slowly 1 March: Post-radiation pic. Minus beard. Minus 9 kilos pic. twitter.com/ U6x3kXWou7 2 March: Back after a 3 hr outing in city.

Consulted a well-known homeopath on radiation side-effects. Visited my house after 3 months 2 March: A day of rest. Some eating, some rocking in chair, some sleeping, some walking, some browsing, some writing, some thinking, some hoping 3 March: My life is not one dream fulfilled.

It is a series of broken dreams made of memories & pains 3 March: This is the second week after radiation was completed. Side-effects continue, but I am up & moving 3 March: Cld hardly wait to return to my house & resume my lonely existence.

52 open

Possibly March-end. I love my lonely existence 3 March: Am a bachelor. Living alone since 1963 with a domestic assistant 14 March: No more OK for me ever since I underwent 36 sessions of high intensity radiation #ok 15 March: Well. Surviving 15 March: Am itching to get going normally 15 March: Completing 3 weeks of radiation recovery today. Discomforts due to side effects r not yet subsiding. Weight

Unbearable pain.

Trying to sleep, sans morphine.

Good night...

Sinking.

Slowly, but steadily.

A losing battle...

Courage, I have. Desire to

live longer I no longer have

constant at 79 kilos 15 March: Slowly increasing my walk.

About 15 minutes daily now 19 March: Had a detailed post-radiation eye-check-up. Eyes normal. No cataract.

Advised another check-up in Sept 19 March: Think of others who underwent radiation along with me. Many from NE including 4 yr old child from Kol. Hope they r recovering 20 March: This morning too since the burning sensation during urination has

not subsided. Has asked me to take Urispas 22 March: 4 weeks of post-radiation recovery. Weight constant at 79 kilos.

Haemo rises from 9.5 To 10.2. food intake improves. Burning urination 6 April: No problem last night. Food intake normal. Sleep OK. Burning sensation during urination continues.

18 April: I complete 8 weeks of my postradiation recovery on Apr 23. Thereafter, scans & other tests to assess impact on my 2 tumours in the bladder 20 April: When I was under radiation treatment, blood donation for pushing up my haemoglobin was arranged by a local sathyasai baba pple 22 April: Completed 2 months of radiation recovery today. Visit to radiologist on 26th for evaluation 24 April: Despite 36 sessions of high intensity radiation, my Total PSA shoots up from 14 on Nov 30 last to 104 yesterday.

Hope to know reason Apr 26 24 April: Cistoscopy in 2009 & Dec 2012 For bladder. CT scan showed 2 tumours in bladder. prostate was clean. radiation for bladder 24 April: Good indicators. Weight stable at 80.5 kgs Normal food intake.

Haemoglobin level goes up to 11 Sans any further transfusion after Jan 21 24 April: My cytology report—occasional lymphocytes & mature squamous epithelial cells in proteinaceous background. No evidence of malignancy 25 April: MY HAEMOGLOBIN LEVEL: 1.Came down to 5.9 on Nov 30 last.

Started gasping. Couldn’t walk even inside my flat 25 April: MY HAEMOGLOBIN LEVEL: 2.

Was given 3 blood transfusions in Dec & 2 in January. Went up to 9.2 25 April: MY HAEMOGLOBIN LEVEL: 3.

Since then has reached 11 by my taking daily a glass of beetroot juice and one of anar juice 25 April: MY HAEMOGLOBIN LEVEL: 4.

Now am able to walk briskly for abt 25 8 July 2013

minutes daily. Also drink a glass of white pumpin juice daily to reduce acid 25 April: I have observed my stomach as cancer patient tolerates sambhar nicely if it is not spicy & has very little dal & lot of cut vegetables 25 April: My stomach as cancer patient can’t tolerate sukha sabji. Creates nausea 26 April: Back from hospital after meeting radiologist. Have to go again Monday morning for PET CT scan of lower abdomen 26 April: I am under treatment for 2 tumours in my urinary bladder. Hope to know the progress next week. Thanks 26 April: Danger is it will discover tumours not found earlier. Means more therapy 29 April: Back home after PET CT scan of lower abdomen. Results tomorrow evening 2 May: Back from my radiologist. Cancer in my bladder has totally disappeared.

Small growths in liver & adrenalin gland.

Advised to see oncologist 8 May: Visit to oncologist today to consult on lesions in liver, adrenalin gland & lower part of lungs noticed in PET scan 8 May: In cancer, therapy can be worse than the disease 8 May: Will be 77 in Aug. beautiful age to die rather than undergo one therapy after another 9 May: He says my cancer is spreading across body. No safe treatment options available. Has suggested morphine to be taken if painful 9 May: I told him I will fight it out till my last breath. I won’t give up so soon 12 May: Woke up. Ate some rice with curd, one plum, 3 Muscat dates. Back to sleep 12 May: Spreading relentlessly for last 2 weeks 12 May: Cancer cells of my bladder have got into blood stream and affected liver. the count-down 12 May: I want other cancer patients to know about my battle 12 May: I have declined. Underwent radiation 8 July 2013

12 May: 15 minutes of walk despite pain in lower abdomen. 2 Liv 52 tablets of Himalaya 12 May: No. am trying Google Vedic cancer treatment 13 May: No recovery. Downhill. Trying to arrest speed 13 May: My bladder cancer has spread to liver. No safe treatment options available. Have been Advised to try alternate medicine 13 May: Not gloomy, but pain 14 May: Shanti Ayurved Clinic North Boag Road, T.Nagar, Chennai-17 has been recommended to me for alternate treatment of cancer. Any views?

15 May: http://ramanstrategicanalysis. blogspot.in/2013/05/state-of-my-cancer-update.html … State of My Cancer— An Update 15 May: Am a terminal cancer patient. speak & tweet from personal experience of suffering & sharing 15 May: Some R painfully terminal. Some R philosophically.

15 May: I have lost 2 relatives in US to cancer due to aggressive treatment 15 May: It is a branch of Coimbatore AryaVaidyasala. Heard of it? A well-wisher says they cured a relative of breast cancer

changed the medicines for painful urination. Will prescribe oral chemo 18 May: Cancer 4: with less worrisome side-effects. Has promised new pain-killer will be effective 18 May: A week after I was diagnosed with secondary liver cancer, my weight has more or less remained constant at 78.5 kilos 19 May: The heat, gastric rechting 19 May: Weight same as yesterday—78.50 kilos 19 May: Unbearable pain. Trying to sleep, sans morphine. Good night 19 May: Planning to formalise will for my flat tomorrow 19 May: Sinking. Slowly, but steadily. A losing battle 19 May: Courage, I have. Desire to live longer I no longer have 20 May: Opinion of best cancer team in Chennai—No medical option available.

Advised to follow palliative pain management 20 May: Advised to take half a tablet of heroine twice a day even if I have no pain 20 May: Last night 2 of my old bosses asked me to take pain-killers sans ignoring doctor’s advice 21 May: Touched by a message of good recovery from NaMo’s office yesterday

16 May: Just analysing. shifting to my brother’s house for 4 days tomorrow.

He intends discussing my case in Adyar Cancer Institute 16 May: Painful. My oncologist has suggested morphine. Am avoiding

23 May: Living under care of a male nurse since this morning 23 May: Am in terminal,stage of my cancer. Very painful. Thought will share my knowledge with them before I die in Oct. frustrated

17 May: Severe back pain. Took half a tablet of Morphine as advised by Oncologist.

Good night

28 May 28: Lovely musical calls of koyals all around 28 may: I can eat only what my tummy can tolerate. I can’t eat what others want me to eat 28 May: Affection for terminal cancer patients shd be simple and normal, not instructive

18 May: Cancer 1. In Adyar area a group of medical specialists including oncologists cater to domestic medical requirements of senior citizens 18 May: 2. Was examined by one of them today. He is confident they can keep my liver cancer stationery sans worsening 18 May: Cancer 3.Has replaced Morphine with less potent pain-killer & has

29 May: Admitted in hospital last AN for checking catheter. No emergency, though 30 May: Hanumanji willing, shd be back home coming Saturday n open www.openthemagazine.com 53

arts

Inhabiting the Male Body Contemporary dancer Mandeep Raikhy explores ideas of masculinity in his piece A Male Ant Has No Straight Antennae DEVIKA BAKSHI

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hat is masculinity?

Mandeep Raikhy’s recent contemporary dance work, A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae, raises and responds to this question far more effectively through movement than could be possible in words. Pinpointing such an abstraction is a mammoth task, plagued by convolution, generalisation and jargon. But masculinity, and indeed all gender, is a peculiar sort of abstraction—though it evades language, it finds constant, tangible expression in the body. And if the body is the medium through which masculinity articulates itself, Raikhy’s enthral-

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ling piece suggests it may also be the ideal site for a re-articulation.

The body is where Raikhy, Managing Director of Gati Dance Forum, began his investigation, sending the members of his ensemble out into South Delhi’s Khirkee village, where Gati is located, to “observe the male body as though it were an alien”. The dancers reported back with characteristics that intrigued them—gestures, postures, gaits. “There were all sorts of images of gender, of masculinities, sitting in people’s walks,” Raikhy says.

The material brought in by his ensemble allowed Raikhy to create a basic

physical vocabulary of borrowed “elements” with which to work. “It’s really like making a language,” he says, finding “a logic between the elements”, combining the elements into clusters, like letter into words, stringing those into phrases and sentences, which are then repeated and layered on top of each other, creating a cacophony of meaning that’s familiar in texture, yet not fully comprehensible.

Creating images based on what they’d found, the ensemble then went about “deepening the images”, exaggerating an element here, repeating another there. One of the most compel8 july 2013

body language Raikhy (centre) attempts to create meaning through repetitions of single images

soumita bhattacharya

ling sequences in the piece came out of such a deepening—a duet with his ensemble’s only female dancer, which involved several iterations of a phrase built around the curved-in arm-positioning of muscular men of a certain bearing. “Puffy arms”, Raikhy calls it.

“Just that as a graphic was fascinating.”

Raikhy admits the sequence is more formal than he initially intended to get in the piece, for which he eschewed his tendency toward abstraction in favour of movement that was more real, raw.

But the sequence is an important punctuation for the work as a whole— uptempo and unnerving. What begins as a hypnotic pendulum of arms transforms, over the course of several repetitions, into a menacing gait of the upper body, the swinging motion creating a frenzy of intimidation.

8 july 2013

This, perhaps, is what Raikhy means when he describes the sequence as an attempt at “meaning-making through just repetition”. Repetition, here, is in a strictly choreographed sense, with phrases danced in fugue, then in sync, then repeated with minor disconcerting alterations, then sped up—in effect, taking one simple image and scrutinising it from every angle. Not disengaging from the movement its kernel of meaning, but highlighting it through repetition, revealing it as the pivot of the whole thing, as with the arms and their kernel of aggression. This would be impossible to explain in words—the meaning carried in the shape of a man’s arms—but it can be enacted, enhanced, and so, experienced.

In their observation of the men of Khirkee village, Raikhy’s ensemble discovered many such characteristics of what he calls “the particular body dy-

Mandeep Raikhy began his investigation by sending the members of his ensemble out into South Delhi’s Khirkee village, to “observe the male body as though it were an alien” namic” inhabited by Indian men—the “pelvis dropping forward”, the expanded ribcage, the hands constantly touching things: other hands, themselves.

“There’s something really sensual about those bodies,” Raikhy says, contrasting them with the more “trained bodies” you’d likely encounter just across the street at the Saket malls.

“Gender is a playing out of these characteristics, these physical details,” says Raikhy. Recombining these details, it follows, would be a reconstruction of gender. But Raikhy was careful not to construct a single new meaning, allowing himself to be led instead by specific inquiries such as, how does the body behave when the bedroom door is shut and what happens to it when someone enters the room? Answers to these questions were found through

improvisation, and then rearranged conceptually.

This interplay between concept and improvisation is evident in the sequence that deals with what happens when someone enters the room. This too is a highly percussive sequence, beginning as one body being policed into self-conscious self-correction by another (with the aid of guttural shouts), and shifting gradually into a kind of rythmic physical groupthink, with all bodies snapping erect in tandem, no longer needing an auditory cue.

There is a central conceptual concern embedded in Raikhy’s piece, though he scrupulously avoided talking to his dancers about it, knowing it would make its way into the piece naturally.

It comes through most potently in a duet between Raikhy and a male dancer, which begins with the two lying entangled downstage. It’s easy to imagine this sequence as the counterpoint to the one in which the ensemble springs repeatedly to attention—another aspect of the investigation of what bodies are like when no one’s looking.

Though he never uses the word, this sequence is an exploration of intimacy, of “masculinity as it plays out in contact with another body, [of] how the idea of touch can present many possibilities of being male”. This is where Raikhy’s central concern reveals itself: masculinity as an axis of fear and desire and the male body as the source of these forces, an object of attraction and repulsion—a magnet.

The entire piece unfolds along this axis—the push and pull between dancers, competition and intimacy, encouragement and encroachment, embarrassment and bravado, fear and desire, violence and play. In an interview with Blouin Artinfo a few weeks ago, Raikhy said he was interested in “the ideas of masculinity that reside in the real moment of contact between people”.

Though he doesn’t elaborate on what ideas of masculinity he had aimed to articulate in the moments of contact in Antennae, the answers are already in the piece—embedded, embodied. I can’t tell you what masculinity is; perhaps neither can Raikhy. But there it is, enacting itself on the stage. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

music peyush berenwal

New Kids on the Block One of the most significant indie bands to emerge out of Delhi, Peter Cat Recording Co. on daring to be musicians gunjeet sra

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hen Peter Cat Recording Co. (PCRC) started out two and a half years ago, the Delhi underground music scene mainly revolved around heavy metal, and a few electronic dance music acts. So it was no surprise that the audience at their first few shows in Delhi were awed by what they heard: a part-cabaret, partfolksy, part-jazz melancholic sound.

They were well-orchestrated shows, which included animated projections and a lead singer who alternated between playing the keyboard and pro56 open

voking the crowd. The sound, using the keyboard, drums, harmonium samples and a trumpet, was fresh and new. And, therefore, exciting.

Suryakant Sawhney, the lead singer and frontman for the band, had just returned from San Francisco, where he had been doing a course on film studies. He was irreverent, immensely talented and itching to make music. “I constantly have an urge to create or be part of a grand project and at that time, it was music,” he says. After school, while applying to foreign universities

and waiting for scholarships to come through, he had joined a graphic designing course in Gurgaon and was introduced to Rohan Kulshreshtha through a friend. They jammed a little and then Sawhney was on his way abroad. “I thought I would catch up with him during summer breaks, but that didn’t really happen until I got back [for good]. And then, everything fell into place,” he says.

Kulshreshtha, who is also part of a heavy metal band called Lycanthropia, teamed up with Sawhney and PCRC 8 july 2013

front seat wonders (From left) Karan Singh, Suryakant Sawhney, Kartik Pillai and Rohan Kulshreshtha

was born. Sawhney says that he “spent a long [time] looking for a name, and then stumbled into a café [called Peter Cat] in Kolkata after a particularly weird day and realised the name fit the aesthetic of laid-back jazz”. He later found out that Japanese author Haruki Murakami, too, owned a jazz club by this name and was happy to know that “we both had the same idea of what it meant”.

Their first album, Sinema, released on 1 January 2011, has been steadily picking up on sales. The solo video for Sinema, titled The Love Demon, has over 7,000 views on YouTube, a remarkable feat considering that it was shot in a day with a little help from friends. The B-side of the album, titled The Wall of Want, which was released last year, too, seems to be enjoying moderate success.

It’s getting bigger for PCRC, which has performed at all major music festivals in the country, including Ragasthan and NH7. Sawhney says that it is this “average” success that has kept them going and given them the confidence to “chase their dream and quit pursuing anything other than music”.

They are tight-lipped about their next album, which they have been recording since they returned from a music festival in Challal, Himachal Pradesh, where their performance got rained out. Sinema, which was old school complete with a vintage photograph for the cover (in fact, a childhood photograph of Sawhney’s mother), was “all about the vintage look and feel of it… old tapes, older sounds, song writing, focus on the lyrics and the postproduction of it”, Sawhney says. This time, he adds, “it’s purely spontaneous.

It’s only when we get to the middle of it will we think about any thought progression we’d like to take”.

The band likes to tour often, regardless of the venue. While in the Northeast, they performed at a bamboo festival in Dimapur at the suggestion of a local. “It was a strange experience, performing in front of a crowd of 300 to 400 people, mainly uncle and aunties.

8 july 2013

The moment our first song got over, we saw a whole block, say about 150 people, get up and walk off. The younger lot loved it,” says Sawhney. Today they have played in each of the major cities in the country and are saving a repeat performance in Mumbai for a “grand” show later this year.

The later part of the year will also see an album launch, which they claim will be a far cry from the drunken debauchery that followed the launch of their first album. “We did it at Rohan’s house in Bapa Nagar the first time around and invited a few friends. Those few friends turned out to be some 50 to 60 odd people. We were so drunk by the end of it, we performed everything but the album songs,” laughs Sawhney.

“While the rock star lifestyle may initially draw you to music, it’s not

“While the rock star lifestyle may initially draw you to music, it’s not something that you can keep up with.

People have this image of [musicians] being total junkies. That can get physically taxing” something that you can keep up with,” says Peter Cat’s drummer Karan Singh.

“To live like a proper musician, people have this image of you being a total junkie. That can get physically taxing,” he says, sipping on a warm cup of tea to calm his sore throat. There was a time when PCRC’s image was marked by the bohemian lifestyles of its members and the unkempt look they endorsed.

In the last two years, says Singh, a lot has changed. “We have to be more conscious. If we let the lifestyle get in the way, we make mistakes, we don’t coordinate well and we essentially fuck up.”

The past one year has also seen a new addition in their group, lead guitarist Kartik Pillai, who was also a sound engineer on some of their gigs in Chennai. He joined the band when a founding member, Andy, quit due to “ideological differences”. Singh says

this is something that he still feels bad about. “A band is like a family; we can’t live with each other and can’t live without each other. Thankfully Kartik shares a lot of the same aesthetics as us.

The first time we jammed, we knew it was going to work.”

Pillai, who studied audio engineering from Chennai, may be a new addition to the band, but has been involved with music for as long as he can remember. He also plays with an alternative band called Begum, whose music has Carnatic influences. Interestingly, the four Peter Cat musicians say that the freedom to explore their individual interests in music is what keeps them together. Sawhney, too, works with an electronic project Lifafa, just as Kulshreshtha and Singh are still involved with Lycanthropia. Between the four of them, they juggle genres from heavy metal to electronica to alternative to laid-back jazz. “Music is a release for all of us. It is our way of coping with life. To club it in genres would be unfair. We take back from everything that we experiment with and that eventually aids us with PCRC,” says Singh.

The band dynamics are pretty clear.

Though the spotlight alternates between all the members, Sawhney is clearly the leader. That can perhaps be attributed to the fact that PCRC was his brainchild, that he is the song writer, and the fact that he is involved in most of the post-production work along with Pillai. “Me and Rohan are not good at it,” says Singh, who also gives drum classes on the side and takes up odd design gigs to make a quick buck.

Kulshreshtha, too, does event programming and artist representation to get the money flowing, while Sawhney does a little bit of logo designing.

Aside from these, and their music, you will find them at their rooms in Hauz Khas Village, indifferent to anything around them, including the rare and occasional groupie. “We like to live a frugal existence. We can’t afford to go out. Our going out is only music, it takes care of our social needs and the organisers feed us well. For the rest of the time, we are just ideating… making music and figuring out ways to make extra money,” says Sawhney. n open www.openthemagazine.com 57

CINEMA Rendezvous with a Character Purandar Vitthal, the character played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Bombay Talkies, is based on Ashok Karangutkar, a common man with an uncommon touch Drashti Thakkar

D

ibakar Banerjee’s short film,

Star, in the recently released omnibus Bombay Talkies, is a rendition of Satyajit Ray’s short story Patol Babu Film Star. It features Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Purandar Vitthal, a man who relives the most fulfilling years of his life as a stage actor by becoming a storyteller to his daughter. When they joined Banerjee as chief assistant directors, Shabani Hassanwalia and Samreen Farooqui were asked to find a real-life Purandar Vitthal. Ashok Karangutkar is that man.

His friends and neighbours call him ‘lambu’ or ‘bandiya’. He is tall and lanky with sullen cheeks that serve to highlight his eyes. When he talks of the incidents that mark his life, he uses his eyes to convey wonder and surprise. His face is reserved for more dramatic expressions. A conversation with him is coloured with theatrical pitches, rising-anticipating-falling. His bony hands and long fingers gesticulate emphatically and his body moves in tune with the emotions he is conveying. He doesn’t remember having told Samreen and Shabani anything special but for the two, conversations with him were fascinating. “You can’t stop listening to him,” says Samreen.

“They came here first around Ganesh Chaturthi because they liked our building,” says Karangutkar, who lives in Lalbaug, which used to be the mill district of Mumbai. “The location manager felt my house would be the best place to shoot Star in. They brought along Shabani and Samreen the next time they came and we got talking.”

Amidst the decision to give away his home for 15 days, Ashok was approached with another unusual request. Shabani and Samreen explained to him that he intrigued them. His life had similarities with that of Vitthal and they needed his help to flesh out

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the character. “Though the script is completely based on Satyajit Ray’s short story, the character, his nuances and behaviour and even the events that affect his life have been drawn from instances in Ashok and Nawaz’s (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) lives.

Purandar’s character is an amalgamation of these two,” says Samreen. She says Ashok was generous to them. “He opened his house and heart to us immediately with such endearing honesty. Even when the shooting was in progress, we would sometimes just sit together and talk for hours.”

Shabani and Samreen, who work under the label Hit and Run Films, saw a story in this serendipitous accident.

Ashok has lived all his life in the small flat that served as Purandar’s house in the movie. He sleeps where Purandar did, in the balcony, waking up to the sight of the Lalbaug flyover and the sounds of early vehicles On their next visit, they told Ashok that they wanted to make a documentary on him. This is in the post-production stage and Samreen says that while they haven’t decided what to do with it, it was a magical experience.

According to Ashok, the duo started shooting the documentary almost immediately, even before shooting for Star had begun. “Mai kuch bhi karu Jigi (cameraman Jigmet Wangchuk) apne camera se shoot karta. Sone jau, khaane jau, kaam karne jau, kapde sukhane jau, kuch bhi karu, uska camera saath aayega (No matter what I would do, Jigi would be there with his camera—whether I was eating or sleeping or working or

drying clothes, his camera would follow me),” he says.

Ashok is a raconteur and this is evident as he speaks of his experiences with the film crew of Bombay Talkies.

“You know that scene, Siddiquiji is running back home to his daughter. It is night time and he must run through a patch of land occupied by a procession. When we got to the set to start shooting, all these people from BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) came in and started creating trouble. Poora maidan khali karvaya aur hamara saman le ke jama kar diya.

Bole, ‘Fine bharna padega.’ Arrey! Abhi poore panch-dus minute ki shooting bhi nahi karni thi, aur fine bharna padega?”

(They made us leave and took away our equipment. They said, ‘You will have to pay a fine.’ Pay a fine for just shooting for five to ten minutes?)

And then?

“Phir? Phir kya? Main gaya BMC aur maine baat ki, sham tak saara saman aur shooting permit dono dilwa diya tha.”

(Then? Then what? I went to the BMC office and had a chat with them. By the evening, I had convinced them to return all our equipment as well as to grant us a shooting permit.)

Ashok has lived all his life in the small flat that served as Purandar’s house in the movie. He sleeps where Purandar did, in the balcony, waking up to the sight of the Lalbaug flyover and the sounds of early vehicles.

His father was an employee at Phoenix Mills. “When the mill burnt down, he lost his job. They gave him some money, but it wasn’t enough. So bhaiya (my brother) and I had to start working when I was 17,” he says. Ashok started with making chokes for tubelights.

“I have been a cook, a driver, an electrician, a mechanic. Aisa koi kaam nahi hai jo maine nai kiya (There is no such work that I have not done).” He says he 8 july 2013

ritesh uttamchandani

where star was born Ashok Karangutkar (in red), like Nawazuddin’s character in the film, was a theatre actor in his teenage years

works independently as an interior designer now. “Ghar banana ke saare kaam kar sakta hu, plumbing, wiring, sab kuch. (I can do everything from plumbing to wiring.)” Vitthal’s life was also a series of jobs.

Ashok was a Marathi theatre actor in his teenage years. But unlike Vitthal, who finds a rejuvenation of sorts in the movie from his art, Ashok has lost all passion for it. In 1996, he acted, very grudgingly, in an ad film for Manikchand gutkha. He was featured as the apex of a human pyramid formed to reach the dahi handi in celebration of the Janmashthami festival. Like the protagonist in Star, this role came to him by chance. “I was in the gym when I got the call. They needed someone who could climb the top of the pyramid and I used to do that in 8 jujy 2013

Govinda (festival). The filming took too long to finish and Arpit (his son) was sick at that time. Once I was done, I ran back home to cheer up my son.”

In Patol Babu Film Star, Patol Babu leaves the film set without taking any money because creative satisfaction for him outshadows his need for money. In real life, Ashok’s need to reach home to his unwell son was much more urgent than his need for money.

In the short film, Purandar’s reasons for abandoning his fee are a mix of the two. “What Ashok has, and you will see this reflected in Purandar’s character as well, is the ability to dream big and wholeheartedly pursue it. That is a quality Nawaz possesses as well. That is what unites them,” says Samreen.

Ashok’s son Arpit has similar dreams. He wants to do film editing

and says he shall learn it from Dibakar Banerjee and no one else. There is also Jaymala, Ashok’s 66-year-old mother, who lives in the house. She says Nawazuddin would never ask her to move for the sake of the frame. If they came to shoot at odd times, Nawaz would ask for her permission very respectfully and make the crew wait outside till she finished with her work.

Ashok still misses the bustle around his life when the shooting was going on. “Bahut yaad aati hai un logo ki. Nawazji abhi bhi baat karte hai.

Har kuch dino me unka phone aata hai.

Puchte hai ‘Kaise ho? Meri film aa rahi hai. Dekhna jaroor’.” (I miss those people a lot. Nawaz still talks to me. Every few days he calls and ask, ‘How are you? My film is about to release. Watch it for sure.’) n open www.openthemagazine.com 59

The pH SCALE ph levels A pH level lower than 5.5 puts a person at risk for tooth erosion, which is a process that wears away the enamel of teeth. The higher the pH level is above 5.5, the lower the chance of developing cavities

Did Men Cause Menopause? It has evolved because of men’s preference to breed with younger women

Cheese Prevents Dental Caries

alan lagadu

science

Consuming cheese and other dairy products could prevent dental caries, according to a new study in India. For the study, published in General Dentistry, Dr Ravishankar Telgi of Kothiwal Dental College and Research Center, and his team sampled 68 participants ranging in age from 12 to 15. The scientists looked at the dental plaque pH in the subjects’ mouths before and after they consumed cheese, milk, or sugar-free yogurt. Those who consumed milk and sugar-free yogurt showed no changes in the pH levels in their mouths.

Those who ate cheese, however, showed a rapid increase in pH levels, suggesting that cheese has anti-cavity properties. n

W

hat causes menopause in women? Over the years, various hypotheses have been proposed to explain it. According to one hypothesis, often termed the ‘grandmother theory’, menopause evolved in women so that older women can cooperate and help their daughter rear children, thus improving the survival of their kin.

However, a new study questions this theory and posits a new one.

Rama S Singh, head of Department of Biology, McMaster University, who led the new study says that the ‘grandmother theory’ does not add up. “How do you evolve infertility? It is contrary to the whole notion of natural selection. Natural selection selects for fertility, for reproduction—not for stopping it,” he says.

The authors of the new study, published in PLOS Computational Biology, claim that the reason why menopause has evolved is because of the preference among men to breed with younger women. This phenomenon would have stacked against continued fertility in older women, and when genetic mutations that final-

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ly brought on menopause started appearing, it persisted and became more prevalent over time.

Researchers used a computational model and computer simulation to show that male mating preference for younger females in humans could have led to the ‘accumulation of mutations deleterious to female fertility and thereby produced menopause’.

The authors write in the journal, ‘The origin and evolution of menopause is understood poorly and explanations remain contentious.

Virtually ignored among explanations is the effect that mate choice can exert on an evolving population... Our model demonstrates for the first time that neither an assumption of pre-existing diminished fertility in older women nor a requirement of benefits derived from older, non-reproducing women assisting younger women in rearing children is necessary to explain the origin of menopause.’

According to the study, if menopause developed over time in the way they think it did, this also means that it can be reversed. n

Converting CO2 Into Methanol

According to a study, published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, Université Laval researchers have developed a highly effective method for converting CO2 into methanol, which can be used as a low-emissions fuel for vehicles.

They used a compound called hydroborane (BH3), and the results have been spectacular. The reaction achieved is two times more effective than the best catalyst known—and it produces little waste.

Also, the chemical reaction does not damage the catalyst, which can be reactivated by adding new substrate. The only downside is the price. “Our approach to creating methanol is highly effective from a chemistry standpoint, but for now the process is expensive,” explained professor Fontaine who led the study. n 8 july 2013

tech&style

BlackBerry Q10 For BB users who swear by physical QWERTY keypad, Q10 is a winner gagandeep Singh Sapra

thermoelectric generators While inefficient, they are more reliable and have a smaller chance of breaking over time and use. Many space probes generate electricity using a thermoelectric generator whose heat source is a radioactive element

Gucci Interlocking w Collection

Price on request

Rs 44,990

A

The collection for women includes three crystalline variants in a small 29 mm size, each bearing the interlocking GG in 40 pavé diamonds. The black version comes with a black lacquered dial and black crocodile skin strap, while the two stainless steel variants feature a white or grey mother of pearl dial. The ‘Automatic Interlocking’ timepiece for women comes in 32 mm size. The watch has a Swiss made automatic ETA 2824 movement. n

fter all the speculations about

what BlackBerry will do next and what its future will be, it came back with a bang with the Z10 earlier in the year, but hard core BlackBerry users missed the physical keyboard.

The new Q10 has taken care of that. It has a touchscreen, a keyboard, and a new operating system all packed in a smart handset.

The Q10 is what BlackBerry likes to call ‘the best way to type’, so if you are a QWERTY person like me, then you will love the Q10. Its intelligent word prediction and dictionary engine allow you to use the keyboard more efficiently and faster.

The Q10 is available in both black and white colours. The keyboard design speaks of precision engineering, while the rounded edges retain the familiar BlackBerry look and feel.

But there are no end/reject call and answer call keys, all these functions are done via the touchscreen. All the apps that are available on the Z10 will work with the Q10, thanks to a wonderful software development kit from BlackBerry.

The Q10’s 3.1 inch LCD screen offers a resolution of 720 X 720 pixels, which makes the screen look lovely when it comes to your applications and other uses, but when it comes to watching videos, the screen is limiting. The Q10 also ships with BlackBerry 10.1 operating system, which quickens a few things, say, if you want to tweet you can just type ‘tweet’ and the message, and it goes to Twitter; to email, just type ‘email person@email.id’ and it opens up mail.

8 july 2013

BioLite Camping Stove

The Q10 is fitted with three microphones that allows for active noise cancellation, and in my tests at a noisy airport, my calls were received loud and clear without any noise.

The Q10 features an 8 megapixel rear camera and a front 2 megapixel camera. The cameras respond slightly faster than the OS10 and give some sharp images, but they still can’t beat my iPhone’s camera.

The black Q10 has a back cover with weaved carbon fibre matte finish, which gives each handset a slightly different look from one another, but that is not with the white.

Otherwise, between the black handsets and the white ones everything else is the same. n

£149.99

This camping stove can cook, heat and also charge your electronic devices. It uses biomass such as twigs, pinecones and wood pellets for fuel. You just have to put them into its burning chamber and light it. An internal fan creates airflow that keeps the fire at its maximum efficiency. Its thermoelectric generator converts heat into electricity—a maximum of 5 Watts @ 5 Volts—, which you can tap into using its USB port. It’s light at 935 gm and is about the size of a 1 litre bottle. It folds up easy and comes with a carry sack. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

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CINEMA

zombie alert In October 2011, almost a hundred live weapons, including machine guns, rifles and pistols, flown into Hungary from London for the filming of World War Z, were confiscated by customs officials in Budapest

Raanjhanaa Shockingly, this film seems to endorse stalking and sexual harassment ajit duara

o n scr een

current

World War Z Director Marc Forster cast Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos,

Daniella Kertesz Score ★★★★★

or, Cast sonam kapo ol de y ha ab h, us dhan l rai Director anand

T

his malevolent little film is quite

a detour from Anand L Rai’s previous work, Tanu Weds Manu. There he looked at the ritual of arranged marriages in middle-class families of Uttar Pradesh and placed a free-spirited girl and a non-conformist man right in the middle of it. Though socially conservative, Rai was squarely in the 21st century there. Here, in Raanjhanaa, he has inexplicably regressed and endorsed ritual stalking, sexual harassment and political opportunism.

Some of it is quite shocking. A teenager called Kundan (Dhanush), the son of a Tamil priest in Varanasi, falls in love with a local Muslim girl called Zoya (Sonam Kapoor). At first he hounds her with his comic antics, and when that doesn’t work, he gives her a little piece of wisdom by telling her that in UP, the only way to patao a girl is either by pestering her or by terrifying her. He then slits his wrist with a razor blade, sending everyone into hysterics.

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Post haste, her father sends Zoya to Aligarh and she stays away from Varanasi for eight years, going on to study at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). In the meantime, Kundan has infiltrated his way into the good books of Zoya’s family (do they not recognise him?), and picks up from where he left off with some more theatre—he drives a scooter into the Ganges, with Zoya on the pillion.

The writing in the film is purportedly witty, one-liners laced with obscenity, directed largely at the fickle nature of women. After all this, the filmmaker has the nerve to take his movie to JNU to mock student politics there. Then, in one fell swoop, he takes us onto the streets of Delhi for a ‘public protest’.

In style and picturisation, the ‘protest’ scene replicates the recent demonstrations against the rape and molestation of women. The message is clear—look at these pseudo-intellectuals and their hypocritical empathy.

What a laugh! n

This is a movie, set in the present, about a global epidemic that turns people into zombies. No one knows the origin of the virus. It is spread by swarming zombies who bite. The only people protected are those already sick with a life-threatening bacteria. Being mortally ill works like an inoculation from the infection.

Though Brad Pitt is the protagonist, the heroes of the film are members of that much maligned organisation, the United Nations, in particular the WHO. Pitt plays a former UN employee who has no choice but to get back to his job as an investigator. He travels to South Korea, where the zombies first turned up. Were they sent as a goodwill gesture by their better halves in the North?

The most extraordinary scenes take place in Israel, where Pitt travels next.

The walled city of Jerusalem acts as a barrier to the hordes of zombies outside. We are told that history has got the Israelis used to the siege. That’s right. Crusaders, Palestinian terrorists, infectious zombies—what difference does it make?

Apartheid is practised well in that State and the walls of Jerusalem are impregnable. Or are they? Unfortunately, the movie caricatures zombies. When the audience starts laughing at them at the end, you know that this disaster film is in big trouble. n ad

8 july 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Shah Rukh Gets Adventurous

There might be some good news in store for everyone who has been criticising Shah Rukh Khan’s reluctance to venture too far from his comfort zone as far as his film choices go. Despite having delivered credible performances in such films as Swades and Chak De India, he has preferred to work in mostly romantic films and large-scale entertainers that have built-in audiences and virtually guaranteed bank-breaking box-office returns.

But now it appears that the actor has said yes to a ‘relatively serious’ film to be helmed by Parzania director Rahul Dholakia that SRK’s friends at Excel Entertainment, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, will produce. Details on the project are still sketchy, but according to those in the know, the story is set in Gujarat, whose outdated liquor prohibition policy has famously resulted in large-scale alcohol smuggling across the state. Shah Rukh is likely to play a small-time bootlegger who subsequently becomes a liquor baron.

The film is slated to go into production after Shah Rukh wraps up initial schedules of Happy New Year, and there are plans to announce the project shortly before the release of Chennai Express on 8 August. Insiders say the producers are planning a launch campaign with SRK sporting the look of the character that he will play in the film.

Not Easy to Topple Sajid Khan For many of us, the memory of Sajid Khan’s spectacularly underwhelming Himmatwala remake is still fresh—it has only been three months since it released— but the filmmaker himself appears to have moved on, with few scratches to show for it. Earlier this week, Fox Star Studios announced a joint production with Vashu Bhagnani’s Pooja Films on what they have declared will be ‘the biggest comedy entertain8 july 2013

er of 2014’. The film, to be directed by Sajid Khan and titled Humshakals, will star Saif Ali Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh and TV heavyweight (pun unintended) Ram Kapoor, each in triple roles.

Reportedly, this is the same Angoor remake that Sajid has been working on for some months now, and over which he also clashed with Rohit Shetty some months ago. The Chennai Express director had apparently acquired the official remake rights to Angoor and was in no mood to let Sajid make his own ‘unofficial’ version.

Despite speculation that Saif was likely to ditch the project in the wake of the Himmatwala debacle, the Go Goa Gone star has remained committed to the film.

However, insiders say that he is being ‘very well compensated’ for his involvement in the project.

Sajid had lesser luck with Amitabh Bachchan, who reportedly pulled out of the film stating the usual date problems. Bachchan was hotly pursued for the film, with Sajid once even flying into Bhopal and showing up on the sets of Prakash Jha’s Satyagraha to narrate the film to the actor. TV star Ram Kapoor of Bade Achche Lagte Hain fame has taken on the role Sajid had written for Bachchan.

No Performance Bonus

There are murmurs that the director of a recent blockbuster film is feeling slighted since he wasn’t “suitably compensated” for the project. Signed to helm the film for an agreed (reasonable) sum, rumour mongers are saying that the director hoped to see a fancy bonus come his way when the film broke box-office records, but was left wanting by his mentor-producer.

The director also allegedly visited another ‘blockbuster filmmaker’ known for blowing up cars in his movies, to understand the intricacies of Bollywood numbers and box-office business, and also for advice on what salary he ought to quote for subsequent film projects. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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Certified Copy

by r i t e s h u t ta m c h a n da n i

Aleena Zachariah (right) and Aneela Zachariah (left) work as ticket collectors at Pune railway station. The twins were born two minutes apart in their hometown of Kannur, Kerala. All of 176 cm in height, the Zachariah sisters represented India in the Asian Junior Volleyball Championships a few years ago. In 2008, Vaishali Phadtare, the then coach of the Central Railway volleyball team, spotted them when they were playing for Kerala in a Nagpur tournament and offered them their present jobs. In their first working week in Pune, Aleena had checked the tickets of a passenger near the front exit. The same man encountered Aneela a few metres ahead, close to the taxi stand. Confused, he asked her if there was a secret shortcut that she took to race ahead of him

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8 july 2013