Blink issue 42 november15 2014

SPEAK EASY His aides rue, “Why can’t he be more diplomatic?”

Manohar Parrikar now brings a refreshing dose of candour to South Block p3 saturday, november 15, 2014

thulasi kakkat

In Kerala, a simple act of affection is still a source of voyeuristic pleasure to many. But as liberal voices rise on its streets, the state begins its reluctant journey towards change p10

The first kiss

NOAH IN VEMBANAD Dr Irving Finkel decodes 4,000-year-old instructions on how to build an ark p2

EXPLOSION ON LAUNCH Interstellar might have arresting visuals but collapses under its own weight p15

explore know

BL BL 222

saturday, november 15, 15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

MOM’s The return of the ark Bulbuls the word CREATURE FEATURE

The discovery of a long-forgotten tablet provides 4,000-year-old instructions that can be Eluding the predator (and the photographers’ followed to build the mythical ark lens), or ‘coexisting’ without stepping on each Tracing the Mars Orbiter’s 4,000-year-old quick journey other’s birdie toes, life is never short of drama n 1985 Douglas Simmonds, a set of instructions

I

W

man of few words and the that can be followed to produce hen a top scientist son of a Royal Air Force (RAF) Much of thethat book preoccupiedI an object is isfunctioning. of the Indian Space with pilot with a penchant for colthe ‘virtues’ of Indian space scidon’t know another instance of Research Organisa- ence: lecting antiquities, walked into from launch vehicles that arit,” he says. tion (ISRO) says, rive atop the British Museum with a handbicycles bullock carts, And so beganand the complex proc“Life is not a molecule of methane,” and ful of items from his father’s colwhoan “never brag” to essscientists of creating ancient boat one wonders what the Mars Orbiter thebased lection packed into a plastic bag. amount ofancient jugaad text. in the frugal on an With the Mission (MOM) is doing out there, engineering, Dr Irving Finkel, now assistant the tilak-sporting help of a and mathematician, three Diversion 680 million kilometres away, all missions keeper at the museum’s Middle blessed by the Church and Oman-based boat builders experiahead The strapped up with the methane sen- theenced Eastern department, was the curalord at the inTirupati. buildingReaching ancientfor boats red-vented sor. The same scientist also claims Stars tor who examined the objects at is not a “human story of(without an epic from original materials bulbul watches we should have gone to the virgin achievement,” the time. As soon as he chanced unlike say, the revealglue or nails), the process began. out for planet of Mercury and not Mars. ingThey upon one of them — a clay tablet account in Apollo: to thea decided againstRace building predators debashis mukherjee There are others too; those who be- Moon the size of a mobile phone, dating that told of thewould story have of a full-sized one,uswhich lieve the red planet isn’t the “for- space back to around BC 1800 — he recprobehalf riddled with pitch. political occupied a football As n a perfect world, one would midable combination of favourable controversies ognised that it had something to ranges, one is compelled to lapping engineering obFinkel writesand in his book, this boat hope to do always an animal characteristics to make a habitable stacles. withspot the story or legend ofhow the they coexist. ask the so righteous wouldDespite have been high thatswag a giwithout Flood: disturbing it, topart al- of Mesopoenvironment” just yet. And those of raffe an integral In peninsular India, these two the book, there is much to celewould have struggled to ways be tamian able to watch an ani-andspecies who think the mission is a “national brate mythology, subse-coexist by not fully coexistabout and Indian space peek over MOM its side.

So the team optmal withoutquently worrying aboutreligions the ing. waste”. With so many misgivings, missions. of many across They seem to prefer slightly difThe methane sensor ed to scale down and, usingmay the effect of yourthe presence. realistione is tempted to ask if the cheapest or same world. But “Wall Wall! Reed, wall! weather conditions — ferent may not confirm thebuild presence of proportions, a boat cally, many animals notice you mission to Mars, the ₹4,500-million theroughly Reed Wall, That youlong may live forevred-whiskered bulbuls live in margas. Even if of it the does, we won’t a fifth original. before you notice them. You onlyHouse, see ginally Mangalyaan, is worth er! Destroy Your build awetter, more humid environknow if it’s and biologically Given the political security them from the corner of your eye asandments the four rupees that boat; spurn property save a than red-vented bulbuls. generated risks, building the craftmethane in Iraq they’re fleeing. went out of our life.” Thus began the 60-line Suchtabfine separation isn’t unusual — (indicating lifeThe existed wasn’t really an option. obviBut no creature creates as script pockets. let, written in quite cuneiform — the natural world is rife with pairs of on Mars) just asteous alternative was or Kerala, with much of a ruckus about an ap- soclosely In Reaching for the Mesopotamian writing old itrelated species that divide roid dust. But, as Bagla its ancient boat-building tradiproaching predator (orany person) as alphabet. a up their shared habitat along alStars: India’s Mission to predates form of “the journey ittions and writes, ready supply of essennesting bird because Mars andhis Beyond, Aroundnesting a thirdbirds of the most inscripimperceptible the self is a great achievetial materials such as the reeds Treasure axes, findergiving Dr Irving Finkel nearly fell off chair whenauhe read that vidya ramBagla and were to move while onto the boat thors “2 by 2”Pallav aren’t really fleeing they’re tion on—the tabletstagwas damaged impression animals of coexistence, ment, and that and bitumen specified in is thewhy ining a diversion. birds chirp the Subhadra Menon do and Many unclear.

He placed tablet avoiding each other. carefully call many MOM of a structions.scientists Besides that, raucously, and to allay misin a even drawer in his office and examined itWhat for ismost fainted whenlittle I looked thatsuch word up in the experienced workers remarkable ‘technological demonand boatyard manfake injury, toover distract placedwhat fears, rathersays agers who worked alongside a decade, whenever he got the chance. the dictionary it meant,” about these bulbuls, and found strator’”. is aof good the It team boatpredators from do in their best of tothe building experts in Oman Then, the word by word, he began to unravel the is Finkel, his office,they tucked a corner however, that inthey timewere for space science. from Kerala. eggs or chicks inside couch India’s foray inmore complex parts of the text. Somemaintain of the British Library. this separaNolan’s InEarlier year, it Christopher took 60 to 70 workers Reaching forthis the Stars In Hawaii, these two Bagla and their nest. It’sdiscoveries this sort left him astounded: far fromtion the science of the fibeing ForaFinkel, of cuneiform writ- Pallava even in new whosetostudy terstellar gave us a nearfour months to build the boat. Many challengspecies recreated a Menon of drama that firstrendering of a classic story, thehome nalleft frontier in earthly a simple tabletestablished ing at university had him with a lifelong Subhadra over accurate of a es slowed the pace of work: the depiction bitumen used pattern akin to their Non-fiction drew my attention things like space races, was in the form of a dialogue between the god interest Mesopotamian literature and his- ₹899 12,000km away, onin the blackhole; China had undidn’t prove as watertight as everyone geographic to the nest Enki of a and red- an unwitting hero, Atra Hasis.island politics and worthy InIt con- of Oahu tory, the were clear: “The presence inconclusions Haveiled their Mars rover hoped, and at points, water had to be pumped distribution in India vented bulbul indetailed, a dianand values.

The book tained mathematical instructions of the story Koran is undoubtwaii.on In the ’60s, red-in the Bible on the heels out and the structure re-patched.

ButofinMangaMarch patch of thorntraces how to build a boat that would save mankind. borrowing from the MOM’s Meso- journey whiskerededly abulbuls lyaan; anda Philae left it was finally there: miniature scrubButforest from the chambers of this boat was not shaped like the were ark weintroduced potamian world that preceded into mothership Rosetta to replica, weighing 35 tonnes, of MOM was in think Kutch. dustypubbuilding in of today: it was round and bore some a clear of it.” this year,a Finkel theEarlier wetter attempt the first-ever the circular craft described in the a “100-metre dash” Resting amid thetothorny resemblance the coracles built modernArk BeforeKhan Noah,Market, an en- Delhi, to parts ofinOahu.

By thelished ’80s,The they landing on a comet. Inancient tablet. spanning 15 months succulent of a hadn’t second day Iraqbranches (old Mesopotamia) as latespread as the 1930s personal the and oftenlaunchpad too far gaging, from where too has The boatdia now sits onambitious a small caThe presence of the cactus-like euphorb, at Sriharikota, and ’40s. Another phrase they left him even more gently humorous account of the Andhra were introduced, unable to plans to launch Aditya nal off Lake Vembanad.

Bitumen story in the Bible and branches filled “2 with Pradesh. Ordinarily, astonished: by 2”noxwas how thedrier wild animals literary tradition, his Korana is undoubtedly waterproofing cross habitats tocuneiform reach new (a flight to the Sun), to problems have ious to sap, thisthe patches of thisa scale were meant board boat. Thisofseemed discovery and the mission conclusions moist aforest.

The redvisit a passing taking inastewaborrowing from the led to it gradually marathon run over clear link to the story of Noah and the ark. “I alhe draws from it. would’ve been a Mesopotamian vented bulbuls, however, spread sendNasser humans into space. ter.and Sheikh of Kuwait, who world roid, butthe it’s reduced to a “100believes once in much furtherHe in the thatyears, over Galactic! runs a Virgin museum in Kuwait and that preceded it Move metre dash” history of Mesopotamia there spanning 15 months.

The of the book, and has hero a home in Kerala, is setthe to nest was impeccably The earliest was a hugely destructive floodwindow of opportunity probe, arguably, the and Polarall Satellite takeisover the boat the redefended. The bulbuls’ de— November far exceeding the routine flood- 2013 — was chosen, not Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The workquired maintenance. fence seemed effective — the same time, into so much ing from the Tigris and for Eu-the right alignment of horse Whatever satellite its was chosen over future, to Finkel chick in this nest did not get eat- drier regions. These two to beat Chinese its in the phrates thinkbutthis wasthenever spe- rivers. “Iorbits ‘naughty boy’ GSLV, as it inject significance is tremendous.

“Itcould proved the en. But the geographic range of the cies therefore recreated, space race.

Thatbe-the validity probe that forgotten and was Asian often referred to and in miniaMOM Mars’s with minithisinto wasn’t just orbit the stuff of fantared-vented bulbul extends into eco- ture but also in quick would have a front-row cametime, a partaof the culture,” he says.

“The mythviewsyof mum energy transfer.

Onunderpinits 25th buta there is some kind of reality systems quite different from thorn- distribution pattern that comet was Theit,” he of the rescue, it, was the answer toincidental. their ning closely re- as I seespeeding mission says. with MOM, PSLV has been scrub forest, into regions where sembled their geographic authors insist,lost however, that theHe de-recalls psychological if nature control, distribu- fear that usedwith for different differpalpable missions enthusiasm the there are not only fewer euphorbs in tion in India. Why would partment space ISRO are farspent one ofspecies the gods would come of along to and rescue ently.

In 2008, set workforce, a world record time in Kerala withitthe who which to safely nest but also myriad that have spent millionsthe life.” removed from the Capital, unwillof core yearsofbalaunching 10 satellites in aone kept theirby pledge of keeping the building seother species with which they must lancing avoidance with coexistence ing likely to participate in the politics The tablet itself was to be a memory shot; ISROcollaborative, official said itcollegiate was akin cret.of“It was thean most interact, not the least of which is the do it differently on the aide, Nations take spaceorracething so se-ever, travelling storyteller other perhaps side of for aspace. toand a school dropping children a real bus exciting experiment in red-whiskered bulbul. riously thatcommunities, when Chandrayaan-I of storytellers.

In river the world? Similarly,pair I imagine home,history. only atIt the boat-building wasspeed such of an 27,000 advenA large portion of the range of the wherever they are, red-vented failed tovalid keepdetails its 1998 deadline, fall-Daft kmph, elaboratebulmathematically might withme high colliture. people like whochances work onof inscripred-vented bulbul overlaps with buls put as much effortbe ing an behind China’s maiden tions lunardon’t needed to win over audience with boatinto defendsion.

And thanks since normally havetoa PSLV, whisper ofNoan that of red-whiskered bulbuls. And ing their nests from predators probe, Delhihave wasbeen so upset, building experience.

“It would im- former as did vember 24, 2014, about a year after opportunity like this…” in many ways, they seem near-iden- the pair of birds nesting PM Manmohan Singh never perative who recounted this granted in the for eu- the people MOM and is safely installed in Belyingits hislaunch, white beard formal academtical — they eat a similar mix of fruits phorb — if a survival story an of audience to have this kind data.” to the moon mission mechanism the red planet’s orbit, tweeting ic credentials, Finkel exudes the passion,picviand insects, build similar nests from isn’t broken, why fix it? When the suggestion teamto inbuild his tenure. after gour Chan-and tures, a boatThis, based at fellow and boyishhollering enthusiasm of an probes adventurer twigs, roots and cobwebs, and make drayaan-I discovered water on on the tablet’s instructions came from a docusteering of whizzing comets. on the track of newclear treasures. a fuss about predators. On realising ambika kamath studies organismic moon;leaped a major mentaryand company, Finkel at thescientific oppor- breakWithout glue or nails The ark being builtthat at an such undisclosed location Kerala blink films andevolutionary channel 4 biology at Harvard University similar birdsinoccupy overthrough,for before contact. tunity.

“What is miraculous me islosing to have a vidya rampriyanka kotamraju

I

Q R

Q Q R R

CH-X _ A

3

BL

meet

saturday, november 15, 2014

Against the grain The original aam aadmi chief minister Manohar Parrikar brings his pragmatism and innovation to the office of the defence minister and then rode a strong anti-incumbency wave to deliver a BJP majority for the first time in the state Assembly.

But after taking over as chief minister, the Opposition had accused Parrikar of going soft on illegal mining. In August this year, he had supported the renewal rather than fresh auctioning of 27 mining leases in the state. While the opposition has taken him on over his flipflops, Parrikar’s supporters say that he has been a pragmatic administrator who did not want to further cripple the mining industry, which was already reeling from a Supreme Court ban, leading to thousands of job cuts and loss of revenue for the exchequer.

A similar story played out with Goa’s offshore casinos. While in Opposition, Parrikar had led protests against them, demanding their immediate closure. But as chief minister, he had delayed the closure till 2016. Doing it in a rush, he reasoned, could certainly scare away investors.

The big policy feather in Parrikar’s cap was his decision to reduce value added tax on petrol from 22 per cent to 0.1 per cent in the state, making it the most affordable in the country at ₹55 a litre. He also reduced VAT on aviation fuel from 22 per cent to 12 per cent, incentivising refuel stops for all airlines at the Dabolim airport. More and cheaper flights to Goa meant more tourists for the state, and more revenues for residents and the exchequer.

Truth be told In a city of sycophants, Manohar Parrikar still speaks his mind monica tiwari

I

n a city teeming with sycophants, Manohar Parrikar is the rare Narendra Modi loyalist who can be counted on to give him frank — even critical — counsel. The new Defence Minister from Goa has a mind of his own, and a friendship with Modi that goes back over two decades when they were in the RSS together.

In early September 2013, a fortnight before Modi was officially declared BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Parrikar gave me an interview for The New York Times’ India blog. He backed Modi’s nomination, but also called the 2002 Gujarat riots a “blot on Modi’s career”.

Delhi’s media went into a tizzy over the quote, painting this as another example of a party still divided over Modi’s candidature.

The morning after the interview was published, when I reached Parrikar’s office-in-residence in Panjim’s well-heeled Altinho neighbourhood, his aides were in damagecontrol mode. The media was calling persistently, looking for a few more juicy quotes on Modi. The RSS was offended: in the same interview Parrikar had said that while he was a Hindu nationalist, he wouldn’t “take out a sword and kill Muslims”. The state’s Christians were unhappy because he had called them “culturally Hindu”.

“Why can’t he be a bit more diplomatic in his interviews,” sighed one Parrikar aide that same morning.

Sunny Goa to South Block If policy pragmatism and innovation are Parrikar’s hallmark, he will need plenty of that in his new job. The Defence Ministry office in South Block will be a far cry from sunny, laidback Goa, though Parrikar himself is reputed to put in long working hours.

Crucial decisions await his approval, including shoring up the artillery wing of the Army, “But then he wouldn’t be Manohar Parri- which has not seen any acquisitions since the kar,” said another with a chuckle.

Bofors scandal of 1987.

Parrikar has the squeaky-clean image to set The pragmatic Kejriwal? things in motion on that front, particularly in Parrikar’s frugal lifestyle is legendary and has purchasing light artillery guns that can be made him a middle-class hero: he carries his moved easily in the mountains, where the Inown luggage at the airport and travels econo- dian Army’s face-offs with the Pakistani and my class. As chief minister, his office used only Chinese armies are only increasing. two government cars, one for him and anothA $22-billion deal for the delivery of 126 Raer shared by his staff. When Arvind Kejriwal fale fighters with French manufacturer Daswas making news for his austere lifestyle at sault Aviation is also pending. The Indian Air the helm of Delhi, many Parrikar Force chief said we cannot afford fans quickly pointed out that any more hold-ups, particularly their man was the real aam aadafter the Sukhoi fleet was mi chief minister. grounded in October. The Navy There is something to There is something to the Parhas been pitching for more subthe Parrikar-Kejriwal rikar-Kejriwal comparisons. Parmarines and helicopters as well. comparisons; they rikar, a 58-year-old metallurgical All this will require Parrikar to both fought engineer from IIT-Powai (Kejriconvince Narendra Modi and corruption wal went to IIT-Kharagpur) also Arun Jaitley to increase capital burnished his reputation with a expenditure on defence, which fight against corruption. Parrimay not be easy till the economy kar took on Goa’s powerful illehas recovered fully. gal mining lobby. According to the Justice MB Politically, Parrikar will be expected to talk Shah Commission report, between 2005 and tough with Pakistan and China during border 2012 there had been illegal mining worth skirmishes. A man who once called Lal Krishna ₹35,000 crore in Goa. Advani “rancid pickle” may soon have to come Before the 2012 Goa elections, Parrikar start- up with some more colourful adjectives for ed a Jan Sampark Yatra, where he travelled the neighbours. across Goa, staying with voters and supporters. He painted the Digambar Kamat-led Con- sambuddha mitra mustafi is founder of gress government as corrupt and ineffective, The Political Indian

Q R

know takeaway

BL BL 204

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

Natural habitat

ly coming of age and beginning to adapt itself to the digital age. “While designing a font, you are looking to capture something of the spirit of the age in which it is appearing,” he says, “Like any designed object, it is interesting to see how it becomes part of our visual culture.

Projects by groups such as ITF are promising in this sense.”

Ahmedabad’s ITF, set up by National Institute of Design-graduate Satya Rajpurohit and Slovak typographer Peter Bilak, has designed typefaces for television channels. “Although we have thousands of fonts available, if you look for those that support a language like Hindi, 2 work in small point size on a computer screen and have many different styles for differentiating text hierarchy, you would end up with just one or two possible candidates,” says Bilak, “I try to look at text not just formally but al3 so the meaning behind it. At ITF, we have designed and published fonts for over 200 languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Arabic.”

Rosetta Type Foundry’s Vaibhav Singh, who is also pursuing his Master’s at the University of Reading (one of few design schools where students can select the scripts they want to design typefaces for), warns that certain limitations in font design ought to be overcome first.

“A critical issue in designing Indian script typefaces is to recognise and respect the logic behind the letter-shapes — how they are egends surrounding the Nirnaya Sa- scripts in India — nearly 66 scripts and 780 lan- formed and treated. Taking Latin-script feagar Press — at its peak in 19th- and guages, according to the People’s Linguistic tures and grafting them on to a different early 20th-century Bombay — are of- Survey of India (PLSI) — poses other problems. script is an unfortunate approach, common e knew had veered off theDelhi-based ten repeated in thewe font design circles see the Madhuram board —designer and, Prathamesh type and graphic Neela- even today.

So fartodesigners have merely We walked the dining areabeen through a purbeatenart track whenat theDelhi Googlekash of India. Rajeev Prakash, director Samant waiting towho welcome us. one of the providing Kshetrimayum, designed Indian-script equivalents to And Latin ple night twinkling with tiny flames. then lady began instructing Press and designer Maps of popular fonts like Alan- first fonts “We’ve reached,”says mythatthree daughterstypographic in Manipuri, for historical conventions.”as a parade of dishes — gazed in astonishment us to drive intothe haystacks kar, narrates one such tale where proprie-andreasons crowed at once.was written in the Bengali Manipuri Largely, font in aIndian fried fish,though, crab curry, fishdesign curry, dal, couple of “Take a right turnwhile in 100scriptWell torsmango of the orchards. press, or the Jawaji family, yes.

And The Mayek. car had reached itsscripts rather than theno. native is adapting wellatopot digitisation and to veggies, kheer and of pink, irresistible metres,” she commanded, trying her best to “There finalising typefaces for the Kavyamala antholdestination.

But major we stillincident had a in 2005, new media, such was this as the internet, mobile sol kadi — arrived at the table. All drown us in a pond filled with wallowing ogies, a 14-volume collection of ancient San-buf-where short way towith go. more than 1.45 lakh Mani- phones and television. a library With Google launching this was being conjured up in a faloes.

“Takeinsisted a right turn.

Take a right turn.” puri books skrit poems, on making Sanskrit Samant, an unflappable 25-script was the Indian Language written in the Bengali Alliance, kitchenInternet with open fires, andearmy Theread babbling Android was not the only scholars the text in point size eight at thesigntorched year-old, led theheway in Imphal,” says.down This a signed to encourage content inthat of women and implements that hadwith parted withatthe convoy break ofwe dawn, onlyways a lantern hand.

De- ofresulted roughinpath that terminated a revival of sorts forin a and themore gov- at wouldlanguages have looked “You have to cross regional tourists driving from Mumbainew to Goa on thatMayek. spite the tediousness of making typesets clear,Kshetrimayum shallow stream.says, “You “I have ernment set to announce dot home in a torture chamber. this water body to Tuesday the faltered, roads weredon’t with metal,afternoon. wherever Suddenly the scholars to cross water body to reach knowthis much about history, domainmother, names who soon cease— reach Maachli,” he BharatSamant’s though, font narrow and deserted — barring the occasional words or letters were painstakingly recast and butMaachli,” explained, as if Largely, what I doheknow are typewhere the text in the website lessly supervised the kitchenasand explained, as if design in Indian bus, rickshaw and legibility suicidal chicken. theST text waspurple reprinted to ensure even faces. splashing So whenthrough I set out atoknee-high create as the out site’smagnificent address will treats be splashing through a wellturned scripts is adapting We passed a few sleepy stores in the middle of mystream in low-light conditions. as commonplace Mayek was typefaces Pakhangba as knee-high languages — there’s aand like malpua for breakfast stream wasin Indian digitisation as whole nowhere, asigns villages names Designing font for today is not with nearly as try-likeandcrossing Shahid Singh well Sanamahi, I wentBhagat back and of opportunities friednew tigerset prawns for dinner, was asto commonplace and crossing to new media and crude shed that identified itselflooked ingHeloba, as it used toabe.

Yet it’s a manifold and rigRoadatin Colaba, Mumbai. how the script evolved, grabs. clearly a traditionalist. But then Shahid up for as aprocess “Phanaswith Stop”.itsPerhaps, a retiring roomstudied orous own contemporary Rather weout clutched how nervously, it was carved in While thekitchen ‘Helvetica’ of Indian her vast — which would Bhagat Singh Road for wearyPopular jackfruit? challenges. fonts like Yogesh and the stone bags and phones iPods and earlier.

I also and researched is most probably not homemakers out there give modern in Colaba, Mumbai fonts Otherwise it was us andBengali, the glorious Linotype Devanagari andjust Linotype for samples wires and waded in. Mythe three of manuscripts, yet,conniptions technological innovations — is part of the “vilroad. Endless ribbons of tar, with instance, have been in use forfringed decades.

Butjadewooden goggling, giggling press and daughters wooden alandlage a growing market that for Indian experience” the Sagreen palms. since theyshrubs are all and frommoptop a pre-digital era,Shadowy they blocks most four slippers between oflost lettering before starting my work.” fonts are pavingmants the way for better typefaces so proudly offer.

And they avenues seemed lead a fairytale. them. Then Naima fell flat and don’t alwaysthat translate as to well ontocomputer and design. are clearly delighted that people the last five yearswet or so, Indian font design Though were taking or us to Maa- nemerged screens as actually, they do they on newspapers billlooking and mortified.

Which is As British designer Pinhorn, who also from far corners ofJonny the world are landing up at hadwe a major facelift. suchwas as toworks chli, aDesigners little farmmust stay in the heart of charming has boards. constantly innovate when first heard theDesigners laughter that with“ancestral ITF and hasproperty”, designed fonts such asthe their crossing Czech David Brezina and hisKonkan colleague Sindhudurg. so we hoped.needs — for a thebecome to cater to new, Or ever-changing the soundtrack of our adven-Akhand Tamil, Akhand andlearning Saguna to stream, visiting theMalayalam local temple, the Rosetta Foundry, fourteenthabout time, utility.

I read out the direc-Vaibhav good For fontthe is essentially tures.Singh Threeoflocal womenType were almostSadou-Gujarati, says, a fascinating cook on an“Designing open flametype andisexploring the unKulkarni of Mumbai’s Ek Type, designers tions Ross, sent by host.

We had passed BenPingulirang Fiona theour brain behind Linotype bled over with mirth. Clearly, they found citytaskexpectedly because you’re trying to design difference gorgeous countryside.

Indian Type Foundry (ITF) and within sameness, balancing both unity and where we hadIndian askedfonts for directions. galivillage, and other successful such as at Ahmedabad’s bumpkins highly amusing. hich total is how we find ourselves heading players Pradnya Naik and “Yousays, will be guided to take second right turn,” Rohini, “I look back on some fonts that I independent Ten minutes later,like we were ensconced in ourflair. You have control over every aspect theand next morning towards a beach Saxenacottage have tasted success bothstructure com- of the micro stated the instructions. rightPooja have co-designed — ones that“After have taking been sucspotless — a cosy wooden macro elements right up to name of Bhogve.

Panicked of design.

Re-entry of thewith come village path, cessful instraight terms offor the14km. users’Atand readers’ re-youmercially tuckedand awayininterms a dense plantation of cashew, pointthe of unpretty publication.

Then, at that point, bydesign the thought of acrossing the stream suchnut as Monotype the My Indian will see statue of see Kingthings Shivaji.

Take rightbe turncompanies sponses — and can that could mango, betel and kokumin trees. daugh-your becomes tool for others to useand clothes,with.

I’ve insisted daughalsoout given boost.lightanddirtying at statue.

Come forfor 4km.

You will improved upon.

If itahead weren’t deadlines, orseemarket ters has rushed to type helpdesigners Samant’sasister communicate You holdthat no my control ters their pyjamas over their swimsuits.

Chaudhuri, who has re-designed English Madhuram Paryatan board.

I will welcome Itu some new idea for a different design, it would clay diyas. And though they returned withover its wear use anymore.” dailies liketoes The and Economic and magazines you there.” be hard for me to know when to stop.” burnt tales Times of Jurassic Park-style in- But all bashfulness is forgotten once we drive Parule village and turn into an untouarasu Open, they says that font design is slowWe were to spot Shivaji, maintainBesides, therelieved diversity of languages and likesects, wereIndian absolutely delighted withsibipast ched golden grassland. Brown boards point ing his lonely vigil. And even more relieved to their newly acquired skills.

A tale of lost rubber chappals, charming farm stays, learning to cook on an open flame and uncovering the unexpectedly gorgeous countryside in Konkan

1

Type of things to come 4

Deep forest The Farm of Happiness, near Ratnagiri, veiled in green rahul kulkarni

With dot Bharat domains in the pipeline and an Indian Language Internet Alliance

by Google, designers of Indian fonts are readying for a brave new future

L W

Q Q

I

CH-X _ A

A perfectionist slant (Clockwise from the top) 1. Skolar, a Devanagari typeface by Rosetta Type Foundry; 2. Pakhangba and Sanamahi, Neelakash Kshetrimayum’s Mayek typefaces in Manipuri; 3. Pooja Saxena’s Cawnpore Devanagari typeface based on handwriting models; and 4. designs in multiple scripts by Rajeev Prakash

R R

W

5

BL

work

saturday, november 15, 2014

Although both these young Kashmiris grew up during years of political uncertainty and long for a peaceful and just solution, they come from very different backgrounds. Shabbir’s parents are both doctors, whereas Mir’s mother educated him with the money she earned from spinning yarn. They have been brought together by their common belief in art as a means of social justice and the voice of lived experience.

Rather than asking the weavers to replicate a design, as is routinely done, Shabbir and Mir design each shawl in consultation with the weavers and draw from their traditional knowledge system.

“I had been making kani shawls for 20 years but have never made or seen a shawl with a barbwire or gun in it,” says one of the weavers, Aashiq Hussain Dar. “But when I was making it, I knew that it was the same barbwire that I had seen through my life in Kashmir, around the Army camps and bunkers, in numerous curfews and crackdowns; and while I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to make it, it just came to me naturally.”

Dar is currently working on another shawl that has radically changed the age-old Kash- with just two motifs all over it — paisleys and miri shawl by contemporising the motif. In- Kalashnikovs. “Their (Crafted-in-Kashmir) stead of blossoming branches, barbwires run shawls are pure quality, and the motifs are so through the Pashmina shawls, skulls take the different… no one has ever made shawls like place of chinar leaves, guns and paisleys face these before. They are interesting and also say each other, and flowers in the colours of something about this place and the times we spring are imprisoned in loops live in,” the artisan says. and tangles of barbwires.

Each Kashmiri shawl takes “We have heard about attempts months to make and passes to contemporise Kashmiri art, through several hands in the but contemporising does not Instead of blossoming process. For centuries, it has remean brightening the colours mained a major source of inbranches, barbwires and resetting prices; instead, it’s come for thousands: the run through the about making the art an expresweavers, washers, dyers and Pashmina shawls sion of the artist and artisan. And spinners, who are almost althat is what we wanted to do: to ways women. give the art a voice,” says Shabbir.

Mir’s mother, Mehrunisa, has Together, they work with young worked the spinning wheel for artists and designers as well as senior weavers three decades now. One afternoon, during curand spinners to create a shawl “that is not only few, we walked across Srinagar to meet her at a thing of beauty but also the voice of an arti- her house in Chattabal. san, the voice of a people”. So far, the site has “When I got married, my mother gave me sold shawls and sweaters mostly to foreign this spinning wheel as a gift,” says Mehrunisa. buyers, and their prices range from $400 for That, in turn, helped her give her children the the ‘sada’ cashmere range to $1,000-plus for gift of education. Today she believes spinners the exquisite kani range. are a dying breed as there is little money in it.

“I got one rupee for one knot 30 years ago and get the same today. Why would anyone do it?” she asks.

That one rupee includes the cost of the yarn, which the women have to buy themselves.

“We used to buy 10gm of yarn for about ₹100 and, after spinning it over two days, sold it back for ₹140. The ₹40 we earned is nothing these days.”

Back when she was young, almost every second house in Srinagar had a woman spinning yarn to bolster the household income and fetch her financial independence; today, these women find less work due to the mechanisation of looms and spinners.

Mir has seen the ins and outs of this business since childhood, and was always struck by the gender inequality that denied his mother and hundreds of other women spinners in his neighbourhood their rightful share of income.

“When we went into this business, we decided to give the women yarn for free, so everything they earned was profit and we pay in advance,” he says.

Shabbir and Mir want to ensure that their shawl business goes beyond commercial interests and helps put the cottage industry back on its feet on improved social terms. The shawl’s engagement with the politics of the time is yet another of its raison d’etre.

Paisleys and AK47s Two young Kashmiris rework the region’s famed shawl business to reflect its politics and socioeconomic realities

W

Spinning out of control At one time, nearly every second house in Srinagar had a woman spinning yarn and her financial independence, but few can do so now

hen Mahum Shabbir began learning the art of the famed Kashmiri papier-mâché, she had a strange feeling that the miniature flowers, leaves and branches she was drawing were all dead. Shabbir, then 19, had just enrolled as a freshman at Harvard University and was home during the summer, attempting to deepen her ties with the Valley through this centuries-old art. But with every motif she attempted, the feeling of estrangement intensified. Kashmiri papier-mâché was filled with unblemished paradisiacal beauty, but Shabbir belonged to a generation that grew up with an ongoing strife in that ‘paradise on earth’.

“Everything on those papier-mâché boxes looked like an imitation of an imitation, and all of it was dead,” she says. “And it had nothing to do with the artist’s expression anymore.

It all felt like a farce, a beautiful farce, and not art, which must have an ethical imperative and concern for social justice.”

Together with her friend Suhail Mir, an artist and newspaper cartoonist, she now runs an online shawl business — Crafted-in-Kashmir —

Q R

zahid rafiq is The Hindu’s correspondent in Srinagar

read work

BL BL 186

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

In proximity ELSEWHERE

Compared to Sarah Waters’ previous breathless novels, this one offers quieter introspection

Hitch a ride?

At times, the Universe does listen to our pleas

F

riday morning. I had booked a cab for 6:30am but it wasn’t there when I stepped out.

I called the cab com- ideaAnother Navi Mumbai-based start-up, pany. “He’s onForge his way,” said the lady other end.

The — brainchild of at students at IIT-Bombay seconds ticked— by.

Finally, I sawonly an Orange Cab draw offers services to the Defence Research up. But when I walked towards it, the driver shook his head re- and and Development Organisation (DRDO) shutterstock gretfully. “I have a passenger,” he said, the woman paramilitary andindicating security forces.

Their clients in the passenger seat. She was National looking straight a include Securityahead, Guard,with Indo-Tibetan came upon the work of Sarah Lilian, move in. this-is-SO-not-my-problem expression her face.Disaster Apparently Border Police, on National Response Waters quite accidentally. I was they had stopped in theForce parking of my building andlot Delhi Police.

“It isin a order really to hot marThey are all in equal measure horat the Delhi Book Fair and had rified by the proximity with which get a coffee from Dunkin’ ket Donuts. right now. Over the last few years, there has resolved to only buy authors I they have to live their lives and pecuI needed to be at the Marriott Hotel atannual 6:55amgrowth in order been a consistent of to 70 to 80 hadn’t read or heard of. Reading the liarly fascinated by one another. board the shuttle service the says airport in Providence.

I had per to cent,” Deshraj Singh, head of marketpile over the next few weeks, I real- Frances lies in her room at the end been invited to attending theand annual Asia Conference as a salesSouth at ideaForge. ised as far as making book choices of long days spent cleaning and visiting playwright. It was now 6:40am, the airport one Kulshreshtha agrees: “In lesswas than one year go, buying one based on the cover scrubbing, smoking her cigarette in hour away and check-in was we at 9:30am.

I missedhas thealready shuttle,broken since started,IfQuidich image and the flap synopsis was secret and listening to the sounds of which was operated byeven the same as the cabs,The my onand company we are profitable. market is likely to end more often than not in the Barbers chatting, eating their ly other option was a bus.

It would get me to the airport just growing rapidly.”

Quidich’s first assignment The Paying Guests Sarah Waters disappointment. And so, when I dinner and going down to the lavaon time but only if there no traffic along the way.a leading news waswas election coverage with Virago picked up Waters’ Night Watch, it tory. Being a feminist (who had once I went up to the Orange Cab“We driver.

He andwith his them passenger channel. travelled for 40 days, Fiction wasn’t with much hope, but merely thrown a shoe at a police officer) were sipping their coffee a leisurely manner. said,The “Umm ourinUAVs following their Ibus. interviews ₹599 a dogged determination to finish. and a lesbian, Frances is curious and … any chance you could drop me off atwere the Marriott?”

It was with politicians also captured with our The book starts with Kay — wearing critical of the Barbers’ marriage. literally just adown road from drones.

We got lot ofthe mileage from that.” military clothes and sporting her And this being a Sarah Waters novel, where we was were.

The driver shook Soon, Quidich flooded with clients. short hair, stepping out into a ‘limp it is only a question of time before his head once more, though he did day’. “Don’t you know the war’s she and Lilian manage to fall in love call up the cab company. AccordFarewell, copters My driver had arrived over?” men ask her jeeringly. And with each other. ing are to the dispatcher, my driver So what the benefits of UAVs? For starters, on time but pushed hen filmmaker Rahatflawlessly Kul- not have been up to the mark. It was then that theyhad within two pages you are sucked inon timealternative but pushedto offhelicopare arrived a cost-effective Waters describes the off because he didn’t shooting a muhe found about unmanned aerial vehicles ters.because to the curious life of overtshreshtha and cov- wastribulations he didn’t can see be me used waiting While choppers for everyand conflicts of out being see me waiting in the sic video Shreya relationship” (UAVs) being used ert lesbians in post-war England.

It forin singer in—the driveway. from security surveillance to film and an “unnatural at in the US for taking aerial thing driveway Singhal wanted to Frances’ shots from less-distant heights. He bought music Iproduction was a shockingly good book.

Withlast a year, stepped back, feeling defeated.

— they come with a huge thathe time through own contakethat, a fewthere aerialisshots over the Noida And Expressoneearlier from there discovery like only one bestCharges option now would abehelicopter to priceMytag. for hiring fusions. while her narra-for his own venture. way oncan thedo, outskirts of Delhi.tives, The only wayher to heroines, UAVs are have defined as vehicles installed with range thing a reader obsessively walk to ₹1 thelakh bustoterminal because I from ₹2 lakh an hour, dependlike it was to hire a helicopter and seek regulaavionicsedge that-ofcan either fly autonomously or ing had buy all thedo works of the author.

Night breathlessly surely the shuttle. on the use. missed In contrast, a droneI can be raced through tory permissions its use. the-seat Yet, shotplotlines, from a The

by Paying using Guests the commands from the base.

Thebackpack Watch, I realised, was Waters’for fourth had only a small was drizzling hired as forluggage eight tobut 10 it hours from a starting From a distance A UAV from minimum ofbefore 2,000set feet, common person perhaps knows novel, there were three in theisfootage slightlythem and Ibetter didn’t want toof start the day on alakh downbeat.

Just price ₹1 lakh to ₹1.5 and customised to a work ofwould much quieter introspecideaForge (above); an aerial view Victorian England and filled with as drones, because of thethen, military connotaa voice spoke to requirements. me: the lady inFor thefilming, car parked to has to even next if a shot tion. In fact, it takes about 200 pages shot by a UAV (below) airpix tions. for various layered protagonists who mostly for Frances and Lilian theused cab had leaned outbe of re-taken, her window.

“Aww, honey,” she said. a drone can be brought down, its to However, just kiss! UAVs can be filmwant productions, loved other women. My favourite The rest of the plotcivilian a ride to thebattery Marriott?

Hop in!” had a few min-“Shootchanged andShe sent back again. is hardpurposes, to de- such as“You wedding photography, surveillance and she highthough is Fingersmith, a book so well scribe without giving utes to spare, said, and it wasn’t very far out of her way. So I and a ing with a helicopter is time-consuming much away.

So rise real some estateofprojects. got in. plotted that bang in the middle of it, let’s just say things happen, pain,” says Kulshreshtha. Moreover, helicopKulshreshtha Gaurav Meh-kindters you realise with a gasp that you’ve which eventually lead Thanks to this stranger, I arrived at to theflyMarriott are not allowed below aincertain to a cour- teamed up with ta and Tanuj Bhojwani, twotime batchmates atthe Ash-shuttle. been had and you have to re-read troom even. to board I wasmaking the onlyitpassenger andtake chatheight, difficult to close-up oka University. this driver from the beginning. ted withearlier the friendly way to drone the airport, shots.all Anthe average rentalcaught package inWaters is a master of writingThey set up Quidich — a Delhi-based firm that provides All of which is to say that I’d been about a certain kindyear my flight andaerial spent two wonderful days inwhich Madison. had than cludes 10 batteries, are I more of England and images in and UAVs.great conversations, waiting all year to get my hands on effortlessly paints pictures attended a livelyshoot. reading of my enough for a day-long a videos per- throughsome Three friends Veermata Waters’ sixth and latest, The Paying fect sepia tone in your play Harvest andJijaenjoyedMore my luxurious roomsays at the Madison importantly, Kulshreshtha, the head.

Yet, Ifrom Mumbai’s Technological Institute (VJTI) are also Guests. Set in London in the 1920s, found myself a bitbai Concourse Hotel.

On the return journey, I boarded the Orange ease of permissions makes drones a better opweary of both working growing the book is a tight narrative of the Frances and Lilian by shuttle oncemarket more from theas airport.

Onelocal of the otherneeds passention, only the police to be inthe endovertime of the to tap this for UAVs, in INavi the satellite city of formed. merging of class and sexual mores. book. As a Sarah Waters was a silver-haired businesswoman with require a laughingvarious Helicopters fan girl, see Mumbai, gers India’soffinancial Frances, the young protagonist lives in this book a maturing twinkleTatipamula, in her eyes. We soon began long-lost approvals, at leasttalking a week like in advance.

But since an au- capital. Aniket and Shinil Shekhar suc- a cab with her mother in their grand thor, a toning down Neeraj friends and shared whenhave we got down from at the shut- regupeople been using drones without of pace Waghchaure and dracessfully few failed at- I got house in Camberwell. Her father ma, which makes me tle’saterminal stop. homethey feeling and with happy, cher-paths at lation, maywarm interfere flight curiouscreated about a UAV, after in 2012.

October and brothers died in the war, and what she’ll dish out tempts, byIn the Universe. higher altitudes, posing security risks. To next. in their college labished trio set up Airpix, a professional ae- check that, the Directorate General of Civil times are so tough that not only But if you haven’t2013, read the author MANJULA PADMANABHAN and (DGCA) artist, tellshas us tales of herthe parallel photography production com- author does Frances do all the housework before, I’d say startrial Aviation banned uselife of drones with another and video in Elsewhere, in this fortnightly series marginalien.blogspot.in client list includes realUS,estate herself, they are even forced to rent book. Fingersmith, inpany, till it finalises guidelines on their use. fact, ifwhose you have developers, town planners, the police, governout a portion of the house. The book a healthy heart.

However, companies like Quidich and Airment departments and even media houses. starts on the day the tenants Leopix can seek permission from DGCA and other nard Barber and his beautiful wife, veena venugopal

I

Eye in the sky

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are taking to the Indian landscape in various roles — from wedding photography to police surveillance and crowd management

W

Q R

CH-X _ A

7

BL

work

saturday, november 15, 2014

authorities for using drones under 300 feet.

“This is free air space and any object at this altitude does not interfere with routine flight paths,” says Kulshreshtha.

View from a home While UAVs might be used to take aerial shots of actors and actresses, Airpix uses it in the real estate sector as well. It bagged its first project from Haware Builders in Mumbai’s suburban Thane early this year. “The view from a flat is the USP of high-rise buildings. We use drones to capture the view, which can leverage flat sales,” says Shekhar. So, even before the construction commences, Airpix drones can create a virtual view from a flat on any floor. And it has done this for marquee names, including Lodha Developers, Shapoorji Pallonji, K Raheja Corp and Omkar Realtors.

Airpix works with its clients on a project basis. “A definitive cost cannot be reached since we customise the drone as per the final application with different kinds of performances and payloads,” says Shekhar. The physics of the equipment and electronics change with project needs. So for real estate projects, UAVs have to be fitted with high-resolution cameras to provide images that can be blown up. And for aerial photography of sports events, the equipment’s mobility and manoeuvrability have to be good.

With growing demand, Airpix has expanded from one to six UAVs in less than a year; Quidich has gone from one to seven. These players are now assembling their own UAVs rather than buying them from manufacturers. The parts are flown in from other countries, assembled and customised as per requirement. Quidich gets its motors from China, bodies from Belgium and other parts from the US. “We put them together based on how much weight it has to lift,” says Kulshreshtha. So while a UAV for lifting compact and lightweight Go-Pro cameras can cost ₹2 lakh, the one for lifting film cameras that weigh 5-8kg can cost up to ₹20 lakh.

The hover craft UAVs can be used in real estate projects (above); and for crowd monitoring (below) airpix

Higher and brighter Photographer Jasmer Singh has used Quidich drones fitted with cameras to shoot stills for industrial locations as well as resorts. “The essential advantage is that UAVs take cameras to

Airpix, for example, is already staying away places where we cannot take them otherwise.

And the quality of images is good too.” He can from aerial wedding photography as that also see the display in real time and adjust market is getting commoditised. Shekhar says aperture, shutter speed, while sitting in front his firm has done four wedding assignments, of a computer. In most cases, UAVs produce but will stop at that. “There is no value addisharp images from a distance of 500 metres to tion in those services. We are consciously trya kilometre. This also makes it suitable for ing to stay away from this segment as drones sports events; Airpix provided aerial coverage are just complementing other mediums.” Ditfor a Brazilian TV series Kayak, which covers to for Quidich. “In Delhi, anybody can buy a white-water rafting in various countries. “We drone for ₹2 lakh for wedding photography. did the aerial view shooting for their Nepal That is not a particularly lucrative market,” edition. It helps capture the says Kulshreshtha. thrill and action better,” he adds.

Not surprisingly, drones can Gasha Aeri Alawani, Marketbe bought for as little as ₹50,000 ing Motorsports at Volkswagen in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk. In With growing India agrees. She says her comKhan Market, the base price can demand, Airpix has pany first used UAVs in 2013. go up to ₹1 lakh. But they are expanded from one to “This year too we will take their mostly imported from China. to six UAVs in less services to cover our VW Polo-RAnd it is these players that are inthan a year; Quidich Cup. In circuit racing (such as creasing the competition in the has gone from one the Buddh International circuit, UAV space. to seven Greater Noida), through a camBoth Shekhar and Kulshreshera installed on UAVs, we can tha agree that competition will capture what a handheld-cambring rentals down. But the seriera cannot. They can also follow ous players are working on spethe track well.” She does, however, find the cialised verticals and will offer more cost on the higher side. Alawani believes that data-based analytical services. ideaForge, for with the increase in competition, prices are example, has created a niche by working only likely to come down and the quality of the with security forces. “With UAVs, you can’t just product will improve. issue a tender and ask for the lowest bidder.

Every single requirement needs to be specified and it has to be customised,” says Singh of ideaForge.

Shekhar should know. His firm worked on a project with the Mumbai police on Ambedkar Jayanti. For a gathering held at Shivaji Park, the police wanted to monitor crowds from a vantage point and, in case of a mishap, identify the spot as soon as possible. “We used a high-zoom camera to close in on places where mishaps might occur, and a high-definition camera to capture data,” he says.

Quidich has also developed UAV software for agriculture surveys, which will help measure crop density and quality, soil conditions, and so on. “We can put thermal cameras to monitor this. We are also working on a system for disaster management,” says Kulshreshtha.

Quidich also has engineers on board to work on analytics and is offering a top-end UAV of around ₹30 lakh. With major companies like Amazon entering the UAV space with Amazon Prime Air, and Facebook looking into solarpowered UAVs by 2015, clearly it is the technology of the future. Shekhar at Airpix says, “We want to grow as a technology company, which provides real solutions to real problems.”

Q R

rashmi pratap with inputs from Sibi Arasu

read talk

BL BL 16 8

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

PRESENT IMPERFECT

Such a sorry state

If women in Kerala believe the day the state turns dry will be the first of a violence-free domestic life, they are likely to be very disappointed

Disrupting the canon

Tug of war tokenism When will women in Kerala exercise their power and fight for what’s right g ramakrishnA

Pratilipi, an online magazine from Bikaner where Norwegian and Urdu writers stand side by f all the distressing aspects about comparison, in 1957, when women in other doctors, nurses, writers, sporting icons, activban on consuming liquor in parts of the country barely visible in poliists and entrepreneurs side,theconfounds the neat categories of thewere Indian literary world

O T

Kerala, the most disheartening is tics, the Kerala Assembly had six women.

But in Kerala, the enduring Malayali fantasy the fact that it is seen as some kind It’s perhaps unkind but not entirely incor- is still a girl dressed in a traditional white sari, here are subversive, waywardof words of victory for the state’s women. A member you transcript maddening rect to saya that womenofinthe Kerala are oftenvariety too of it Pratilipi, theon translated dampnamed hair loosely tied,indicating eyes firmly the that often keep up their workaday the Kerala Women’s Commission seems to busy Indian literatures, it also gives to a full play to keeping one another in check worry livesFor we the live state’s in the age of the the internet, which ground. men, twirlers of face and dodge attention.

I caught have aired a standard anecdote to all who meanings hiddenright. in theThis word: represenaboutother fighting for what’s neighbrings together people and lush moustaches, whodiverse have been raised on cultures the one aatwoman the recent of Indian would listen about whofestival complained tation and duplication.

As it places side by side bourly censorship of who’s wearing what and from the world. “We wanted tothis disrupt appeal of around an unquestionable machismo, Samanvay, at the India Habitat aboutlanguages, her husband who beat her (and their Cenvarious national and international literatures, talking to whom is a full-time occupation.

(It is woman theiscentre-periphery binary the one literary a convenient fantasy.

Shein is the tre (IHC) when in Delhi.

Pratilipi, which means also a the two children) he was drunk.

She also theyonly gaze place at oneIanother and raise uncomfortknow where there is a who world withdemand the hierarchy of lanknowsand thatdo sheaway should nothing, copy, a was photocopy, a routine added that commonly the husband kind andisgentle Is fiction in Hindipersonal or any other greatable dealquestions. of curiosity about others’ and writers.

We evenabout publish writers neverguages raise her voice or complain things in“How the daily Hindi of theshe governwhileword sober. often doesworld he drink?” regional language a truer copy of Indian real- in alphabetical hygiene.

Random people, even says.to focus onbecauseorder,” she is he raised ment,“Seven commerce education. on the was asked. days aand week,” came theBut reply. ity than fiction in English? relative strangers think nothingIs literature a tranPratilipi long way the off ugliness from theoftimes ly is ona shielding a literaryone magazine, it comes It’s a masthead remarkableofanecdote, that is tailorscriptyou of ifthe society and aclass in which it when it seemed of asking you have had English and regional her household away from languagthe in its many disruptive madealive to demonstrate how drinkhues.

— and only bath.emerges or canconveniently it transcend its context? Can es were two This question, worlds that could never meet. neighbours’ ever-prying eyes.

All Enis a unique bilingual literary drink —Pratilipi drives domestic violence.

It’s online also a stoHindi truer copy of Oriya poetry reduced to provide one worda in Malayaglish writers came from upperinmiddle-class insults about women Kerala On paper, women magazine, which is also available in print on ry that is laden with naiveté.

English?manner Is Scandinavian in urban lam, than is a favoured of in- inliterature regional writers are entirely ofwhile a sexual nature. no other state have backgrounds, demand. founder and Giriraj If women in Its Kerala believe theeditor, day the state KiraHindi as much a transcript troduction in my parents’of co- so much going smallwoman towns. is Bigsupwriters The lived good in Kerala is a creative director of Samanvay, which turnsdoo, dry will be the first of a violence-free dolonial as the British litervillage, nearpolitics Palakkad). like Salman Rushdie could get posed to live her life in anticipatfor them thelife, IHCthey organises everytoyear.

Samanvay mestic are likely be very disap-looks Theature we read in classrooms? background score of my As away by ofdeclaring Indian ed avoidance this. All ofthat which like For an offline twin of Partilipi since both propointed. the most part, domestic violence spreads itselfwas across own Pratilipi childhood in Kochi my lanwriting English far more brings me toin one word —was why? mote Indian languages literatures. is cultural, and just becauseand it isn’t preceded mother’s guages, cultures and politics, anxiety about what it We wanted to disrupt Why valuable all that has been can’t than women in Kerala The juxtaposing ofnot Hindi anditEnglish on the by a quarter of rum does mean will disconfounds who are people would readers say about oneused written in regional languages. out of this?

Why can’t they the centre-peripherybreak masthead the Pratilipi websitethough, reminds me appear entirely.ofMore than anything categories. thingtoorneat another.

Remarkably, it stoppedbinary be- in Pratilipi at theof front of own a new littake risks, grab theiscause their thesome literary a notorious bookby byisathis rogue philosopher. whatof I am disappointed benign ac- ing a concern The variety of Pratilipi isn’t outworld the minute they moved of and erary movement selves demand more freedom? that Whymixes can’t the doand away Jacques Derrida anti-book, ceptance of their lot in wrote life thatan women in the Glas, merely a product editorial the state, even thoughofI was then ina teenager metropolitan with the mofussil take their and experience and with thethey hierarchy of education runs in two parallel columns of text in state which have demonstrated all along.

To be hontheit,magazine was languages proneventiveness; to, let’s call experimentation.

But mould and ‘contaminates’ the canon. the culture to one that doesn’t assume and writers different type. The column is onfor German est, I’ve been waiting forleft a few years now a mostbirthed in hybridity. girls I knew,(and in this,Kiradoo I was a happy ex- violence against them But Kiradoo says they aren’t is purely a function of tryand rightshall on the storyphilosopher that shows Hegel women in the Kerala, we writpublishes it fromwith Bikaner in Raception), were raised one eye on the cal- how much alcoholing tomen bridge divides. their haveany drunk?

And “We ingssome of French kleptomaniac say, kick ass. Resmi Nair, Kissplaywright Day orga- and not the best endarjasthan, and another on location the bankforlocker. A why can’t they help just each disrupt theinold order. We other breaking Genet.

Between these columns horoscope is a national niser,novelist is so far Jean the lone sign of promise.

He isaa suitable these stereotypes?bring wasliterary drawnarbiter. up and writing different Why can’t theyfrom marry later? remedley of comments, quotations andsoother Onapaper, women in no other state have PhD in English literature, poetry groom sought as soon as theywrites turnedprose, 21, and languages and cultures togetherthe and let And gions, be worthy brides without carrying By juxtaposing literature and phimuchmarginalia. going for them.

The state boasts 100 per and fictionminimum in Hindi, and has no true love the mandatory of 101 sovereigns of for these each the way they weight of writings two kiloslook of at gold onother themselves? losophy,an Derrida tries expose each to the cent literacy, enviable sexto ratio of 1084 and origins. “Six years ago, I was fed gold his wasRajasthani accumulated. he have says. each In Pratilipi, and Hindi Why want,” can’t they other’sEnglish backs instead assumptions and going possibilities. has aother’s long history of women outsideMore In aup with Hindi literary journals, which were eipost-liberalisation sartorial leap, salwar are notfrom necessarily can find of peeping behind adversaries; the window,each sniggera book, it is a confounding collage their than homes and working.

Despite higher lev-of inther Left or Right.the The formalist was ankameezes replaced skirt andschool blouse. in thetheir otherneighbour’s its own pratilipi. ing about muffled brawl? impressions. that (While els ofterplaying educationideas and and the empowerment ti-Left and evaded contemporary issues. The This Kiradoo in an equally awkward development, write in beEnglish is 2014, itcan’t doesn’t take fluently a lot to not Pratilipi isn’t as crazy as Glas and has none of come from financial independence, there problem with thelegitimate Left was aoutdoor focus onapissues the nightdress became hasInbeen English lecturer. have though like it’s he 1982. fact, an if you ask me, the He frustrating complexity. hasn’titsbeen a memorable event inIt’s thean lastaccessible two parel.) and verythan little emphasis onhas literariness.

Other that, very little changed We creative to can himdoonly mostsays effective thingwriting womencomes in Kerala is in magazine to its title.

It provides a lot of decades here oftrue a woman standing up for livedbetween in the long shadow cold war,” he says. in Kerala the ’80s and of now.

This is para life in Make constant translation, headHindi. to the He barlives themselves. it a gender several directions: from Norwewhattranslation is right andinnot feeling embarrassed to ticularly As the internetnow blurred boundaries and demagnified because women from which shows in location his magazine: in Partilipi neutral, democratic whereonly everyone intoabout Hindiit.and Assamese intoeven English, creategian a row Forget activists, in for molished borders, they could of pubthe state are doing supremely welldream while livcan you both thework. reclusive Urdu writer unwinds afterfind a hard day’s That in itself instance.

Its women latest issue, titled Freedom, public life, Kerala are woefully absent. fealishing literary they wanted ing in othera parts of magazine the country and the to Naiyer Masud and Norwegian writer Ingrid would keep most men out. more than 50 in about a dozen Theretures is one woman in writers the state’s cabinet. read. his friend Rahul Soni,dollar who shared world.

TheyWith are heads of multi-billion IT Storholmen side by side. t@veenavenugopal the magazine does share Therelanguages. are seven But women in the Assembly.

In the his hybridity, and designer Shiv Kumar companies, CXOs of FMCG companies, pilots,Gandbook’s disruptive zeal. While it seems to give hi, Kiradoo set up the online magazine and dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based journalist

Q Q R R

CH-X _ A

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

9

BL

talk

saturday, november 15, 2014

BAWDY LINE

An equal music In our household, in the domesticity of our newly acquired old gramophone, is an atavism your phone to be a lifelike singer. Price: One rupee and eight annas for 1,000 needles.’ Gauhar Jan was the Armenian heartthrob from Calcutta, who had become a thumri singing sensation. She was one of the first singers in India to be recorded by the pioneering sound-recordist FW Gaisberg for the Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. In 1903, when her discs were released, she became the first person whose voice could be possessed as a thing by Indians.

Her performances became material objects, something one could hold in their hands, which could be bought and sold. The success of Gauhar Jan’s records not just transformed the way musicians made their living but shifted the principal context of musical performance from its long-established locus (salons, concert halls, public festivals) into the home.

By 1910, the Indian market teemed with 75 recording companies with European and local labels wrangling with the Gramophone Company for a slice of the market. The GramoA good old spin The musical enigma that was the shiny black plate shutterstock phone Company’s earnings between 1910 and 1913 showed an average sale of almost half a million records and over 6,000 machines per y seven-year-old son’s first en- then issued it out of a concealed horn through year. They had ended up creating a market counter with the mechanical be- a fine mesh in the latticework below. All mov- where the raw material came from. The shellac ing of the gramophone machine ing parts. Analogue sound. No amplification. that formed the physical substance of records produced a response that was Nothing to be plugged in. Just the slight both- was sourced almost entirely from India. The something of a cultural atavism. It was redo- er of the preparatory ritual. Like cigarette-roll- music industry had become the most consumlent of that keenly written chapter in The Mag- ing or coffee-making in the moka pot. mate form of capitalism. Imagine a division of ic Mountain, where Thomas Mann describes For Rudra, the form of the gramophone re- Toyota as an oil and gas company marketing Hans Castorp’s discovery of a German-made cord, its thingness, was the puzzle. A shiny petroleum products. gramophone in the salon of the Berghof sana- black plate that came out of its brown paper Music as a thing was where I lost his intertorium: “He bent over the whirring, pulsating sleeve had music worth three minutes written est. For a seven-year-old in these times, the mechanism as over a spray of lilac, rapt in a on each side in an Archimedean spiral, in in- MP3 has been assigned the rank of a thing. Mucloud of sweet sound.” finitesimal, tightly packed grooves, one hun- sic as an object of private, individualised conIn a state of melded reverie and alertness, dredth to an inch, each finer than human hair. sumption is losing its property as a my son listened and his lips parted in a smile. Under the magnifying glass, the grooves were commodity as it passes around outside the What stood before him was a small mahogany what they seemed: unexciting furrows with value economy. It can be reproduced at will, cabinet with a detachable crank: the 80-year- humps and wiggles. Where was the music? without the exchange of money. MP3 is the obold colonial HMV 113a Transportable — by any He solved the puzzle with his fingernail. On verse form of the gramophone record; the reckoning an object of great physical and ton- the turntable, with the record anti-particle. al beauty. The last wind-up gramophone pro- spinning, he placed his fingerBut both avail of the same caduced by HMV. I suppose the only manner in nail on the surface instead of the price of the physiology of listenwhich it could have been considered transpor- needle. In a barely audible mewing, which is this: the human ear He solved the puzzle table was on the back of some Gunga Din, who ing sort of way, the song played and its sense of hearing discards with his fingernail would convey it up the hill for a bit of Hill Sta- itself. Any fine thing running in most of the sounds that it hears. tion phonography in the Indian Summer. those sinuosities became a styThe MP3 works on a mathematiThe essence of the machine, if one may dare lus. Actually, the platter was cal model that second guesses to define it from a seven-year-old child’s per- what was running. At 78 rpm. the process of human auditory spective, was in the abstraction of music from That was followed by How to Make Your Own perception. It pre-emptively discards data in the object whirring on the green fleece-cov- Gramophone from YouTube, which was the sound file that it expects will be discarded ered turntable; the music a strange com- promptly pulled off using a pencil for a peg, a by the human ear anyway. What we get is a pound of granular recorded sound and the CD stack holder, a conical roll of paper and a much smaller file, with 90 percent of the parunrelieved scratchy whine of surface noise. sowing needle. By the end of it, Ella Fitzgerald ticulars taken out of it.

After just one practical demonstration Ru- was mewing Dream a Little Dream of Me out of The old gramophone record, on the condra learned the motions of producing music the paper roll. It was Rudra’s pinhole-camera trary, brings into play the human psychofrom it: to screw in the fine steel needle into its moment. He had learnt how to make those acoustic response. The ear acts as a sieve for all slot in the pickup head (with the aluminium black plastic records yield their music. Over the wow and flutter, the background noise, diaphragm) that was attached to the tone arm the days, he found that the fidelity of his appa- the tonal inconsistencies to let in no more — a pivoted hollow metal lever whose halves ratus got better as he improved on the needle. than an equal music. moved in the vertical and horizontal axis, re- In a book on gramophones, I showed him an In our household, in the domesticity of our spectively, to enable the needle to settle lightly advertisement (that had appeared in a local newly acquired old gramophone, is the ataon the record. Then to crank the handle that newspaper in Calcutta in 1911) that read as fol- vism. We are once more the bourgeois family loaded the spring in the clockwork to set the lows: ‘If you wish to obtain a natural reproduc- that gathers around it after dinner to enjoy platter twirling. Finally, to allow the needle to tion of a singer’s voice or sound of a musical the music. In a way, it has returned something be in communion with vinyl at a 45o angle. Ru- instrument on a Disc Talking Machine, you are that we’d misplaced. dra could sense that it was the tone arm that strongly recommended to use ‘Gauhar Jan’ asatwik@gmail.com conveyed the sound into the cabinetry, which needles. By using these needles you will find

M

Q R

Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer

cover watch

saturday, november 15, 2014

Common thread The chars are depicted on the film’s CD cover using kantha stitch, also found in both India and Bangladesh

BL

14 10

XOXO, Kerala The Kiss of Love was foiled, but the truth is that liberal voices are louder than ever before in Conservatism’s Own Country

Shared struggles A short film made by children living on river bars, or chars, on both sides of the IndoBangladesh border tells the story of their precarious existence

S

Near perfect Away from the prying eyes of ‘well-meaning’ neighbours, a couple find solitude by the beach at Fort Kochi vipin chandran

CH-X _ A

ohail, Firoza, Ruma and Mizanur of Gaibandha district in Bangladesh and Tapan, Pinky, Naseem and Rocky of Malda district in West Bengal have several things in common, including their language and heritage. The teenagers on both sides of the border are equally victims of shifting rivers and chars — the landmass that forms in the middle of a river or along its convex banks. Known as river point bar in geomorphology, a char is created or eroded as the river changes course. As newly formed chars offer new areas for settlement and cultivation, the erosion and flooding of existing chars lead to the displacement and devastation of multitudes alongnthe banks. 2, Marine Drive in KoNovember Children chi living onachars both countries saw largein crowd of over have produced a short film,fell Fables of Ganga Ja10,000.

They roughly into muna, withthree the categories, help of the out International of which two Union for Conservation that were unfamiliar sights of inNature Kerala:(IUCN), a group of tells the story of their precarious existence as couples, young and middle-aged, who had seen through their gathered to kiss in young publiceyes. in order to make a What isstatement today’s Pepulia char in the Jamunaa symbolic against moral policing; river in Gaibandha district of Bangladesh was hitherto unseen collaboration of diametricalonce the location of a thriving river-port, Fully opposite right-wing organisations marchchory connected by aofrailway network. ing toGhat, ensure the culture the land is not Over theby years, the river receded took with tainted the public display of and affection; and it the livelihood of a perhaps large number of people. the third group was the least unsurWithout river, who therecame is no to longer a Fulchoprising —the people watch people ry ghat or to any of the river services ferrying who came kiss. people and cargo.

One can see boats rotting on It is against such a backdrop, where a simaple sandy that wasaonce theofbank of a act ofsurface affection is still source voyeurismighty river; the railway station been tic pleasure to many, that Kiss of Lovehas becomes abandoned, the once-thriving eating placa milestone and for Kerala.

Perhaps, I should clares river have disappeared. ifyalong that itthe is not thebank event itself which deserves Firoza narrates the travails ofencores life in Gobindi this accolade (although it saw in oth-

O

char in Bangladesh. The receding Jamuna has major rivers drain an area of about 1.75 million snatched away many joys of her life: diving in- sqkm and directly impact the livelihood of to the flowing waters any time of the day, the more than 600 million people. Cross-border smell of fertile land, the swaying of golden- cooperation is, therefore, imperative to meet yellow corn, and the colours of fairs and festiv- the growing water needs of the region. IUCN’s als after the harvest is done. “The absence of four-year project Ecosystems for Life focuses water has pushed us to the brink,” she says. on several critical themes, including food seTapan’s family watched helplessly as their curity, water productivity, poverty, climate home and those of others on Purba Paranpur change, trans-boundary inland navigation, char in Malda district, West Benenvironmental security and biogal, were sucked into the river by diversity conservation. Each of erosion. They shifted to Hamidthem is intricately linked to wapur char, surrounded by rivers ter management both at the naChildren of the chars on all sides, only to face more tional and trans-boundary levels. who shot the film challenges, both man-made and The 20-minute film Fables of were handling video major er cities like Delhi and Kolkata). While defi- — the post-2000s natural.

GangaMalayalee Jamuna exodus was to recently cameras for the first nitely centrepiece stir, it suffered Indian citiesscreened for higher Somethe chars are homeof to the lakhs forstudies the firstand timeemployin Koltime in their lives mentleaving is an important This is from poor but organisation, of people bereft of which basic kata, the selectone. audience was expected given not to say that in metros or amenities.

Malda char,theforconinimpressed.

It living is difficult to beeducation institutions is straintsisofallthe organisers, stance, of 390sqkm andand inlieve that in theelite children of the a magic wand,countries which makes was quickly smothered by two the habited by an estimated chars in both who indishot They want to kiss on ‘protective custody’ of the po- drinking more liberal.

Those lakh, who have no access to clean film wereviduals handling video cameras forwho the the wastreet the today, moved to Prior thesetocities at anthey imlice.roads, The symbolic nature of the ter, or medical or basic educational first time in their lives. shooting, whatfatomorrow? protestallegedly was lost on as evi- reasons”. pressionable became more cilities duemany, to “political attended workshops held age simultaneously in open to, or atThe leastchildren were exposed denced by questions like even “Theywhere help is Malda and Gaibandha.

Paradoxically, however, used more tonotes thingsacross that they sowant to kiss onthe thechars street today, dangerously Skype to exchange at hand, life on remains thewere border what tomorrow?”

But the cially conditioned in Kerala to unpredictable.

Thanks to public the Jharkhand gov- and share their experiences of living in chars. debate it managed toliving whip on up Jharkhand on moral policscandalous — PDA, homosexuality, ernment, the people char consider Postscript: A few of the children involved in ingthe and personal liberty is its lasting legacy.

In the live-in relationships, women whoatdrink and so in Ganga river, in West Bengal today, have film’s making were present the screenon. Most of all, people began to the Kerala, pucca there has never banks, been a lack of provocaroads, houses, schools and a ing to share their experience.

Allappreciate of them hapconcepttoofbepersonal space. thatBengal, social tive ideas, but forBahudubi (a significant the pened bridge over the river.portion Yet theyof) keep from the charsGiven in West general public to takeAa flood standor ontwo, either mediatheir is ubiquitous andin has increasingly retheir fingers crossed. andside, an Sadly, counterparts Bangladesh could instead can of being signals an accel- not placed shops and through tea stalls as a popular erosion wash indifferent, away all of it. bebarber reached, even Skype.

The erating cultural shift. site forhave political and cultural debates in KeraThe Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna are floods displaced them again. areamong many factors which contribute to- la, non-resident Keralites effortlessly contribtheThere largest the 56 river systems shared is a Kolkata-based ute to thesanyal zeitgeist in the state.writer Additionally, wards the increase in liberal voices these in thethree state santanu by India and Bangladesh.

Together

Q

R Q R

BL

cover watch

saturday, november 15, 2014

No sensawunda at all

the people who returned to Kerala from the Indian metros and foreign countries — notably less-puritanical Gulf countries, such as Dubai and Bahrain — also added to the cosmopolitan texture of Malayalee society.

she did not know who Sachin Tendulkar was. ty when dealing with deep-seated taboos and More importantly, the internet also quick- should try to shape societal reaction rather ened the shift towards progressive thought in than mirror it. But the filmmakers’ decision to the state. People who had a liberal worldview include unambiguously homosexual characfound out there were several others like them, ters was still commendable considering how and had the chance to read and share the mainstream Malayalam cinema has shied thoughts of people who articulate better than away from it for so long. In 1986, when Padmathem. The power of social media in creating rajan made Deshatanakkili Karayarilla, a momass movements and sustaining them on the vie with strong lesbian undertones, the ground can’t be understated. The Kiss of Love L-word was not mentioned in it even once, campaign was planned by a single Facebook which was a testament to how taboo the subcommunity, Free Thinkers, and popularised ject was at the time.

The spread liberalsling-shooting values that threaten where humanity start afresh. scientist coasting almost exclusivelycan via Facebook andATwitter. past of Saturn, around status quoorishaunting often derisively dismissed usplayed by Michael Caine concocts a plan to the black holes, desolation of alien ing theallcatch-all term by ‘New Generation culsend humans to another galaxy.

Queering the pitch vistas, accompanied Hans Zimmer’s maeven itthough attitude towards How do you get there? which has now Another heartening signNASA, of social progress in ture’, jestic score, is utterlythe beautiful. liberalisation cannot deturned feral, has discovered a wormhole near cultural What causes it to lose orbit be andstrictly plummet alongis generational lines.a Itsystemic is true Saturn, placed there by unknown entities. A marcated back to earth an age-old flaw, broadly the youngerScience generation are wormhole is an artefact in space-time that en- that weakness in Hollywood. fiction is imthe adversely by the factorsThe discussed — inables one to traverse unimaginable distances, pacted literature of the imagination. foundation of life outside Kerala and the internet. a kind of cosmic shortcut. A host of promising fluence of the reading experience, which is absolutely the ‘New Generation’ here doesisnot planets have been found on the other side of But unique and essential to the genre, theliterasense refer to — the generation, and instead this escape hatch, orbiting a colossal black lly of wonder ornewer ‘sensawunda’ as fans dub it. An comes frompitch the that termcan ‘New hole called Gargantua. emotional be Generation likened to aCinekind used in Kerala to describe fresh wave of At the core of the plot is an effect called grav- ma’ of revelation, that sudden shiftain perspective broke away from formulaic stoitational-time dilation. A consequence of the movies leading that to heightened awareness.

When comand new narrative techniques to detheory of relativity, it predicates that gravity ries pared inused this light, Interstellar can be defined predominantly urban themes. can affect the flow of time. There are many pict as existing in two dimensions — oneThese as a movies captured the of cosmopolitan nature of masterpieces that use this constream arresting visuals evokthe modern Malayalee and changed waya cept; my favourite is Joe Haldeing this feeling, and thethe other, women were depicted on screen by overturnman’s The Forever War, where preposterously banal plot that ing at least thejust more obvious sexistwith tropes. soldiers fighting an alien foe are doesn’t grapple the impermanently estranged from the ages that move and breathe.

The world’s first She’s differentAnd on screen Earth and from each other when a character says, known story using Women drink,issmoke flirtthat aretrannot thanks to the inexorable logic of the oneand thing gravitational time who “Love necessarily to time Malayalam cinema, this relativistic mechanism. scends and space” — in but the dilation is found in alien they were mostly the ‘other’ — The world’s first known story senseestablished of an actualasphysical force, the Mahabharata the brat brought abroad; or the vamp who using this effect, however, is youup know that this rocket has excan barely speak Malayalam.

The new movies found in the Mahabharata, in the ploded on the launch pad. boldly depicted One the urban Malayaleeblocks woman legend of King Kakudmi and his of the building of as she is — notSFbothering to hide thequestion, bits the daughter Revati. Instead of is the “What if?” public didn’t their searching for habitable worlds, they search Malayalee which forces taking theircare ideastoallsee theinway to — sometimes forFor theexample, sheer shock valfor something even more precious, a suitable women their logical conclusion. there is doesn’t mean that all strong husband. Revati is all kinds of awesome and ue. an This offhand mention of athey ‘Planwere B’, which inwho held their own against there are so many suitors that the king female volves characters sending thousands of fertilised emmale characters; a fewThat female-oriented decides to meet Lord Brahma and the bryos to the new planets! sounded far Female Kotdid standthan out, such as 22that get His take on who to pick. movies more intriguing anything unfolds but ifStill I were to administer Bechdel When the appointment hap- tayam, on screen. in some respects,the Interstellar on allhas these I would expect of very pens, the Creator has a test certainly the movies, architectural elements SF. come out good.

But that is aBob” difgood laugh and tells few It isto littered withlooking AYKB or “As you know, fightwhich — the point is that the info-dumps New Generthem that time runs ferent dialogues, are expository did manage to portray the far slower in His ation aimed movies at the audience disguised as conversasocial and cultural fabric of Kerala. plane of existence. changing tion between characters.

IThe thought about Kerala and of thethe Kiss ofisLove He helpfully adds, science-fictional aspect film unI watched a clip of comedian Azizfuture” Ansari “Those upon when intentional.

Curiously, “mankind’s about people whoAmerican opposedfuture.

LGBT whom you may ranting here is held to be a white, in the “At this why is anyone have already rights The Stars andUS: Stripes arepoint, everywhere, emblagay marriage?fluttering These are the sameplanpeodecided are against zoned on spaceships, on alien didn’t want women to vote, now gone, ple ets, that draped in offices.

At a time when that the want black guys to play football.”

I can’t and so are didn’t Chinese, Europeans and Indians are forging because it is “unsuitable forRusour their sons, quote aheadthe in rest space exploration, when the culture”, you can look it up online.

As a nagrandsons sians stillbut have a robust capability, to advance where Sec 377 still in effect, we have is a and other de- tion a future driven by is jut-jawed Anglo-Saxons long way to go(There beforeisAnsari’s words become scendants. rather daring. even a backstory to exus. But, toAttransplant hisIndia question the state is the measure ofYou acceptance cannot relevant plain thistoboldness: some point and take a look at the the US, people achieved by the LGBT community.even Kerala hosthear to theKerala, Asiansjust went to war with and who lost. a couple kissingstill in public will tarnish ed its fifth LGBT pride march in about July this their year, think However, our drones loiter aimlessly in — these are the same people who organised by the Queer Pride Keralam names.Group, You our theirculture airspace.) thefascinating right of lower-caste women consisting mainly of Queerala (a support must there- opposed The most aspect of the film to is breasts, theof rights of dalits to enter group for the LGBT community)fore and Sahayathbestow cover buriedtheir in the making it. Nolan hired black These the same people oprika (a human rights organisation for lesbian this virgin gem temples. hole expert Kipare Thorne to help out. who Existing the rightisofnot homosexuals to lead and bisexual women in Kerala).

These organiupon some other pose VFX software built to handle thenormal incredThese aremovements the same people who post lewda sations hold workshops all over the state in- lives. husband, fortoyou ibly complex of light around the photos of the formulae Kiss Of Love crease awareness about homosexuality.

The comments are now alone, and black hole. on Thorne wrote dense on Nair, demanding to know taboo of not conforming to societal your friends, sexual your organiser how light Resmi wouldRbehave, and these were fed of her innerwear posting dianorms is still strong,ministers, but it’s a welcome servants, the intocolour custom-built algorithmsand to generate the on their ownthe walls against her immoral change that the rightswives, of the kinsmen, LGBT community armies, tribes incredible.

When images were generated, our sacred culture.

The bottom are popping up in mainstream conversations and treasures, have long kisses Thorneruining realised that existing theories on how is:holes whenwould a culturally progressive more than ever. since Recent mainstream been swept awayMalayaby the line black look like had to bechange revised is — Rithu and Mumbai Police had here, it is here to stay. Time only reinforce lam movies like hand of Time”. and Science happened, as itwill were.

A black hole pivotal characters who are gay.

They were not Anyonewhen who opposes it is on the losing side, The poignancy of these words is it. is formed a giant gas-filled star collapses without — the portrayal the homosexthey areweight. the majority theflaws emotional force thatofmoves Interstel- even underif its own Much now. like Interstellar. ual and the reactions to their sexlar.characters So is it any good?

Alas, not. There are more is a software currently ual perhaps too jaideepraouf unudurti writes onengineer popular culture, chess plotpreference holes thanare wormholes in stereotypical. this clunky ef-I abdul believe have socialofresponsibiliin Washington DC and cinema fort. As that longmovies as there areashots spaceships based

With a stream of arresting visuals and a preposterous plot, Christopher Nolan’s ambitious Interstellar goes only as far as two dimensions

Mob in the Net The internet has played a crucial part in enlightening us about more liberal as well as repressive lands, showing us where we stand on personal liberty. Before the internet, the average Malayalee relied on Mathrubhumi Azhfor weekly commentaries on chapathippu he Golden Age of science fiction hapworld affairs. has been length pensItat the agediscussed of 14. It’satthe best how cyberspace amplified theSF. less-palatatime ofhas your life to read The arterble aspects societyhardened — it did iesofofthe theMalayalee brain haven’t yet, and you are willing to have your mind blown. Each book you read promises, nay, guarantees this. Of the millions of fans who go through this ontogenetic development, there are a few who dare to ask themselves — can I write too?

Now, imagine our hypothetical 14-year-old dashes off a script. Hollywood throws a couple of hundred million dollars at it, and gets the buzziest director in the world to direct it. The result would be something like Christopher Nolan’s new film Interstellar. The reach of the ideas contained within is well beyond the grasp of adolescent enthusiasm. “We must confront the reality of interstellar travel,” intones Michael Caine’s character gravely. But did the Nolans (the script is by brother Jonathan) confront the reality of making a genuine science fiction film?

Interstellar posits a world where crops are failing and immense dust storms scour the surface. Science and exploration are frowned upon. The Earth is dying and a few brave astronauts are sent on a journey to find a planet

T

Into the abyss Supposedly the most accurate depiction of the black hole, as seen in Interstellar

Make love, not war PDA at the Kiss of Love campaign in Kochi pti

definitely provide a new outlet for the repressed tendencies of the Malayalee male, with the added dimension of mob mentality.

Safe in the relative anonymity of the internet, Malayalees are unconcerned by how they will be perceived outside the state. Occasionally, this has given rise to hilarious stories like when actor Mohanlal’s website was hacked by a Pakistani group, which mistook a page describing his connection to the Territorial Army as an Indian Army-related page. In retaliation, his fans hacked multiple Pakistani sites, including the website of Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO). The Malayalee hackers chose to demonstrate their dismissive contempt for their Pakistani counterparts by displaying on every hacked page one of the actor’s popular dialogues: “Nee po, mone dinesha (Get lost, dear Dinesh)”. Similarly, tennis star Maria Sharapova’s page was inundated with Malayalam comments after she revealed

Q R

CH-X _ A

11 15

shoot

saturday, november 15, 2014

BL

12

By the seaside A peddler woos prospective customers at Marine Drr

Spicy bites A street vendor peddles chana jor garam, a popular snack made of gram, spices and raw mango powder, near the Gateway of India

Spud nick A Mumbaikar has her ďŹ ll of vada pav at Juhu beach

Rice time Veg pulao for office-goers near Churchgate

Anytime food A stack of local pav to mop up the bhaji with

Meat of the matter Kebabs aplenty at Mohammed Ali Road

rrive

BL

shoot

saturday, november 15, 2014

Vada pav and cutting chai The flavour of the streets of Mumbai

Naturally sweet Watermelon and pineapple pyramids at a khau gali near Marine Drive

S

oon Mumbai will taste its first (beef-free) Burger King Whopper. Like others that went before it, the international quick service restaurant chain will feed the city’s curiosity, and perhaps succeed in doing brisk business. But as anyone who has lived in the city, or had a vada pav or three on its streets will tell you, Mumbai — despite its flirtations with global favourites — will never lose its local flavour. Grilled corn-on-the-cob in season, bhel all year round, pani puri by the dozens and kebabs that send smoke signals to hungry customers at sundown will continue to rule the maximum city.

Along its beaches like Girgaum Chowpatty and Juhu, or at the khau galis — lanes in different parts of the city lined with food stalls of every kind — lovers and friends, families and weary office-goers will tuck into plates of cheap, filling familiarity. Elsewhere, the sound of laughter and the wafting smells of Mughlai food will fill Mohammed Ali Road long after the streetlights flicker to life. At eateries like Noor Mohammadi, Hindusthan Hotel and Sarvi Seekh Kebab, it will be business as usual as regular patrons and tourists queue up for yet another helping of biryani, rounding off the meal with phirni and fruit salad. Come Ramzan, the atmosphere will be even more electric... All you need to savour the city’s many delights is a cast-iron stomach. paul noronha

CH-X _ A

13

cover watch

saturday, november 15, 2014

Common thread The chars are depicted on the film’s CD cover using kantha stitch, also found in both India and Bangladesh

BL

14 10

XOXO, Kerala The Kiss of Love was foiled, but the truth is that liberal voices are louder than ever before in Conservatism’s Own Country

Shared struggles A short film made by children living on river bars, or chars, on both sides of the IndoBangladesh border tells the story of their precarious existence

S

Near perfect Away from the prying eyes of ‘well-meaning’ neighbours, a couple find solitude by the beach at Fort Kochi vipin chandran

CH-X _ A

ohail, Firoza, Ruma and Mizanur of Gaibandha district in Bangladesh and Tapan, Pinky, Naseem and Rocky of Malda district in West Bengal have several things in common, including their language and heritage. The teenagers on both sides of the border are equally victims of shifting rivers and chars — the landmass that forms in the middle of a river or along its convex banks. Known as river point bar in geomorphology, a char is created or eroded as the river changes course. As newly formed chars offer new areas for settlement and cultivation, the erosion and flooding of existing chars lead to the displacement and devastation of multitudes alongnthe banks. 2, Marine Drive in KoNovember Childrenchi living both countries sawonachars largein crowd of over have produced a short film,fell Fables of Ganga Ja10,000.

They roughly into muna, withthree the categories, help of the out International of which two Union for Conservation that were unfamiliar sights of in Nature Kerala:(IUCN), a group of tells the story of their precarious existence as couples, young and middle-aged, who had seen through their gathered to kiss in young publiceyes. in order to make a What isstatement today’s Pepulia char in the Jamunaa symbolic against moral policing; river in Gaibandha district of Bangladesh was hitherto unseen collaboration of diametricalonce the location of a thriving river-port, Fully opposite right-wing organisations marchchory connected by aofrailway network. ing to Ghat, ensure the culture the land is not Over theby years, the river receded and took with tainted the public display of affection; and it the livelihood of a perhaps large number of people. the third group was the least unsurWithout river,who therecame is no to longer a Fulchoprising —the people watch people ry ghat orto any of the river services ferrying who came kiss. people and cargo.

One can see boats rotting on It is against such a backdrop, where a simaple sandy that wasaonce theofbank of a act ofsurface affection is still source voyeurismighty river; the railway been tic pleasure to many, that Kissstation of Lovehas becomes abandoned, the once-thriving eating placa milestone and for Kerala.

Perhaps, I should clares river have disappeared. ifyalong that itthe is not thebank event itself which deserves Firoza narrates the travails life in Gobindi this accolade (although it sawofencores in oth-

O

char in Bangladesh. The receding Jamuna has major rivers drain an area of about 1.75 million snatched away many joys of her life: diving in- sqkm and directly impact the livelihood of to the flowing waters any time of the day, the more than 600 million people. Cross-border smell of fertile land, the swaying of golden- cooperation is, therefore, imperative to meet yellow corn, and the colours of fairs and festiv- the growing water needs of the region. IUCN’s als after the harvest is done. “The absence of four-year project Ecosystems for Life focuses water has pushed us to the brink,” she says. on several critical themes, including food seTapan’s family watched helplessly as their curity, water productivity, poverty, climate home and those of others on Purba Paranpur change, trans-boundary inland navigation, char in Malda district, West Benenvironmental security and biogal, were sucked into the river by diversity conservation. Each of erosion. They shifted to Hamidthem is intricately linked to wapur char, surrounded by rivers ter management both at the naChildren of the chars on all sides, only to face more tional and trans-boundary levels. who shot the film challenges, both man-made and The 20-minute film Fables of were handling video major er cities like Delhi and Kolkata). While defi- — the post-2000s natural.

GangaMalayalee Jamunaexodus was to recently cameras for the first nitely the centrepiece stir, it suffered Indian cities screened for higher employSome chars are homeoftothe lakhs forstudies the firstand time in Koltime in their lives ment is an important This is from poor but organisation, of people bereft of which basic kata, leaving the selectone. audience was expected given not to say that in metros or amenities.

Malda char,theforconinimpressed.

It living is difficult to beeducation elite institutions is straintsisofallthe organisers, stance, of 390sqkm andand inlieve that in the children of the achars magic which makes was quickly smothered by two the habited by an estimated in wand, both countries who indishot They want to kiss on ‘protective custody’ of the po- drinking more liberal.

Those lakh, who have no access to clean wa- the film wereviduals handling video cameras forwho the the street today, moved to Prior thesetocities at anthey imlice.roads, The symbolic nature of the ter, or medical or basic educational first time in their lives. shooting, whatfatomorrow? protestallegedly was lost on as evi- reasons”. pressionable became more cilities duemany, to “political attended workshops held age simultaneously in to, or atThe leastchildren were exposed denced by questions like even “Theywhere help is Malda and open Paradoxically, however, Gaibandha. used more tonotes thingsacross that they sowant to kiss onthe thechars street today, dangerously Skype to exchange at hand, life on remains thewere border what tomorrow?”

But the cially conditioned in Kerala to unpredictable.

Thanks to public the Jharkhand gov- and share their experiences of living in chars. debate it managed toliving whip on up Jharkhand on moral policscandalous — PDA, homosexuality, ernment, the people char consider Postscript: A few of the children involved in ingthe andGanga personal liberty is its lasting legacy.

In the live-in relationships, women whoatdrink and so in river, in West Bengal today, have film’s making were present the screenon. Most of all, people began to the Kerala, there never banks, been a lack of provocaroads, pucca has houses, schools and a ing to share their experience.

Allappreciate of them hapconcepttoofbepersonal space. thatBengal, social tive ideas, but forBahudubi (a significant of)keep the pened bridge over the river.portion Yet they from the charsGiven in West general public to takeAa flood standor ontwo, either side, mediatheir is ubiquitous andin has increasingly retheir fingers crossed. and an Sadly, counterparts Bangladesh could instead can of being signals an accel- not placed shops and through tea stalls as a popular erosion washindifferent, away all of it. bebarber reached, even Skype.

The erating cultural shift. site forhave political and cultural debates in KeraThe Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna are floods displaced them again. areamong many factors whichsystems contribute to- la, non-resident Keralites effortlessly contribtheThere largest the 56 river shared is a Kolkata-based ute to thesanyal zeitgeist in the state.writer Additionally, wards the increase in liberal voices these in thethree state santanu by India and Bangladesh.

Together

Q

R Q R

BL

cover watch

saturday, november 15, 2014

No sensawunda at all

the people who returned to Kerala from the Indian metros and foreign countries — notably less-puritanical Gulf countries, such as Dubai and Bahrain — also added to the cosmopolitan texture of Malayalee society.

she did not know who Sachin Tendulkar was. ty when dealing with deep-seated taboos and More importantly, the internet also quick- should try to shape societal reaction rather ened the shift towards progressive thought in than mirror it. But the filmmakers’ decision to the state. People who had a liberal worldview include unambiguously homosexual characfound out there were several others like them, ters was still commendable considering how and had the chance to read and share the mainstream Malayalam cinema has shied thoughts of people who articulate better than away from it for so long. In 1986, when Padmathem. The power of social media in creating rajan made Deshatanakkili Karayarilla, a momass movements and sustaining them on the vie with strong lesbian undertones, the ground can’t be understated. The Kiss of Love L-word was not mentioned in it even once, campaign was planned by a single Facebook which was a testament to how taboo the subcommunity, Free Thinkers, and popularised ject was at the time.

The spread liberalsling-shooting values that threaten where humanity start afresh. scientist coasting almost exclusivelycan via Facebook andATwitter. past of Saturn, around status quoorishaunting often derisively dismissed usplayed by Michael Caine concocts a plan to the black holes, desolation of alien ing theallcatch-all term by ‘New Generation culsend humans to another galaxy.

Queering the pitch vistas, accompanied Hans Zimmer’s maeven itthough attitude towards How do you get there? which has now Another heartening signNASA, of social progress in ture’, jestic score, is utterlythe beautiful. liberalisation cannot deturned feral, has discovered a wormhole near cultural What causes it to lose orbit be andstrictly plummet alongis generational lines.a It is true Saturn, placed there by unknown entities. A marcated back to earth an age-old flaw, systemic broadly the youngerScience generation wormhole is an artefact in space-time that en- that weakness in Hollywood. fictionare is imthe adversely by the factorsThe discussed — inables one to traverse unimaginable distances, pacted literature of the imagination. foundation of life outside Kerala and the internet. a kind of cosmic shortcut. A host of promising fluence of the reading experience, which is absolutely the and ‘Newessential Generation’ here doesisnot planets have been found on the other side of But unique to the genre, theliterasense refer to — the generation, and instead this escape hatch, orbiting a colossal black lly of wonder ornewer ‘sensawunda’ as fans dub it. An comes from the that termcan ‘New hole called Gargantua. emotional pitch be Generation likened to a Cinekind used in Kerala to describe fresh wave of At the core of the plot is an effect called grav- ma’ of revelation, that sudden shiftain perspective broke away from formulaic stoitational-time dilation. A consequence of the movies leading that to heightened awareness.

When comand new narrative techniques to detheory of relativity, it predicates that gravity ries pared inused this light, Interstellar can be defined predominantly urban themes. can affect the flow of time. There are many pict as existing in two dimensions — oneThese as a movies captured the of cosmopolitan nature of masterpieces that use this constream arresting visuals evokthe modern Malayalee and changed waya cept; my favourite is Joe Haldeing this feeling, and thethe other, women were depicted on screen by overturnman’s The Forever War, where preposterously banal plot that ing at least thejust more obvious sexist tropes. soldiers fighting an alien foe are doesn’t grapple with the impermanently estranged from the ages that move and breathe.

The world’s first She’s differentAnd on screen Earth and from each other when a character says, known story using Women drink,issmoke flirtthat aretrannot thanks to the inexorable logic of the oneand thing gravitational time who “Love necessarily to time Malayalam cinema, this relativistic mechanism. scends and space” — in but the dilation is found in alien they were mostly the ‘other’ — The world’s first known story senseestablished of an actualasphysical force, the Mahabharata the brat brought abroad; or the vamp who using this effect, however, is youup know that this rocket has excan barely speak Malayalam.

The new movies found in the Mahabharata, in the ploded on the launch pad. boldly depicted One the urban Malayaleeblocks woman legend of King Kakudmi and his of the building of as she is — notSFbothering to hide bits the daughter Revati. Instead of is the “What if?”thequestion, public didn’t their searching for habitable worlds, they search Malayalee which forces taking theircare ideastoallsee theinway to — sometimes forFor theexample, sheer shock valfor something even more precious, a suitable women their logical conclusion. there is doesn’t mean that all strong husband. Revati is all kinds of awesome and ue. an This offhand mention of a they ‘Planwere B’, which inwho held their own against there are so many suitors that the king female volves characters sending thousands of fertilised emcharacters; a fewThat female-oriented decides to meet Lord Brahma and the bryosmale to the new planets! sounded far Female Kotdid standthan out, such as 22that get His take on who to pick. movies more intriguing anything unfolds but ifStill I were to administer Bechdel When the appointment hap- tayam, on screen. in some respects,the Interstellar on allhas these I would expectof very pens, the Creator has a test certainly the movies, architectural elements SF. come out good.

But that is aBob” difgood laugh and tells few It is to littered withlooking AYKB or “As you know, fightwhich — the point is that the info-dumps New Generthem that time runs ferent dialogues, are expository did manage to portray the far slower in His ation aimed movies at the audience disguised as conversasocial and cultural fabric of Kerala. plane of existence. changing tion between characters.

IThe thought about Kerala and of the Kiss ofisLove He helpfully adds, science-fictional aspect the film unI watched a clip of comedian Azizfuture” Ansari “Those upon when intentional.

Curiously, “mankind’s about people whoAmerican opposedfuture.

LGBT whom you may ranting here is held to be a white, in the “At this why is anyone have already rights The Stars andUS: Stripes arepoint, everywhere, emblagay marriage?fluttering These are on thealien sameplanpeodecided are against zoned on spaceships, didn’t want women to vote, now gone, ple ets, that draped in offices.

At a time when that the want black guys to play football.”

I can’t and so are didn’t Chinese, Europeans and Indians are forging because it is “unsuitable forRusour their sons, quote ahead the in rest space exploration, when the culture”, you can look it up online.

As a nagrandsons sians stillbut have a robust capability, to advance where Sec 377 still in effect, we have isa and other de- tion a future driven by is jut-jawed Anglo-Saxons long to go(There beforeisAnsari’s words become scendants. ratherway daring. even a backstory to exus. But, toAttransplant hisIndia question the state is the measure ofYou acceptance cannot relevant plain thistoboldness: some point and take a look at the the US, people achieved by the LGBT community.

Kerala hosteven hear to theKerala, Asiansjust went to war with and who lost. a couple kissingstill in public will tarnish ed its fifth LGBT pride march in about July this their year, think However, our drones loiter aimlessly in — these are the same people who organised by the Queer Pride Keralam names. Group, You our theirculture airspace.) thefascinating right of lower-caste women consisting mainly of Queerala (a support must there- opposed The most aspect of the film to is breasts, theof rights of dalits to black enter group for the LGBT community) and Sahayathfore bestow cover buriedtheir in the making it. Nolan hired These the same people oprika (a human rights organisation for lesbian this virgin gem temples. hole expert Kipare Thorne to help out. who Existing the rightisofnot homosexuals to lead and bisexual women in Kerala).

These organiupon some other pose VFX software built to handle thenormal incredThese aremovements the same people who post lewda sations hold workshops all over the state in- lives. husband, fortoyou ibly complex of light around the photos of the formulae Kiss Of Love crease awareness about homosexuality.

The comments are now alone, and black hole. on Thorne wrote dense on Nair, demanding to know taboo of not conforming to societal your friends, sexual your organiser how light Resmi would Rbehave, and these were fed of her innerwear posting dianorms is still strong,ministers, but it’s a welcome servants, the intocolour custom-built algorithmsand to generate the on their own walls against her immoral change that the rightswives, of thekinsmen, LGBT community armies, tribes incredible.

When the images were generated, sacred culture.

The bottom are popping up in mainstream conversations and treasures, have long kisses Thorneruining realisedour that existing theories on how is:holes whenwould a culturally progressive more than ever. since Recent mainstream been swept awayMalayaby the line black look like had to be change revised is — Rithu and Mumbai Police had here, it is here to stay. Time only reinforce lam movies like hand of Time”. and Science happened, as itwill were.

A black hole pivotal characters who are gay.

They were not Anyonewhen who opposes it is on the losing side, The poignancy of these words is it. is formed a giant gas-filled star collapses without — the portrayal the homosexthey areweight. the majority now.Interstellar. theflaws emotional force thatofmoves Interstel- even underifits own Much like ual and the reactions to their sexlar.characters So is it any good?

Alas, not. There are more is a software currently ual perhaps too jaideepraouf unudurti writes onengineer popular culture, chess plotpreference holes thanare wormholes in stereotypical. this clunky ef-I abdul believe have socialofresponsibiliin Washington DC and cinema fort. As that longmovies as there areashots spaceships based

With a stream of arresting visuals and a preposterous plot, Christopher Nolan’s ambitious Interstellar goes only as far as two dimensions

Mob in the Net The internet has played a crucial part in enlightening us about more liberal as well as repressive lands, showing us where we stand on personal liberty. Before the internet, the average Malayalee relied on Mathrubhumi Azhfor weekly commentaries on chapathippu he Golden Age of science fiction hapworld affairs. has been length pensItat the agediscussed of 14. It’satthe best how cyberspace amplified theSF.less-palatatime ofhas your life to read The arterble aspects societyhardened — it did iesofofthe theMalayalee brain haven’t yet, and you are willing to have your mind blown. Each book you read promises, nay, guarantees this. Of the millions of fans who go through this ontogenetic development, there are a few who dare to ask themselves — can I write too?

Now, imagine our hypothetical 14-year-old dashes off a script. Hollywood throws a couple of hundred million dollars at it, and gets the buzziest director in the world to direct it. The result would be something like Christopher Nolan’s new film Interstellar. The reach of the ideas contained within is well beyond the grasp of adolescent enthusiasm. “We must confront the reality of interstellar travel,” intones Michael Caine’s character gravely. But did the Nolans (the script is by brother Jonathan) confront the reality of making a genuine science fiction film?

Interstellar posits a world where crops are failing and immense dust storms scour the surface. Science and exploration are frowned upon. The Earth is dying and a few brave astronauts are sent on a journey to find a planet

T

Into the abyss Supposedly the most accurate depiction of the black hole, as seen in Interstellar

Make love, not war PDA at the Kiss of Love campaign in Kochi pti

definitely provide a new outlet for the repressed tendencies of the Malayalee male, with the added dimension of mob mentality.

Safe in the relative anonymity of the internet, Malayalees are unconcerned by how they will be perceived outside the state. Occasionally, this has given rise to hilarious stories like when actor Mohanlal’s website was hacked by a Pakistani group, which mistook a page describing his connection to the Territorial Army as an Indian Army-related page. In retaliation, his fans hacked multiple Pakistani sites, including the website of Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO). The Malayalee hackers chose to demonstrate their dismissive contempt for their Pakistani counterparts by displaying on every hacked page one of the actor’s popular dialogues: “Nee po, mone dinesha (Get lost, dear Dinesh)”. Similarly, tennis star Maria Sharapova’s page was inundated with Malayalam comments after she revealed

Q R

CH-X _ A

11 15

read talk

BL BL 168

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

PRESENT IMPERFECT

Such a sorry state

If women in Kerala believe the day the state turns dry will be the first of a violence-free domestic life, they are likely to be very disappointed

Disrupting the canon

Tug of war tokenism When will women in Kerala exercise their power and fight for what’s right g ramakrishnA

Pratilipi, an online magazine from Bikaner where Norwegian and Urdu writers stand side by f all the distressing aspects about comparison, in 1957, when women in other doctors, nurses, writers, sporting icons, activban on consuming liquor in parts of the country barely visible in poliists and entrepreneurs side,theconfounds the neat categories of thewere Indian literary world

O T

Kerala, the most disheartening is tics, the Kerala Assembly had six women.

But in Kerala, the enduring Malayali fantasy the fact that it is seen as some kind It’s perhaps unkind but not entirely incor- is still a girl dressed in a traditional white sari, here are subversive, waywardof words of victory for the state’s women. A member you transcript ofinthe maddening rect to saya that women Kerala are oftenvariety too of named it Pratilipi, theon translated damp hair loosely tied,indicating eyes firmly the that often keep up their workaday the Kerala Women’s Commission seems to busy Indian literatures, it also gives to a full play to keeping one another in check worry livesFor we the live in the age of the internet, which ground. state’s men, twirlers of face and dodge attention.

I caught have aired a standard anecdote to all who meanings hiddenright. in theThis word: represenaboutother fighting for what’s neightogether people and lush brings moustaches, whodiverse have been raised oncultures the one aatwoman the recent of Indian would listen about whofestival complained tation and duplication.

As it places side by side bourly censorship of who’s wearing what and from the world. “We wanted tothis disrupt appeal of around an unquestionable machismo, Samanvay, at the India Habitat aboutlanguages, her husband who beat her (and their Cenvarious national and international literatures, talking to whom is a full-time occupation.

(It is woman the iscentre-periphery binary the one literary a convenient fantasy.

Shein is the tre (IHC) when in Delhi.

Pratilipi, which a they two children) he was drunk.

She means also also gaze place at oneIanother and raise uncomfortthe only know where there is a who world away withdemand the hierarchy of lanknowsand thatdo she should nothing, copy, a was photocopy, a routine added thatcommonly the husband kind andisgentle Is fiction in Hindipersonal or any other greatable dealquestions. of curiosity about others’ and writers.

We evenabout publish writers neverguages raise her voice or complain things in“How the daily Hindi of theshe governwhileword sober. often doesworld he drink?” regional language a truer copy of Indian real- in alphabetical hygiene.

Random people, even order,” says.to focus onbecause she is he raised ment,“Seven commerce education. on the was asked. days aand week,” came theBut reply. ity than fiction in English? relative strangers think nothingIs literature a tranPratilipi long way the off ugliness from theoftimes ly isona shielding a literaryone magazine, it comes It’s a masthead remarkableofanecdote, that is tailorscriptyou of if the society and aclass in which it when it seemed of asking you have had English and regional her household away from languagthe in its many disruptive hues. madealive to demonstrate how drink — and only bath.emerges or canconveniently it transcend its context? Can es were two This question, worlds that could never meet. neighbours’ ever-prying eyes.

All Enis a unique bilingual literary drink —Pratilipi drives domestic violence.

It’s online also a stoHindi a in truer copy of Oriya poetry reduced to provide one word Malayaglish writers came from upperinmiddle-class insults about women Kerala On paper, women magazine, which is also available in print on ry that is laden with naiveté.

English?manner Is Scandinavian in urban lam, than is a favoured of in- inliterature while regional writers are entirely of a sexual nature. no other state have backgrounds, demand. founder and editor, Giriraj If women in Its Kerala believe the day the state KiraHindi as much a transcript troduction in my parents’of co- so much going smallwoman towns. is Bigsupwriters The lived good in Kerala is a creative director of Samanvay, which turnsdoo, dry will be the first of a violence-free dolonial as the British litervillage, nearpolitics Palakkad). like Salman Rushdie could get posed to live her life in anticipatfor them thelife, IHCthey organises everytoyear. mestic are likely be Samanvay very disap-looks Theature we read inscore classrooms? background of my As away by of declaring Indian ed avoidance this. All ofthat which like For an offline twin of Partilipi since both propointed. the most part, domestic violence spreads itselfwas across own Pratilipi childhood in Kochi my lanwriting English far more brings me toin one word —was why? mote Indian languages literatures. is cultural, and just becauseand it isn’t preceded mother’s guages, cultures and politics, anxiety about what it We wanted to disrupt Why valuable all that has been can’t than women in Kerala The juxtaposing ofnot Hindi anditEnglish on the by a quarter of rum does mean will disconfounds who are people would readers say about oneused written in regional languages. out of this?

Why can’t they the centre-peripherybreak masthead the Pratilipi websitethough, reminds me appear entirely.ofMore than anything categories. thingtoorneat another.

Remarkably, it stoppedbinary be- in Pratilipi at theof front of own a new littake risks, grab theiscause their thesome literary a notorious bookby byisa this rogue philosopher. whatof I am disappointed benign ac- ing a concern The variety of Pratilipi isn’t out the minute they moved of and erary movement selves demand more freedom?that Whymixes can’t the world doand away Jacques Derrida anti-book, ceptance of their lot in wrote life thatanwomen in the Glas, merely a product editorial the state, even thoughofI was thenina teenager metropolitan with the mofussil take their and experience and with thethey hierarchy of education runs in two parallel columns of text in state which have demonstrated all along.

To be honventiveness; theit,magazine was languages prone to, let’s call experimentation.

But mould and ‘contaminates’ the canon. the culture to one that doesn’t assume and writers different type. The column is onfor German est, I’ve been waiting forleft a few years now a mostbirthed in hybridity. girls I knew,(and in this,Kiradoo I was a happy ex- violence against them But Kiradoo says they aren’t is purely a function of tryand rightshall on the storyphilosopher that shows Hegel women in the Kerala, we writpublishes it fromwith Bikaner ception), were raised one in eyeRaon the cal- how much alcoholing tomen bridge divides. their haveany drunk?

And “We ingssome of French kleptomaniac say, kick ass. Resmi Nair, Kissplaywright Day orga- and not the best forlocker. A why can’t they help endarjasthan, and another on location the bank just each disrupt theinold order. We other breaking Genet.

Between these columns is niser,novelist is so farJean the lone sign of promise. a national He isaa suitable these stereotypes?bring horoscope wasliterary drawnarbiter. up and writing different Why can’t theyfrom marry later? remedley of comments, quotations andsoother Onapaper, women in no other state have PhD in English literature, poetry groom sought as soon as theywrites turnedprose, 21, and languages and cultures togetherthe and let And gions, be worthy brides without carrying By juxtaposing literature muchmarginalia. going for them.

The state boasts 100 and per phiand fictionminimum in Hindi, and has no true love the mandatory of 101 sovereigns of for these each the way they weight of writings two kiloslook of at gold onother themselves? losophy,an Derrida tries expose each to the cent literacy, enviable sexto ratio of 1084 and origins. “Six years ago, I was fed gold his wasRajasthani accumulated. he have says. each In Pratilipi, and Hindi Why want,” can’t they other’sEnglish backs instead assumptions and going possibilities. has aother’s long history of women outsideMore In up with Hindi literary journals, which were eia post-liberalisation sartorial leap, salwar are notfrom necessarily can find of peeping behindadversaries; the window,each sniggera book, it is a confounding collage theirthan homes and working.

Despite higher lev-of inther Left or Right.the The formalist was ankameezes replaced skirt andschool blouse. in thetheir otherneighbour’s its own pratilipi. ing about muffled brawl? els ofterplaying educationideas and and the impressions. empowerment that (While ti-Left and evaded contemporary issues. The This Kiradoo in an equally awkward development, write in beEnglish is 2014, itcan’t doesn’t takefluently a lot to not Pratilipi isn’t as crazy as Glas and has none of come from financial independence, there problem with the legitimate Left was aoutdoor focus onapissues the nightdress became hasInbeen English lecturer. havethough like it’s he 1982. fact, an if you ask me, the He itsbeen frustrating complexity. hasn’t a memorable event inIt’s thean lastaccessible two parel.) and verythan little emphasis onhas literariness.

Other that, very little changed We creative to can himdoonly mostsays effective thingwriting womencomes in Kerala is in magazine true to its title.

It provides a lot of decades here of a woman standing up for livedbetween in the long cold war,” he says. in Kerala the shadow ’80s andof now.

This is para life in Make constant translation, headHindi. to theHe barlives themselves. it a gender several directions: from Norwewhattranslation is right andinnot feeling embarrassed to ticularly As the internetnow blurred boundaries and demagnified because women from which shows in location his magazine: in Partilipi neutral, democratic whereonly everyone intoabout Hindiit.and Assamese intoeven English, creategian a row Forget activists, in for molished borders, they could of pubthe state are doing supremely welldream while livcan you both thework. reclusive writer unwinds afterfind a hard day’s That Urdu in itself instance.

Its women latest issue, titled Freedom, public life, Kerala are woefully absent. fealishing literary they wanted ing in othera parts of magazine the country and the to Naiyer Masud andout.

Norwegian writer Ingrid would keep most men more than 50 in about a dozen Theretures is one woman in writers the state’s cabinet. read. his friend Rahul Soni,dollar who shared world.

TheyWith are heads of multi-billion IT Storholmen side by side. t@veenavenugopal the magazine does share Therelanguages. are seven But women in the Assembly.

In the his hybridity, and designer Shiv Kumar Gandcompanies, CXOs of FMCG companies, pilots, book’s disruptive zeal. While it seems to give hi, Kiradoo set up the online magazine and dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based journalist

Q Q R R

CH-X _ A

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

read talk

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

Snap to attention Should we use moving images to promote the printed word?

BAWDY LINE

shutterstock / guy shapira

An equal music

In our household, in the domesticity of our newly acquired old gramophone, is an atavism your phone to be a lifelike singer. Price: One rupee and fordogmatic 1,000 needles.’

Gauhar the ers eight may annas escape definitions, Jan was theusually Armenian heartthrob Calcutworst spring from anfrom overlap between ta, who a thumri decent singingefforts sensa-have the had two become genres. Perfectly tion.been She was one by of the first in India towhile ruined ‘Voice ofsingers God’ voiceovers, be recorded by the pioneering sound-recordfour-minute epic dramas try to sell you the ist FW Gaisberg for the and Type-It’s alplot.

TC Boyle’s TheGramophone Women, for example. writer Ltd.that In some 1903, book whentrailers her discs were releged inherently released, firstimaginative person whose moveshe thebecame elementthe of the process voiceand could be possessed as a thing

by Indians. potentially cheapen the medium by sugHer performances material objects, gesting a sort ofbecame inadequacy.

This is Exhibit A. something one category could hold in their hands, The other of book trailers, one that which couldArons, be bought andofsold. successArt of Rachel author The The Awkward of Gauhar Jan’s records just transformed Book Trailers for Thenot New Yorker, seems to fathe way musicians made their the living but shiftvour, is the kind in which author embarks ed the context of musical performonprincipal a postmodernist metaphysical pitch. The ancekind frominits long-established locus insert (salons, which they oh-so-cleverly themconcert halls, public festivals) home. hiselves in the trailer.

Either into in anthe apparently By 1910, the Indian market teemed withJohn 75 re-Wray larious reversal of roles (author cording companies andwho local interviews actorwith ZachEuropean Galifianakis, is porlabelstraying wrangling with — wait forthe it —Gramophone author JohnComWray) or panythey for hatch a sliceheinously of the market.

Theplots Gramoelaborate to make A goodPAPERWALLAH old spin The musical enigma that was the shiny black plate shutterstock phone Company’s between 1910 what I call theearnings ‘non book trailer’.

BJ and Novak’s 1913 showed average sale of almost One MoreanThing, for example, set uphalf as aa faux million records andorover 6,000 per French movie, actor Aasifmachines Mandvi ‘rallying’ y seven-year-old son’s first en- then issued it out of a concealed horn through year. his They hadtoended uppromo creating a market mates be in his video.

This last alcounter with the mechanical be- a fine mesh in the latticework below. All mov- where raw material came from. Thebook shellac sothe features another (American?) trailer ing of the gramophone machine ing parts. Analogue sound. No amplification. that formed substance of records trend —the thephysical ‘oh, look at my many celebrity produced a response that was Nothing to be plugged in. Just the slight both- was sourced almost entirely from India.

The friends’ promos.

You might argue that Mandsomething of a cultural atavism. It was redo- er of the preparatory ritual. Like cigarette-roll- music industry had become the most consumvi’s involvement in showbiz justifies his starlent of that keenly written chapter in The Mag- ing or coffee-making in the moka pot. matestudded form of capitalism.

ImagineRussian-American a division of soirée. Yet there’s ic Mountain, where Thomas Mann describes For Rudra, the form of the gramophone re- Toyota as anGary oil and gas company marketing satirist Shteyngart, who Arons calls “the Hans Castorp’s discovery of a German-made cord, its thingness, was the puzzle. A shiny petroleum leadingproducts. book-trailer auteur of our time”. His gramophone in the salon of the Berghof sana- black plate that came out of its brown paper Music as a thingparody was where I lost his intermini-movies the absurdities and hutorium: “He bent over the whirring, pulsating sleeve had music worth three minutes written est. For a seven-year-old in these times, the (yes, miliations of authorly self-promotion mechanism as over a spray of lilac, rapt in a on each side in an Archimedean spiral, in in- MP3 has beenbut assigned the help rank of… of a thing. funny), with the JamesMuFranco, cloud of sweet sound.” finitesimal, tightly packed grooves, one hun- sic asRashida an object of private, con-GaitJones, Jeffreyindividualised Eugenides, Mary In a state of melded reverie and alertness, dredth to an inch, each finer than human hair. sumption is Karpovsky, losing itsandproperty as aFranskill, Alex even Jonathan my son listened and his lips parted in a smile. Under the magnifying glass, the grooves were commodity as itcould passes possibly around outside thewith zen. Who compete What stood before him was a small mahogany what they seemed: unexciting furrows with valuepromos economy. can be reproduced likeItthat?

Especially if all at youwill, have at cabinet with a detachable crank: the 80-year- humps and wiggles. Where was the music? without exchange of money.

MP3bad is the ob- efyourthe disposal is stock footage, sound old colonial HMV 113a Transportable — by any He solved the puzzle with his fingernail. On versefects, formand of the gramophone flourishes record; theremitext-presentation reckoning an ately, objectIofhave greatbeen physical and ton-about thinking the turntable, with thegrudgingly record admits, in the niscent of space. As Franzen anti-particle.

PowerPoint. al beauty. Thebook last wind-up trailers. gramophone pro- spinning, he placed his to fingersame breath he uses state his “profound disBut both thewhile samethese ca- viOne can’t help butavail feelof that duced by HMV. IYou suppose theyour onlyeyes, manner in nail on may roll and mutter, the surface insteademinently of the comfort,” it “makes good sense to sual forays price of the physiology of listen-aftermake for highly entertaining which it couldJonathan have beenFranzen-style, considered transporabout your needle. a barelylittle audible mewbe In recording videos like this.”

Of course, ing, which something is this: the human ear has lunch distraction, ultimately He solved the puzzle tableprofound was on thediscomfort back of some Gunga Din, with having to who use moving sort of way, the played he wouldn’t besong happy to know that has been lost: and sense of hearing discards theits book itself.

I find that I’m drawn withthis his fingernail would convey it up the hill forthe a bit of Hillword.

Sta- “To ing images to promote printed itself.been Any going fine thing on asrunning far backinas 1986. A video for to book most of that the sounds that it hears. trailers focus on text, interplaytion phonography Indian me, the point in of the a novel is toSummer. take you to a still thoseWildwood, sinuosities became a stya novel by ‘Southern Gothic’ writer ing thatThe MP3 works on a mathematiwith fittingly captivating imagery.

Theplace,” essence the machine, if one may darevideo. heofsays in the Freedom promo lus. John Actually, platter Farristhe may just bewas the first ever made, Ones that calshun model guesses the that awfulsecond Voice of God in fato define fromofa books seven-year-old child’s per- what “The it world is the quiet alternative — complete was running.

78 rpm. awful withAtterrifically the process auditory vour of ofanhuman author’s own voice spective, wasmore in thedesperately abstractionneeded of music from an ever alternative.”

That was followed

by Howpads, to Make CGI, gigantic shoulder andYour Own perception. It pre-emptively discards dataExcerpts in reading their own work. the object whirring theagreen fleece-cov(Who else wouldon make book trailer about beGramophone fromhairstyles.

YouTube, (One which was the sound file thatfrom electrocuted it expects be discarded Zadie will Smith’s NW, for examered ing turntable; music a strange reluctantthe to make a book trailer?)comYou may promptly for a peg, a by the human ear mustpulled watchoffit,using if fora pencil nothing anyway.

Whatstills we get is a ple, populate of bustling A quick Google pound ofingranular recorded sound nod commiseration — yes, it’s and comethe to this, CD stack a conicalofroll of paper and a much smaller file,Camden else, holder, the spectacle a dainty with 90 percent of the par- and Town. Blackbirds search will tell you unrelieved scratchy whine of surface noise. the publishing industry falling in forlorn sowing needle. foot By the end of it, EllainFitzgerald ticulars taken outMockingbird slippered transforming of it.

by Chuck Wendig arthat there seems to After just one practical demonstration Rucompliance with the laws of a YouTube world. was mewing to a tigerDream paw.) a Little Dream of Me out of The old gramophone record,atoncreative the conranges words angles be no designated dra learned the all motions music is Yet, as we agree, of theproducing job of publishers the paper It was Rudra’sbepinhole-camera Yet roll. perhaps it might more trary, brings intotoplay the human psycho- caaccentuate the writing’s ‘standards’ for fromplacing it: to screw in the fine steelhands. needleAnd intoas itsLorin books in people’s moment.

He hadtolearnt to the make those acoustic response.dence. customary starthow with The earMy acts absolute as a sieve for all favourite, book promos slot in the pickup head aluminium Stein, editor of The(with Paris the Review, says, “We’ve blackquestion: plastic records yield theirtrailmusic. Over the wow and flutter, ‘what is a book the would background though, be thenoise, Italian Eidiaphragm) that was attached to in thesilly tone armsince been advertising our wares ways the days, that the fidelity of his appa- the tonal inconsistencies er?’ he As found self-explanatory as that to let in more naudi’s trailer fornoMurakami’s — a pivoted leveron whose puttinghollow a dirtymetal picture the halves cover of ratus a might got better as heaimproved on the needle. than an equal music. sound, quick Google Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His moved in the vertical and horizontal Faulkner book.” True.

In the earlyaxis, 20threcentuIn a book onwill gramophones, I showed search tell you that there him an In our household, in the domesticitySparse of our line Years of Pilgrimage. spectively, to enable needle to settle ry, printed adsthe were all the rage.lightly From the advertisement had appeared in a local seem to be(that no designated ‘standards’ for book newly acquiredmelt oldand gramophone, is the ata- by a drawings merge, accompanied on the record. Then to crank the thatof Kidownright inappropriate — handle a reprint newspaper inTake Calcutta in 1911) that readVideos as fol- may promos. length, for example. vism.measured We are once more theand bourgeois family voiceover excellent use of loaded the spring in the clockwork set theIndia pling’s Kim prompted one thattotermed lows:range ‘If you from wish to30-second obtain a natural reproducquickies, like Irvine that sound. gathersItaround it want after to dinner to book enjoyeven made me read the platter Finally, to allow the needle to earantwirling.

“Orient treasure-trove”— to the sweetly tion of a singer’s voicefeaturing or soundaof a musical Welsh’s Skagboys dancing skeletal the music.

In Ia haven’t way, it has returned though picked up asomething Murakami in be innest communion vinyl atclipping a 45o angle.

— a 1926with newspaper forRuThe Sun instrument on a Disc you are that we’d marionette, to Talking lengthyMachine, documentary-style years.misplaced.

That, surely, is a book trailer’s simplest, dra could sense that it “that was the tone that Also Rises claimed with thisarm book Mr Hestrongly recommended to use Klein’s ‘Gauhartrailer Jan’ for highest accolade. projects, such as Naomi asatwik@gmail.com conveyed the sound intoalso the rise.” cabinetry, which needles. mingway’s sun will

By Doctrine. using these needles youmovie will find Shock Nothing like trailers, It seems only natural that book promotion where you can hold certain predictable expec- janice pariat is the author of Seahorse (like everything else) would move into digital tations that are usually met. While book trail- t@janicepariat

Advertising M our wares

Book trailers — do they remove the element of the imaginative process, cheapen the medium or make you want to pick up the book?

janice pariat

L

Q R Q R

Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer

CH-X _ A

9 17BL BL

read work

BL BL 186

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

In proximity ELSEWHERE

Compared to Sarah Waters’ previous breathless novels, this one offers quieter introspection

Hitch a ride?

At times, the Universe does listen to our pleas

F

riday morning. I had booked a cab for 6:30am but it wasn’t there when I stepped out.

I called the cab com- ideaAnother Navi Mumbai-based start-up, pany. “He’s onForge his way,” said the lady other end.

The — brainchild of at students at IIT-Bombay seconds ticked Finally, I sawonly an Orange Cab draw — by. offers services to the Defence Research up. But when I walked towards it, the driver shook his head re- and and Development Organisation (DRDO) shutterstock gretfully. “I have a passenger,” he said, the woman paramilitary andindicating security forces.

Their clients in the passenger seat. include She was National looking straight a Securityahead, Guard,with Indo-Tibetan came upon the work of Sarah Lilian, move in. this-is-SO-not-my-problem expression her face.Disaster Apparently Border Police, on National Response Waters quite accidentally. I was they had stopped in the parking of my building order to Force andlot Delhi Police.

“It isin a really hot marThey are all in equal measure horat the Delhi Book Fair and had rified by the proximity with which get a coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. ket right now. Over the last few years, there has resolved to only buy authors I they have to live their lives and pecuI needed to be at the Marriott Hotel atannual 6:55amgrowth in order been a consistent of to 70 to 80 hadn’t read or heard of. Reading the liarly fascinated by one another. board the shuttle service the says airport in Providence.

I had per to cent,” Deshraj Singh, head of marketpile over the next few weeks, I real- Frances lies in her room at the end been invited to attending theand annual Asia Conference as a salesSouth at ideaForge. ised as far as making book choices of long days spent cleaning and visiting playwright. It was now 6:40am, the airport one Kulshreshtha agrees: “In lesswas than one year go, buying one based on the cover scrubbing, smoking her cigarette in hour away and check-in was we at 9:30am.

I missedhas thealready shuttle,broken since started,IfQuidich image and the flap synopsis was secret and listening to the sounds of which was operated byeven the same as the cabs,The my onand company we are profitable. market is likely to end more often than not in the Barbers chatting, eating their ly other option was a bus.

It would get me to the airport just growing rapidly.”

Quidich’s first assignment disappointment. And so, when I dinner and going down to the lavaon time but only if there no traffic along the way.a leading news waswas election coverage with picked up Waters’ Night Watch, it tory. Being a feminist (who had once I went up to the Orange Cab“We driver.

He and his them passenger channel. travelled with for 40 days, wasn’t with much hope, but merely thrown a shoe at a police officer) were sipping their coffee a leisurely manner. said,The “Umm ourin UAVs following their Ibus. interviews a dogged determination to finish. and a lesbian, Frances is curious and … any chance you could drop me off atwere the Marriott?”

It was with politicians also captured with our The book starts with Kay — wearing critical of the Barbers’ marriage. literally justadown road from drones.

We got lot ofthe mileage from that.” military clothes and sporting her And this being a Sarah Waters novel, where we was were.

The driver shook Soon, Quidich flooded with clients. short hair, stepping out into a ‘limp it is only a question of time before his head once more, though he did day’. “Don’t you know the war’s she and Lilian manage to fall in love call up the cab company. AccordFarewell, copters My driver had arrived over?” men ask her jeeringly. And with each other. ing are to the dispatcher, my driver So what the benefits of UAVs? For starters, on time but pushed hen filmmaker Rahatflawlessly Kul- not have been up to the mark. It was then that theyhad within two pages you are sucked inon timealternative but pushedtooffhelicopare arrived a cost-effective Waters describes the off because he didn’t shooting a muhe found about unmanned aerial vehicles ters.because to the curious life of overtshreshtha and cov- wastribulations he didn’t can see be meused waiting While choppers for everyand conflicts of out being see me waiting in the sic videoIt forinsinger Shreya relationship” (UAVs) being used ert lesbians in post-war England. in—the driveway. from security surveillance to film and an “unnatural at in the US for taking aerial thing driveway Singhal wanted to Frances’ shots from less-distant heights. He bought music Iproduction was a shockingly good book.

Withlast a year, stepped back, feeling defeated.

— they come with a huge thathe time through own cona fewthere aerialisshots over the Noida And Expressoneearlier from there discovery take like that, only one bestCharges option now would abehelicopter to priceMytag. for hiring fusions. while her narra-for his own venture. way oncan thedo, outskirts of Delhi.tives, The only wayher to heroines, UAVs are have defined as vehicles installed with range thing a reader obsessively walk to ₹1 the bustoterminal because I from lakh ₹2 lakh an hour, dependlike it was to hire a helicopter and seek regulaavionicsedge that-ofcan either fly autonomously or ing had buy all thedo works of the author.

Night breathlessly surely the shuttle. on the use. missed In contrast, a drone Ican be raced through tory permissions its use. the-seat Yet, shotplotlines, from a The

by Paying using the commands from the base.

Thebackpack Watch, I realised, was Waters’for fourth had only a small as luggage was from drizzling hired for eight tobut 10 it hours a starting Guests minimum of before 2,000 set feet, common person perhaps knows novel, there were three in theisfootage slightlythem and Ibetter didn’t want toof start the day on alakh downbeat.

Just price ₹1 lakh to ₹1.5 and customised to a work ofwould much quieter introspecas drones, because of thethen, military connotaVictorian England and filled with tion. In fact, it takes about a voice spoke to requirements. me: the lady inFor the car parked to has to filming, even next if a shot 200 pages tions. for various layered protagonists who mostly for Frances and Lilian theused cab had leaned outbe of re-taken, her window.

“Aww, honey,” she said. a drone can be brought down, its to However, just kiss! UAVs can be filmwant productions, loved other women. My favourite The rest of the plotcivilian a ride to thebattery Marriott?

Hop in!” had a few min-“Shootchanged andShe sent back again. is hardpurposes, to de- such as“You wedding photography, surveillance and she highthough is Fingersmith, a book so well scribe without giving utes to spare, said, ing andwith it wasn’t very far out of her way. So I and a a helicopter is time-consuming much away.

So rise real some estateof projects. got in. plotted that bang in the middle of it, let’s just say things happen, pain,” says Kulshreshtha. Moreover, helicopKulshreshtha Gaurav Meh-kindters you realise with a gasp that you’ve which eventually lead Thanks to this stranger, I arrived theflyMarriott are not allowedat to below aincertain to a cour- teamed up with ta and Tanuj Bhojwani, two time batchmates at the Ash-shuttle. been had and you have to re-read troom even. to board I wasmaking the onlyitpassenger and chatheight, difficult to take close-up oka University.

They set up Quidich this driver from the beginning. ted withearlier the friendly way to drone the airport, shots.all Anthe average rentalcaught package inWaters is a master of writing — a Delhi-based firm that All of which is to say that I’d been about a certain kindyear my provides flight andaerial spent two wonderful days inwhich Madison. had than cludes 10 batteries, are I more of England and images and UAVs.great conversations, waiting all year to get my hands on effortlessly paints pictures attended a livelyshoot. reading of my enough for a day-long in a videos per- throughsome Three friends Veermata JijaWaters’ sixth and latest, The Paying fect sepia tone in your play Harvest and enjoyedMore my luxurious roomsays at the Madison importantly, Kulshreshtha, the head.

Yet, Ifrom Mumbai’s Technological Institute (VJTI) are also Guests. Set in London in the 1920s, found myself a bitbai Concourse Hotel.

On the return journey, I boarded the Orange ease of permissions makes drones a better opweary of both working growing the book is a tight narrative of the Frances and Lilian by shuttle oncemarket more from theas airport.

Onelocal of the otherneeds passention, only the police to be inthe endovertime of the to tap this for UAVs, in INavi the satellite of formed. merging of class and sexual mores. book. As a Sarah Waters was a city silver-haired businesswoman with require a laughingvarious Helicopters fan girl, see Mumbai, gers India’soffinancial Frances, the young protagonist lives in this book a maturing twinkleTatipamula, in her eyes. We soon began like long-lost approvals, at leasttalking a week in advance.

But since an au- capital. Aniket and Shinil Shekhar suc- a cab with her mother in their grand thor, a toning down Neeraj friends and shared whenhave we got down from at the shut- regupeople been using drones without of paceWaghchaure and dracessfully few failed at- I got house in Camberwell. Her father ma, which makes me tle’saterminal stop. homethey feeling and with happy, cher-paths at lation, maywarm interfere flight curiouscreated about a UAV, after in 2012.

October and brothers died in the war, and what she’ll dish out tempts, byIn the Universe. higher altitudes, posing security risks. To next. in their college labished trio set up Airpix, a professional ae- check that, the Directorate General of Civil times are so tough that not only But if you haven’t2013, read the author PADMANABHAN and(DGCA) artist, tellshas us tales of herthe parallel photography production com- author does Frances do all the housework before, I’d say startrialwith Aviation banned uselife of drones another and videoMANJULA in Elsewhere, in this fortnightly series marginalien.blogspot.in client list includes realUS,estate herself, they are even forced to rent book. Fingersmith, inpany, till it finalises guidelines on their use. fact, ifwhose you have developers, town planners, the police, governout a portion of the house. The book a healthy heart.

However, companies like Quidich and Airment departments and even media houses. starts on the day the tenants Leopix can seek permission from DGCA and other nard Barber and his beautiful wife, veena venugopal

I

The Paying Guests Sarah Waters Virago Fiction ₹599

Eye in the sky

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are taking to the Indian landscape in various roles — from wedding photography to police surveillance and crowd management

W

From a distance A UAV from ideaForge (above); an aerial view shot by a UAV (below) airpix

Q R

CH-X _ A

authorities for using drones under 300 feet.

“This is free air space and any object at this altitude does not interfere with routine flight paths,” says Kulshreshtha.

View from a home While UAVs might be used to take aerial shots of actors and actresses, Airpix uses it in the real estate sector as well. It bagged its first project from Haware Builders in Mumbai’s suburban Thane early this year. “The view from a flat is the USP of high-rise buildings. We use drones to capture the view, which can leverage flat sales,” says Shekhar. So, even before the construction commences, Airpix drones can create a virtual view from a flat on any floor. And it has done this for marquee names, including Lodha Developers, Shapoorji Pallonji, K Raheja Corp and Omkar Realtors.

Airpix works with its clients on a project basis. “A definitive cost cannot be reached since we customise the drone as per the final application with different kinds of performances and payloads,” says Shekhar. The physics of the equipment and electronics change with project needs. So for real estate projects, UAVs have to be fitted with high-resolution cameras to provide images that can be blown up. And for aerial photography of sports events, the equipment’s mobility and manoeuvrability have to be good.

With growing demand, Airpix has expanded from one to six UAVs in less than a year; Quidich has gone from one to seven. These players are now assembling their own UAVs rather than buying them from manufacturers. The parts are flown in from other countries, assembled and customised as per requirement. Quidich gets its motors from China, bodies from Belgium and other parts from the US. “We put them together based on how much weight it has to lift,” says Kulshreshtha. So while a UAV for lifting compact and lightweight Go-Pro cameras can cost ₹2 lakh, the one for lifting film cameras that weigh 5-8kg can cost up to ₹20 lakh.

The hover craft UAVs can be used in real estate projects (above); and for crowd monitoring (below) airpix

most dishes call for just a few leaves, for which you don’t need to buy a big expensive bunch from the supermarket.

Don’t ignore the Indian favourite, tulsi or holy basil. It is excellent in teas to prevent or soothe a bad throat. Mint grows easily from sprigs that you have bought from the market.

It covers the ground very quickly, so it is best grown in pots. Curry leaves, a south Indian favourite, is best planted in the soil as the roots run deep.

When you buy lemongrass from a supermarket, choose one with the root end intact.

After you use up the leaves, keep the root immersed in a jar of water for a week. Once new rootlets develop, this can be sown in soil and soon lemongrass leaves will sprout. These can be used in Thai curries and also to flavour masala chai.

CHILLIES While there are many different varieties of Airpix, for example, is already staying away is places where we cannot take them otherwise. chillies, kandhari thatwell And the quality of images is good too.” He can from aerial wedding photography one thatas grows also see the display in real time and adjust market is getting commoditised. in Shekhar winters. says One of aperture, shutter speed, while sitting in front his firm has done four wedding myassignments, plants produced is no value of a computer. In most cases, UAVs produce but will stop at that. “There nearly 3-4kgaddiin seatrysharp images from a distance of 500 metres to tion in those services. We are son.consciously Since they couldn’t segment as drones a kilometre. This also makes it suitable for ing to stay away from this all be used at once, I alcomplementing mediums.”

Dit-sun, sports events; Airpix provided aerial coverage are just lowed them to ripen,other dried them in the Quidich.

“Inthem Delhi, anybody can buy a for a Brazilian TV series Kayak, which covers to for and now I use in daily cooking.

Kandhari white-water rafting in various countries. “We drone lakh for wedding canfor be₹2grown in pots, but photography. the yield will be did the aerial view shooting for their Nepal Thatmore is not a particularly lucrative when grown directly in soil.market,” edition. It helps capture the says Kulshreshtha. thrill and action better,” he adds.

Not surprisingly, drones can OTHER GREENS Gasha Aeri Alawani, Marketbe bought for asSow littlegarlic as ₹50,000 cloves in ing Motorsports at Volkswagen in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk. soil and in aIn few With growing India agrees. She says her comKhan Market, thedays base price you’llcanfind demand, Airpix has pany first used UAVs in 2013. go up to ₹1 lakh.

But garlic they are green shoots, expanded from one to “This year too we will take their mostly importedwhich from China. can be to six UAVs in less services to cover our VW Polo-RAnd it is these players thatand areused in- in snipped than a year; Quidich Cup. In circuit racing (such as creasing the competition in curries. the chutneys and has gone from one the Buddh International circuit, UAV space. Salad greens like letto seven Greater Noida), through a camBoth Shekhar and Kulshreshtuce and rocket also grow era installed on UAVs, we can tha agree thatSeeds competition will in well in shallow trays. are available capture what a handheld-cambring rentals down. the serimost online gardening storesBut such annadanaera cannot. They can also follow players are working on spe- and india.org,ous florafields.com, kraftseeds.com the track well.” She does, however, find the cialised Higher and brighter verticals and will /gardening-needs. offer more bigbasket.com/pc/household Photographer Jasmer Singh has used Quidich cost on the higher side. Alawani believes that data-based analytical services. ideaForge, for drones fitted with cameras to shoot stills for with the increase in competition, prices are example, has created a niche byVEGETABLES working only ROOT industrial locations as well as resorts. “The es- likely to come down and the quality of the with security forces. “With UAVs, you can’t Red radish is ajust delight sential advantage is that UAVs take cameras to product will improve. issue a tender and ask for the tolowest grow asbidder. it is ready Every single requirement needs be specito to harvest in 30 fied and it has to be customised,” says Singh of too days.

Don’t sow ideaForge. many at a time, as Shekhar should know. His firm on all a of youworked can’t eat project with the Mumbai police on together.

AmbedkarAlso, them Jayanti. For a gathering held at Shivaji Park,seed don’t sow the the police wanted to monitor from a deeper crowds than 1-2cm. vantage in case ofginger, a mishap, Topoint grow and, turmeric and buryidentia piece in fy the as soon possible.

“We used thespot compost pot, as sprinkle water every daya and on’t let the word ‘garden’ discour- places across India would be ideal. high-zoom camera close insoil on places where after a few daysto bury it in along with some You can start with either seed or sapling. Formishaps age you. A few plants on a sunny occur, of themight compost.

Thisand hasaa high-definition better success rate. windowsill, a foot-wide bed of soil newbie gardeners, saplings cut down on thecamera to capture says. aroma to foods Turmeric leavesdata,” lend he a delicate around your compound, or even a waiting time and the chances of the seed not Quidich hasand also developed UAV They software wrapped steamed in them. are also row of pots on a waterproofed terrace could germinating or getting affected by pests in thefor agriculture will meatied aroundsurveys, the neckwhich of a pot of help pongal, so the suffice. The important thing is to start small early stages. To avoid disappointment, yousureperfect crop density quality, conditions, time toand plant themsoil is before the onset could buy a few saplings from a nursery first. and of with easy-to-grow plants. sowinter. on. “We can put thermal cameras to monitor We are also working onup a system Forthis. inspiration, you can sign with FaceHERBS THUMB RULES for disaster management,” says Your Kulshreshtha. book groups such as Grow Own Veggies Soil used to grow any vegetable should be well I started my kitchenQuidich has engineers on board to workhave and also Organic Terrace Gardening, which garden experimentson analytics aerated, neither too loose nor too compact. and is offering a top-end UAV ofwith many enthusiastic kitchen gardeners with a few herbs inaround And the depth of the soil needs to be more ₹30 lakh.suggestions With major and companies ready advice, support.like than one foot. The soil should retain moisture my tiny MumbaiAmazon entering with Amazon And when the youUAV can,space attend local farmers’ apartment balcony.Prime — for example, a mix of red soil, clay, small Air, and Facebook looking markets, events like Oota frominto yoursolarThota in pebbles, vermicompost, and once the seed has The joy of garnish-powered UAVs byor 2015, clearly it is the technolBangalore, seedand sapling-sharing ing a dish of pastaogy events, germinated, dried leaves to cover the top layof the future. at Airpix “We such asShekhar the one being heldsays, today at the with a freshly pluckedwantKotturpuram er, works well. to grow as a technology company, which Tree Park, Chennai. leaf of Italian basil is un-provides It is worthwhile to do a germination test bereal solutions to real Start small and bask inproblems.” the joy of cooking fore sowing — soak seeds in water for four paralleled. Be it basil, rosemary, thyme or with homegrown herbs and vegetables. hours, discard floating seeds (these won’t ger- mint. And a little goes a long way, as they arerashmi pratap with inputs from Sibi Arasu minate) and sow the others. The best time to most flavourful when they go straight from nandita iyer, Bangalore-based blogger sow is when there is at least three hours of pot to plate. Also, unless you are making a pes- (saffrontrail.com); with inputs from organic farmer strong sunlight left; so around 9-10am in most to — in which case you’ll need lots of basil — Allalladi Mahadevan (theorganicfarm.in)

An easy patch

A few (green) thumb rules to plant and watch your kitchen ‘garden’ grow this season

D

Q R

CH-X _ A

takeaway work

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

shutterstock

7 19BL BL

know takeaway

BL BL 20 4

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

Natural habitat

ly coming of age and beginning to adapt itself to the digital age. “While designing a font, you are looking to capture something of the spirit of the age in which it is appearing,” he says, “Like any designed object, it is interesting to see how it becomes part of our visual culture.

Projects by groups such as ITF are promising in this sense.”

Ahmedabad’s ITF, set up by National Institute of Design-graduate Satya Rajpurohit and Slovak typographer Peter Bilak, has designed typefaces for television channels. “Although we have thousands of fonts available, if you look for those that support a language like Hindi, 2 work in small point size on a computer screen and have many different styles for differentiating text hierarchy, you would end up with just one or two possible candidates,” says Bilak, “I try to look at text not just formally but al3 so the meaning behind it. At ITF, we have designed and published fonts for over 200 languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Arabic.”

Rosetta Type Foundry’s Vaibhav Singh, who is also pursuing his Master’s at the University of Reading (one of few design schools where students can select the scripts they want to design typefaces for), warns that certain limitations in font design ought to be overcome first.

“A critical issue in designing Indian script typefaces is to recognise and respect the logic behind the letter-shapes — how they are egends surrounding the Nirnaya Sa- scripts in India — nearly 66 scripts and 780 lan- formed and treated. Taking Latin-script feagar Press — at its peak in 19th- and guages, according to the People’s Linguistic tures and grafting them on to a different early 20th-century Bombay — are of- Survey of India (PLSI) — poses other problems. script is an unfortunate approach, common e knew had veered off theDelhi-based ten repeated in thewe font design circles see the Madhuram board —designer and, Prathamesh type and graphic Neela- even today.

So fartodesigners have merely We walked the dining areabeen through a purbeatenart track whenat the Googlekash of India. Rajeev Prakash, director Delhi Samant waiting towho welcome us. one of the providing Kshetrimayum, designed Indian-script equivalents to And Latin ple night twinkling with tiny flames. then lady began instructing Press and designer Maps of popular fonts like Alan- first fonts “We’ve reached,”says mythatthree daughterstypographic in Manipuri, for historical conventions.”as a parade of dishes — gazed in astonishment us to drive intothe haystacks kar, narrates one such tale where proprie-andreasons crowed at once.was written in the Bengali Manipuri Largely, though, font in aIndian fried fish, crab curry, fishdesign curry, dal, couple of “Take a right turn in 100scriptWell torsmango of the orchards. press, or the Jawaji family, while yes.

And The Mayek. car had reached itsscripts rather than theno. native is adapting wellatopot digitisation and to veggies, kheer and of pink, irresistible metres,” she commanded, trying her best to “There finalising typefaces for the Kavyamala antholdestination.

But major we still had a in 2005, new media, such was this incident as the internet, mobile sol kadi — arrived at the table. All drown us in a pond filled with wallowing ogies, a 14-volume collection of ancient San-buf-where short way towith go. more than 1.45 lakh Mani- phones and television. a library With Google launching this was being conjured up in a faloes.

“Takeinsisted a right turn.

Take a right turn.” puri books skrit poems, on making Sanskrit Samant, an unflappable 25-script was the Indian Language written in the Bengali Alliance, kitchenInternet with open fires, andearmy Theread babbling Android was not the only scholars the text in point size eight at thesigntorched year-old, led theheway in Imphal,” says.down This a signed to encourage content inthat of women and implements that hadwith parted withatthe convoy break of we dawn, onlyways a lantern hand.

De- ofresulted roughinpath that terminated a revival of sorts forin a and themore gov- at wouldlanguages have looked “You have to cross regional tourists driving from Mumbainew to Goa on thatMayek. spite the tediousness of making typesets clear,Kshetrimayum shallow stream.says, “You “I have ernment set to announce dot home in a torture chamber. this water body to Tuesday the faltered, roads weredon’t with metal,afternoon. wherever Suddenly the scholars to know cross this water body to reach much about history, domainmother, names who soon cease— reach Maachli,” he BharatSamant’s though, font narrow and deserted — barring the occasional words or letters were painstakingly recast and butMaachli,” explained, as if Largely, what I doheknow are typethesupervised text in thethe website lessly kitchenasand explained, as if where design in Indian bus, rickshaw andlegibility suicidal chicken. theST text waspurple reprinted to ensure even faces. splashing So whenthrough I set out atoknee-high create as the site’s address will be out magnificent treats splashing through a wellturned scripts is adapting We passed a few sleepy stores in the middle ofmy stream in low-light conditions. as commonplace Mayek was typefaces Pakhangba as knee-high languages there’s aand like malpua for — breakfast stream wasin Indian digitisation as whole nowhere, asigns villages Designing font for today is not with nearlynames as try-likeandcrossing Shahid Singh well Sanamahi, I wentBhagat back and of opportunities friednew tigerset prawns for dinner, was asto commonplace and crossing to new media and crude shed that identified itselflooked ingHeloba, as it used to abe.

Yet it’s a manifold and rigRoad Colaba, Mumbai. atin how the script evolved, grabs. clearly a traditionalist. But then Shahid up for as aprocess “Phanaswith Stop”.itsPerhaps, a retiring roomstudied orous own contemporary Rather weout clutched how nervously, it was carved in While thekitchen ‘Helvetica’ of Indian her vast — which would Bhagat Singh Road for wearyPopular jackfruit? challenges. fonts like Yogesh and the stone bags and phones iPods and earlier.

I also and researched is most probably not homemakers out there give modern in Colaba, Mumbai fonts Otherwise it was us and the glorious Linotype Devanagari andjust Linotype Bengali, for samples wires and waded in. Mythe three of manuscripts, yet,conniptions technological innovations — is part of the “vilroad. Endless ribbons of tar, with instance, have been in use forfringed decades.

Butjadewooden goggling, giggling press and daughters wooden alandlage a growing market that for Indian experience” the Sagreen and moptop palms. since theyshrubs are all from a pre-digital era,Shadowy they blocks most four slippers between of lost lettering before starting my work.” fonts are pavingmants the way for better typefaces so proudly offer.

And they avenues seemed lead a fairytale. them. Then Naima fell flat and don’t alwaysthat translate as to well on to computer and design. are clearly delighted that people the last five years wet or so, Indian font design Though were taking or us to Maa- nemerged screens as actually, they do they on newspapers billlooking and mortified.

Which is As British designer Pinhorn, who also from far corners ofJonny the world are landing up at hadwe a major facelift. suchwas as toworks chli, aDesigners little farmmust stay in the heart of charming has boards. constantly innovate when first heard theDesigners laughter that with“ancestral ITF and hasproperty”, designed fonts such asthe their crossing Czech David Brezina and hisKonkan colleague Sindhudurg. so we hoped.needs — for a thebecome to cater to new, Or ever-changing the soundtrack of our adven-Akhand Tamil, Akhand andlearning Saguna to stream, visiting theMalayalam local temple, the Rosetta Foundry, For the fourteenthabout time, utility.

I read out the direc-Vaibhav good font is essentially tures.Singh Threeoflocal womenType were almostSadou-Gujarati, says, a fascinating cook on an“Designing open flametype andisexploring the unKulkarni of Mumbai’s Ek Type, designers tions Ross, sent by host.

We had passed BenPingulirang Fiona theour brain behind Linotype bled over with mirth. Clearly, they found citytaskexpectedly because you’re trying to design difference gorgeous countryside.

Indian Type Foundry (ITF) and within sameness, balancing both unity and where we hadIndian askedfonts for directions. galivillage, and other successful such as at Ahmedabad’s bumpkins highly amusing. hich total is how we find ourselves heading players Pradnya Naik and “Yousays, will be guided to take second right turn,” Rohini, “I look back on some fonts that I independent Ten minutes later,like we were ensconced in ourflair. You have control over every aspect theand next morning towards a beach Saxenacottage have tasted success bothstructure com- of the micro stated the instructions. takingsucrightPooja have co-designed — ones that“After have been spotless — a cosy wooden macro elements right up to name of Bhogve.

Panicked inin terms of design.

Re-entry of thewith come village path, cessful in straight terms offor the14km. users’Atand readers’ re-youmercially tuckedand away a dense plantation of cashew, pointthe of unpretty publication.

Then, at that point, bydesign the thought ofacrossing the stream such nut as Monotype the My Indian will see statue of see Kingthings Shivaji.

Take rightbe turncompanies sponses — and can that could mango, betel and kokumintrees. daugh-your becomes tool for others to useand clothes,with.

I’ve insisted daughalsoout given boost.lightanddirtying at statue.

Come forfor 4km.

You will improved upon.

If itahead weren’t deadlines, or seemarket ters has rushed totype helpdesigners Samant’sasister communicate You holdthat no my control their pyjamas over their swimsuits.

Chaudhuri, who has re-designed English Madhuram Paryatan board.

I will welcome Itu some new idea for a different design, it would clay diyas. And though they returned withoverters its wear use anymore.” dailies liketoes The and Economic and magazines you there.” be hard for me to know when to stop.” burnt tales Times of Jurassic Park-style in- But all bashfulness is forgotten once we drive Parule village and turn into an untouarasu Open, they says that font design is slowWe were to spot Shivaji, maintainBesides, therelieved diversity of languages and likesects, wereIndian absolutely delighted withsibipast ched golden grassland. Brown boards point ing his lonely vigil. And even more relieved to their newly acquired skills.

A tale of lost rubber chappals, charming farm stays, learning to cook on an open flame and uncovering the unexpectedly gorgeous countryside in Konkan

1

Type of things to come 4

Deep forest The Farm of Happiness, near Ratnagiri, veiled in green rahul kulkarni

With dot Bharat domains in the pipeline and an Indian Language Internet Alliance

by Google, designers of Indian fonts are readying for a brave new future

L W

Q Q

I

CH-X _ A

A perfectionist slant (Clockwise from the top) 1. Skolar, a Devanagari typeface by Rosetta Type Foundry; 2. Pakhangba and Sanamahi, Neelakash Kshetrimayum’s Mayek typefaces in Manipuri; 3. Pooja Saxena’s Cawnpore Devanagari typeface based on handwriting models; and 4. designs in multiple scripts by Rajeev Prakash

R R

W

work takeaway

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

the way to an array of beaches — Nivati, Tarkarli, Vengurla. But we remain Bhogve loyalists.

And sensibly so.

Bhogve is a curvaceous ‘C’ of pristine sand, enclosing a bay of pellucid water through which we can see shells and tiny fish and green crabs going about their business. The only other soul around is a villager walking his dog. My husband swims. Aaliya, Nisha and Naima launch into a game of Mermaid Mermaid. And I read a juicy murder mystery. And it’s noon before I pop my dehydrated daughters into their bedraggled pyjamas and we head back — with a quick stop for a Limca at the Parule restaurant, where villagers in their Diwali finery gape at the three damp and sandy girls in pyjamas.

On the way back to Maachli, Aaliya’s slippers succumb to the rough and tumble of village life, which is why we are back at Parule that evening, standing outside the chappal shop. The Diwali celebrations have kicked in and a loudspeaker is playing bhajans so loudly that the entire bazaar is vibrating. The shop owner takes one look at us and produces fancy purple slippers which have shoe bite written henno,” Mahum began all over them. “No, I mimeShabbir and holler, trylearning the art the famed ing to communicate through theof high-decibel Kashmiri papier-mâché, she celebrations, “Simple rubber slippers.” had is a strange feeling that the The shopkeeper not best pleased.

He miniature flowers, leaves she sniffs.

He sighs.

He rolls hisand eyesbranches in a manner was drawing all dead. Shabbir, 19, that indicateswere ‘cheapskates’.

Then he then shuffles had enrolled as a pokes freshman at Harvard to thejust back of the shop, a couple of boxUniversity and was during thepair summer, es and returns withhome a sturdy black with attemptingstraps. to deepen herthey ties are with the Valley patterned They fit, moderately through this centuries-old art. But everya comfortable.

Only one problem — with one has motif strap, she attempted, theafeeling of estrangegreen the other has blue strap.

And my ment intensified. Kashmiri papier-mâché was fashion-conscious 11-year-old doesn’t agree filled“mismatched with unblemished paradisiacal beauty, that is funky”. but Shabbir belonged to ashuffles. generation More eye rolling, more Thenthat the grew up with anYear ongoing strifebasic in that ‘paradiSalesman of the produces black slipse onwith earth’. pers blue straps. “They match,” I exclaim “Everything on boxes encouragingly.

Butthose Aaliyapapier-mâché is staring at her feet looked like an imitation of anOne imitation, with a perplexed expression. slipper and fits. all ofother it wasisdead,” she says. it had nothThe a different size“And altogether.

The ing to do with artist’s expression salesman givesthe a ‘just adjust’ shrug. anymore.

It all like a farce, a beautiful and not It’sfelt another 10 minutes beforefarce, we leave Paart, which must have an ethical imperative and concern for social justice.”

Together with her friend Suhail Mir, an artist and newspaper cartoonist, she now runs an online shawl business — Crafted-in-Kashmir —

Although both these young Kashmiris grew up during years of political uncertainty and long for a peaceful and just solution, they come from very different backgrounds. Shabbir’s parents are both doctors, whereas Mir’s mother educated him with the money she earned from spinning yarn. They have been brought together by their common belief in art as a means of social justice and the voice of lived experience.

Rather than asking the weavers to replicate a design, as is routinely done, Shabbir and Mir design each shawl in consultation with the weavers and draw from their traditional knowledge system.

“I had been making kani shawls for 20 years but have never made or seen a shawl with a barbwire or gun in it,” says one of the weavers, Aashiq Hussain Dar. “But when I was making it, I knew that it was the same barbwire that I had seen through my life in Kashmir, around the Army camps and bunkers, in numerous curfews and crackdowns; and while I was Country living A cottage at Maachli in Sindhudurg afraid that I wouldn’t be able to make it, it just came to me naturally.” rule with matching slippers, loudspeaker-inDar is currently working on another shawl that has radicallyand changed the age-old sense Kash- with just two motifs all over it — paisleys and duced migraine the embarrassed miri half shawl byvillage contemporising thearound motif. Inthat the has gathered to Kalashnikovs. “Their (Crafted-in-Kashmir) Get there stead of blossoming branches, barbwires run shawls are pure quality, and the motifs are so watch our shopping spree. theever bestmade option.

Trainslike through the Pashmina skulls take the different…Driving From Parule we driveshawls, through the tranquil no oneishas shawls plyThey fromare Mumbai to Kudal place of chinar leaves, guns and that paisleys grasslands and walk along a path runsface be- these before. interesting andand also say The farmand stays each other, and flowers in and the the colours of somethingRatnagiri. tween the serene, silver river famous about this place thewill times we organise autorickshaws for the spring are of imprisoned loops mangroves the Konkan.inWe spot kingfishers live in,” the artisan says. last legEach of the journey. shawl AC buses of birdsong. barbwires.Till a cow, that was and tangles listen to Kashmiri takes alsomonths ply to Kudal and Ratnagiri.

“We have heard about attempts hitherto munching stolidly, develops a frisky to make and passes to contemporise Kashmiri art, interest in us. We skedaddle. through several hands in the Get around but contemporising does not weInstead More amused laughter.

But now are usedof blossoming process. For centuries, it has reIf you don’t have your own car, mean to it. brightening the colours a major source of inbranches, barbwires you mained can make an arrangement and resetting prices; instead, The next afternoon, we hearit’s the rumble for thousands: the runof through the withcome a local auto driver. about making the art an though, expres- is unfazed distant thunder.

Samant, weavers, washers, dyers and Pashmina shawls sion urges of the artist artisan. and us to and go along onAnd a nature walk Stayspinners, who are almost althat is what we wanted to do: through a jungle filled with wildtomango trees. waysatwomen.

Maachli Parule village offers give the art a voice,” Shabbir.

We’re standing on a says plateau covered in waistMir’sbut mother, Mehrunisa, four basic elegant cottages has Together, they work withthe young high, coppery grass when storm arrives. A worked the spinning for (₹4,900, inclusive of meals,wheel nature artistsof and designersaasroar wellofasthunder senior weavers crack lightning, and a three decades now.

One afternoon, during curtrail and plantation walks for two; and spinners to create a shawl not only few, we walked wind that ripples through the“that grassisin waves across Srinagar to meet her at maachli.in). a thing beauty but We’re also the voice of anWe’ve arti- her house in Chattabal. of silverofand violet. transfixed.

Farm of Happiness has rooms in san, the voice of a people”. far, the site has never seen a celestial DiwaliSofirework display “When I got married, my mother gave me an old Konkan-style house sold as shawls such this. and sweaters mostly to foreign this spinning wheel as a gift,” says Mehrunisa. (₹4,000, inclusive of meals and buyers, andstarts their as prices range from $400 for That, in turn, helped her give her children the The rain we scramble back to our complimentary activities for two; the ‘sada’and cashmere range $1,000-plus cottage, drums on thetoasbestos roof for all gift of education. Today she believes spinners the exquisite kani range. night.

By the time we are packed and ready to are a dyingfarmofhappiness.com). breed as there is little money in it.

Other for options in the leave the next morning, the stream is deep “I got one rupee one knot 30 area yearsinclude ago and Atithi Parinay, in Ratnagiri district and swirly, and my daughters put on a bravura get the same today. Why would anyone do it?”

Titanic performance. she asks. (₹3,300-3,900; atithiparinay.com).

That one rupee includes the cost of the yarn, Eat hen, after an uneventful drive on the love- which the women have to buy themselves.

Eat at the farm stays. The food is ly, old Bombay-Goa Highway, we return to “We used to buy 10gm of yarn for about ₹100 unmatched. If you like seafood, village roads in our quest for the Farm of Hap- and, after spinning it over two days, sold it Mama Samant’s spread is piness. This is a farm stay near Ratnagiri, and back for ₹140. The ₹40 we earned is nothing fabulous. At Farm of Happiness, even more remote than Maachli, with direc- these days.” theshe farm’s is usedevery to sections like “Drive till Manjare Fata. This one is a Back when wasproduce young, almost delicacies, V junction. The major road turns left here for ond housemake in Srinagar had aincluding woman an spinning addictive, ragi porridge Guhagar. DO NOT TAKE THIS LEFT. Take the yarn to bolster the savoury household income and for breakfast. road to your right towards Phungus Fata.” fetch her financial independence; today, these We arrive at Farm of Happiness in time for a women find Tipless work due to the mechanisafabulous fish lunch, and a lazy afternoon tion of looms and spinners.

If you are driving via Kolhapur, spent on the porch dotted with hammocks Mir has seen the ins and outs of this busistop at Hotel Parakh for a lunch and comfy chairs. The Farm of Happiness is ness since childhood, and was always struck of Kolhapuri rassas and mutton. run by Rahul Kulkarni, who, sick of his life as by the gender inequality that denied his an ad man in Mumbai, returned to his ances- mother and hundreds of other women spintral village and fashioned an organic farm out your andneighbourhood eat them for breakfast,” Rahul ners eggs in his their rightful of a patch of jungle. He built a large, tradition- promises the girls. share of income. al Konkan house with porches and verandahs It will have to be next time, though.

For in “When we went into this business, we decidonce again navigating and creeper-clad courtyards, and now shares the ed tomorning give the we’re women yarn for free, so every-T and junctions onwas our profit way back his patch of peace and paddy with visitors. thingV they earned and home. we payBut in We ask for tea, so Rahul takes my daughters these challenges advance,” he says.are a small price to pay for along to milk the cattle. Then we wander our wonderful into theensure Konkan.

And for Shabbir and rambles Mir want that their around the vegetable patches and fields and I realising that golden grasslands and sparshawl business goes beyond commercial inwatch gobsmacked as my veggie-phobic kling just aput drive away.

All weindustry need to terestsbays andarehelps the cottage threesome munch their way through a cluster do is on pack rubber slippers, summon back itsplenty feet onofimproved social terms.

The of sweet potatoes yanked out of the mud. up Google Maps and head shawl’s engagement withsouth. the politics of the Then we take a long walk in the deepening time is yet another of its raison d’etre. dusk to a little village temple standing alone shabnam minwalla is a Mumbai-based journalist zahid rafiq is The correspondent Srinagar SixHindu’s Spellmakers of DorabjiinStreet author of The amidst pewter rocks. “You can go and collect and

Paisleys and AK47s Two young Kashmiris rework the region’s famed shawl business to reflect its politics and socioeconomic realities

W

Spinning out of control At one time, nearly every second house in Srinagar had a woman spinning yarn and her financial independence, but few can do so now

Travel Log

Q R

T

CH-X _ A

5 BL 21 BL

explore know

BL BL 222

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

MOM’s The return of the ark Bulbuls the word CREATURE FEATURE

The discovery of a long-forgotten tablet provides 4,000-year-old instructions that can be Eluding the predator (and the photographers’ followed to build the mythical ark lens), or ‘coexisting’ without stepping on each Tracing the Mars Orbiter’s 4,000-year-old quick journey other’s birdie toes, life is never short of drama n 1985 Douglas Simmonds, a set of instructions

I

W

man of few words and the that can be followed to produce hen a top scientist son of a Royal Air Force (RAF) Much of the book preoccupiedI an object that is is functioning. of the Indian Space with pilot with a penchant for colthe know ‘virtues’ of Indian space scidon’t another instance of Research Organisa- ence: lecting antiquities, walked into from launch vehicles that arit,” he says. tion (ISRO) says, rive atop the British Museum with a handbicycles bullock carts, And so began and the complex proc“Life is not a molecule of methane,” and ful of items from his father’s colwhoan “never brag” to essscientists of creating ancient boat one wonders what the Mars Orbiter thebased lection packed into a plastic bag. amount ofancient jugaad text. in the frugal on an With the Mission (MOM) is doing out there, engineering, Dr Irving Finkel, now assistant and the tilak-sporting help of a mathematician, three Diversion 680 million kilometres away, all missions keeper at the museum’s Middle blessed by builders the Church and Oman-based boat experiahead The strapped up with the methane sen- theenced Eastern department, was the curalord at the inTirupati. buildingReaching ancient for boats red-vented sor. The same scientist also claims Stars tor who examined the objects at is not a “human story of an epic from original materials (without bulbul watches we should have gone to the virgin achievement,” the time. As soon as he chanced unlike say, the began. revealglue or nails), the process out for planet of Mercury and not Mars. ingThey upon one of them — a clay tablet account in Apollo: to thea decided against Race building predators debashis mukherjee There are others too; those who be- Moon the size of a mobile phone, dating that told of the storyhave of a full-sized one,us which would lieve the red planet isn’t the “for- space back to around BC 1800 — he recprobehalf riddled with pitch. political occupied a football As n a perfect world, would midable combination of favourable controversies ognised thatone it had something to ranges, one is compelled to lapping engineering obFinkel writesand in his book, this boat hope to do always an animal characteristics to make a habitable stacles. withspot the story or legend ofhow the they coexist. ask theso righteous wouldDespite have been high thatswag a giwithoutFlood: disturbing it, topart al-of Mesopoenvironment” just yet. And those of raffe an integral In peninsular India, these two the book, there is much to celewould have struggled to ways betamian able to watch an ani-and species who think the mission is a “national brate mythology, subse- coexist by not fully coexistMOM Indian space peekabout over its side.and So the team optmal withoutquently worrying aboutreligions the ing. waste”. With so many misgivings, missions. of many across They seem to prefer slightly difThe down methane ed to scale and,sensor usingmay the effect of yourthe presence.

But realistione is tempted to ask if the cheapest orsame world. “Wall Wall! Reed, wall! weather conditions — ferent may not confirm the presence of proportions, build a boat cally, many animals notice mission to Mars, the ₹4,500-million theroughly Reed Wall, Thatyou youlong may live forevred-whiskered bulbuls live in margas. Even if of it the does, we won’t a fifth original. before you notice them. You onlyHouse, see ginally Mangalyaan, is worth er! Destroy Your build awetter, more humid environknow if it’sand biologically Given the political security them from the corner of your eye asandments the four rupees that boat; spurn property save a than red-vented bulbuls. generated risks, building the craftmethane in Iraq they’re fleeing. went out of our life.” Thus began the 60-line Suchtabfine separation isn’t unusual — (indicating life existed wasn’t really an option.

The obviBut no creature creates quite as script pockets. let, written in cuneiform — the natural world is rife with pairs of on Mars) just with asteous alternative was or Kerala, much of a Mesopotamian ruckus about an ap- soclosely In Reaching for the writing old it related species that divide dust. But, as Bagla its ancientroid boat-building tradiproaching predator (orany person) as alphabet. a up their shared habitat along alStars: India’s Mission to predates form of “the journey ittions and writes, ready supply of essennesting bird because Mars and Beyond, Aroundnesting a thirdbirds of the inscripmost imperceptible axes, giving the self such is a great achievetial materials as the reeds Treasure finder Dr Irving Finkel nearly fell off his chair whenauhe read that vidya ramBagla and were to move onto the boat “2 by 2”Pallav aren’t really tion fleeing they’re thors on —the tabletstagwas damaged impressionanimals of coexistence, while ment, and that is why and bitumen specified in the ining a diversion.

Many birds chirp thecarefully Subhadra Menon do and unclear.

He placed tablet avoiding each other. call many MOM ofa structions.scientists Besides that, raucously, and even in his office and examined itWhat to allay in a drawer for ismost fainted when little I looked thatsuch wordmisup in the experienced workers remarkable ‘technological demonand boatyard manfake injury, toover distract placedwhat fears, rathersays agers who worked alongside a decade, whenever he got the chance. the dictionary it meant,” about these bulbuls, and found strator’”.

It is of a good the team boatpredators from dointheir best oftothe building experts in Oman Then, the word by word, he began to unravel the Finkel, his office,they tucked a corner however, is thatinthey timewere for from spaceKerala. science. eggs or chicks inside couch India’s foray inmore complex parts of the text. Some maintain of the British Library. this separaChristopher Nolan’s InEarlier year, it took 60 to 70 workers Reaching forthis the Stars In Hawaii, these two Bagla and their nest. It’sdiscoveries this sort left him astounded: far fromtion the science of the fibeingeven in For aFinkel, of cuneiform writ- Pallava new whosetostudy terstellar gave us a nearfour months to build the boat. Many challengspecies recreated a Menon of drama that firstrendering of a classic story, thehome nalleft frontier in earthly a simple tabletestablished ing at university had him with a lifelong Subhadra over accurate depictionused of a es slowed the pace of work: the bitumen pattern akin to their Non-fiction drew my attention things like space races, was in the form of a dialogue between the god interest Mesopotamian literature and his- ₹899 12,000km away, oninthe blackhole; China had undidn’t prove as watertight as everyone geographic to the nestEnki of a and red-an unwitting hero, Atra Hasis.island politics and “The worthy InIt con- of tory, were clear: presence Oahuthe inconclusions Haveiled their Mars rover hoped, and at points, water had to be pumped distribution in India vented bulbul a dianand values. book tainedindetailed, mathematical instructions of the story in the Bible KoranThe is undoubtwaii.onIn the ’60s, redon the heels out and the structure re-patched.

ButofinMangaMarch patch of thorntraces MOM’s journey how to build a boat that would save mankind. borrowing from the Mesowhiskerededly abulbuls lyaan; anda Philae left it was finally there: miniature scrub from the chambers of But forest this boat was not shaped like the ark potamianinto world that preceded wereweintroduced mothership Rosetta of to replica, weighing 35 tonnes, MOM was in think Kutch. dustypubbuilding in of today: it was round and bore some a clear of it.” this year,aFinkel theEarlier wetter attempt the first-ever the circular craft described in the a “100-metre dash” Resting amid the resemblance to thorny the coracles builtofinOahu. modernlished Ark BeforeKhan Noah,Market, an en- Delhi, to parts By the ’80s,Thethey landing on a comet. Inancient tablet. spanning 15 months succulent of a hadn’t day Iraqbranches (old Mesopotamia) as latespread as the 1930s personal the andsecond oftenlaunchpad too far gaging, from where too The boatdia now sitshas onambitious a small caThe presence of the cactus-like euphorb, at Sriharikota, and ’40s. Another phrase they left him even more gently humorous account of the Andhra were introduced, unable to plans to launch Aditya nal off Lake Vembanad.

Bitumen story in the Bible and branches filled “2 with Pradesh. his Ordinarily, astonished: by 2”noxwas how the drier wild animals literary tradition, cross habitats tocuneiform reach new (a flight to the Sun), to problems have Korana is undoubtedly waterproofing ious to sap, thisthe boat. of thisa borrowing scale were meant board Thisofseemed discovery and the mission conclusions patches moist aforest.

The redvisit a passing taking inastewafrom the led to it gradually marathon run over clear link to the story of Noah and the ark. “I al-however, he draws from it. would’ve been aMesopotamian vented bulbuls, spread sendNasser humans into space. ter.and Sheikh of Kuwait, who world roid, buttheit’s reduced to a “100He in believes once in much further the that years, over Galactic! runs a Virgin museum in Kuwait and that preceded it Move metre dash” history of Mesopotamia there spanning 15 months.

The of the book, is and has hero a home in Kerala, setthe to nest was impeccably The earliest was a hugely destructive floodwindow of opportunity probe, arguably, the and PolarallSatellite takeisover the boat the redefended. The bulbuls’ de— November far exceeding the routine flood- 2013 — was chosen, not Launch (PSLV). The workquiredVehicle maintenance. fence seemed effective — the same time, into so much ing from the Tigris and for Eu- the right alignment of horseWhatever satellite its was chosen over future, to Finkel chick in this nest did not get eat- drier regions. These two to beat Chineseits in significance the ‘naughty phrates thinkbutthis wasthenever spe- rivers. “I orbits boy’ GSLV, as “It it could inject is tremendous. proved the en. But the geographic range of the cies therefore recreated, space race.

Thatbe-the validity probe that forgotten and was Asian often referred to and in miniaMOM Mars’s orbit with minithisinto wasn’t just the stuff of fantared-vented bulbul extends into eco- ture but also in quick would have a front-row cametime, a part aof the culture,” he says.

“The mythview mum energy Onunderpinits 25th sy of buta there is some kindtransfer. of reality systems quite different from thorn- distribution pattern that was The of the rescue, it, was thecomet answer to incidental. their ning closely re- as I seespeeding mission it,” he says. with MOM, PSLV has been scrub forest, into regions where sembled their geographic authors insist,lost however, that theHe de-recalls psychological if nature control, distribu- fear that usedwith for palpable different enthusiasm missions differthe there are not only fewer euphorbs in tion in India. Why would partment space ISRO are one ofspecies the gods would come of along to and rescue In 2008, setworkforce, a world record timefar spentently. in Kerala withitthe who which to safely nest but also myriad that have spent millions removed from the Capital, unwillthe life.” ofcore yearsofbalaunching 10 satellites in aone kept theirby pledge of keeping the building seother species with which they must lancing avoidance with coexistence ing likely to participate in the politics The tablet itself was to be a memory shot; ISROcollaborative, official said itcollegiate was akin cret.of “It was thean most interact, not the least of which is the do it differently on the aide, Nations take space so se-ever,toand travelling storyteller orracething otherperhaps side of for aspace. a school dropping children a real bus exciting experiment in red-whiskered bulbul. riously thatcommunities, when Chandrayaan-I of storytellers.

In river the world? Similarly,pair I imagine home, only at of 27,000 boat-building history.

It the wasspeed such an advenA large portion of the range of the wherever they are, red-vented failed to keepdetails its 1998 deadline, fallelaboratebulmathematically valid might kmph, like withme high colliture.

Daft people whochances work onof inscripred-vented bulbul overlaps with buls put as much effortbe inganbehind China’s maiden tions lunardon’t needed to win over audience with boatinto defendsion.

And thanks since normally have to a PSLV, whisper of Noan that of red-whiskered bulbuls. And ing their nests from predators probe, Delhihave wasbeen so upset, building “It would im- former asexperience. did vember 24, 2014, about a year after opportunity like this…” in many ways, they seem near-iden- the pair of birds nesting PM Manmohan Singh never perative who recounted this granted in thefor eu-the people MOMand is safely installed in Belyingits hislaunch, white beard formal academtical — they eat a similar mix of fruits phorb — if a survivalstory an of audience to have this kind data.” to the moon mission mechanism the red planet’s orbit, ic credentials, Finkel exudes thetweeting passion,picviand insects, build similar nests from isn’t broken, why fix it? When the suggestion teamto inbuild his tenure. aftergour Chana boatThis, based tures, hollering at fellow probes and and boyish enthusiasm of an adventurer twigs, roots and cobwebs, and make drayaan-I discovered water on on the tablet’s instructions came from a docusteering of whizzing comets. on the track of newclear treasures. a fuss about predators. On realising ambika kamath studies organismic moon;leaped a major mentaryand company, Finkel at thescientific oppor- breakWithout glue or nails The ark being built that at an undisclosed location Kerala blink films andevolutionary channel 4 biology at Harvard University such similar birdsinoccupy overthrough,for before contact. tunity.

“What is miraculous me islosing to have a vidya rampriyanka kotamraju

I

Q R

Q Q R R

CH-X _ A

scan meet

saturday, november 15,15, 2014 saturday, november 2014

Karma is a…

Against the grain

Cops become pawns in political games

H

The original aam aadmi chief minister Manohar Parrikar brings his pragmatism and innovation to the office of the defence minister

ow the tables have turned for Asansol circle inspector Bamapada Das. Just months ago, he was subjecting the then BJP candidate Babul Supriyo to a most searching interrogation. Last Sunday however, the tide turned and Das had to accompany a procession that was celebrating Supriyo’s induction into the Modi Cabinet. In April, Das had grilled the singer, detained under the Arms Act. So severe was the interrogation that Supriyo said he had “never faced such a moment in my life before”. A case was lodged against the singer by Trinamul Congress, allegedly at Mamata Banerjee’s behest. “I don’t have a personal grudge against the inspector. In Bengal, the police only obey Didi,” says Supriyo. But political pawn or not, Das must lick his wounds and sing a different tune.

Call of love? Nah Know your chances before you make elaborate proposals

Cold diplomacy Putin’s gesture of warmth at Beijing greeted with customary Chinese chill

M

W

hen various heads of states met for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at Beijing last week, news about economics and cooperation was sidelined by a simple ‘shawl incident’. On the cold night of the opening ceremony, when the Chinese president was busy chatting up Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin was seen draping a shawl on the Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, presumably to keep her warm. A heartthrob among Chinese women, the divorced Russian president’s gallant gesture was captured on video and soon went viral. The Chinese media have so far portrayed the first couple as lovey-dovey; Putin’s shawl diplomacy has upset that script. Soon, all references to the incident — comments, tags, likes, the video itself — were wiped off the Internet. Peng Liyuan accepted the shawl with a only slight bow, and soon, pulled her own black coat out. Russian diplomats, on the other hand, have complimented Putin for his gentleman-like behaviour. But that is cold comfort, surely?

Begone world peace!

Truth be told In a city of sycophants, Manohar Parrikar still speaks his mind

Beauty queens get real monica tiwari at pageants

T

he number of times ‘world peace’ makes an appearance at pageants is perhaps, rivalled only by the number of times Rahul Gandhi says ‘women’s empowerment’.

Even as beauty contests continue to be dismissed, the Miss International pageant at Tokyo last week saw the winner and her fellow beauties ditching ‘world peace’ for serious political talk. While Puerto Rican stunner Valerie Matias spoke about her country’s rotting education system, Colombian Zuleika Suarez attacked racial intolerance and Britain’s Victoria Tooby tackled unemployment. When Frenchwoman Aurianne Sinacola won the ‘Perfect Body’ title, she surprised all by admitting she doesn’t “work out at all”. Things have changed, you feel? Worry not, there was a swimsuit round, plunging necklines and some world peace.

I

and then rode a strong anti-incumbency wave to deliver a BJP majority for the first time in the state Assembly.

But after taking over as chief minister, the Opposition had accused Parrikar of going soft on illegal mining. In August this year, he had supported the renewal rather than fresh auctioning of 27 mining leases in the state. While the opposition has taken him on over his flipflops, Parrikar’s supporters say that he has been a pragmatic administrator who did not want to ove further the mining industry, overcripple basketball stadiums, Eifwhich was already reeling from aofSupreme fel Tower and giant screens love.

Court ban,from leading to thousands ofChina job cuts A man Guangzhou city in andhas losscome of revenue forathe exchequer. up with new-age proposal Athat similar story playedthe outtimes. with Paying Goa’s offkeeps up with shore casinos.

While in Opposition, Parrikar homage to the country’s smartphonehadobsessed led protests against them, demanding culture, the man decided to their immediate closure.

Butthe as chief minister, woo his sweetheart with iPhone6 — he had closureintill 2016.

Doing 99 ofdelayed them, the arranged the shape of ait in a rush, could certainly heart.he Forreasoned, a whopping $94,000, that scare is away investors. nearly ₹60 lakh! The grand proposal The policyonfeather in and Parrikar’s wasbig caught camera, went cap viralwas hison decision reduce value added taxsites. on petWeibo to and international media rolIncidentally, from 22 per cent to 0.1 per11,cent in the state, November which was making it the most affordable the country the day of the proposal, hasinbeen celeat ₹55 a litre.

He also reduced brated as ‘Singles Day’ for VAT the on lastaviation few fuelyears. from At 22 the per cent to 12 event, per cent, incentivisnational those uninglucky refuelinstops all together airlines attothe Dabolim love for come woo obairport.

More and cheaper to Goa jects of affection or meetflights prospects. meant tourists for the state, andyou more Whatmore happened to our iPhone lover, revenues forhis residents and theno. exchequer. ask? Ah, girlfriend said

n a city teeming with sycophants, Manohar Parrikar is the rare Narendra Modi loyalist who can be counted on to give him frank — even critical — counsel. The new Defence Minister from Goa has a mind of his own, and a friendship with Modi that goes back over two decades when they were in the RSS together.

In early September 2013, a fortnight before Modi was officially declared BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Parrikar gave me an interview for The New York Times’ India blog. He backed Modi’s nomination, but also called the 2002 Gujarat riots a “blot on Modi’s career”.

Delhi’s media went into a tizzy over the quote, painting this as another example of a party still divided over Modi’s candidature.

The morning after the interview was published, when I reached Parrikar’s office-in-residence in Panjim’s well-heeled Altinho neighbourhood, his aides were in damagecontrol mode. The media was calling persistently, looking for a few more juicy quotes on Modi. The RSS was offended: in the same interview Parrikar had said that while he was a Hindu nationalist, he wouldn’t “take out a sword and kill Muslims”. The state’s Christians were unhappy because he had called them “culturally Hindu”.

“Why can’t he be a bit more diplomatic in his interviews,” sighed one Parrikar aide that same morning.

Sunny Goa to South Block If policy pragmatism and innovation are Parrikar’s hallmark, he will need plenty of that in his new job. The Defence Ministry office in South Block will be a far cry from sunny, laidback Goa, though Parrikar himself is reputed to put in long working hours.

Crucial decisions await his approval, including shoring up the artillery wing of the Army, “But then he wouldn’t be Manohar Parri- which has not seen any acquisitions since the kar,” said another with a chuckle.

Bofors scandal of 1987.

Parrikar has the squeaky-clean image to set The pragmatic Kejriwal? things in motion on that front, particularly in Parrikar’s frugal lifestyle is legendary and has purchasing light artillery guns that can be made him a middle-class hero: he carries his moved easily in the mountains, where the Inown luggage at the airport and travels econo- dian Army’s face-offs with the Pakistani and my class. As chief minister, his office used only Chinese armies are only increasing. two government cars, one for him and anothA $22-billion deal for the delivery of 126 Rago out and Kejriwal look er shared byho hisneeds staff. to When Arvind fale fighters with French manufacturer Dastalented when at sault Aviation is also pending. The Indian Air was making for news for hispersonnel austere lifestyle youofcan keep it allParrikar in the family? At the helm Delhi, many Force chief said we cannot afford least that’s what the fans quickly pointed outBihar that chief minany more hold-ups, particularly isterwas Jitan Manjhi their man theRam real aam aad-must have after the Sukhoi fleet was thought when appointing his own mi chief minister. grounded in October. The Navy There is something to son-in-law Devendra Manjhi as his There is something to the Parhas been pitching for more subthe Parrikar-Kejriwal personalcomparisons. assistant. This, despite a cirrikar-Kejriwal Parmarines and helicopters as well. comparisons; they issued metallurgical in Bihar in 2000, which rikar, acular 58-year-old All this will require Parrikar to both fought clearly states, “appointment of relaengineer from IIT-Powai (Kejriconvince Narendra Modi and corruption tivestoasIIT-Kharagpur) private secretaries wal went also adversely afArun Jaitley to increase capital fects his thereputation government’s After burnished withfunctioning”. a expenditure on defence, which the Opposition madeParria hue and cry about fight against corruption. may not be easy till the economy theon issue, thepowerful CM gave in and asked his kin to kar took Goa’s illehas recovered fully. resign.

Devendra, understably, was aMB tad dis- Politically, Parrikar will be expected to talk gal mining lobby.

According to the Justice appointed. “I’m son-in-law only attough with Pakistan and China during border Shah Commission report,hisbetween 2005 and home,” he been told aillegal local daily.

“Myworth body lan-skirmishes. A man who once called Lal Krishna 2012 there had mining guage and behaviour are different as PA. I fol₹35,000 crore in Goa. Advani “rancid pickle” may soon have to come lowthe the2012 system and do things likestart‘yes sir, up no with some more colourful adjectives for Before Goa elections, Parrikar sir’.”Sampark Well, nowYatra, that PA Devendra is gone, what ed a Jan where he travelled the neighbours. to son-in-law Devendra? acrosshappens Goa, staying with voters and supporters. He painted the Digambar Kamat-led Con- sambuddha mitra mustafi is founder of gress government as corrupt and ineffective, The Political Indian

Not married to the job

Bihar’s Opposition says no to the CM’s son-inlaw, who doubled up as his personal assistant

W

Q R

CH-X _ A

3 23BL BL

HANG

saturday, november 15, 2014

BL

24

cornerstone in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Bans

P 1

rohibition is around the corner in god’s own country. Kiss of Love protests thwarted. Great time for a quiz on prohibitions and bans.

Which country’s national broadcaster bizarrely allows music to be shown on its network but has a complete ban on showing musical instruments?

2

On the same lines, in September 2007, which country passed a decree about citizens not being allowed to reincarnate without prior consent. Work it out.

3

In 1975, the Maruti factory in Gurgaon was the unlikely location for the destruction of the only prints of which film, starring Shabana Azmi, Utpal Dutt and Manohar Singh?

4

What specifically did Peter the Great of Russia first ban, and then implement a heavy tax on, to control the influence of the Boyars, the old Russian dynastic families?

5

Which book was banned in the Soviet Union on its publication in 1973, but since 2009, has been a high school textbook in the Russian Federation?

6

In the late ’80s, a British edition of The Economist ran a blank page with the following explanation, “In all but one country, our readers have on this page a review of _____, a book by ______ _____. The exception is Britain, where the book, and comment on it, have been banned. For our 4,20,000 readers there, this page is blank — and the law is an ass.” Name the book, or the author.

the new york times crossword-0608

aladdin

7

Which two games were banned by the Scottish parliament in 1457 with the following observation; ‘and that ____ and ____ should be utterly condemned and stopped. And that a pair of targets should be made up at all parish churches and shooting should be practised each Sunday?’

8 9

For what specific reason did Woody Allen refuse to allow the release of his film Blue Jasmine in India?

Which classic novel is set in an unspecified American city in the mid ’60s and has three parts; ‘The Hearth and the Salamander,’ ‘The Sieve and the Sand,’ and ‘Burning Bright’?

10

The term was first applied to establishments in Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th century, originating from the practice of not talking about such a place and alerting the police. It came into national use in the ’20s and remained popular even after 1933, when it became less prevalent. Name the term.

ANSWERS

1. Iran. In January 2014, one of their shows actually showed a santoor and a lute, but the broadcaster admitted it was a mistake.

2. China. To control and register the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhists.

3. Kissa Kursi Ka, which was a spoof on the then government and Sanjay Gandhi’s car manufacturing plans.

4. Beards. The Boyars were recognised by their long, flowing beards.

5. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.

6. Spycatcher by Peter Wright, which speculated about the fifth person in the Cambridge Spy Ring.

7. Golf and football. To make the men focus on archery practice.

8. He was not comfortable with the anti-smoking ads on screen every time a character lit up.

9. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the ultimate account of book burning 10. Speakeasy, for unlicensed drinking establishments.

CH-X _ A

joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and author of Junior Premier League — The First Eleven t@joybhattacharj

ACROSS 1 To the same extent 6 Something Pedro and Pablo might have?

9 Coll. program 13 Tug-of-war participant 19 Watts on a screen 20 Like some desk work 22 One of a group of Eastern Christians 23 King’s move?

2 5Only what a person can take?

26 In fine fettle 27 Process of sorting injuries 28 Gets browner 30 Start of something big?

31 Mineralogists’ study 32 Anoint, archaically 33 Like some French sauces 34 Brooklyn squad 35 The two sides of PacMan’s mouth, say 37 Principles espoused during Women’s History Month?

40 Cry after a roller coaster ride, maybe 44 Together

45 Coward from England 46 Ability to walk a tightrope or swallow a sword?

51 Land in the Golden Triangle 52 Part of a giggle 55 Pass with flying colors 56 Like the 10-Down 57 Soupçon 60 Olden 62 Finish (up) 64 Soprano Sumac 65At the discretion of 66 Dream for late sleepers?

72 Identity 74 Car antitheft aid, for short 75 Informal way to say 87-Across 76 Sheen 79 Chooses beforehand 83 It’s all tied up with the present 86 Start to love?

87 “Certainly” 88 Collapse, with “out” 89 Waterway leading to a SW German city?

92 Way to l’Île de la Cité 93 Feature of many a

wide, its neck is narra”: Ogden Nash 3 Gave birth on a farm, say 4 Unlikely memoirist 5 Fix Ludacris lyric 6 Derision 94 Add up 7 1966 title role reprised by 95 Slinky going down the Jude Law in 2004 stairs?

8 Neighbor of a 116-Across 101 Dough raiser 9 Inflame, with “up” 105 Large family 10 South American tuber 106 Postlarval 11 Touchy?

107 Crimean conference 12 Tidies up locale 13 Not be bold 111 Over 14 Commercial version of 112 Captain, e.g. crazy eights 113 Confederate 15 In-between 114 Biblical book in two parts 16 Cosmetician Estée 115 Star burst 17And so on and so forth 116 Neighbor of an 8-Down 18 Go over and over 118 Dissertation on people’s 21 Lost it inherent spitefulness?

24 Letter between two 121 Chaperone, often others that rhyme with it 122 Treasure Stater 29 Like some care 123 Human or alien 33 Lacks 124 Some cheaters have 36 One who might stick his them tongue out at you?

125 Frat members 38 Long time 126 Drivers brake for it 39 Agosto or settembre 127 Pungent green 41 Ed of “Up” DOWN 42 “___ be my pleasure!”

1 Hold down 43 Burns’s refusal 2 “The ostrich roams the 46 It’s widely hailed as a great ___. / Its mouth is

convenient way to get around 47 Frozen over 48 Entertains 49 Bemoan 50 Organic compound 51 Monastery resident 52 One parodied on “Portlandia” 53 Fangorn Forest denizen 54 Inflatable thing 58Reason for glasses 59 Captain Morgan and others 61 Does away with 63 Layer 67 Action-packed 68 It has a light at one end 69 Roll of the dice, say 70 Up 71 Strip for a fashion show 72 Secret collector 73 Before, poetically 77 The ___ City (New Haven) 78 Literary inits.

80 Nobel Prize subj.

81 Trousers 82 Racing boat

84 Sandwich order, for short 85 Scary word 90 Young Darth Vader’s nickname 91 Evergreen shrub 92 Thumbs’ opposites 93 Represent, sportswise 95 Lines at a theater?

96 Like Flatland 97 Became less than a trickle 98 Composure 99 Spiral-horned antelope 100 Mischievous girl 102 Social breakdown 103 Common dice rolls 104 Elements of some accents 108 “American Graffiti” director 109 Frigid temps 110 Like 114 Srs.’ worries 117 Colony member 119 Telephone trio 120 Its logo displays all Roy G. Biv except indigo

By Tom McCoy / Edited by Will Shortz

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