Blink issue 24 july05 2014

ASK ALLY The Investigator comes to the rescue of a distraught dad bit in the fleshy part of his leg by his football fan son p14 saturday, july 5, 2014

SYED MOHAMMAD QASIM

What goes boo at night? We chase down wispy shadows and women in white, even as urbanisation threatens to leave ghosts and djinns homeless p2

After dark

WHAT LIES BENEATH The art world needs a regulatory body as ‘fakes’ go under the hammer p17

WARM TURKEY Istanbul lays out an overladen table of raw lamb kofte and chicken for dessert p21

explore cover

BL BL 222

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Boo!

The peacock and the maharaja

rohit gupta

Scientific knowledge does not always carry across borders, and these omissions come to define our scientific understanding

This, their favourite haunt

Missing pieces Maharaja Jai Singh, who built the monumental Jantar Mantar, seemed to have been unaware of Kepler and Newton

In the shadows of India’s bustling metros, live paranormal investigators and exorcists, believers and sceptics, chasing and dispelling the idea of a ghost.

BLink goes in search of the truth, or the embellished lie, trailing the pallu of a spotless white sari

s subramanium

T

ND-X _ A

he cauldron of history is stirred by these curves in the history of science up to the the micrometer, or the vernier. On the theoretthe movement of people. Like leaves time of Isaac Newton is unparalleled in geom- ical side, Jai Singh seems unaware of Kepler on some invisible wind of desire, ad- etry. Planets were found to move in elliptical and Newton. A question is often raised: why venturers and explorers have polli- orbits, cannonballs and projectiles fell in a did Jai Singh, an enlightened scholar, a man DELHI nated foreign cultures with ideas across Jamali parabolic archlooms underinthe gravity, ones home. with its rough, Kamali theinfluence distance, of beautifar call ahead of hisThe time,tomb, remain ignorant of or igmillennia. It seems astonishing then, that the fuland on sundials moved in a hyper- jagged and shadows serene. There are vast areas of darkness lies in ruins. Only his son Khan noreedges, the neo-astronomy of Europe, and inpeacock of Indian mathematics remained un- around bolic it. path.

Our feet drag. But closer to Maulana Shahid’s tomb is relatively Dehlvi stead attempt ‘to reviveintact. the spirit of tells Ulugh molested by Greek geometry for 2,000 years. Jamali’s Thetomb, otherthe omissions concern geome- us Beg’ atmosphere getssolid decidedly of a at woman of his walka timewho that came seems,on inone retrospect — a cenThea hot, scholar TA Sarasvati t was muggy summerAmma night. blamed The huntthis lighter. try, and the existence of only fivedjinns Platonic Dehlvi tells us that good sur-sol- ingtury tours too and late?”returned home to find she on apparitions the brahminical fixation with on religious for of women in white the round ids, namely tetrahedron, octahedron, the Sufi—saint’s shrinecube, and keep bad wasn’t alone. “She kept calling me, tellingfurther me Raymond Mercier of Cambridge and social purpose, “...this streets of Delhi had come to leaning naught. towards Even spirits icosahedron and the These there was someone her room.

There at bay. “When dogsdodecahedron. bark through the adds that, “In the in Mughal period, for wasn’t example, utilitarianism has had unfortunate results. night, empty, desolate bungalows of leafy Lutyens’ five elemental were are usedfighting,” since thehe time much you know solids the djinns couldofdo, and Beg asked to chant was somethe Iwork Ulugh of her Samarkand wellThehad nonchalance which splendid says, Delhi few tales to with tell, no spiritsthe to report. of “Many Plato inpeople pondering the structure of atoms, feel that Jamali Kamali is thing,” he says. stopped, known, and When parts the of itcalls (mainly theDehlvi trigonoachievements of Greek geometry were That’s when we landed at the Mehrauli Ar- ig- alive.” crystals andtombs matterare in shut general.

But the and locked. checked on and her. She was fine, but the were djinninmetrical geographical tables) nored, while the apseudo-science Greek and HeSo chaeological Park, reliable hauntofof good on points one hand have conic sections, then to awe pitch dark stretch, oncethe hasn’t leftin her since.

The air turns sticky cluded theside Zîj of Jai Singh.

The tables of sun, Babylonian astrology wasrestless receivedspirits with open and bad djinns, where the of a 17th-century trajectories settlement, in which abeyond lot of celestial and again, beads sweat trickle down ourtaken spines. which lies moon andofplanets, however, were over hands,Metcalfe is perhaps worst of these.

It wanwas on- theearthbound Thomas andthe ‘Slave ruler’ Balban matter moved, tomb of Balban.

Dehlvi tellsand us of an expe- As we step out of Balban’sfrom sinister ruins, my unaltered Philippe de La in the 18th century, 2,000 after dition der.lyThe 200-acre heritagenearly site has seenyears continon the other we horribly have the geomethat went wrong here — a friend complains of sudden her ears.asHire.

By this pain timeinEuropean active contact of for Indians with the Greeks, that group uous occupation at least 1,000 years. try ofofsolids, which explained people were forced the to leave the The gate is closetronomy by. Whenhad we slip past it, Dehlundergone revoluEuclid’speriods Elementsofwere translated intohere Sanskrit Different history intersect — grounds. structure of matter itself. want With-you… they vi bends forwardtionary “If the djinns don’t and shakes his head in disbedevelopments at the It is surprising that thenstands perhaps example of the willout theand Lodieven dynasty nextthe to the Mamluks; these two pillars of classical lief. He looks uphands at my of friend.

A wisp of whiteKesuffocate you,” he mutters darkly.

Copernicus, Galileo, the pillars of classical Arabsfrom provided the inspiration.” tombs the Mughal period give way to movement andthe matter, Ifphysics, Jamali Kamali is where good djinns re- smoke escapes pler, her ears.

The pain subsides.

Halley, and of course Newphysics remained Fritzretreats Staal even demarcates thewhere main philosummer of the Raj. Here’s Ak- side, thethe tomb Indianof Balban mathematicians is what the diabolical “That was a djinn,” says.of that was entirely ton.heAll undiscovered by sophical betweenAnga Indian and Greek bar’s fosterdifference mother Maham weeps for could not possibly have trigunknown not only in Mughal InIndian geometers to mathematics, — “The sonapproaches Adham Khan; a mysterioussaying fragrance lin-an- gered a scientific revolution; and dia but in the rest of the Islamic cient Greeks developed logic andtomb; a notion gers at Balban’s son Khan Shahid’s and of as we know — they certainly world. The introduction of de La rationality asdjinns deduction best exhibited

by Eu- didn’t. That these ideas retales are told of who gather at Sufi poet Hire’s tables alone proved to be clid’s geometry.

These discoveries Jamali’s shrine. Fortified by severalcontributed swigs of mained undiscovered by Indian of little consequence in the dethe development of Western redsubstantially wine, we hadto joined Asif Khan Dehlvi, who geometers is surprising; but not so much as velopment of Mughal astronomy.” science. civilisation was an the fact that early Greek works treating this leads walks Ancient through Indian the seven cities of Delhi, One might even say that Jai Singh was as traditionghost and the oral transmission of the subject never even reached India until late in- much of a historian as futurist or even mystic, fororal a night-time trail through Mehrauli. tradition became the first object of house. scientific to the British Raj. Our first stop is Metcalfe’s summer and he never meant the instruments to have inquiry.

Thus arose two human sciences, closeOnce the governor general, Thomas Metcalfe Another beguiling mystery is the astrono- scientific value. However, because the next ly related to retreat each other their formal struc- mer-king of Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Jaisingh II, name in Indian science did not appear until built his lavish overin the tombs of Lodi ture: the sciences of ritual and language.” and Mughal rulers, incurring their wrath. Akwho built the monumental solar observatory 150 years later (in Jagadish Chandra Bose), he beginQuli with,Khan’s while atomb number key contribar’s To general was of turned inin the early 18th century. “Jai Singh’s career has had a moral obligation to the transfer of made Indian mathematito butions a guest were house for by honeymooners and been described as an enigma,” writes Virendra knowledge from Europe that he failed to accians,rooms they somehow remained in complete sacred were turned into a library.

It’s Nath Sharma, “... inspite of his close contacts complish, with tragic consequences that resodarkness about sections. are sim- with Europeans, Jai Singh’s endeavours reflect nate to this day. unsurprising then conic that his uneasy These spirit saunthe various dissections of an hourglass tersply about the grounds of Mehrauli, for no one(or, Thelittle or no influence ofruins the at astronomy conhauntings A moat skirts the MehrauliofArchaeological Park; and (top) the tomb of the Sufi saint rohit gupta explores the history of science as a double which are the ellipse, the pa- Jamali messes with cone) ancient mausoleums. temporary mohammadHis qasiminstruments do not exKamali syedEurope. rabola and the hyperbola. The importance of ploit refinements such as the telescopic sight, Compasswallah t@fadesingh

Mehrauli Archaeological Park

I

Q R

3

BL

cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

Ranjit Nagar, near Shadipur Metro Station

“L

Boo!

Lost spirit The Sekhris believe their house in west Delhi was haunted sibi arasu

et’s talk about her once we’re outside,” says Harsh Puri, criminal lawyer by morning and paranormal investigator by noon. We are at the top floor, a tiny two-room setup, of a four-storey DDA flat in Ranjit Nagar, not five minutes from the Shadipur Metro Station in Delhi — home to a wicked spirit, now in exile. The flat belongs to Rajesh Sekhri, 53, who claims to be a professional astrologer and his son Rajneesh, 18, who is pursuing a civil engineering degree. Two months ago, the Sekhris were sure their house was haunted.

Haunted or not, there’s something decidedly eerie about the flat. A cooler with peculiar scratches across its khus (straw padding), a carpet mauled much the same way. The fridge wire and other cables cut, only to be taped up later. “Even our gas pipe was slashed once. Thankfully, the gas was turned off,” says Sekhri. “Every evening we came back home to one strange thing or the other. Once my son even saw utensils fly up and then around the room.”

Petrified, Sekhri shows us locks he has spent a fortune on; some priced at ₹6,000 apiece. Among them is a lock with keys that can’t be duplicated and another with a screeching theft alarm. At the main door is a CCTV camera. And yet, there are no signs of a break-in. There never were, claim the residents.

When Sekhri first met Puri, the latter promised to ‘cure’ the house of all evil. Sekhri says he kept his word. Using dhyan yoga, Puri communicated with the resident spirit who, in keeping with ghostly stereotypes, happens to be a woman. “She was conjured and sent here by someone who wanted evil to befall the family,” says Puri, “When I asked her to leave she dug her heels in, leaving only after several hours of hard work and persistence.”

One month and 27 days after she left the building, Puri refuses to speak of her indoors.

Peepul tree, Dwarka Sector 9

I

t has no reason to be there, the tree. It stands bang in the middle of the road, forcing every vehicle to circumvent it. But the peepul tree at Toganpur village, or what is now Dwarka Sector 9, stands tall, unmoved by the hubbub of traffic.

“In 1977, when this area was being developed, they tried to move the tree,” says Indresh Yadav. He claims his family — worshippers of Dada Badi Wala, whose shrine is located on the roadside next to the tree — has lived in this area for centuries.

“They got a crane to uproot it, but the crane broke down. They brought in two more cranes. Those failed as well. Because this tree has shakti, a power that lets no one displace it.”

We’re here to follow up on rumours that have been flying thick and fast. Of the corpse of a young woman seen hanging upside down from the peepul tree. Of the lady in a white sari who asks for a lift late at night and runs along with the car if it refuses to stop or, worse, attaches herself to its rear window.

“We’ve heard these stories too, especially from call centre employees who live in this area,” says Yadav. “But I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. We believe that Dada Badi Wala is where the tree’s shakti comes from. He used to ride a white horse when he was alive, and some say they still see him at a full gallop.”

Tall tales The peepul tree near the Dada Badi Wala shrine in Dwarka kamal narang

takeaway cover

BL BL 204

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Sensual pleasures (clockwise from left) The foodtruck crew in Chef merrick morton; Juliet Binoche’s sweet confections in Chocolat; and a poster of Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia

A moveable feast Jon Favreau’s new film Chef, like others in its genre, places food at the narrative’s centre, while myth, love, loss and humour are stirred in as secondary ingredients

A

gleaming knife cuts effortlessly : a disorderly charred brisket to reveal patronobish Order in the house The resident ghost of the National Library doesn’tthrough approve of readers sushanto

under the disapproving aegis of its stern may-

National ofunravelling India the or, stirring upLibrary emotions and

F

or years now, stories who of sudden horrorinhave true nature of people live together this been whispered at the National Library.

The apparently tight-knit community.

Sometimes impressive 250-year-old is reported to food enters the realm building of magic realism, to porhave once housed the Metcalfe family. The of tray the protagonist’s emotions, be spirit it love, a pernickety LadyorMetcalfe, is food said, that remains lust, betrayal sadness. it The Tita prone to at sneaking up wedding on unsuspecting readers cooks her lover’s feast causes sickwhoness don’t return books to their shelves. as well as great longing in proper the hearts of all Panchanan Chandra, whoWater carries out maintethose who eat it in Like for Chocolate.

It is nance work at the library,ofrecalls an incident that as much a reflection her Mexican heritage transpired fiveher years ago.

“There were someAn fiveenof as it is of own personal dilemma. us helping renovate building.

We each felt chantedtocrab and athe stunning Penelope Cruz, it. Out a white appeared and cladof in nowhere, tomato red dressesform (probably the only went rightgrace through us.film), It wascook the up most terrifying saving of the a sensual reexperience in my life.” past thatI have makehad strangers fall in love in Woman Narayan on Top. Chandra Saha, a guard who often worksFood the night shift the library, and claims the can be theatconnection thethat bridge unexplained of babies havefamily stopped ruffling between cries estranged lovers, members his and feathers.

“Thisofone time, a morning members a community.

There iswalker nothfainted because she felt anthan invisible hand straning more comforting the warmth of a gling herfamily neck. You need skin tothat haveforms such large meal, andaitthin is this idea experiences.

Me,tenets I am too for this.” is, the central of brave Babette’s Feast There and Eat however, one story that Sahalives saysand he worlds too is spookDrink Man Woman.

From as far ed by.

After more than apart ashaving a smallheard villagethe ontale the from Jutland coast in oneDenmark taxi driver,tomany National Library Taipei, Taiwan, food employees plays the nowcommon use it to justify faith salve in theas paranormal. role of their a healing well as the Early in the a policetogether. sergeantThus is someglue thatmorning, holds families Batimes seenmarvellous standing outside the Alipore He bette’s feast costing 10,000Zoo. francs hails a cab.

By thequail time with the taxi the Maiand featuring foiereaches gras and truffle dan, the driver looks back to see that both his passenger and his fare have vanished into thin air.

a juicy and glistening pink interior.

The meat is quickly sliced up, piled on to fluffy white bread, slathered in rich butter, laden with pickles, topped with stretchy, melty cheese and toasted gently; a sandwich believes that she herself has felt the fit for the gods. presence of a malevolent spirit lurking While some could call this a slice of heaven, nearby. “I was walking down the street I had friends watching this scene with expresone night and as I passed Bhooter Bari, I sions of misery, for this was extreme food porn ocated near Neemtala, one of the felt someone push me against the wall. designed to as torture all those who love to eat. ith Calcutta having served the capicity’s oldest crematoriums, Bhooter My hand was grazed and I can swear Evenfor asover the agorgeous Scarlett Johansson and tal of British India century, it Bari (House of Ghosts) makes the Na- there was no one there.” Her brother, Sofia Vergara slurpfeaup fresh-from-the-stove perhaps isn’t surprising that the British tional Library appear almost benign. “It says Gudiya, has seen a phantom in a herby dig into ture as protagonists in manypasta of itsorghost sto-a melty, cheesy Cuban might just be the proximity to a burn- red sari wander their street, while othsandwich, strangely enough, your attention is ries, making more literal the city’s colonial ing ghat or the unfulfilled desires of its ers claim to have heard a voice castigatdrawnsahib awayphantasms, from these beautiful women — to hangover. Of all its truant old inhabitants, but there is definitely ing the squatters now living in the what they eating.

In Jon Favreau’s Chef, the Warren Hastings is possibly theare most promisomething here that can’t be ex- ramshackle house — “You people create screen is setof ablaze by is the food that is in turns nent. The first governor general Bengal plained,” says Gudiya Sonkar. A resident such filth. You don’t want to see me get playful, nostalgic, believed to still haunt sexy, Hastings House, his ear-homely, sophisticated of the neighbourhood, Gudiya firmly my broom out.” and always lier residence that now serves as a delicious. campus forWhile the film itself is not without its flaws, the food that Jon Favreau the Institute of Education for Women.

Lookpays made homage to, to is Enmost definitely flawless. ing for a bureau that never it back From the farm-fresh and inspiragland, Lord Hastings shuffles hisexquisite way around dishes crafted rooms, opens drawerstional and generally makesinahis tiny home kitchen mon thread. All of them capture sauce, a blue cheese, fig, papaya, presented on rustic wooden platters — the the interplay between the culracket at odd hours. Aand teacher at the institute, grape and pineapple platter, turCasper’s journey meal that could said, have “A impressed internet mil- tural, emotional, sensual and exwho requested to remain anonymous, tle soup, endive and walnut salfrom chef de cuisine andtold food few days ago, a physicslionaire professor mecritic that Ramsey Michel, once tremely visual aspects of food. ad and rum cake with glaceed at a celebrated LA and forstaff all —room to a simple, he was sitting alone in the when buttery, three-cheese Cooking and eating remain at fruits is hardly all that different restaurant to an sandwich chef Carl Casper makes the centre of the narrative, while the door inexplicablygrilled kept opening andthat closfrom Mr Chu’s extravagant dinout-of-work internet son,could everyexplain dish is honest and intends to cultural mores, myth, love, loss, ing. Nothing, no windfor orhis force, ners for his daughters, where he joke and, eventually, theheperson it is created for. Casper’s sex and humour are stirred in as why. I tried remindingplease him that was a man whips up delicacies like steamed a food truck hero, is journey chef deex-cuisine at a celebrated the secondary ingredients into of science, but that didn’t ease from the stricken chicken with black mushroom, one of discovery and LA restaurant to an out-of-work internet joke food films. pression from his face.” stir-fried clams, shrimp and walove — of both the and, eventually, a food truck hero, is one of disJust like Chef Carl Casper, othter chestnut croquettes and San culinary and the covery and love — of both the culinary and the er underdogs of the culinary Pei chicken from the fish he has human sort human sort. world include Remy the rat from farmed and chickens he has bred Jon Favreau’s Chef celebrates food, and there Ratatouille, whose biggest dream to meet his own high standards. is a beating heart at the squishy centre of this is to cook, and Julie Powell from Chef is, mostly, a worthy sucindie offering that is bound to leave you feel- Julie & Julia, who wants to transcessor of these films. It draws on ing warm and very, very hungry. This little film form her life through the magic of Julia many of their tropes and whips them together from the director renowned for his big-ticket Child’s recipes. These characters overcome with a dollop of New Orleans jazz, Latin dance outings like Iron Man follows in the tradition great odds with determination, spirit, a little music, Facebook updates and Twitter feeds, of Chocolat (directed by Lasse Hallstrom, love from food critics, a friendly chef or two making it a delectable all-American concoc2000), Julie and Julia (by Nora Ephron, 2009), and the internet. Their stories are ones that in- tion about the indomitable human spirit. And Woman on Top (by Fina Torres, 2000), Eat Drink spire you to take that first step, to get off the as Chef Carl, his sous chef Martin and his son, Man Woman (by Ang Lee, 1994), Like Water for edge of a first floor sublet above a grimy pizza 10-year-old Percy, lip sync through the brass Chocolate (by Alfonso Arau, 1992), Babette’s parlour in Queens to do what you’ve always band version of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing Feast (by Gabriel Axel, 1987), and the delight- wanted to do. in their food truck, riding across America, sellful, animated classic Ratatouille (by Brad Bird Food can be used as a device that inter- ing their food dream, we realise that we have and Jan Pinkava, 2007), among others. twines myth, storytelling, culture and com- bought into it as well.

This mix of big studio Hollywood films as munity. In Chocolat Juliet Binoche’s Vianna diya is awandering Bangalore-based Who goes there?

Located near together a burning ghat, Bari chocois a convenient pitkohli stop for spirits writer shreevatsa nevatia well as indie and foreign cinema has a comRocher mixes herBhooter decadent

Institute of Education for Women

W Boo!

late-filled confections in a little French town Kolkata

Bhooter Bari, Neemtala

L

Q R

CH-X _ A

5

BL

cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

Boo! Kolkata Port Trust quarters, Taratala

I

n Taratala, some of Kolkata Port Trust’s abandoned residential quarters seem to wear Bhooter Bari’s red, decrepit look. The rooms are dark and the stairs downright terrifying. As a dog suddenly leaps out of a crumbling building, taxi driver Anil Kumar Das explains why the structure has remained uninhabited since 1998. “Sixteen years ago, a teenage girl came home, opened the fridge, drank some cold water and died right there. Two days later, an acquaintance of hers got a phone call. It was her voice on the other end.” Mohammad Anwar, who has been listening patiently, finally interrupts, “I still see her, sitting on the third floor, wearing a white frock.” Surprisingly, Anwar says he feels no fear. Like much of Kolkata, he is conversant with the nature of this beast.

Girl in waiting The residential quarters of Kolkata Port Trust have been witness to strange things shreevatsa nevatia

CHENNAI

Fort St George The first English fortress in India, built in 1644, St George houses the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and other administrative buildings today. The entrance to this government establishment, when approached from the Fort Railway Station at night, is the stuff of legends. A colonial building, complete with a gateway illuminated by the filament of a dying bulb, this is one place where even the most hardened sceptics take a deep breath. The walls of the entryway leading to the rest of the administrative block, lined with rusted metal frames, hinges, gothic-looking door jambs and locks, are drawn straight out of a Poe novel. Having had the privilege of walking through this stretch in the middle of the night, one can say with certainty — it does make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, especially when you hear the slain commander’s war cry echoing from the past.

Not just any old building Only those with steely nerves dare to visit Fort St George at night v ganesan and the hindu archives

Or maybe, it’s your imagination.

The graveyard of the St Mary’s Church (the oldest Anglican church in India) located inside St George also has its share of spooks. Vipul K Saini, a marketing professional who used to live in the military quarters nearby, says, “Several decades ago, two young men who were best friends dared each other to go to the graveyard in the middle of the night and hammer a nail on a particular tombstone.

The more adventurous of the two ventured first, completed the dare and came back unscathed. His friend though, wasn’t half as lucky. As soon as he had finished hitting the nail on its head for the last time, he turned around to step away from the tombstone.

That’s when he felt something tugging at the loose end of his dhoti near the ankles. Seized by abject terror, he dropped to the ground clutching his heart. Later, when his friend came in search of him, he found him lying cold and dead — the loose end of his dhoti nailed to the foot of the tombstone.”

cover read

BL BL 186

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

A panegyric to paper Dayanita Singh’s latest collection reveals both the colossal decay and the human spirit behind cabinets filled with files

Boo!

C

File Room Dayanita Singh Steidl ₹2,400

harles Dickens invented, in Little Dorrit, the archetypal bureaucratic office, an intricately constructed maze of red tape marshalled by obfuscating clerks. Indians recognise in Dickens’ Circumlocution Office a contemporary portrait of our own mouldering government departments and the pedantic, magisterially incompetent civil servants harboured within, consulting their files, their leaning towers of files. Few of us, perhaps, are inclined to look upon files and paper with much affection, stung by those requests for forms in triplicate.

Counterintuitively, Dayanita Singh’s File Room, her 11th and most recent book, is a panegyric to paper, to the dusty, roach-laden archives to which our histories are consigned, held precariously in abeyance until someone asks and the long-forgotten is temporarily revived. The book, another collaboration with her German publisher Steidl, is typically elegant. Black-and-white gives Singh’s photographs of rotting rooms and rotting paper an austere quality. There is something noble about the Sisyphean effort to maintain these archives in tropical weather, with little budget to speak of, in the face of worms, rats, bats, even industrial-strength fans; something noble about the men and women who do this thankless job of being locked in hour after hour, day after day with the dust and the smell amed after a 19th-century paper Portuguese of decomposing seeping slowly into businessman, John de Monte, the coltheir lungs. ony lies off St Mary’s in death the upscale But forRoad all the and decay evident in neighbourhood Alwarpet. Lined theseof photographs, File with Room is not just, as single-storey Singh’s houses,own all website padlocked and her book, an describes crumbling, the colony of de Monte — donated to the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore in keeping with his will — is the source of many a vaporous story. De Monte’s own past — a son who died early and a wife who was, apparently, mentally unsound — is the likely tinder.

Long-time residents nearby, however, discount these tales as urban legends. V Balaji, a real estate professional tells us, “A well-known industrialist had leased out this property from the church for about 49 years. At that time, it served as the living quarters of his employees and their families.” After the lease ended, it was handed back to its owners. Deepika MV, a communications manager who lives a stone’s throw from the colony and often went for walks in the park adjacent to it, dismisses the rumours too.

But can there be any supernatural smoke without fire? Diego Edwin, a microbiology student, narrates the story he heard from an itinerant tea-seller who used to cycle through this area around midnight. Years ago, he said, there used to be this slow-mannered albino boy who came begging for biscuits and tea near the De Monte Colony. Often, the locals gave him what they could spare. But one day, a shopkeeper rebuked him and he left the place wailing. Months later, the shopkeeper’s wife had a baby. A child with pale, colourless skin. An albino.

De Monte Colony, Alwarpet

N

elegy. Yes, paper will soon, even in these fusty juxtaposed with a picture of the same sister in archives, be replaced by digitised files but Delhi in 2013, the original photograph of her what cannot be lost is the human spirit of younger self on the wall behind her. Time has which these files are a moving symbol. People passed between the two photographs, been want to leave behind something of who they lost as such never to be recovered, but in the were and how they lived. As Singh says to the look the old woman gives the camera the Swiss art historian and critic Hans Ulrich young woman from half a century ago is still Obrist, in a long interview included in the present. Our faces are palimpsests, traces of book, just “one fact and one file could make the past still evident beneath the lines and such a difference to someone’s life.” She then sagging skin of the present. tells a story about going to the “land record Memory is the spur for Nony Singh the phodepartment, which looked a mess and I tographer, her desire not only to record particthought it would be impossible ular moments for posterity, to find anything there. They but to shape memory, bring orsaid, ‘Tell us your father and der to it. The archivists in grandfather’s addresses’...

Dayanita Singh’s File Room picFrom this they told me that my tures do something similar, Archives, Singh is great-great-grandfather had each organising and shaping saying, are as much been adopted by such-andthe memory vault with which about life as they are such a Hindu family, so I’m not they’ve been entrusted in idioabout death; inside quite the lineage that I thought syncratic, resolutely individual those files are clues to I was, and I said, ‘Stop it, I don’t ways. Memory, of course, is who we are, how we want to know anything more!’” how we keep things alive. got here, who we Archives, Singh is saying, are These files then, ordered so apused to be as much about life as they are parently haphazardly, are about death; inside those files teeming with life, with memoForgotten and forsaken A dilapidated house at thery.

DeThat Montethey Colony ghosh are clues to who we are, how we arebijoy teeming with got here, who we used to be. File life quite literally, as Aveek Sen Room should be read in conjunction with The points out in an essay published in File Room, Archivist, a collection of photographs by Nony is surely not incidental. hisRoom ship in theup waters nearby.

Singh (Dayanita’s mother) released as a book Pictureschored from File show in The Archifor More several months, he towards the end of last year. The bulk of the vist, in theSeaborne background. directly, the last received single letter pictures are of Nony Singh’s family — parents, pictures inhadn’t The Archivist areapictures of thefrom files hisSingh’s wife indining months andatwas driven siblings, husband and children. A picture of under Nony table, the foot of to distraction.

Butthe onumpteen that fateful he aswell-maintained one of her sisters posing Scarlett O’Hara internaher bed. These are files from lawtional of thesuits spiri-she has night — longsince before Nofrom Gone with the Wind in 1962,headquarters for instance, is fought sheChristopher was widowed, tual organisation, located lawsuits in a to landodecided to explore the ideaand of with wheat production spectacularly green belt in land Adyar, shared dreaming in Inception — two ownership. might seem an unlikely contender. gnomes who in lived the baA version of an essay The under Archivist, titled But wait. One of the objectives‘Sea of the nyan tree here appeared in theancapof Files’, is reproduced in File Room, insleep.Singh’s Luringlife him back from society is to investigate thesight unex-intotain’s how Nony became conplained laws of nature and the pow- bythe they assured himtothat if he sumed theedge, documents needed pursue ers latent in man. up Within the idea those of committing suicases in gave court. documents, Even before The Theosophical So- was cide, would receive a letter though, anhe image of her husband shefrom was hispreserve. beloved the day.passion True to ciety came into being though, its to fighting It isvery thenext same their words, letter arrived,her andhusthe grounds, they say, bore witness withtowhich she seeksa to preserve matters paranormal. Among the dog-eared captain lived to tell theof tale. tale band’s photographs hisThe many tales moored firmly here is that of ofbefore the friendly thein banyan girlfriends he metghosts Nony; of here, these the English captain who once tree in Adyar. dry anlegal documents and photos of a dapper man dancing with blondes, is her husband.

Not that paper should be confused with life itself, which is why Nony gives up on her lawsuits before it consumes her life completely and that of her children.

Dayanita Singh does not fetishise paper in File Room. She is aware of its limitations. What she is celebrating is its tactility, its odours, its perishability. The vulnerability of paper, a little like that of humans, feels somehow appropriate as a medium on which to record human action and memory. There is poetry in these fetid storerooms with their delicately poised heaps of paper and Singh — who with her recent retrospective at The Hayward and her inventive ‘Museum Bhavan’, mobile collections of her voluminous work, is an artist at the height of her career — records that poetry ironically for posterity. As for digital files, surely nothing could be more prosaic.

Q R

The Theosophical Society, Adyar

T

ND-X _ A

shougat dasgupta is a freelance Rooted in myth The banyan tree at The Theosophical Society in Adyarjournalist is said tobased harbour Sisyphean effort Dayanita Singh’s photographs tell of an inept bureaucracy and individual battles dayanita singh in Delhi m karunakaran friendly spirits

7

BL

cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

MUMBAI

Sanjay Gandhi National Park

A Boo!

Close encounters Couples seek privacy at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, undettered by the tales of leopards or ghosts paul noronha

t first glance, there’s nothing seemingly sinister or spooky about Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP). Near the entrance, a group of hikers fasten their shoelaces. Inside, a bunch of college kids playing hooky settle down to a midweek picnic. And even deeper in the forest, couples seek refuge in the heavy foliage. But if the caretakers here are to be believed, there’s more to this image than meets the eye.

Ram Moghe (name changed) has been a watchman at the park for eight years, taking over from his father, who had served for 40 years. He says, for old-timers like him, colliding with bhatakti aatmas (roving souls) is par for the course. At Gandhi Tekdi, a dome-like structure where Moghe is often sent on night duty, he hears a woman screeching at the top of her voice every now and then. But that’s not what spooks him most.

In the past, he has tried to follow her voice, but has never caught a glimpse of her. When he hits his laathi to shoo her away though, Moghe claims, the yelling stops abruptly. He can sense her running away, her invisible presence retreating into the darkness. There are times when the guard wakes up to find himself a couple of feet away from his original position, sometimes teetering close to the edge of the elevated Tekdi. Moghe is certain he’s not hallucinating. “It is not just me. Many security guards have been witnessing this for years. We’ve tried complaining to the authorities but nobody believes us. It scares us sometimes to do the night shift all alone,” he says.

Over the years, SGNP has seen the deaths of many visitors — cases of suicide, drowning and leopard attacks.

Moghe believes it’s natural for a place with a bloody past to have unhappy spirits lurking around. One such hotspot for accidents is Kakar Bhatti, a waterfall within the park where tourists like to go for a swim. As I follow watchman Krishna Pande (name changed) down a marshy path, he narrates tales of swimmers drowning to death before his eyes. “Sometimes the water isn’t even that deep, but every other year there will be one major accident. Now they say there is some spirit down there that sucks people into the water,” says Pande.

Worli Sea Face

F

ilmmaker Reema Kagti says the germ of the idea for Talaash (2012) came into being when writerdirector Zoya Akhtar had a brush with the supernatural at the Worli Sea Face. Akhtar was driving down that stretch late at night with a couple of friends, when out of the blue a woman appeared in front of her car. Worried that they had run her over, the group rushed out of the car to help, but the woman had vanished into thin air.

A sceptic, Kagti was unconvinced when Zoya narrated the incident to her. So much so that she ribbed her friend about it. “I just couldn’t believe it. But then Zoya doesn’t lie,” she says. Kagti’s views on the paranormal remain unchanged, yet she admits that while researching the film she met other residents in the area who claimed to have been tricked by a mysterious woman. Two years after it was released, people still call her to share their ‘Talaash moment’.

Twilight zone The sun goes down at the Worli Sea Face shashi ashiwal With inputs from Priyanka Kotamraju and Sibi Arasu (Delhi), Shreevatsa Nevatia (Kolkata), Bijoy Bharathan (Chennai) and Mohini Chaudhuri (Mumbai).

watch cover

BL BL 16 8

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Grace and grit The courthouse of Mallarpur

A practitioner of the ancient martial form Kalaripayattu reveals its sweet kind of pain

Boo!

E O

very Tuesday and Thursday morning, at around 9.30, I ask myself existential questions. This is the time I get back home after an hour-and-a-halflong class of Kalaripayattu. Once I have braced myself for the ascent up a flight of stairs to my apartment winced into a softin seat, I wonurand story is set in Bengal, a small der, oftenvillage aloud, why I continue to put called Mallarpur.

It’s myself just through the swollen knees, aching mus20km away from thethe tantric shrine cles and of the sometimes Tarapith, whereexcruciating the goddess pain.

Tapay for that pain,” mother reminds ra“And is worshipped.

Tara is themy second of the Daevery time, over same,Mahavidyas (10the phone.

Great Wisdoms), Kalaripayattu not a form yoga.

It isn’t unquenchable andiseternal like a of star.

Tarapith either, or contemporary dance, or anyis karate a centre of tantric learning and activity, thingpeople else anyone tempted to they drawbelieve parallels where bring is those whom It is among oldest martial art forms towith. be possessed to bethe exorcised. in and can be traced innow mythology As the youworld drive to Mallarpur, off the busy to Parashurama.

After reclaiming land from highway, you will see a grand old ruin domthe Arabian Sea to create thearound. realm ofThis Kerala, inating the landscape for miles is the sage isBaari supposed haveHouse. established 108 the Kacheri or the to Court Built in kalaris — the traditional 21x42ft must mud have pit in the late 18th century, this building which Kalaripayattu practised. like in been stunning in its isheyday.

As Much you enter yoga, its martial origins in mythrough a once grand, butare nowshrouded rusted metal thology and mystery. gate, you come into the front lawn, about 50 is said tolike have givenspider, birth to yardsKalaripayattu long. At the end of it, a giant martial arts such asAkarate andhouse. kung fu. If the sits the Kacheri Baari. haunted latter areasoutright fighting KalariIn 1759, Mir Qasim rodetechniques, through his fapayattu looks a dance, lethal during ther’s realm, he more came like across a Rajasthani sadbut simply when performhupractice, sitting under a treegorgeous and meditating along edbanks on stage. the of the Ganga at Murshidabad. Qasim wanted to be the nawab and asked the sadhu when it would come to pass. The sadhu laughed and said, “Since you are in such a hurry, this will happen within a month.” Lo and behold! the British, who had brought his father Mir Jafar to the throne, replaced the father with the son within a month. The new Nawab went to the sadhu, bowed his head, and gave him three estates in return at Birbhum (West Bengal) and Munger (Bihar) and

rocky singh

“It is difficult to explain what Kalaripayattu interest and join classes, says Mullaratt. is, you have to experience it,” says Ranjan MulPopular culture gives the martial art form a laratt, my guru at the Kalari Academy of Per- boost, albeit a dubious one. The Malayalam forming Arts in Bangalore. At a recent event to film Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, which tells of mark 15 years of the institution, Mullaratt’s the legendary warriors Chandu and Unniyarstudents defy the laws of gravity and the limi- cha, used Kalari extensively as did Kamal Hastations the body Bangladesh. to jump andThe twist, bend and Jessore in of present-day sadhu, san’s Tamil Indian, which glorifies marma eyes, and film swung her legs while looking at crawl. They(celibate), fight withadopted swords, odd-shaped a and Brahmachari descend- him vidya and its potential with a cocked head to as kill shethrough hummedpressure a sad wooden weapons the lethal the tune. ants and served well and the people in hisurumi, charge on aHe marma vitalthat point. ask if we can told or them she“People had a menacing, whip-like sword which, unless wield- almost asflexible did his sons.

But his grandchildren became teachcrazed that inlook a week,” says Mullaratt. ask if it on her face and thatI there ed with can decapitate was drunk withfierce powerconcentration, and the good life. is possible to kill usingabout marma vidya, the She study something strange her mouth. the one wielding Intoxicated, they it! rode through their lands, constantly moved of the 108 sensitivecircular points moin the it in a strange event showcases, and The abducted any and allamong the women they tion and he stared, human body.

“Theaway. knowledge unable to look He felt of otherdesirable. sequences, the women Ashtavadifound These were brought an aura of malevolence. the marmaShe points canatbe used stared him al-to eight movements thatand emu-made to live most as if she wished tovu the—Kacheri Baari forcibly both heal a person and cause to do him harm and asinKalaripayattu is notrooted a jury,” late asthe rooster, there nautch girls.snake, Those horse, who complained I am told.

It is the stage he stood to the spot in fear, shelast slowly form of yoga.

It isn’t elephant, lion, wildwho boarbore and this agony smiled and disappeared disappeared, andcat, those in Kalaripayattu after into thintraining, air. He could or sleepthe Graceful the moveinpeacock. silence spent theirasmiserable youth inkarate this either, urumi. no longer well as she would come in his contemporary dance ments are, that theyhad remind me of a centre hellish home now become of dreams comewent to class and scareSeveral him. Aspeople the weeks by,to the weeks and of difficulty I had in members he wasted away debauchery sin. Their family improve balance and and stamina, died within three moving muscles previously un- paid off or months. who came to save them were either strength. Even as it retains its traused till as they I wasleft; learning to tread beaten many disappeared like the ditional moves, full-body The other one, they say, is alsothe angry.

She the length the enslaved, classroom,raped and wears a white sari women who ofwere workout ensures that with flowers in her hairKalariand bent likeKacheri the lion.

Theybore make it look so easy. tortured.

Baari silent witness to lashes payattu inher. a modern setting. out remains at anyonerelevant who sees Vinod BahaBritish banned it all.The In time, the power andKalaripayattu fortune of Mir when Qa- dur, Dancers learnwatchman, it for added grace. the night lives nearMovement the entheyfamily arrivedwas in Kerala, well aware how dangersim’s squandered, and the de- trance artistes learn balance rigour in acan small room.

As he and his wifefrom slept it. ous it could be even without weapons.

Mulla- one scendants moved away, leaving this once Strands are incorporated into contemponight,ofheitwas suddenly awakened by the ratt tells me his guru learned Kalaripayattu in sound grand home deserted. rary performance arts.falling.

Much As likehea language, of steel utensils opened secret, likeBhandari, many others during the ban, using Kalaripayattu Mahadev the grandits changing hisimbibes eyes, hefrom saw her standingenviat coconut in lieu of swords.

Post-Inde- ronment tothe son of thefronds last accountant to accommodate newer head of his bed,derivations, looking pendence, is yet tostill regain the popularity it all the whiledown serve in thisit house, lives retaining itsBefore ancient at him. heidiom. could reenjoyed during the with Cholapasand Chera reign, here.

He tells this story As for me, after years practising act, shesome leapt15on his of chest and Kalari warriors, mostly from the Nair heard sionwhen and conviction. yoga, the possibility of pain is what pinned him to the bed.draws He re-me I distinctly the community, were employed by kings Another resident, 54-year-old tofeet push mymembers limits, likenot the translucent being ablewings to soundand of bare to fight, death, tothe of Ashok Roy,chieftains remembers whenoften he tillclimbing the dragonfly burning at the as edges of a move or even breathe she sat stairs disputes ofbehind their me was 10 or 12 years old,settle somethe men flame. It is about bodyher burning in a battle on histhe chest, hair wild.

She employers.

Yet, where the mind came to excavate and convert take pain lookedwins. angryYou and he the closed hisbethrough word of cause thereeyes, Kacheri Baari into a rice mill. is joyunable in looking downupon the mounto look her mouth, people tain that you Soon after they started digging have just The prayview is frightful face,climbed. and started continue to take fabulous, the the foundations, there was a sudairThe fresh and the soul smiling. ing. weight then slowly liftden commotion. One of the labourers had un- ed off his chest. His wife next to him slept deepa bhasthi is a Bangalore-based writer earthed human skulls and bones. One was peacefully through it all. Bahadur claims he almost complete and the others in pieces. sees the apparition every few weeks, and closAshok and the other boys recall the con- es his eyes and prays. As long as he doesn’t fusion that followed, and the whiten- stare at her, she goes away. ess of the skulls, before they were I spent a night alone at Kacheri Baari. The chased away by the contractor. Ev- villagers say that it’s safe for women and only eryone in the village believes men are attacked, but I never saw either of the they were the skeletons of the women. I never heard the sounds of the payal, women who disappeared in the most common of the hauntings. As I the Baari. climbed up the stairs above the place where Most of them believe the the skeletons had been discovered, I distinctly skeleton belonged to the one heard the sound of bare feet climbing the they dread seeing most. Their stairs behind me. I turned and shone my flashgrandparents told stories of light at the sound, and there was nothing the unfortunate ones who saw there. her. She still lives at the Kacheri As I sat in the main room of the Baari at Baari. Many in the village claim night, I felt a sense of unease, an aura of hatred to have heard the sounds of her and anger. I felt a negative energy and a great payal (anklets). She appears rarely, sadness that I was unable to explain. More and those who are unfortunate than once I thought I heard someone humenough to see her, die within ming a low sad song, but I can’t be certain. three months of the sighting.

The events that took place here are tragic.

She is the harbinger of doom. The villagers believe the spirits of the girls live Her last victim was returning in that house and will live there till someone from work and decided to take a finally brings them peace. I hope it happens, shortcut through the lawns of even though no one knows how, and I do hope the home. His attention was sud- it happens soon, because I, for one, believe denly drawn to a movement on that they are still there. Go, see for yourself. the wall and there she sat. He told the villagers that she rocky singh is the host of India’s Most Haunted on was pretty with dark hair NDTV Good Times

PARTHA PRATIM SHARMA

At Kacheri Baari in Bengal, scars run deep, and the air hangs heavy with tales of persecution

Q R

Q R

ND-X _ A

courtesy kalari academy of performing arts

BL

cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

No bungalow for bhoot As we grow in number and grab every inch of land we can, there is little wilderness — or plain imagination — left for ghosts to haunt

Boo!

G

hosts thrived in the age of leisure: The snoozy afternoons, lengthening dusks and whispering nights.

Just as you cannot enjoy the music of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan in a hurry, you could not hope to spot a ghost in haste. It was an aesthetic experience choreographed with operatic virtuosity. It required a patient mind, a fertile imagination and, above all, an uncanny ability to be alive to the surroundings. The ghost usually staged its entry with an acoustic overture. The wind sighed, sibilant echoes followed your footsteps and the door creaked with a lacerated cry. Or was it just a fearful you curating a soundscape out of sundry noises?

You could never tell. Soon, the drama began.

The leaves which were cheerfully waving in the wind started gesticulating wildly. Was that a white saree behind that pillar or just a splinter of light from the faraway road? That doubt fled as the ghost began unpacking its repertoire of dramatic acts. It could access your deepest fears and take on an appearance that spoke to them: an old ghoul, a pretty girl in wedding finery, a witch with white hair or a bloody-eyed vampire.

The pride of place the ghost had in our daily life was a pointer to our limitless capacity to imagine. More than a haunted house, it was the story, which beautifully swelled with each telling, that the ghost inhabited. The death of the ghost indicates our growing inability to imagine. We have ceded imagination to technology, which is getting smarter by the day. It is taking away from us our art of telling stories. It has made us passive consumers. Cinema details the story down to the tiniest pixel and leaves nothing to imagination. Earlier, we co-created every novel. The writer made broad

strokes, which were cues for us to fill in our we grow in number, we crowd them out by reown colour, put together our own setting and claiming land from the wilderness. Straight flesh out our own characters. In the age of cin- roads that cut at right angles offer no drama of ema and TV, we are no longer the active stake- the scary chase one imagined in curling streets. There is no space for ghosts in our flooholders in the creative process.

Our belief in ghosts marked us out as cre- dlit lives under CCTV cameras. The State and ative people who could piece together from market control space and colonise time. There random data a spectral presence. As our imag- are very few places that remain cut off from ciination dulls, we are less likely to create our ties, and with your smartphone you are never own gestalt of the world — we miss the man in alone or fully available.

As science disenchanted the world by exorthe moon, the woman in the cigarette smoke and the hooded figure left on the crumbling cising the ghost, it not only left us less human but also created a new enchantwall by peeling plaster. We have ed, magical world: The button on killed the ghost as we knew it for your phone throbs and lights up thousands of years. when you press it, Google eerily The ghost was the tip of our completes your half-formed sensubmerged social unconscious, There is no space for tences, and the ex from a longand also the valve for our collecghosts in our floodlit lost past inexplicably pops up on tive guilt over an innocent murlives under CCTV your Facebook among People dered or a woman violated. It cameras You May Know. was the necessary double of the The belief in ghosts is a belief civilisational order, like the junthat nothing ever dies. Every degle the city carried on its fringes letion of life lingers as a spectral or the ruins hidden in the deep folds of mohallas. The ghost arose from our trace in some nano corner of the hard disk of own heart of darkness. In the west, ghost the universe. When it’s aware of its unfulfilhunting and conducted tours to haunted sites ment, it returns to bang on the doors of the are a tourist attraction but, more importantly, RAM that runs the visible world. Ghosts were they are an archaeology of our ancient cultur- part of a culture which believed people come from somewhere and go somewhere. It was a al apprehensions.

Even as storytelling, the haunt of ghosts, pe- continuous world. Science offers a truncated ters out in the crowd of information and reality of beginnings and endings. The sonews, we are also wiping out the landscape called scientific temper denudes us of our vifrom which they emerged: the desolate and tal irrationality and denies us our fancies, imthe unclaimed. That babool round the corner, pressions and subjective truths.

Science has spread a culture of sanity that the narrow street that slithered through tall, damp buildings, and the abandoned houses pathologises the beautiful mind. that looked like forlorn mausoleums. Ghosts are definitely the oustees of development. As dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based journalist

Q R

shutterstock

9

talk cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

BL

14 10

Residential spooks Boarding schools — rich in imagination and impressionable minds — are the perfect home for restless old men, headless boys and women in white

I

t was a cold dark night. As nights in hill stations are wont to be.

The clatter of dinner plates had faded. A girl suddenly buckled over, clutching her stomach. Charu sighed and looked across the dining hall. She knew the drill. As prefect she would have to escort the ailing girl to the hospital. It wasn’t just any old hospital. In Lawrence School, Sanawar, the hospital sat atop a hill at the end of a 20-minute walk. She left the dining hall, held the girl’s clammy hand and walked up the winding moonlit path to the clinic. The nurse examined the girl and declared that she must be admitted. Which meant Charu would have to walk back alone.

Steeling her nerves, she started down the hill at a brisk pace. All she could hear was the wind in the deodar trees and the crunch of leaves underfoot.

As she turned a bend in the road, she saw an old woman sitting on a rock.

She quickened her pace. The old “So the message of the film is that it’s bethe studio is full of babies with woman ing upraised as a woman, may have been her handwhich and seemed moustaches. Some are crawling toadded later by her. gay She people.

Currently call out after started run- we are ter to have five children instead of 100?” on the floor. A few are taking naps. ning. focusing on before family she planning.”

“As the case of Pandu demonstrates, such But not noticed that Others are being burped by their the woman “So thishad filmlittle will avoid condoms potlis tied to heraltogeth- things are often in the hands of the gods,” says the director. “Up to five children, we mothers. All of them are wearing the conical thin er?”wrist.

I ask. golden crowns originally popularised by The director shocked. “Please She reached herisdormitory breath-don’t say should let nature take its course. Beyond Amar Chitra Katha. One of them is sitting on less dirty words,” says, “There women and that, some caution is required. We were and in a he cold sweat.

A are friend thinking of introducing Laloo at this point, a chair nearby, sucking his thumb and asked babies We are“Did using simple herpresent. immediately, you see logic watching me thoughtfully. His moustache is the instead of foreign technology. Our old woman?” slightly askew. A cow with a vermillion tilak slogan is ‘If you have many The old woman wastoo said to be a on its forehead stands close by, ready to pro- washerwoman. children, someYears of them are had sat ago, she vide milk on demand. The air is rich with the down bound evil.’ ontoa be rock at aDhritahairpin bend smell of fresh cow dung. rashtra wasof unable to her feet. with bundles clothes by “We are producing a series of films based She practise self-control. asked for help.

And no one ofon learnings from the Mahabharata,” says fered Widespread destruction to carry her load. She waited the director, “Women should remain secure- and was the result.

Whereas in passed waited.

No one came. She ly draped at all times. Gambling is evil, ex- away the case of spot Pandu, his sat fivethere at the andallhas cept during Diwali. Maternal uncles should since, children were virtuous, alawaiting a kind soul. Or body. be viewed with suspicion. Of course, some though theschools twins were slight- lend Boarding naturally bits will be modified, such as Arjuna dress- themselves ly lacking in topersonality.” stories of the unexplained and incomprehensible.

These self-contained Dear Sir/Madam, worlds, often cut off from distractions, Since youurban are from Jullundur, are I am unable rife imagination and imaginings. to in make out whether you are a man or a With someYou of have the leading boarding woman. also neglected to mention schools ofof the country over a century the age your son. Without proper inputs, old, can sure to find it isyou hard forbe me to help you.resident In management ghosts of restless parlance, this isfounders, known asunhappy ‘garbage in, garchildren and,and of Icourse, in to your bage out’, am notwomen referring white sarees, dwelling cooking, or your wife’s,within as the these case may be. walls.

Nothing cansince be confirmed andis paying Nevertheless, The Hindu n news that has been called ‘a gamenothing cantry beto denied. me, I will reply. If your son is a toddler, changer’ by Competition Success Review, With is no thecause boundary between there for concern.

If he is an adoMaharashtra has announced that govpranks incidents, imaginings lescent,and you should probably be feeding him ernment departments and educational and reality suitably blurred —adult, the list more.

If he is a full-grown the matter institutions will henceforth reserve 25 per ofisthe unusual is as bound tobe increase. more serious, would the condition of cent seats for candidates of proven merit.

There boy could roll yourwas leg.the Both of who you should takehis tetanus in“Initially we had misgivings about introAlly Subramaniam was born in south-west pupils backTry into at will — jections. tohis gethead your—son interested in ducing merit into government,” said a spoSundarbans, but was blown away by a cyclone and washed up on the shore near Chennai. He was who sent a god-fearing classmate other sports, such as table tennis, or water kesperson for the government, “but seeing adopted by a poor Brahmin family from Tirupur. He ducking for cover and scurrying for contact that they will be in the minority polo, where the chances of physical can answer all your questions. Just send them to Ayyappa The you ‘ghost’ that are less. photos.

Alternatively, could remove all we decided to take a chance. At askallysubramaniam@gmail.com would wax peoples’ his teeth.

Don’t trylegs thisatatnight. home.And Employ the the same time, certain safebest story?

The Hindimedical master practitioner. who ear Ally, my son is a football fan. the services of a qualified guards have been put in don ayou white and bang at for your place. Those with too much Yesterday, while I was disciplining would In case are sheet seeking a remedy piano every Friday theson, 13thI night. leg, as opposed to your would suggest merit will not be considered. him, he bit me in the fleshy part of the These were of the fun tales; application Zandu balmthe fourincitimes a day. A scheme is being worked out my leg. Please suggest a remedy. dents thataffectionately, came with explanations.

Regards, Jaspreet, Jullunder Yours Ally with the US government to proBut there are far more sinister ones. dipankar bhattacharya The Investigator is a fortnightly round-up of all things droll and newsy.

All views personal. personal t@shovonc Ruchira Singh studying at are Army Pub- Really

lic School, in the hill station of Dagshai, was rushing for dinner when the electricity went off. She called out to a friend to wait for her. Her friend using her pet name said, “Wait Kanu, I’ll be there in two minutes.” Her friend came to her and they chuckled about this and that. After that a girl with a torch appeared and asked Singh who she was talking to. “Kittu,” she replied confidently, using her friend’s name. “Kittu and all the other girls are in the common room (a good 100 metres away),” the girl told her. Singh never found out whom she had had that conversation with.

All old boarding schools teem with similar tales that cannot be explained. If Auckland House School in Shimla has a gruff-voiced ghost hollering “Bring back my gold” and a wispySHOVON spirit complaining CHOWDHURY isabout a and author leakychief roof,Truthdigger Mayo College Girls School, of had The Competent Ajmer, its womanAuthority with ghungroos who chun-chuned through the corribut we were unable to findCotton the proper mythdors.

If Bishop School, Shimla, ological context.” has its renowned Lefroy Ghost, Oak “But if Dhritarashtra used protection, Grove schoolhad near Mussoorie had the would we headmistress/spurned not have been able to avoid loverthewho war that devastated the country?”

I ask. and the clip-clopped on high heels “We do not wantwho to get into technical de-who teacher committed suicide, tails,” says peered the director, “Whatthe is important through chapel door. is the underlying whichSchool, is Alumnimoral from principle, Assam Valley that sex is where bad. This washelpfully the thewhole boys’disaster hostel is result of inability control urges. The curbuilt ontoan old Christian graveyard, rent film isreport about family planning.

Thein next of seeing women white film will address the core issue directly. (surprise!) and erudite ghostsItwho will bring out fundamental message flip the through newspapers afterofdark. the Mahabharata through a catchy themeKurThose from Victoria Boys School, song, to beseong, composed Shankar-Ehsaanswearbythat they have heard Loy, exceptfootsteps without — Ehsaan Hopenot of and manLoy. or beast — but fully it willof cure a people.” headless boy. And from St Jo“What isseph’s it goingCollege, to be called?”

I ask.

Nainital, we hear of “Too Much Sexboy is Bad For roams the Eyes,” says the the who the corridors director. murmuring, “I have to do my homework, I have to do my homework.”

My favourite ‘ghost’ story? That would be of the boy who was dared to visit the graveyard in Lawrence School Lovedale and hammer a nail into the tree as ‘evidence’. Spread across 750 acres, the cemetery lies at one end of the campus. The marble graves shine white in the silver moonlight. The gate with ‘Not here risen’waiver written it, creaks in the vide them with of across visa fee.” slightest While raging adolesA wide variety of breeze. new categories are also cent hormones haveofdared to canoounder consideration.

Children the Indian dleare amongst tombstones, cricket team likely to bethese included, along others of theIdol lesswinners, desperate variety do with children of Indian Flipkart nervescard to enter.

The boy sauncustomers,need Citibank holders, IIPM teredgovernors, in. Told himself there of was nothalumni, former musicians the ing toand fear.

Hammered theofnail Jaipur gharana registered users Jee-into the tree.

And turned to leave. vansaathi.com.

However, meritorious stu- But something held his jacket. dents will continue to beAnd theheld it primary tight. new He focus couldn’t area.move. He couldn’t turn.

He died of not fear.conHe had Is the government nailed his own jacket to the tree. (And cerned about legal challengwhere es?have “Notweatheard all,” this saysstory the before?)

Is this true? Is“there’s it not? You spokesperson, 6.5 will never know.seats Only the tombstones per cent reservation for know better.of judges also.” the children dipankar

Boo!

GOVERNMENT TO UTILISE DHRITARASHTRA IN FAMILY PLANNING CAMPAIGN!

T

ASK ALLY

25% RESERVATION FOR MERITORIOUS STUDENTS IN MAHARASHTRA!

I

D

ND-X _ A

nandini nair

BL

watch cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

reincarnation film. (Another great Bengali director, Tapan Sinha explored similar territory with Khudito Pashan in 1960.) The ghost-as-reminder-of-previous-life device became a popular — and quintessentially Indian — trope. In Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Vijay Mishra writes that Indian cinema, by adding reincarnation to the traditional ghost film template, had “presented the gothic with a narrative which its European form never had”.

Though the reincarnation film became a genre in itself, it continued to cross paths with the ghost story, culminating in Farah Khan’s spoof/tribute Om Shanti Om (2007), whose storyline resembled Madhumati’s enough for Bimal Roy’s daughter, Rinki Bhattacharya, to consider legal action against its makers.

By the end of the ’60s, directors were looking for new ways to present onscreen ghosts.

The dance of the spirits in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) was the trippiest sequence Satyajit Ray ever committed to celluloid. And in 1975, Mani Kaul, who had already made the pioneering experimental film Uski Roti, took the bold step of dissociating the ghost film from both the melodrama and the thriller. Duvidha is a rare film that acknowledges the everyday nature of spirits in Indian culture; it treats the tale of a ghost falling in love with a woman and taking the form of her husband as matterof-factly as possible.

Amol Palekar remade it as Paheli in 2005, retaining the Rajasthan setting but adding stars (Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji) and songs. It’s a skilfully constructed film, very charming in parts, but it must be said that the severe, stark Duvidha is the real masterpiece.

Starting out in the ’70s at the other end of the spectrum from Kaul were the Ramsay brothers, pioneers of Indian B-grade schlock This, of course, is now a familiar scenario — horror.

Theirreasons films were and infor mindless — by tacky political orlurid; social orthe collusion between opponents of free stead of bhoots, had darindas andthat churels ganisations withthey a history of violence, anspeech, the police and politicians who side and daayans.

The Ramsays’ success Purana ger has become a reflex reaction to all—protest. with them either actively or through calculat- Mandir wasinthe second highest grosser Protest, fact, is invaluable becauseof it 1984 gened silence. The message from the establish- — meant that This Indian spectre erates debate. column is acinema protest.was Rement is clear: some subjects are best avoided. pushed into an books exploitation ghetto.

(Mainviews skewering and films are a protest The result has been what Bollywood director stream whole lot they betagainst ghost their movies qualityweren’t or the apositions Shoojit Sircar describes as increased “self-ban- ter inWhen the ’80s: Dimple Kapadia’s elastic hand take. reports emerged in 2005 that the ning”. Last year, Sircar’s Madras Cafe starring routine the 1988 remake of and Beesthe SaalAll Baad is Eye BankinAssociation of India India John Abraham was not released in Tamil Nadu aOphthalmic strong contender for filed the PILs weirdest BollySociety had against the despite being cleared by the Central Board of wood of all time.) Gulzar tried to story injectof a Urmilascene Matondkar-starrer Naina — the paranormal kicks — the gothic thriller, the touch Film Certification.

Theatre owners were just of class witha Lekin... but itand took a woman who gets corneal(1991), transplant is first of theTamil Indiannationalist ghost movie. too iteration scared after groups Ram Gopal Varma’s (1992), which possessed by the spirit ofRaat the donor — many of The first classic ghost film made in the brought slickus claimed it demeaned the strugproduction anYet, A-list laughed. I values confessand I did. recountry was Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal in 1949. It cast to pulpy actions gles of Sri Lankan Tamils. horror, to restore ghostdrew mofrom the the doctors formed template for future On thethe contrary, Madras Cafe gothic ro- vie to a reasonable level to of respectability.

Since attention the fact that supermances: fromcommentary the hero inheriting was a telling on the a haunted then, Varma has proved a committed director stitions and misinformation are haveli toThe the“self-banning” reincarnation angle and a futilitydown of war. and producer of horror cinema, even though the reasons why many Indians The protests were lovely in a didn’t singing start ghost with dressed its release he seems to grow louder, notorbetdon’t donate their organs, acbizarre considering white The scenes where ter, each production. though.sari.

It began at the writing ceptwith transplants.

With You, Without Ashok Kumar through The ghost film, which stage. The filmwanders is a fictionalised Ourcomedy opposition then can’t be You leans almost the houseofatIndia’s night listening to a dates back but to Mehmood’s account intelligenceto protest, to enemies ofBhoot a dientirely towards its voice sing efforts Aayegaand aayega aaneBungla grew popular in gathering covert opversity (1965), of opinions, and to imThe song sequence female protagonist, wala haveinvolving the qualitythe of aLTTE beautithe ’90sorand aughts:threats there was erations in plicit explicit of for Aayega who is aaayega Sri ful nightmare.

(German Chamatkar (1992), the that Malayalam the years leading up to former violence. Do read again aanewala the Lankan has Tamil cameraman Joseph Wirsching psychological-thriller-comedy Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s as- quality of a beautiful please: implicit or explicit threats deserves a lotRecent of the history credit.) Itis Manichitrathazhu — a big sassination. of violence. When(1993) Dinanath Banightmare isn’t it sure is ghostly. enough hitShiksha to be remade in Tasuchscary, a hot but potato in this country tra of the Bachao AndoDespite sludgy mil, Telugu,sends Bengali and Hindi to — though, that LTTEpacing is calledand LTFan in lan Samiti legal notices increasingly demented narraand thehe ghost of Mahatma Gandthe film; and Rajiv’s character is not called Ra- publishing houses, is within his rights to tive, was a hit.

It catapulthimajor in Lage Raho while MunnacapituBhai jiv, heMahal is addressed throughout as just “ex-PM”. do so. Yet, two publishers edStage to fame Madhubala and a (2006).

Oscar Wilde’s TheinCanterville Ghosthave was two aof16-year-old the “self-banning” happened lating to his demands the past year, little-known singer his called Lata Mangeshkar. as Bhoothnath 2008.

The sequel, rewhen Sircar showed script around in 2006- adapted done so publicly citing in a fear of violence.

Batra Mangeshkar later recalled how music in have April made this year, incorporated an elec07. Actors and producers wereMahal’s unwilling to leased may not open threats to either of director Khemchand and for Amrohi and record a Honey Singh number. touch it. “The first actorPrakash I approached John tion them,plotline but the track of organisations he went out of role theirsaid way the to make Aayega aanewacomplain thatsupport Party with the Abraham’s subject is too sensi- Old-timers is affiliatedmay to and the open he has la sound genuinely one of their in- Bhoothnath is no Aayega butenough Bhoothtive,” recalls the haunting director — who ultimately from the Vishwa Hinduaanewala, Parishad are structions for her to end walkoftowards the nath did collect ₹30 crore at the doshelved thewas project till the the Lankan to getReturns any ordinary citizen worried. mike as she sang. The song was so popular it mestic office.of Add to this the paranormal civil war in 2009.

In thebox absence protection from the State, ended thethis trend theaplaintiveof feel recent films liketoTalaash, Ek Let’sup belaunching clear here: isofnot column leanings most then compelled give in.Aatma, In a naly singing spectre in cinema, from Ka- Thi Goynar Baksho, and seems against protests.

If Indian freedom of expression tionDaayan of rawand nerves, there can be noitgreater hin deep jale kahin dil to Yaara seeli it seeli.

Indian cinema giving up must include the right to offend, must also unlikely threat tothat art, academia and awill freebe press.

Bimal the Roy,right editortoofprotest.

Mahal, went on to include Liberals in make India the ghost anytime soon. his pioneering ghost film in 1958. are own so disgusted with the repeated callsLike for anna mm vetticad is the author of The Adventures bhatiaFilm is Assistant Editor, Time Out Delhi of an Intrepid Critic t@annavetticad Mahal, Madhumati is aacademic ghost story that’s a uday bans on artistic and works — also often

Ghosts whoofact The nature dissent FILM FATALE

Boo!

anna mm vetticad

As mythologies faded onscreen, the ghost movie gave If freedom of expression include thechills rightand to offend, Indian audiences their fill must of supernatural thrills it must also include the right to protest. But should it be at the cost of “self-banning” in films, art, academia?

S

he: “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the Sinhala Army?... My two brothers were killed by the Army. My parents brought me here so that I wouldn’t get raped by someone like you…”

He: “I didn’t ask if your brothers were terrorists. I didn’t ask anything about you. I didn’t tell you anything about myself, because it doesn’t matter any more.”

She: “It matters to me. My brothers were not terrorists. They were innocent schoolboys.”

He: “I didn’t kill your brothers. I was doing a job. Then I quit.”

Was it this conversation between a married couple in Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage’s With You, Without You that irked unnamed groups in Tamil Nadu? We do not know. What we do know is that the critically acclaimed Sinhalese-Tamil film — a cutting critique of the impact of war on ordinary people — was withdrawn from theatres in Chennai this fortnight, after threatening calls from persons claiming to represent Tamil interests.

The protests were bizarre considering that With You, Without You leans almost entirely towards its female protagonist who is a Sri Lankan Tamil. A representative of the film’s Indian distributor, PVR Director’s Rare, confirms that the Chennai police refused to provide security to theatres screening it and advised them to withdraw it. A letter from co-producer Rahul Roy and others to Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has received no response as this column goes to press.

B

In a different spirit Neither melodrama, nor thriller, Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (1975) is a rare film in the ghost genre; (right) Amol Palekar remade it as Paheli (2005) with Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji in the lead afp

Whose interest is it, anyway? Protestors tear a poster of Madras Cafe in Mumbai last year ap/rajanish kakade; and (top) a still from With You, Without You, which was recently withdrawn from theatres in Chennai

efore ghosts, there were gods. The mythological was the first distinctively Indian movie genre, fusing history and legend with a social message. Like the Biblical films of Hollywood, they were also an excuse to unleash some spectacular visual effects — young Krishna emerging from the lake atop a snake in Shree Krishna Janma; the ascent to heaven in a chariot in Sant Tukaram. By the 1940s, Indian viewers were used to otherworldly phenomena on the big screen. As the mythological began to fade, a new genre supplied audiences with

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

11 15

cover

Boo!

saturday, july 5, 2014

The wall

12

A Bengali short story that leaves you asking, what lurks on the other side… of the phone, of the wall

T

PARTHA PRATIM SHARMA

BL

he phone rang.

Shovonlal was surprised. He had been under the impression the phone was out of order. He had been sitting outside in the garden, from where he heard the phone ring. Who was telephoning at this hour? He didn’t feel like getting up to answer. He was in fact afraid to enter his room.

Who could possibly be telephoning him now?

Was there anyone here in this town who might want to? He had gotten a phone only because of his urge to speak to Sujata. It was only through the phone that he had some contact with Sujata once in a while — and that too, never at Sujata’s initiative. If Shovonlal phoned her, she did pick up the receiver to speak to him.

Apparently her mother stood beside her all the time. But at least he got to hear her voice.

This was enough for Shovonlal’s satisfaction.

It was for Sujata that he had moved to Bihar.

The only consolation was that he was near her.

The phone kept ringing.

Suddenly Shovonlal wondered whether it might be Sujata who was calling. But Sujata never telephoned. Besides, she wasn’t even here — she had gone to Munger the day before.

Was she back already? She had said she would be away for seven or eight days. Maybe she was back.

Shovonlal went in. The phone stopped ringing as soon as he entered. Still, he picked up the receiver.

‘Hello. . . who is it?’

No response.

‘Hello. . . hello. . .?’

No response.

Putting the receiver back in its cradle, he returned to the garden.

He thought about Sujata. He had known her since childhood. They had gone to the same

school, passing their matriculation exams together. Then he had gone away to college in Calcutta. He used to write to Sujata from there.

Had Sujata kept those letters? She had told him on the phone that she had burnt them. He had some of her letters too. Simple, restrained letters, but even in them, within those unassuming words, Shovonlal used to seek deeper significance. She would never write, ‘I am well.’ She would write, ‘I am in good health.’

Shovonlal used to imagine hidden meaning in there. ‘I am in good health’ meant she wasn’t cheerful, she was miserable. Things like that couldn’t be written openly. She wrote, ‘You must be happy with new friends at college in Calcutta.’ She never added, ‘You must have forgotten me.’ That part remained unsaid, but Shovonlal had no trouble reading between the lines. It was her unarticulated statements that held deeper meaning for him. He felt that what she had not said in so many words had actually been conveyed in a far better manner.

To say them would have meant being done with them. Not saying them had placed them in the category of the infinite. They could never end. There was no count of the number of times Shovonlal had read Sujata’s short letters, discovering new meaning in them each time. In one of them, she had written, ‘I hope your studies are going well.’ Shovonlal had savoured the silent mockery in it.

He was rapt in his thoughts of Sujata. The incessant chirping of crickets, the black clouds in the sky with a few stars in the gaps between them, that huge banyan tree amidst the mass of darkness — all of them seemed to be imbued with Sujata. Shovonlal felt that this darkness was just like the darkness that shrouded Sujata’s life. This indefatigable call of the cricket — we hear it every day, but do we ever hear the entreaty it holds within? Do we ever try to understand the essence of the message that gives the darkness its heartbeat? Had we understood Sujata? Had we succeeded in honouring her rare displays of joy, just like the handful of stars amidst the clouds? Had we come to know that banyan tree subtly ensconced in the darkness — so alive, its life-force flowing in its arteries and veins, its joy ex-

pressed in its leaves and buds, its festive identity camouflaged in its silence? We had not.

Just like we had not come to know Sujata either. She had once said, ‘Our freedom is on paper only. The insurmountable wall all around us has only changed its colour from time to time, it has not been dismantled. It remains as insurmountable as before.’

After her mother’s death, the wall had become still more insurmountable. Sujata’s mother liked Shovonlal. She might even have agreed if the subject had been broached. Intercaste marriages were taking place, after all.

But Shovonlal didn’t get the opportunity to talk to her. She died of a heart attack before that. Then Sujata’s father was transferred to Bihar. Shovonlal followed him there. It was impossible for him to stay far away from Sujata. He’d had to rent a house in Calcutta too, just like he was doing here. In fact, rents were lower in this town. Shovonlal would have come even if they had been higher. There was nothing to prevent him, for he had no ties anywhere. Not only did he not have parents or siblings to worry about, he was also not fettered by a job or a profession.

He was a poet, a writer. Had it not been for his father’s bank balance, he would have been in serious trouble. But he was not.

He had moved to this Bihar town six months after Sujata’s father.

He had visited them as soon as he arrived, discovering that Sujata’s father had married again. And he had married, of all persons, Amita, who was Shovonlal’s classmate in college. Not just his classmate, but someone who had fallen in love with him and had wanted to marry him. He had kept her numerous letters for a long time, planning to show them to Sujata. But he hadn’t got the chance. And he had burnt the letters. Who would have imagined that the same Amita would end up as Sujata’s stepmother and guardian. The first time that he

BL

cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

had visited Sujata here at home, he was startled to see Amita. She must have been surprised, too, though she didn’t show it. She had simply disappeared inside the house, half-covering her head. As though she didn’t know him, had never seen him. He had made the proposal of marriage through a letter to Sujata’s father. He still remembered the reply. . .

Dear Shovonlal, You are highly educated. I did not expect a letter like this from you. I love you like a son, and had expected you to think of Sujata like a sister. Moreover, Sujata is the daughter of a Brahmin, while you’re a Vaidya. Vaidyas are trying to establish themselves as Brahmins these days, but society at large has not yet acknowledged that. Sujata’s mother — although she is her stepmother, she is a genuine well-wisher — will never agree to this wedding. When I showed her your letter, she said: if you go ahead with this wedding, I will leave home. Sujata’s mother said something else too — that given your proclivities, it would be best for you not to visit our house any more. My best wishes are with you.

May God give you good sense.

Yours sincerely, Harananda Chatterjee.

The wall was insurmountable indeed. Amita’s advent had made it even more so. It did not take Shovonlal long to fathom why Amita had become so concerned about Sujata’s wellbeing. If she had not been there, he would have been able to persuade Harananda. He had met Harananda one day in the field near Jhau Kuthi. Shovonlal used to visit that desolate spot for a walk every day. It was a huge bungalow set in huge grounds, with a tiled roof. There were long verandas and steps all around the house. And enormous grounds.

Shovonlal loved the place. He went there for a walk every evening. He had told Sujata on the phone, ‘I have no way of visiting you at home.

Can’t you come to Jhau Kuthi on some pretext? I haven’t seen you in so very long a time.’

Sujata hadn’t agreed. A couple of days later he met Harananda in the field near Jhau Kuthi.

‘Still here, Shovon?’

‘That’s right . . .’

‘How long are you planning to stay?’

‘Permanently.’

Harananda was taken aback by his answer.

‘Have you returned to your senses?’ he asked.

‘I had never lost them,’ Shovonlal answered courteously.

‘What I had written to you was not in jest. I will wait for Sujata all my life. If you had considered the whole thing more rationally, you would not have been angry with me.’

Harananda looked at him for a while. Then he said, ‘I had asked Sujata, she isn’t unwilling.

Given the way the wind is blowing in society these days, I would probably have agreed too.

But the problem is with Sujata’s mother. The letter I wrote you was dictated by her. She has threatened to either leave us or to hang herself if this wedding takes place. What can I do?

Let’s see if she changes her mind.’

Shovonlal knew she wouldn’t. He also knew that at this age Harananda would not go against his young wife’s wishes. Shovonlal kept thinking of Sujata. Suddenly he felt someone standing behind him. He rose to his feet quickly — but no, there was no one there. He sat down again. A cold wind whistled. But still he remained sitting. A little later a dog barked.

Shovonlal rose to his feet again, flashing his torch all around. The dog stopped after barking for some time. Then the owls began hooting. They were trying to say something in their rasping voices, which Shovonlal could not understand. He thought they were saying: can’t you see, can’t you see, can’t you see . . .?

What was it that he should see? There was nothing but darkness. He let his tired body slump into his chair. But he couldn’t help feel-

ing someone was moving around — he could sense a presence circulating silently, a gentle smell of hair in the wind. Then everything stopped. Shovonlal lay there like an inanimate object.

The phone rang again.

Shovonlal ran into his room quickly.

‘Hello, is that Sujata? Sujata, yes, how are you?’

‘Come over. We can meet this time . . .’

Sujata’s voice seemed to be coming from a very long distance.

‘Shall I come to your house?’

‘No, come to Jhau Kuthi. You had asked me earlier, I couldn’t go then. Now I have. Come . . .’

‘How did you get to Jhau Kuthi at this hour of the night?’

‘I’ll tell you when you come.’

At Jhau Kuthi, Shovon found Sujata sitting on the steps, alone. He hadn’t spotted her at first, seeing her only after he lit his torch.

‘Sujata?’

‘Yes. The walls around me have been broken, I am free — there are no more impediments.’

In the torchlight Shovonlal could see the joy in Sujata’s eyes.

‘What do you mean, free?’

‘I was in Munger. I died a short while ago, buried under a house. Didn’t you feel the earthquake here?’

‘I did . . .’

‘What about you, then . . .?’

‘No, I am alive.’

‘Then your walls haven’t been broken. How shall we be together then?’

Sujata stretched her arms out. Shovonlal tried to take her hand, but couldn’t. He only touched air, Sujata was flesh and blood no more.

‘How shall we be together then? All my walls have crumbled. But yours haven’t. How shall we be together . . .?’

Sujata sobbed.

‘Tell me how we can be together. You must tell me, Sujata . . .’

‘There. Jump in. Break the walls . . .’

Sujata pointed at the old-fashioned well.

Shovonlal was transfixed.

‘Come with me . . .’

Sujata advanced slowly towards the well.

Shovonlal followed her mechanically.

At the edge, Sujata said, ‘Jump in. Break the walls, get rid of the obstacles . . .’

After a few moments, Shovonlal jumped. banaphool translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha; excerpted from What Really Happened and Other Stories, with permission from Penguin Books, 2010

ND-X _ A

13

talk cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

BL

14 10

Residential spooks Boarding schools — rich in imagination and impressionable minds — are the perfect home for restless old men, headless boys and women in white

I

t was a cold dark night. As nights in hill stations are wont to be.

The clatter of dinner plates had faded. A girl suddenly buckled over, clutching her stomach. Charu sighed and looked across the dining hall. She knew the drill. As prefect she would have to escort the ailing girl to the hospital. It wasn’t just any old hospital. In Lawrence School, Sanawar, the hospital sat atop a hill at the end of a 20-minute walk. She left the dining hall, held the girl’s clammy hand and walked up the winding moonlit path to the clinic. The nurse examined the girl and declared that she must be admitted. Which meant Charu would have to walk back alone.

Steeling her nerves, she started down the hill at a brisk pace. All she could hear was the wind in the deodar trees and the crunch of leaves underfoot.

As she turned a bend in the road, she saw an old woman sitting on a rock.

She quickened her pace. The old “So the message of the film is that it’s bethe studio is full of babies with woman ing upraised as a woman, may have been her handwhich and seemed moustaches. Some are crawling toadded later byher. gay She people.

Currently call out after started run- we are ter to have five children instead of 100?” on the floor. A few are taking naps. ning. focusing onbefore family she planning.”

“As the case of Pandu demonstrates, such But not noticed that Others are being burped by their the woman “So thishad filmlittle will avoid condoms potlis tied to heraltogeth- things are often in the hands of the gods,” says the director. “Up to five children, we mothers. All of them are wearing the conical thin er?”wrist.

I ask. golden crowns originally popularised by The director shocked. “Please She reached herisdormitory breath-don’t say should let nature take its course. Beyond Amar Chitra Katha. One of them is sitting on less dirty words,” says, “There women and that, some caution is required. We were and in a he cold sweat.

A are friend thinking of introducing Laloo at this point, a chair nearby, sucking his thumb and asked babies We are“Did using simple herpresent. immediately, you see logic watching me thoughtfully. His moustache is the instead of foreign technology. Our old woman?” slightly askew. A cow with a vermillion tilak slogan you have many The oldis ‘If woman wastoo said to be a on its forehead stands close by, ready to pro- washerwoman. children, some of them arehad sat Years ago, she vide milk on demand. The air is rich with the down bound evil.’ ontoa be rock at aDhritahairpin bend smell of fresh cow dung. rashtra wasof unable to her feet. with bundles clothes by “We are producing a series of films based She practise self-control. asked for help.

And no one ofon learnings from the Mahabharata,” says fered Widespread destruction to carry her load. She waited the director, “Women should remain secure- and was the result.

Whereas in passed waited.

No one came. She ly draped at all times. Gambling is evil, ex- away the case of spot Pandu, his sat fivethere at the andallhas cept during Diwali. Maternal uncles should since, children were virtuous, alawaiting a kind soul. Or body. be viewed with suspicion. Of course, some though theschools twins were slight- lend Boarding naturally bits will be modified, such as Arjuna dress- themselves ly lacking in topersonality.” stories of the unexplained and incomprehensible.

These self-contained Dear Sir/Madam, worlds, often cut off from distractions, Since youurban are from Jullundur, are I am unable rife imagination and imaginings. to in make out whether you are a man or a With someYou of have the leading boarding woman. also neglected to mention schools ofof the country over a century the age your son. Without proper inputs, old, can sure to find it isyou hard forbe me to help you.resident In management ghosts of restless parlance, this isfounders, known asunhappy ‘garbage in, garchildren and,and of Icourse, in to your bage out’, am notwomen referring white sarees, dwelling cooking, or your wife’s,within as the these case may be. walls.

Nothing can since be confirmed andis paying Nevertheless, The Hindu n news that has been called ‘a gamenothing cantry beto denied. me, I will reply. If your son is a toddler, changer’ by Competition Success Review, With is no thecause boundary between there for concern.

If he is an adoMaharashtra has announced that govpranks imaginings lescent,and you incidents, should probably be feeding him ernment departments and educational and reality suitably blurred —adult, the list more.

If he is a full-grown the matter institutions will henceforth reserve 25 per ofisthe unusual is as bound tobe increase. more serious, would the condition of cent seats for candidates of proven merit.

There boy could roll yourwas leg.the Both of who you should takehis tetanus in“Initially we had misgivings about introAlly Subramaniam was born in south-west pupils backTry into at will — jections. tohis gethead your— son interested in ducing merit into government,” said a spoSundarbans, but was blown away by a cyclone and washed up on the shore near Chennai. He was who sent a god-fearing classmate other sports, such as table tennis, or water kesperson for the government, “but seeing adopted by a poor Brahmin family from Tirupur. He ducking for cover and scurrying for contact that they will be in the minority polo, where the chances of physical can answer all your questions. Just send them to Ayyappa The you ‘ghost’ that are less. photos.

Alternatively, could remove all we decided to take a chance. At askallysubramaniam@gmail.com would wax peoples’ his teeth.

Don’t trylegs thisatatnight. home.And Employ the the same time, certain safebest story?

The Hindimedical master practitioner. who ear Ally, my son is a football fan. the services of a qualified guards have been put in white anda bang at for your place. Those with too much Yesterday, while I was disciplining would In don case ayou are sheet seeking remedy piano every Friday theson, 13thI night. leg, as opposed to your would suggest merit will not be considered. him, he bit me in the fleshy part of the These were of the fun tales; application Zandu balmthe fourincitimes a day. A scheme is being worked out my leg. Please suggest a remedy. dents thataffectionately, came with explanations.

Regards, Jaspreet, Jullunder Yours Ally with the US government to proBut there are far more sinister ones. dipankar bhattacharya The Investigator is a fortnightly round-up of all things droll and newsy.

All views personal. personal t@shovonc Ruchira Singh studying at are Army Pub- Really

lic School, in the hill station of Dagshai, was rushing for dinner when the electricity went off. She called out to a friend to wait for her. Her friend using her pet name said, “Wait Kanu, I’ll be there in two minutes.” Her friend came to her and they chuckled about this and that. After that a girl with a torch appeared and asked Singh who she was talking to. “Kittu,” she replied confidently, using her friend’s name. “Kittu and all the other girls are in the common room (a good 100 metres away),” the girl told her. Singh never found out whom she had had that conversation with.

All old boarding schools teem with similar tales that cannot be explained. If Auckland House School in Shimla has a gruff-voiced ghost hollering “Bring back my gold” and a wispySHOVON spirit complaining CHOWDHURY isabout a and author leakychief roof,Truthdigger Mayo College Girls School, ofhad The Competent Ajmer, its womanAuthority with ghungroos who chun-chuned through the corribut we were unable to find the proper mythdors.

If Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, ological context.” has its renowned Lefroy Ghost, Oak “But if Dhritarashtra used protection, Grove schoolhad near Mussoorie had the would we headmistress/spurned not have been able to avoid loverthewho war that devastated the country?”

I ask. and the clip-clopped on high heels “We do not wantwho to get into technical de-who teacher committed suicide, tails,” says peered the director, “Whatthe is important through chapel door. is the underlying whichSchool, is Alumnimoral from principle, Assam Valley that sex is where bad. This was the thewhole boys’disaster hostel is helpfully result of inability control urges. The curbuilt ontoan old Christian graveyard, rent film isreport about family planning.

Thein next of seeing women white film will address the and core erudite issue directly. (surprise!) ghostsItwho will bring out fundamental message flip the through newspapers after of dark. the Mahabharata through a catchy themeKurThose from Victoria Boys School, song, to beseong, composed Shankar-Ehsaanswearby that they have heard Loy, exceptfootsteps without —Ehsaan Hopenot of and manLoy. or beast — but fully it willof cure people.” boy. And from St Joa headless “What isseph’s it going to be called?”

I ask.

College, Nainital, we hear of “Too Much Sexboy is Bad For roams the Eyes,” says the the who the corridors director. murmuring, “I have to do my homework, I have to do my homework.”

My favourite ‘ghost’ story? That would be of the boy who was dared to visit the graveyard in Lawrence School Lovedale and hammer a nail into the tree as ‘evidence’. Spread across 750 acres, the cemetery lies at one end of the campus. The marble graves shine white in the silver moonlight. The gate with ‘Not here risen’waiver written it, creaks in the vide them with of across visa fee.” slightest While raging adolesA wide variety of breeze. new categories are also cent hormones haveofdared to canoounder consideration.

Children the Indian dleareamongst tombstones, cricket team likely to bethese included, along others of theIdol lesswinners, desperate variety do with children of Indian Flipkart nerves card to enter.

The boy sauncustomers,need Citibank holders, IIPM teredgovernors, in. Told himself there of was nothalumni, former musicians the ing toand fear.

Hammered theofnail Jaipur gharana registered users Jee-into the tree.

And turned to leave. vansaathi.com.

However, meritorious stu- But something held his jacket. dents will continue to beAnd theheld it primary tight. He couldn’t new focus area.move. He couldn’t turn.

He died of not fear.conHe had Is the government nailed his own jacket to the tree. (And cerned about legal challengwhere weatheard es?have “Not all,” this saysstory the before?)

Is this true? Is“there’s it not? You spokesperson, 6.5 will never know.seats Onlyreservation the tombstones per cent for know better.of judges also.” the children dipankar

Boo!

GOVERNMENT TO UTILISE DHRITARASHTRA IN FAMILY PLANNING CAMPAIGN!

T

ASK ALLY

25% RESERVATION FOR MERITORIOUS STUDENTS IN MAHARASHTRA!

I

D

ND-X _ A

nandini nair

BL

watch cover

saturday, july 5, 2014

reincarnation film. (Another great Bengali director, Tapan Sinha explored similar territory with Khudito Pashan in 1960.) The ghost-as-reminder-of-previous-life device became a popular — and quintessentially Indian — trope. In Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Vijay Mishra writes that Indian cinema, by adding reincarnation to the traditional ghost film template, had “presented the gothic with a narrative which its European form never had”.

Though the reincarnation film became a genre in itself, it continued to cross paths with the ghost story, culminating in Farah Khan’s spoof/tribute Om Shanti Om (2007), whose storyline resembled Madhumati’s enough for Bimal Roy’s daughter, Rinki Bhattacharya, to consider legal action against its makers.

By the end of the ’60s, directors were looking for new ways to present onscreen ghosts.

The dance of the spirits in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) was the trippiest sequence Satyajit Ray ever committed to celluloid. And in 1975, Mani Kaul, who had already made the pioneering experimental film Uski Roti, took the bold step of dissociating the ghost film from both the melodrama and the thriller. Duvidha is a rare film that acknowledges the everyday nature of spirits in Indian culture; it treats the tale of a ghost falling in love with a woman and taking the form of her husband as matterof-factly as possible.

Amol Palekar remade it as Paheli in 2005, retaining the Rajasthan setting but adding stars (Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji) and songs. It’s a skilfully constructed film, very charming in parts, but it must be said that the severe, stark Duvidha is the real masterpiece.

Starting out in the ’70s at the other end of the spectrum from Kaul were the Ramsay brothers, pioneers of Indian B-grade schlock This, of course, is now a familiar scenario — horror.

Theirreasons films were tacky and infor mindless — by political or lurid; social orthe collusion between opponents of free stead of bhoots, had darindas andthat churels ganisations withthey a history of violence, anspeech, the police and politicians who side and daayans.

The Ramsays’ success Purana ger has become a reflex reaction to all—protest. with them either actively or through calculat- Mandir wasinthe second highest because grosser of Protest, fact, is invaluable it 1984 gened silence. The message from the establish- — meant that This Indian spectre erates debate. column is acinema protest. was Rement is clear: some subjects are best avoided. pushed into an books exploitation ghetto.

(Mainviews skewering and films are a protest The result has been what Bollywood director stream whole lotthey betagainst ghost their movies qualityweren’t or the apositions Shoojit Sircar describes as increased “self-ban- ter inWhen the ’80s: Dimple Kapadia’s elastic hand take. reports emerged in 2005 that the ning”. Last year, Sircar’s Madras Cafe starring routine the 1988 remake of and Beesthe SaalAll Baad is Eye BankinAssociation of India India John Abraham was not released in Tamil Nadu aOphthalmic strong contender for filed the PILs weirdest BollySociety had against the despite being cleared by the Central Board of wood of all time.) Gulzar tried to story injectofa Urmilascene Matondkar-starrer Naina — the paranormal kicks — the gothic thriller, the touch Film Certification.

Theatre owners were just of class witha Lekin... but itand took a woman who gets corneal(1991), transplant is first of theTamil Indiannationalist ghost movie. too iteration scared after groups Ram Gopal Varma’s (1992), which possessed by the spirit ofRaat the donor — many of The first classic ghost film made in the brought slickus claimed it demeaned the strugproduction values and anYet, A-list laughed. I confess I did. recountry Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal in 1949. It cast to pulpy actions gles of Sriwas Lankan Tamils. horror, to restore ghostdrew mofrom the the doctors formed template for future On thethe contrary, Madras Cafe gothic ro- vie to a reasonable level to of respectability.

Since attention the fact that supermances: from the hero inheriting was a telling commentary on the a haunted then, Varma has proved director stitions anda committed misinformation are haveli toThe the“self-banning” reincarnation angle and a futilitydown of war. and producer of horror cinema, even though the reasons why many Indians The protests were lovely in a didn’t singing start ghost with dressed its release he seems to grow not don’t donate theirlouder, organs, orbetacbizarre considering white The scenes where ter, each production. though.sari.

It began at the writing ceptwith transplants.

With You, Without Ashok Kumar through The ghost film, which stage. The filmwanders is a fictionalised Ourcomedy opposition then can’t be You leans almost the houseofatIndia’s night listening to a dates back but to Mehmood’s account intelligenceto protest, to enemies ofBhoot a dientirely towards its voice sing efforts Aayegaand aayega aaneBungla grew popular in gathering covert opversity (1965), of opinions, and to imThe song sequence female protagonist, wala haveinvolving the qualitythe of aLTTE beautithe ’90sorand aughts:threats there was erations in plicit explicit of for Aayega who is aaayega Sri ful nightmare.

(German Chamatkar (1992), the that Malayalam the years leading up to former violence. Do read again aanewala the Lankan has Tamil cameraman Joseph Wirsching psychological-thriller-comedy Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s as- quality of a beautiful please: implicit or explicit threats deserves a lotRecent of the history credit.) It Manichitrathazhu — a big sassination. is of violence. When(1993) Dinanath Banightmare isn’t but it sure is ghostly. enough hitShiksha to be remade in Tasuchscary, a hot potato in this country tra of the Bachao AndoDespite sludgy mil, Telugu,sends Bengali and Hindito — though, that LTTE pacing is calledand LTFan in lan Samiti legal notices increasingly demented narraand thehe ghost of Mahatma Gandthe film; and Rajiv’s character is not called Ra- publishing houses, is within his rights to tive, was a hit.

It catapulthimajor in Lage Raho while MunnacapituBhai jiv, heMahal is addressed throughout as just “ex-PM”. do so. Yet, two publishers edStage to fame Madhubala and a (2006).

Wilde’s The Ghosthave was two aof16-year-old the “self-banning” happened lating toOscar his demands inCanterville the past year, little-known singer his called Lata Mangeshkar. as Bhoothnath 2008.

The sequel, rewhen Sircar showed script around in 2006- adapted done so publicly citing in a fear of violence.

Batra Mangeshkar later recalled how music in have Aprilmade this year, incorporated an elec07. Actors and producers wereMahal’s unwilling to leased may not open threats to either of director Khemchand and for Amrohi and record a Honey Singh number. touch it. “The first actorPrakash I approached John tion them,plotline but the track of organisations he went out of role theirsaid waythe to make Aayega aanewacomplain that Party with the Abraham’s subject is too sensi- Old-timers is affiliatedmay to and the open support he has la sound genuinely one ultimately of their in- Bhoothnath is no Aayega butenough Bhoothtive,” recalls the haunting director — who from the Vishwa Hindu aanewala, Parishad are structions for till herthe to end walkoftowards the nath did collect ₹30 crore at the doshelved thewas project the Lankan to getReturns any ordinary citizen worried. mike as she sang. The song was so popular it mestic office.ofAdd to this the paranormal civil war in 2009.

In thebox absence protection from the State, ended thethis trend theaplaintiveof feel recent films liketoTalaash, Ek Let’sup belaunching clear here: isofnot column leanings most then compelled give in.Aatma, In a naly singing spectre in cinema, from Ka- Thi Goynar Baksho, and seems against protests.

If Indian freedom of expression tionDaayan of rawand nerves, there can be noitgreater hin deep jale kahin dil to to Yaara seeli it seeli.

Indian cinema giving up must include the right offend, must also unlikely threat tothat art, academia and a will free be press.

Bimalthe Roy,right editor Mahal, went on to include toofprotest.

Liberals in make India the ghost anytime soon. his pioneering ghost film in 1958. are own so disgusted with the repeated callsLike for anna mm vetticad is the author of The Adventures bhatiaFilm is Assistant Editor, Time Out Delhi of an Intrepid Critic t@annavetticad Mahal, is aacademic ghost story that’s bans onMadhumati artistic and works — also oftena uday

Ghosts whoofact The nature dissent FILM FATALE

Boo!

anna mm vetticad

As mythologies faded onscreen, the ghost movie gave If freedom of expression include thechills rightand to offend, Indian audiences their fill must of supernatural thrills it must also include the right to protest. But should it be at the cost of “self-banning” in films, art, academia?

S

he: “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the Sinhala Army?... My two brothers were killed by the Army. My parents brought me here so that I wouldn’t get raped by someone like you…”

He: “I didn’t ask if your brothers were terrorists. I didn’t ask anything about you. I didn’t tell you anything about myself, because it doesn’t matter any more.”

She: “It matters to me. My brothers were not terrorists. They were innocent schoolboys.”

He: “I didn’t kill your brothers. I was doing a job. Then I quit.”

Was it this conversation between a married couple in Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage’s With You, Without You that irked unnamed groups in Tamil Nadu? We do not know. What we do know is that the critically acclaimed Sinhalese-Tamil film — a cutting critique of the impact of war on ordinary people — was withdrawn from theatres in Chennai this fortnight, after threatening calls from persons claiming to represent Tamil interests.

The protests were bizarre considering that With You, Without You leans almost entirely towards its female protagonist who is a Sri Lankan Tamil. A representative of the film’s Indian distributor, PVR Director’s Rare, confirms that the Chennai police refused to provide security to theatres screening it and advised them to withdraw it. A letter from co-producer Rahul Roy and others to Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has received no response as this column goes to press.

B

In a different spirit Neither melodrama, nor thriller, Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (1975) is a rare film in the ghost genre; (right) Amol Palekar remade it as Paheli (2005) with Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji in the lead afp

Whose interest is it, anyway? Protestors tear a poster of Madras Cafe in Mumbai last year ap/rajanish kakade; and (top) a still from With You, Without You, which was recently withdrawn from theatres in Chennai

efore ghosts, there were gods. The mythological was the first distinctively Indian movie genre, fusing history and legend with a social message. Like the Biblical films of Hollywood, they were also an excuse to unleash some spectacular visual effects — young Krishna emerging from the lake atop a snake in Shree Krishna Janma; the ascent to heaven in a chariot in Sant Tukaram. By the 1940s, Indian viewers were used to otherworldly phenomena on the big screen. As the mythological began to fade, a new genre supplied audiences with

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

11 15

watch cover

BL BL 168

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Grace and grit The courthouse of Mallarpur

A practitioner of the ancient martial form Kalaripayattu reveals its sweet kind of pain

Boo!

E O

very Tuesday and Thursday morning, at around 9.30, I ask myself existential questions. This is the time I get back home after an hour-and-a-halflong class of Kalaripayattu. Once I have braced myself for the ascent up a flight of stairs to my apartment winced into a softin seat, I wonurand story is set in Bengal, a small der, oftenvillage aloud, why I continue to put called Mallarpur.

It’s myself just through the swollen knees, aching mus20km away from thethe tantric shrine cles and of the sometimes Tarapith, whereexcruciating the goddess pain.

Tapay for that pain,” mother reminds ra“And is worshipped.

Tara is themy second of the Daevery time, over same,Mahavidyas (10the phone.

Great Wisdoms), Kalaripayattu not a form yoga.

It isn’t unquenchable andiseternal like a of star.

Tarapith either, or contemporary dance, or anyis karate a centre of tantric learning and activity, thingpeople else anyone tempted to draw parallels where bring isthose whom they believe It is among oldest martial art forms towith. be possessed to bethe exorcised. in and can be traced innow mythology Asthe youworld drive to Mallarpur, off the busy to Parashurama.

After reclaiming land from highway, you will see a grand old ruin domthe Arabian Sea to create the around. realm ofThis Kerala, inating the landscape for miles is the sage isBaari supposed haveHouse. established 108 the Kacheri or theto Court Built in kalaris — the traditional 21x42ft must mud have pit in the late 18th century, this building which Kalaripayattu practised. like in been stunning in its isheyday.

As Much you enter yoga, its martial origins shrouded in mythrough a once grand, butare now rusted metal thology and mystery. gate, you come into the front lawn, about 50 is said tolike have givenspider, birth to yardsKalaripayattu long. At the end of it, a giant martial arts such as Akarate andhouse. kung fu. If the sits the Kacheri Baari. haunted latter areas outright fighting KalariIn 1759, Mir Qasim rodetechniques, through his fapayattu looks a dance, lethal during ther’s realm, he more came like across a Rajasthani sadbut simply when performhupractice, sitting under a treegorgeous and meditating along edbanks on stage. the of the Ganga at Murshidabad. Qasim wanted to be the nawab and asked the sadhu when it would come to pass. The sadhu laughed and said, “Since you are in such a hurry, this will happen within a month.” Lo and behold! the British, who had brought his father Mir Jafar to the throne, replaced the father with the son within a month. The new Nawab went to the sadhu, bowed his head, and gave him three estates in return at Birbhum (West Bengal) and Munger (Bihar) and

rocky singh

“It is difficult to explain what Kalaripayattu interest and join classes, says Mullaratt. is, you have to experience it,” says Ranjan MulPopular culture gives the martial art form a laratt, my guru at the Kalari Academy of Per- boost, albeit a dubious one. The Malayalam forming Arts in Bangalore. At a recent event to film Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, which tells of mark 15 years of the institution, Mullaratt’s the legendary warriors Chandu and Unniyarstudents defy the laws of gravity and the limi- cha, used Kalari extensively as did Kamal Hastations the body Bangladesh. to jump andThe twist, bend and Jessore in of present-day sadhu, san’s Tamil Indian, which glorifies marma eyes, andfilm swung her legs while looking at crawl. They(celibate), fight withadopted swords, odd-shaped a and Brahmachari descend- him vidya and its potential pressure with a cocked head to as kill shethrough hummed a sad wooden weapons the lethal urumi, the tune. ants and served well and the people in his charge on aHe marma vitalthat point. ask if we can told or them she“People had a menacing, whip-like sword which, unless wield- almost asflexible did his sons.

But his grandchildren became teachcrazed that inlook a week,” says Mullaratt. if it on her face and thatI ask there ed with can decapitate was drunk withfierce powerconcentration, and the good life. is possible to kill usingabout marma vidya, the study something strange her mouth.

She the one wielding Intoxicated, theyit! rode through their lands, constantly moved of the 108 sensitivecircular points in the it in a strange moevent showcases, and The abducted any and allamong the women they tion and he stared, human body.

“The away. knowledge unable to look He feltof otherdesirable. sequences, the women Ashtavadifound These were brought an aura of malevolence. the marmaShe points canatbe used stared him al-to eight movements thatand emu-made to live most as if she wished tovu the— Kacheri Baari forcibly both heal a person and cause to do him harm and asinKalaripayattu is notrooted a jury,” late asthe rooster, there nautch girls.snake, Those horse, who complained I am told.

It is the stage he stood to the spot in fear, shelast slowly form of yoga.

It isn’t elephant, lion, wildwho boarbore and this agony smiled and disappeared disappeared, andcat, those in Kalaripayattu after into thintraining, air. He could or sleepthe Graceful the moveinpeacock. silence spent theirasmiserable youth inkarate this either, urumi. no longer well as she would come in his contemporary dance mentshome are, that theyhad remind me of a centre hellish now become of dreams people comewent to class and scareSeveral him. As the weeks by,to the weeks and of difficulty I had in members he wasted away debauchery sin. Their family improve balance and and stamina, died within three moving previously un- paid off or months. who came muscles to save them were either strength. Even as it retains its traused till as they I wasleft; learning to tread beaten many disappeared like the ditional moves, full-body The other one, they say, is alsothe angry.

She the length the enslaved, classroom,raped and wears a white sari women who ofwere workout ensures that with flowers in her hairKalariand bent likeKacheri the lion.

Theybore make it look so easy. tortured.

Baari silent witness to lashes payattu relevant in her. a modern out remains at anyone who sees Vinod setting.

BahaBritish banned it all.The In time, the power andKalaripayattu fortune of Mirwhen Qa- dur, Dancers learnwatchman, it for added grace. the night lives nearMovement the entheyfamily arrivedwas in Kerala, well aware how dangersim’s squandered, and the de- trance artistes learn balance rigour in acan small room.

As he and his wifefrom sleptit. ous it could be even without weapons.

Mulla- one scendants moved away, leaving this once Strands are incorporated into contemponight,ofheitwas suddenly awakened by the ratt tells me his guru learned Kalaripayattu in sound grand home deserted. rary performance arts.falling.

Much like a language, of steel utensils As he opened secret, likeBhandari, many others during the ban, using Kalaripayattu Mahadev the grandits changing hisimbibes eyes, hefrom saw her standingenviat coconut in lieu of swords.

Post-Inde- ronment tothe son of thefronds last accountant to accommodate newer head of his bed,derivations, looking pendence, is yet tostill regain the popularity it all the whiledown serve in thisit house, lives retaining itsBefore ancientheidiom. at him. could reenjoyed during the with Cholapasand Chera reign, here.

He tells this story As for me,act, after years practising shesome leapt15on hisofchest and Kalari warriors, mostly from the Nair heard sionwhen and conviction. yoga, the possibility of pain is what me pinned him to the bed.draws He reI distinctly the community, were employed by kings Another resident, 54-year-old tofeet push mymembers limits, likenot the translucent being ablewings to soundand of bare to fight, death, tothe of Ashok Roy,chieftains remembers whenoften he tillclimbing the dragonfly burning at the as edges of a move or even breathe she sat stairs settle disputes ofbehind their me was 10 or 12 years old, somethe men flame. It is about bodyher burning in a battle on histhe chest, hair wild.

She employers.

Yet, where the mind came to excavate and convert You take pain lookedwins. angry and he the closed hisbethrough word of cause thereeyes, Kacheri Baari into a rice mill. is joyunable in looking downupon the mounto look her mouth, people tain that you Soon after they started digging have just The view frightful face,climbed. and started pray- is continue to take fabulous, the the foundations, there was a sudairThe fresh and the soul smiling. ing. weight then slowly liftden commotion. One of the labourers had un- ed off his chest. His wife next to him slept deepa bhasthi is a Bangalore-based writer earthed human skulls and bones. One was peacefully through it all. Bahadur claims he almost complete and the others in pieces. sees the apparition every few weeks, and closAshok and the other boys recall the con- es his eyes and prays. As long as he doesn’t fusion that followed, and the whiten- stare at her, she goes away. ess of the skulls, before they were I spent a night alone at Kacheri Baari. The chased away by the contractor. Ev- villagers say that it’s safe for women and only eryone in the village believes men are attacked, but I never saw either of the they were the skeletons of the women. I never heard the sounds of the payal, women who disappeared in the most common of the hauntings. As I the Baari. climbed up the stairs above the place where Most of them believe the the skeletons had been discovered, I distinctly skeleton belonged to the one heard the sound of bare feet climbing the they dread seeing most. Their stairs behind me. I turned and shone my flashgrandparents told stories of light at the sound, and there was nothing the unfortunate ones who saw there. her. She still lives at the Kacheri As I sat in the main room of the Baari at Baari. Many in the village claim night, I felt a sense of unease, an aura of hatred to have heard the sounds of her and anger. I felt a negative energy and a great payal (anklets). She appears rarely, sadness that I was unable to explain. More and those who are unfortunate than once I thought I heard someone humenough to see her, die within ming a low sad song, but I can’t be certain. three months of the sighting.

The events that took place here are tragic.

She is the harbinger of doom. The villagers believe the spirits of the girls live Her last victim was returning in that house and will live there till someone from work and decided to take a finally brings them peace. I hope it happens, shortcut through the lawns of even though no one knows how, and I do hope the home. His attention was sud- it happens soon, because I, for one, believe denly drawn to a movement on that they are still there. Go, see for yourself. the wall and there she sat. He told the villagers that she rocky singh is the host of India’s Most Haunted on was pretty with dark hair NDTV Good Times

PARTHA PRATIM SHARMA

At Kacheri Baari in Bengal, scars run deep, and the air hangs heavy with tales of persecution

Q R

Q R

ND-X _ A

courtesy kalari academy of performing arts

cover watch

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

No bungalow for bhoot

ta. The work in question is a shaded pastel on paper of a woman facing the viewer, which is dated 1972 and priced at ₹7 lakh.

Dadha, however, disagrees. “We have nothing to hide and we are totally confident of the provenance of the artworks. The people who have consigned the works are respected and well-known. Those who have objections should have come and seen the works that have been hanging in our preview section and have been on our website for months before hosts thrived in the age of leisure: strokes, which were cues for us to fill in our wethe grow in number, crowdlike them out by hunt, reauction.

Thiswe seems a witch The snoozy afternoons, lengthen- own colour, put together our own setting and claiming land from thethe wilderness.

Straight planned right before auction, to dissuade ing dusks and whispering nights. flesh out our own characters. In the age of cin- roads cut at right angles offer noreputation,” drama of ourthat buyers and to besmirch our Just as you cannot enjoy the music ema and TV, we are no longer the active stake- thehescary says. chase one imagined in curling of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan in a hurry, you could holders in the creative process. streets.

There isPathan, no spacethe fordaughter ghosts in our flooRuksana of veteran not hope to spot a ghost in haste. It was an aeslivesKH under CCTV“Icameras.

Statecall and Our belief in ghosts marked us out as cre- dlitartist Ara says, received aThe phone that thetic experience choreographed with operat- ative people who could piece together from market controlpaintings space and were colonise time.

There my father’s being auctioned, ic virtuosity. It required a patient mind, a random data a spectral presence. As our imag- areso very few places that remain cutthey off from I went on Facebook, where wereciprofertile imagination and, above all, an uncanny ination dulls, we are less likely to create our ties, and with smartphone youatare never moting theyour auction, and looked the works, ability to be alive to the surroundings. The own gestalt of the world — we miss the man in alone available. twoor offully which I found to be at variance with his ghost usually staged its entry with an acoustic the moon, the woman in the cigarette smoke As science disenchanted the worldworks by exorstyle.

I usually never authenticate and I overture. The wind sighed, sibilant echoes fol- and the hooded figure left on the crumbling cising the ghost, it not only left less human do not consider myself an us authority.

But I lowed your footsteps and the door creaked wall by peeling plaster. We have but also a new enchantgrew up around mycreated father’s works and I can with a lacerated cry. Or was it just a fearful you killed the ghost as we knew it for button tell when ed, it’smagical not hisworld: work,”The she said on from curating a soundscape out of sundry noises? thousands of years. your phoneout throbs lights upinkMumbai. She pointed thatand an untitled You could never tell. Soon, the drama began. when you it, featuring Google eerily The ghost was the tip of our and-gouache work onpress board, a goat The leaves which were cheerfully waving in submerged social unconscious, completes your and a half-formed family, are sennot in There is no space for the wind started gesticulating wildly. Was that and also the valve for our collectences, and the exwith from a longkeeping Ara’s subject ghosts in our floodlit a white saree behind that pillar or just a splin- tive guilt over an innocent murlost past inexplicably pops uppainton matter or style.

“He lives under CCTV ter of light from the faraway road? That doubt dered or a woman violated. It your Facebook among Peopleand ed mostly still-life cameras fled as the ghost began unpacking its reper- was the necessary double of the You May Know. nudes,” she adds, claimtoire of dramatic acts. It could access your civilisational order, like the junThe belief ghosts is a belief ing in that the second work, deepest fears and take on an appearance that gle the city carried on its fringes that nothing dies.

Every Still ever Life of Fruits, is deoverspoke to them: an old ghoul, a pretty girl in or the ruins hidden in the deep letion of life lingers as athe spectral worked and colour wedding finery, a witch with white hair or a folds of mohallas. The ghost arose from our trace in some nano corner of the hard palette seems off.disk of bloody-eyed vampire. of be its mentioned unfulfilown heart of darkness. In the west, ghost the universe. When it’s aware It must The pride of place the ghost had in our daily hunting and conducted tours to haunted sites ment, it returns to bang the thaton inthe thisdoors wholeofbrouhalife was a pointer to our limitless capacity to are a tourist attraction but, more importantly, RAM that runs the visible world.isGhosts were ha, there no established imagine. More than a haunted house, it was they are an archaeology of our ancient cultur- part of a culture whichbody believed people or avenue tocome authenthe story, which beautifully swelled with each al apprehensions. from somewhere and go somewhere. wasita reticate artworks Itand telling, that the ghost inhabited. The death of a truncated Even as storytelling, the haunt of ghosts, pe- continuous world. Science mainsoffers a rather ad-hoc the ghost indicates our growing inability to ters out in the crowd of information and reality of beginnings process, and endings.

The so-on dependent imagine. We have ceded imagination to tech- news, we are also wiping out the landscape called scientific temper denudes us of our vi-exthe opinions a few nology, which is getting smarter by the day. It from which they emerged: the desolate and tal irrationality and denies our impertsus and thefancies, descendants is taking away from us our art of telling sto- the unclaimed. That babool round the corner, pressions and subjective of truths. the deceased artist. ries. It has made us passive consumers. Cine- the narrow street that slithered through tall, Science has spread a culture of sanity that On the heels of this incima details the story down to the tiniest pixel damp buildings, and the abandoned houses pathologises the beautiful mind. artists, gallery dent a group of concerned and leaves nothing to imagination. Earlier, we that looked like forlorn mausoleums. Ghosts owners and historians have proposed a regukumar to is a“clear Delhi-based co-created every novel. The writer made broad are definitely the oustees of development. As dharminder latory authority the journalist air on many issues that concern the consumer, who is at a disadvantage in the absence of an authority… in case of sale of problematic/fake works.” The signatories were Ashish Anand of the Delhi Art he controversial Bid & Hammer auc- an orange background, and the work is ac- Gallery, Sonia Ballaney of Vadehra Art Gallery, tion at a posh Delhi hotel is barely companied by an authentication certificate in Tushar Sethi, head of Astaguru Auction, Rajani hours away. Maher Dadha the foun- the distinctive handwriting of the painter. Prasanna, the daughter of KK Hebbar and Sader of the Bangalore-based auction While this clearly looks like the work of a great marendranath Mazumdar, the grandnephew house, is pacing about, phone to his ear, as a master, a few awkwardly crafted self-portraits of Hemen Mazumdar. few art enthusiasts trickle in. have raised alarm bells.

The atmosphere crackles with tension as Need for intervention Bid & Hammer decide to go ahead with the Under the gavel According to artist KS Radhakrishnan, it is auction despite several allegations regarding Serious viewers and collectors were disap- high time the government got involved and counterfeits in its collection. These range pointed that Dadha went ahead regulated the art market. He befrom a legal notice from the estate of MF Hu- with the auction despite the reslieves there is a need for an ausain to objections from Bengal School artist Bi- ervations voiced by others, as the thenticating body that uses kash Bhattacharjee’s daughter Balaka and art established practice at most aucscientific methods like carbon historian Susobhan Adhikary from Kolkata, tion houses — be it a Christie’s, dating and X-rays alongside hisSome artists believe who raised a red flag regarding a Tagore paint- Osian’s or Bowring’s — is to retorical documentation. Dadha the government ing titled Nritya. “This work currently hangs at move controversial works from welcomes it too, saying, “At least should get involved the Visva Bharati in Santiniketan and there is all auctions. it would break the concentraand regulate the no way it can be at an auction. I have seen the “Even after we told them twice tion of power in art cartels that art market JPEG image and it is clearly a block print, not a that it is a fake and not my father support each other and lynch hand-rendered ink on paper,” says Adhikary.

Bikash Bhattacharjee’s work, outsiders like myself.”

A similar allegation was made by Dr Rajeev they went ahead and even sold it It has been seven years since Lochan, director, the National Gallery of Mod- in the auction,” says Balaka Bhatartist Anjolie Ela Menon apern Art regarding the Woman Sitting under a tacharjee, also a painter. “My father has docu- pealed to the government to form a regulatoTree (20×33.2 cm), done by Nandalal Bose in mented 99 per cent of his work, and my ry body. Menon took severe action when she the watercolour wash-technique that the Ben- mother and I were very close to his art and his discovered that her assistant was faking her gal School was best known for. “The work (at process. Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge works and selling them through a dealer in NGMA) has a seal of authentication from the in Indian art will tell you that in 1972, my fa- Kolkata. The accused found themselves beartist,” says Lochan. ther was doing his doll series, working only in hind bars. But, a decade later, an official auAs one walks into the display area, the first oils, and was no longer painting the woman thenticating body is yet to be created. painting to catch one’s eye is the 34x60 inch series. Besides, it is technically not even close Horses by Husain. White steeds prance against to the worst of his works,” she said from Kolka- georgina maddox is a Delhi-based art writer Good as real?

Red flags have been raised about a MF Husain selfportrait and (below) Tagore’s Nritya bid & hammer

As we grow in number and grab every inch of land we can, there is little wilderness — or plain imagination — left for ghosts to haunt

G

Q R

Till fakes do us apart

The art fraternity raises its brush in protest as the provenance and sale of iconic works come into question

T

Q R

shutterstock

Boo!

ND-X _ A

9 17BL BL

cover read

BL BL 186

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

A panegyric to paper Dayanita Singh’s latest collection reveals both the colossal decay and the human spirit behind cabinets filled with files

Boo!

C

File Room Dayanita Singh Steidl ₹2,400

harles Dickens invented, in Little Dorrit, the archetypal bureaucratic office, an intricately constructed maze of red tape marshalled by obfuscating clerks. Indians recognise in Dickens’ Circumlocution Office a contemporary portrait of our own mouldering government departments and the pedantic, magisterially incompetent civil servants harboured within, consulting their files, their leaning towers of files. Few of us, perhaps, are inclined to look upon files and paper with much affection, stung by those requests for forms in triplicate.

Counterintuitively, Dayanita Singh’s File Room, her 11th and most recent book, is a panegyric to paper, to the dusty, roach-laden archives to which our histories are consigned, held precariously in abeyance until someone asks and the long-forgotten is temporarily revived. The book, another collaboration with her German publisher Steidl, is typically elegant. Black-and-white gives Singh’s photographs of rotting rooms and rotting paper an austere quality. There is something noble about the Sisyphean effort to maintain these archives in tropical weather, with little budget to speak of, in the face of worms, rats, bats, even industrial-strength fans; something noble about the men and women who do this thankless job of being locked in hour after hour, day after day with the dust and the smell amed after a 19th-century Portuguese of decomposing paper seeping slowly into businessman, John de Monte, the coltheir lungs. ony lies off St Mary’s in death the upscale But forRoad all the and decay evident in neighbourhood of photographs, Alwarpet. Lined these File with Room is not just, as single-storey Singh’s houses,own all website padlocked and her book, an describes crumbling, the colony of de Monte — donated to the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore in keeping with his will — is the source of many a vaporous story. De Monte’s own past — a son who died early and a wife who was, apparently, mentally unsound — is the likely tinder.

Long-time residents nearby, however, discount these tales as urban legends. V Balaji, a real estate professional tells us, “A well-known industrialist had leased out this property from the church for about 49 years. At that time, it served as the living quarters of his employees and their families.” After the lease ended, it was handed back to its owners. Deepika MV, a communications manager who lives a stone’s throw from the colony and often went for walks in the park adjacent to it, dismisses the rumours too.

But can there be any supernatural smoke without fire? Diego Edwin, a microbiology student, narrates the story he heard from an itinerant tea-seller who used to cycle through this area around midnight. Years ago, he said, there used to be this slow-mannered albino boy who came begging for biscuits and tea near the De Monte Colony. Often, the locals gave him what they could spare. But one day, a shopkeeper rebuked him and he left the place wailing. Months later, the shopkeeper’s wife had a baby. A child with pale, colourless skin. An albino.

De Monte Colony, Alwarpet

N

elegy. Yes, paper will soon, even in these fusty juxtaposed with a picture of the same sister in archives, be replaced by digitised files but Delhi in 2013, the original photograph of her what cannot be lost is the human spirit of younger self on the wall behind her. Time has which these files are a moving symbol. People passed between the two photographs, been want to leave behind something of who they lost as such never to be recovered, but in the were and how they lived. As Singh says to the look the old woman gives the camera the Swiss art historian and critic Hans Ulrich young woman from half a century ago is still Obrist, in a long interview included in the present. Our faces are palimpsests, traces of book, just “one fact and one file could make the past still evident beneath the lines and such a difference to someone’s life.” She then sagging skin of the present. tells a story about going to the “land record Memory is the spur for Nony Singh the phodepartment, which looked a mess and I tographer, her desire not only to record particthought it would be impossible ular moments for posterity, to find anything there. They but to shape memory, bring orsaid, ‘Tell us your father and der to it. The archivists in grandfather’s addresses’...

Dayanita Singh’s File Room picFrom this they told me that my tures do something similar, Archives, Singh is great-great-grandfather had each organising and shaping saying, are as much been adopted by such-andthe memory vault with which about life as they are such a Hindu family, so I’m not they’ve been entrusted in idioabout death; inside quite the lineage that I thought syncratic, resolutely individual those files are clues to I was, and I said, ‘Stop it, I don’t ways. Memory, of course, is who we are, how we want to know anything more!’” how we keep things alive. got here, who we Archives, Singh is saying, are These files then, ordered so apused to be as much about life as they are parently haphazardly, are about death; inside those files teeming with life, with memoForgotten and forsaken A dilapidated house at thery.

De That Montethey Colony ghosh are clues to who we are, how we arebijoy teeming with got here, who we used to be. File life quite literally, as Aveek Sen Room should be read in conjunction with The points out in an essay published in File Room, Archivist, a collection of photographs by Nony is surely not incidental. hisRoom ship in the up waters nearby.

Singh (Dayanita’s mother) released as a book Pictureschored from File show in The Archifor More several months, he towards the end of last year. The bulk of the vist, in theSeaborne background. directly, the last received single letter pictures are of Nony Singh’s family — parents, pictures inhadn’t The Archivist areapictures of thefrom files hisSingh’s wife indining months andatwas driven siblings, husband and children. A picture of under Nony table, the foot of to distraction.

Butthe onumpteen that fateful he aswell-maintained one of her sisters posing Scarlett O’Hara internaher bed. These are files from lawtional of thesuits spiri-she has night — longsince before Nofrom Gone with the Wind in 1962,headquarters for instance, is fought sheChristopher was widowed, tual organisation, located lawsuits in a to lando decided to explore the ideaand of with wheat production spectacularly green belt in land Adyar, shared dreaming in Inception — two ownership. might seem an unlikely contender. gnomes who in lived the baA version of an essay The under Archivist, titled But wait. One of the objectives‘Sea of the nyan tree here appeared in theancapof Files’, is reproduced in File Room, insleep.Singh’s Luringlife him back from society is to investigate thesight unex-intotain’s how Nony became conplained laws of nature and the pow- bythe they assured himtothat if he sumed theedge, documents needed pursue ers latent in man. up Within the idea those of committing suicases in gave court. documents, Even before The Theosophical So- was cide, would receive a letter though, anhe image of her husband shefrom was hispreserve. beloved the very day.passion True to ciety came into being though, its to fighting It is thenext same their words, arrived,her andhusthe grounds, they say, bore witness withtowhich she seeksa letter to preserve matters paranormal. Among the dog-eared captain lived to tell theof tale. tale band’s photographs hisThe many tales moored firmly here is that of ofbefore the friendly thein banyan girlfriends he metghosts Nony; of here, these the English captain who once tree in Adyar. dryanlegal documents and photos of a dapper man dancing with blondes, is her husband.

Not that paper should be confused with life itself, which is why Nony gives up on her lawsuits before it consumes her life completely and that of her children.

Dayanita Singh does not fetishise paper in File Room. She is aware of its limitations. What she is celebrating is its tactility, its odours, its perishability. The vulnerability of paper, a little like that of humans, feels somehow appropriate as a medium on which to record human action and memory. There is poetry in these fetid storerooms with their delicately poised heaps of paper and Singh — who with her recent retrospective at The Hayward and her inventive ‘Museum Bhavan’, mobile collections of her voluminous work, is an artist at the height of her career — records that poetry ironically for posterity. As for digital files, surely nothing could be more prosaic.

Q R

The Theosophical Society, Adyar

T

ND-X _ A

shougat dasgupta is a freelance Rooted in myth The banyan tree at The Theosophical Society in Adyarjournalist is said tobased harbour Sisyphean effort Dayanita Singh’s photographs tell of an inept bureaucracy and individual battles dayanita singh in Delhi m karunakaran friendly spirits

takeaway cover

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

worked upon the collapsed balloon, squeezing the air out of it, and rolled it back into its MUMBAI sleeping bag. Definitely a team activity, one that we raised a toast to during the post-ride breakfast with a glass of champagne. t first glance, there’s nothing seemingly sinister or Delirious (and, perhaps, a tad tipsy) with spookyjoy, about Mumbai’s Gandhi I decided I had toSanjay further test myNational vertical Park (SGNP).

Near Of thecourse, entrance, group of hikersdeeper fasten limits. thisa meant digging their shoelaces.

Inside, a bunch of college kids playing into my pocket, but what are a few extra dolhooky settle down a midweek picnic.

And even deeper lars for atoonce-in-a-lifetime experience? in the forest, couples the heavy But Soon a seek sleekrefuge and in shiny black foliage. helicopter if the caretakers here areorange to be believed, to streaked with rumbledthere’s on themore helipad this image as than meets the eye. it from the bay, deterI walked towards Ram Moghe (name hasby been watchman at mined not changed) to be swayed theawind.

We took the park foroff eight years, taking over from his father, who towards the inland waterways, by far my fahad servedvourite for 40 years.

Heofsays, for old-timers feature the city, away fromlike thehim, concolliding with bhatakti coastline. aatmas (roving par for the crete-heavy It wassouls) a shortis10 minutes course. At of Gandhi Tekdi, a dome-like structure where low-level coastal viewing of the Q1, Surfers Moghe is often sentSeaworld on night and duty,South he hears a woman Paradise, Stradbroke Isscreechingland at thebefore top ofreturning her voice every and then.for Buta to thenow Broadwater that’s not what spooks himMirage most. Heliport. Tiny surfers landing at the In the past, he has up tried to down followthe herwaves voice, and but has nevbounced and tourists er caught aspilled glimpseon of to her.the When he hits his laathi to shoo streets, even as the locals her away though, claims, the yelling stops abruptsoakedMoghe in the sun. ly. He can sense her from running away, her invisible Fresh these airborne thrills,presence I would retreating have into the darkness. times when the gladly turnedThere downare any driving plans guard wakes upnot to find himself a couple of feet away from had the short ride to Tamborine Mountain his originalpromised position,yet sometimes teetering close to the another adventure, reasonably edge of theabove elevated Tekdi.Part Moghe certainvolcanic he’s notrim, halground. of anisancient lucinating.just “It is45km not just me. Many guards at have off Gold Coast,security the mountain an been witnessing this of for500m years. We’ve complaining elevation offers tried fantastic lookout to the authorities but the nobody believesand us. the It scares us points for hinterland distant sometimescoastline. to do the night shift all alone,” he says.

Hang-gliding enthusiasts can sign Over theup years, SGNP has seenswooping the deaths of many visfor tandem rides, down wide valitors — cases suicide, drowning andand leopard leysofwith electrifying twists turns.attacks.

If your Moghe believes it’shold natural for amight placespot withthe a bloody past nerves up, you waterfalls, to have unhappy spirits lurking around. rainforests, even a hiker or two.One such hotspot for accidents Kakar Bhatti, waterfall within the WhenisI landed in GoldaCoast, I imagined my park wheredays tourists like go for a swim.

I follow would betofilled with sandy As toes, long watchman walks Krishna Pande (name changed) down on the beach, ice cream in hand anda marshy path, he narrates tales of swimmers drowning to surfing on my mind. Who knew I would set my death before his much, eyes. “Sometimes the water isn’t even sights much higher? that deep, but every other year there will be one major accident. Nowsupriya they say there is isasome spirit down there that sehgal Bangalore-based writer sucks people into the water,” says Pande.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park

A Boo!

Top of the charts (clockwise from above) firing up a ballooning adventure at Canungra; the urban sprawl along the bay; coasting above the forested ranges near the Lamington National Park; and the farms below supriya sehgal

The high road

In this balmy corner Down Under, skirt the beaches for highaltitude thrills… a paul balloon or hangClose encounters Couples seek privacy at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, scale undetteredabyskyscraper, the tales of leopardsride or ghosts noronha glide across verdant valleys of Queensland’s Gold Coast

T

Travel Log

hough the harness is designed to several notches higher than jostling for space Reach take the weight of 20 cars, I had my and a clear view of the setting sun on a crowdGoldstar airport is in Coolangatta misgivings about its ability to keep ed beach. and connected by Qantas, Jetstar all 48 kilos of me secured to the railAfter the first day’s adventure, it was only and Virgin Blue flights. Airport ing. It was only a matter of 140 steps inclined natural to follow it up with something higher shuttles are available at regular at 30°, a walk through the metal observation and more nerve-wracking. A hot-air balloon intervals for hotels located in the deck at the top and another 140 steps down to ride suggested itself. Rising at 3am and drivtourist hub of Surfers Paradise. the glass bay of the Q1 building. ing to the lush, sub-tropical Stay But this ‘short’ brush with high mountainous hinterland was Crowne Plaza in Surfers Paradise is adventure lasted an eternity. worth every wink of lost sleep. conveniently located, with the Clasped to the railing, assured Clasped to the railing, After having assessed the wind that I wasn’t about to fly off the conditions, our bus creaked to a beach, restaurants and markets assured that I wasn’t world’s 25th tallest building halt at a sprawling farm off Canearby (ihg.com/crowneplaza); the about to fly off the (1,058ft), I inched up, leading the nungra, a small hamlet lined Islander Resort Hotel has oneworld’s 25th tallest way for eight other liquid pairs bedroom apartments for long-stay building , I inched up, with boutique vineyards off the of legs. Keeping us going was the Gold Coast. Massive yellow and travellers (islander.com.au). leading the way for ilmmaker Reema Kagti says the germ of the idea constant stream of anecdotes orange balloons swelled up In Tamborine Philwriterand eight other liquid for Talaash (2012) came intoMountain, being when and information from the bubslowly from the collapsed jumAnia’s chalet, The Polish Place, pairs of legs director Zoya Akhtar had a brush with the supernatbly Luke, our climbing instrucbles of cloth and jute-and-wood offers a great blend local flavour Sea Face.

Akhtar was of driving down tor for the evening. I suspect his baskets. Twenty-six excitedural first-at the Worli and Polishwith cuisine and decor that stretch late at night a couple of friends, cheerful chatter is designed to time ballooners hopped aboard (polishplace.com.au). distract jumpy nerves. with our navigator Rudy, when cam- out of the blue a woman appeared in front of her car.

Worried that they had run her over, the Connect Perched at last on the 1,000-feet-high deck, eras and cellphones in readiness. group rushed out of the car Climb to help, but the woman • Skypoint (A$69-89; the nervousness ebbed away and I redeemed The morning chill soon displaced the warm had vanished intoskypoint.com.au) thin air. my ‘adventurous’ tag by standing at the edge burst of air from the cylinders as we ascended sceptic, Kagti•was when Zoya narHotunconvinced Air Gold Coast (A$25 of the building and leaning back into noth- smoothly, first to 1,000 feet, then 2,000 andAfirated the incident to her.

So much so that she ribbed ingness (of course, it’s absolutely safe). nally, 3,000, coddled by wisps of white. The onwards; hotair.com.au) her friend about it. “I just couldn’t believe it. But The Skypoint is Australia’s highest external farms below looked like a patchwork in differ• Gold Coast Heli Tours (adult lie,” she says. Kagti’s views on the building climb in the Surfers Paradise suburb ent shades of green, and the cows, then mereZoya doesn’tA$65/child A$55 for 5min; adult paranormal remain unchanged, yet she admits that of Gold Coast. From atop it, the sight of a dark specks in the landscape. After sailing through A$375/child A$270 for 45 minutes; while the film she met other residents storm building up in the middle of the ocean a thin veil of clouds, we sank gradually to- researching goldcoasthelitours.com.au) in the area who claimed to have been tricked by a and the scattered rays of the sun glistening on wards the ground, landing with a small bump.

• Extreme Air after (paragliding tandem mysterious woman.

Two years it was released, the hundreds of canals zigzagging the town In comparison with the Skypoint climb, this A$275, hang-gliding tandem A$285; to share their ‘Talaash moment’. (more than Venice!) was breathtaking — all was definitely sedate. Hardly the swayingpeople and still call her extremeair.co.nz) 360° of it. An evening spent on the skywalk al- intrepid adventure I had imagined it would • Southern Cross 4WD (Mt TamboTwilight zone The sun goes down at the Worli Sea Face shashi ashiwal so meant we saw the entire coast light up be. Next came a delightful hour, longer than rine from A$138; sc4wd.com.au) With inputs from Priyanka Kotamraju and Sibi Arasu (Delhi), Shreevatsa Nevatia (Kolkata), Bijoy Bharathan (Chennai) and Mohini Chaudhuri (Mumbai). against the orange-hued sky — an experience the half-hour balloon ride, during which we

Q

Worli Sea Face

R

F

ND-X _ A

7 19BL BL

takeaway cover

BL BL 20 4

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Sensual pleasures (clockwise from left) The foodtruck crew in Chef merrick morton; Juliet Binoche’s sweet confections in Chocolat; and a poster of Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia

A moveable feast Jon Favreau’s new film Chef, like others in its genre, places food at the narrative’s centre, while myth, love, loss and humour are stirred in as secondary ingredients

A

gleaming knife cuts effortlessly : a disorderly charred brisket to reveal patronobish Order in the house The resident ghost of the National Library doesn’tthrough approve of readers sushanto

under the disapproving aegis of its stern may-

National ofunravelling India the or, stirring upLibrary emotions and

F

or years now, stories who of sudden horrorinhave true nature of people live together this been whispered at the National Library.

The apparently tight-knit community.

Sometimes impressive 250-year-old is reported to food enters the realm building of magic realism, to porhavetray once housed the Metcalfe family. The of the protagonist’s emotions, be spirit it love, a pernickety LadyorMetcalfe, is food said, that remains lust, betrayal sadness. itThe Tita prone to at sneaking up wedding on unsuspecting readers cooks her lover’s feast causes sickwhoness don’t return books to their shelves. as well as great longing in proper the hearts of all Panchanan Chandra, whoWater carries out maintethose who eat it in Like for Chocolate.

It is nance work at the library,ofrecalls an incident that as much a reflection her Mexican heritage transpired fiveher years ago.

“There were someAn fiveenof as it is of own personal dilemma. us helping renovate building.

We each felt chantedtocrab and athe stunning Penelope Cruz, it. Out a white appeared and cladofinnowhere, tomato red dressesform (probably the only went rightgrace through us.film), It wascook the up most terrifying saving of the a sensual reexperience in my life.” past thatI have makehad strangers fall in love in Woman Narayan on Top. Chandra Saha, a guard who often worksFood the night shift the library, and claims the can be theatconnection thethat bridge unexplained of babies havefamily stopped ruffling between cries estranged lovers, members his and feathers.

“Thisofone time, a morning members a community.

There iswalker nothfainted because she felt anthan invisible hand straning more comforting the warmth of a gling herfamily neck. You need skin tothat haveforms such large meal, andaitthin is this idea experiences.

Me,tenets I am too for this.” is, the central of brave Babette’s Feast There and Eat however, one story that Sahalives saysand he too is spookDrink Man Woman.

From worlds as far ed by.

After more than apart ashaving a smallheard villagethe ontale thefrom Jutland coast in oneDenmark taxi driver,tomany National Library Taipei, Taiwan, foodemployees plays the nowcommon use it to justify faith salve in theas paranormal. role oftheir a healing well as the Early in the a policetogether. sergeant Thus is someglue thatmorning, holds families Batimes seenmarvellous standing outside the Alipore He bette’s feast costing 10,000Zoo. francs hails a cab.

By thequail time with the taxi the Maiand featuring foiereaches gras and truffle dan, the driver looks back to see that both his passenger and his fare have vanished into thin air.

a juicy and glistening pink interior.

The meat is quickly sliced up, piled on to fluffy white bread, slathered in rich butter, laden with pickles, topped with stretchy, melty cheese and toasted gently; a sandwich believes that she herself has felt the fit for the gods. presence of a malevolent spirit lurking While some could call this a slice of heaven, nearby. “I was walking down the street I had friends watching this scene with expresone night and as I passed Bhooter Bari, I sions of misery, for this was extreme food porn ocated near Neemtala, one of the felt someone push me against the wall. designed to as torture all those who love to eat. ith Calcutta having served the capicity’s oldest crematoriums, Bhooter My hand was grazed and I can swear Evenforasover the agorgeous Scarlett Johansson and tal of British India century, it Bari (House of Ghosts) makes the Na- there was no one there.” Her brother, Sofia Vergara slurpfeaup fresh-from-the-stove perhaps isn’t surprising that the British tional Library appear almost benign. “It says Gudiya, has seen a phantom in a dig into ture as protagonists inherby manypasta of itsorghost sto-a melty, cheesy Cuban might just be the proximity to a burn- red sari wander their street, while othsandwich, strangely enough, your attention is ries, making more literal the city’s colonial ing ghat or the unfulfilled desires of its ers claim to have heard a voice castigatdrawnsahib awayphantasms, from these beautiful women — to hangover. Of all its truant old inhabitants, but there is definitely ing the squatters now living in the what they eating.

In Jon Favreau’s Chef, the Warren Hastings is possibly theare most promisomething here that can’t be ex- ramshackle house — “You people create screen is setofablaze by is the food that is in turns nent. The first governor general Bengal plained,” says Gudiya Sonkar. A resident such filth. You don’t want to see me get playful, nostalgic, believed to still haunt sexy, Hastings House, his ear-homely, sophisticated of the neighbourhood, Gudiya firmly my broom out.” always lier residence that nowand serves as a delicious. campus forWhile the film itself is not without its flaws, the food that Jon Favreau the Institute of Education for Women.

Lookpays made homage to, to is Enmost definitely flawless. ing for a bureau that never it back From the farm-fresh and inspiragland, Lord Hastings shuffles hisexquisite way around dishes crafted rooms, opens drawerstional and generally makesinahis tiny home kitchen mon thread. All of them capture sauce, a blue cheese, fig, papaya, presented on rustic wooden platters — the the interplay between the culracket at odd hours. A and teacher at the institute, grape and pineapple platter, turCasper’s journey meal that could said, have “A impressed internet mil- tural, emotional, sensual and exwho requested to remain anonymous, tle soup, endive and walnut salfrom chef de cuisine and food few days ago, a physicslionaire professor told mecritic that Ramsey Michel, once tremely visual aspects of food. ad and rum cake with glaceed at a celebrated LA and forstaff all —room to a simple, he was sitting alone in the when buttery, three-cheese Cooking and eating remain at fruits is hardly all that different restaurant to an sandwich chef Carl Casper makes the centre of the narrative, while the door inexplicably grilled kept opening andthat closfrom Mr Chu’s extravagant dinout-of-work internet son,could everyexplain dish is honest and intends to cultural mores, myth, love, loss, ing. Nothing, no windfor or his force, ners for his daughters, where he joke and, eventually, theheperson it is created for. Casper’s sex and humour are stirred in as why. I tried remindingplease him that was a man whips up delicacies like steamed a food truck hero, is journey from chef deex-cuisine at a celebrated the secondary ingredients into of science, but that didn’t ease the stricken chicken with black mushroom, one of discovery and LA restaurant to an out-of-work internet joke food films. pression from his face.” stir-fried clams, shrimp and walove — of both the and, eventually, a food truck hero, is one of disJust like Chef Carl Casper, othter chestnut croquettes and San culinary and the covery and love — of both the culinary and the er underdogs of the culinary Pei chicken from the fish he has human sort human sort. world include Remy the rat from farmed and chickens he has bred Jon Favreau’s Chef celebrates food, and there Ratatouille, whose biggest dream to meet his own high standards. is a beating heart at the squishy centre of this is to cook, and Julie Powell from Chef is, mostly, a worthy sucindie offering that is bound to leave you feel- Julie & Julia, who wants to transcessor of these films. It draws on ing warm and very, very hungry. This little film form her life through the magic of Julia many of their tropes and whips them together from the director renowned for his big-ticket Child’s recipes. These characters overcome with a dollop of New Orleans jazz, Latin dance outings like Iron Man follows in the tradition great odds with determination, spirit, a little music, Facebook updates and Twitter feeds, of Chocolat (directed by Lasse Hallstrom, love from food critics, a friendly chef or two making it a delectable all-American concoc2000), Julie and Julia (by Nora Ephron, 2009), and the internet. Their stories are ones that in- tion about the indomitable human spirit. And Woman on Top (by Fina Torres, 2000), Eat Drink spire you to take that first step, to get off the as Chef Carl, his sous chef Martin and his son, Man Woman (by Ang Lee, 1994), Like Water for edge of a first floor sublet above a grimy pizza 10-year-old Percy, lip sync through the brass Chocolate (by Alfonso Arau, 1992), Babette’s parlour in Queens to do what you’ve always band version of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing Feast (by Gabriel Axel, 1987), and the delight- wanted to do. in their food truck, riding across America, sellful, animated classic Ratatouille (by Brad Bird Food can be used as a device that inter- ing their food dream, we realise that we have and Jan Pinkava, 2007), among others. twines myth, storytelling, culture and com- bought into it as well.

This mix of big studio Hollywood films as munity. In Chocolat Juliet Binoche’s Vianna diya is awandering Bangalore-based Who goes there?

Located near together a burning ghat, Bari is a convenient pitkohli stop for spirits writer shreevatsa nevatia well as indie and foreign cinema has a comRocher mixes herBhooter decadent choco-

Institute of Education for Women

W Boo!

late-filled confections in a little French town Kolkata

Bhooter Bari, Neemtala

L

Q R

ND-X _ A

cover takeaway

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Keema cook-off Is kachhe keeme ki tikiya Boo! better than the shami?

W

hat happens when you accidentally defrost half a kilo of mutton keema on a weeknight? In my kitchen, it usually means a large batch of keema matar, large enough to freeze a box for n Taratala, some of Kolkata Port a rainy day. But sometimes, even theTrust’s one- abandoned quarters seem to wear trick ponyresidential needs a little rest. Thumbing a Bhooter Bari’s red, copy decrepit look.

The rooms well-thumbed of Priti Narain’s The Es-are dark and theDelhi stairs downright terrifying.

As a dog sudsential Cookbook, therefore, I decided denly outaofkebab a crumbling building, it was leaps time for experiment.

A rawtaxi driver Anil cooked Kumar mince Das explains thekeeme structure has versus duel —why kachhe remained uninhabited since 1998.

“Sixteen years ki tikiya pitted against a fail-safe shami. ago, a teenage opened the fridge, Dividing thegirl pilecame into home, two, I marinated drank colda water andofdied there. Two the firstsome lot with teaspoon rawright papaya, days later, anand acquaintance of half hersagot some ginger salt, and hung cupa phone call.

It was voice over on the of curd in aher kerchief theother sink end.” for 30Mohammad Anwar, been listening patiently, fiminutes.

In awho pan,has meanwhile, I browned interrupts, “I still see her, on the third anally sliced onion, and ground in asitting mixer half wearing white frock.”

Surprisingly, Anwar afloor, cup of roasteda chickpeas, 1½ tablespoons says he poppy feels no fear.and Likea much of Kolkata, he is roasted seeds scant teaspoon conversant with the this beast. of garam masala.

Thenature recipeof asked for cinnamon powder and chironji too, but I skipped those. Mixing everything together, I shaped them into discs, filling each with chopped ginger, coriander and green chillies, before frying — covered and on a low flame — in oil spiked with ghee.

Kolkata Port Trust quarters, Taratala

I

Meanwhile, the keema for the shami was being pressure cooked with a quarter cup of chana dal (Bengal gram), six cloves of ground garlic, one-inch piece ginger, ground, one-inch cinnamon, four green cardamoms, four cloves, a bay leaf and salt in about 300ml of water. Now, before the purists come chasing with an eightinch knife, let me clarify that Narain suggests you cook the keema in a pan for about an hour or until the mince is tender and the water has evaporated. But I must confess the only significant difference I’ve noticed between mince cooked in a pressure cooker and a pan is the cooking time (cut down by half!). Once cool, remove the bay leaf and the cinnamon and grind the mixture. Shape into discs, fill with chopped ginger, coriander and chillies, before frying them much the same way.

The verdict: those of a meat-loving persuasion will be pleased by both, but the texture of the shami is a shade better. That it also involves less effort and time (if using a pressure cooker), and can be made ahead, certainly helps.

Yet dinner that night was ordered in. Patience flew out the kitchen window at the first whistle.

MEAL TICKET

naintara maya oberoi

Eating Turkey

Chicken for dessert and raw lamb çig köfte for a taste of local generosity, Istanbul puts the very best of the East and the West on the table

I

stanbul was once the crossroads of the world, and it is still the meeting point of Europe and Asia. Last summer, it was also the spot my family chose as a meeting point — my grandmother had expressed a wish to go to Turkey for her 80th birthday, so the 12 of us swooped down on Istanbul from all directions, like an ice cream-devouring Assyrian horde.

It was easy to see why Istanbul, balanced on the Golden Horn, atGirl thein juncture of the Bosphowaiting The residential quarters of Kolkata Port Trust have been witness to strange things shreevatsa nevatia rus and the dazzling cobaltbright Sea of Marmara, had once been the centre of the world. Despite the heat, Or maybe, it’s your imagination.

CHENNAI the piers were bustling The graveyard of the St Mary’s Church (the with people, sweet-sellers, oldest Anglican church in India) located injuice carts, cruise liners and St George also hasand its dolmas share of spooks. ViThe first English fortress in India,Bybuilt in 1644, the way A cart onside the Eminönü waterfront; shutterstock small boats chugging in and St George houses the Tamil Nadu Legislative pul K Saini, a marketing professional who out. It was at once sleek Euto live in and the mulberry military quarters Assembly and other administrative dessert buildings — a Punjabi used Turkish wine sherbet. nearby, ropean and chaotic Asian, and today. The entrance to this government estab- says,Everything “Several decades ago, two men family’s dream. we had eaten so faryoung paled in its food drew from all over Turkey lishment, when approached the Fort were best friends each other to go But from Istanbul’s real who comparison to Çiya:dared the meats zinged and its neighbours.

Railway Station atculinary night, isheart the was stuffout of on leg-its to with the graveyard thesauces, middleand of the night their tart in fruit everyThe big birthday dinner took us to Borends. Astreets. colonial complete a and hammer a particular tombstone.

In building, the cavernous Spicewith Bazaar, thing shonea nail withon the Mediterranean flasa, an upscale restaurant in Beyoglu with more of theand twodrizzles ventured gatewaycustomers illuminated bythrough the filament of avats dy-of The sifted massive vours of adventurous garlic, mint, sumac décor designed to please any passing completed andallcame back ing bulb, this is where evenblack, the most olives — one paleplace green, purple, sam- first, of olive oil. Wethe leftdare dazed, curling upunRussian oligarch. We ordered most ofhardened the pling sceptics take a deep breath. Thewe scathed.

His friend though, wasn’tnaps. half as here and there.

In Sultanahmet, on the ferry home to take satisfied menu: dolmas, astringent grape leaves AsIstanbul soon as he had done finished walls ofate theaentryway leading the rest of the whole levrek (seatobass) baked in a lucky.

But wasn’t yet.hitting Gettingthe stuffed with rice, artichokes stuffed with administrative block, with metalAt nail heada for the lastwalk time, he turned hard casing of lined sea salt andrusted set aflame. offon theitsferry, digestive along the herbs and rice, imam bayildi-style auberto seemed step away the tombstone. frames,Eminönü, hinges, gothic-looking door on the waterfront, we jambs stood in around seafront justfrom the thing.

I wangines, hummus with roasted peppers, and locks, drawn straight out of a Poe nov- That’s when feltquieter, something tugging at the lineare among chatty Istanbullus for four-lidered off tohethe smaller pier, and quails marinated in thyme, grilled calaof his dhoti near the wheeling ankles. Seized el. Having had mackerel-and-onion the privilege of walking ra grilled sandwich- loose wasend photographing a man a mari, lamb manti dumplings, and what abjectkebab terror,cart hearound, dropped to the through stretch in fishing the middle the bybright es,this served off old boats.ofOutside when the ground midthe menu described as “special lukenight, one canby say certainty Later, whenthat his had friend the city, thewith Bosphorus, a — it does clutching his heart. dle-aged couple warm Bolu beans”. Then, more lamb with make the hair on the backconjured of your neck stand came in searchjust of him, he found lying nondescript shack bought their him snacks aubergines, veal doner kebabs, luscious on end,upespecially whenanchovies, you hear the slain cold and dead from — thehim loose end my of his dhoti briny, fatty tapped shoulbeef filets marinated in thyme andcommander’s yo- quick-fried of “Where the tombstone.” war cry echoing from the past. nailed to the foot in corn, grilled der. from?” said the I only share food ghurt, and still more lamb, grilled with swordfish and batter-fried man, as his headscarved at gunpoint peppers and tomatoes. For dessert, we red mullets with accusing wife clambered onto the went round the table as our waiter prehistoric eyes. hood of their car, and unmopped his brow. Fig and date pudding.

One day, we crossed the wrapped her lettuce-kebab Quinces in syrup. Orange semolina with Bosphorus Strait to eat at Çiwrap. “You like this kebab ice cream. Custard with chicken breast. ya in Kadıköy. Çiya — actually three ad- man? You take this kebab!” And he handMy aunt, who was relaying everything joining sister restaurants — is run by Chef ed me his own just-bought kebab roll. to the waiter, stopped and glowered me- Musa Dagdeviren, who spends his time I was taken aback, since personally, I nacingly. “Dessert, I said. If you’ve gone unearthing long-forgotten regional reci- only share food at gunpoint. But he inback to mains…” pes, cramming his menu with unusual sisted, pressing it into my hands. My “I haven’t,” said the small personage home-style dishes. You order your food at stomach groaned, but I took it. His wife who had spoken, refusing to be cowed. a deli-style counter, and pay by weight. grinned, and pointed at her own sand“It’s in desserts!”

Our spoils were a yoghurt soup with bul- wich, miming how delicious it was. I bit The waiter intervened with the air of gur and mint, lamb meatballs in a sauce in: the grainy, spicy lamb meatballs inwisdom: “It’s a custard made with chick- with tart cherries, roasted green figs with side were almost raw, mixed with bulgur, en, madam. Very fine threads of chicken tomato, pomegranate and onion, and a herbs and scallions. “Çig köfte,” said the breast with milk and cinnamon.” But the parade of kebabs: lamb-tomato skewers, man, beaming. “Good? Best?” fine-chicken-breast custard, when it ar- spicy cumin-scented beyti kebabs in la“Best,” I said. “Istanbul, best.” rived, was a letdown: a gelatinous cousin vash flatbread parcels, lamb with pome- naintara maya oberoi is a food writer based of panna cotta, with no hint of poultry in granate juice and aubergine, chicken in Paris t@naintaramaya its creamy, jiggly depths. Still, now every- shish kebabs, and beef kebabs with mozone could say they had eaten chicken for zarella and mint, accompanied by pale

Fort St George

Not just any old building Only those with steely nerves dare to visit Fort St George at night v ganesan and the hindu archives soity banerjee

Q R

ND-X _ A

5 BL 21 BL

explore cover

BL BL 222

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

Boo!

The peacock and the maharaja

rohit gupta

Scientific knowledge does not always carry across borders, and these omissions come to define our scientific understanding

This, their favourite haunt

Missing pieces Maharaja Jai Singh, who built the monumental Jantar Mantar, seemed to have been unaware of Kepler and Newton

In the shadows of India’s bustling metros, live paranormal investigators and exorcists, believers and sceptics, chasing and dispelling the idea of a ghost.

BLink goes in search of the truth, or the embellished lie, trailing the pallu of a spotless white sari

s subramanium

T

ND-X _ A

he cauldron of history is stirred by these curves in the history of science up to the the micrometer, or the vernier. On the theoretthe movement of people. Like leaves time of Isaac Newton is unparalleled in geom- ical side, Jai Singh seems unaware of Kepler on some invisible wind of desire, ad- etry. Planets were found to move in elliptical and Newton. A question is often raised: why venturers and explorers have polli- orbits, cannonballs and projectiles fell in a did Jai Singh, an enlightened scholar, a man DELHI nated foreign cultures with ideas across Jamali parabolic archlooms underinthe of gravity, ones home. with its rough, Kamali theinfluence distance, beautifarcall ahead of hisThe time,tomb, remain ignorant of or igmillennia. It seems astonishing then, that the ful and serene. shadows on sundials moved in a hyper- jagged There are vast areas of darkness lies in ruins. Only his son Khan noreedges, the neo-astronomy of Europe, and inpeacock of Indian mathematics remained un- around bolicit. path.

Our feet drag. But closer to Maulana Shahid’s is relatively Dehlvi stead tomb attempt ‘to reviveintact. the spirit oftells Ulugh molested by Greek geometry for 2,000 years. Jamali’s Thetomb, otherthe omissions concern geome- us of atmosphere gets solid decidedly a woman of his walkBeg’ at a timewho thatcame seems,oninone retrospect — a cenThe scholar TA Sarasvati blamed t was a hot, muggy summerAmma night. The huntthis lighter. try, and the existence of only five Platonic Dehlvi tells us that good djinns sur-sol- ingtury tours tooand late?”returned home to find she on apparitions the brahminical fixation with on religious for of women in white the round ids, namely tetrahedron, octahedron, the Sufi—saint’s shrine cube, and keep bad wasn’tRaymond alone. “She kept calling me, tellingfurther me Mercier of Cambridge and of social purpose, “...this streets Delhi had come to leaning naught. towards Even spirits icosahedron and the These there was someone her room.

There at bay. “When dogsdodecahedron. bark through the adds that, “In thein Mughal period, forwasn’t example, utilitarianism has had unfortunate results. night, empty, desolate bungalows of leafy Lutyens’ five you elemental wereare used since thehe time much know solids the djinns fighting,” couldofdo, and asked to chant sometheIwork Ulugh Beg ofher Samarkand was wellThehad nonchalance withnowhich splendid says, Delhi few tales to tell, spiritsthe to report. of “Many Plato inpeople pondering the Jamali structure of atoms, feel that Kamali is thing,” he says. calls stopped, known, andWhen parts the of it (mainly theDehlvi trigonoachievements of Greek geometry were That’s when we landed at the Mehrauli Ar- ig- alive.” crystals andtombs matter inshut general.

But the are and locked. checked on her. was fine, but the were djinn inmetrical and She geographical tables) nored, while the apseudo-science chaeological Park, reliable hauntofofGreek goodand He So onpoints one hand have conic sections, then to a we pitch dark stretch, oncethe hasn’t left in her side since.

The air turns sticky cluded the Zîj of Jai Singh.

The tables of sun, astrology wasrestless received with of open a 17th-century andBabylonian bad djinns, where the spirits trajectories settlement, in which abeyond lot of which celestial beads sweat trickle down ourtaken spines. liesand again, moon andofplanets, however, were over hands, is perhaps worst of these. was on- theearthbound Thomas Metcalfe andthe ‘Slave ruler’ BalbanItwanmatter moved, tomb of Balban.

Dehlvi tells and us of an expe- As we step out of Balban’s from sinister ruins, my unaltered Philippe de La in the 18th century, 2,000 after dition der.lyThe 200-acre heritagenearly site has seenyears continon the other we horribly have the geomethat went wrong here — a friend complains of sudden her ears. asHire.

By thispain timeinEuropean active contact offor Indians with the Greeks, uous occupation at least 1,000 years.that group try ofofsolids, which explained people were forced the to leave the The gate is close tronomy by. When had we slip past it, Dehlundergone revoluEuclid’speriods Elementsofwere translated into Sanskrit Different history intersect here — grounds. structure of matter itself.want With-you… they vi bends forwardtionary “If the djinns don’t and shakes his head in disbedevelopments at the It is surprising that thenstands perhaps example of the willout theand Lodieven dynasty nextthe to the Mamluks; these two pillars of classical lief. He looks uphands at my of friend.

A wisp of whiteKesuffocate you,” he mutters darkly.

Copernicus, Galileo, the pillars of classical Arabs provided the inspiration.” tombs from the Mughal period give way to movement andthe matter, Ifphysics, Jamali Kamali is where good djinns re- smoke escapes pler, her ears.

Theand pain subsides.

Halley, of course Newphysics remained Fritzretreats Staal even demarcates thewhere main Akphilo- side, summer of the Raj. Here’s the Indian mathematicians the tomb of Balban is what the diabolical “That was a djinn,” he All says.of that was entirely ton. undiscovered by sophical between Indian and for Greek could not possibly have trigbar’s foster difference mother Maham Anga weeps unknown not only in Mughal InIndian geometers to mathematics, — “The sonapproaches Adham Khan; a mysterious saying fragrance lin-an- gered a scientific revolution; and dia but in the rest of the Islamic cient Greeks developed logic and a notion gers at Balban’s son Khan Shahid’s tomb; and of as we know — they certainly world. The introduction of de La rationality deduction best exhibited

by Eu- didn’t. That these ideas retales are told ofasdjinns who gather at Sufi poet Hire’s tables alone proved to be clid’s geometry.

These discoveries Jamali’s shrine. Fortified by several contributed swigs of mained undiscovered by Indian of little consequence in the dethe development of Western redsubstantially wine, we hadto joined Asif Khan Dehlvi, who geometers is surprising; but not so much as velopment of Mughal astronomy.” science. civilisation was an the fact that early Greek works treating this leads walks Ancient through Indian the seven cities of Delhi, One might even say that Jai Singh was as traditionghost and the oral transmission of the subject never even reached India until late in- much of a historian as futurist or even mystic, for oral a night-time trail through Mehrauli. tradition became the first summer object of house. scientific to the British Raj. Our first stop is Metcalfe’s and he never meant the instruments to have inquiry.

Thus arose two human sciences, closeOnce the governor general, Thomas Metcalfe Another beguiling mystery is the astrono- scientific value. However, because the next ly related to retreat each other formal struc- mer-king of Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Jaisingh II, name in Indian science did not appear until built his lavish overin thetheir tombs of Lodi the sciences of ritual and language.” andture: Mughal rulers, incurring their wrath. Akwho built the monumental solar observatory 150 years later (in Jagadish Chandra Bose), he To beginQuli with,Khan’s while tomb a number of key contribar’s general was turned inin the early 18th century. “Jai Singh’s career has had a moral obligation to the transfer of

by Indian mathematito butions a guest were housemade for honeymooners and been described as an enigma,” writes Virendra knowledge from Europe that he failed to accians, they were somehow remained in complete sacred rooms turned into a library.

It’s Nath Sharma, “... inspite of his close contacts complish, with tragic consequences that resodarkness about conichis sections. are sim- with Europeans, Jai Singh’s endeavours reflect nate to this day. unsurprising then that uneasy These spirit saunthe various dissections of an hourglass tersply about the grounds of Mehrauli, for no one(or, Thelittle or no Ainfluence theatastronomy conhauntings moat skirtsofruins the MehrauliofArchaeological Park; and (top) the tomb of the Sufi saint a double cone) which are the ellipse, the pa- Jamali messes with ancient mausoleums. temporary His instruments do not ex- rohit gupta explores the history of science as mohammad qasim Kamali syedEurope. rabola and the hyperbola. The importance of ploit refinements such as the telescopic sight, Compasswallah t@fadesingh

Mehrauli Archaeological Park

I

Q R

scan cover

saturday, july 5, 2014 saturday, july 5, 2014

Licence to kill

Ranjit Nagar, near Scrapping Orkut Shadipur Metro Station

Peruvian government turns on its own citizens

I

f you thought India’s Intelligence Bureau’s report and the subsequent government action on NGOs was harsh, where non-profits were called ‘anti-national’ and deemed accountable for two to three per cent of India’s GDP annually, try this. If you’re a Peruvian expressing concern over the environmental impact of mining, then the government can issue the following: death threats, rape threats, physical and electronic

Boo!

surveillance, media smear campaigns, police intimidation and prosecution. As per a new amendment, made in January and revealed in a report by a Dublinbased NGO this month, members of its armed forces and police are even exempt from criminal responsibility if they cause injury or death. Democratic organisations in Peru and outside have said the law amounts to a “licence to kill”. In Peru, there’s no room for protest.

Google Inc giveset’sup the ghost on its first social talk about her once we’re outside,” says networking siteHarsh Puri, criminal lawyer by morning and

“L

paranormal investigator by noon. We are at the top rkut Büyükkökten up with the ideaofofa social networking floor, acame tiny two-room setup, four-storey DDA flatduring his ‘20 per project’ at Google, the Shadipur company alin cent Ranjit Nagar,time not five minuteswhere from the lows employees toMetro dedicate one-fifth of their timetotoathings than Station in Delhi — home wickedother spirit, their job requirements. a decade it was the mother now inNow, exile.

The flatsince belongs to founded, Rajesh Sekhri, 53, ship has decided to let the site,to once the rage, dieastrologer a slow death. who claims be all a professional andThe hissite, where many a high school crush18, came tilla civil only engineering a few years ago, son Rajneesh, whoto isfruition pursuing will now rest in cyber heaven, where all thethe has-been go.their For usdegree.

Two months ago, Sekhriswebsites were sure ers who want to backup their content, they can visit the Google Takeout house was haunted. site where archives of all Orkut are stored.

Haunted orusers not, there’s something decidedly eerie about the flat. A cooler with peculiar scratches across its khus (straw padding), a carpet mauled much the same way. The fridge wire and other cables cut, only to be taped up later. “Even our gas pipe was slashed once. Thankfully, the gas was turned off,” says Sekhri. “Every evening we came back home to one strange thing or the other. Once my son even saw utensils fly up and then around the room.”

Petrified, Sekhri shows us locks he has spent a fortune on; some priced at ₹6,000 apiece. Among them is a lock with keys that can’t be duplicated and another with a screeching theft alarm. At the main door is a CCTV camera. And yet, there are no signs of a break-in. There never were, claim the residents.

When Sekhri first met Puri, the latter promised to ‘cure’ the house of all evil. Sekhri says he kept his word. Using dhyan yoga, Puri communicated with the resident spirit who, in keeping with ghostly stereotypes, happens to be a woman. “She was conjured and sent here by someone who wanted evil to befall the family,” says Puri, “When I asked her to leave she dug her heels in, leaving only after several hours of hard work and persistence.”

One month and 27 days after she left the building, Lost spirit The Sekhris believe their house in west Delhi was haunted sibi arasu Puri refuses to speak of her indoors. or nearly 50 hours, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan was distraught. On June 28, when he landed in Delhi, the sarod maestro found that his “priceless, precious and almost half-a-century-old” instrument was mislaid by British Airways. The maestro took to Twitter to unleash his anguish, not forgetting to mention that the carrier had previously damaged his sarod in 1997. Memories of 2010 also resurfaced, when t has no reason to be there, tree.

It damaged anAirthe India had stands bang in the middleother of thesarod road,and then civil aviaforcing every vehicle to circumvent it. But Praful Patel had to tion minister the peepul tree at Toganpur village, or personally apologise. When BA what is now Dwarka Sector 9, stands tall, the Medellin Cartel are a long forgotten finally managed to restore the bynot thejust hubbub of traffic. memory, his hipposunmoved still thrive, 45-year-old sarod to him, he 1977, when this being dethe first three, but 16 of“In their offspring as area was tweeted: “EPIC REUNION!!!” veloped, around they tried tree,”the sayscarrier worked well. These hippos roaming theto move the While Indresh Yadav.aHeperclaims his family — worsurrounding areas have become round-the-clock for this Dadaelse Badi Wala, whose shrine manent fixture. Notshippers knowingofwhat much-publicised reunion, located on started the roadside next to the to do, people in theis area have scores oftree regular passen— has in this centuries. adopting them. In the locallived school, the area for gers are still grappling “They got a crane it, but the kids even share their swimming poolto uproot with a malfunctioncrane broke down. They brought in twobelt. with these ‘gentle giants’. ing baggage more cranes. Those failed as well. Because this tree has shakti, a power that lets no one displace it.”

We’re here to follow up on rumours that have been flying thick and fast. Of the corpse of a young woman seen hanging upside down from the peepul tree. Of the lady in a white sari who asks for a lift late at night and runs along with the car if minister herDr Harsh Vardhan told the unfortunate girl who happened to be dressed in a short it refuses to stopirst or, health worse, attaches New York Times that “the thrust in his ministry skirt at the venue to “emphasise his point”. To add fuel to self to its rear window. would towards “We’ve heard thesebestories too,promoting especial- the integrity of the sex- the fire or should we say desi ghee to the agni, Pramod ual relationship and wife”, rather Muthalik, infamous for beating up pub-goers in Mangaly from call centre employees between who live husband in than condom use.never Now seen Sudin Dhavalikar, the public lore in 2009, is trying to claw his way into the State, to this area,” says Yadav.

“But I’ve works minister it with my own eyes.department We believe that Dada in Goa has got in on the start a Goa branch of his Sri Rama Sene soon. Meando-this-don’t-do-that Last week at the sidelines of while, the Congress sniffing publicity brownie points Badi Wala is where the tree’s shaktiact. comes State he told from. He useda to ride function, a white horse whenjournalists, “Young girls have sent across a box of short skirts to the PWD minisshort in nightclubs are a threat to our ter’s office, like the pink chaddis Muthalik received from he was alive, wearing and some sayskirts they still see Tall tales The peepul tree near the Dada Badi Walainshrine in Dwarka kamal narang across the country 2009. culture.” And what’s more, he started pointing at an him at a full gallop.”

O

What’s hippo got to do with it?

Case of the missing sarod

Colombian drug lord leaves behind a problem of mammalian proportions

When Ustad Amjad Ali Khan lost and found his “priceless” instrument

T

here are many legacies that the ‘King of Cocaine’ Pablo Escobar left Colombia with, but this latest one is peculiar to say the least. When the Medellin Cartel was soaring high, among the various indulgences of Escobar were hippos, yes, you heard right, hippopotamuses like in Madagascar. Escobar did most of his business from his ranch, Hacienda Napoles, some 300km from Bogota. For some reason he decided that the surest way of displaying his pomp and glory would be to build a zoo for himself. You know, to spend those lazy afternoons after all the coke is shipped out. For this zoo, he brought in elephants, giraffes, all sorts of exciting creatures as well as four hippos — three females and one male.

While the rest of the creatures were removed by authorities when Escobar died, the hippos somehow got left behind. Now two decades after Escobar and

F

Peepul tree, Dwarka Sector 9

I

Skirting the issue

After condoms, skirts and bikinis threaten Indian culture

F

ND-X _ A

3 23BL BL

HANG

saturday, july 5, 2014

BL

24

cornerstone in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Ghosts

I

n keeping with the rest of the issue, this quiz is all about ghosts, including a few living ones thrown in for variety!

1

The ouija board, also known as the spirit board, is a flat board marked with the numbers zero to nine and a few letters. It is commonly used to communicate with spirits during a séance. What is the name of the small heart-shaped wooden indicator which spells out the spirit’s message?

2 3

Which word in the English dictionary, and the name of a hit film, is a combination of the German words for ‘noisy’ and ‘ghost’?

The 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness about two man-eating lions with seemingly supernatural abilities was based on which early 20th century account by big game hunter John Henry Patterson? Val Kilmer plays the hunter in the film.

4

The White House has its fair share of ghosts, but the most common one is that of a former president. It is supposed to have scared Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands into a dead faint, surprised Winston Churchill in his bathtub and frightened countless security staff. Whose ghost are we talking about?

5

The 1958 hit Madhumati was one of the first mainstream hits to explore the theme of reincarnation. Which leading director co-wrote the script with Rajinder Singh Bedi for this Bimal Roy production?

the new york times crossword-1013

toe tags

6

Which legendary American ghost was first mentioned in a set of short stories titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent that told the story of a Hessian artilleryman who lost his life in the battle of White Plains in 1776?

7 8 9 10

In the mid 1990s, who used to be known as the ‘Phantom of Fine Hall’?

In the same vein, which tennis star, notorious for his deadpan expression while playing, was known as the ‘Ostrava Ghost’?

Which variety of Indian ghost are found in three kinds — Poshi, Soshi and Toshi?

According to some sources, Bernard Fokke, who died in the 17th century, is the inspiration for this legend. However, an 18thcentury magazine mentions a certain Hendrick Vanderdecken as the real person. What legend are they supposed to have inspired, which has been spotted around the world?

Answers

1. Planchette, the more common term for séances in our part of the world.

2. Poltergeist (‘poltern’ and ‘geist’) 3. The Man-eaters of Tsavo 4. Abraham Lincoln; his wife Mary Todd’s apparition has also been spotted fairly often.

5. Ritwik Ghatak 6. The Headless Horseman, he was decapitated by an American cannonball and his comrades carried his body away but could not find his head.

7. John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and subject of the film A Beautiful Mind who used to wander around Fine Hall, the mathematics block at Princeton University.

8. Ivan Lendl; he hailed from the town of Ostrava in Czechoslovakia.

9. These are the famous churels — the Poshi and Toshi variety serve their partners even after death, while the Soshi are the ones who have been wronged and return to drain the blood of their husbands.

10. The ghost ship ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ which can never make port and is doomed to sail the seas forever.

ND-X _ A

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

ACROSS

1 Tach site 5 “Histoire de ___” (children’s classic) 10 Ocular ailment 14 Where roots grow 19 Tech company in the Fortune 500 20 Like Lincolns 21Comply with 22 Holmes of Hollywood 23 Magic word that never loses its power?

26 Autograph seekers’ targets 27 Company with a monocled mascot 28 1970s Ford on the move?

30 Twins, possibly 31 Old trans-Atlantic voyager 32 Exudes 33 More than a murmur of discontent 36 Ruptures 37 Bezos who founded Amazon 39 Enthusiastic enjoyment of one’s unhappiness?

41 The Josip Broz Memorial Trophy?

46 Lapse in secrecy

47 Balance sheet nos.

48 Stumper 49 Hindustan capital of old 50 Common ingredient in Nigerian cuisine 51 Bag End resident 53 “North Dallas Forty” star 54 Tenderloin cut 55 Hands-free microphone’s place 56 More than ardent 57 Camp rentals 58 Stingy snack vendor’s special offer?

61 Gussied (up) 63 Impertinent 64 Rises dramatically 65 Say uncle 66 Like the word “cwm” 67 Settlement stipulations 68 Capture 71 Away from the wind 72 Rock used for flagstones 73 Country club vehicle 74 Dublin-born musician 75 Big Apple cop who’s looking to bust Popeye?

77 Learn all about the capital of Ecuador?

80 Conversation openers?

81 Track assignments

82 Teacher at Alexandria 83 Skimming utensil 86 Tootle 87 Unsound, as an argument 88 Portion of Dante’s “Inferno” that was wisely excised?

91 Photo processing centers 95 To date 96 Christmas decoration that automatically steers toward lovers?

98 “Here lies One ___ Name was writ in Water” (words on Keats’s tombstone) 99 Tiny pasta 100 Sad sack 101 Constellation animal 102 Whittled (down) 103 Spotted 104 Goizueta Business School’s university 105 Slip by

DOWN

1 People’s Sexiest Man Alive … twice 2 Genesis victim 3 1979 Fleetwood Mac hit 4 Service manual?

5 Waterless 6 Maintains 7 Rubbermaid wares 8 Lead bug in “A Bug’s Life” 9 You may have had issues with them in the past 10 Extracts metal from 11 Car company based in Palo Alto, Calif.

12 Seven-foot (or so) cryptid 13 English school 14 Leave surreptitiously 15 Southernmost province of Spain 16 Compensate (for) 17 Pleasant vocal qualities 18 Spanish “weight” 24 Elite squad 25 Sonata segment 29 Take a stab at 31 Genoese delicacy 33 Frightful 34 Defendant’s declaration 35 Incur cellphone charges, maybe 36 Model A features 37 Fitting punishment 38 Sport with a French name 40 Ancient Hellenic healer 41 ___ Kaepernick, Super Bowl XLVII QB for the

49ers 42 Spoils 43 Round house 44 Golfer’s obstacle 45 Stable diet?

48 Submarine 51 Sang in the moonlight, maybe 52 Player in a pocket 53 “But of course!”

54 Some fund-raisers 55 Pacified 56 Get more mileage out of 57 Learn fast, say 58 [unmentionable] 59 Wine Country surname 60 Area in which one shines 61 Cannon who married Cary Grant 62 Like sulfuric acid 66 Lick 67 Dart gun 68 Seethe 69 Prefix with septic or tank 70 “I’m glad!”

72 Rock launcher 73 Make out 74 Driver’s recommendation 76 Overlarge 77 Paint option 78 Orbital decay result 79 Small game 81 Three-time Olympics host 83One of the Obamas 84 Seinfeld called him “the Picasso of our profession” 85 Overlarge 86 Mesoamerican crop 87 Tempered by experience 88 Stare stupidly 89 Impediments to teamwork 90 Medical breakthrough 91 ___ soup 92 Sensor forerunner 93 Give orders to 94 Poseidon ruled them 97 Pop lover

By Patrick Berry / Edited by Will Shortz

Reach us at blink@thehindu.co.in. Follow us on t@Ink_BL and facebook.com/blink.hbl or log on to thehindubusinessline.com/blink