Blink issue 106 february13 2016

KEEP THE FAITH Debates on individual choices, as well as the sacred and the profane in India continue to interest Diana Eck p3 saturday, february 13, 2016

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Life after love

What happens when dreams go bust, ambition fails, or a companion ceases to be? On the other side of love lies the reality of picking up the pieces and reconstructing lives p6-11

WIFE FOR A DAY A bride’s ecstasy is replaced by a widow’s grief in a day’s time at Koovagam p12

VIEW FINDER The contribution of perspective in moulding art, engineering and architecture p22

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THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Radha and the tricky space-time illusion The history of perspective in art, engineering and architecture

rohit gupta

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his miniature painting (right) from circa 1650, by an unknown artist, shows Lord Krishna’s lover Radha in an elegant pose at night with the stars looking down. From just this single mythological image, one may extrapolate a modest sketch of science in the 17th century.

Since the pigments don’t seem to have faded or changed much in over 360 years, it shows a good knowledge of materials, if not their actual chemistry. The night sky betrays the painter’s ignorance of astronomy; to depict stars as points distributed evenly in the upper sky, instead of irregular clusters and constellations, is wrong. The ornate water vessels are testament to the Mughal mastery of metallurgy, but their proportions against the little crane show that geometric perspective has not yet been discovered in this culture; or perhaps the exotic bird is now extinct like Emperor Jahangir’s dodo.

Although the moon is full, it casts no shadows on the ground — as if the painter is unsure two-year-old Ashabai Doke tuned how theyorty should fall. It may seem that the to wasteis waiting picking for forKrishna a livelihood lonely milkmaid at the when no other choice. Twenupper edge ofshe thehad Earth’s atmosphere, the ty years on, through she is anthe entrepreneur moon visible directly vacuum of who isspace. the strength behindrhombic the Kagad Kanch outer The twisted, frame of Patra Kamgar (KKPKS), a waste Radha’s square Sanghatana seat, however, shows an amapickers’ union in Aurangabad. She manages teur attempt at three-dimensional illusion; an two dry waste collection and has affine transformation in today’sshops, vocabulary. played an of important role in improving The craft mimicking three dimensionsthe of lives ofon47a waste pickers. Doke was invited to space two-dimensional surface was sigshare her more experiences at The United nificantly advanced at this time Nations in faraFramework Convention on Climate way Europe, where Renaissance artists Change such as (UNFCCC) CoP21 in Paris, but couldn’t it Filippo Brunelleschi (AD 1377-1446) hadmake inherdue to visa issues. Excerpts from an geometry. interview. ited and re-invented Greco-Islamic It gave to their architects and mechanical enFrom a waste picker to an entrepreneur, gineers the modern equivalent of software — a share your life’s journey with us. perspective drawing with depth that could be I was born in a small village, Ozar in reproduced and printed.

MoreLahane importantly, it Buldhana district Maharashtra.

I studied up transformed the of way they designed these to standard and was themselves. married at Mechan12 into a buildings andIIImachines farmers’ The region wasmay droughtical and family. architectural drawing have prone, and we migrated where served a similar purposetoinAurangabad the Renaissance, I initially worked as construction labour.

Latas computer simulations of complex physical er, I was such left with no option but to go systems, as aircraft or galaxies, dopicking for the waste. Inscientist.

2010, my scrap dealer sold his shop, modern and the new ownerentered started popular cutting weight sayThese methods entertaining the was wet.

When confrontedstagehim, ment aswaste well, in the hands of Iinnovative he retortedsuch thatas I had no option but Inspired to sell to designers Nicola Sabbatini. him.

I took it up challenge started by Perspectivae LibriasVIa(1600 AD), aand book writwaste collection in aand small neighbourhood ten by mathematician astronomer Guidoand I rented a space for Soon baldo del Monte (a ₹2,000 friend aofmonth.

Galileo’s), a bigger dealer offered betterofrates for my for paSabbatini created new kinds machinery per, cardboard, plastic bags and bottles, dramatic effects in theatre: A wave machineand to my business took off. of sea, hidden mechashow the turbulence Afterfor a few months I fell ill and couldn’t run nisms storms, lightning, flying gods and the shop.fires My family several austerity blazing of hell.adopted If perspective drawing measures to pay the retain theartists, place. was like software forrent the and Renaissance Finally inwas January 2015, a woman of relative Sabbatini creating the equivalent comloaned me ₹30,000, I reopened and also freed puter graphics in movies. three women waste pickers a scrap In an unexpected turn offrom events, this dealnew er. A lawyer too helpedwas me to outlay with science of perspective the₹50,000. foundaToday,of47a revolution women sellintheir wasteWhat directly to tions geometry. if difme. My landlady has faith in me and refuses offerent curves like lines, circles, ellipses,

Sorting lives Fortyseven women waste pickers sell their waste directly to Ashabai Doke parikshit suryavanshi

A voice from the waste box Ashabai Doke, the woman who began picking waste to sustain her family, is now an entrepreneur and the community’s voice for justice in Aurangabad

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What are the waste pickers fighting for?

We are fighting for full remuneration, and also want to repay debts so that we can free women from the clutches of scrap dealers. If I sunrise The get financial help, I want toBefore set free at least 50 How do you free a bonded waste picker? night in sky ain year this 1650 women. Loans can be repaid and painting betrays the at In times of crisis, like illness, which is com- more women can be released.

Liquor flows artist’s ignorance of mon in the unhygienic conditions we often every slum corner. Children are getting adwikimedia astronomy commons work in, or occasions like a girl’s marriage, the dicted while husbands drink off their wives illiterate women waste pickers borrow money hard-earned money. It has destroyed innufrom the scrap This means they can the sell tum merable poorits families.

A ban liquor might parabolas and dealer. hyperbolas were actually particles actors and theon laws of physics waste when later only to that dealer, who will cheat help.

Waste pickers’ finddo themselves same viewed from different points of its play.

And yet thesechildren three pieces not fit toon weight, cut on rates, and that the gether in this into business from childhood, view?

Even more profound wasensure the realisation a coherent whole untilthey thisneed day. an debtnot is never repaid. the debt and education.

Frequent physicists illness is a cause of misethat only did this When field ofI pay projective geomeSome theoretical such as Juan freecontain a wastenew picker, the scrap dealers usetheovari- Maldacena ry. Unhygienic wasteproposed hurts waste pickers; try theorems, it contained have now that the three ous arguments tactics to re-Simply should disposed in aposscirems about and theorems. by dimensionswaste of space, andbe one of time are tain them, but we andofget‘points’ with sibly the four-dimensional entific manner and the waste pickinterchanging thepersist usage projection of inforthem out. ers mation shouldthat benefit from ‘lines’, one theorem could be exists in only free, two quality health This services.

Governtransformed into another — a dimensions. ‘holographic What was your daily routine Waste pickers’ ment needs to is do like a proper of phenomenon called the Duality principle’ an survey echo of when you were a waste picker? children find thethose community.

Principle.

Renaissance artists who What if different themselves in this I used to get up at half pastwork three, Despite a foundational wanted to bewitch the beholder You were invited to Paris, but curves like lines, business from make for the family beand of 1639food

by Girard Desargues with their virtual conjurings on couldn’t make it. What happened? circles, ellipses, childhood leave byfor 5am. collected ing lost overI 200 years,waste this a sheet of paper, or like maya in parabolas and Natasha of Civic Response till 1pm, and sorting it out the force of unifying ideas was at proHinduZarine cosmology. hyperbolas were Team,Inofthe which I too we amhave, a part, dealer’sand would takeslowly another found; it grew in painting if mywere waste picker-to-entrethree hours. minds such Iasreturned Pascal home and actually the same when shared Radha to look up toward viewed from different preneur storysky, at an Alliance Indiaround Poncelet 5pm, cooked, cleaned, Monge, , Gergonne, all the night she would of notice view?

Waste pickers (AIW) conference.

The AIW washed went to bed though not points before of an of whomand came later.

Towards in some time that the stars are participation to UNFCCC CoP21 10pm! picker Arwoman has the applied for mynot the endEvery of thewaste 19th century, drawing great, concentric through Indian Youth I was sameCayley crushing routine. was led thur (1821-1895) circles inClimate the sky Network. with Polaris at invited. Though tried our reasons to exclaim that “’projective gethewecentre, asbest, she for expected.

How did the KKPKS start in Aurangabad? unknown, my visa identical didn’t come through.

I was ometry is all geometry”; in 1925, Felix Klein These equidistant, points cannot be I took somebywomen pickers a public to talk on myagainst struggle well as on of sustainaconcurred callingwaste it “the royaltoroad” to traced, even theasblackboard night. meeting of domestic helps in 2008. Seeing They ble and equitable solid waste management sogeometry. look like slow tidal waves, or Moiré patthat, we 20th too felt the need to its come together. lutionsThere and a cleaner better world for all.

As the century raised curtain, Ein- terns. are noand shadows because theI With the help of socialofactivists, the at late was to represent the people most affected by stein’s field equations gravity like hinted a moonlight has been subdued by light from Pravin Wagh and Subhash Lomteto, we gath- these climate change.

I couldn’t take their spherical or hyperbolic shape of the universe. dense stars.But And this strange worldvoice she ered on waste pickers andDirac started KKPKS to the world.

In thedata opposite direction, Paul used pro- would know to be maya, the illusion that in Aurangabad. out of 8,000 waste (With inputs from Peeyush jective geometryToday, to build histhe quantum me- Krishna keeps talking about.Sekhsaria) pickers in Aurangabad, abouttwo 3,500 are the chanics.

Could it be that these discordant gupta explores the history of science as parikshit suryavanshi is a researcher, translator members of an theunderlying KKPKS, andsymmetry? we work forSpacetheir rohit sciences had and writer basedt@fadesingh in Aurangabad welfare. time had become the theatre’s stage, quan- Compasswallah fers of higher rent from scrap dealers. I stepped into the waste pile some 20 years ago and I am still there, though slightly better placed.

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that has many of its followers saying that all Indians are originally Hindu in the broadest possible way, that does place secularism under threat. Secularism isn’t non-religion because India is a very religious country in so many ways. But secularism as the equal treatment of all religions… that’s very important.”

Eck has previously received the National Humanities Medal in the US and served as president of the American Academy of Religion. She has also, since 1991, led the Pluralism Project, an initiative aimed at understanding her country’s burgeoning diversity. “And that expanding diversity is very good for a country of immigrants (except for the native people, who are themselves diverse),” she says. “The US is a newly and profoundly diverse nation in ways we notice more than in India.”

But it’s a diversity that’s increasingly under attack from the Right, led in no small measure by presidential aspirant Donald Trump. “This is just absurd, the idea that someone harks back to nativist rhetoric,” she says.

She is not entirely surprised when the topic of ‘ghar wapsi’ and the reconversion-to-Hinduism debate is raised. “It’s not entirely new,” she says, pointing to similar episodes in the 1920s and the tensions as a result within the Indian freedom movement. On whether the State should have a role to play in this sort of thing, she is categorical, “The government really shouldn’t have a role in who should convert or reconvert… The real issue is how much coercion is levied.”

Scheduled to later deliver the Vasant J Sheth Memorial lecture on India’s sacred rivers, Eck, who has closely studied Banaras, says she found the city’s Assi Ghat “better than ever” on her current visit. “There is certainly an effort to underline the message [of the countrywide Swachh Bharat cleanliness movement],” she says. “The message is itself important. It can Points to ponder We need to balance the need for dams and hydro-electric power projects, canals for become too much of a slogan, I imagine; so it irrigation and the human, cultural and religious needs, says Diana Eck PAUL NORONHA needs to have something behind it.”

Cleaning up the Ganga is not a new idea.

Thirty years ago, one of Eck’s teachers launched an initiative to do just this. It is inexplicable why rivers — one of Eck’s areas of expertise — are so poorly looked after and massively polluted despite being considered sacred. “I think people, here and elsewhere, have a divided consciousness,” she says. “‘Yes, it’s a sacred river, [but] no, its sacredness does not diminish because we pollute it’.”

During her lecture, she is careful to emphasise that rivers need to be understood and approached holistically.

“You need people on both sides,” she says, meaning those who are scientifically astute as well as those who can understand the sanctity of the river and the significance it holds. “We need to balance the need for dams and hydroelectric power projects, canals for irrigation arvard professor Diana Eck is country in the 1960s and has since returned and the human, cultural and religious needs.” dumbfounded. She happens to be several times, including a visit in 2013 to lead a She segues into the poetic when speaking of visiting one of India’s states that study tour of the Kumbh Mela. these majestic water bodies: “the strong liqprohibit the consumption and The Professor of Comparative uid fingers of the Ganga runsale of beef. “It’s astonishing that a govern- Religion and Indian Studies rening through solid rocks”, the ment would pass that kind of law about what fuses to be drawn into discussing river not “simply as a site for a people eat,” she says at a meeting held at the the usefulness of the uniform civpleasant outing… but an inteCan something be Royal Bombay Yacht Club in Mumbai. “Espe- il code [“I’m going to leave it to all gandagi (polluting) at gral and vital theatre of daily cially in a nation as pluralistic as India... some of you for now,” she laughs] or life”, the rivers of India as “its the same time as people are vegetarian, some are non-vegetar- whether the air has become temples, its cathedrals”. being pure? ian. I mean, this is not an area of personal life more polarised [“I don’t sense And, yet, the ultimate contrathat government should be intruding on.” this, but I’ve heard this”]. But she diction: where the divine and Her students, she says, brush off the new is happy to discuss threadbare pristine clash against industrial laws as something that won’t really be imple- what it means to be secular, pareffluents and clogged estuaries. mented in earnestness. Is that true, she wants ticularly in India, where the term refers to an “Can something be gandagi (polluting) at the to know. equal treatment of all religions, rather than same time as being pure?” she asks. “That is a In town to deliver a lecture, Eck — a global the western conception of religion as separate religious discourse of purity. It may look dirty authority on religion and the author of books from the State. So, is that under threat? but it’s not impure.” on Banaras, India’s rivers and its geographies “It may be,” she says. “People do say that.”

— is no stranger to India. She first visited the She continues, “I think with a government bhavya dore is a Mumbai-based journalist

‘Dirty, but not impure’

Diana Eck, expert on India’s rivers and global religion, speaks on the message of Swachh Bharat and the testy matter of eating beef in the country

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Model behaviour

profit among the households at that time of the year.”

After crafting this self-funded public commuting service, the people of Touphema embarked on another successful model in 2001.

This one is linked as much to their livelihood as to documenting their lives and crafts.

With Nagaland opening its doors to tourists in early 2000, villagers decided to host tourists to earn an extra income. They came up with the idea of a tourist village. A villager offered his ancestral land on a hillock for the purpose. They modelled it on a traditional Angami village. Twelve Angami clans or khel from Touphema and surrounding villages funded it. Each khel built a hut, with facades that have the traditional Naga symbols like mithun (animal), da (sword), jathi (spear), cup (for prosperity) and so on.

“Though the khels provided the labour and the huts were built from local material, we needed money for other things like running a kitchen, salary for the staff, buying bathroom Love lost Aamir Khan fittings and furnishings, landscaping, and so is no longer the brand on. The village council hadambassador some funds but we for online needed more. So we borrowed from a Snapdeal governmarketplace, dave of ₹30 ment agency. Till date, we reuters/amit have a debt lakh,” says Neitho Kense, managing director AGENDA of the initiative.

Their effort is yet to yield profits though with the growing number of tourists in Nagaland, Kense says that day is not far. “It will happen eventually. For instance, during the Hornbill Festival, we get good occupancy. We are getting both domestic and European tourists. The Nagaland Tourism Board helps us in promoting it,” he says.

Once the tourist village began to receive visitors, villagers added a museum to it to promote the Angami way of life. “We wanted to showcase our history, how people lived in olndia’s corporates are among the biggest ket. If a government starts regulating your den academic legal they data used. more Exhibits accessible to times and what were sambuddha wimps in the world.

The license-permit speech and food habits, it’s only a matter of the public, by hacking through paywalls and collected from each household to fill up the mitra mustafi raj, and Indira Gandhi’s self-serving, ag- time they start rigging the markets to favour museum,” esoteric government websites. death states Kense.

ChairsSwartz’s made of elegressive pushback against the motives of their cronies. That is why Friedman also phant ultimately in abaskets, major paddy changestorin tusks,resulted bamboo jars, private enterprise, turned Indian corporates stated, “The fundamental threat to freedom is age American policy: traditional Aaron’s Law brought bins,public grinders, clothes, into lapdogs of the government. Greasing gov- power to coerce, be it in the hands of a mon- jewellery about a more legal approach towards andsensible headgear, utensils, musical inernment palms and massaging government arch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary struments, hackers, getting ridbows of some of arrows the most dracospears, and used by egos became a necessity to do business in In- majority.” nian andyouth: outdated clauses.

Angami these are some of the exhibits dia. Businesses that played this game well beIn his personal capacity, Snapdeal’s brand onJobs and An Swartz were both successful display. amphitheatre, built whenentreToucame immensely successful and profitable, ambassador had expressed his opinion phema preneurs who used Rio their genius in very differboy Neipho was the chief minister bought over media and khel wonbuilt social acceptance Home turf Twelve Angami clans or khel from Touphema funded a tourist village. Each a hut, with facades displaying sangeeta barooah pisharoty againstNaga the symbols attack on freedom of expression of entNagaland, ways: oneiscontinued to buildmatches a profitable used for football and as leaders of industry. They set a bad example by this “momentary majority” in India, the Sekrenyi, corporation while the othercelebrated gave up wealth an Angami festival in Febfor the next generation of businesses (like Hindutva brigade. The “momen(and ultimately his life) in his acruary every year.

Snapdeal) to follow. tary majority” used its social onlinethe freedom.

The village tivism councilfor oversees tourist But vils the last of the lights go off, a blanWhen Snapdeal dropped Aamir Khan as villagers need commute to Ingovernment of- lage and the museum. media heft to to coerce one of both became legends for the Atsubu and Kense are ket of darkness cloaks village brand ambassador earlier this the week, it fices, and business establishments among the staffers. dia’s hospitals biggest companies into same reason: theyis believed that After a fee paid, Atsubu The fundamental for India’s yet another night. A sharp cho- in showed that new generation of startthe capital city basis. The inhabitsubmission, firstonbya daily reducing they doing, the takes a visitorthe for work a trip to thewere village.

You can with russlicker from a versions throng ofofcrickets ups are just the oldpenelala ants of Touphema toocampaigns felt helpless. Unlikeproblem oth- see Khan’s role in their products and ideas they were their barns and bedrooms, kitchens and business in India trates the hush the black, starless You ers, companies.

TheofBansals and Bahls night. of e-comthey decided act. “Even though and eventually by nottorenewing creating, the world a betcourtyards, the morungsmade (traditional bachelor is that it is not seen enter hut;very latch the wooden door before Touphema merceyour are not different from the Ambanis was km from his contract.

Dojust we 41 really need ter place. pads) and the memorial stones. as a vehicle for switching and turn in too. in Kohima, and Adanisoffofthe oldlights commerce.

Our newTen startwas the no threat state any more there proof that If the board Don’t missfounders the headsand of hunted social good the night inare a city may becross late between evening but up leaders a curious the for In- transport or private service.

Vilto freedom by power in this memberslining of Snapdeal saw themanimals the verandas of your and other residents dian host oligarchs who they grewofupTouphema, watching lagers felt that real? the government country is very selves as leaders of society, as the huts.

Once Touphema the Angami village, it is past midnight. andNaga the American entrepreneurs whose ideas can’t everything. Soproblem in 1985, Thedofundamental people matter, would Villagewho youth cookthey Naga disbegan to receive Like a goodinspired guest, you follow the rules. eventually them. all the 600 households with business in India is contribthat it is havefor stood Khan’sYou right to exhes the by visitors. can savisitors, villagers Though the peopleinofIndia Touphema, in Naga- uted Private enterprise has historically whatever money they not seen as a vehicle for social pressdelicious his concerns on freedom vour chutneys made of added a museum to itButspring land’s Kohima district, may be other could remained mediocre because of like this any mediocribuy aamini-bus forevil. regugood, to rather necessary Therefore busiin India. because they see as onions andthemselves cherry tomarural folk in the North-eastern State in their lar ty in corporate leadership and the expediency commuting Kohima,” says ness leaders in to India do not see themselves profit-driventoes, operators behind a faceless corbesides meats and eggs habits, few factors set them apart. The differ- Atsubu, of theiravision.

The new generation of corpoyoung man fromofthe leaders ofa society, or agents change, in a way poration, dropping Khanbamboo was probably an cooked with shoots and ence the reason forexceptions, your visit to Touphema. rates,isbarring a few are much the village.

Sinceorthen, the like activists artists do.bus has easy choice for them.

It did not occur them local vegetables.

Corn tomixed This difference, in both thought and action, same.

Rather than creating products and been plying that to Kohima and back of Steve Jobs perhaps, thatwith Compare to the self-image business too haveatathe rehoneyleaders is an attraction defines their community life for in Touphema, ideas that change the world the better, twice a day. who imagined himself as a revo- breakfast for example, sponsibility to fight for freedom, because a table. which began in by 1985 and continues phases. they are guided short-term gains.in And rath- lutionary “It has made our lives easier. can now out to change the worldWe through his free laysTouphema the ground-work a two free So society what does lack? “Wefor have So so thatuptoday, village is an examer much than stand for athe free society and free procure and medicines easily; thosemarail- primary productsgoods that were not just engineering market toand operate. middle schools but students ple to others on how communities canboth be selfmarket in India, they would dump to ing of goingappealing. to Kohima forrevolutreat- have vels,can butthink aesthetically The “Freedom rare andafter delicate plant,” to go outisof athe village the standard reliant and even propel the government keep the government in good humour. ma- ment any day. Interestingly, fromhow the VIII. tionary image stuck to Jobspeople no matter wrote Friedman Capitalism EvThis pushes in some to dropand outFreedom. of school,” chinery chipclassic in withCapitalism help. The development In histo1962 and Freedom, nearby areas have startedcorporate using ourpracbus. says unappealing somealso of Apple’s ery Indian isThanks responsible nurturing it, and Atsubu. to thefor former CM’s sprawstory in Nagaland, like many parts of the re- So the great free market economist Milton Friedwewere. make some profit from ticket sales,” he ling tices that bungalow, includes the corporate Indian. where he spends some time of gion, been that, disproportionate. it be- adds man has argued “UnderlyingThough most argugleefully.

Since aregenius Chris- the(Views Or take the case of most Aaronvillagers Swartz, the are village personal) year, the even has a mobile tower! came state in Stateis Transport ments aagainst the1963, free the market a lack of tians and need money, during co-founder of Reddit, whoparticularly committed suicide barooah pisharoty is founder a Delhi-based sambuddha mitra mustafi is the of Department has not been to connect belief in freedom itself.”

Anyable attack on free- Christmas festivities.

Atsubu: “The village in 2013 at the age of 26,Says after being hounded by sangeeta journalist The Political Indian t@some_buddha most areas well with Andmarthe council, dom isrural also an implicit attackKohima. on the free whichauthorities runs the service, shares the freelance the American for trying to make

Touphema, a tourist village near Kohima, is a proud example of a tribe’s efforts to earn both money and recognition

Unicorn of wimps

Snapdeal dropping Aamir Khan shows how grovelling to the “momentary majority” is second nature to Indian corporates

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PRESENT IMPERFECT

Maybe love is the answer Most 40-55-year-olds in the country have been raised to believe that unbridled passion is not a worthy ambition

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Veena Venugopal is editor BLink and author of The Mother-in-Law

n Saturday, while rummaging through some papers, I discover one in which my 10-year-old daughter and her friends have tried to ascertain the status of their relationships with boys through the time-honoured methodology of FLAMES. (As anyone who has gone to school in the last 30 or so years knows, by eliminating the common letters between the two names and counting the remaining down until only one letter is left, it can be ascertained whether the duo is Friends, Lovers, Admirers, Marriage-bound, Enemies or Siblings). Fittingly, my discovery comes exactly a week before Valentine’s Day. Ever so discreetly, I try to ferret out some information about the status of romance in Std IV, but all I can gather is that while boys are still mostly deplorable, some of them have begun to manifest themselves as crushes.

Although my opinion in this matter is not sought, I am eager to play it cool, to tell her that crushes are not just normal, they are to be celebrated. To be sure, when I was growing up, we didn’t have crushes at 10. But at 13 or 14, when you felt the first stirrings of something identifiable but unwelcome, the first instinct was to feel shame. There would be no talk of personal crushes at home. There would be no talk of love at home. When someone in the neighbourhood was spotted “chatting” with a boy, every parent on the lane made it their duty to not just warn their offspring against love, but also give a dressing down to the girl in question. Love, romantic love, was the scourge of our times, and it was a collective parental responsibility to not allow teenage kids “any damages or distractions” and instead help them focus solely on their inherited ambition

of becoming an engineer or a doctor, and ab- chasing their dreams, we would have effectivesolutely nothing else. ly completed our circle of driven, yet joyless When I left the culturally stifling environ- pursuits of possession that only the self-cenment of the township I grew up in and went to tred can achieve. Even now, when we meet, we college in Chennai, I realised the taboo against talk about ourselves — the cars that we plan to love wasn’t just a small-town fixation. My gen- buy, the holiday destinations that we plan to eration, largely, has been raised to have no de- “do”, the housing prices that have dropped, sire for anything other than a selfish pursuit of the mortgage payments that have stretched. stable livelihood. Our parents, born in the ’40s The banality of our achievements is only and early ’50s, grew up hearing stories of fam- matched by the triteness of our aspirations. ily and community members standing up to We didn’t set out to take our chances and the cause of the freedom struggle. This trick- change anything. Instead, we made sure we led down, and for a large chunk weren’t being cheated out of anyof the generation before mine, thing. We paid to have our risks passion was directed into the deassessed and bought insurance sire for nation building. When I policies to cover us against the The banality of our now hear my parents and their possible and the improbable. If friends talk, the motif of their ro- achievements is only we are stable and secure, it is bematched by the mance, I notice, is unrequited cause we have chosen that triteness of our love. After a few drinks are against the option of exposing aspirations downed, often, a few names crop ourselves to any kind of vulneraup and in a matter of minutes, bility — emotional or material. poor renditions of Mohammed I am acutely aware of this and Rafi ands Mukesh fill the room. yet it is a task to go against condiPerhaps, they wanted us to escape the pain. tioning. When my daughter and her friends Perhaps, because the nation didn’t really build tell me their ambitions — rock star, footballer, well, they had concluded that no matter what actress, Masterchef winner, I have to bite my the question is, love is not the answer. Irre- tongue so as not to tell them these are fickle spective of their motivations and reasons, fact options, that making a Plan B wouldn’t be a remains, most 40-55-year-olds in the country bad idea. “Just in case,” I want to say, but I mantoday have been raised to believe that unbri- age to hold back. Come Valentine’s Day 2017, dled passion is not a worthy ambition, that maybe my then 11-year-old would have told me surrendering to it is foolishness. a little more about her crushes. And I hope I We are the ones who make jokes about Val- have the courage to tell her that love is worth entine’s Day, not just because it signifies gaudy plunging into. That passion is priceless. And consumption of all things red, but because we that making oneself vulnerable is the only have been raised to believe there is nothing to guarantee to living a life that is truly full. celebrate about love. Love makes us squeat@veenavenugopal mish. By the time our kids grow up and start

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the size, and the third — a real humdinger — takes up an entire line. There’s an even bigger BOOM in Book Two that falls off the edge of the page. You can practically feel the aftershocks.

When a spaceship crash-lands nearby, Todd gets to meet the sole survivor, a young girl called Viola. She is the first person he’s ever met without Noise. “I wonder what it must be like to have no Noise, to come from a place with no Noise. What does it mean? What kind of a place is it? Is it wonderful? Is it terrible?”

And then he realises, “Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.”

In Book Two, Ness makes another interesting type decision. Todd’s narrative continues in Fairfield, but the parts of the book narrated

by Viola are set in Optima — a slightly thicker, more rounded, somehow more female font.

The Mayor — the dictatorial thought-controlling villain of the piece — has thoughts, or noise, that has nothing of Viola’s gentle curves or subtle serifs: it comes in uninflected hard We shall overcome capitals that seem to brookShirshah no argument.

Heravi Of course, it’s not that unusual have sto(extremeto right) with his children ries told in different typefaces: thereand are any aditi sengupta number of books told instudents alternate voices, where each chapter is assigned a different font so you know, without thinking about it, who is speaking. Ness takes this to a new level in Book Three, where the narrative alternates between Todd, Viola and the Spackle — a member of the indigenous aliens (if that makes sense) against whom the humans are pitted.

Ness and his designer must have searched long and hard for a typeface to assign to the Spackle. Some form of letters that would convey a primitive species, yet one with its own abul, April 1992. The early summer entry to Aryana English Centre in Bhogal’s highly lated my country beyond recognition. evolved tribal society, one thatThere was sun, usually a welcome sight after Church Lane, in central Delhi. A modest white- more was tension Corruption and funalignedeverywhere. to the natural world than the months of harsh winter, brought washed room in the basement of a residential tightly damentalism was killing Afghanistan minute controlled civilized one: a type that little cheer or warmth to Shirshah building was the best that Heravi could find could by minute,” says Heravi. Theopposite urge to the helpMaythe stand as diametrically Heravi. The constant shelling by Mujahideen within his budget. Contributions from friends or’s country get back on its feet prompted regimented capitalisations.

TheyHeravi manfighters hammered the young undergradu- and former colleagues helped him buy chairs aged to join hands with — but only just.various international bodate’s nerves as he headed for the university ev- along with writing pads, a printer, writing iesUsing and ministries. work took him farfancy fontsHis or unorthodox typetosizes ery morning. The radio and the television boards and spoken English guides. flung areas while his familyemployed settled down or formatting is frequently as a into lazy added to the unease, relaying news of the civil “I pay ₹15,000 in rent for this room, but shortcut. a modernIt’s housing complex the airport the reason mostnear publishers stipwar from other Afghan provinces. Son of a mil- even that becomes difficult when the students ulate in Kabul. standard formatting for authors to subitary officer who served under the ousted Pres- can’t pay the tuition fee, which is only ₹500,” mitIntheir late work.

2012, Just Shaheer, Heravi’s elder because a story it setson, in ident Najibullah, Heravi feared that the war says Heravi as he arranges printouts for a les- childish-looking complained that type he was beingmean shadowed doesn’t that iton is might disrupt his studies in law and political son. Unable to meet expenses from the coach- suitable his way to school and—back.

“It pressed the chilpanfor children in fact, I know one science. And that’s what happened. ing income, he became an interpreter with a dren’s ic button in my head.

Abductions were anthat evpublisher who rejects manuscripts Various factions of the Mujahideen closed UN agency. For nine hours a day, Heravi is the use eryday affairSans and anyone who worked witheven the Comic on principle without in on Kabul from different directions while in- bridge of communication between officials reading government or international werethat tarthem and there’s bodies nothing ternational bodies tried to broker a peace and Afghan refugees in India. “It gives me screams gets,” Heravi breakslouder down as he recalls the day ‘amateur’ than a manuscript What you seeBut is what get Legibility andlittle clarityefare the namesatisfaction of the game shutterstock agreement. the you negotiations had some that I am able to help people full he decided to leave Afghanistan for good. “Toof gimmicky typefaces. fect on how the radical outfits transformed who are in the same boat. But I keep asking Al- day I don’t I don’t have car. I There arehave verysavings. good reasons why ayou’re ith acultural huge, blood-red viciousthe city’s social and fabric. Public exe- to unfiltered of the Noise — either reading lahthe if we will everbabble see better days.

My children don’t have enough money to take my family this article in Capitolium News to if bowie Women knife blazing cutions becamelooking a routine. were that, goneme mad. keep or asking theNess sameworked ques- closely with you’ve got thethe Taj Mahal. at least we are paper in frontBut of you, or Georgia it, the cover of the Patrick barred from jobsacross and education.

And airy his designer Books figuring out how if you’re reading tion…

I haveat noWalker answer,” he says. together and alive,” he and says.clarHis on screen.

Legibility Ness’sUniversity The Knife of Never Letting classrooms of Kabul became the to Like designevery the typefather, such that it was clear to the ity are the name Heravi children AdibaBut, (18), Shaheer of the—game. as Jim WilGo leavesfor youthose in nowho doubt that this going to reader gallows resisted theis Islamisawas, and what was regular wants awhat goodNoise education, a career Baheer (9) —reminds like to stay liams, author(17)ofand Type Matters! us, Today, I am struggling be anofedgy sort of book. But it’s the type that speech. tion the capital.

The unobtrusive Fairfield typeface and marriage for his children. of the time.and “Stay“Fonts clothes most that word wear” we to pay the rent forare theindoors really gets you: the font looks like it’sloyal beento giv-a used Fearing persecution for being for the is main texthe is peppered other But safety what prizes with close to each other our way in them ing an ‘emotional tone’ justisas quicktwo small read rooms en a loaded gun, intravenously fed a triple es- typefaces: man who once enjoyed Soviet support, the Hea childish handwriting-like font for ly and as unconsciously most. “Concern for the physical of feeling secure,” he says. as we judge a person presso on to a fourth-storey ravis layand low pushed for a couple of years.

In 1995, a some men’s Noise,brought a thick, safetyofofthe my children claims byHeravi the clothes thathis sheneighbours wears. window ledge. is practically disintegrating year before theItTaliban stormed into Kabul barely forAfter the anime to legible India,” scrawl he says. alare“Messing friendly but the sense bearound with of typewith adrenalinNajibullah and anxiety — his which is pretty and executed and brother, the mals saying ‘flesh, most — 10crocodiles years of living in Shiraz ing andoesn’t outsider is ever present.

“I faces always work, so we much the reader feels on the feast, familyhow crossed the border intoevery Iran.one Andofthat tooth’, Heravi or squirrels and Tehran, foundtauntan opportunity to have that sure protects triedcard to make it wasme notfrom carUsing fancy fontsaisrefugee 1,634 pages that follow. journey earned him a tag that Heravi is still ing the dog with ‘come on, whirmigrate to Canada.

“I was getting the papers employed forced deportation toonish or or detention, silly,” says but Ness.that’s The frequently The Chaos of which is ler, trying to loseWalking — that oftrilogy, a refugee.

“I missKnife those whirler, whirler’. ready for our move to Canada when my not enough to erasethat questions people around reason the fonts add to, rathas elder a lazy shortcut the part, is set on a planet recently colo-a brother daysfirst in my father’s house in Kabul…

It was But it’scalled not just typeface me the back to Afghanistan. He us have,” he says while his eyes wander to the er than detract from, the story he nised by humans.

In this primitive society, huge bungalow with more rooms that I canthe re- that Ness usesgone a lotthere of to sell his clock on a stark said changes. my father, who’d “I am expecting tellswhite is thewall. centrality of the ideaa men are afflicted by what’s known as ‘Noise’. member.

We had every comfort a family in an styling in had all three the books. property, been of poisoned by an aunt’s fam- visit from theoflocal police station.

—I Noise: that silentSomeone persistent This means that their thoughts can be heard upscale neighbourhood in those days could The littered sud- I had my du- don’t know who ily. I pages had noare choice butwith to return, — hasthat complained clamour goes on that everyI run min-a by they,I too, can hear animals. askanyone, for. Andand today, am struggling to pay For the denly capitalised words, italicsinto anda emties. I packed my wife andwith children bus ute jihadist madrasa from this centre,” he adds. of the day in the privacy of our own skulls.

Ness, Noise far offsays what it’s like to be dashes, rent for two“isn’t smallthat rooms,” Heravi. short lines half-finished thoughts, and returned to myofcountry after another ar- Without At 10 pm, Heravi locks heavy ironus, gate the creative use ofthe fonts to help siconstantly buried in texts messaging and and In his early 40s now, theand six-foot-tall Afghan lots and lotshe of recalls. dialogue. This makes for a lent duous journey,” and readers, walks home, five minutes away.

“I ‘hear’ just the story, I’m not sure that emails mobile and three on… racy, arrivedand in Delhi in phones August and 2013.onWith read — buta it also means that Thepacy return wasn’t happy occasion foryou the the can’tChaos say what tomorrow willcould bring.have For now, Walking trilogy beenI that’s what about, children in the tow,book’s Heravireally and his wifeinformaKamila can hear the thing in your loud family.

Heravi’s father died head after really months of written have a home-cooked meal and some Afghan at all. tion overload.” started a coaching centre for Afghan refugees and clear. in At aone point, in book there’s a TV channels to return to,” he says. suffering hospital, even as three, they struggled no privacy, and no way to control in With the city.

A signboard in Dari, one of thetheir two war raging. The first goes off — BOOM! — anita roy is a writer, editor and publisher; to reconcile with thebomb drastic changes in a waraditi sengupta thoughts, the menof have become accustomed official languages Afghanistan, marks the in 20pt type.

The second ‘boom’ is about twice www.anitaroy.net ravaged Afghanistan.

“The Taliban had muti-

ON THE SHELF

The clothes that words wear

Fonts are not merely window dressing — they are often central to the emotional temperature of the narrative

anita roy

Life after war

Shirshah Heravi’s life is a primer for refugees, for whom the constant companion is fear

K

W

The Knife of Never Letting Go Patrick Ness

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Straight up KS Narendran believed in facing reality head-on; (below) A family picture k pichumani, pti

Life after loss One can never completely work their way out of a loss.

There will be remnants, things that get evoked each time somebody around loses someone

H

ope is not always a happy instrument for survival. At times it worsens our pain and adds to the panic, forcing one to delay the inevitable tryst with reality. KS Narendran, 51, didn’t want that. He decided to face reality head-on, like a fallible, understanding human being. “From the early weeks, the possibility that my wife is not going to come back has been dangling precariously,” he says.

His wife of over 25 years, Chandrika Sharma, was on board the Malaysian Airlines MH370 that mysteriously went off the radar on March 8, 2014, on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Sharma was heading to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to attend a Food and Agriculture Organisation conference. “When the news came in, I thought it would probably be a matter of few hours before the confusion and the dust settles and we had some facts,” says Narendran. And he is still waiting. He didn’t imagine it to be the long-drawn, unending wait it has become. But he was not ready to let his loss overpower his ways. Yet it wasn’t easy to cope with the deep void that’s come up in his life. “Intellectually one understands that nobody is here for eternity. Mortality is a given,” reasons Narendran, sitting in his neat, capacious flat in Guindy, Chennai. “In most cases, you don’t really set an end date and often it visits you without your knowing.” Sharma and Narendran had often talked about what lay in store. “We would say who’s gonna be here tomorrow. The fact that we might not be living as long as we might wish was almost certain.”

But that doesn’t take away the difficulty in dealing with the loss. “So, the intellectual understanding, at least for me, made it more difficult to deal with emotional acceptance.”

While it helped him be functional at least in

the early months, it made it tougher to actual- others. That makes me even more responsible, ly accept and acknowledge what he was feel- that one must reply or respond to those peoing. “The fact of feeling alone, the fact of ple and let them know what’s happening.” missing my wife, the fact of feeling lonely. Yes, And many of them knew Sharma. They wrote it did make things a lot more difficult,” says about their association with her. Narendran Narendran who is not overtly religious. discovered that her world was large and that How did he manage to move on? Or has he? she has made a difference to lot of people, “One of the things I started doing was to many unknown to him. “Through them I diswrite.” It helped to put down what he felt. “It covered facets, which over 25 years of our comhelped me come to terms with what was hap- panionship, had not really revealed as vividly, pening within me and outside. In the privacy as brightly as these conversations portrayed.” of my own conversations with the medium, Did that cure it all? One doesn’t know. such introspection was much easier.” Also, “Some part of my day ends up with a requirethere were a lot of thoughts ment to respond to my responbuzzing around which were difsibilities. And I realise that once ficult to sift through. “Writing one has got back a semblance of helped me piece things together routine, it makes life a little easand see things from a distance.” ier and the task of coping not a Writing helped me Then there were friends. Many piece things together lonely burden.” But there are still would drop in. “They would in- and see things from a large tracts of the day where he vite me to come by and spend continues to wander, ask what distance time with them, not necessarily might have happened, and feels to ‘moan, groan, bemoan. Just to “a little loss in myself”. But “life experience companionship.’ goes on”.

That was quite helpful.”

Their daughter is a student of Also, a number of people psychology in Delhi. “I only hope wrote in. There were several Facebook messag- she has come to terms with her loss. I can only es, e-mails, SMSes, and even snail mails (cards wish. I won’t know for certain.” But he believes and letters). “I’d reply to as many of them as I youngsters have a different way of dealing could.” He realised there were many who with things, like giving themselves a long don’t necessarily deal with their sense of loss time to come to terms with loss. “There is no “clearly, fully or comprehensively”. “Nobody immediacy.” The immediacy is for other does,” he says. It is not as if it is over and done things — a career or other ambitions. Narenwith. “Nobody has ever completely worked dran lost his father when he was 17 and “it took through it and has come out of it. So, there are me over a decade to grieve and really underremnants, there are residues, there are things stand and come to terms with the loss. So all that get evoked each time somebody around that I do is let my daughter know that no questhem has encountered some loss.” tions are off limits, no questions taboo, no Those who wrote in spoke of their own loss conversation unwelcome.” and “I realised that in a way this process of communicating was both valuable to me and jinoy p jose

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Life oblivion Theafter life and times of an Indian Mr Chips

In his fast-disintegrating brain, relationships and realities do not matter. A wife’s account of turning caregiver to her spouse affected by dementia stress, especially there are substantial Dev Lahiri’s memoir is an engaging and revelatory book that chronicles thewhen challenges of monthly medical costs. running an educational institution in India Our family was luckier than most in that, we

faced no unexpected bereavement or illness or tragic events. So it was a shock to realise This should haveago, been the ending: around 10-12 years that myhappy husband was the marathoner finds memory his destination, the experiencing irrational lapses, and drifter discovers hisaccount calling,for lives fulfilling crucially, unable to theamoney he life, shapes pupils, buildstransboys spent.

And remarkable so gradually, dementia and girlsme of into character, writesand a real-life, Indian formed a caregiver home nurse.

MrDementia Chips. Allisthe whileanhis college mates indeed implacable foe asare it struggling in the so-called ‘realmakes world’, survivrelentlessly attacks the victim, him lose ing individuality the minefield and of the corporate or his leaves him asector, shallow perhaps the civil services. each of them shell of his former self. It is aYet, progressively dehad been prepared forcausing his profession: at an agenerative condition memory loss, cademy in Mussoorie, a management school personality changes and erratic behaviour.

In wherever.

As Lahiri the book, has nothing my husband’s case,says theincondition proin Indiathrough preparesseveral you to be the head ofhea gressed stages — initially, school, especially a residential school, indicatwas prone to violence, was aggressive and aring a huge gap in the country at bathe a timewould when gumentative, even asking him to more andhim. more schools being set up. provoke Now, he isare much more passive, The unlikely challenges of cooperative. a humble, idealcalmer and thankfully, more But istic who hasout justdaily got his firstlike break as he is teacher unable to carry habits baththe head of a school canhaving be summarised by the ing, cleaning oneself, a shave and so reception awaited 1991.aAs he aron.

A malethat nurse comesLahiri home in thrice week to rived but in Delhi final job interview, the help, one for has the to anticipate basic needs. education ofdisInThough stillsecretary active atof 85,the he government is increasingly dia told him, “Young man, be very honoriented, unpredictable in let hisme behaviour, and est. Although Ialso am the Chairman, I would not unfortunately, prone to mindlessly eating wish this he school its preanything sees. (Lawrence He has also,School) in theseinpast five sent state on my worst thrice. enemy. You may just years, gone missing Miraculously find it too to handle …” him each and evenough, wehot managed to find shutterstock upone theofchallenge.

Thechallenges contours eryLahiri time. took That is the greatest became soonwith enough.

The faculty in caringapparent for a person dementia — they n arranged marriage is quite often a Our firstborn arrived after just two years, are wasprone factionalised, along Malayalee and Tamil to wandering.

I, therefore, have to coming together of contrasts. Take the next one took her own sweet time — nine be lines.

Indiscipline among the students alert and ensure that our front gatewas is almy case — my spouse and I were years to be precise, but she arrived on the ways most locked. a cherished art form, with “scooters and Statutory warning When Dev Lahiri applied for the position of headmaster Lawrencebackgrounds.

School, LovedaleI(above), was told Chairman: “Although I am the emfrom at different was he same daybyasthe her elder sister!

Sons-in-law cars (…) frequently if Through much ofvandalised, our marriedparticularly life, my husChairman, I would not wish this school in its present state on my worst to enemy. find it too to handle.” supposed be a You citymay girljust educated inhot then Ma- bellished the tribe over the years and toaband teacher an act oflawyer, indiscipline to the wasreported a chauvinistic who would dras though my family lived in Wellington, a day, we have three fine (school)socialise authorities.” with his fellow professionals forbut an grandchildren cantonmentuman near existence Coonoor. is It the wasquest no city, the first time hetoo. was leaving India. As he so disIn a school of neglecting its martial traditions, andproud friends, his family. idyll. Of course, each of us defines pretty cosmopolitan in its denizens and their armingly his family had been too the biggest challenge The oneconfesses, person who rewas bullying, which was Now because of his illness, ironiindividually andhad percepoutlook on that life. idyll Living in Kozhikode not mained ordinary and middle-class perennially un- to afford too many particularly vicious Lawrence. was the cally at enough, he isThis dependent tions vary sharply, as do human urbanised my husband, he still retained many moved trips, even India. He arrived in Britain first battle Lahiri by within our family’s largely won. It onfought, me andand uncomplainingly beingsofthemselves.

Dev Lahiri, traits the landedFor gentry, hailingthe as author he did triumphs an awkwardand young man, unsure of how to ne- was when he sought tribulaelaborate enjoysto taper my the company. of thisa slim and eminently readable memoir, from tharavad (ancestral house) where the tions gotiatewas themy bushusband. journey to his University. He founder’s day events and parade, preparaThroughout our marriage, the idyll meant escaping the madness of He oldest male member was from the karnavan (family left did threenoyears later asata complete product, tions for which took adjusting several months my husband took alland thecleardecithe corporate rat away from thetaught hum- all, head).

While my sixrace, siblings and I were not merely academically just ploughed hisbut as a social being, ly affected examination that Lahiri ranI sions inresults, the family.

Today, drum of urban thefather woodsto and sanc- easy-going by example by life, our into doctor doa most a student community furrow. leader The and a young per- into the school’s equivalent of a religious oram in sole charge of managtuary ofon hisour own. things own, my husband’s family al- girls son used enriched by father many to say their thodoxy: thehouse, powerful alumni body, ing the our finances, and In had his younger a heart ways minions days, in towbefore to aid the mostcondimun- closely experiences. resembled the protagwhich had romanticised past my husband too — a rolethe reversal tion intervened, by running for miles, onist dane tasks, muchhetodid myitannoyance.

A series of jobs in India — in Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s andofLawrence School’s supposedly sorts. becoming a marathoner cross-country Our life together began inand a small dwelling; classic in companies as far apart as(The movie Elippathayam “manly” rigour.

It did come as a shock to me, to practitioner of some andtitle coming to see Rat-Trap), it hardly deserved therepute dignified of ‘house’.

OUP and who Hindustan is very Lever feudal—and Lahiri ran into the An illustrious group can realise we hadalumni spent no less than long-distance running, asofagraceful “meditative, al- medieval It was set in a compound coconut was not enough seduce Lain histooutlook.

Para-school's equivalent of become a school’s calling card. At 50 years together as husband Togetherness is aboutLawrence, orthodoxy: most spiritual exercise”.

While palms and blessed by a shrine tothe Lordtheme Shiva of at doxically, hiri away my from that ethereal husband’s no-non-a religious to The Lahiri’s mind,on it Debeand wife. occasion the routine powerful alumniof a came sport, especially running and horse riding, the entrance.

It seems incredible now that is wea sense calm that he felt in when the I theliving attitude didonly help a tether let the cember 30that lastrefused year, to however, humdrum day, body constant throughout richwater, life, there are experienced had no electricity, or his piped or telemiddle of a long run,ofordepresthe a bout institution evolve withfor thehim. times held no significance He ignoring the moods, four distinct phases that shape himyou.

— aToday, child- sion phone — the basic essentials, mind magic of those three years in defollowing my mother’s andiscome termscapable with newofmodes no to longer such With a Little Help the irascibility and from My Friends hoodwould as thehave son oftoa add proud and upstanding ar- mise. one television, computer, Oxford.

He was awaited his callThere no unnecessary andthought. methodsBut of pedagogy and sensithen, togetherness Dev Lahiri unpredictability my officer, in the cocoon of a cantonment; St fridge, washing machine and mixer-grinder ing, and found it one day sympathising, which would tive rearing of children.

The result is about living the routine of a Rupa Publications Stephen’s in the 1970s,did his not firstadorn expo- have to that list,College but these gadgets whileincreased walkingtheinside the in wallowing washumdrum a formidable against day,coalition ignoring the Non-fiction ₹295 surehomestead! to a big city;And Oxford where he misery! the yet IUniversity, did not find life imDoon School campus with his wife. This is Lahiri, shattering his the idyll,irascibility and leavingand himunin moods, realised for the first it wasstudio possible possible.

One did nottime needthat a fitness or where to be. beings Ourshe is awanted tale of human a determinedpredictability. struggle for hisTogetherness, ‘Izzat aur Iqbal’.as for white and—brown, and blackfrom for that gymnasium drawing water the matwell with Lahiri did what only a few all their weaknesses andbig-city foibles.dwellers I admit theThe strugglewedding took a lotsacrament out of him,puts but evenChristian it so ter, indeed men and women every kept one spry and active.

Andoffor extracolour exer- that of hismy generation would an — migrate hill beautifully, husband lacked interest to in ahard tually his honour was vindicated. is also about being thereMr forChips each and ethnic type,perform to become friends; and finalcise, one could graceful aerobics on work. town and becomewe a teacher andany later, head to of other Therefore, never had savings said his goodbyes and his own — in sickness — and in on health, goodterms. times ly, the boarding school in India, last re- speak the sawdust stoves.

Sawdust had tothe be packed a boarding From Doon he moved of. Yet, school. today, we are not dependent on and This bad. book is the headmaster’s valediction. doubt ofthe another outside stove age. and a funnel created in the our south to Lawrence School, Lovedale, later, daughters because I enjoy a goodand pension ashok smalik fellow at the retired Observer Research nair is senior a Kozhikode-based professor LahiriProducing made it tosuch Oxford in the mid-’70s on as centre. a marvel was indeed after a short stint in back income to Dehraa retiree.

Having an Kolkata, independent in radha Foundation English theintricate strengthbusiness. of a Rhodes Scholarship. It was one’s an dun, at Welham Boys. reduces a great deal of of old age definitely

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To the finishing line Youngsters at the Indian Track Club; (below) Karan Singh, the founder

Life after fall

For Karan Singh, realising that his life’s dream was not going to materialise after all was only the beginning of his journey

M

y name is Karan Singh, and this is my story.

Sports is in my blood thanks to my parents who excelled in them at school and national levels. It became a way of life in my growing years.

Like most kids growing up in the ’90s, I was obsessed with cricket. I represented Delhi at the junior levels through my teens. Running and jumping came naturally to me only with more ease than rest of the kids at school. Despite my love affair with cricket, my sports idol was Steve Prefontaine, a middle-distance runner from Eugene in Oregon, US. Prefontaine was a constant source of inspiration. He was in my mind in whatever I did. I ran extra laps before and after the cricket sessions only because I enjoyed it.

My cricketing career took a big hit when I tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my right knee. I was in standard XII and participated in the long jump competition in school where I overshot the pit. I had my second ACL reconstruction surgery the following year and with two years out of the

game, it was time to do some serious thinking juries of my career. While preparing for the about my future in cricket.

National Open Championship in Kolkata in Somewhere between recovering from these 2011, I stepped on a broken piece of the track injuries and my dream of playing cricket for where my right heel took a battering and I also India, I started to run, run and run to become ended up with a grade three groin tear. As desfit, so much so that I would run for an hour ev- tiny would have it, I moved to Eugene in the ery morning before leaving for college and summer of 2011. Despite the injuries that conrush home early so I could go to the local tinued to hamper complete recovery, I persisttracks or playgrounds. During every run I ed with my training. My performance started would think of Prefontaine and imagine that I to improve but it never reached the level I aswas running for India. pired to. The fact that I could not be the best I was so determined to become a runner haunts me even today. I knew I had so much in that, at the age of 18, I found a coach in Delhi me but my body just could not bear it. and told him that I wanted to run for India in It was after many such episodes that I chose three years. Little did I know what was in store. a dream even bigger than running for India — My coach would train me hard that of setting of up a running twice a day, six days a week. As club with the right attitude, the training load increased, my training and medical facilities. I body complained, especially afstarted the Indian Track Club in Somewhere between August 2013 with only six stuter the two big ACL surgeries. In a matter of two years of training recovering from these dents. In less than three years, injuries and my in Delhi, I had seven stress fracthe number climbed to 60 young dream of playing tures in the fibula of my legs. runners (between 7 and 19 years). cricket for India, I This was extremely frustrating A team of professionals train started to run because the injuries kept holdthese youngsters in Delhi and ing me back.

Gurgaon. Students are provided Once again due to my injuries, training gear through our partserious decisions about the funership with Adidas. In 2014, ture of my running career had some of our students had the opto be made. I moved to Apopka, Florida in portunity to meet Sajeesh Joseph, one of In2009 where I trained for three years in a pro- dia’s best runners. fessional setup of a coach and a sports mediThese kids are the second chance at glory cine team. Under their guidance, I slowly got that my body never gave me. I want them to my body back in shape to take on the rigours get the best guidance and the best facilities, so of the track. I did reasonably well in Florida, that they do not have to go through what I did. making a name for myself in the middle and Through them I hope to realise my dream of long distance categories. I was invited to the making India proud.

Indian National Camp in Bangalore. This was when I had two of the most heartbreaking in- karan singh is based in Delhi

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Mining collective history Life after dreams A Lankan playa delves into theout common, past of two very at It’sSri tough when start-up runs of steamconflicted and funds.

Returning to andifferent old job isnations tougher. the of theJayant BharatBhadauria Rang Mahotsav But 18th that’sedition what taught the importance of caution

Give it a shot What people don’t realise is that few start-ups are successful— Jayant Bhadauria (below)

bloomberg & grn somashekar

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quit my job in early 2012.” Jayant gress independently, depending upon the Bhadauria cannot be identified courses they enrolled for, advising them War footing A still from play Dear Children, directed by Ruwanthie de Chickera s thyagrajan among the the start-up kids of theSincerely..., dot- through the final year via the(right) platform, on com bubble, passing out of MBA what project or internship would add to their straight into their own funded start-up. An en- portfolio. Bhadauria contacted former colonflict doesn’t race or region. gineering graduate fromknow NIT Allahabad, Bha- formance, Upside-down Land for returned to re- ful. India is what Sri Lanka can aspire to be in leagues to create a wireframe the company.

The nature of warinis such that it mind dauria did an MBA marketing of found the ahorror the bloody They even customerofwho brought in terms of support, training and infrastructure. spares one. Cities burn, people management, andno worked for over 10 years in insurrections 4,000 studentsand for sustained Collabgridcommunal to mentor. riots Sri Lanka has very good talent, but the indusdie, sector and that is how the pages the education before jumping ship. of “I that scarred countries “I quit my both job after we gotfor thelife. first customer try is very weak. Plenty of young people take to history are made. awayselling from and was working withCountries Adobe at miles the time, Dear Children, Sincerely... madeHaving its debut at theatre, but they burn out soon because the invested in an office space. a cuseach other a common suffering; people software toshare educational institutes and the gov- the Ubumumtu in Kigali, tomer at such anArts earlyFestival stage was both aRwanbless- industry cannot sustain them; there’s not with diverse identify with each ernment whenskin I gotcolour the idea for Collabgrid.

I’d da, July 2015;Once the project later travelledyou to enough money to pay the actors for their ing in and a curse. you have a customer, other’s forissues every in nation has endured discuss pain, various this industry with a Colombo for itsthe second show in already Januaryknow 2016. training. It’s a very vibrant and young indusstart building product; you similar pattern of and war, the and biggest therefore, everychildhood friend, issue we In India, performed to it a full-house in try, but unfortunately the actors don’t mature, that you the are team getting paid for it; is a comfortone’s history is the collective. identified was lack of credibility when it Jammu’s Abhinav theatre earlier this month, many of them fade out.” And is her country able position that can make you complacent,” Taking a slice of this shared to“Highbuild before comes to the education sector,”history he says. travelling to Delhi’s Kasays Bhadauria. too facing the brunt of intolerthe foundation a theatre project titled Dear mani er education is aofvery large ecosystem — about Auditorium and However, building theThiruvaplatform was taking ance and censorship? “The theatChildren, thecome Stagesout Theatre Group nanthapuram’s 10,00,000Sincerely..., engineers Theatre. itsTagore own time, while they had re space has always been under from Lanka aspired to bring to light the stoeverySri year from 1.6 million engiThe project,started which is based on workshops doing offline Every scene has been the radar. It continues to be. The ries and experiences transpired neering hopefuls in that India.

There years ago, conversationsfor with citithe senior students their customer previous regime was beginning created from a but relevant today. The narrative unfolds zens, mostly public wereare also many reports floating figures and had brought ina already.

“We to crack down on journalists and conversation with an through thehow eyesonly of this history’s — start around on 25 per cent witnesses Don’t a few ordinary people, into couldn’tdelves have students or educathat few start-ups are successful — maybe influencing the artists, but one the elderly person company simplymemories, the elders of the society — at the 18th edition of their of technical graduates were emtional experiences, institutes on board with- in a 100. You should how read signs to presentknow system is to different.

Cenbecause the BharatOur Rang Mahotsav theatre festival orployable. aim was to better and reflections in order create out the to companies and vice cut losses early.

You have givehigh. it twoIt’s to five sorship was tovery no it sounds ganised by the National in a‘cool’ these statistics,” he adds. School of Drama bank of stories.

These are thenthat it was be- years… Don’t versa.

We realised start company it more likea that.

Peoplebecause are pretty New Delhi, Jammu Bhadauria teamed & upKashmir, with his and Kerala taken to young peoplequite through coming vast and we were sounds ‘cool’.” outspoken,” she says. respectively. techie friend to build a portal to storytelling and live performances. deviating from the original idea Thea decision to span call itof quits and go back to a In very short time, Dear Children, Under the guidance of director help improve connectivity be- Ruwanthie “Research that into we Dear Sincerely... hadChildren, of a product.

We Sincerely... job was a tough one, especially when he had has managed to impress the de Chickera, a cast of 15asAsian and African ar- started in April tween students as well compa2015, when we began talkingbeto ARIADNE started looking for funding spent a lottheatre of timemakers convincing everyone previ— a group of female tistes travelled to perform in India, nies. The idea started taking shape by the and end people born in the 1930swas in Sri Lanka. This re- theatre cause the scope of work increasing.

Until ously. “You start questioning yourself,of and it directors working in countries conbrought two diverse nations —the Rwanda and Sri of 2011, where they discussed possibility of markable generation, bornthat in colonial times flict then, we had the money the customer takes aand toll on you. Couple of were vepost-conflict — months and through Lanka together an international collabo- and being a—variant forfor platforms such as LinkedIn. now us, eight grew had paid butdecades then weold, putessentially in our own.

We ARIADNE, ry tough, the butproject once I is had taken a decision to now being adapted in ration of three unveiling three up “The flaw in theperformances, LinkedIn model is that anyone in parallel lines to their country.

Thethough idea of Ireland, didn’t have any companies on board, move on,Palestine, it was easier.

Everybody supported Rwanda, Burundi, Serbia, different perspectives ofprofile the past. can go and create their with whatever bringing Rwanda picture happened we had spoken to into a lot the of skill providers.

But the me UK, andthe that wasand veryBelgium. important,” adds.

DRC, Withhe nine counWhile the they first might story, want Seven to Decades information put up.Deep But naturally. had a friend there andpositive we spoke there was Ino product to showand re- tries Bhadauria stresses the importance on board, the project is all setoftocaugo compared enormous Hutu-Tutsi commu- about we wantedthe to make a model where informacommon sponsesthe were hard to histories come by.”of both coun- global. tion and meticulous planning as opposed to nity Rwanda with the Tamil-Sinhala tion conflict could beinauthenticated.”

The duo’s initial tries. scene has been createdand from con- enthusiasm

By Every the end of 2013, Bhadauria hisapartwhen in awitnessed start-up: “No Their stories areinvesting real events, by crisis Sri Lanka, and drewauncanny similariplansinincluded designing platform to en- versation with elderly person.

The idea is to real ner decided to an fade out slowly.

Things weren’t one people, should and jump into it without real comments thatsparing managea ties between exile of the Tutsi families to create hance the lifethe cycle of students from the year number of performance cominga together as short planned, and their pieces future to thought forpast the forever amountinofthe work.

Even ifofyou etch the chapters tothe movement in Lanka, sec- that they‘Sinhala join anOnly’ institute to the final year, the includwill focus on one aspecttoofachieve. history, Bhaone day. projections seemed difficult haveThe a great you to find the right past, idea, as they say,have is never truly behind ond story,they Marriage, Sex and Love introduced ing skills may need to build, depending opinion, explains dauria isone nowstory,” unsure about Chickera. whether he’d re- us; mentor, the right of people.”

There is great no matter howset hard one tries to forget, it comic by recalling thecompany traditions when it turn on therelief environment of the they seek Commenting of “I thedon’t the- claws to the life on of the an comparison entrepreneur. freedom in back. entrepreneurship.

Butis imper‘being its way And perhaps that was forbidden for a bride to be seen by a atre to join. and SriI Lanka shehappy says, ative knowscene if I’min cutIndia out for this; am quite stuckto inremember. a job’ has its own charm too. groom beforetied they and when Bhadauria up got withmarried Gurgaon-based as- “There’s huge amount ofand infrastructure in working afor a company enjoying the mazumdar is a Delhi-based journalist payel majumdar dowry wascompanies measured to in track cows.students’ The last proper- India; sessment thesecurity. industryWhat is massive very powersense of peopleand don’t realise is arunima

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merely mortal is the true protagonist of this tale. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, the story harks back to a period that evokes deep nostalgia in many Malayalis, a time when individuals were not so closely swept up in the rising tide of community identities. Many have remarked that Ennu Ninte Moideen counters the discourse of ‘love jihad’ and the freezing of community identities that deeply disempower the young today. Of course, Hindu-Muslim romances are not unknown on the Indian screen. But this story reverses narratives in which the hero who represents resistance to communalism and embodies secularism is almost always Hindu, and the heroine, who the hero must ‘rescue’, is most frequently nonHindu. Yet such analyses may be seriously mistaken, given the Hindu right-wing’s preoccupation in the present with the ‘good Muslim’ (the figure of Moideen certainly approximates to that), and its distaste of imagining an interfaith domestic scene in which thegrace MuslimAmazing Rehman has born man may be the headWaheeda of the household. neveris spent much for Therefore, for me, the movie valuable the the way in which it declarestime loveimpressing as the merger undeniable fact of her of two individual lives, impossible. simulta‘difference’Itupon us shiv kumar pushpakar of a neously gestures towards the possibility greater love enabling movement and not inerPICTURE THIS tia — love as sneham, or lubrication, two proximate surfaces in harmonious, friction-free movement relative to each other. This is love in which sexual attraction may indeed be secondary. In other words, the exact opposite of two surfaces sticking to each other. It is the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick who captures Kanchanamala’s love most accurately. In her A Dialogue on Love, she writes: “For me, what falling in love means is different. It’s a matter of suddenly, globally, “knowing” that another person represents your only f Raj Khosla had had his way, there might Conversations with Waheeda Rehman (2014) — is access time, or dances were often a melantohow somefilm vitally never have been a star called Waheeda charming and thoughtful. Rehman firmly re- getransmissible of styles, withtruth movements tailored to suit Rehman. At the meeting where the debu- fuses, as she has done all her life, to speak of theorframe. radiantly heightened Reel and realactress Kanchanamala (right) actor Parvathy who her onwith screenGuru in Ennu Ninte tante was to signwith her contract herportrayed relationship Dutt — whom she There of are several interesting accounts of mode perception, s ramesh kurupKhosla — the director of Moideen (still) with Guru Dutt Films, refers to throughout as ‘Guruduttji’, using the male Rehman (the andcolleagues’ that if you protectiveness: lose the thread of this intimCID (1956), her first Hindi film — declared that first half of his formal name, Gurudutt Padu- acy, character in theand post-Pyaasa phase, ushboth actor) your soul your whole world her name was too long. But the quiet 17-year- kone. But about almost everything else, she is might ering her and her mother out of parties where subsist forever in some desert-like state old was no pushover. “My parents have given quietly candid, turning a considered eye upon of people were likely to drink till late; Raj Kapoor ontological impoverishment.” me this name and I like it,” she answered. “I the industry as it once was. Her thefascinating end of the Teesri Kasam Also, to me,atthe presence of wawon’t change it.” Khosla, Rehman remembers, starting salary from Guru Dutt shoot rain angering anever-flowing assembled ter — as monsoon and the “got all het up” (“He was a Punjabi, you know, Productions was ₹2000 a at Bina refusing Iruvazhinji —crowd was the trulyStation poetic by element in and they can get all excited.”) When he point- month, later increased to ₹3500. to let them see Rehman, because the film. As Gaston Bachelard has remarked, An asthmatic child, ed out that ‘everyone’ had changed their “For Solva Saal, my first film as a “Why should they look a womthere is something about water thatat draws us Rehman's first guru names, from Dilip Kumar (Yusuf Khan) to Nar- freelancer, I received ₹30,000. an And anyway?”; Majto the infinite. water senior in Ennulyricist Ninte Moisaid dancing might gis (Fatima Rashid), Meena Kumari (Mahja- The highest I ever earned in my rooh Sultanpuri herpool she deen is flowing, falling — not thetelling stagnant help her lungs expand been Bano) to Madhubala (Mumtaz Jahan), career was 7 lakh for a film.” have taken a taxi alone in the bosomshouldn’t of which the dead may sleep forshe was adamant: “I am not everyone.”

One of her recurring subjects all thewhich way to Madh Rehever, or the mirror holds us Island. in thrall, ofThe name stayed. On February 3 this year, is her relationship with dance. not say in so many fering us ourman owndoes image.

It isit the flowing the bearer of the name turned 78.

She started to learn Bharatanawords,tragic but finality the safeguarding of water that imparts to the imposSixty years after CID, it is impossible to imag- tyam as a nine-year-old in Rajahmundry. An sibility virtue was clearly crucial to a suitable public of love-as-merger. was cinema standing by theWaheeda road at Rehman.

Tirur in traught ine Hindi without Kanchanamala attempts but persona. asthmatic child, Rehman's first suicide guru said Almost all her No wonder that she mentions clings to of hiscostumes, memory north self-possessed Kerala one morning, a Moideen’s The innate quality thatwhen helped mother embraces her; expand, she findsand life even dancing might help her lungs for instance, haveoftotime do flows with not as the river by. Iwearing do not friendly-looking taxi driver approached her resist a filmi naamkaran also gave her the again, animated by his memory,the anddance devoted her mother “started regarding les- know something inappropriately revealing. experiif the real-life Kanchanamala me. “Just 25 kmhappily from here,” he more said. to confidence to venture into roles serving theof poor in Mukkam.

The real-life sons as a kind treatment”.

Her father, a gov- enced Female asdid! close friends. suchcolleagues love, but I appear hope she “Want go see Kanchanamala?”

Hefrom. was refertimid to heroines might have run She Kanchanamala continues to live in Mukkam ernment employee, not only disregarded the Nargis is seen in several of her photoAt Tirur, I was struck by thepersonal taxi-driver’s asring to to Kerala’s Kanchanamala, whose starting story of and seems have had no compunctions her home now buzzes with criticism of relatives who felt dance was not graphs, including a remarkable one with her sumption of the shared knowlundying is now mainly awe-struck out as a love vamp (CID’sa legend Kaminiofissorts, the villain's visitors. an appropriate activity for Muslim girls, but in and Sunil Dutt at the Berlin Film festival, 1973, edge of Kanchanamala, but what because of Ennu the wildly-sucmoll, though sheNinte has aMoideen, change of heart), or lat- fact There can be little encouraged the doubt young that Rehman and her beaming as they sit on either Satyajit rushed into my side mindofwas his cessful Malayalam film of based on in it. The tale—ofa it er, accepting the role Rosie Guide is the violence of the sister Sayeeda to take thepresent stage at for an official Ray — the same Ray Nargis criticised in 1980 as choice of words: ‘see’ rather than She Cfinds again,grown star-crossed timeless.

Buthusband at a timefor of that woman wholovers leavesis her neglectful has endowed film with General function in honourthe of Governor Ra- life having famous by showcasing ‘meet’.

In order to becomeIndia’s saleaanimated poverty by his to the Hindu right-wing this film, another man and ascendancy, a life as a dancer, andbased later such great healing power for so jagopalachari, just after Indian independence. world.

In more recent ble, Kanchanamala’s loveholiday must memory, devotedwe be on the the tragic real-life of lovethe and longing leaves lover too —story or playing mother of many cine-goers. canfilms onewere Rehman’s recallHow of how made inandpictures, seereduced the oft-discussed Bollywood to ‘romance’.

Only poor in which between young Hindu woman, Amitabh aBachchan in Trishul (1978)Kanchanawhen she forget thatespecially the viciously divisive to serving her time, of song-picturisations, is the girl gang sadly lost two the members thenhas may she become object mala, Moideen, son just of a two powerful playedand his BP wife in Kabhiethe Kabhie years talk of ‘love jihad’, which accussharp: the innovative tracks created for Mukkam the since the book’s release Parekh, Sadhaattached to—it,Asha an emblem, a talisMuslim elder in remarkable the village ofthat Mukkam Koz- es earlier. (It’s also in bothinthese youngtoMuslim of luring camera film themen circular shot at the end of na, Shammi, man.

Helen, Nanda and Waheeda Worse, the waters of theRehIruhikode, particularly fascinating films, herproved characters are unwed mothers.) for away young Hindu origher famous ‘snake women, dance’ in Guide, or the re- man herself. vazhinji are being carried away Malayalis.

Kanchanamala are inated Yet the reticent actor has and neverMoideen spent much the Kerala ofkaour shoot ofinthe ‘Chaudhvin Chand’ song in Kabir’s book-length interview by visitors in bottles assuggests souveseparated from each but theyfact resist time impressing theother, undeniable offamher times?

Ennutechnology, Ninte Moideen in-which she had many possible new colour during conversations.

It nirs!follow-up Alas, do these foolish souls ily and community for decades. ‘difference’ upon us. pressures The documentary film- stead a tale of passion in bucket which pasto dipoffers chamois leather in an—ice and realise would that be a they joy ifwill Rehman persuaded to see inwere the trapped water When decide toMunni leave the village makerthey and finally writer Nasreen Kabir took sion in the thestudio boundless dab it lies on herprecisely face to keep lights not havelove them. but their own images, stilled forever? together, the rivertotakes him. Moideen drowns nearly a decade persuade her to be inter- determination with which from burning her skin.

She the alsolovers makesaffirm strikdevikagupta is a historian andand critic based in in Delhi; is a writer critic based in the Iruvazhinji river asks in ano canoe accident, viewed.

Although Kabir tough or criti- their undying need for each other.

The iming general observations: the fact that male ac- jtrisha t@chhotahazri while trying to save co-passengers.

The discal questions, thehisbook that resulted — mense agency thatrequired love cantoconfer the Thiruvananthapuram tors weren’t really danceon in her

In her own name

Waheeda Rehman turned 78 this month. Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book-length interview is a treat for fans of the veteran actress

trisha gupta

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Life after film The immense agency that love can confer on the merely mortal is the true protagonist in the tale of Kanchanamala and Moideen

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Love in Koovagam The third gender comes to this Tamil Nadu village to marry a Pandava

Bride of Aravan A priest at the Koothandavar Temple ties the symbolic thali (mangalsutra)

K

oovagam, a village 30 km from Villupuram in Tamil Nadu, owes much to the Pandava prince Aravan. Son of Arjun and Manipuri princess Chitrangada, Aravan is the presiding deity of the Koothandavar Temple in Koovagam. At the battlefield of Kurukshetra, a prophecy spelt defeat for the Pandavas unless a perfect male was sacrificed. Aravan offered to die on one condition — that he be granted a night as a married man. When no king agreed to part with their daughter to a dying man, Lord Krishna fulfilled Aravan’s wish by assuming the female form.

For 18 days in April-May every year, transvestites and transgenders from across India celebrate the sacrifice of the unsung prince.

However, some reports suggest that the number of attendees has dipped in the last five years due to incidents of sexual abuse.

The first 16 days are spent in merrymaking.

Community kitchens pepper the alleys around the temple. In recent years, plays on AIDS awareness have been staged, along with music and dance recitals. On the 17th day of the festival, devotees offer themselves as brides to Aravan. They wear colourful bangles and tie thalis (mangalsutra) around the neck.

The festival concludes with the widowing of these brides, who then mourn the death of Aravan by breaking their bangles and thalis. kr sunil, based in Kodangallur, is an artist and photographer

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Looking for love Koovagam is a place where many come in search of partners

The more the merrier Song and dance is one of the highlights of the festival

One for all The devotees of Aravan are from various age groups

Ready for the act A bride-to-be awaits her turn

The end of an affair The symbolic widowing a day after the wedding

The family that eats together A kitchen in the compound of a house near the temple

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Mining collective history Life after dreams A Lankan playa start-up delves into theout common, past of two very at It’sSri tough when runs of steamconflicted and funds.

Returning to andifferent old job isnations tougher. the of theJayant BharatBhadauria Rang Mahotsav But 18th that’sedition what taught the importance of caution

Give it a shot What people don’t realise is that few start-ups are successful— Jayant Bhadauria (below)

bloomberg & grn somashekar

“I C

quit my job in early 2012.” Jayant gress independently, depending upon the Bhadauria cannot be identified courses they enrolled for, advising them War footing A still from play Dear Children, directed by Ruwanthie de Chickera s thyagrajan among the the start-up kids of theSincerely..., dot- through the final year via the(right) platform, on com bubble, passing out of MBA what project or internship would add to their straight into their own funded start-up. An en- portfolio. Bhadauria contacted former colonflict doesn’t race or region. gineering graduate from know NIT Allahabad, Bha- formance, Upside-down Landfor returned to re- ful. India is what Sri Lanka can aspire to be in leagues to create a wireframe the company.

The nature of warinis such that it mind dauria did an MBA marketing of found the a horror bloody They even customerofwhothe brought in terms of support, training and infrastructure. spares one. Cities burn, people management, andno worked for over 10 years in insurrections 4,000 studentsand for sustained Collabgridcommunal to mentor. riots Sri Lanka has very good talent, but the indusdie, sector and that is how the pages the education before jumping ship. of “I that scarred both countries “I quit my job after we got for thelife. first customer try is very weak. Plenty of young people take to history are made. awayselling from and was working withCountries Adobe at miles the time, Dear Children, Sincerely... madeHaving its debut at theatre, but they burn out soon because the invested in an office space. a cuseach other a common suffering; people software to share educational institutes and the gov- the Ubumumtu in Kigali, tomer at such anArts earlyFestival stage was both aRwanbless- industry cannot sustain them; there’s not with diverse identify with each ernment whenskin I gotcolour the idea for Collabgrid.

I’d da, in July 2015;Once the project later travelledyou to enough money to pay the actors for their ing and a curse. you have a customer, other’s forissues everyin nation has endured discuss pain, various this industry with a Colombo for itsthe second show in already Januaryknow 2016. training. It’s a very vibrant and young indusstart building product; you similar pattern of and war, the and biggest therefore, everychildhood friend, issue we In India, performed toita full-house in try, but unfortunately the actors don’t mature, that you the are team getting paid for it; is a comfortone’s history collective. identified wasis the lack of credibility when it Jammu’s Abhinav theatre earlier this month, many of them fade out.” And is her country able position that can make you complacent,” Taking a slice of this shared build before comes to the education sector,”history he says.to“Hightravelling to Delhi’s Kasays Bhadauria. too facing the brunt of intolerthe foundation a theatre project titled Dear mani er education is aofvery large ecosystem — about Auditorium and However, building theThiruvaplatform was taking ance and censorship? “The theatChildren, thecome Stagesout Theatre Group nanthapuram’s 10,00,000Sincerely..., engineers Theatre. its Tagore own time, while they had re space has always been under from Lanka aspired to bring to light the stoeverySri year from 1.6 million engiThe project,started which doing is based on workshops offline Every scene has been the radar. It continues to be. The ries and experiences transpired neering hopefuls in that India.

There years ago, conversationsfor with citithe senior students their customer previous regime was beginning created from a but relevant today. The narrative unfolds zens, mostly public wereare also many reports floating figures and had brought in a already.

“We to crack down on journalists and conversation with an through thehow eyesonly of this history’s — start around on 25 per cent witnesses Don’t few a ordinary people, into couldn’tdelves have students or educathat few start-ups are successful — maybe influencing the artists, but one the elderly person company simplymemories, the elders of the society were — at the 18th edition of their of technical graduates emtional experiences, institutes on board with- in a 100. You should how read signs to presentknow system isto different.

Cenbecause the BharatOur Rang Mahotsav theatre festival orployable. aim was to better and reflections in order to create out the companies and vice cut losses early.

You have givehigh. it twoIt’s to five sorship was tovery no it sounds ganised by the National in a‘cool’ these statistics,” he adds. School of Drama bank of stories.

These are thenthat it was be- years… Don’t versa.

We realised start company it more likea that.

Peoplebecause are pretty New Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Bhadauria teamed up with his and Kerala taken to young peoplequite through coming vast and we were sounds ‘cool’.” outspoken,” she says. respectively. techie friend to build a portal to storytelling and live performances. deviating from the original idea Thea decision to span call itof quits and go back to a In very short time, Dear Children, Under the guidance of director help improve connectivity be- Ruwanthie “Research that into we Dear Sincerely... hadChildren, of a product.

We Sincerely... job was a tough one, especially when he had has managed to impress the de Chickera, a cast of 15asAsian and African ar- started in April tween students as well compa2015, when we began talkingbeto ARIADNE started looking for funding spent a lottheatre of timemakers convincing everyone previ— a group of female tistes travelled to perform in India, nies. The idea started taking shape by the and end people born in the 1930swas in Sri Lanka. This re- theatre cause the scope of work increasing.

Until ously. “You start questioning yourself, of and it directors working in countries conbrought two diverse nations —the Rwanda and Sri of 2011, where they discussed possibility of markable generation, bornthat in colonial times flict then, we had the money the customer takes aand toll on you. Couple of were vepost-conflict — months and through Lanka together an international collabo- and being a—variant forfor platforms such as LinkedIn. now us, eight grew had paid butdecades then weold, putessentially in our own.

We ARIADNE, ry tough, the but project once I had taken a decision is now being adapted to in ration of three unveiling three up “The flaw in theperformances, LinkedIn model is that anyone in parallel lines to their country.

Thethough idea of Ireland, didn’t have any companies on board, move on,Palestine, it was easier.

Everybody supported Rwanda, Burundi, Serbia, different perspectives the past. can go and create theirofprofile with whatever bringing Rwanda picture happened we had spoken to into a lot the of skill providers.

But the me and thatDRC, wasand veryBelgium. important,” adds.

UK, the Withhe nine counWhile the they first might story, want Seven to Decades information put up.Deep But naturally.

I had a friend there andpositive we spoke there was no product to showand re- tries Bhadauria stresses the importance on board, the project is all setoftocaugo compared enormous Hutu-Tutsi commu- about we wantedthe to make a model where informacommon sponsesthe were hard to histories come by.”of both coun- global. tion and meticulous planning as opposed to nity Rwanda with the tion conflict could beinauthenticated.”

TheTamil-Sinhala duo’s initial tries.

Every scene has been created from con- enthusiasm By the end of 2013, Bhadauria and hisapartwhen in awitnessed start-up: “No Their stories areinvesting real events, by crisis Sri Lanka, and drewauncanny similariplans in included designing platform to en- versation with elderly person.

The idea is to real ner decided to an fade out slowly.

Things weren’t one people, should and jump into it without real comments thatsparing managea ties between exile of the Tutsi families to create hance the lifethe cycle of students from the year number of performance pieces to cominga together as short planned, and their future thought forpast the amount ofthe work.

Even ifofyou etch the forever in chapters tothe movement in Lanka, sec- that they‘Sinhala join anOnly’ institute to the final year, the includwill focus on one aspecttoofachieve. history, Bhaone day. projections seemed difficult haveThe a great you to find the right past, idea, as they say,have is never truly behind ond story,they Marriage, Sex and Love introduced ing skills may need to build, depending opinion, explains dauria is one nowstory,” unsure about Chickera. whether he’d re- us; mentor, the right of people.”

There is great no matter howset hard one tries to forget, it comic by recalling thecompany traditions when it turn on the relief environment of the they seek Commenting comparison of “I thedon’t the- claws to the life on of the an entrepreneur. freedom in back. entrepreneurship.

Butis imper‘being its way And perhaps that was forbidden for a bride to be seen by a atre to join. and SriI Lanka shehappy says, ative knowscene if I’min cutIndia out for this; am quite stuckto inremember. a job’ has its own charm too. groom beforetied they and when Bhadauria up got withmarried Gurgaon-based as- “There’s huge amount ofand infrastructure in working afor a company enjoying the mazumdar is a Delhi-based journalist payel majumdar dowry wascompanies measuredto intrack cows.students’ The last proper- India; sessment thesecurity. industryWhat is massive very powersense of peopleand don’t realise is arunima

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merely mortal is the true protagonist of this tale. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, the story harks back to a period that evokes deep nostalgia in many Malayalis, a time when individuals were not so closely swept up in the rising tide of community identities. Many have remarked that Ennu Ninte Moideen counters the discourse of ‘love jihad’ and the freezing of community identities that deeply disempower the young today. Of course, Hindu-Muslim romances are not unknown on the Indian screen. But this story reverses narratives in which the hero who represents resistance to communalism and embodies secularism is almost always Hindu, and the heroine, who the hero must ‘rescue’, is most frequently nonHindu. Yet such analyses may be seriously mistaken, given the Hindu right-wing’s preoccupation in the present with the ‘good Muslim’ (the figure of Moideen certainly approximates to that), and its distaste of imagining an interfaith domestic scene in which thegrace MuslimAmazing Rehman has born man may be the headWaheeda of the household. neveris spent much for Therefore, for me, the movie valuable the the way in which it declarestime loveimpressing as the merger undeniable fact of her of two individual lives, impossible. simulta‘difference’Itupon us shiv kumar pushpakar of a neously gestures towards the possibility greater love enabling movement and not inerPICTURE THIS tia — love as sneham, or lubrication, two proximate surfaces in harmonious, friction-free movement relative to each other. This is love in which sexual attraction may indeed be secondary. In other words, the exact opposite of two surfaces sticking to each other. It is the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick who captures Kanchanamala’s love most accurately. In her A Dialogue on Love, she writes: “For me, what falling in love means is different. It’s a matter of suddenly, globally, “knowing” that another person represents your only f Raj Khosla had had his way, there might Conversations with Waheeda Rehman (2014) — is access time, or dances were often a melantohow somefilm vitally never have been a star called Waheeda charming and thoughtful. Rehman firmly re- getransmissible of styles, withtruth movements tailored to suit Rehman. At the meeting where the debu- fuses, as she has done all her life, to speak of theorframe. radiantly heightened Reel and realactress Kanchanamala (right) Parvathy who her onwith screen in Ennu Ninte tante was to signwith heractor contract herportrayed relationship Guru Dutt — whom she There of areperception, several interesting accounts of mode s ramesh kurupKhosla — the director of Moideen (still) with Guru Dutt Films, refers to throughout as ‘Guruduttji’, using the male (the andcolleagues’ that if you protectiveness: lose the thread Rehman of this intimCID (1956), her first Hindi film — declared that first half of his formal name, Gurudutt Padu- acy, character in theand post-Pyaasa phase, ushboth actor) your soul your whole world her name was too long. But the quiet 17-year- kone. But about almost everything else, she is might ering her and her mother out of parties where subsist forever in some desert-like state old was no pushover. “My parents have given quietly candid, turning a considered eye upon of people were likely to drink till late; Raj Kapoor ontological impoverishment.” me this name and I like it,” she answered. “I the industry as it once was. Her thefascinating end of the Teesri Kasam Also, to me,atthe presence of wawon’t change it.” Khosla, Rehman remembers, starting salary from Guru Dutt shoot rain angering anever-flowing assembled ter — as monsoon and the “got all het up” (“He was a Punjabi, you know, Productions was ₹2000 a at Bina refusing Iruvazhinji —crowd was the trulyStation poetic by element in and they can get all excited.”) When he point- month, later increased to ₹3500. to let them see Rehman, because the film. As Gaston Bachelard has remarked, An asthmatic child, ed out that ‘everyone’ had changed their “For Solva Saal, my first film as a “Why should they look a womthere is something about water thatat draws us Rehman's first guru names, from Dilip Kumar (Yusuf Khan) to Nar- freelancer, I received ₹30,000. an And anyway?”; to the infinite. water senior in Ennulyricist Ninte MajMoisaid dancing might gis (Fatima Rashid), Meena Kumari (Mahja- The highest I ever earned in my rooh Sultanpuri herpool she deen is flowing, falling — not thetelling stagnant help her lungs expand been Bano) to Madhubala (Mumtaz Jahan), career was 7 lakh for a film.” have taken a taxi alone in the bosomshouldn’t of which the dead may sleep forshe was adamant: “I am not everyone.”

One of her recurring subjects all thewhich way to Madh Rehever, or the mirror holds us Island. in thrall, ofThe name stayed. On February 3 this year, is her relationship with dance. man does not say in so many fering us our own image.

It isit the flowing the bearer of the name turned 78.

She started to learn Bharatanawords,tragic but the safeguarding of water that imparts finality to the imposSixty years after CID, it is impossible to imag- tyam as a nine-year-old in Rajahmundry. An sibility virtue was clearly crucial to a suitable public of love-as-merger. was cinema standing by theWaheeda road at Rehman.

Tirur in traught ine Hindi without Kanchanamala attempts but persona. asthmatic child, Rehman's first suicide guru said Almost all her No wonder that she mentions clings to of hiscostumes, memory north self-possessed Kerala one morning, The innate quality thatwhen helpeda Moideen’s mother embraces her; expand, she findsand life even dancing might help her lungs for instance, haveoftotime do with as the river flows not by. Iwearing do not friendly-looking taxi driver approached her resist a filmi naamkaran also gave her the again, animated by his memory,the and devoted her mother “started regarding dance les- know something inappropriately revealing. experiif the real-life Kanchanamala me. “Just 25 kmhappily from here,” he more said. to confidence to venture into roles serving theofpoor in Mukkam.

The real-life sons as a kind treatment”.

Her father, a gov- enced Female asdid! close friends. suchcolleagues love, but I appear hope she “Want go see Kanchanamala?”

Hefrom. was refertimid to heroines might have run She Kanchanamala continues to live in Mukkam ernment employee, not only disregarded the Nargis is seen in several photoAt Tirur, I was struck of byher thepersonal taxi-driver’s asring toto Kerala’s Kanchanamala, whosestarting story of and seems have had no compunctions her home now buzzes with criticism of relatives who felt dance was not graphs, including a remarkable one with her sumption of the shared knowlundying is now mainly awe-struck out as a love vamp (CID’sa legend Kaminiofissorts, the villain's visitors. an appropriate activity for Muslim girls, but in and Sunil Dutt at the Berlin Film festival, 1973, edge of Kanchanamala, but what because of Ennu wildly-sucmoll, though sheNinte has aMoideen, change ofthe heart), or lat- fact There can be little doubt that encouraged the young Rehman and her beaming as they sit on either Satyajit rushed into my side mindof was his cessful Malayalam film of based on in it. The tale—ofa it er, accepting the role Rosie Guide is the violence of the sister Sayeeda to take the present stage at for an official Ray — the same Ray Nargis criticised in 1980 as choice of words: ‘see’ rather than She Cfinds again,grown star-crossed timeless.

Buthusband at a timefor of that woman wholovers leaves is her neglectful has endowed film with General function in honourthe of Governor Ra- life having famous by showcasing ‘meet’.

In order to becomeIndia’s saleaanimated poverty by his to the Hindu this film, anotherright-wing man and ascendancy, a life as a dancer, andbased later such great healing power for so jagopalachari, just after Indian independence. world.

In more recent holiday ble, Kanchanamala’s love must memory, devotedwe be on thethe tragic real-life of love and longing leaves lover too —story or playing the mother of many cine-goers. canfilms onewere Rehman’s recallHow of how made inandpictures, see reduced the oft-discussed Bollywood to ‘romance’.

Only poor in which between a young Hindu woman, Amitabh Bachchan in Trishul (1978)Kanchanawhen she forget thatespecially the viciously divisive to serving her time, of song-picturisations, is the girl gang sadly lost two the members thenhas may she become object mala, BP Moideen, son just of a two powerful playedand his wife in Kabhiethe Kabhie years talk of ‘love jihad’, which accussharp: the innovative tracks created for Mukkam the since the book’s release Parekh, Sadhaattached to—it,Asha an emblem, a talisMuslim elder in remarkable the village ofthat Mukkam Koz- es earlier. (It’s also in bothinthese youngtoMuslim of luring camera film themen circular shot at the end of na, Shammi, man.

Helen,Worse, Nanda and Waheeda the waters of theRehIruhikode, particularly fascinating films, herproved characters are unwed mothers.) for away young Hindu her famous ‘snake women, dance’ inorigGuide, or the re- man herself. vazhinji are being carried away Malayalis.

Kanchanamala are inated Yet the reticent actor has and neverMoideen spent much Kerala ofkaour shoot ofinthethe ‘Chaudhvin Chand’ song in Kabir’s book-length interview suggests by visitors in bottles as souveseparated from each but theyfact resist time impressing theother, undeniable offamher times?

Ennutechnology, Ninte Moideen in-which she had many possible new colour during conversations.

It nirs!follow-up Alas, do these foolish souls ily and community pressures for decades. ‘difference’ upon us. The documentary film- stead a tale of passion inbucket which pasto dipoffers chamois leather in an—ice and realise would be a they joy ifwill Rehman persuaded to that see inwere the trapped water When finally Nasreen decide toMunni leave Kabir the village maker they and writer took sion in the thestudio boundless dab it lies on herprecisely face to keep lights not havelove them. but their own images, stilled forever? together, the rivertotakes him. Moideen drowns nearly a decade persuade her to be inter- determination with which from burning her skin.

She the alsolovers makesaffirm strikdevikagupta is a historian andand critic based in in Delhi; is a writer critic based in the Iruvazhinji riverasks in ano canoe accident, viewed.

Although Kabir tough or criti- their undying need for each other.

The iming general observations: the fact that male ac- jtrisha t@chhotahazri while trying to save co-passengers.

The discal questions, thehis book that resulted — mense agency thatrequired love cantoconfer the Thiruvananthapuram tors weren’t really dance on in her

In her own name

Waheeda Rehman turned 78 this month. Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book-length interview is a treat for fans of the veteran actress

trisha gupta

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Life after film The immense agency that love can confer on the merely mortal is the true protagonist in the tale of Kanchanamala and Moideen

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Life after oblivion The life and times of an Indian Mr Chips

In his fast-disintegrating brain, relationships and realities do not matter. A wife’s account of turning caregiver to her spouse affected by dementia

stress, especially there are substantial Dev Lahiri’s memoir is an engaging and revelatory book that chronicles thewhen challenges of monthly medical costs. running an educational institution in India Our family was luckier than most in that, we

faced no unexpected bereavement or illness or tragic events. So it was a shock to realise This should haveago, been the ending: around 10-12 years that myhappy husband was the marathoner finds his destination, the experiencing irrational memory lapses, and drifter discovers hisaccount calling,for lives fulfilling crucially, unable to theamoney he life, shapes pupils, buildstransboys spent.

And remarkable so gradually, dementia and girlsme of into character, writesand a real-life, Indian formed a caregiver home nurse.

MrDementia Chips. Allisthe whileanhis college mates indeed implacable foe asare it struggling the so-called ‘realmakes world’, survivrelentlesslyin attacks the victim, him lose ing minefield and of the corporate or his the individuality leaves him asector, shallow perhaps theformer civil services. each of them shell of his self. It is aYet, progressively dehad been prepared for causing his profession: at an agenerative condition memory loss, cademy in Mussoorie, a management school personality changes and erratic behaviour.

In wherever.

As Lahiri the book, has nothing my husband’s case,says theincondition proin Indiathrough preparesseveral you tostages be the head ofhea gressed — initially, school, especially a residential school, indicatwas prone to violence, was aggressive and aring a huge gap in the country at bathe a timewould when gumentative, even asking him to more andhim. more schools being set up. provoke Now, he isare much more passive, The unlikely challenges of cooperative. a humble, idealcalmer and thankfully, more But istic who hasout justdaily got his firstlike break as he is teacher unable to carry habits baththe of a school canhaving be summarised by the ing,head cleaning oneself, a shave and so reception awaited 1991.aAs he aron. A malethat nurse comesLahiri homein thrice week to rived in Delhi final job interview, the help, but one for hasthe to anticipate basic needs. education secretary ofdisInThough still active atof 85,the he government is increasingly dia told him, “Young man, be very honoriented, unpredictable in let hisme behaviour, and est.

Although I also am the Chairman, I would not unfortunately, prone to mindlessly eating wish this he school its preanything sees.(Lawrence He has also,School) in theseinpast five sent on my worst thrice. enemy. You may just years,state gone missing Miraculously find it too hot to handle enough, we managed to …” find him each and evshutterstock upone theofchallenge.

Thechallenges contours eryLahiri time. took That is the greatest became soonwith enough.

The faculty in caringapparent for a person dementia — they n arranged marriage is quite often a Our firstborn arrived after just two years, was factionalised, along Malayalee and Tamil are prone to wandering.

I, therefore, have to coming together of contrasts. Take the next one took her own sweet time — nine lines.

Indiscipline among the students was be alert and ensure that our front gate is almy case — my spouse and I were years to be precise, but she arrived on the most a cherished art form, with “scooters and ways locked.

Statutory warning When Dev Lahiri applied for the position of headmaster Lawrencebackgrounds.

School, LovedaleI(above), was told Chairman: “Although I am the em- cars from at different was he same daybyasthe her elder sister!

Sons-in-law (…) frequently particularly if Through much ofvandalised, our married life, my husChairman, I would not wish this school in its present state on my worst to enemy. find it too to handle.” supposed be a You citymay girljust educated inhot then Ma- bellished the tribe over the years and toaband teacher reported an act oflawyer, indiscipline to the was a chauvinistic who would dras though my family lived in Wellington, a day, we have three fine (school)socialise authorities.” with his fellow professionals forbut an the cantonmentuman near existence Coonoor. is It the wasquest no city, first time hetoo. was leaving India. As he so disgrandchildren In a school of its martial traditions, andproud friends, neglecting his family. idyll. Of course, each of us defines pretty cosmopolitan in its denizens and their armingly his family had been too the biggest challenge The oneconfesses, person who rewas bullying, which was Now because of his illness, ironiindividually andhad percepoutlook on that life. idyll Living in Kozhikode not ordinary middle-class mained and perennially un- to afford too many particularly vicious Lawrence. was the cally at enough, he isThis dependent tions vary sharply, as do human urbanised my husband, he still retained many trips, India. He arrived in Britain first battle Lahiri movedeven by within our family’s largely won. It onfought, me andand uncomplainingly beings Dev Lahiri, traits ofthemselves. the landedFor gentry, hailingthe as author he did an awkwardand young man, unsure of how to ne- was when he sought triumphs tribulaelaborate enjoysto taper my the company. of thisa slim and eminently readablewhere memoir, from tharavad (ancestral house) the gotiate themy bushusband. journey to his University. He founder’s day events tions was and parade, preparaThroughout our marriage, the idyll meant escaping the madness of left oldest male member wasfrom the karnavan (family threenoyears later asata complete product, tions for which took He did adjusting several months my husband took alland thecleardecithe corporate ratsixrace, away from thetaught hum- not head).

While my siblings and I were academically all, merely just ploughed hisbut as a social being, ly affected examination that Lahiri ranI sions inresults, the family.

Today, drum of urban the father woodsto and sanc- aeasy-going by example by life, our into doctor doa most student community furrow. leader The and a young per- into the school’sam equivalent of a religious orin sole charge of managtuary hisour own. thingsofon own, my husband’s family al- son enriched by father many girls used to say their thodoxy: thehouse, powerful ing the our alumni finances,body, and In his a heart ways hadyounger minions days, in towbefore to aid the mostcondimun- experiences. closely resembled the protagwhich had romanticised past my husband too — a rolethe reversal tion by running for miles, onist daneintervened, tasks, muchhetodid myitannoyance.

A series of jobs in India — in Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s andofLawrence School’s supposedly sorts. becoming a marathoner and cross-country Our life together began in a small dwelling; in companies as far apart as(The classic movie Elippathayam “manly” rigour.

It did come as a shock to me, to practitioner of some andtitle coming to see OUP it hardly deserved therepute dignified of ‘house’. and who Hindustan Rat-Trap), is very Lever feudal—and Lahiri ran into the An illustrious group can realise we hadalumni spent no less than long-distance running, asofagraceful “meditative, al- was It was set in a compound coconut not enough seduce Lamedieval in histooutlook.

Para-school's equivalent of become a school’s calling card. At 50 years together as husband Togetherness is aboutLawrence, orthodoxy: most exercise”.

Whiletothe theme palmsspiritual and blessed by a shrine Lord Shiva of at hiri away my from that ethereal doxically, husband’s no-non-a religious to The Lahiri’s mind,on it Debeand wife. occasion the routine powerful alumniof a came sport, especially running and horse riding, the entrance.

It seems incredible now that is wea calm he felt in when the I theliving sense that attitude didonly help a tether let the cember 30that lastrefused year, to however, humdrum day, body constant throughout rich water, life, there are middle had no electricity, orhis piped or teleof a long run,ofordepresthe experienced a bout institution evolve withfor thehim. times held no significance He ignoring the moods, four distinct phases that shape himyou.

— a Today, child- magic phone — the basic essentials, mind of those three years in desion following my mother’s andiscome termscapable with newofmodes no to longer such With a Little Help the irascibility and from My Friends hood as the have son oftoa add proud and upstanding ar- Oxford. one would television, computer, He awaited his callmise. There was no unnecessary andthought. methodsBut of pedagogy and sensithen, togetherness Dev Lahiri unpredictability my officer, in the cocoon of a cantonment; St fridge, washing machine and mixer-grinder ing, and found it one day sympathising, which would tive rearing of children.

The result is about living the routine of a Rupa Publications Stephen’s in the 1970s, did his not firstadorn expo- while to that list,College but these gadgets walkingthe inside the in have increased wallowing washumdrum a formidable against day,coalition ignoring the Non-fiction ₹295 sure to a big city;And Oxford where he Doon the homestead! yet IUniversity, did not find life imSchool campus with his wife. This is Lahiri, shattering misery! his idyll, and leavingand himunin moods, the irascibility realised the first it wasstudio possible possible.for One did nottime needthat a fitness or where be. beings Ourshe is awanted tale of to human a determinedpredictability. struggle for hisTogetherness, ‘Izzat aur Iqbal’.as for white and—brown, and blackfrom for that gymnasium drawing water the matwell with Lahiri did what only a few all their weaknesses andbig-city foibles.dwellers I admit theThe strugglewedding took a lotsacrament out of him,puts but evenChristian it so ter, men and women every keptindeed one spry and active.

Andoffor extracolour exer- of hismy generation would an — migrate hill tually that husband lacked interest to in ahard his honour was vindicated. beautifully, is also about being thereMr forChips each and type,perform to become friends; and finalcise, ethnic one could graceful aerobics on town becomewe a teacher andany later, head of work.and Therefore, never had savings to said goodbyes and his own otherhis — in sickness — and in on health, goodterms. times ly, boarding school in India, last re- aspeak thethe sawdust stoves.

Sawdust had tothe be packed boarding From Doon he moved of. Yet, school. today, we are not dependent on This book is the headmaster’s valediction. and bad. doubt another outsideofthe stove age. and a funnel created in the south to Lawrence School, Lovedale, later, our daughters because I enjoy a goodand pension fellow at the retired Observer Research radha malik s nair isis senior a Kozhikode-based professor LahiriProducing made it tosuch Oxford in the mid-’70s on after centre. a marvel was indeed a shortHaving stint in back income to Dehraas a retiree. anKolkata, independent in ashok of English the strengthbusiness. of a Rhodes Scholarship. It was dun, an intricate Welham Boys. reduces a great deal of Foundation one’sat old age definitely

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A city ignored by Kolkata and Calcutta Kunal Basu’s new novel confronts the dehumanising of the immigrant and its implications for Kolkata, that prince among paranoiac cities multiply marginalised as poor, Muslim, and a Bihari immigrant — staring at the dark underbelly of Bengali respectability, especially of its affluent, cocktail-sipping society in Alipore. It is also about female lust, something that this society, or for that matter, its liberal avatar in the ‘bhadramahila’ tradition would be too squeamish to own up to in public. But Jami knows all about this lust as he feeds it daily, forming memorable friendships as well as odd and disturbing relationships on the way.

A seasoned novelist working at the height of his powers, Basu has created a real and enTo the finishing line Youngsters at the Indian Track Club; (below) Karan Singh, the founder grossing world populated with rich characters. These are characters which are, to use EM Forster’s influential formulation, round — with multiple dimensions just like people in real life, capable of unpredictable, idiosyncratic behaviour. Sometimes the best way of creating such characters is to build them atop recognisable social types, giving them little unexpected twirls and twists. Such is the young Bengali intellectual Ani, Jami’s smoking buddy at his first workplace (a somewhat shady travel agency) and unexpectedly, his genuine friend. The loud and lyrical Monica Goswami, straight out of the world of ShanInvisible entities Kalkatta will be treasured as a moving and vivid story of a world that not only the Bengali, but the urban bourgeoisie in general, has not even bothered to y name is Kagame, it was time to do some serious thinking juries of my career.

While preparing forsinisthe kar’s Chowringhee with a sharper, more look at arunangsu roy chowdhury ran Singh, and about my future in cricket.

National Open twist, Championship Kolkata in ter 21st-century is the first,inand in some hile I was reading so- ta,’Somewhere thisKalkatta, is my story. such as thebetween impoverished Bihari migrant recovering from these 2011, I stepped on a broken piece the track senses, the arch-client whom Jamiofpleasures, cial media pulled up a isblog Sports in injuries who is easily elided in the conception of the and my dream of playing cricket for where mywith righthis heel took a battering also initially massaging hands and andI very post the cover design my about blood thanks to my par- India, city; just as easily ‘Kalkatta’ leftto out of the ended I started to as run, run andisrun become up with gradebody. threeAnd groin tear.there As dessoon, with his aentire then is ofents thewho novel.

It was an outexcelled in them at fit, polemic between andfor ‘Kolkata.’ so much so that‘Calcutta’ I would run an hourThis ev- tiny would have it, moved to Eugeneofinfresh the the key character of IMandira, a breath burst of toxic anger thatand went on to list “4 reaschool national levels.

It ery is a figure whose humanity is easily missedand by summer morning before leaving for college that conevening of air2011. in aDespite bitter the andinjuries claustrophobic sons why this isbecame the worst a book way cover of lifeever in and my rush the more comfortably members of tinued home early so I ensconced could go to the local hamper complete I persistworld, to Jami’s Banalata Senrecovery, — if indeed he an insult to the city of Kolkata.” I was in- tracks growing years. the city.or playgrounds. During every run I ed with my training. performance started thought like those My “cultured” Bengalis he trigued, not only because was halfway Like most kidsIgrowing up in would Is this representation moral? it is notI to think of Prefontaine and Surely imagine that improve but it never the runs level ICalassometimes thinks reallyreached owns and through thethe novel andI was due towith talk was ’90s, wassoon obsessed meant to be normative running for India. — that the poor Mus- pired fact that Isuffering could notfrom be the best cutta. to.

HerThe son, Pablo, leukaeabout it in cricket. public, but also because I had fol- limI was I represented Delhi at the Bihari city should be haunts so immigrant determinedintothe become a runner me even today.

I knew I had muchhe in mia, drives Jami to become the so person lowed thejunior worklevels of thethrough illustrator, PinakiRunDe, that, my teens. read as dog; but depressingly empiriat athe age of rather, 18, I found a coach in Delhi me but my just could bear it. novel. becomes forbody the crucial, lastnot third of the for several years I’m yet to see a cover by ning andnow. jumping came naturally to and cal —told thathim (s)he does end up, in for India in that I wanted to run It was after many that Iwill chose Truesuch to itsepisodes title, Kalkatta be De that has memore mesmerised — includme not onlyleft with ease than rest of three the real andLittle sick politics of econyears. did I know what was in store. a dream eventreasured bigger than India — as arunning movingfor and vivid ing, I should say,atthe one he did for first the kids school.

Despite mymy love af- My omycoach and culture, like ame doghard or a would train that upnot a running storyof of setting a world of that only the novel, fair Silverfish. was strange, then,idol to hear with It cricket, my sports was twice bitch, a forgotten and beaten day, six days a week.

As club with right bourgeoiattitude, Bengali, but the urban People don't notice the sound of abuse.

Steve Prefontaine, a middle-distance the down but threatening at my the training load increased, training and medical facilities. sie in general, has not even both-I Jami but upper-class started The author this anger, noticed on US. his body runneroffrom EugeneI in Oregon, same complained, time. Through this cover, especially afthe Indian Trackcriticism Club in ered to look at. My only Bengali women Somewhere between August blog, wasPrefontaine based in Delhi, and fromsource his last was a constant of ter De has richsurgeries. and disturbthe etched two biga ACL In only six sturemains2013 aboutwith the moral weight cannot help salivate recovering from these dents. name, wasinspiration. of north Indian descent.

Hemind was anHe was in my in aing narrative, any of true artist matter of twoasyears training In author less than threebehind years, that the throws after his flesh injuries and my gered by the half-man, creature on in whatever I did.half-dog I ran extra laps beshould far more disturbing Delhi,—I had seven stress fracthe climbed 60 young Jaminumber — and to a lessertoextent, the dream of playing the cover that him,after wasthe meant to represent foretoand cricket sessions tures than in onethemight simply fibulahave of my legs. runners (between 19 an years). rest of his family 7—and with uncricket for India, I the city. Theonly ‘sickbecause logic’ behind that I enjoyed it. symbol- This imagined the city as afrustrating kutta. was extremely A team of professionals train swerving single-mindedness.

JaKalkatta started to run ism, as he read it,My derived from the play took of ‘Kal-a because cricketing career The un-noticing the holddog, the injuriesofkept these youngsters in Delhitoand mi starts as, and remains, the Kunal Basu Picador India katta’ with ‘kutta’, dogwhen in Hindi. bigorhit I tore the ante- ing dangerous me back.and beautifully sinewy, trampled end of the novel, Gurgaon.

Studentswho are is provided the innocent abused Fiction Kalkatta, the evocative title of Kunal Basu’s rior cruciate ligament (ACL) butOnce richly alive, is to themy subject of Basu’s engag- by the worldtraining again due injuries, gear through our parthe finds himself in.

His own hu₹599 new novel, is also the name of the city Iaswas given in my right knee. in serious ing novel.

It is the story Jamshed Alam, aka manity, soaring decisions aboutofthe funership with Adidas.

In 2014, far above those who claim and to it by its Hindi-speaking residents.

While the ture standard XII and particiJami,of ancestrally fromcareer Bihar but my running hadborn in a refu- exercise power some of our had theonly opover him,students is unscathed, name-czars were fighting patedthe inCalcutta-Kolkata the long jump to geebe camp for IBihari in Bangladesh, made. movedMuslims to Apopka, Florida in portunity tothe meet Joseph,him. oneDid of Inenriched by feetSajeesh that trample Jadebate (a meaninglesscompetition one for the in bilingual school 2009 reborn — illegally of course — as an Indian in dia’s where I trained for three years in a probest runners. mi really have to be such an oppressed god?

Bengali), the city’s avatarwhere as ‘Kalkatta’ went the un- fessional I overshot what is eventually become homemedicity: DoThese setup of ato coach and his a sports kids are the creation, second chance at glory we detect, in his the social connoticed. Which is why I think outburst of cine pit.this I had my secKalkatta. of his beautiful team.Bearing Under the theirburden guidance, I slowly got that myof body me. Iwith wantthe them to science the never liberalgave Bengali guilty anger at the cover is misplaced.

Because in my my ond ACL reconbody — people but rigours upper- get body back indon’t shapenotice to takehim on the the bestof guidance and the best facilities, so aftertaste a hegemonic consciousness? eyes, the disturbing, quasi-canine, quasi-hu- of struction class cannot help af- that theBengali track. Iwomen did reasonably well salivate in Florida, dodoes not have go through whatsit I did.

Howthey then, thatto social conscience in man creature, poised on the ground, readythe to making surgery ter his flesh — Jami enters the lifemiddle of a gigolo a name for myself in the and Through them that I hope to realise the wilderness is the soul of my art?dream of snarl and pounce, is not the city. following In my mind, it long through the (apparently backdistance categories. I respectable) was invited to the making India proud. is meant to represent the most marginalised year and with Indian door ofNational a massage parlour.

Much of this Camp in Bangalore.

This bruwas saikat majumdar’s most recent book is the novel The Firebird singh is based in Delhi section of the populationtwo thatyears callsout it ‘Kalkatof the when tally honest novel about the gigolo in— karan I had two of theismost heartbreaking

Life after fall

For Karan Singh, realising that his life’s dream was not going to materialise after all was only the beginning of his journey

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the size, and the third — a real humdinger — takes up an entire line. There’s an even bigger BOOM in Book Two that falls off the edge of the page. You can practically feel the aftershocks.

When a spaceship crash-lands nearby, Todd gets to meet the sole survivor, a young girl called Viola. She is the first person he’s ever met without Noise. “I wonder what it must be like to have no Noise, to come from a place with no Noise. What does it mean? What kind of a place is it? Is it wonderful? Is it terrible?”

And then he realises, “Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.”

In Book Two, Ness makes another interesting type decision. Todd’s narrative continues in Fairfield, but the parts of the book narrated

by Viola are set in Optima — a slightly thicker, more rounded, somehow more female font.

The Mayor — the dictatorial thought-controlling villain of the piece — has thoughts, or noise, that has nothing of Viola’s gentle curves or subtle serifs: it comes in uninflected hard We shall overcome capitals that seem to brookShirshah no argument.

Heravi Of course, it’s not that unusual have sto(extremeto right) with his children ries told in different typefaces: thereand are any aditi sengupta number of books told instudents alternate voices, where each chapter is assigned a different font so you know, without thinking about it, who is speaking. Ness takes this to a new level in Book Three, where the narrative alternates between Todd, Viola and the Spackle — a member of the indigenous aliens (if that makes sense) against whom the humans are pitted.

Ness and his designer must have searched long and hard for a typeface to assign to the Spackle. Some form of letters that would convey a primitive species, yet one with its own abul, April 1992. The early summer entry to Aryana English Centre in Bhogal’s highly lated my country beyond recognition. evolved tribal society, one thatThere was sun, usually a welcome sight after Church Lane, in central Delhi. A modest white- more was tension everywhere.

Corruption and funaligned to the natural world than the months of harsh winter, brought washed room in the basement of a residential tightly damentalism was killing Afghanistan minute controlled civilized one: a type that little cheer or warmth to Shirshah building was the best that Heravi could find could by minute,” says Heravi. Theopposite urge to help the stand as diametrically the MayHeravi. The constant shelling by Mujahideen within his budget. Contributions from friends or’s country get back on its feet prompted regimented capitalisations.

TheyHeravi manfighters hammered the young undergradu- and former colleagues helped him buy chairs aged to join with various international bod— hands but only just. ate’s nerves as he headed for the university ev- along with writing pads, a printer, writing iesUsing and ministries. work took him farfancy fontsHis or unorthodox typetosizes ery morning. The radio and the television boards and spoken English guides. flung areas while his familyemployed settled down or formatting is frequently as a into lazy added to the unease, relaying news of the civil “I pay ₹15,000 in rent for this room, but shortcut. a modernIt’s housing complex the airport the reason mostnear publishers stipwar from other Afghan provinces. Son of a mil- even that becomes difficult when the students ulate in Kabul. standard formatting for authors to subitary officer who served under the ousted Pres- can’t pay the tuition fee, which is only ₹500,” mit Intheir late work.

2012, Just Shaheer, Heravi’s elder son, because a story it set in ident Najibullah, Heravi feared that the war says Heravi as he arranges printouts for a les- childish-looking complained that type he was beingmean shadowed doesn’t that iton is might disrupt his studies in law and political son. Unable to meet expenses from the coach- suitable his way to school and—back.

“It pressed the panfor children in fact, I know one chilscience. And that’s what happened. ing income, he became an interpreter with a dren’s ic button in my head.

Abductions were anthat evpublisher who rejects manuscripts Various factions of the Mujahideen closed UN agency. For nine hours a day, Heravi is the use eryday affairSans and anyone who worked witheven the Comic on principle without in on Kabul from different directions while in- bridge of communication between officials reading government or international werethat tarthem and there’s bodies nothing ternational bodies tried to broker a peace and Afghan refugees in India. “It gives me screams gets,” Heravi breakslouder down as he recalls the day ‘amateur’ than a manuscript What you seeBut is what you get Legibility andlittle clarityefare the namesatisfaction of the game shutterstock agreement. the negotiations had some that I am able to help people full he decided to leave Afghanistan for good. “Toof gimmicky typefaces. fect on how the radical outfits transformed who are in the same boat. But I keep asking Al- day I don’t I don’t have car. I There arehave verysavings. good reasons why ayou’re ith acultural huge, blood-red viciousthe city’s social and fabric. Public exe- to unfiltered of the Noise — either reading lahthe if we will everbabble see better days.

My children don’t have enough money to take my family this article in Capitolium News to if bowie Women knife blazing cutions becamelooking a routine. were that, goneme mad. keep or asking theNess sameworked ques- closely with you’ve got thethe Taj Mahal. at least we are paper in frontBut of you, or Georgia it, the cover ofthe Patrick barred from jobsacross and education.

And airy his designer Books figuring out how if you’re reading tion…

I have at noWalker answer,” he says. together and alive,” he says.

His on screen.

Legibility and clarNess’sUniversity The Knife of Never Letting classrooms of Kabul became the to Like designevery the typefather, such that it was clear to the ity are the name Heravi children AdibaBut, (18), of the—game. as Shaheer Jim WilGo leavesfor youthose in nowho doubt that this going to reader gallows resisted theis Islamisawas, and what was regular wants awhat goodNoise education, a career (17)ofand Baheer (9) —reminds like to stay liams, author Type Matters! us, Today, I am struggling be sort of book. But it’s the type that speech. tionanofedgy the capital.

The unobtrusive Fairfield typeface and marriage for his children. of the time.and “Stay“Fonts clothesmost that word wear” we to pay the rent forare theindoors really gets you: the font looks like it’sloyal beento giv-a used Fearing persecution for being for the is main texthe is peppered other But safety what prizes with close to each other our way in them ing an ‘emotional tone’ justisas quicktwo small read rooms en a loaded gun, intravenously fed a triple es- typefaces: man who once enjoyed Soviet support, the Hea childish handwriting-like font for ly and as unconsciously most. “Concern for the physical of feeling secure,” he says. as we judge a person presso on to a fourth-storey ravis layand low pushed for a couple of years.

In 1995, a some men’s Noise,brought a thick, safetyofofthe my children claims his neighbours byHeravi the clothes that she wears. window ledge. is practically disintegrating year before theItTaliban stormed into Kabul barely forAfter the anime to legible India,” scrawl he says. alare“Messing friendly but the sense bearound with of typewith adrenalinNajibullah and anxiety which is pretty and executed and— his brother, the mals saying ‘flesh, most — 10 crocodiles years of living in Shiraz ing andoesn’t outsider is ever present.

“I faces always work, so we much the reader feels into on every the feast, familyhow crossed the border Iran.one Andofthat tooth’, Heravi or squirrels and Tehran, foundtauntan opportunity to have card that sure protects tried to make it wasme notfrom carUsing fancy fontsaisrefugee 1,634 pages that follow. journey earned him a tag that Heravi is still ing the dog with ‘come on, getting whir- the migrate to Canada.

“I was papers employed forced deportation toonishor or detention, silly,” says but Ness.that’s The frequently The Chaos of which is ler, trying to loseWalking — that oftrilogy, a refugee.

“I missKnife those whirler, whirler’. ready for our move to Canada when my not enough to erasethat questions people around reason the fonts add to, rathas elder a lazy shortcut the part, is set on a planet recently colo-a brother daysfirst in my father’s house in Kabul…

It was But it’scalled not just me the backtypeface to Afghanistan. He us have,” he says while his eyes wander to the er than detract from, the story he nised by humans.

In this primitive society, huge bungalow with more rooms that I canthe re- that usesgone a lotthere of to sell his clock on a stark said changes. my father,Ness who’d “I am expecting tellswhite is thewall. centrality of the ideaa men are afflicted by what’s known as ‘Noise’. member.

We had every comfort a family in an styling inhad all three the books. property, been of poisoned by an aunt’s fam- visit from theoflocal police station.

—I Noise: that silentSomeone persistent This means that their thoughts can be heard upscale neighbourhood in those days could The littered sud- I had my du- don’t know who ily. I pages had noare choice but with to return, — hasthat complained clamour goes on that everyI run min-a by they,I too, can hear animals.

For denly askanyone, for. Andand today, am struggling to pay the capitalised words, italicsinto anda emties. I packed my wife andwith children bus ute jihadist madrasa from this centre,” he adds. of the day in the privacy of our own skulls.

Ness, Noise far offsays what it’s like to be dashes, rent for two“isn’t smallthat rooms,” Heravi. short to lines half-finished thoughts, and returned myofcountry after another ar- Without At 10 pm, Heravi locks heavy ironus, gate the creative use ofthe fonts to help siconstantly buried in texts messaging and and In his early 40s now, theand six-foot-tall Afghan lots and lotshe of recalls. dialogue. This makes for a lent duous journey,” and readers, walks home, five minutes away.

“I ‘hear’ just the story, I’m not sure that emails mobile and three on… racy, arrived and in Delhi in phones August and 2013.onWith read — buta it also occasion means that Thepacy return wasn’t happy for you the the can’tChaos say what tomorrow willcould bring.have For now, Walking trilogy beenI that’s what about, children in the tow,book’s Heravireally and his wifeinformaKamila can hear the thing in your loud family.

Heravi’s father died head after really months of written have a home-cooked meal and some Afghan at all. tion overload.” started a coaching centre for Afghan refugees and clear. in At aone point, in book three,struggled there’s a TV channels to return to,” he says. suffering hospital, even as they no privacy, and no way to control in With the city.

A signboard in Dari, one of thetheir two war raging. The first goes off — BOOM! — anita roy is a writer, editor and publisher; to reconcile with thebomb drastic changes in a waraditi sengupta thoughts, the menof have become accustomed official languages Afghanistan, marks the in 20pt type.

The second ‘boom’ is about twice www.anitaroy.net ravaged Afghanistan.

“The Taliban had muti-

ON THE SHELF

The clothes that words wear

Fonts are not merely window dressing — they are often central to the emotional temperature of the narrative

anita roy

Life after war

Shirshah Heravi’s life is a primer for refugees, for whom the constant companion is fear

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The Knife of Never Letting Go Patrick Ness

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Malaysian murtabak For the dough 500g maida Ghee 2 cups water mixed with some salt Filling: 100g minced chicken 1 small onion diced 1 garlic chopped 1/2 inch ginger chopped 2 tbsp kurma or curry powder 1/2 tsp ground black pepper 2 eggs, beaten Straight KS A pinch of sugar and salt toup taste Narendran believed in Dough: Knead 1 facing tbsp ghee realitywith head-on; flour in a large bowl, adding salted (below) A family water bit by bit. Mix until it forms picture pichumani, pti the a ball and dough kpulls from bowl. Cover bowl with damp towel and let it rise for two hours. shutterstock

STREET, EAT, REPEAT

Pile up the parathas Life after loss Nothing beat the perfection of theway parathas average One can can never completely work their out of the a loss.

Jalandhar or the burly magicians in the street There will daadi be remnants, things that get evoked each corners time of Amritsar insouciantly dole out somebody around loses someone shabnam minwalla

H B

opeitison not happy lame thealways wintera nip.

Orinstruon rement for to survival.

At times it worscent jaunts Delhi and Amritsar.

Or enscruel our advertisements pain and adds to the those featuring panic, forcingmelting one to delay the inblobs of butter atop golden evitable with the reality.

KS Narendran, 51, parathas.tryst Whatever reason, I’m feeling disdidn’t want that. He decided to face reality tinctly dissatisfied. head-on, like a fallible, understanding human When it comes to food, Mumbai does most being. earlychaat weeks,tothe possibility things “From well —thefrom vodka chilly that my wifefrom is not going tobaus cometoback has cheesecake, pork belly bisi bele been dangling precariously,” he want says. today is bhaath.

But what I really, really wife of over 25And years, Chandrika Sharma, theHis perfect paratha. that is a tough ask. was on board the MalaysianofAirlines MH370 Admittedly, mountains parathas are that mysteriously went off March probably being rolled outthe allradar over on Mumbai, 8, 2014, its and way gripe to Beijing from Kuala Lumpeven as Ion type — in mock dhabas, fiveur. was heading to Ulaanbaatar, MonstarSharma kitchens and catering outfits. But somegolia, to never attend and that Agriculture how they live aupFood to the fare the averOrganisation “When tosses the news age Jalandhar conference. daadi insouciantly out came in, ITV thought would matbetween soaps it and cupsprobably of chai. be Or athose ter few hours before the confusion and the thatofburly magicians produce so nonchalantly dust settlesstreet and we had some facts,” Crisp says Naat crowded corners in Amritsar. on rendran.

And heand is spicy still waiting.

He didn’t the outside, soft in the middle, and imagine it to be thethat long-drawn, unending so hot and yummy you are robbed of wait it has speech andbecome. sense. But he was not ready to let hisThe lossmost overpower his ways.

Yet it are wasn’t easy successful parathas sinfully to cope with the void rolled that’s come in fried circles, like deep the ones out atup Gali his life. “Intellectually oneamidst understands that Parathe Wali in Old Delhi, lace shops, nobody is here for eternity.

Mortality selfie-snapping tourists and chaos. isOra givthe en,” Narendran, sitting in hisdown neat, cacrisp,reasons substantial squares plonked in pacious flat in Guindy, Chennai. those tyre-festooned dhabas amidst “In the most muscases, you don’t reallyOr setthe andeceptively end date and oftard fields of Punjab. light, ten it visits you without knowing.”

Sharspice-laden triangles thatyour arrive in oily parcels ma Narendran often talked about and and enliven working had lunches in Amritsar. what in store. wouldthose, say who’s gonna Andlay once you’ve“We sampled it’s imposbe here Thelimp fact that we might sible to tomorrow. make do with lookalikes.

Fornot exbe living as long might wish was almost ample, the as wepale, goody-goody, certain.”

I’m-trying-to-be-healthy version that invariathat doesn’t take away the in blyBut emerges from my kitchen.

Or difficulty the doughy, dealing the served loss. “So, unpaunchywith fellows upthe by intellectual so many Mumderstanding, at least forthat me,matter, made itpizza more difbai restaurants.

Or, for paraficult to deal with emotional acceptance.” thas, pasta parathas, Schezwan parathas and While it helped variations. him be functional least in other terrifying The true at paratha —

Filling: Sauté garlic, ginger, then add minced chicken, spice powder, black pepper, salt and sugar and stir until cooked. When filling has cooled, put in bowl and mix diced onions and beaten eggs.

Murtabak: 1 Sprinkle ghee on work surface.

Take a portion of the dough, shape into a ball and flatten it into a very thin sheet with your palms and by gently pulling the ends.

Fold the edges to create a square, sprinkle one tsp of ghee and a little flour and roll out to create a thin rectangular layer.

2 Evenly spoon 2 tbsp of the filling into the middle and fold the four sides like an envelope.

3 Carefully lifteven the murtabak with the early it made tougher to actualstuff months, of nostalgia and it fridge magnets — is others. That makes me more responsible, both hands into an oiled and ly accept and acknowledge whatand he was feel- that one must reply or respond to those peoladen with cholesterol and ghee an array pre-heated tawa. Cook for 2-3 ing.

“The factfillings. of feeling the fact of ple and let of delectable Aloo,alone, of course, is the themtillknow what’s minutes brown.

Then happening.” lift, add missing wife, thefollowed fact of feeling lonely.

Yes, And manymore universalmy favourite, closely by gobi, of them Sharma. oil toknew the tawa and They cook wrote the it did make things aBut lotthere moreare difficult,” paneer and cheese. loads ofsays op- about their association with her. Narendran other side till brown.

Narendran not overtly religious. tions, from who acharisto barfi, kheema to shrimp. discovered that her world was large and that How didahe manage Or has he?

During recent tripto tomove Delhi,on? ignoring the she has made a difference to lot of people, “One of disapproval, the things I headed started to doing was to many general Gali Parathe for millennia.) unknown to him. “Through them I diswrite.”

It helped to put down what he felt. “Ita covered Wali. “They deep-fry their parathas,” gasped In fact, parathas not only facets, whichhave over 25 years of survived, our comhelped meacquaintance. come to terms“Just withawhat wastrap,” hap- panionship, size zero tourist they have travelled well.

Benhad notsurprisingly really revealed as In vividly, pening me“When and outside.

In the sneeredwithin another. we were kidsprivacy there as gal,brightly the delectable paratha is stuffed as theseMughlai conversations portrayed.” of mytoown conversations with the there. medium, used be about 20 paratha places No with fried. In KerDidmeat, thatcovered cure itwith all? egg Oneand doesn’t know. such was longerintrospection what it used to be.”much easier.” Also, “Some ala, thepart dishof has taken on theup glorious guise of my day ends with a requirethere werebut a Ilot thoughts Perhaps, stillofwanted to buy silver, nib- the flaky, layered In Chennai, this is mentparotta. to respond to my responbuzzing around dif- tiny gali that broken into little ble on jalebis andwhich strollwere into the bits and on a tawa with sibilities.

Andfried I realise that once ficult to sift through.parathas “Writingfor almost 150 meat, veggiesone has been dispensing andhas loads spices and sold as got of back a semblance of helped methat piece things together years, one has served the likes of Jawahar- kothu roti. routine, it makes life a little easand see things distance.” lal Nehru.

Andfrom comea up with inalso accomier The and paratha the task has of coping not a Writing helped me Then there were friends.

Many spired stuffings like papad, panied the Indian diaspora to lonely burden.”

But there are still piece things together would in.karela, “They would in- and see things from a large banana,drop meva, rabdi, kishforeign lands. tracts of theThe day Malaysian where he vite come by and spend mishme andto badam. murtabak to is wander, stuffed with stircontinues ask what distance The true paratha — time with this them, not necessarily During jaunt, I only samfried have mincehappened, and egg.and Friends might feels the stuff of nostalgia to ‘moan, groan,papad bemoan.

Just to(I and fridge magnets — “afrom pled the offbeat paratha.

UAE pine for littlethe loss instill myself”.

Butchips “life experience may be a foodcompanionship.’ columnist, but Oman paratha — a flaky paratha goes on”. is laden with That quitegobble helpful.” even was I can’t more than smothered in cream cheese, Their daughter is a student of cholesterol and ghee Also, a number ofa day people one deep-fried paratha and doused with spicy“Isauce, covpsychology in aDelhi. only hope and an array of wrote in. zero Thereinwere several Facebook messaglook size the eye.)

So now I ered with crushed, spicy has come to terms with her loss.

I canchips only delectableshe fillings es, e-mails, SMSes, and even snail mails (cards wish. I won’t know have at least six exciting reasons and rolled.

WhileBut the up for certain.” he buss believes and letters).

“I’d reply to as many of them as I youngsters have to return to Delhi. shota isdifferent a Trinidadian way of paratha dealing could.”

He realised there were many who with things, that Meanwhile Mumbai remains is actually beaten so that like giving themselves a long don’t necessarily deal with about their sense of loss time to come the distressingly pragmatic layerswith separate lookislike to terms loss.and “There no “clearly, or comprehensively”.

“Nobody parathas.fully Supermarket trolleys are piled high immediacy.” a tattered, burst up shirt!

The outcome meltThe immediacy is forisother does,” he says.stuff.

It is not as if it is over andmumdone things with frozen Nutrition-obsessed in-the-mouth fabulous.

— a career or other ambitions. Narenwith.

“Nobody hasveggies ever completely worked mies sneak hated into parathas and dran So lost much thatwhen the quest the “it perfect hisso father he wasfor 17 and took through it and come out oftoddlers it. So, there feed them to has unsuspecting — are no me paratha turn out to and be an expensive over might a decade to grieve really underremnants, therethem are residues, there things stand doubt scarring for life. (In fact,are parathas business and actually end in Chennai and— come to terms with the loss.orSoPort all that evoked each timeVedic somebody around have get been around since times and it’s that of Spain rather than Patiala!

I do is let my daughter know that no questhem hasimagine encountered someChitra loss.” Katha-type tions are off limits, no questions taboo, no easy to an Amar shabnam minwalla is a journalist and the author of Those who wrote in spoke of spinach their own loss conversation maa, desperate to force some down unwelcome.” and “I realised that in astuffing way this process of The Strange Haunting of Model High School and The her recalcitrant toddler, it into a paraShy Supergirl p jose communicating both valuable to me and jinoy tha. And startingwas a food trend that has thrived

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Model behaviour

profit among the households at that time of the year.”

After crafting this self-funded public commuting service, the people of Touphema embarked on another successful model in 2001.

This one is linked as much to their livelihood as to documenting their lives and crafts.

With Nagaland opening its doors to tourists in early 2000, villagers decided to host tourists to earn an extra income. They came up with the idea of a tourist village. A villager offered his ancestral land on a hillock for the purpose. They modelled it on a traditional Angami village. Twelve Angami clans or khel from Touphema and surrounding villages funded it. Each khel built a hut, with facades that have the traditional Naga symbols like mithun (animal), da (sword), jathi (spear), cup (for prosperity) and so on.

“Though the khels provided the labour and the huts were built from local material, we needed money for other things like running a kitchen, salary for the staff, buying bathroom Love lost Aamir Khan fittings and furnishings, landscaping, and so is no longer the brand on. The village council hadambassador some funds but we for online needed more. So we borrowed from a Snapdeal governmarketplace, dave of ₹30 ment agency. Till date, we reuters/amit have a debt lakh,” says Neitho Kense, managing director AGENDA of the initiative.

Their effort is yet to yield profits though with the growing number of tourists in Nagaland, Kense says that day is not far. “It will happen eventually. For instance, during the Hornbill Festival, we get good occupancy. We are getting both domestic and European tourists. The Nagaland Tourism Board helps us in promoting it,” he says.

Once the tourist village began to receive visitors, villagers added a museum to it to promote the Angami way of life. “We wanted to showcase our history, how people lived in olndia’s corporates are among the biggest ket. If a government starts regulating your academic more Exhibits accessible to den times and and legal what data they used. were sambuddha wimps in the world.

The license-permit speech and food habits, it’s only a matter of the public, by hacking through paywalls and collected from each household to fill up the mitra mustafi raj, and Indira Gandhi’s self-serving, ag- time they start rigging the markets to favour esoteric government websites. death museum,” states Kense.

ChairsSwartz’s made of elegressive pushback against the motives of their cronies. That is why Friedman also ultimately major paddy changestorin phant tusks,resulted bamboo in jars,abaskets, private enterprise, turned Indian corporates stated, “The fundamental threat to freedom is American policy: Aaron’s Law brought age bins,public grinders, traditional clothes, into lapdogs of the government. Greasing gov- power to coerce, be it in the hands of a mon- about a more legal approach towards jewellery andsensible headgear, utensils, musical inernment palms and massaging government arch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary hackers, getting rid bows of some of arrows the most dracostruments, spears, and used by egos became a necessity to do business in In- majority.” nian andyouth: outdated clauses.

Angami these are some of the exhibits dia. Businesses that played this game well beIn his personal capacity, Snapdeal’s brand onJobs and Swartz were both successful entredisplay.

An amphitheatre, built when Toucame immensely successful and profitable, ambassador had expressed his opinion preneurs who used Rio their genius in very differphema boy Neipho was the chief minister bought over media and won social acceptance Home turf Twelve Angami clans or khel from Touphema funded a tourist village. Each khel built a hut, with facades displaying sangeeta barooah pisharoty againstNaga the symbols attack on freedom of expression ent ways: oneiscontinued to buildmatches a profitable of Nagaland, used for football and as leaders of industry. They set a bad example by this “momentary majority” in India, the corporation while the othercelebrated gave up wealth Sekrenyi, an Angami festival in Febfor the next generation of businesses (like Hindutva brigade. The “momen(and ultimately his life) in his acruary every year.

Snapdeal) to follow. tary majority” used its social online the freedom.

The villagetivism councilfor oversees tourist But vils the last of the lights go off, a blanWhen Snapdeal dropped Aamir Khan as media villagers need commute toIngovernment of- lage and the both heft to to coerce one of became legends for the museum.

Atsubu and Kense are ket of darkness cloaks village brand ambassador earlier this the week, it dia’s fices, hospitals and business establishments among the staffers. biggest companies into same reason: theyisbelieved that After a fee paid, Atsubu The fundamental for India’s yet another night. A sharp cho- submission, showed that new generation of startin the capital city basis. The inhabitfirstonbya daily reducing doing, the takes a visitorthe for work a trip they to thewere village.

You can with russlicker from a versions throng ofofcrickets ups are just the oldpenelala Khan’s ants of Touphema toocampaigns felt helpless. Unlikeproblem oth- see role in their products and ideas they were their barns and bedrooms, kitchens and business in India trates the hush the black, starless You and companies.

TheofBansals and Bahls night. of e-comers, eventually they decided act. “Even though by nottorenewing creating, made the world a betcourtyards, the morungs (traditional bachelor is that it is not seen enter your hut; latch the wooden door before his merce are not very different from the Ambanis Touphema was km from contract.

Dojust we 41 really need ter place. pads) and the memorial stones. as a vehicle for switching and turn in too. in any and Adanisoffofthe oldlights commerce.

Our newTen startKohima, was the no threat state more there proof that If the board Don’t missfounders the headsand of hunted social good theleaders night inare a city may becross late between evening but up a curious the for In- to transport or private service.

Vilfreedom by power in this memberslining of Snapdeal saw themanimals the verandas of your host and other residents dian oligarchs who they grew ofupTouphema, watching country lagers felt that real? the government is very selves as leaders of society, as the huts.

Once Touphema the Naga Angami village, it is past midnight. and the American entrepreneurs whose ideas can’t everything. Soproblem in 1985, Thedofundamental people matter, would Villagewho youth cookthey Naga disbegan to receive Like a goodinspired guest, you follow the rules. eventually them. all the 600 households with business in India is contribthat it is havefor stood Khan’sYou right to exhes the by visitors. can savisitors, villagers Thoughenterprise the peopleinofIndia Touphema, in Naga- not Private has historically utedseen whatever money they as a vehicle for social pressdelicious his concerns on freedom vour chutneys made of added a museum to itButspring land’s Kohima district, may be like any other good, remained mediocre because of this mediocricould to buy aamini-bus forevil. regurather necessary Therefore busiin India. because they see as onions andthemselves cherry tomarural folk in the North-eastern State in their ness ty in corporate leadership and the expediency lar commuting Kohima,” says leaders in to India do not see themselves profit-driventoes, operators behind a faceless corbesides meats and eggs habits, few factors set them apart. The differ- leaders of theiravision.

The new generation of corpoAtsubu,ofa society, young or man fromofthe agents change, in a way poration, dropping Khanbamboo was probably an cooked with shoots and ence isbarring the reason forexceptions, your visit to Touphema. rates, a few are much the like village.

Sinceorthen, the activists artists do.bus has easy choice for them.

It did not occur them local vegetables.

Corn tomixed This difference, in both thought and action, same.

Rather than creating products and been plying that to Kohima and back of Steve Jobs perhaps, thatwith Compare to the self-image business too haveatathe rehoneyleaders is an attraction definesthat their community life for in Touphema, ideas change the world the better, for twice a day. who imagined himself as a revo- sponsibility example, to fight for freedom, because a breakfast table. which began in by 1985 and continues phases. they are guided short-term gains.in And rath- lutionary “It has out made our lives can now to change theeasier. worldWe through his free laysTouphema the ground-work a free Sosociety what does lack? “Wefor have two So much so that is an examer than stand uptoday, for athe freevillage society and free products procure goods and medicines easily; those ail- market that were not just engineering maroperate. primarytoand middle schools but students ple to others on how communities canboth be selfmarket in India, they would dump to vels, ing can of goingappealing. to Kohima forrevolutreat- have butthink aesthetically The “Freedom rare andafter delicate plant,” to go outisofathe village the standard reliant even propel the government keep theand government in good humour. ma- tionary ment any day. Interestingly, fromhow the wrote image stuck to Jobspeople no matter Friedman Capitalism EvVIII. This pushes in some to dropand outFreedom. of school,” chinery chipclassic in withCapitalism help. The development In histo1962 and Freedom, unappealing nearby areas have startedcorporate using ourpracbus. ery somealso of Apple’s is Thanks responsible nurturing it, and saysIndian Atsubu. to thefor former CM’s sprawstory in Nagaland, like many parts of the re- tices the great free market economist Milton FriedSo wewere. make some profit from ticket sales,” he that includes the corporate Indian. ling bungalow, where he spends some time of gion, has been that, disproportionate. it be- adds man argued “UnderlyingThough most argugleefully.

Since most villagers aregenius Chris- the(Views Or take the case of Aaron Swartz, the are village personal) year, the even has a mobile tower! came aagainst state in Stateis Transport ments the1963, free the market a lack of co-founder tians and need money, during of Reddit, whoparticularly committed suicide sangeeta barooah pisharoty a Delhi-based mitra mustafi is theis founder of Department has not been to connect belief in freedom itself.”

Anyable attack on free- in Christmas festivities.

Atsubu: “The village 2013 at the age of 26,Says after being hounded by sambuddha freelance journalist Political Indian t@some_buddha mostisrural areas well with Andmarthe the dom also an implicit attackKohima. on the free council, whichauthorities runs the service, shares the The American for trying to make

Touphema, a tourist village near Kohima, is a proud example of a tribe’s efforts to earn both money and recognition

Unicorn of wimps

Snapdeal dropping Aamir Khan shows how grovelling to the “momentary majority” is second nature to Indian corporates

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Ghent and the good life The medieval Belgian city has a surprisingly modern palate

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Travel log

hent is beautiful. This I expected.

Many of its 13th-century buildings Getting there still survive and you feel like you’ve Jet Airways flies directly to walked straight into the set Brussels, the capital of of a period film, complete with Belgium, from where you grand architecture, a mediecan get to Ghent within an val port, old and new boats hour by road. and beautiful men. It is better than a film — it Stay is all real and in front Ghent Marriott, centrally of you. located and opens right What I did not exonto the port area. http:// pect, however, was www.marriott.com/hotels/ how much of this extravel/gnemc-ghentperience will be food: marriott-hotel/ k c when I was not eating, I sto ter t Eat was buying food. Even u sh sightseeing somehow came Organic food at: back toIMPERFECT food, when, impressed www.naturell-gent.be/ PRESENT by a medieval building in the Mustard: www.tierenteynmost beautiful part of town, Graslei, verlent.be/ and http:// the old port area, I was informed that I was ohne.be/gent/ actually staring at Belga Queen, one of Ghent’s Dressed to please A dish from Naturell Drink beer: www.gruut.be/ top restaurants, housed in the 13th-century en warehouse that I was admiring. hes such as sea bream ceviche made with seaCakes: www.julieshouse.be/ Perhaps it is an odd mix of being a medieval sonal produce. (This also means that the en historic destination as well as a thriving uni- menu changes every two months.) The food at Seafood: versity city that lends Ghent a unique charm — Naturell is full of surprising flavours and texwww.oudevismijn.be it is romantic but also cool; old but also hip- tures: you wouldn’t expect bergamot to pop in Tip ster. Evidence of the latter was found at my your mouth as you eat lime yogurt, nor will Take a boat tour on the lunch place, Naturell, where the minimal dé- you expect crunchy brandy snaps or a grainy and see city from rummagingof the cor wasn asSaturday, pleasing aswhile the presentation of becoming an engineer ab- at white chocolate, but or allaofdoctor, this isand possible chasing their dreams,canal we would havethe effectivetheofother side.yet Choose through some papers, I discover food, which is modern and local.

Belgian and solutely else. thisnothing delightful little place. ly completed our circle driven, joylessa tour from one Chef in which my 10-year-old self-taught, Lieven Lootens’s restaurant is WhenI went I leftfor thea culturally stifling walking tour after environmy meal and pursuits of possession that only the self-cenwww.debootjesvangent.be/ daughter and Guide her friends have listed in the Michelin for serving up dismentmy of the township in and went guide pointedI grew out a up charming littleto house tred can achieve. Even now, when we meet, we tried to ascertain the status of their relation- college Chennai, I realised taboo against onin the canal near Castle the of the Counts, the last talk about ourselves — the cars that we plan to ships with boys through the time-honoured love wasn’t just awooden small-town fixation.

My genremaining façade in the city centre of buy, the holiday destinations that we plan to methodology of FLAMES. (As anyone who has eration, largely, beenforward raised toon have de- to Ghent.

As Ihas leaned theno bridge ornately carved depicting the “do”,tury, the its housing prices thatfaçade have dropped, gone to school in the last 30 or so years knows, sire for anything other than of a selfish pursuitwooden of the mortgage take in the prettiness this yellow five sensespayments — you’d have by now that thatguessed have stretched. by eliminating the common letters between stable livelihood. parents, in thesaid: ’40s “It is house sittingOur on the water,born my guide is a restaurant as well, a Thai one The this banality of our achievements is this onlytime, the two names and counting the remaining and early grew bistro up hearing of fam- matched now a’50s, popular calledstories Club Reserva.” calledbyNam Jai, and quite popular too. Temthe triteness of our aspirations. down until only one letter is left, it can be as- ily and You community standing up cannot members separate anything in to Ghent merman is another popular We didn’t setnext out door to take our chances andstore, certained whether the duo is Friends, Lovers, the cause theOne freedom This trickfrom of food. of thestruggle. most popular shops in where you can buy Ghent speciality sweets change anything.

Instead, we made sure we Admirers, Marriage-bound, Enemies or Sib- led down, and for a large chunk the city is Tierenteyn, which is… a store full of such as cuberdons (cone shapedout gummy candy weren’t being cheated of anylings). Fittingly, my discovery comes exactly a of the generation before mine, for this brand of also called mustard.

Ghent is famous ‘noses’ because of the shape) thing.

We paid to have our risks and week before Valentine’s Day. Ever so discreetly, passion was directed de- usually eat with snowballs mustard, whichinto the the locals (melt-in-the-mouth candy). assessed and bought sugary insurance I try to ferret out some information about the sire for nation building. cheese.

I loved the When sharpI kick Hall, or the policiesThe to Great coverButcher’s us against the status of romance in Std IV, but all I can gather now and hearimmediately my parents and their bought a bot-The banality of our meatand market where youIf can possible the improbable. is that while boys are still mostly deplorable, friends of their ro-pret-achievements is only we are tle.talk, At €3the ormotif €4 a bottle, and stock upand on secure, sausages stable it isand be- cold some of them have begun to manifest them- mance, I notice, is both unrequited ty packaging, the grainy matched by the home, that is anothcausecuts weto take haveback chosen of our Even sightseeing selves as crushes. love. and After a fewversions drinks make are ex- triteness smooth er lovely 15th-century building against the option of exposing aspirations somehow came back Although my opinion in this matter is not downed, often, a few crop cellent gifts.

Younames can also buy the and even today can see variourselves to any kindyou of vulnerato food sought, I am eager to play it cool, to tell her up and in a matter ofcheese minutes, mustard and the togethmeats hanging from the ceilbilityous — emotional or material. that crushes are not just normal, they are to be poorer renditions offood Mohammed at the Ohne store located ingacutely like inaware the old Its high I am of days. this and celebrated. To be sure, when I was growing up, Rafi ands Mukesh 59. fill Itthe room. on Steendam also sells othis something yet it wooden is a task toroof go against condi- to we didn’t have crushes at 10. But at 13 or 14, Perhaps, they wanted us including to escape athe pain. tioning. When my er organic products marvel at, that if you can take daughter andisher friends when you felt the first stirrings of something Perhaps, because nation really build tell me their ambitions range of localthe seeds anddidn’t grains. your eyes off star, the scandalous — rock footballer, disidentifiable but unwelcome, the first instinct well, they hadwe concluded no matter what When were notthat eating, we were drinkplayMasterchef of meat. The store inside where you can actress, winner, I haveisto bite my was to feel shame. There would be no talk of the question is not the answer. in Irreing. Gruutis,islove the only microbrewery Europe try so some of the woody, ham betongue as not to tell themsmoky these local are fickle personal crushes at home. There would be no spective their beer motivations thatof makes withoutand hop.reasons, I wasn’tfact as interfore that you buy some.a Plan B wouldn’t be a options, making talk of love at home. When someone in the remains, 40-55-year-olds in the country estedmost in the beer as young Julian who was My“Just lastin dinner Ghent wasbut at Ithe stylish bad idea. case,” in I want to say, manneighbourhood was spotted “chatting” with a todayshowing have been to believe that unbri-form, meraised around, a dish in human Oude literally translating the ‘old age to holdVismijn, back. Come Valentine’s Dayto2017, boy, every parent on the lane made it their du- dled but passion nota beer a worthy ambition, if youisare drinker then thisthat a mustfish market’, because would this was the siteme of the maybe my then 11-year-old have told ty to not just warn their offspring against love, surrendering to itblonde is foolishness. visit. Gruut’s beer is one of the most remarket the 17th The distinctive a little moreinabout hercentury. crushes.

And I hope I gate but also give a dressing down to the girl in Wefreshing are the ones brewswho I’ve make tasted.jokes about Val- haveat entrance of her the that market remains, thethe courage to tell lovestill is worth question. Love, romantic love, was the scourge entine’sWalking Day, notabout, just because gaudy I cameit signifies upon Julie’s House, though inside a fine isdining placeAnd full of plunging into.

That ispassion priceless. of our times, and it was a collective parental consumption all things red,in but because we Julocated inofKraanlei, right the city centre. people. The freshest that Ghent’s makingfashionable oneself vulnerable is the only searesponsibility to not allow teenage kids “any have lie’s beenisraised tonew believe there is to baka fairly addition tonothing the home food, atoglass ofafine side of lovely guarantee living life wine, that iswith trulyafull. damages or distractions” and instead help celebrate about love.

Loveinmakes squeaers-turned-pro cafes town. us Some of the views of the harbour is on offer — a perfect t@veenavenugopal them focus solely on their inherited ambition mish.prettiest By the time kids grow up you’ll and start cakesour and small bites ever see place to end your holiday. here, as well as delicious, airy cupcakes. Right next to Julie’s is a building from mid-17th-cen- kalyani prasher is a Delhi-based freelance writer

Maybe love is the answer

Most 40-55-year-olds in the country have been raised to believe that unbridled passion is not a worthy ambition

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THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Radha and the tricky space-time illusion The history of perspective in art, engineering and architecture

rohit gupta

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his miniature painting (right) from circa 1650, by an unknown artist, shows Lord Krishna’s lover Radha in an elegant pose at night with the stars looking down. From just this single mythological image, one may extrapolate a modest sketch of science in the 17th century.

Since the pigments don’t seem to have faded or changed much in over 360 years, it shows a good knowledge of materials, if not their actual chemistry. The night sky betrays the painter’s ignorance of astronomy; to depict stars as points distributed evenly in the upper sky, instead of irregular clusters and constellations, is wrong. The ornate water vessels are testament to the Mughal mastery of metallurgy, but their proportions against the little crane show that geometric perspective has not yet been discovered in this culture; or perhaps the exotic bird is now extinct like Emperor Jahangir’s dodo.

Although the moon is full, it casts no shadows on the ground — as if the painter is unsure orty two-year-old Ashabai Doke tuned how they should fall. It may seem that the to wasteis picking forKrishna a livelihood lonely milkmaid waiting for at the when no other choice. Twenupper edge ofshe thehad Earth’s atmosphere, the ty years on, she is anthe entrepreneur moon visible directly through vacuum of who isspace. the strength behindrhombic the Kagad Kanch outer The twisted, frame of Patra Kamgar (KKPKS), a waste Radha’s squareSanghatana seat, however, shows an amapickers’ union in Aurangabad. She manages teur attempt at three-dimensional illusion; an two dry waste collection shops, and has affine transformation in today’s vocabulary. played an important rolethree in improving The craft of mimicking dimensionsthe of lives ofon47awaste pickers. Dokesurface was invited to space two-dimensional was sigshare her more experiences at The United nificantly advanced at this timeNations in faraFramework Convention on Climate way Europe, where Renaissance artistsChange such as (UNFCCC) CoP21 in Paris, but couldn’t it Filippo Brunelleschi (AD 1377-1446) hadmake inherdue to visa issues. Excerpts from an interview. ited and re-invented Greco-Islamic geometry.

It gave to their architects and mechanical enFrom a waste picker to an entrepreneur, gineers the modern equivalent of software — a share your life’s journey with us. perspective drawing with depth that could be I was born in a small village, Ozar in reproduced and printed.

MoreLahane importantly, it Buldhana district Maharashtra.

I studied up transformed the ofway they designed these to standard IIImachines and was themselves. married at 12 into a buildings and Mechanfarmers’ The region wasmay droughtical and family. architectural drawing have prone, and we migrated Aurangabad where served a similar purposetoin the Renaissance, I initially worked as construction labour.

Latas computer simulations of complex physical er, I was left no option but to go systems, suchwith as aircraft or galaxies, dopicking for the waste. Inscientist.

2010, my scrap dealer sold his shop, modern and the new ownerentered started cutting sayThese methods popularweight entertaining theaswaste wet.

When confrontedstagehim, ment well, was in the hands ofIinnovative he retortedsuch thatas I had no option but to sell to designers Nicola Sabbatini.

Inspired him.

I took it up asVIa (1600 challenge started by Perspectivae Libri AD), aand book writwaste collection in a and small neighbourhood ten by mathematician astronomer Guidoand I rented a space for month.

Soon baldo del Monte (a ₹2,000 friend aof Galileo’s), a bigger dealer offered betterofrates for my paSabbatini created new kinds machinery for per, cardboard, bagsA wave and bottles, and dramatic effects plastic in theatre: machine to my business took off. of sea, hidden mechashow the turbulence Afterfor a few months I fell ill and couldn’t run nisms storms, lightning, flying gods and the shop.fires My family several austerity blazing of hell.adopted If perspective drawing measures to pay the retain theartists, place. was like software forrent theand Renaissance Finally inwas January 2015, woman relative Sabbatini creating the aequivalent of comloanedgraphics me ₹30,000, I reopened and also freed puter in movies. three women waste pickers a scrap In an unexpected turn offrom events, this dealnew er. A lawyer too helpedwas me out with science of perspective to lay the₹50,000. foundaToday,of47a women sellintheir waste What directly to tions revolution geometry. if difme. My landlady has faith in me and refuses offerent curves like lines, circles, ellipses,

Sorting lives Fortyseven women waste pickers sell their waste directly to Ashabai Doke parikshit suryavanshi

A voice from the waste box Ashabai Doke, the woman who began picking waste to sustain her family, is now an entrepreneur and the community’s voice for justice in Aurangabad

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What are the waste pickers fighting for?

We are fighting for full remuneration, and also want to repay debts so that we can free women from the clutches of scrap dealers. If I The get financial help, I want toBefore set freesunrise at least 50 How do you free a bonded waste picker? nightin skyainyear this 1650 women. Loans can be repaid and painting betrays theat In times of crisis, like illness, which is com- more women can be released.

Liquor flows artist’s ignorance of mon in the unhygienic conditions we often every slum corner. Children are getting adwikimedia astronomy commons work in, or occasions like a girl’s marriage, the dicted while husbands drink off their wives illiterate women waste pickers borrow money hard-earned money. It has destroyed innufrom the scrap This means they can sell poorits families.

A ban liquor might parabolas and dealer. hyperbolas were actually the merable tum particles actors and theon laws of physics waste when later only to that dealer, who will cheat Waste finddo themselves same viewed from different points of help. its play.

And pickers’ yet thesechildren three pieces not fit toon weight, cut on rates, and that the in this business from childhood, they view?

Even more profound wasensure the realisation gether into a coherent whole until thisneed day. an debtnot is never the debt and education.

Frequent illness is a cause that only repaid. did thisWhen field ofI pay projective geomeSome theoretical physicists such of as miseJuan freecontain a wastenew picker, the scrap usetheovari- ry.

Unhygienic wasteproposed hurts waste pickers; try theorems, it dealers contained Maldacena have now that the three ous arguments tactics to re-Simply waste should disposed scirems about andtheorems. by dimensions of space, andbe one of time in areapostain them, but we persist andofget‘points’ with sibly the four-dimensional entific manner and the waste pickinterchanging the usage projection of inforthem out. ers mation shouldthat benefit from ‘lines’, one theorem could be exists in only free, two quality health This services.

Governtransformed into another — a dimensions. ‘holographic What was your daily routine Waste pickers’ ment needs to do proper phenomenon called the Duality principle’ is alike an survey echo of when you were a waste picker? children find the those community.

Principle.

Renaissance artists who What if different themselves in this I used to get at half past work three, Despite a up foundational wanted to bewitch the beholder were invited to Paris, but curves like lines, Youwith business from make for the family beand of 1639food

by Girard Desargues their virtual conjurings on couldn’t make it. What happened? circles, ellipses, childhood leavelost byfor 5am. ing overI collected 200 years,waste this a sheet of paper, or like maya in parabolas and Natasha of Civic Response till 1pm, and sorting it out the force of unifying ideas wasatproHinduZarine cosmology. hyperbolas were Team,Inof the which I too we am have, a part, dealer’s and would takeslowly another found; it grew in painting if mywere waste picker-to-entrethree hours. minds such I asreturned Pascal home and actually the same whenshared Radha to look up toward viewed from different preneur storysky, at an Alliance Indiaround Poncelet 5pm, cooked, cleaned, Monge, , Gergonne, all the night she wouldof notice points ofan view?

Waste pickers (AIW)time conference.

The AIW washed and wentlater. to bed though not before of whom came Towards in some that the stars are participation to UNFCCC CoP21 10pm! picker woman has the applied for mynot the endEvery of thewaste 19th century, Ardrawing great, concentric through Indian YouthinClimate I was same Cayley crushing routine. was led thur (1821-1895) circles the sky Network. with Polaris at invited. Though tried our reasons to exclaim that “’projective gethewecentre, asbest, shefor expected.

How did the KKPKS start in Aurangabad? my visa didn’t come through.

I was ometry is all geometry”; in 1925, Felix Klein unknown, These equidistant, identical points cannot be I took someby women waste pickers a public talk on myagainst struggle well as on sustainaconcurred calling it “the royaltoroad” to to traced, even theasblackboard of night. meeting of domestic helps in 2008. Seeing ble and equitable solid waste management sogeometry.

They look like slow tidal waves, or Moiré patthat, we too the need to its come together. and a cleaner better world for all.

As the 20thfelt century raised curtain, Ein- lutions terns. There are noand shadows because theI With the help of socialof activists, the at latea was to represent the people most by stein’s field equations gravity like hinted moonlight has been subdued by affected light from Pravin Wagh and Subhash Lomteto, we gath- climate change.

But I couldn’t take their spherical or hyperbolic shape of the universe. these dense stars.

And this strange worldvoice she ered on waste pickersPaul andDirac started KKPKS the world.

In thedata opposite direction, used pro- to would know to be maya, the illusion that in Aurangabad. out of 8,000 waste (With inputs Peeyush Sekhsaria) jective geometryToday, to build histhe quantum me- Krishna keeps from talking about. pickers in Aurangabad, abouttwo 3,500 are the chanics.

Could it be that these discordant gupta explores the history of science as parikshit suryavanshi is a researcher, translator membershad of the KKPKS, andsymmetry? we work forSpacetheir rohit sciences an underlying and writer basedt@fadesingh in Aurangabad welfare. time had become the theatre’s stage, quan- Compasswallah fers of higher rent from scrap dealers. I stepped into the waste pile some 20 years ago and I am still there, though slightly better placed.

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that has many of its followers saying that all Indians are originally Hindu in the broadest possible way, that does place secularism under threat. Secularism isn’t non-religion because India is a very religious country in so many ways. But secularism as the equal treatment of all religions… that’s very important.”

Eck has previously received the National Humanities Medal in the US and served as president of the American Academy of Religion. She has also, since 1991, led the Pluralism Project, an initiative aimed at understanding her country’s burgeoning diversity. “And that expanding diversity is very good for a country of immigrants (except for the native people, olice in Haryana are looking at new, innovative who are themselves diverse),” she says. “The ways to control crowds. Bamboo lathis, tear gas, US is a newly and profoundly diverse nation in rubber/plastic bullets and water cannons have been ways we notice more than in India.” tried; it’s time to turn to catapults. Loaded with chilBut it’s a diversity that’s increasingly under li powder, police hope the catapults will reduce colattack from the Right, led in no small measure lateral damage. Marbles will be used when chilli by presidential aspirant Donald Trump. “This balls fail. Time travel, anyone? is just absurd, the idea that someone harks back to nativist rhetoric,” she says.

She is not entirely surprised when the topic of ‘ghar wapsi’ and the reconversion-to-Hinduism debate is raised. “It’s not entirely new,” she says, pointing to similar episodes in the 1920s and the tensions as a result within the Indian freedom movement. On whether the State should have a role to play in this sort of thing, she is categorical, “The government really shouldn’t have a role in who should convert or reconvert… The real issue is how much coercion is levied.”

Scheduled to later deliver the Vasant J Sheth Memorial lecture on India’s sacred rivers, Eck, who has closely studied Banaras, says she found the city’s Assi Ghat “better than ever” on her current visit. “There is certainly an effort to underline the message [of the countrywide Swachh Bharat cleanliness movement],” she says. “The message is itself important. It can Points to ponder We need to balance the need for dams and hydro-electric power projects, canals for become too much of a slogan, I imagine; so it irrigation and the human, cultural and religious needs, says Diana Eck PAUL NORONHA needs to have something behind it.” ayward drones have stumped authorities Cleaning theaims Ganga is not a new idea. smartphone appup that to help Iranian worldwide, often posing a security threat in Thirty ago, one ofpolice Eck’shasteachers users avoid years the country’s moral areas. Now, Dutch police have a new solution for pesan initiative to do justapp this.alIt is inexbecomelaunched a hit in Tehran.

The Gershad ky drones — snatching them out of the sky. Police have plicable why rivers — one of Eck’s areas lows users to mark places in Tehran city where of exteamed up with a security firm, Guard from Above, pertise — (known are so as poorly looked poafter and the Gasht-e-Ershad the “morality who are training eagles to aggressively defend territomassively polluted despite considered lice”) units are located, so that othersbeing can avoid ry. In a video posted online, the eagle pounces on a sacred.

“I think people, were here quick and elsewhere, those areas.

Iranian authorities to drone and carries it away. Nature - 1, Man - 0. a divided consciousness,” she says. ban the have app, but the creators are now trying to “‘Yes, it’sonline. a sacred river, [but] no, its sacredness does get it back not diminish because we pollute it’.”

During her lecture, she is careful to emphagoat in Chattisgarh has been released on sise that rivers need to be understood and apbail after being arrested for entering the proached holistically. home of a local magistrate. The goat’s owner, “You need people on both sides,” she says, Abdul Hasan, was also booked for criminal meaning those who are scientifically astute as trespass and mischief, causing damage on the well as those who can understand the sanctity complaint of judicial magistrate H Ratre. The of the river and the significance it holds. “We magistrate called senior police officers to comneed to balance the need for dams and hydroplain about Babli the goat. Whether the crimielectric power projects, canals for irrigation nal record will hinder Babli's passport arvard professor Diana Eck is country in the 1960s and has since returned and the human, cultural and religious needs.” application is yet to be established. dumbfounded. She happens to be several times, including a visit in 2013 to lead a She segues into the poetic when speaking of visiting one of India’s states that study tour of the Kumbh Mela. these majestic water bodies: “the strong liqprohibit the consumption and The Professor of Comparative uid fingers of the Ganga runsale of beef. “It’s astonishing that a govern- Religion and Indian Studies rening through solid rocks”, the ment would pass that kind of law about what fuses to be drawn into discussing river not “simply as a site for a people eat,” she says at a meeting held at the the usefulness of the uniform civpleasant outing… but an inteCan something be Royal Bombay Yacht Club in Mumbai. “Espe- il code [“I’m going to leave it to all gandagi (polluting) at gral and vital theatre of daily cially in a nation as pluralistic as India... some of you for now,” she laughs] or life”, the rivers of India as “its the same time as people are vegetarian, some are non-vegetar- whether the air has become temples, its cathedrals”. being pure? ian. I mean, this is not an area of personal life more polarised [“I don’t sense And, yet, the ultimate contrathat government should be intruding on.” this, but I’ve heard this”]. But she diction: where the divine and Her students, she says, brush off the new is happy to discuss pristine clash against industrial t was a trip to throwthreadbare open a social housing project in Egypt, where President Abdel-Fatlaws as something that won’t really be imple- what meansspoke to be of secular, par- costly state subsidies. However, effluents clogged estuaries. tahitel-Sissi trimming a four and km-long red-carmented in earnestness. Is that true, she wants ticularly in India, wherelaid theover termpublic refersroads to an sent “Can gandagiThe (polluting) pet for his motorcade outsomething a different be message. televisedat the to know. equal treatment of attention all religions, rather than thanthe same timerolled as being pure?” she asks.

“That conference got less nationally welcome out for the leader.

With a is a In town to deliver a lecture, Eck — a global the western conception of religion as separate discourse of purity.

It may look dirty clampdown on unauthorised protests, the localreligious media devoted front pages to the inciauthority on religion and the author of books from So,took is that but it’s not impure.” dentthe andState. dissent tounder social threat? media. on Banaras, India’s rivers and its geographies “It may be,” she says. “People do say that.”

— is no stranger to India. She first visited the She continues, “I think with a government bhavya dore is a Mumbai-based journalist

Losing their marbles

Haryana Police to use catapults for riot control

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Eagle eyed skywatch Trained Dutch eagles take down drones

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‘Dirty, but not Goat to be kidding impure’

A moral idea

App tracks moral police, gets banned

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Trespassing animal in lock-up

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Diana Eck, expert on India’s rivers and global religion, speaks on the message of Swachh Bharat and the testy matter of eating beef in the country

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Egypt red over carpet

President glides over red carpet to preach austerity

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

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n Feb 13, 1931, New Delhi officially took over as the capital of British India. This quiz is on capital cities.

here,there & elsewhere

The cookie’s calling

Capitalist enquiries

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Which animal do the cities of Berlin, Bern and Madrid have on their coat of arms?

Which capital city’s complete name literally means ‘The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (unlike Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built

by Vishnukarn?’

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The 14th-century capital of the Serbian Empire is now the capital of another country.

Name the city and the other country.

Which African capital city was once one of the largest ports for the Barbary pirates and has a medina listed as a World Heritage Site?

Frankfort is the unlikely capital of an American state with two much better-known cities. One of the cities is known for a world famous horse race, while the other features a college basketball stadium which is the largest in the world. Which state are we talking about?

6 7

In which country are all the highest courts based in the city of Brno, while the constitutional capital is another city?

The Ming dynasty finally decided to relocate the Chinese capital to Beijing to effectively control the borders from Mongols and Manchus.

In which ancient city did the Chinese Empire have its capital before Beijing?

8

La Paz is the highest capital in the world, located at an altitude of almost 12,000feet, making it a nightmare for football teams from other countries. Which is the Asian capital at the highest altitude, after La Paz and Quito in the global rankings?

9

Leading on from the last question, which is the lowest national capital, located 28m below sea level and having a Persian-origin name that literally means ‘Wind Pounded city’. It is infamous for its harsh winds and snow squalls.

ookie, our friendly neighbourhood not-really-tame raccoon, sneaks in K one day. Bins insists on leaving the windows open on the off-chance that Kookie might want to drop by for a snack. Which he does, now and then.

However, today I happen to be reading when he comes in. So he sniffs around, opens drawers, checks my studio for tasty tubes of paint before ambling up to me. He points to his mouth and pats his plump little belly, the internationally recognised sign language for “Feed Me Now, I’m Hungry”. “Sorry,” I say to him, “I’m busy.” I show him the book I’m reading: Story Is A Vagabond, a collection of short fiction, essays, and drama by Intizar Husain.

“Who is that?” Kookie wants to know. “A great Pakistani writer who died only 10 days ago,” I say. The book is a collection of translations edited by Alok Bhalla and published by the University of Hawaii. There are a couple of photographs of the author plus artwork in a lyrical, miniaturist style by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi.

Kookie wants to know if raccoons are featured in the book. I say, “No, but I think the author would have enjoyed putting you into one of his stories if he had met you.”

“Why?” Kookie wants to know. He

doesn’t often hear of humans who might want to include him in their stories. “Because,” I say, “a talking raccoon is an oddity and I think he liked oddities. He heard myths in the cries of peacocks, found fables in the shadows of ordinary life.” Kookie asks for an example and I describe to him a story called ‘The Boat’. It’s about the Ark and the flood and the floating menagerie that Noah took with him, told through the medium of three different cultures, describing a catastrophic flood. The way he plaits the stories together is both charming and poignant. We share our dreams, he seems to say, but fail to value that sharing when we’re awake.

“I still don’t see where I fit in,” says Kookie. “The stories speak of a time when India and Pakistan shared the language of thought,” I explain. “There are little chips of humour scattered throughout, like mica glittering in sand.

In the world of his stories, there would be nothing unusual about a raccoon talking to a human.” Kookie looks puzzled and says, “There IS nothing unusual about that!” I nod, but feel sad anyway. I lived in Pakistan as a child and when we returned to India, the difference between the two countries was invisible to me.

“In a wonderful story called ‘Leaves’,” I say, “a Buddhist monk struggles with desire. The tale runs its course, told in poetic words. It seems like a simple fable but when it ends, what remains is the heady perfume of desire. Not release.” Kookie perks up. “Oh!” he says. “I understand that perfectly well.”

“Really?” I say, surprised. I had not realised that raccoons had mystical tendencies. “Of course,” says the little creature. “I’m always hungry. That’s what you’re talking about, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly,” I say, bringing him a cookie. “But never mind.” manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

cornerstone

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In British India, every Presidency had a ‘summer capital’ where the government would move in the summer season. Shimla, Ootacamund and Mahabaleshwar have all served as British summer capitals. Which is the only Indian state to still have a summer capital?

Answers 1. The Bear 2. Bangkok 3. Skopje, currently the capital of the Republic of Macedonia 4. Rabat, the capital of Morocco 5. Kentucky, Frankfort was chosen as a compromise after the leaders could not choose between Louisville and Lexington 6. Czech Republic, Prague is the designated capital 7. Nanjing, whose name literally means ‘southern capital’ in Chinese 8. Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, located at an altitude of 8680 ft 9. Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan 10. Jammu and Kashmir; Srinagar is its official summer capital

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

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