Blink issue 17 may17 2014

LAND OF LAKES AND LETTERS KR Meera on Kottayam, the town of bars, bakeries and successful women, which made her the writer that she is p17 saturday, may 17, 2014

HERITAGE IN BRICK Architects of Ahmedabad succeed in safeguarding the legacy of Le Corbusier p3

CHARACTER SKETCH National Award-winner Rajkummar Rao is no longer a Bollywood outsider p16

Where was I...

It is the end of the most polarising elections in the history of Indian democracy.

As a new government forms, we look back at some of the iconic events that shaped the political, business, sporting and cultural landscape of the country p6

DUNG GOODERS The mysterious dung beetles, rolling and burrowing for a million years now p22

know explore

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Anuran talkies

CREATURE FEATURE

I bequeath my passwords to…

L A peek into the life and times of the Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis aka the purple frog, on the verge of extinction

Dung beetles The scatological insects who know both the Milky Way and dino droppings intimately

et’s begin at the beginning. seen by anybody, mostly because my So they say our ancestors mother is not more than 10cm and have been around since the my dad is even smaller, about 7cm Mesozoic era or the time or so. It did happen though, and I when dinosaurs were frolicking am the living proof of it. about. They also say that our closest Even as a tiny tadpole, resilience relative, the Sooglossidae, live more has always been one of my than 3,000km away, in what are strengths. My suctorial mouth lets now the islands of Seychelles and me hang onto rocks and stones, prewill in the form of a written document with Madagascar. Some of them ended venting strong currents from washtwo independent witnesses. But as N Vijayashup catching a really long cruise ing me away. If I’d known the Bee ankar, a techno-legal information consultant across the high seas, and by long I Gees then, I would have probably based in Bangalore, points out, “‘Digital propSisyphean task? Dung roll is thenot ballseparately using the sun for orientation shah mean a journey that lasted millions been humming, Stayin’ alive, stayin’ erty’beetles in India defined.

What divyaraj is of years. It was during that time that alive. The point is, I made it through defined in the IT Act is an ‘electronic docuut away ment’.” your cup coffee the Indian landmass came into its the ebbs and flows of the tide, and In of some situations, the laws of digital cies that are active at night? They or piece wills of toast a minown, developing its own distinct before you can say Nasikabatrachus mayfor have to be derived by interpreting use the light from the moon instead. ute, andthelet’s about succession, biomes within which new varieties sahyadrensis, I was on my way to belawstalk of property hethey says.do on nights when But what do dung beetles.

Why dung of flora and fauna emerged. By the coming a fully-grown purple frog.

Clearly, there are nothe great expectations yet It turns out, moon isn’t visible? beetles, you ask? for Because no animal time it ended up where it is now, we the digital will indung India.

As Gupta says, beetles can use starlight — the I might be wrong, but I’m four better exemplifies the though notion Ithat too had found our own identity.

“Even am notorientation averse to digital of the wills, Milky Way, in paryears old now, more than halfway one creature’s waste another’s enAlthough we’re similar to our Sey- through my life. In these years, I’ve the is substantive law inticular India makes them un-of where they — to keep track tire existence. For a dung and beetle, chellois cousins, we also possess seen many things from top and botenforceable null.” are going! dung is more than just its roti aur characteristics that are unique — the tom. What I’ve seen underground, I It isn’t just the rollers that have The digital afterlife makaan — battles are fought and evolved impressive features in relack of toe discs and our much can’t really talk about here, as I don’t hearts are won over a pile of dung. the digital Globally, however, been en- Male tunlarger size, for example. While our think human beings can compresponsewill to has competition.

Dung beetles come in several va- nellers thusiastically embraced by many In with one brethren grow up to a maximum of hend them. Maybe, if more people also netizens. battle fiercely rieties, each with a different rela- Shavit Israel, Vered Rose begandefending advocating a centimetre or so, at another, access to felike Dr SD Biju and his tionship to dung.

The wills ‘tunnellers’ digital after her brother Tal Shavit died in eggs within full size, we can be as males who will lay their group, Lost Amphibtunnel through dung to accident. build nests a road She set the blog large as 7cm. What the up tunnel nests.Digital Rival males fight ians of India, continue in the ground below, carrying dung Dust after hackers stole her brother’s digital happened to us apparover who gets to father those eggs — observing us, one day, I My parents met by into these nests to both feed onafter andhis death. data a month “I wanted raise ently makes a strong they lock horns to with each other at can talk about what we the side of a gurgling laysite eggs in. Theawareness ‘dwellers’ofset boutisacalled year ago, Gautam a 35- accounts, theup fact that we entrances, are all going to males with case for what tunnel and on under. a password online, do down Untilmanager streamJohn, in Idukki shop in the leave dungbehind pile, expendyear-old TED-fellow and Bangalore- so my digital legacies assets, of senthe biotic ferry model biggerand horns prevail.

Species of tunwife will have access in right the case then, let’s just stick to to them ing while no effort based educationist, chanced upon of my timental, emotional and financial value, of evolution.

I believe nellingand dung beetles this beyond thepassing,” surface. he says, adding that that an obscure should manage it. I also wantedtherefore to assistpossess a diwe’re also the missingGoogle policy blog that is notIna formal will per se, as required a practi- toweburmy four years of it serves row just beneath the that are going through the process stated, “Not many of us like thinking about calexistence, families of of impreslink between the oldverse array alternative.

I’ve seen the surface. But thedealing first with the digital legacy andsive death — especially our own. making plansfrom above for only about assets of including and new-world frogs.

SinceBut barely horns, world Dung beetles can use Silence of the law beetles to arrive on the ones who have passed away, by forofwhat happens after you’re really loved provid135 us have been spotted so far,gone in- istwo some species whose months, give or take some. This starlight to track Currently, digital has no legal scenesanctity. followingingthe important forthree the people youthe leave Sobe difficult them useful information such ashorns technical cluding only females, In-behind. are outrageousmight fora you to will imagwhere they are going Says essentially Apar Gupta,subterrawho works forproduction Delhi-basedof a guides fresh and how-tos,” says Shavit. ly large — they can today, we’reUnion launching a new feature ternational for Conservation ine,that but we’re law firm and Co and pileonofIT-relatdung are There the are companies such as Legacy makes it easy to has tell put Google what want Locker, of Nature (IUCN) us on the you weigh more than 15 nean creatures andAdvani come up only to focuses “At present, will isThese not beetles ‘rollers’. done with your digitalSpecies. assets when die or ed passmywill.com, lifecapsule.be and others thatof the total Red List of Threatened What youprocreate. per cent Welitigation, burrow our way up a digital India as ashowers, registered will.quickly roll a ball of can Ino longer your account.” offer spaces to store digital treacan say, timesuse are tough.

It’s sur- before thevalid mass of the beetle. Calfirst in monsoon However, parties always atdung away from the pile before bu-or take Called the Inactive Manager, it alsures instructions prising though that weAccount were found a and culate how muchto17pass per cent of your like my dad and everyare other to adduce a willgo, in a pro-rying it, attempting to minimise Google users to telldisthe internet on the digital details is, to and loved decadelows ago; most anurans were body weight then imagine male in liberty my species, I too proceeding, and a court,competition with both other ones after one’shauling behemoth what it ago. should with bate death. that weight around covered a couple of centuries I do “RRRAAAK,” in the hope of attractAt present, however, based on thehopefully, specific State their personal data if anding when In an era whereon people lead for the sake guess we slipped through the gaps your head, a pretty woman, a law,rollers and the onslaught a digital will is not may give it effect.” of tunnellers and theyI diverge. die or their account be-round full digital lives — fromofschmoozsomehow. Anyways, dung. fleshy one.

And I have to say, I valid in India comes ing on social media sites andtestament to The beginning for me isinactive. when my haven’t doneAdvocate One too badly.and cyber law expertdwellers who arrive Duggal it’s timesoon after. But arrivmeside it isof the concept shopping from e-tailerstheright mother and father met“For by the value of dung as Don’t getPavan me wrong.

I’mbelieves not gloatthestubby law caught with digitaling first isn’t alDead Man’sing, Protodown to the everydaynessaof paythis gurgling streamof in the Idukki, Keralife-supporting but my limbs, up protrud“In India, thousands colmy (Switch) which ing led me ing household bills and banking la, my father riding on mother’s resource is that snout,life. bloated body and tinyof giga-ways enough to of any personal go downavoid the drain ev- online — a digital will assumes an importance competition to leave online back with the aid of stickybehind secre- myeyes dung beetles are are asbytes fine as other data purple ery day… seldom their data roll— individual possessions to myfrog wife,” all its own. tions and, you know, doing their found on almost I know.

But sincepeople there are onlyplan how should distributed andthem- As Shavit explains, “It is up to each every ersdeath) who find person continent. thing. All this mightsays not John. have The beenDeada Man’s few females left, be come rains, it’s (after al- their there is really nowho legalgets provision selves to provide ac- how without a they deal with something like this, Switch refers to a ways switch But but perhaps more a race to determine cesswhom. to thisDespite lost data.”

He blames this on dung balltheof their that is operated automatiwhat I do recommend is that we make these is the fact compelling to jiggy with the jigoutdated Information Technology Act, own willwhich launch into vi- while we are still alive andthat cally if the human operator decisions lucid, andbeetles have these gying, we’re a rare species.

But I’m in 2000 and amended cious combat with becomes incapacitated. notrollers leave our loved ones to wonder weabout their been what going sure therewas areenacted more ofway us back in this in 2008. who are rushingwould awayhave from “Apart from the Google managwanted.” lives of rolling, burying and world. I’mjust toldonce we live in the WestIndian lawAnna— Indian Succession Act, their hard-won dung burrowing into dung for millions of the pile with er, I have also backed-up all my passern Ghats, inUnder Parambikulam, sibi arasu 1925and — anyone aged Hills.

21 and above can trying make ato wrest balls, control of the years. There exist fossils of dinosaur words, including those of mymalai, bankNilgiris Cardamom precious resource. For the early-ar- droppings that bear distinct eviHere, in my neck of the woods, I riving rollers, therefore, speed is of dence of being used by tunnelling hope to see a few more monsoons essence. But getting far away from dung-eaters, most likely beetles. and finish that burrow. Missing link the dung pat as fast as possible neWould you have imagined conor not, I also hope my tadpoles see cessitates knowing exactly where templating the dung beetle would many pre-monsoons of their own. one is going. To be able to move in a launch you into the far reaches of (Information courtesy Dr SD Biju straight line directly away from the space and time? I certainly didn’t. and team, Systematics Lab, Universidung pile, some beetles have ty of Delhi.) evolved to orient themselves based ambika kamath studies organismic and sibi arasu on the sun. But what about the spe- evolutionary biology at Harvard University

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No, not diddly-squat...

The purple frog knows what lies above and beneath the ground

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PAR THA PRA TIM SHA RM A

sd biju

PARTHA PRATIM SHARMA

More and more people are drawing up a digital will to specify who will inherit their personal data and other online assets after they are gone

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Museum Unlimited It is a victory for architects and Le Corbusier in Ahmedabad

Ideas in brick (Top) Professor Neelkanth Chhaya with the architect fraternity at Sanskar Kendra when they brought out a petition SNEHAL GANDHI; the Louis Kahn Plaza at IIM-A

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n the morning of May 7, a bitter stand-off between the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and the city’s architect fraternity came to an end. The AMC, which had planned to construct a two-storey control room adjacent to the Sanskar Kendra, was forced to abandon its plan. The construction had threatened to eclipse the Le Corbusier-designed museum, the first of three such museums in the world, the other two being in Tokyo and Chandigarh.

In his 1925 book The Decorative Arts of Today, Le Corbusier writes, “Let us imagine a true museum, one that contains everything, one that could present a complete picture after the passage of time…” The Swiss-French architect, considered a pioneer of modern architecture,

proposed this form of a new museum for the location of the control room, Fondation Le three projects — the World Museum of the Corbusier’s president, Antoine Picon, sent an Mundaneum, the Museum of Modern Art and appeal to the AMC chief Guruprasad Mohapathe Museum of Unlimited Growth. tra. To the Paris-based foundation, which arBuilt in 1954, the Sanskar Kendra is based on chives the architect’s works, the building is the architect’s idea of a true museum or the one of Corbusier’s major realisations.

Museum of Unlimited Growth. “Corbusier In the letter, a copy of which is with BLink, Picalled it the cultural centre of Ahmedabad, con writes, “I would like the city of Ahmedahence the name Sanskar Kendra,” says Profes- bad to make its best effort to find a solution sor Neelkanth Chhaya, architect and former that would permit the new development furfaculty member at Centre for Environmental ther away from the museum façade… I would Planning and Technology University (CEPT). be very pleased if you could take into consid“All (the museums of unlimited growth) are eration the violent impact on the integrity of different in structure, but have the seminal the museum on one side and the awful conseidea of modernism and culture.” quences of the current project on the reputaYet, for decades the cultural centre, located tion of the city and of the Foundation, on the in the tree-lined and posh neighbourhood of other side”.

Paldi along the Sabarmati, has remained a AMC chief Mohapatra, however, says that static place for exhibitions. Originally con- the architects assigned on the project didn’t ceived as a complex that would house sepa- inform the corporation about the key features rate pavilions for different subjects such as of the original plan. “In the plan by Corbusier, anthropology, natural history, archaeology there was a kind of grid that was to come up and folklore, the Sanskar Kendra currently on- surrounding the main building, but that was ly houses a museum. not shared with us. As soon as this came to our In the 1950s, at the invitation of the then knowledge, we decided to shift the new proprime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Le Corbu- ject,” he explains. sier undertook the project of building ChandiAccording to experts, the law needs to be garh, the new capital for Punjab. amended to protect such sites The architect was also commisthat do not fall under the ASI crisioned to build four other buildteria of protecting monuments ings in Ahmedabad, including that have existed for at least 100 the Sanskar Kendra. The buildyears. “It is sad to find that there There is no law to ing realises some of the ideas of is no law to protect such contemprotect Corbusier’s museum. Deborah porary but world-renowned arcontemporary but Gans in the Le Corbusier Guide dechitectural sites. This (Sanskar world-renowned scribes some of these: “Standard Kendra) is synonymous with the architectural sites bays of linear galleries wrap fabric of the city,” says Karan around a square court. The muGrover, a Vadodara-based conserseums are ‘buildings without favation architect who helped reçade, entered from below, in store the heritage site of other words, from inside’. The museums are Champaner in central Gujarat. siteless as well as unlimited.”

For architects, Corbusier’s futuristic deMost of the architect’s signature elements — signs were the main draw. Author Jon T Lang pilotis (columns), a roof garden and ribbon writes in A Concise History of Modern Architecwindows — find a place in the Sanskar Kendra. ture that many young architects wanted to Its roof is left wide open for a terrace garden, work with Corbusier in India, such as BV unlike the museum in Tokyo. “Forty-five open Doshi, who worked with the architect in Paris water tanks were to cool the galleries below. and later as his site-architect in Chandigarh The continuous trough at the top of the pilotis and Ahmedabad. Lang says that Corbusier’s was to hold vines that would climb the brick impact on the architects was at many levels — façades,” reads the Corbusier Guide. “Unlimited as an employer, as a theorist, a form-giver and growth”, as envisioned by Corbusier, was to be an educator. shown through nature. And Ahmedabad, beMore than a decade later in 1962, when the sides Paris and Chandigarh, was one of the few Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad cities in the world to have inherited such a was completed, Louis Kahn held out a similar, Corbusier legacy.

Corbusier-like appeal for the architects here.

The AMC’s move to build the weather con- Kahn, a US-based architect, was commistrol room was seen not only as an attempt to sioned to design the IIM-A. The Louis Kahn Pladeface an architectural landmark, but also za, considered an architectural marvel and one that would hurt Ahmedabad’s chances to which features in the film 2 States, has aged become a UNESCO heritage site. According to fast after the 2001 earthquake. The complex architects, the new construction was violating has sustained damages over the past 50 years. the very idea of modern architecture, that is, In a boost for the architect fraternity in the to have a foreground. Foregrounds are kept so city, the IIM-A management will undertake the that the building can be viewed from a dis- first-ever conservation exercise since 1962. For tance. “There was no plan for new construc- the next three to five years, the institute will tion in the original design by Corbusier,” says spend an estimated ₹15 crore per year in restoYatin Pandya, an Ahmedabad-based architect ration efforts. and activist. Most of the architect fraternity, With Corbusier’s legacy intact and Kahn’s including people from CEPT, architect associ- getting a much-needed facelift, the architects ations and international groups joined in to of the city have prevailed. protest against AMC’s proposed construction.

Two days before the AMC decided to shift rutam vora

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PRESENT IMPERFECT

My week of wealth Everything seemed to be falling into place. The Sensex was up and I was living my future even before it had arrived taking the Metro befitted my new station in life. I started several phone conversations with “my view on the market is that…” Everything seemed to be falling into place; I was living my future even before it had arrived.

When I reached office, the Sensex was up another 400 points. This was bewildering, I had to admit. I expected it to be down by that much. My loss of imaginary profit was threatening to overtake my actual profit.

I toldtomyTutu good self not to panic. Any minute now the market be true would crash and I’ll buy.

A ballerina’s ‘impromptu’ Mother called to say she had followed my infor structions and sold her stocksperformance for a low fourThe Ride figure profit. And the prices had climbed significantly since. I told her to calm down.

Maybe I was yelling. She sounded like she might cry. The pesky minions at work kept coming in with story ideas and page layouts. It was all too much.

Monday evening, I decided to watch the business channels just to hear what my contemporaries in the financial services world were saying. Everyone seemed bullish. There was no talk of even a possibility of a fall in the your attention. He waves at you. So you wave markets.

— a fraction ofwas timecoming, in which so many possibilModi development was back. And then he proceeds to leave the pack- assured. ities exist that it goods, seems like no time at all.

A viCapital automobiles, banks, age he is carrying by the road and bursts into they sualsaid, illusion, or is itgoa wrong sensorywith delusion? you can’t these. Mayvigorous hip-hop. Two Asian ladies, one of be they The Ride an The houronly andway drops back in werelasts right. theusmarket them pushing a child in a buggy, veer to their front of the Madame Tussauds museum on W could go is up.

I wondered whether I should shutterstock right to avoid the dancing UPS man from tell 42nd Street.toAsbuy I hop the busagainst and quickly mother butoff decided it. It crashing into them. The child looks up from wasn’t dart across the road to see it looks like like she was paying mewhat for advice. the stroller, enthusiastically and gives from outside, I feel the chill the of excitement made me feel awaves little awkward that I made this Tuesday morning, I first skipped gym. I’d you theon most adorable smile.

You are rather of being New York. took two money a Modi rally. toothless I considered registerbe in rich than fit, Itanyway.

Asdays soontoascome the so aprimed the unexpected you won- markets — this much-anticipated excitement but I ing couple for of Likes on some of that his Facebook opened, I bought stocks by the— armderpages whenasthe baby will jump outbut then de- ful. I threw in everything, am glad that at last it my has.profits fan a token of gratitude, including of theI should buggy and jig.

This isinmy first trip too, to New cided justbreak give ainto partaof the money to from Friday. I logged sale orders to I aminstead. on The Thirty Ride, aper buscent which City. Stocks I nearlywere made it here charity seemed fair. square off my York positions. shooting isThat all glass side with three twice in the past both left on meone with ₹1.4 lakh, nothing to be up. I was making thousands of and rupees bytimes the rows ofat. seats, stadiumthe trip was scuttled at theuplast sneezed Nowarranged I know that I wouldn’tYou’re be ableso primed second.for I contemplated which car I should 30 or minute.

I was to think tostyle. makeAbout ₹1.4 lakh inso thetourists marketsit every the day.unexpected, But grade to. mother andbeginning insisted she buy youI called facingI could the glass, no-smudge that the seemed universeespecially wasn’t quite surely, make a₹14,000.

How hardwonder would if too.

At office, everyone anthe baby viewbe? of And the ifcity.

As we drive everywill going to conspire toaround bring me that I made ₹14,000 day, I noying.

When I managed to get to jump out of the around Manhattan, two edit here, that maybe mytoNew York could retire before 40. with This whole meetchecking the market, I was shocked see that buggy, break into a jig wittydeadline-chasing compères on the gig mic, was of all wouldwere always be pale in the realm ing, things more pink thanof the things thatanyway, go on outside the fiction.

I hungMy onstocks to the visuals getting tiring and this bright green. seemedof bus, itbe is ahard to figure what city — onsome television would perfect escapeout route. tothe be shedding gains. shows I was isI staged and what is real.about Is that and movies. finally artold a couple of friends going to wait So tillwhen 3pm Iand then ladyjackpot; an investment banker home rive, nothing feels new.

Walking around the my in hushed tones,heading modify my orders and still sell By the time I reached from work or arich, full-throated opera singer city the couplefor of days, everything so now that I was the tax guys a profit.

Come feels 3pm, office,waitI had made ₹2firstthem ing to blow yourThey mind off with voice? familiar that it feels like a terrible waste to wouldn’t be far. both sug- her big lakh some work nonsense turned up in profit Perhaps that ais cottage a real teenager to get gested I buy in the on the kerb have spent so andmuch I losttime tracktrying of time.

By here. the waiting toand burst balloon Ibehind an old The only source York joymarket initiallywas was mountains startthe a business. time ofI New looked up, man’s sure head.about Is it part of Ia am stand-up act meant the fact thatclosed I was staying Paramount wasn’t that, a and myatstocks were Hotel, deep forgirl. the bus? are about to witness a which is right nextred. to the Scientology Centre. city I likePerhaps to keepyou a distance in the Tragedy! crime of some kind.wish Perhaps youwould will laugh, There were nomorning, sightings of Tom Cruise or John from nature and only nature keep Wednesday Sensex is down 40 you willme. cry,But perhaps you scream.

Travolta. everyone on the street seemed itsperhaps distance from the rest ofwill it was per- points.

My But stocks are bleeding a dark crimson.

It could be live any in of the this.city, Or itwhere couldIbe none.nevPer- Actual like a profit potential auditor. drama seemed fect.

I could would is now down Some to high four figures. thatfrom is why they call a New Yorkpeople minute Even imminent.

Alas, profit none transpired. erhaps be far a wi-fi, andithelp other imaginary is at a loss now. Remake some money in the market as well. Be- freshed the site every minute but it is only getcause this was generous and charitable of me, ting redder. At last count, I had ₹700 left from I figured I should have no qualms about put- my jackpot on Friday. Blocked mother’s numting that 30 per cent back into my kitty. ber on the phone. Off to an editorial meeting Then I called my mother. “You should sell now, we’ll toss around some story ideas, define too,” I told her. She had only small profits here some deadlines, talk about a book or a movie. and there, but I told her to sell everything off The team is great, the wi-fi is free, this is a lot of and wait for my instructions to buy again. She fun actually. agreed. I even had my first client. t@veenavenugopal On Monday, I drove to work. I didn’t think

New York minute

Is it a visual illusion, or a sensory delusion? The city that can still surprise

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VEENA VENUGOPAL is editor BLink ND-X _ A

and author of The Mother-in-Law

t Columbus Circle, a ballerina, bound up against the cold in pink turtleneck and a tutu, swirls and pirouettes. She leaps over the grey stone and twirls past the statue of the winged boy holding the globe. Then, as she raises her arm, she accidentally brushes the man walking past her, a backpack overfortune. his shouln Friday I came slung by a small I der. He might a tourist.

Or a around local walking had be been nipping the home after work.

He turns the stock market for a around, couple ofsees years ballerina and, to your astonishment, joins her without really having anything in her dance. together, weavsubstantial to Now showthey for move it. Some months I ing past walkers andthousands gawkers, their would make a few and bodies then glidingon round themoderate circle. As success, the bus you areinin spurred by that throw leaves the money Circle toafter head back tostay Times Square, some good bad and stuck for thenext ballerina andor the take bow.turned the half year so,man until theatides You barely peel your off them when for reasons unknown to eyes me. But with an eye a UPS the notion trademark khaki on thedelivery political,man, and a in vague that there shortsbeand shirt, standing the kerb catches might a last spike in the on market before the election results come out, I’d been religiously logging into my online account for the last 10 days. On Friday, seeing that the Sensex was up some 150 points and that my forecast had indeed come true, I calculated grandly, added ₹20 to the trading price of the stocks I had, logged my order and set off to work.

By the time I reached office, I had made nearly ₹2 lakh in profit and lost nearly ₹30,000 in additional profit, money I imagine I would have made if I hadn’t sold in haste.

Sensex was up some 500 points. I had to delay the editorial meeting because every second my loss of imaginary profit was inching up. By 3pm, I was down some ₹50,000 in imaginary profit and it showed no sign of slowing. I had the worst headache of my life and decided to abandon computing personal wealth and get down to the business of editing this paper. I won’t tell you the final loss figure, it still makes me want to weep a little.

Anyway, over a few drinks that evening, I decided I was going about this all wrong and should only think of the money I actually made. Since I wasn’t a supporter, at first it

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BAWDY LINE

The two generals As young surgical residents, we could belong to one of two units — the Parsi’s or the Maratha’s tween their outcomes for every parameter — postoperative morbidity, mortality and patient survival. The results for oesophageal surgery were: curative resection rates 40 per cent (Parsi) vs 76 per cent (Maratha), 30-day patient mortality 30 per cent vs 10 per cent, local recurrence 38 per cent vs 15 per cent, anastomotic leaks 25 per cent vs 10 per cent, and 10-year survival after curative resection was 20 per cent vs 63 per cent. Our own audit was carried out in the slipstream of a self-evident proposition that widely appeared in surgical journals then: the surgeon is to be considered an important variable that can influence patient outcome, particularly in cancer surgery. The foregrounding of this ancient bromide happened in the characteristic language of peerreviewed journals. ‘The current data suggests Knight and day While one professor gave us free rein in the OT, the other kept us at the sidelines shutterstock that the surgeon is an important prognostic factor in the treatment of oesophageal cancer.’ fter his much-vaunted oesophageal was fine for he actually allowed us to cut peoParadoxically, the results of our departmenresections for cancer of the oeso- ple up. It was in his unit that we got a whole lot tal audit were at variance with the other bit of phagus, when the Parsi Professor of surgical action, which meant the chance to inference being bandied about in these jourwould emerge from the OT to speak wander unaccompanied into abdominal and nals as gospel — the relation between case volto the patient’s family, he would cinematically thoracic cavities amid their sundry viscera. He ume and outcome. That, somehow, quantity refer the matter upwards, to a Radically Benev- allowed us our first unchaperoned encoun- meant quality. The more you undertake, the olent God. For a man who was antipathetic to ters with animate tissues. It was there that we better you get at it. Miller et al had analysed any superintending deity, this referral was plugged the hole between theory and praxis. the Hamilton (Canada) regional oesophageal never done shiftily or casually, but with the Everybody wanted to be in the Parsi’s unit. He cancer registry (1989-1993), and found 22 per highest seriousness, almost as an act of faith. was the man we exalted. Almost as much for cent hospital mortality for surgeons performPosterior to it, Marx’s great throwaway line his fantastic swagger and pudendum-based ing fewer than six cases per year, compared from the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right expletives and all-round grouchiness as his with zero per cent for surgeons performing was thrown at us, the small congregation of surgical discourse. And, as might be expected, over six cases per year. In our hospital, the Parsurgical residents, as a sort of verbal annota- for giving us free rein. si did more than twice as many oesophageal tion: ‘To call on them to give up their illusions But, it was during our time with the Ma- and pancreatic cases as the Maratha (whose about their condition is to call on them to give ratha that most of us could feel the first stir- score in an average year would not exceed six). up a condition that requires illusions’. “But we rings of the artisan in us. We hated the man on The two of them were true generalists. As do need to find out,” he’d often say, “if God can a cellular level, but delighted in general surgeons, there wasn’t a heal the oesophageal anastomosis.” Twice, the consummately artisanal way pathology that did not fall in midway through my term, he’d threatened to in which he performed surgery. their remit. Lung, oesophagus, change the subject of my dissertation to ‘A We wanted to do it just like that. pancreas, prostate, breasts, thyStudy of the Intercessory Effects of Prayers in The lecturers would be his first roid, thymus: they did everyIt was there (in his Patients Undergoing Oesophageal Resection’. assistants and we were relegated thing and looked upon the loss OT) that we plugged As young residents in a mofussil hospital in to the position of being second of generality as the declension of the hole between Maharashtra, we could belong to one of two and third assistants, watching the new generation. But the Parsi theory and praxis surgical units: the Parsi’s or the Maratha’s. We those magnificent performances had always considered the oesohad no choice in the matter. We ended up from the sidelines. Even his cirphagus and pancreas his forte. spending two years in our respective parent cumcisions (for pathologically A major element of the Maunit and were decanted in the middle for a adherent, non-retractile adult ratha’s personality had been his year to the other unit. The whole thing wasn’t foreskins) were transcendent. It could be said unslackening contempt for the Parsi. The Parsi quite fun and games: the work was very hard he considered it a procedure for beautifica- believed in all seriousness that the Maratha, as for very little, the conditions feudal, the atmo- tion. It was done with trigonometric solic- an organism, had lower intelligence than his sphere a meld of what you’d find in a debased itude, without any loss of blood, the penile constituent parts. The results of the audit had communist State and a Victorian workhouse. breach closed with an impossible running absolutely no effect on him. His operative The Professors, Dickensian villains both, subcuticular stitch. technique, with its equal mix of insouciance, glowered at us perpetually and treated us like We couldn’t do it, no matter how hard we flamboyance and caprice had become a habit. chattel. The Maratha was a leathery old cur- tried. Our circumcisions in the Parsi’s unit The Maratha’s big-headedness grew even mudgeon who displayed the most coxcombi- produced fringes around the glans, like lace- more. He thought the audit was the apotheocal variant of vanity and conceitedness, and work or the ample necks of frilled lizards, even sis of his career. His operative technique had operated so imperiously that every time he though we removed as much prepuce as was never come across as a transferrable skill. Nor took off his surgical gloves, it seemed he was legislated by the Maratha. On excising hae- did he ever try any kind of transference. going to announce he’d invaded Multan. The morrhoids, we couldn’t get those three perI’m aware that the debt for my own surgical prospect of working in his unit was a lowering fectly formed cloverleaf defects (with his tally enlightenment must be split evenly between one as his residents never got a chance to oper- of just three streaks of blood on a solitary the two. Let it also be said that some of those ate. What they got, was a kind of spectatorial gauze piece). Our haemorrhoidectomies tend- oesophageal resections (imputed to the Parsi) education. Intraoperatively, they served as tis- ed to be blood-sodden campaigns. were performed by residents. In the course of sue retractors to make way for His Majesty; It was actually a departmental audit that a few of them was begotten my own learning postoperatively, they provided the ovation. prepared us for what turned out to be an un- curve. When residents operate, the religious The Parsi, an illustrious savant in the groves falsifiable conclusion — the Maratha was the might make a case for intercessory prayers. of academe, was equally irascible most of the better surgeon. Not just empirically, but mea asatwik@gmail.com time and looked upon us as valets, but all that surably. We noticed significant differences be-

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Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and and the author of a rogue and deviant sexual history of the British Raj called Perineum: Nether Parts of the Empire

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Running in a dream

ELSEWHERE

manjula padmanabhan

A montage of essays on culture and cinema that provide an unwritten history of our political subconscious

Jogging along Not much fairy dust on this Peter Pan bus

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Stop and stare In a time of information overkill, this book provides a pause n rajesh

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nmediated is a Sisyphean pause “in the screen luminescent; then, suddenly, she the time of the nightly boisterous vanishes into the blue like a gypsy caravan. brawl goaded on by the anchor that Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika: did the “anti-heropasses for studio news debate… ine” break the cliché? …Comment pips fact every inch of the way.

Writes Sashi Kumar, “While a subdued and The information that is conveyed lacks credi- quiet but strong style has become her forte, bility, is speculative or half-baked…” The book the real test of her creativity and innovativearrives like Gaston Bachelard’s ‘poetics of rev- ness as an actress is her ability to give this baerie’ in the time of ‘paid news’, fake opinion sic characteristic a range: to impart those polls and Narendra Modi ‘live’, the feed of the subtle nuances, add those extra inputs that demagogue panned eternally on TV keep her from going stale or becoming typescreens, zooming in like Leni Rie- cast even as a breakaway character.” fenstahl’s many cameras. Words You turn a corner, there is no miracle. It’s move to and fro across familiar cor- bitter realism. This is how an essay ‘The Cut ridors like dream sequences. You and Thrust of Eisenstein’s Montage’ begins: have never been to this place and “In much the same manner as Che Guevera, yet you know the zigzag like the uprooted from the cause of his struggle and eyes of a lens. It is like running in a the context of his death, has been suborned by dream, unable to scream. market capitalism, to become fetishized comUnmediated moves like a primor- modity and iconized brand as an aspirational dial bioscope, and if you have eyes romantic rebel hero of our times, montage — a of wonder and amazement, you product of the first flush of the October Revocan actually see the still film as a lution — has been appropriated and vulgarmoving film, the static as a kaleido- ized by commercial advertisement and scope, stasis as magic realism. In publicity films and videos, over the decades, to this spiral, writing becomes anti- serve precisely the opposite artistic and ideocatharsis. If the ‘ways of seeing’ logical purpose.” as John Berger would tell us, beFor someone who started dabcomes ‘manufactured consent’, bling in multimedia much beas Noam Chomsky would prove, fore the ‘imagined community’ We have been turned then we must learn to enter the of ‘convergence’ could even halinto comic strips of unfamiliar ‘poetics of space’, perlucinate about it, and for a jourinsatiable desire. The haps the next by-lane where nalist who travelled across West more we have, the Herbert Marcuse’s ‘essay on libAsia as an eclectic great leap forless we are eration’ becomes a graffiti of reward, and then through the sistance on the wall. sleepless nights, meticulous riIndeed, as Andrei Tarkovsky’s gour and metaphysics of televicinematic The Sacrifice with a sion, radio, print, cinema, bucket of water and a solitary tree, in the be- internet, these radical, existential and nonginning was the word. Surely, this is also a mo- conformist essays on media, culture and cinement of exile and condemnation. In that ma travel like a rediscovery and an unwritten sense, if the universally embedded media has history of our political subconscious. The onemade all of us ‘Outsiders’ then even the smile dimensional tyranny of the herd mentality, of a stranger woman on the street can become the shallow and the stuffed, is turned a commodity. Buy one smile, get two free. transparent.

Surely, Unmediated tells us that we have The book, by its range, takes the reader by been turned into comic strips of insatiable de- surprise. From Aravindan, Coppola, Godard to sire; the more we have, the less we are. And yet, Guru Dutt, the ‘montage’ is breathless. A must in these ‘Modern Times’, like that incredible for media practitioners and academics, especritique of capitalism by Charlie Chaplin, the cially students. night is full of magical possibilities.

It’s like Smita Patil, a shooting star in the amit sengupta is a journalist and associate professor, nocturnal sky, with her dark darkness making at The Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi

he Peter Pan Bus service halts in Fall River, Massachusetts on its way to New York City. The bus terminal is around the corner from the site of a sensational 19th-century murder. There’s a famous nursery rhyme about the prime suspect: Lizzie Borden took an axe/And gave her mother forty whacks/When he saw what she had done/She gave her father forty-one. The young woman was acquitted but Peter Pan bus drivers sometimes point the site out to tourists; “She was let off,” they say, with a dark leer, “but the murderer was never found!”

The terminal is a transit point for local buses as well as long-distance services. I have a half-hour wait before boarding the next bus. Senior students from a local high school slouch in. The boys wear baggy jeans, the girls wear cut-away shorts and four-inch heels. One girl’s t-shirt is covered in neon green cheetah-prints, another wears a red-brick wall covered in graffiti. The station empties out when their bus arrives. A handful of men wearing dirty denim overalls remain. A Chinese grandmother sits in dignified silence on a bench beside twin girls dressed in identical pink tiger-stripe pyjama suits.

Peter Pan takes five hours to get from Fall River to New York’s Port Authority Bus Station. The building The air smells of is neon bright on the inside, raucaramel, burnt coffee cous with music, shops and restauand stale bubble gum. rants. Shoals of travellers mill It’s all very familiar about, looking for somewhere to sit, for a bite to eat, for misplaced tickets. The air smells of caramel, burnt coffee and stale bubble gum.

It’s all very familiar. I’ve passed this way many times before.

My next bus, a Greyhound, is at 2.30pm. It is now just after one. I hurry down three floors. All around me there are children carrying backpacks that look like furry animals, old men wheezing while standing stationary on the escalator, young women dressed in sequined straps, their skins shiny black or dead-pan white, eyelashes two inches long, hair hanging down in cascades of brassy curls.

Yes! There’s Gate 28. Yes, it’s to Binghamton. Twelve other passengers are already in line. I ask the tired Cuban mother with three sleeping children plastered to her to please hold my spot so that I can go buy a coffee. When I offer to get one for her too, she smiles but shakes her head. By the time I’m back four minutes later, the queue has already grown to 20 people. This is a popular route. At 2.25 the driver opens the door and we begin filing through, slinging our bags into the luggage-hold under the bus, before climbing in. I settle into a window seat and am soon joined by a red-haired girl juggling her backpack, a latte and an open laptop in one hand, while texting on her cellphone with the other.

Five-and-a-half hours later, we pull into Binghamton. I spot my sister waiting for me and begin waving even though she can’t yet see me. Then we’re in her sleek, moss-green BMW, speeding away from buses, rest-stops and the cheerful chaos of other people’s lives.

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Unmediated Essays on Media, Culture, Cinema Sashi Kumar Tulika Books ₹895

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As India wraps up a crucial election and looks ahead, BLink chronicles the events that were inflection points in our recent history. Luminaries in business, sports, the arts and literature tell us how these shaped them and their fields

MANJULA PADMANABHAN, author and artist, tells us tales of her parallel

life in Elsewhere, US, in this fortnightly series t@magnolialotus

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The country was Partitioned (1947)

A fine balance American photographer Margaret Bourke documented the stream of refugees courtesy gandhi smriti

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SATISH GUJRAL Painter, sculptor, muralist, architect and writer

began my art education in Lahore. When I was eight, I met with an accident and lost my sense of hearing. I was also bedridden for months and started doodling.

My father saw the doodles and thought it could be a good thing for me to learn art. We migrated to India during the Partition. I was really shook up with what I witnessed during that time. I helped my father for seven months in running a centre for refugees. It influenced my art hugely. I went to Bombay and studied art at the J J School of Art. Souza, Gaitonde, Sabharval, Raza and Pai were all my classmates.

When I finished college, I came to Shimla and started working as a graphic artist.

A few months later, Charles Fabri, a prominent art critic at the time, came to town. I knew his wife from Lahore. I ran into her at Mall Road one day and asked her if she would bring Fabri to my house so I could show him my paintings. Fabri agreed and came over. He saw my paintings and said he had only one advice for me, I should go to Mexico.

I was a communist then, and Mexico appealed to me. My brother, Inder Kumar, who later became the prime minister of India, said my speech impediment would not be a problem there. Since India was newly independent, a lot of countries were setting up their embassies and consulates here. I applied for a scholarship through the Mexican Embassy and eventually, got one.

Had I not gone to Mexico, we wouldn’t be sitting here and talking. It played a significant role in my life. People say that the Mexican influence on my painting is very obvious. They are wrong. Even after Partition when I was painting in Shimla, this was my style. But no one in India was following it. It was disheartening. Had I not visited Mexico, I would have dropped out eventually.

By the time I came back (1949-50), India was not merely a newborn. It had a place for art and artists, and Indian artists were doing some incredible things. Most of my contemporaries were bigger successes commercially because they stuck to one form. In my case, once I became known for a certain style, I got tired of it.

I am not a trained sculptor. But I decided to sculpt. When the Belgian government wanted to build an embassy in India, they held a competition. I thought it was a joke that a foreign government would commission an Indian architect. But I submitted a design and I won it. That’s how I became an architect. I designed 12 buildings. Someone asked me if you keep changing like this, what will you be doing tomorrow? I said, if I know it, I’ll do it today. ♦

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MILKHA SINGH Track and field sprinter

still get nightmares. I shudder when I think of that dark period of our history. People ran wherever they could.

They hid wherever they could. It was not easy. There was blood everywhere. Mankind had lost its sense. Man wanted to devour man. It was heart-wrenching as cries of pain and agony emanated from all corners. Did we deserve this? Friendly neighbours had turned hostile in no time. Where to go was the challenge. I heard cries, “They have come, they have come, run to save your lives.” Who had come? No one knew. People just ran. Some escaped. Many did not. They met cruel death. I have lived that nightmare of fleeing from my native village countless times. I left behind everything (in Multan). My parents died. My family was nearly destroyed.

I survived because I ran. I saw bodies everywhere. Sights that haunt me even now. I was too young to understand the reasons for what happened but even then we were told that the horrific acts were carried out by professionals.

I lost everything in the Partition, a part of me was left behind. Trying to make my way, trying to find a future, I discovered the harsh realities of my life. I took refuge in a ladies’ coach, to be born again, literally. At that point, I did not know where my next meal would come from. When I think of Partition, I am reminded of pain and hunger. I pray no one should experience what I did. I left my self behind in my native village until I rediscovered it by running — by running for life. ♦

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Sholay the screen Freshhitprince (1975) of Bollywood From an outsider with the ‘wrong eyebrows’ to an actor with a national award – the story of Rajkummar Rao

Arey O Samba The ending of Sholay was changed to abide by the diktats of The Emergency

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n Shahid, he is a straight-edged lawyer who believes everyone is entitled to a defence. In Kai Po Che, he is Govind Patel, a Gujarati middle-class boy always looking to set up a successful enterprise. And in the eight other films he has starred in, he portrays SAJID KHAN as many distinctive characters and, like any Filmmaker, scriptwriter and good actor, stays true to all. Rajkumar Yadav television presenter aka Rajkummar Rao, 29, belongs to that school of acting where the truest allegiance is to versatility.

“As an actor I don’t want was a toddler when I went to to restrict myself to one genre a certain stereotype,” Rao says see Sholay in theortheatre.

I will meet him just neverwhen forgetwethat spectacle.

Myas he was leaving to collect thisneighbours year’s National family and my had Film Award for Best Actor his portrayal of Mumbai lawyer Shaleft together to for watch the film but Azmiforindifferent the acclaimed we had gothid tickets cine- film Shahid. (He shared the award withcinMalayalam actor Suraj mas. Sholay was playing in every Venjaramood for Perariyathavar.) ema in the city, it had a grand “There arecorrectly, six billion release. If I remember the characters in this world while I can’t poster said, ‘The and greatest star castplay as- all of them, I want portray as many as I can. When people see sembled.’ to I recall getting very scared they should not remember me, but reof Gabbarme Singh.

In Bombay’s Minerthefilm character played,” he says. va theatre,member where the played Ifor thefirst four25years since five years, forInthe weeks theyhis cinematic debut in Love, Sex aur put up a huge poster of Dhoka, all the Rao ac- has won himself a reputation as an actor most willtors. But formidable later, the poster got reto trywhich an alternative role. And that’s quite placed byingone had just flat. What a shot to produce at that anthe achievement forwere a Gurgaon lad who started Gabbar and other actors at stage. What can one say of the briloffAmjad as a complete newbie in the Hindi film inthe bottom.

Khan’s performliant running catch by Kapil Dev. His dustry. that come from a filmi family ance was the best“I’d eversay seen inIHindi athleticism was stunning and he in aone sense. No Khan, one’s connected to the film cinema by newcomer. in On a role National transformed a tough task into a riindustry, butactor everyto Saturday fact, was the first-ever sign the VCR was takaward-winning actor diculously easy one. Finally, the Indien out and family would watch an endorsement deal.the It whole was unRajkummar Rao kamal narang an team celebrating on the balcony filmsItback back,” he says, adding, heard of atthree that time. was ato Parle-G of Lord’s was the icing on the cake. It been a Plan-B ad and the“there’s taglinenever was ‘Gabbar Ki As- for me; ever since I was an achievement that gave a li Pasand’. was in school, I knew I wanted to be an actor.” greatround impetus to Indian cricket. for the second minus the muscles?

The film initially had another about looking good and saying the lines.”

Tinsel dreams moment me He did bagThat the glorious role and the criticalgave acclaim ending. A few DVDs available on the After leaving FTII in 2008, Rao tried his luck The Gurgaon he grew in was barren and far in films. He moved to Mumbai, showreel in in its wake. the Ragini inspiration be a part of such MMS to followed, and then international market have thatup verremoved from the ritzy malls that line it at ev- hand, and embarked on a round of unsuccess- smaller roles an achievement.

To Gangs be honest, as an in Shaitan, the of Wasseysion. It ends with Thakur crushing ery turn today.

“Myhim dadviowas a patwari (revenue ful auditions. “I wasVVS I didn’t follow the Chittagong and Aamir Khan’s Talaash Gabbar’s hands and killing toldLAXMAN a lot of mean things. pur films, eight-year-old official) we have been here for a long Someone said my eyebrow tournament until the final.

It was before Shahid happened.

While Shahid may lently. And then and Thakur breaks is not right for the Indian batsman time,” says Rao, youngest later that I sawKai the rehim plaudits, it was Povideo Che that down. Unfortunately, thethe end they of three siblings. role. Someone else said I wasn’t fair enough to have wonmuch and dance, be a Hindi film hero. But it did not demoralise propelledcordings of some of inhim to stardom.

Asthe he matches, puts it, “BeeventuallyGrowing used wasup, so learning meek. At taekwondo the he discovered love for the stage during a me, rather it inspired me,” he says. the the semi-finals, fore KPC cluding people knew characters where I had time of Sholay’s release, athe Emerplay.declared “I loved the Sandeep Patil, a dashing strokehat do I remember played, nobody knew my name.

But after the gency hadClass just Xbeen andspecial Fame time maker, batted well. of the 1983 film World everyone knew whoso I was.” they had attention to show that people no onegive is you, After a year of struggling withDefinitely started feelingthe that I wasn’t final,bywhich watched at Cup win?

City Lights,The directed HansalIMehta of Shaabove the and law, so they reshot end disappointments, he cameI canhid justbeing a regular guy. and It was stupid, I huge impact on me.has We the final. never fame, home, whomhad Raoa considers “family”, with Gabbar arrested takacrossforget an ad announcing di- just hit theatres. the six that that Krishnamachari used toAfter stay working in apartments and film our on a short en away. know, but I knew then that actI was told a lot of rector Srikkanth Dibakar hit Banerjee wasleg. with ing was something to — including a classmate over square It flew Miraneighbours Nair, he is currently shooting for his Sholay was declared a flop Iinwanted its mean things... I do.” In the ’70s, all films wereKialso cricket lovers.

OurSonam balcoDoli, which co-stars first two weeks. wasn’t fair enough to looking for newcomers. On next film,—Dolly learning that the role was that of Kapoor and ledlost-and-found him to an acting nies wereSamrat adjacent, every time a Pulkit (ofand Kyunki Saas Bhi were based That on the be a Hindi film hero a Delhi guy, he quickly bought Kabhi Bahu course the Shri Ram Centre in wicket fell we Other wouldupcoming run out andprodo Thi fame). theme. This film at was a little disconhimself a body-hugging t-shirt jects include Delhi and parents high-fives with the Hamari neighbours Revolution 2020 and Adhunected from that.

The“my villain didn’tstarted and hit the gym for two hours a ri Kahani. across I was balcony.

It was pure enter“I just the can’t take up more than one appear tillbelieving the end ofthat the first hourserious day. “I was muscular at the time, film at a time acting”.there Afterwas hisno graduatainment andI what joyofKapil Dev because do a lot research and, mostabout importantly, tion he pursued another gave to the neighbourhood and the character,” he says. mother. Filmmakers wereyetsure it degree in acting, so pumping iron made me look beefier. I was about each this But timeSholay at Pune’s reputed nationforwith that fabulous As he leaves the National Awardscatch, cerewould tank. proved a Film and Televi- confident I’d get the role. Everything nosedived once I reached the audition though. The mony, we ask sion Institute ofthat India which will always berule remembered. what his thumb is for choospoint to all of us.

I learnt if (FTII). you was in Delhi, Thescript lasting memory of sense that 1983 should make and make a film“When with Iconviction, thelike everyone else I casting director yelled at me for the way I was ing films. “The on Shahaccepted Rukh and Bachchan.

But dressed. The role was that of a simple, office- excite mewin is actor. that ofThere Kapilshould Dev lifting the as an be somechances ofloved it being areAmitabh 95 Icing the cake Kapil going guy and not some stud.” then I went to FTII and that changed a lot of cup.

That picture has stayed with me thing in there that I’m ready to give four per cent more.

Dev and Sunil Convinced he had lost out, he returned to months ofbecause in the two years we were India beat the West Indies, my life to.”

One of things… the saddest things is thatthere, Gavaskar withliving the Gurgaon only to be called back. Banerjee had andfilm breathing cinema.inI realised acting which was the best team in the our greatest is not available hindu is trophy the archives something it’s not only liked his audition, and could he please return sibi arasuworld at the time. ♦ home theatre format.you ♦ can get deep into,

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India won the World Cup (1983)

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The riots hit Bombay (1992) Wounded city A van goes up in flames after it was set afire by a rioting mob, at Mahim, Bombay on December 10, 1992 the hindu archives

MAHESH BHATT Filmmaker, producer and screenwriter

ADIL JUSSAWALLA Poet, columnist and critic

ANIL KUMBLE Bowler and former captain of the Indian cricket team

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have very sweet memories of the 1983 triumph. It changed the face of Indian cricket because the win was huge. It made the cricket world sit up and view Indian cricket differently. Like most young people, I too followed the tournament as a 13-year-old.

Those days, television did not cover cricket much and we had to follow reports in the newspapers or listen to the commentary on the radio.

I remember watching the video of the semi-final win against England and the chase that India pulled off in that match. The memory of Sandeep Patil hitting the winning runs to put India in the final is so vivid.

When India was climbing to

the top of one-day cricket, I had just about started playing competitive cricket, so I can’t really say if the World Cup had an impact on me. But it was obviously something to be proud of. It was a great feeling and a very exciting one as well.

Of the epic final against the West Indies, I can never forget the catch that Kapil Dev took to get rid of a rampaging Viv Richards. Kapil made a very difficult catch look so easy.

I can also never forget the sight of Gordon Greenidge shouldering arms to Balwinder Sandhu and losing his wicket. It was a most sensational delivery to bowl and just the motivational start the team could have hoped for. ♦

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n 1992, I was with the Times of India, looking after the book review sections. I might be mistaking it with the Bombay blasts, which happened a few months after the riots, but my first memory is of smoke rising from different parts of the city.

My own personal memory is linked to my father’s fall in the clinic. He was a naturopath and he used to go to his clinic every day. He had a bad fall on January 5 that year. My wife and I do not live too close to the clinic. I had to go visit the hospital. We knew the riots were on. The idea that the city is burning but we have to go about our business is a cliché. But at that time, I had to stay in touch with my brother and visit my mother.

I moved around by cab and those routes were not directly affected. But I am reminded of the press photographers who were very, very brave people… they used to rush to the spots and took searing photos.

There was one incident I remember clearly… I was going to my parents’ flat to meet my mother when I ran into Nissim Ezekiel, the poet, who was visiting his wife. He lived on Bellasis road, which was a dangerous area. It was late in the evening and I told him he couldn’t return home, I took him to our flat in Cuffe Parade.

That night wasn’t free of incident… from our 18th-floor apartment we saw two men being chased down the road by a crowd. They tried to take shelter behind the gates of a building but were caught and stabbed. It brought home to me the fact that no area is really untouched.

The conflagrations in the city appear often in my poems. Burning trains have impinged on my memories a great deal. I lost all hope when I heard of the Godhra incident; I felt that even after so many years, there was no hope for change. I realised this will occur again and again. My perception of the city changed as I realised that anything can happen at any point of time. ♦

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was in my flat in Juhu, just about to head out to Film City for a shoot around the time that the 1992 riots broke out. As I was about to turn into the road that leads to Film City, a few people instructed me to turn back. They told me there was stone-pelting, arson and violence ahead. When I was much younger, I had witnessed similar scenes in Lower Parel during the labour agitations but it was after a long time that Bombay had seen such intense scenes.

As the day progressed, the situation got more grim and then came the very heartbreaking and dark phase of curfew.

In 1998, when I directed Zakhm, I got footage of the riots from a reliable source, so making it was not a problem. It even got passed by the censors, but at the last minute, the Censor Board chief at the time, Asha Parekh, got cold feet. After that, the intolerance I faced from the NDA government is something I will never forget. They drained me financially by asking me to digitally change the saffron bands of the mobsters in all the scenes to grey. It is a very painful memory. They gave the film a National Award later, but that showed the duplicity of the NDA government. I never understood it. Zakhm was the last film that I directed. ♦

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The MyIndian thirdeconomy place was liberalised (1991)

Businessman and academic Nirmalya Kumar’s marvellous collection of Jamini Roys helped him find a balance between his many worlds Weighty issues The relaxation of licensing rules went a long way in tackling red tape s siva saravanan

Visceral connection Nirmalya Kumar with his carefully curated collection suseela yesudian; Kumar’s latest Jamini Roy purchase, ‘Krishna and Balarama’ british museum photographers

RC BHARGAVA Chairman, Maruti Suzuki

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was the chairman and MD of Maruti Udyog in 1991 when liberalisation was announced.

AJAY PIRAMAL Maruti and Hindustan Motors ries, CAG audits and public servants company cannot sustain or improve Chairman, Piramal Group (the makers of Ambassador) were, did not apply to us, increasing flexi- itself in the absence of competition. more or less, the only carmakers in bility. Operationally, it became People within Maruti also started efore 1991, licences were reIndia at the time. The government much easier, especially after licens- looking at things differently postquired for everything. liberalisation. And it enabled us to wanted to showcase the new liberal- ing rules were abolished in 1993. he Marylebone a major thor-also started coming grow at a faster pace. Today, capacity There was the MRTP Act ised policies. So it asked us to soundRoad, Competition oughfare through with Daewoo (in and sales have increased manifold, (Monopolies and Restricout Suzuki if it would increasethat equi- thunders in, beginning central be a rather ty in Maruti from 40 to 50 London, per cent.can1994).

Then, hosone by one, other play- exports have gone up and a robust tive Trade Practices Act) wherein you stifling just The result was that tile the and 60:40 share-place. ersThough came in.

It aled to improvement auto component industry has come were classified as a monopoly if your short hop from Regent's one of the in — quality, productivity and custom- up in the country. Thanks to liberali- assets exceeded ₹50 crore. There holding became 50:50, and Maruti Park most beautiful it is packed with besides com- a renewed focus sation , the Indian industry has reac- was industrial licensing and other became acity’s private company in — 1992. er services muters and tourists the many restrictions. In 1988, when we acConsequently, many rules foreager sala-to explore on keeping costs under check. A hed near-international levels. ♦ attractions (Sherlock Holmes territory and quired Nicholas, the pricing for the Madame Tussauds, to name a couple). Thereshares was determined by the govfore, stepping out of it into an elegant apart- his fireplace (and which fetched $60,000, ac- painting that ernment the Controller of tookthrough inspiration from Indian ment lined wall-to-wall with Jamini Roy cording to the Christie’s New York website).

Capital All that was suddenly folk art and used aIssues. restricted palette of earthy paintings feels both surreal and liberating. relaxed after liberalisation.

That was Kumar has established himself as the Roy colours. Over five decades, Roy seemed able to The apartment is the London home of Nir- go-to-person for London’s numerous art auc- draw on both the the time I decided to do an not adEast and the West while malya Kumar, a popular and successful former tion houses, often consulted by them to deter- being confined vanced management programme by either, says Kumar. academic at the London Business School. He mine the genuineness of Roy’s paintings. from to understand We pause byHarvard pictures(1992) juxtaposed against has authored a number of books on both In- (Roy’s penchant for reinterpreting and copy- one another whattothe bestRoy’s companies the show evolvingintechdia and marketing — including last year’s ing previous works on works without dates or nique: two world were doing. Because liberof his Kalighat-style cat inwith a Brand Breakout: How Emerging Market Brands names has left his collection ripe for forgers). prawn (a alisation, you that are developed going to open composition over Will Go Global — and ranks high on many glob- Kumar even owns a fake, which we look over time), andyourself toofthe world, female and I wanted paintings a solitary figure al lists of management thinkers (he came in closely as he points to some of the obvious (to who became to know to prepare forsensuous it. morehow curvaceous and 20 on last year’s Thinkers50 list). Recently he him) characteristics, such as its I asunderstood it Roy honedhow his important method. We joined the Tata Group’s executive council for colours, subject matter and lack wasstop to get the customer to portrait the cenbefore an exquisite strategy operations, which has returned him of depth. Yet, while he clearly has tre.ofInRabindranath the pre-liberalised Tagoreeconomy, (the unto India, a country he left several decades ago. an expert knowledge of the artyoucle had to wait for years to get a of Roy’s teacher, the modernKumar is the Jamini The apartment has few traces of his busi- ist’s work, Kumar’s relationship phone and up toAbanindranath eight years to ist line painter Roy go-to-person for ness persona: alongside the 70-something Ja- with Roy is essentially an emogetTagore), a car. Overnight, here was this executed in a Byzantine London’s art auction new world. How do you react to it? mini Roys he’s collected over the past decade tional one. When I ask what atstyle reminiscent of Russian houses and more, there are a handful of Rabindra- tracted him to his first Roy — a Theicons, Harvard programme helped the me while Kumar explains nath Tagores as well as works by other Indian sensuous portrait of a wide-eyed understand what real quality and complexity ofis the technique, artists and, most recently, a rare JMW Turner mother and child — he says simwhat is management of quality; marvelling simultaneously at its set in India. Bookshelves are stacked high with ply that it “spoke to me… it was what is the importance of customdepiction of the “grandness and volumes on modern and Indian art. andman. how He to keep getting visceral.” grandeur”ers, of the recollects themore eyeWe discuss some of Roy’s characteristics efficient. there sum was so The issue of identity figures frequently in brows raised by theBecause substantial hemuch paid that Kumar appreciates as a businessman, in- our discussion. In a frank and rather emotion- for the picture protection nowarnings imports back inuntil 2003,then, and the cluding his marketing instincts. Roy was well al chapter in Re-Imagine: India-UK cultural rela- he received were allowed, insulatabout the and risksyou of were putting too ALOK NATH ahead of his time — he recognised the art Computers had just come in too. tions in thechildren 21st Century, Kumar ofhindu how one artist.

Film and television actor A new window Cable TV exposed to a world beyondwrote India the archivesmuch intoed. world’s desire for reinterpretations and his learning about Roy — whom he first came We learnt how IT could beselect a competKumar has become increasingly with darshan inas 1972. time, was in plight of researched farmers and a fewhis lightn theown early ’90s to when Zee TV appeal ordinary Indians as well art At the itive It brought across inI2001 and has since with choices overadvantage. the years, bidding onlydown if he school in Delhi hadprecision done hearted ones like—Chitrahaar. launched, I worked on a show enthusiasts worldwide — ofacting whom he acyet raised our10quality theand eager of an academic helped believes itour willcosts fall into the top or 12 instanhis called Tara. Ita was quite westerplays for them.

TV and Zeeof TV werecollection. more dards. quired substantial followingsome during his lifecould himTowards develop the a better Star understanding himWhileWehis newexport role more. at TataThat’s has nised, but people lapped it up. late ’80s I was by brash and modern.

Even if people at hethe time.

But these are not particularly theoffered time we started the ISO self. Buniyaad Leaving Calcutta in the ’90s as a graduate meant only spends a week or initiative so every It featured a single and filmmaker Ramesh Sippy. The con-for the DDUS, wanted tohad keep up with qualities thatmother count with Kumar, for whom his student and Juran Combound Kumar been ea- satellite month in London, hequality is eagermovement. for other Roy enTV, they were tied down by strict gui- to young girls drinking cept of daily soaps was artsmoking collectionand is entirely distinct from the rest petition but we in ger beginning to shun histoold identity before commencthusiasts see his increased, collection while he were is away. delines. Ithat agree these newI chanbeer. The guys Doordarshan got to a have catch on. All of DD’s shows of hisatworld.

“You need a third side: spaces could react well.

Aling to find were a new balance: of that an Indian ask whether hewhere misseswe the collection he has culture shock!

They looked like place meant to reach outwho to villages and nels initially penetrate theso fervently, home, work andataus third to recharge so, you had more sources by of wasn’t confined by couldn’t his national identity. built but many he seems surprised we were yourself. degenerates, wel- my espouse Besides, remotest parts work of the country, butquestion. it funds.

This isbut my Ipassion, thirdIndian place,”sentiments. and valuThere was something in Roy’s that the “OfMarkets course opened not, theyupare always comed thehe change because to wehis gotmost to recent DD was basically struck a government lot of actors. with There were sohead.” says, pointing Roy acquiations went up too. Had we not liba chord. Roysaved had aexperimented in my mouthpiece.

It showed many art newtechniques shows and do more varied brazen sition,and a large and stuff. striking painting of Krishna bothpolitical Westerndisand Indian be- roles to eralised, India would have been one from. ♦ I first started working fordominates Door- cussions, about the hischoose and Balarama that the space serious above shows fore developing own unique ‘flat’ style of vidya ramof the most backward countries. ♦

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arunabha deb

Arundhati Roy won The shehnai at the arati the Booker (1998) MANJH KHAMAJ

It is best if Hindustani musicians continue to define their identities through their music alone

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was lecturing at Oxford that night and knew she had a good chance. I got into the car, turned on the radio, and there she was… We were quite close then. I had read the manuscript of The God of Small Things and advised her on the publisher she chose. Ten minutes later, I was on the phone with her. She was new to fancy hotels at the time — HarperCollins had put her up at the St James’ Court in London, I think — and, of all things, I remember her talking about the towels in the bathroom!

Arundhati’s Booker had a big impact on publishing in India, but not necessarily a good one. Publishers are always chasing the last Booker winner; before long, several international houses had arrived in India,

giving out large advances to mediocre authors, creating a negative backwash along the way.

At that point, all the action was in fiction. Of course in the last few years, non-fiction has turned a corner, especially after Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City — a book that did for non-fiction, what Midnight’s Children had done for fiction.

But there is no question that Arundhati’s win was an important one. She was part of the wave that started with Naipaul and Rushdie, and then Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga… Indians now expected to be on the shortlist, and were surprised when they weren’t. It’s a standing joke that I’m the only Indian author who hasn’t won a Booker yet!

MEENA KANDASAMY Author

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f I remember right — I was a 13year-old, still in high school in Chennai. I remember reading about it in the morning papers; we didn’t have a TV at home.

Looking back, I think it was pride in WILLIAM DALRYMPLE the school-girlish, teenager-kind of Author way, pride that this was an Indian woman, the pride you partake when India wins a match. Then again, most of us never really knew of English writers — they were a construct far-removed. I had read novels under the desk when a Physics or Mathematics teacher would drone on — but the person who was writing was heroanything not someoneVaranasi’s I had known Ustad Bismillah Khan about. Withbest Arundhati Roy’s win, embodied the here was someone could see, adideas ofone secularism rajeev bhatt mire and celebrate.

The God of Small Things might completed my studies at the University of California in 1995 and mean many different things to difbackpractised to India. My firsttemple job waspremises. with Hughes now Hisferent hen Ustad Bismillah came Khan’s SpeakingKhan, for myself, in the It is Software, ludi- mind. father,people.

Baba Allauddin was a calledtoAricent.

The primary reason that drove medragged back to India was asMuslim son Zamin Hussain refused a young girl against evcrous that this man’s family has now practising and yetrebelling was a devotee at the the desire to a company.

I got into a jobPoliticians to get some experibe a proposer for Narendra erything, I realised while Pradesh. reading hisstart name into a political tussle.

Saradha temple at Maihar in Madhya ence.

Internet catching up in the country then, to and we thought of the Modi’s nomination from Va- was that writing was a way have reportedly made several visits Khan’s Ali Akbar hadbook an entire wall dedicated to out. picstarting jobsahead.com in 1999 (sold to monster.com in 2004). date,of Hindu ranasi, I felt his decision was a fitting tribute Writing wasand poetry, writing grave at Lallapura recently.

I am reminded of a Tilltures gods goddesses.

On was this my career has largely revolved myreceived companythe andBharat venture investto his late father. But now that Hussain and power, writing was placed beauty. curtain, When I quip made by around Devi, “He wall hung a strategically ing,at and both are centred round internet. other family members have played Rahul got hold of itdraw fromevery my school liRatna, and you the should see the state of his which thefirst maestro would evening online businesses justmound one partof of mud, the story.before Inter- consuming Gandhi’s roadshow in Varanasi, theirE-commerce previous and brary, four fivequota girlsofwould grave.

There is only aare little hisor daily a litresit of transformed we graze consume entertainment; cater Hearound motives seem less clear. Whether net it ishas Modi or goatsthe it aloud. senandway dogs on media, it. Apparently, the Chivas. did notand wantread to ‘anger’ theHer gods. ourany healthcare, education,has andsanctioned access government ef- identities Gandhi, it is obvious why anyone to with po- government tences made you fall in musicians love with ₹30 lakh services. for his ThatThe of Hindustani fectto is associprofoundsamadhi and goesbut beyond thethink business litical stake in Varanasi would want The biggest compliment that I don’t evenopportunities. ₹30 has been have beenwords. determined by lineage of learning is still aspent lot ofon innovation happening on the Net and there ate with the late maestro’s family. There Bismillah be than paid lineage is that of every time a it.” (byare guru)can rather birth.

They manyBenaras layers of information surfacing beyond e-commerce.

Yet, it is a relwas synonymous with his beloved woman fiction With a few exceptions, religious identity have beenyoung fiercelyIndian protective (andwrites competitive ALOK MITTAL, ativelytoyoung that hasaaconcern lot of innovation to offer in the next (“Bana banaya ras, Banaras,” he used say) medium even their poetry), someone inevitahas never been for Hindustani muand petty)(orabout gharanas, possessive Managing Director, few years.the sicians. The oral history of this and fewCanaan other Partners cultural icons embodied bly compares to Roy. but hardly about theirher bandishes, idea of secularism as demonstrably as he did. music is replete with instances of ever distinguished between felFor a political party — especially in the con- tolerance. The Scindia kings of low artistes or disciples on the text of these elections — getting his family on Gwalior were passionate patrons basis of religion.

Varanasi, and board means a sprinkling of secular dust, and of Hindustani music and the Hindustani musicians wanted especially its it is the kind of cheap tokenism that the maes- maestros who were the fountainto assert who they were and musicians, tro would surely have abhorred. The members heads of the Gwalior gharana — where they came from through always rose of Khan’s family might cry themselves hoarse Ustad Nathan Pir Bakhsh, Ustad inherited singing styles and above religion proclaiming playing at a roadshow Haddu Khan, Ustad Hassu Khan compositions.

That is it surrunning of their train is why deeply rehen I that firstby read they were not endorsing the Congress, but and Ustad Nathu Khan — were all prises nobody that Pandit Bhimgretted. Why? Because for better-off about Air Deccan inthey did use the maestro’s sen Joshi, in now his very first LP, troducing cheap portrait as a back- part of the Scindia court. Apart Indians, air has become thesang audrop and they were asked to perform only befrom being khayal singers, Hadunforgettable versions of Karim tomatic choice, and they are the Inflights, my spirits cause their lineage.

It is one of the great du, Hassu and Nathu Khan learnt shlokas and naam terodians and Mohammadsha rangileno in Miyansank. I knew thisofwould be a bodywith clout. They longer tragedies of Hindustani And perhaps that railways is why Pandit Omabout the because blow to Indian railways, my favou-music that none of arya abhangs of the Marathi poet Moropant ki Malhar.care Khan’s family members (or disciples, for that from Vishnu Pandit and sang them with the karnath Thakur, who was quite a zealous they don’t travel on them, so no one rite mode of transport. See what has is an established sprinkled jal onup thefor dais behappenedmatter) — all around the countryshehnai player in his king in the temple. The Dagar family has been Hindu andwho countsGanga is standing train own right; nobody would ask them to join a the primary custodian of dhrupad in this fore a recital, sang Allah jaane maula jaane in travellers. Successive governments gleaming, modern airports have roadshow for the quality of their music. country and though Muslims, their knowlTodi.

When it came to the music itself — the sprung up to accommodate the new ignore their plight. Now AirAsia, the Most who have lived edge of Sanskrit was profound. Also, almost all bandishes,newest the vistaar, the raga roop — nobody, entrant in the cheap-flight travellers who canHindustani now affordmusicians to fly. and flourished in Varanasi speak at length, the dhrupad compositions they sang connot even Omkarnath, bothered about relimarket, has openly stated its fares If brand-new or extensively renovatand with pride, about how the city, and espetained lyrics centred on Hindu themes and gious connotations. ed stations with modern methods of will be aimed at robbing the railits musicians, It is bestways thatof Hindustani musicians continpassengers.

But 1st class AC handling cially passengers and their always lug- rose above reli- motifs. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan created gion.

In an interview with Girija Devi about six several compositions invoking Shiva, and his ue to define their identities through their this is madness. In the rest of muthe gage had also sprung up that would years ago,soshe toldBut merail that members of her arguably most popular ‘request piece’ at con- sic alone.world, Staying clear of never-ending railways arethe staging a comenot have mattered much. family kepttomannats (a wish) on Muharram certs was Hari om tat sat. Tabla maestro Ustad religious-secular saga Indian politics will back, and theof folly of relying entirepassengers still have bargain with and how they fed chana and gur to the horses Amir Hussain Khan often played at the Ramhelp.

As many Hindustani musicians say, their ly on air and road transport is at last argumentative porters, stagger up in the Muharram But of all the krishna Mission in Bombay on Kali puja. chosen religion music; their god resides in widelyisrecognised.

Nowhere is this steep stairways, fight theirprocession. way ‘goosebump’ stories about religious harmony Ustad Vilayat Khan’s photograph of him bitthe komal gandhar of Darbari. more needed than in India with its along crowded platforms only to be Fresh arrivals On the inaugural Air Deccan flight from Delhi to Chennai in September Varanasi, nothing regularingthe into a sweet (presumably prasad) before a afp/ dibyangshu sarkar 2004, 80-year-old R Gupta, oldest passenger on board, takes a nap vast population and long distances. told by theinannouncer that theequals late- Bismillah ly playing the shehnai during the arati at the Saraswati idol is a telling image. Speaking of arunabha deb is a Kolkata-based lawyer and music As told to Mohini Chaudhuri, Nandini Rashmi Sibi Arasu, Soity Banerjee, Vijay Lokapally shubhodeb@hotmail.com writer Balaji temple. His uncle Ali Baksh and he also photographs, Ustad Ali Akbar KhanNair, comes to Pratap,

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Awards in vain Ustad Bismillah Khan might have been awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2001, but his legacy remains forgotten shanker chakravarty

MARK TULLY Journalist and author

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Still life Early morning at Raghurajpur, home to over 400 artists and employer of several more who come in from neighbouring villages

On the bright side Natural colours are made of kapitha (wood apple) trees, coconut shells, other vegetable dyes and locally available minerals

Fine print Each intricate painting takes more than two weeks to complete

Labour days Vipin Kumar Sahu (left) working on pattachitras along with other artists at his

s workshop

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Like a painted scroll The village of Raghurajpur is a cultural canvas, a parchment of colour and traditions

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arely a dozen kilometres from Puri lies the village of Raghurajpur, best known for its Pattachitra or painted scrolls. Also tucked into its warren of lanes is the rich history of Gotipua, the forerunner of Odissi, usually performed by young boys dressed as girls, and other arts and crafts traditions, such as tussar paintings, palm-leaf engravings, stone and wood carvings, and wooden, cow dung and papier mâché toys and masks.

Inducted by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) as Orissa’s first heritage village in 2000 , it is a living museum lined by homes adorned with intricate murals. Pattachitra though is the mainstay of the cottage industry here, culturally and monetarily, and the paintings showcase their creators’ exquisite workmanship. The canvas for this traditional art form are pieces of cloth or patta, first treated with a mixture of glue and chalk. Made using natural, indigenous colours, the paintings portray mythological narratives, often with Lord Jagannath or the Vaishnav cult at its centre. What is particularly encouraging is that because of official patronage and commercial success, the younger generation here seems keen to continue practising this art form, in turn ensuring that these beautifully painted scrolls outlive both myth as well as reality. kamal narang

By divine design A completed pattachitra, which portrays the many forms of Lord Jagannath

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14 10

The MyIndian thirdeconomy place was liberalised (1991)

Businessman and academic Nirmalya Kumar’s marvellous collection of Jamini Roys helped him find a balance between his many worlds Weighty issues The relaxation of licensing rules went a long way in tackling red tape s siva saravanan

Visceral connection Nirmalya Kumar with his carefully curated collection suseela yesudian; Kumar’s latest Jamini Roy purchase, ‘Krishna and Balarama’ british museum photographers

RC BHARGAVA Chairman, Maruti Suzuki

I

was the chairman and MD of Maruti Udyog in 1991 when liberalisation was announced.

AJAY PIRAMAL Maruti and Hindustan Motors ries, CAG audits and public servants company cannot sustain or improve Chairman, Piramal Group (the makers of Ambassador) were, did not apply to us, increasing flexi- itself in the absence of competition. more or less, the only carmakers in bility. Operationally, it became People within Maruti also started efore 1991, licences were reIndia at the time. The government much easier, especially after licens- looking at things differently postquired for everything. liberalisation. And it enabled us to wanted to showcase the new liberal- ing rules were abolished in 1993. he Marylebone a major thor-also started coming grow at a faster pace. Today, capacity There was the MRTP Act ised policies. So it asked us to soundRoad, Competition oughfare through with Daewoo (in and sales have increased manifold, (Monopolies and Restricout Suzuki if it would increasethat equi- thunders in, beginning central London, be a rather ty in Maruti from 40 to 50 per cent.can1994).

Then, hosone by one, other play- exports have gone up and a robust tive Trade Practices Act) wherein you tile and stifling just The result was that the 60:40 share-place. ersThough came in.

It aled to improvement auto component industry has come were classified as a monopoly if your short hop from — one of the in quality, productivity and custom- up in the country. Thanks to liberali- assets exceeded ₹50 crore. There holding became 50:50, andRegent's Maruti Park most beautiful it is packed with besides com- a renewed focus sation , the Indian industry has reac- was industrial licensing and other became a city’s private company in — 1992. er services muters and tourists the many restrictions. In 1988, when we acConsequently, many rules foreager sala-to explore on keeping costs under check. A hed near-international levels. ♦ attractions (Sherlock Holmes territory and quired Nicholas, the pricing for the Madame Tussauds, to name a couple). Thereshares was determined by the govfore, stepping out of it into an elegant apart- his fireplace (and which fetched $60,000, ac- painting that ernment the Controller of tookthrough inspiration from Indian ment lined wall-to-wall with Jamini Roy cording to the Christie’s New York website).

Capital All that was suddenly folk art and used aIssues. restricted palette of earthy paintings feels both surreal and liberating. relaxed liberalisation.

That was Kumar has established himself as the Roy colours. Over five after decades, Roy seemed able to The apartment is the London home of Nir- go-to-person for London’s numerous art auc- draw on both the the timeEast I decided to do an not adand the West while malya Kumar, a popular and successful former tion houses, often consulted by them to deter- being confined vanced programme by management either, says Kumar. academic at the London Business School. He mine the genuineness of Roy’s paintings. from to understand We pause byHarvard pictures(1992) juxtaposed against has authored a number of books on both In- (Roy’s penchant for reinterpreting and copy- one another whattothe bestRoy’s companies the show evolvingintechdia and marketing — including last year’s ing previous works on works without dates or nique: two world were doing. Because liber-a of his Kalighat-style catinwith Brand Breakout: How Emerging Market Brands names has left his collection ripe for forgers). prawn (a alisation, you that are developed going to open composition over Will Go Global — and ranks high on many glob- Kumar even owns a fake, which we look over time), andyourself toof the world, and I wanted paintings a solitary female figure al lists of management thinkers (he came in closely as he points to some of the obvious (to who became to know to prepare forsensuous it. morehow curvaceous and 20 on last year’s Thinkers50 list). Recently he him) characteristics, such as its I asunderstood it Roy honedhow his important method. We joined the Tata Group’s executive council for colours, subject matter and lack wasstop to get the customer to the cenbefore an exquisite portrait strategy operations, which has returned him of depth. Yet, while he clearly has tre.of InRabindranath the pre-liberalised Tagoreeconomy, (the unto India, a country he left several decades ago. an expert knowledge of the artyoucle had to wait for years to get a of Roy’s teacher, the modernKumar is the Jamini The apartment has few traces of his busi- ist’s work, Kumar’s relationship phone and up toAbanindranath eight years to ist line painter Roy go-to-person for ness persona: alongside the 70-something Ja- with Roy is essentially an emoget Tagore), a car. Overnight, here was this executed in a Byzantine London’s art auction new world. How do you react to it? mini Roys he’s collected over the past decade tional one. When I ask what atstyle reminiscent of Russian houses and more, there are a handful of Rabindra- tracted him to his first Roy — a Theicons, Harvard programme helped the me while Kumar explains nath Tagores as well as works by other Indian sensuous portrait of a wide-eyed understand whatofis real and complexity the quality technique, artists and, most recently, a rare JMW Turner mother and child — he says simwhat is management of quality; marvelling simultaneously at its set in India. Bookshelves are stacked high with ply that it “spoke to me… it was what is the importance of customdepiction of the “grandness and volumes on modern and Indian art. and man. how to getting visceral.” grandeur”ers, of the Hekeep recollects themore eyeWe discuss some of Roy’s characteristics efficient.

Because there sum was so The issue of identity figures frequently in brows raised by the substantial hemuch paid that Kumar appreciates as a businessman, in- our discussion. In a frank and rather emotion- for the picture protection nowarnings imports back inuntil 2003,then, and the cluding his marketing instincts. Roy was well al chapter in Re-Imagine: India-UK cultural rela- he received were allowed, insulatabout the and risksyou of were putting too ALOK NATH ahead of his time — he recognised the art Computers had just come in too. tions in thechildren 21st Century, Kumar ofhindu how one artist.

Film and television actor A new window Cable TV exposed to a world beyondwrote India the archivesmuch intoed. world’s desire for reinterpretations and his learning about Roy — whom he first came We learnt how IT could beselect a competKumar has become increasingly with darshan inas 1972. time, was in plight of researched farmers and a fewhis lightn theown early ’90s to when Zee TV appeal ordinary Indians as well artAt the itive It brought across inI 2001 and has since with choices overadvantage. the years, bidding onlydown if he school in Delhi hadprecision done hearted ones like—Chitrahaar. launched, I worked on a show— ofacting enthusiasts worldwide whom he acyet raised our10quality stantheand eager of an academic helped believes itour willcosts fall into the top or 12 in his called Tara. Ita was quite westerplays TV and Zeeof TV werecollection. more dards. quired substantial followingsome during his for life- them. could That’s himTowards develop the a better Star understanding himWhileWehis newexport role more. at Tata has nised, but people lapped it up. late ’80s I was by brash and modern.

Even if people at hethe time.

But these are not particularly theoffered time we started the ISO self. Buniyaad Leaving Calcutta in the ’90s as a graduate meant only spends a week or initiative so every It featured a single and filmmaker Ramesh Sippy. The con-for the DDUS, wanted tohad keepbeen up with qualities thatmother count with Kumar, for whom his student Juran Combound Kumar ea- satellite month in and London, hequality is eagermovement. for other Roy enTV, they were tied down by strict gui- to young girls drinking ceptfrom of daily soaps was artsmoking collectionand is entirely distinct the rest petition but we in gerbeginning to shun histoold identity before commencthusiasts see his increased, collection while hewere is away. delines. Ithat agree these newI chanbeer. The guys Doordarshan got to a have catch on. All of DD’s of hisatworld.

“You need a third side: spaces could react well.

Aling shows to find were a new balance: ofthat an Indian ask whether hewhere misseswe the collection he has culture shock!

They looked like place meant reach outwho to villages and nels initially penetrate theso fervently, home, work andatausthird to to recharge so, you had more sources by of wasn’t confined by couldn’t his national identity. built but many he seems surprised we were yourself. degenerates, wel- my espouse Besides, remotest parts of the country, butquestion. it funds.

This isbut my Ipassion, thirdIndian place,”sentiments. upare and valuThere was something in Roy’s work that the “OfMarkets course opened not, they always comed thehe change because we gotmost to recent DD was basically struck a government lot of actors. with There were sohead.” says, pointing to his Roy acquiations went up too. Had we not liba chord. Roysaved had aexperimented in my mouthpiece.

It showed many art newtechniques shows and do more varied brazen sition,and a large andstuff. striking painting of Krishna bothpolitical Westerndisand Indian be- roles to eralised, India would have been one from. ♦ I first started working fordominates Door- cussions, about the hischoose and Balarama that the space serious above shows fore developing own unique ‘flat’ style of vidya ramof the most backward countries. ♦

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arunabha deb

Arundhati Roy won The shehnai at the arati the Booker (1998) MANJH KHAMAJ

It is best if Hindustani musicians continue to define their identities through their music alone

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was lecturing at Oxford that night and knew she had a good chance. I got into the car, turned on the radio, and there she was… We were quite close then. I had read the manuscript of The God of Small Things and advised her on the publisher she chose. Ten minutes later, I was on the phone with her. She was new to fancy hotels at the time — HarperCollins had put her up at the St James’ Court in London, I think — and, of all things, I remember her talking about the towels in the bathroom!

Arundhati’s Booker had a big impact on publishing in India, but not necessarily a good one. Publishers are always chasing the last Booker winner; before long, several international houses had arrived in India,

giving out large advances to mediocre authors, creating a negative backwash along the way.

At that point, all the action was in fiction. Of course in the last few years, non-fiction has turned a corner, especially after Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City — a book that did for non-fiction, what Midnight’s Children had done for fiction.

But there is no question that Arundhati’s win was an important one. She was part of the wave that started with Naipaul and Rushdie, and then Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga… Indians now expected to be on the shortlist, and were surprised when they weren’t. It’s a standing joke that I’m the only Indian author who hasn’t won a Booker yet!

MEENA KANDASAMY Author

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f I remember right — I was a 13year-old, still in high school in Chennai. I remember reading about it in the morning papers; we didn’t have a TV at home.

Looking back, I think it was pride in WILLIAM DALRYMPLE the school-girlish, teenager-kind of Author way, pride that this was an Indian woman, the pride you partake when India wins a match. Then again, most of us never really knew of English writers — they were a construct far-removed. I had read novels under the desk when a Physics or Mathematics teacher would drone on — but the person who was writing was Varanasi’s hero anything not someone I had known Ustad Bismillah Khan about. Withbest Arundhati Roy’s win, embodied the here was someone could see, adideas ofone secularism rajeev bhatt mire and celebrate.

The God of Small Things might completed my studies at the University of California in 1995 and mean many different things to difbackpractised to India. My firsttemple job waspremises. with Hughes Software, now Hisferent hen Ustad Bismillah came Khan’s SpeakingKhan, for myself, in the It is ludimind. father,people.

Baba Allauddin was a calledtoAricent.

The primary reason that has drove medragged back to India was as son Zamin Hussain refused a young girl against evcrous that this man’s family now practising Muslim and yetrebelling was a devotee at the the desire his to start a company.

I got into a jobPoliticians to get some experibe a proposer for Narendra erything, I realised while Pradesh. reading name into a political tussle.

Saradha temple at Maihar in Madhya ence.

Internet catching up in the country then, to and we thought of the Modi’s nomination from Va- was that writing was a way have reportedly made several visits Khan’s Ali Akbar hadbook an entire wall dedicated to out. picstarting jobsahead.com in 1999 (sold to monster.com in 2004). date,of Hindu ranasi, I felt his decision was a fitting tribute Writing wasand poetry, writing was grave at Lallapura recently.

I am reminded of a Till tures gods goddesses.

On this my career has largely revolved myreceived companythe and venture investto his late father. But now that Hussain and power, writing wasplaced beauty. curtain, When I quip made by around Devi, “He Bharat wall hung a strategically ing,at and both are centred round internet. other family members have played Rahul got hold of itdraw fromevery my school liRatna, and you the should see the state of his which thefirst maestro would evening online businesses justmound one partof of mud, the story.before Inter- consuming Gandhi’s roadshow in Varanasi, theirE-commerce previous and brary, four fivequota girlsofwould grave.

There is only aare little hisor daily a litre sit of transformed we graze consume media, entertainment; cater Hearound motives seem less clear. Whether net it ishas Modi or goatsthe it aloud. senandway dogs on it.

Apparently, the Chivas. did notand wantread to ‘anger’ theHer gods. ourany healthcare, education,has andsanctioned access government ef- identities Gandhi, it is obvious why anyone to with po- government tences made you fall in musicians love with ₹30 lakh services. for his ThatThe of Hindustani fecttois associprofoundsamadhi and goesbut beyond thethink business litical stake in Varanasi would want The biggest compliment that I don’t evenopportunities. ₹30 has been have beenwords. determined by lineage of learning is still aspent lot ofon innovation happening on the Net and there ate with the late maestro’s family. There Bismillah be than paid lineage is that of every time it.” (by are guru)can rather birth.

Theya many layers of information surfacing beyond e-commerce.

Yet, it is a relwas synonymous with his beloved Benaras woman fiction With a few exceptions, religious identity have beenyoung fiercelyIndian protective (andwrites competitive ALOK MITTAL, ativelytoyoung that hasaaconcern lot of innovation to offer in the next (“Bana banaya ras, Banaras,” he used say) medium even their poetry), someone inevitahas never been for Hindustani muand petty)(orabout gharanas, possessive Managing Director, few years.the sicians. The oral history of this and fewCanaan other Partners cultural icons embodied bly about compares to Roy. but hardly theirher bandishes, idea of secularism as demonstrably as he did. music is replete with instances of ever distinguished between felFor a political party — especially in the con- tolerance. The Scindia kings of low artistes or disciples on the text of these elections — getting his family on Gwalior were passionate patrons basis of religion.

Varanasi, and board means a sprinkling of secular dust, and of Hindustani music and the Hindustani musicians wanted especially its it is the kind of cheap tokenism that the maes- maestros who were the fountainto assert who they were and musicians, tro would surely have abhorred. The members heads of the Gwalior gharana — where they came from through always rose of Khan’s family might cry themselves hoarse Ustad Nathan Pir Bakhsh, Ustad inherited singing styles and above religion proclaiming playing at a roadshow Haddu Khan, Ustad Hassu Khan compositions.

That is it surrunning of their train is why deeply rehen I that firstby read they were not endorsing the Congress, but and Ustad Nathu Khan — were all prises nobody that Pandit Bhimgretted. Why? Because for better-off about Air Deccan inthey did use the maestro’s sen Joshi, in his first LP, sang troducing cheap portrait as a back- part of the Scindia court. Apart Indians, air has nowvery become the audrop and they were asked to perform only befrom being khayal singers, Hadunforgettable versions of Karim tomatic choice, and they are the Inflights, my spirits cause their lineage.

It is one of the great du, Hassu and Nathu Khan learnt shlokas and naam tero dians and Mohammadsha rangileno in Miyansank. I knew thisofwould be a bodywith clout. They longer tragedies of Hindustani And perhaps that railways is why Pandit Omabout the because blow to Indian railways, my favou-music that none of arya abhangs of the Marathi poet Moropant ki Malhar.care Khan’s family members (or disciples, for that from Vishnu Pandit and sang them with the karnath Thakur, who was quite a zealous they don’t travel on them, so no one rite mode of transport. See what has is an established sprinkled jal onup thefor dais behappenedmatter) — all around the countryshehnai player in his king in the temple. The Dagar family has been Hindu andwho countsGanga is standing train own right; nobody would ask them to join a the primary custodian of dhrupad in this fore a recital, sang Allah jaane maula jaane in travellers. Successive governments gleaming, modern airports have roadshow for the quality of their music. country and though Muslims, their knowlTodi.

When it came to the music itself — the sprung up to accommodate the new ignore their plight. Now AirAsia, the Most who have lived edge of Sanskrit was profound. Also, almost all bandishes,newest the vistaar, the raga roop — nobody, entrant in the cheap-flight travellers who canHindustani now affordmusicians to fly. and flourished in Varanasi speak at length, the dhrupad compositions they sang connot even Omkarnath, bothered about relimarket, has openly stated its fares If brand-new or extensively renovatand with pride, about how the city, and espetained lyrics centred on Hindu themes and gious connotations. ed stations with modern methods of will be aimed at robbing the railits musicians, It is bestways that of Hindustani musicians continpassengers.

But 1st class AC handling cially passengers and their always lug- rose above reli- motifs. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan created gion.

In an interview with Girija Devi about six several compositions invoking Shiva, and his ue to define their identities through their this is madness. In the rest of muthe gage had also sprung up that would years ago,soshe toldBut merail that members of her arguably most popular ‘request piece’ at con- sic alone.world, Staying clear ofarethe never-ending railways staging a comenot have mattered much. family kepttomannats (a wish) on Muharram certs was Hari om tat sat. Tabla maestro Ustad religious-secular saga Indian politics will back, and theoffolly of relying entirepassengers still have bargain with and how they fed chana and gur to the horses Amir Hussain Khan often played at the Ramhelp.

As many Hindustani musicians say, their ly on air and road transport is at last argumentative porters, stagger up in the Muharram procession.

But of all the krishna Mission in Bombay on Kali puja. chosen religion music; their god resides in widelyisrecognised.

Nowhere is this steep stairways, fight their way ‘goosebump’ stories about religious harmony Ustad Vilayat Khan’s photograph of him bitthe komal gandhar of Darbari. more needed than in India with its along crowded platforms only to be Fresh arrivals On the inaugural Air Deccan flight from Delhi to Chennai in September Varanasi, nothing regular-R Gupta, ingthe into a sweet (presumably prasad) before a afp/ dibyangshu sarkar 2004, 80-year-old oldest passenger on board, takes a nap vast population and long distances. told by theinannouncer that theequals late- Bismillah ly playing the shehnai during the arati at the Saraswati idol is a telling image. Speaking of arunabha deb is a Kolkata-based lawyer and music As told to Mohini Chaudhuri, Nandini Rashmi Sibi Arasu, Soity Banerjee, Vijay Lokapally shubhodeb@hotmail.com writer Balaji temple. His uncle Ali Baksh and he also photographs, Ustad Ali Akbar KhanNair, comes to Pratap,

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Awards in vain Ustad Bismillah Khan might have been awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2001, but his legacy remains forgotten shanker chakravarty

MARK TULLY Journalist and author

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Sholay the screen Freshhitprince (1975) of Bollywood From an outsider with the ‘wrong eyebrows’ to an actor with a national award – the story of Rajkummar Rao

Arey O Samba The ending of Sholay was changed to abide by the diktats of The Emergency

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n Shahid, he is a straight-edged lawyer who believes everyone is entitled to a defence. In Kai Po Che, he is Govind Patel, a Gujarati middle-class boy always looking to set up a successful enterprise. And in the eight other films he has starred in, he portrays SAJID KHAN as many distinctive characters and, like any Filmmaker, scriptwriter and good actor, stays true to all. Rajkumar Yadav television presenter aka Rajkummar Rao, 29, belongs to that school of acting where the truest allegiance is to versatility.

“As an actor I don’t want was a toddler when I went to to restrict myself to one genre a certain stereotype,” Rao says see Sholay in theortheatre.

I will wethat meet him just neverwhen forget spectacle.

Myas he was leaving to collect thisneighbours year’s National family and my had Film Award for Best Actor his portrayal of Mumbai lawyer Shaleft together tofor watch the film but Azmiforindifferent the acclaimed we had gothid tickets cine- film Shahid. (He shared the award withcinMalayalam actor Suraj mas. Sholay was playing in every Venjaramood for Perariyathavar.) ema in the city, it had a grand “There arecorrectly, six billion release. If I remember the characters in this world while I can’t poster said, ‘The and greatest star castplay as- all of them, I want portray as many as I can. When people see sembled.’ to I recall getting very scared they should not remember me, but reof Gabbarme Singh.

In Bombay’s Minerthefilm character played,” he says. va theatre,member where the played Ifor thefirst four25years since five years, forInthe weeks theyhis cinematic debut in Love, Sex aur put up a huge poster of Dhoka, all the Rao ac- has won himself a reputation as an actor most willtors. But formidable later, the poster got reto trywhich an alternative role. And that’s quite placed byingone had just flat. What a shot to produce at that anthe achievement forwere a Gurgaon lad who started Gabbar and other actors at stage. What can one say of the briloffAmjad as a complete newbie in the Hindi film inthe bottom.

Khan’s performliant running catch by Kapil Dev. His dustry. that come from a filmi family ance was the best“I’d eversay seen inIHindi athleticism was stunning and he in aone sense. No Khan, one’s connected to the film cinema by newcomer. in On a role National transformed a tough task into a riindustry, but actor everyto Saturday fact, was the first-ever sign the VCR was takaward-winning actor diculously easy one. Finally, the Indien out and family would watch an endorsement deal.the It whole was unRajkummar Rao kamal narang an team celebrating on the balcony filmsItback back,” he says, adding, heard of atthree that time. was ato Parle-G of Lord’s was the icing on the cake. It been a Plan-B ad and the“there’s taglinenever was ‘Gabbar Ki As- for me; ever since I was an achievement that gave a li Pasand’. was in school, I knew I wanted to be an actor.” greatround impetus to Indian cricket. for the second minus the muscles?

The film initially had another about looking good and saying the lines.”

Tinsel dreams glorious moment me He did bagThat the role and the criticalgave acclaim ending. A few DVDs available on the After leaving FTII in 2008, Rao tried his luck The Gurgaon he grew in was barren and far in films. He moved to Mumbai, showreel in in its wake. theRagini inspiration be a part of such MMS to followed, and then international market have thatup verremoved from thecrushing ritzy malls that line it at ev- hand, and embarked on a round of unsuccess- smaller roles an achievement.

ToGangs be honest, as an in Shaitan, the of Wasseysion. It ends with Thakur ery turn today.

“Myhim dadviowas a patwari (revenue ful auditions. “I wasVVS eight-year-old I didn’t follow the and Aamir Khan’s Talaash Gabbar’s hands and killing toldLAXMAN a lot of mean things. pur films, Chittagong official) we have been here for a long Someone said my eyebrow tournament until the final.

It was before Shahid happened.

While Shahid may lently. And then and Thakur breaks is not right for the Indian batsman time,” says Rao, youngest later that I sawKaithe rehim plaudits, it was Povideo Che that down. Unfortunately, thethe end they of three siblings. role. Someone else said I wasn’t fair enough to have won much and dance, be a Hindi film hero. But it did not demoralise propelledcordings of some of inhim to stardom.

Asthe he matches, puts it, “BeeventuallyGrowing used wasup, so learning meek. At taekwondo the he discovered loveEmerfor the stage during a me, rather it inspired me,” he says. cluding knew the the semi-finals, fore KPC people characters where I had time of Sholay’s release, athe play.declared “I loved the Sandeep Patil, a dashing strokehat do I remember played, nobody knew my name.

But after the gency hadClass justXbeen andspecial Fame time maker, batted well. of the 1983 film World everyone knew whoso I was.” they had attention to show that people no onegive is you, After a year of struggling withDefinitely started feelingthe that I wasn’t final,bywhich watched at Cup win?

City Lights,The directed HansalIMehta of Shaabove the and law, so they reshot end disappointments, he cameI canhid justbeing a regular guy. and It was stupid, I huge impact on me.has We the final. never fame, home, whomhad Raoa considers “family”, with Gabbar arrested takacross forget an ad announcing di- just hit theatres. the six that that Krishnamachari used toAfter stay working in apartments andfilm our on a short en away. know, but I knew then that actI was told a lot of rector Srikkanth Dibakar hit Banerjee wasleg. with ing was something to — including a classmate over square It flew Mira neighbours Nair, he is currently shooting for his Sholay was declared a flop Iinwanted its mean things... I do.” In the ’70s, all films wereKialso cricket OurSonam balcoDoli, whichlovers. co-stars first two weeks. wasn’t fair enough to looking for newcomers. On next film,—Dolly learning that the role was that of Kapoor and ledlost-and-found him to an acting nies wereSamrat adjacent, every time Pulkit (ofand Kyunki Saas Bhia were based That on the be a Hindi film hero a Delhi guy, he quickly bought Kabhi Bahu course the Centre in wicket fell weOther wouldupcoming run out andprodo Thi fame). theme. This film at was a Shri littleRam disconhimself a body-hugging t-shirt jects include Delhi and parents high-fives with the Hamari neighbours Revolution 2020 and Adhunected from that.

The“my villain didn’tstarted and hit the gym for two hours a ri Kahani. across I was balcony. was pure enter“I just the can’t take upIt more than one appear tillbelieving the end ofthat the first hourserious day. “I was muscular at the time, film at a time acting”.there Afterwas hisno graduatainment andI what joyofKapil Dev because do a lot research and, mostabout importantly, tion he pursued another gave to the neighbourhood and the character,” he says. mother. Filmmakers wereyetsure it degree in acting, so pumping iron made me look beefier. I was about each this But timeSholay at Pune’s reputed nationforwith that fabulous As he leaves the National Awardscatch, cerewould tank. proved a Film and Televi- confident I’d get the role. Everything nosedived once I reached the audition though. The mony, we ask sion Institute ofthat India which will berule remembered. what hisalways thumb is for choospoint to all of us.

I learnt if (FTII). you “When was in Delhi, Thescript lasting memory ofsense that 1983 should make and make a film with Iconviction, thelike everyone else I casting director yelled at me for the way I was ing films. “The on Shahaccepted Rukh and Bachchan.

But dressed. The role was that of a simple, office- excite mewin is actor. that of Kapilshould Dev lifting the as an There be somechances ofloved it being areAmitabh 95 Icing the cake Kapil going guy and not some stud.” then I went to FTII and that changed a lot of cup.

That picture has stayed with me thing in there that I’m ready to give four per cent more.

Dev and Sunil Convinced he had lost out, he returned to months ofbecause in the two years we were living India beat the West Indies, my life to.”

One of things… the saddest things is thatthere, Gavaskar with the Gurgaon only to be called back. Banerjee had andfilm breathing cinema.inI realised acting which was the best team in the our greatest is not available hindu is trophy the archives something it’s not only liked his audition, and could he please return sibi arasuworld at the time. ♦ home theatre format.you ♦ can get deep into,

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The riots hit Caught in its grip Bombay (1992) HOME SPUN

Kottayam — as rich in myth and history as in bakeries and parlours — has made me its own

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hen I started researching the goes up in flames after it was set afire by a city of Kolkata for my novel rioting mob, at Mahim, Hang Woman (Aaraachaar in Bombay on December Malayalam), I realised that a 10, 1992 the hindu archives city or town becomes magnificent not through spectacular monuments but through the beehive of history and the antechambers of nostalgia.

Kottayam, where I live, is a town nestling between the Western Ghats on the east and the Vembanad Lake and paddy fields on the west.

It derives its name from ‘kotta’ and ‘akam’, meaning the inside of a fort. The footprints of the past dot the place — the temple of Thali, which was the seat of Thekkumkoor Raja, the Old Seminary where English education was introduced to south India in 1813, the Baker School, which was the first girls’ school in all of Kerala and the CMS College, the first college in south India. This history reminds me of the aristocracy and orthodoxy embedded here, while also revealing a need for change.

Bound by water and hills The Meenachil river flows through the city h vibhu It disheartens me that there is little authentic study accessible to common readers on the planning of the ‘Missionary’ Kottayam, the munist party leader P Krishna Pillai. I had outside Kerala, while my daughter is addicted cuisine and architecture of princely Kot- come with my mother from my village Sas- to the pastries of Square One Talent. tayam, the invasion of Marthanda Varma etc. thamcotta in Kollam district for the All-Kerala The Christian women of Kottayam stand So the writer in me can only gaze in wonder at elocution contest. I sat in the bus and looked out for their sober and elegant outfits, and the splendid and sober thatched bungalows angrily at this small town running past my their husbands are known for their business on the banks of River Meenachil and imagine window. Even though beautiful thatched acumen. The gap between the rich and poor is the different lives and struggles of the people houses stood with neat gardens, I didn’t like wide, of course, but a certain sophistication of who inhabited them. the place because it cheated my imaginary manners is demonstrated by even the poorest.

I call Kottayam my hometown not because Macondo. That visit left me disillusioned and The residents here are generally well-educated its river Meenachil or the serene Kumarakam bitter. When I returned 20 years and civilised MAHESH BHATTand can be extremeare known internationally, but because this is later as a journalist, I wished to ly traditional.

Filmmaker, producer the only place on earth which will never relin- run away at the earliest opportuI have travelled extensively, and screenwriter quish its grip on me. By some witchcraft, it nity. But life is unpredictable. I but I now know that no other Kottayam is a land waswill in feel my like flat home. in Juhu, justI roots me and retains me year upon year. I completed 20 years here on July place When of successful women. abouttotoKochi, head out to Film City found my true vocation of journalism in this 2, 2013. travel I think of KotDo I write the stories I for a shoot thepeace, time small but aristocratic town, met my husband I started to feel proud of this tayam’s clean around air and do because I that the 1992 riots broke out. As here, gave birth to my daughter here. The town, which chose me to be its when I shop in Bangalore or live here?

I was about Itomiss turnthe into the road name was etched in my heartADIL fromJUSSAWALLA the age of own, never imprisoning me but Chennai, showrooms thatofleads to and FilmSeematti.

City, a fewRumour people five, when I heard stories from Aithihyasheltering me. Kottayam is Gowri Poet,the columnist and critic instructed me even to turn back. They maala (The Garland of Myths) — compiled by hailed as the land of lakes, lethas it that Arundhati Roy toldprefers me there stone-pelting, arKottarathil Sankunni, a native of the city. ters and latex, but it is also the towas get her blouses and violence ahead.

When I was I made my first trip here 33 years ago, when land of bars, bakeries, boutiques and beauty stitched atson Swapna Garments.

All my favourite n 1992, was with the Times India, looking the book sec-of eating muchand younger, I hadinwitnessed as an 11-year-old I foolishly searched for IKotparlours.

Youofcannot find a after city with morereview spots shopping Kottayamsimare tions. I might be mistaking it with the blasts, which ilarrun scenes Lower Parel during the tayam Thampuran’s Palace and Kumaradhara beauty parlours in all ofBombay Kerala! Churches, col-happened owned and by inwomen.

Beena Kannan a few months after the riots, butare myabundant. first memory is of our smokeowns risingSeematti; labourAnnamma agitationsKottukapally but it was after — the waterfalls that could transform even leges, restaurants We close ownsa parts of the city. time that had seen mules into Sanskrit poets. At thatfrom time,different Kot- shops early but keep our bars open late into the bakerylong chain Ann’s, sheBombay has completed 30 My goddesses, own personal the memory to my fall in the clinic. He wasin the suchmale-dominated intense scenes. confectionary tayam was a land of myths, of gods, night.isIlinked still rush tofather’s Ann’s bakery to buy years the top of one-day cricket, I had naturopath and hemarble used toand go toplumcake his clinic every day.

He had a bad fallbusiness on Ja- of As the day progressed, yakshis and gandharvas and ofalegendary Combefore I visit friends Kerala.

Square One is the run situaby a just about started playing comnuary 5 that year. My wife and I do not live too close to the clinic. I hadgroup to go of tion got moreGowri grim isand came housewives; runthen

by Thara petitive cricket, so I can’t really visit the hospital. We knew the riots were on. The idea that the city is burning the Garments very heartbreaking andRajamdark Nair; Swapna by two sisters say if the World Cup had an imbut we have to go about our business is a cliché. But at that time, I had ma to stay phase of and Omana.

So,curfew.

Kottayam is a land of sucpact on me. But it was obviously in touch with my brother and visit my mother.

In 1998, Zakhm, cessful women.

Likewhen MaryI directed Roy, known forI something to be proud of. It was I moved around by cab and those routes were not directly affected.

But I battle got footage of the riots from a reliawaging for Syrian Christian women to a great feeling and a very excitam reminded of the press photographers who were very, very brave source, so making it was not laypeoclaim ble to their ancestral property; like thea ing one as well. ple… they used to rush to the spots and took searing photos. problem.

It even got passed by the late Annamma Mathew, who was the pioneer Of the epic final against the There was one incident I remember clearly… I was going to my parents’ butinatMalayalam; the last minute, the of culinarycensors, literature like Beena West Indies, I can never forget flat to meet my mother when I ran into Nissim Ezekiel, the poet, who was vis- who Censor Board chief at theintime, Asha Kannan, is the only woman Kerala to the catch that Kapil Dev took to iting his wife. He lived on Bellasis road, which was a dangerous area.run It was Parekh, got cold feet. After that, the a textile business as gigantic as Seematti. get rid of a rampaging Viv Rilate in the evening and I told him he couldn’t return home, I took himIs toitour intolerance I facedthem fromthat theI write NDA because of living amidst chards. Kapil made a very diffiflat in Cuffe Parade. is something I will nevthe storiesgovernment I have written? cult catch look so easy.

That night wasn’t free of incident… from our 18th-floor apartment weKottayam saw er forget. drained to me They is a village inme its financialnature, a I can also never forget the two men being chased down the road by a crowd. They tried to take shelter by asking me to in digitally change town in itslyappearance, a city content, and a sight of Gordon Greenidge behind the gates of a building but were caught and stabbed. It brought the saffron bands of mobsters in metro in quality.

It inspires methe and leaves me Land of myth The shouldering arms to Balwinder home to me the fact that no area is really untouched. all the scenes to grey.

It is a very painedified. What more could I want?

Thirunakkara Sandhu and losing his wicket. It The conflagrations in the city appear often in my poems. Burning trains ful memory. gavechronicle the filmthe a Na(In this monthly seriesThey authors ciMahadevar Temple was a most sensational delivery have impinged on my memories a great deal. lies I lost all hope when I heard of tional Award later, but that showed ties they call home.) in the heart of to bowl and just the motivationthe Godhra incident; I felt that even after so many years, there was no hope the duplicity of the NDA governKottayam hindu archives MEERAment. is an award-winning Malayalam author. al start the team could have for change. I realised this will occur again andtheagain.

My perceptionKR of the I never understood it. Zakhm releases this June hoped for. ♦ city changed as I realised that anything can happen at any point of time. ♦ Hang Her book wasWoman the last film that I directed. ♦

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ANIL KUMBLE Bowler and former captain of the Indian cricket team

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have very sweet memories of the 1983 triumph. It changed the face of Indian cricket because the win was huge. It made the cricket world sit up and view Indian cricket differently. Like most young people, I too followed the tournament as a 13-year-old.

Those days, television did not cover cricket much and we had to follow reports in the newspapers or listen to the commentary on the radio.

I remember watching the video of the semi-final win against England and the chase that India pulled off in that match. The memory of Sandeep Patil hitting the winning runs to put India in the final is so vivid.

When India was climbing to

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Running in a dream

ELSEWHERE

manjula padmanabhan

A montage of essays on culture and cinema that provide an unwritten history of our political subconscious

Jogging along Not much fairy dust on this Peter Pan bus

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Stop and stare In a time of information overkill, this book provides a pause n rajesh

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nmediated is a Sisyphean pause “in the screen luminescent; then, suddenly, she the time of the nightly boisterous vanishes into the blue like a gypsy caravan. brawl goaded on by the anchor that Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika: did the “anti-heropasses for studio news debate… ine” break the cliché? …Comment pips fact every inch of the way.

Writes Sashi Kumar, “While a subdued and The information that is conveyed lacks credi- quiet but strong style has become her forte, bility, is speculative or half-baked…” The book the real test of her creativity and innovativearrives like Gaston Bachelard’s ‘poetics of rev- ness as an actress is her ability to give this baerie’ in the time of ‘paid news’, fake opinion sic characteristic a range: to impart those polls and Narendra Modi ‘live’, the feed of the subtle nuances, add those extra inputs that demagogue panned eternally on TV keep her from going stale or becoming typescreens, zooming in like Leni Rie- cast even as a breakaway character.” fenstahl’s many cameras. Words You turn a corner, there is no miracle. It’s move to and fro across familiar cor- bitter realism. This is how an essay ‘The Cut ridors like dream sequences. You and Thrust of Eisenstein’s Montage’ begins: have never been to this place and “In much the same manner as Che Guevera, yet you know the zigzag like the uprooted from the cause of his struggle and eyes of a lens. It is like running in a the context of his death, has been suborned by dream, unable to scream. market capitalism, to become fetishized comUnmediated moves like a primor- modity and iconized brand as an aspirational dial bioscope, and if you have eyes romantic rebel hero of our times, montage — a of wonder and amazement, you product of the first flush of the October Revocan actually see the still film as a lution — has been appropriated and vulgarmoving film, the static as a kaleido- ized by commercial advertisement and scope, stasis as magic realism. In publicity films and videos, over the decades, to this spiral, writing becomes anti- serve precisely the opposite artistic and ideocatharsis. If the ‘ways of seeing’ logical purpose.” as John Berger would tell us, beFor someone who started dabcomes ‘manufactured consent’, bling in multimedia much beas Noam Chomsky would prove, fore the ‘imagined community’ We have been turned then we must learn to enter the of ‘convergence’ could even halinto comic strips of unfamiliar ‘poetics of space’, perlucinate about it, and for a jourinsatiable desire. The haps the next by-lane where nalist who travelled across West more we have, the Herbert Marcuse’s ‘essay on libAsia as an eclectic great leap forless we are eration’ becomes a graffiti of reward, and then through the sistance on the wall. sleepless nights, meticulous riIndeed, as Andrei Tarkovsky’s gour and metaphysics of televicinematic The Sacrifice with a sion, radio, print, cinema, bucket of water and a solitary tree, in the be- internet, these radical, existential and nonginning was the word. Surely, this is also a mo- conformist essays on media, culture and cinement of exile and condemnation. In that ma travel like a rediscovery and an unwritten sense, if the universally embedded media has history of our political subconscious. The onemade all of us ‘Outsiders’ then even the smile dimensional tyranny of the herd mentality, of a stranger woman on the street can become the shallow and the stuffed, is turned a commodity. Buy one smile, get two free. transparent.

Surely, Unmediated tells us that we have The book, by its range, takes the reader by been turned into comic strips of insatiable de- surprise. From Aravindan, Coppola, Godard to sire; the more we have, the less we are. And yet, Guru Dutt, the ‘montage’ is breathless. A must in these ‘Modern Times’, like that incredible for media practitioners and academics, especritique of capitalism by Charlie Chaplin, the cially students. night is full of magical possibilities.

It’s like Smita Patil, a shooting star in the amit sengupta is a journalist and associate professor, nocturnal sky, with her dark darkness making at The Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi

he Peter Pan Bus service halts in Fall River, Massachusetts on its way to New York City. The bus terminal is around the corner from the site of a sensational 19th-century murder. There’s a famous nursery rhyme about the prime suspect: Lizzie Borden took an axe/And gave her mother forty whacks/When he saw what she had done/She gave her father forty-one. The young woman was acquitted but Peter Pan bus drivers sometimes point the site out to tourists; “She was let off,” they say, with a dark leer, “but the murderer was never found!”

The terminal is a transit point for local buses as well as long-distance services. I have a half-hour wait before boarding the next bus. Senior students from a local high school slouch in. The boys wear baggy jeans, the girls wear cut-away shorts and four-inch heels. One girl’s t-shirt is covered in neon green cheetah-prints, another wears a red-brick wall covered in graffiti. The station empties out when their bus arrives. A handful of men wearing dirty denim overalls remain. A Chinese grandmother sits in dignified silence on a bench beside twin girls dressed in identical pink tiger-stripe pyjama suits.

Peter Pan takes five hours to get from Fall River to New York’s Port Authority Bus Station. The building The air smells of is neon bright on the inside, raucaramel, burnt coffee cous with music, shops and restauand stale bubble gum. rants. Shoals of travellers mill It’s all very familiar about, looking for somewhere to sit, for a bite to eat, for misplaced tickets. The air smells of caramel, burnt coffee and stale bubble gum.

It’s all very familiar. I’ve passed this way many times before.

My next bus, a Greyhound, is at 2.30pm. It is now just after one. I hurry down three floors. All around me there are children carrying backpacks that look like furry animals, old men wheezing while standing stationary on the escalator, young women dressed in sequined straps, their skins shiny black or dead-pan white, eyelashes two inches long, hair hanging down in cascades of brassy curls.

Yes! There’s Gate 28. Yes, it’s to Binghamton. Twelve other passengers are already in line. I ask the tired Cuban mother with three sleeping children plastered to her to please hold my spot so that I can go buy a coffee. When I offer to get one for her too, she smiles but shakes her head. By the time I’m back four minutes later, the queue has already grown to 20 people. This is a popular route. At 2.25 the driver opens the door and we begin filing through, slinging our bags into the luggage-hold under the bus, before climbing in. I settle into a window seat and am soon joined by a red-haired girl juggling her backpack, a latte and an open laptop in one hand, while texting on her cellphone with the other.

Five-and-a-half hours later, we pull into Binghamton. I spot my sister waiting for me and begin waving even though she can’t yet see me. Then we’re in her sleek, moss-green BMW, speeding away from buses, rest-stops and the cheerful chaos of other people’s lives.

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Where was I when...

Unmediated Essays on Media, Culture, Cinema Sashi Kumar Tulika Books ₹895

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As India wraps up a crucial election and looks ahead, BLink chronicles the events that were inflection points in our recent history. Luminaries in business, sports, the arts and literature tell us how these shaped them and their fields

MANJULA PADMANABHAN, author and artist, tells us tales of her parallel

life in Elsewhere, US, in this fortnightly series t@magnolialotus

where wastakeaway i when...

saturday, may 17,17, 2014 saturday, may 2014

Q Being a foodie is hard work The princess of Kent struggles with her chopsticks in Hong Kong in 1961

The country Talking foodiewas Partitioned (1947) How to be a party in the foodies party?

free and un-clingwrapped — you were a locavore; consumer of things grown and produced locally. You can still pretend to be one — just don’t tell them you order hapoos online.

the hindu archives

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’m with a woman who is borderline Ms Perfect but she couldn’t care less about food. She’d be happy to have dal-chawal every day, all week. Sure she eats the risottos and paellas I make but I can tell she doesn’t really ‘get’ why I bother. Should I be worried about the shelf-life of our relationship?” — Conflicted Foodie, Mumbai.

Now, there’s a letter no agony aunt could have met until a few years ago.

But as dinner parties turn into food orgies and neighbours into (home) bakers by the dozens, not knowing who a locavore is (no, not a steam engine), can’t be an option. Here’s a short cheat-sheet to foodie glibness:

Mouthfeel It may make your skin crawl, but it works. (This pudding has a wonderful texture and mouthfeel. Or the Merlot has a generous mouthfeel.) Add toothsome, unctuous and ambrosial to the list and you could host a TV show.

Amuse-bouche The French language is notorious for turning what’s perfectly mundane — an appetiser or ‘that which amuses the mouth’ — into fodder extraordinaire. Use it lavishly, when the canapés arrive. Try not to overstretch it to include greasy seekh kebabs though.

A fine balance Umami American Here’s a word that lends itself well to photographer vagueness. Feel free to bandy it about Margaret Bourke when something is not sweet, salty, documented the sour or bitter. The ‘fifth taste’ is often stream of refugees courtesy gandhi smriti used for Japanese foods like seaweed and shitake, but everything from ParLocavore mesan to ketchup also has it. Umami When farmer’s markets meant just is also great as a consolatory adjective began mydhania art education in food Lahore.

When I was eight, I still get nightmares. I shudthat — a local bazaar where was for experiments gone wrong. met with an accident and lost my sense of hearing. I der when I think of that dark was also bedridden for months and started doodling. period of our history. People My father saw the doodles and thought it could be a ran wherever they could. good thing for me to learn art. We migrated to India during They hid wherever they could. It the Partition. I was really shook up with what I witnessed was not easy. There was blood evduring that time. I helped my father for seven months in erywhere. Mankind had lost its running a centre for refugees. It influenced my art hugely. I sense. Man wanted to devour went to Bombay and studied art at the J J School of Art. Souman. It was heart-wrenching as za, Gaitonde, Sabharval, Raza and Pai were all my classmates. cries of pain and agony emanated When I finished college, I came to Shimla and started workfrom all corners. Did we deserve ing as a graphic artist. this? Friendly neighbours had rishi piparaiya A few months later, Charles Fabri, a prominent art critic at turned hostile in no time. Where the time, came to town. I knew his wife from Lahore. I ran into go was the challenge. I heard SATISH GUJRAL MILKHA SINGH to her at Mall Road one day and asked her if she would bring cries, “They have come, they have WINDOW OR AISLE Track and field sprinter Painter, sculptor, muralist, Fabri to my house so I could show him my paintings. Fabri come, run to save your lives.” Who architect and writer agreed and came over. He saw my paintings and said he had had come? No one knew. People only one advice for me, I should go to Mexico. just ran. Some escaped. Many did I was a communist then, and Mexico appealed to me. My not. They met cruel death. I have brother, Inder Kumar, who later became the prime minister lived that nightmare of fleeing of India, said my speech impediment would not be a probfrom my native village countless lem there. Since India was newly independent, a lot of countimes. I left behind everything (in tries were setting up their embassies and consulates here. I Multan). My parents died. My famBut that’s not the Indestroyed. a world earns you frequent flier miles that have just done something all fre- applied countsfor onadining, half-price on weekend scholarship through the Mexicanspent Embassy and ilybest waspart. nearly is fast losing itsI ran. I saw quent travellers and epicures must eventually, stays andgotcomplimentary rounds of can be redeemed for free flights. Last where service orientation one.

I survived because year, here I signed organisations thatSights that do: renewed my membership to drinks with friends.

But that’s not the Had I not gone to Mexico, we wouldn’t be sitting and up for the Platinum mem- meaning, these are bodies everywhere. bership one such card. As a welcome have set the highest benchmarks cus- I was too best part.

Theya significant also give me free some amazing loyalty programmes. talking.

It played roleone in my life. People sayofthat haunt me eveninnow. possessing thesethe reasons room night;influence in Mumbai, they have three gift, I was given thousands of compli- tomer service. And the Mexican on my painting is very obvious.

They young to understand me tohappened an ‘emperor mentary miles. But that’s not the best memberships elevates A hospitality card hotels, including anPartition iconic South are wrong.

Even after when MumI was painting in Shimfor what but even then part. I was every Many hotel groups run programmes that la,bai palace, worth least thisheritage was my style.

But no one inatIndia was following it. Italso given complimentary of the world’ treatment we wereat told that step. the horrific acts when I connect with entitle members to special offers and dis- was ₹10,000.

But that’sHad notIthe part.Mexico, If I membership disheartening. notbest visited I would haveto the Gold level of the air- They talk with carewere carried out by professionals. reasonable re- Partition, a pay an additional ₹5,000 when I use this line, free lounge access at all major do- them. They honour counts at their properties. And last year, I dropped out eventually.

I lostalleverything in the before occatheyI came will upgrade me to aIndia clubwasmestic and international airports, and a quests. They call me signed up for the Gold membership to voucher, By the time back (1949-50), not merely a part of mespecial was left behind. Trying check I have of other the loyalty programme of one of India’s newborn. room/junior suite subject to availability.

I host It had a place for art and artists, and Indian artistsprivileges. But that’s not the sions and politelyto makeif my way,made trying to find a exercised and was floored best part. I started charging all my big- any plans. And if I do visitIthem on a spebest luxury hospitality groups. were doing this someoption incredible things.

Most—of my contempofuture, discovered the harsh realpurchases on this card, including cial day, they ensure they inundate I received a classy welcome package raries they upgraded me to a heritage suite that ticket were bigger successes commercially because they itiesthat of my life.

I took refuge in a laauto and surprises. coststoupwards ofIn ₹60,000 night!

I reco- known and a card that earns me points for every stuck one form. my case,aonce I became for alife cer-insurance, and once I cross- me with wishes and dies’ coach,And to that be isborn again, warm memories they I did not vered my initial fee many ed a certain threshold, I was given a free the best part. The literally. rupee that I spend, for stay or dining, at tain style, I got tiredmembership of it.

At that point, around ₹10,000 permeal would night, no fine print, at a leading ho- leave me with. Forknow any of their properties. It essentially times overain that stay itself. But I decided toroom I am not trained sculptor. sculpt.

When where my next tel. But in that’s it’sfrom. a steal! translates to a 15-20 per cent discount on the Belgian government wanted to build an embassy In- not the best part. These annual membership, come When I think of Partispends on insurance and utilieverything. But that’s not the best part. dia, Thethey airline-bank credit card I thought it wasmundane held a competition. a joke that a tion, I am reminded of pain and author ofI pray Aisle Be bills earned Many banks have partnered with airlinesan ty Every year I get about 10 assorted vouch- foreign government would commission Indian archi- me enough miles for a few rishi piparaiya is the hunger. no one should expeDamned rishi@aislebedamned.com to launch co-branded cards. and Every rupee complimentary ers that entitle me to room upgrades, dis- tect.

But I submitted a design I won it. That’s how I be- domestic flight tickets. rience what I did. I left my self became an architect. I designed 12 buildings. Someone asked hind in my native village until I me if you keep changing like this, what will you be doing torediscovered it by running — by morrow? I said, if I know it, I’ll do it today. ♦ running for life. ♦

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How much should memories cost? Why loyalty cards can go a long way

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PRESENT IMPERFECT

My week of wealth Everything seemed to be falling into place. The Sensex was up and I was living my future even before it had arrived taking the Metro befitted my new station in life. I started several phone conversations with “my view on the market is that…” Everything seemed to be falling into place; I was living my future even before it had arrived.

When I reached office, the Sensex was up another 400 points. This was bewildering, I had to admit. I expected it to be down by that much. My loss of imaginary profit was threatening to overtake my actual profit.

I toldtomyTutu good self not to panic. Any minute now the market be true would crash and I’ll buy.

A ballerina’s ‘impromptu’ Mother called to say she had followed my infor structions and sold her stocksperformance for a low fourThe Ride figure profit. And the prices had climbed significantly since. I told her to calm down.

Maybe I was yelling. She sounded like she might cry. The pesky minions at work kept coming in with story ideas and page layouts. It was all too much.

Monday evening, I decided to watch the business channels just to hear what my contemporaries in the financial services world were saying. Everyone seemed bullish. There was no talk of even a possibility of a fall in the your attention. He waves at you. So you wave markets.

— a fraction ofwas timecoming, in which so many possibilModi development was back. And then he proceeds to leave the pack- assured. ities exist that it goods, seems like no time at banks, all. A viCapital automobiles, age he is carrying by the road and bursts into they sualsaid, illusion, or is it sensorywith delusion? you can’t goa wrong these. Mayvigorous hip-hop. Two Asian ladies, one of be they The Ride anThe houronly andway drops back in werelasts right. theusmarket them pushing a child in a buggy, veer to their front of the Madame Tussauds museum on W could go is up.

I wondered whether I should shutterstock right to avoid the dancing UPS man from tell 42nd Street.toAsbuy I hop the busagainst and quickly mother butoff decided it. It crashing into them. The child looks up from wasn’t dart across the road to see it looks like like she was paying mewhat for advice. the stroller, enthusiastically and this gives from outside, I feel the first chillthe of excitement made me feel awaves little awkward that I made Tuesday morning, I skipped gym. I’d you theonmost adorable smile.

You are rather of being in New York. took two money a Modi rally. toothless I considered registerbe rich than fit, It anyway.

As days soontoascome the so aprimed the unexpected you won- markets — this much-anticipated excitement but I ing couple for of Likes on some of that his Facebook opened, I bought stocks by the— armderpages whenasthe baby will jump outbut then de- ful. I threw in everything, am glad that at last it my has.profits fan a token of gratitude, including of the buggy and This isinmy trip too, to New cided I should just break give ainto partaofjig. the money to from Friday. I logged salefirst orders to I aminstead. on The Thirty Ride, aper buscent which York City. Stocks I nearly made it here charity seemed fair. square off my positions. were shooting isThat all glass side with three twice in the past both left on meone with ₹1.4 lakh, nothing to be up. I was making thousands of and rupees bytimes the rows ofat. seats, stadiumthe trip was scuttled at theuplast sneezed Nowarranged I know that I wouldn’tYou’re be ableso primed second.for I contemplated which car I should 30 or minute.

I was to think tostyle. makeAbout ₹1.4 lakh inso thetourists marketsit every the day.unexpected, But grade to. mother andbeginning insisted she buy youI called facingI could the glass, a no-smudge that the seemed universeespecially wasn’t quite surely, make ₹14,000.

How hardwonder would if too.

At office, everyone anthe baby viewbe?ofAnd the ifcity.

As we drive everywill going to conspire toaround bring to me that I made ₹14,000 day, I noying.

When I managed to get jump out of the around Manhattan, with whole two edit here, that mytoNew York could retire before 40. This meet-break checking the market, I wasmaybe shocked see that buggy, into a jig witty compères on the gig mic, was of all wouldwere always bepale in the realm ing, deadline-chasing things more pink thanof the things that go on outside the fiction.

I hungMy onstocks to the visuals getting tiring anyway, and this bright green. seemedof bus, itbe isahard to figure what city — onsome television would perfect escapeout route. tothe be shedding gains. shows I was isI told staged and what is real.about Is that and movies. finally ara couple of friends going to wait So tillwhen 3pm Iand then ladyjackpot; an investment banker home rive, nothing feels new.

Walking around the my in hushed tones,heading modify my orders and still sell By the time I reached from work or arich, full-throated opera singer city the couplefor of days, everything now that I was the tax guys a profit.

Come feels 3pm,so office,waitI had made ₹2firstthem ing to blow yourThey mind off with voice? familiar that it feels like a terrible waste wouldn’t be far. both sug- her big lakh some work nonsense turned upto in profit Perhaps that aiscottage a real teenager so much to get gested I buy in the on the kerb have spent and I losttime tracktrying of time.

By here. the waiting toand burst balloon Ibehind an old The only source York joymarket initiallywas was mountains startthe a business. time ofI New looked up, man’ssure head.about Is it part of Ia am stand-up act meant the fact thatclosed I was staying Paramount Hotel, wasn’t that, a and myatstocks were deep forgirl. the bus? are about to witness a which is right nextred. to the Scientology Centre. city I likePerhaps to keepyou a distance in the Tragedy! crime of some kind.wish Perhaps you will laugh, There were nomorning, sightings of Tom Cruise or John from nature and only nature would keep Wednesday Sensex is down 40 you willme. cry,But perhaps you scream.

Travolta. everyone on the street seemed itsperhaps distance from the rest ofwill it was per- points.

My But stocks are bleeding a dark crimson.

It could be live any in of the this.city, Or itwhere couldI be none.

Per- Actual like aprofit potential auditor. drama seemed fect.

I could would nevis now down Some to high four figures. that is why they call a New Yorkpeople minute Even imminent.

Alas, profit none transpired. erhaps be far from a wi-fi, andithelp other imaginary is at a loss now. Remake some money in the market as well. Be- freshed the site every minute but it is only getcause this was generous and charitable of me, ting redder. At last count, I had ₹700 left from I figured I should have no qualms about put- my jackpot on Friday. Blocked mother’s numting that 30 per cent back into my kitty. ber on the phone. Off to an editorial meeting Then I called my mother. “You should sell now, we’ll toss around some story ideas, define too,” I told her. She had only small profits here some deadlines, talk about a book or a movie. and there, but I told her to sell everything off The team is great, the wi-fi is free, this is a lot of and wait for my instructions to buy again. She fun actually. agreed. I even had my first client. t@veenavenugopal On Monday, I drove to work. I didn’t think

New York minute

Is it a visual illusion, or a sensory delusion? The city that can still surprise

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t Columbus Circle, a ballerina, bound up against the cold in pink turtleneck and a tutu, swirls and pirouettes. She leaps over the grey stone and twirls past the statue of the winged boy holding the globe. Then, as she raises her arm, she accidentally brushes the man walking past her, a backpack overfortune. his shouln Friday I came slung by a small I der. He might a tourist.

Or a around local walking had be been nipping the home after work.

He turns the stock market for a around, couple ofsees years ballerina and, to your astonishment, joins her without really having anything in her dance. together, weavsubstantial to Now showthey for move it. Some months I ing past walkers andthousands gawkers, their would make a few and bodies then glidingon round themoderate circle. As success, the bus throw you areinin spurred by that leaves the money Circle toafter head back tostay Times Square, some good bad and stuck for thenext ballerina andor the bow.turned the half year so,man untiltake theatides You barely peel your eyes But off them when for reasons unknown to me. with an eye a thenotion trademark khaki onUPS thedelivery political,man, and a in vague that there shortsbeand shirt, standing on the kerb catches might a last spike in the market before the election results come out, I’d been religiously logging into my online account for the last 10 days. On Friday, seeing that the Sensex was up some 150 points and that my forecast had indeed come true, I calculated grandly, added ₹20 to the trading price of the stocks I had, logged my order and set off to work.

By the time I reached office, I had made nearly ₹2 lakh in profit and lost nearly ₹30,000 in additional profit, money I imagine I would have made if I hadn’t sold in haste.

Sensex was up some 500 points. I had to delay the editorial meeting because every second my loss of imaginary profit was inching up. By 3pm, I was down some ₹50,000 in imaginary profit and it showed no sign of slowing. I had the worst headache of my life and decided to abandon computing personal wealth and get down to the business of editing this paper. I won’t tell you the final loss figure, it still makes me want to weep a little.

Anyway, over a few drinks that evening, I decided I was going about this all wrong and should only think of the money I actually made. Since I wasn’t a supporter, at first it

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takeaway talk

saturday, may 17,17, 2014 saturday, may 2014

The trouble with being a tourist in New York, especially a first-time visitor, and doing the touristy routine is that after a while it beBAWDY LINE gins to feel like the hundredth re-run of Seinfeld, Friends or Sex and the City. I saw the same landmarks in various ways. Twice by boat; once on a blustery morning when even the Statue of Liberty looked like she’d rather be somewhere indoors and warm, and once over a gourmet dinner in a cruise boat. I cycled around Central Park. And rode up the Rockefeller Centre to see the city from the top. It was a quick descent from “oh wow, look at that” to “ah okay, this again.” Which is why The Ride was special. It put the “oh wow” into things which weren’t even fascinating at first sight.

Travel Log

The two generals Get there

All major international airlines fly to New York. We flew Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class from Mumbai to London and London to JFK Airport and are still reeling from how awesome and posh it was. With 180-degree flatbeds and as much champagne as you can drink, it is the least tiring way to get anywhere (virgin-atlantic.com).

As young surgical residents, we could belongStay to one of two units — the Parsi’s or the Maratha’s The Paramount Hotel at Times Square is known for the parties it hosts and is a good option to stay in as well (nycparamount.com). You might tween their outcomes for every parameter — run into the Olsen twins and other celebrities in the lobby. The postoperative morbidity, mortality and paScientology Centre is next door. tient survival. The results for oesophageal surThe Manhattan at Times Square is were: a brighter, more airy place to40 stay gery curative resection rates per cent (manhattanhoteltimessquare.com). is 76 centrally located and is walking (Parsi)It vs per cent (Maratha), 30-day patient wo days after The Ride, I boarded yet andistance to the subway station, Times Square, Centre well reas mortality 30 per Rockefeller cent vs 10 per cent,aslocal other bus. This one was regular and everythe Museum of Modern Art. currence 38 per cent vs 15 per cent, anastomotic leaks 25 per cent vs 10 per cent, and 10-year Eat survival after curative resection was 20 per Try the restaurant Supernova cent at Novotel Hotel. is inspired by was the carried vs 63 per cent.ItOur own audit dropping of the crystal ball onout New Year’s Eve andofhas an amazing proposiview of in the slipstream a self-evident the actual ball. tion that widely appeared in surgical journals The Rockefeller Centre Café isthen: a nice for lunch.

Take a table with a theplace surgeon is to be considered an imview of the skating rink. If you’re luckyvariable — and considering there arepatient a few portant that can influence thousand of them every year, outcome, you are likely to be —in you can witness particularly cancer surgery.a The Red-hot chilli pepperoni There special Rockefeller Centre Engagement with the prospective on haphis foregrounding of this ancientgroom bromide are no new licences knees and the whole shebang.pened in the characteristic language of peerfor wood-fired ovens, journals. suggests Take a Bateaux Cruise for its reviewed sophisticated dinner‘The on current board a data cruise ship. so in Brooklyn, Knight and day While one professor gave us free rein in the OT, the other kept us at the sidelines shutterstock that the surgeon is an important prognostic Live jazz music, fine wine, dancing and a view of New York by night that there's a pizza war in the treatment oesophageal you will remember for a long factor time. There is a dress of code though, becancer.’ raging shutterstock/ andrey kuzmin fter his much-vaunted oesophageal was fine for he actually allowed us to cut peoParadoxically, the results of our departmenformally dressed. resections for cancer of the oeso- ple up. It was in his unit that we got a whole lot tal audit were at variance with the other bit of Tip meant the chance to inference being bandied about in these jourphagus, when the Parsi Professor of surgical action, which one faced forward all the way to Brooklyn, would emerge from the OT to speak wander unaccompanied into abdominal andvisitor nalscentre as gospel — the relation between First stop: the NYC & Co on Seventh Ave between Wcase 46thvolwhere a pizza war is brewing. Just under the to the patient’s family, he would cinematically thoracic cavities amid their sundry viscera.Herald He ume and outcome. That, somehow, quantity and 47th or at Macy’s Square (nycgo.com).

You can pick up your Brooklyn bridge, Grimaldi’s has been serving refer the matter upwards, to a Radically Benev- allowed us our first encoun-guides meant quality. The on more you here. undertake, the cityunchaperoned pass, subway tickets, and information events its signature pie for the last 24 years. In 1998, olent God. For a man who was antipathetic to ters with animate tissues.

Ita was there that we better you get at it.the Miller et alofhad analysed Go on water-taxi ride (nywatertaxi.com) to see Statue Liberty, Patsy Grimaldi decided he was too old to run any superintending deity, this referral was plugged the hole between theory and praxis. the Hamilton (Canada) regional oesophageal Brooklyn Bridge, WTC site and so on.

It can be windy; carry a windcheater. the business and sold it to Frank Ciolla. Last never done shiftily or casually, but with the Everybody wanted to be in the Parsi’s He Rockefeller cancer registry and found 22It per Take a guided tourunit. of the Centre (1989-1993), (rockefellercenter.com). is year, Grimaldi decided he wanted back in. He highest seriousness, almost as an act of faith. was the man we exalted.

Almost as see, much for centand hospital mortality formurals surgeons the best way to understand appreciate all the and performartwork. bought a restaurant next door and after losing Posterior to it, Marx’s great throwaway line his fantastic swagger and pudendum-based ing The fewer than sixCollection cases percurates year, compared A Broadway show is a must too.

Broadway some of the legal battle to call his pizzeria by his own from the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right expletives and all-round grouchiness as his with zero per cent for surgeons performing the best shows, and tickets can be booked in India before you leave name, named it Juliana after his wife. Pizzewas thrown at us, the small congregation of surgical discourse. And, as might be expected, over six cases per year. In our hospital, the Parthrough their agents here (broadwaycollection.com). rias’ prime assets are their ovens and the city surgical residents, as a sort of verbal annota- for giving us free rein. si did more than twice as many oesophageal council has almost entirely stopped giving Spend a morning biking around Central Park. It’s a moderately easy ride tion: ‘To call on them to give up their illusions But, it was during our time with the Ma- and pancreatic cases as the Maratha (whose new licences for wood-fired ovens because of with enough stops at prominent attractions (centralparkbiketours.com). about their condition is to call on them to give ratha that most of us could feel the first stir- score in an average year would not exceed six). o, the ice bar at New York environmental concerns. But Grimaldi manAnd relive polar Minus up a condition that requires illusions’. “But we rings of the artisan in us.finally, We hated thethe man on vortex Theattwo of 5them were true generalists. As ages to get a licence — through means that are Midtown, glasses isthere madewasn’t of ice a do need to find out,” he’d often say, “if God can a cellular level, butHilton delighted in where everything from furniture generaltosurgeons, both inexplicable and awe-inspiring. Paula, (minus5experience.com). heal the oesophageal anastomosis.” Twice, the consummately artisanal way pathology that did not fall in our young guide, tells us this story in the bus. midway through my term, he’d threatened to in which he performed surgery. their remit. Lung, oesophagus, We are on a slice of pizza tour through Brookchange the subject of my dissertation to ‘A We wanted to do it just like that. pancreas, prostate, breasts, thylyn and it is fitting that there be suspense and Study of the Intercessory Effects of Prayers in The lecturers would be his first roid, thymus: they did everyIt was there (in his drama around pizza. I was mildly disappointPatients Undergoing Oesophageal Resection’. assistants and we were relegated thing and looked upon the loss OT) that we plugged No parking Pedalling ed that there was no murder.

At Grimaldi’s the pizza is worth its lore. Thin tainly expands your stomach.

As young residents in a mofussil hospital in to the position of being second of generality as the declension of thebubhole between around Central Park crust with the freshest of mozzarellas If The Ride made me see the wonder in New shutterstock/gerard lazaro Maharashtra, we could belong to one of two and third assistants, watching the new generation. But the Parsi theory and praxis bling on it, the pie is worth its multi-decade York, Brooklyn’s obsession with its pizzas surgical units: the Parsi’s or the Maratha’s. We those magnificent performances had always considered the oesohistory. We order one with no toppings but opened my eyes to the quirks of its people. Rehad no choice in the matter. We ended up from the sidelines. Even his cirphagus and pancreas his forte. the depth of flavours in the pie, the sauce and ally, there was nothing more I wanted. New spending two years in our respective parent cumcisions (for pathologically A major element of the Mathe cheese are enough. We roll through Brook- York, it seemed, was falling into place. unit and were decanted in the middle for a adherent, non-retractile adult ratha’s personality had been his lyn while Paula shifts from pizza to real estate.

That evening, I took my first subway ride year to the other unit. The whole thing wasn’t foreskins) were transcendent. It could be said unslackening contempt for the Parsi. The Parsi We drive past multi-million-dollar homes and back to the city. A teenager, pink-haired and quite fun and games: the work was very hard he considered it a procedure for beautifica- believed in all seriousness that the Maratha, as listen to stories of indulgent fathers, spoilt surly, sat next to me. I peeped over her shoulfor very little, the conditions feudal, the atmo- tion. It was done with trigonometric solic- an organism, had lower intelligence than his daughters and their 10-bedroom mansions. der to see what she was reading. It was Salinsphere a meld of what you’d find in a debased itude, without any loss of blood, the penile constituent parts. The results of the audit had L&B Spumoni is at the other end of Brooklyn ger’s The Catcher in the Rye, whose iconic communist State and a Victorian workhouse. breach closed with an impossible running absolutely no effect on him. His operative and so is its pie. If the Grimaldi pizza is as crisp protagonist Holden Caulfield escapes PennsylThe Professors, Dickensian villains both, subcuticular stitch. technique, with its equal mix of insouciance, as it’s thin, Spumoni is the king of the pan vania to romp around in New York — checking glowered at us perpetually and treated us like We couldn’t do it, no matter how hard we flamboyance and caprice had become a habit. crust. I have ever been keen on pan crusts, to into downtown hotels, going to jazz clubs in chattel. The Maratha was a leathery old cur- tried. Our circumcisions in the Parsi’s unit The Maratha’s big-headedness grew even be honest, having found them too doughy. But Greenwich Village and watching Broadway mudgeon who displayed the most coxcombi- produced fringes around the glans, like lace- more. He thought the audit was the apotheoat Spumoni, the flour is worked and left to rise shows, a tourist trail similar to my own. I cal variant of vanity and conceitedness, and work or the ample necks of frilled lizards, even sis of his career. His operative technique had not once but twice. The yeast and the air play could’ve laughed at the ridiculous irony of it. operated so imperiously that every time he though we removed as much prepuce as was never come across as a transferrable skill. Nor such grand chemistry with the pizza, it blows Or I could’ve taken it as a sign from the unitook off his surgical gloves, it seemed he was legislated by the Maratha. On excising hae- did he ever try any kind of transference. me away. Eating it is like biting into a pie filled verse that much of New York might be predictgoing to announce he’d invaded Multan. The morrhoids, we couldn’t get those three perI’m aware that the debt for my own surgical with crisp, oven air. It is portly and invisible at able but all of it is alluring. I picked the latter. prospect of working in his unit was a lowering fectly formed cloverleaf defects (with his tally enlightenment must be split evenly between the same time. It is suddenly easy to see why (The writer was in New York at the invitation of one as his residents never got a chance to oper- of just three streaks of blood on a solitary the two. Let it also be said that some of those an entire borough is caught up in pizza wars. NYC & Co and Virgin Atlantic.) ate. What they got, was a kind of spectatorial gauze piece). Our haemorrhoidectomies tend- oesophageal resections (imputed to the Parsi) Travel, they say, expands your mind. I can’t education. Intraoperatively, they served as tis- ed to be blood-sodden campaigns. were performed by residents. In the course of claim any evidence of it. In Brooklyn, it cer- veena venugopal sue retractors to make way for His Majesty; It was actually a departmental audit that a few of them was begotten my own learning postoperatively, they provided the ovation. prepared us for what turned out to be an un- curve. When residents operate, the religious Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based The Parsi, an illustrious savant in the groves falsifiable conclusion — the Maratha was the might make a case for intercessory prayers. vascular surgeon and and the author of of academe, was equally irascible most of the better surgeon. Not just empirically, but meaa rogue and deviant sexual history of the asatwik@gmail.com time and looked upon us as valets, but all that surably. We noticed significant differences beBritish Raj called Perineum: Nether Parts

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Anuran talkies

CREATURE FEATURE

I bequeath my passwords to…

L A peek into the life and times of the Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis aka the purple frog, on the verge of extinction

Dung beetles The scatological insects who know both the Milky Way and dino droppings intimately

et’s begin at the beginning. seen by anybody, mostly because my So they say our ancestors mother is not more than 10cm and have been around since the my dad is even smaller, about 7cm Mesozoic era or the time or so. It did happen though, and I when dinosaurs were frolicking am the living proof of it. about. They also say that our closest Even as a tiny tadpole, resilience relative, the Sooglossidae, live more has always been one of my than 3,000km away, in what are strengths. My suctorial mouth lets now the islands of Seychelles and me hang onto rocks and stones, prewill in the form of a written document with Madagascar. Some of them ended venting strong currents from washtwo independent witnesses. But as N Vijayashup catching a really long cruise ing me away. If I’d known the Bee ankar, a techno-legal information consultant across the high seas, and by long I Gees then, I would have probably based in Bangalore, points out, “‘Digital propSisyphean task? Dung rollis the ballseparately using the sun for orientation divyaraj shah mean a journey that lasted millions been humming, Stayin’ alive, stayin’ erty’beetles in India not defined.

What is of years. It was during that time that alive. The point is, I made it through defined in the IT Act is an ‘electronic docuut away ment’.” your cup coffee the Indian landmass came into its the ebbs and flows of the tide, and In of some situations, the laws digital cies that are of active at night? They or piecewills of toast a minown, developing its own distinct before you can say Nasikabatrachus mayfor have to be derived by interpreting use the light from the moon instead. ute, andthelet’s about succession, biomes within which new varieties sahyadrensis, I was on my way to belawstalk of property he they says.do on nights when But what do dung beetles.

Why dung of flora and fauna emerged. By the coming a fully-grown purple frog.

Clearly, there are nothe great expectations yet It turns out, moon isn’t visible? beetles, you ask?for Because no animal time it ended up where it is now, we the digital will indung India.beetles As Gupta says, can use starlight — the I might be wrong, but I’m four better exemplifies thethough notion Ithat too had found our own identity.

“Even am notorientation averse to digital of thewills, Milky Way, in paryears old now, more than halfway one creature’s waste is another’s enAlthough we’re similar to our Sey- through my life. In these years, I’ve the substantive law inticular India makes them un-of where they — to keep track tire existence. For a dung and beetle, chellois cousins, we also possess seen many things from top and botenforceable null.” are going! dung is more than just its roti aur characteristics that are unique — the tom. What I’ve seen underground, I It isn’t just the rollers that have The digital afterlife makaan — battles are fought and evolved impressive features in relack of toe discs and our much can’t really talk about here, as I don’t hearts are won over a pile however, of dung. the digital Globally, been en- Male tunlarger size, for example. While our think human beings can compresponsewill to has competition.

Dung beetles come in several va- nellers thusiastically embraced by many In brethren grow up to a maximum of hend them. Maybe, if more people alsonetizens. battle fiercely with one rieties, each with a different rela- Shavit Israel, Vered Rose begandefending advocatingaccess to fea centimetre or so, at another, like Dr SD Biju and his tionship to dung.

The wills ‘tunnellers’ digital after her brother Tal Shavit died in eggs within full size, we can be as males who will lay their group, Lost Amphibtunnel through dung build nests a roadtoaccident.

She set the blog Digital large as 7cm. What theup tunnel nests.

Rival males fight ians of India, continue in the ground below, dung stole Dust carrying after hackers herwho brother’s happened to us apparover gets to digital father those eggs — observing us, one day, I My parents met by into these nests to both feed on andhis death. data a month after “I wanted raiseeach other at ently makes a strong they lock hornstowith can talk about what we the side of a gurgling lay eggs in.

The ‘dwellers’ set up boutisacalled year ago, Gautam John, a 35awareness of the fact that we are all going to males with case for what tunnel entrances, and accounts, on a password manager site online, do down under.

Until stream in Idukki shop right in theleave dungbehind pile, expendTED-fellow and Bangalore- so my digital legacies assets, of senthe biotic year-old ferry model biggerand horns prevail.

Species of tunwife willjust have access in the case then, let’s stick to to them ing while no effort based educationist, chanced upon of my timental, emotional and financial value, anddung beetles of evolution.

I believe nelling this beyond thepassing,” surface. he says, adding that that should manage it. I also wantedtherefore to assist possess a diwe’re also an theobscure missingGoogle policy blog that is notIn a formal willyears per se, as arequired practi- toweburmy four of it serves row just beneath the that are going through the process stated, “Not many of us like thinking about cal existence, families of of impreslink between the oldverse array alternative.

I’ve seen the surface. But thedealing first with the digital legacy andsive death — especially our own. makingworld plans from above for only about assets of including and new-world frogs.

SinceBut barely horns, Dung beetles can use Silence of the law beetles to arrive on theones who have passed away, by for of what happens after you’re really loved provid135 us have been spotted so far,gone in- istwo some species whose months, give or take some. This starlight to track a digital has no legal scenesanctity. followingingthe important forthree the people youthe leave So be Currently, them useful information such ashorns technical cluding only females, In-behind. are outrageousmight difficult for you to will imagwhere they are going Says Apar Gupta,subterrawho works forproduction Delhi-basedof aguides fresh and how-tos,” says Shavit. ly large — they can today, we’reUnion launching a new feature ternational for Conservation ine,that but we’re essentially law firm andonly Co and IT-relatpileonof dung are There the are companies such as Legacy makes it easy to has tell put Google what want Locker, of Nature (IUCN) us on the younean weigh more than 15 creatures andAdvani come up to focuses “At present, will isThese not beetles ‘rollers’. done with your digitalSpecies. assets when die or ed passmywill.com, lifecapsule.be and others that of the total Red List of Threatened Whatyouprocreate. per cent Welitigation, burrow our way up a digital India as ashowers, registered will.quickly roll a ball of can no longer useare your account.” offer spaces to store digital can I say, times tough.

It’s sur- before thevalid mass treaof the beetle. Calfirstinmonsoon However, parties always atdung away from the pile before bu-or take Called the Inactive Manager, it alsures instructions prising though that weAccount were found a and culate how muchto17pass per cent of your like my dad and everyare other to adduce a willgo, in a pro-rying it, attempting to minimise users to telldisthe internet on the digital details is, to and loved decadelows ago; Google most anurans were body weight then imagine male in liberty my species, I too proceeding, and a court,competition with both other ones after one’shauling behemoth what it should with bate death. that weight around covered a couple of centuries ago. I do “RRRAAAK,” in the hope of attractAt present, however, based on thehopefully, specific State theirthrough personalthe data if anding when In an era where on people lead for the sake guess we slipped gaps your head, a pretty woman, a law,rollers and the onslaught a digital will is not may giveAnd it effect.” of tunnellers and theyI diverge. die or their account be-round full digital lives — fromof schmoozsomehow. Anyways, dung. fleshy one.

I have to say, I valid in India comes inactive. ing on social media sitesOne andtestament to The beginning for me is when my haven’t doneAdvocate too badly.and cyber law expertdwellers who arrive Pavan Duggal it’s timesoon after. But arriv“For me side it is of the concept shopping from e-tailerstheright mother and father met by the value of dung as Don’t get me wrong.

I’mbelieves not gloatthestubby law caught with digitaling first isn’t alDead Man’s ing, Protodown to the everydayness aof paythis gurgling streamofinthe Idukki, Keralife-supporting but my limbs, up protrud“In India, thousands colmy (Switch) which ing led me ing household bills and banking la, my father riding on mother’s resource is that snout,life. bloated body and tinyof giga-ways enough to of any personal go down avoid the drain ev- online — a digital will assumes an importance competition to leave online back with the aid of stickybehind secre-myeyes dung beetles are are asbytes fine as otherdata purple eryBut day… people their data roll— individual possessions to myfrog wife,” all its own. tions and, you know, doing their found on almost I know. since there seldom are onlyplan how should distributed andthem-As Shavit explains, “It is up to each person ersdeath) who find DeadaMan’s thing. All this mightsays notJohn. have The been every continent. few females left,be come rains, it’s(after al- their there is really nowho legalgets provision to provide ac- how selves without a they deal with something like this, Switch refers to a ways switch But but perhaps more a race to determine cesswhom. to thisDespite lost data.”

He blames this on dung balltheof their that is operated automatiwhat I do recommend is that we make these is the fact compelling to jiggy with the jigoutdated Information Technology Act, which own will launch into vi- while we are still alive andthat cally if the human operator decisions lucid, and beetles have these gying, we’re a rare species.

But I’m way in 2000 and amended cious combat with becomes incapacitated. notrollers leave our loved ones to wonder we about their beenwhat going sure therewas areenacted more of usback in this in 2008. who are rushing awayhave from “Apart from the Google managwould wanted.” lives of rolling, burying and world. I’mjust toldonce we live in the WestIndian lawAnna— Indian Succession Act, their hard-won dung burrowing into dung for millions of the pile with er, I have also backed-up all my passern Ghats, inUnder Parambikulam, sibi arasu 1925 and — anyone aged 21 and above can trying make ato wrest balls, control of the years. There exist fossils of dinosaur words, including those of mymalai, bankNilgiris Cardamom Hills. precious resource. For the early-ar- droppings that bear distinct eviHere, in my neck of the woods, I riving rollers, therefore, speed is of dence of being used by tunnelling hope to see a few more monsoons essence. But getting far away from dung-eaters, most likely beetles. and finish that burrow. Missing link the dung pat as fast as possible neWould you have imagined conor not, I also hope my tadpoles see cessitates knowing exactly where templating the dung beetle would many pre-monsoons of their own. one is going. To be able to move in a launch you into the far reaches of (Information courtesy Dr SD Biju straight line directly away from the space and time? I certainly didn’t. and team, Systematics Lab, Universidung pile, some beetles have ty of Delhi.) evolved to orient themselves based ambika kamath studies organismic and sibi arasu on the sun. But what about the spe- evolutionary biology at Harvard University

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The purple frog knows what lies above and beneath the ground

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PARTHA PRATIM SHARMA

More and more people are drawing up a digital will to specify who will inherit their personal data and other online assets after they are gone

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proposed this form of a new museum for the location of the control room, Fondation Le three projects — the World Museum of the Corbusier’s president, Antoine Picon, sent an Mundaneum, the Museum of Modern Art and appeal to the AMC chief Guruprasad Mohapathe Museum of Unlimited Growth. tra. To the Paris-based foundation, which arBuilt in 1954, the Sanskar Kendra is based on chives the architect’s works, the building is the architect’s idea of a true museum or the one of Corbusier’s major realisations.

Museum of Unlimited Growth. “Corbusier In the letter, a copy of which is with BLink, Picalled it the cultural centre of Ahmedabad, con writes, “I would like the city of Ahmedahey have found Santa hundred years hence theMaria! nameFiver Sanskar Kendra,” says Profes- bad to make its best effort to find a solution after Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria sor Neelkanth Chhaya, architectwas and former that would permit the new development furwrecked, underwater investigators facultyarchaeological member at Centre for Environmental ther away from the museum façade… I would have discovered the vessel’sand remains off theUniversity Haitian (CEPT). be very pleased if you could take into considPlanning Technology coast. In what is likely to be one of the world’s most “All (the museums of unlimited growth) are eration the violent impact on the integrity of important underwater discoveries, the team posidifferent in structure, but has have the seminal the museum on one side and the awful consetively identified the with a little help from Coideawreck of modernism and culture.” quences of the current project on the reputalumbus’s diary, photographs from the an cultural initial survey Yet, for decades centre, located tion of the city and of the Foundation, on the carried out in 2003 and data from in the tree-lined andreconnaissance posh neighbourhood of other side”. missions on the site In 1492, Paldiearlier alongthis themonth.

Sabarmati, has Coremained a AMC chief Mohapatra, however, says that lumbus hired Santa Maria and sailed from the Spanish static place for exhibitions.

Originally con- the architects assigned on the project didn’t coast in search ofceived a newasroute to Asia.that Months later, a complex would house sepa- inform the corporation about the key features the ship drifted off northern of Haiti and such as of the original plan. “In the plan by Corbusier, ratethe pavilions forcoast different subjects was abandoned. Columbus returned to Spain aboard anthropology, natural history, archaeology there was a kind of grid that was to come up his other two vessels — La Nina and La Pinta.

Santa and folklore, the Sanskar Kendra Macurrently on- surrounding the main building, but that was he European Union’s court of justice has just handed Google an unforria was the largestlyofhouses his ships, but it is said his favoua museum. gettable verdict, declaring that the search engine must delete “inadenot shared with us. As soon as this came to our rite was the little La In Nina. the 1950s, at the invitation of the then knowledge, we decided to shift the new proquate, irrelevant” data from its results when a member of public requests it. prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Le Corbu- ject,” he explains.

The first test case of Spanish resident Mario Costeja González has given us sier undertook the project of building Chandithe ‘right to be forgotten’. González went to court after Google continued to According to experts, the law needs to be garh, the new capital for Punjab. link him to a 1998 auction notice of his home, which was done to recover his amended to protect such sites The architect was also commisdebts but has been repossessed since. “I was fighting for the elimination of that do not fall under the ASI crisioned to build four other builddata that adversely affects people’s honour, dignity and exposes their priteria of protecting monuments ings in Ahmedabad, including vate lives,” González told The Guardian. The court has asked Google to erase that have existed for at least 100 the Sanskar Kendra. The buildlinks to pages that showed up whenever González’s name was keyed in. This years. “It is sad to find that there There is no law to ing realises some of the ideas of is the first of more than 200 cases lined up against Google, which is already is no law to protect such contemprotect Corbusier’s museum. Deborah building an “army of removal experts.” porary but world-renowned arcontemporary but Gans in the Le Corbusier Guide dechitectural sites. This (Sanskar world-renowned scribes some of these: “Standard Kendra) is synonymous with the architectural sites bays of linear galleries wrap fabric of the city,” says Karan around a square court. The muGrover, a Vadodara-based conserseums are ‘buildings without favation architect who helped ren The Mysterious Styles, Agatha çade, entered from below, in store Affairs the at heritage site of Christie introduces usGujarat. to the little Belgian other words, from inside’. The museums are Champaner in central detective Hercule Poirot, one of the refugeesdesiteless as well as unlimited.”

For architects, Corbusier’s futuristic down bymain Mrs Cavendish, whose Most of the architect’s signature elements — brought signs were the draw. Author Jon murT Lang he subsequently investigates.

It hasArchitecnow pilotis (columns), a roof garden and ribbon der writes in A Concise History of Modern a real-life Belgian policeman windows — find a place in the Sanskar Kendra. emerged ture thatthat many young architects wanted to came to Torquay during the First Its roof is left wide open for a terrace garden, who work with Corbusier in India, suchWorld as BV hat a national award winner for ‘Best Actor’ can also might have been the inspiration for Chrisunlike the museum in Tokyo. “Forty-five open War Doshi, who worked with the architect in Paris be the best comedian in the State has not gone fictionalindetective.

A water tanks were to cool the galleries below. tie’s andfamously later as eccentric his site-architect Chandigarh down well with the Kerala government. Suraj Venjaranavy commander, who The continuous trough at the top of the pilotis retired and Ahmedabad.

Lang Michael says thatClapp, Corbusier’s moodu, who won the national award for his moving researching his family history, came — was to hold vines that would climb the brick was impact on the architects was at many levels portrayal of a scavenger in Perariyathavar, was declared across Jacques Hornais, a retired gendarme façades,” reads the Corbusier Guide.

“Unlimited as an employer, as a theorist, a form-giver and n online petition titled ‘Stop Treating Indians ‘Best Comedian’ for Daivathinte Swantham Cleetus, a to England with hundreds of other growth”, as envisioned

by Corbusier, was to be who an came educator.

Like Garbage!’ that accuses the Indian mission in comedy. The government has now recommended the I. Inlater her in autobiography, shownits through be- Belgians Moreduring than a WW decade 1962, when the London of treating visitorsnature. poorlyAnd has Ahmedabad, received removal of the award itself, which acChristie also gives clues to her detective withsides Paris and Chandigarh, was one of the few Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad more than 3,000 signatures at last count. The petition cording some, has “belittled naming anyone: “WeKahn had quite a colony of cities theNational world toIndian have inherited was completed, Louis held out a similar, Ideas in brickto (Top) Professor Neelkanth the has the backing of inthe Students such a out Chhaya with the honour”. architect fraternity at national The expert refugees living in the parish of Tor. Why not Corbusier legacy.

Corbusier-like appeal for the architects here.

Union, UK, which has students from across the islandSanskar Kendra whenheaded they brought n the morning of Maynation 7, a bitter committee, by out ac- a my adetective a Belgian?”

Butwas ardent fans The AMC’s moveseems to build the weather Kahn, US-based architect, commisaffiliated to it. The mission to have taken con- make SNEHAL GANDHI; the Louis Kahn petition stand-off between the Ahmedabad claimed filmmaker Adoor like novelist Sophie Hannah, whose new Poitrol room was seen not only as an attempt to sioned to design the IIM-A. The Louis Kahn Plaour desi version of ‘babudom’ all the way to England.

Plaza at IIM-A Municipal CorporationThe (AMC) and Gopalakrishnan, is yet to rot mystery The Monogram deface an architectural landmark, but also za, considered an architectural marvel and demands in the petition include, “Stop abusing the city’s architect fraternity came take a decision but the sitMurders out in would hurt Ahmedabad’s chances to which features in the film 2isStates, hasSepaged pregnant ladiesone andthat senior citizens.

Update your webto an end. The AMC, which had planned to conuation is not really tickling tember this year, are become a UNESCO heritage site.

According to fast after the 2001 earthquake.

The complex site with latest information rather than expecting us struct a two-storey control room adjacent to changes anyone. Venjaramoodu, who not As architects, thestuck new construction violating has sustained damages overconvinced. the past 50 years. to guess that are on a piece of was paper the Sanskar Kendra, was forced to abandon may be the last of the comediHannah says, “Agatha thewall veryofidea of modernStop architecture, fraternity in the outitson the the consulate. throwing that is, In a boost for the architect plan. The construction had threatened to ans in Kerala, is against the reneverwill mentioned to have back a foreground.

Foregrounds are kept so city, the IIM-A management undertake it the documents at people’s faces. Suspend eclipse the Le Corbusier-designed museum, officers moval of the award and says, “I it makes me wonthat the can be viewed exercise since 1962.

For whobuilding cannot treat people withfrom re- a dis- first-ever conservationand the first of three such museums in the world, spect.” think the award is an inspiration der why not.” tance. Aye “There was no plan for new constructhe next three to five years, the institute will Aye for them. the other two being in Tokyo and Chandigarh. tion in the original design by Corbusier,” says spend an estimated ₹15 crore per year in restofor upcoming artistes and I don’t In his 1925 book The Decorative Arts of Today, Yatin Pandya, an Ahmedabad-based architect ration efforts. think dropping it is a good idea.”

Le Corbusier writes, “Let us imagine a true mu- and activist. Most of the architect fraternity, Veteran comedian Salim Kumar With Corbusier’s legacy intact and Kahn’s seum, one that contains everything, one that including people from CEPT, architect associ- getting a much-needed facelift, the architects though is of a different opinion. could present a complete picture after the pas- ations and international groups joined in to of the city have prevailed.

He says, “A character emotes difsage of time…” The Swiss-French architect, protest against AMC’s proposed construction. ferent rasas (emotions) while actconsidered a pioneer of modern architecture, ing, and hasya (comedy) is part of Two days before the AMC decided to shift rutam vora the navarasas. In this situation you will have to give awards for all these emotions.”

Lost and found

Chris Columbus’s shipwreck surfaces, five centuries later

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It’s my right!

Landmark case of internet privacy will give us the ‘right to be forgotten’

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Museum Unlimited The joke’s on you

Will the real Poirot please stand up?

A new Agatha Christie mystery in the making

It is a victory for architects and Le Corbusier in Ahmedabad Kerala recommends removal of Mind your language Best Comedian Award The Indian mission in London treats visitors like ‘garbage’

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saturday, may 17, 2014

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cornerstone in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Modern Indian History

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quiz on events and newsmakers in modern Indian history. In no particular chronology.

Let’s start with an answer. “Being a woman by itself is a gift of God which all of us must appreciate. The origin of a child is a mother and is a woman and the woman is the one who shares and shows a man what love, caring, and sharing is all about. That’s the essence of a woman.” Whose words are these, and why does it feature in this quiz?

2 3

Who famously compared Indira Gandhi to Durga after her leadership during the 1971 Indo-Pak war?

Why would Indians have reason to remember two Russian gentlemen named Malyshev and Strekalov, and how are they indirectly connected with a song written by Mohammed Iqbal?

4

In 1982, on a trip to Mexico, Vasant Sathe was impressed by the use of media for social change. As a result, what started on April 7, 1984, which took the nation by storm?

5

June 25 is a red-letter day in Indian cricket history. The day we played our first test match is also the day we won the World Cup in 1983. Who took the last wicket for India to seal the win?

6

August 15, 1975 — Sholay released in halls around the country. The initial going was slow before it gathered momentum and became the biggest hit in Indian film history. Which prominent member of the cast requested not to be featured in any scene with a specific co-star?

And why?

the new york times crossword-0330

bright ideas

7

She starred as a goatherd in an acclaimed film in 1985, wrote the script for Shah Rukh Khan’s first film appearance and also taught aerobics in the ’90s. Who are we talking about and why was she in the news in 1998?

8 9 10

Indian sports : Why should we remember Henri Hakkinen of Finland and Zhu Qinan of China?

Shankarrao Chavan, Madhu Dandavate, Yashwant Sinha. Next name on that list.

Significant, obviously.

The first company he started was Softronics, which failed to take off. His second, after a corporate stint, was much more successful, and in March 1999 garnered significant international attention. Name the person, and the company he started. Easy!

ANSWERS

1. Sushmita Sen’s answer to the final question in the 1994 Miss Universe contest. All the cosmetics companies shall forever be grateful.

2. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, very sporting of him, though the Opposition reminded him about it for years.

3. They were the cosmonauts who accompanied Rakesh Sharma on Soyuz T11. When the PM asked what India looked like from space, Sharma famously quoted Iqbal, “Saare jahan se achcha.”

4. The serial Hum Log. 5. Mohinder Amarnath, who trapped Michael Holding leg before wicket.

6. Hema Malini requested not to be featured in any scene with Sanjeev Kumar, as he had proposed to her a few months before. Besides, boyfriend Dharam was also around and probably wouldn’t have approved.

7. Arundhati Roy, won the Booker for God Of Small Things in 1998. The film was In Which Annie Gives it to Those Ones.

8. They finished with bronze and silver medals, respectively, when Abhinav Bindra won India’s first-ever individual gold medal in the 2008 Olympic Games held in Beijing.

9. Manmohan Singh, who followed them as Finance Minister in 1992.

10. Narayana Murthy and Infosys.

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joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster, director Kolkata Knight Riders and author of Junior Premier League — The First XI t@joybhattacharj

When this puzzle is done, the circled letters, reading counter-clockwise from the top, will spell a phrase relating to the puzzle’s theme.

50 Rocket 51 Cousin of “Ugh!” 52 Osaka-to-Sapporo dir.

53 Law firm department 55 Fired on 57 Good-for-nothing 59 Resort city in 1945 news Across 60 Small scene 1 Expands, in a way 61 Restricted part of an 7 Sister of Helios urban area 10 ___ room 63 Ball player?

13 Elite unit 64 Prominent feature of an 18 Gambling mecca Obama caricature 19 Saint’s home, for short 65 Ray Charles hosted it in 22 Venomous African 1977: Abbr. tree-dweller 66 Couple at the altar?

23 Start of a motivational 69 Start to show one’s real comment attributed to potential 86-Across 72 So 26 Justin Timberlake’s “Cry 73 Birthplace of Buddha, now ___ River” 75 Pitcher Mike with 270 wins 27 [That makes me so 78 Christmas cookie uncomfortable] ingredient 28 Lockup 80 Plagues 29 Middle of the comment 81 Eponymous German 37 Toolbar feature physicist 38 Director Nicolas 82 Combined with 39 Record 40 Facial moisturizing brand 83 Watering hole for Homer and Barney 41 “Power” suffix 84 Coin collector 42 Sticks in the closet?

85 Pelican’s home, for short 43 End of the comment 86 See 23-Across 48 College major, briefly 49 Commercial lead-in to Pen 90 The Durbeyfield girl, in

literature 91 Dr. Seuss animal 92 It has paper denominations from 5 to 500 93 Ex-Fed head Bernanke 94 Some body work, in slang 95 Zippo alternatives 96 Nickname for 86-Across 103 Barrel of fun?

104 Saffron-flavored dish 105 Brow line?

106 Development of 86Across … as depicted in the middle of this grid 115 World capital on the slope of an active volcano 116 Dolph of “Rocky IV” 117 More chilling 118 Throw around 119 D.C. mover and shaker: Abbr.

120 Scandinavian coin 121 Actor Christian

Down

1 French kiss recipient, maybe 2 “How silly of me!”

3 Bit of a code 4 Stockpile 5 View that may cost you extra 6 Security Council veto

7 Ins 8 Near future 9 Hardly enough 10 The French way?

11 It may be delayed by a storm: Abbr.

12 United Center team 13 Update, say 14 Garden State casino, informally, with “the” 15 Outback native 16 Crunches crunch them 17 Yoga base 20 ___ of relief 21 Non-dairy item in the dairy aisle 24 Ones without a leg to stand on?

25 Part of a moving line 29 Blues Brothers wear 30 Nosedives 31 Utmost: Abbr.

32 Farm mother 33 “My word!”

34 Stag, maybe 35 “The fish that got away” and others 36 Comic Wanda 37 Hurried 42 “Death Magnetic” band 43 Drinking binge 44 Accessory for the 91Across

45 Many an Al Jazeera viewer 46 Pioneer org.

47 Five-time Super Bowl champions, informally 50 Barak’s successor 54 Sharp pains 55 Travel agency listings 56 Cabooses 58 Starts of news articles 60 Deli stock with seeds 62 Tight 67 What an electric current does not flow through 68 Relaxed, say 70 Difficult weight 71 Appropriate flowers for Mother’s Day? 72 Bootleggers’ banes 74 Exams offered four times a yr.

75Certain Bach composition 76 “For sure” 77 Gooey campfire treat 79 “Not ___ shabby!”

80 Cesare Angelotti in “Tosca,” e.g.

84 It gets you off schedule 87 Place to store hay

88 German article 89 Third line on many a ballot: Abbr.

90 Sunbathing evidence 94 One with bills piling up?

95 “My Name Is ___,” gold album of 1965 97 “Tell me about it!”

98 One of two parts of a British puzzle?

99 ___ page 100 Canine 101 D.C. mover 102 Pi ___, “Life of Pi” protagonist 106 100s of ordinary people?

107 Fanatic 108 Geometry fig.

109 Had something 110 Bring into court 111 “___ = Politics” (TV slogan) 112 Guys 113 Food Network host Sandra 114 “It’s f-f-freezing!”

By Ian Livengood / Edited by Will Shortz

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