Blink issue 101 january02 2016

MIGRATION CERTIFICATE Winged visitors to Delhi are a hardy lot. But even they may not for long overlook its filthy air and swampy waters p2 saturday, january 2, 2016

shutterstock/ prudkov

Poetic justice Indian poetry is in a state of resurgence, in publishing and the general consciousness, thanks to the old hands as well as a bunch of freshly-minted wordsmiths p6-15

HOLY FLYING KICKS The ‘kung fu nuns’ are cycling into a town near you, with an important message p5

SWEET OBSESSIONS The perfect recipe for holiday goodies to indulge your sugary cravings p19

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Come back, birdie Death of the floating world THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Winters in Delhi still witness huge arrivals of winged migrants. But perhaps not for much The transformation Japan during 1868-1912, and manicured continentalparks drift and empty lakes longer if all they get of from us are poisonous swamps,

rohit gupta

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efore the year 1868 — as the first railand of these about 170 are NRIs. In 2014, some ways chugged across the Indian sub70 migratory species were recorded from the continent, and photography began Sultanpur National Park in Haryana, which is to challenge painters in Europe — Jajust 1.42 sq km in extent. The park has been pan had remained closed to the outside world through its ups and downs, but one thing for almost three centuries. So profound was seems to be clear: give birds the hospitality its intellectual isolation that the Japanese who they deserve and they will turn up unfailingly. left their soil and returned were executed to The even smaller wetland Basai, just outside prevent ideas coming from outside; and the Gurgaon on the road to Sultanpur, is yet an‘construction of ocean-going ships was other example of how a small area — if suitabanned until 1853’. ble and left in peace — can attract masses of It is somewhat of a miracle then, that this birds. Beyond Sultanpur lies the Bhindawas feudal backwater with medieval technology sanctuary, another quiet haven, even if was able to produce Nobel-quality physics plagued by water hyacinth. within 30-40 years of its opening up as a result The Yamuna was, and still is a big draw for of the Meiji Restoration. The key role in Japan’s migratory waterfowl and waders in Delhi and scientific upliftment was played by one of the the Okhla bird sanctuary on the banks of the leading scientists of his age — Lord Kelvin (also river was declared ostensibly keeping this in known as William Thomson) who, on the Emmind. The capricious water levels at the barperor’s request, sent a small fleet of his young rage however, have made it an unreliable desstudents to head entire colleges in Japan. tination. It must be confusing for the birds Seasonal high The Yamuna continues to attract visitors like tufted pochards images ranjit lal These students were known as oyatoi gaikokutoo, and it was reported that their numbers jin (‘honourable foreign employees’). In a here were down last year. If there’s a good strange turn of events, Japan’s unique relaamount of water, you may see skeins of ducks hen you think the journey and Brahmaputra, followed leading lines such — shoveller, gadwall, pintail, common teal, tionship with the sea and withofearthquakes mightinfluence have onbeen as river courses, mountain ranges, and the ruddy shelduck, and pochard (of various modbegan to exert itsthey own reverse the through in order to get here, coast, and spread themselves comfortably all els), basking in the buttery winter sunshine, march of European science. think that we realover the country. They touch John Perry, oneyou of might the oyatoi engineers and as well as flocks of geese — both ly ought to have laid the red Japan carpetaout for down on familiar rivers, lakes, an assistant of Kelvin, found fertile bar-headed and greylag — lurkthem. Instead, we offer them poisonous, stink- tanks, ponds, gardens, fields, ground to study earthquakes, among other ing among the reeds or bobbing ing waterbodies, pollutedPerry parksand andhis woodmeadows, parks and woodlands things.

For this purpose, colblithely in open water. Okhla unBeyond Sultanpur lands — and ‘lakes’ that have all butto dried up. with pinpoint accuracy and precileagues developed a seismograph record fortunately suffers from the malies the Bhindawas And yet the birds coming, every winter, sion timing, year after year. And them, tracing lineskeep of extraordinary waviness jor trauma of being sanctuary, another fewer in numberLittle (anddid species), perhaps, Delhi, thanks to the Yamuna, lies and fluctuation.

Perry know thatthan this cheek-by-jowl with malevolently quiet haven, even if in the previous year, but what can youpit expect? on one of their major flyways into geological investigation would soon him thrumming power lines, frenetic plagued by water Actually, migrants as the subcontinent. Some touch against his the ownfirst mentor — thebegin greatflying Lordin Kelreal estate development (nudghyacinth earlywho as July August. busy By now (mid-winter) down on waterbodies, woods, vin, wasand in Europe estimating the ing ever closer), and of course, of course, age of Earth.great skeins of waterfowl, ducks gardens, parks and fields in and traffic and bridge building, and long-leggedphysicist, storks anditcranes, salt- around the Capital for a bit of rest Asgeese, a mathematical has been which spell a dire prognosis for The old order changeth A Tsukioka Yoshitoshi creation — ‘Moon Above The Sea at and-pepper waders, keen-eyed and, and recreation before noted that Kelvin’s most favouredraptors instrument Daimatsu Bay’ (1886)heading from ‘One Hundred Aspects Of The Moon’ its future. last the buttheory not least, the gutsy tiny-tots would south; others stay on for the entire season. was of Fourier analysis.

And indeed, Do not disturb have flown maybe overdown vast tracts Of the around 1,300 species of birds found Fourier’s theory was8,000 a way km, to break comof land through the river valleys theshockIndus in India, nearly 300 are said to be migratory, It really is astonishing how ‘tolerant’ birds are, plex periodic phenomena (such asofthe wave of an earthquake) into simple idea that the core of Earth was solid, as Kelvin large distances over billions of years would components. A good example is the breaking had assumed. He proposed that the interior of have been accepted much earlier. of sunlight into its constituent colours Earth was fluid, upon which floated the outThe fact that Perry was in Japan, surrounded through a prism, or the notes that make up a side shell of a solid crust, just as icebergs float by its art and culture, teaching physics to sakemusical chord. on water. The diffusion of heat through such a drenched samurais, may indeed have played a Fourier’s transform was such a universal fluid sphere would push back the planet’s age role in shaping his theory. This changing Japrism whose brute analysis could be applied to a few billion years, contradicting Kelvin. pan, the hedonistic world of the Edo era with to a vast number of natural phenomena — the Perry wrote to his offended its tradition of woodblock prints cycle of appearing and disappearing sun- teacher, “the real basis of your called the ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the spots, the tides in a bay, or signals in a tele- calculation is your assumption floating world’), was confronted graph wire (a lot of Kelvin’s wealth came from that the solid earth cannot alter

by Western technology after MeiLittle did Perry know that). Although, when Fourier invented his its shape... even in 1000 million ji reforms. Perhaps its greatest that this geological method, the purpose was to study the diffu- years, under the action of forces artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was investigation would sion of heat over time in a solid body,. Taking constantly tending to alter its slowly being driven mad with soon pit him against Fourier’s cue, Kelvin tried to calculate the age shape, and yet we see the gradu- his own mentor — the the decline of Japanese culture, a of the planet by reverse-engineering the cur- al closing up of passages in a fact he made very explicit in the great Lord Kelvin rent temperature using Fourier’s mathemat- mine, and we know that wrinviolence of his images. For him it ics of diffusion. He literally asked, “How long kling and faults and other was the sinking moment of a has this solid sphere been cooling to be at the changes of shape are always gofloating world, a cosmic tug-ofcurrent temperature?” coming to an estimate ing on in the earth under the acwar that shows clearly in his of 24-400 million years for a solid globe. It is tion of long-continued forces. I know that ‘death poem’. worth mentioning how important this was to solid rock is not like cobbler’s wax, but ‘...holding back the night people like Darwin, because if evolution was 1000,000,000 years is a long time, and the with its increasing brilliance true, the age of the planet would be a central forces are great.” the summer moon…’ piece of evidence.

Had Perry’s theory of a fluid core been taken Having studied earthquakes in Japan for a seriously, some scholars now believe, the fact rohit gupta explores the history of science as t@fadesingh Smalltime, wonders In 2014, 70 migratory species recorded from Sultanpur National Park in Haryana; (inset) Compaswallah the black redstart loves to visit parks and gardens long Perry hadsome trouble accepting thewere that continents of the Earth have ‘drifted’

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Fort at one time used to host houseful crowds of pintail, shoveller and teal on its ponds and waterbodies, but in recent years just a handful turn up rather dispiritedly: it’s said the water has gone bad. Another good area being developed as a sanctuary is the Surajpur wetland near Dadri, though here alas, development plans include the introduction of something called ‘forest sport’.

Call time Water birds apart, there are others that make these momentous journeys too: On lawns and in gardens and parks, wagtails strut like prosperous landlords, and in woodland areas, the lesser whitethroat keeps up its disapproving ‘tch-tch’ call. Other little ones include warblers (usually dun brown or grey and difficult to tell apart unless you’ve dedicated your life to them) and chiffchaffs and flycatchers. Not all birds fly down immense distances from climes abroad: the pugnacious little greyheaded canary flycatcher, which you might have met in Himalayan hill-stations in summer, flies down from the mountains, and likes quiet woodland areas usually near water. The black redstart, in formal sooty black, grey and russet, is a quiet NRI visitor to gardens and parks — though I have been seeing fewer and fewer of them every passing year.

A large number of raptors — eagles, hawks, falcons and harriers et al, follow the flocks of waterfowl, quickly dispensing with the weaklings or those tarrying awhile. A sudden commotion on a waterbody — sounding like a giant gargling — usually means that a marsh harrier has swung low and is checking out the dozing ducks, which all suddenly wake up and take off desperately.

Most of the migrants dress in casuals in this season and this sometimes makes identifying them — especially And they all touch down (clockwise from above) Greylag geese, pintails, those salt-and-pepper bar-headed geese and red-crested pochards have often been spotted at waders and some gulls Okhla bird sanctuary, on the banks of the Yamuna and terns — difficult. The reason is simple: the provided they perceive no threat: Years ago, I blackand dudes have no reason to remember watching large flocks of pied avo- brown-headlook flashy now because cets blithely scouring the river, right beneath ed gulls that they’re not courting at this the great clanging iron bridge at Salimgarh, turn up when time and putting on finery even as trains thundered over it, pulling out of called, (‘aao-aaois expensive and risky. But or into Old Delhi Railway Station nearby. But if aao’) scrimmaging just wait till February, and they anyone took a single step beyond their ‘com- noisily as fistfuls of will start changing — some like the namkeen (!) are thrown by fort zone’ they were up and awa0y in a trice. ruff — into outfits befitting ShakespeaIt is stupefying — also a little scary — to see passers-by. In winter, their rean dandies. how birds of so many different species can heads are white and only start turning coffeeThey say global warming is one reason why still be seen along the banks of the Yamuna or brown or black around February. Gulls, the fewer migratory birds are being recorded evin the river proper as it makes its way gluti- world over, are one of the avian success sto- ery year. Well, birds migrate because condinously through Delhi, turning your stomach ries, simply because they have expanded their tions in their homeland become impossible as in the process. You wonder at the muck all diet to include nearly everything winter clamps down: the ground these long-legged waders, with their varying edible (which is why they flock to is covered with ice and snow, inbeak lengths — the sandpipers, redshanks, landfills). A slightly more edifying sect and plant life dies out, so plovers et al, and those happily bobbing ducks area for birding along the river, there is nothing to eat. If the On lawns and in — would be ingesting as they rootle happily lies north of the Wazirabad barnorthern latitudes really did gardens and parks, about in the sludge and frothy guck. The sand- rage and at the Yamuna Biodiversiheat up then maybe insect and wagtails strut like banks and muddy riverbank also bob and ty Park. Here, because apparently plant life would hang on, and the prosperous scutter with wagtails, larks and pipits, busily they prefer cleaner water, you may birds might not feel the need to landlords snapping up tiny creepy-crawlies and worms. be fortunate to see that prince of risk these immense journeys.

And it’s wonderful to see how well their cam- ducks — the red-crested pochard — And yet, they also tell us that the ouflage works: when still they vanish! On bobbing happily amongst his harimpetus for migration is given fence-posts or reeds, bluethroats and stone- em of dudettes. not by weather, but the dayWhile Okhla’s star may be falling, it appears length — or photoperiodism. And that rechats keep watch, and amongst the reed are those astonishing tiny-tot warblers, who Najafgarh jheel’s star has started to rise again. mains constant… might have come all the way from Siberia. And The Najafgarh drain, amongst Delhi’s most As for us, in Delhi and other cities that host swallows, swifts and martins, both migratory noxiously notorious, is apparently a relatively migratory visitors from abroad, it really is and resident, skim low over the water or do hi- clean marshy jheel before it has the misfor- quite simple. Drain a swamp, let a lake go jinks in the heavens, their beaks agape, snap- tune of entering Delhi proper. And migratory bone dry (like Badkhal), spray your lawns with birds have known this for years. Usha Ganguli pesticides, convert woodlands into maniping up midges, mosquitoes and flies. mentions this jheel as a wonderful birding ar- cured, pedicured parks, and the birds will take Water babies ea in her classic A Guide to the Birds of the Delhi one look and just fly on.

One of the most popular of visiting migrants Area, published way back in the ’70s.

The National Zoological Park near the Old ranjit lal is an author and environmentalist to the river has to be the huge snowy flocks of

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EXCERPT

Food, glorious food In this excerpt from Chillies and Porridge, a new collection of essays, we first enter the kitchens of a village in Arunachal Pradesh, and then join an Indian craving the heat of chillies in sub-zero temperatures

Road to perdition Delhi’s car-owners seem determined to keep the city an urban hellhole by global standards shiv kumar pushpakar

AGENDA

Collective action What opponents of Delhi’s odd-even policy can learn from a scene in The Beautiful Mind

sambuddha mitra mustafi

Chillies and Porridge: Writing Food Edited by Mita Kapur HarperCollins Non-fiction ₹499

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or roughly 200 million Indians, or the top 15 per cent of the population, the post-liberalisation period has been a journey from decades of scarcity to an abrupt abundance. Like hungry, caged animals set free by the new economy, we have It devoured everything in sight for the Cook Slowly last quarter century. Now we have overeaten.

By Mamang Dai Having turned our cities into Now we are sick.

‘All we are doing nothing, we feel hungas day chambers, we don’t give a but damn. gry,’ mySharma mother, laughing.

Assays Mihir recently put it in a Business Yes, I hanker grilled cheese and Standard op-ed,for “Only theoctopus, Indian elite would olives, also remember the serene faces of rather but not Ibreathe than be ordinary.” a group of womenresponse sitting around a fire where The lukewarm (or ridicule) to the aroad-space pot is on rationing the boil. Their conversation goes plan in Delhi shows up something like this: the car-owning Indian elite for what we are: a ‘Don’t let it boil too fast.’ self-involved, defeatist set, who don’t want to ‘Hai,up take lidmess. off.’ Just like we throw our clean ourthe own ‘Hai, the evaporate.’ garbage ontaste thewill streets to keep our homes ‘Cook it slowly.’ sparkling.

‘This bestimmense time, when the in redour antsown are And is wethe have faith seen on the A leaves.’ mendacity. corrupt, inefficient police force ‘Hai, it is a sign.’ the odd-even enforcement will be monitoring antswith are clever in ‘The the city India’s...’worst traffic offenders.

It iscan a quiet, languid conversation in a vilHow this idea even succeed? lage house on art ofto cooking the with popular “I request allthe citizens start 2016 the Clerodendrum ColebrookiaOn-giin truth andleaf, not or to lie about being sick,” is what It is of a tall, vigorously growing num. the chief Delhi Police had to say perennial on impleshrub of broad, dark green leaves with a hint menting the odd-even scheme, which the of bitterness. children we usedtry to to hate this city’s drivers As will undoubtedly cheat, stuff but they ate them wereBStold it just like cheatbecause at red we lights.

Bassi would grow tall,speaking especiallytoifhis weset held soundsmake moreus like a jailor of up the greens, stem and all, tilted our prisoners, though politely.

Theand belief in each heads to eat them. food scientists other’sback crookedness is soNow strong, that he can have analysed Clerodendrum say that withoutthat offending anyone. contains medicinal properties for the diaDelhi’s VIPs, the icons andtreatment celebritiesofwho betes, rheumatism and go to are supposed to lead thehypertension. way throughIexamthe and buy of the leaf.Every They ple, market have already gotbundles their exemptions. grow the garden and I look out for the lobbyin from doctorstoo, to journalists to lawyers red appear. too, driven by their own willants seekto exemptions khautek, tongtep, khau-laam and What sense of is importance, in India’s most self-im-

Rice to the occasion

Children walkahead through portant city. Politicians will squabble in TV stu- cut corners, jump lights and sneak of paddy fields dios, like the city’s drivers do on the streets, the next guy, most of themterraced cause more chaos near the Assamcreating enough chaos and pollution to keep and delay their own ride, apart from others’.

Arunachal border India’s capital a consistent urban hellhole by What each driver thinks is smart rituaraj konwar decision global standards. driven by self-interest, harms them individuFrom Paris to Beijing and Sao Paolo, large ci- ally, and all drivers collectively. While with coldungpoo?

Rice cakes using red, ties around the world have shown that, if casions. lective action, by following laneshort-grained driving, they In case implemented you are wondering, these are all wrapped leaf are an essential properly and supported by rice the sticky would rice all reach their in destination quicker and preparations — steamed, in aleaf, at weddings.

Rice is also the chief ingrepublic, road-space rationingwrapped does have big item with little swearing. powdered, mixed with sesame seeds and flat- dient the local beerfrom that, the according to popimpact in reducing emissions and cleaning In afor famous scene 2001 movie A tened cakes.

They then into ular folklore, men equal to theinto godsa up the into air. Apart from theare data, justrolled the beforeBeautiful Mind,makes a group of women walk balls or cooked in bamboo restores health and after pictures of Beijing (whose emission lev- bar, led by a and striking blonde, who is laughter the only tubes.

Rice is to the most show widelya dramatic im- one fancied by inall this world. els are closest Delhi’s) the men in the bar. At one taKhau-laam bamboo rice is a consumed grainthat in Arunaprovement.staple Assuming most ble, a group oformen, all graduate clean, convenient way ofstart packagchal Pradesh.

In fact, is the beof Delhi’s car-owners canit see students of economics, baning cooked carlieved to (if be not of divine origin.

One pictures read the data), it tering over rice whothat willcan getbelucky The rice-filled ried when out on a journey. story thatopposition rice is a gifttofrom makesgoes their the Delhi’s witheasily the blonde. bamboo tubes are VIPs, the icons The are simply rice the gods that camemore to a race odd-even rule even venal.of “Iningredients competition, individual cooked over an open and celebrities who and water.

I am using the word skyBut dwellers in the fish why does the land new of Indian ambition serves the common fire, and a good deal are supposed to lead ‘khau-laam’ thequoting KhamptiAdam peoand It happened during a of attention is elitestars. behave like this, irrationalgood,” says of one, the way through required to ensure ple where the variety of bamboo great hunt when the our faithful ly, ultimately harming own Smith, the father of modern capexample, have that thegot rice is used is “Every knownman locally ‘khaudog of areducing legendaryour hunter lost health, lifespan italism. for as himself,” already their thoroughly cooked lam-ba’.

It is a soft bamboo with a his and strayed into the and way our children’s?

It’s partly besays another. exemptions thin thatNobel coats lauthe kingdom of the Great Earth cause we have taken the wrong Butmembrane the eventual rice it Nash, cooks, played allowing the Mother, the Goddess of Grain. lessons from the ‘capitalism’ of reateas John

by Ruscooked rice tolooks be removed in one The dogquarter told her how We he have was the last century. sell Crowe, beyond the cylindrical piece.Smith The rice is left lost.

The goddess heardsimplistic him out imbibed the most obvious. “Adam needs resoak he overnight filledoninto bamboo and sent him on his of waymodern with acapifew to (and then wrong) interpretation vision,” exclaims.and He goes to posit that leaving space for expansion.

A grains rice,the which faithful carried talism:ofthat bestthe results for dog society are tubes, the best result enough for the male group can actually water isthrough poured ainsort andofthe bambooacis back to his master the crease ofand his ear. achieved only whenineach woman manTois little be achieved collective a leaf ofignoring arrowroot. rice-filled day, rice is cultivated statepure and sealed competing with throughout the other thefor tion: bywith all of them theThe blonde (and tubes are other’s cookedway), over while an open fire, many varieties are grown — they can be classi- bamboo self-interest. not getting in each getting a good dealmore of attention is required fied into two broad categories: that ofIndia’s, high- and Evolved capitalist societies, unlike lucky with her achievable friends. to enthe rice thoroughly cooked land or mountain which is grown in the sure are smart enough rice, to understand the benefits Forthat a better life, isIndia’s neo-elite has toand igjhumaction: fields of shifting cultivation, Bamboo rice self-interest) can be eaten by cyclical of collective that best results for theand in- not noreburnt. the blonde (pure in simply favour the lowland wet rice A hardy the soft bamboo, by slicing the dividual andorsociety cancultivation. be achieved if we pulling of moreback sustainable collectiveoraction.

Living species of mountain locally as ‘Mi- bamboo into pieces. is unparalelled cooperate with each rice, otherknown for collective benein gas chambers is Its notflavour a rational economic pun’, believed to be the original seed that and can be savoured best while sitting in the fit, notisjust compete. choice. was brought back the granary Delhi’s drivers arefrom a prime example of of the shade by a river with the breeze on your face. sambuddha mitra is the founder Earth Mother. nothing elsemustafi is required exceptofkhaupitfalls of unadulterated self-interest overrid- Then The Political Indian t@some_buddha and maybe a little salt. are required on many ocingRice anypreparations collective action.

In their eagerness to laam

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Kung fu and karma cycle Buddhist nuns with flying kicks are pedalling 2,000 km across India with a clear message

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re they on the trail of the Buddhist monks Fa-Hien and Hiuen Tsang?

On the outskirts of Kannauj, the once imperial city where the scholarly travellers halted and hobnobbed with Chandragupta II and Emperor Harsha, the locals gawk at the sight of 250 Buddhist nuns pedalling past in dashing red-and-black cycling gear. Not just any nuns, they’re the famous ‘kung fu nuns’ of the Drukpa (Dragon) lineage, well versed in martial arts. They are on an epic cyclethon across north India to spread the dual message of environment consciousness and women’s empowerment on behalf of the Live to Love Foundation, the international non-profit founded by the head of their order, Gyalwang Drukpa.

“The idea is to show by example that if 250 women can cycle thousands of kilometres, all the way from Kathmandu, through tough terrains, then people living in the cities here can walk a bit more and cycle a bit more,” says Gyalwa Dokhampa, second in command in the order, who is cycling alongside the nuns.

Jigme Konchok Lhamo, a 22-year-old nun, chips in saying, “We also hold meetings in village schools and towns, telling people how to reduce pollution.” Their expedition certainly could not get timelier. When they arrive in Delhi on January 9, the Capital will be bang in the middle of a radical experiment to reduce the number of vehicles on its roads through an odd-even number-plate policy.

In Delhi, the nuns will also ring in the Ladakhi year and sound the bugle for the Naropa Festival — known as the Kumbh of the Himalayas as it is observed once every 12 years — to be held in July 2016 in Ladakh.

They will then cycle onwards to Lumbini, in Nepal, before dispersing to their respective convents in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Darjeeling and Kathmandu. What binds this motley crew of nuns, some of whom speak Hindi and others Ladakhi, is the Tibetan language, which all of them have learnt in order to read

Breathing fire Famous as the ‘kung fu nuns’ of the Drukpa (Dragon) lineage, 250 of them are on a cyclethon across north India to raise awareness on environment protection and women’s empowerment vijay kutty

Buddhist scriptures. from China. “We point to the Indian flags on By the end of their yatra, which began in Ne- our cycles and say we are very much from this pal, they would have traversed over 2,200 km, country,” says Jigme Migyun Palmo. At other taking in the sights — especially Buddhist places, they just ask the villagers if they have spots — at places like Gaya, Varanasi, Allahabad watched the movie 3 Idiots and explain that and Kanpur. No strangers to long expeditions, they are from the same order that runs Ranmost of them have been on long padayatras cho’s school in the movie. The solar energyacross the Himalayas. Cycling trips, however, powered Druk White School is totally environare a relatively recent activity for them. ment-friendly. Actor Aamir Khan, who played Arriving in Kannauj at sunset, the colourful Rancho, is today a patron of the Live to Love contingent led by Gyalwang Drukpa decides foundation as are Hollywood stars Susan Sato pitch camp for the night under a large pee- randon and Michelle Yeoh. pul tree adjacent to a potato field, as there is a A few years ago, the foundation earned a handy water pump nearby. Within minutes, Guinness record for planting 99,103 trees in 53 with the discipline of an army, minutes flat in Ladakh. everything is unloaded from Started in 1161, the Drukpa orthe jeeps and vans, tents are der is involved in running pitched and gas burners lit. Tea schools, clinics and so on, like We wanted to gets brewed. any spiritual sect. Where it introduce gender The Kannauj of today is a broke the mould, however, and equality in our order nondescript dusty UP town, drew world attention was though it is famous as the perthrough its kung fu nuns. “We fume capital of India. Potato wanted to introduce gender farmer Indrajeet Singh, on equality in our order, so threw whose fields the group has pitched camp, open our doors to women in 1992,” says Dokgapes at them and then furiously dials a few hampa. From 21 nuns in 1992, today there are friends to come over and watch the goings-on. well over 500. It was the Gyalwang’s idea to Not only do the monks in maroon garbs and teach them kung fu, both for self-preservation nuns with shaved heads and jaunty steps at- and to instil confidence and focus. “Kung fu is tract attention, but they are also accompanied close to meditation,” says Dokhampa. by an interesting menagerie. Out springs the It’s an ascetic life, but the nuns — whose agHoliness’s little dog Ting. Two nuns can be es range from 12 to 50 — are far from being seen feeding a pair of fluffy yellow chicks. grave women. They crack jokes, horse around “Whenever we see an animal being tortured and rib each other. or in trouble we take it along with us,” says By 8 the following morning, everything at Jigme Yudron Lhamo. “During a walking trip the camp is neatly loaded back, and the nuns through Ladakh, a horse, four goats and a are on their cycles, ready to hit the road again. sheep had tagged along,” she says with an im- The potato farmer offers them (and us) a sack pish grin. A dog that followed them from Na- of potatoes. “Everywhere in India, the villagers landa, all the way back to Kathmandu, was are so hospitable — if we were to do this in the named, what else, but Nalanda!

US, we would be shooed away for trespassing, The nuns are divided into 10 teams. Each here we are gifted vegetables too,” grins group sticks together, cooking and cycling.

Dokhampa.

Have people been receptive to their messagAs they depart, Singh looks around his field, es? “We are showing them by example,” says blinks and says there’s no sign that the monks Dokhampa. “When we set up camp, we not on- and nuns were here. Not like the mundan cerely do not litter, but we also clean up other peo- mony held a few days back on the same spot, ple’s rubbish and leave the place better than after which paper plates had littered his field. before,” says Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo.

At most places, people ask them if they are chitra narayanan

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Sold on poetry

India today, in doodles A digital comic arrives as a physical copy, compiling four years of taking cheap shots at anything topical curity council had me scrambling to the archives to ferret it out (it actually happened!)

Such moments of pleasurable viciousness are preserved like a fly in aspic.

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he writing is crisp and punchy. There are plenty of zingers — “Look I didn’t really jump the red light” as one of the characters explains to a traffic cop, “I merely anticipated the green”; or downer observations, “There is something to be learnt from every tragedy.

Namely there’s one to follow soon after that will take the spotlight away from this one”.

A cartoon strip, however, lives and dies by the art — the ability to convey complex subjects in as few lines as possible. I peeked under the hood to see the “graphic engine” it runs on. Immediately some elements came to light.

One is to amplify meaning by reducing it to objects — a 1980s vintage TV stands for the Media, an unbuttoned shirt for the Police, and so on. Then there is the overarching vocabulary of the strip: a repetitive pattern of playing with scale — for instance, a wide shot of a neighbourhood is followed by a close-up of a roach clambering up a drainpipe. The strip is held together by a grammar of extreme zooms and close-ups, of a long “pan” ending on a telling detail, or repeating a visual but with new context.

Then there are tics — the noses of all the characters are rendered like little rockets with stubby fins. Some of the mechanisms are sus(Tragi)Comic relief Pages from Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land tained by the rich tradition of cartooning. In Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, for example, President Bush was shown as a floating astef newspapers are the first draft of History, This top-notch production quality is a relief risk surmounted by a Roman helmet to depict then presumably political cartoons are from some of the recent Indian offerings; I re- a certain imperial vacuity. Similarly, Narendra the doodles on its last page, the kind call an anthology by a leading publisher Modi is depicted as a hairy fist (in one amusmade by a backbencher during a boring whose spine cracked apart after the first read- ing variation referencing the time he allegedclass. In recent years, cartooning has found a ing, like one of those “Should you choose to ac- ly refused to wear a Muslim skullcap, the hairy natural home on the Web — and at the same cept” messages in Mission Impossible. fist immediately dons a bewildering array of time, digital comics is going through a renaisWhat of the contents? CWTL has been com- headwear, including a tribal one featuring a sance in India. ing out every Monday morning (‘the best time dead bird). The mask-like heads of the characSo even if you are a frog in a well, you’ll ap- of the week for insults’) since August 2010, ters are totemised, in a manner that reminded preciate Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land, with May 2014 as the last entry. me of Steve Bell’s work in The which compiles four years of the strip. For Considering they are “belowGuardian, with his underpantsnewcomers it is a handy introduction, while the-belt cheap shots” at anyobsessed John Major and cyclothose familiar will enjoy the heft of the physi- thing topical, the first question pean Tony Blair.

The cartoon also cal copy.

Speaking of which, I first camepoetry acrossreading My personal inis: events Can something so talent ephemeral Follow the line No longer an elitist preserve, nurture young and make fineserves works accessible to a wide cross-section of peoplefavourites aditya tejas up a fitting the collection crouching atop a magazine stand up? Accompanying snipclude a wordless two-page layout riposte to anyone stand in a bookstore chain, thanks to an un- pets explain context. Some are where a woman riding on a metwho claims the NDA caring staff. The cover with its square of red still fresh, their issues still topiro is silently leered at by two men has been receiving hen you’vejaws written a 900Savage Detectives and its equally part-treatment enclosing canine-encrusted in a scythe of cal, Bandra bandstand”.

— a duel of stares and gazes. Anothers have already faded in- savage unfair novel becomes the to ner-in-comedy Literature in the Americas) black seemed topage devour its that anaemic fashion “As Billie’sother headisfinally touched floor, a bizarre nestedthe storyline that dustbin Nazi of history. publishing event of the year, is about drink,ofthey whore around, Bolaño got tofeaturing and lifestyle neighbours.

If you’re wondering his feet and gathered hisand briefa severed hand a Sad to poets: say, thethey carousel Indiit’s difficult to insist they form means and disband cliques, whether a strip published through Tumblrthat re- an case.studying He told me the sun was boy thethat night before his politics nothing much you’re really a poet who’s to has they embark epic, foolhardy ally needs a physical copy, writing turning novels the page high and soon would be too exam.

There areitgood laughs to changed.on Many of the earn a quick buck. But precisely what quests to find—‘lost’ poetsfreedom and of expres- be had when hot provides the answer: thethat’s book is worthy of all themes to walk members or work. ‘Only poetry committee interview a today sedition, the late, lamented they —seldom ever get down to those dead trees. Chilean author Roberto Bo- sion is not shit’, he said.

‘Stop wasting dog that has applied for membership in an were encountered in different guises Exciting new voices laño insisted, right down to his very last interwriting poetry.

Inremember some of his One is immediately greeted by strong de- back so much time.’

Evenengages in the dream elite the work with then; anyone Asim Trivedi? are knocking on club. the Occasionally view. the After his themed masterpiece 2666are was he evenalso features theup poet sign: stray-dog endpapers yel- poems, I realizedwho thatexpresses this was athe fairly acview The cartoon serves a fitting riposte door withcritics every — a character translated intovehemence English by Natasha Wimmer, to Nicanor Parra a character. low with the of a government curate rendering of my writing that the strip is too dark is promptly dropped anyone whoasclaims the NDA has been repassing month the world satprogramme. up and paid The attention toblack his earIt was rather appropriate, anti-malaria slabs of of ceiving career.” unfair treatment.

The years the collec- into a manhole. lier novel The page, Savagefollowed Detectives, turned tion then, spans that thecoincide tables were recentthe half-title bywhich the cartoon the last two years, there CWTL, with itsInanonymous writer-artist duo, with the UPA’s most out toreaper be every bit as agood.

Bolaño, sadly, did dysfunctional ly turned on Bolaño: the introgrim provide foreshadowing of the have been so new releases by an imstrong, expect a graphic rephase. Almost every example is still running not live long enough to process his meteoric duction to the Jeetpowers-that-be.

Thayil’s Collected take-no-prisoners attitude of what follows. “lambasts” pressively long of major Indiport card on Modi and Co in list 2019! rise. substrate All that was left forby readers was his fa- Poems the dated authorthan narrating The provided the thick paper Somebegins stories with are more others. Aa an poets. Ranjit Hoskote, Vikram Seth, unudurti is a Hyderabad-based andSumous declaration: “The poems make meof blush dreamthat thatreferences featured Bolaño smoking smack jaideep holds up the architecture-like layout the strip Arundhati Subramaniam, Karthikawriter Nair, SM Krishna delivering novelist less”. A lot of Bolaño’s fiction (especially The the withPortuguese Billie Holiday “in a Parsi sanatorium on graphic panels. deep Sen, Sridala Swami, and Keki Daruwalla: minister’s speech at the UN Se-

Works by poets established and new are flooding the Indian publishing market even as informal clubs and collectives spread the word in colleges, cafes and moonlit terraces

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and that’s just off the top of my head. There have also been handsome ‘Collected Poems’ editions for poets like Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Kamala Das, to say nothing of works in translation, like the incandescent You Are Neera by Sunil Gangopadhyay (translated into English by Arunava Sinha). Exciting new voices are knocking on the door with every passing month, it seems. Informal poetry clubs and collectives are spreading the word in colleges and cafes and moonlit terraces.

All of a sudden, we seem to have woken up to what the late Hindi writer Kamleshwar once said about poetry: “Kavita hriday mein kanghi karti hai” (Poetry is that which combs the heart).

The resurgence is manifested in publishers willing to send out more poetry books into the market: this despite the fact that the poetry editor is an endangered (possibly extinct?) beast at most of India's top publishing firms.

That ’70s show There was an embarrassment of riches in Indian poetry as early as 1974, when Adil Jussawalla released his seminal anthology New Writing in India. Not only did that volume include Anglophones of the calibre of Dilip Chitre, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Lawrence Bantleman, it also gave us the best of Indian poetry in translation: Amrita Pritam (Punjabi), Arun Kolatkar (Marathi), Gieve Patel (Gujarati) and several other stalwarts.

Keki Daruwalla, one of India’s finest living poets, was first published in 1970. He has been published in every decade since, his most recent book being Fire Altar (2013, HarperCollins India). His memories of the 1970s are less than rosy: “Publishing poetry in the ’60s and ’70s was so negligible that it is hard to describe.

Nissim Ezekiel published Gieve Patel in 1966.

Nissim didn’t like my verse in 1964 (and rightly so) but in 1966, when I went to Bombay from Joshimath, he was ready to publish me and spend his own money doing so. Wisely I deferred till 1970, when P Lal asked me for three poems for his anthology and offered me a book. I jumped at the offer and wrote Under

Orion in one year flat.”

Daruwalla, however, also recalls the emergence of literary magazines and independent journals around the same time. “Small journals like Pritish Nandy’s Dialogue were coming up. Century, a magazine by Lawrence Bantleman (who migrated to Canada), and Thought edited by Keshav Malik had also started. And Nissim started a poetry page in The Illustrated Weekly, with help from Khushwant Singh, the editor.”

Poet’s corner of the Web More than four decades later, this functionality has been fulfilled by webzines: several online journals in India publish a mixture of established and young poets. Webzines like The Bangalore Review, The Northeast Review, Vayavya, Coldnoon and Café Dissensus have Aditi Rao The Muse India-Satish Verma Young published some very fine poetry in recent Writer (2015) balances wide-eyed, unfettered times. Complementing these efforts are poet- dreamscapes with hard-nosed pragmatism ry/spoken-word groups like Bring Back the Poets and Poets’ Collective. A few weeks ago, I attended an informal slam poetry event at Zu evidence of ‘Cinderella Syndrome’, most defiTisch, a German-themed bar in New Delhi. Or- nitely has it.

Which isn’t to say that at events like these, ganised by The Bombay Review, it featured both the aforementioned groups, along with the performative trumps the written word. As The Sunflower Collective, a new webzine. Delhi- Angiras put it: “For me any spoken-word perbased poet and activist Aditi Angiras, founder formance must be about poetry first and then of Bring Back the Poets, was judging the event performance. I see so many performances in and she had some strong words for those the city and on YouTube and feel that somequick to stereotype poets. how it’s becoming more about the ‘how’ than “Most people think that poets smoke ciga- the ‘what’. We need to go back to reading more rettes, drink a lot of whiskey, and get laid a lot and writing more; otherwise we’ll go down (hopefully). And that politicians the same lane as popular trash are hard men. They think that music. I still believe that we can poetry is separate from politics. do more than follow the US slam But I want to say to them: poetry We need to go back to culture, and imagine and create is politics.” beyond it.” reading more and True to Angiras’s words, the writing more; Everybody’s verse now very first poem of that evening otherwise we’ll go Collectives like Bring Back the Poturned out to be a fiery, passiondown the same lane ets are the sort of egalitarian ate slam called ‘Cinderella Synas popular trash boost that poetry in India — drome’, written and performed music trapped far too long in an elitist

by Shibani Das. The poem critiimage-exercise — needs despercised classic pop-cultural genately. Moreover, they act as muchder tropes, especially ones needed safe spaces where young feeding a young woman the idea that finding the perfect man is the raison poets can test the waters and benefit from d'être of her existence. I enjoyed watching this constructive critique. Angiras said: “We’re not performance because the poet demonstrated a closed group like most poetry clubs in India, a keen understanding of the spoken word for- but a fluid collective of artists and activists mat’s rhythms. Not every poet is an automatic across the globe. Spoken-word poets from candidate for a slam/spoken word appear- Word Warriors Nepal, from Malaysia and from ance: the energy, vigour and theatrical flair as- USA have performed with us. We host as many sociated with international slam stars like HM as two to three events most months, including Naqvi or Kip Fulbeck can’t really be taught. the Extremely Queerious Poetry event during You either have it or you don’t, and Das, on the Pride month (November).”

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Keki Daruwalla One of India’s finest living poets, he was first published in 1970 and has emerged with new works every decade since gp sampath kumar

Akhil Katyal After years of online presence, his poetry had a publishing debut in 2015

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Life after Tamasha

Two young poets, both of whom turned 30 recently, made their publishing debuts in 2015, although this writer has been following their words and their exploits on the Internet for years. Aditi Rao’s The Fingers Remember (Yoda Press) and Akhil Katyal’s Night Charge Extra (Writer’s Workshop) are books that bode well for the future of Indian poetry. Both poets were nominated for the Muse India-Satish Verma Young Writer Award 2015: Rao won.

What is most impressive about The Fingers Remember is that it never confuses sentimentality with true-blue emotion. Rao is a seasoned traveller who knows that wide-eyed, unfettered dreamscapes hit home all the better when balanced with strategic infusions of hard-nosed pragmatism. At the end of the poem ‘Not being a man, I bleed like this’, she says, “On the highway, sitting ghoda-taang on the motorcycle/ behind the man I love — no one to notice. Closer/ to the village, side saddle. A woman you can trust/ to educate your daughters. I will live in between.”

On the eve of the book’s release, Rao’s publisher, Arpita Das (founder of Yoda Press), described the discovery of this rising star: “Aditi sent us her manuscript early in 2013. I remember I was on the verge of taking that final decision about closing Yodakin (my bookstore) and was down in the dumps, and happened to unwrap this magical manuscript, which lifted my spirits immediately. Her poetry is haunting, imbued by such a deep sense of loss and anguish (and you just know that she has felt every bit of it) — and yet so reassuring, just to know that such anguish is felt by others and can be so exquisitely expressed.”

Katyal’s is an altogether different voice. His weapons are quicksilver wit, an exceptional sense of rhythm and the ability to assimilate disparate poetic elements, sometimes in the beenHere, over afor month sinceare thehis release of samet’s poem. instance, electric Ranbirthe Kapoor-Deepika Padukone lines about controversial Section 377 ofstarthe rer Tamasha, but it took a while for the dust to settle. A quick Google search will reveal long, philosophical and insightful blog posts by viewers, which praise and rip apart the film in equal measure. Its maker Imtiaz Ali is pleasantly surprised to see his piece de resistance triggering strong emotions in viewers, even if it is not all positive. He admits that some of the deconstruction is deeper than what he intended. “It’s beautiful how people are engaging with the film. I would love every person in this universe to love every film I’ve made, but that’s never how it works out. After Rockstar, I realised that views can be bipolar.

People hated that film. Thankfully, people haven’t hated this film. There are many who are just disliking it or not getting the point of it,” he analyses.

Ali did the rounds of single-screen theatres across the country to get a first-hand report of how Tamasha was faring. This is a practice he follows with all his releases. When we met last month at a suburban coffee shop in Mumbai, he still had a few more days to go till his film would be swallowed whole by mammoth productions like Dilwale and Bajirao Mastani.

“Sometimes you have to hear very rude things about your film. But you’ve got to be aware of the real world. Strangely I’ve got the best reactions in PVR Priya (in Delhi) and Chandan (in Mumbai), where the tickets are less expensive.

When I went to Chandan for the first time with my mom, I felt that the movie is connecting with the audience. It’s just a sense,” he says with certainty. It’s oddly refreshing that he’s not that up-to-speed with box office collections. But he can tell you the exact moments in his film that generated applause and whistles in the theatre.

In Tamasha, Ali traces the journey of Ved

Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore Imtiaz Ali’s latest. And bad reviews, of which he’s had aplenty, won’t stop the director from doing the rounds of theatres screening his films

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Turn to verse A meeting of Poets’ Collective in Delhi’s Deer Park; (bottom) Delhi-based poet Aditi Angiras is the founder of the spoken-word collective Bring Back the Poets

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This— too shallEnglish pass to an accomplished translator from Indian Penal Code. has often his Ali blog, you’ll find “Girl, when you / blow your boy, / or boy, Hindi and vice versa. OnImtiaz accused of set of a wildly diverse when / you go down / on her, or when / both of poems-in-translation bybeen repeating one theme people: they include Langston Hughes, Wiszlayou use / a toy, and all the / world’s a blur, in several films monica ; (below) A still Seth, Dorothy Parker, I know it feels / like heaven, you / too violate wa Szymborska, Vikramtiwari from Tamasha Gwendolyn Brooks, Ashok Vajpeyi, Munawwar 377.”

Less than two weeks ago, a short poem he Rana and, most recently, Ravish Kumar. Best of wrote about Farida Khanum went viral on the all, Katyal has a large body of work available of cost, on his blogdiscuss as welltheir as onproblems his FaceInternet, findinga its wayproduct into themanager Pakistani (Ranbir Kapoor), boring at free coming friends.

They among other places. newspaper a marketingDawn, firm who is secretly stifling his re- book and I timeline. discuss mine,” Ali explains.

“Whento Farida Khanum and stage performal desire be a storyteller Ali’s passion for travelling reflects in all his anew now critique of the film is that the Rhymes er.sings A common films. He has a penchant for shooting at loshe premise does not of hide the age one’s dream and Towards theare end thebeintroduction Thaybasic following cales that yetof to explored intoIndian Poems,inthe author in her voice, breaking free of societal pressure is one that films. Often il’s he Collected sets his stories places he us that he as won’t be writing Aliinstead has rehashed time and again in all his films hasn’t visitedtells himself, such Prague, where poemsorany more.for Ironically, it in paisleys, — she onewraps sees flashes of it in the male protago- he shot Rockstar, Corsica Tamasha.the “I of hiscapital departure andofforJab a moment nists We Met and Rockstar too.I “I don’t knew Praguemoment was the only city infeels Euknow it feels / like like the precipice opportunity holds it in know how toboth reactof toher that.hands, I just write the story you rope that wasn’t flattened outofby the World heaven, / too poetry.

It feels like a bebefore that comes to my mind. Maybe I’m Warfor soIndian I imagined that its buildings violate 377” ginning.

Andthan there’s cosmicelse. evishe drowns it in sky. not that careful orour calculative were older anywhere dence for this When shestory singsInow, about the want to That’s the hypothesis. look I wanted for Consider this strange coincishe knows make.

Maybe it is a that portion of my film.

For dence: Tamasha Thayil’s first collection, that at the end of that theme.

Could it be?” he note I wanted to Gemini, was published in 1992, and ita was a when her voice breaks asks himself.

After a come up with place two-poet volume, the other like a wishbone, quiet moment of ponwherecontributor Indians being don’t Vijay Nambisan, also anormally debutantvisit, back then. will stay.” dering, hehedeclares, so I that speltofcurtains who teaches English litera- And in 2015, the year thought “There mustKatyal, be a subCorsica for or Nambisan has reat Shiv conscious ture reason.”

As Nadar University, is also Thayil’s own poetic career, Ecuador,” he says. turned from exile with First for the reviews, he He’sInfinities unsure of(Poetrywhere wala), a sensational collection and calmly asks, “They are his next film will take undoubtedly one of him. the books of point the year. awful, na? I’ve not read At this he In is the foreword, Nambisan confesses that forto a them but I heard they bouncing off a few ideas long time, he took his around cues from Auden were horrible.” those him and and getfelt that poetry did matter.ofHewhat then people says: “I Ali’s stories, he says, are tingnot a sense don’t know exactly why, butto some ago I born out of life — some his own, might want see years him make veered to the opposite view: Poetry is the feedonly but mostly of those around him. next. “I’m open to taking thing that matters. have justification for He’s an incessant people-watcher, backI at anyno stage.

Even before I’m not trying to make that; it’s all in the loves to travel, and makes friends themind.” film is made,” he says. As notes but there are Where one poet ‘no more’,he’s another was easily. “The work (filmmaking) forsaid the feedback collected some bold strokes shaken out of his ennui, moved to break a take selfthat puts you in a bubble also on Tamasha, he says it will that I won’t forget imposed exile. Where ended, other betakes you out and makes you enhim a one good two the years before gan anew. So too, seems, thethe fatefilm of Indian gage with people. For this film I he itcan analyse objecpoetry: at everytively. cynical where it is was in Shimla for three months.

“I’mmoment not trying to make written off, there will but arisethere Atlases bearbold the Now if you meet the same people notes areto some we forget. will readIf them; in good every day, beyond a certain point, the fact that poet’s strokesburden. that I And won’t I’m insecure bad, aloud in grateful silence, I’m a filmmaker and that they’ve seen me in times about or something andor I hear some criticism in the fellow-dreamers, newspapers and on Kapil’s comedy show, goes alone whichor points incompany the same of direction, I’ll never weit,” will thank god for poetry. out of their mind. They welcome me to their and forget hesay: says. houses and that gives me a genuine opportumohini mani chaudhuri jha nity of involving myself with them and be- aditya

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The lone ranger Though a household name in Punjab, Patar, just like the trees in his verse, is an exile of modernity jatinder preet

raries were experimenting, he chose to write in the old literary form of ghazal, which was considered decadent in those times of the Naxalite revolution. But he says he does not write ghazals; his poetry is ghazalnuma (ghazal-like). Bah’r, the Urdu meter, is not a learnt and practised craft but his very breath. He says he doesn’t write in bah’r but lives in it.

In Patar’s lyrical fellowship with trees, there is no place for the green fields of Punjab. You don’t hear about the wheat turning golden, the shooting sap in tall sugarcanes, or the mirth of mustard fields. Though he has taught at Punjab Agriculture University for decades, there is no agriculture in his poetry. He says he cannot relate to crops because crops come and go but trees age like human beings. As shuterstock agriculture turns nature into an industry, people grow distant from trees. Now you will see fewer local trees such as beri, jand, pipal, bohr, barota, toot and tahli. Fewer trees in a farm means more area for cultivation. Trees with commercial promise such as poplar and eucalyptus abound. Trees in his poetry are not just works of nature. They are cultural anchors too. They get consecrated by the Gurus and heroes in ballads rest under them. They are a benign presence in hot summers. Homes, streets and villages are known from them. With trees, whole cultural references vanish. Patar has Patar’s poetry, trees converse because they written a popular poem, ‘Mar rahi hai meri have been alienated in an industrial society. bhasha (my language is dying)’ in which he Both Patar and his trees are exiles of modern- names the words which have dropped from ity. Unlikely for a literary work, his Old Court Punjabi over time. Soon, they will include poem ‘Kujh keha taan hanera jarega kivein names of many trees. (how will the darkness tolerate Patar may be a poet of the if I speak out?)’ became so popmodern lyric but there is a folk ular that Hans Raj Hans topped undertone in his poetry. That’s the charts when he sang it. why his literary poems too turn In his poems, trees sigh, wait, into popular songs. Today, very In Patar’s lyrical converse and reincarnate as fellowship with trees, few poets have the distinction of flutes and sarangis. In the old being mass icons. Travelling in a there is no place for poetic form of Barahmaha, the the green fields taxi in Delhi, Patar found the of Punjab agony of the separated lovers driver staring at him from the grows with every change in searear-view mirror, again and son. Nature becomes an index of again. He knew the driver had longing and pain. In Patar, narecognised him. In Punjab, he is a ture is a whispering lover, a crehousehold name. ative collaborator, and a secret sharer. He Poetry, he says, comes to him in rhyme. His modulates the old Punjabi aesthetic of exile, poems are compressed and tightly packed in biraha, into a song of modern man’s loneli- the Urdu meter but unfurl gloriously in his ness. The spiritual exile of Punjabi Sufi poet Ba- haunting voice. When he pauses to consider a ba Farid becomes the urban exile in Patar’s question, he turns his face away, purses his verses. Patar chose the romantic lyric to tap in- lips, narrows his eyes and sits so still that he alto the biraha aesthetic that comes down from most looks like a tree.

Baba Farid to modern poet Shiv Kumar Balatvi, taking various forms. When Patar’s contempo- dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based journalist

True to the roots

In Surjit Patar’s poems, written in an Urdu meter, trees sigh, wait, converse and reincarnate as flutes and sarangis

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ast year, I spotted star Punjabi poet Surjit Patar in Delhi. He looked lost. I had a ‘headlinish’ thought — ‘A poet of trees in the city of pollution’. Then I remembered he comes from Ludhiana, a city no less toxic. Not long ago, Ludhiana could be mistaken for the Dickensian industrial London, with its grime, smog, and utter inhumanity of money and machine. Its trees could be mistaken for smokestacks. Ludhiana is also home to the Punjab Agriculture University, the ruinous womb of the Green Revolution.

Patar says when it gets so silent that you can hear even the sound of a falling leaf, the tree begins to recite its poems. How did Patar come to converse with trees in a clangorous city?

Walking near the Old Courts about two decades ago, Patar noticed the dried-up trees in the compound. They appeared human to him.

They were once people who had come here for justice, he thought. And endless wait had turned them into trees. The nature in Patar’s poetry is not a romantic refuge but a confidant of the modern alienated man. In anthropomorphic folk-tales, trees spoke out or men and women turned into trees because they were considered a part of the human order. In

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Four seasons of rhyme and rhythm A new poem each by four leading contemporary poets: Sudeep Sen, Karthika Nair, Ranjit Hoskote and Sampurna Chattarji

Dance Triptych Kathak for Aditi Mangaldas

New idiom, grammar — Fusion of everyday clipped accent and the lyric with the unusual assonance of Bangla DESH, Deep within the eyes of a dancer,

and spiritual irises and poems bloom. merge beautifully. making you glow — Fluid, organic language — On her cupped curled a unique signature, an aura captured kohl-lined eyelids, similes smile.

permanently your own dance-bhasha On each eyelash, metaphors arch, coalesce quietly. as light’s trickery — waiting to flutter.

Desire, ecstasy, transcendence — dancer’s lissome grace.

The holy trifecta Jazz, drugs and death figure prominently in Jeet Thayil’s world shutterstock sudeep sen is an award-winning poet, editor On her bosom’s electric-silk fabric, pupil, iris, retina — focussing and translator of over 25 books including, most secret lyrics are bloused. balance — intersecting recently, Fractals: New and Selected Poems I perfectly, on solar-plexus axis.

Translations 1980-2015 (Gallerie) and Her limb’s slender extension-tips EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House) decant arias — thumris sing, soar.

Apparition

Thayil’s in extremis terrain

Her balletic grace, liquid — she dances on water, always afloat.

for Mavin Khoo

An apparition

in perfect cruciform — Behind the snarl, a sweet man… behind the difficult man, a grand poet Even Khusro and Kabir —

Metroland 2015

paced in measured slow-motion — Shaolin ’m 70, today.

I remember Jeet Thayil’s and poets! Thayil lived on Shuklaji Street. (Some compete to compose couplets Vijay Seshadri says Thayil is truly contempoVijaynext Nambisan’s Gemini (I havemonk forgotretraces for this dancer’s movement.

Bombay poet he! The only other one was Nam- rary. His world is our world: the same Kenten the poems I then envied.) Buddha’s Next cameIndian deosoul.

Dhasal, who was born there.) Vaginas, to tucky Fried from Bombay to Hong Stalingrad, en route to 8Chicken am Pupils wide-eyed, Thayil’s English. I remember the collec- Thayil, smell like Camembert cheese.There’d Every- seldom Kongbe tomuch New York. space All for three heartscities are places Siddhartha she cajoles, seeking her lover —wrote about Little tion’s archi-tectonics; it; don’t one knows Narcopolis. No one knows to the po- or Thayil has lived settle stay. Forty pairs,in and written about. No need draped in white know where, can’t recall what. ems. “This is as it should be,” says Thayil. strive fidget, for ‘Indianness’, said Adil Jussawalla or so, of feettowould fence, hidden in the dancer’s heart, poet and his reputation is Thayil is a grand And the drug-reveries: when does lurch a drugof Thayil.

Thayil “I am me.” That ‘I’ is conand trip through Garesays, de l’Est, white the beloved quietly resides. that of a ‘difficult man’. Some poems on here are — others reverie become a dream? These addicts, Thayil temporary. “I was born the year Billie Holiday robed colour-solids — worship anything. “I worship sweet; most very harsh about hard meninhe says, will a died,” the Preface to Collected Poems begins. It République and Oberkampf.

Balance finds funny. (Is hardness a mask? Are the po- shoe.” This is the rage of the lapsed Christian. thebegun worldtoofsip jazz, drugs and death. Naresh

By Bastille, is he’d for Akram Khan red, blue, ems about the difficulty of being sweet in a green, Lapsed Christianity plus drugs make the — Fernandes of it in Taj Mahal Foxtrot, newsprint Le Mondespeaks or its weekend

yellow,who beige, orange — hard world?) Dom Moraes, world luminous. where Shuklaji Street is sanitised supplement?

— and dreamshot, half-clad lips, at Apollo You sculpt air, creating gave the young Thayil drink Julia Kristeva says poetry is ‘feminine’.

(SorPier.

(Itwith is also the world of the new ‘Bombay turn by turn, one relish. shapes in black — unstitching make beautiful and shelter (in that order), ry, ‘macho’ Jeet!) Words in a poem come out noir’ film Bombay Velvet, which bombed at the coal-dark diorama drapes. large arcs, was right about hisclaw-like first like a drug-addict’s or a schizophrenic’sAnd ‘wordbox listened, office.) Drugs and death are the same for you, you’d ears wrapped

book: “He’s good when salad’. But what words! And someBombay whore and the hoin France Inter, listened the through stations, Your outstretched limbs arching their bodies he’s not too preoccutimes, so—tender, as with his dead bos inMaris the American West. Only crowds and kisses, to Bernard and fingers frenzied — and with the dead poet Agha pied with hisballetic, persona.” wife, the details cross words with Dominique Seux, differ. All men are sintrace lines and curves — Why is he preoccu- Shahid Ali. Why did they have to like on any other Friday.ful, especially the poet. Poetry These addicts,

pied with freeze-frame whores? die? Ali gave Jeet ghazals, while will redeem them. This poem is Thayil says, will motion. deft as a seasoned seamstress, Coming choreographed to think of alive and dead. But the wife, dead, the ‘god’ in a godless world. The Listened to Maris slam greed worship anything. in translucent slow-motion — it, Thayil is our only took his poetry with her. Or so poet’s eye takes in the dunghill and growthaunbridled, untangle “I worship shoe.” Seux In aChrismomentThayil of fragile and delicate lapsed male says in the Preface. He’ll and the beauty of nature’s plenty. cutbacks, layoffs, the endless madness,

tian poet.

(Eunicein a moment write no more poems. He’s 55. spiral of State thrift, andBehind both the snarl, Thayil is a sweet like season’s first snowflakes. de Souza is nomiHe likes Babur. (So do I. So did “Betray me before I betray seek a gentler realm for man. earthlings. frenzy, is A melange of poise, nally female.)ofWhat a there Moraes.)

He likes other Bs: Brodyou,” he writes. stillness, peace, calm. posture and perfect pitch — poem to Kamala Das! sky, Bolano, Botero. And, of course, Baudelaire, Guilt: when the wife died, did she leave a Listened, till Campo Formio,

She quotes the Ko- whom he characterises in one line: to “Naponote saying “Nobody’s to blame”? So the poet crucial, affable debate.

The spotlights the arched brown-glaze ran, then speaks leon’s hair, Poe’s eyes” (as in the Manet etch- unknowing says, “I am Nobody”.

Listened, this wouldYou be can’t win with a guiltflare out,in casting of your pate and skin, of ‘yielding’ ing). Indeed! Bolano pops up in their Thayil’s ridden person. has to hate himself, go last duet, unsullied byHe grief, the deep gaze orgasm. God Bombay poem; helps him to his poetic feet.the through orgies offreedoms repentance, horror, end of nameless — come out with celestial

bless us halos Brodsky comes up as a pastiche. Rilke is re- kind a burnished poem. What is damnation, what another of unbeing. on ordinary things. of your kohl-lined eyes worked, thrice, in autumnal tints. Life is un- redemption? The two are the same, just as for sculpt a subtle abhinaya. fair. We’ll be unfair to it in a poem. But we’ll naïr the isbody, spirituality and ofsensuality are one karthika the author, most recently, Until The Lions Rest is all flourish, drama. always be fair to poetry: ghazal, sonnet, villa- and The UK), Mind, the Mind has to be (HarperCollins India/the Arcsame.

Publications which won the 2015 nelle, sestina. Sanity, thy name is poetry, Thisofsnake Eden:award put it to sleep with Tataeven Literaturecured.

Live! Book the Yearin(fiction) if a poem be insane. drugs, sex, drink, love, poetry. Frances Newton stunned, tongue-tied — searchingly

I

Line 5, early January

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Jeet Thayil Slave, master, judge and record-keeper k bhagya prakash

BL

cover

saturday, january 2, 2016

Arrow

Graffiti loves the arrow. tyrone siu The skewered heart.

The cock and balls neatly labelled with bio-book arrows Souza comes to mind: the churches made res- thologies. Not one queer poet hasflying made offittiled bathroom walls. plendent with drink-sodden priests; the nun- there. Why? Following Freud, Judith Butler Fragile.

This way up. neries, their harems. No wonder the Cardinal finds ‘a great melancholy’ in heterosexual Sortie. Exit. of Bombay, Valerian Gracias, thirsted for his men; for the homosexuality they have rejectAirports bristling with arrows. blood. The Fathers of St Xavier’s, Bombay (he ed. Thayil understands this melancholic curwas my father’s contemporary) kicked him rent under male-male relationships. his like pins, LikeIn needles, out of college. We got the paintings. poem, Thayil has, for an American hobo, “one like an expert seamstress, Thayil is in good company. Drink is the final kiss on the mouth”. But for me, I lineThayil them up in my mouth. curse and glory of the Bombay poets: Dom Mo- had a savage hyena-laugh at the Jaipur Litarrow Fest. multiplies, One raes, Adil Jussawalla, Vijay Nambisan, Santan (I hid behind the boy I was then hitting freezeson). and multiplies in slo-mo, Rodrigues (he died young). His predecessor is Thayil eulogises the vagina like no poet before a skyful eyeful, the Jewish, guilt-ridden Nissim Ezekiel, who or after him has. like in those scenes from the TV-epic dropped acid once and only once and came I think Thayil’s seminal poem is everyone “English”.was glued to out with “Latter-Day Psalms”. My Parsi guilt (at After all, he’s an English poet from forIndia; a yearaof Sundays. my homosexuality) makes me “drool karma world-poet, really. He starts with The thestreets mad quiet, and dharma” from my sadhu-beard into my Christopher Smart: “For every word has traffic its gone to rest all the soup. No maudlin religious compensations marrow in the English tongue.” Language is of warring gods. at the feet for Thayil. His people die on him. How dare gendered. The French word ‘genre’ means they? His wife, his grandma, his poet-friend ‘gender’. In French, nouns are given ‘fictive No one shot me.

A tired man will hang at dawn Ali. But wife is not mother, mother’s mother is genders’, which is quite hilarious. (‘La’ isflowers femi- fell upon me, Five forishearing voices in his head.nine, ‘Le’ masculine.) All gender ashoka, no wife, poet-friend no lover; wife: lover, is fictive; jasmine, Tomorrow’s newspapers won’thence be read though, was a fellow-poet.

He has discrete pofunny. The genre of Indian English red lotus,ismango blossom, andloves. the Republic willleft sleep ems for these discrete “I alone am to peacefully. funny to the English. (Peter Sellers and then, Sal-lily the exact blue Hoshang Merchant tell this love.” man Rushdie now with his Hin- shade unforgiving of the ink pv sivakumar The Rottweilers have been taken off the leash, Compassion is too lily-livered glish.) Thayil begins from with the tattoo artist’s needle. they arelibernosing out children in the dark. Bombay: “(...) I stand for the seva word for Thayil. He is no thou has shriven me, he says / aloud. Yes, Lord, Tomorrow’s will in the park al, he is no Catholic.

He is ajoggers E enth and last time / by aAsuras sign that porcupine venstumble a literary thou hast taken from me / all vanity and surand the Republic will sleep peacefully. wounded animal with a bleedsays, ‘Welcome to Bombay’.”

He under my aim, revolution is not a Bone-weary, / I beg recompense. I wait to ing wound. He knows what it is tea-party. It demands brings home some larvae in a cease. the battlefield bristles plucked / and played but all night thy terriwhite branch to bleed. He knowsAhow tocrow stop settles on a blood hat. They “(...) slap theirinto genitals / beshapes, sickening ble hands / push against the stern”. Even a litstripped ofto its leaves, which boys shred. once more with rage and bleeding. And he knows how decry stitches and Kama erary revolution is not a tea-party. It demands Thelaugh. flayedHe rain trees will soon be dead laugh and make us the terrible / litanies of ThotheStfive flowers of love (‘Blood’ is another favourite ‘b’ word of theofRepublic will sleep peacefully. can imagine lives. and (One the mas, ‘Mary you too mayinto / become my skin, blood. painstakingly, Thayil’s.) poems here is called “How to be a living spirit resembling males. /the only knowing way The lion’s open mouth is foaming, “Atforever Kabul Zoo, the Lion” shows us that only a Girl”.) He knows fauna.

He likes best the exotFor every woman who makes herself malethem / to make live his keepers haveinside foraged for flesh night. those truly love animals can love human ic fish that starts eating itself ‘from out’. will all enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’“is‘Phallolothrough pain, thewho prickling of tears, up their plunder at first light quite a mouthful! beings. proves himself a lover: “So this He would like to beThey that will fish!pile Children like to gocentrism’: the long hours in his Thayil parlour, and the Republicespecially will sleep peacefully. is nor fear:sailor, / (…) Everything burned: / The tiger show off before their mothers; The dung beetle is led by the neither poet into yakuza shrugged fire / off and his shoulders. / (…) Blind in mothers who aren’t easy to impress. But the ‘God’s crazy teeming garden’. The preferring phallus is ashoka and jasmine lotus A man is horsewhipped for bringing theissky eye /and mydemons, jaw in shreds, my mane / singed son, Jeet, also begs pardon from his mom, who male, God male, language is male, the is one overPoet skewered hearts into cold room without or before. to a enough useless of crop, / I in wait had to birth his ‘big, fata head’.

(It’s bald nowaftermale.

(But poetic language is female.)

The fe-I’d have knowing those myfor life,these men / to door to me.” and his trademark.)They will nail his shadow to the male dung beetle has to have a sex knowing change tothatcome this garden and the Republic sleep peacefully. spirit in extremis: this is Thayil’s He has also grown a beard.

He callswill it ‘white enter heaven. Sorry feminists! must bloom on The a battlefield of skin, terrain. as snow’. Did Thayil mature when we weren’t In Hong Kong these days, homeless oldlovers la- can where stroll, wondering A manlooking? swings But as I said dies die sitting in all-night McDonald’s Agha Ali’stime and Vikram Seth’s rhymes looking? When he wasn’t whyjoints. the air smells so Shahid sweet each clapper in a bell.An old lady rowed Thayil across in 1997. are more brilliant than before, there alwayslike wasa abroken great deal of sweetI walk“Her into a room where the blood has justThayil’s, whose The hangman knowsto allgubut cannot tell:unforgiving face is as impassive rhymes sometimes feel sprayed forced. But is a miness there. And, an Indian indebtedness wide and / as and been shed, a heart has just been on this a wall, the of): Republic must peacefully. nor flaw in athrough major poet. rus (even if made fun Gandhi, hissleep father, December on the South China sea.”an Burning, arrow quivering right it.

Thayil has his own territory of which he is Dom Moraes, the Western poets who gave him burning St Augustine came to Carthage. ranjit is the author of over 20 books, slave, master, and lines, the mother, thehoskote mother-tongue, “Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, thousampurna pluckest chattarji is a poet,judge novelist andrecord-keeper. translator. Her 14 A brilof poems including Central Time (2014), a collection WasteliantGulliver record, indeed.

Malayalam.

(2015), a poetry sequence published books include Space me out.”

Eliot echoed Augustine in The publishedhad

by Penguin IndiaThay- land. Thayil echoes both in the modern

by HarperCollins India wasteEarly on, Keki Daruwalla said that il, with his pithy images, will make it to the an- land of the great Asian metropolis: “My God hoshang merchant is a poet, critic and gay activist

Hangman’s Song

Collected Poems Jeet Thayil Aleph Book Company ₹ 499

Modern wasteland Thayil echoes both Eliot and St Augustine in Hong Kong, where homeless seniors these days sleep in 24-hour McDonald’s restaurants reuters/

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cover

saturday, january 2, 2016

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The Prufrock project

Montreal-based artist Julian Peters recently finished a graphic adaptation of TS Eliot’s 1910 poem ‘‘T

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saturday, january 2, 2016

‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’. Here are the first eight pages of Peters’s comic book

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Four seasons of rhyme and rhythm A new poem each by four leading contemporary poets: Sudeep Sen, Karthika Nair, Ranjit Hoskote and Sampurna Chattarji

Dance Triptych Kathak for Aditi Mangaldas

New idiom, grammar — Fusion of everyday clipped accent and the lyric with the unusual assonance of Bangla DESH, Deep within the eyes of a dancer,

and spiritual irises and poems bloom. merge beautifully. making you glow — Fluid, organic language — On her cupped curled a unique signature, an aura captured kohl-lined eyelids, similes smile.

permanently your own dance-bhasha On each eyelash, metaphors arch, coalesce quietly. as light’s trickery — waiting to flutter.

Desire, ecstasy, transcendence — dancer’s lissome grace.

The holy trifecta Jazz, drugs and death figure prominently in Jeet Thayil’s world shutterstock sudeep sen is an award-winning poet, editor On her bosom’s electric-silk fabric, pupil, iris, retina — focussing and translator of over 25 books including, most secret lyrics are bloused. balance — intersecting recently, Fractals: New and Selected Poems I perfectly, on solar-plexus axis.

Translations 1980-2015 (Gallerie) and Her limb’s slender extension-tips EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House) decant arias — thumris sing, soar.

Apparition

Thayil’s in extremis terrain

Her balletic grace, liquid — she dances on water, always afloat.

for Mavin Khoo

An apparition

in perfect cruciform — Behind the snarl, a sweet man… behind the difficult man, a grand poet Even Khusro and Kabir —

Metroland 2015

paced in measured slow-motion — Shaolin ’m 70, today.

I remember Jeet Thayil’s and poets! Thayil lived on Shuklaji Street. (Some compete to compose couplets Vijay Seshadri says Thayil is truly contempoVijaynext Nambisan’s Gemini (I havemonk forgotretraces for this dancer’s movement.

Bombay poet he! The only other one was Nam- rary. His world is our world: the same Kenten the poems I then envied.) Buddha’s Next cameIndian deosoul.

Dhasal, who was born there.) Vaginas, to tucky Fried from Bombay to Hong Stalingrad, en route to 8Chicken am Pupils wide-eyed, Thayil’s English. I remember the collec- Thayil, smell like Camembert cheese.There’d Every- seldom Kongbetomuch New space York. All for three heartscities are places Siddhartha she cajoles, seeking her lover —wrote about Little tion’s archi-tectonics; it; don’t one knows Narcopolis. No one knows to the po- or Thayil has pairs, lived in and written about. No need settle stay. Forty draped in white know where, can’t recall what. ems. “This is as it should be,” says Thayil. strivefidget, for ‘Indianness’, said Adil Jussawalla or so, of feettowould fence, hidden in the dancer’s heart, poet and his reputation is Thayil is a grand And the drug-reveries: when does lurch a drugof Thayil.

Thayil “I am me.” That ‘I’ is conand trip through Garesays, de l’Est, white the beloved resides. that quietly of a ‘difficult man’. Some poems on here are — others reverie become a dream? These addicts, Thayil temporary. “I was born the year Billie Holiday robed colour-solids — worship anything. “I worship sweet; most very harsh about hard meninhe says, will a died,” the Preface to Collected Poems begins. It République and Oberkampf.

Balance finds funny. (Is hardness a mask? Are the po- shoe.” This is the rage of the lapsed Christian. thebegun worldtoofsip jazz, drugs and death. Naresh

By Bastille, is he’d for Akram Khan red, blue, ems about the difficulty of being sweet in a green, Lapsed Christianity plus drugs make the — Fernandes of it in Taj Mahal Foxtrot, newsprint Le Mondespeaks or its weekend

yellow,who beige, orange — hard world?) Dom Moraes, world luminous. where Shuklaji Street is sanitised supplement?

— and dreamshot, half-clad lips, at Apollo You sculpt air, creating gave the young Thayil drink Julia Kristeva says poetry is ‘feminine’.

(SorPier. is also the world of the new ‘Bombay turn by turn, one(Itwith relish. shapes in black — unstitching make beautiful and shelter (in that order), ry, ‘macho’ Jeet!) Words in a poem come out noir’ film Bombay Velvet, which bombed at the coal-dark diorama drapes. large arcs,a drug-addict’s or a schizophrenic’sAnd was right about hisclaw-like first like ‘wordbox listened, office.) Drugs and death are the same for you, you’d ears wrapped

book: “He’s good when salad’. But what words! And someBombay whore and the hoin France Inter, listened the through stations, Your outstretched limbs arching their bodies he’s not too preoccutimes, so—tender, as with his dead bos inMaris the American West. Only crowds and kisses, to Bernard and fingers frenzied — and with the dead poet Agha pied with hisballetic, persona.” wife, the details cross words with Dominique Seux, differ. All men are sintrace lines and curves — Why is he preoccu- Shahid Ali. Why did they have to like on any other Friday. ful, especially the poet. Poetry These addicts,

pied with freeze-frame whores? die? Ali gave Jeet ghazals, while will redeem them. This poem is Thayil says, will motion. deft as a seasoned seamstress, Coming choreographed to think of alive and dead. But the wife, dead, the ‘god’ in a godless world. The Listened to Maris slam greed worship anything. in translucent slow-motion — it, Thayil is our only took his poetry with her. Or so poet’s eye takes in the dunghill and growthaunbridled, untangle “I worship shoe.” Seux In aChrismomentThayil of fragile and delicate lapsed male says in the Preface. He’ll and the beauty of nature’s plenty. cutbacks, layoffs, the endless madness,

tian poet.

(Eunicein a moment write no more poems. He’s 55. spiral of State thrift, andBehind both the snarl, Thayil is a sweet like season’s first snowflakes. de Souza is nomiHe likes Babur. (So do I. So did man. “Betray me before I betray seek a gentler realm for earthlings. frenzy, is A melange of poise, nally female.)ofWhat a there Moraes.)

He likes other Bs: Brodyou,” he writes. stillness, peace, calm. posture and perfect pitch — poem to Kamala Das! sky, Bolano, Botero. And, of course, Baudelaire, Guilt: when the wife died, did she leave a Listened, till Campo Formio,

She quotes the Ko- whom he characterises in one line:to“Naponote saying “Nobody’s to blame”? So the poet crucial, affable debate.

The spotlights the arched brown-glaze ran, then speaks leon’s hair, Poe’s eyes” (as in the Manet etch- unknowing says, “I am this Nobody”.

Listened, wouldYou be can’t win with a guiltflare out,in casting of your pate and skin, of ‘yielding’ ing). Indeed! Bolano pops up in their Thayil’s ridden person. has to hate himself, go last duet, unsullied

by He grief, the deep gaze orgasm. God Bombay poem; helps him to his poetic feet.the through orgies offreedoms repentance, horror, end of nameless — come out with celestial

bless ushalos Brodsky comes up as a pastiche. Rilke is re- kind a burnished poem. What is damnation, what another of unbeing. on ordinary things. of your kohl-lined eyes worked, thrice, in autumnal tints. Life is un- redemption? The two are the same, just as for sculpt a subtle abhinaya. fair. We’ll be unfair to it in a poem. But we’ll naïr the isbody, spirituality andofsensuality are one karthika the author, most recently, Until The Lions Rest is all flourish, drama. always be fair to poetry: ghazal, sonnet, villa- and The UK), Mind, the Mind has to be (HarperCollins India/the Arc same.

Publications which won the 2015 nelle, sestina. Sanity, thy name is poetry, This Eden:award put it to sleep with Tataeven Literaturecured.

Live! Book ofsnake the Yearin(fiction) if a poem be insane. drugs, sex, drink, love, poetry. Frances Newton stunned, tongue-tied — searchingly

I

Line 5, early January

Q R

ND-X _ A

Jeet Thayil Slave, master, judge and record-keeper k bhagya prakash

BL

cover

saturday, january 2, 2016

Arrow

Graffiti loves the arrow. tyrone siu The skewered heart.

The cock and balls neatly labelled with bio-book arrows Souza comes to mind: the churches made res- thologies. Not one queer poet hasflying madeoffittiled bathroom walls. plendent with drink-sodden priests; the nun- there. Why? Following Freud, Judith Butler Fragile.

This way up. neries, their harems. No wonder the Cardinal finds ‘a great melancholy’ in heterosexual Sortie. Exit. of Bombay, Valerian Gracias, thirsted for his men; for the homosexuality they have rejectAirports bristling with arrows. blood. The Fathers of St Xavier’s, Bombay (he ed. Thayil understands this melancholic curwas my father’s contemporary) kicked him rent under male-male relationships. his like pins, LikeInneedles, out of college. We got the paintings. poem, Thayil has, for an American hobo, “one like an expert seamstress, Thayil is in good company. Drink is the final kiss on the mouth”. But for me, Thayil I line them up in my mouth. curse and glory of the Bombay poets: Dom Mo- had a savage hyena-laugh at the Jaipur Litarrow Fest. multiplies, One raes, Adil Jussawalla, Vijay Nambisan, Santan (I hid behind the boy I was then hitting freezeson). and multiplies in slo-mo, Rodrigues (he died young). His predecessor is Thayil eulogises the vagina like no poet before a skyful eyeful, the Jewish, guilt-ridden Nissim Ezekiel, who or after him has. like in those scenes from the TV-epic dropped acid once and only once and came I think Thayil’s seminal poem is everyone “English”.was glued to out with “Latter-Day Psalms”. My Parsi guilt (at After all, he’s an English poet fromforIndia; a yearaof Sundays. my homosexuality) makes me “drool karma world-poet, really. He starts with The thestreets mad quiet, and dharma” from my sadhu-beard into my Christopher Smart: “For every word has traffic its gone to rest all the soup. No maudlin religious compensations marrow in the English tongue.” Language is of warring gods. at the feet for Thayil. His people die on him. How dare gendered. The French word ‘genre’ means they? His wife, his grandma, his poet-friend ‘gender’. In French, nouns are given No ‘fictive one shot me.

A tired man will hang at dawn Ali. But wife is not mother, mother’s mother is genders’, which is quite hilarious. (‘La’ is flowers femi- fell upon me, Five forishearing voices in his head.nine, ‘Le’ masculine.) All gender ashoka, no wife, poet-friend no lover; wife: lover, is fictive; jasmine, Tomorrow’s newspapers won’thence be read though, was a fellow-poet.

He has discrete pofunny. The genre of Indian English red lotus,ismango blossom, andloves. the Republic willleft sleep ems for these discrete “I alone am to peacefully. funny to the English. (Peter Sellers and then, Sal-lily the exact blue Hoshang Merchant tell this love.” man Rushdie now withunforgiving his Hin- shade of the ink pv sivakumar The Rottweilers have been taken off the leash, Compassion is too lily-livered glish.) Thayil begins from with the tattoo artist’s needle. they arelibernosing out children in the dark. Bombay: “(...) I stand for the seva word for Thayil. He is no thou has shriven me, he says / aloud. Yes, Lord, Tomorrow’s will in the park al, he is no Catholic.

He is ajoggers E enth and last time / by aAsuras sign that porcupine venstumble a literary thou hast taken from me / all vanity and surand the Republic will sleep peacefully. wounded animal with a bleedsays, ‘Welcome to Bombay’.”

He under my aim, revolution is not a Bone-weary, / I beg recompense. I wait to ing wound. He knows what it is tea-party. It demands brings home some larvae in a cease. the battlefield bristles plucked / and played but all night thy terriwhite branch to bleed. He knowsAhow to crow stop settles on a blood hat. They “(...) slap theirinto genitals / beshapes, sickening ble hands / push against the stern”. Even a litstripped its leaves, which boys shred. once more with rage and bleeding. And he knows howofto and decry Kama stitches erary revolution is not a tea-party. It demands Thelaugh. flayedHe rain trees will soon be dead laugh and make us the terrible / litanies of ThotheStfive flowers of love (‘Blood’ is another favourite ‘b’ word of will sleep peacefully. can imagine lives. and (Onethe ofRepublic the mas, ‘Mary you too mayinto / become my skin, blood. painstakingly, poems here is called “How to be a living spirit resembling males. /the Thayil’s.) knowing only way The lion’s open mouth is foaming, “Atforever Kabul Zoo, the Lion” shows us that only a Girl”.) He knows fauna.

He likes best the exotFor every woman who makes herself male them / to make live his keepers haveinside foraged for flesh night. those truly love animals can love human ic fish that starts eating itself ‘from out’. will all enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’“is‘Phallolothrough pain, thewho prickling of tears, up their plunder at first lightquite a mouthful! beings. proves himself a lover: “So this He would like to beThey that will fish!pile Children like to gocentrism’: the long hours in his Thayil parlour, and the Republicespecially will sleep peacefully. is nor fear:sailor, / (…) Everything burned: / The tiger show off before their mothers; The dung beetle is led by the neither poet into yakuza shrugged fire / off and his shoulders. / (…) Blind in mothers who aren’t easy to impress. But the ‘God’s crazy teeming garden’. The phallus is ashoka preferring and jasmine lotus A man is horsewhipped for bringing theissky eye /and my demons, jaw in shreds, my mane / singed son, Jeet, also begs pardon from his mom, who male, God male, language is male, the is one overPoet skewered hearts into cold room without or before. to a enough useless of crop, / I in wait had to birth his ‘big, fatahead’.

(It’s bald nowaftermale.

(But poetic language is female.)

The fe-I’d have knowing those myfor life,these men / to door to me.” and his trademark.)They will nail his shadow to the male dung beetle has to have a sex change knowingtothatcome this garden and the Republic sleep peacefully. spirit in extremis: this is Thayil’s He has also grown a beard.

He callswill it ‘white enter heaven. Sorry feminists! must bloom onThe a battlefield of skin, as snow’. Did Thayil mature when we weren’t In Hong Kong these days, homeless oldlovers la- terrain. where can stroll, wondering A manlooking? swings But as I said dies die sitting in all-night McDonald’s Agha Ali’stime and Vikram Seth’s rhymes looking? When he wasn’t whyjoints. the air smells so Shahid sweet each clapper in a bell.An old lady rowed Thayil across in 1997. are more brilliant than before, there alwayslike wasa abroken great deal of sweetI walk“Her into a room where the blood has justThayil’s, whose The hangman knowsto allgubut cannot tell:unforgiving face is as impassive rhymes sometimes feel sprayed forced. But is a miness there. And, an Indian indebtedness wide and / as and been shed, a heart has just been on this a wall, the of): Republic must peacefully. nor flaw in athrough major poet. rus (even if made fun Gandhi, hissleep father, December on the South China sea.”an Burning, arrow quivering right it.

Thayil has his own territory of which he is Dom Moraes, the Western poets who gave him burning St Augustine came to Carthage. ranjit is the author of over 20 books, slave, master, and lines, the mother, thehoskote mother-tongue, “Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, thousampurna pluckest chattarji is a poet,judge novelist andrecord-keeper. translator. Her 14 A brilof poems including Central Time (2014), a collection WasteliantGulliver record, indeed.

Malayalam.

(2015), a poetry sequence published books include Space me out.”

Eliot echoed Augustine in The publishedhad

by Penguin IndiaThay- land. Thayil echoes both in the modern

by HarperCollins India wasteEarly on, Keki Daruwalla said that il, with his pithy images, will make it to the an- land of the great Asian metropolis: “My God hoshang merchant is a poet, critic and gay activist

Hangman’s Song

Collected Poems Jeet Thayil Aleph Book Company ₹ 499

Modern wasteland Thayil echoes both Eliot and St Augustine in Hong Kong, where homeless seniors these days sleep in 24-hour McDonald’s restaurants reuters/

Q R

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Life after Tamasha

Two young poets, both of whom turned 30 recently, made their publishing debuts in 2015, although this writer has been following their words and their exploits on the Internet for years. Aditi Rao’s The Fingers Remember (Yoda Press) and Akhil Katyal’s Night Charge Extra (Writer’s Workshop) are books that bode well for the future of Indian poetry. Both poets were nominated for the Muse India-Satish Verma Young Writer Award 2015: Rao won.

What is most impressive about The Fingers Remember is that it never confuses sentimentality with true-blue emotion. Rao is a seasoned traveller who knows that wide-eyed, unfettered dreamscapes hit home all the better when balanced with strategic infusions of hard-nosed pragmatism. At the end of the poem ‘Not being a man, I bleed like this’, she says, “On the highway, sitting ghoda-taang on the motorcycle/ behind the man I love — no one to notice. Closer/ to the village, side saddle. A woman you can trust/ to educate your daughters. I will live in between.”

On the eve of the book’s release, Rao’s publisher, Arpita Das (founder of Yoda Press), described the discovery of this rising star: “Aditi sent us her manuscript early in 2013. I remember I was on the verge of taking that final decision about closing Yodakin (my bookstore) and was down in the dumps, and happened to unwrap this magical manuscript, which lifted my spirits immediately. Her poetry is haunting, imbued by such a deep sense of loss and anguish (and you just know that she has felt every bit of it) — and yet so reassuring, just to know that such anguish is felt by others and can be so exquisitely expressed.”

Katyal’s is an altogether different voice. His weapons are quicksilver wit, an exceptional sense of rhythm and the ability to assimilate disparate poetic elements, sometimes in the beenHere, over afor month sinceare thehis release of samet’s poem. instance, electric Kapoor-Deepika Padukone lines Ranbir about the controversial Section 377 ofstarthe rer Tamasha, but it took a while for the dust to settle. A quick Google search will reveal long, philosophical and insightful blog posts by viewers, which praise and rip apart the film in equal measure. Its maker Imtiaz Ali is pleasantly surprised to see his piece de resistance triggering strong emotions in viewers, even if it is not all positive. He admits that some of the deconstruction is deeper than what he intended. “It’s beautiful how people are engaging with the film. I would love every person in this universe to love every film I’ve made, but that’s never how it works out. After Rockstar, I realised that views can be bipolar.

People hated that film. Thankfully, people haven’t hated this film. There are many who are just disliking it or not getting the point of it,” he analyses.

Ali did the rounds of single-screen theatres across the country to get a first-hand report of how Tamasha was faring. This is a practice he follows with all his releases. When we met last month at a suburban coffee shop in Mumbai, he still had a few more days to go till his film would be swallowed whole by mammoth productions like Dilwale and Bajirao Mastani.

“Sometimes you have to hear very rude things about your film. But you’ve got to be aware of the real world. Strangely I’ve got the best reactions in PVR Priya (in Delhi) and Chandan (in Mumbai), where the tickets are less expensive.

When I went to Chandan for the first time with my mom, I felt that the movie is connecting with the audience. It’s just a sense,” he says with certainty. It’s oddly refreshing that he’s not that up-to-speed with box office collections. But he can tell you the exact moments in his film that generated applause and whistles in the theatre.

In Tamasha, Ali traces the journey of Ved

Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore Imtiaz Ali’s latest. And bad reviews, of which he’s had aplenty, won’t stop the director from doing the rounds of theatres screening his films

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Turn to verse A meeting of Poets’ Collective in Delhi’s Deer Park; (bottom) Delhi-based poet Aditi Angiras is the founder of the spoken-word collective Bring Back the Poets

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This — too shallEnglish pass to an accomplished translator from Indian Penal Code.

Imtiaz has often his Ali blog, you’ll find “Girl, when you / blow your boy, / or boy, Hindi and vice versa. On accused of set of a wildly diverse when / you go down / on her, or when / both of poems-in-translation bybeen repeating one theme people: they include Langston Hughes, Wiszlayou use / a toy, and all the / world’s a blur, in several films monica ; (below) A still Seth, Dorothy Parker, I know it feels / like heaven, you / too violate wa Szymborska, Vikramtiwari from Tamasha Gwendolyn Brooks, Ashok Vajpeyi, Munawwar 377.”

Less than two weeks ago, a short poem he Rana and, most recently, Ravish Kumar. Best of wrote about Farida Khanum went viral on the all, Katyal has a large body of work available free of cost, on his blog as welltheir as onproblems his FaceInternet,Kapoor), findinga its wayproduct into themanager Pakistani (Ranbir boring at coming friends.

They discuss among other places. bookI discuss timeline. anewspaper marketingDawn, firm who is secretly stifling his re- and mine,” Ali explains.

“Whento Farida Khanum and stage performal desire be a storyteller Ali’s passion for travelling reflects in all his Rhymes anew now critique of the film is that the films. er.sings A common He has a penchant for shooting at loshe premise does not of hide the age one’s dream and cales Towards end thebeintroduction Thaybasic following thattheare yetofto explored intoIndian Collected Poems,inthe author in her voice, breaking free of societal pressure is one that films. Often il’s he sets his stories places he us that he as won’t be writing Aliinstead has rehashed time and again in all his films hasn’t visitedtells himself, such Prague, where poemsorany more.for Ironically, she wraps it in paisleys, — one sees flashes of it in the male protago- he shot Rockstar, Corsica Tamasha.the “I of hiscapital departure andoffor a moment nists Jab We Met and Rockstar too.I “I don’t knew Praguemoment was the only city infeels Euknow it feels / like like the precipice opportunity holds it in know how to both reactof toher that.hands, I just write the story you rope that wasn’t flattened outofby the World heaven, / too poetry.

It feels like a bebefore that comes to my mind. Maybe I’m Warfor so Indian I imagined that its buildings violate 377” ginning.

Andthan there’s cosmicelse. evidrowns it in sky. notshe that careful orour calculative were older anywhere dence for this When shestory singsI now, about the want to That’s the hypothesis. look I wanted for Consider this strange coincishe knows make.

Maybe it is a that portion of my film.

For dence: Tamasha Thayil’s first collection, that at the end of that theme.

Could it be?” he note I wanted to Gemini, was published in 1992, and ita was when her voice breaks asks himself.

After a come up with placea two-poet volume, the other like a wishbone, quiet moment of ponwherecontributor Indians being don’t Vijay Nambisan, also normally a debutantvisit, back then. will stay.” dering, hehedeclares, so I that speltofcurtains who teaches English litera- And in 2015, the year thought “There mustKatyal, be a subCorsica for or Nambisan ture at Shiv conscious reason.”

As Nadar University, is also Thayil’s own poetic career, Ecuador,” he says.has returned from exile with First for the reviews, he He’sInfinities unsure of(Poetrywhere wala), a sensational collection and calmly asks, “They are his next film will take undoubtedly one ofhim. the books of point the year. awful, na? I’ve not read At this he In is the foreword, Nambisan confesses that fortoa them but I heard they bouncing off a few ideas long time, he took his around cues from Auden were horrible.” those him and and getfelt that poetry did matter.ofHewhat then people says: “I Ali’s stories, he says, are tingnot a sense don’t know exactly why, butto some ago I born out of life — some his own, might want see years him make veered to the opposite view: Poetry is the feedonly but mostly of those around him. next. “I’m open to taking thing that matters. have justification for He’s an incessant people-watcher, backIat anyno stage.

Even before I’m not trying to make that; it’s all in the loves to travel, and makes friends themind.” film is made,” he says. As notes but there are Where one poet ‘no more’,he’s another was easily. “The work (filmmaking) for said the feedback collected some bold strokes shaken out of his ennui, moved to break a take selfthat puts you in a bubble also on Tamasha, he says it will that I won’t forget imposed exile. Where ended, other betakes you out and makes you enhim a one good two the years before gan anew. So too, seems, thethe fatefilm of Indian gage with people. For this film I he it can analyse objecpoetry: at everytively. cynical where it is was in Shimla for three months.

“I’mmoment not trying to make written off, there willbut arise Atlases bearbold the Now if you meet the same people notes there are to some poet’s burden. we forget. will read in good every day, beyond a certain point, the fact that strokes that I And won’t If them; I’m insecure times or bad, aloud in grateful silence, I’m a filmmaker and that they’ve seen me in about something andor I hear some criticism alone or in the fellow-dreamers, newspapers and on Kapil’s comedy show, goes which points incompany the same of direction, I’ll never and weit,” will thank god for poetry. out of their mind. They welcome me to their forget hesay: says. houses and that gives me a genuine opportuchaudhuri aditya mani jha nity of involving myself with them and be- mohini

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ON THE SHELF

The book’s the thing Books that also make for exceptionally pretty artefacts are a hit when it comes to gifting options (and yes, e-books make for terrible gifts)

anita roy

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n the run-up to Christmas, the shops are stuffed to bursting with gifts to buy. Take an ordinary object and wrap it up in festive paper, ribbons and bows, and you have transformed a thing into an idea, an object into a symbol. Under the Roy Christmas tree, the packages tend to be about the thickness and weight of a book. That’s because they usually are.

From board books for toddlers to gardening books for totterers, a quarter of all bookshop sales happen in the one month leading up to Christmas. ‘Books are for giving’ is not just a great advertising slogan, it’s an economic fact.

Despite the prevalence of e-Readers, the convenience of downloadable books, and our increasing comfort with reading on screen, let’s face it, an e-book makes a crap gift. Half the point of the whole process is the handing over, the struggling with Sellotape, the reading of the little gift-tag, the whole unwrapping thing where your character is laid bare: picky paper-saver or a flamboyant tearer.

Walking around Waterstones this year, it looks like the response by publishers to the gauntlet thrown down by ebooks: You want physical? Let’s get physical then. Stroke this.

The latest editions of the Penguin Classics, for example, look like they’ve been individually hand-tooled by elves and bound in baby seal. They possibly have. Dickens, the Brontes, the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe — all reissued in 2015 — have never looked so distinguished in their brand new, hipsterishly antiquified, Arts-and-Crafts-inspired dust jackets.

According to the publishers’ website, these books are for people who “not only love having a great Classic to read but also cherish the feel of a wonderful object.”

At bookshop entrance, one table is piled ast year, I spotted star Punjabi high with a large-format, gorgeously arty poet chilSurjita Patar in Delhi.

He looked lost. aI dren’s book: perfect Christmas gift, with had a ‘headlinish’ ‘A poet seasonally festive feel to it, thought called The— Fox and of trees in the city of pollution’.

Then the Star. The stylised illustrations look like liInoremembered he comes Ludhiana,using a city or wood-cuts, and from screenprinted no toxic.

Not long ago,ItLudhiana could be justless one or two colours. is a fable — few mistaken theeach Dickensian industrial Lonwords per for page, spread an artwork in itdon, with hardbound its grime, smog, andnavy-blue utter inhumanself, and in rich cloth ity of money machine.

Its treesThe could be binding with and silver ink highlights. book mistaken for illustrated, smokestacks.

Ludhiana is also was written, typeset and created home to the Punjab Agriculture University,

by Coralie Bickford-Smith — who just happens the womb of the Green Revolution. to beruinous the cover designer at Penguin responsibPatar saysClothbound when it getsClassics so silent le for the too.that you can hear thestarted soundaof falling leaf, tree Theeven trend, fewa years ago, tothe include begins to recite poems.

How didpaper Patarat come information onits the typeface and the to converse a clangorous back of the with booktrees was Iinsuspect all partcity? of this Walking nearpart the of Oldpublishers Courts about two decdesire on the to feed the ades Patar noticed the fetishists, dried-up trees in need ago, of the physical book designthe compound. appeared toglory him. heads, and fontThey groupies who,human like me, They once people who come here for in thewere arcane knowledge thathad Bickford-Smith’s justice, thought.

And in endless had touchinghe fable was printed Italy onwait Munken turned them You into won’t trees. get The that nature Pure Rough. onin a Patar’s Kindle poetry not for a romantic refuge but a confiscreen, is that’s sure. dant modern alienated man. anthroButofifthe you’re looking for a gift forIn someone pomorphic folk-tales, trees spoke out or men who has formed an unhealthily co-dependent and women turned into Kindle trees because they relationship with their and yet is were considered a parttoofsneak the human order.

In adulterously inclined physical books

The lone ranger Though a household name in Punjab, Patar, just like the trees in his verse, is an exile of modernity jatinder preet

raries were experimenting, he chose to write in the old literary form of ghazal, which was considered decadent in those times of the Naxalite revolution. But he says he does not write ghazals; his poetry is ghazalnuma (ghazal-like). Bah’r, the Urdu meter, is not a learnt and practised craft but his very breath. He says he doesn’t write in bah’r but lives in it.

In Patar’s lyrical fellowship with trees, there is no place for the green fields of Punjab. You don’t hear about the wheat turning golden, the shooting sap in tall sugarcanes, or the mirth of mustard fields. Though he has taught at Punjab Agriculture University for decades, there is no agriculture in his poetry. He says he cannot relate to crops because crops come and go but trees age like human beings. As shuterstock agriculture turns nature into an industry, people grow distant from trees. Now you will see fewer local trees such as beri, jand, pipal, bohr, barota, toot and tahli. Fewer trees in a farm means more area for cultivation. Trees with commercial promise such as poplar and eucalyptus abound. Trees in his poetry are not just works of nature. They are cultural anchors too. They get consecrated by the Gurus and heroes in ballads rest under them. They are a bebethge nignshutterstock/thomas presence in hot summers. Homes, streets and villages are known from them. With trees, between the covers, you might want to invest whole cultural references has published

by Granary Booksvanish. in 2012.Patar The GorPatar’s treesanconverse because they written in Smellpoetry, of Books™, ‘aerosol e-book enhana popular ‘Mar rahi meri geous Nothings takespoem, its titles from onehai of Dickhave been alienated an industrial cer’. Compatible withinmost e-Readers,society. it will bhasha (my language is blend dying)’ofin which he inson’s poems, a perfect sumptuous Both Patar his trees arewhiff exiles modernswathe yourand beloved in the ofof old library, names the and words have dropped from physicality thewhich airily sublime.

The book reity.

Unlikely for aallliterary work, his Old Court without having the time-consuming both- Punjabi time. Soon, they will include producesover facsimiles of 52 poems written on poem keha taan jarega breakkivein names eration‘Kujh of waiting for hanera the chemical of out many trees. by a poet who is pracflattened envelopes (how the darkness down will of cellulose and tolerate lignin in the paper, tically a by-word Patar be aeconomy poet of and the formay puritan if I speakinks out?)’ became so glue. popprinting and binding modern there is aThese folk plainnesslyric and but its opposite. ular Hans Rajanother Hans topped (Notethat of caution: of the undertone in —his poetry. are fragments even by theThat’s stanthe charts when he sangisit.called company’s perfumes why poems too turn dardshis of literary that most fragmentary In his trees sigh, wait, ‘Eau, Youpoems, Have Cats’). popular songs.inToday, of poets — scrawled pencilvery on Inlatest Patar’s lyrical of into The editions converse as fellowship On the and otherreincarnate hand, if you few poets have the distinction of throw-away scraps.

Yet here they with trees, the Penguin Classics, flutes andFull sarangis.

In the old look want the Monty, something being mass icons. Travelling in a are, reincarnated as a sumptuthere is they’ve no placebeen for like poetic of in Barahmaha, the the green fields perhapsform bound Nigerian goattaxi Delhi, Patar found the ouslyin bound limited edition individually handof Punjab agony of the separated lovers skin and printed on moulddriver staring at him from the boxed volume accompanied by tooled by elves and grows with every seamade paper with change deckle in edges, rear-view mirror, again an essay, letterpress printedand by bound in baby seal. son.

Nature becomes index of might I direct you toanthe Folio again.

He knew the driver had Friedrich Kerksieck on Byron They possibly have longing and may pain.beIntempted Patar, naSociety? You by recognised him.

In Punjab, heand is a Weston Linen Ledger White ture a whispering a cretheirisedition of The lover, Fitzwilliam household name. bound in Saint Armand Dark Linative a secret sharer. He Book ofcollaborator, Hours with itsand silk-woven Poetry, he says, comes to blue him Shikibu in rhyme.

His en with royal Gammodulates old Punjabi aesthetic of exile, poems are compressed jacquard the binding commisand tightly packed in pi-shi endpapers, no less.

Yours biraha, into a mill songfounded of modern loneli- the sioned from by anman’s 18th-century for aUrdu meremeter $3,500.but unfurl gloriously in his ness.

The spiritual exile of Punjabi Sufi poet Ba- haunting Huguenot silk weaver. voice. When helistening, pauses to you consider So for anyone that’s knowa baAs Farid becomes thebecome urban exile Patar’s question, physical books morein ‘collectahe top turns his Christmas face away,list purses his what’s at the of my for next verses.

Patar chose thed’art romantic lyric to tapdein- lips, ble’, more like objets than convenient eyes and sitsand so still thatit. he alyear:narrows put thathis in your Kindle smoke to the systems biraha aesthetic that comes down livery for textual (or visual) stuff,from you most looks like a tree.

Baba Farid modern poet Shiv Kumar Balatvi, anita roy is a writer, editor and publisher; cannot toptoEmily Dickinson’s The Gorgeous www.anitaroy.net kumar is a Delhi-based journalist taking various When Patar’s contempoNothings: Emilyforms.

Dickinson’s Envelope Poems, dharminder

True to the roots

In Surjit Patar’s poems, written in an Urdu meter, trees sigh, wait, converse and reincarnate as flutes and sarangis

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Sold on poetry

India today, in doodles A digital comic arrives as a physical copy, compiling four years of taking cheap shots at anything topical curity council had me scrambling to the archives to ferret it out (it actually happened!)

Such moments of pleasurable viciousness are preserved like a fly in aspic.

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he writing is crisp and punchy. There are plenty of zingers — “Look I didn’t really jump the red light” as one of the characters explains to a traffic cop, “I merely anticipated the green”; or downer observations, “There is something to be learnt from every tragedy.

Namely there’s one to follow soon after that will take the spotlight away from this one”.

A cartoon strip, however, lives and dies by the art — the ability to convey complex subjects in as few lines as possible. I peeked under the hood to see the “graphic engine” it runs on. Immediately some elements came to light.

One is to amplify meaning by reducing it to objects — a 1980s vintage TV stands for the Media, an unbuttoned shirt for the Police, and so on. Then there is the overarching vocabulary of the strip: a repetitive pattern of playing with scale — for instance, a wide shot of a neighbourhood is followed by a close-up of a roach clambering up a drainpipe. The strip is held together by a grammar of extreme zooms and close-ups, of a long “pan” ending on a telling detail, or repeating a visual but with new context.

Then there are tics — the noses of all the characters are rendered like little rockets with stubby fins. Some of the mechanisms are sus(Tragi)Comic relief Pages from Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land tained by the rich tradition of cartooning. In Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, for example, President Bush was shown as a floating astef newspapers are the first draft of History, This top-notch production quality is a relief risk surmounted by a Roman helmet to depict then presumably political cartoons are from some of the recent Indian offerings; I re- a certain imperial vacuity. Similarly, Narendra the doodles on its last page, the kind call an anthology by a leading publisher Modi is depicted as a hairy fist (in one amusmade by a backbencher during a boring whose spine cracked apart after the first read- ing variation referencing the time he allegedclass. In recent years, cartooning has found a ing, like one of those “Should you choose to ac- ly refused to wear a Muslim skullcap, the hairy natural home on the Web — and at the same cept” messages in Mission Impossible. fist immediately dons a bewildering array of time, digital comics is going through a renaisWhat of the contents? CWTL has been com- headwear, including a tribal one featuring a sance in India. ing out every Monday morning (‘the best time dead bird). The mask-like heads of the characSo even if you are a frog in a well, you’ll ap- of the week for insults’) since August 2010, ters are totemised, in a manner that reminded preciate Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land, with May 2014 as the last entry. me of Steve Bell’s work in The which compiles four years of the strip. For Considering they are “belowGuardian, with his underpantsnewcomers it is a handy introduction, while the-belt cheap shots” at anyobsessed John Major and cyclothose familiar will enjoy the heft of the physi- thing topical, the first question pean Tony Blair.

The cartoon also cal copy.

Speaking of which, I first camepoetry acrossreading My personal inis: events Can something so talent ephemeral Follow the line No longer an elitist preserve, nurture young and make fineserves works accessible to a wide cross-section of peoplefavourites aditya tejas up a fitting the collection crouching atop a magazine stand up? Accompanying snipclude a wordless two-page layout riposte to anyone stand in a bookstore chain, thanks to an un- pets explain context. Some are where a woman riding on a metwho claims the NDA caring staff. The cover with its square of red still fresh, their issues still topiro is silently leered at by two men has been receiving hen you’vejaws written a 900Savage Detectives and itsfaded equally part-treatment enclosing canine-encrusted in a scythe of cal, Bandra bandstand”.

— a duel of stares and gazes. Anothers have already in- savage unfair novel becomes the to ner-in-comedy Literature in the Americas) black seemed topage devour itsthat anaemic fashion “As Billie’sother headisfinally touched floor, a bizarre nestedthe storyline that dustbin Nazi of history. publishing event of the year, is about drink,ofthey whore around, Bolaño got tofeaturing and lifestyle neighbours.

If you’re wondering his feet and gathered hisand brief-a a severed hand Sad topoets: say, thethey carousel Indiit’s difficult to insist they form means and disband cliques, whether a strip published through Tumblrthat re- an case.studying He told me the sun was boy thethat night before his politics nothing much you’re really a poet who’s to has they embark epic, foolhardy ally needs a physical copy, writing turning novels the page high and soon would be too exam.

There areitgood laughs to changed.on Many of the earn a quick buck. But precisely quests to find—‘lost’ poetsfreedom and of expres- be had when hot provides the answer: thethat’s book is worthy what of all themes to walk members or work. ‘Only poetrya committee interview today sedition, the late, lamented they — seldom ever get down to those dead trees. Chilean author Roberto Bo- sion not shit’, hemembership said. ‘Stop wasting dog that hasisapplied for in an were encountered in different guisesnew Exciting voices laño insisted, right down to his very last interwriting poetry.

In remember some of his One is immediately greeted by strong de- back so much time.’

Evenengages in the dream elite the work with then; anyone Asim Trivedi? are knocking on club. the Occasionally view. the After his themed masterpiece 2666are was he evenalso features theup poet sign: stray-dog endpapers yel- poems, I realizedwho thatexpresses this was a the fairly acview The cartoon serves a fitting riposte door withcritics every — a character translated intovehemence English by Natasha Wimmer, to Nicanor Parra a character. low with the of a government curate rendering of my writing that the strip is too dark is promptly dropped anyone whoasclaims the NDA has been repassing month the world satprogramme. up and paid The attention toblack his earIt was rather appropriate, anti-malaria slabs of of ceiving career.” unfair treatment.

The years the collec- into a manhole. lier novel The page, Savagefollowed Detectives, turned tion then, that thecoincide tables were recentthe half-title bywhich the cartoon the last two years, there CWTL, with itsInanonymous writer-artist duo, spans with the UPA’s most out toreaper be every bit as agood.

Bolaño, sadly, ly turned on Bolaño: introgrim provide foreshadowing of did the dysfunctional have been so new releases by an imstrong, expect a graphic rephase. the Almost every example is still running not live long enough to process his meteoric duction to Jeet Thayil’s Collected take-no-prisoners attitude of what follows. “lambasts” pressively long of major Indiport card on Modi and Co in list 2019! the powers-that-be. rise. substrate All that was left forby readers was his fa- Poems the dated authorthan narrating The provided the thick paper Somebegins stories with are more others. Aa an poets. Ranjit Hoskote, Vikram Seth, unudurti is a Hyderabad-based andSumous declaration: “The poems make meof blush dreamthat thatreferences featured Bolaño smoking smack jaideep holds up the architecture-like layout the strip Arundhati Subramaniam, Karthikawriter Nair, SM Krishna delivering novelist less”. A lot of Bolaño’s fiction (especially The the withPortuguese Billie Holiday “in a Parsi sanatorium on graphic panels. deep Sen, Sridala Swami, and Keki Daruwalla: minister’s speech at the UN Se-

Works by poets established and new are flooding the Indian publishing market even as informal clubs and collectives spread the word in colleges, cafes and moonlit terraces

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Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land HarperCollins India Comics ₹599

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and that’s EAT, just off the top of my head. There STREET, REPEAT have also been handsome ‘Collected Poems’ editions for poets like Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Kamala Das, to say nothing of works in translation, like the incandescent You Are Neera by Sunil Gangopadhyay (translated into English by Arunava Sinha). Exciting new voices are knocking on the door with every passing month, it seems. Informal poetry clubs and collectives are spreading the word in colleges and cafes and moonlit terraces.

All of a sudden, we seem to have woken up to what the late Hindi writer Kamleshwar once said about poetry: “Kavita hriday mein kanghi karti hai” (Poetry is that which combs the heart).

The resurgence is manifested in publishers willing to send out more poetry books into the market: this despite the fact that the poetry editor is an endangered (possibly extinct?) beast at most of India's top publishing firms.

Orion in one year flat.”

Daruwalla, however, also recalls the emergence of literary magazines and independent journals around the same time. “Small journals like Pritish Nandy’s Dialogue were coming up. Century, a magazine by Lawrence Bantleman (who migrated to Canada), and Thought edited by Keshav Malik had also started. And Nissim started a poetry page in The Illustrated Weekly, with help from Khushwant Singh, the editor.”

Plum in the mouth The festive season is particularly unkind to those who count calories and love skinny jeans

shabnam minwalla

Poet’s corner of the Web

Christmas cake (modified from a recipe by Delia Smith)

More than four decades later, this functionali- Ingredients ty has been fulfilled by webzines: several on- Soak overnight in 100 ml brandy: line journals in India publish a mixture of 450g currants established and young poets. Webzines like 175g sultanas The Bangalore Review, The Northeast Review, 175g raisins 50g candied peel Vayavya, Coldnoon and Café Dissensus have Aditi Rao The Muse India-Satish Verma Young 225g flour (2015) balances wide-eyed, unfettered published some very fine poetry in recent Writer A pinch of salt with hard-nosed pragmatism times. Complementing these efforts are poet- dreamscapes ry/spoken-word groups like Bring Back the Po- 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg 1/2 tsp mixed spice ets and Poets’ Collective. A few weeks ago, I 225g brown sugar That ’70s show of ‘Cinderella Syndrome’, most defiattended an informal slam poetry event at Zu evidence 4 eggs has it.

There was an embarrassment of riches in Indi- Tisch, a German-themed bar in New Delhi. Or- nitely 1 tsp treacle Which isn’tbutter to say that at events like these, an poetry as early as 1974, when Adil Jussawal- ganised by The Bombay Review, it featured 225g softened 50g performative chopped almonds trumps the written word. As la released his seminal anthology New Writing both the aforementioned groups, along with the Zest of 1 put lemon and 1me orange in India. Not only did that volume include An- The Sunflower Collective, a new webzine. Delhi- Angiras it: “For any spoken-word perglophones of the calibre of Dilip Chitre, Ar- based poet and activist Aditi Angiras, founder formance must be about first and then 1 Pre-soak ingredients thepoetry night before.

Put vind Krishna Mehrotra and Lawrence of Bring Back the Poets, was judging the event performance. see so performances fruits in a bowlI and mixmany with brandy, cover in withcity cloth, and to soak.

Bantleman, it also gave us the best of Indian and she had some strong words for those the and onleave YouTube and feel that some2 Pre-heat oven to 140°C. poetry in translation: Amrita Pritam (Punja- quick to stereotype poets. how it’s becoming more about the ‘how’ than 3 Sift the flour, salt and into a largemore bi), Arun Kolatkar (Marathi), Gieve Patel (Guja“Most people think that poets smoke ciga- the ‘what’.

We need to gospices back to reading bowl writing then addmore; the sugar, eggs, treacle and rati) and several other stalwarts. rettes, drink a lot of whiskey, and get laid a lot and otherwise we’ll go down butter and beat with an electric hand-whisk Keki Daruwalla, one of India’s finest living (hopefully). And that politicians the same lane as popular trash until everything is smooth and fluffy. poets, was first published in 1970. He has been are hard men. They think that I still believe can 4 Fold in the music. fruit mixture, choppedthat nutsweand published in every decade since, his most re- poetry is separate from politics. grated zests. do more than follow the US slam cent book being Fire Altar (2013, HarperCollins But I want to say to them: poetry We need to go culture, imagine20-cm and create 5 Transfer intoand a greased, back to mixture round cake tin.

Drop it.” the blanched almonds in India). His memories of the 1970s are less than is politics.” beyond reading more and circles over the surface. rosy: “Publishing poetry in the ’60s and ’70s True to Angiras’s words, the writing more; verse 6 Finally take Everybody’s a double square ofnow butter paper was so negligible that it is hard to describe. very first poem of that evening otherwise we’ll with agosmall hole in the centre and place this Nissim Ezekiel published Gieve Patel in 1966. turned out to be a fiery, passionCollectives like Bring Back the Podown the same lane on the rim of the pan.

Star of the show It’smy considered luck to eat mince tarts eachcalled of the 12 days of Christmas Nissim didn’t like verse ingood 1964 (and rightets on arethethe sort shelf of egalitarian ate on slam ‘Cinderella Syn- shutterstock as popular7trash Bake the cake lowest of the ly so) but in 1966, when I went to Bombay from drome’, written and performed in India — hours that until itpoetry feels springy in the musicoven for fourboost Joshimath, he was ready to publish me and by Shibani Das. The poem crititrapped far tooSometimes long in an itelitist centre when lightly touched. can longer. Let— the cakedespercool that cinnamon-scented spendt’shis owndangerous, money doing so. Wisely I de- cised image-exercise needs classic pop-cultural gentopped, English mince tarts are filled with take 30-45 minutes 30 minutes. of year.

When snow beckons ferredtime till 1970, when P Lalfake asked me for three der Moreover, they act as muchtropes, especially ones chopped fruit, dried fruit and nuts that have in the tin for ately. ‘feed’safe it by making smallyoung from windows and cousins-frompoems for shop his anthology offered me a feeding needed spaces where a young woman the idea been soaked in dark sugar, brandy and rum. 8 When it’s cold, holes with a cocktail stick and spooning a Under that their book.Connecticut I jumped at make the offer andbrief wroteappearthe in perfect thethe raison (Greatfinding favourites Tudor man times,isbut tarts poets can test the waters and benefitinfrom couple of tablespoons of brandy, then wrap it ance. When weighing scales and skinny jeans d'être critique.

Angiras said: “We’re not of herVIII existence. this that Henry gobbledI enjoyed betweenwatching disposing of constructive in butter paper and foil and store in an are harbingers of bad news. closedtin. group like most poetry clubs in India, performance because the poet demonstrated wives were mixed with minced meat or beef aairtight Feed at odd intervals.

Clearly, this nippy, festive season is unkind afat. keen understanding the are spoken word for- but a fluid collective of artists and activists Incidentally, minceoftarts Santa’s favouto those who count their calories. Some go mat’s rhythms.

Not every poetgood is an luck automatic rite food.

And it’s considered to eat across the globe. Spoken-word poets from weak at the knees when they spot the orange candidate Warriors Malaysia and from a slam/spoken word appearone on eachfor of the 12 days of Christmas, begin- Word Then the firstNepal, day offrom Christmas arrives, and moons outside mithai shops — thalis of gajar ance: havemy performed with us. We hostwe as many the energy, vigour flair as- USA ning with Christmas Dayand andtheatrical ending on Januso does iced cake.

After which need halwa, glistening with desi ghee and khoya. sociated twogoodies to three events most months, slam like HM as ary 5. Sowith you international still have time to stars amass some some for New Years.

Then including the panic Others can’t ignore the frothy charms of hot Naqvi Queerious duringI or Kip Fulbeck can’t really be taught. the good luck.) setsExtremely in. During the first Poetry week event of January, chocolate. And then some — like me — aban- You (November).” either have it ortarts you don’t, and Das, onwith the Pride Anyway, mince are wonderful snatchmonth two stollens because the salesman says don commonsense when they catch that sug- fresh cream. So I nip across to that this may be the last batch of ary, spicy whiff announcing the presence of Modern Dairy. Then the tarts the year. Then I buy a plum pudChristmas goodies. vanish but there’s cream in my ding for good measure. Then my This terrible test of resolve begins in the pitcher. So I head back to the husband arrives home with a middle of December when bakeries scrawl bakery for a few more tarts. Orders were accepted plum cake because the pile on their Christmas wares on little blackboards: Waste not, want not, and all that. between September 1 the counter has dwindled and 15 — and, no Plum cake studded with almonds, stollen Once I’ve transacted my tartfrighteningly. matter how much I stuffed with marzipan, star-topped mince related business, my eyes rove.

Sometime in the middle of Japlotted and jotted, I tarts, yule logs, gingerbread men and jujubes. And I realise that we still haven’t nuary I pop in for burger buns, always missed that The annual saga usually begins like this: I’ve eaten Christmas cake this seaand the salesman solemnly magic window dropped into my friendly neighbourhood son. The plum cake I like best is points to the four boxes on the bakery for a virtuous loaf of multi-grain the one with the snowy sugar counter and announces, “Our bread, when I sniff that nutmeggy, boozy aro- and marzipan icing. But that’s last batch of the year.” ma. The counter is piled with round, red boxes available only on order. So I orI ho. I hum. And then I sucfull of Christmas cakes and rectangular boxes der. And then buy one of the bald ones anyway. cumb. Then two days later the bakery calls. of stollen. “The first stollen of the season,” my As I head home I acknowledge that some- “We had a special order for stollens so baked a greedy inner voice wheedles. “And how about times, the good old days are a myth. When I few extra,” they say in buttery tones. “We a few mince tarts…?” was younger, I depended entirely on Aunty thought you might…”

And I march home with a bulging bag that D’Souza’s generosity for my plum cake fix. Of Well, what would you do? owes just half a bulge to multi-grain bread. course, there were Cake Ladies who made By the end of January it’s clear that skinny And receive a rousing reception from my Christmas cakes on order. But traditionally, jeans are just not for me. three daughters. the preparations begin in September. So orStollen is a spicy bread — very popular in ders were accepted between September 1 and shabnam minwalla is a journalist and the author of Germany — that’s rich with dried fruits, nuts, 15 — and, no matter how much I plotted and The Strange Haunting of Model High School and The Supergirldebut in 2015 Katyal Aftermissed years ofthat online presence, his poetry hadShy a publishing powdered sugar and marzipan. While the star- Akhil jotted, I always magic window.

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Keki Daruwalla One of India’s finest living poets, he was first published in 1970 and has emerged with new works every decade since gp sampath kumar

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EXCERPT

Food, glorious food In this excerpt from Chillies and Porridge, a new collection of essays, we first enter the kitchens of a village in Arunachal Pradesh, and then join an Indian craving the heat of chillies in sub-zero temperatures

Road to perdition Delhi’s car-owners seem determined to keep the city an urban hellhole by global standards shiv kumar pushpakar

AGENDA

Collective action What opponents of Delhi’s odd-even policy can learn from a scene in The Beautiful Mind

sambuddha mitra mustafi

Chillies and Porridge: Writing Food Edited by Mita Kapur HarperCollins Non-fiction ₹499

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or roughly 200 million Indians, or the top 15 per cent of the population, the post-liberalisation period has been a journey from decades of scarcity to an abrupt abundance. Like hungry, caged animals set free by the new economy, we have devoured everything in sight for the Cook It Slowly last quarter century. Now we have overeaten.

By Mamang Dai Having turned our cities into Now we are sick.

‘All day we are doing nothing, we feel hungas chambers, we don’t give a but damn. gry,’ my mother, laughing.

Assays Mihir Sharma recently put it in a Business Yes, I hanker grilled cheese and Standard op-ed,for “Only theoctopus, Indian elite would olives, but I also remember the serene faces of rather not breathe than be ordinary.” a group of womenresponse sitting around a fire where The lukewarm (or ridicule) to the a pot is on rationing the boil. Their conversation road-space plan in Delhi showsgoes up something like this: the car-owning Indian elite for what we are: a ‘Don’t let it defeatist boil too fast.’ self-involved, set, who don’t want to ‘Hai,up take lidmess. off.’ Just like we throw our clean ourthe own ‘Hai, the evaporate.’ garbage ontaste thewill streets to keep our homes ‘Cook it slowly.’ sparkling.

‘This bestimmense time, when the in redour antsown are And is wethe have faith seen on the Aleaves.’ mendacity. corrupt, inefficient police force ‘Hai, it is a sign.’ the odd-even enforcement will be monitoring antswith are clever in ‘The the city India’s...’worst traffic offenders.

It iscan a quiet, languid conversation in a vilHow this idea even succeed? lage house on art ofto cooking the with popular “I request allthe citizens start 2016 the Clerodendrum ColebrookiaOn-giin or lie truth andleaf, not to about being sick,” is what It is of a tall, vigorously growing num.chief the Delhi Police had to say perennial on impleshrub of broad, dark green leaves with a hint menting the odd-even scheme, which the of bitterness. children we usedtry to to hate this city’s drivers As will undoubtedly cheat, stuff like but they ate them wereBStold it just cheatbecause at red we lights.

Bassi would make grow tall,speaking especiallytoifhis weset held sounds moreus like a jailor of up the greens, stem and all, tilted our prisoners, though politely.

Theand belief in each heads back to eat them. food scientists other’s crookedness is soNow strong, that he can havethat analysed Clerodendrum say withoutthat offending anyone. contains medicinal properties for the diaDelhi’s VIPs, the icons andtreatment celebritiesofwho betes, rheumatism and go to are supposed to lead thehypertension. way throughIexamthe market and buy of the leaf.Every They ple, have already gotbundles their exemptions. grow in the garden and I look out for the lobby from doctorstoo, to journalists to lawyers red ants appear. too, driven by their own will seekto exemptions khautek, tongtep, khau-laam and What sense of is importance, in India’s most self-im-

Rice to the occasion

Children walkahead through portant city. Politicians will squabble in TV stu- cut corners, jump lights and sneak of paddy fields dios, like the city’s drivers do on the streets, the next guy, most of themterraced cause more chaos near the Assamcreating enough chaos and pollution to keep and delay their own ride, apart from others’.

Arunachal border India’s capital a consistent urban hellhole by What each driver thinks isrituarajsmart konwar decision global standards. driven by self-interest, harms them individuFrom Paris to Beijing and Sao Paolo, large ci- ally, and all drivers collectively. While with coldungpoo? casions.action, Rice cakes using red, ties around the world have shown that, if lective by following laneshort-grained driving, they In case implemented you are wondering, these are all sticky rice wrapped in leaf are an essential properly and supported by rice the would all reach their destination quicker and preparations — steamed, in aleaf, item little at weddings.

Rice is also the chief ingrepublic, road-space rationingwrapped does have big with swearing. powdered, mixed with sesame seeds and flat- dient the local beerfrom that,the according to popimpact in reducing emissions and cleaning In afor famous scene 2001 movie A tened cakes.

They then into Beautiful ular folklore, men equal to theinto godsa up the into air. Apart from theare data, justrolled the beforeMind,makes a group of women walk balls pictures or cooked in bamboo restores health and after of Beijing (whose emission lev- bar, led by a and striking blonde, who is laughter the only tubes.

Rice is to the most show widely inall this world. els are closest Delhi’s) a dramatic im- one fancied by the men in the bar. At one taKhau-laam bamboo rice is a consumed staple grainthat in Arunaprovement.

Assuming most ble, a group oformen, all graduate clean, convenient way of packagchal Pradesh.

In fact, is the beof Delhi’s car-owners canitsee students of economics, start baning cooked carlieved to (if be not of divine origin.

One pictures read the data), it tering over rice whothat willcan getbelucky The rice-filled ried easily when out on a journey. story goes that rice is a gifttofrom makes their opposition the Delhi’s with the blonde. bamboo tubes are VIPs, the icons The are simply rice the gods that camemore to a venal. race of odd-even rule even “Iningredients competition, individual cooked over an open and celebrities who and water.

I am using the word skyBut dwellers in the of fish why does the land new Indian ambition serves the common fire, and a good deal are supposed to lead ‘khau-laam’ thequoting KhamptiAdam peoand stars.

It happened during a of way attention is elite behave like this, irrationalgood,” says of one, the through required to ensure ple where the variety of bamboo great hunt when the our faithful ly, ultimately harming own Smith, the father of modern capexample, have that the rice is used is “Every knownman locally ‘khaudog of areducing legendaryour hunter lost health, lifespan italism. for as himself,” already got their thoroughly cooked lam-ba’.

It is a soft bamboo with a his our waychildren’s? and strayed into the and It’s partly besays another. exemptions thin thatNobel coats lauthe kingdom of the Great Earth cause we have taken the wrong Butmembrane the eventual rice as it Nash, cooks,played allowing the Mother, from the Goddess of Grain. lessons the ‘capitalism’ of reate John

by Ruscooked rice tolooks be removed in one Thelast dogquarter told her how We he have was the century. sell Crowe, beyond the cylindrical piece.Smith The rice is left lost. The goddess heard him out imbibed the most simplistic obvious.

“Adam needs reto soak he overnight filledoninto bamboo and then sent him on his of way with acapifew vision,” (and wrong) interpretation modern exclaims.and He goes to posit that tubes, leaving enough space for expansion.

A grains ofthat rice,the which faithful carried talism: best the results for dog society are the best result for the male group can actually little water isthrough poured ainsort andofthe bambooacis back to his master the crease his man ear. Toachieved only whenineach womanofand is be achieved collective sealedbywith a leaf ofignoring arrowroot. rice-filled day, rice is cultivated statepure and tion: competing with throughout the other thefor all of them theThe blonde (and bamboo tubes are other’s cookedway), over while an open fire, many varieties are grown — they can be classi- not self-interest. getting in each getting and a with goodher dealmore of attention is required fied into two broad categories: that ofIndia’s, high- lucky Evolved capitalist societies, unlike achievable friends. to enthe rice thoroughly cooked landsmart or mountain rice, which is grown in the sure are enough to understand the benefits Forthat a better life, is India’s neo-elite has toand igjhumaction: fields of shifting cultivation, not burnt.

Bamboo rice self-interest) can be eaten by cyclical of collective that best results for theand in- nore the blonde (pure in simply favour the lowland wet rice A hardy pulling the soft bamboo, by slicing the dividual andorsociety cancultivation. be achieved if we of moreback sustainable collectiveoraction.

Living species of mountain locally as ‘Mi- in bamboo into pieces. is unparalelled cooperate with each rice, otherknown for collective benegas chambers is Its notflavour a rational economic pun’, believed to be the original seed that choice. and can be savoured best while sitting in the fit, notisjust compete. was brought back the example granary of Delhi’s drivers arefrom a prime of the shade by a river with the breeze on your face. mitra is the founder Earth Mother.

Then nothing elsemustafi is required exceptofkhaupitfalls of unadulterated self-interest overrid- sambuddha Political Indian t@some_buddha and maybe a little salt. laam are required on many ocingRice anypreparations collective action.

In their eagerness to The

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Kung fu and karma cycle Buddhist nuns with flying kicks are pedalling 2,000 km across India with a clear message

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re they on the trail of the Buddhist monks Fa-Hien and Hiuen Tsang?

On the outskirts of Kannauj, the once imperial city where the scholarly travellers halted and hobnobbed with Chandragupta II and Emperor Harsha, the locals gawk at the sight of 250 Buddhist nuns pedalling past in dashing red-and-black cycling gear. Not just any nuns, they’re the famous ‘kung fu nuns’ of the Drukpa (Dragon) lineage, well versed in martial arts. They are on an epic cyclethon across north India to spread the dual message of environment consciousness and women’s empowerment on behalf of the Live to Love Foundation, the international non-profit founded by the head of their order, Gyalwang Drukpa.

“The idea is to show by example that if 250 Chilli High women can cycle thousands of kilometres, all By Sharma theBulbul way from Kathmandu, through tough terIt was athen gloomy, wetliving morning incities 1965 when my rains, people in the here can mother landed inand England. was nervously walk a bit more cycle She a bit more,” says clutching in her handsecond a red velvet bag. It conGyalwa Dokhampa, in command in tained herwho precious goldalongside jewellery,the her tulsi the order, is cycling nuns. beads, six red Lhamo, chillies.aNow, almost nun, fifty Jigmeand Konchok 22-year-old years I am“We doing the same thing. In chips later, in saying, also hold meetings in my villuggage there five packets of dried lage schools andare towns, telling people howred to chillies along with Their home-made ‘chatcertainly masala’ reduce pollution.” expedition and ‘panch phoren’.

Sniffer dogsthey eye me suspicould not get timelier.

When arrive in ciously the airport thenwill go away since Delhi onatJanuary 9, thebut Capital be bang in they are notofsure what experiment this heady, to nose-tickthe middle a radical reduce ling aroma means. the number of vehicles on its roads through have changed from anThings odd-even number-plate policy.the days my In Delhi, the nuns will also ring in the Ladakhi year and sound the bugle for the Naropa Festival — known as the Kumbh of the Himalayas as it is observed once every 12 years — to be held in July 2016 in Ladakh.

They will then cycle onwards to Lumbini, in Nepal, before dispersing to their respective convents in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Darjeeling and Kathmandu. What binds this motley crew of nuns, some of whom speak Hindi and others Ladakhi, is the Tibetan language, which all of them have learnt in order to read

Red carpet: A woman grades chillies under the blazing sun, near Penuganchiprolu in Krishna district, Andhra PradeshTHE

HINDU

mother travelled. Now you can buy red chillies the single green chilli sitting on top of the dein London quite easily, but they do not contain licious cabbage like a tiny emerald glittering the same fire flavour asasour home-grown ones. a crown.

My 250 fellow students I was Breathing Famous the ‘kung fu nuns’ of the Drukpaon (Dragon) lineage, of them are onthought a cyclethon vijay kutty across ruby north red Indiawith to raise awareness on environment women’sI empowerment Deep a hint of orange runningprotection cryingand because loved the Soviet cabbage so along the sides, our chillies are pungent and much and would generously heap more on can set your tongue on fire with the first bite. my Buddhist scriptures. plate.

Then, day,to I told the truth. from China.

“Weone point the them Indian flags on They willend bring tearsyatra, of joywhich to your eyesinand By the of their began Ne- our ‘Chillies … you want chillies?’ my cycles and say we are very muchasked from this clear yourwould head.have traversed over 2,200 km, roommate, pal, they a lovely girl from Georcountry,” says Jigmedark-eyed Migyun Palmo.

At other Like most Indians, addicted to chillies gia. taking in the sightsI am — especially Buddhist ‘I will some.

My grandmother places, theyget justyou ask the villagers if they have collective farm). and do without them.

At home there is grows spotscannot — at places like Gaya, Varanasi, Allahabad them the Kalkhos watched theinmovie 3 Idiots(aand explain that notfrom allowed to, butorder she grows them all no since green tochillies come free She andproblem Kanpur. No strangers long expeditions, theyisare the same that runs Ransame.’ along with a bunch of fresh coriander when the most of them have been on long padayatras cho’s school in the movie. The solar energyIt took Elena quite aSchool while is tototally get through to one buys the market, but powered across the vegetables Himalayas. from Cycling trips, however, Druk White environgrandmother since there was no phone in when I have torecent travelactivity abroad,for the scene gets her are a relatively them. ment-friendly.

Actor Aamir Khan, who played village theapostal erratic. dismal.

I can last about three days without her Arriving in Kannauj at sunset, the colourful Rancho, is and today patronservices of the were Live to Love one day, as justare when I had given upSusan all hope, tasting a green but afterDrukpa that I am like a But contingent led chilli

by Gyalwang decides foundation Hollywood stars Sasmall parcel arrived.Yeoh.

The hostel warden, a gidemented person searching for anything to pitch camp for the night under a large that pee- arandon and Michelle a woman with a black moustache anda will giveadjacent me a chilli At first I thought pul tree tohigh. a potato field, as therethis is a antA of few years ago, the foundation earned eyes, calledfor Elena to her99,103 office.trees She in took was a family to our clan, mean handy water trait pumpconfined nearby. only Within minutes, Guinness record planting 53 support. but I found there are hundreds me along for moral withgradually the discipline ofthat an army, minutes flat in Ladakh.

‘What is in this packet?’ growled our warof fellow Indians who suffer from withdrawal everything is unloaded from Started in 1161, the Drukpa orElenaisand then turned to smile symptoms whenvans, they are in aare place where red den staring atder the jeeps and tents involved in running looking like the or greenand chillies are nowhere pitched gas burners lit. Tea to be found. at me ferociously, schools, clinics andfamous so on, wolf like Wethe wanted to in grandmother’s instrucOver the years I have made friends with gets brewed. any clothes. spiritualThey sect.had Where it introduce gender tions from high above be polite to foreign unlikeliest of people, the only The Kannauj of today is athing connectbroke thetomould, however, and equality in our order students. ing us beingdusty our UP relentless nondescript town, drew world attention was ‘Chillies,itsComrade Pesearch chilli fix.as‘Have you thoughfor it isa famous the perthrough kung fu Galina nuns. “We trovna,’ got left?’ of a bank fumeany capital India.manager Potato wantedsaid to Elena. introduce gender ‘Chilliesin…our from where?

You hisses to my ears.

I ignore farmer inIndrajeet Singh, on equality order, so threw ‘Have you got any know food from outside is forhim.

‘Only halfthe butgroup I can share whose fields has it pitched camp, open our doors to women in 1992,” says Dokleft?’ a bank manager bidden?’ three replies a professor gapes ways,’ at them and then furiously dials a few hampa.

21 nuns in 1992, today there are hisses in to my ears.From I ‘They my grandmothwho is more generous than me,the goings-on. friends to come over and watch well over 500. It wasare thefrom Gyalwang’s idea to ignore him Kalkhos.

I want to show my er’s fu, furtively into his Not only digging do the monks in briefmaroon garbs and teach them kung both for self-preservation friend from India that we fu can case. nuns with shaved heads and jaunty steps at- and to instil confidence and focus.

“Kung is grow anything we want,’ said Myattention, adventures with tract but theythe arechilli also accompanied close to meditation,” says Dokhampa.

Elena, on her feet. agbegan when I wasmenagerie. a student Out in springs the by an interesting It’s an ascetic life,thinking but the nuns — whose a brief as the unMoscow period.

Holiness’sduring little the dog bleak Ting. Soviet Two nuns canThe be es There rangewas from 12 to pause 50 — are far warden from being the parcel, torejokes, the brown paper only vegetable you of saw there was the symbol wrapped seen feeding a pair fluffy yellow chicks. grave women.

They crack horse around hereach huge fingers and then bit the string of “Whenever working-class the humble we pride see an—animal being cabbage. tortured with and rib other. her bare teeth.

There everything on the white Huge football-sized cabbages, or in trouble we take it alongpale withand us,”transsays offBywith 8 the following morning, at table lay tenloaded chilliesback, — four red and six lucent as jade, Lhamo. were served to us everydaytrip for plastic Jigme Yudron “During a walking the camp is neatly and the nuns They had travelled allhit the way from Gelunch andLadakh, dinner, aeither boiled, larda green. through horse, four baked goats in and are on their cycles, ready to the road again. by train, then by van ourus) hostel — or burnt The burntshe dish was the sheep hadcrisp. tagged along,” says with anbest im- orgia The potato farmer offers themto(and a sack one extreme cornerin ofIndia, the mighty Soviet since we could taste the cabbage at allNain from pish grin.

A dognot that followed them from of potatoes.

“Everywhere the villagers to another,—yet they looked fresh as the cinders, especially if you added lots of was salt Union landa, all the way back to Kathmandu, are so hospitable if we were to doas this in the chillies. warden shrugged and pepper. bit but of tomato ketchup would newly named, whatAelse, Nalanda!

US, we picked would be shooedThe away for trespassing, and letvegetables us go. We too,” ran togrins our have were the10days whenEach the her Thehelped, nuns but are those divided into teams. hereshoulders we are gifted and I sat down at my desk, took out a Russians hated all things American and ketch- room group sticks together, cooking and cycling.

Dokhampa. of depart, salted biscuits andaround ate one upHave was apeople bad word you could be fined for packet beenand receptive to their messagAs they Singh looks hiswhole field, as my friend Elena watched me, uttering it. showing them by example,” says green es? “We are blinks chilli and says there’s no sign that the monks a proud mother duck watching As I ate this burntwe offering whichwe thenot fertile Dokhampa.

“When set up camp, on- smiling and nunslike were here. Not like the mundan cereduckling nibble a strand of the weed. land Russia hadclean produced, I would ly do of notMother litter, but we also up other peo- her mony held a few days back on same spot, remember myand grandmother’s finely shredded ple’s rubbish leave the place better than after which paper plates had littered his field. green cabbage dishWangchuk served with hot poories. chillies and porridge: writing food was before,” says Jigme Lhamo. in November 2015 chitra narayanan Tears wouldplaces, roll down myask cheeks recalled At most people themasifI they are published

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Come back, birdie Death of the floating world THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Winters in Delhi still witness huge arrivals of winged migrants. But perhaps not for much The transformation of Japan during 1868-1912, and manicured continentalparks drift and empty lakes longer if all they get from us are poisonous swamps,

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efore the year 1868 — as the first railand of these about 170 are NRIs. In 2014, some ways chugged across the Indian sub70 migratory species were recorded from the continent, and photography began Sultanpur National Park in Haryana, which is to challenge painters in Europe — Jajust 1.42 sq km in extent. The park has been pan had remained closed to the outside world through its ups and downs, but one thing for almost three centuries. So profound was seems to be clear: give birds the hospitality its intellectual isolation that the Japanese who they deserve and they will turn up unfailingly. left their soil and returned were executed to The even smaller wetland Basai, just outside prevent ideas coming from outside; and the Gurgaon on the road to Sultanpur, is yet an‘construction of ocean-going ships was other example of how a small area — if suitabanned until 1853’. ble and left in peace — can attract masses of It is somewhat of a miracle then, that this birds. Beyond Sultanpur lies the Bhindawas feudal backwater with medieval technology sanctuary, another quiet haven, even if was able to produce Nobel-quality physics plagued by water hyacinth. within 30-40 years of its opening up as a result The Yamuna was, and still is a big draw for of the Meiji Restoration. The key role in Japan’s migratory waterfowl and waders in Delhi and scientific upliftment was played by one of the the Okhla bird sanctuary on the banks of the leading scientists of his age — Lord Kelvin (also river was declared ostensibly keeping this in known as William Thomson) who, on the Emmind. The capricious water levels at the barperor’s request, sent a small fleet of his young rage however, have made it an unreliable desstudents to head entire colleges in Japan. tination. It must be confusing for the birds Seasonal high Thewere Yamuna continues to attract visitors like tufted pochards images ranjit lal These students known as oyatoi gaikokutoo, and it was reported that their numbers jin (‘honourable foreign employees’). In a here were down last year. If there’s a good strange turn of events, Japan’s unique relaamount of water, you may see skeins of ducks hensea you think ofearthquakes the journey and Brahmaputra, followed leading lines such — shoveller, gadwall, pintail, common teal, tionship with the and with mightinfluence have on been began to exert itsthey own reverse the as river courses, mountain ranges, and the ruddy shelduck, and pochard (of various modthrough in order to get here, coast, and spread themselves comfortably all els), basking in the buttery winter sunshine, march of European science. you think that we realJohn Perry, one of might the oyatoi engineers and over the country. They touch as well as flocks of geese — both ly ought to have laid the red Japan carpetaout for down on familiar rivers, lakes, an assistant of Kelvin, found fertile bar-headed and greylag — lurkthem. Instead, we offer them poisonous, ground to study earthquakes, among stinkother tanks, ponds, gardens, fields, ing among the reeds or bobbing ing waterbodies, pollutedPerry parksand andhis woodthings.

For this purpose, col- meadows, parks and woodlands blithely in open water. Okhla unBeyond Sultanpur lands — and ‘lakes’ that have all but to dried up. with pinpoint accuracy and precileagues developed a seismograph record fortunately suffers from the malies the Bhindawas And yet the birds coming, every winter, sion timing, year after year. And them, tracing lineskeep of extraordinary waviness jor trauma of being sanctuary, another fewer in numberLittle (anddid species), perhaps, and fluctuation.

Perry know thatthan this Delhi, thanks to the Yamuna, lies cheek-by-jowl with malevolently quiet haven, even if in the previous year, but what can you pit expect? geological investigation would soon him on one of their major flyways into thrumming power lines, frenetic plagued by water Actually, first migrants begin flying as the subcontinent. Some touch against his the own mentor — the great Lordin Kelreal estate development (nudghyacinth earlywho as July now (mid-winter) vin, wasand in August.

Europe By busy estimating the down on waterbodies, woods, ing ever closer), and of course, of course, age of Earth.great skeins of waterfowl, ducks gardens, parks and fields in and traffic and bridge building, and long-legged physicist, storks anditcranes, salt- around the Capital for a bit of rest Asgeese, a mathematical has been which spell a dire prognosis for The old order changeth A Tsukioka Yoshitoshi creation — ‘Moon Above The Sea at and-pepper waders, keen-eyed and, and recreation before noted that Kelvin’s most favouredraptors instrument Daimatsu Bay’ (1886)heading from ‘One Hundred Aspects Of The Moon’its future. last the buttheory not least, the gutsy tiny-tots would south; others stay on for the entire season. was of Fourier analysis.

And indeed, Do not disturb have flown maybe overdown vast tracts Of the around 1,300 species of birds found Fourier’s theory was8,000 a waykm, to break comof land through the river valleys ofthe theshockIndus in India, nearly 300 are said to be migratory, It really is astonishing how ‘tolerant’ birds are, plex periodic phenomena (such as wave of an earthquake) into simple idea that the core of Earth was solid, as Kelvin large distances over billions of years would components. A good example is the breaking had assumed. He proposed that the interior of have been accepted much earlier. of sunlight into its constituent colours Earth was fluid, upon which floated the outThe fact that Perry was in Japan, surrounded through a prism, or the notes that make up a side shell of a solid crust, just as icebergs float by its art and culture, teaching physics to sakemusical chord. on water. The diffusion of heat through such a drenched samurais, may indeed have played a Fourier’s transform was such a universal fluid sphere would push back the planet’s age role in shaping his theory. This changing Japrism whose brute analysis could be applied to a few billion years, contradicting Kelvin. pan, the hedonistic world of the Edo era with to a vast number of natural phenomena — the Perry wrote to his offended its tradition of woodblock prints cycle of appearing and disappearing sun- teacher, “the real basis of your called the ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the spots, the tides in a bay, or signals in a tele- calculation is your assumption floating world’), was confronted graph wire (a lot of Kelvin’s wealth came from that the solid earth cannot alter

by Western technology after MeiLittle did Perry know that). Although, when Fourier invented his its shape... even in 1000 million ji reforms. Perhaps its greatest that this geological method, the purpose was to study the diffu- years, under the action of forces artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was investigation would sion of heat over time in a solid body,. Taking constantly tending to alter its slowly being driven mad with soon pit him against Fourier’s cue, Kelvin tried to calculate the age shape, and yet we see the gradu- his own mentor — the the decline of Japanese culture, a of the planet by reverse-engineering the cur- al closing up of passages in a fact he made very explicit in the great Lord Kelvin rent temperature using Fourier’s mathemat- mine, and we know that wrinviolence of his images. For him it ics of diffusion. He literally asked, “How long kling and faults and other was the sinking moment of a has this solid sphere been cooling to be at the changes of shape are always gofloating world, a cosmic tug-ofcurrent temperature?” coming to an estimate ing on in the earth under the acwar that shows clearly in his of 24-400 million years for a solid globe. It is tion of long-continued forces. I know that ‘death poem’. worth mentioning how important this was to solid rock is not like cobbler’s wax, but ‘...holding back the night people like Darwin, because if evolution was 1000,000,000 years is a long time, and the with its increasing brilliance true, the age of the planet would be a central forces are great.” the summer moon…’ piece of evidence.

Had Perry’s theory of a fluid core been taken Having studied earthquakes in Japan for a seriously, some scholars now believe, the fact rohit gupta explores the history of science as Compaswallah t@fadesingh Small time, wonders In 2014, 70 migratory species were that recorded from Sultanpur National Parkhave in Haryana; (inset) the black redstart loves to visit parks and gardens long Perry hadsome trouble accepting the continents of the Earth ‘drifted’

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#Dogpants Viral trend divides internet

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t’s a ‘viral question’ that the pooches are probably not excited or even bothered about. How would a dog wear pants? Maxim US deputy editor Jared Keller posted a picture, asking readers if dogs would wear pants on two or all four of their legs. Shared by users, the debate ignited the internet, users posted with the hashtag ‘#dogpants’, and eventually most agreed that a smart dog would wear pants only on the hind legs.

Blue-collar beggars One-fifth of beggars are 12th pass

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degree doesn’t guarantee a salary. Census data for 2011, released only last week, proves this. It shows that at least 75,000 beggars in India — which is about one-fifth of the tribe — have passed Std XII boards. Nearly 3,000 in this group are graduates or postgraduates or have a professional diploma. This data is in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom that links begging to lack of educational opportunities. It shows that other factors, including the difficulty of rehabilitating beggars, are more powerful than previously thought.

Fort at one time used to host houseful crowds of pintail, shoveller and teal on its ponds and waterbodies, but in recent years just a handful turn up rather dispiritedly: it’s said the water has gone bad. Another good area being developed as a sanctuary is the Surajpur wetland near Dadri, though here alas, development plans include the introduction of something called ‘forest sport’.

Call time

Water birds apart, there are others that make these momentous journeys too: On lawns and in gardens and parks, wagtails strut like prosperous landlords, and in woodland areas, the lesser whitethroat keeps up its disapproving ‘tch-tch’ call. Other little ones include warblers (usually dun brown or grey and difficult to tell apart unless you’ve dedicated your life to them) and chiffchaffs and flycatchers. Not all birds fly down immense distances from climes abroad: the pugnacious little greyheaded canary flycatcher, which you might have met in Himalayan hill-stations in sumsking Twitter followers for targets to bomb is probably thethe best use of the and internet. mer, flies downnot from mountains, likes Two would-be suicide bombers in the UK quiet learntwoodland this the hard way, after being convicted areas usually near water.

The in a plot to bomb London on the 10th anniversary ofredstart, the 7/7 attacks.

An undercover black in formal sooty black,investigagrey and tor read tweets from accused Mohammed Rehman for advice: “Westfield Shopping russet, asking is a quiet NRI visitor to gardens and Center or London Underground, any advice will be—appreciated greatly.”

When the police parks though I have been seeing fewer and raided his home, they found 10 kg of urea nitrate along with bomb-making fewer of them every passing year.instructions.

Rehman is now cooling his heels in a British prison, hopefully with no access to Twitter.

A large number of raptors — eagles, hawks, falcons and harriers et al, follow the flocks of waterfowl, quickly dispensing with the weaklings or those tarrying awhile. A sudden commotion on a waterbody — sounding like a giant gargling — usually means that a marsh harrier has swung low and is checking out the dozing ducks, which all suddenly wake up and take off desperately.

Most of the migrants dress in casuals in this season and this sometimes makes identifying them — especially And they all touch down (clockwise from above) Greylag geese, pintails, those salt-and-pepper bar-headed geese and red-crested pochards have often been spotted at waders and some gulls Okhla bird sanctuary, on the banks of the Yamuna and terns — difficult. The reason is simple: the provided they perceive no threat: Years ago, I blackand dudes have no reason to remember watching large flocks of pied avo- brown-headlook flashy now because cets blithely scouring the river, right beneath ed gulls that they’re not courting at this the great clanging iron bridge at Salimgarh, turn up when time and putting on finery even as trains thundered over it, pulling out of called, (‘aao-aaois expensive and risky. But or into Old Delhi Railway Station nearby. But if aao’) scrimmaging just wait till February, and they anyone took a single step beyond their ‘com- noisily as fistfuls of will start changing — some like the namkeen (!) are thrown by fort zone’ they were up and awa0y in a trice. ruff — into outfits befitting ShakespeaIt is stupefying — also a little scary — to see passers-by. In winter, their rean dandies. how birds of so many different species can heads are white and only start turning coffeeThey say global warming is one reason why t’s banks a special giftYamuna that onlyor1,000 Russian are theFebruary. Gulls, the fewer migratory birds are being recorded evbrown or officials black around still be seen along the of the recipients of.glutiWords That Change a avian success sto- ery year. Well, birds migrate because condiworld over, the are World one ofisthe in the river proper chosen as it makes its way 400-page tome with pearls of ries, wisdom from President simply because they have expanded their tions in their homeland become impossible as nously through Delhi, turning your stomach Vladimir Putin andmuck compiled a pro-Kremlin group,everything diet to include nearly in the process. You wonder at the all by winter clamps down: the ground “We their had varying begun to edible notice (which that everything is why they flock to these long-leggedNetwork. waders, with is covered with ice and snow, inPutin says comes to pass to one degree or another,” landfills).

A slightly more edifying beak lengths — which the sandpipers, redshanks, sect and plant life dies out, so author Antonbobbing Volodin said in a statement.

“In this book area for birding alongwethe river, plovers et al, and those happily ducks there is nothing to eat. If the On lawns and in tracedashisthey words andhappily confirmedlies thatnorth idea.” Aofthreat to “rub the Wazirabad bar— would be ingesting rootle northern latitudes really did gardens and parks, out” militants in therage “outand house,” one such at theis Yamuna Biodiversiabout in the sludge andChechen frothy guck.

The sandheat up then maybe insect and wagtails strut like memorable banks and muddy riverbankquote. also Ahem! bob and ty Park. Here, because apparently plant life would hang on, and the prosperous scutter with wagtails, larks and pipits, busily they prefer cleaner water, you may birds might not feel the need to landlords snapping up tiny creepy-crawlies and worms. be fortunate to see that prince of risk these immense journeys.

And it’s wonderful to see how well their cam- ducks — the red-crested pochard — And yet, they also tell us that the ouflage works: when still they vanish! On bobbing happily amongst his harimpetus for migration is given fence-posts or reeds, bluethroats and stone- em of dudettes. not by weather, but the dayWhile Okhla’s star may be falling, it appears length — or photoperiodism. And that rechats keep watch, and amongst the reed are those astonishing tiny-tot warblers, who Najafgarh jheel’s star has started to rise again. mains constant… might have come all the way from Siberia. And The Najafgarh drain, amongst Delhi’s most As for us, in Delhi and other cities that host swallows, swifts and martins, both migratory noxiously notorious, is apparently a relatively migratory visitors from abroad, it really is and resident, skim low over the water or do hi- clean marshy jheel before it has the misfor- quite simple. Drain a swamp, let a lake go jinks in the heavens, their beaks agape, snap- tune of entering Delhi proper. And migratory bone dry (like Badkhal), spray your lawns with birds have known this for years. Usha Ganguli pesticides, convert woodlands into maniping up midges, mosquitoes and flies. mentions this jheel as a wonderful birding ar- cured, pedicured parks, and the birds will take Water babies ea in her classic A Guide to the Birds of the Delhi one look and just fly on.

One of the most popular of visiting migrants Area, published way back in the ’70s.

The National Zoological Park near the Old ranjit lal is an author and environmentalist to the river has to be the huge snowy flocks of

Explosion on Twitter

Aspiring suicide bombers give away plan on their handle

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Talk of the Khan Why Delhi’s upscale market is not amused with Salman

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here can be only one Khan Market. Traders at New Delhi’s posh shopping area won’t have it any other way. Little did Salman Khan, eager to please his overjoyed fans on his 50th birthday on December 27, know how touchy the topic could get. Within minutes of the launch of khanmarketonline.com, the actor’s online shopping website, the traders decided to file a trademark violation case. “Since the name Khan Market has been with us for ages we have a right on it,” Sanjiv Mehra, president of Khan Market Traders Association was reported saying.

From Putin, with…

Presidential quotes to explain the world

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

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t’s 2016, and as good a time as any for a quiz about the year that was.

here,there & elsewhere

Looking back

1

What was started on January 1, 2015, with Sindushree Khullar as CEO, replacing an institution inspired by a body that started in 1921 and finally wrapped up in 1991?

2

Why did Carolina Marin’s defeat to Ratchanok Intanon on March 28, 2015, create front page news in India?

3

Version ‘O’ of the ‘Les Femmes d’Alger’ series set a new record for a painting at a Christie’s auction in May, selling for $179.3 million and comfortably beating the previous record held by Francis Bacon’s ‘Three Studies of Lucien Freud.’

Name the painter.

4

In December, which company became the first private institution to create a space rocket that managed to land its first stage back to the ground at Cape Canaveral? The owner is probably even more famous than the organisation.

5

Which actor, who passed away last year, was so associated with one specific role that his two autobiographies were titled ‘I Am Not ______’ and ‘I Am _____’, both blanks being the name of the same role?

6

In 2015, who announced her retirement immediately after winning her first Grand Slam singles tennis event?

7

Last year, who was the most searched person in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and, strangely, Bolivia?

8 9

Which organisation’s website has the url www.abc.xyz?

In more important news, why did a British Airways flight from London to Dubai in March 2015 return to Heathrow about 40 minutes after take-off? Fittingly, the news was first broadcast on Twitter by a certain Abhishek Sachdev?

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Force field “T

he first day of the New Year!” exclaims Bins, leaping out of bed and slamming on the overhead light.

“Come on — we must make resolutions!” But the sun’s not risen and neither have I. “You go ahead,” I mumble, with the pillow over my face to defend myself against wakefulness.

“I’m still watching the end-credits of last year’s dreams.”

“Pooh! You don’t scare me!” says Bins, snatching the pillow away. “My first resolution is to force you to wake up early EVERY DAY.” I snatch the pillow back, snarling, “—in which case, MY first resolution is to resist everything you do to so-called IMPROVE me!” Needless to say, however, I am now awake. And grumpy.

It’s barely six o’clock. Outside, the sky has not yet shaken off its nightclothes.

My warm toes shrink from the cold interior of my slippers.

“Second resolution: to force you to make tea every morning with a smile!” says Bins, grinning like The Joker.

Nothing thrills him more than to torture me when I am not yet fully armed with consciousness. “But I DO make tea every morning...” I protest.

Strictly speaking, this is not true. Bins makes himself the first couple of glasses and then, when I wake up, I make some more. We’re major tea

drinkers, Bins and I. We use one of those infuser-strainers that fit over the tops of mugs (or, as in our case, glasses), into which the tea leaves are placed and boiling water poured through.

“But you don’t smile while you’re doing it,” says Bins. “That flavours the tea with bad temper. Then when we drink the tea, our chakras start spinning counter-clockwise.” I am now in the kitchen, boiling water. “Chakras!”

I snort. “Don’t tell me we’re becoming mystical in our old age?” “Third resolution: to force you to become more mystical in your old age…” says Bins, as he ducks to avoid the

thunderbolt I fling in his direction.

“What’s with all this FORCING!” I exclaim. “Why must all YOUR resolutions involve ME?” “If I tell you, you will not smile,” says Bins. “And since you are making the tea, it could have terrible consequences for the rest of the year.” “Oh go on, tell me anyway,” I say, as I wash out the old tea-leaves from the infuser and throw in a teaspoon of fresh dry ones.

“No, no, no,” says Bins steepling his eyebrows to give himself what he thinks is a pious expression. “The first tea of the New Year is the Tea of Power. If it is good, the whole year will be fragrant and energetic. If it is bad…” and he gives a Gallic shrug “…the year will be full of stinks and weasels.”

So of course, I begin to smile.

“Weasels?!” I say, as the kettle whistles and the water boils. “Why weasels, specifically?” I pour the water through the tea. “Why not?” asks Bins. “Good point,” I say, as the tea-scented steam rises up from our glasses. I add a drop of milk.

Bins raises his glass. “May the Force be with you,” he says, winking. “And with you,” I grin, as we clink glasses. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

cornerstone

In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft completed the first close fly-by of which astronomical body in our solar system?

Answers 1. The NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission — which in turn was based on the Soviet Gosplan 2. Marin’s defeat meant that Saina Nehwal, who had beaten Yui Hashimoto of Japan in another encounter in the Indian Open tournament, became the first ever Indian woman to be ranked No 1 in world badminton 3. Pablo Picasso; this was the final painting of his ‘Women Of Algiers’ series 4. Spacex, a company founded in 2002 by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk 5. Leonard Nimoy, who appeared as Spock the Vulcan in the Star Trek series 6. Italian Flavia Penetta, who beat fellow Italian Roberta Vinci in the finals 7. Katrina Kaif 8. Alphabet, the new parent company of Google, created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page 9. Smelly poo. The stink was so unbearable from one of the toilets that the crew decided to return to Heathrow 10. Pluto; the spaceship was launched in 2006, and crossed Jupiter in 2007

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joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj

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