Blink issue 18 may 24 2014

LAUGHTER CHALLENGE Kundan Shah, director of the hit comic caper Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, talks about living up to its success and the making of his new film P se PM tak p4 saturday, may 24, 2014

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Dead for a penny Murdered over a jalebi or the use of a public loo. Guns are cheap in Delhi, as is life

CORPORATE COUNTRY On walking away from plush jobs and into the heart of rural India p6

GOING VEG IN BANGKOK Despite the odds, there is good vegetarian food to be had in this meat heaven p20

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The regional resilience Despite the BJP’s strong showing on its own, regional parties will continue to hold sway

Strength in numbers Narendra Modi’s BJP will require allies such as the AIADMK, led by J Jayalalithaa, to prevail in the Rajya Sabha r ragu

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or the first time since Indira Gandhi’s assassination ensured a sympathy wave for the Congress, a single party — the Bharatiya Janata Party — finds itself in a position to form the Central government on its own. Since 1989 (except during 1991), party coalitions have ruled at the Centre, whether led by the grand old Congress, or the newly victorious BJP, or an assemblage of regional forces anchored by several smaller national parties.

Although the BJP can technically rule on its own, it would not, for it will still require its allies to add numbers in the Rajya Sabha. Moreover, it no longer sees the allies as particularly problematic, as the National Democratic Alliance is a much more coherent and close-knit “homogeneous” alliance than ever before.

The BJP and the NDA’s singular dominance means that for the first time in many years, regional parties will not have the heft they had at the Centre. If anything, only the regional component of the NDA will matter in Delhi,

and that too not all that much, given the substantial shift in the nature of the political dispensations ruling at the Centre since 1991.

That was the year the Congress formed a government on its own — that is, without any regional allies.

If one were to consider all parties except the Congress and BJP as regional (even the Left parties, despite the Election Commission definition, are geographically concentrated in select regions), you would see that their vote share consistently increased since 1984, before petering out in 2009 and holding steady in 2014. Seat shares more or less remained unchanged, as the fortunes of the Congress and BJP fluctuated over time, while those of the regional parties remained relatively intact.

In other words, the BJP’s victory in this election has been possible even without too many regional allies primarily because the Congress has performed very poorly. The BJP achieved what it set out to do by shoring up its vote share away from the Congress in States where

For an interactive version of the graphic, visit thehindubusinessline/features/blink

there was a direct fight and by concentrating on the largest State, Uttar Pradesh. Except for the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in this important State and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand, the regional parties that lost vote share mostly benefited a rival regional outfit rather than the BJP. This is clear from the experience of Tamil Nadu (DMK to the AIADMK), Bihar (JDU to the RJD), West Bengal (Left to the Trinamool Congress) and Punjab (Shiromani Akali Dal to Aam Aadmi Party), among others (in the north-east).

In other words, the regionalisation of India’s polity is still quite intact. It is the decline and weakening of the Congress and the parties that projected an ambivalent attitude towards it (SP, BSP and others such as the DMK and the JMM) that helped the BJP’s strong electoral victory. Parties such as the AIADMK, TMC, BJD or AAP might have no role to play in the Centre as far as the government goes. But these parties (among others) will definitely shape the contours of India’s political system for years to come. srinivasan ramani is senior assistant editor, Economic and Political Weekly

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What lies beneath (clockwise from above) the well-preserved granary, built with mud bricks and lined with lime and grass to ward off insects and moisture deccan college, pune; rattles and toys; a necklace; and a collared, domestic cheetal ramesh sharma

Once upon a time in Rakhigarhi In Haryana lies the largest Harappan site which could also be the origin of the civilisation

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10-foot-wide lane separates the twin Haryana villages of Rakhi-khas and Rakhi-shahpur. “Well, it is nine feet in some parts and 11 in others but mostly it’s 10 feet,” observes Wazir Chand Saraooe, a retired schoolteacher with a proclivity for precision. The hamlets are among the most important sites of the Harappan civilisation outside Mohenjodaro. Clubbed together as Rakhigarhi by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the area has also emerged as the largest Harappan site, spread over 350 hectares at last count. A recently concluded excavation has also gathered more evidence to support the theory that the origins of the 5,000-year-old civilisation can be found here.

The four-month-long excavation, led by Professor Vasant Shinde of Deccan College, Pune, was carried out on RGR 4, the fourth of the seven mounds dug up in Rakhigarhi. Among the major finds of the dig, which wrapped up in April, are the discovery of a near-intact granary and artefacts from the early to late phase of the ancient civilisation. At the moment, however, there are few signs of the dig. The excavated mounds have been covered with fresh soil and ziggurats of dung cakes. The ASI fence running along its perimeter has stopped no one; villagers continue to cut across the seat of the Harappan civilisation to reach their fields and children unearth priceless artefacts to sell them for a few hundred rupees to the occasional tourist. The quarters designated for the ASI-appointed guards at the edge of RGR 1 lies locked and abandoned. “Addressing this (apathy/ignorance) was one of the objectives of the excavation,” says Shinde. While the process for acquiring a World Heritage tag has begun, including the construction of an onsite museum, the village has already made it to the list of endangered sites in Asia.

The research objective, on the other hand, was to collect evidence for the theory historians and archaeologists have

come to support for a decade now. The find- This time, in Rakhigarhi, another burial site ings at Rakhigarhi and other sites — Farmana, has been found. “But we’ve exhumed only one Banawali and Birhana — in Haryana have led body as the site is under a field of standing them to believe that Harappan culture might crops,” he says. The owner had been reluctant have its roots here on the banks of the now-ex- to let the archaeologists explore further but tinct rivers of Saraswati and Drishadvati. “Rak- “he has agreed to allow access in December.”

The teams have also discovered a granary higarhi is ideal to study the growth of the culture. We’ve found evidence for the begin- dating back to 2,500BC, crucial to understandning, dating back to 5,500 BC,” says Shinde. ing the lifestyle of the time. “We’ve unearthed While archaeologists still have “little idea of seven rooms but there are more,” says Shinde.

Last week, when we visited Rakhigarhi, Wathe site”, it’s important to establish a “series of dates” from the early to late periods to arrive zir Chand, the 54-year-old resident historian, agreed to show us around. Despite the lack of at conclusive evidence to bolster the theory.

Since January, a team of 10 faculty members formal training, Chand has been involved in from Deccan College and 20-25 students had every dig here. As a young lad he would accompany RS Bisht, a former ASI dicamped at a farmhouse, nearly rector, on excavations and bring 3km from the site. Life at the dig back small artefacts. “My mother began early. “We woke up at 5am. wasn’t very happy about it,” he Work started by 7am and continChildren unearth laughs. While most of his priceued till the evening,” says Shinde.

Armed with knives and brushes, priceless artefacts less collection has found its way and sell them for to the National Museum in Delhi, they chipped away, horizontally, at hundred rupees Haryana Archaeological Museum the soil, 5-6cm at a time. Data was and Gurukul Museum at Jhajjar, a collected in the form of seals, ornasmall room in his house still ments and pottery. The colour and holds an extensive collection arcomposition of the soil roughly inranged in sealed glass cabinets. dicated the period of the culture.

One of the most important markers of the Holding forth on ancient history, Chand picks phases, says Shinde, is its pottery. “The pottery up a plastic plate scattered with stone beads of the mature phase of Harappan civilisation and pendants and in under a minute fashions a layered Harappan necklace with them. Since is more advanced and you can see that here.”

In the evenings, the faculty held classes. the ’90s, Chand has waged a lone battle for Post-dinner, the teams sifted and recorded the Rakhigarhi, taking up matters with ASI and evidence at the local farmhouse, abuzz with the government, holding classes for local childebates and discussions late into the night. dren. Now, his 17-year-old son Khyaliram acUnlike the mysteries of Agatha Christie, who companies him on excavations and acts as a conjured up murders most foul in the historic guide, often at the expense of his studies. “But settings of Petra or in erstwhile Mesopotamia, I don’t want to be an archaeologist, there’s no life at Rakhigarhi was largely peaceful. “It is an money in it,” says Khyaliram, who's studying exciting time to be here,” says Kim Yongjun, a to be a doctor.

The archaeologists are set to return in Descholar at Deccan College and Seoul National University, South Korea. Yongjun is part of a fo- cember for another four-month stint. And rensics team collecting DNA to establish the while questions like ‘Who were the Harapsecond part of the research puzzle: who were pans?’ remain unanswered, Shinde says, “Take the Harappans? In 2006, Shinde and his team a walk around Rakhigarhi. You’ll find you’re had discovered a burial site at Farmana, less still strolling in a Harappan village.” than 50km away. Remains of 17 bodies were unearthed but most were in a state of decay. priyanka kotamraju

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Mischief afoot Naseeruddin Shah in the iconic, rib-tickling ’80s film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

The burden of greatness Best known for Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Kundan Shah on bringing a movie to the screen that was 19 years in the making, and living under the shadow of his own epic film

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f ever there is a vote on the most hilarious He throws open the doors of the two overstuffmoment of Hindi cinema, the ‘Mahabha- ed Godrej cupboards to confirm that. “See, I rat scene’ of the 1983 cult classic Jaane Bhi have thousands and thousands of scripts Do Yaaro would win hands down. What ready. There’s one about a guy who has a car can trump the sari-clad corpse on roller skates accident and when he gets up he realises that playing Draupadi? If such tomfoolery can be it’s been six months and he’s in a different re-created, it should probably be attempted car,” he gushes, “I don’t mind if somebody coonly by the man who invented this genius pies it. I’m quite democratic that way.”

Why then has he been away so long? “I’ve idea in the first place. In his next release after almost a decade, P Se PM Tak, filmmaker Kun- been out of a job. I’m on the periphery of the dan Shah promises to bring back the much- industry. I came up with the idea of P Se PM Tak missed dead body. “In JBDY the climax ran for in 1995 and have been waiting 19 years to make it,” he says. I wonder if one of the 13 minutes. This time I plan to keep perils of making such an epic debut it 17 minutes long. And this one too film is living forever under its shadwill have a dead body,” says Shah ow. Shah’s last big release back in with a wide smile.

I’m on the He walks into his Bandra office at periphery of the 2002 was a forgettable Dil Hai Tumhara starring Rekha and Preity Zinta.

11am with a bunch of newspapers industry Smaller projects after that didn’t tucked under his arm. He shouts out even get a theatrical release. Shah is for a cup of tea, a lighter and a stool certain he could have made a far suto rest his feet. I ask him about the perior film than the 30-year-old progress of his film but he wants to discuss the day’s front page headlines first. JBDY, but that he was never given the opportu“All my films are taken from newspaper arti- nity. Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, an assistant on cles. Even the most entertaining ones,” he JBDY, says even an Orson Welles could never says. In P Se PM Tak — which was slated to hit make another Citizen Kane. “There are filmthe theatres last month, but now awaits a new makers who are not good convincers. They release date — Shah tells the story of a prosti- don’t have good marketing skills,” he says.

Mishra remembers how the gang of Film tute who becomes a chief minister in four days. The child-like enthusiasm with which and Television Institute of India (FTII, Pune) Shah goes on narrate the intricacies of the plot students — Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, proves that the 67-year-old is still raring to go. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Satish Shah, Satish Kaushik — gave him his first job in the movies, as the film’s assistant director. “The making of that film is the stuff of legend. In the morning, we would have alu gobi and at night, gobi alu.

We had a camaraderie that I have not seen since,” says Mishra. The filmmaker also recalls “a lot of argument” on the set. Naseeruddin Shah, in particular, threw a fit when he was told about the scene where Satish Kaushik’s character and he speak to each other on the phone in the same room. At one point in that logic-defying scene, the two characters end up talking on the same phone. “Nobody had done this before and nobody has attempted it later either. Kundan Shah just took a chance and it worked,” says Mishra.

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Dance of democracy In P se PM tak, Kundan Shah tells the story of a prostitute who becomes a chief minister in four days

Director’s cut Kundan Shah paul noronha

While on a trip to Delhi to collect his National Award for JBDY in 1983, Shah was offered the opportunity to create a new television series for Doordarshan. “There were some nice serials made by Doordarshan at the time but there were many American shows like Diff’rent Strokes. Our motivation was to show we could outdo them,” he says with a laugh. He took a break from films and created iconic shows like Waghle Ki Duniya, Nukkad and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi. He especially cherishes the experience of working with cartoonist RK Laxman on Waghle Ki Duniya. “I learnt a lot from him. Sometimes he would act. He’d show us how the peon would come and stand in the scene. I felt he was the best actor in the world. Of course, I never dared ask for a retake!”

One of Shah’s favourite pitches when approaching a producer with a story is, “Do you want a hit film now or a super-hit 20 years later.” Like with most cult films, JBDY too won due appreciation seven years after its release.

Thanks to Doordarshan, which played the film on loop since it didn’t have enough material, the film got a second life. Again pointing to his cupboard, Shah says the script of the sequel is already complete. “It is not very funny, but more relevant,” he says. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another decade for this one. mohini chaudhuri

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In storage Tupperware’s direct selling agents are trained to host parties and demonstrate the products to new buyers. ss kumar

It’s a woman’s world… in plastic Globally, Tupperware sells on the strength of its predominantly female sales force and the food storage products company prefers to keep it that way

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hen Tupperware entered India about 18 years ago, it faced a market that was happy using steel dabbas and recycled Horlicks bottles for food storage.

Plastic containers were rare back then in most Indian kitchens. But Tupperware managed to change all that, becoming the country’s second-largest direct selling company in the process. Asha Gupta, Tupperware’s first woman managing director, who is currently group president for its Asia-Pacific operations, describes the company’s journey in India and what it means to its global portfolio.

You were part of the Tupperware start-up team in 1996. How did the company convince Indian women to give up steel dabbas for storing food?

When we started off, the concept of food storage in plastic containers was alien to India. The mindset had been to use recycled Horlicks bottles. But we do have climatic conditions that necessitate good preservation of food. We realised there is a huge market gap, and we are known worldwide for keeping food extremely fresh.

When we came, there was some resistance. But it didn’t take any

Inside the box Asha Gupta, Tupperware’s first woman managing director and currently the group president for its Asia-Pacific operations

time to prove to the average homemaker that this product worked. In Chennai, idli-dosa batter would sour in no time even in the refrigerator. We demonstrated that in our container, it could stay fresh not for three days but three to four weeks. They were completely baffled.

When something works, people are delighted and share the knowledge willingly with family and friends.

People started investing in Tupperware. We then extended the range to fruit and vegetable containers and other categories.

more courageous. We were at the cusp of that.

That challenge isn’t there anymore. With time, we have also become more experienced in doing things more consistently.

Did the brand ever feel threatened by environmental concerns around plastics?

The interesting thing was that people had absolutely no such perception about Tupperware. Our lifetime warranty works in such a way, even from an ecological standpoint, where we take back and replace a broken product with a new one. So our products are not seen in garbage collection centres. They are re-crushed With time, we have and remade for non-food uses become more like garbage containers. Prima faexperienced in doing cie, a Tupperware product lasts things more much longer than any other plasconsistently tic container. Say, a lid isn’t okay anymore, we replace it even if it was bought 30 years back in another country.

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How did you rope in the first bunch of direct selling agents?

The key part was product demonstration in people’s homes in groups. Women would get together and a demonstrator would show them the benefits of product, how it worked and how it was better to carry food in a Tupperware container.

When we started, our agents were those who had applied to be a part of the start-up team. We advertised, calling people to meet us… they could bring their friends too.

We showcased the brand, its success and history around the world. The first lot was trained by veterans — from America and Australia — on sales techniques. They were trained to host parties and demonstrate to more people.

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What was the biggest challenge in India?

The biggest challenge back then was to make women understand they could actually do this. Most of them said they had never worked and some said they had day jobs. We had to make them realise that it was close to what they were anyway doing — cooking, spending time with friends; this business didn’t go against their grain. It is an extension of what you are. That’s how we got over the initial hump. We didn’t have many emancipated women almost two decades back. Now, women have become emancipated over time, are

How does India compare with other Asia-Pacific countries in sales and brand awareness?

India is certainly one of our key markets.

There are only a few countries which have the kind of population and emerging middleclass like India, China and Indonesia. In India, the brand awareness is extremely good; it is 70 per cent in the metros. We have a strong topof-the-mind awareness.

Why are men not part of your workforce?

There are some men who are part of the workforce in countries where it works. But they are barely 5 per cent of our sales force globally.

Seeing the socio-cultural pattern in India, we find it best to have women in our sales teams.

Women deserve more opportunities and never got them. It is our way of giving them 100 per cent reservation.

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Grassroots calling Parveen Shaikh (in salwar-kameez) gave up her law practice to help tribals in Dang, Gujarat, fight malnutrition; she is now the National Coordinator for SEWA Ahmedabad

Leaving on a bullock cart There is a growing tide of city-bred youngsters who are turning their backs on fancy degrees and jobs to work in rural areas

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hen Simran Grover got a job with US-based offshore oilfield company J Ray McDermott at its Dubai operations, he was more than ecstatic. A six-digit salary was enough to keep this IIT-Delhi graduate happy. But after just two years, Grover was craving something different. The glitz of Dubai and the fat paycheque no longer held his interest. In 2010, he was back in India, learning, exploring and working in villages.

“What you do here (in villages) gives you first-hand access to knowledge. I am more at peace working in rural areas,” says Grover, now the technology officer at Boond, a social enterprise providing solar energy products and solutions in rural India. His salary is onetenth what it was at McDermott, but his happiness is many times over. He is in no hurry to leave Udaipur, in south Rajasthan, where he is content lighting up village homes.

Like Grover, many young Indians are increasingly opting to work in rural areas, happily leaving behind their big-city origins.

Among them is Parveen Shaikh, who gave up a lucrative law practice in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, and moved to Ahmedabad to work as the national coordinator for SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association).

As one of the few civil lawyers in Aurangabad, Shaikh used to be flooded with land-related complaints from the surrounding villages.

“I couldn’t take up all cases due to paucity of time. The entire day I’d wait in court for matters to come up. The process was too slow. It was then that I decided to do something for development in rural areas to better utilise my time and help more people,” she says.

The starting point for both Grover and Shaikh happened to be the State Bank of India

Youth for India (SBI YFI) one-year fellowship almost a decade at Tata Consultancy Services programme, which allows them to partner when it suddenly hit him that he didn’t actualwith non-governmental organisations for ly need all the money he was earning. “During grassroots development. A friend had tipped the fellowship, I understood that you don’t Grover off about the programme, while need much money to live. The programme gave me the confidence to follow my heart,” Shaikh found out about it in a newspaper.

Shaikh chose the predominantly tribal dis- he says. He now works full time at the AITUC trict of Dang, near Navsari, in Gujarat for her (All India Trade Union Congress), informing work. Despite growing abundant ragi, the ar- migrant construction workers about insurea witnessed severe malnutrition among ance and other Government schemes availawomen and children. “They were more inter- ble to them. ested in selling the crop than consuming it.

We worked with them, taught them kitchen Goodbye, rat race gardening as well as healthy food recipes. I So what exactly is spurring youngsters with sensitised them about their legal rights and degrees from premier institutions to take up that was, for me, the beginning of working work in rural areas? The motivation ranges from personal satisfaction to the desire for with women,” she says.

Not stopping with the fellowship, she went change at the grassroots level and a need for learning beyond what is taught in on to work with the Indian Instithe sanitised classrooms of big tute of Human Settlements in universities.

Bangalore. “After that, I took up a “At some point, you get tired of job in SEWA,” she says. the rat race and ask yourself: ‘For Explaining why SBI launched My stomach whom am I doing all this?’ And is the fellowship for young profeswas full, but my there any new learning in what I sionals, Geeta Verghese, Deputy brain was not have been doing?” says Pradeep General Manager (corporate soLokhande, founder of Rural Relacial responsibility), says, “Their tions, a Pune-based rural consumparents put them through an ener relations organisation. These gineering course; they get into questions inspire many young MNCs and are in a stream totally cut off from what is happening to 70 per cent professionals to give back to society by using of India’s population. We help them take a their talent and contacts to benefit the masses, he adds. break and work with people in rural areas.”

It certainly prompted Chetan Gautham to And often, that decision has proved lifechanging for the professionals. “Nearly half of give up his job at the Lakewood Development them have opted not to go back to the corpo- Corporation in the US and return to India in rate world. They took up jobs in the rural de- 2010. “My stomach was full, but my brain was velopment sector or turned social not. I had food and enough money, but I was restless and not satisfied with what I was doentrepreneurs,” she says.

Satyanand Mukund had been working for ing there (in the US),” says Gautham, currently

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In the sun Dubai-returned Simran Grover is technology officer of Boond, a social enterprise for solar energy solutions in rural areas

options in rural areas, finding financial assistance remains a big challenge, says Grover.

As a woman, Shaikh has had to contend with other kinds of challenges too. “The first question would be on my marriage. Why was I unmarried?,” she says. The lack of convenient modes of transport, too, made it hard for her.

Moreover, getting all the women together for any discussion or demonstration proved next to impossible. “They work both at home and in the fields. Each one finishes at different times. In fact, I discovered that weddings in the villages were the best place to catch them all together,” she quips. And convincing rural women was certainly no easy task, as she found out. “They are bombarded with information from various NGOs as well as TV. They want someone to help them sift through and answer all their questions,” she says.

Wising up Shuvajit Payne (right), a programme officer of SBI Youth for India fellowship, offers career counselling to youngsters in Sawad village, Maharashtra

Fresh pastures SBI Youth for India fellows at a goat-rearing project in Udaipur, Rajasthan

a Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow working in the town of Paderu, a Naxal-affected area in the Vishakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh.

His move to the US in 2006, after his BE in urban regional planning from Hyderabad’s Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, had opened his eyes to the different realities there.

“I saw the involvement of locals in decisionmaking, something that was unheard of in the Indian setting. People there knew exactly what they were voting for and their rights. I wondered why this was not so in India. That’s when I decided to come back and work in rural areas,” he says.

Roughing it The decision to stay back in the hinterland is certainly not an easy one for the city-bred

youngsters, especially when it comes to dealing with the daily infrastructural challenges.

“Sometimes, even having a toilet with water is a luxury,” says Gautham.

Grover lists the absence of adequate infrastructure, reliable transportation and logistics as major challenges, especially for those building from scratch. His solar lighting start-up works with families below the poverty line. “In south Rajasthan, where houses are far apart and the terrain is harsh, finding good marketing channels is a big challenge,” he says.

As solar is inherently a costly technology, the initial investment (about ₹14,000 for a two-bedroom house) is huge for those below the poverty line. To help them find financial assistance, the organisation has tied up with microfinance institutions such as the Grameen Bank. As there are not enough banking

Staying motivated Compared to a corporate job, work in rural areas depends greatly on inter-personal relationships and grassroots knowledge, and can hardly be accomplished seated at an office desk. “That we are changing the perspectives of many people — whether that of a family towards solar lighting, or those of bankers towards lending to the poor — is a really big motivator,” says Grover.

For Mukund, the motivation stems from a belief that he is fighting for a cause — to help workers get their due. “I have always had Leftist views,” he says. Gautham, meanwhile, is assisting the district collector in implementing an Integrated Action Plan (IAP) in Paderu to deploy ₹200-500 crore towards providing roads, drinking water and skills training programmes. Although he earns about one-fifth of what his US job fetched him, what keeps him going are the smiles on the faces of the people who come to him every Monday for grievance redressal.

“I wanted to learn about and remove the urban-rural community divide. My intention was to learn rather than write a blog. So there was no way I would back out despite difficulties,” he says. rashmi pratap

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IT WAS A VICTORY FOR ME, SAYS DEMOCRACY!

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peak softly,” says the nurse, as I sit down in a chair next to the bed. “The patient has just had surgery.” She dabs the patient’s nose with a sponge affectionately. “Don’t you exhaust yourself,” she says, twinkling.

She gives me a look of warning and moves to the side. Democracy is on its back, in traction, its arms and legs in plaster, its head covered in bandages. But the eyes peeping through the bandages are cheerful. I am impressed. Democracy is resilient.

“Don’t worry, this happens every time,” says Democracy, “All kinds of people keep dragging me into everything. Some wear and tear is natural. Luckily, I get six years to recover, during which time no one disturbs me. Except during the Emergency, when they locked me up in the basement. Everything was quite cordial, though. The PM

provided. Grave injustice was done. On the other hand, the good news is that an alien invasion was prevented.”

“You mean immigrants from…”

“I mean Rakhi Sawant,” says Democracy, “Looking at her strange green costume, which she wore consistently, I assumed she was representing alien life forms not yet known to mankind. Luckily, the public of Mumbai were vigilant. For the time being, we are safe. Of course, one or two frightening people have nevertheless succeeded.”

“You mean like…”

“I mean like Mann in Punjab and Innocent in Kerala. Naturally, I’m all for Democracy.

But once comedians start

would often inquire about my health. Sometimes she would come and visit. Soon you will be free, she would say, once the public is in a good mood.”

“Was it better or worse this time?” I ask.

“Slightly worse, but nothing I can’t handle.

They didn’t let me into Bengal, but then they haven’t been letting me into Bengal for over 30 years. I’ve forgotten what the place looks like. No one died in Bihar. I count that as a plus. My one regret is that Bappida was defeated. I think it was very wrong on the part of the public to reject him, after all the service he has

SHOVON CHOWDHURY is chief Truthdigger and author of The Competent Authority

winning elections, where does it end? Next thing we know, a comedian will become Railway Minister. It’s the thin end of the wedge. It’s the slippery slope. These comedians are very tricky characters. If we’re not careful, one day we might have some clown running the country.”

I get up to leave. I try to shake his hand, and settle for clasping three fingers sticking out of his plaster. I squeeze gently and move to the door. “See you in five years,” says Democracy, “And tell Arnab I’ll miss him too.”

ROBERT VADRA CBI OFFICER TO ADVISE COLLAPSES AFTER WORLD BANK! SOMERSAULT!

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n news that has led to turmoil on Wall Street, legendary investor Robert Vadra has been appointed to the World Bank as Special Advisor. “The world needs more money,” said a spokesperson for the World Bank, “He was the obvious choice. We considered several other candidates, but his track record spoke for itself. He also comes highly recommended by Warren Buffet, who once considered appointing him as his successor at Berkshire Hathaway. Had it not been for the red pants, that job would have been his. As it is, we are fortunate to enjoy his services.”

This lays to rest rumours that Mr Vadra was about to open a motorcycle maintenance shop in Honolulu. Even otherwise, he has been flooded with offers, including the lead role in the Indian version of How I Met Your Mother, jacuzzi-demonstrator, cover model for Muscle Magazine, adoption by Angelina Jolie and personal wardrobe consultant to Arindam Chaudhuri.

“We look forward to welcoming him soon,” said the bank, “He’ll be leaving the country quickly, while he’s still exempt from airport security.”

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nspector Deshmukh is holding his back and panting. His bush shirt is damp with perspiration. There are tears in his eyes. I hand him a handkerchief. “It’s not fair,” he says, “Are we not human beings? Every six years this drama happens. One minute they say, pursue this guy, next minute, the guy is writing our chargesheets. Who can keep track?

Which files are we supposed to keep, and which are we supposed to lose? Which are the priority cases? Are we supposed to investigate them, or not investigate them? And God forbid if we solve anything by mistake. Posting to Andaman and Nicobar is practically guaranteed.”

All around me officers are running around, heaping files for a bonfire. Other officers are pulling them out, checking to make sure no mistakes have been made. A bearer goes around handing out khaki shorts. In another corner, officers are feverishly writing FIRs, while an additional commissioner urges them on with a stick. The mood of panic in the room is palpable.

The commissioner turns to Deshmukh and glares at him.

Inspector Deshmukh straightens and gets ready to do another somersault. “Don’t forget what we did for the country,” he whispers.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll make sure they don’t.”

The Investigator is a fortnightly round-up of all things droll and newsy. All views are personal. Really personal t@shovonc

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THE CRITICAL ISSUE

That which is unsaid Now that the winning party is in place, what does the future hold for women?

Waiting for change The number of women voters may have gone up since 1977, for instance (here, in Rajasthan), but has it really affected gender issues and policies? the hindu archives

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URVASHI BUTALIA is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

omen, an advertisement for Tata tea told us when the elections were looming, could not be ignored, after all, they were 49 per cent of the population. Not to be scoffed at. So, in the ad, a strong, confident woman stood up to her politician husband, warning him, don’t ignore us, we can make or break governments.

True enough, 49 per cent gives any group the strength to make or break. And equally true, that for women these numbers have been steadily increasing since 1962 so that today there are 803 women voters for every 1,000 men. But while we know these figures, we don’t, as yet, know nearly enough about these women. Who are they? Are they rural or urban? Where do they come from? Are they illiterate or literate? Young or old? There’s so much talk about the millions of young voters who have been added to the electoral roll this year. How many of these are women?

Every year, as the summer break comes round and universities begin to close, the inbox in our office mailbox begins to fill up with requests from young women who want to work, perhaps to intern, just do something with their holidays, perhaps as a precursor to what they might want to do later in life. In recent years, such requests have gone up exponentially. Clearly young women want to do something with their lives.

Outside of the office space, things are no different. A domestic worker asked me some weeks ago what she needed to do to find a job

as a housekeeper in a hotel. A street-smart those that don’t, women who get sexually asyoung woman now drives an autorickshaw in saulted are painted and dented, or those who Delhi — the only woman to do so. Single wom- don’t speak to their rapists addressing them en, those who have been abandoned by their as brothers are fairly and squarely responsible husbands, others for whom life had more or for what happens to them.

A party’s point of view often becomes maniless come to an end, today drive taxis, work as chauffeurs, salesgirls, delivery persons, petrol fest in the sorts of issues it raises in its election pump attendants and more. Something is campaigns and what its leaders say in the course of their speeches. Despite the last 18 changing here.

No doubt it is these women who voted in months being dominated by discussions on women’s status in India, little of large numbers in the recent electhis has found reflection in the tion. No doubt, like millions of othnoise generated by the 2014 elecers, they voted for the party they tions. Indeed, the winning parbelieved would bring change, posity’s agenda of ‘development’ has tive change. Some have got the parThe winning been offered as a sort of neutral ty they wanted, others may well be party’s agenda of space, one in which gender plays disappointed, having hoped for ‘development’ has no role. Also political platforms, someone else. But now that the winbeen offered as especially for the winning party, ning party is in place, what does the a neutral space, have been almost entirely male future hold for women? Will the one in which gender and even though a number of ground gained by women activists plays no role women have been elected, we in the last year and a half be lost? don’t, as yet, know where they Will the aspirations of the hunwill feature in the new dreds of thousands of young womgovernment. en be fulfilled?

Indeed, what we’ve had is a reA reality check might well be in order. The BJP has never been a party that has sounding silence — as if the 49 per cent did not had much to say about women — except to say really exist, or do not really matter. The comthat their proper place is in the home, not on ing months will unravel the truth or otherthe streets, or in the workplace and especially wise of this. What is certain is that if women’s not in bars. Nor have they raised their voice rights take a backseat, the rights of other minorities and marginalised people will not be when women have been attacked.

They’re not alone in this, the majority of our far behind. political leaders share this view, but some of them manage to hide it better than others. For Yblink@thehindu.co.in

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The petty Capital An increasing number of incidents show that it doesn’t take much to be on the wrong side of a bullet in Delhi dipankar bhattacharya

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n a Tuesday evening in February this year, Gole Market, a relatively quiet, residential neighbourhood in the heart of the city was rattled by a gunshot.

Thirty-five-year-old Satender Singh, a waiter at a sweet shop in the area was gunned down by a customer, after Singh, according to news reports, “Had taken a long time to deliver the jalebis he had ordered.” The 9mm bullet that pierced through Singh’s head left him in a critical state, and he succumbed to his injury the following day.

While it appears to be a ‘freak’ case of one man losing his composure and committing a crime in the heat of the moment, it is by no account an isolated incident. In 2014 alone, there have been at least 10 cases in the Capital where seemingly trivial affairs have led to murder or violence. Statistics reveal that from 1953 to 2011, the number of murders in Delhi has gone up by 250 per cent. The numbers also indicate that 20.5 per cent of all murders in the city in 2012 were motivated by what the police call ‘sudden provocation or minor issues’.

“It is difficult to pre-empt or prevent such incidents,” says SBS Tyagi, DCP, Delhi, in whose precinct the murder over the jalebis occurred.

“As policemen we try to prevent as many such situations as we can but, at the end of the day, this is not just a law-and-order problem, or a criminal issue. It’s a larger, sociological issue.”

In theory and practice A cursory look at the city pages of national dailies reveals a host of similar incidents. On Wednesday last, for instance, two teenagers were stabbed to death in Pitampura by another boy over an argument on who would use the public toilet first.

Earlier, on April 21, at an eatery in Janakpuri, a young man was shot at because “he was talking too loudly”.

Trigger-happy Nitesh Yadav pulled out a gun (issued to his army-man father), ‘provoked’ by the high-decibel spat between the eatery’s owner and the victim. Luckily, Yadav missed his target. On the same day, elsewhere in east Delhi’s Sunlight Colony, a customer poured hot oil on a momoseller when asked to pay up. Four days before that, yet another man was stabbed to death over ₹200 at a food stall in Okhla.

Sociologist Renuka Singh of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) believes ideas such as the Strain theory — where social structures may pressure individuals to commit crimes —

could help understand such situations better.

“We have to look at the apparent causes and the real causes,” says Singh, “Okay, maybe the person didn’t get the jalebi but you know the real reason could be tension... family tension, something to do with his neighbours, tension at work or other similar strains. And then, inevitably, a tipping point is reached.” However, she also believes that while sociological ideas, such as the Strain theory and the Labelling theory — where the self-identity and behaviour of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them — might be helpful in decoding such petty crimes, a case-by-case analysis is required to reach an informed conclusion.

The Capital itself, with its particular set of dynamics — from traffic congestion to the trite ‘janta hai mera baap kaun hai’ refrain — can be a trigger in so many ways. “These incidents are actually a culmination of the personal, social, economic and political circumstances in which the individual is embedded,” says Ruchi Sinha, criminologist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. “All societies have their checks and balances, and when society at large is in transition, any context can become the trigger for aggression and violence.” Sinha says these kinds of violent crimes should not be casually dismissed as stray instances — “But be clearly identified as a

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central issue for the security and development agenda. It is associated with processes of rapid social change that are magnified in the current context of globalisation, and which lead to exacerbation of levels of insecurity and fear in society.”

Questioning an individual’s or a group’s honour is also perceived as a key reason for ‘pulling the trigger’. Sumit Kumar, a former Delhiite, and now a criminologist at the University of Maryland, US, says, “I’m curious to know if there’s something more to these incidents than just something minor. For instance, insults to honour or even a perception of such an insult can lead to minor incidents escalating into violence, especially when people are forced to rely on themselves for protection rather than on the police, and a high value is placed on honour.” He also draws attention to the fact that most of the perpetrators tend to have low self-control.

Of guns and numbers While the experts BLink spoke to differed in their responses to the questions of ‘why’ and ‘what next’, the one thing they agreed on was the direct correlation of the growing gun culture in the city to the spurt in such crimes.

“The chances of a petty criminal like a chainsnatcher walking around with a gun in Delhi is quite high. See, even the use of knives has decreased,” says Ram Singh, SHO, Safdarjung Police Station, who has spent a quarter of a century with the city’s police department.

That neighbouring towns, like Meerut, Rampur and Muzaffarnagar have practically turned gun-making into a cottage industry, has only made access to firearms easier in the Capital. “What used to be a simple fight before is now turning violent because guns are getting added to the mix.”

The numbers reflect this trend too. According to statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Delhi consistently trumps the list when it comes to murder.

While the maximum number of murders in any other major metro in 2012 was 266 (in Ban-

galore), 408 cases of murder were registered in Delhi. That this is 20 less than the 438 cases reported in 2011 is cold comfort, really. While attempt to murder cases, which fall under IPC 307, are more in Bangalore with 454 registered cases, Delhi is not far behind at 369. In terms of the total number of crimes committed though, Delhi trumps all other cities by a large margin. In 2012, the total number of crimes committed in Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Mumbai added up to a little more than a lakh — in the same year, Delhi alone accounted for a whopping 47,982 cases.

A collective psyche On a bright February morning this year at Bawana, in the northwest district of Delhi, a scuffle over parking space led to two brothers being shot at. Both of them were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Although fights over parking space are commonplace across India, there are few cities where they lead to murder at such frequent intervals.

“A simple hypothetical structure to explain incidents such as these would neither be valid nor very good,” says Alok Sarin, a leading Delhi-based psychiatrist, who is a visiting consultant at the Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research. “Psychiatry is a medical construct that deals with mental illnesses, but if its tools are used wisely, it can help offer broader perspectives to deal with such situa-

tions.” A situational case study helps explain things better. “Let me put it this way. If in a campus, a few cases of eve-teasing occur, the likelihood of more such instances is high, unless it’s clearly recognised or discouraged,” says Sarin.

An important caveat, adds Sarin, is the manner of crime coverage in the media. “If you’re only looking at news reports of such cases, then it should be recognised that it is a kind of biased sampling, a sampling of sensation, so to speak. You also have to balance this with the fact that there are enough and more evidences

of restraint and courtesy, but they are not going to make news or get reported, so in a sense they are invisible.”

Nimesh Desai of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), Delhi, probes deeper into the psyche of the perpetrators of such crimes. “Factors such as socio-political changes, rural-urban migration and other explanations are all valid. That urban landscapes are alienating is a fact,” he says, “But an individual’s perception of the success of the policing system, and the feeling that he or she can get away with it, certainly plays at a subconscious level. I’m not saying a person who guns someone down realises this, but subliminally it could be a factor.”

So what sort of a person pulls the trigger at the smallest slight? The answer lies in the ubiquity of the situation. As Vijay Raghavan, Sinha’s colleague at TISS, says, “The criminologist David Garland argues that the culture of high-crime societies has led to viewing crime as an outcome of a normal social interaction and a risk to be calculated, both by the offender and the victim rather than as the violation of a norm. In such a society, it is futile to look for a typical offender with a particular psychosocial background. In such a society, almost anyone can become a violator of law.” sibi arasu

CasualCasual leave At leave the At crime the scene crime in Gole Market,scene where in Gole a waiter Market, was where shot sandeep saxena a waiter was shot sandeep saxena

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Window to the world Jayamma in front of a showroom on Brigade Road in Bangalore. Sometimes, she recognises clothes she stitched on display in shops

Before and after Women at Bangalore’s garment factories live a hard, yet spirited life outside their walls

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started photographing the garment workers in Bangalore outside their factory space — mostly in the hours before and after work — in June 2012. One of the most exploitative industries in India, the minimum wage for employees here is ₹4,472 per month — hardly enough to support a family in a metro city. And this when the industry is valued at more than $55 billion; Bangalore alone saw a turnover of over ₹2,000 crore last year.

Women constitute 80 per cent of the total workforce in the industry. While many of them are from surrounding villages and commute to work daily by trains, a significant number has moved to the city to cut travel time and costs.

Abirami (name changed on request), who works in a factory in Ansipalya, once told me that they are not allowed to take leave no

matter how compelling the reason. If they do, the day they return to work, they are asked to wait outside. “They abuse us, call us b*****s, donkeys, and tell us to go die. Supervisors constantly harass us and even throw things at us... Would you believe that I didn’t know the meaning of sexual harassment until I joined a union? I thought it was a norm in factories, so I remained silent for several years without ever questioning it.”

Most of the garment workers in Bangalore stitch at home after hours, work as domestic helps, make garlands, papads, or do other odd jobs, to supplement their wages. In a city where inflation has affected everyone, where prices of commodities have increased sharply like elsewhere in the country, survival is an everyday battle. rudra rakshit is a Bangalore-based photographer

Two’s company Geeta celebrates Gowri Pooja, a popular festival in Karnataka, with her daughter

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Spin city Many women also work as neighbourhood tailors, domestic helps and garland-makers to compensate for their low wages

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Lunchbox Mallige packs lunch before leaving for work at 9am. She usually ďŹ nishes by 5.30pm, but when there’s an increase in demand, she is often asked to stay on, and is rarely paid overtime

Pursuit of happiness Some factories offer pick-up and drop in private buses packed to the gills

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End of days Mallige returns home after work.

She lives alone, away from her two children, who stay with their grandmother in a village nearby

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PICTURE THIS

The Marathi renaissance TRISHA GUPTA

Exciting work is emerging once again from the land of Prabhat Studios: films with close ties to the social and cultural ground from which they spring

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New perspectives A movie still from the acclaimed Dadasaheb Phalke biopic Harishchandrachi Factory _A

am no expert on Marathi cinema: I live in Delhi and have never seen a Marathi film in the theatre. I don’t even speak the language (though I love the sharply articulated sound of it). But over the last six years or so, I have seen so many interesting Marathi films at festival screenings that I have no hesitation in agreeing with pronouncements of a renaissance. What seems to me truly wonderful is the variety of films being made, and how close their ties are to the social and cultural ground from which they rise.

Astu, which I saw last week, is named for a Sanskrit word that translates to ‘so be it’. Directed by the long-time director duo Sunil Sukhtankar and Sumitra Bhave, Astu centres on the transformation of a man’s relationship with the world as a result of Alzheimer’s. Mohan Agashe plays a retired Sanskrit professor who goes from being a sagacious old man to an overgrown child. As he loses his memory, his elder daughter Ira (Irawati Harshe) must deal with a father who no longer behaves like a father. But to find the strength to do so, she must first forgive him. Astu offers a quietly terrifying vision of ageing and life: if the growing defencelessness of the old is a regression to childhood, children’s transition to adulthood seems to make them more brutal.

The film might have worked purely as a fraught family portrait. But Bhave and Sukhtankar are interested in something more ambitious. Against the educated uppermiddle-class Marathi family with its intellectualised responses and complex dynamics, they pit a poor Telugu-speaking migrant woman who seems instinctively to know what is needed. If she worries, it is only about how to feed another mouth. The veteran Agashe is great at depicting the professor’s increasingly childlike dependence on the goodness of others — and the immensely talented Amruta Subhash won a National Award as the embodiment of that goodness. The filmmakers also make evocative use of an elephant (which Agashe becomes obsessed with) to move the film into a more mythical register, charging the beast with the symbolic heft of his move from culture to nature.

Despite all these things working for it, the film is not flawless. It feels a little flabby, and its father-daughter conversations about philosophy — Zen or Mahabharat — sound pretentious rather than thought-provoking. The final irritant is harder to articulate: there is something deeply Brahminical about the milieu, the characters and their concerns. Nothing wrong with that — a Brahmin subculture is as legitimate as any other, you might say. But there’s something annoying about the film’s almost ideological equation of Sanskrit with the highest form of knowledge, with god-likeness. And the fact that Brahmin-ness is constantly played on, but never overtly invoked.

That’s the thing about caste at the upper

In good company Actor Amruta Subhash, who won a National Award for her role in Astu as a poor Teluguspeaking migrant, seen here with veteran actor Mohan Agashe

end of the hierarchy — it is made invisible: other ways. It is beautifully shot, with a palette we’re all supposed to pretend it doesn’t mat- that echoes his theme. The desiccated landter. At the lower end of the hierarchy, no one scape of rocks and spiny bushes is bleached of has the luxury of that pretence. So I’m glad all colour, as drab as the lives Jabya and his that Marathi cinema is beginning to make family live. Jabya’s desire for bright things — room for films that speak of — and from — that and his fruitless search for a mythical bird — predicament, too. Baboo Band Baja, made in shows his world in aching relief.

Other recent Marathi films 2010, centred on a young boy that have gotten noticed at the from a community of bandwaNational Awards include Gabhrilas. The film flagged the quescha Paus (The Damned Rain, tion of whether the boy could 2009) about farmer suicides in go to school and hope to move One can see the Vidarbha; Umesh Kulkarni’s Vaout of the system, or be forced to difference between lu, Vihir and 2012’s Deool (the latcontinue in the family profesMarathi cinema and ter is among the more powerful sion. Rajesh Pinjani’s decision to Bollywood in the films I’ve seen about the comembody the two points of view substantial scripts, mercialisation of faith), Sujay Dain the mother and father was efthe use of actors hake’s 2011 paean to school life, fective, if a bit ham-handed. instead of stars and Shala; Paresh Mokashi’s DadasaNagaraj Manjule’s film semian attention to heb Phalke biopic Harishchandraautobiographical Fandry, relocations chi Factory (2009) and Sandesh leased in 2013, deals much more Kulkarni’s Masala (2012), infrontally with the caste quesspired by the Chordias, a couple tion, interestingly also via a who grew from nothing to beyoung boy in a rural setting trycome owners of a masala eming to deal with the conflicting pire. Masala is a Guru without the imperatives of his home and school milieus. Sanskrit appears in this film, gloss: unlike that glorification of Dhirubhai too, though from a very different angle: Ja- Ambani’s questionable tactics, Masala makes bya’s classmate Vedant Kulkarni, the studious business seem both honest and admirable.

A lot of Marathi cinema emerges out of a good boy to whom he and his friends go for notes, has (like the adult Ira in Astu) a Sanskrit cross-fertilisation with theatre. One can see teacher for a father. Jabya’s own father, in con- the difference from Bollywood in the substantrast, cannot even read his son’s secret love let- tial scripts, the use of actors rather than stars, ter when he stumbles upon it. Caste is a plain and an attention to locations. Yes, sometimes fact of life here, and Manjule doesn’t beat the films can be verbose, and when they try to around the bush about it. Early in the film we cater to the commercial side of things by addhear Jabya’s mother say how he’d throw even ing item songs, they can be tacky as well. But more tantrums if he were fair-skinned — and on the whole, this is a world well worth trying she’s not joking. When Jabya gets besotted to enter. with his classmate Shalu, it’s apparent her fairtrisha gupta is a writer and critic based in Delhi skinned Brahmin-ness is crucial to his desire.

Colour is important to Manjule’s film in t@chhotahazri

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Lost and found across continents The story of the boy who came home after 25 years is set to become a feature film

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orn in 1981, in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh, Saroo was only five when left home with his elder brother, Guddu, who used to sweep trains.

They boarded a train to a small town called Burhanpur. It was meant to be an expedition for fun, but what followed changed their lives

Bonds for life Saroo Brierley with his birth and adoptive mothers at Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh

All in the game Training the lens at an obscure carrom club in suburban Mumbai

urally a huge advocate of the evolution of technology. I have been fortunate enough to meet some wonderful people within the Google family since news of my story broke. Without modern-day technology like Google Earth and Facebook, I would never have been able to find my family. And I hope fewer children suffer the same fate as me by putting this technology to good use.”

Saroo’s memoir A Long Way Home, published by Penguin India in June 2013, is now going to be adapted into a film as well. The film is being produced by See-Saw Films and Sunstar Entertainment, and is expected to go into production later this year. Emile Sherman at SeeSaw Films, who won the Oscar for The King’s Speech in 2011, is the producer, and Garth Davis has been roped in to direct it.

Saroo’s role in the book-to-film-adaptation is that of a consultant. Saroo, who now gives talks on issues of identity, is thankful for having been given a second chance at life and feels extremely lucky to be blessed with two families. He continues to live in Hobart but remains in touch with his family in Khandwa.

Saroo says he still feels at home in a small village in MP and in faraway Tasmania. arunima mazumdar is a Delhi-based journalist

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t Mamu’s, located in the distant suburb of Malwani in Mumbai, a furious game of carrom is on.

Oblivious to the international spotlight on it, the club marches on in the haze of hashish and boric acid powder. Directed by Udita Bhargava, Imraan, c/o Carrom Club, a 13minute short film set at Mamu’s, has won an award at the 60th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. One of the oldest short film festivals in the world, it screened 440 films from 66 countries this year. Set in a predominantly Muslim area, Bhargava’s film revolves around its “precocious operator Imraan”, giving a “glimpse of life in a carrom club” and its protagonists who seem “as childlike as they’re macho”. At Mamu’s though, it’s business as usual. Excerpts from an interview: How was the film conceived?

Imraan was shot as part of a project initiated by my film school, the HFF ‘Konrad Wolf’ in Germany, and Arte/Rbb, which are TV channels. The project was to produce a series of documentaries in the slums of Mumbai.

Short storyteller Director Udita Bhargava

forever. A miscommunication separated the two brothers, Saroo boarded another train and fell asleep. When he woke up nearly 14 hours later he was at the Howrah station in Calcutta. He waited for a familiar face amid the vast sea of strangers; he made several attempts to remember the name of his State, but all in vain. He was lost.

A good soul took him to a police station, where he stayed for some time until the Indian Society of Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA) took him in. After a year, he was adopted by an Australian couple from Tasmania. But the memory of his family back home clung to him. With the map of India pinned on his bedroom wall, he grew up determined to find his birth mother. The problem was he did not know the name of his village. He only had memories of it. He multiplied the time he was on the train and the average speed of the train to deduce that his home must be roughly 1,200km from Kolkata. Using Google Earth, he then drew a circle around that area and looked for landmarks that he remembered — such as a large waterfall. Using Facebook groups he reached his birth home 25 years after he had been lost in 2012.

Tagged as the ‘Google Boy’, Saroo, now a successful businessman in Hobart, says, “I am nat-

The colour blue Imraan, the film’s protagonist, in the haze that is Mamu’s carrom club

busy it is, it remains open until after midnight. The people I met told me that they came to the club to relax, escape their mothers, wives and girlfriends. I wanted to show a glimpse of that life. It was a place that was previously unknown even to me. It was like visiting another planet, Imraan’s planet.

How did you decide on the Philomena J Carrom Club?

Before I came to Berlin, I lived and worked in Mumbai. Walking around the city, I’d often encounter men gathered around carrom boards at street corners and tea stalls. I knew there were such clubs in the city and I had always been curious about them. I came across Malwani’s carrom clubs on the internet. I visited it, shortlisted three and ended up filming in Philomena J Carrom Club, better known as Mamu’s, at Gate No 7 1/2. They say it is the oldest club in the area. And Imraan was the reason we stayed there.

Why were you drawn to Imraan?

Imraan’s air of innocence is hard to miss. Unlike other kids, he had a quiet confidence in front of the camera. He wasn’t a poser. He would often forget us or ignore us. Imraan and his contemporaries (the boys in the club aren’t necessarily his friends) hang out in the clubs because they don’t go to school. Some of them work. Imraan, for instance, was employed to look after the club.

The children responded well to the camera.

We didn’t plan to let the camera be so visible but once we realised that it was the encounter between the camera and them that was generating lively material, we went along with it.

What is a day at Mamu’s club like?

The club opens at around 11am. On holidays and Sundays, it’s full by noon, while on weekdays, evenings are livelier. Depending on how

There is attention to detail in the film — the powder box sitting on the lamp, lingering shots of the Congress office board etc…

We didn’t want to film outside the club. It had

six tables, three in the front room and three at the back. Once we were stationed inside, it was a question of finding a position that wouldn’t disturb the activity. We found that spot intuitively, right in the middle of the club where the two rooms met. The details were never shown as cutaways or close-ups. We tried to integrate these things as naturally as possible. It would’ve been easy to get wrapped in the romance of the setting… every object, right down to the exhaust fan, has aged beautifully.

You’ve been a camera assistant for Slumdog Millionaire. And a short film director. What is more satisfying? Will you make a featurelength film?

I worked in Mumbai as a camera assistant. I had made a few short films at Jamia Millia... As a director, you often have to bring forth the first impulse for a project. Then your collaborators work with it and make it grow. This exercise can be satisfying but it can also be very stressful. But short films are easier to produce.

You can experiment more, so you’re more likely to ‘find your own voice’. And I’ll start shooting my first feature film next year in March. priyanka kotamraju

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Small city in a hurry A bolt of lightning electrifies the rush hour at KR Circle in Mysore; (bottom) the heritage Devaraja Market MA SRIRAM

Clarity begins at home Mahesh Rao’s The Smoke is Rising, set around the aspirations of Mysore, inherits the mantle of the Great Indian Novel

L The Smoke is Rising Mahesh Rao Random House Fiction ₹499 (hardback)

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ong before IIT and IIM graduates started to keep literary manuscripts in their top drawers, the ‘Great Indian Novel’ remained a tag much coveted.

Books that successfully earned this badge — Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things — were seen to have a few traits in common. They were all set in the backdrop of some great social or political upheaval. These books often spoke in a polyphony of voices and their narratives explored the private lives of its characters in order to better evoke the tumult that is a changing India. Mahesh Rao’s The Smoke is Rising ticks many of these boxes, but also brings to your table a contemporary freshness. With a gaze that can only be described as binocular, the book helps prove that to write a Great Indian Novel, you first need hearty empathy, and not a hackneyed formula.

By starting his novel amidst the excitement surrounding the launch of India’s first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, Rao provides a context and scale for the larger aspirations of an emerging power. Mysore, “India’s eleventh-fastest growing small city”, has ambitions of its own. Developers are busy selling the dream of HeritageLand, a theme park, which once completed would give visitors the chance to wage war against Ravan’s army and fight battles in a virtual Kurukshetra. But even though venture capitalists in Hong Kong are ready with finances, Asia’s largest proposed theme park has to face hostility closer home.

Several farmers are reluctant to give up their land for paltry compensations and, as they take their protest to the streets, the smoke literally begins to rise.

If credible realism were indeed the criterion, Rao seems to have mastered that delicate art with descriptions that are always instantly familiar. He writes about a cramped cyber cafe and the intrigues of a soap opera with an exacting precision. Some of his conversations convince you that you have eavesdropped on

them before. A senior bank official, for in- nists help suffuse The Smoke is Rising with a stance, tells his junior, “We are the mother of sense of female agency that one can only invention, you know. Algebra, buttons, snakes cheer. It is surprising that despite an aura of and ladders, all invented here. Also, ₹1 sham- bleakness, the book never seems to lose its poo sachets and idli manchurian.” But more sense of humour. Rao gives Krishna devotees than dialogue and detail, it’s Rao’s characters the kind of lip that would put adolescent ruffians to shame and he then compares spiritual that are vividly recognisable. pamphlets to honeymooning Despite being divided by class guides with an equal and disarmand status, the three principal ing ease. While facilitators of crecharacters of The Smoke is Rising ative writing workshops could have much in common. Susheela, It offers a vision of well cite such instances when exan aging widow, Uma, her domesIndia that is both plaining the importance of undertic help, and Mala, a physically honest and urgent cutting grim subject matter, they abused wife, are all women who might perhaps take issue with are confronted by solitude. They Rao’s rampant use of adjectives. are forced to live their lives under The colour of the ocean on a coma burden of secrets, continuously questioning the limits of a patriarchal and ru- puter’s screen saver is said to be an “impossimour-hungry society. As Susheela and Uma ble” blue, while the shell of an incinerated bus seek to invest their individual lives with a is believed to have a “macabre” gaze. It isn’t so greater intimacy, Rao handles their seeming much the aptness of these qualifiers that transgressions with a deft hand that is com- proves troubling, just their proliferation passionate, but never claustrophobically sen- that’s seemingly excessive.

Having finished The Smoke is Rising, you timental. In the case of Mala, her experience of domestic violence is described with an eco- might end up hoping that the book was longnomical restraint that only exacerbates its er. You would be justified in wishing that rathhorror — “Girish’s clothes for the day were laid er than assigning peripheral characters the out on the bed, a familiar form that seemed to roles of walk-on cameos, Rao had fleshed want to grab at her but lacked the flesh or them out more. You may even find yourself bones to support its desire.” Though some yearning for happier closures, but it would turns in their narratives might be deemed certainly be hard for you to not claim a greater somewhat predictable, Rao’s three protago- contentment.

Like all those other Great Indian Novels, Rao’s book enlightens as much as it entertains. Never pedantic in its observations, it offers a vision of India that is both honest and urgent. Though Rao joins a vast army of debutant Indian novelists with this book, the author appears to have found a rare voice of his own. His arrival should give the country’s literary enthusiasts some cause to stop and take notice. All that smoke apart, this first novel marks the rise of a very able raconteur.

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shreevatsa nevatia is a freelance writer currently based in Kolkata

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CUB READS

Gangs of Potoldanga The four findouters of Bengal

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ong before Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs tapped the Marauder’s Map with their wands and solemnly swore they were up to no good, Tenida and his merry band of goons were spreading terror through the streets of Calcutta. The foursome — leader Tenida of the big battle-axe nose and even bigger appetite, Pelaram of weak stomach and sickly spleen, Kyabla, the cleverest of the lot, and Dhaka-born Habul — reigned over Potoldanga, where everyone lives on a diet of weak catfish curry, potol (pointed gourd) and basak leaves.

These are perhaps times when the degrees of separation between anyone and a Bengali are far less than six; when re-runs and adaptations of detective Byomkesh Bakshi are eagerly awaited; and when Feluda omnibuses are fixtures in every self-respecting bookshelf. I’ve spent enough years living with Bengalis who have ‘cut their milk teeth on Tenida’ to relish these nonsensical misadventures of the Potoldanga boys and appropriate them as part of my own reimagined childhood. The stories could’ve been located anywhere in the country and the result would have been a set of similarly colourful stories. An equally dull vegetable would’ve replaced potol, and bhelpuri, chanachur.

So, the first English translation of Narayan Gangopadhyay’s Tenida stories comes as a The Best of Tenida welcome addition Narayan Gangopadhyay Puffin Classics to a well-fattened ₹250 list of Bengali cultural legacies. The compilation has some of the best stories of Tenida’s gang, including the wellknown novella Charmurti. In Charmurti, the Potoldanga boys recount the adventures of a summer in Hazaribagh, where they spend an entire holiday running from loveable villains such as Guru Gloomyswami and his “unworthy disciple” Gajeswar Garui aka Chop Yu Thin Lee. In the short story The Bhajahari Film Corporation, Tenida and Pelaram hatch a harebrained scheme to dupe their colonywallas for a few KC Das rasgullas. Inventing a fictitious film company, they put out eyeball-grabbing ads for a few rupees. In fact, the greed for food is a recurrent theme in Gangopadhyay’s tales and often the main reason for trouble. Much of their activities revolve around procuring snacks and sweetmeats. Tenida, who has an insatiable appetite, has a weakness for samosas, mutton ghugnee, crispy alu kabli and laddoos. Even dangerous threats from villains take the form of food — “I’ll make sheekh kebabs out of you”; “We’ll fry you into cutlets”.

The translation comes with a handy glossary of all things Bengali and a little note on Tenida’s Calcutta. My Bengali friends observe that the translation, as all translations do, loses some of the local flavours and witticisms but as far as I’m concerned, I’ll have what Tenida’s having. priyanka kotamraju

anita roy

ON THE SHELF

Don’t worry. Be Happy How happy is the prospect of buying a book about happiness?

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s I parted with a wad of cash in Full Circle bookstore, exchanging one kind of paper for another, I experienced that particular thrill that one gets perfectly summed up by the slogan on the bag that my paperback came in: ‘You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books. And that’s kind of the same thing.’ Which prompted me to wonder, would the effect be squared if I bought a book about happiness? So I did.

Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project wears its heart on its sleeve. It is a bright blue book with jolly yellow lettering.

There’s a blue bird (of happiness, presumably) flying over some brownstone New York tenement buildings, and just in case that didn’t hammer home the point hard enough, the subtitle tells you pretty much all you need to know about the author: ‘Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.’ A busy mother of two young daughters, a New Yorker and, by her own admission, a very ‘driven’ person, Rubin is a bit of a powerhouse: a list-maker, a goal-setter and achievement-bunny. Her approach to the whole business of ‘becoming happier’ is a slightly alarming set of directives. She chops up her year into 12 bite-size chunks. January is dedicated to finding ways to boost energy, February to remembering love, March is all about aiming higher, the slogan for April (a bit of a relief, at this point) is to ‘lighten up’ — and so on.

Peppered throughout are rules, slogans and reminders: Smile more. Try to look accessible and warm. Wherever possible, choose vegetables. Laugh out loud.

Give positive reviews. Go off the path.

Rubin’s lists are great fun to browse through, and her scatter-gun approach sometimes really hits the spot (‘find an area of refuge’), and others, are just downright silly (‘breakfast is the new lunch’). Some fall into the category of ‘True Rules’, others are ‘Secrets of Adulthood’ (‘It’s important to be nice to everyone’ next to ‘Bring a sweater’), then there are the 12 Commandments — the first of

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which is ‘Be Gretchen’ — and finally, the Eight Splendid Truths (‘To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth’ being my favourite).

Rubin is an omnivore when it comes to citing others. In this peppy tome, you’ll find quotes from everyone: Winston Churchill to AE Housman, Thomas à Kempis to John Stuart Mill, Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, and her sister Elizabeth. But she starts her quest inspired by Aristotle and Benjamin Franklin — the former who declared that happiness was the summum bonum, the greatest good, and the latter because he was an absolute fiend for lists.

In Ben Franklin, Rubin finds a fellow compulsive resolution-maker. He strove to live his life according to 13 virtues — temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility. Rubin puts these ideas into her whirring happiness machine and sets the spin cycle to Sex-and-the-City. The results are minty-fresh, easy to digest and far more toothsome to the modern gal than Franklin’s Puritanism.

After 11 consecutive months of striving to be happier, Rubin goes for broke. December is the biggie — ‘Boot Camp Perfect’. ‘I would follow all of my resolutions, all the time. I would aim to see nothing but gold stars glittering on my Resolutions Chart. This goal of perfection was

daunting, because following my resolutions took a huge amount of mental discipline and self-control — not to mention, it took a lot of time.’

Reading The Happiness Project is quite a project in itself. Putting some — or even any — of Rubin’s resolutions into practice seems like simultaneously an excellent idea, and an absolutely exhausting prospect. But thousands of people out there have jumped on board, contributing their own happiness projects to her mega-successful blog, and prompting the appearance of a sequel — Happier at Home — and another in the pipeline (Before and After).

That’s a whole lot of Happy.

On the other hand, if you’re feeling like all this sounds like too much hard work, I would recommend a different book on the subject, the chalk to Rubin’s cheese, Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Happiness. His secret seems to be to do nothing very much but be aware of your breath, mindful in your actions, kind to others, and kind to yourself. The perfect antidote to Gretchen Rubin and a lovely reminder that happy is as happy does, and though the way we skip, stagger, glide or hop along the yellow brick road of life, we’re all heading towards Oz. Who knows, we may even arrive someday. anita roy is a writer and director of Young Zubaan Y anita@anitaroy.net

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Jaipur goes to London In its first foray outside the Pink City, the Jaipur Literature Festival took along some of its best traditions and quirks

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he first-ever Jaipur Literature Festival, nine years ago, was attended by 18 authors and a few dozen people, some of whom were dazed tourists who simply stumbled upon the event, as the festival’s co-director, author William Dalrymple, has often jested. The festival’s first foray outside of Jaipur had no such modest start. On a gloriously warm and sunny Sunday in midMay, a large crowd gathered for JLF’s first London outing at the waterfront South Bank Centre for a full day of literature, debate and music.

The venue was certainly an intuitive second home for the festival. Set up in the early 1950s to provide a “tonic” to a nation still haunted by the horrors of two World Wars, the South Bank Centre was committed to the “propaganda of the imagination”, its artistic director Jude Kelly explained at the launch. The hope was to provide a venue for humans “to stay and fall in love with other humans”, to express similarities and differences and recognise that “everyone’s imagination must count,” she said. Following her own first visit to the JLF, she had vowed to do her best to bring JLF to the centre’s annual South Asian festival of music, dance and literature — Alchemy.

Bringing the event to London presented the organisers with something of a challenge, explained Dalrymple at the end of the day. In India, the JLF has established its reputation by attracting top names from across the world, including some with limited links to India. A similar strategy in Britain — home to the thrilling, literary-gargantuan-magnet, the Hay Festival — could prove counterproductive, which is why the JLF organisers focused largely on showcasing Indian talent.

Unlike the original, the London event wasn’t free, though in a city used to extortionate prices for cultural events, the £20-a-head ticket won’t have raised eyebrows. It brought along some of the quirks associated with the original, including drumrolls as timekeepers for debates.

The day itself kicked off with a thunderous drumroll, and quickly launched into a fascinating discussion on myth and memory. The audience quickly warmed up to Mary Beard, the classical historian, eager to move away from the traditional place myths had been accorded in societies (including attempts to see similarities across cultures) and encourage seeing it more as an active verb — “to myth”.

Her no-nonsense approach included a gentle put-down of the countless stage productions of Greek tragedies that sought to establish relevance in whatever was the contentious conflict of the day, which drew warm laughter

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Meet the fabulists Playwright Girish Karnad, classical historian Mary Beard and SOAS lecturer James Mallinson kicked off the Jaipur Literature Festival in London with a discussion on myth and memory vidya ram

Turning a page Author Vikram Seth reads The Hare and the Tortoise from his well-loved Beastly Tales at the first Jaipur Literature Festival in London at the South Bank Centre vidya ram

from the audience. Playwright Girish Karnad was also a delightful presence, entertaining the audience with his brief history of Indian mythmaking — and its early aversion to tragedy — while at the same time grounding the discussion in current politics, highlighting the role that myth, as it evolved over the years, has played in propagating communal tensions.

The impossibility of being wrong about a myth, was what was both so exciting and dangerous about it.

This strong start was always going to be hard to maintain through the day. While a session on the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz was praised by those attended — particularly the insights of his daughter Salima Hashmi — a discussion on empire seemed to exasperate many in the audience as it descended into a series of hostile exchanges between participants and failed to cover new ground, sticking to such well-trodden textbook themes as the impact of British rail infrastructure on developing India. A discussion on the portraits of Indian metropolises done in recent years drew a large and attentive crowd, from a British audience eager to learn more about the evolving cities, as did a well-paced discussion on the literature of regional languages, with Girish Karnad once again providing a particularly insightful presence.

A conversation with Vikram Seth provided the international “celebrity” moment of the

festival; and while a clearly star-struck moderator failed to get as much out of the discussion as she could have, Seth proved a charming presence on stage, insisting that novels were merely “elevated gossip” and breezily brushing off the organisers’ attempts to cut short a Beastly Tales reading halfway through — to loud applause from the audience.

Following the JLF tradition of closing with a debate, the day ended with the discussion “Dynasty and democracy are not incompatible in South Asia”. As one of the debaters was swift to point out, the topic’s double negative was not just confusing for the audience but also a peculiarly Indian-style of wording.

Many pointed out that the widespread prevalence of dynasties in politics made the topic a moot point, while sidestepping the more important question of whether it allowed for the type of democracy we wanted to live.

Dalrymple was the first to admit the London event was a work in progress — “cobbled together” over a handful of weeks. But as I watched a typically London crowd — a hodgepodge of ages and nationalities — gather in the foyer to listen to Nathoo Solanki and other Rajasthani musicians perform into the night, it was clear that this would be a lovely addition to the city’s cultural scene that many, me included, would return to over the years. vidya ram

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saturday, may 24, 2014

The maker of things A pilgrimage to Geoffery Bawa’s retreats in the Sri Lankan Capital and the countryside

Beyond brick-and-mortar At Number 11, Geoffery Bawa’s home in Colombo and (below) green vistas at Lunuganga tara rachel thomas

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lying into Colombo and travelling through its commercial district into the heart of the city, there’s a niggling sense of disbelief. While Sri Lanka is moving on after a violent civil war, its Capital looks like a European metropolis.

Fast food chains, large-scale construction, a multitude of banks, open green spaces and hotels trying to outdo each other, all dot the coastal Galle Road; a gleaming spectacle fast becoming unrecognisable, even to residents who have lived here for generations.

Of the few things that have remained untouched by the war and the tsunami in 2004, is the legacy of the country’s most renowned architect Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003). Bawa designed the Sri Lankan Parliament as well as a number of houses and hotels. A man who seemingly embraced architecture on a whim and — armed with his style of Tropical Modernism — went on to create spaces that were ‘modern’ yet incorporated local and natural elements that complemented the culture and landscape of his sites.

Bawa’s Colombo residence, Number 11, situated in the noticeably upmarket Bagatalle Road, for instance, is often the first stop in the pilgrimage that his admirers often undertake.

Away from the din of the Capital, the house is now maintained by a trust, and visitors can participate in a tour of the residence, which has an almost museum-like quality to it. Red oxide tiles and stark white walls form a generous canvas strung across a grid of wooden columns and painted doors. Earthy hues dominate the paintings, furniture, tapestry, statues and curios; all left intact from Bawa’s time, imprinted by his elegance and style. Although the interiors appear to be somewhat

removed from what one might consider Sri Lanka’s true architectural vernacular, the sloping, tiled roofs, skylights and the frangipani trees are all rooted in the local soil, leaving you in no doubt about its coordinates.

The two rooms upstairs, where Bawa once hosted friends, now comprise a guest suite.

But it is clear that those who wish to stay at Number 11 must appreciate the space they inhabit, and allow its leisurely magic to work on them, rather than expect world-class amenities and room service.

Pick up a kaleidoscope of your choice, settle down with a book, or spend hours marvelling at the unique lamps, paintings, record players, cassettes and art deco pieces that surround you. Live a life well-lived by Bawa. arely 60km south of Colombo lies another of Bawa’s projects — arguably, also his most ambitious — the Lunuganga Estate in Bentota; its rambling gardens, spread over 15 acres of an abandoned rubber plantation. At this country retreat of his, Bawa supervised the planting of trees and plants, the creation of water bodies and the sourcing and placement of sculptures and paintings. He also designed a few rooms (now open to guests), all of which come together to form breathtaking vistas no matter which direction you look.

The gardens are open to visitors in the day, and on request, a traditional Sri Lankan lunch is served at a table overlooking the placid lake Dedduwa, which surrounds Lunuganga. The sticky-sweet brinjal moju and ambulpolos (sour baby jackfruit) curry that could at a pinch pass for chicken, are unforgettable, making you want to run into the kitchen to demand more, the minute the veshti-clad server takes your dishes away. It’s a fitting meal be-

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fore you begin the guided walk through Lunuganga, weaving through various levels of verdure, lichen-covered stone and cement.

Bawa’s love for metal sculptures and painting is immediately evident to anyone who walks in his gardens.

The fading yellow, blue and green natural dye mural by artist Laki Senanayake —depicting bows, arrows and sword-wielding warriors — is just one example of the art around the gardens that urge you to stop and stare. It is not unusual to spot langurs, monitor lizards, deer and birds that have embraced this tranquil eco-system.

Bawa’s Lunuganga Estate and his Colombo residence are no place for a ‘holiday’. They are not places with WiFi, televisions and swimming pools, or the kind that would tolerate drunken debauchery or a child’s tantrums.

They do offer, however, an invitation to explore the spaces that inspired one of Sri Lanka’s best minds. tara rachel thomas is a Bangalore-based writer

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Veg-only in Bangkok A sumptuous surprise awaits those who wish to steer clear of the city’s rich meat offerings

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Just as I was about to hop into a tuk-tuk, a egetarian Bangkok would pretty much be an oxymoron. So a week of bright-yellow board proclaiming ‘Jae’ food hectic culinary immersion in the drew me towards Ama’s kitchen — a cosy fourcity found me single-mindedly table eatery at which the Chinese all-veg Jae chasing Thailand’s popular non-vegetarian cuisine is served with an extra dash of love by cuisine. Keen to give my palate something its owner ‘Ama’. Economical combos, convenew to savour, however, I also set aside an en- nient location (just off Silom road) and consistently good food ensure she trumps all tire day for some veg-food hunting.

The trail began at the arterial Sukhumvit competition along this road. Despite the lanroad, synonymous with the Bangkok’s vibrant guage barrier, I felt immediately at home and nightlife. Several odd- and even-numbered sampled a speedy snack of fritters.

Khao San is decidedly the liveliest part of Sois, or streets, criss-crossed Sukhumvit, choca-bloc with glitzy malls, restaurants and the city, and backpacker central. The place is shops. As I walked on to build an appetite, it marked by cheap stay options, tattoo parlours, shops with heaps of clothes was comforting to have the indisand, of course, a variety of restaupensable Sky Train rumbling rants and local food-stalls. I above, reassuring me that I could burned a few calories roaming make a quick dash to other parts these streets before making my of the city in no time.

From a pushcart, As I intended to stick to veg op- a dollop of rice and way to two of the most recommended restaurants at Samsen tions for all meals, the unassumnine curries to Soi, a short distance from Khao ing Tian Sin stall had to be first on choose from San. The redbrick wall with Indimy list. It opens early at 6.30 am an-themed paintings at Tham Na but pulls its shutters down soon caught my eye first. Only after I after lunch. That I was effortlessly had taken in the soothing ambidirected through a maze of streets ence did I order from the delito the small stall tucked away in the narrow Phiphat Soi alone testifies to its cious organic vegetarian Italian-Thai fusion popularity. Run by two sisters, Tian Sin epito- menu. After scraping out every bit of Tham mises Thailand’s pushcart-style food, though Na’s heavenly papaya salad from the bowl, I exclusively of the veg kind. A dollop of rice and walked down to the cheery May Kaidee restaumore than nine curries to choose from, it was rant a few doors away.

The friendly manager there was more than certainly a morning well spent. The no-frills open-air joint is known for imparting the happy to tell me all about this widely popular most mundane crop of mushrooms, cauli- restaurant. Soon to go international, May Kaiflower, beans, with authentic Thai flavours. dee has a heartening array of veg and vegan Lighter by less than a hundred baht, I was off food, as also the inspiring story of May, who started out running a street stall years ago. Into my next stop, Khao San. ternational travellers not only swear by the dining experience, many of them also stay back long enough to take up May’s Thai cooking classes. A perfect lunch and even better conversation later, I was more ‘veg-aware’ than ever and could not wait to head out to Issaya, recommended by a fellow veg-hunter.

White chairs set on a freshly mowed green lawn greeted me outside an old Bangkok Villa, a rarity in the rapidly expanding city. Inside was a world of artistic furniture and colourful furnishings. With this atmospheric setting and Chef Ian’s signature Thai cuisine, Issaya was just what I had imagined it to be. The res-

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On-the-go refreshment Cut-fruit stall on Bangkok’s arterial Sukhumvit road; (top) pushcart flavours at Tian Sin supriya sehgal

Eatinerary Tian Sin, Phiphat Soi 2, Bangkok, +66 0869841621, 6.30am to 1.30pm Ama, Silom Street, Bangkok, 10500, +66 0897890889, Monday-Friday 9.30am to 5pm, closed on weekends Tham Na, 175 Samsen Road, (Between Samsen 3 and 5), Bangkok 10200, +66 022824979, facebook.com/ ThamnabyChefyim, Monday-Saturday 11am to 3pm, 5pm to 9pm, closed on Sundays May Kaidee, 33 Samsen Road, Soi 2, Banglamphu, Bangkok 10200, +66 0891373173, 026294413, maykaidee.com, 9am to 10pm Issaya,4 Soi Sri Aksorn, Chua Ploeng Road, Thung Muahmek, Sathorn, Bangkok 10120,+66 026729040-1, issaya.com, @issaya.com, 11am to 3.30pm, 6pm to 10.30pm Na Aroon, Ariyasomvilla Co Ltd, 65, Sukhumvit Soi 1, Sukhumvit Road, KlongtoeyNua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, +66 022548880, 022538800, ariyasom.com, davidlees@ariyasom.com, 6.30am to 10.30pm

taurant stands out for its use of traditional ingredients, progressive cooking methods and elegant food presentations. I was determined to return here for a more comprehensive meal — it deserved a full evening.

But I had saved the best for the last, so dinner was back at Sukhumvit Soi 1, the boutique restaurant of Ariyasomvilla, Na Aroon. Ariyasomvilla is also a refurbished Bangkok villa dating back to 1941. Na Aroon, the in-house restaurant, promises a soothing ambience and the choice of poolside or indoor seating. The oriental-themed restaurant dishes out hearty vegetarian fare prepared largely from organic produce. After a light Mee Grob (a sweet, sour and crispy noodle dish) and an apple crumble to end the meal, it was time to head back.

Walking down Sukhumvit, I couldn’t help but grab one of the on-the-go cut-fruit bags — a perfect accomplice to a stroll down Bangkok's busy warren of streets.

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supriya sehgal is a Bangalore-based writer

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saturday, may 24, 2014

Hobbit Scones (Serves 4) 2 cups flour 1/3 cup granulated sugar 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 6 tbsp unsalted butter, chilled 1/2 cup buttermilk 1 large egg 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 2/3 cup raisins (optional)

1 Preheat oven to 200oC. 2 In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

3 Cut the chilled butter into half-inch cubes and sprinkle them over the flour mixture.

4 Cut the butter in with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture is coarse — like tiny peas.

In another bowl, stir together the buttermilk, egg and vanilla.

5 Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour and stir to combine. If you are adding raisins, stir them in gently.

6 Flour your hands and pat the dough into an 8-inch circle on an ungreased baking sheet. With a knife, cut the dough into eight wedges (cut 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the dough, not the whole way).

7 Bake for 18-20 minutes until the top is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the centre of one of the wedges comes out clean.

8 Let cool for five minutes and cut into proper wedges. Serve warm with butter.

Butterbeer A Muggle version of a magical recipe (Serves 4) 1 cup brown sugar 2 tbsp water 6 tbsp butter 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp cider vinegar 3/4 cup heavy cream 1 tsp rum 1 1/2 litre of cream soda

1 In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the brown sugar and water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook till the sugar is dissolved.

2 Stir in the butter, salt, vinegar and 1/4 cup cream. Set aside to cool.

3 Once the mixture has cooled, stir in the rum.

4 In a medium bowl, combine 2 tbsp of the brown sugar mixture and the remaining cream. Use an electric mixer or beat until just thickened, but not completely whipped.

5 To serve, divide the brown sugar mixture between four tall glasses (about 1/4 cup for each glass). Add 1/4 cup of cream soda to each glass, then stir.

Top up each glass with cream soda, then spoon the whipped topping over each.

In a (rabbit) stew Fantasy lovers have no choice but to warm up to stews shutterstock

THE HUNGRY READER

Not that fantastic

Why hang out with all those magical types if they can’t even conjure up a decent meal?

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et me begin with a confession. I am not a fantasy fiction fan. I can’t bite my nails and hold my breath through 819 pages as some unwashed and unbrushed hero crosses mountains infested with blood-sucking rodents and realms sizzling with wicked magic. And all this just to swap insults with a Dark Lord with a bad case of halitosis.

I don’t like the tedious journeys — worse even than a Mumbai-LA flight with three stopovers. I don’t like characters with names like Dragonbludd and Cthgumrill. But most of all, I don’t like the food.

I mean, look at the irony. These books are fantasy. The writers don’t need to stick to reality. They can — and do — create whatever their heart desires. Nasty witches who can steal your dreams. Talking trees. Pigs with wings.

So then why do all their characters — after a hard day spent getting lost in zombie lands, hunting for dragons’ eggs, identifying lost heirs to kingdoms — always settle down to the same meal, night after night? For in every book since Tolkein wrote Lord of the Rings, the characters in Fantasyland seem to subsist solely on stew. Or, on occasion, hunks of four-dayold bread, cheese and dried meat. Which makes me wonder, what is the point of hanging out with all those magical types if they can’t even conjure up a decent meal?

It also makes me enormously grateful to the rare writers who pep up mealtimes with a dash of magic and strangeness.

With, for example, a ‘Pan-Galactic Gargle-

blaster’ that is like “having your brains sumed on a grassy hillock. Or in dimly lit tasmashed in with a slice of lemon wrapped verns full of shadows and lurking strangers.

Okay. I exaggerate. There are exceptions. The around a large gold brick” and includes ingredients like Mega Gin, Hypermint and the hobbits in Tolkein’s books eat six meals a day, tooth of an Algolan Suntiger (The Hitchhiker’s and aren’t all that eager to set out on quests Guide to the Galaxy). Or feasts of camels, lac- that interfere with their intake of Honey Nut quered duck and seagulls that George RR Mar- Cake, Mulled Wine and Cottage Pies. And even the Elven bread called Lembas — perhaps the tin dreams up in his chunky books.

Perhaps the loveliest fantasy foods appear most famous magical food of all times — is a in books for children. Remember the pop- poor substitute. “For these things are given to ping, fizzing goodies that were always con- serve you when all else fails,” the seekers are told when they set out on their sumed on the branches of Enid journey. “The cakes will keep Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree? The sweet for many, many days, if thrill when Silky — the longthey are unbroken and left in haired pixie — brought out a tin their leaf-wrappings, as we have of Pop Cakes to share with Jo, BeWhy do they feel ssie and Fanny? “As soon as you compelled to go from brought them. One will keep a traveller on his feet for a day of bit into them they went pop! And Chocolate Frogs and long labour, even if he be one of you suddenly found your mouth Fudge Flies to stew? the tall men of Minas Tirith.” filled with new honey from the Till recently, foods like Lemmiddle of the little cake.” bas and Butterbeer and Blood Similarly, the Google Buns that Pies belonged to the realm of ficthe magical Moonface served tion. But fantasy fans are a breed were “most peculiar”. “They each had a very large currant in the middle and this apart and determined to live the lives and eat was filled with sherbet. So when you got to the the foods of their straggly-haired heroes. As a currant and bit it, the sherbet frothed out and result, websites and a stack of bestselling filled your mouth with fine bubbles that cookbooks are busy experimenting with recipes that allow fantasy geeks to actually whip tasted delicious.”

Equally tantalising are the treats from the up a batch of Discworld Dwarf Bread or fried wizarding world inhabited by Harry Potter — squirrel.

Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook: A Useful and ImprovButterbeer and Fudge Flies and exploding bonbons and Chocoballs stuffed with straw- ing Almanac of Information Including Astonishberry mousse and clotted cream. Though I’m ing Recipes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld not sure that I’d really bother with a bag of features Discworld oddities like the StrawberBertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans — which are a ry Wobbler. While on the pages of the The Unoflot like jelly beans but include unexpected fla- ficial Hunger Games Cookbook, you can find vours like spinach, liver, earwax and vomit raccoon in bacon drippings.

The Official Game of Thrones Cookbook — and guarantee “a risk with every mouthful”.

Or Peppermint Toads that hop in your tummy. based on George RR Martin’s series — provides Or squeaking sugar mice. Not very muggle- equally adventurous fare. Honey-spiced locusts, grilled rattlesnakes with a mustard friendly, I guess.

Given that the youthful denizens of Fantasy- sauce and jellied calves brains, all tried and land enjoy pretty innovative fare, one won- tested. Understandably, the cookbook writers ders why they eventually feel compelled to decided to steer clear of olives stuffed with make the switch from Chocolate Frogs to stew. maggots and a wedding pie with a hundred Rabbit stew. Raptor stew. Elk stew. Just-gobble- live doves cooked into it.

They did, however, feel compelled to init-and-don’t-ask stew. Usually cooked and conclude a recipe for Rabbit Stew.

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Not for muggles Professor Dumbledore towers over a heaving table at a rare feast in Harry Potter afp

shabnam minwalla is a journalist and author of The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street

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Lost ground, forgotten heroes Hockey was at its peak in the ’70s... A look back at the glory days, and why things went wrong

VIJAY LOKAPALLY

Stuff of legend Indian captain Ajitpal Singh holds aloft the 1975 hockey World Cup after defeating Pakistan in the finals the hindu archives

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elhi’s National Stadium was the hub for hockey players, both budding and established. The cricket field was a mass of youngsters. So was the hockey turf. It was a constant tussle — a turf war — between cricket and hockey. And the latter usually won as the astro turf inside and the grass surface outside witnessed unstinted activity all year round.

Punjab was then the nursery of Indian hockey, and Sansarpur its factory, producing national and international stars year after year. Over time, the game has become dormant, and talent has dried up in what was once a hockey-prosperous State. So much so that it has impacted the game as a whole.

Hockey has lost out to better-administered disciplines like tennis, cricket, badminton and golf as also to other sports that hog airtime across channels. Today, hockey jostles with international cricket, IPL, EPL and other football leagues from around the world, F1 racing, NBA and tennis.

The Hero Hockey India League is a step in the right direction but the sport needs to raise its own profile and, more importantly, that of its stars. It can achieve that only with more TV support. Stories like that of Yuvraj Walmiki, the striker who emerged from the slums of Mumbai, must be told in graphic ways on television and other visual media for the game to reach out to the masses and for the team’s victories to be beamed live for hockey to regain its lost ground.

Playing hockey today is so much tougher than it was in the ’50s and ’60s when it was bigger than cricket. I remember players being mobbed at the National Stadium. In later years, Shivaji Stadium emerged as the hockey theatre in the Capital. It was fun in winter, watching hockey in the heart of the city, with a packed house cheering its heroes.

Hockey players did not command the fee that cricketers and tennis stars did. But they shared the same space among sports lovers.

“It was a great feeling when people walked up to take our autographs. Hockey was very popular. It was second to none in terms of fan following,” reminisces Ashok Kumar, the player who scored India’s winning goal in the final of the 1975 World Cup. The sheer number of tournaments that marked the annual hockey calendar spoke for the game’s administration. When domestic cricket was played with free entry for the spectators, one had to buy tickets to watch hockey matches all over the country. “The fan frenzy had to be seen to be believed. Faithful hockey lovers would throng the venues. To procure a season ticket was the best way to follow the game. I have seen ‘sold out’ boards at the Shivaji Stadium,” recalls veteran commentator Anupam Ghulati.

India’s 1983 Cricket World Cup win triggers national celebration every four years. Each member of that team is a household name.

Sadly, few would remember the hockey leg-

World-beating line-up Indian players Ajitpal Singh, Aslam Sher Khan and Ashok Kumar hug Harcharan Singh (hidden) after he scored the lone goal against West Germany in the Group B match of the third hockey World Cup at Kuala Lumpur in 1975 the hindu archives

ends who won the World Cup in 1975. “It is un- stars like Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Pran… derstandable if the general public does not There were no commercial gains for the playrecognise us and our achievements. But you ers but they thrived on the affection and refeel sad when the hockey fraternity has to be spect that came from their fans drawn from all reminded of the 1975 feat,” says sections of the society.

Ashok Diwan, who kept goal in inding a job was the motivathe pulsating semi-final against tion for hockey players, acceptMalaysia and the final against ing offers in the class III and IV Pakistan.

Sometimes even The nation celebrated the 1975 the hockey fraternity categories, joining as jawans and triumph. There were awards ga- has to be reminded constables, serving the game with uncompromising loyalty. The filore for the team. “It was a fantasof the 1975 feat nancial returns for them were tic experience to be recognised in meagre but feats on the field rich. public,” said Ajitpal Singh at a reAnd yet, says the sporting great, cent function to felicitate the heMohammad Shahid, “No regrets roes of that team. He was allotted a petrol pump in south Delhi, which he for playing hockey.”

Let me leave you with a sobering thought. promptly named Centre Half, the position Back in 1998, India regained the Asian Games that he played at.

A year before the World Cup, a series of sev- hockey gold after 32 years. Barring the gold in en matches were held in India between an all- the 1980 Olympic Games, which was a wastar Asian XI and an Indian selection. Over- tered-down competition, the Asian Games vicflowing stands greeted the hockey stalwarts at tory was India’s finest moment on astro-turf — all venues. And what a line up it was — Ashok played out on colour TV. And yet, when the Kumar, Ajitpal Singh, Surjit Singh playing in team returned home, there was no ticker-tape the same side as Islahuddin Siddique, Samiul- parade or even muted celebrations. Instead, lah Khan, Akhtar Rasool, Munawwar-uz-Za- six players and the coach, MK Kaushik, were man, Manzoor ul Haq and Salim Sherwani, a sacked by self-seeking officials. The message to parents who would have considered sending galaxy of champions from Pakistan.

Hockey was at its peak in the ’70s. The Pakis- their sons to hockey clubs and academies was tani players would visit India for an annual clear: there are no rewards for doing well; hockey series. Some of them remember the there is no stardom at the end of the rainbow. games at the Cooperage in Bombay, the stay at the Ambassador and felicitations by movie vijay lokapally is deputy editor, sports, The Hindu

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The Titanosaur cometh The biggest of the big boys discovered

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n Argentina’s Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio lies what remains of arguably the single largest creature that ever walked the Earth. At about 130 feet long, weighing about 80,000 kg, it doesn’t get any larger than the Titanosaur. A dinosaur specialist at the Argentine museum, Jose Luis Carballido told a local daily, “It’s like two trucks with a trailer each, one in front of the other, and the weight of 14 elephants together.” They are as old as they are big.

These herbivores are thought to be at least 95 million years old.

Miss not-so-Lovely Beauty pageant gets it wrong, blames Indians for looking alike

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Best footy forward Bolivian president joins a football club. The ‘new Vuvuzela’ makes its debut. The heat is on

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ith less than a month to go for the 20th edition of the Fifa World Cup, everyone is getting into the spirit of football.

In Bolivia, their charismatic 54year-old El Presidente, Evo Morales will be signing up for a top division club in the coming season. Morales, who has played in an exhibition game with Maradona before, will be sporting the Number 10 at the club and will be paid their minimum wage of $214 a month. “He loves football and plays well. Because of his busy schedule, we’ll send him a list of matches and he’ll chose which ones he wants to play in,” says Mario Cronenbold, president of the club.

In other news, we can look forward to a World Cup without the audio sounding like a swarm of bees flying over our living rooms. The Vuvuzela, the bane or boon of South Africa depending on what decibel levels do to your sense of excitement, will be replaced by the Caxirola, a baby rattle-like instrument, which organisers will be handing out outside stadiums across Brazil. They had a successful trial run with the Confederations Cup last summer and hope to replicate it this year when the circus rolls in.

hat’s wrong with beauty pageants you ask? Well, here’s yet another nail in their coffin. Last week, organisers of Miss Globe New Zealand asked an Indianorigin woman to return the top prize because they had made an ‘honest mistake’ by confusing her with another ‘Indian girl’.

Two days after she was crowned Miss Globe New Zealand, 19-yearold Fiji-born Synthia Nath was stripped of her title as it was ‘honestly’ intended for another Indianorigin model Loriza Latif, the alleged ‘lookalike’. To add insult to injury, Nath was asked to cough up $3,000 to compete at an international pageant in Turkey — supposed to have been part of her prize. She was also asked to return the crown and sash. However, when Nath tried returning the items, the organisers emailed her saying: “You can keep it and pretend that you still are Miss Globe.”

How to be an Undecellionaire Get bitten by a dog. Now sue everyone around you

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wo followed by 36 zeros with a dollar sign in front of it — or $2 undecellion — is what Anton Purisima, 62, resident of New York City wants as compensation for being bitten by a dog.

In his 22-page, handwritten lawsuit to the Manhattan federal court last month, Purisima has indicted a Kmart store, the NYC Transit authority, the City of New York, the LaGuardia Airport and Au Bon Pain café to name just a few. Purisima filed the lawsuit because the incident occurred in a city bus. While composing his petition, he decided to include the café that apparently overcharges for coffee at the airport. He claims he has suffered civil rights violations, personal injury, discrimination based on national origin, retaliation, harassment, fraud, attempted murder, intentional infliction of emotional distress and conspiracy to defraud. A bit of a serial plaintiff, Purisima has previously filed complaints against the People’s Republic of China and banks like JP Morgan. FYI: $2 undecellion is more money than exists on the planet!

Looking the part British supermarket goofs up with this ‘fashion statement’

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ainsbury’s, the supermarket chain, is as omnipresent in the UK as post offices or traffic signals. While it is the best bet for getting all that you need in one place, the marketing department of the franchise got a bit carried away last week. In one of its stores in the town of Oxford, they took the ‘film to fashion’ campaign to a whole new low. Near a DVD stand holding copies of the Oscar winning 12 Years A Slave, a film about the horrors of slavery, the store decided to dress up a mannequin in the same attire as the film’s protagonist Solomon Northup. The costume was complete with a twig in the front pocket. Following a twitter row, the store eventually admitted to its folly, with a spokesperson saying, “We can only apologise. It has been taken down from the store and clearly should never have gone up in the first place.”

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cornerstone in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Criminal pursuits

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oes crime pay? Not sure, but quiz columns on crime pay. Get in touch with your dark side with this quiz: For around four centuries the thuggees were one of the most dangerous criminal groups in Indian history, killing thousands every year.

For what reason, grounded in mythology, did they almost always strangle their victims?

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Till 1989, which cult film of the ’70s is believed to have ‘inspired’ 39 suicides?

Further research has been actively discouraged so as not to create a cult around it.

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Alphonse Capone was one of the most wanted gangsters in the US in the ’20s.

Scarface Al committed almost every crime — murder, kidnapping, extortion, bootlegging, to mention just a few. But for what crime did the police finally manage to put him away for 11 years in 1931?

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Which extremely famous ad line was inspired by a statement by condemned criminal Gary Gilmore, minutes before he was executed in 1977?

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Which inventor was ironically also the greatest proponent of Alternating Current for use in electric chairs in the US at the turn of the 20th century?

the new york times crossword-1124

two halves in one

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What was the police term for the scheme through which heroin was smuggled from Turkey to France and then to the US? The operation reached its peak in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when it provided the vast majority of the illicit heroin used in the US.

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We all know what a 420 means in India.

However, if you were doing a 420 in the US, what would you be doing?

The San Francisco Chronicle once published this television listing for which classic film: “transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again?”

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‘Are you in or out?’ is the tagline for which stylish 2001 crime caper featuring a stunning star cast?

According to Hussain Zaidi, chronicler of the Mumbai underworld, which term originated from a custom started by Bhim, the king of the Mahemi tribe, after whom the suburb of Mahim is named?

Answers 1. They were devotees of Kali, and in her battle against the demon Raktabija, every drop of blood spilled by him created another demon. So the thuggees would try and kill without spilling blood. Interestingly, many of the thuggees captured by William Sleeman were Muslims.

2. The Deer Hunter, which featured Robert De Niro 3. Tax evasion; Capone had not paid taxes for many years.

4. Nike’s ‘Just Do It’. Gilmore actually said, “Let’s do it”.

5. Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of Direct Current, as he wanted people to believe Alternating Current was dangerous. Great inventor and a very devious man!

6. The French Connection, from where the awardwinning film got its name 7. Smoking marijuana — nobody quite knows why. April 20 is celebrated as weed day in the US. 8. The Wizard of Oz 9. Ocean’s Eleven 10. Supari. When Bhim wanted a difficult job done, he would invite his warriors for a feast, and a supari would be placed in the middle at the end of the meal. The warrior who picked up the supari would be entrusted with the job.

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

ACROSS

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1 Start of the United Negro College Fund slogan 6 Old lab burners 11 Abbr. at the top of an email 14 Something passed between the legs?

19 ___ Domingo 20 Now and again?

21 Like an ode 23 Kind of farming 25 Like Neptune among the planets in the solar system 26 ___ pro nobis 27 Echelon 28 With the circled letters, 1955 Bill Haley and His Comets hit?

30 Sound of sweet nothings 31 Having a beat 33 Hall-of-Famer Ralph 35 Purveyor of the Doublicious sandwich 36 ___ Webster, Twain’s “celebrated jumping frog” 37 With 43-Across, 1973 Deep Purple hit?

39 Like Odin 41 Sound engineer’s knob

43 See 37-Across 45 Brings in 47 Some dreams 50 Reverse, e.g.

51 Dismissed 53 “Eternally nameless” thing, in Eastern religion 54 Bath accessories 55 Dr Pepper alternative 58 Former Disney president Michael 60 Dreamy romantic quality 62 Olympic leap 64 Ring Lardner’s “Alibi ___” 65 It’s put on before takeoff 66 1959 Dion and the Belmonts hit?

69 Old mattress stuffing 72 Pond denizen 73 Phil who played 65-Down 78 1984 Cyndi Lauper hit?

79 Memorable series in “Psycho” 81 Dawn-to-dusk 82 The continents, e.g.

83 “Phooey!”

85 Kelly of morning TV 87 Haughty affectation 88 Rap sheet listing 89 Query at the start of a poker game

91 Verbally assault 94 Rene of “Thor” 96 Thumbing-the-nose gesture 98 Challenge for F.D.R. 99 Mideast V.I.P. 101 Meatless day in W.W. II: Abbr.

103 Some lawn mowers 105Pertaining to religious rites 108 Bugs Bunny addressee 109 Where to find screwdrivers and rusty nails 111 Like peas in ___ 113 Suffix with salt 114 Made bats 116 Primer pair 119 Info on a magazine cover 120 Real dear 121 More cool, in slang 122 French thinkers?

123 Wink’s partner 124 ___ State (Mountain West Conference team) 125 Runners in the cold?

DOWN 1 Org. 2 Actress Tierney 3 Suffering

4 Some versions of Windows 5 “Quit stalling!”

6 Suffix with major 7 Back it up, in a way 8 “Seduction of the Minotaur” author 9 Bank ID 10 “Listen, pal!”

11 Tea Partiers, e.g.

12 Crack filler 13 Casual summer wear 14 Medium for love letters?

15 Card reader, for short 16 What fastidious people can’t be 17 ___ Scott Card, “Ender’s Game” writer 18 Competitor of ZzzQuil 22 Label for 28-Across 24 Alaskan city 29 Fake 32 Chef Lagasse 34 “To sum up …”

36 No longer in fashion 38 Info for an airport greeter, for short 40 Victorian ___ 42 Summons, of a sort 43 The “T” of Mr. T 44 Prefix with thermal 46 “Long time ___”

48 Boss Tweed nemesis 49 New York arrival of ’77 50 BBC std.

52 Bank in need of support?

54 Where “hello” is “sveiks” 56 Reinforces 57 Muff a grounder 59 Something you can believe 61 Hands on deck 63 Chicken ___ (Italian dish, informally) 65 NCO of 1950s TV 67 Former faddish exercise regimen 68 Way off 69 Oktoberfest quaff 70 John Locke, philosophically 71 Out-of-the-way way 74 Brand of pickles 75 Slanted writing 76 Description on many eBay listings 77 The “s” in Awacs: Abbr.

78 Dose meas.

79 Eastern religion

80 Place for a mani-pedi 84 Graz’s land: Abbr.

86 Rev (up) 89 See 95-Down 90 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit?

92 Quantum physics particle 93 Rubber from Arabia?

95 With 89-Down, 1968 Tammy Wynette hit?

97 “Twelfth Night” duke 99 “___ to the list” 100 Inspector of crime fiction 102 One inspiring love of poetry?

104 “___ alive!”

106 “Bonne ___!”

107 Longing looks 109 Some queens 110 Didn’t stop in time, say 112 ___ ale 115 French scene 117 Hollywood special FX 118 “Selena” star, to her fans

By Peter A Collins/Edited

by Will Shortz

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