Blink issue 71 june06 2015

POOR HACKS There is wider coverage of rape today, but the rulebook of reporting is flouted all too often p2 saturday, june 6, 2015

partha pratim sharma

With leopards straying into human settlements in eastern Uttar Pradesh, man and animal find themselves too close for comfort p9

Beastly tales

WORD’S WORTH Amitav Ghosh, the author who is like his books — gleeful and erudite p8

SOUND LOGIC Seeing with their ears is the key to survival for certain bats and wasps p22

explore know

BL BL 222

saturday, june 6, 2015 saturday, june 6, 2015

Flying in the dark At sunset, thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats swarm out of their daytime shelters in search of food rachel moon; (below) the female Megarhyssa wasp uses her hearing skills to locate larvae of wood-boring insects to lay her eggs on ambika kamath

Ripple effect ‘It was only because of the medical student violated in the bus on that foggy December night that a tribal woman in remote Subalpur, Birbhum district, CREATURE FEATURE received a hearing at all’ ap

Buzz in the wild Digging deeper

‘Seeing’ with sound is the key to survival for Mexican free-tailed bats and the enigmatic Megarhyssa wasps While the media has played an important role in reporting rapes, it has also been guilty of leaping to conclusions and failing the basics of journalism ambika kamath

O S

ND-X _ A

n warm, still summer evenings in Gainesville, Florida, a motley crowd gathers pack in front two tatistics sometimes moreofpunch large, strangeheadlines. wooden structures, than newspaper According apparently nothingreleased more than roofsNational on tall to figures by the stilts. Affixed the front Bureau of each roof a black Crimeto Records last isyear, 93 wooden silhouette a bat.every An elderly couple women are raped inofIndia day, meaning support otherhere as they towardsEach the a womaneach is raped everywalk 15 minutes. benches the odd houses. A young instanceoverlooking is an occasion for collective regret, boy enacts a zombie drama for his ever-pabut our outrage is often delimited by the qualtient as they wait for the to set. ity of parents journalistic intervention.

Oursun pursuit of Teenage tomotion join the just as justice isgirls oftenrun set in bygroup the reporter’s darkness starts to fall, hopping onto the fencfirst judgment. es While that stop us from gettingoftoo close the the wider coverage rape and to sexual houses. uninitiated growviolenceToinan recent times isobserver, a positivethe developing throng must seem mystifying. ment, the rulebook forthoroughly reporting such crimes Butcomes after the sungreater sets, youscrutiny. see whatMost all the also under refuss is about: the spectacle of hundreds of porters would confess that a balance between thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats swarmsensitivity and accuracy is difficult to strike in ing out of their daytime shelters and flying off a climate of sensationalism.

Moreover, cases into the night.

As they first trickleserve and as then like that of Priyadarshini Mattoo retumble endlessly out of their houses, can’t minders.

Journalists can impact theyou judicial help but be by so their numprocesses of impressed this country, thesheer veracity of bers. also needs can’t help their puntheir You findings to besmelling examined. gent guano, busyatrocities clicking How does and one hearing faithfullytheir recount chatter.

But never their most impressive sensory that victims want to describe again to ability echolocation — is one we humans friends,—let alone strangers? How does a jourcan’t perceive. nalisteven unpack a victim’s testament? How does Insect-eating bats of have a range of a reporter stay clear easyevolved prejudices, where sophisticated mechanisms they ‘see’ ‘kangaroo courts’ are seenby aswhich regressive and with sound.

By emitting high-frequency adivasis as backward? sounds and then listening for the reflection off want Tooobjects terriblethey to be trueto land on or insects they want eat, bats can create fairly In hertorecently released ebooka 13 Menprecise (Deca), mental image of the world around them. It’s a Sonia Faleiro investigates the January 2014 bit likerape walking around at night withina village torch, gang of a 20-year-old woman except thatWest the torch is inside your eyes.

Subalpur, Bengal.

As the bats swoop out ofreportage the bat-houses, exThrough her extensive and invespertly avoiding andthe hawks and that scores of tigation Faleirotrees exposes pitfalls jourpeople standing below while pickingShe tiny innalists fail to avoid all too frequently. stays

sects out of the air, I start to wonder about Clicking at just the right time can save the tihow noisy this environment might be in the ger moth’s life. frequencies my hearing.

Surely, clear of easybeyond pronouncements and neverwith suc- ing Inwhich, the forests notseven far from she says, menthe tookbat-houses turns raphundreds thousandsunderstanding of bats trying of to navicumbs to aofsimplistic right lives a formidable insect—that onand its ing her, while two more her depends date, Drew, gate throughinstead it, evenshe theasks sky questions, can seem crowdand wrong; listens sense of hearing much instruction as the bats and another man —as gave and ed.

Actually, the situation is eventhe worse than hard, digs deep and unearths story thatI moths do. For the Megarhyssa wasp, however, encouragement.” imagined.

Beyond dodgingAtother did not make it to simply the headlines. timestravshe hearing allows it not tomade feed orheadlines, avoid being fed ‘A Rape on Campus’ unforellers in the aerial equivalent of a train station appears to be hedging her judgements.

While on, but to successfully.

Female tunately for reproduce quite the wrong reasons; it beplatform, Mexican free-tailed must this mightthese frustrate some readers, bats it also dis- Megarhyssa wasps lay their eggs on the to larvae came an example of ‘how not do cope intentional sabotage from their obeyswith the usual diktats of investigations, leav- of wood-boring insects.

As their sugjournalism.’

It was discovered thatname journalist swarm-mates. ing it remarkably open-ended. Faleiro delivers gests, wood-boring larvae not livetoinside Sabrina Rubin Erdelyinsect had chosen interThetosabotage occurs facts the reader, andprecisely then leaves it to them view any of the wood.

Looking theidentified Megarhyssa men Jackieathad as at moment before a bat cap-This is the kind her rapists. wasp, tothe draw their own conclusions.

I struggled to imagine how Sources that Erdely mentioned, tures an that insect, a time whenand its of book causes debate she could locate to a wood-boring which seemed corroborate signal is mostand vulnerable bediscussions, must betocominsect through many centiJackie’slarva story, later confessed to ing jammed.

To pinpoint the lomended for that. metres of wood, lettoalone find aa have never spoken her. After The sabotage occurs cation of itsstarts prey,by a bat emits a The book chronicling way in whichinvestigation, to deposit herpolice eggs four-month precisely at the series of calls in rapid succesthe horrifying suffering of the moment onto it. claimed they had not officials For many reporters before a bat sion, known as a ‘feeding survivor (called Baby inbuzz.’ the And any yet she does. that By sensing found evidence would who reached captures an insect, a Other to time when book).bats As are oneespecially of Baby’salert assaisubtlethe vibrations of a woodconfirm allegations Erdely Subalpur, its signal is the the feeding buzzes their comlants recorded herof gang rape backwardness boring beetle larva as it chews seemed to have levelled in her reproved most vulnerable to petitors, and will emit a12signal with his digital camera, other through wood, these wasps can port. Rolling Stone apologised for too convenient being jammed a that overlapsmen almost completely, inebriated forced thempick larvae that are at its exactly theseout ‘discrepancies’ and pubstereotype in bothontiming and frequency. selves her in succession.

Lalu the depth to which their lisher asked the dean ofoviposiColumThis interception the Murmu, one of theconfuses assailants, is tors will extend.

She then posibia University Graduate School of bat enough almost reported tothat haveitsaid, “If always you do tions herself to carefully above the Journalism audit its flawed misses its prey, the other not allow me, leaving I will insert mybats a chance larvae, and lifts her abdomen comically Steve high journalistic processes. to catch theyour insect instead.and bring it out and in hand into abdomen the report air to be to position‘Aher ovipositor, Coll’s is able unambiguous.

Rape on Camthisan sort of interfeeatEven youmore raw.” interestingly, This cruelty had unlikely par- the through which she lays herfailure eggs, pus’,tubes he says, is a ‘story of journalistic rence doesn’t allel across thecome globe. only from other bats — perfectly perpendicular to the wood’s surface. that was avoidable’. bats sometimes suffer indignity of By exuding an enzyme that dissolves through Oncan November 19, 2014, thethe American magajamming at the hands of their prey as zine Rolling Stone published a insect story titled ‘A wood, the wasp’s delicate ovipositor painstakBaby, interrupted well. the report gloriously patterned Rape In onparticular, Campus’. The recounted the ingly makes its Rolling way through solid wood.

Even after this, Stone publisher Jann red-and-yellow tiger moth is known to emit an Watching events of a night in September 2012 when Jacka Megarhyssa wasp her eggs is faas Wenner referred to Jackie as ‘alay really expert ultrasonic instudent, responseistosaid the to signals ie, then a clicking freshman have enthralling as watching the enormous aggrebulist storyteller’.

The accusation, though imof certain Again, the counter-clicking been rapedbats. by seven members of a fraternity gation of bats flying into the I wish I prudent, helped amplify an night, alreadybut prevalent seems confuse the bat’s ability locate the could at the to University of Virginia.

The to descriptions what theyever hearbeen too. raped? By the doubthear — had Jackie insect, much likeinshining a light in your eyes of sexual assault 13 Men and ‘A Rape on Camtime you turn the last page of 13 Men, you find studies evolutionary just to“She reach for your spoon pus’ as areyou’re eerilyabout similar. remembers every ambika yourselfkamath frustrated byorganismic a similarand question.

Unat Harvard Universityhowever, it is the crediand fork of may you of from eating. moment thewell nextprevent three hours agony, dur- biology like Erdely’s credulity,

Q Q R R

3

BL

know

saturday, june 6, 2015

Centre court Tribals carrying traditional weapons march through Kolkata in protest against the arrest of 13 Santhals, including their community head ashoke chakrabarty

bility of Faleiro’s reporting that makes you examine Baby’s account of the assault.

‘A Rape on Campus’ is decidedly guided by the testimony of Jackie, and in the first part of 13 Men, Baby too is the unrivalled protagonist. But Faleiro’s access to Baby — she was the only journalist allowed to interview the rape victim in a high-security government shelter — does not persuade her to sacrifice objectivity. Though prominent, the survivor’s narration is judiciously interrupted by voices that corroborate as well as contradict. Faleiro carefully delineates the chain of events that Baby said had unfolded on the night of January 20, 2014. Enraged by her affair with a married Muslim man, the Santhal villagers of Subalpur had forcibly dragged Baby and Khaleque out of her house. They had tied the couple to a tree and, before the shalisi sabha (village council) could deliver its verdict the next morn-

ing, Baby alleges, she had been raped by 13 of ports from Subalpur. The audit proves critical.

Subalpur’s most powerful men. Faleiro never Tribal traditions and governmental response challenges this claim directly. She simply aren’t the only issues at stake. When an inpoints out that the additional district and ses- stance of rape gains national prominence, the sions judge who had sentenced the accused to aftermath is felt across board. Faleiro writes, an imprisonment of 20 years in September “It was only because of the medical student vihad done so without any medical or scientific olated in the bus on that foggy December proof. The lack of forensic evidence doesn’t night that a tribal labourer in remote Subaljust demonstrate the limits of a fast-tracked pur received a hearing at all.” According to dainvestigation. It also denies Baby an imperfo- ta recently tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the rate justice. Her statements still warrant a rig- number of rapes registered in India jumped orous review. from 24,929 in 2012 to 33,703 in 2013. The 35 per Faleiro is wary of her counterparts in India’s cent increase demonstrates a new courage. mainstream media. Referring to the Subalpur Protests that followed the December 16 gang judgment, she writes, “The decision didn’t rape helped expose the much-neglected mamake the front pages, like the laise of sexual violence. The tenanews of the rape had. There had cious coverage by India’s media been other, widely-discussed only emboldened awareness. sexual assaults in India in the inJournalists have doubtlessly nevterim, and people — or perhaps er been more integral to the What Faleiro just news editors — were no processes of transition. discovered was that longer interested in the destiny Banned in India, BBC’s docuthe case had been India’s Daughter was acof some poor tribal men, or even mentary almost entirely cused of being part of ‘a of their victim.” In an interview misreported conspiracy to defame India’ by to The Hindu, she is yet more candid. “What I discovered was that Minister of Parliamentary Affairs the case had been almost entireM Venkaiah Naidu. The governly misreported.” ment and a section of activists Early last year, journalists were quick to were united in their opposition. Filmmaker claim that Baby’s gang rape was a punishment Leslee Udwin, they claimed, had simply reinadministered by a ‘kangaroo court’ in her vil- forced misogyny by interviewing an unrelage. The ensuing indignation reportedly pentant Mukesh Singh. Though the convict’s compelled Mamata Banarjee to take action. views were reprehensibly violent, the ban on She is said to have circulated an internal me- the film effectively made conspicuous a remo asking that the state police disband all vil- grettable truth. India wasn’t prepared to aclage councils. Faleiro gives these parallel cept the journalistic tenet that every story has justice systems a context. Not only do they act two sides, and that in cases of rape, the perpeas arbiters of everyday complaints, they are al- trator’s perspective is often unpalatable. so a perceived solution to neglect and a deFaleiro in 13 Men shows that a recreation of fence against mineral-hungry land sharks. For events can be completed only by telling the many reporters who reached Subalpur, back- stories of the men as well. She uses her 15,000 wardness proved too convenient a stereotype. words to pack in the several details required Their resultant assertions of a sanctioned to place Baby’s ordeal within a social and politgang rape were irreversibly damaging. The ical framework. In the end, this specificity council had only levelled punitive fines. It turns out to be crucial. Faleiro had one enviable advantage. She took eight months to rehadn’t prescribed assault. port the story. In the process, she mended news that others were too eager to break.

Step across this deadline Much of 13 Men is an inadvertent correction of errors that journalists had made in their re- shreevatsa nevatia

Q R

Yesterday’s news The media soon lost interest in the fate of 13 tribal men arrested for assault ap

takeaway know

BL BL 204

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

To the east of Eden Unsullied by the tourism onslaught in the country, villages around Loikaw in East Myanmar are home to a longneck tribe and their many tales

A

s I sat down on the wooden bench of a roadside bar in remote Eastern Myanmar — home to the long-neck tribe Kayan Lahwi — a tribal woman, presumably the owner, sauntered in. Her round face and hair, a close crop that fell on the forehead, was typical of a Kayan woman. But something else was different about her. It was her neck. It was abnormally long and slender and I quickly realised that she was liberated from her set of tribal neck rings. “Has she had her neck rings reBlind ride IMost casualties wereJoseph workersand under various government moved?” asked my guide immediately felt anwelfare schemes t vijaya kumar urge to talk to her to know if she feels any different or scared that her neck will snap.

Heavy bronze rings are added to a Kayan girl’s neck at the tender age of five. The neck gets elongated as the girl becomes a woman. An age-old practice to prevent rival tribes from abducting the beautiful Kayan Lahwi women, the tradition is now waning but women with bronze-ringed necks are still found in the villages surrounding Loikaw, the capital of Kayah, a state in East Myanmar.

Turns out, this particular woman, Mu Prize, removed

Burnt out

As Andhra and Telangana lose over 1,500 people to the heat wave, the under-preparedness of the governments in tackling the crisis lies exposed Standing in prayer Wooden temples are built to appease nats or spirits

F

ND-X _ A

our young men made an omelette sans a stove in Sultanabad, Karimnagar, recently. One of them held out a pan under the sun, while another broke an egg over it. No, they were not making a YouTube video. They were just trying to make an otherwise punishing summer day an enjoyable one. What they made looked like a half-boiled egg — a state that people in both states found themselves in for about two weeks in the latter half of May. Till May 15, it was largely a dream summer in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Punctuated by cloudy days and intermittent rains, the weather was quite unsummery. Sale of airconditioners and coolers slumped. The biggest disappointment of the season was the scanty yield of Banganapalli mangoes and other seasonal fruits. What appeared like a kind summer led to a sense of complacency in the government machinery. Their under-preparedness was exposed in the weeks ahead as the only action the hapless government could manage was to bombard people with tame messages of dos and don’ts, even as over 1,500 people died.

The first signs of a cruel season surfaced by May 18. Temperatures soared, abruptly making Andhra Pradesh and Telangana a veritable furnace. In the next 10 days, over 1,500 people were killed, with over a 1,000 in Andhra Pradesh alone. The prolonged heat wave forced people to remain indoors most of the day. But that was of not much help. With walls and rooftops remaining hot till 10pm, there was little relief on offer.

In the coastal districts of Andhra, east and west Godavari, Prakasam, Guntur, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram, the blistering heat Staying calm The Seven Fairies Lake in Loikaw all photos bygenerated prathap nair by the above-normal temperature

combined with the sultry, humid conditions access to oral rehydration or medical help eiproved vicious. In Prakasam district, which is ther. According to official records in Andhra, facing the worst drought situation in nearly about 25 per cent of the victims are workers half a century, cattle and human death was under various government welfare schemes. the highest at around 350.

Casualties were also reported among sheep VS Krishna, general secretary, Human grazers, construction workers and bus passenRights Forum, blames it on indifferent govern- gers. “They come with high levels of dehydraments. “What’s the point of announcing com- tion, fever and vomiting. If we can give them pensation after sunstroke killed them? They fluids in time, we can revive them. We have should have done something for farmers, dai- been treating such patients in the last two ly labourers, the elderly and children,” he says. weeks,” says Koundinya, a house surgeon at Unlike most other natural disasters like cy- the Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad. clones, floods, droughts and cold The Hudhud cyclone in Octowaves, a heat wave does not qualber last year in a way aggravated ify to be tackled on an emergenthe current situation in Visakhacy basis by the National Disaster patnam, Godavari districts, The only action the Management Authority nor does Krishna, Nellore and Prakasam. hapless government the centre provide compensaThe missing greenery pushed up could manage was to tion or relief to the victims. It is bombard people with humidity to agonising levels for left to the states to fight and fend tame messages of dos a few days. People, who went on for themselves. States like Odholidays in the region, were and don’ts isha have a mechanism of comforced to spend their vacation pensation and relief measures, indoors. while Gujarat has shown some One silver lining in this gloom preparedness. However, heat was the improved power situawaves sweep through northern India, includ- tion in both states. Those who could afford to ing the national capital, with consistent fre- stay in protected environments or worked inquency, as data proves. It is only the deaths doors had the benefit of continuous power and temperatures that are religiously report- supply. During the summer of 2014, extended ed, only to be quietly forgotten when the sum- power cuts and an uncertain political environmer is gone. ment had taken the lives of nearly a 1,000 peoAs is often the case, it is the poor and the ple during a less-severe heat wave. lower-middle class that bore the brunt of this Now, the worst appears to be past us. There heat wave. Among those killed by sunstroke have been a few showers and the temperature was an eight-month-old baby in east Godavari has climbed down. “The worst phase is over. district. Though she was not exposed to the We are forecasting a drop in temperatures and sun directly, the heat proved to be fatal. Simi- rains in several parts,” says an official at the Inlarly, a 75-year-old man in Ongole reportedly dian Meteorological Department. succumbed to the heat as his thatched hut was not protection enough. He did not have k v kurmanath with m somasekhar

Q R

5

BL

know

saturday, june 6, 2015

Zero filter India views Bangladesh as a limitless source of unwelcome immigrants creating ethnic strife in the Northeast ritu raj konwar

STATES OF MATTER

Neighbourhood watch Recent bonhomie between India and Bangladesh is a poor camouflage for the mutual suspicion that stems from our constant indifference to land, water and border issues

sukumar muralidharan

F

ailing a late mood shift, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will land in Dhaka today as part of an alltoo-rare bilateral visit to Bangladesh by an Indian Prime Minister. Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh involves a substantive agenda, again a relative rarity in relations between the neighbours. Banerjee was on the invitee list when Manmohan Singh visited as Prime Minister in 2011, but pulled out at the last moment, forcing an important river-water sharing agreement off the agenda.

That remains one neighbourly courtesy India has continued to deny, four decades since an agreement with Bangladesh promised a future of mutual harmony. The Sheikh Mujib-Indira Gandhi accord of 1974 was to come into effect on an exchange of instruments of ratification between the two sides. Bangladesh managed its end of the bargain without delay but India, then under the imperious Indira Gandhi, who had a comfortable majority in parliament and virtually all state governments under her thumb, fell short.

India then basked in an aura of parenthood built on the support rendered to Bangladesh through its liberation war and the final military coup de grace it administered to vanquish the oppressors. But the glow did not last long. Perceptions began mutating rapidly on both sides following the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

In India, Bangladesh soon came to be perceived as a teeming landmass of truculent people, an impediment to cementing the country’s complex Northeast into the nationalist topography. A nation that India liberated was seen to have transformed itself into a demographic time bomb, a limitless source of unwelcome immigrants stirring the ethnic cauldron in the Northeast, reducing it to a state of permanent strife.

In Bangladeshi perceptions, the neighbourhood leviathan went from being a potential partner working for the shared good, to an enveloping presence, wrapping the entire country in a far-from-benign territorial embrace. It was a neighbour that failed to show the largeheartedness appropriate to its imposing size.

When called on to work out a comprehensive gress of the fencing project along the Banglaland, water and border agreement in a com- desh border. plex terrain, whose ecology did not readily Could an impenetrable fence be constructadapt to arbitrarily drawn national borders, ed along a stretch of over 4,000km, among India constantly changed the subject. And the longest land and riverine borders in the while disavowing the unwelcome identifica- world? That question has never seriously been tion as a fount of illegal migrants, Bangladesh addressed as the barbed wire fencing continwas also known to argue that population ues apace. Yet with a substantial part of the shifts would continue if land and water man- fencing completed, perhaps to the extent of agement issues were not settled.

90 per cent in the Assam sector, an assessment India, meanwhile, continued its dogged of how it has impacted border communities vigil over the baleful legacy of Partition, which could certainly be carried out. created a host of irregular features along the Recent bonhomie is a poor camouflage for border, virtually enclosing several citizens of the mutual suspicion that lurks just under the each country in the territory of the other, sub- surface. From India’s side, the overtures of rejecting them to the hostility of neighbours cent times are an offshoot of its ‘look east’ poland suspicious border guards. icy, a recognition that the centre India’s Border Security Force of gravity of global economic (BSF), as documented in a Hudynamics is shifting to Asia. Inman Rights Watch report in dia’s Northeast is regarded as a The alleged influx from 2010 and again by the Banglaspringboard for the new ecoBangladesh has always desh campaign group Odhikar nomic linkages with the east remained an last month, became a ruthless and having Bangladesh onside uncertainly quantified enforcer, subjecting marginalis vital to bringing this designatphenomenon, allowing ised and desperately poor bored role to fruition. for every manner of der communities to an arbitrary Though eager to be rid of the wild surmise to reign of excess and terror. constrictions of its encirclegain traction The Tin Bigha lease in 1992 ment by India, Bangladesh is unwas a beginning in the effort to likely to relent in the matter of set right the anomalies of bortransit rights without greater ders inherited from Partition. In accommodation on water sharOpposition at the time, the BJP equated this ing. And there India’s larger ambitions revery modest territorial adjustment to a variety main stymied by the smaller agendas that its of high treason. In craven confusion, the Con- diverse mosaic of states brings to the table. gress government withdrew, allowing the Bangladesh is keen to ensure that India rerightwing veto to stand and severely limiting mains well-disposed as it deals with bitter inthe hours through which Bangladeshis would ternal convulsions, centred around be allowed transit through the corridor. unresolved issues of history and national The alleged influx from Bangladesh has al- identity. If India demands a price for its goodways remained an uncertainly quantified phe- will, it could easily be represented within the nomenon, allowing for every manner of wild polarities of Bangladeshi politics as a betrayal surmise to gain traction. Consultations to get of national interests. Without sensitive handa true measure of a serious humanitarian ling, the rapprochement with the neighbour problem have been rare, though fiery rhetoric could then become a partisan time bomb that has been abundant. In December 2014, India’s could damage the cause of a more friendly Supreme Court reprised the theme of ‘exter- and peaceful subcontinent. nal aggression and internal disturbance’ that it first broached nine years before, and took sukumar muralidharan is a fellow at the Indian upon itself the onus of monitoring the pro- Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla

Q R

work read

BL BL 186

saturday, june 6, 2015 saturday, june 6, 2015

Tryst withturn our of dark selves Lucrative events Essays thatthat examine the long-term consequences of Partition ‘hitherto A website lets youngsters register and apply for part-timeand jobsventure ranginginto from in-mall unaddressed areas’ such asexhibition Ladakh and thetoNortheast promotions and manning stalls tele-calling for the numerous gigs in town

A

s a teenager, Amin Memon was always looking for ways to earn pocket money. A few odd jobs here and there brought him cash, but not as often as he’d have liked. He needed to be in touch with event managers and marketing professionals to find out about openings for part-time workers. That’s when he thought of a website that would list all upcoming parties on a single platform, although he then had neither the resources nor the programming abilities to create one. Finally, after completing his graduation he began the groundwork for his project.

“It was a completely niche and untapped sector. I learnt about the technology from my friends and began coding for the website around the end of 2012,” says the 25-year-old Mumbai entrepreneur, who has a postgraduate degree in advertising.

Together with friends Kadir Sayyed and Moiz Sayed, he developed the software and launched EventBaba.com in February 2013.

The website lets youngsters register and apply for events-related jobs such as in-mall promotions, manning exhibition stalls, concierge guides, tele-calling, short-duration workshops and so on. Once a candidate is shortlist- Youth at work EventBaba candidates run the show at an interactive stall for a children’s TV channel ed for an event, she is briefed by the EventBaba Helpless against team and paid in cash after the event. hate A mother washes her sick child this and started Memon says male workers can earn ₹400- day,” says Memon, adding that of the total reg- strapped. We pooled our in savings 650 per day, depending on the timings and istrations, around 40 per cent is female. the website.” 1953 image of Partition The site charges a commiswork requirements, and female workers get Initiallyrefugees companies were apliving in Howrah ₹600-1,800 per day. Job applicants should be sion of 20-40 per cent of an proached directly for business. station, Calcutta in the 18-28 age group, although the site rou- event’s outlay. “If the event inThe client base includes event the hindu archives tinely receives queries from candidates as volves a lot of hard work, outagencies, advertising agencies, The youngsters like young as 13. “We have to refuse them as we door activities and longer work start-ups and direct brands. “We to brag share moment iery Urdubelow poet 18,” JoshMemon Malihabadi hours, we reduce our to give it to a lapse incut sanity.

The violence be- andhistorical don’t hire people says. mi- signing get recurring from and situatebusiness it amid our diwithculturalthem. toofPakistan a decade after Parmore toan theaberration users but iforthe a work part of the their other.cardverse Withingrated 10 days the launch, EventBaba had comes Most of the new clients are and political processes. friends. helpsessayscoming tition, much against his friend is fairly simple, increase it saves ourthen ownwe selves from scrutiny.

I re- That The 200 users and four clients on board.

Today, Thus word-of-mouth explorethrough new narrative forms us get users Jawaharlal Nehru’s counsel.

Afraid our cut,”how saysaMemon.

EventBafriend was shocked to read themore more than 23,000 have registered on the por- member referrals from satisfied clients,” such as graphic stories, reveal how Partition on board that Urduthere had no in an independent In- accounts ba was profitable from the first of violence against Muslims in Puntal and arefuture part-time job offers from he says. community of the Bancame to the borderless dia dominated Hindi,including Josh was lured by the month itself, he adds. in Gyanendra Pandey’s book on Partition. ni pastoralists, and more than 100by clients the likes of jab To expand its pool of job candireconstruct memories and promise of greater respect Urdu Day, and Pidihim It was Thatsomething is preciselyhe why starthadthe never come across in events to gaindates, Airtel, Yamaha, Godrej, CaféforCoffee EventBaba developed new insights.

Anhas interesting esin His homeland up has notViolence, raised any funds as far as heso knew, had hap- say tells the little-known lite,Pakistan.

Garnier, Nataraj, Philips anddream FedEx. soon textbooks. an innovative strategy.

Anyone history of the comsoured, and he spent his registrations last years in every utter pened far. “Itmostly is completely in Pakistan. boot“We get around 70 new who works is munists of Kashmir and with theirthe keycompany role in the frustration and disillusionment. His ideas did While the elite history perpetuates our naï- shaping given customised business cards. “The youngof Sheikh Abdullah’s campaign not exactly endear him to the ruling elite. veté by muting the individual sters like to against brag and share their princely rule. cards Prajnawith PaAmong Punjabi Muslims, who dominated pol- voices, the oral or subaltern hisfriends. Thatramita helpsParasher us get recovers more users on memoitics and culture in that country, he was a less- tory brings us face to face with board,” he adds. ries of her father, the famous er being — a mohajir, as those who migrated our dark selves by parsing those Additionally, more than 20 candidates have artist SL Parasher, as she looks at from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were called. silences. The oral history can tell bagged jobs atof various companies the sketches the displaced he Oral history tells permanent Sometime during his last years, the story goes, us, for instance, that the victims on the basis of theirwhen performance an Eventmade he was inatcharge of us that the victims Josh, so proud of his delicate Lakhnawi Urdu, of Partition were actually womassignment.

“Somecamp othersinget work on a the refugee Ambala. of PartitionBaba were was found struggling to learn Punjabi. When en and children and not Hindus, project clients,” he too says.disToday,from Partition seems actually women andbasis directly someone asked him about it, he retorted, “Su- Muslims or Sikhs.

EventBaba two to three tant to the handles new generation.

The children andCurrently, not na hai dozakh main Punjabi hi boli jaati hai (I Urvashi Butalia had exposed events a day. names With growing from othof Delhidemand localities such as Hindus, Muslims have heard they speak only Punjabi in hell).” such silences around Partition er cities, Memon launched the services in Derawal Nagar, Kohat Enclave or Sikhs Elite history often elides the history that is in her now famous book The OthPune last month a tie-up and through Gujranwala Town,with all event evoklived by people. The history that people tell er Side of Silence. Her latest book, managementing firm Benchmark.

“While they locations in Pakistan, hardly each other, or memory reconstructs, always Partition: The Long Shadow, a colwill look after marketing, speak to themwe thewill waymanage they didthe to trumps the history that grows out of archives. lection of essays by scholars, is backend from Mumbai,” says.many This means their parents.heHow would The history of Partition is not merely what an addition to a growing discipline that can point Benchmark will arrange events and, Eventout Partition as a for significant event, let Nehru, Jinnah and the British did, or didn’t do. be called Partition studies. It was originally alone Baba will shortlistit? and assign candidates for understand Few can even speak the It is chiefly what we — as religious, gendered conceived as a set of lectures to mark the 60th language, the relatedsuch jobsas through Pune portal.

Seraiki,its that their elders did. and ethnic subjects — did to one another. Our anniversary of Partition, but was later expand- Yet,Delhi, Bengaluru andasHyderabad next in Partition is as real it was halfare a century tryst with destiny, which our textbooks so ed to take in new works as well. line, for again tie-ups.

Memon is are nowstill alago, thethrough assumptions that led to it proudly tell us of, was also the time when we As the title suggests, the book explores the alive. so open the ideaofofPartition tappingwill seedbefunds.

AfThetomemory relevant had a tryst with our dark selves. long-term consequences of Partition. It also to terusall, calendar promisesinfests to be as his longbusiness as the politics of Partition Partition as a historical event suppresses brings to the discipline “hitherto unad- our eventful for some time to come. times.

Partition as a personal memory. As a historical dressed areas” such as Ladakh and the Northkumar is a Delhi-based journalist rashmi pratap narrative, it exceptionalises the violence as- Amin Friends-turned-job creators (From left) Moizby Sayed, Memon and Kadir to Sayyed EventBaba.com east.

It attempts takeofPartition beyond a dharminder

F

Partition: The Long Shadow Edited by Urvashi Butalia Zubaan Non-fiction ₹599

Q R

Q R

ND-X _ A

7

BL

talk

saturday, june 6, 2015

THE CRITICAL ISSUE

Education became our battle In Pakistan those who have faced violence move forward by returning to the classroom

Bravest of them all Pakistani children arrive at their school in Peshawar on December 20, 2014, after three days of mourning for those killed by Taliban militants in an attack on an army-run school afp / a majeed

I

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

t’s the second day of the Islamabad Literature Festival. The first event on the schedule is a conversation with students of the Army Public School, Peshawar. Public memory is often short and I do not immediately register that this is the same school where the shootout took place that left 141 dead — including 132 students, and others like teachers and caretakers — in December 2014.

Instead, my mind is on a more recent shooting in Karachi — that of well-known and much loved activist Sabeen Mahmud, the founder of a creative and political space called T2F (short for ‘the second floor’). Mahmud was shot dead in her car while returning from an event she had organised on Baluchistan. Earlier slated to be held at the Lahore University of Management Studies this event was apparently cancelled due to government pressure.

The literature festival takes both of these things squarely on board: it opens with a moving tribute to Mahmud, and with the announcement that there will be a special session devoted to her, it then leads straight into the conversation with students.

On the stage are young people who were present during the shooting; including a math teacher who was in class, father of an injured student, and the head of an NGO that has been formed to bring together survivors — ‘not only for students but also for peons, sweepers and others for, after all, they too died or were injured.’

The conversation begins with a brief introduction, although no one in the packed-to-the brim hall needs to be reminded of what happened that day. Ameena Saiyid, director of the festival and publisher of Oxford University Press Pakistan, does this with grace. She then hands over to Ayesha Mian, a trained psychia-

trist who reminds the audience of the need for home. “Every corner reminds me of him,” she sensitivity while talking to the students. says. On Fridays, most parents no longer send “These young people have been through a their children to school, fearing attacks. traumatic time,” she says, and speaks about But for most of them, the hardest thing is to the courage it takes to be in a public forum. reconcile the medical with the social and eduShe suggests therefore that both the conversa- cational. Many parents still take their children tion and the questions need to focus not on to hospitals for treatment, and students are the events of that day but on how the students not yet ready to take on things like exams. But have moved forward, and what has helped despite reassurances and guarantees, the eduthem arrive where they are at now. cational system has been indifferent and does “I never thought I would be able to return to not make allowances for trauma, injuries and school,” says Mohammed Amir, psychological damage. “And if who was wounded in the attack, this is the case with elite stu“the bullet hit my hand, and it’s dents,” Suleiman, the math the hand with which I write.” Deteacher tells us, “then imagine How, the speaker spite the trauma, he — like many what it is like for the poor, those of his friends — went back to asks, can a society be whose children went to the sensitised to the school the day it opened. “This same school, children who sold reality of a fractured was the best way for us to avenge chips in the breaks to help pay society? Of a society ourselves, from that day on, edufor their education.” torn apart by violence cation became our battle.”

These questions are critical to When asked, “You have experiour society today. How can instienced terrorism, what can you tutions be sensitised to the realtell us about how to prepare to ity of a fractured society, of a face it?” Musha Ahmed says, “An society torn apart by violence? experience like this teaches you that terrorism What is the role of the State? A speaker points is a reality and you have to learn to face it.” He out that “till today, the Prime Minister has not describes his experience: “I wanted to join the visited Peshawar to meet the children.” What army, but this injury means I cannot do that will it take, he asks, for the State to understand now. But I will not let this defeat me, I will not both its power and its responsibilities towards let my morale down. I’ve decided if I can’t have its citizens? the army, I will go in for aeronautical The discussion is moving, mature, and engineering.” strongly political. And it’s taking place at a litAs story after story is recounted, the audi- erature festival. ence learns about what it takes for society to As Suleiman, the teacher says, “I lost eight deal with such trauma, and how convinced students, now the number of lost students is the survivors are that the only answer to vio- much higher. Every janaza — whether of one or lence is education. The parents, we’re told, are 50 — is as painful. Please do something.” equally traumatised. A mother who lost her blink@thehindu.co.in son in the attack can no longer bear to live at

Q R

read meet

BL BL 16 8

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Storyteller for all times An ode that stayed PAPERWALLAH

Amitav Ghosh on daydreaming in Goa, Calcutta of the 19th century, and a special fan letter John Keats, with his lovelorn poems and early death, is the perfect gentle obsession

I

Having just completed a UK book tour and t began in school, this mild obsession, spurning the first signs of flu, Ghosh seems a sparked by a picture in a poetry textbook. tad weary of analysing his books. He expresses A sketch of John Keats, head tilted and no undue distress that the characters he has janice pariat crowned with curly hair, hand supportlived with for 10 years have been put to rest. ing his chin, clad in a cuffed white shirt, dark There is no lingering melancholy at having eyes staring into the distance. To be honest, completed the trilogy. He has no wish to disthere wasn’t much to choose from for a teensect his characters or scrutinise the books’ age girl — TS Eliot looked sternly grim, WH Austructure. He says simply, “I didn’t have any den wrinkly and, well, old, William Blake a bit idea, I sort of blunder around... It was never of a silver-haired Santa, Philip Larkin a balding completely thought out.” What works, goggle-eyed septuagenarian. (Come to think shouldn’t be probed too deeply — that seems of it now, why were there only male poets in to be the axiom of his answers. our Elective English syllabus?) Keats, though, We sail out from the Flood of Fire, docking at was eternally youthful. He died at 25; hence bequestions of time and place, and immediately stowed, like all artistes who pass away young, his eyes light up and his ‘Ohs’ rise a notch with an air of tragic glamour. He wrote romanhigher. Calcutta serves as the port of departic poems with lines like ‘Pillow’d upon my ture for all his characters and for him as well. fair love’s ripening breast.’ And then, of When he wanders through the city, he sees the course, there were his odes. All six composed “significant global port” that Calcutta was in in 1819, in quick, frenetic succession. ‘On a Grethe 19th century. The wars that the British cian Urn.’ ‘On Indolence.’ ‘On Melancholy.’ ‘To launched from the port rise before his eyes, as Psyche.’ ‘To Autumn.’ ‘To a Nightingale.’ do the opium auction markets and wareIn school, we studied the last two, taught by houses from where the East India Company a forbidding Bengali lady — shall we call her sold the narcotic to China. From his childMs SS? — who pretty much thought our class of hood, Ghosh’s regular restaurant outing used three (Elective English wasn’t fashionable to be to Nanking, said to be the oldest Chinese those days; also everyone was terrified of Ms restaurant in India, which now jostles for SS) was a gathering of the lowest, scummiest space with a rubbish dump. philistines on the face of the earth. (It didn’t Ghosh creates a sense of place through the help that my classmates, seated on either side, stories of its people. It is no surprise that his dozed off at any chance they got. I stayed readers root for his characters — be it havaldar awake mainly to nudge them in the ribs.) It is Kesri Singh of the East India Company, who odd what stays with you. Hot Assam afterlearns the hard way that rules of the panDown to earth Amitav Ghosh often doesn’t see anyone but family for years when he is working on a book. The hullaballoo around a new book feels like “falling from a noons, air heavy with monsoon humidity, dechayat prevail even in the army; or Zachary very great height into very cold water,” he says emilio madrid-kuser ciphering ‘Season of mists and mellow Reid, the young American sailor; or Shireen he year isbosom-friend 1974. Or perhaps 1975.

And follows the trail of opium that leads to Can- Modi, the Parsi widow who sails to China to lofruitfulness/Close of the matura precocious 19-year-old Amiing sun.’ But it was ‘Ode18to aorNightingale’ that, ton. Flood of Fire concludes with results of the cate her stepson and the grave of her husband. tava Ghosh has just written one of hisI war, the British takeover of Hong Kong in 1841. for me, was revelation.

‘Tender is the night,’ Through them he reveals that what occurs articles.

TheAnd topic — moment, unusual rememberfirst repeating softly. that Starting from Bihar, moving onto Calcutta, on distant battlefields often decides the lives words in theroom English language.

He has sent it China and Hong Kong, the trilogy spans a vast of individuals. For Ghosh, a takeaway question in a white filled with rows of empty to a magazine its name him —the which desks, Ms SS at—her table, escapes I understood po- trajectory. But Ghosh wrote it sitting in rural from the book, in Neel’s words would be — is edited

by MJ Akbar.

The article is summarily em.

The references made coherent sense, and Goa, looking out at paddy fields, and in Brook- “how was it possible that a small number of rejected. is a seemed tad disappointed, but far lyn, New York, gaping at the hipsters who men, in the span of a few hours or minutes, the worldGhosh suddenly clearer, as though from broken.had Tamasha, heinto recollects, was one a viewfinder slipped place. Verse six. passed under his window. He wonders aloud if could decide the fate of millions of people yet of theI words that made it to theand list. recited to the location of his desk affects the metre of his unborn.” Ghosh elaborates, “There is someThat committed to memory, Today,who Amitav Ghosh is easily one patient of the prose. And anyone would give me a hearing, thenfor says with John a warm about imagination that Written eternity Keats’ tombstone in Rome is unadornedthing and reads ‘Here lies one shutterstock whose name was writ water’ most recognised authors of theand, country.

Win- laugh, “In or otherwise.

‘Darkling I listen; for many Goa, I am ablein to dayemerged from the 19th centuner of numerous prizes 10 with novelseaseful and a dream more. The wild and whacky a time/I have been halffor inhis love ry which came to privilege Man Bookerhim International finalist, Death/Call’d soft names in many aGhosh’s musèd bits wrote ‘OdeintoGoa.” a Nightingale’), bringing along friend Joseph Severn later interpreted and come process and structureit),over In Goa, I am able to written word achieves instant friends rhyme/To takedemands into the and air my quiet breath/ familyofvisitors, attending the an- the words — ‘Here lies one whose was Thereand is plenty the wild and events... it leads usname to forget daydream more. The attention. endorse his success with num- whacky Now moreTothan ever seems it rich to die/To nual Keats I mean writ in water.’ Below that, aof date: 24, 1821. in festival Flood ofwith Fire.other You stalkers, only how much lifeFeb is actually wild and whacky bits bers he has over three million cease—upon thesold midnight with no pain.’books I was need enthusiasts.

In contingent my excitement, snapped a to listen in to Mrs Burnham, and Iaccidental.” come in Goa worldwide, his work has been translated into who all of 17 . Grasping, unexpectedly, small slivers When was coitus in Rome a few picture and updated location coosI post to her ‘mysThe ‘what ifs’ of my history en33 years of languages. truth aboutBut loss40and life.after that first rejec- tery’ years (or ago,mistri) I looked his resionchant Facebook.

Except Mr up Zachary Reid: Ghosh.

Whatitifread the ‘JanBattion, some things remain unchanged.

A decade ago, when I first moved to London, “Oh dence 26 IPiazza Spagna. icetle Pariat was in Keats’ — Mrat Reid, do not di doubt that it of Waterloo hadgrave’ ended stilland reads theThe city59-year-old where Keatsauthor was born liveddictiomost is Stricken travspurring manyWould tenderwecoma joy toby betuberculosis, a launder ofhe your age, And that moment, in differently? be a white—room filled French naries for pleasure, and continues to revel in with of his short life, I looked for his house.

Tucked elled atolathee Italy in the hope that ments from friends, asking if I always ready to abe lagowed speaking today, he asks. with rows unusual words andHeath, etymologies.

He has justa and away in Hampstead at 10 Keats’ Grove, warmer, drier climate would wasthe alright. sane. a dumb-poke is certainly a fine thing, not of empty Moving from ‘whatOrifs’ to the here and desks, Ms SS at her completed the third book, Flood ofplace, Fire, of charming white-walled Georgian setthe in- to help him. The place is tiny, This summer, found myself in be cure scorned.” now, Ghosh expresses a deepI appreciation of table, I understood Ibis trilogy, set against thebeen firstturned opiuminto wara hisWhile to a wide curving lawn. It’s airless only re- for its Hampstead once again.by The thebedroom’s trilogy is remarkable retellhis readers. He remains overwhelmed his the poem with China (1839-42).

As Ghosh says, “history museum, with a café and shop (where you can ing deeming feature a wide winstreets still looked and of history andisrecreation of lost time, this readers’ attachment to his earlyfamiliar, work, espeprovides the scaffolding, not the anchor of the kind buy ‘vintage’ prints of his poems, and fridge dow of overlooking the the Spanish wound down to dialogue and vocabulary of the cially The Shadow Lines.temptingly Stifling a chortle, he rebook,” the but restthe is really a hurlymagnets), roomsall aretamasha, spectacularly in- text Stepsconjure outside. an- words are counts, “A fewKeats’ Thea plum was upEventually, life into it.on Ghosh’s yearsGrove. ago I got letter. tree It said, ‘I burly action, and emotion, dialogue and like tact — of displaying his letters to Fanny Brawne, other visit, I roistering found hisongrave. taller, myfrom one-year pass had your long acrobats the page, contort- am a 14-year-old girl Kerala.

I read conversations.

While trilogy is rich a ing the girl he loved, herthe engagement ring,inhis Keats is buried in Cimitero Acat- in surpris- book The Shadow expired, looked into unexpected forms, packing Linesbut andeverything loved it. Now can sense play and the anti-serious, arc spansa es small,ofeclectic library, and, ratherits morbidly, tolico, the ‘non Catholic’ or Protestant Ceme- you exactly thesend same. enter; I felt I’d aland often leaving you astonished. please meI adidn’t picture of Tridip?’” colonial history and upheavals, and tery, copy of his death mask.

At the time,battles along with outside of the city, a ready seen everything I had to see. ‘Tender is When I meetthe the(then) authorwalls in Delhi, it quickly His readers believe his characters are made empires, pasts of Europe, a ticket, I the was criss-crossing given a one-year student pass; I strikes peaceful placethat haunted by cypressimbues trees. His theflesh night,’ repeated softly as dusk faded home his personality his of andI blood, dwell in his neighbourChina and India.

The first book, SeaI did. of Poppies could return whenever I liked.

And Most- prose. tombstone is unadorned, engraved with a hood, aroundand me.can be captured on film. Is there Both are equally generous with guffaws (2008) Ibis, a read slaveand shippretend carrying ly to sit introduced in the garden and to and simple Greek lyre (with four its sense eight any greater honour for an author? information.

Both possess an of innate indentured labour to Mauritiwrite, shaded by thefrom plumCalcutta tree (fourth or fifth of strings ‘to show his classical glee, broken even while grappling with thegenius issues janice pariat is the author of Seahorse t@janicepariat nair us.

River of Smoke as the name suggests, generation of the(2011), original under which Keats of cuttheir off time. by death before its maturity’ as his nandini

T

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

9

BL

cover

saturday, june 6, 2015

Leopard at my door

B for Big Cat In the 100-odd villages in Gaisri block, Uttar Pradesh, schools like this one have to battle scarce resources and watch out for predatory leopards round-the-clock priyanka kotamraju

As leopards move out of Protected Areas, the conflict with humans is increasing. Villagers in Beninagar, Uttar Pradesh, struggle to carve out a peaceable coexistence while the leopards try in vain to stay clear of people in densely populated areas

E

ight-year-old Mastan is the boy who survived. On a November evening last year, a leopard attacked Mastan just outside his home in Beninagar village of Balrampur district, Uttar Pradesh.

The felid caught him by the left shoulder and dragged him into the nearby jungle. His mother Savrunissa ran out into the street, raising an alarm. When neighbours arrived, with lathis and lanterns, they found Savrunissa locked in a desperate tussle with the animal.

The commotion distracted the leopard and the mother snatched away her boy from certain death. Mastan lived to tell the tale.

Others have not been so lucky. Four days before the incident, 15km from Beninagar, the leopard had killed seven-year-old Puja in Jhamoria village after carrying her away from

outside her home at dusk. After a day’s search, Balrampur district was seized by panic. Local her body was found in the sugarcane fields. In reports wrote of dehshat — an apt term to deone week in November, the same leopard re- scribe the spread of paranoia — in at least 75 portedly struck thrice in differvillages in Gaisri and Haraya ent villages before being Sadhrawa blocks. This region in trapped. the northernmost Terai belt of Uttar Pradesh, bordering Nepal, Over the past year, at least 12 An increase in the was seeing an unusual spate of human kills — mostly children — number of big cats is have been reported in Balrampur leopard attacks. Daily life was creating new district. In 2013, too, 10 people hit. Shops closed before dusk problems for wildlife died in what were described as and farmers returned earlier management from their fields. Children stopleopard attacks. More recently, ped attending school. Governthere have been similar reports from Junnar taluka, Pune disment primary and upper trict, Maharashtra. Since April, primary schools in Gaisri registhree children have been attacked, leaving tered zero attendance.

One of the reasons cited for the rising numone dead.

For months after the attacks in November, ber of leopard attacks is that the felines are

Q R

watch cover

saturday, june 6, 2015

14 10

Strength in numbers Students of the government primary school in Jhauwwa, try to guess where the leopard (below jomish mohan) might be hiding as they walk back home from school

PICTURE THIS

priyanka kotamraju

Up close and real

‘straying’ from their territories. Sohelwa wildlife sanctuary — spread over 452 sq km across the districts of Shravasti, Gonda and Balrampur — is home to 70 leopards. According to the Balrampur forest division, leopards have been regularly ‘straying’ into the densely populated district, increasing the chances of human-animal conflict. At 642 persons per sq km, the district’s population density is higher than the national average.

In February, BLink visited Balrampur, to folis film festival seasontheir in Delhi. low theummer children slowly making way the cutting city showers award-winning back toWhen school, through sugarcane Indianfields cinema you, it’s possible to and mustard andon jungles. forget that the skies are raining fire outside.

The International Film Festival of InRise in numbers dia mayfigures have jilted milder in climes, and Recent showusanfor increase the numOsian’s Cinefan leftthis, us toinour own devices after ber of big cats and turn, is creating new whetting Asian and Arab problemsour forappetite wildlife for management.

Bigcinecats ma.

But theout National Film Festival, organised are moving of Protected Areas and seeking every summer, screensInall the year’s expanded territories.

Gir, theprevious census found national award-winning films atthe Sirisanctuary Fort, and more than 200 lions outside the Centre’sConservation annual filmTrust festival, and aHabitat recent Wildlife camwhich completed a decade under the era-trapjust exercise reported the presence ofintidefatigable Radhakrishnan, offers the pick gers outsideUMaharashtra’s Protected Areas. of The recent regional as well as a retroleopard too iscinema changing its spots.

There spective.

And the entry is but free.India is home to are no official numbers, May, it 10,000-20,000 was Tamil filmsleopards I found really inanThis estimated (though teresting.

Onehave of my favourites the numbers fallen by 70-80was per Kaakka cent in Muttai written andare directed the last(The 100 Crow’s years). Egg), Predator attacks being by M Manikandan, by two of Tareported from the and Teraiproduced belt to Maharashtra, mil cinema’s current bigincreasingly names: Dhanush, the because it appears that the leopactor and Vetrimaaran, the critically-acard is equally at home in sugarcane fields, vilclaimed director It is billed as a lage streets, parksofasAadukalam. it is in the forest. children’s filmhave and won the national award in The attacks obviously scared villagers, that category, as wellinasMaharashtra earned its two leading to protests andchild the stars, Ramesh andofVignesh, a thoroughly debeating to death a leopard in UP. The reaserved Award for Best Child Artiste. sons forNational the attacks remain unknown.

VillagBut Kaakka Muttai, which released in children theatres ers speculate that leopards mistake yesterday, by no means film onlyobfuscate for chilfor small is animals.

Forestaofficials dren.

Yes, it is anpredators uncomplicated story, sensiand say that the are translocated eitively notorboring forzoo. a minute; so ther totold, otherand areas even the According children will enjoy it.

But theorganisation simplicity isPandeto the international wildlife ceptive.

The premise thatleopards of two little boys thera, among the big—cats, are killed will stray fascinated out of desigfrom a Chennai slum becoming by the most.

The animal nated areas.

The question will humans the idea of tasting a pizzais—how is the basis for a carve out a coexistence?

The case the ‘straysubtle, affecting film about the of inequalities ing’ leopard several questions: What we’ve come toraises take for granted. constitutes the ‘wild’ now? Whyisisto theshow leopard Manikandan’s achievement up entering human-dominated territories?

How the grotesqueness of the world we’ve built can we tell a man-eating leopard without everapart saying it in words. The pizzafrom parthe others?

Andacross importantly, lour that opens the road how fromcan the children continue to school without being dren’s home,going serves pretty ordinary afraid of attacks?pizza. But to the children mass-produced who’ve never eaten it, the stringy melted Off to school cheese surface studded with unfamiliar vegeThree months after the leopard in And Febtables looks as exotic as the attack, moon’s. ruary, Mastan — who scars on his though they have nostill ideabears whatthe a pizza tastes calf and shoulders — seems had not like, the whole world to returned conspire to school.it The government primary sits make seem they’re missing outschool on some-

BL

on the edge of the village, flanked by Mastan’s ard walked into the trap set up by the forest semi-pucca home and the jungle. Across the department. But the feline was not hunting road, fully-grown sugarcane crops stand tall. alone. “It was a mother-cub duo,” says Rampal Harvesting has begun. On the day the leopard Yadav, a local Amar Ujala reporter, who was struck, a goatherd had spotted it thrice, cross- present when the leopard was trapped. “The ing the village street to disappear into the sug- cub wasn’t caught and villagers continue to report sightings of the lonely cub.” arcane crop.

Hindi teacher Anuradha Singh began workAt the school, attendance still hovers at a low 30 per cent. Students of classes III, IV and V ing at the school in 2006. She lives across the sit in rows reciting single-syllable Hindi words school and her house has a clear view of the that rhyme with kal — “bal, hal, chal, jal, pal…,” lake. “It is so difficult to concentrate on teachthey chant in unison. younger ones, from ing. My two-year-old is at home alone but I thing marvellous.

TheThe actor who inaugurates classes I and II, sit in aishuddle, for their the restaurant and filmed waiting eating the first have to take classes,” she says. “Adults don’t acmidday company the children to school. slice, themeal. advertisement that makes the cheese While is astounding absent, None of them have bicycles. I look moreMastan melty, the price tag of cousin—Salim hogsto allsuggest the have spent the last few ₹300 all intend that pizza must attention, narrating We laugh as the chilmonths in constant be truly scrumptious. the sensational worry.” Even without dren are taken in enby these things. But, in fact, counter to curious a man-eater leopwe are also laughing at ourselves, because we classmates and the nexus of consumption, ard on the loose, are taken in too: nosey reporters.

Singh says, advertising and media has us in its grip much Wrapped they’ve enough more than these children. around problems to The film’shis turning point comes when the mother’s deal with. “We boys, havingleg, finally saved up enough money, Mastanproudly leavesto get their pizza. But the manhave to cook arrive her side only toand gives one of them a rethe midday ager emerges play a quick meals. Course sounding slap, knocking him to the ground. lagori, game of the material and Defeated, boys pick themselves up and go and Kuttram his shirt funds haven’t arhome.

Butpocket it so happens that another slum Deceptively simple Kaakka Muttai Kadithal (top) tell simple tales but highlight the spilling with the whole thing on his inequalities we have learnt to ignore rived yet. Students’ child hasover recorded objects setting of all kinds attendance is fallphone, off a media circus in which pol— pebbles, ing. We are providing iticians andmatchboxbusinessmen and local toughs are es vying and dead cellphone for claims the school from our all to mould the narrative to their pur- sary discipline. The film to show everybatteries. own pose.

The media is inescapable in this arc, but one’s point of view, butpockets,” Brammashe G’s says. direction Puja’s father, Ram in a little better tilts us clearly away The from schools Jhauwwa perhaps it comes outAnchal, looking thein slum child’s and unJhamoria village, is also reluc- the media’s cle, a street thug Beninagar don’t have than in the first half — without who walks around withplaythe tant to send his younger grounds or electricity. amplification, there wouldchilhave been no aura of the power he can marshal. The librardren at toall.school. In Jhauwwa ies have no books well-cast, and the event Kuttram Kadithal is exceptionally village, Mastan’s attackeranother Tamil and the actors Jhauwwa school doesn’t have A fewwhere days later, I watched bring each and every character Four months after the was finally trapped,Kuttram the primary boundary Jitendra film.

Fascinatingly, Kadithal (The Puni- to life: from the teacher walls. in favour of sexChaudeducaleopard attack, school iswhich locatedwon 3kmthe away, in a hary,to thethe block education officer. shment), Nationtion principal’s wife.

The Mastan has still not forest clearing. are held says, “The have al Award for BestClasses Tamil Film and slum child’sleopard mother,attacks who drives returned to school in the open. only added to themore problems.”

In releases on June 19, also centres an auto, is much convincof 105 students, only 40 Gaisri’s villages, schools onOut a slum child being slapped.

A ing as 100-odd a working-class person The nexus of have turned The children that Kaakka are already struggling to young femaleup.teacher called than Muttai’s too-urbane consumption, have heard the attacks and meet standards mandated Merlin, takenofaback by a bratty mother (Iyshwarya Rajesh).under But a advertising and media the subsequent capture.

“Tendua Education Act and Sarva Shiksha pre-adolescent boy who says bachchon ko the Right to loud, distracting background has us in its grip much (the children),” says Abhiyan are now khatakiss haiher for predahe’d if itleopard were hereats birthscorealso andwatching a series ofout soppy songs more than these classslaps V student Ram Darshan. day, him. By some quirk “It of sits on top of tors round-the-clock. turn a potentially taut slice-ofchildren the school, opens mouth wide and jumps,” Lauki Kalanlife is one of theinto last villages on the fate, the boy has its a pre-existing narrative an indulgent, he continues, as his classmates border.

On February 24 medical condition; he falls un-giggle. “That’s Uttar Pradesh-Nepal high-pitched drama. a monkey, and thethen leopard yellow and it has last year, Shyam Prakash’s four-year-old conscious, into aiscoma.

I preferred the understated neblackenough, spots,” corrects hisgets friend carried away by a leopard Sure the media in-Ramesh. Nan- daughter wasorealism of Kaakka Muttai.from But dini, a class II student, says they were in- both their films courtyard The incident volved.

However, this time we see itsgiven impact offerata dusk. startlingly similar became view of structions theslapped leopard but wasalso stalking the contemporary an election issue afterNadu, angryaslocals threatened not just onwhen the one the one Tamil a society so fracko na niklo, akele mat chalo tured village. to boycott polls.

Villagers gathered his ateawho did“Sandhya the slapping. by class (and caste) that it takesatonly ti(don’t out alone after evening).” stall say there been several morefire. attacks This step is Kaakka Muttai seen from the other ny media sparkhave to start a full-fledged Thethe Beninagar leopard had settled in near side: middle-class person who slaps the subsequently. “A 15-year-old girl and another gupta is aWe writer critic based in walking Delhi the lake, just behind the school, often young bring- trisha 11-year-old boy... seeand the predator child in Kuttram Kadithal is a frazzled ing its prey there.

It was weeks before is thenecesleop- t@chhotahazri around almost every day,” says Janka, the cook woman doling out what she thinks

Kaakka Muttai and Kuttram Kadithal, two award-winning films releasing this month, show how fissures in Tamil society are amplified by the media

trisha gupta

S

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

BL

watch cover

saturday, june 6, 2015

Role less taken Actor Shilpa Shukla chose to pave her way into film industry with less-known, but critically acclaimed productions

In the cat’s eye Dogs are often the favourite food of leopards; (below) classes are held outdoors at the Jhauwwa primary school priyanka kotamraju

A

ctor Shilpa Shukla’s choice of films has been unusual. When others preferred to play safe by debuting with a famous director or a superstar coactor, Shukla chose to pave her way into the industry with the less-known, albeit critically acclaimed Khamosh Pani in 2003. She played the love interest of a teenage boy in Pakistan at a time of Islamisation under Zia-ul-Haq and a swirling political crisis harking back to the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. The film won several international awards, including three major awards at the 56th Locarno Interat Lauki Kalan’s primary school. national Film Festival in Switzerland.

After the leopard attack, the the forest Back home in India, however, filmdepartflounment conducted small tours ofmore the forest deredhad at the box-office against the popfor children. what tigers and ulartheVeer Zaara “They with told its us star cast.

Luckily leopards looked like. They told uswas to slide though, an able section of B-town quickthe to grills the classrooms and stay the noticeofShukla’s flair for acting.

Sheinside is nowifbest animals came for close by,”role saysinSandeep, a class V remembered her the Shah Rukh student.

Thirty-four-year-old ChaKhan-starrer Chak De India asDipendra the stubborn turvedi 45km daily from Balrampur Bindiya travels Naik. She followed that up with BA city to the Thelike roads are badPani, and Pass,toaget neo noirschool. which, Khamosh there no water or electricity in these didn’tismake a mark at the supply box-office but parts. can children get school,” proved“How a game-changer fortoher; the asks film Chaturvedi. have trouble with attendance bagged the“We Audience Choice Award at the round the year.

Once the sugarcane South Asian Alternative Film Festival harvest (SAAFF) begins, are in employed in the in Francemy andstudents the Best Film Indian Competifields. withOsian’s man-eaters roaming around, tion atNow the 12th Cinefan Film Festival. theShukla numbers fallen nowhave returns tofurther.” theatre after a gap of 12 years with A Woman Alone, a black-comedy Leopards want meet political man originallydon’t written byto Italian activists While villagers are doing all they can to stay and theatre-makers Dario Fo and Franca clear leopards, by thethe animal is not particularRame.ofProduced Renaisstance Theatre ly disposed either.

A recent Society and towards directedhumans

by Mohit Tripathi, the study titled ‘Adaptable Neighbours: Moveplay is essentially a monologue by a housewife ment of woes GPS-Collared in HuaboutPatterns her many — she is Leopards held a prisoner man Dominated Landscapes India’ at home by her husband, driven toinmadness ONE), tracked the move(published in PLOS by his abuses and so-called possessive love, ments of five leopards, and tired of GPS-collared the household choresrevealing and her that the feline takesgaze. great care to things avoid hubrother’s perverted Just when are mans. villages in Gaisri block about The to get worse, a young boymostly entershave the dwellings livestock sheds semi-pucca scene. Sparks fly and aand lovethe affair begins.

The are fenced.

Manytohomes handplay not is also scheduled travel tohave the Jaipur pumps courtyards and are surTheatre installed Festival inin October.

Changing spots Does this mean that the leopard is not ‘wild’?

The leopard, or Panthera pardus, can easily adapt to different environments, from “open and semi-arid deserts, through savannahs to tropical forests.”

New research talks of the potential of multiuse landscapes like secondary forests and agriforest systems to harbour wildlife. “These carDomestic distress nivores can thrive in multi-use landscapes,” Shilpa Shukla plays the writes leopard conservationist Athreya. troubledVidya homemaker While this explains why in leopards are settling the black-comedy A Woman Aloneas farmclose to varied environments such lands and villages, it doesn’t resolve the conflict raging in Junnar or Balrampur: why are children? not felines feel orkilling think for another, our purpose in Over email, Shukla shares her experiences the to Tolerance guidelinesisfrom the Ministry is defeated. a strong message from the world of theatre and films, and the lifeAccording Environment andofForests on human-leopsent across this tale noir times.

The transichoices she made purely on instinct. Edited of ard the leopard is contionconflict of Indiamanagement, is multilayered, and at its foundaexcerpts. sidered a man-eater it “picks up same child time, from tion is the theory of if karma.

At the outside In November, the trapped we needthe to house.” ask ourselves how open-minded What made you return to stage after so long? leopard was packed offheritage. to Lucknow. we truly were, as reflected in our I was performing Girish Karnad’s Yayati when Beninagar I fell on the stage thrice during a dance per- In most cases of human-animal conflict, forest translocation to remove Films or playsuse — which do you enjoy more?the formance. That was 12 years ago. That day I did departments thestate affected areas.NothConIt’s reallyanimals a matterfrom of the of mind. not go for the curtain call. The play was staged problem question this approach and ing changes for me except in the ways of say exin Chandigarh and I remember Dolly Ahluwa- servationists translocation be one of the reasons pression, at timescould through body and other lia was in the audience. I guess I was fighting that thethrough increase voice in conflicts. times modulation and projecthat fear for so long. Today, I can laugh about for rounded by farm forestlands.

Electricity is tion.

“Translocation is a scientific I enjoy both equally.

On stage,procedure you have the incident.

That or is what life is about.

Falling erratic.

The up darkness of the ab- meant for augmenting the population ofemospethe power to make the audience feel any and getting till the time thevillages, ups andthe downs sence clear who boundaries, of release andI guess not forit’s dealing tion at inthe onesite single shot, so more do notofdefine you are.means leopards lit- cies erally stumble these pockets. problemYou animals. unscientific manchallenging. aspireThis for the same thing in Later in life, Iinto participated in the dance show with In almost the the leopard onlyisworsfilms too,and butreleases the process a litJhalak Dikhlaall Jaacases, and was top attacked be- agement of capture tween dawn. and dogs were ened conflicttlelevels,” Athreya writes in her different.

But both forms are scorer; dusk I alsoand made it to Cows the top picked up amore frequently.they Small children, study ‘Is Relocation Viable Management Opclose toamy heart.

While the stage five. I love live audience; under theidea agewhat of 11, were or attacked tiongives for Unwanted Animal?

— movies The Case of you the gives you liberty, give have no they killed give me Whileoutthe stage side homes, near Leopard inBoth India’.

Inhelped the villagpopularity. have me when their they look into my eyes.hand- you liberty, movies pumps, or on the fringes of fields give you popularity es, however, suspicion is become a betterthe performer. when answering nature’s call. that “the children looked like Did you deliberately choose to The study shows which small,are domestic easy prey.”

Which the newand plays you’re work in films that that leopards, aren’t run-ofare generally diurnal in forests, Back atworking the Jhauwwa on? primary the-mill?

Conservationists say currently turned nearI do. human children I school, wish toatdo5pm, many shows pack of A I have tonocturnal love the work All that translocation habitations. upthe their books. grab their Woman Alone, as play needsThey to grow and rethe films I’ve done have been consciouscould choic-be one of the authors of the study write and set outWe’re on the walk out to a friends wider audience. experies,The which I’m extremely happy with. Thisreasons year, ach for the that the two leopards living the genre home adding — Kusum walkstowith costumes, layers the for example, I attempted thein comic with inmenting increase conflictswith back human-dominated landscape Akash walks with Rathe performance more evocaCrazy Ccukkad Family, a film

by Prakash Jha Pro- script to makePoonam, around Akole town (near Nashik) mesh. andinunsuplays,Unescorted I have a fun role Main ductions, which unfortunately bombed at the tive. As for other would travel tothat seven pervised, to is anthe epicchildren take on atry Bollybox-office.

Butfive I love filmtimes and hope the au- Bhi Bachchan, which the distance at night thanitthey walk in aIt’s single file.riot.

Some pick stage. a laugh dience soon gets to watch on television. I wood masala on would the day.

The distance the cats keepa up sticks, some take the shortcut through the feel thein movies choose me, so maybe it’s not from the nearest dwelling during day- field.

Some try to imagine where the What’s nextof in them your film career? deliberate choice urban after all; it’s destined. time is another indicator of their anxiety to predator might hide — behind thatfilm, sal tree, or I have signed Sujoy Ghosh’s dream which avoid in thicket.much Kusum falls Kahaani. behind, her hethe conceived before I amslipper doing What humans. is your take on A Woman Alone with respect to the present-day situation of Another study by the Wildlife Conservation is broken.

What will they they reach a very interesting role in do an when Indo-British film women?showed that leopard diet consisted home?

Society “We can’t play outside, forbidden. called Bombairiya, which we areit’s shooting for That is of exactly my point for performing it! A So mostly domestic dogs, based on 85 samples we will go to our friend’s house and tell her at the moment.

I have also just finished shootWoman Alone initiates a superb that what of leopard poop.

Nearly 87 per dialogue cent of their she missed at school. will try toRishi coning for a very special role inWe a film with we need to hold. mirror and every which one of vince diet was made upIt’s of adomestic animals, her back,”black-comedy. she says.

Kapoor — to it’scome a political us can see in it atbecoming some point of our means thatourselves the big cats are dependkotamrajuis a Delhi-based journalist arunima mazumdar lives. are interdependent beings. If we do priyanka ent onWe human-related food sources.

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

11 15

shoot

saturday, june 6, 2015

BL

12

Going with the ow Maheshwar thrives on Narmada and the legends of Ahilyabai, a Holkar queen

Bank story A pair of temples and a statue of Queen Ahilyabai Holkar on the ghats of Maheshwar. In the background are the high ramparts of Ahilya Fort

Cooling point Siesta under the watchful eyes of Hanuman

Daily job Women walk down stone steps to bathe in the Narmada

Touch up The chaos and the crowd on the ghaa

BL

shoot

saturday, june 6, 2015

aats don’t seem to bother the young girl getting ready for the day

Etched in time A grandmother-grandson duo admires a procession of royal elephants carved on Vithoji’s chhatri inside Ahilya Fort

R

iver Narmada — the name evokes memories of one of the longest and most debated social movements in the country’s recent history. Far from the unrest and bitterness that surrounds the dam on the river, Narmada is a picture of calm. Overlooking the north bank of this river, near Indore, the holy town of Maheshwar features on the itinerary of the Hindu pilgrim. It is mentioned in both the Mahabharata and Ramayana under its old name, Mahishmati, as King Kartvirajun’s ancient capital.

Well off the ‘package tour’ trail that is so popular in Madhya Pradesh, Maheshwar enjoyed a golden age in the late 18th century under Holkar queen Ahilyabai, a formidable ruler who built a palace in a towering fort and many other monuments. Highly revered in the Malwa region, Ahilyabai — a child bride who was widowed at the age of 29 and then went on to rule Malwa for 28 years — also built countless Shiva temples, bathing ghats, chhatris, water tanks and dharamshalas.

This is also the town which gave us the Maheshwari sari.

The legend of this sari, too, has the Ahilyabai stamp. The queen invited weavers from Gujarat to live in Maheshwar, asking them to create a weave that reflects its architectural heritage. That explains why the sari, with delicate zari borders, has motifs of bricks, spires and diamonds.

Maheshwar’s colourful streets display brightly painted wooden houses with overhanging balconies. But the Narmada and its crowded ghats is where you will experience the real Maheshwar.

Take it easy Boatmen wait for tourists and pilgrims

ayan ghosh is a writer-photographer based in Kolkata

ND-X _ A

13

watch cover

saturday, june 6, 2015

14 10

Strength in numbers Students of the government primary school in Jhauwwa, try to guess where the leopard (below jomish mohan) might be hiding as they walk back home from school

PICTURE THIS

priyanka kotamraju

Up close and real

‘straying’ from their territories. Sohelwa wildlife sanctuary — spread over 452 sq km across the districts of Shravasti, Gonda and Balrampur — is home to 70 leopards. According to the Balrampur forest division, leopards have been regularly ‘straying’ into the densely populated district, increasing the chances of human-animal conflict. At 642 persons per sq km, the district’s population density is higher than the national average.

In February, BLink visited Balrampur, to folis film festival season in Delhi. low theummer children slowly making their way thecutting city showers award-winning back toWhen school, through sugarcane Indianfields cinema you, it’s possible to and mustard andon jungles. forget that the skies are raining fire outside.

The International Film Festival of InRise in numbers dia mayfigures have jilted milderin climes, and Recent showusanfor increase the numOsian’s Cinefan leftthis, us to own devices after ber of big cats and inour turn, is creating new whetting Asian and Arab problemsour for appetite wildlife for management.

Bigcinecats ma.

But theout National Film Festival, organised are moving of Protected Areas and seeking every summer, screens year’s expanded territories.

Inall Gir,the theprevious census found national award-winning films atthe Sirisanctuary Fort, and more than 200 lions outside the Centre’sConservation annual filmTrust festival, and aHabitat recent Wildlife camwhich completed a decade under the era-trapjust exercise reported the presence of intidefatigable Radhakrishnan, offers the pick gers outsideUMaharashtra’s Protected Areas. of The recent regional as well as a There retroleopard too iscinema changing its spots. spective.

And the entry isbut free.India is home to are no official numbers, May, it10,000-20,000 was Tamil filmsleopards I found really inanThis estimated (though teresting.

Onehave of my favourites Kaakka the numbers fallen by 70-80was per cent in Muttai written andare directed the last(The 100 Crow’s years). Egg), Predator attacks being by M Manikandan, by two of Tareported from the and Teraiproduced belt to Maharashtra, mil cinema’s current bigincreasingly names: Dhanush, the because it appears that the leopactor and Vetrimaaran, the critically-acard is equally at home in sugarcane fields, vilclaimed director It is billed as a lage streets, parksofasAadukalam. it is in the forest. children’s filmhave and obviously won the national award in The attacks scared villagers, that category, as wellinasMaharashtra earned its two leading to protests andchild the stars, Ramesh andofVignesh, a thoroughly debeating to death a leopard in UP. The reaserved Award for Best Child Artiste. sons forNational the attacks remain unknown.

VillagBut Kaakka Muttai, which released in children theatres ers speculate that leopards mistake yesterday, is by no means film only for chilfor small animals.

Forest aofficials obfuscate dren.

Yes, it is uncomplicated story, sensiand say that theanpredators are translocated eitively notorboring forzoo. a minute; so ther totold, otherand areas even the According children will enjoy it.

But the simplicity isPandeto the international wildlife organisation ceptive.

The premise thatleopards of two little boys thera, among the big —cats, are killed will stray fascinated out of desigfrom a Chennai slum becoming by the most.

The animal nated areas.

The question will humans the idea of tasting a pizzais—how is the basis for a carve out a coexistence?

The case the ‘straysubtle, affecting film about the of inequalities ing’ leopard several questions: What we’ve come toraises take for granted. constitutes the ‘wild’ now? Whyisis to theshow leopard Manikandan’s achievement up entering human-dominated territories?

How the grotesqueness of the world we’ve built can we tell a man-eating leopard without everapart saying it in words. The pizzafrom parthe others?

Andacross importantly, lour that opens the roadhow fromcan the children continue to school without being dren’s home,going serves pretty ordinary afraid of attacks?pizza. But to the children mass-produced who’ve never eaten it, the stringy melted Off to school cheese surface studded with unfamiliar vegeThree months after the leopard in And Febtables looks as exotic as the attack, moon’s. ruary, Mastan — who bears scars on his though they have nostill idea whatthe a pizza tastes calf and shoulders — seems had not like, the whole world to returned conspire to school.itThe government primary sits make seem they’re missing outschool on some-

BL

on the edge of the village, flanked by Mastan’s ard walked into the trap set up by the forest semi-pucca home and the jungle. Across the department. But the feline was not hunting road, fully-grown sugarcane crops stand tall. alone. “It was a mother-cub duo,” says Rampal Harvesting has begun. On the day the leopard Yadav, a local Amar Ujala reporter, who was struck, a goatherd had spotted it thrice, cross- present when the leopard was trapped. “The ing the village street to disappear into the sug- cub wasn’t caught and villagers continue to report sightings of the lonely cub.” arcane crop.

Hindi teacher Anuradha Singh began workAt the school, attendance still hovers at a low 30 per cent. Students of classes III, IV and V ing at the school in 2006. She lives across the sit in rows reciting single-syllable Hindi words school and her house has a clear view of the that rhyme with kal — “bal, hal, chal, jal, pal…,” lake. “It is so difficult to concentrate on teachthey chant in unison. younger ones, from ing. My two-year-old is at home alone but I thing marvellous.

TheThe actor who inaugurates classes I and II, sit in aishuddle, for their the restaurant and filmedwaiting eating the first have to take classes,” she says. “Adults don’t acmidday company the children to school. slice, themeal. advertisement that makes the cheese While is astounding absent, None of them have bicycles. I look moreMastan melty, the price tag of cousin—Salim hogs to allsuggest the have spent the last few ₹300 all intend that pizza must attention, narrating We laugh as the chilmonths in constant be truly scrumptious. the sensational worry.” Even without dren are taken in enby these things. But, in fact, counter to curious a man-eater leopwe are also laughing at ourselves, because we classmates and the nexus of consumption, ard on the loose, are taken in too: nosey reporters.

Singh says, advertising and media has us in its grip much Wrapped they’ve enough more than these children. around problems to The film’shis turning point comes when the mother’s deal with. “We boys, havingleg, finally saved up enough money, Mastanproudly leavesto get their pizza. But the manhave to cook arrive her side only toand gives one of them a rethe midday ager emerges play a quick meals. Course sounding slap, knocking him to the ground. game of lagori, material and Defeated, the boys pick themselves up and go and Kuttram his shirt funds haven’t arhome.

Butpocket it so happens that another slum Deceptively simple Kaakka Muttai Kadithal (top) tell simple tales but highlight the spilling over with the whole thing on his inequalities we have learnt to ignore rived yet. Students’ child has recorded objects setting of all kinds attendance is fallphone, off a media circus in which pol— pebbles, ing. We are providing iticians andmatchboxbusinessmen and local toughs are es vying and dead cellphone for claims the school from our all to mould the narrative to their pur- sary discipline. The film to show everybatteries. own pose.

The media is inescapable in this arc, but one’s point of view, butpockets,” Brammashe G’s says. direction Puja’s father, Ram in a little better tilts us clearly away The from schools Jhauwwa perhaps it comes outAnchal, looking thein slum child’sand unJhamoria village, is also reluc- the media’s cle, a street thug Beninagar don’t have than in the first half — without who walks around withplaythe tant to send his younger grounds or electricity. amplification, there wouldchilhave been no aura of the power he can marshal. The librardren at toall.school. In Jhauwwa ies have no books well-cast, and the event Kuttram Kadithal is exceptionally village, Mastan’s attackeranother Tamil and the actors Jhauwwa school doesn’t have A fewwhere days later, I watched bring each and every character Four months after the was finally trapped,Kuttram the primary boundary Jitendra film.

Fascinatingly, Kadithal (The Puni- to life: from the teacher walls. in favour of sexChaudeducaleopard attack, school iswhich locatedwon 3kmthe away, in a hary, thethe block education officer. shment), Nationtion to principal’s wife.

The Mastan has still not forest clearing. are held says, have al Award for BestClasses Tamil Film and slum “The child’sleopard mother,attacks who drives returned to school in the open. only added to themore problems.”

In releases on June 19, also centres an auto, is much convincof 105 students, only 40 Gaisri’s villages, schools onOut a slum child being slapped.

A ing as 100-odd a working-class person The nexus of have turned The children that already struggling to young femaleup.teacher called than are Kaakka Muttai’s too-urbane consumption, have heard the attacks and meet standards mandated Merlin, takenofaback by a bratty mother (Iyshwarya Rajesh).under But a advertising and media the subsequent capture.

“Tendua Act and Sarva Shiksha pre-adolescent boy who says bachchon ko the Right to Education loud, distracting background has us in its grip much (the eats children),” says Abhiyan are now khatakiss haiher for predahe’d if itleopard were her birthscorealso andwatching a series ofout soppy songs more than these classslaps V student Ram Darshan. day, him. By some quirk “It of sits on top of tors round-the-clock. turn a potentially taut slice-ofchildren the school, opens mouth wide and jumps,” Lauki Kalanlife is one of the into last villages on the fate, the boy has its a pre-existing narrative an indulgent, he continues, as his classmates border.

On February 24 medical condition; he falls un-giggle. “That’s Uttar Pradesh-Nepal high-pitched drama. a monkey, and the then leopard yellow and it has last year, Shyam Prakash’s four-year-old conscious, into aiscoma.

I preferred the understated neblackenough, spots,” corrects his gets friend carried away by a leopard Sure the media in-Ramesh. Nan- daughter wasorealism of Kaakka Muttai.from But dini, a class II student, were in- their The incident volved.

However, this says timethey we see itsgiven impact both courtyard films offerata dusk. startlingly similar became view of structions the slapped leopard but was also stalking the an election issue afterNadu, angryaslocals threatened not just onwhen the one the one contemporary Tamil a society so fracko na niklo, akele mat chalo to village. boycott polls.

Villagers gathered his teawho did“Sandhya the slapping. tured by class (and caste) that it takesatonly a ti(don’t out alone afterseen evening).” say there beena full-fledged several morefire. attacks Thisstep is Kaakka Muttai from the other stall ny media sparkhave to start Thethe Beninagar leopard had settled in near side: middle-class person who slaps the subsequently. “A 15-year-old girl and another trisha gupta is aWe writer critic based in walking Delhi the lake, just behind the school, often young bring- 11-year-old boy... seeand the predator child in Kuttram Kadithal is a frazzled t@chhotahazri ing its prey there.

It was weeks before the leop- around almost every day,” says Janka, the cook woman doling out what she thinks is neces-

Kaakka Muttai and Kuttram Kadithal, two award-winning films releasing this month, show how fissures in Tamil society are amplified by the media

trisha gupta

S

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

BL

watch cover

saturday, june 6, 2015

Role less taken Actor Shilpa Shukla chose to pave her way into film industry with less-known, but critically acclaimed productions

In the cat’s eye Dogs are often the favourite food of leopards; (below) classes are held outdoors at the Jhauwwa primary school priyanka kotamraju

A

ctor Shilpa Shukla’s choice of films has been unusual. When others preferred to play safe by debuting with a famous director or a superstar coactor, Shukla chose to pave her way into the industry with the less-known, albeit critically acclaimed Khamosh Pani in 2003. She played the love interest of a teenage boy in Pakistan at a time of Islamisation under Zia-ul-Haq and a swirling political crisis harking back to the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. The film won several international awards, including three major awards at the 56th Locarno Interat Lauki Kalan’s primary school. national Film Festival in Switzerland.

After the leopard attack, the the forest Back home in India, however, filmdepartflounment conducted tours the forest dered had at the box-officesmall against theofmore popfor children. what tigers and ularthe Veer Zaara “They with told its us star cast.

Luckily leopards looked like. They told uswas to slide though, an able section of B-town quickthe to grills the classrooms and stay the noticeofShukla’s flair for acting.

Sheinside is nowifbest animals came for close by,”role saysinSandeep, a class V remembered her the Shah Rukh student.

Thirty-four-year-old ChaKhan-starrer Chak De India asDipendra the stubborn turvedi 45km daily from Balrampur Bindiya travels Naik. She followed that up with BA city to the The roads are badPani, and Pass,toaget neo noirschool. which, like Khamosh there no water or electricity in these didn’tismake a mark at the supply box-office but parts. can children get school,” proved“How a game-changer for toher; the asks film Chaturvedi. have trouble attendance bagged the “We Audience Choicewith Award at the round the year.

Once the sugarcane South Asian Alternative Film Festival harvest (SAAFF) begins, are in employed in the in Francemy andstudents the Best Film Indian Competifields. withOsian’s man-eaters roaming around, tion atNow the 12th Cinefan Film Festival. theShukla numbers fallen nowhave returns to further.” theatre after a gap of 12 years with A Woman Alone, a black-comedy Leopards want meet political man originallydon’t written byto Italian activists While villagers are doing all they can to stay and theatre-makers Dario Fo and Franca clear leopards,by thethe animal is not particularRame.ofProduced Renaisstance Theatre ly disposed either.

A recent Society and towards directedhumans

by Mohit Tripathi, the study titled ‘Adaptable Neighbours: Moveplay is essentially a monologue by a housewife ment of woes GPS-Collared in HuaboutPatterns her many — she is Leopards held a prisoner man Dominated Landscapes India’ at home by her husband, driven toinmadness ONE), tracked the move(published in PLOS by his abuses and so-called possessive love, ments of five leopards, and tired of GPS-collared the household choresrevealing and her that the feline takesgaze. great care to things avoid hubrother’s perverted Just when are mans. villages in Gaisri block about The to get worse, a young boymostly entershave the dwellings livestock sheds semi-pucca scene. Sparks fly and aand lovethe affair begins.

The are fenced.

Manytohomes handplay not is also scheduled travel tohave the Jaipur pumps installedinin courtyards and are surTheatre Festival October.

Changing spots Does this mean that the leopard is not ‘wild’?

The leopard, or Panthera pardus, can easily adapt to different environments, from “open and semi-arid deserts, through savannahs to tropical forests.”

New research talks of the potential of multiuse landscapes like secondary forests and agriforest systems to harbour wildlife. “These carDomestic distress nivores can thrive in multi-use landscapes,” Shilpa Shukla plays the writes leopard conservationist Athreya. troubledVidya homemaker While this explains why inleopards are settling the black-comedy A Woman Aloneas farmclose to varied environments such lands and villages, it doesn’t resolve the conflict raging in Junnar or Balrampur: why are children? not felines feel or killing think for another, our purpose in Over email, Shukla shares her experiences the to Tolerance guidelinesisfrom the message Ministry is defeated. a strong from the world of theatre and films, and the lifeAccording Environment andofForests on human-leopsent across this tale noir times.

The transichoices she made purely on instinct. Edited of ard the leopard is contionconflict of Indiamanagement, is multilayered, and at its foundaexcerpts. sidered a man-eater if it “picks up same child time, from tion is the theory of karma.

At the outside In November, the trapped we needthe to house.” ask ourselves how open-minded What made you return to stage after so long? leopard was packed offheritage. to Lucknow. we truly were, as reflected in our I was performing Girish Karnad’s Yayati when Beninagar I fell on the stage thrice during a dance per- In most cases of human-animal conflict, forest translocation to remove Films or playsuse — which do you enjoy more? the formance. That was 12 years ago. That day I did departments thestate affected areas.NothConIt’s reallyanimals a matterfrom of the of mind. not go for the curtain call. The play was staged problem question this approach and ing changes for me except in the ways of say exin Chandigarh and I remember Dolly Ahluwa- servationists translocation be one of the reasons pression, at timescould through body and other lia was in the audience. I guess I was fighting that thethrough increasevoice in conflicts. times modulation and projecthat fear for so long. Today, I can laugh about for rounded by farm forestlands.

Electricity is tion.

“Translocation is a scientific I enjoy both equally.

On stage,procedure you have the incident.

That or is what life is about.

Falling erratic.

The up darkness of the ab- meant for augmenting the population spethe power to make the audience feel anyofemoand getting till the time thevillages, ups andthe downs sence clear who boundaries, of release and not forit’s dealing tion at inthe onesite single shot, so I guess more do notofdefine you are.means leopards lit- cies erally stumble these pockets. problemYou animals. unscientific manchallenging. aspireThis for the same thing in Later in life, Iinto participated in the dance show with In almost the the leopard onlyisworsfilms too,and butreleases the process a litJhalak Dikhlaall Jaacases, and was top attacked be- agement of capture tween dawn. and dogs were ened conflicttlelevels,” Athreya writes in her different.

But both forms are scorer; dusk I alsoand made it to Cows the top picked up amore frequently.they Small children, study ‘Is Relocation Viable Management Opclose toamy heart.

While the stage five. I love live audience; under the agewhat of 11, were or attacked tiongives for Unwanted Animal?

—movies The Case of you the gives you liberty, give have no idea they killed give me Whileoutthe stage side homes, near Leopard inBoth India’.

Inhelped the villagpopularity. have me when their they look into my eyes.hand- you liberty, movies pumps, or on the fringes of fields give you popularity es, however, suspicion is become a betterthe performer. when answering nature’s call. that “the children looked like Did you deliberately choose to The study shows which small,are domestic easy prey.”

Which the newand plays you’re work in films that leopards, aren’t run-ofare generally diurnal in forests, Back at the Jhauwwa working on? primary the-mill?

Conservationists say currently turned nearI do. human children I school, wish toatdo5pm, many shows pack of A I have tonocturnal love the work All that translocation habitations. upthe their grab their Woman Alone, as playbooks. needsThey to grow and rethe films I’ve done have been consciouscould choic-be one of the authors of the study write and set outWe’re on the walk out to a friends wider audience. experies,The which I’m extremely happy with. Thisreasons year, ach for the that the two leopards living the genre homeadding — Kusum walkstowith costumes, layers the for example, I attempted thein comic with inmenting increase conflictswith back human-dominated landscape Akash walks with Rathe performance more evocaCrazy Ccukkad Family, a film

by Prakash Jha Pro- script to makePoonam, around Akole town (near Nashik) mesh. andinunsuplays,Unescorted I have a fun role Main ductions, which unfortunately bombed at the tive. As for other would travel tothat seven pervised, to is anthe epicchildren take on atry Bollybox-office.

Butfive I love filmtimes and hope the au- Bhi Bachchan, which the distance at night thanitthey walk in aIt’s single file.riot.

Some pick stage. a laugh dience soon gets to watch on television. I wood masala on would the day.

The distance the cats keepa up sticks, some take the shortcut through the feel thein movies choose me, so maybe it’s not from the nearest dwelling during day- field.

Some try career? to imagine where the What’s nextof in them your film deliberate choice urban after all; it’s destined. time is another indicator of their anxiety to predator might hide — behind thatfilm, sal tree, or I have signed Sujoy Ghosh’s dream which avoid humans. in thicket.much Kusum falls Kahaani. behind, her hethe conceived before I amslipper doing What is your take on A Woman Alone with respect to the present-day situation of Another study by the Wildlife Conservation is broken.

What will they when they reach a very interesting role in do an Indo-British film women?showed that leopard diet consisted home?

Society “We can’t play outside, forbidden. called Bombairiya, which we areit’s shooting for That is of exactly my point performing it! A So mostly domestic dogs, for based on 85 samples we will go to our friend’s house and tell her at the moment.

I have also just finished shootWoman Alone initiates a superb that what of leopard poop.

Nearly 87 per dialogue cent of their she missed at school. will try toRishi coning for a very special role inWe a film with we need hold. mirror and every one of vince diet was to made upIt’s of adomestic animals, which her back,”black-comedy. she says.

Kapoor — to it’scome a political us can see in it atbecoming some point of our means thatourselves the big cats are dependkotamrajuis a Delhi-based journalist arunima mazumdar lives. are interdependent beings. If we do priyanka ent onWe human-related food sources.

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

11 15

read meet

BL BL 168

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Storyteller for all times An ode that stayed PAPERWALLAH

Amitav Ghosh on daydreaming in Goa, Calcutta of the 19th century, and a special fan letter John Keats, with his lovelorn poems and early death, is the perfect gentle obsession

I

Having just completed a UK book tour and t began in school, this mild obsession, spurning the first signs of flu, Ghosh seems a sparked by a picture in a poetry textbook. tad weary of analysing his books. He expresses A sketch of John Keats, head tilted and no undue distress that the characters he has janice pariat crowned with curly hair, hand supportlived with for 10 years have been put to rest. ing his chin, clad in a cuffed white shirt, dark There is no lingering melancholy at having eyes staring into the distance. To be honest, completed the trilogy. He has no wish to disthere wasn’t much to choose from for a teensect his characters or scrutinise the books’ age girl — TS Eliot looked sternly grim, WH Austructure. He says simply, “I didn’t have any den wrinkly and, well, old, William Blake a bit idea, I sort of blunder around... It was never of a silver-haired Santa, Philip Larkin a balding completely thought out.” What works, goggle-eyed septuagenarian. (Come to think shouldn’t be probed too deeply — that seems of it now, why were there only male poets in to be the axiom of his answers. our Elective English syllabus?) Keats, though, We sail out from the Flood of Fire, docking at was eternally youthful. He died at 25; hence bequestions of time and place, and immediately stowed, like all artistes who pass away young, his eyes light up and his ‘Ohs’ rise a notch with an air of tragic glamour. He wrote romanhigher. Calcutta serves as the port of departic poems with lines like ‘Pillow’d upon my ture for all his characters and for him as well. fair love’s ripening breast.’ And then, of When he wanders through the city, he sees the course, there were his odes. All six composed “significant global port” that Calcutta was in in 1819, in quick, frenetic succession. ‘On a Grethe 19th century. The wars that the British cian Urn.’ ‘On Indolence.’ ‘On Melancholy.’ ‘To launched from the port rise before his eyes, as Psyche.’ ‘To Autumn.’ ‘To a Nightingale.’ do the opium auction markets and wareIn school, we studied the last two, taught by houses from where the East India Company a forbidding Bengali lady — shall we call her sold the narcotic to China. From his childMs SS? — who pretty much thought our class of hood, Ghosh’s regular restaurant outing used three (Elective English wasn’t fashionable to be to Nanking, said to be the oldest Chinese those days; also everyone was terrified of Ms restaurant in India, which now jostles for SS) was a gathering of the lowest, scummiest space with a rubbish dump. philistines on the face of the earth. (It didn’t Ghosh creates a sense of place through the help that my classmates, seated on either side, stories of its people. It is no surprise that his dozed off at any chance they got. I stayed readers root for his characters — be it havaldar awake mainly to nudge them in the ribs.) It is Kesri Singh of the East India Company, who odd what stays with you. Hot Assam afterlearns the hard way that rules of the panDown to earth Amitav Ghosh often doesn’t see anyone but family for years when he is working on a book. The hullaballoo around a new book feels like “falling from a noons, air heavy with monsoon humidity, dechayat prevail even in the army; or Zachary very great height into very cold water,” he says emilio madrid-kuser ciphering ‘Season of mists and mellow Reid, the young American sailor; or Shireen he year isbosom-friend 1974. Or perhaps 1975.

And follows the trail of opium that leads to Can- Modi, the Parsi widow who sails to China to lofruitfulness/Close of the matura precocious 19-year-old that, Ami- ton. Flood of Fire concludes with results of the cate her stepson and the grave of her husband. ing sun.’ But it was ‘Ode18to aorNightingale’ tava Ghosh has just written one of hisI war, the British takeover of Hong Kong in 1841. for me, was revelation.

‘Tender is the night,’ Through them he reveals that what occurs articles.

TheAnd topic —moment, unusual rememberfirst repeating softly. that Starting from Bihar, moving onto Calcutta, on distant battlefields often decides the lives words in theroom English language.

He has sent it China and Hong Kong, the trilogy spans a vast of individuals. For Ghosh, a takeaway question in a white filled with rows of empty to a magazine its name him —the which desks, Ms SS at—her table, escapes I understood po- trajectory. But Ghosh wrote it sitting in rural from the book, in Neel’s words would be — is edited

by MJ Akbar.

The coherent article is summarily em.

The references made sense, and Goa, looking out at paddy fields, and in Brook- “how was it possible that a small number of rejected. is a seemed tad disappointed, but far lyn, New York, gaping at the hipsters who men, in the span of a few hours or minutes, the worldGhosh suddenly clearer, as though broken.had Tamasha, recollects, was one afrom viewfinder slippedheinto place. Verse six. passed under his window. He wonders aloud if could decide the fate of millions of people yet of theI words that made it to theand list. recited to the location of his desk affects the metre of his unborn.” Ghosh elaborates, “There is someThat committed to memory, Today,who Amitav Ghosh is easily one patient of the prose. And anyone would give me a hearing, thenforsays with John a warm about that Written eternity Keats’ tombstone in Rome is unadornedthing and reads ‘Hereimagination lies one shutterstock whose name was writ water’ most recognised authors of theand, country.

Win- laugh, “In or otherwise.

‘Darkling I listen; for many Goa, I am ablein to dayemerged from the 19th centuof numerous prizes 10 with novelseaseful and a dream more. The wild and whacky aner time/I have been halffor inhis love ry which came to privilege Man Bookerhim International finalist, Death/Call’d soft names in many aGhosh’s musèd wrote ‘OdeintoGoa.” a Nightingale’), bringing along friend Joseph Severn later interpreted and bits come process and structureit),over In Goa, I am able to written word achieves instant friends rhyme/To takedemands into the and air my quiet breath/ familyofvisitors, attending the an- the words — ‘Here lies one whose was Thereand is plenty the wild and events... it leads usname to forget daydream more. The attention. endorse his success num- nual Now moreTo than ever seems it richwith to die/To Keats I mean writ in water.’ Below that, aof date: 24, 1821. whacky in festival Flood ofwith Fire.other You stalkers, only how much lifeFeb is actually wild and whacky bits bers —upon he has over three million cease thesold midnight with no pain.’books I was enthusiasts.

In contingent my excitement, snapped a need to listen in to Mrs Burnham, and I accidental.” come in Goa worldwide, his work has been translated into who all of 17 . Grasping, unexpectedly, small slivers When was coitus in Rome a few picture and updated location coosI post to her ‘mysThe ‘what ifs’ of my history en33 languages. years of truth aboutBut loss40 and life.after that first rejec- years ago,mistri) I looked his resionchant Facebook.

Except tery’ (or Mr up Zachary Reid: Ghosh.

Whatitifread the ‘JanBattion, some things remain unchanged.

A decade ago, when I first moved to London, dence 26 IPiazza Spagna. icetle Pariat was in Keats’ — “Oh Mrat Reid, do notdi doubt that it of Waterloo hadgrave’ ended stilland reads theThe city59-year-old where Keatsauthor was born liveddictiomost Stricken travspurring manyWould tenderwecomis a joy toby betuberculosis, a launder ofhe your age, And that moment, in differently? be a white—room filled French naries for pleasure, and for continues to revel in elled of his short life, I looked his house.

Tucked Italy inalways the hope that ments from friends, asking if I with atolathee ready to abe lagowed speaking today, he asks. with rows unusual words andHeath, etymologies.

He has justa warmer, away in Hampstead at 10 Keats’ Grove, drier climate would wasthe alright. sane. and a dumb-poke is certainly a fine thing, not of empty Moving from ‘whatOrifs’ to the here and desks, Ms SS at her completedwhite-walled the third book, Flood ofplace, Fire, of charming Georgian setthe in- help him. The place is tiny, This summer, myself in to be cure scorned.” now, Ghosh expresses a deepI found appreciation of I understood Ibisa wide trilogy, set against thebeen firstturned opiuminto wara hisWhile to curving lawn. It’s airless only re- for table, Hampstead once again.by The thebedroom’s trilogy is remarkable its retellhis readers. He remains overwhelmed his the poem with China (1839-42).

As Ghosh says, “history museum, with a café and shop (where you can deeming feature a wide winstreets still looked and ing of history andisrecreation of lost time, this readers’ attachment to his earlyfamiliar, work, espeprovides the scaffolding, not the anchor of the dow buy ‘vintage’ prints of his poems, and fridge overlooking the the Spanish wound down to kind of dialogue and vocabulary of the cially The Shadow Lines.temptingly Stifling a chortle, he rebook,” thebut restthe is really a hurlymagnets), roomsall aretamasha, spectacularly in- Steps outside.upEventually, an- words are counts, “A few Keats’ Thea plum was text conjure life into it.on Ghosh’s yearsGrove. ago I got letter. tree It said, ‘I burly— of action, and emotion, dialogue and other tact displaying his letters to Fanny Brawne, visit, I roistering found hisongrave. taller, myfrom one-year pass had your long like acrobats the page, contort- am a 14-year-old girl Kerala.

I read conversations.

While trilogy is rich the girl he loved, herthe engagement ring,inhisa Keats is buried in Cimitero Acat- in surpris- book The Shadow expired, looked ing into unexpected forms, packing Linesbut andeverything loved it. Now can sense of play and the anti-serious, arc spansa tolico, small, eclectic library, and, ratherits morbidly, the ‘non Catholic’ or Protestant Ceme- exactly thesend same. enter; I felt I’d ales and often leaving you astonished. you please meI adidn’t picture of Tridip?’” colonial history and upheavals, and tery, copy of his death mask.

At the time,battles along with outside the of the city, a ready seen everything I had to see. ‘Tender is When I meet the(then) authorwalls in Delhi, it quickly His readers believe his characters are made pasts of Europe, aempires, ticket, I the was criss-crossing given a one-year student pass; I peaceful placethat haunted by cypressimbues trees. His night,’ repeated softly as dusk faded strikes home his personality his the of flesh andI blood, dwell in his neighbourChina return and India.

The first book, SeaI did. of Poppies could whenever I liked.

And Most- tombstone is unadorned, engraved with a around me.can be captured on film. Is there prose. Both are equally generous with guffaws hood, and (2008) Ibis, slaveand ship carrying ly to sit introduced in the garden anda read pretend to simple Greek lyre (with four its sense eight any greater honour for an author? and information.

Both possess an of innate indentured labour to Mauritiwrite, shaded by thefrom plumCalcutta tree (fourth or fifth strings ‘to show his classical of glee, broken even while grappling with thegenius issues janice pariat is the author of Seahorse nandini nair us. River of Smoke as the name suggests, generation of the(2011), original under which Keats cut off time. by death before its maturity’ as his t@janicepariat of their

T

Q Q R R

ND-X _ A

read cover

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Leopard at my door Undertone of disquiet In Sleeping on Jupiter the Bay of Bengal stretches as far as the eye can see, its surface ravaged by the monsoon kr deepak

World without mercy While Sleeping on Jupiter is a tad too tragic, its characters hook you with their courage and the plot engages you by playing with time and place

A

nuradha Roy’s opening line in Sleep- three quickly become my favourites. squealing like pigs at the slaughter, the sale ing on Jupiter soon proves itself a lie.

Gouri nurtures a deep spirituality, and her and rape of a young girl, the snapping of a Her protagonist, Nomita tells us: warmth and humour provide a kind of tragic man’s sanity and his battery of an animal…

“The year the war came closer, I was counterpoint to her ongoing, inexorable loss and all this just in the first half of the novel. six or seven and it did not matter to me.” But of memory; Vidya’s “forty years in the bureauEven when the book is not exploding into vithe reader knows better than the little girl — cracy” are paired with a “preoccupied self-im- olence, there is a steady undertow of disquiet the proximity of conflict always matters. portance”; but burgundy-haired Latika is still and grief. What balance exists I find only Nomi lives in a kind of paradise, from which capable of surprising us all. She is (relatively) around Vidya, Latika and Gouri. (I catch myself she is soon to face eviction, though she doesn’t sprightly, innately irreverent and about to get wishing that I could shed the other characters Sleeping on Jupiter know that yet. Cast on the mercy of the world, drunk for the very first time. for the honest, interesting company of just Anuradha Roy she will find it has little to spare for her.

Roy sketches these women with pragmatic these three.)

Hachette Roy’s third book, I should tell you right compassion and real insight. As an author, But there are other compensations for readFiction ₹499 away, is almost relentlessly grim. Her charac- this is indisputably her gift, a willingness to ing Sleeping on Jupiter, such as its structure. ters, who are complicated and conflicted, are a pause long enough to provide even the most Roy plays with time and place, switching beresult of a world underpinned with loss and minor character with a backstory that lends tween first person and third person; between suffering. Nomi is ostensibly the linchpin on their presence depth and weight. A perfect ex- five days in the present and a lifetime in the which the story turns. We meet her first, catch ample of this is the mysterious Johnny Toppo, past. Her choice of whose thoughts we are glimpses of her journey into adulthood and the tea-seller who sings privy to, and whose we are not, are then return with her to India. By then she is hauntingly lovely folk songs, deliberate and clever. Through B for Big Cat In the 100-odd villages in Gaisri block, Uttar Pradesh, schools like this one have to battle scarce resources and watch out for predatory leopards round-the-clock priyanka kotamraju Nomi Frederiksen, daughter to a mother who as he serves up tea spiced them, we see a man undone by his abandoned her, adopted by another whom with ginger and cardamom. deep love for a boy, yet are denied Roy’s gift is a she rejects.

Out of the likes of Toppo, Roy insight into another predator who willingness to pause In the fictional seaside town of Jarmuli, fa- weaves a bold, sprawling tapsystematically rapes and abuses his long enough to mous for its temples and ashrams, Nomi’s sto- estry of emotion and human young charges. By choosing when provide even the ry arc converges with a small horde of other interaction. most minor character we are inside Nomi’s head, Roy characters. It is immediately evident that Roy Roy’s other gift is an ability with a backstory that makes her past as real as her prehas an enviable sense of place. She imagines to write in a way that is acutesent, and allows us to see the unfurlends their presence ight-year-old Mastan is the with boy who her to home dusk.Her After a day’s search, Balrampurling district seized by panic. Local into being a temple city crowded pil- outside ly pleasing the at senses. of herwas courage. depth and weight dehshat — an apt term desurvived. a November body was found in the sugarcane fields. In reports wrote grims, tourists andOn those who wouldevening make a her words allow her readers to Inofthe writing, I realise it istothis spread ofthat paranoia least 75 last Here, year, athe leopard Mastan week in November, living there. scent attacked of incense min- one see, smell, taste.

She is sothe po-same leopard re- scribe the courage keeps— in meat reading home Beninagar differvillages Haraya gles with just that outside of fish —his fresh, friedinand rotting. portedly tent that struck at thethrice end ofin the through to in theGaisri end. Itand is not just beforea simbeing Sadhrawa This region in village district, Uttar DownofbyBalrampur the water, you can dig yourPradesh. toes in- ent book, Ivillages still remember Nomi’s; whileblocks. her courage is perThe felid caught him bythis thetreacherous left shoulder and trapped. northernmost Teraithe belt of to the sand, but beware coast. ple description from her first page — of Nomi’s haps the mostthe considerable, it is also least Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, dragged intostretches the nearby His brother Over the pastdown year, aatgrapefruit least 12 from their interesting. Instead, The Bay ofhim Bengal as farjungle. as the eye cutting valour bordering infuses and eleAn increase in the was seeing an unusual spate of mother ran ravaged out into the rais- human mostly children — and heavy vates nearly every can see,Savrunissa its surface by street, monsoon family’skills tree.—The fruit is pale yellow character. number of big cats is ing an alarm.

When neighbours arrived, for witha have Balrampur leopard was winds, its depths offering forgetfulness with been juice,reported its skin isinstippled but its flesh is a Overarching all thisattacks. is Roy’sDaily own life fearlesscreating new lathis lanterns, they found Savrunissa In 2013, too, of 10itpeople hit.

Shops before price. Itand is here that Suraj — ostensibly the fixer district. tender pink, the scent is tart and fresh. ness as a writer — she is allclosed raw feeling, anddusk vivproblems for wildlife locked in a desperate tussle with the animal. in whatwhile wereRoy described as assurance id life. and farmers returned earlier for Nomi’s documentary project — goes to died However, writes with management from theirshe fields.

Children stopThe commotion distracted thetemple leopard and leopard Moreherrecently, swim, and here that Badal, the guide, and skill,attacks.

I find that plot choices someIn Sleeping on Jupiter, has written a novel ped attending school.And Governthe mother snatched away herheboy from cer- there been comes to look for Raghu, who is desperatetimes have stretch thesimilar limits reports of my appetite for that speaks powerfully to her times. in dotain Mastan lived to tell the tale. from Junnar taluka, Pune dis-The same de- ing so, she manages ment toprimary and the upper ly in death. love with. tragedy and reinforce clichés. embrace both ugly Others have notLatika been so lucky.of Four days sitbe- trict, Maharashtra.

Sinceme April, primary in Gaisrithat regisIt is here that dreams simply scriptive gift which leaves with a mild crav- truths and the suddenschools luminescence so fore incident, 15km from Beninagar, the three have makes been attacked, leaving zero attendance. ting the by the sea and drinking coconut water ing forchildren a grapefruit, a long series of tered distinguishes the human condition.

One of the reasons cited for the rising numleopard seven-year-old inholiJha- one dead.abusive encounters difficult to read: while onhad her killed first real — and likelyPuja last — violently For months after the attacks in November, of daniel leopardis aattacks thatbased the in felines are moria village after carrying herVidya. away These from a murder smriti freelanceiswriter Sri Lanka day with her friends Gouri and by machete that leaves a father ber

Q

As leopards move out of Protected Areas, the conflict with humans is increasing. Villagers in Beninagar, Uttar Pradesh, struggle to carve out a peaceable coexistence while the leopards try in vain to stay clear of people in densely populated areas

E

R Q R

ND-X _ A

9 17BL BL

work read

BL BL 186

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Tryst withturn our of dark selves Lucrative events Essays thatthat examine the long-term consequences of Partition ‘hitherto A website lets youngsters register and apply for part-timeand jobsventure ranginginto from in-mall unaddressed areas’ such asexhibition Ladakh and thetoNortheast promotions and manning stalls tele-calling for the numerous gigs in town

A

s a teenager, Amin Memon was always looking for ways to earn pocket money. A few odd jobs here and there brought him cash, but not as often as he’d have liked. He needed to be in touch with event managers and marketing professionals to find out about openings for part-time workers. That’s when he thought of a website that would list all upcoming parties on a single platform, although he then had neither the resources nor the programming abilities to create one. Finally, after completing his graduation he began the groundwork for his project.

“It was a completely niche and untapped sector. I learnt about the technology from my friends and began coding for the website around the end of 2012,” says the 25-year-old Mumbai entrepreneur, who has a postgraduate degree in advertising.

Together with friends Kadir Sayyed and Moiz Sayed, he developed the software and launched EventBaba.com in February 2013.

The website lets youngsters register and apply for events-related jobs such as in-mall promotions, manning exhibition stalls, concierge guides, tele-calling, short-duration workshops and so on. Once a candidate is shortlist- Youth at work EventBaba candidates run the show at an interactive stall for a children’s TV channel ed for an event, she is briefed by the EventBaba Helpless against team and paid in cash after the event. hate A mother washes her sick child in this and started Memon says male workers can earn ₹400- day,” says Memon, adding that of the total reg- strapped. We pooled our savings 650 per day, depending on the timings and istrations, around 40 per cent is female. the website.” 1953 image of Partition The site charges a commiswork requirements, and female workers get Initiallyrefugees companies were apliving in Howrah ₹600-1,800 per day. Job applicants should be sion of 20-40 per cent of an proached directly for business. station, Calcutta in the 18-28 age group, although the site rou- event’s outlay. “If the event inThe client base includes event the hindu archives tinely receives queries from candidates as volves a lot of hard work, outagencies, advertising agencies, The youngsters like young as 13. “We have to refuse them as we door activities and longer work start-ups and direct brands. “We to brag share moment iery Urdubelow poet 18,” JoshMemon Malihabadi hours, we reduce ourincut to give it to a lapse sanity.

The violence be- andhistorical don’t hire people says. mi- signing get recurring from and situatebusiness it amid our diwithculturalthem. a decade after had Par- comes more toan theaberration users but ifor the a work part of the their other.cardverse Withingrated 10 daystoofPakistan the launch, EventBaba Most of the new clients are and political processes. friends. tition, much against his friend is fairly simple, increase it saves ourthen ownwe selves from scrutiny.

I re- That helps 200 users and four clients on board.

Today, Thus word-of-mouth The essayscoming explorethrough new narrative forms us get users Jawaharlal Nehru’s counsel.

Afraid our cut,”how saysaMemon.

EventBafriend was shocked to read themore more than 23,000 have registered on the por- member referrals from satisfied clients,” such as graphic stories, reveal how Partition on board that Urduthere had no in an independent In- accounts ba was profitable from the first of violence against Muslims in Puntal and arefuture part-time job offers from he says. community of the Bancame to the borderless dia dominated Hindi,including Josh was lured by the month itself, he adds. in Gyanendra Pandey’s book on Partition. ni pastoralists, and more than 100by clients the likes of jab To expand its pool of job candireconstruct memories and promise of greater respect UrduDay, and Pidihim It was Thatsomething is preciselyhe why starthadthe never come across in events to gaindates, Airtel, Yamaha, Godrej, Caféfor Coffee EventBaba developed new insights.

Anhas interesting esin His homeland up has notViolence, raised any funds as far as heso knew, had hap- say tells the little-known lite, Pakistan.

Garnier, Nataraj, Philips anddream FedEx. soon textbooks. an innovative strategy.

Anyone history of the comsoured, and he spent his registrations last years in every utter pened far. “Itmostly is completely in Pakistan. boot“We get around 70 new who works is munists of Kashmir andwith theirthe keycompany role in the frustration and disillusionment. His ideas did While the elite history perpetuates our naï- shaping given customised business cards. “The youngof Sheikh Abdullah’s campaign not exactly endear him to the ruling elite. veté by muting the individual sters like to brag andprincely share their against rule. cards Prajnawith PaAmong Punjabi Muslims, who dominated pol- voices, the oral or subaltern hisfriends. Thatramita helpsParasher us get recovers more users on memoitics and culture in that country, he was a less- tory brings us face to face with board,” he adds. ries of her father, the famous er being — a mohajir, as those who migrated our dark selves by parsing those Additionally, more than 20 candidates have artist SL Parasher, as she looks at from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were called. silences. The oral history can tell bagged jobs atof various companies the sketches the displaced he Oral history tells permanent Sometime during his last years, the story goes, us, for instance, that the victims the basis of theirwhen performance atcharge an Eventmade he was in of us that the on victims Josh, so proud of his delicate Lakhnawi Urdu, of Partition were actually womassignment.

“Some camp othersinget work on a the refugee Ambala. of PartitionBaba were was found struggling to learn Punjabi. When en and children and not Hindus, project clients,” he too says.disToday,from Partition seems actually women andbasis directly someone asked him about it, he retorted, “Su- Muslims or Sikhs.

EventBaba two to three tant to the handles new generation.

The children andCurrently, not na hai dozakh main Punjabi hi boli jaati hai (I Urvashi Butalia had exposed events a day. names With growing from othof Delhidemand localities such as Hindus, Muslims have heard they speak only Punjabi in hell).” such silences around Partition er cities, Memon launched the services in Derawal Nagar, Kohat Enclave or Sikhs Elite history often elides the history that is in her now famous book The OthPune last month a tie-up with and through Gujranwala Town, all event evoklived by people. The history that people tell er Side of Silence. Her latest book, managementing firm Benchmark.

“Whilehardly they locations in Pakistan, each other, or memory reconstructs, always Partition: The Long Shadow, a colwill look afterspeak marketing, to themwe thewill waymanage they didthe to trumps the history that grows out of archives. lection of essays by scholars, is backend from Mumbai,” says.many This means their parents.heHow would The history of Partition is not merely what an addition to a growing discipline that can point Benchmark will arrange events and, Eventout Partition as a for significant event, let Nehru, Jinnah and the British did, or didn’t do. be called Partition studies. It was originally alone Baba will shortlistit? and assign candidates for understand Few can even speak the It is chiefly what we — as religious, gendered conceived as a set of lectures to mark the 60th language, the relatedsuch jobsas through Pune portal.

Seraiki,its that their elders did. and ethnic subjects — did to one another. Our anniversary of Partition, but was later expand- Yet,Delhi, Bengaluru andasHyderabad next in Partition is as real it was halfare a century tryst with destiny, which our textbooks so ed to take in new works as well. line, for again tie-ups.

Memon is are nowstill alago, thethrough assumptions that led to it proudly tell us of, was also the time when we As the title suggests, the book explores the alive. so open the ideaofofPartition tappingwill seedbefunds.

AfThetomemory relevant had a tryst with our dark selves. long-term consequences of Partition. It also to terus all, business calendar promisesinfests to be ashis long as the politics of Partition Partition as a historical event suppresses brings to the discipline “hitherto unad- our eventful for some time to come. times.

Partition as a personal memory. As a historical dressed areas” such as Ladakh and the Northkumar is a Delhi-based journalist rashmi pratap narrative, it exceptionalises the violence as- Amin Friends-turned-job creators (From left) Moizby Sayed, Memon and Kadir to Sayyed EventBaba.com east.

It attempts takeofPartition beyond a dharminder

F

Partition: The Long Shadow Edited by Urvashi Butalia Zubaan Non-fiction ₹599

Q R

Q R

ND-X _ A

talk takeaway

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Layered, where cooked meat is mixed with the prepared rice, or the un-layered, where raw THE CRITICAL ISSUE meat is boiled along with the rice, imparting meaty juices to it. Incidentally, the ubiquitous Andhra biryani, served on every street in Bengaluru, isn’t part of this connoisseur’s tour.

“Too much spice,” dismisses Ali. Around the corneron MM Road, at the stylish Sait, we sample a unique Gujarati Muslim cuisine. The delicate Kutchi Memon-style mutton dum biryani is made of impossibly longgrained rice. Incidentally, this particular restaurant was started just some months ago, but the Zackria family behind it are local legends — they were the first caterers in town, cooking good food since 1964, and this new venture is getting rave reviews from food critics.

Speaking of religious food experiences, Fraser Town is the place to be seen — I mean, eating — during the month of Ramzan, when all of Mosque Road turns into one big food court, with stalls selling goat brain puffs, skewered camel, grilled quail and the interestingly misspelled ‘wheel kebab’, which isn’t the TUMMY TRAVELS result of some horrific traffic accident, but made of veal. Next door, at Chichaba’s Taj, run by descendants of Chichaba uncle, a spice merchant who started the original Taj (not the hotel chain or the mausoleum in Agra) in Shivajinagar in 1935, we get to try the ‘Bangalore biryani’, which is also known as Dakhni biryani, essentially a dum biryani with mediumgrained zeera rice and fatty chunks of mutton.

Bravest of them all Afterwards we head to the smart Alibaba, a Pakistani children e’re staring at a stone plaque in, depending on one’s mentality. As I’m not Middle-Eastern eatery tucked away on the arrive at their school in first in Pulakeshinagar, which pro- really a gourmet, but rather a gourmand or a floor of a building, where we on encounter a rare Peshawar claims that the area we are in borderline glutton, I initially worry that this Bhatkal-style preparation, shaiya December 20, 2014, biryani, after three days of flour veris actually Fraser Town.

“It is sounds too good to be true, but it turns out to made of, hold your breath, thin rice zac o’yeah mourning for those often misspelled as Frazertown,” points out be 100 per cent for real. micelli (mixed with chicken), suggesting perkilled by Taliban Mansoor Ali, architect and foodie, who is At the first restaurant, aptly named Heri- haps Mediterranean trading influences. militants in an attack about to guide us down ‘Gourmet Boulevard’ tage, there is tangible anticipation in the air as Bhatkal in Karnataka after all,school a coastal on is, an army-run / a majeed as Mosque Road is sometimes called. We hu- we wait for the rare kofta ki biryatown, soafpconnections with exotic mans have many names for the things we love. ni — also known as purdah biryacuisines are only to be expected. t’s second day ofcould the Islamabad LiteraForthe sure, this place also be called Kebabtrist who reminds of the ni due to the the rotiaudience that is used to need for home. “Every cornerBy reminds me of him,” she this time I loosen up my ture Festival.

Thethe firstroad event on the schedtown, because that begins at this sensitivity tousthe seal thewhile degchi.talking Ali helps passstudents. says. On Fridays, most parents noor longer belt by an inch five. Isend won’t go is tangible ule is aisconversation with students stone lined with non-veg eateries.of the “These people havethe been throughThere a their theyoung time by narrating histochildren to school, attacks. into allfearing the other side items we anticipation themost air of eat Army Public School, Public Stuart Mitford Fraser,Peshawar. a prominent Indian traumatic time,” she and speaks ry of biryani as asays, Persian mili- about Butinfor them, the hardest thing is to — quail, for one, at Rahhams as we wait for the memory often short not immediCivilisService officerand whoI do tutored the Maharathe courage it takes in a really public forum. tary dish.

Thattoitbeisn’t reconcile the medical the social and (‘thewith Authentic Taste of eduBengalurare kofta ki biryani – parents ately jah register that is this the samewhose schoolname of Mysore, theisgentleman She suggests that is both native totherefore South India alsothe re-conversacational.

Many still take their children ru’), which is the oldest running also as purdah where the shootout took place that left 141 ingraces the foundation stone which further tion flected and theinquestions need to focus onknown the menu, which de- not to hospitals for treatment, students restaurant and in these parts.are biryani due rotito takeThe deaddicates — including 132 students, and born othersinlike that Fraser Town was August the events that day but how the students claresofallegiance to on Peshawari, not to yetthe ready on things like exams.

But walk focuses on the slightthat is despite used toreassurances seal teachers caretakers — in December 1910.and It existed happily for about 2014. a hundred have Arabic movedand forward, what The has helped Awadhiand cuisines. and guarantees, ly classier eateries, the buteduequally thecational degchi system has Instead, mind is on a more recent shoot-turnyears my under that name, until it recently thembiryani arrive where theycomes are at now. we taste almost been indifferent and does enthusiastic crowds swarm ing ined Karachi — that of well-known andafter much into Pulakeshinagar — named an an- “I never thought be able to return to not make allowances straight out ofI would Lucknavi Nawab for trauma, injuriescanteens. and around the humbler lovedcient activist Sabeen Mahmud, the founder of school,” king. says Mohammed Amir, Wajid Ali Shah’s cookbook. psychological “And if parThe menusdamage. are particularly a creative andapolitical called T2F (short We’re handfulspace of eager eaters who have who was wounded in the attack, The basic crash course on bithistial is the case with stu- keto mutton andelite chicken for ‘the second Mahmud wasby shot dead “the ryani joined thefloor’).

‘Biryani Walk’ run unhurried.in. bullet also hit my hand, and enlightens usit’s about dents,” babs,Suleiman, but brainthe or math bheja fry in herThe carfood while returning event she upand heritagefrom walk an encompasses the hand withthat which write.” Dethe fact noI matter how many biryanis appears teacher us,one. “then on moretells than Asimagine does ‘horse How, the speaker had organised on Baluchistan.

Earlier(out slated wards half-a-dozen restaurants of to the 50 spitethere the trauma, like manysouthern may behe — —including varieties what out it is like the poor,woman those on meat’, points one for Australian asks,and canCheta society be held at that the Lahore University Manageor so line these streets),ofwith an equal of his — went back to Ambur likefriends Hyderabadi, Thalassery, went to the thebe tour; whose however,children after some confused discusmentnumber Studiesof this event to was apparently can- school biryanis sample, or over-indulge the day it opened.

“This tinadu — they’re all essentially of sensitised two kinds:to the sameout school, who soldgram sion it turns she’schildren mistaken horse reality of a fractured celled due to government pressure. was the best way for us to avenge chips fillet. in the breaks to help pay for equestrian society? Of a society The literature festival takes both of these ourselves, from that day on, edufor their education.”

While strolling, Ali also tells stories of the oltorn apart by violence things squarely on board: it opens with a mov- cation became our battle.”

These der buildings.

Thequestions last stop isare thecritical iconicto Albert ing tribute to Mahmud, and with the announWhen asked, “You have experiour society Howone canofinstiBakery dating back totoday.

1902 and the bestcement that there will be a special session enced terrorism, what can you tutions be sensitised to the real- not kept foodie secrets in town. Well, maybe devoted to her, it then leads straight into the tell us about how to prepare to ity of considering a fractured itsociety, of awith quite so secret is crowded conversation with students. face it?” Musha Ahmed says, “An societykhoya tornnaans apartand by chicken violence? people buying samoOn the stage are young people who were experience like this teaches you that terrorism Whatsas is the of the State? A speaker points androle mutton puffs. present during the shooting; including a is a reality and you have to learn to face it.” He out thatAh! “tillIt today, the Minister has not is great toPrime be a tourist in one’s homemath teacher who was in class, father of an in- describes his experience: “I wanted to join the visited Peshawar to meet thetravelling children.”isWhat town sometimes.

For not just jured student, and the head of an NGO that army, but this injury means I cannot do that will itabout take, flying he asks, the State to understand tofor Thailand, Switzerland or Goa. It has been formed to bring together survivors — now. But I will not let this defeat me, I will not bothcan its power its responsibilities towards also beand about venturing out in a local bus ‘not only for students but also for peons, let my morale down. I’ve decided if I can’t have its citizens? to a neighbourhood that you’re not so familsweepers and others for, after all, they too died the army, I will go in for aeronautical The is moving, iardiscussion with. Other similar walksmature, led by Aliand take visor were injured.’ engineering.” strongly And it’s taking place at aMarkets, lititorspolitical. to the old Russell and Johnson The conversation begins with a brief introAs story after story is recounted, the audi- erature festival. both rich in food lore, and for the more vegeAs tarian-minded Suleiman, the teacher “I lost eight there is says, the idli-dosa walk in Flavour capital duction, although no one in the packed-to-the ence learns about what it takes for society to brim hall needs to be reminded of what hap- deal with such trauma, and how convinced students, now the number of lost neighbourhood students is the predominantly Brahmin There are essentially that day. Ameena Saiyid, director of the the survivors are that the only answer to vio- much Every janaza — whether of one or ofhigher.

Malleshwaram.

— two kinds of biryanipened layered (top) and festival and publisher of Oxford University lence is education. The parents, we’re told, are 50 — is as painful.

Please do something.”

(This new monthly column combines the two unlayered v sreenivasaPress Pakistan, does this with grace. She then equally traumatised.

A mother who lost her best things in life — food and travel) murthy; (right) there are blink@thehindu.co.in hands over to Ayesha Mian, a trained psychia- son in the attack can no longer bear to live at close to 50 restaurants Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher zac o’yeah is a Bengaluru-based author, travel writer in Pulakeshinagar

Education became our battle In Pakistan those who have faced violence move forward by returning to the classroom

Boulevard feast

An unhurried stroll through Bengaluru’s biryani hub

W

I

Q

R Q R

and director of Zubaan

(Fraser Town) zac o’yeah

and literary critic

ND-X _ A

7 19BL BL

takeaway know

BL BL 20 4

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

To the east of Eden Unsullied by the tourism onslaught in the country, villages around Loikaw in East Myanmar are home to a longneck tribe and their many tales

A

s I sat down on the wooden bench of a roadside bar in remote Eastern Myanmar — home to the long-neck tribe Kayan Lahwi — a tribal woman, presumably the owner, sauntered in. Her round face and hair, a close crop that fell on the forehead, was typical of a Kayan woman. But something else was different about her. It was her neck. It was abnormally long and slender and I quickly realised that she was liberated from her set of tribal neck rings. “Has she had her neck rings reBlind ride IMost casualties wereJoseph workersand under various government moved?” asked my guide immediately felt anwelfare schemes t vijaya kumar urge to talk to her to know if she feels any different or scared that her neck will snap.

Heavy bronze rings are added to a Kayan girl’s neck at the tender age of five. The neck gets elongated as the girl becomes a woman. An age-old practice to prevent rival tribes from abducting the beautiful Kayan Lahwi women, the tradition is now waning but women with bronze-ringed necks are still found in the villages surrounding Loikaw, the capital of Kayah, a state in East Myanmar.

Turns out, this particular woman, Mu Prize, removed

Burnt out

As Andhra and Telangana lose over 1,500 people to the heat wave, the under-preparedness of the governments in tackling the crisis lies exposed Standing in prayer Wooden temples are built to appease nats or spirits

F

ND-X _ A

our young men made an omelette sans a stove in Sultanabad, Karimnagar, recently. One of them held out a pan under the sun, while another broke an egg over it. No, they were not making a YouTube video. They were just trying to make an otherwise punishing summer day an enjoyable one. What they made looked like a half-boiled egg — a state that people in both states found themselves in for about two weeks in the latter half of May. Till May 15, it was largely a dream summer in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Punctuated by cloudy days and intermittent rains, the weather was quite unsummery. Sale of airconditioners and coolers slumped. The biggest disappointment of the season was the scanty yield of Banganapalli mangoes and other seasonal fruits. What appeared like a kind summer led to a sense of complacency in the government machinery. Their under-preparedness was exposed in the weeks ahead as the only action the hapless government could manage was to bombard people with tame messages of dos and don’ts, even as over 1,500 people died.

The first signs of a cruel season surfaced by May 18. Temperatures soared, abruptly making Andhra Pradesh and Telangana a veritable furnace. In the next 10 days, over 1,500 people were killed, with over a 1,000 in Andhra Pradesh alone. The prolonged heat wave forced people to remain indoors most of the day. But that was of not much help. With walls and rooftops remaining hot till 10pm, there was little relief on offer.

In the coastal districts of Andhra, east and west Godavari, Prakasam, Guntur, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram, the blistering heat Staying calm The Seven Fairies Lake in Loikaw all photos bygenerated prathap nair by the above-normal temperature

combined with the sultry, humid conditions access to oral rehydration or medical help eiproved vicious. In Prakasam district, which is ther. According to official records in Andhra, facing the worst drought situation in nearly about 25 per cent of the victims are workers half a century, cattle and human death was under various government welfare schemes. the highest at around 350.

Casualties were also reported among sheep VS Krishna, general secretary, Human grazers, construction workers and bus passenRights Forum, blames it on indifferent govern- gers. “They come with high levels of dehydraments. “What’s the point of announcing com- tion, fever and vomiting. If we can give them pensation after sunstroke killed them? They fluids in time, we can revive them. We have should have done something for farmers, dai- been treating such patients in the last two ly labourers, the elderly and children,” he says. weeks,” says Koundinya, a house surgeon at Unlike most other natural disasters like cy- the Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad. clones, floods, droughts and cold The Hudhud cyclone in Octowaves, a heat wave does not qualber last year in a way aggravated ify to be tackled on an emergenthe current situation in Visakhacy basis by the National Disaster patnam, Godavari districts, The only action the Management Authority nor does Krishna, Nellore and Prakasam. hapless government the centre provide compensaThe missing greenery pushed up could manage was to tion or relief to the victims. It is bombard people with humidity to agonising levels for left to the states to fight and fend tame messages of dos a few days. People, who went on for themselves. States like Odholidays in the region, were and don’ts isha have a mechanism of comforced to spend their vacation pensation and relief measures, indoors. while Gujarat has shown some One silver lining in this gloom preparedness. However, heat was the improved power situawaves sweep through northern India, includ- tion in both states. Those who could afford to ing the national capital, with consistent fre- stay in protected environments or worked inquency, as data proves. It is only the deaths doors had the benefit of continuous power and temperatures that are religiously report- supply. During the summer of 2014, extended ed, only to be quietly forgotten when the sum- power cuts and an uncertain political environmer is gone. ment had taken the lives of nearly a 1,000 peoAs is often the case, it is the poor and the ple during a less-severe heat wave. lower-middle class that bore the brunt of this Now, the worst appears to be past us. There heat wave. Among those killed by sunstroke have been a few showers and the temperature was an eight-month-old baby in east Godavari has climbed down. “The worst phase is over. district. Though she was not exposed to the We are forecasting a drop in temperatures and sun directly, the heat proved to be fatal. Simi- rains in several parts,” says an official at the Inlarly, a 75-year-old man in Ongole reportedly dian Meteorological Department. succumbed to the heat as his thatched hut was not protection enough. He did not have k v kurmanath with m somasekhar

Q R

know takeaway

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Travel log Get there

Located in Eastern Myanmar, Loikaw is the capital of Kayah State and is well-connected by road from all major cities in the country. Two companies, Shwe yar Zar and Thein Than Gaday, run daily bus services from Mandalay. An overnight bus from Mandalay (around 365km) will cost you approximately $11 (₹700 approximately).

Stay

You can find budget guesthouses Zero filter India views for US$20-30 (₹1300-1900 a approximately) a Bangladesh night per as person. limitless source of Advance bookingunwelcome is, however, recommended. One good option immigrants creating is the Nan Ayar Inn,ethnic run strife by a infriendly, the Northeast elderly woman. +95 83 21306 ritu raj konwar

Circle of lifeOF A Kayan Lahwi woman sports her neck rings STATES MATTER

Sightseeing

Neighbourhood watch

her braces six years ago. Her graceful face is supported by her slender neck and it renders her ineffable beauty. She is without inhibition, willing to engage in a conversation, albeit with the help of an interpreter. Two years ago, this might have been an impossible conversation to have had, let alone an impossible sight to witness these beautiful women. Atrocities against tribal minorities by the military spurred rebellion and Kayah, which borders Thailand, was out of bounds for tourists. a late mood shift, however.

West Bengal Thingsailing are slowly changing, As Minister Mamata Banerjee MyanmarChief slowly eases restrictions, the farwill relandcountry in Dhaka part offor antouallaches of the aretoday beingas opened too-rare bilateralbyvisit to Bangladesh rism. Kayah, surrounded Karen Hills, is one by an People Indian are Prime Minister.

Narendra Modi’s such. genial and their hospitality is visit to Bangladesh involves a and substantive unencumbered by their suffering poverty. agenda,that again a relative rarity in relations beEarlier day, my guesthouse owner Saw tweenLa thehad neighbours. on the inKhin offered toBanerjee do my was laundry (and vitee list Manmohan Singh visited as didn’t billwhen it afterwards).

Prime Minister in 2011, but pulled out at the last moment, forcing an important river-water sharing agreement off the agenda.

That remains one neighbourly courtesy India has continued to deny, four decades since an agreement with Bangladesh promised a future of mutual harmony. The Sheikh Mujib-Indira Gandhi accord of 1974 was to come into effect on an exchange of instruments of ratification between the two sides. Bangladesh managed its end of the bargain without delay but India, then under the imperious Indira Gandhi, who had a comfortable majority in parliament and virtually all state governments under her thumb, fell short.

India then basked in an aura of parenthood built on the support rendered to Bangladesh through its liberation war and the final military coup de grace it administered to vanquish the oppressors. But the glow did not last long. Perceptions began mutating rapidly on both sides following the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

In India, Bangladesh soon came to be perceived as a teeming landmass of truculent people, an impediment to cementing the country’s complex Northeast into the nationalist topography. A nation that India liberated was seen to have transformed itself into a demographic time bomb, a limitless source of unwelcome immigrants stirring the ethnic cauldron in the Northeast, reducing it to a state of permanent strife.

In Bangladeshi perceptions, the neighbourhood leviathan went from being a potential partner working for the shared good, to an enveloping presence, wrapping the entire country in a far-from-benign territorial embrace. It was a neighbour that failed to show the largeheartedness appropriate to its imposing size.

Write to Win Naing at loikawtravel.infos@gmail.com to plan a trip for you. Spend at least two days to visit the tribal villages.

Tip

Visit the Loikaw market for its

curious produce — from quirky Recent bonhomie between India and Bangladesh is a poor camouflage for hill the mutual fruits and green tea to sun-dried, suspicion that stems from our constant indifference to land, water and issues sourborder mustard leaves, which lend a

sukumar muralidharan

F

heady tang to any dish. Try the local set meal that comes with an When called on to work out a comprehensive gress of the fencing project along Banglaassortment of curries andthe salads land, water and border agreement in a com- desh border. and wash it down with green tea. plex terrain, whose ecology did not readily Could an impenetrable fence be constructLocal flavours Green tea salad adapt to arbitrarily drawn national borders, ed along a stretch of over 4,000km, among India constantly changed the subject. And the longest land and riverine borders in the Loikaw’s aloofness a welcome break from eroded while disavowing theisunwelcome identificawooden structures.

These are nat been temworld? That question has never seriously the onslaught countryBangladesh witnessed ples, tiontourism as a fount of illegalthe migrants, Josephasintoned.

Natswire are spirits they addressed the barbed fencingand continin after a gruelling 12- are wasrecent also years. knownI arrived to argue that population withathe lives of the villagers. ues intertwined apace. Yet with substantial part of the hour from Mandalay in aand bus, in which shifts ride would continue if land water man- Temples are built to perhaps appease to them, fencing completed, the sacrifices extent of the driverissues sworewere to keep passengers awake are agement notthe settled. offered and Wean also visit the 90 per cent in thecelebrated.

Assam sector, assessment with the unkind help ofcontinued blaring music and sil- Seven India, meanwhile, its dogged — the lake doescommunities look like fairof howFairies it hasLake impacted border ly Myanmar in which girls with pink ies vigil over theslapsticks baleful legacy of Partition, which could reside its aquamarine waters. could certainly be in carried out. hair represented face offeatures modernity. created a host of the irregular along the Without soul in sight dip incamouflage its pristine waRecentabonhomie isto a poor for Loikaw itself proved to beseveral a far cry from the border, virtually enclosing citizens of ters, it stays placid, that nudged ageing, the mutual suspicion lurksby justan under the cacophonic I sufferedofin bus.subOn wooden each countryassault in the territory thethe other, dive board. surface. From India’s side, the overtures of rethat reluctantly morning, I drove to cent jecting them to misty the hostility of asneighbours Back at Mu shop,ofconversation times arePrize’s an offshoot its ‘look east’built polmy a taxi,guards. broad and guesthouse suspicious in border up. found it that strange that I icy, She a recognition the centre roads shadows of India’shugged Border the Security Force asked if herofhusband approved of gravity global economic huge canopies. Theinsun felt (BSF), tree as documented a Huofdynamics her removing the neck braces. is shifting to Asia.

Inlight the skin, a milder man on Rights Watch report verin Of course he did, replied. dia’s Northeast is she regarded as aI The alleged influx from kounge for ye, athe country sion its rather unsympathetic 2010ofand again by the Banglasipped springboard new wine ecoThe age-oldhas practice Bangladesh always distilled from maize, in plastic avatar in the upper desh campaign group Burmese Odhikar nomic linkages with the east to prevent rivalan tribes remained glasses.

It is traditional Kayan tipplains of Mandalay. last month, became a ruthless and having Bangladesh onside from abducting the uncertainly quantified ple, Joseph tells me this before sceptiMy guide Joseph wasmarginalaware of enforcer, subjecting is vital to bringing designatbeautiful Kayan phenomenon, allowing cally offering me a glass. He was Loikaw’s growing importance ised and desperately poor bored role to fruition.

Lahwi women is now for every manner of notThough sure I could poon tourist map.

Hearbitrary quit bederthe communities to an eager handle to be ridthe of the waning wild surmise to tency.

It is full bodied, unlike ing in Yangon reignaofguide excess and terror. and constrictions of itsnot encirclegain traction the Japanese sake, but its tangimoved to Loikaw, birthplace, The Tin Bigha his lease in 1992 ment

by India, Bangladesh is unness long the last to with family andeffort in the wasbe a beginning in the to likelylingers to relent in after the matter of sip.

Joseph didn’t know I’ve had hope thatthetourism willofbring set right anomalies bortransit rights without greater naiveté, coylyon accepting anbusiness to thefrom region.

Life is hard, ders inherited Partition.

In tourism is worse. I pretended accommodation water sharglass.

The sun grew febrile as the afteronly slowly picking up and has a familythis to other Opposition at the time, thehe BJP equated ing. And there India’s larger ambitions refeed.

Both histerritorial knowledge of the region his noon very modest adjustment to aand variety main progressed. stymied by the smaller agendas that its After mosaic a while,ofJoseph pried me apart from English are impeccable. of high treason.

In craven confusion, the Con- diverse states brings to the table. conversation and the shop bench — it was As we parked our car by the road and gress government withdrew, allowing the theBangladesh is keen to ensure that India reus to watch the a special trekked across after village in the tribal time rightwing vetovillage to stand and severely limiting mainsfor well-disposed as itsunset deals from with bitter inhe said. Before which,around there belt, we saw tribal women harvesting the vantage the hours through which Bangladeshis would ternal point, convulsions, centred one more stop — Umbrella A safields, theirtransit sicklethrough coarselythe sawing through was be allowed corridor. unresolved issues ofthe history andLake. national water body demands into whicha one pebbunches of ripe paddy.

Their neck ringshas glintThe alleged influx from Bangladesh al- cred identity.

If India pricethrows for its agoodmaking wish, the lake’swithin perennial ed in remained the sun. an uncertainly quantified phe- ble ways will,after it could easilya be represented the brings up bubbles,politics umbrella Joseph looked hopeful of the country’s fu- spring nomenon, allowing for every manner of wild polarities of Bangladeshi as alike. betrayal made a wish.

For Joseph.

I picked a pebble ture though he didn’t share the same enthusisurmise to gain traction.

Consultations to get of Inational interests.

Without sensitive handto myself —with let there be many asm Kyi’shumanitarian chances of and a trueregarding measure Daw of a Suu serious ling, thought the rapprochement the neighbour sunrisesain Joseph’s lifebomb — before becoming the been next rare, president.

“They let wonderful problem have though fierywon’t rhetoric could then become partisan time that it intothe thecause lake. I of scurried away with her,” he said, referring the still-partially mil- throwing has been abundant.

Into December 2014, India’s could damage a more friendly to watchsubcontinent. the sunset, pleasantly disorientitary ruling party.

Supreme Court reprised the theme of ‘exter- him and peaceful Christianity has reached thesethat far ed by the koung ye state of mind. nalThough aggression and internal disturbance’ corners, ancient nine customs survived.

We sukumar muralidharan is a fellow at the Indian it first broached yearshave before, and took Institute of nair Advanced Study in Shimla freelance writer is a Bengaluru-based came upon the a patch with tall, upon itself onus of of land monitoring thewindpro- prathap

Q R R

ND-X _ A

5 BL 21 BL

explore know

BL BL 222

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Flying in the dark At sunset, thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats swarm out of their daytime shelters in search of food rachel moon; (below) the female Megarhyssa wasp uses her hearing skills to locate larvae of wood-boring insects to lay her eggs on ambika kamath

Ripple effect ‘It was only because of the medical student violated in the bus on that foggy December night that a tribal woman in remote Subalpur, Birbhum district, CREATURE FEATURE received a hearing at all’ ap

Buzz in the wild Digging deeper

‘Seeing’ with sound is the key to survival for Mexican free-tailed bats and the enigmatic Megarhyssa wasps While the media has played an important role in reporting rapes, it has also been guilty of leaping to conclusions and failing the basics of journalism ambika kamath

O S

ND-X _ A

n warm, still summer evenings in Gainesville, Florida, a motley crowd gathers pack in front two tatistics sometimes moreofpunch strangeheadlines. wooden structures, thanlarge, newspaper According apparently nothingreleased more than roofsNational on tall to figures by the stilts. Affixed the frontBureau of each roof a black CrimetoRecords last isyear, 93 wooden silhouette a bat.every An elderly couple women are raped inofIndia day, meaning support other as they towardsEach the a womaneach is raped here everywalk 15 minutes. benches the for oddcollective houses. A regret, young instance overlooking is an occasion boy enacts a zombie for his ever-pabut our outrage is oftendrama delimited by the qualtient as they wait for the to set. ity of parents journalistic intervention.

Oursun pursuit of Teenage tomotion join the just as justice is girls oftenrun set in by group the reporter’s darkness starts to fall, hopping onto the fencfirst judgment. es While that stop us from getting to the the wider coverage oftoo rapeclose and sexual houses. uninitiated growviolenceTo inan recent times isobserver, a positivethe developing throng must seem mystifying. ment, the rulebook forthoroughly reporting such crimes Butcomes after the sungreater sets, you see what all the also under scrutiny.

Most refuss is about: the spectacle of hundreds of porters would confess that a balance between thousands of Mexican swarmsensitivity and accuracyfree-tailed is difficultbats to strike in ing out of their daytime shelters and flying off a climate of sensationalism.

Moreover, cases into the night.

As they first trickleserve and as then like that of Priyadarshini Mattoo retumble endlessly out of their houses, can’t minders.

Journalists can impact theyou judicial help but be by so their numprocesses of impressed this country, thesheer veracity of bers.

You also needs can’t help their puntheir findings to be smelling examined. gent guano, hearing their busyatrocities clicking How does and one faithfully recount chatter.

But never their want most to impressive sensory that victims describe again to ability — is one we friends,—letecholocation alone strangers? How doeshumans a jourcan’t perceive. nalisteven unpack a victim’s testament? How does Insect-eating bats of have a range of a reporter stay clear easyevolved prejudices, where sophisticated mechanisms they ‘see’ ‘kangaroo courts’ are seenby aswhich regressive and with sound.

By emitting high-frequency adivasis as backward? sounds and then listening for the reflection off want Tooobjects terriblethey to be trueto land on or insects they want eat, bats can create In herto recently released ebooka 13fairly Men precise (Deca), mental image of the world around them. 2014 It’s a Sonia Faleiro investigates the January bit like walking around at night with torch, gang rape of a 20-year-old woman inavillage except thatWest the Bengal. torch is inside your eyes.

Subalpur, As the bats swoop out of the bat-houses, exThrough her extensive reportage and invespertly avoiding andthe hawks andthat scores of tigation Faleiro trees exposes pitfalls jourpeople standing below while pickingShe tiny innalists fail to avoid all too frequently. stays

sects out of the air, I start to wonder about Clicking at just the right time can save the tihow noisy this environment might be in the ger moth’s life. frequencies my hearing.

Surely, clear of easybeyond pronouncements and neverwith suc- ingInwhich, the forests notseven far from she says, men the tookbat-houses turns raphundreds thousands of bats trying of to right navi- ing cumbs to aofsimplistic understanding livesher, a formidable insect—that depends onand its while two more her date, Drew, gate through it, evenshe theasks skyquestions, can seem crowdand wrong; instead listens another sense of hearing much instruction as the bats and man —as gave ed.

Actually, the situation is even worse hard, digs deep and unearths the storythan thatI encouragement.” moths do. For the Megarhyssa wasp, however, imagined.

Beyond simply dodging did not make it to the headlines.

Atother timestravshe hearing allows it not tomade feed or avoid being fed ‘A Rape on Campus’ headlines, unforellers in the aerial equivalent of a train station appears to be hedging her judgements.

While tunately on, but for to reproduce successfully. quite the wrong reasons;Female it beplatform, Mexican free-tailed bats this mightthese frustrate some readers, it alsomust dis- came Megarhyssa wasps lay their eggs on larvae an example of ‘how nottheto do cope intentional from their obeys with the usual diktats ofsabotage investigations, leav- journalism.’ of wood-boring insects.

As their sugIt was discovered thatname journalist swarm-mates. ing it remarkably open-ended. Faleiro delivers Sabrina gests, wood-boring larvaenot livetoinside Rubin Erdelyinsect had chosen interThetosabotage occurs facts the reader, and precisely then leaves it to them view any of the wood.

Looking theidentified Megarhyssa men Jackie at had as at the moment before a bat capto draw their own conclusions.

This is the kind her rapists. Sources wasp, I struggled to imagine how that Erdely mentioned, tures an that insect, a time whenand its of book causes debate she could locate to a wood-boring which seemed corroborate signal is most vulnerable bediscussions, and must be to cominsect larva through many centiJackie’s story, later confessed to ing jammed.

To pinpoint the lomended for that. metres of wood, lettoalone find a have never spoken her. After The sabotage occurs cation of itsstarts prey,by a chronicling bat emits a The book way in whichinvestigation, to deposit herpolice eggs four-month precisely at the series of calls in rapid succesthe horrifying suffering of the onto it. claimed they had not officials For many reporters moment before a bat sion, known as a ‘feeding survivor (called Baby inbuzz.’ the And any yet she does. that By sensing found evidence would who reached captures an insect, a Other to time when book).bats As are oneespecially of Baby’salert assaithe subtlethe vibrations of a Erdely woodallegations Subalpur, its signal is confirm the buzzes their comlantsfeeding recorded herof gang rape backwardness boring beetle larva as it chews seemed to have levelled in her reproved most vulnerable to petitors, and will emit a12signal with his digital camera, other through wood, these wasps can port.

Rolling Stone apologised for too convenient being jammed a that overlapsmen almost completely, inebriated forced thempick out larvae that are atits exactly these ‘discrepancies’ and pubstereotype in both and frequency. selves ontiming her in succession.

Lalu the depth to which their lisher asked the dean of oviposiColumThis interception Murmu, one of theconfuses assailants,the is torsUniversity will extend.

She then posibia Graduate School of bat enough almost always reported to that haveitsaid, “If you do tions herselftocarefully above the Journalism audit its flawed misses its prey, the other not allow me, leaving I will insert my bats a chance larvae, and lifts her abdomen comically Steve high journalistic processes. to catch the insect instead.and bring it out and Coll’s hand into your abdomen in thereport air to be able to position‘Aher ovipositor, is unambiguous.

Rape on Caminterestingly, thisansort of interfeeatEven you more raw.” This cruelty had unlikely par- pus’, the tubes through which she lays herfailure eggs, he says, is a ‘story of journalistic rence doesn’t allel across thecome globe. only from other bats — that perfectly perpendicular to the wood’s surface. was avoidable’. bats sometimes suffer indignity of By exuding an enzyme that dissolves through Oncan November 19, 2014, the the American magajamming at Stone the hands of their insecttitled prey as zine Rolling published a story ‘A Baby, wood,interrupted the wasp’s delicate ovipositor painstakwell. the report gloriously patterned Rape In on particular, Campus’. The recounted the Even ingly after makes itsRolling way through solid wood. this, Stone publisher Jann red-and-yellow moth is known to emit an Wenner events of a nighttiger in September 2012 when JackWatching a Megarhyssa wasp her expert eggs is faas referred to Jackie as ‘alay really ultrasonic clicking instudent, responseistosaid theto signals ie, then a freshman have bulist enthralling as watching the enormous aggrestoryteller’.

The accusation, though imof certain Again, the counter-clicking been rapedbats. by seven members of a fraternity prudent, gation of helped bats flying into the night, but I wish I amplify an already prevalent seems to confuse of theVirginia. bat’s ability to locate the doubt at the University The descriptions could hear what theyever hearbeen too. raped? By the — had Jackie insect, much likeinshining a light in your eyes time you turn the last page of 13 Men, you find of sexual assault 13 Men and ‘A Rape on Camambika kamath studies evolutionary just to“She reach for your spoon pus’ as areyou’re eerily about similar. remembers every yourself frustrated by organismic a similarand question.

Unbiology at Harvard Universityhowever, it is the crediand fork of may youof from eating. moment thewell nextprevent three hours agony, dur- like Erdely’s credulity,

Q Q R R

scan know

saturday, june 6, 6, 2015 saturday, june 2015

Mighty cone Hitler is the face of ice-creams made in UP

T

he Fuhrer is back. This time, in the avatar of an ice-cream cone. And you don’t need a visa or euros to be able to eat from the Hitler cone.

It’s made in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. The owner of MVF Products, the cone manufacturer, claims the cones have been named after a quick-tempered and strict uncle. Neeraj Kumar believes his buyers — most of them living in the villages — don’t know of Hitler or his politics. But the brand is already under fire after photos of Hitler, sporting a brown blazer, on its cartons went viral on social media. ReWhen you’re down and troubled ports suggest that even the GerAllCentre you need is Tribals a Babecarrying at hand mans are not pleased. court traditional weapons march through Kolkata in protest against the arrest of 13 Santhals, including their community head ashoke chakrabarty And nothing, nothing is going right Close your eyes and think of Mr Piggy ing, Baby alleges, she had been raped by 13 of ports from Subalpur. The audit proves critical. bility ofhe Faleiro’s reporting that makes you And soon will be there Subalpur’s most powerful men. Faleiro never Tribal traditions and governmental response examine account of cuddly. the assault.

Bright eyes,Baby’s pink snout and so challenges this claim directly. She simply aren’t the only issues at stake. When an in‘A Rape on Campus’ is decidedly guided points out that the additional district and ses- stance of rape gains national prominence, the by testimony and of Jackie, and in the first he the over-stressed highly-imagisions judge who had sentenced the accused to aftermath is felt across board. Faleiro writes, Men, Baby of too is the unrivalled propart of 13students native Nottingham an imprisonment of 20 years in September “It was only because of the medical student viButinFaleiro’s to Baby Trenttagonist.

University the UK access have found a — she had done so without any medical or scientific olated in the bus on that foggy December onlywe journalist allowed to to interview newwas — orthe should say, porcine — way proof. The lack of forensic evidence doesn’t night that a tribal labourer in remote Subalin ayear high-security kickthe backrape andvictim relax. Last they orga- governjust demonstrate of aWale fast-tracked ment shelter — does not persuade her to sacpur received a hearing at all.” According to dan January 29, at the 5am,limits Gemma was nised a puppy room to raise money for investigation.

Baby rifice Though the ta recently tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the making love Ittoalso her denies partner.

Foran 10 imperfominguide dogsobjectivity. and to allow their prominent, peers to rate Her statements stillHer warrant a rig- number of rapes registered in India jumped survivor’s narration is judiciously interrupt- utes, shejustice. screamed and shouted. neighcuddle and chill with the canines. This orous review. ed piglet by voices that featured corroborate as well from 24,929 in 2012 to 33,703 in 2013. The 35 per woke up. “She’s violating paragraph year’s room seven pi- as con- bours wary of herbehavioural counterpartsorder,” in India’s cent increase demonstrates a new courage. tradict.

Faleiro carefully delineates the three Faleiro of theisantisocial glets, two goats, a donkey and chickens. to Wale the Subalpur events that Baby said had unfolded theymainstream Protests that followed the December 16 gang cried and media. ran to Referring the court. was It chain is notof surprising that Babe was the judgment, writes, “The didn’t rape helped the night of January expose the much-neglected cowboy hat. A leather gun holster.mawith anshe order barring herdecision from causmoston beloved in the room. 20, 2014. Enraged by slapped the front like the to swear, her affair with a married Muslim man, the ing make of sexual violence.

The to tenaThat’slaise all John Erik Wagner seems a nuisance.

But pages, she continued news of the rape had. There had loud sex, Santhal villagers of Subalpur had forcibly shout cious coverage to by be India’s media need in his campaign Danish and slam doors.

She had beenloud other, dragged Baby and Khaleque out of her played only emboldened awareness.

Prime Minister.

Nude billboards of musicwidely-discussed and ran “noisily” around assaults incourt, India in thehas in- been senhouse. They had tied the couple to a tree the sexual have doubtlessly nevWagner inJournalists just the hat and the holster property.

Back at Wale terim, andweeks people orafter perhaps and, before the shalisi sabha (village coun- tenced er been more integral to line the streets of election-charged Co-the to two in — jail, the judge conWhat Faleiro just news — were cil) could deliver its verdict the next morn- cluded, processes transition. and they of sure stand out from “The editors defendant wasnoguilty of discovered waspenhagen, that longer interested in the Banned in India, BBC’s docuthe clutter of mug-shots.

A long-time screaming whilst having sexdestiny at which caused the case had been India’s Daughter was of some tribal men,Wail. or even mentary prime minister aspirant fighting his acnuisance to poor (a neighbour).” almost entirely cusedWagner of being of their victim.” In an interview third election, urges part votersofto ‘a misreported conspiracy to defame India’ to The Hindu, she is yet more can‘Vote for Wagner, it benefits.’

And that in- by did. “What I discovered was that Parliamentary cludes freeMinister trips toofthe dentist’s. If Affairs his the case had been almost entireM Venkaiah Naidu. The full-on doesn’t work, Wagner says,governhe ly misreported.” andshot a section of go activists will give itment another and then get Early last year, journalists were quick to were united in their opposition.

Filmmaker back his municipal garbage man’s job. claim that Baby’s gang rape was a punishment Leslee Udwin, they claimed, had simply reinadministered by a ‘kangaroo court’ in her vil- forced misogyny by interviewing an unrelage. The ensuing indignation reportedly pentant Mukesh Singh. Though the convict’s compelled Mamata Banarjee to take action. views were reprehensibly violent, the ban on She is said to have circulated an internal me- the film effectively made conspicuous a remo asking that the state police disband all vil- grettable truth. India wasn’t prepared to aclage councils. Faleiro gives these parallel cept the journalistic tenet that every story has justice systems a context. Not only do they act two sides, and that in cases of rape, the perpeas arbiters of everyday complaints, they are al- trator’s perspective is often unpalatable. so a perceived solution to neglect and a deFaleiro in 13 Men shows that a recreation of fence against mineral-hungry land sharks. For events can be completed only by telling the many reporters who reached Subalpur, back- stories of the men as well. She uses her 15,000 wardness proved too convenient a stereotype. words to pack in the several details required Their resultant assertions of a sanctioned to place Baby’s ordeal within a social and politgang rape were irreversibly damaging. The ical framework. In the end, this specificity council had only levelled punitive fines. It turns out to be crucial. Faleiro had one enviable advantage. She took eight months to rehadn’t prescribed assault. port the story. In the process, she mended news that others were too eager to break.

Step across this deadline Much of 13 Men is an inadvertent correction of Yesterday’s news The media soon lost interest in the fate of 13 tribal men arrested for assault ap errors that journalists had made in their re- shreevatsa nevatia

Babe

T

Only much louder Birmingham woman jailed for having noisy sex

O

Running for PM

Wagner doesn’t need a million-dollar machinery to run his campaign

A

Gone missing A new voyage looks for clues to Amelia Earhart flight mystery

S

eventy eight years ago, aviatrix Amelia Earhart was on a mission to follow the equator when she vanished into thin air at Nikumaroro in the South Pacific. Theories speculate that she ditched the Lockheed Electra or was captured

by Japanese forces. But what really happened? Ten expeditions later, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery is setting off once again to crack the mystery of Earhart’s disappearance. And while they’re on this noble mission, 68 passengers will be on an Earhart-themed voyage, looking for signs of the ill-fated flight. At $11,000 per person, the voyage will show them a shoe that might’ve been hers, the spot where Electra might’ve crashed. Will too many sleuths spoil the mystery?

Q R

ND-X _ A

3 23BL BL

HANG

saturday, june 6, 2015

BL

24

in-faq by joy bhattacharjya Feathered beings

T

here is a pigeon currently under arrest in Pathankot, accused of spying for Pakistan.

Great time for a quiz on our feathered friends and foes.

here,there & elsewhere

Food wars!

E

ver since our vegetarian visitor last week, Bins and I have been swapping insults. “You’re an anti-national BRINJAL!” Bins hurls at me. “And you’re a hypocritical PUMPKIN,” I respond.

“You don’t like food fanatics any more than I do.”

“Yes — but he was your countryman!

And he was hungry!” Bins feels strongly about all matters of the stomach. In his view, if someone is hungry, they are immediately elevated to victimsainthood. “Not so hungry that he’d eat my curry,” I retort. “Whose fault is it that he believes his food habits are superior to mine? Who’s forcing him to be picky?” Bins cannot refute this logic, but he continues firing. “ARTICHOKE!!” he roars. I return fire with “GORGONZOLA!” He sucks in his breath and starts out on “BISI BELE HOOLI ...” when there’s a knock on the door.

To my amazement, it’s Jiggs, the vegetarian. He’s grinning broadly, holding a stadium-sized pizza-box in his hands. “Hello, please!” he yodels in his nasal Indo-US accent, “I’m not disturbing, of course? I myself have brought the lunch this time! Pure vegetarian pie — enough for everyone to eat —” He dashes in and plonks the steaming monstrosity down on the desk in the middle of the room. Right

cornerstone

over my laptop.

I snatch my precious machine out of harm’s way as Jiggs says, “The chef at Pizza Plaza is an Indian and my friend.

He is vegetarian too! We are everywhere!” He aims a smirk in my direction. “He makes my pizza to order.

Completely safe, not even one grain of meat!” Bins is standing behind Jiggs and hurling warning glances at me. So I smile through clenched teeth as I sit down.

“How nice,” I say. “Thank you.” As Jiggs opens the box he says, “He is also an artist, just like you, Mrs Manju. Look what he has made!” With a flourish he

1 reveals the pizza within. It’s in the colours of the Indian flag: shredded carrot on top, shredded white radish in the middle and chopped dhania below, in three neat stripes. In the centre there’s a charkha carved out of a brinjal.

“Umm,” says Bins, looking a little green. “No cheese?” “Nothing, nothing!” chortles Jiggs. “I told you it is purest of pure veg! Neither garlic nor onion even!” There’s no place for plates, so the three of us dig in right there — or try to: the pizza is much too soggy to pick up. Jiggs rolls up his slice like a parantha, stuffing one end into his mouth and munching away. I try to do the same but gag on my first mouthful of dhania. Bins drapes his slice across both hands and tries to slurp up the mush, failing miserably.

Jiggs lectures us on the holy merits of vegetarianism for two hours. The moment he leaves, Bins leaps up and vomits luxuriously in the bathroom.

Then he eats the leftover pot of beef curry, cold, straight from the fridge.

“That Jiggs,” he says in a weak voice, “is a total UTTAPAM. A boring, sanctimonious CURD.” I smile happily.

For once, we’re in agreement. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

Japanese fishermen call it ukai. This particular style of fishing is also common in parts of China, Greece and Macedonia where a bird is used to hunt fish. A snare is tied around its neck so that it cannot swallow the larger fish.

Which bird is used in this traditional form of fishing?

2

The bar-headed goose breeds near lakes in Central Asia and then holidays in winter in the Indian subcontinent. Why is it of great interest to ornithologists?

3

Glasgow-born, he took a position as a cabin boy to reach the US and made his fortune at Klondike when he found a rock the size of a goose’s egg. He has figured regularly on the Forbes list of fictional billionaires. Identify this avian entrepreneur?

4 5 6

Whose first student was a bird named Fletcher Lynd?

Which novella was adapted for the 1978 film Junoon, starring Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendall and a young Nafisa Ali? Fill in the blanks with the name of a bird, and for good measure identify the person being quoted, “For my own part I wish the ____ _____ had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character.

He does not get his living honestly.”

7

Which bird shares a mutually beneficial relationship with giant tortoises, where the tortoise raise its torso so that the birds can clean its skin of parasites. This species is reasonably well-known in the history of science.

8 9

What connects Rossini’s La gazza ladra, Tintin comics, Swedish and Russian folklore, and an album by Marillion?

After which bird is the special forces unit of the Indian Air Force named. They are currently deployed in peacekeeping operations in Congo.

10

Which variety of flightless birds is regarded as the only avian that hunts primarily by smell as it has poor eyesight and has nostrils at the end of its beak? It also lays the largest egg in proportion to its body size.

Answers

1. The cormorant 2. It is the highest flying migratory bird. While many breeds cross the Himalayas, a few fly over the higher peaks. Bar-headed geese have been seen over Makalu and other 8,000-metre peaks and unconfirmed sightings report them flying over Mount Everest 3. Scrooge McDuck was supposed to be a one-time character in a Donald Duck comic, instead it inspired a whole line of new comics 4. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the eponymous character of the bestselling book by Richard Bach. If you are wondering what the fuss is about, just ask anyone who grew up in the 1970s 5. A Flight of Pigeons, by Ruskin Bond, is a story set in 1857 6. Bald eagle. Benjamin Franklin, who apparently preferred the turkey as America’s national bird 7. The Galapagos or Darwin finches, first observed and captured during Darwin’s expedition to the islands on HMS Beagle 8. The magpie, known for its love of bright and shiny items. The opera and album were named after them and they were the villains in The Castafiore Emerald 9. Garud, the mount or vahan of Lord Vishnu 10. The kiwi

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

ND-X _ A

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