Blink issue 66 may02 2015

OPERATION NEPAL Citizens turn into good Samaritans, tourists into volunteers and rescuers into heroes, as the Himalayan country slowly gets back on its feet p5 saturday, may 2, 2015

partha pratim sharma

As the IT sector matures and morphs, mid-level employees find themselves out of jobs and staring at bleak prospects p10

The Blue Screen

SHAKE ON WHAT India’s recent nuclear deals with Canada and France are mere bombast p2

WHERE BUTTERFLIES ROAM Lepidopterist Peter Smetacek on the growing pains of Bhimtal p17

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No big deal Heavy mettle

year 2020”. This target has, presumably, since been completely abandoned.

The insignificance of the Canadian deal can also be measured by a different metric: its relevance is limited to reactors that generated only about 1.5 per cent of the total electricity produced in the country over the last year. In light of this, the reported claims by the Prime Minister that “[the deal] is to save the world… from global warming and climate change” appear to be merely bombast.

While the deal with Areva was overshadowed in the media by coverage of defence agreements, it is potentially far more significant and could have serious consequences for nuclear safety and the country’s own economic interests.

The Jaitapur project has close parallels to Enron: the EPR reactors represent a flawed and expensive technology marketed by a company in deep economic difficulty. Areva started work on its first EPR in Olkiluoto (Finland) in 2005. Instead of completing work in the promised four years, it has now pushed back the date for commissioning to 2018. In 2012, it announced that costs had increased to about $10 billion — almost 300 per cent of its original estimates. Similar delays and cost increases have occurred at the other European build of the EPR at Flamanville (France). Even assuming optimistic reductions in the cost of construction in India, in a detailed study for the Economic and Political Weekly, we estimated that electricity at these reactors would cost about ₹15 per unit excluding transmission and distribution costs. This is several times higher than competing sources of electricity.

More alarmingly, just ahead of Modi’s visit, on April 7, the French Nuclear Safety Authority announced that Areva had discovered “anomalies” in the reactor pressure vessel of the Flamanville EPR that led to a “lower than expected mechanical toughness.” The safety of the pressure vessel, which contains all the radioactive material and the fission reactions within the nuclear reactor, is critical, especially in the case of the EPR that will hold the largest load of nuclear fuel of any reactor in operate at their rated capacity” primarily, as a the world. result of uranium imported from Kazakhstan This discovery underscores the folly of the and Russia.

Modi government’s efforts to reinterpret InEven for Cameco, the deal is minor; the an- dia’s liability law to protect suppliers from the ticipated sales of about 640 tonnes to India consequences of accidents caused by design each year constitute only four per cent of its defects. total annual sales of about 15,000 tonnes. In Unlike in the case of Cameco, however, the an attempt to present a rosy picture to its in- contract with India might give a lifeline to Arevestors, Cameco tried to wish away this reality. va, whose commercial outlook is extremely It claimed that “by 2032, India expects to have bleak. In March 2015, after Areva announced a 45,000 megawatts of nuclear caloss of €4.8 billion, the credit-ratpacity” and so “this contract ing agency Standard & Poor’s opens the door to a dynamic and (S&P) downgraded it to ‘BB—’, or expanding uranium market.” what investors call ‘junk grade’.

The French deal This suggestion — that the InIn spite of this, Modi’s joint advances a purchase dian nuclear sector will expand statement with the French presithat makes no sense by about 700 per cent over the dent suggests that his governfrom the standpoint next 17 years — ignores history. ment remains committed to the of either technology The Indian nuclear establisheventual purchase of up to six or economics ment has regularly made such EPR reactors. If this is indeed carpromises only to disappoint ried through, it would involve each time. For example, in 1984 a the bailout of a crumbling ‘profile’ produced by the DepartFrench public sector company by ment of Atomic Energy (DAE) promised nucle- Indian taxpayers. ar capacity of 10,000 MW by 2000. Reviewing In a speech to Indo-Canadians, Modi exthe programme 15 years later, the Comptroller plained that “we have to have an energy revoand Auditor general found that the “actual ad- lution in India.” However, his government’s ditional generation of power under the pro- actions — the liberal use of propaganda to emfile... was nil”. bellish insignificant deals, and a promise to In 2003, the secretary of the DAE wrote that spend billions of dollars on failed technology “in about four years from now, DAE will reach peddled by a multinational corporation — Riding luckon these an installed capacity of 6800 MW.” Twelve provide a revealing commentary Kaustubh Radkar at years later, total installed capacity, at 5,780 grand pronouncements. the 180.25km MW, still falls short. cycling event in Port are physicists with At the same time, the DAE also claimed to suvrat raju and mv ramana Elizabeth, South and Africa Peace. have “formulated a programme that envisag- the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament es setting up of about 20,000 MW… by the The views expressed are personal

India’stonuclear agreement with France is problematic, while With 11 titles his credit, Kaustubh Radkar is the country’s very own Ironman. Just one the deal likely toofhave a limited impact more victory will with placeCanada him in aisleague athletes no Indian has ever made to

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or Kaustubh Radkar, the man who bagged the World Ironman Triathlon title in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on March 29, winning is more than an obsession. The first Asian (among the only four such people in the world) to complete the Ironman Triathlon in six continents, the elated Pune athlete says, “Winning this race was important because I want to be part of an elite group which no Indian has ever made to.” With 11 titles to his credit, Radkar is just one victory away from making it to this league.

The World Ironman Triathlon, organised by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), tests an athlete’s endurance with a 3.86 km swim, 180.25 km bicycle ride and a 42.2 km run. Radkar completed the task in 13 hours, 32 minutes and 14 seconds. “Muscle pain, stomach cramps and soreness take a backseat when your mind is set on the finishing line,” says the 32-year-old whose performance at Port Elizabeth was not free from hiccups. He was vomiting due to rough sea winds and his bike chain came apart. Radkar’s next target is winning a race in Zurich in July this year. “A win there is a gateway to the World Championship,” which he plans to enter by 2017.

Power suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper pti

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Sculpting the Ironman Born and brought up in Pune, this doctor in sports medicine had his eyes on this goal since the very beginning. He became a national swimming champion when he had just entered his teens.

“I left my house by 5.30 every morning to exercise. School started at 7am,” he says. The habit of starting early hasn’t left Radkar. His day starts even before the neighbourhood rooster. After finishing college from BMCC, Pune, Radkar decided to move to the US for further studies. He chose exercise science as his subject before completing an MSc in cardiovascular physiology from Wisconsin College in 2004.

“My college friends asked me to take part in the triathlon his recent three-nation event. I was already gooduring at swimming and running, thetour, onMinister ly thing I had to work onPrime was cycling,” saysNarendra Radkar. Modi oversaw nuclear agreements both Six months of hard work and patience helped him comin Franceevent and Canada.

TheArizona.

Indian fortably finish his first triathlon in 2008 in Nuclear Power Sharing the experience of hisCorporation first race, he(NPCIL) says, “Asigned simplea agreement with theyou French turn of eventspre-engineering teaches you a lot.

In an event where are company Areva, which is tyre supposed to supply not allowed external help, I fixed a flat all by myself.

It European Pressurised for Jaitatook me hardly six-seven minutes, Reactors but it felt(EPRs) like forever.” pur In on Canada, the NPCIL This, he claims, was(Maharashtra). his first big lesson patience. agreed to purchase about 3,200 tonnes of uranium over the next five years from the CanaBehind the scenes Cameco.

So what goesdian intocompany the making of an Ironman? Hours of On his practice, willpower andreturn, a strict the diet.Prime RadkarMinister says, “Inemphaa day, I sised significance of these deals andor even focus on two of thethe three things: swimming, running cyexplained tothrice his party’s parliamencling.” He alsoreportedly hits the gym twice or a week.

When it that they would have a “huge comes to diet,tarians the 5’ 9” athlete packs it with meatsimpact”. and salfacts suggest otherwise. imads. He allowsHowever, himself athe cheat meal only once a week,The happy of of thejust deal with Canada is likely to be to maintain apact weight 67kg. rather limited.

And far from having a positive CEO and founder of RadRx, a healthcare company, Radimpact, the French advances a purchase kar’s work leaves him with littledeal spare time. He tries to that makes no sense fromare theas standpoint of to eisqueeze out time for reading.

Books important technology or economics. him as fridgether magnets, something he never fails to bring The uranium from Canada can only be used home from his travels. that are safeguarded InterFor advice for andreactors inspiration, Radkar looks upbytothe Rick Arnational Atomic Energy Agency.

Leaving aside miger, a friend from the US with 21 Ironman titles under his ‘light water’ likeupKudankulam — belt. “Rick’s disciplined life isreactors what I look to,” he says. Arwhich require fuel, which isto covered miger’s life changed after heenriched lost his newborn son heart contracts — the remaining ‘heavy complicationsbyinseparate 1996. His obsession with the triathlon water’ reactors under havefriends a total makes him an inspirational figuresafeguards for fans and of another 1,960 mega wattsfrom (MW).the Extrapolatalike. Monicacapacity Moreno, friend US, has figures released the and Prime Ministaught Radkaring thefrom importance of beingby calm positive.

Office (PMO) in parliament in February, The mention ter’s of the family — parents and a sister — comes these would reactors require only abouthe400 tonnes right after. “Where I be without them?” asks. of uranium each year when operating at a caekta katti is apacity Pune-based journalist factor of 85 per cent. But, as the PMO admitted in parliament in 2014, there is already “sufficient fuel available for these reactors to

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The last of the tribe A dozen-odd porters at Margao’s New Market are different from those you will find in the rest of the country. They are the bhadels, all women and senior citizens

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osephine Noronha is not an easy woman to follow. Her rubber slippers appear nothing more than a blur as she walks through the maze of lanes in Margao’s central market. The pile of brown cartons on her head doesn’t slow down the 60-year-old. Noronha neither twitches nor fumbles as she frees herself of the boxes, arranging them neatly in a corner outside a busy store. “Why are you surprised? I have been doing this work for the last 30 years,” she says, adjusting her rosary and scapular with her deceptively frail fingers.

Noronha belongs to a tribe that has only a dozen or so members left: bhadels (women porters). And Margao is the only market in Goa where you will still find these women — all of them senior citizens — in action. “I worked in the fields ages ago, but when I married and had children, the money was not enough. So I started looking for work as a bhadel,” Noronha says even as another customer, owner of a palm jaggery and candle store, instructs her to fetch goods from a tempo. “Mashe rao (please wait),” she tells him, puts her wages into a purse tied at her waist and goes back to work again.

Loading and unloading of goods is a roundthe-clock affair at Margao’s busy covered market. Called New Market, though it was last renovated in 1889, the bhadels’ workplace is a crisscross of narrow lanes. In one such lane you will find Caitana Maria Borges, 76. “The women worked as porters even when the Portuguese were here,” she says. A bhadel for over 60 years, Borges picked up the baton from her mother-in-law. She says, “I was married young, and my mother-in-law was a bhadel. She got me here to work.

Most of us are from one waddo (sector) in Borda (a suburb of Margao); a few are

Fast movers Josephine Noronha, 60, and (right) Caitana Maria Borges, 76, at work in New Market (below), which was last renovated in 1889 sharon fernandes

from Davorlim or Navelim, which is close by.” turn with the goods,” adds Shetti. He teases These hardworking grandmothers get Carvalho on his way out: “Do you want me to ₹2,000 a month under the state’s senior citi- tell them how mischievous you are?” Pat zen scheme. But that’s too meagre to run a comes the reply, “Yes, please tell them that I household. “We need the money, even though slapped you when you were a little boy.” what we earn as bhadels is not great. And we The relationship between the trusty porters are not as strong as before,” laughs Jacqueline and the traders, however, will end in a few Carvalho, 70, from Navelim. Just like the other years. “Their numbers are dwindling, they are bhadels, her printed sari hangs a little above old and no young woman is interested in this the ankles and a towel is tucked at the waist. “I job. The Howrah Express and the Konkan Railwork for two days, and the next way trains have flooded the martwo days I have to rest. But I can’t kets of Goa with thousands of sit at home. Who will help us? labourers over the last decade.

Do you think the new daughtersWe will soon have to depend on “Why are you in-law in jeans will share the non-Goans who can’t speak Konsurprised? I have load?” she asks. kani,” says Shetti. been doing this work The honesty of the bhadels is While the world around them for the last 30 years,” legendary. And every store ownhas changed, the burden on the she says while er in the market vouches for the heads of these women porters adjusting her rosary same. “I can give them a parcel has not eased. With rates of ₹30 and scapular of ₹1 lakh and not be worried at for 25kg or ₹10 to carry a shopall,” says Prashant Naik of AR ping basket from the shop to the Naik and Associates, a kitchen car park, it is little money for the appliances store. The porch effort. As widows whose sons outside his store is where most bhadels don’t earn enough as daily wage labourers, break for lunch. “Our store is over 100 these women are still the breadwinners for years old… We sold cloth, rice, spices and their families. Cristalin Carvalho, 76, says, “I gold earlier. These women have always come at 9am and leave in the afternoon, exbeen here. They have watched us hausted. My sons are dead. And no one from grow up,” says Naik. the new generation wants to join me in doing “Our shop has been around for 50 this kind of work. The grandchildren live with years. Both my grandfather and father me. I need this money.” employed bhadels,” says M Shetti, a rice Bhadels take a break only after the shop merchant, who works with Carvalho on shutters are drawn for the siesta, and the mara daily basis. “We can leave our ket is relatively quiet. Their steel tiffin boxes shops to them, and go are filled to the brim with rice, fried fish and a home for a break. They are smattering of red curry. Between morsels, eathonest, reliable and don’t en in silence, one of them says, “We are the oncharge too much unless it ly ones left. You won’t see more of us soon.” is really hard work. You The rest nod in agreement. don’t have to follow them, they will re- sharon fernandes is a Goa-based writer

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Troublelight in a sinking paradise Making of Milan Stand-up comic Palta never missesrock a good She shares somefavourite moments of humour Ugly stories ofNeeti human rights violations thelaugh.

Maldives, the world’s luxury tourist from her recent visit to the Italian fashion capital destination, as the government crushes civil and political rights 7.30am A digital board at the airport takes me back to the speeding SUV on Delhi roads

10.30am: Stretching and posing by a fountain

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t has been a fairly rocky road for the Maldives in recent years. In 2008, the nation moved towards multi-party democracy after being ruled by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom for 30 years, a period marred by serious human rights violations.

The Maldives enjoyed partial success in addressing some of these violations under the new constitution of 2008, which allowed political parties to function and get a democratically elected leader, the island-nation’s first.

Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian DemocraticKnotty Party art (MDP) the new President.

11.30am: in anbecame artist’s block But the change was shortlived. Forces loyal to the Gayoom regime joined hands to unseat Nasheed in February 2012.

Amnesty International documented violations by the police against MDP supporters at the time of Nasheed’s ouster. Even senior party officials and parliamentarians were not spared. Those targeted included MP Evan Abdulla, who recently wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking help to restore the rule of law in the Maldives.

Since Nasheed’s departure, human rights have come under continued attack under the governments that followed. The list of offences ranged from sexual harassment of female detainees to use of excessive force against demonstrators, such as frequent beatings, use of tear gas in enclosed buildings, and pepper 12.35pm: No seat getseyes higher or the holier spraying in the and mouth.

Past and present governments have ignored repeated calls from Maldivian and international human rights bodies to investigate these violations and bring perpetrators to justice.

The situation continues to deteriorate, with eroding judicial impartiality, a sustained assault on civil and political rights, and increasing impunity. Maldivian authorities have sent human rights into a free fall by misusing the institutions of the state, including the judiciary and the Parliament, to justify the violations. The Maldivian move towards democracy and human rights protection is most likely to be derailed. A country like India

10am: The hop-on-hop-off looks attractive but no bus for the crazy walk-aholic

9am: If the morning starts with hearty Italian breakfast, the day has to be good

10.50 am: This Malay couple believes in clicking together

Rough patch Former President Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader, being dragged to a criminal court in Male after being arrested on terror charges pti

must not be a silent bystander. his choice at all stages of the trial. At one point, A recent Amnesty International fact-finding the court even refused the right of the accused mission to the Maldives found that space for to present witnesses, arguing that defence civil society and political opposition is dra- witnesses would not be able to refute the evimatically shrinking, as safeguards for human dence already submitted by the prosecution. rights are weakened.

Authorities have come down heavily on The Maldivian authorities are silencing crit- peaceful demonstrations in Nasheed’s supical voices by any means. port. The police have curtailed the right to Independent investigations and extensive freedom of expression and peaceful assembly discussions with various civil society actors, by unlawfully restricting demonstrations or journalists, lawyers and political activists re- banning protests from determined areas or vealed that the rule of law, fair trial guarantees times, impeding peaceful protesters from and the rights to freedom of expression and gathering and expressing their views in a visipeaceful assembly are all under attack. ble, public location. Hundreds who were arOne big concern relates to the respect of fair rested from such gatherings were released on trial guarantees and the role the conditions impeding them from judiciary is playing in the steady taking part in demonstrations. weakening of the fundamental Journalists and other mediaprinciple of impartiality. This persons have been threatened The list of offences has been clearly illustrated by and intimidated. Those covering ranged from sexual the politically motivated chargdemonstrations are particularly es and unfair trials of three harassment of female vulnerable to attacks. Several detainess to use of prominent opponents of the have received death threats by excessive force government — Nasheed, former Twitter or SMS, and the police against defence minister Mohamed Nahave failed to probe any of these. demonstrators zim and former MP Ahmed NaIt’s been nine months since wellzim. These are documented in known journalist of Minivan Amnesty International’s latest News and blogger Ahmed Rilwan briefing on the Maldives. disappeared, but the case is yet to Nasheed was sentenced to 13 be fully investigated. years in prison on terrorism charges followIt is imperative that the international com12.55pm: Coconut unfair for the peckish?

1.35pm: The easier route to upliftment ing a manifestly trial. The principle of munity — especially influential neighbours impartiality was compromised and the out- such as India — engages the Maldivian authorcome appeared to be predetermined even be- ities to work towards protecting and promotfore the trial began. ing human rights. The upcoming UN Two of the three judges who tried and con- Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a peer review victed Nasheed had acted as witnesses against of a nation’s human rights record by other him in 2012, in relation to the very incident for countries, is a good opportunity to push Malwhich he was tried last February. divian authorities to act swiftly.

Despite this most obvious conflict of interPolitical tensions are already at boiling est, the judges refused to recuse themselves af- point, and further harassment and attacks on ter a request by the defence and proceeded those criticising the authorities will only with the trial. make the situation spiral out of control.

Other fair trial guarantees were not respected throughout the trial, including the right to raghu menon is Amnesty International India’s adequate time to prepare a defence and the Advocacy Coordinator and was part of a fact-finding right to be effectively advised by a counsel of mission to the Maldives

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All hands on deck As Nepal lies buried under the rubble of devastation, rescue workers, medical staff and even a few hardy survivors toil round-the-clock to reach out to the affected

Youngest of them all A little girl gets some comfort from her teddy bear and her grandfather’s stories in a hospital in Kathmandu all photos vivek singh

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t is late afternoon on April 28. At Machha Pokhari, Kathmandu, a team of rescuers work non-stop to find survivors buried under a collapsed building, more than 50 hours after a deadly earthquake jolted Nepal and turned it upside down. The Nepal Reserve Police personnel direct a bulldozer and mechanical jackhammer working on the unstable debris of a seven-storey hotel. As the bulldozers remove the rubble floor by floor, there are urgent shouts of ‘water’ from the thrilled rescuers who spot Siko Lakshmi, a woman trapped under the debris.

Soon a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team from India takes charge of the operation, forming a cordon around the spot and obtaining vital rescue equipment, which the Nepalese Police team lacked. They have an oxygen cylinder to pump air into the suffocating space, a huge electrical cutter powered by a truck-mounted generator to cut through steel bars embedded in concrete, and a large roll of wire that brings electricity to the spot.

The well-trained team in their orange NDRF jackets form an inner circle while thousands of people crowd around the shifting mounds of rubble. Some bystanders ascend the

mound of debris, while others on the road tels on the land that was reclaimed. “The lake watch and record the scene through their eyes bed is probably unstable, [that is why] so and on mobile phone cameras. many buildings have fallen here,” says ShambAbout 40 minutes later, multiple hands hu Prasad Gupta, from Bihar, who has lived support the stretcher that carries Lakshmi out here for decades. He owns a fruit shop close by, to the safety of an ambulance and the medical and describes how the earth shook and turnattention that she needs. ed his world upside down. His life’s efforts lie Sadly, she dies the next morning, at 5am. buried under three floors. When the quake The rescuers don’t stop, going hit, Shambhu had jumped onto deeper into the mire. Half an the railings of the collapsing hour later, the whistles and exbuilding and climbed to the top citement that come after a hufloor to reach his brother, wife The whistles and man being is found in the and three children. He saved excitement that come rubble turn to a hushed silence them all. after a human being is as the team checks for a pulse on found in the rubble, a limp hand. A soldier then Emergency centre turn to a hushed stands atop the bulldozer, givThe eerie sound of ambulance sisilence as the team ing directions as the scoop rens punctuates the silence of checks for a pulse on works cautiously to unearth the the empty streets of Kathmandu a limp hand lifeless body of Uttam Gurung. all through the day and night as His left hand clutches his sports people are rushed to hospitals. At shoes while a marigold garland the Bir hospital, one of the largelies next to the other. The team st in Kathmandu, the staff strugcontinues its search as his body, draped by a gles to cope with the deluge of patients. Nurse sheet, lies near the main road.

Suman Chaudhary has been working 12-hour This area was Machha Pokhari lake in the shifts, leaving her 10-month-old daughter, past, and people built shops, houses and ho- Avodaya, at home. The doctors are even more

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Stuck in a blur In The Buried Giant people find themselves in a mist or a strange forgetfulness that leaves them not entirely sure of their histories reuters/luke macgregor

No respite Rescue personnel from India and Nepal work round-the-clock to help the living; they often come across heartbreaking scenes such as a young man clutching onto his shoes under the rubble

stretched, working 24-hour shifts, with barely a break.

“My little baby is at home, but I am needed here,” says Chaudhary, trying to lessen the guilt of leaving her child. Foreign and local volunteers guide the injured into the building, keep records, distribute food to patients, raise their flagging spirits and even man the helpdesk counter outside the hospital. The four floors of the 200-bed hospital are packed with disaster victims. A tiny and frail Sabila Dahal, aged eight, with a skull fracture, a black eye and wounds on her hand, whimpers in pain as she clutches her teddy bear, almost the same size as her. Her grandfather sits beside her on a chair, trying to comfort her with whispered stories and rhymes.

Ordinary people in Kathmandu are helping in every way they can. Alok, who owns the Dalle (Nepali cherry-like chilli) restaurant in nearby Kamal Pokhari, is one such saviour who packs food from his restaurant and, to-

trary, that The Remains of the Day, for instance, could just as easily have been set in Los Angeles in the 1990s instead of a great English country house in the years before World War II, or that he does not labour to create a prose specific to each novel. Only that these disparate settings and styles — the writer Neil Gaiman in his lukewarm review of The Buried Giant praised Ishiguro for not writing “the same novel, or even the same type of novel, twice” — are not the point. For if, as Gaiman would have it, Ishiguro ranges widely in his choice of genre and setting, country house novel, say, or detective novel, or science-fiction novel, he is preoccupied by a much narrower range of themes. Overlapping ideas are examined and re-examined in his novels, a theme turned over for a new angle, a new facet.

Memory is chief among Ishiguro’s concerns. And what is left unsaid or is unsayable.

Can we confront the collapse of our hopes, our ideals? Can we confront our failures? Or must we turn to silence as both balm and penance?

In The Buried Giant, we are introduced to an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, Britons living out their old age in a dark, dank, barely hospitable ‘village’, a warren carved into a hillside.

Their memories cloudy, not as you might surmise from old age, but from a more general malaise that affects the whole village and others further afield. They decide to travel to their son’s village, though they are not quite sure where this village is or if he will be there to greet them. They are convinced though of the desirability of a reunion. Along the way, they pass a Saxon village roiled and made fearful by ogres who have killed men and kidnapped a boy. These Saxon villagers are also suffering from what Beatrice calls “the mist”, the strange forgetfulness that leaves people not entirely sure of their histories, of what they might have said or done, and subsequently who they are beyond the immediate present.

Axl and Beatrice then set off for a monastery in the mountains where she hopes to find answers to her questions about both the mist and a slight but nagging pain in her side. The Saxon warrior is on a quest to slay the shedragon Querig, a quest which brings him into gether with cartsa nephew it to the hospital to conflict withhis Sirstaff, Gawain, of King Ardistribute among thefinest survivors. thur and one of the knights of the legAt Bhaktapur, the stunning Heritage endary round table.

Arthur World is long dead, Site withhis its palace and in temples, though legacy durbar is evident Saxonsmany and iconic structures are severely damaged.

The Britons living together in peace, and Gawain half-man, half-lion statues, by has aged, his armour rustingalready and hisdefaced warhorse shoddy old restoration, watch theacollapsed equally and tetchy.

He is over literally Quixotic buildings andoftemples.

The age narrow of figure, a relic a chivalric wholanes has bethe city makeand it difficult rescue andwhose recovcome parody farce. Itfor is the dragon ery vehicles reach breath is theto cause of the the victims. mist and so the quest views and Ishiguro has been embroiled in a to slay Satyaher, Ram Suwal had athe three-storey house which involves novel’s protagospurious controversy over some mild com- nists and smallin oneofsuch lane. With wall cast characters is a one quest to ments made in an interview about how his retrieve not just of the building devastated, individual memories buthis a readers might react to a novel filled with collective memory. home is now reduced to the ogres, pixies and dragons. The pots, pans that What lies and doescupboards a society tell itCommon people in writer Ursula Le Guin took exare the visible from a distance.

On self, novel asks.

What does a Kathmandu are ception to his supposed diss of the daychoose of the earthquake, Susociety to forget? Are helping in every way there the ‘fantasy’ genre, exception wal was outside “I some thingshis it house. is necesthey can which she later acknowledged could think of myself sary for aonly society to forget in orMemory is chief as hasty and clumsy, though she when earth shaking. der to the keep the was peace?

Can among Ishiguro’s did not take it back. “I found Whenonly the tremors slowed I ran peace result from a monuconcerns. And what is reading the book painful,” she to saveact myofchildren.

I could mental violence deliberleft unsaid or is had written. hear people crying for ately repressed?

Andouthow, unsayable What Ishiguro described as help, but I felt despite that my children werewe more the damage doimto the ‘surface elements’ of the portant and I each stayed withasthem.

I feel do guilty other a couple, we novel — the circa sixth century now,” he says. continue to love? post-Arthurian setting, the Looking at hisThe wifeBuried Sapna,Giant who has stands its next lonaforementioned ogres — has exercised most gueurs. to him, (Which he adds.novel “She doesn’t?) is braver And thaneven me, ifshe it reviewers, with many agreeing with Le Guin offers ran to save our children Sapna, who and was ambiguities and first.” elusive allegory that Ishiguro’s treatment of his setting is rudi- metaphor in a neighbour’s 50m away, describes in placehouse of answers, it would be a mentary, not fully imagined. Ishiguro’s con- poor how she fought friends when tried to reader whoher could not see thethey present-day cern though, in each of his seven novels, is not implications stop her fromofleaving.

Goose pimples rise on its questions about violence, with the details of mise en scene or even of memory, her neck and hands as and she describes how she revenge, our individual calanguage, but with his abstract themes, the pacity ran barefoot, for love.in panic, shouting the names of abiding questions which catalyse his writing. her son and daughter, even as the earth shook is a Delhi-based freelance writer This is not to say his choice of setting is arbi- shougat under herdasgupta feet and dust clouds hid everything.

What lies within A novel that provides allegories and not answers to fundamental questions

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The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro Faber & Faber Fiction ₹799

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azuo Ishiguro, alongside Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, is part of a celebrated cohort of English male novelists that represents the zenith of a bygone age (though they are all still healthy and at their desks). We will not see their like again.

The economics of publishing has been too radically transformed by the internet, by Amazon, and self-publishing, and the literary novel no longer occupies so central a place in contemporary culture as to excite either tabloid prurience or broadsheet chin-stroking.

In keeping with the milieu, if not the subject, of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro’s new novel, his first in 10 years, it is as if Ishiguro, Rushdie et al were the knights of some literary roundtable jousting for literary prizes, bestsellers, eye-watering advances, and column inches.

Every so often, their chainmail still burnished, mounted on their high horses, these authors continue to command our attention and admiration. But the fanfare for their books gets a little less loud each time, and the notices get a little more bold, a little more disrespectful.

The Buried Giant has so far received mixed re-

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pal with an intensity of 7.6 on the Richter scale at around noon on April 26, 40 tremors measuring more than 4.5 have followed. Terrified of the aftershocks, people today prefer the safety (and cold) of the outdoors to the uncertainty and vulnerability of their homes.

At the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, on the banks of the Bagmati river, funeral pyres burn all day and even after sunset. Shiva, a priest at the temple, points to a spot on the riverbank where a mother and child were consigned to the flames. An old priest uses a bamboo stick to adjust the logs on the pyres that continue to burn.

Many people here have lost the little they had. After 18 years of driving people around in his Maruti 800 taxi, Gyan Bahadur Tamang had built a home in Kabra, near Kathmandu.

In 52 seconds, it turned to dust.

“It will take 20 years for our country to get back to where we were. The Indian government is helping its citizens, taking people

A country in distress (from top) Doctors and nurses work without taking a break; crowds gather when a women is taken out alive from the rubble after 50 hours; families mourn as pyres burn at the Bagmati river

“I thought I won’t see my children again, I was a few seconds away, but it felt like I took 15 minutes to get here,” she says.

Aerial view As our aircraft prepares to land in Kathmandu, we see the peaks of Mount Everest and the Annapurna range towering above the clouds in the distance. As we descend below the cloud cover, many orange and neon-blue tarpaulins become visible among the apartment blocks and homes. Since the first earthquake hit Ne-

home, and rescuing our people here, while our government does nothing,” says Tamang.

The resourceful and hardworking people of Nepal have given their share to the region, and also the world.

They now face the worst crisis their country has seen in three generations. Nepal needs all the help it can get. saurabh yadav and vivek singh are an independent writer-photographer duo based out of Delhi, working on in-depth reportage projects

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Devastation brings disease Slash and burn AGENDA

The surgeon-writer duo Kalpish onleaders forgotten histories, neglected heroes and what Across parties, the message fromRatna India’s is this: dollar-funded infrastructure is great, infectious diseases tell us but dollar-funded dissent is anti-national in history. In the official records they exist. But they are not celebrated. sambuddha mitra mustafi

All for one Kalpana Swaminathan (rv moorthy) and Ishrat Syed (sangeetha devi dundoo) believe that Kalpish Ratna is the essence of the two of them

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Room 000 Narratives of the Bombay Plague Kalpish Ratna Macmillan Non-fiction ₹599

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oom 000 written by Kalpish Ratna (the nom de plume of Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed) tells the story of plague in Bombay and how it altered the course ofof history.

Written in favourite hobby the South Asian vivid prose, it unearths who were at ruling class isdoctors blaming foreigners the forefront theown battle, who have beenthe all for of their failures.

Because but forgotten.

Here the surgeon-writer duo, ‘evil foreign hand’ theory is an effecwithway many their name, about the tive to titles diverttoattention andtalk curb dissent perils of ignoring the artofofconquests sleuthing in a region with ahistory, deep history parallels between Ebola and and the colonisation.

Indira Gandhi and plague.

Zia ulEdited excerpts fromindividuals the interview: Haq were paranoid with dictatorial tendencies. In the shadow of the Cold War, This book narrates thelaws battle against plague in both passed despotic against civil society Bombay.

But it also hints at the future and of and the Opposition by raising the spectre how infectious disease coups funded by the USspreads. or Russia. In Pakistan, Ishrat Syed (IS) We areand at the juncture where Bangladesh, Sri Lanka Nepal, leaders still these diseases willthings keep appearing blame India when go wrong. over and over if wethe humans continue on the path Theagain, US was big, bad, foreign hand in that we have chosen. post-colonial, socialist India. But after the end Kalpana Swaminathan (KS) It to is Washingnot only of the Cold War and India’s turn nowwe that we arefrenemies. at the juncture.

Humanity has ton, became We now woo Ameralwaysinvestors, been at various junctures. the lanican presidents andIn defence guage of environmental science, these alliare companies; we tom-tom the “strategic calledbetween drivers. the Andworld’s these drivers are pressures ance two largest democthat induce certain in the racies”; we talk of a changes democratic axisenvironagainst ment... planet Yet, doesdig notabelong to us. Itand bethe riseThe of China. little deeper, longs to War-era the most ancientpersists. living organisms, the Cold mistrust theThe viruses and the bacteria.

Indian political class sees a conspiracy IS The next World War isfor notenvironmental going to be about behind dollar support acIslam or religion.

But water. have agreater mindtivists and organisations thatWe demand set of extractivism, takeAmericans it out, use get it, what you political transparency. frustratleave you don’t give a damn about. ed thatbehind we don’t appreciate their universal doThat ‘d’ [that society talks about] should not goodism, which is sometimes naïve or condebe development butnationalism devastation.meets white scending.

Insecure KS Andburden. devastation brings disease. man’s Stupidity ensues.

IS We bring a medical perspective to this, we are doctors theories and surgeons. We are trying to tell Conspiracy you,Tuesday, this is not rightgovernment way.

On thethe Modi cancelled KS When youoflook atforeign-funded disease, we are NGOs, also lookthe licences 8,975 for ing at what changes one humble life. allegedly not filing their annual ordinary returns. Last Bombay completely after theFoundaplague. week thechanged government put the Ford We got oura watch independence because the of the tion under list and directed Replague.

Thatofis India something that is overlooked. serve Bank to take a clearance from the Home Ministry before approving any In the for book mention that when the organifunds theyou New York-headquartered scientists started studying plague, their sation.

Among Ford Foundation’s beneficiarvantage ignorance.

Isn’tand that similar ies havepoint beenwas Teesta Setalvad Arvind

Why aren’t they celebrated?

KS Because they were Indian.

IS You have a medical assistant, who is the hardworking Indian doctor. Who is actually doing everything. His pay is 1/10th of the sahib.

The plague occurred at a time, when these discrepancies could no longer be borne. In 1896, germ theory of disease was new. Doctors were just beginning to look at the fact that there were actual causative microscopic organisms.

Pathology was a new science, bacteriology was a new science. When a disease on an epidemic scale broke out, that place became ground zero for all the doctors in the world. People flocked here from Paris, Vienna, etc to examine it. It was good it was happening to someone else, so that tomorrow someone should Those in glass not die in Paris or Germany. houses…The Indian KS We were sub-human to political the Europeans, class sees abut is there any reason why we conspiracy should remain behindsubhuman to ourselves now? dollar Theresupport is a lotfor of anenvironmental ger in this book. Not our anger. that IS It could be the anger oforganisations the common man demand greater today. political transparency

to what is happening with Ebola today?

Both It should be. vv krishnan IS Unless we begin with ignorance, unless we recognise that we don’t know anything, we This book is essentially about historic have no hope.

Give usin time, we will give you Kejriwal, both thorns Narendra Modi’s side.a maintain sleuthing.the As physicians do status quo.and Whysurgeons would anhow Ambabook on Ebola.

We will still be in room 000. ni In March, the government stopped a GreenyouFoundation approach sleuthing? want to fund an anti-corrupWith every new disease we willto beLondon at the same peace activist from travelling and tion IS The art of medicine craft of mediwatchdog or and an theenvironmental juncture. that up by freezing the organisa- organisation? followed cine and surgery the well-meaning art of sleuthing.

Every Soisthe activist KS Thebank parallels are so similar, tion’s accounts fordevastatingly alleged violations of who patient thattocomes to us, weinare detectives wants start an NGO this space hasoftoa incident for incident the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act go kind.

TheFord criminal we are seeking is what causto the Foundation.

IS If you thefirst term ‘plague’ andbyput (FCRA).

Thechange FCRA was promulgated In- es But the there disease. unlike the detectives ficis aAnd breeze of change in India.ofEco‘Ebola’, you could re-market this book today.re- nomic dira Gandhi in 1976, withdrawn, and then tion and police procedure who doup notmany cure liberalisation has thrown enacted more stringently by the Manmohan first-generation people who comehigh-networth to them, our attempt is to individuals.

You write how at a time of disease, the Singh government in 2010. rid them of the crime, and make them they stay Having made their money transparently, protocol is inspection, segregation andFCRA re- are And not just NGOs, the draconian alive.

It is our interesttoinorganisations writing that predates likely to donate that are quarantine.

What are the legisstricts judges, journalists, us becoming It is just fighting for a surgeons. cleaner system.

If problems with that system? lators, bureaucrats and election logical that we now go there in thewill opthat does happen, then IS Whateverfrom youaccepting do, if people candidates ‘forposite direction. be pressure on the crony billiodon’t contributions’ see beneficial effects, eign except they unnaires to follow suit.

There is no CryptoThis book is to set the will not follow very it. The specific British der some How do you move from the ‘I’ toit In the early 20th-century US, Church-CIA-Jihadirecord straight. In the used bleach andRepeatedly perchloridethe of circumstances. ‘us’ in your writing? took naming, shaming and NGO conspiracy out official records these mercury theused cartload.

FCRA has by been by theNone govKS We do everything together. muck-raking journalism before there doctors to enslave Indian and of this helped.

Doctors it ernment to harass and knew silence From the epiphany onward.

Gilded Age billionaires like The the Indians nursesusexist.

But they wasn’tthat working.

They to tell voices do not toetried its line. thought is not complete in one Fords, Carnegies and Rockefellare not celebrated theCutting British. No one was listening. across parties, the person, being completers tookwithout to philanthropy to reThis wentfrom on, inspection, segremessage India’s leaders is ed by the other.image.

Our strongest build their These gation.dollar-funded The British knew how to this: infrastrucsuit is dissent. more we disbillionaires whoThe were vilified for segregate — Muslims, Parsis, etc.dissent is anti- their shadowy ture is great, but dollar-funded agree, the more we agree. is business practices endedItup national. Foreigners can make profits in India, creating dangerous on days when we agree, we know some of the world’s most respected Andcannot that is how yougreater create aaccountability fear of the or a grant-making but ask for something disastrous is going to happen organisations. outsider… better environment from the government. soon!

Any John process that works we don’tofquesIn 1913, D Rockefeller, owner the IS This Of course, thatBecause is how you deflect attenis sillyand logic. if you follow the Standard tion it tooOil closely.

We areset just it works.

Company, upgrateful the Rockefeller tion away from irresponsibility. money trail, youyour see that the same global busi- Foundation, which is today one of GreenpeacKS People had invest only one question; go to ness elite who in India, who ‘If weIroll outa e’s Youtop have written many books for children donors.

Ford Motor Company founder hospital, will Ifor, survive?

If the I am goingdonors to die, Henry the red carpet are also biggest before.and Is there another in the his son Edselone set up theoffing?

Ford Founwhy can’tNGOs. I die atThis home, with myaown people?’ to these is merely natural out- dation IS We still writeNow, for children, but we contribuhave conin 1936. private charity But they’d turn of around and say, but come of the cycle global capitalism andyour phi- tion sciously to publish. are not is 2.2decided per centnot of GDP in the US,We compared home is dirty. say,isthis lanthropy thatBut wethose havepeople joined.could There no to happy with how children is goan abysmal 0.4publishing per cent infor India.

And grants is how I live... Many of the quotes here out are in Crypto-Church-CIA-Jihadi-NGO conspiracy ingthe in governance the country.space We both feelbethat writing would a tiny fracdrawntoverbatim. there enslave us Indians. for children is the best writing that we tion of that tiny fraction.

India ranks 133do. in the KS YouGiving cannotIndex, publish book for children World evena below Bangladesh These areout histories that are not celebrated.

The way with no a child in it. You cannot talk (109) andspace Nepalfor (115).

Like you mention the book, the plaque to At the heart of theinproblem lies the unwillingdown to them, certainly. the foreign hand, we So before we amputate WM Haffkine, createdbillionaires the first successful ness of India’swho traditional to phil- must When is being harsh, we alasklife ourselves: Is incredibly an Indian hand ready to vaccine againstfund bubonic plague in room anthropically organisations that000 seek fill ways something for children.

It becomes thewrite void?

Even a prosthetic would do. even haschange a typo in positive init.the governance and policy better that way.

IS The As reason behind this book is tooftell the sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of space. the biggest beneficiaries crony nandini nair Political Indian t some_buddha story of doctors whobusiness were denied place governance, India’s elitetheir wants to The

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LIGHTHOUSE

Never mind the bullocks…

Frontloading the batting order is the key to survival, and success in T20 cricket

Capital waste Kieron Pollard, the V12 engine in Mumbai Indians spends most of its time in the garage kr deepak

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Amit Varma is a novelist. He blogs at indiauncut.com

saw the strangest thing the other day.

Out on the road, there was a sleek Lamborghini with a man in a dhoti-kurta at the driver’s seat. His hands weren’t on the wheel. Instead, he held a whip in his right hand, which extended out of his window, and he was whipping a couple of bullocks tied to the front of the car. The engine was off; the bullocks were pulling the car.

Now, okay, this is perhaps a bit too weird even for India, and I confess that I didn’t see exactly this. But I did witness something very close. I was watching the IPL. Twenty20 cricket is a relatively new form of the game which makes new demands on the teams that play it. Like a bullock-cart driver who has just been given a Lamborghini, the men who run the teams and play for them haven’t quite come to terms with this. So they continue to whip the bullocks. When one-day cricket was born, teams played it much like they would a Test match — consider Sunil Gavaskar’s 36 not out in 1975 through 60 overs, and while that is an extreme example, consider the low par scores of those times. Eventually, players adapted. Even Gavaskar made a thrilling World Cup century before retiring, and par scores crept up until, as I wrote in my last instalment of Lighthouse, they crossed 300 in the subcontinent, which was once an outlier score and not the norm.

Similarly, in T20 cricket, teams have basically adapted their ODI approach to this shorter format. So maybe they tonk in the powerplay at the start, then they consolidate and set a platform, then they tonk again towards the end. They often have freeflowing openers, but leave their hard-hitting maniacs, like Kieron Pollard of Mumbai Indians, to bat at the end.

This is a flawed approach, because T20 is not just a modified version of ODIs, it’s a whole new format with its own imperatives.

First of all, consider that T20 cricket is from continuing to frontload, has reverted to played with the same number of players in traditional structures of building an innings, each side as ODI cricket is: 11. This is not a banal sending in Maxwell later than they did last point, but crucial to understanding how to ap- year and, even at the time of writing this piece, proach the game. If T20 games were played dropping him from the side. Mumbai Indians eight-a-side, you would be justified in structur- haven’t learnt from their past mistakes, and ing the innings as you structure an ODI one. continue to save Pollard for a dash at the end.

But with 11 players, you have extra resources They would be better served if Pollard and Cofor the time given to you. Your task is to ensure rey Anderson batted three and four, in whatevthese resources are not wasted, and are opti- er order, with Rohit Sharma opening. mally used. If the hardest-hitting strokeplayer The idea is not just to frontload resources in the team routinely gets only but also to frontload intent. Evfour or five overs to bat, you are ery side doesn’t have a Maxwell screwing up somewhere. So or a Pollard. But whoever goes what should you do? out there should attack, attack, The one team that I’d written a piece after last attack. Sure, if a Starc or Malinga has gotten year’s IPL for Cricinfo where I’d is on fire, play that one guy out. frontloading right in laid out what I felt was the bigBut otherwise go for it. Not only this IPL is the Chennai does it ensure you don’t waste gest tactical advance of the tourSuper Kings nament: Frontloading. Basically, batting resources, it also ensures King’s XI Punjab decided to that soft overs in between by lesssnort at the concept of building er bowlers are not wasted. Bata platform, and just sent their ting strategies are so predictable hardest hitters upfront and treated every over that fielding captains can plan how to use as sides would usually treat overs 16-20. They their resources well, keeping their best restricattacked from the outset, with Glenn Maxwell, tive bowlers, like Malinga, for the end of the inDavid Miller and George Bailey coming in at nings. But what can they do if you’re going at three, four and five, and sometimes, if an early them all the time? wicket fell, Wriddhiman Saha coming at three, The one team that has gotten frontloading but also to tonk. Their frontloading ensured right in this IPL is the Chennai Super Kings. that batting resources were not wasted, and Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith play this approach got them off to an excellent every over like it’s the 18th of the innings, and start. In contrast, Mumbai Indians consistent- Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni, two outstanding ly sent out their best hitter, Pollard, with just a strokeplayers, follow at three and four. This is handful of overs to go, and he had nowhere good captaincy. Of course, Chennai also has an near the impact he could have had. Kolkata excellent bowling attack, which is why they’re Knight Riders started poorly, but then adapt- among the favourites year after year. All things ed, dropped Jacques Kallis the accumulator, being equal between teams, though, fronfrontloaded the hitting, and things worked tloading makes the difference. So when you out. They also had a better bowling attack than have a Lamborghini, drive the damn thing.

Kings XI, and deservedly won the IPL. t@amitvarma This year has been bizarre. King’s XI, far

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Downsized IT dream

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Past comes first (left) National Archives of India (NAI) employee at work ; (inset) a record from November 1887 shows how Mahatma Gandhi fared in matriculation; (below) staff member uses archival adhesive to piece together a document; (bottom) visitors at the exhibition held recently to mark NAI’s 125th anniversary

Once the proud holders of a prized job, IT workers at the mid-level suddenly find themselves thrown out as their blue-chip employers restructure

In history’s lair

prashant nakwe; kamal narang

Celebrating its 125th year, the National Archives of India, a grand symbol of Lutyens’ Delhi, is no less historic than the past it preserves

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tacked end to end, all the shelves at the more than 25 years old and with a certain hisNational Archives of India (NAI) would torical value. There are many non-governmenstretch up to 45km. That is almost the tal documents as well, donated by families length of Delhi. Luckily for us though, and other organisations,” says Rajmani. To deIndia’s rich historical heritage is not strewn termine what makes it into the NAI, archivists across the Capital’s dusty Ring Road but go through every page of the documents substored in climate-controlled rooms within the mitted and assess its historical or cultural valmonolith structure that is the National Ar- ue, if any. He adds, “The archives are the chives of India. Built by Edwin Lutyens, for the backbone of any country and our job is to preexpress purpose of preserving Imperial In- serve it for research scholars, administrators dia’s heritage, the erstwhile Imperial Records and our people. This is the resting place of Department, rechristened the National Ar- these records.” chives of India after Independence, continues The Private Papers section holds pride of to be a permanent home for the subconti- place at NAI. Says Rajmani, “In this section, you nent’s past. As its website states, the ‘NAI is the will find photographs, musical instruments, repository of non-current records of the Gov- memorabilia, etc. We have items associated ernment of India and holds with some of the biggest names them in trust for the use of adin the history of the country — CP ministrators and scholars’.

Ramanujam, Sarojini Naidu, MaAt a recently concluded exhihadevi Verma, Govind Ballabh It’s a simple thing. If bition to celebrate its quasquiPant, Mulk Raj Anand and hunwe don’t take care of centennial anniversary, the NAI dreds of others.” the archives, the t’s aout Friday afternoon in Marchfuture when generations I my life; now I don’t what to do when brought some of its prized The know largest repository of the arinevitable happens.

Maybe I in will begin selling meet Sashi* the nondescript Coffee spare possessions, which,ataccording to chival material South Asia, the won’t us Rohini, Delhi,few near my Home in Delhi’s Connaught Rajmani, assistant director of ex- Place. Seat- properties inNAI has, in east the past years, ing ourselves among the abandoned midhibitions and publications, “iscrowd of 20- house… We have triedbeen to revamp itself in bythe loosensomethings away theHe afternoon, and dle of nowhere.” only the tip whiling of the iceberg”. ing the bureaucratic red tape retirees in no hurry get anywhere, Sashi Rudraneil*,and in Kolkata, feels he “In was archives asked to adds, “Every year theretoare thougoing digital. resign from Wipro too clearlyof seemed out of place. of 21 years sands new additions to His thejob archives but the world over, justbecause like for he us,had the become main probcostlyis for 39-year-old been a at TataitConsultancy Services (TCS) rarely took lem since is our 125th year we decided to showthethem. sheer The volume of the had collections. him outside this our timecollections.” of day. programme analyst for 10 years.

“Despite recase some ofthe theoffice bestat from Without a robust indexing and cataloguing peated requests, refused me back. on forced now, such they have told me system, On“I’m display were leave treasures as Mahatma it’s like they searching fortoatake needle in a not to come to office and let mePublic know haystack,” I have nowsays started on Garg, a PhD,deputy and to director, support Gandhi’s marksheet fromthey’ll Kathiawar Sanjay my family I give tuitionslaunched to candidates appearonce they decide on my future23, with thea comSchool, Rajkot, dated January 1888; note NAI. “We have recently our own sysing for exams,” he documents says. Apart pany,”the says the 47-year-old, as we sip cold cof- tem from newly formed Government of Pakisfor competitive this and close to 1,800 fee, to which he insists onof paying “I am, at have frombeen earning muchso less, tan the Government India for. about the or dividigitised far.”he is uncomfortable leastof I was, a senior consultant and have been strange looks from people for sion the archives, dated February 17, 1948; a with Thethe NAI is also sethetogets launch a system with the for of my life.AtlanEven through giving tuitions holdingcan ansearch IT job. and orletter fromcompany the island of most St Helena in the which after researchers retrenchment numbers vary for from during the recession this of bad, but derThe tic conveying the newsitofwas thenot demise Napoa copy of a document online. Plans of3,000 to 12,000assistance and even are 25,000, now everyone hasdated been told, only leon Bonaparte, May apparently 10, 1821; and a fering remote also depending afoot. This verbally, notthe to enlist any Tughlaq, projects. would on whomean you ask.

During December 2014 and Japaper from court seniors of FerozinShah that a researcher who currently nuary sector to have been It’s alright that19, they arethe making leave. I only dated October 1352, oldestus document in has to 2015, travelthe toITDelhi toappears access the archives, wisharchives. they had told us ahead, so we would have can cleaning house,the getting rid of from high-earning the soon access information any part mid-level employees.

The charge. restructuring, debeen prepared.

I have worked IT all “Webetter acquire any government recordinthat is of the world for a nominal

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Code red From a robust 30 per cent during the boom years a decade ago, the IT sector’s growth rate has fallen to10-15 per cent dhiraj singh/bloomberg

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spite the sector’s lower growth rates in recent years, was so sudden and without warning that most of those who lost jobs feel they have been left in the lurch by once-trusted employers.

Notwithstanding the new developments, Bolt archivists from the blue the see NAI surviving the test of “It wasAsonly last April thatnext I gotto promoted as reastime.

Rajmani, sitting one of the sistant consultant.

I was working on a project cord rooms filled with thousands of files says, witha simple a clientthing. and Ifwas the senior-most re“It’s we don’t take care of the source,” says 32-year-old Sarita Tripathi, who archives, the future generations won’t spare recently joba Herculean with TCS. “On us.”

It’s nolost lessher than task.December Consider 24, Isheer was suddenly project, the numbersrelieved and youfrom will the know how and within a makes week IIndia was asked to leave. much of what lies in the vaultsNo of room for NAI. negotiations, nothing. The ironic the trusty part that only last I had interAt islast count, the November archives are home to viewed around 20 candidates a jobmaps with 38,75,332 files; 64,221 volumes; for 1,10,332 the company.” and cartographic items; 3,601 Bills assented to flurry of IT terminations tookand the byThe the recent President(s) India; 1,065 treaties employees completely by surprise.

2,442 rare manuscripts.

Naveen Hasija, a 53-year-old senior consultsibi arasu ant at TCS with 29 years in the industry, was re-

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Anatomy of a riot Filmmaker Meera Chaudhary dissects the events of Muzaffarnagar in a searing documentary that the Censor Board initially refused to clear

Bits and bytes Employees dine in a canteen at the Tata Consultancy Services campus in SIPCOT IT Park, Chennai dhiraj singh/bloomberg

Story within a story Riot victims take refuge at a makeshift camp in Muzaffarnagar pti / manvender vashist

tensions. Can you elaborate on that?

In Muzaffarnagar, in these areas, eve-teasing is common. Even we weren’t spared. Whether the boys are Hindus or Muslims, eve-teasing is prevalent. But then, over time, people started identifying eve-teasers as Muslims. That there was a concerted campaign of ‘Love Jihad’ where Muslim youth pretended to be Hindus, with kalavas (sacred red threads) tied around their wrists. BJP leader Umesh Malik told us theofsame story, ‘beware Muslim who Heads will roll In Bengaluru, current and former employees TCS wear masks bearingofthe image ofboys CEO N afp/ manjunath kiran Chandrashekaran during a protest against reported layoffslook like Hindus’.

People here are conservative and there is also hypocrisy here. Equal status for women is a no-no but they will die to save the izzat of their women. Their manliness was being targeted. There were small meetings, vichar goshtis, about which the media was not informed. Only those who were pro-RSS, proBJP were called. They would talk on topics like ‘What should India be like in the 21st century’, but the film shows the statements made at these gatherings. And these are happening regularly, in colleges, community centres.

moved from a government PSU project and subsequently asked to leave the company.

“See, for them it’s much easier to get a person at much lower wages. Why pay someone ₹100 when you can get three others at the same price,” says Hasija. “The management was told not to induct senior employees into their groups,” he adds.

At the IT majors, the Resource Management Group (RMG) is charged with finding new projects for employees on the ‘bench’ — namely, a What happened in Soram? reserve pool. “When the RMG doesn’t realloOn August 18, nearly 10 days before the August cate, it affects our ratings. My ratings have al27 incident, an eve-teasing incident happened ways been a consistent ‘C’ (or ‘meets in Soram village. A Muslim man travelling company’s expectations’) and most people fall with his wife and sister was harassed by three in the same band. But it was the seniors who drunken Hindu boys. They asked the man to were asked to resign.” get off the rickshaw and leave his sister beHasija and the handful iots Tripathi eruptedare in among September 2013 in Som in Muzaffarnagar.) But we had no idea it hind. The Muslim man informed his friends, of terminated TCS employees who have taken would blow up into large-scale riots. When we who thrashed the Hindu boys at Soram. FolMuzaffarnagar and Shamli districts their grievances to the labour courts, where went to the camps a month later, stories be- lowing this, a Muslim hotel in the village was of western Uttar Pradesh.

Fifty-two the company initially were gan to crop up. NGOs were able to gather a lot vandalised by Hindu men. On August 27, at Kapersons wereargued killed that — 37they Muslims ‘managers’ andand, didn’t come under pur- of information and there was a pattern emerg- wal village, Shahnawaz was killed by Gaurav and 15 Hindus, according to the the UP state view of the Industrial Disputespeople Act, 1947.

That government, 50,955 displaced were ac- ing. It was said that the riots happened out of and Sachin for allegedly eve-teasing their siscontention was overruled and the the blue. But that wasn’t the case. We heard so ter. Shahnawaz’s father maintains that the commodated in 11however relief camps. cases currently under Theare documentary film trial.

En Dino Muzaffarna- many stories at the camps that ‘this happened brawl was only over a motorcycle. Both Gaurav BLink by approached TCS for comment, here, When gar, directed Shubhradeep Chakravorty Global Crisil its Nothatanalytics happenedfirm there’.

It ishad easyin to get the done to communicate middle-manageand Sachin were killedtobythe a mob.

By Septemaand mail fromChaudhary, its corporate communications Meera follows the series of vember report ‘For aspirants, stories of2014 the victims and IT to service locate the riot-hit ment group what was them or ber 7, Muzaffarnagar hadexpected explodedofwith comteam they “do not want to particieventsstated in thethat district between August 18 and job opportunities will predictedbea equipping villages.

But finding outnarrow’ what happened them to retrain. Nasscom aims to munal violence. pate in this 7story”.

September that year, from the initial signs of slowdown in the coming quarters. “The IT sec- redress fore, that took a lot of time. a new programme called Soramthis is through one of the largest villages in the In the legal dispute with their former em- torThe communal trouble at Soram village, the Kawal is atfilm a crossroads today,” Anuj Sethi, di- Reboot and Refresh tells the story ofsays what forwith mid-level district, equalworkers. numbers of ployer, likes Shahnawaz, of Hasija and Tripathi incidentthe where Gaurav andhave Sa- rector, Crisil Ratings.

“It the is mostly the happened in Soram village, Hindu Jats and Mullay Jats (Musfound an allywere in the Chennai-based for mid-level chin Malik killed, to the Jat Forum mahapanemployees are laid-off. Current Future tense lim Jats). We visited the village two versions of whatwho happened IT Employees Formed in late-December organisational chayat held at(FITE).

Nangla Mandod. structures at IT—majors havesaidNasscom’s in Kawal. It also tells of two men appear four times andwell-intentioned, people started to It was that the efforts in First the immediate of the retrenchscreened ataftermath Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, been thrown out of whack, withathe entry-levSanjeev Baliyan, who became but with most IT majors announcing tepid become conscious.

We couldn’t riots happened out of ment, the Board forumrefused has steadily the Censor to clear the film in BJP MP, and aellandless employees hired en masse man from quarterly theinterview mid-levelofexodus will get the the Muslim thedurblue. But that results, grown inyear. numbers.

Ku- battle with Kutba Kutbi ing June last After a Senthil seven-month thewho 2000s up the village triedmoving to likely be unabated. girl who was eve-teased; her wasn’t the case mar Tyagarajan, a volunteer the censors, the film (with three cuts) was save his village ladderand to become top- or mid-levmaintain Labour rights experts for drastic family wascall scared.

But weovermet with FITE “Though they this time, peace. cleared in says, January 2015. During el employees. Hence the current hauls in labour regulation.

Umesh Malik,“Most a BJP labour leader, laws who A worker without term it as performance-driven Chakravorty, a critically acclaimed filmmaker, organisational structure would in India are from a pre-IT points out Babu made out era,” a different case.

He fundamental rights is workforce optimisation, it is inCurrently, his What patternrepresent died of a brain haemorrhage. emerged? an hour-glass — top- Ramesh, the associate at IGNOU who claimedprofessor that Muslim boys were a slave fact systematic ter-attempting to The Hindu community partner Meera profit-driven Chaudhary is heavy. The and downsizing more is politicalisleaders famous coining the term ‘cyber coolies’ beating upfor Hindu youth, without giving any minations.

If atthe companies show the film various public spaces. Here said at the time towards correcting moving that Muslims hadand a strategy of when researching labour in the 2000s. reasons.

The policeIThad to take theearly Hindu boys were retrenching employees in she talks of incidents that fomented commu- leaving the villages back tobefore the pyramid structure.” the riots.

Actually, “There is a need for that, redefining ininto custody.

After the BJPthings, begantake to call large numbers, they should havethe hypocrisy they seem to With nal hatred in Muzaffarnagar, service requirements have IT got this idea because of unthe to changes in the business ortheconsideration police and state government ‘anti-Hindu’ informed the government aboutand thethe reasons that surrounds ‘bahu beti ki izzat’, lone- dergoing changes, many skillthem. sets such aswas su- der.” atmosphere building around There Bobby Kunhu, a human rights lawyer and ‘anti-Jat’. for it. Aofworker fundamental rights in is pervision liness beingwithout a documentary filmmaker are becoming redundant. a lot of rumour-mongering.

Several incidents who was a part of FITE’s fact-finding team aIndia. slave,Edited regardless of whether name them “Employees excerpts from thewe interview: need to re-skill themselves looking were taking would place. There was no propaganda, intoisthe TCS layoffs, agrees. “The arbiHow tough it being a documentary as assistant systems engineer, software profes- for technologies sensed like SMAC butemerging minority communities that(social, some- trariness and the sudden firing of these emfilmmaker? sional, or whatever.

The failure of ITinto employ- mobility, Tell us about the research that went and cloud),” Sethi.their ployees thing wasanalytics wrong. They started says sending is inhuman,” he says. “You are paid As independent filmmakers, we struggle. ees to come together and voice their rights has daughters making the film.

Sangeetato Gupta, seniorEight vice-president and a well, safe places. months before liveno a certain lifestyle for many years and, There’s real return on investment.

We manput in this situation.”

The them day after the precarious Kawal incident, I received the 25 IT lobby National theyears 2014veteran generalwith elections, thegroup BJP started to one day, you arecopies suddenly askedaudiences. to leave. I feel age to sell a few to niche But fake video from my father. (Chaudhary hails Association of Software andNow, Services Compaopen up offices in the area. there’s noth- the problem is a totalmaking lack of govyes, underlying I don’t think documentary is a Shaping up from Muzaffarnagar.)

In one day, the video of nies (Nasscom) the job-loss are ernment ing wrong with a feels party wanting to befears fully preregulations.

Unfortunately, the refull-time profession.

In fact, those who want to Accounting for being over beaten 31 lakhtoemployees, or overstated. two Hindu boys death by Muspared. But when you start distributing fake cent are only the beginning, and more makelayoffs it a full-time profession are discouraged. nearly a quarter of the workforce in the orgalims was circulated from Muzaffarnagar and CDs/videos “The industry touched $50campaigns… billion in 2009 and run rumour the and larger numbers of people will definitely There should be a support system for these nised sector, the IT industry is onevia of and Shamliprivate to Faridabad, Gurgaon and Delhi $100 billion in 2013-14.

So, clearly, growth BJP leaders may not have been in the riots but be affected over nextisyear.

TCS episode filmmakers, butthe there noneThe currently.

One the biggestand employers in the From a rates Bluetooth WhatsApp on country. mobile phones. are at 12-13 cent, but the industry now is they created theper atmosphere. only the of the iceberg.” should gettip support for these ideas, even if (* Names robust 30 tell per that centthis during boom years a has a much larger base and is able to grow and they’re We could was the a doctored video. riskychanged ones. on request.) decade ago,was the two sector’s growth ratein hasSialkot, fallen build (The video years old, shot on that,” says. According to her,that the Throughout theshe documentary, it appears arasukotamraju priyanka to 10-15 per cent.

Pakistan and circulated by BJP MLA Sangeet problem, if any, that not enough has been sibi eve-teasing waswas a means to fan communal

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In a league of its own Sitting on the border between India and Myanmar, Nagaland’s Longwa village thrives on the legend of its fierce headhunters

A bird’s eye view Located in a remote corner of Nagaland, Longwa has resisted urbanisation, and most houses still use thatch for their roofs

Building big A traditional Konyak long house

Pose perfect Inside a Konyak long house, an elaborately carved pillar depicting a Konyak warrr

In a haze Inside a metalsmith’s workshop. The man on the left is preparin n Longwa lies along a major opium transit route from Southeast Asia to Ind d

Market day A display of beaded jewellery and artefacts that the villagers sell as souvenirs to tourists

True treasures A Konyak woman with her brass bangles, worn either on the wrist as a bracelet, or on the arms. Unlike in most of India, gold has little or no value in Konyak jewellery. Social status is instead displayed through elaborate beaded and brass jewellery

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Hands on A tattooed headhunter making traditional baskets from bamboo strips

Carrying weight An old headhunter with elaborate ear piercings made of horn and heavy beaded jewellery

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Slow and steady A bead worker strings together a necklace to be worn by Konyak women

ongwa, in Nagaland’s Mon district, is not the typical sleepy Northeastern village you come across in travelogues and photo books. It is one of the few entry points to Myanmar from India, and that explains the round-the-clock presence of Border Security Force personnel. One of the main concerns arising from Longwa’s location is related to the smuggling of narcotics from across the border.

Proximity to Myanmar is not the only thing Longwa is known for. It is home to the last of Nagaland’s tattooed headhunters from the fierce Konyak tribe. The arrival of the British in Kohima changed the Naga tribes’ way of life.

Headhunting was banished with the advent of Christianity in the state. Mon resisted religious conversion for long, and the Konyaks were the last to give up their unique lifestyle.

Till the ’70s, few Konyaks wore clothes, covering their bodies in layers of beaded jewellery instead.

The Konyaks, unlike other Naga tribes that have village councils, follow a system of hereditary kingship. Longwa has a king — Ang, in the local dialect — who has jurisdiction

over villages located on both sides of the border. A popular myth in Longwa is the Indo-Myanmar border passing through his long house. Mon has several Angs and the system is also practised by Konyaks in Myanmar.

It is an unwritten law that anyone who visits Longwa meets the Ang first. The Ang’s house in Longwa is one of its attractions. A huge family — the number runs into several dozens — lives under the roof of what is considered a superb example of traditional Naga architecture. The interiors are resplendent with wooden sculptures and trophies of hunted wildlife. This is also the venue for village meetings and functions, apart from being a makeshift marketplace for tourists looking for souvenirs to take back home.

Longwa is also home to a community of bead workers and artisans who craft pendants out of brass. The pendant holds a special place in Konyak history. The number of brass head pendants on a Konyak warrior was equal to the number of real heads taken. ayan ghosh is a writer-photographer based in Kolkata

n ng opium on a hearth. Opium consumption is common among Konyak men, and d dia, mainly due to the long and porous border India shares with Myanmar

In god, we trust Christianity is the dominant cultural force in Konyak society today. The church has replaced the Ang’s house as the most important community building in the village

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Downsized IT dream

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Past comes first (left) National Archives of India (NAI) employee at work ; (inset) a record from November 1887 shows how Mahatma Gandhi fared in matriculation; (below) staff member uses archival adhesive to piece together a document; (bottom) visitors at the exhibition held recently to mark NAI’s 125th anniversary

Once the proud holders of a prized job, IT workers at the mid-level suddenly find themselves thrown out as their blue-chip employers restructure

In history’s lair

prashant nakwe; kamal narang

Celebrating its 125th year, the National Archives of India, a grand symbol of Lutyens’ Delhi, is no less historic than the past it preserves

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tacked end to end, all the shelves at the more than 25 years old and with a certain hisNational Archives of India (NAI) would torical value. There are many non-governmenstretch up to 45km. That is almost the tal documents as well, donated by families length of Delhi. Luckily for us though, and other organisations,” says Rajmani. To deIndia’s rich historical heritage is not strewn termine what makes it into the NAI, archivists across the Capital’s dusty Ring Road but go through every page of the documents substored in climate-controlled rooms within the mitted and assess its historical or cultural valmonolith structure that is the National Ar- ue, if any. He adds, “The archives are the chives of India. Built by Edwin Lutyens, for the backbone of any country and our job is to preexpress purpose of preserving Imperial In- serve it for research scholars, administrators dia’s heritage, the erstwhile Imperial Records and our people. This is the resting place of Department, rechristened the National Ar- these records.” chives of India after Independence, continues The Private Papers section holds pride of to be a permanent home for the subconti- place at NAI. Says Rajmani, “In this section, you nent’s past. As its website states, the ‘NAI is the will find photographs, musical instruments, repository of non-current records of the Gov- memorabilia, etc. We have items associated ernment of India and holds with some of the biggest names them in trust for the use of adin the history of the country — CP ministrators and scholars’.

Ramanujam, Sarojini Naidu, MaAt a recently concluded exhihadevi Verma, Govind Ballabh It’s a simple thing. If bition to celebrate its quasquiPant, Mulk Raj Anand and hunwe don’t take care of centennial anniversary, the NAI dreds of others.” the archives, the t’s aout Friday afternoon in Marchfuture when generations I my life; now I don’t what to do when brought some of its prized The know largest repository of the arinevitable happens.

Maybe I in will beginAsia, selling meet Sashi* the nondescript Coffee spare possessions, which,ataccording to chival material South the won’t us Rohini, Delhi,few near my Home in Delhi’s Connaught Rajmani, assistant director of ex- Place. Seat- properties inNAI has, in east the past years, ing ourselves among the abandoned midhibitions and publications, “iscrowd of 20- house… We have triedbeen to revamp itself in bythe loosensomethings away theHe afternoon, and dle of nowhere.” only the tip whiling of the iceberg”. ing the bureaucratic red tape retirees in no hurry get anywhere, Sashi Rudraneil*,and in Kolkata, feels he was asked to adds, “Every year theretoare thougoing digital.

“In archives resign from Wipro too clearlyof seemed out of place. of 21 years sands new additions to His thejob archives but the world over, justbecause like for he us,had thebecome main probcostlyis for 39-year-old been a at TataitConsultancy Services (TCS) rarely took lem since is our 125th year we decided to showthethem. sheer The volume of the had collections. him outside this our timecollections.” of day. programme analystindexing for 10 years.

“Despite recase some ofthe theoffice bestatfrom Without a robust and cataloguing peated requests, refused toatake me back. on forced now, such they have told me system, On“I’m display were leave treasures as Mahatma it’s like they searching for needle in a not to come to office and let mePublic know haystack,” I have nowsays started on aGarg, PhD,deputy and to director, support Gandhi’s marksheet fromthey’ll Kathiawar Sanjay my family I give tuitionslaunched to candidates appearonce they decide on my future23, with thea comSchool, Rajkot, dated January 1888; note NAI. “We have recently our own sysing for exams,” he documents says. Apart pany,”the says the 47-year-old, as we sip cold cof- tem from newly formed Government of Pakisfor competitive this and close to 1,800 fee, to which he insists onof paying “I am, at have from been earning muchso less, he is uncomfortable tan the Government India for. about the or dividigitised far.” least of I was, a senior consultant and have beena with strange looks gets from people for sion the archives, dated February 17, 1948; ThetheNAI is also setheto launch a system with the company for of my life.AtlanEven through giving tuitions holdingcan an search IT job. and orletter from the island ofmost St Helena in the which after researchers retrenchment numbers vary for from during the recession this bad, but derThe tic conveying the newsitofwas thenot demise of Napoa copy of a document online. Plans of3,000 to 12,000assistance and even are 25,000, now everyone hasdated been told, onlya fering leon Bonaparte, May apparently 10, 1821; and remote also depending afoot. This verbally, notthe to enlist any Tughlaq, projects. would on whomean you ask.

During December 2014 and Japaper from court seniors of FerozinShah that a researcher who currently nuary sector to have been It’s alright that19, they arethe making leave. I only dated October 1352, oldestusdocument in has to 2015, travelthe toITDelhi toappears access the archives, wisharchives. they had told us ahead, so we would have can cleaning house,the getting rid of from high-earning the soon access information any part mid-level employees.

The charge. restructuring, debeen prepared.

I have worked IT all “Webetter acquire any government recordinthat is of the world for a nominal

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Code red From a robust 30 per cent during the boom years a decade ago, the IT sector’s growth rate has fallen to10-15 per cent dhiraj singh/bloomberg

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spite the sector’s lower growth rates in recent years, was so sudden and without warning that most of those who lost jobs feel they have been left in the lurch by once-trusted employers.

Notwithstanding the new developments, Bolt archivists from the blue the see NAI surviving the test of “It wasAsonly last April thatnext I got to promoted as astime.

Rajmani, sitting one of the resistant consultant.

I was working on a project cord rooms filled with thousands of files says, witha simple a clientthing. and Ifwas the senior-most re“It’s we don’t take care of the source,” says 32-year-old Sarita Tripathi, who archives, the future generations won’t spare recently lost joba Herculean with TCS. “On us.”

It’s no lessher than task.December Consider 24, Isheer was suddenly project, the numbersrelieved and youfrom will the know how and within a week was asked much of what makesI India lies in to theleave. vaultsNo of room for NAI. negotiations, nothing. The ironic the trusty part that only last I had interAt islast count, the November archives are home to viewed around 20 candidates a jobmaps with 38,75,332 files; 64,221 volumes; for 1,10,332 the company.” and cartographic items; 3,601 Bills assented to flurry of IT terminations tookand the byThe therecent President(s) India; 1,065 treaties employees completely by surprise.

2,442 rare manuscripts.

Naveen Hasija, a 53-year-old senior consultsibi arasu ant at TCS with 29 years in the industry, was re-

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Anatomy of a riot Filmmaker Meera Chaudhary dissects the events of Muzaffarnagar in a searing documentary that the Censor Board initially refused to clear

Bits and bytes Employees dine in a canteen at the Tata Consultancy Services campus in SIPCOT IT Park, Chennai dhiraj singh/bloomberg

Story within a story Riot victims take refuge at a makeshift camp in Muzaffarnagar pti / manvender vashist

tensions. Can you elaborate on that?

In Muzaffarnagar, in these areas, eve-teasing is common. Even we weren’t spared. Whether the boys are Hindus or Muslims, eve-teasing is prevalent. But then, over time, people started identifying eve-teasers as Muslims. That there was a concerted campaign of ‘Love Jihad’ where Muslim youth pretended to be Hindus, with kalavas (sacred red threads) tied around their wrists. BJP leader Umesh Malik told us theofsame story, ‘beware Muslim who Heads will roll In Bengaluru, current and former employees TCS wear masks bearingofthe image ofboys CEO N afp/ manjunath kiran Chandrashekaran during a protest against reported layoffslook like Hindus’.

People here are conservative and there is also hypocrisy here. Equal status for women is a no-no but they will die to save the izzat of their women. Their manliness was being targeted. There were small meetings, vichar goshtis, about which the media was not informed. Only those who were pro-RSS, proBJP were called. They would talk on topics like ‘What should India be like in the 21st century’, but the film shows the statements made at these gatherings. And these are happening regularly, in colleges, community centres.

moved from a government PSU project and subsequently asked to leave the company.

“See, for them it’s much easier to get a person at much lower wages. Why pay someone ₹100 when you can get three others at the same price,” says Hasija. “The management was told not to induct senior employees into their groups,” he adds.

At the IT majors, the Resource Management Group (RMG) is charged with finding new projects for employees on the ‘bench’ — namely, a What happened in Soram? reserve pool. “When the RMG doesn’t realloOn August 18, nearly 10 days before the August cate, it affects our ratings. My ratings have al27 incident, an eve-teasing incident happened ways been a consistent ‘C’ (or ‘meets in Soram village. A Muslim man travelling company’s expectations’) and most people fall with his wife and sister was harassed by three in the same band. But it was the seniors who drunken Hindu boys. They asked the man to were asked to resign.” get off the rickshaw and leave his sister beHasija and the handful iots Tripathi eruptedare in among September 2013 in Som in Muzaffarnagar.) But we had no idea it hind. The Muslim man informed his friends, of terminated TCS employees who have taken would blow up into large-scale riots. When we who thrashed the Hindu boys at Soram. FolMuzaffarnagar and Shamli districts their grievances to the labour courts, where went to the camps a month later, stories be- lowing this, a Muslim hotel in the village was of western Uttar Pradesh.

Fifty-two the company initially were gan to crop up. NGOs were able to gather a lot vandalised by Hindu men. On August 27, at Kapersons wereargued killed that — 37they Muslims ‘managers’ andand, didn’t come under pur- of information and there was a pattern emerg- wal village, Shahnawaz was killed by Gaurav and 15 Hindus, according to the the UP state view of the Industrial Disputespeople Act, 1947.

That government, 50,955 displaced were ac- ing. It was said that the riots happened out of and Sachin for allegedly eve-teasing their siscontention was overruled and the the blue. But that wasn’t the case. We heard so ter. Shahnawaz’s father maintains that the commodated in 11however relief camps. cases currently under Theare documentary film trial.

En Dino Muzaffarna- many stories at the camps that ‘this happened brawl was only over a motorcycle. Both Gaurav BLink by approached TCS for comment, here, When gar, directed Shubhradeep Chakravorty Global Crisil its Nothat analytics happenedfirm there’.

It ishad easy in to get the done to communicate middle-manageand Sachin were killedtobythe a mob.

By Septemaand mail fromChaudhary, its corporate communications Meera follows the series of vember report ‘For aspirants, stories of2014 the victims and IT to service locate the riot-hit ment group what was them or ber 7, Muzaffarnagar hadexpected explodedofwith comteam they between “do not want to particieventsstated in thethat district August 18 and job opportunities predictedbe-a equipping villages.

But findingwill outnarrow’ what happened them to retrain. Nasscom aims to munal violence. pate in this7story”.

September that year, from the initial signs of slowdown in the coming quarters. “The IT sec- redress fore, that took a lot of time. through a new programme called Soramthis is one of the largest villages in the In the legal dispute with their former em- torThe communal trouble at Soram village, the Kawal is atfilm a crossroads today,” tells the story ofsays whatAnuj Sethi, di- Reboot and Refresh forwith mid-level district, equalworkers. numbers of ployer, likes Shahnawaz, of Hasija and Tripathi incidentthe where Gaurav andhave Sa- rector, Crisil Ratings.

“It the is mostly the happened in Soram village, Hindu Jats and Mullay Jats (Musfound an ally in the Chennai-based for mid-level chin Malik were killed, to the Jat Forum mahapanemployees are laid-off. Current Future tense lim Jats). We visited the village two versions of whatwho happened IT Employees Formed in late-December organisational chayat held at(FITE).

Nangla Mandod. structures at IT—majors havesaidNasscom’s in Kawal. It also tells of two men appear four times andwell-intentioned, people started to It was that the efforts in First the immediate of the retrenchscreened ataftermath Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, been thrown out of whack, withathe entry-levSanjeev Baliyan, who became but with most IT majors announcing tepid become conscious.

We couldn’t riots happened out of ment, the Board forumrefused has steadily the Censor to clear the film in BJP MP, and aellandless employees hired man fromen masse quarterly theinterview mid-levelof exodus will get the the Muslim thedurblue. But that results, grown numbers.

Ku- battle with Kutba Kutbi ing June lastinyear.

After a Senthil seven-month thewho 2000s up the village triedmoving to likely be unabated. girl who was eve-teased; her wasn’t the case mar Tyagarajan, a volunteer the censors, the film (with three cuts) was save his village ladderand to become top- or mid-levmaintain Labour rights experts for drastic family was call scared.

But weovermet with FITE “Though they this time, peace. cleared in says, January 2015. During el employees. Hence the current hauls in labour regulation.

Umesh Malik,“Most a BJP labour leader, laws who A worker without term it as performance-driven Chakravorty, a critically acclaimed filmmaker, organisational structure would in India are from a pre-IT points out Babu made out era,” a different case.

He fundamental rights is workforce optimisation, it is inCurrently, his What patternrepresent died of a brain haemorrhage. emerged? an hour-glass — top- Ramesh, the associate at IGNOU who claimedprofessor that Muslim boys were a slave fact systematic partner Meera profit-driven Chaudhary isterattempting to The Hindu community heavy. The and downsizing more is politicalisleaders famous coining the term ‘cyber coolies’ beating upfor Hindu youth, without giving any minations.

If atthe companies show the film various public spaces. Here said at the time towards correcting moving that Muslims hadand a strategy of when researching labour in the 2000s. reasons.

The policeIThad to take theearly Hindu boys were retrenching employees in she talks of incidents that fomented commu- leaving the villages back tobefore the pyramid structure.” the riots.

Actually, “There is a need for that, redefining ininto custody.

After the BJPthings, begantake to call large numbers, they should havethe hypocrisy they seem to With nal hatred in Muzaffarnagar, requirements un- to have IT gotservice this idea because of the changes in the business ortheconsideration police and state government ‘anti-Hindu’ informed the government aboutand thethe reasons that surrounds ‘bahu beti ki izzat’, lone- dergoing changes, many skillthem. sets such aswas su- der.” atmosphere building around There Bobby Kunhu, a human rights lawyer and ‘anti-Jat’. for it. Aofworker fundamental rightsin is pervision liness being without a documentary filmmaker are becoming redundant. a lot of rumour-mongering.

Several incidents who was a part of FITE’s fact-finding team aIndia. slave,Edited regardless of whether name them “Employees excerpts from thewe interview: need to re-skill themselves looking were taking would place. There was no propaganda, into TCS layoffs, agrees. “The arbiHow tough is the it being a documentary as assistant systems engineer, software profes- for technologies sensed like SMAC but emerging minority communities that(social, some- trariness and the sudden firing of these emfilmmaker? sional, or whatever.

The failure of ITinto employ- mobility, Tell us about the research that went and cloud),” Sethi.their ployees thing wasanalytics wrong. They started says sending is inhuman,” he says. “You are paid As independent filmmakers, we struggle. ees to come together and voice their rights has daughters making the film.

SangeetatoGupta, seniorEight vice-president and a well, safe places. months before livenoa real certain lifestyle for many years and, There’s return on investment.

We manput in this situation.”

The them day after the precarious Kawal incident, I received the 25 IT lobby National theyears 2014veteran generalwith elections, thegroup BJP started to one day, you arecopies suddenly askedaudiences. to leave. I feel age to sell a few to niche But fake video from my father. (Chaudhary hails Association of Software andNow, Services Compaopen up offices in the area. there’s noth- the problem is a totalmaking lack of govyes, underlying I don’t think documentary is a Shaping up from Muzaffarnagar.)

In one day, the video of nies (Nasscom) feels wanting the job-loss are ernment ing wrong with a party to befears fully preregulations.

Unfortunately, the refull-time profession.

In fact, those who want to Accounting for being over beaten 31 lakhtoemployees, or overstated. two Hindu boys death by Muspared. But when you start distributing fake cent are only the beginning, and more makelayoffs it a full-time profession are discouraged. nearly a quarter of the workforce in the orgalims was circulated from Muzaffarnagar and CDs/videos “The industry touched $50campaigns… billion in 2009 and run rumour the and numbers of people will definitely Therelarger should be a support system for these nised sector, the IT industry is onevia of and Shamliprivate to Faridabad, Gurgaon and Delhi $100 billion in 2013-14.

So, in clearly, growth BJP leaders may not have been the riots but be affected over next TCS episode filmmakers, butthe there isyear. noneThe currently.

One the biggestand employers in the From a rates Bluetooth WhatsApp on country. mobile phones. are at 12-13 cent, but the industry now is they created theper atmosphere. only the of the iceberg.” should gettip support for these ideas, even if (* Names robust 30 tell per that centthis during boom years We could was the a doctored video.a has a much larger base and is able to grow and they’re riskychanged ones. on request.) decade ago,was the two sector’s growth ratein has fallen build (The video years old, shot Sialkot, on that,” says. According to her, the Throughout theshe documentary, it appears that arasukotamraju priyanka to 10-15 per cent.

Pakistan and circulated by BJP MLA Sangeet problem, if any, that not enough has been sibi eve-teasing waswas a means to fan communal

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Devastation brings disease Slash and burn AGENDA

The surgeon-writer duo Kalpish onleaders forgotten histories, neglected heroes and what Across parties, the message fromRatna India’s is this: dollar-funded infrastructure is great, infectious diseases tell us but dollar-funded dissent is anti-national in history. In the official records they exist. But they are not celebrated. sambuddha mitra mustafi

All for one Kalpana Swaminathan (rv moorthy) and Ishrat Syed (sangeetha devi dundoo) believe that Kalpish Ratna is the essence of the two of them

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Room 000 Narratives of the Bombay Plague Kalpish Ratna Macmillan Non-fiction ₹599

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oom 000 written by Kalpish Ratna (the nom de plume of Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed) tells the story of plague in Bombay and how it altered the course of of history.

Written in favourite hobby the South Asian vivid prose, it unearths who were at ruling class isdoctors blaming foreigners the forefront theown battle, who have beenthe all for of their failures.

Because but forgotten.

Here the surgeon-writer duo, ‘evil foreign hand’ theory is an effecwith many their name, about the tive way to titles diverttoattention andtalk curb dissent perils of ignoring the artof ofconquests sleuthing in a region with ahistory, deep history and the parallels between Ebola and colonisation.

Indira Gandhi and plague.

Zia ulEdited excerpts fromindividuals the interview: Haq were paranoid with dictatorial tendencies. In the shadow of the Cold War, This narrates thelaws battle against plague in bothbook passed despotic against civil society Bombay.

But it also hints at the future and of and the Opposition by raising the spectre how infectious disease coups funded by the USspreads. or Russia. In Pakistan, Ishrat Syed (IS) We areand at the juncture where Bangladesh, Sri Lanka Nepal, leaders still these willthings keep appearing blamediseases India when go wrong. over and over again, if wethe humans continue on the path The US was big, bad, foreign hand in that we have chosen. post-colonial, socialist India. But after the end Kalpana Swaminathan (KS) It to is Washingnot only of the Cold War and India’s turn now that we are frenemies. at the juncture.

Humanity has ton, we became We now woo Ameralways been at various junctures. lanican investors, presidents andIn the defence guage of environmental science, these alliare companies; we tom-tom the “strategic called drivers. And these drivers are pressures ance between the world’s two largest democthat induce certain in the racies”; we talk of a changes democratic axisenvironagainst ment... planet Yet, doesdig notabelong to us. Itand bethe riseThe of China. little deeper, longs to War-era the most ancientpersists. living organisms, the Cold mistrust theThe viruses and the bacteria.

Indian political class sees a conspiracy IS The next World War isfor notenvironmental going to be about behind dollar support acIslam religion.

But water. have agreater mindtivists or and organisations thatWe demand set of extractivism, takeAmericans it out, use get it, what you political transparency. frustratleave you don’t give a damn about. ed thatbehind we don’t appreciate their universal doThat ‘d’ [that society talks about] should not goodism, which is sometimes naïve or condebe development butnationalism devastation. meets white scending.

Insecure KS Andburden. devastation brings disease. man’s Stupidity ensues.

IS We bring a medical perspective to this, we are doctors theories and surgeons. We are trying to tell Conspiracy you, this is not rightgovernment way.

On Tuesday, thethe Modi cancelled KS youoflook atforeign-funded disease, we are NGOs, also looktheWhen licences 8,975 for ing at what changes one humble life. allegedly not filing their annual ordinary returns. Last Bombay completely after theFoundaplague. week thechanged government put the Ford We oura watch independence because the of the tion got under list and directed Replague.

Thatofis India something that is overlooked. serve Bank to take a clearance from the Home Ministry before approving any In the book you mention that when the organifunds for the New York-headquartered scientists started studying plague, their sation. Among Ford Foundation’s beneficiarvantage ignorance.

Isn’tand that similar ies havepoint beenwas Teesta Setalvad Arvind

Why aren’t they celebrated?

KS Because they were Indian.

IS You have a medical assistant, who is the hardworking Indian doctor. Who is actually doing everything. His pay is 1/10th of the sahib.

The plague occurred at a time, when these discrepancies could no longer be borne. In 1896, germ theory of disease was new. Doctors were just beginning to look at the fact that there were actual causative microscopic organisms.

Pathology was a new science, bacteriology was a new science. When a disease on an epidemic scale broke out, that place became ground zero for all the doctors in the world. People flocked here from Paris, Vienna, etc to examine it. It was good it was happening to someone else, so that tomorrow someone should Those in glass not die in Paris or Germany.houses…The Indian KS We were sub-human to political the Europeans, class sees abut is there any reason why we conspiracy should remain behindsubhuman to ourselves now? dollar Theresupport is a lotfor of anenvironmental ger in this book. Not our anger. that IS It could be the anger oforganisations the common man demand greater today. political transparency

to what is happening with Ebola today?

Both It should be. vv krishnan IS Unless we begin with ignorance, unless we recognise that we don’t know anything, we This book is essentially about historic have no hope.

Give usin time, we willModi’s give you Kejriwal, both thorns Narendra side.a sleuthing.

As physicians do maintain the status quo.and Whysurgeons would anhow Ambabook on Ebola. will still be in room 000. you In March, the We government stopped a Greenapproach sleuthing? ni Foundation want to fund an anti-corrupWith newfrom disease we willto beLondon at the same peaceevery activist travelling and IS The art of medicine craft of medition watchdog or and an theenvironmental juncture. followed that up by freezing the organisa- cine and surgery the well-meaning art of sleuthing.

Every organisation?

Soisthe activist KS Thebank parallels are so similar, tion’s accounts fordevastatingly alleged violations of patient thattocomes to us, weinare detectives who wants start an NGO this space hasoftoa incident for incident the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act kind. criminal we are seeking is what causgo to The the Ford Foundation.

IS If you change thefirst term ‘plague’ andbyput (FCRA).

The FCRA was promulgated In- es But the there disease. unlike the detectives ficis aAnd breeze of change in India.ofEco‘Ebola’, you could re-market this book today.re- tion dira Gandhi in 1976, withdrawn, and then andliberalisation police procedure who doup notmany cure nomic has thrown enacted more stringently by the Manmohan people who comehigh-networth to them, our attempt is to first-generation individuals.

You write how at a time of disease, the Singh government in 2010. rid them of the crime, and make them they stay Having made their money transparently, protocol is inspection, andFCRA re- alive.

And not just NGOs, segregation the draconian It is our interesttoinorganisations writing that predates are likely to donate that are quarantine.

What are the legisstricts judges, journalists, us becoming It is just fighting for asurgeons. cleaner system.

If problems with that system? lators, bureaucrats and election logical that we now go in thewill opthat does happen, then there IS Whateverfrom you accepting do, if people candidates ‘forposite direction. be pressure on the crony billiodon’t see beneficial effects, eign contributions’ exceptthey unnaires to follow suit.

There is no CryptoThis book is to set the will follow very it. The specific British der not some How do you move from the ‘I’US, toit In the early 20th-century Church-CIA-Jihadirecord straight. In the used bleach andRepeatedly perchloridethe of circumstances. ‘us’ in your writing? took naming, shaming and NGO conspiracy out official records these mercury theused cartload.

FCRA has by been by theNone govKS We do everything together. muck-raking journalism before theredoctors to enslave Indian and of this helped.

Doctors it ernment to harass and knew silence From epiphany onward.

Gildedthe Age billionaires like The the Indians nursesusexist.

But they wasn’t working.

They to tell voices that do not toetried its line. thought is not complete in one Fords, Carnegies and Rockefellare not celebrated theCutting British. No one was listening. across parties, the person, being completers tookwithout to philanthropy to reThis wentfrom on, inspection, segremessage India’s leaders is ed by the other.image.

Our strongest build their These gation.

The British knew how to this: dollar-funded infrastrucsuit is dissent. more we disbillionaires whoThe were vilified for segregate — Muslims, Parsis, etc.dissent is anti- their shadowy ture is great, but dollar-funded agree, the more we agree. is business practices endedItup national. Foreigners can make profits in India, dangerous on days when we agree, we know creating some of the world’s most respected And that is how yougreater create aaccountability fear of the or a something but cannot ask for disastrous is going to happen grant-making organisations. outsider… better environment from the government. soon!

Any John process that works we don’tofquesIn 1913, D Rockefeller, owner the IS This Of course, thatBecause is how you deflect attenis sillyand logic. if you follow the tion it tooOil closely.

We areset justup grateful it works.

Standard Company, the Rockefeller tion away from irresponsibility. money trail, youyour see that the same global busi- Foundation, which is today one of GreenpeacKS had invest only one question; go to nessPeople elite who in India, who ‘If weI roll outa You have written many books for children e’s top donors.

Ford Motor Company founder hospital, will Ifor, survive?

If the I ambiggest going donors to die, before. the red carpet are also Is there another in the Henry and his son Edselone set up theoffing?

Ford Founwhy can’tNGOs. I die atThis home, with myaown people?’ to these is merely natural out- IS We still writeNow, for children, but we have condation in 1936. private charity contribuBut turn of around say, but comethey’d of the cycle global and capitalism andyour phi- sciously to publish. are not tion is 2.2decided per centnot of GDP in the US,We compared home is dirty. say,isthis lanthropy thatBut wethose havepeople joined.could There no happy with how children is goto an abysmal 0.4publishing per cent infor India.

And grants is how I live... Many of the quotes here out are ing Crypto-Church-CIA-Jihadi-NGO conspiracy in governance the country.space We both feelbethat writing in the would a tiny fracdrawn there toverbatim. enslave us Indians. for is the best writing that we tionchildren of that tiny fraction.

India ranks 133do. in the KS YouGiving cannotIndex, publish a below book for children World even Bangladesh These areout histories that are not celebrated.

The way with for a child in it. You cannot talk (109) no andspace Nepal (115).

Like you mention the book, the plaque to At the heart of theinproblem lies the unwillingdown to them, certainly. the foreign hand, we So before we amputate WM createdbillionaires the first successful ness Haffkine, of India’swho traditional to phil- must When is being harsh, we alasklife ourselves: Is incredibly an Indian hand ready to vaccine againstfund bubonic plague in room anthropically organisations that000 seek ways write something for children.

It becomes fill the void?

Even a prosthetic would do. even haschange a typo in positive init.the governance and policy better that way.

IS The As reason behind this book is tooftell the sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of space. the biggest beneficiaries crony nair The Political Indian t some_buddha story of doctors whobusiness were denied place governance, India’s elitetheir wants to nandini

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HOME SPUN

Butterfly breeze Never mind the bullocks…

LIGHTHOUSE

Bhimtal might have expanded overkey thetodecades, leopards stalk the streets at Frontloading the batting order is the survival,however and success in T20still cricket night and deer still peer down from the ridges at the unusual goings-on below

peter smetacek

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e lived on a forest estate a few This was considered quite the done thing at during the rainy season. We discontinued kilometres from the town of the time. It was even considered normal for swimming there when the cremation ground Bhimtal. Visits to the markets the Kalbera sisters, two old British spinsters, at the head of the lake was used, but in years were few and far between, to have their armchair placed in the aisle of when there were no deaths, swimming in the mainly because there was nothing much to do the bus on their infrequent visits to crystal clear water was the closest there. A dozen shops lined the sleepy street. Nainital! one could get to flying!

Teashops were the order of the day and we Father’s interest in naSlowly the town grew. were not entirely welcome in some of them, ture was well known With the expansion of for the wood they burnt was smuggled off the throughout the area. the economy towards estate at odd hours of the day and night.

An acquaintance from the end of the last cenSince there were no good schools there, we Calcutta sent a letter tury came a flood of stayed in Nainital for nine months of the year. addressed to ‘Fred investors. The hillOn weekends and holidays, Mother and we Smetacek, Butterfly sides were divided children would hire a taxi in Nainital and Hunter, Kumaon by high walls, cruise down to Bhimtal. The cars were huge Hills’ and it reached barbed-wire fences, Plymouth Savoys, in reasonably good condi- safely within a reaspotlights and other tion. When we got to Bhimtal, we would take a sonable time. This paraphernalia of dirt track to reach home. The driver would meant that, besides repeople who claimed spin the wheel and stomp on the pedals with ceiving mashed butterthat they wanted to ‘live Capital waste all the intensity of a racetrack driver, for guid- flies, struggling beetles in nature’. In fact, these Kieron Pollard, the ing the ungainly monster up the narrow, and decapitated moths at all properties are merely chips V12 engine in winding track was no mean feat. Father had a times of the day and night Mumbai Indians in the investment games be1942 model Ford. One afternoon, while drop- from shy children or brash spends most of its ing played many miles away, time in the garage changing hands as often as ping my brothers to the bus station, he drove adults, he was also considered kr deepak off the road and into a fortuitously placed the correct depository for all the owners believed they were At one time or another, tree. Both my brothers gleefully expected that manners of creatures that resimaking a killing. we had ofcontinuing peacocks, to frontload, saw would the strangest thing and the other day.to at- First they return home not have of all, consider that T20 is a pair dents of the area could not cricket from hassense reverted to Today, the of belonga pair cubs, a Out on the road, theremuch was a to sleek Lamtend school.

However, their dismay, played withthemselves the same number in of leopard bring to kill. of At players traditional structures of to building an innings, ing a community is long serow, asending barking in deer, borghini with a man a dhoti-kurta Father gave them theirinfare and rushedatthem each one sidetime as ODI is: 11. orcricket another, weThis hadisanot a banal Maxwellgone. later than they did last the Strangers throng cats,year piglets, theto driver’s seat. His hands weren’t onended the in off the station.

The car eventually point,pair butofcrucial to understanding to appeacocks, a pair of leop- howwild and, hares, even at the streets time of writing this piece, and shops erupt like rabbits, chicken, a him flying wheel. he aheld whip intohis right theInstead, lake when childadecided learn driving proach game.

If T20agames were played ardthe cubs, a serow, barking dropping from the side.toMumbai fungus cater to Indians the needs of squirrel and so on from the hand,inwhich extended out of his window, and eight-a-side, his absence. youcats, would be justified deer, wild piglets, hares,in structurhaven’t learnt their past mistakes, and growing population. he was Thereafter, whipping aon couple of bullocks to hoSundays and whentied school ing the innings as you structure an ODI one. continue to save Pollard rabbits, chicken, a flying squirfor a dash at the end. wait Hard-eyed businessmen the front the car.

The would engineeither was send off; the lidaysofended, Father a ‘man’ But with 11 players, rel and so on. you have extra resources They would be betterfor served if Pollardwhile and Cocustomers, tradesbullocks were pulling car.with a taxi or else we up to Nainital to the return for the time given toinyou.

Swimming theYour lakestask wasis to ensure rey Anderson batted men three and four, in whatevfrom neighbouring Now, okay,stroll thisdown is perhaps a bit weird would to town andtoo sit in the Post theseone resources wasted, and are opti- er order, with Rohit Sharma of the are onlynot means of enopening. states work overtime for the even Office, for India, andthe I confess that I didn’t see exuntil bus came.

The ‘man’ would mallytertainment. used. If the hardest-hitting strokeplayer At one end of the estate lay the The idea is not just toindustry. frontloadNo resources booming building doubt they actly have this. been But I sent did witness something very earlier to the station a kiloin the team routinely getsthree onlywere heavenly dur- will move Sattal lakes, of which butonalso to frontload Evwhen the boom intent. ends. Perhaps, close.metre I was watching the IPL. further down to reserve seats for us. four ing or five to bat, you areA fourth filled up the silence theovers summer months. erywe side doesn’t have a Maxwell knew in childhood will descend Twenty20 cricket is a relatively new form of screwing up somewhere. So or a Pollard.

But be whoever goesfrienagain. Perhaps, there will peace and the game which makes new demands on the what should you do? out there should attack, attack, dedliness again, when the value of property The one team that teams that play it. Like a bullock-cart driver I’d written a piece after last attack. if a Starc or Malinga creases and theSure, predators move off in search has gotten who has just been given a Lamborghini, the year’s IPL for Cricinfo where I’d is on fire, play that one guy out. of new prey. frontloading right in men who run the teams and play for them laid out what I felt was the bigBut otherwise for it. Not Meanwhile, leopardsgo still stalk the only streets at this IPL is the Chennai does it ensure you don’t waste haven’t quite come to terms with this. So they gest tactical advance of the tournight. Deer peer down from the ridges at the Super Kings continue to whip the bullocks. When one-day nament: Frontloading. Basically, resources, it also ensureshave unusualbatting goings-on below.

Monkeys cricket was born, teams played it much like King’s XI Punjab decided to thattosoft overs in between less-their learnt how open water tanks toby slake they would a Test match — consider Sunil Ga- snort at the concept of building er bowlers are not wasted. thirst, while feral cows threaten all Batagriculvaskar’s 36 not out in 1975 through 60 overs, a platform, and just sent their ting strategies areisso predictable ture businesses.

Bhimtal greener than it evand while that is an extreme example, consid- hardest hitters upfront and treated every over that er fielding captains can centuries, plan how due to use was during the past in large er the low par scores of those times. Eventual- as sides would usually treat overs 16-20. They theirpart resources keeping of their best restricto thewell, availability cooking gas and a ly, players adapted. Even Gavaskar made a attacked from the outset, with Glenn Maxwell, tive bowlers, like Malinga, thebenefits end of the innew awareness aboutfor the of forests. thrilling World Cup century before retiring, David Miller and George Bailey coming in at nings. can they do if you’re going at YetBut thewhat innocence is gone. and par scores crept up until, as I wrote in my three, four and five, and sometimes, if an early them all thetaking time? the long view of things, I know But last instalment of Lighthouse, they crossed wicket fell, Wriddhiman Saha coming at three, The thatephemeral has gotten and frontloading allone thisteam is but cyclical. As I 300 in the subcontinent, which was once an but also to tonk. Their frontloading ensured rightwrote in this the Chennai Superwhen Kings.I pad in IPL theispreface of my book, outlier score and not the norm. that batting resources were not wasted, and Brendon McCullum and Dwayne through the stretches of forestSmith down play to NainiSimilarly, in T20 cricket, teams have basical- this approach got them off to an excellent everytal, over like it’s themuch 18th of innings, it feels very as the though I amand finding ly adapted their ODI approach to this shorter start. In contrast, Mumbai Indians consistent- Suresh and MS Dhoni, two myRaina way through a forest inoutstanding Central Europe. format. So maybe they tonk in the powerplay ly sent out their best hitter, Pollard, with just a strokeplayers, followand at three andnearly four. This The firs, pines oaks are the is same. at the start, then they consolidate and set a handful of overs to go, and he had nowhere goodAnd captaincy. course, Chennai also Silesia has an that yet, theOfmountains of Upper platform, then they tonk again towards the near the impact he could have had. Kolkata excellent bowling attack, whichcalled is whyhome they’reare a my father and his father end. They often have freeflowing openers, but Knight Riders started poorly, but then adapt- among theway favourites year after year. All of things long from the outer ramparts the Himleave their hard-hitting maniacs, like Kieron ed, dropped Jacques Kallis the accumulator, beinglaya equal between teams, though, that fate decided would be homefronto me.

Pollard of Mumbai Indians, to bat at the end. frontloaded the hitting, and things worked tloading the difference.

So when you the (Inmakes this monthly column, authors chronicle This is a flawed approach, because T20 is not out. They also had a better bowling attack than havecities a Lamborghini, drive the damn thing. they call home.) just a modified version of ODIs, it’s a whole Kings XI, and deservedly won the IPL. t@amitvarma peter smetacek is the author of Butterflies on the new format with its own imperatives.

This year has been bizarre. King’s XI, far

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Amit Varma is a novelist. He blogs at indiauncut.com

Bright and beautiful Our house in Bhimtal has been home to any number of wild creatures rajashree bhuyan

Roof of the World and runs the Butterfly Research Centre in Bhimtal

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Stuck in a blur In The Buried Giant people find themselves in a mist or a strange forgetfulness that leaves them not entirely sure of their histories reuters/luke macgregor

No respite Rescue personnel from India and Nepal work round-the-clock to help the living; they often come across heartbreaking scenes such as a young man clutching onto his shoes under the rubble

stretched, working 24-hour shifts, with barely a break.

“My little baby is at home, but I am needed here,” says Chaudhary, trying to lessen the guilt of leaving her child. Foreign and local volunteers guide the injured into the building, keep records, distribute food to patients, raise their flagging spirits and even man the helpdesk counter outside the hospital. The four floors of the 200-bed hospital are packed with disaster victims. A tiny and frail Sabila Dahal, aged eight, with a skull fracture, a black eye and wounds on her hand, whimpers in pain as she clutches her teddy bear, almost the same size as her. Her grandfather sits beside her on a chair, trying to comfort her with whispered stories and rhymes.

Ordinary people in Kathmandu are helping in every way they can. Alok, who owns the Dalle (Nepali cherry-like chilli) restaurant in nearby Kamal Pokhari, is one such saviour who packs food from his restaurant and, to-

trary, that The Remains of the Day, for instance, could just as easily have been set in Los Angeles in the 1990s instead of a great English country house in the years before World War II, or that he does not labour to create a prose specific to each novel. Only that these disparate settings and styles — the writer Neil Gaiman in his lukewarm review of The Buried Giant praised Ishiguro for not writing “the same novel, or even the same type of novel, twice” — are not the point. For if, as Gaiman would have it, Ishiguro ranges widely in his choice of genre and setting, country house novel, say, or detective novel, or science-fiction novel, he is preoccupied by a much narrower range of themes. Overlapping ideas are examined and re-examined in his novels, a theme turned over for a new angle, a new facet.

Memory is chief among Ishiguro’s concerns. And what is left unsaid or is unsayable.

Can we confront the collapse of our hopes, our ideals? Can we confront our failures? Or must we turn to silence as both balm and penance?

In The Buried Giant, we are introduced to an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, Britons living out their old age in a dark, dank, barely hospitable ‘village’, a warren carved into a hillside.

Their memories cloudy, not as you might surmise from old age, but from a more general malaise that affects the whole village and others further afield. They decide to travel to their son’s village, though they are not quite sure where this village is or if he will be there to greet them. They are convinced though of the desirability of a reunion. Along the way, they pass a Saxon village roiled and made fearful by ogres who have killed men and kidnapped a boy. These Saxon villagers are also suffering from what Beatrice calls “the mist”, the strange forgetfulness that leaves people not entirely sure of their histories, of what they might have said or done, and subsequently who they are beyond the immediate present.

Axl and Beatrice then set off for a monastery in the mountains where she hopes to find answers to her questions about both the mist and a slight but nagging pain in her side. The Saxon warrior is on a quest to slay the shedragon Querig, a quest which brings him into gether with cartsa it to the hospital to conflict withhis Sirstaff, Gawain, nephew of King Ardistribute among thefinest survivors. thur and one of the knights of the legAt Bhaktapur, the stunning Heritage endary round table.

Arthur World is long dead, Site withhis its palace and in temples, though legacy durbar is evident Saxonsmany and iconic structures are severely damaged.

The Britons living together in peace, and Gawain half-man, half-lion statues, already by has aged, his armour rusting and hisdefaced warhorse shoddy old restoration, watch the acollapsed equally and tetchy.

He isover literally Quixotic buildings and of temples.

The age narrow of figure, a relic a chivalric wholanes has bethe city makeand it difficult rescue andwhose recovcome parody farce. Itfor is the dragon ery vehicles reach breath is theto cause of the the victims. mist and so the quest views and Ishiguro has been embroiled in a to Satya Ram Suwal had athe three-storey house slay her, which involves novel’s protagospurious controversy over some mild com- nists and smallin oneofsuch lane. With wall cast characters is a one quest to ments made in an interview about how his retrieve not just of the buildingmemories devastated, individual buthisa readers might react to a novel filled with collective memory. home is now reduced to the ogres, pixies and dragons. The pots, pans that What liesand doescupboards a society tell itCommon people in writer Ursula Le Guin took exare the visible from a distance.

Ona self, novel asks.

What does Kathmandu are ception to his supposed diss of the daychoose of the earthquake, Susociety to forget? Are helping in every way there the ‘fantasy’ genre, exception wal was outside “I some thingshis it house. is necesthey can which she later acknowledged could think of myself sary for only a society to forget in orMemory is chief as hasty and clumsy, though she when earth shaking. der to the keep the was peace?

Can among Ishiguro’s did not take it back. “I found Whenonly the tremors slowed I ran peace result from a monuconcerns. And what is reading the book painful,” she to saveact myofchildren.

I could mental violence deliberleft unsaid or is had written. hear people crying for ately repressed?

Andouthow, unsayable What Ishiguro described as help, but I felt despite that my children werewe more the damage doimto the ‘surface elements’ of the portant and I each stayed withasthem.

I feel do guilty other a couple, we novel — the circa sixth century now,” he says. continue to love? post-Arthurian setting, the Looking at hisThe wifeBuried Sapna,Giant who has stands its next lonaforementioned ogres — has exercised most gueurs. to him, (Which he adds.novel “She doesn’t?) is braver And thaneven me, if she it reviewers, with many agreeing with Le Guin offers ran to save our children Sapna, who and was ambiguities and first.” elusive allegory that Ishiguro’s treatment of his setting is rudi- metaphor in a neighbour’s 50m away, describes in placehouse of answers, it would be a mentary, not fully imagined. Ishiguro’s con- poor how she fought friends when tried to reader whoher could not see thethey present-day cern though, in each of his seven novels, is not implications stop her fromofleaving.

Goose pimples rise on its questions about violence, with the details of mise en scene or even of memory, her neck and hands as and she describes how she revenge, our individual calanguage, but with his abstract themes, the pacity ran barefoot, for love.in panic, shouting the names of abiding questions which catalyse his writing. her son and daughter, even as the earth shook is a Delhi-based freelance writer This is not to say his choice of setting is arbi- shougat under herdasgupta feet and dust clouds hid everything.

What lies within A novel that provides allegories and not answers to fundamental questions

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The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro Faber & Faber Fiction ₹799

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azuo Ishiguro, alongside Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, is part of a celebrated cohort of English male novelists that represents the zenith of a bygone age (though they are all still healthy and at their desks). We will not see their like again.

The economics of publishing has been too radically transformed by the internet, by Amazon, and self-publishing, and the literary novel no longer occupies so central a place in contemporary culture as to excite either tabloid prurience or broadsheet chin-stroking.

In keeping with the milieu, if not the subject, of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro’s new novel, his first in 10 years, it is as if Ishiguro, Rushdie et al were the knights of some literary roundtable jousting for literary prizes, bestsellers, eye-watering advances, and column inches.

Every so often, their chainmail still burnished, mounted on their high horses, these authors continue to command our attention and admiration. But the fanfare for their books gets a little less loud each time, and the notices get a little more bold, a little more disrespectful.

The Buried Giant has so far received mixed re-

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saturday, may 2, 2015 saturday, may 2, 2015

A tale of three cities

pal with an intensity of 7.6 on the Richter scale at around noon on April 26, 40 tremors measuring more than 4.5 have followed. Terrified of the aftershocks, people today prefer the safety (and cold) of the outdoors to the uncertainty and vulnerability of their homes.

At the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, on the banks of the Bagmati river, funeral pyres burn all day and even after sunset. Shiva, a priest at the temple, points to a spot on the Records, the buzzing Townand Square fariverbank where a mother childwith wereits conmous astronomical clock, the calendarium signed to the flames. An old priest uses a bamand the quarter.

I stopon at the the pyres legendary boo stickJewish to adjust the logs that Lennon Wall, joining scores of tourists in continue to burn. scribbling a message it. lost the little they Many people here on have Bringing trip across three to an had.

After 18 the years of driving peoplecities around in end Maruti is Budapest — theGyan land Bahadur of StraussTamang whose his 800 taxi, operatic complements theKathmandu. sheer beauhad builtmusic a home in Kabra, near ty and majestyitofturned the Danube skirting the city In 52 seconds, to dust. like azure blocks in Budap“Itan will takeribbon.

20 yearsTraffic for our country to get est briefly takewe mewere. backThe to Bengaluru, my back to where Indian governhometown, but the fadespeople away ment is helping its comparison citizens, taking the moment I spot the Danube. I feast on heart-stopping views of the river from the window of my hotel room.

Standing on the Chain Bridge to watch the merry dance of the twinkling lights on the dark waters makes for a romantic Bollywood vignette. And when cruising down the river on a boat, I feel I am a part of the waltz Blue Danube, playing in a loop in my head. Buda, on the west bank, and Pest on the east were unified in 1873, but it seems they were never apart.

Budapest, like many of its European siblings, is an architectural treasure trove. Think indolent Turkish baths, chapels, basilicas, castles, splendid riverfronts, promenades and parks… A walk down Andrassy Avenue to the Heroes’ Square makes you feel like you could be in Paris. Even if you can’t catch a performance, don’t miss a quick look at the Budapest Opera House for its neo-Renaissance architecture. A tour of the Parliament is a good choice, so is the walk up to the Castle Hill for its views of the Danube.

Shadows of many wars, Nazi savagery and the Iron Curtain are things of the past in Krakow, Prague and Budapest, a handsome trio

Moving on The vibrant Wawel area in Krakow, a city that has shaken off its grim past shutterstock

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andsome heritage monuments, merous tourists. The unusual 13th-century prehistoric architecture, ravages underground Wieliczka Salt Mines takes my of the World Wars and the blister- breath away. It is filled with statues of rock salt ing memory of discomfiting Left sculpted by miners to tell stories from folkpolitics are a silent backdrop to the quaint lore, religion and mythology. A trip and skip charm of Slavonic Europe. Yes, there was the away is the active St Kinga Chapel with its four Iron Curtain, the Velvet Revolution, the histo- storeys, numerous bas-reliefs, crystal chandery of many ugly battles and the savagery of the liers and the newly-added statue of Pope John Nazi past. But when I weigh these against the Paul II. The other attraction here is a ballroom architecture, quaint imprints of art and the with wi-fi hotspots. high charm quotient, the tourist in me is It’s impossible to escape the sombre Schinquite tempted. dler’s Factory (made famous by the film SchinI start my tour at Krakow, southern Poland’s dler’s List), now a modern museum reflecting old capital and one of Europe’s ancient cities. the history of pre-war Krakow, its five years of Dotted with Unesco World Heritage monu- Nazi domination, the resistance movement, ments and sites, this most hisfollowed by Soviet occupation. torical of cities invokes an air of Crossing over to the City of a pleasant awe. For the tourist, Thousand Spires, Prague, is like Krakow’s must-visit sites include stepping into a picturesque book the city centre, the delightful of fairy tales. There is so much to Away from the market square, the Wawel or hill see and learn from this one-time opulent palaces, my area dating back to the Paleolithcapital of Bohemia, with its 1,100personal favourite is ic times, the royal palace, Kazi- the old Jewish district year-old history and its rich conmierz, its historical Jewish fluence of cultures. What is reof Kaziemirz, replete district, and Stradom, another markable is that a significant with old-world old neighbourhood. They don’t number of its renowned cultural synagogues and call it the Polish Mecca for nothattractions survived the violent wayside cafes ing. And yes, if you are the kind history of 20th-century Europe. who likes to soak in the charms a The charms of Czech anachro“I thought I won’t my children wasa city has to offer, just getting lost nismsee greet you on aagain, ride Iin a few seconds away, but it the felt top likeofI the tookOld 15 among the streets, parks and modern lift to minutes get here,” she says.views of the city, castles is equally pleasant.

Town HalltoTower for stunning Krakow’s quaint way of marking its ad- its square and its churches — the Tyn and St Nidresses has a pretty rose in stone at the en- Aerial cholasview Churches are particularly striking. If land Kathmantrance to my hotel, Pod Roza (meaning ‘under As youour areaircraft lucky, prepares you can to hear theintrumpeter wethe seehour. the peaks of Mount Everest and the the rose’). The hotel has a great ambience and du, blow Annapurna range above clouds classical look, as do many others in the city.

The past and the towering present meet yetthe again on a the distance.

Asacross we descend below thehistorcloud Away from the opulent palaces, my person- in Segway bike ride the city’s many many orange neon-bluearound tarpaulins al favourite in Krakow is the old Jewish district cover, ical attractions.

It is and fun tumbling the among apartment of Kazimierz, replete with old-world syn- become imposingvisible Prague Castlethe — the largest blocks in the homes.

Sinceto the earthquake Neagogues and wayside cafes, festive with nu- and world, according thefirst Guinness Book ofhit World

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A country in distress (from top) Doctors and nurses work without taking a break; crowds gather when a women is taken out alive from the rubble after 50 hours; families mourn as pyres burn at the Bagmati river

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melanie p kumar is a Bengaluru-based writer

Travel log Get there

Krakow: Air India, Lufthansa, Jet Airways, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad and British Airways have flights to John Paul II International Airport, with one stopover. Prague: Except British Airways, all carriers flying to Krakow also go to Prague.

Budapest: Qatar, Emirates, Etihad, Lufthansa, British Airways and Jet Airways fly here with one stopover.

Stay

Krakow: Hotel Pod Roza, 14, Florianska Street, is less than 200m from the main square. Prague: Intercontinental Prague is located on the most famous shopping boulevard of Parizska, and is a comfortable distance from the historical Old Town Square.

Budapest: Intercontinental Budapest, home, and rescuing Apaczai Csereour JU, people located here, close while to our government the city’sdoes top nothing,” attractions,says hasTamang. the The resourceful and hardworking people of most breathtaking view of the Nepal have given their share to the region, and Danube river. also the world.

Tip face the worst crisis their country They now beer is one of the bestneeds in all has seenCzech in three generations.

Nepal Don’t miss a pint even if the helpEurope. it can get. you’re not fond of lager. And the of Prague are peppered with saurabhstreets yadav and vivek singh are an independent duo based hotwriter-photographer dog vendors. Must try! out of Delhi, working on in-depth reportage projects

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Troublelight in a sinking paradise Making of Milan Stand-up comic Palta never missesrock a good She the shares somefavourite moments of humour Ugly stories of Neeti human rights violations thelaugh.

Maldives, world’s luxury tourist from her recent visit to the Italian fashion capital destination, as the government crushes civil and political rights 7.30am A digital board at the airport takes me back to the speeding SUV on Delhi roads

10.30am: Stretching and posing by a fountain

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t has been a fairly rocky road for the Maldives in recent years. In 2008, the nation moved towards multi-party democracy after being ruled by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom for 30 years, a period marred by serious human rights violations.

The Maldives enjoyed partial success in addressing some of these violations under the new constitution of 2008, which allowed political parties to function and get a democratically elected leader, the island-nation’s first.

Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Knotty Party art (MDP) the new President.

11.30am: in anbecame artist’s block But the change was shortlived. Forces loyal to the Gayoom regime joined hands to unseat Nasheed in February 2012.

Amnesty International documented violations by the police against MDP supporters at the time of Nasheed’s ouster. Even senior party officials and parliamentarians were not spared. Those targeted included MP Evan Abdulla, who recently wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking help to restore the rule of law in the Maldives.

Since Nasheed’s departure, human rights have come under continued attack under the governments that followed. The list of offences ranged from sexual harassment of female detainees to use of excessive force against demonstrators, such as frequent beatings, use of tear gas in enclosed buildings, and pepper 12.35pm: No seat getseyes higher or the holier spraying in the and mouth.

Past and present governments have ignored repeated calls from Maldivian and international human rights bodies to investigate these violations and bring perpetrators to justice.

The situation continues to deteriorate, with eroding judicial impartiality, a sustained assault on civil and political rights, and increasing impunity. Maldivian authorities have sent human rights into a free fall by misusing the institutions of the state, including the judiciary and the Parliament, to justify the violations. The Maldivian move towards democracy and human rights protection is most likely to be derailed. A country like India

10am: The hop-on-hop-off looks attractive but no bus for the crazy walk-aholic

9am: If the morning starts with hearty Italian breakfast, the day has to be good

10.50 am: This Malay couple believes in clicking together

Rough patch Former President Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader, being dragged to a criminal court in Male after being arrested on terror charges pti

must not be a silent bystander. his choice at all stages of the trial. At one point, A recent Amnesty International fact-finding the court even refused the right of the accused mission to the Maldives found that space for to present witnesses, arguing that defence civil society and political opposition is dra- witnesses would not be able to refute the evimatically shrinking, as safeguards for human dence already submitted by the prosecution. rights are weakened.

Authorities have come down heavily on The Maldivian authorities are silencing crit- peaceful demonstrations in Nasheed’s supical voices by any means. port. The police have curtailed the right to Independent investigations and extensive freedom of expression and peaceful assembly discussions with various civil society actors, by unlawfully restricting demonstrations or journalists, lawyers and political activists re- banning protests from determined areas or vealed that the rule of law, fair trial guarantees times, impeding peaceful protesters from and the rights to freedom of expression and gathering and expressing their views in a visipeaceful assembly are all under attack. ble, public location. Hundreds who were arOne big concern relates to the respect of fair rested from such gatherings were released on trial guarantees and the role the conditions impeding them from judiciary is playing in the steady taking part in demonstrations. weakening of the fundamental Journalists and other mediaprinciple of impartiality. This persons have been threatened The list of offences has been clearly illustrated by and intimidated. Those covering ranged from sexual the politically motivated chargdemonstrations are particularly es and unfair trials of three harassment of female vulnerable to attacks. Several detainess to use of prominent opponents of the have received death threats by excessive force government — Nasheed, former Twitter or SMS, and the police against defence minister Mohamed Nahave failed to probe any of these. demonstrators zim and former MP Ahmed NaIt’s been nine months since wellzim. These are documented in known journalist of Minivan Amnesty International’s latest News and blogger Ahmed Rilwan briefing on the Maldives. disappeared, but the case is yet to Nasheed was sentenced to 13 be fully investigated. years in prison on terrorism charges followIt is imperative that the international com12.55pm: Coconut unfair for the peckish?

1.35pm: The easier route to upliftment ing a manifestly trial. The principle of munity — especially influential neighbours impartiality was compromised and the out- such as India — engages the Maldivian authorcome appeared to be predetermined even be- ities to work towards protecting and promotfore the trial began. ing human rights. The upcoming UN Two of the three judges who tried and con- Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a peer review victed Nasheed had acted as witnesses against of a nation’s human rights record by other him in 2012, in relation to the very incident for countries, is a good opportunity to push Malwhich he was tried last February. divian authorities to act swiftly.

Despite this most obvious conflict of interPolitical tensions are already at boiling est, the judges refused to recuse themselves af- point, and further harassment and attacks on ter a request by the defence and proceeded those criticising the authorities will only with the trial. make the situation spiral out of control.

Other fair trial guarantees were not respected throughout the trial, including the right to raghu menon is Amnesty International India’s adequate time to prepare a defence and the Advocacy Coordinator and was part of a fact-finding right to be effectively advised by a counsel of mission to the Maldives

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All hands on deck As Nepal lies buried under the rubble of devastation, rescue workers, medical staff and even a few hardy survivors toil round-the-clock to reach out to the affected 2.05pm: Reflection high at the splendid Duomo

3pm: Late, light lunch

2.25pm: Keep out the peeping Toms

3.35pm: Food and wine at the next table

Youngest of them all A little girl gets some comfort from her teddy bear and her grandfather’s stories in a hospital in Kathmandu all photos vivek singh

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t is late afternoon on April 28. At Machha Pokhari, Kathmandu, a team of rescuers work non-stop to find survivors buried under a collapsed building, more than 50 hours after a deadly earthquake jolted Nepal and turned it upside down. The Nepal Reserve Police personnel direct a bulldozer and mechanical jackhammer working on the unstable debris of a seven-storey hotel. As the bulldozers remove the rubble floor by floor, there are urgent shouts of ‘water’ from the 5.42pm: Clothes for the portly thrilled rescuers who gentleman spot Siko Lakshmi, a woman trapped under the debris.

Soon a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team from India takes charge of the operation, forming a cordon around the spot and obtaining vital rescue equipment, which the Nepalese Police team lacked. They have an oxygen cylinder to pump air into the suffocating space, a huge electrical cutter powered by a truck-mounted generator to cut through steel bars embedded in concrete, and a large roll of wire that brings electricity to the spot.

The well-trained team in their orange NDRF jackets form an inner circle while thousands of people crowd around the shifting mounds of rubble. Some bystanders ascend the

4.45pm: Try fitting in after a meal in Milan

5.05pm Talk about dropping hints!

mound of debris, while others on the road tels on the land that was reclaimed. “The lake watch and record the scene through their eyes bed is probably unstable, [that is why] so and on mobile phone cameras. many buildings have fallen here,” says ShambAbout 40 minutes later, multiple hands hu Prasad Gupta, from Bihar, who has lived support the stretcher that carries Lakshmi out here for decades. He owns a fruit shop close by, to the safety of an ambulance and the medical and describes how the earth shook and turnattention that she needs. ed his world upside down. His life’s efforts lie Sadly, she dies the next morning, at 5am. buried under three floors. When the quake The rescuers don’t stop, going hit, Shambhu had jumped onto deeper into the mire. Half an the railings of the collapsing hour later, the whistles and exbuilding and climbed to the top 6pm: Gurgaon the heart of Milan 8pm: Sweet bitesto forreach sweet dreams citement thatfashion comeinafter a hufloor his brother, wife The whistles and man being is found in the and three children. He saved excitement that come rubble turn to a hushed silence them all. after a human being is as the team checks for a pulse on found in the rubble, a limp hand. A soldier then Emergency centre turn to a hushed stands atop the bulldozer, givThe eerie sound of ambulance sisilence as the team ing directions as the scoop rens punctuates the silence of checks for a pulse on works cautiously to unearth the the empty streets of Kathmandu a limp hand lifeless body of Uttam Gurung. all through the day and night as His left hand clutches his sports people are rushed to hospitals. At shoes while a marigold garland the Bir hospital, one of the largelies next to the other. The team st in Kathmandu, the staff strugcontinues its search as his body, draped by a gles to cope with the deluge of patients. Nurse sheet, lies near the main road.

Suman Chaudhary has been working 12-hour This area was Machha Pokhari lake in the shifts, leaving her 10-month-old daughter, past, and people built shops, houses and ho- Avodaya, at home. The doctors are even more

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No big deal Heavy mettle

year 2020”. This target has, presumably, since been completely abandoned.

The insignificance of the Canadian deal can also be measured by a different metric: its relevance is limited to reactors that generated only about 1.5 per cent of the total electricity produced in the country over the last year. In light of this, the reported claims by the Prime Minister that “[the deal] is to save the world… from global warming and climate change” appear to be merely bombast.

While the deal with Areva was overshadowed in the media by coverage of defence agreements, it is potentially far more significant and could have serious consequences for nuclear safety and the country’s own economic interests.

The Jaitapur project has close parallels to Enron: the EPR reactors represent a flawed and expensive technology marketed by a company in deep economic difficulty. Areva started work on its first EPR in Olkiluoto (Finland) in 2005. Instead of completing work in the promised four years, it has now pushed back the date for commissioning to 2018. In 2012, it announced that costs had increased to about $10 billion — almost 300 per cent of its original estimates. Similar delays and cost increases have occurred at the other European build of the EPR at Flamanville (France). Even assuming optimistic reductions in the cost of construction in India, in a detailed study for the Economic and Political Weekly, we estimated that electricity at these reactors would cost about ₹15 per unit excluding transmission and distribution costs. This is several times higher than competing sources of electricity.

More alarmingly, just ahead of Modi’s visit, on April 7, the French Nuclear Safety Authority announced that Areva had discovered “anomalies” in the reactor pressure vessel of the Flamanville EPR that led to a “lower than expected mechanical toughness.” The safety of the pressure vessel, which contains all the radioactive material and the fission reactions within the nuclear reactor, is critical, especially in the case of the EPR that will hold the largest load of nuclear fuel of any reactor in operate at their rated capacity” primarily, as a the world. result of uranium imported from Kazakhstan This discovery underscores the folly of the and Russia.

Modi government’s efforts to reinterpret InEven for Cameco, the deal is minor; the an- dia’s liability law to protect suppliers from the ticipated sales of about 640 tonnes to India consequences of accidents caused by design each year constitute only four per cent of its defects. total annual sales of about 15,000 tonnes. In Unlike in the case of Cameco, however, the an attempt to present a rosy picture to its in- contract with India might give a lifeline to Arevestors, Cameco tried to wish away this reality. va, whose commercial outlook is extremely It claimed that “by 2032, India expects to have bleak. In March 2015, after Areva announced a 45,000 megawatts of nuclear caloss of €4.8 billion, the credit-ratpacity” and so “this contract ing agency Standard & Poor’s opens the door to a dynamic and (S&P) downgraded it to ‘BB—’, or expanding uranium market.” what investors call ‘junk grade’.

The French deal This suggestion — that the InIn spite of this, Modi’s joint advances a purchase dian nuclear sector will expand statement with the French presithat makes no sense by about 700 per cent over the dent suggests that his governfrom the standpoint next 17 years — ignores history. ment remains committed to the of either technology The Indian nuclear establisheventual purchase of up to six or economics ment has regularly made such EPR reactors. If this is indeed carpromises only to disappoint ried through, it would involve each time. For example, in 1984 a the bailout of a crumbling ‘profile’ produced by the DepartFrench public sector company by ment of Atomic Energy (DAE) promised nucle- Indian taxpayers. ar capacity of 10,000 MW by 2000. Reviewing In a speech to Indo-Canadians, Modi exthe programme 15 years later, the Comptroller plained that “we have to have an energy revoand Auditor general found that the “actual ad- lution in India.” However, his government’s ditional generation of power under the pro- actions — the liberal use of propaganda to emfile... was nil”. bellish insignificant deals, and a promise to In 2003, the secretary of the DAE wrote that spend billions of dollars on failed technology “in about four years from now, DAE will reach peddled by a multinational corporation — Riding luckon these an installed capacity of 6800 MW.” Twelve provide a revealing commentary Kaustubh Radkar at years later, total installed capacity, at 5,780 grand pronouncements. the 180.25km MW, still falls short. cycling event in Port are physicists with At the same time, the DAE also claimed to suvrat raju and mv ramana Elizabeth, Southand Africa Peace. have “formulated a programme that envisag- the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament es setting up of about 20,000 MW… by the The views expressed are personal

agreement with France is problematic, while With 11 India’s titles tonuclear his credit, Kaustubh Radkar is the country’s very own Ironman. Just one the deal likely toofhave a limited impact more victory will with placeCanada him in aisleague athletes no Indian has ever made to

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or Kaustubh Radkar, the man who bagged the World Ironman Triathlon title in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on March 29, winning is more than an obsession. The first Asian (among the only four such people in the world) to complete the Ironman Triathlon in six continents, the elated Pune athlete says, “Winning this race was important because I want to be part of an elite group which no Indian has ever made to.” With 11 titles to his credit, Radkar is just one victory away from making it to this league.

The World Ironman Triathlon, organised by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), tests an athlete’s endurance with a 3.86 km swim, 180.25 km bicycle ride and a 42.2 km run. Radkar completed the task in 13 hours, 32 minutes and 14 seconds. “Muscle pain, stomach cramps and soreness take a backseat when your mind is set on the finishing line,” says the 32-year-old whose performance at Port Elizabeth was not free from hiccups. He was vomiting due to rough sea winds and his bike chain came apart. Radkar’s next target is winning a race in Zurich in July this year. “A win there is a gateway to the World Championship,” which he plans to enter by 2017.

Power suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper pti

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Sculpting the Ironman Born and brought up in Pune, this doctor in sports medicine had his eyes on this goal since the very beginning. He became a national swimming champion when he had just entered his teens.

“I left my house by 5.30 every morning to exercise. School started at 7am,” he says. The habit of starting early hasn’t left Radkar. His day starts even before the neighbourhood rooster. After finishing college from BMCC, Pune, Radkar decided to move to the US for further studies. He chose exercise science as his subject before completing an MSc in cardiovascular physiology from Wisconsin College in 2004.

“My college friends asked me to take part in the triathlon uring his recent three-nation tour, event. I was already good at swimming and running, the onPrime Minister ly thing I had to work on was cycling,” saysNarendra Radkar. Modi oversaw nuclear agreements both Six months of hard work and patience helped him comFrance event and Canada.

Indian fortably finish his first in triathlon in 2008 The in Arizona.

Nuclear Power (NPCIL) Sharing the experience of hisCorporation first race, he says, “Asigned simplea agreement with the you French turn of eventspre-engineering teaches you a lot.

In an event where are companyhelp, Areva, which is supposed supply not allowed external I fixed a flat tyre all by to myself.

It European Pressurised (EPRs) for Jaitatook me hardly six-seven minutes,Reactors but it felt like forever.” purwas(Maharashtra).

In on Canada, the NPCIL This, he claims, his first big lesson patience. agreed to purchase about 3,200 tonnes of uranium over the next five years from the CanaBehind the scenes Cameco.

So what goesdian intocompany the making of an Ironman? Hours of On his Minister practice, willpower andreturn, a strict the diet.Prime Radkar says, “Inemphaa day, I significance of these deals andor even focus on two sised of thethe three things: swimming, running cyreportedly explained tothrice his party’s parliamencling.” He also hits the gym twice or a week.

When it they would a “huge comes to diet,tarians the 5’ that 9” athlete packs have it with meatsimpact”. and salfacts suggest otherwise. imads. He allowsHowever, himself athe cheat meal only once a week,The happy of the deal with Canada is likely to be to maintain apact weight of just 67kg. rather limited.

And far from having a positive CEO and founder of RadRx, a healthcare company, Radimpact, thewith French deal advances a purchase kar’s work leaves him little spare time. He tries to no sense fromare the as standpoint of eisqueeze out that timemakes for reading.

Books important to technology or economics. him as fridgether magnets, something he never fails to bring The uranium from Canada can only be used home from his travels. that are safeguarded InterFor advice for andreactors inspiration, Radkar looks upbytothe Rick Arnational Atomic Energy Agency.titles Leaving aside miger, a friend from the US with 21 Ironman under his ‘light water’ reactors likeupKudankulam — belt. “Rick’s disciplined life is what I look to,” he says. Arwhich require fuel, which is to covered miger’s life changed after heenriched lost his newborn son heart byin separate contracts — thewith remaining ‘heavy complications 1996. His obsession the triathlon water’ reactors under havefriends a total makes him an inspirational figuresafeguards for fans and of 1,960 mega wattsfrom (MW).the Extrapolatalike. Monicacapacity Moreno, another friend US, has ing from figures released the and Prime Ministaught Radkar the importance of beingby calm positive.

Office (PMO) in parliament in February, The mentionter’s of the family — parents and a sister — comes these would reactors require only abouthe 400 tonnes right after. “Where I be without them?” asks. of uranium each year when operating at a caekta katti is apacity Pune-based journalist factor of 85 per cent. But, as the PMO admitted in parliament in 2014, there is already “sufficient fuel available for these reactors to

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Pam for pachyderms The Baywatch babe reaches out to animals near and far

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ho would have thought that the blonde bombshell from Baywatch would take an interest in religious festivals, in faraway Thrissur? Pamela Anderson, one of the celebrity spokespersons for PETA, has decided to step in to save the elephants of the Thrissur pooram festival. Usually, Anderson’s efforts consist of magazine covers clad in little. But this time, she has written a letter to the Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and the chief priest of the Thrissur temple, asking them to replace the pachyderms with fake ones. If the authorities agree, Anderson says she will bear the cost of the fake elephants. However, Malayalis are not impressed with Anderson’s animal-friendly offer. “Will she accept if I make a suggestion that the feasts in her country should be confined to vegetarian sadya prepared by Ambi Swamy of Thrissur,” a university professor in Kerala shot back.

Take back the beach

The last of the tribe

Fat-shamers versus A dozen-odd porters at Margao’s New Market are different from those you will find in the fit-shamers rest of the country. They are the bhadels, all women and senior citizens

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re you beach body ready? Do you have washboard abs, thighs with gaps and toned arms? If not, then Protein World is asking you and all those on the London underground to slim down (using its weightloss supplement of course), shape up and hit the beach. Of course, not everyone is happy with this. When waves of ‘take the beach back’ protests broke out, the company called the protesters ‘fit-shamers’. Fat-shaming is sadly a real thing now, but what is fit-shaming? Protesters accused the company of projecting an “unrealistic image of a bronzed model” to sell their product. And while the issue of body image rages on, Protein World is making the most of a considerable sales jump.

osephine Noronha is not an easy woman to follow. Her rubber slippers appear nothing more than a blur as she walks through the maze of lanes in Margao’s central market. The pile of brown cartons on her head doesn’t slow down the 60-year-old. Noronha neither twitches nor fumbles as she frees herself of the boxes, arranging them neatly in a corner outside a busy store. “Why are you surprised? I have been doing this work for the last 30 years,” she says, adjusting her rosary and scapular with her deceptively frail fingers.

Noronha belongs to a tribe that has only a dozen or so members left: bhadels (women porters). And Margao is the only market in Goa where you will still find these women — all of them senior citizens in action.

“I worked or best-selling crime—writer Agatha Christie’s 125th in the fields agesa ago, butpoll when I married anniversary, public is seeking to and find out the had children, theChristie money was not enough.

I Murder world’s favourite mystery.

Will it beSoThe started work a bhadel,” Noronha of Roger looking Ackroydfor with its as genre-defying plot twist? Or says even another customer, owner of aOrient Experhaps theasnear-impossible Murder on the palm Dame jaggeryChristie’s and candle store, instructs her press? famous fans and relations have to fetch goods from tempo. “Mashe also weighed in on theira favourites.

David rao Suchet (the (please wait),” she tellsreally) him, puts her wages in-ABC Murbest TV Hercule Poirot has voted for The to a in purse tied atmurders her waist and goesonback to timeders, which the are based a railway work Author again. of the first-ever Poirot continuation novel table.

Loading and unloading of goods is afor roundSophie Hannah likes After the Funeral the names of the-clock affair—attwist Margao’s covered marits characters Corabusy Lansquenet around Fast yourmovers Josephine Noronha, 60, and (right) Caitana Maria Borges, 76, at work in New Market (below), which was last renovated in 1889 sharon fernandes ket. Called New Market, though it was rentongue.

Christie’s publisher loves herlast first The Mysteovated in at 1889, thewhile bhadels’ workplace is a for Five rious Affairs Styles, her gardener plumps crisscross of narrow lanes. In one such lane isfrom Little Pigs. Christie’s personal favourite however End- Davorlim or Navelim, which is close by.” turn with the goods,” adds Shetti. He teases youNight will — find Caitanasans Maria 76.cells’ “Theof Poirot These hardworking grandmothers get Carvalho on his way out: “Do you want me to less a mystery the Borges, ‘little grey women worked porters when‘60s. the Por₹2,000 or Marple; also a as tale of theeven swinging As far as the a month under the state’s senior citi- tell them how mischievous you are?” Pat tuguese were here,” she says. bhadel over zen scheme. But that’s too meagre to run a comes the reply, “Yes, please tell them that I polls go, the game is afoot.

Go Avote (forfor a Poirot)!

60 years, Borges picked up the baton household. “We need the money, even though slapped you when you were a little boy.” from her mother-in-law. She says, “I what we earn as bhadels is not great. And we The relationship between the trusty porters was married young, and my moth- are not as strong as before,” laughs Jacqueline and the traders, however, will end in a few er-in-law was a bhadel. She Carvalho, 70, from Navelim. Just like the other years. “Their numbers are dwindling, they are got me here to work. bhadels, her printed sari hangs a little above old and no young woman is interested in this Most of us are from the ankles and a towel is tucked at the waist. “I job. The Howrah Express and the Konkan Railone waddo (sec- work for two days, and the next way trains have flooded the martor) in Borda (a two days I have to rest. But I can’t kets of Goa with thousands of suburb of Mar- sit at home. Who will help us? labourers over the last decade. gao); a few are Do you think the new daughtersWe will soon have to depend on “Why are you in-law in jeans will share the non-Goans who can’t speak Konsurprised? I have ore than 1.5 lakh cats and kit- Tinder; each catShetti. has a cute profile load?” she asks. kani,” says been doing this work tens are sharesthe its world “life story” while The honesty of the bhadels is looking for homes pic andWhile around them for the last 30 years,” Last week in Kolkata, a lecturer of alegendary. reevery across the UK. Now, an homeowners swipe on cats And every storeyear ownhas changed, theleft burden on the she says while puted college was arrested for shooting animal Wood Green has they heads like. The come home er in the market vouches forcharity the of felines these women porters adjusting her rosary pellets at his neighbour. In acts of same. “re- “I can give them careeased. of theWith micerates menace. teamed up with a cleaning service and take a parcel has not of ₹30 and scapular venge”, he wounded seven people,ofincalled Handy affairs ₹1 lakh and not be worried at on an app that is an Somefor 25kgare or short-lived, ₹10 to carrywhile a shopcluding a child, over three years. all,” The says Prashant answer two problems — finding others, the charity hopes, will to bethe Naik ofto AR ping basket from the shop Parnashree police station had oftenNaik re- and Associates, foster homes for felines and get- longer, a kitchen carloving park, itaffairs. is littleNothing money like for the ceived complaints of a “sniper” shootof rodents. The app some- having a furry withwhose benefits. appliances store.ting Theridporch effort.

Asfriend widows sons ing pellets but until recently, no oneoutside his store what resembles appsdon’t like earn enough as daily wage labourers, is where mostdating bhadels had a clue of the person’s identity. Itbreak for lunch. “Our store is over 100 these women are still the breadwinners for was only when the police set up a “spe-years old… We sold cloth, rice, spices and their families. Cristalin Carvalho, 76, says, “I cial investigative team”, with undercov- gold earlier. These women have always come at 9am and leave in the afternoon, exer police and local informants that been here. They have watched us hausted. My sons are dead. And no one from Monojit Paul was caught. It was regrow up,” says Naik. the new generation wants to join me in doing vealed that the Monojit babu had “Our shop has been around for 50 this kind of work. The grandchildren live with bought an airgun, which he decided to years. Both my grandfather and father me. I need this money.” use on his neighbours. He accused employed bhadels,” says M Shetti, a rice Bhadels take a break only after the shop them of negligence when he was in- merchant, who works with Carvalho on shutters are drawn for the siesta, and the marjured in the neighboura daily basis. “We can leave our ket is relatively quiet. Their steel tiffin boxes hood three years back. The shops to them, and go are filled to the brim with rice, fried fish and a neighbourhood sniper has home for a break. They are smattering of red curry. Between morsels, eatbeen arrested and the resihonest, reliable and don’t en in silence, one of them says, “We are the ondents of Upen Banerjee road can walk charge too much unless it ly ones left. You won’t see more of us soon.” free, without being targets. is really hard work. You The rest nod in agreement. don’t have to follow them, they will re- sharon fernandes is a Goa-based writer

And then there was one A worldwide competition to pick Agatha Christie’s best crime novel

F

Trigger happy neighbour Beware of the sniper shooting pellets

Cats with benefits

Q

A feline app that tackles cat homelessness

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3 23BL BL

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saturday, may 2, 2015

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24

in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Polymath

I

t’s Satyajit Ray’s 94th birth anniversary. As a tribute, I first thought of a film quiz, then a music quiz, then one on famous typefaces.

Finally I decided to do a quiz on polymaths — those who dazzle us with their varied talents.

here,there & elsewhere

Trash bandit T

rash disposal in our building is easy: we bag up our garbage and chuck it into the Dunkin’ Donuts’ dumpster whenever we like. We’re permitted to do this as residents of this building. It’s quite a boon.

Everyone else has to remember on which day to put the trash out on the sidewalk, after having separated organic waste from inorganic and having placed the different varieties in their colourcoded plastic receptacles. In the way of chores, it’s really very minor. Yet not having to do it feels like a tiny luxury.

There should be a name for such pleasures. Something weighty and Germanic, like ‘Schadenfreude’, but meaning quite the opposite.

‘Geblissendheit’, perhaps: the bliss that comes from being spared minor inconveniences.

Anyway. Back to trash-talk. The aforementioned dumpster is a royal blue six-foot container. It is 10 yards from my kitchen window, on the other side of a chain-link fence. Every morning between 8 and 8:30, a garbage truck of matching colour comes grunting and panting up the short slope of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. The truck looks vaguely like a monstrous beetle, with antennae on either side of its head. It positions itself with perfect precision in order to swing the

cornerstone

antennae forward to engage with slots on the sides of the dumpster. Then with a slight creak, it swings the whole dumpster up high over its own head.

The dumpster’s lid swings open and, with a couple of thumps, its contents are transferred to the belly of the truck.

Mission accomplished, the truck reverses all its moves. In less than one minute it’s on its way once more. I have often watched this performance and feel weirdly enriched by it. As in: Ain’t technology Wunnderful? Because sometimes it really is. Anyway. The point of all this is that I am painting in my studio this morning and had requested

1 Bins to dispose of our weekly bag of trash. It just happens to be the day when other residents must put out their trash too. When he doesn’t come back at once, I am not surprised. He often goes out on long rambling walks.

Eventually, I hear my front door open and shut. Then footsteps and the zwip!zwip! whine of a nylon backpack being removed by someone wearing a nylon wind-cheater. Then size-11 shoes being removed and set down carefully.

Hmm, I thought. That’s odd. He normally drops them with loud thumps.

Then... silence. “Bins?” I say, uncertainly.

“Is that you?”

Just then I see him tiptoeing past my studio door. He’s carrying the backpack in a funny way and miming “Shhh!” in my direction. I can hear an unfamiliar sound. A soft musical chittering. Bins brings the bag over and opens it. I see a small furry face with the distinctive black streak across the eyes. A baby raccoon. Oh NOOO! I mime. “I found him looking for garbage,” whispers Bins. “He’s hungry! We have to feed him.” NO!NO!NO! I mime. “Yes! Yes! Yes,” says Bins. “Gimme cookie,” trills the Raccoon. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, chronicles her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

Which other talent is common to actor/ directors Woody Allen, Orson Welles; actors Adrian Brody, Neil Patrick Harris, and Charles Dickens and Muhammad Ali?

2

This polymath from the third century BC invented an algorithm for finding prime numbers, coined the word ‘geography’, created a system of latitude and longitude, wrote a couple of epics, was a well-known music theorist and correctly calculated the tilt of the earth’s axis.

Identify this genius.

3

This Nobel prize-winning author played with distinction for the Junior team of Racing Universitaire d’Alger. Tuberculosis put an end to football and he turned to journalism and philosophy. Till the end of his days, he maintained that football was more important than philosophy. The man?

4

This man was an American football star for Rutgers, a law school topper at Columbia University, a civil rights activist, and a brilliant performer on stage and in films. However, most Indians remember him for his singing voice — especially a song that inspired Bhupen Hazarika.

Name the man, even the song will do.

5

Fill in the blanks in this John F Kennedy quote. “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House — with the possible exception of when ___ ______dined alone.”

6

We all know that in addition to his Sherlock Holmes series, Arthur Conan Doyle was also a doctor, cricketer, opera writer and the man who popularised skiing in Switzerland. In which Swiss town did he start skiing in the late 19th century?

7

Legendary cricket writer John Arlott described him as follows, “____ ______ could be autocratic, angry and self-willed: he was also magnanimous, extravagant, generous, elegant, brilliant — and fun... he was probably the most variously gifted Englishman of any age.” He represented England in both cricket and football, held a world athletics record and ended his career as a sports commentator. Identify this phenomenally talented Englishman?

8 9

Which of the Pandava brothers in addition to being an expert with the bow, mace and sword was also an expert in Ayurveda?

Which Academy award and Golden Globe winning actress tried out for the US archery team for the 2000 Olympics and narrowly missed making the cut?

ANSWERS

1. All extremely talented magicians in addition to their other claims to fame 2. Eratosthenes of Crete, who also found the source of the Nile, and made a celestial catalogue featuring more than 750 stars 3. Albert Camus, who tragically passed away in a car crash in 1960 4. Paul Robeson. Ol’ Man River, Bistirno Parore/Dupare, depending on the Bhupen da version you have heard 5. Thomas Jefferson, the third president 6. Davos, which now hosts the annual World Economic Forum 7. Charles Burgess Fry 8. Nakul, also regarded as the handsomest of the brothers in the Mahabharata 9. Geena Davis. She is also a member of Mensa

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

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