Blink issue 79 august01 2015

WHO IS WHO Decoding the churn in government institutions, we proďŹ le recent appointments to top posts in the country p2 saturday, august 1, 2015

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After 20 years in Delhi, author and publisher Anita Roy packs her bags and heads to Somerset, UK... not for better opportunities, but for green grass, blue skies and a V-neck t-shirt p10

Moving home

AKBAR’S CECIL An exhibition in New York which brings to life hunting scenes from Mughal India p15

THREE-TIERED DELIGHT A cookbook explores the meanings and memories behind the tiffin snack p20

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Who’s who?

Basic instinct CREATURE FEATURE

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tudents of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) are still fighting the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan.

While this been the mostat vocal protest against political appointment, it is not the only Since May 16, Ahas closer look the glory lily a— which has been used to one. cure many ills — reveals how 2014, many institutions are seeing a churn. Who are the people heading India’s top educational and cultural chemicals ensure in the institutions? colours Affiliates of and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghsurvival (RSS), feminists whowild believe crying babies are the mother’s problem, and scholars and actors dabbling in the mythological epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. In the last nine months, four topthe officials havepoint resigned from important institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical rom vantage of my priviResearch (ICHR), theleged National Council life, of Educational and Training (NCERT), and the Indian Institutes of 21st century I think backResearch to ambika kamath of ourThe earliest humanofancesTechnology at Delhi the andtime Bombay. processes appointing chairpersons and vice-chancellors to Institutes of with bodies terror of and awe. education How did and culture have regularly come under the scanner. While national importance tors and apex higher they figure out what they could and couldn’t interference in academic matters is nothing new, the eminent scholars have rightly pointed out that government eat, what would hurt and what would heal? scholarship of the new appointees is worth scrutiny. As historian Ramachandra Guha puts it, “One must distinguish Walking through a cornfield today, it’s easy to here between work done by intellectuals and that done by ideologues.” Priyanka Kotamraju and P Anima put seethe that corn is meant to be eaten.

But thoutogether a list, not of exhaustive, appointments since last year. sands years ago,ofcorn didn’t growmade in neat

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rows or bear such inviting kernels. Ancestral maize seeds were tiny, brown, and hard, borne on plants that look, to the untrained eye, like any other grass. But our forefathers still recognised these plants as sources of nutrition. Or take coffee. How long, how bitter was the procChairperson, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla ess of figuring out that coffee berries must be washed, cleaned, ●dried, and of the 51-year-old institution. Appointed in First roasted, woman ground, chairperson brewed with boiling water? 2014, her candidature was suggested by HRD minister Smriti September In a literal embodiment of the vice-chancellor cliché that Irani. Previously of Maharaja Ganga Singh University, Rawhat doesn’t kill us makes us professor, stronger, many ends, lies in the chemicalshe colchijasthan and political murderous studies at Banaras Hindu University, plant extracts thatwas in small can save cine.

Colchicine interferes with important also aquantities National Fellow at IIAS in 2003-04. ● Has 88 research papers to herproteins credit, and has published severalupbooks our lives will, in larger quantities, cause death.

— tubulins — that make our cells’ Manisha Agradoot: Pandit Madan women’s studies as Bhartiya But when I came on across the glory lily such in a boequivalents of ke bones and arteries. in Dharmashastras: Phenomenological and Malaviya, tanical garden a Mohan few days ago, theWomen thought The glory lily A probably produces colchicine and Feminism, Traditiontoand Modernity (edited).all of Critical (edited) that this plant could helpAnalysis or harm me didn’t for protection, dissuade animals, In her new role, Padiaatplans oncells workcontain that probes India’s intelleceven cross my mind.

I stopped to look it on-to focus whose tubulins, from eating it. tual tradition ly because of its pretty flowers. and third world feminism.

But the flower doesn’t benefit from scaring In Feminism, Tradition and Modernity: Essay in to ManusmriGlory lilies have●been used across the world away allan animals.

InRelation fact, its showy petals exist writes, “The freedom forsolely women which the feminists today will to cure all mannerti,ofPadia ills, from haemorrhoids to for attract certain animals,ofwhich cryofisthe taken to mean equality regarded mere sameness.

But let us pause to head-lice. Many uses that humans transferasits pollen to other glory lilies. The for a involved while and consider whether such a view of equality is workable. found for glory lilies killing somecombination of the flowers’ downward facing What I mean simply attention the different and polthing, be they parasitic wormsisor otherthis. peo-Pay equal male parts (the to anthers coveredneeds in yellow capacities of men and women, themupward appropriate ple. This plant’s potency, serving medicinal or and len)then and give a sharp turn opportuin its female nities for work. How many of our male participants present here would welcome being assigned the task of assuaging crying babes in the absence of their mothers? Here, it is obvious, the mothers have to lend a helping hand.”

Chandrakala Padia

Burning bright The glory lily uses its colourful petals to entice animals that will help transfer its pollen to other flowers ambika kamath

parts (the green style tube ending in three stigmas) make it near-impossible for pollen to fall from the anthers onto its own stigmas, preventing it from fertilising itself.

Some neuroscientists think that similarities in our brains might explain why flowers are attractive to birds, bees, and me. Perhaps our brains see beauty in the contrast of the glory lily’s colours against a green background, perhaps from its symmetry. If I had lived 5,000 years ago, I doubt my brain could have deduced if the glory lily would kill or cure me, but I think that it would still have found these fiery flowers beautiful.

Let’s talk about sex

Mukesh Khanna

Chairperson, Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI)

Appointed in April this year after Amole Gupte, director of child-centric films like Stanley Ka Dabba and Hawaa Hawaai, rement made now to the Prasar Bharati signed in June 2014.

Rules, 2000. As per earlier rules, the ● Khanna played the Indian suchairperson got only a meeting allowperhero Shaktimaan. In the seance of ₹1,000 per meeting, subject to a ries that began in the ’90s, he maximum of ₹5,000 per month. The some ofsuperhuman it on the fly — Howard thesalary manyand routes you might take For example, while waiting to catch frogs in willing to learn attains powers chairperson getsf no no offithe lives of animals, a path the act, Howard raises the question of how ex- doesn’t definethrough some basic terms (expect to see intense meditation.

The cial vehicle. Now,into an official vehicle has ‘sub-hothat takes you through the varied, actly male and female frogs decide when to terms like ‘sexual seriesdimorphism’ proved crucialand to Khanna’s also been provided.” quickly explains difficult conweird, andand thoroughly ● Author of several books articles entertain- migrate to the breeding ponds in which they minin’), and appointment as chairperson to Vice-Chancellor, thisnodal bookbody apartfor from most ing world of animal reproduction mate with each other. Turns out this is a ques- cepts. What sets on parliamentary affairs, Prakash, in a is perhaps India’s children’s about the ascience of animal we don’t really know the answer to. In ex- popular writing that you may admit taking. But Banaras em- tion pieceone titled ‘Verdict 2014:not Sonia-Manmofilms.

“He has very good credenHindu is Howard’s willingness to voice subject of ani- amining the mysterious lives of bdelloid reproductiontial han barrassment Punished forsurrounding Decade-longtheConof working in a famous chilUniversity an opinion on some of the most is unwarranted.

Because temptmal for sex Hindu Majority’, writes, “… almost all rotifers, which never have sex, he dren programme.

That paves the problematic aspects of how peocreatures onthe it to reproduce, sex has ponders why sex evolved in the this column willdepend focus on Congress way for him to lead the organisaple studied capacity,” and talked been tremendously in shaping the first place.

Party’s insolent behaviourimportant towards the tion have in creative PTI about animal Kumar, sex. Foremost By balancing of what University, Tripathi was world, and any to understand ● An RSS man, formerly stories with Allahabad Hindunatural majority which, thisattempt writer bequoted Shravan CEO, CFSI The woods, gardens, we as dovice-chancellor know about animal sex 2014. among theseappointment. is our tendency to dependsdamage upon understanding sex. appointed in November In a conflict of lieves,animals did maximum to its proon Khanna’s zoos, and museums impose human valuesBhishma and inseanimal sex can lead you to with about what committee, we ● Khanna also played in interest, the questions Search-cum-Selection which recomspects inContemplating this election. With the passage of his native know, by talking to and curities about sextelevision onto theseries anithink mostthat puzzling quesBR Chopra’s epic mendeddon’t his candidature, included old associate and RSSEngland icon of time, theabout party some beganoftothe believe are filled withMalaplenty mal world. Why else1990s. has it taken in biology, setjust aside learningMalaviya’s from the grandson scientists who Mahabharat in the Madan Mohan Justice (retd) Giridhar it cantions run the country so with theyour sup-prudishness of organisms with scientists to acknowlspend their lives IIT-BHU’s asking these forthe a while, and go read Sex on Earth: A Celebra● Khanna,so inlong an interview last viya. Reportedly ignoring list of candidates, the HRD port of religious minorities.

Therefascinating sex lives questions, Sex onTripathi Earth shows us edge imporReproduction.

Jules Howard year, that said females “I have play beenasto every ministry also appointed as chairperson of the institute. fore, tion one ofofAnimal the first acts of the howV-Cscience really works. tant a in role in while sex as males? doesn’t travelCombine far or wide fordisfirst-hand● acAfter the appointment, TripathiBut is reported to have visited corner India campaignSonia-Manmohan was to any large revela- temple and the VishWhat’s abhorrent tendcounts the oddest on the planet. the Kal don’t Bhairavexpect temple, Kashi Vishwanath ing for with BJP.” our He also appeared in tort the factsofvis-à-vis the animal Godhrasex inciency to describe advertisements some animal woods, zoos, and museums ofwanath his tions about life on According earth or the temple on campus. to reports, the V-C has also tele-marketing dent. The Egged on gardens, by pseudo-secularists, as ‘rape’? And why rudraksha. do we speculate, onnative England are filled with plenty of orgahuman condition when reach the end of sexfood asked students to go vegan andyou consume non-vegetarian for the In anoninterthe Sonia-Manmohan combine institutHindu, Khanna sugnismsthat withproduced fascinating sex lives,reand this book — it A is professor better readofaseconomics, a series of essays, ly the shakiestview of scientific about outsidethis the book campus. a Google scholar with Thefoundations, ed a probe a spurious filmmakers make the length ofgested an erect T-rex penis? Howard occasionally repetitive citations and some decidedly the stories of duckshad with explosive search reveals no publications, or papers to his name. port includes saying that the karsevaks ● In June 2015,than at the International Conference for Communal themselves set firecorkscrew to the train compartof but thealso Rabetter others. takes on suchanimated questionsversions forcefully penises and vaginas, the sex arenas and Nation building, organised by the Students of Is- and the ment.ofThis piece of fiction line raised Harmony mayana Mahabharat.

“Our funnily, result and is a refreshing account retired race horses, was and in chicks by a There are many, many articles and books and the political science department of at BHU, with the of history resorted children need to imbibe Indian about the science of animal reproduction animal reproduction. pairfalsification of male flamingos named Carlos andlamic Fer- Organisation in a five-minute address, echoedbiologists.

RSS and VHP to by nando. leftist and historivalues. Fortunately, our mythoButpseudo-secular investigating the “sex lives ofTripathi, the written for people who aren’t I intellecambika kamath studiesserials organismic tuals, saying, “Therecommend planet is a family.

Our wayto of you life isifprescribed ans everyday” owing quickly allegiance to theto the limits logical areevolutionary educative and wouldn’t Sex on Earth leads Howard UniversityIndian culture.” bhavantu and vasudhaiva kutumbakam.” by sarveyou Nehru-Gandhis.” promote know sukhinah nothing about biology and aren’t biology at Harvard of our knowledge about animal reproduction. ●

A collection of essays that Girish makes for a refreshing read on animal reproduction

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A Surya Prakash Chairman, Prasar Bharati

Sex on Earth: A

Celebration of veter● Appointed in October 2014, this Animal Reproduction

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an journalist is also aJules Distinguished FelHoward low at the right-wing think tank Non-fiction Bloomsbury FoundaVivekananda International ₹1700 tion. Previous government appointees from the think tank include Ajit Doval, Nripendra Mishra and PK Mishra. ●In June 2015, The Economic Times reported that Prakash “has got a fat hike from the government and could now possibly take home ₹1 lakh a month.”

The report adds that “this is an amend-

Chandra Tripathi

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Baldev Bhai Sharma Chairman, National Book Trust Baldev Sharma was appointed in March 2015, after the HRD ministry cut short veteran Malayalam writer A Sethumadhavan’s term as Chairman, NBT. A seasoned journalist, he spent five years as editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya. In his 35-year career, he has also worked at Dainik Swadesh, Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala. Sharma was also visiting professor at Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya. ● In an interview to DD News in April, when asked about his eligibility and relationship with the RSS, he said, “Is a man of the RSS non-transparent? Will you boycott him from taking any responsibility for the nation? And all those who are of anti-Sangh ideology, they can occupy any position?

Whatever ideology that talks about the country’s progress, its sanskriti, this thought process is the best. To see it as bhagvakaran (saffronisation) is the weakness in your thinking. You can’t see history or books in parts or divisions, as Left or Right.” ●

Pahlaj Nihalani Chairperson, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC)

Yellapragada Sudershan Rao

Lokesh Chandra

Chairperson, Indian Council for Historical Research

Chairman, Indian Council for Cultural Relations

● Appointed in July 2014 by the HRD minister Smriti Irani. He was earlier a professor of history at Kakatiya University. Rao headed the Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), the history wing of the RSS. ● In his ‘Indian Caste System: A Reappraisal,’ Rao says, “The system was working well in ancient times. It is often misinterpreted as an exploitative social system for retaining economic and social status of certain vested interests of the ruling class applying the Marxist jargon which has no respect for the ancient systems and philosophy whether Indian or the other.” He is also working on a project that aims to fix the date of the Mahabharat war. ● In April, historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya resigned as chief editor of Indian Historical Review, the journal of ICHR. In May, the ICHR disbanded the 22-member advisory committee to the journal. Gopinath Ravindran, member secretary of ICHR, quit in June though his term expires in 2016. ● Rao told The Hindu in May that the time had come to research the traditional sources of knowledge and look at the traditional ways in which history has been written. In January, he recommended Narayan Rao, Ishwar Sharan Vishwakarma and Nikhilesh Guha, members of the ABISY, to the top panel of ICHR.

● A Congressman, an Indira Gandhi loyalist, son of noted Indologist Raghu Vira, Lokesh Chandra was appointed as Chairman ICCR in October 2014. The 87-year-old Vedic scholar’s CV says he is fluent in 20 languages, and has published more than 576 books and 286 articles. Twice member of the Rajya Sabha, he has previously served as vice-chairman ICCR, and also as chairman of ICHR. ● In an interview with the Indian Express, he hailed Modi as a “reincarnation of god.” He says, “He (Modi) doesn’t have foreign bank accounts and black money. He doesn’t have a son or son-in-law. For him the country is the son and son-in-law. Modiji, in some aspects, supercedes Gandhi, when it comes to a practical approach.” ● At the January Indian Science Congress, in a session called ‘Bharat ko jano’, Chandra reportedly said that “the mathematical sign for infinity was originally derived from Sheshnag — the mythical snake whose coiled body forms the throne on which Lord Vishnu reclines.” In the Indian Express interview, Chandra says he wants “to connect India to Southeast Asian countries through programmes based on the Mahabharata and Ramayana.”

Appointed in January 2015 after Leela Samson resigned citing government interference. ● Nihalani has produced films like Aankhen, Talaash: The Hunt Begins... and Shola Aur Shabnam. He also produced Ilzaam in 1986, which marked the debut of Govinda, and Aag hi Aag introducing Chunky Pandey. He played a cameo in Halla Bol and directed Avataar in 2012. He also produced the promotional video ‘Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’, which was released on social media ahead of the general elections. In an interview with The Hindu, he said, “I feel that he (Modi) is a guardian.” In another interview to NDTV, he said, “Narendra Modi is my action hero. I am proudly saying I am a BJP person.” ● After Nihalani took charge, the CBFC released a list of 28 English and Hindi words, including Bombay, that cannot be used in films. In recent months, other censor board members have raised allegations against his ‘autocratic’ approach. ●

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Lost in transition (clockwise from top left) An archival image of Elphinstone Picture Palace, the country’s first permanent cinema hall; the dilapidated mansion of Raja Subodh Mullick; Basubati in north Kolkata; Chaplin, a later avatar of Elphinstone Picture Palace, was demolished in 2013 arnab banerjee

For old times’ sake The box of delights

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A recent campaign to preserve Kolkata’s old residential neighbourhoods compels a look at its historic buildings that are prey to neglect and government apathy

Television chef and author Rukmini Srinivas’s new cookbook, Tiffin tempers our nostalgia ecorative iron grilles. Red-oxide ifice that is Telephone Bhavan. The Institute ment it continues to get from the city adminfloors. Shuttered windows. found aitnew home in 42 Jhowtala Street, in the istration. Declared a heritage building in 1998, for homemade food andStained the bonds builds and nourishes

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Tiffin Rukmini Srinivas Rupa ₹395

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glass windows with floral patterns.

It is not unusual for a Kolkata house — even a modest, middle-class one — of the ontological desire to carry your early 19thhecentury or later to have some of homeifeverywhere is at the centre of these features, not all. Sharing space with practices.

Be it your apspecimensallofculinary ‘Bengali’ architecture on the for ghar-ka-khaana orBritish. yearncityscape petite are structures built by the ing forsome feedback a homemade While enjoyon protection underdish, the what ‘heriyou’re really craving of the household tage’ tag, others areisata slice the mercy of realtors you up in. straight-laced post-Inwhogrew belong to In theour ‘multi-storey’ school of ternet age,Bhooter nostalgia isn’t cool(Future anymore, thought.

Bhabishyat of but the the aroma — of‘bhoot’ food inmeans tiffin both boxesinstill evokesa Past/Ghost Bengali), memories.

The where the tales of film released inkitchen 2012, is aispoignant reminder grandmothers come alive: theirshows innovative of this loss of heritage.

The film how a recipes, concern one’s residents health, cleanbunch oftheir happy, noisyfor ghosts, of a ing lunchboxes in the company of old their film palatial zamindari-style house, saves songs lamenting the gradual home and fromsometimes, the clutches of an unscrupulous death culinary excesses.

After all, who can builderofwho can only think of luxury malls. resist a skilled granny’s is piping creamy Kolkata’s architecture back hot, in the news soup a chilly winter evening? with on a campaign led by author-singer Amit Grandmothers often our first intimate Chaudhuri.

In an were appeal to chief minister Mafriends and theChaudhuri food theyand served (even the mata Banerjee, a host of other bland stuff)citizens tasted like heaven.

When Italian prominent (artists, filmmakers, acaphotographer Galimberti was about demicians andGabriele architects) have asked for a to settooff a globetrotting assignment, his stop theondestruction of buildings with the doting askedtouch. how he unique grandmother Bengali-European Thewould camfeed Galimberti swore that he paignhimself. has attracted much attention onwould social only eatnot in other grandmothers’ media, just for its cry to savekitchens. heritage The but result was an award-winning coffee table book also showing how such neighbourhoods can — from Ethiopia to Latvia to bewhere turnedgrannies into tourist attractions.

America were photographed, alongside their Kolkata’s Raj-era buildings, too, need immespecial recipes —Many called Kitchen: Stories diate attention. of In theHer mighty Victorian and Recipesstand from peeling Grandmas the World. buildings andAround decaying, while Clearly, grandmothers and their food are powseveral were demolished without as much as a erful cultural markers, a function they fulfil by murmur in protest from the city’s historians being memory catalysts. and intellectuals.

When author and television chefinRukmini The Dalhousie Institute, built 1865 at Srinivas (aka Rukka) firstas shared family anwhat was once known Tank her Square (now ecdotes about tiffins daughters, BBD Bagh), was one with such her casualty.

It wasthey dereplied, “Amma, us more recipes”.

Srinimolished in 1950,send making way for the ugly ed-

garden house of the celebrated General Jayan- the house, now a University of Calcutta propto Nath Chowdhury. erty, was supposed to be developed into a venIn another blow to the city’s colonial heri- ue for conferences. The only reminder of the vas us, significantly, that this at was a detage,tells the Senate House, built in 1872 a cost of times, the overriding uniformity building’s glorious concerns past is aare dust-covered mand stories”.

In the quest to and ₹5 lakh,for was“more demolished in 1960.

It was the ofstandardisation. however, wants plaque — it states thatSrinivas, Sri Aurobindo lived here assemble stories, she created an each fice of the these vice-chancellor andhas registrar of the us to 1907. remember our meals, and bond from of 1906 heirloom HerThe cookbook Tiffin takes Universityofofrecipes.

Calcutta. building, with its over what we eat.

Baghbazar’s Basubati is luckier. If things go us on a and gastronomical jaunt, found tracingitsthe variportico imposing pillars, way in- as planned, this historic mansion will become ous branches of her to many books on family history,tree. architecture and Ties that lasthotel under the Harsh Neotia a heritage It is not an autobiography se,Walter but its even education.

It was designedper

by Sir B Family over food has been known to Group. bonding It was here that Rabindranath Tagore structure firmly memoir territory. typi- be Granville, is the manin behind other statelyAbuildtherapeutic.

Where I come from, ceremony in Assam, conducted a mass Raksha Bandhan cal consists of notes collected fromMudi- tiffin ingschapter like the General Post Office, Indian is known as and jolpan, a snacktoconsisting of between Hindus Muslims protest the aries, cookery classes, seum and the High Court.vignettes from her pitha (rice-cakes), so on. partition of Bengalladdoo,

by Lordpayosh Curzonand in 1905.

A erstwhile hostel first messpermanent and family experiences: During folk festivals The country’s jolpan would plaque atlike theBihu, old palatial house all of which in Picture the recipe for a vege- kick-start a host cinema hall,culminate Elphinstone of other events.

My tiffin proudly boasts the same.

The for intarian Unlike in a (better typical recipe-book, school wouldteriors Palace snack. at Hogg Market consist of Bihu jolpan, a welof Basubati, off limits for here Srinivas is notMarket), overly smitknown as New was come relief after the tourists, came alive in monotony Srijit Mukten with glossy photografounded in 1907food

by Jamshedji the first fourSrabon. classes.The My plot mothherjee’s Baishe of The building, with its of phy. detailed FramjiHer Madan.

It was culinary rechriswould “Don’t eatthriller them this dark insist: psychological portico and imposing er memories a better compantened twicefind — first Minerva, and all by yourself, must learn revolves aroundyou a renegade popillars, found way You won’t findits cutlets ion Mohit Suneja’s meticutheninChaplin.

In 2013, Chaplin how to share your tiffin”.

Our liceman.

Basubati — with its into many books on here, but you may lously was razed, leavingcross-hatched the city’s Holschool captain, another glutton, crumbling walls, antique furnihistory, architecture learn how to make illustrations.

Perhaps the aulywood lovers heartbroken. would declare,pillars “Ask with not how ture, massive lion and evenvegetable education Appa’s thor’s intention to remind the In the ’80s, theisruling Left govmany are due, motifsassignments — works beautifully as ask the cutlets. Srinivas’s reader of the importance of perernment wanted to paint the what’s in my tiffin.”

Today,played in retlair of the lead character father taught her how sonal names of the copulatouch. of theThe grand Ochterlony rospect, this reminds me of Stanby National Award-winning acto make them recipes emphasise fact too.

Monument (Shahidthis Minar) red. ley, boy without tiffin in Amol tor the Prosenjit Chatterjee.

You here, but Planswon’t werefind afootcutlets to demolish the Town Hall, faGupte’sMackinnon film Stanley&kaMackenzie Dabba. It The magnificent you may to make Ap- architecture. building at Fairlie mous forlearn its how classical Doric explored inner faculties of Placethe on Strand Road is also pa’s vegetable cutlets.

Srinivas’s Strong voices of dissent — Satyajit Ray being set for a new lease children who were of of life.

After yearsterrified of neglect, father howthe to make them, and she their one of taught those —her forced government to rethHindi teacher (aka Khadoos, a fire in the late ’90s spared nothing meaning of the inremembers having the them with Amma’sgoverngreen ‘grouch’), ink. More recently, Trinamool-led whobuilding. would greedily hogtaken the “fourteriors of the It has been over chilli ment relish. faced stiff opposition when it compartment wala” tiffins.

To plans escapeto him, by the Diamond Group, which conThe story aofplan these is, as is usual for Stanley announced to cutlets fill the historic Lal Dighi and‘Diamond his friends devisedOnly a plan: they vert it into Heritage’. the origithis book, Tank) a taletoofmake howway an for exotic culinary (the Great a second ver- trick the teacher eating will at a be spot where he nal façade of the by building kept intact, style/procedure was Building, indigenised. by can’t sion of the Writers’ the Inspired state secrethem. When they get with afind new structure behind it. eventually This will be the the silver-coated tariat dating backVictorian to 1777. metal grinder (and caught, Stanley is suspended from class, first example of ‘facadism’ in eastern India.beVictorian meatsign recipes), Srinivas’s father de- cause he doesn’t carry food. Yet, somehow, his The ‘Danger’ outside the palatial house arnab banerjee is asneak Kolkata-based cided to Subodh experiment with in vegetarian cutlets. friends of Raja Mullick central Kolkata manage to in foodmarketing for him so he professional,go who also conducts walking tours of the city In the franchise ethos of contemporary speaks volumes food for the stepmotherly treat- wouldn’t hungry.

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Opinion maker The BBC World Service manufactured a Western consent around global issues, which helped British foreign policy punch above its actual weight Claudio Divizia/shutterstock

AGENDA

Shrinking Britannia

The BBC faces another funding squeeze as Britain ceases to be a world power

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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o wonder the sun never set on the British empire, because even God would not trust the English in the dark,” went one of Shashi Tharoor’s best zingers from his viral speech at the Oxford Union debate. Well, the English must have grown trustworthy and non-threatening since then, because a melancholic darkness now looms over Britain’s status as a global power.

The most recent symptom of Britain’s shrinkage from the world is another round of funding squeeze at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) — it announced over 1,000 job cuts in July. Since its inception in 1922, the BBC has been an important tool of British foreign policy, influencing global opinion-makers, particularly the English-speaking elites of the erstwhile colonies in Asia and Africa.

“If a communal riot broke out, or if the monsoon had failed, it was the BBC that gave us the most reliable, up-to-date news,” wrote Ramachandra Guha recently in The Guardian, criticising the BBC job cuts. “Not surprisingly, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, the BBC broke the news of her death hours before the AIR did.”

The likes of Guha, the post-colonial elite, grew up with an aspirational Britishness via their transistors, as they listened to The Beatles, Test cricket and unmatched global news coverage on the BBC. Through this generation of Commonwealth coconuts (brown outside, white inside), the Empire, or at least its propaganda, lived on much after it had died.

In the former colonies, the BBC World Service manufactured a Western consent around global issues, which helped British foreign policy punch above its actual weight. By setting the international standards for journalism, by dominating public discourse and information, widely perceived as being “independent and accurate” compared to the “com-

promised and unreliable” local news sources, tain resigns as a world power”. Britain is the BBC subtly helped push the British agenda becoming as important as Luxembourg in inacross the world. And sometimes this connect ternational affairs, he wrote, with a smaller arbetween foreign policy and BBC journalism my, reduced global thinking, and led by a was not even subtle, and its influence was not parochial government whose prime minisrestricted to the former colonies. ter’s first speech since re-election reflected “The BBC World Service was the principal that small thinking. means of engaging listeners behind the Iron “Confronting a world of challenges — inCurtain, who were otherwise unreachable, cluding Greece’s possible exit from the euro, a and challenging the authoritarian leader- massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, ships of Central and Eastern Europe during Ukraine’s perilous state, Russia’s continued inthe Cold War,” according to historian Dr Alban transigence, the advance of the Islamic State Webb, author of the 2014 book titled London and the continuing chaos in the Middle East,” Calling: Britain, the BBC World Service and the wrote Zakaria, “Cameron chose to talk about a Cold War. “The government, priplan to ensure that hospitals in marily through the Foreign Ofthe United Kingdom will be betfice, took a very close interest in ter staffed on weekends.” the World Service, not just beThe rise of China, India and Neither the British cause it funded it, but also beother emerging economies over public nor the current cause it was considered such an the past decade has resulted in a Tory government important tool in getting the big shift in global power, in seem to believe that British point of view heard which Europe and Britain have the “British point of throughout the world.” come out net losers. view” is important to But neither the British public Even in Washington’s pecking the world anymore nor the current Tory governorder, the focus has decisively ment seem to believe that the moved to Asia Pacific, with the US “British point of view” is imporreaching out to Japan and India tant to the world anymore. Acto tackle China, which it now cording to several polls, Britons find the sees as its main threat. Britain, often lam£145.50 compulsory and annual BBC licence pooned as the primary satellite of American fee outdated. With traditional media models foreign policy, is no longer that special in the disrupted by the digital shift, with social State Department either. media dominating the new discourse, the So while many will be upset over the shrinkneed for a publicly funded broadcaster has di- ing of the BBC, it will now have to share space minished. In 2016, when the BBC charter with global broadcasters from Russia, China comes up for renewal, a radical overhaul in and Qatar, in line with the changing world orfunding is expected, which would lead to an der. The heady days of ‘Cool Britannia’ are over. even smaller BBC. ‘Small Britannia’ is now here to stay.

And ‘small’ is what best describes Britain’s (Disclosure: The writer was a BBC employee beoverall thinking now. As David Cameron and tween 2007-2011.) the Conservatives got re-elected earlier this year, journalist Fareed Zakaria wrote a sting- sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of The ing article in The Washington Post titled “Bri- Political Indian t some_buddha

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Double take For readers who remember Atticus as a saint — immortalised by Gregory Peck on screen — the revelation that he might be a racist is naturally a kind of blasphemy reuters

as vivid as To Kill A Mockingbird but neither is it sentimental. The reader will shed no cosy tears. And for that alone, Go Set a Watchman is the more interesting, if not better constructed, novel.

It is set in the mid-1950s, a couple of decades on from To Kill a Mockingbird, just after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Jean Louise (or Scout) catches a train back to Maycomb from New York City for a fortnight’s holiday.

Now 26, she finds herself in a place familiar to anyone who has ever left home, at once alienated and nostalgic. We need for our home to remain fixed; that it does not, just as we do not, is tragic.

The most lyrical passages in Go Set a Watchman are when Scout recalls her childhood in Maycomb, her brother Jem, her friends Dill and Henry Clinton, and when she finds “a delight almost physical” in the landscape, the gently undulating pastureland, the black cows, the “red earth... and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards”. The rural grace, Jem and Dill, Calpurnia and Atticus are already familiar from To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite Go Set a Watchman apparently being written earlier, it is difficult to imagine reading this book without having read To Kill a Mockingbird, without already being familiar with Maycomb. Henry Clinton though is new, a childhood friend whom Scout is considering ers suitably and avoid wastage of goods as as nels then.husband. For a 100 pages the a back potential well as delay in transportation,” he says.

For meanders Express Weather founder and Angnovel through a series of CEO amusing shujyoti it was the memories, complete her lack of set pieces,Das, through Scout’s flirtBuying a forecast weather on her the mild Sunderbans led conhim ing with data Henry, ribbingthat of her In a country with vastly differing climatic re- ventional, to the business of forecasting.

“We were impleliterally corseted aunt. gions — from tropical in the south to temper- menting a sustainable project in In chapter eight, she ecotourism discovers a pamphlet ate in the north and heavy snowfall in elevated on Sunderbans and Unesco forwas some wind her father’s desk: “On asked its cover a drawareas — accurate weather forecasting is emerg- ing data.ofOn the IMD, we above were told an approaching anthropophagous Negro; the ing as a key requirement for businesses and drawing they didn’t have the data,” he says. was printed The Black Plague.” Sickagriculture alike. Several enterprises have ened, Though Sunderbans project eventuagainthe literally, by what Scoutwas interprets emerged in recent times to fill this need. allyher shelved, ventured deeper weathas heroicDas father’s betrayal of into his princi“The demand for forecasting erAtticus data sourcing and ples, she finds and Henry at aresearch, council services is increasing. From aviaand of combined it with crop scimeeting, a sort panchayat populated by tion and shipping to farmers data toFrom support decisionmen fearful ofence the future. here the novel and governments, everybody by farmers. unravels intomaking hysterical speechifying (Scout) needs accurate weather predicand evasive casuistry (everyone else — Atticus, Singh’s weathertions,” says Skymet founder and Formula for the Henry, an uncle devoted to day Victorian literaforecast service CEO Jatin Singh. boasts arture). But it isExpress in theseWeather inchoate pagesthree that Go found ready He set up the Noida-based eas becomes of expertise — it generates a Watchman something special, subscribersSet among company after his former boss seven-day weather forecasts ussomething unbeautiful. the rapidly jury set an innocent mancomfree. Atticusmushrooming fails, at a to Hindi news channel ing open-source modTo Kill a Mockingbird was sonumerical fully realised a of course,about as he the mustlack if only to allow a scene inchannels plained of reliaels developed USitsand novel, so perfectly modulatedintothe create efnews both book anddata film in in which ble weather India. the As town’s black fects, that it was modified cloying.for In Indian Go Set aconditions; Watchman, people in respect for his noble Singh’srise father happened to be a failure. it has to developed an isapp Atticus is revealed be what he — acalled wellFor readers who remember supplier of computers and other Atticus as a born Southern Farmneed to loath combine crop gentleman to give up scihis saint, the revelation he might equipment to IMD, that he was well be a racist is world as he’sence and micro data, always known it. weather Scout, too, for naturally a kind of blasphemy.

Perhaps, to ap- all aware of the dynamics of weather prediction. andher thishumanist is being used by over 25,000 farmers; protestations, shares her faprove of Go Set aSingh Watchman, in which is ther’s In 2003, when launched his Atticus weatherand it attachment installs and to manages automatic weaththe trappings of birth.

In indeed revealed to he harbour forecasting service found white ready subscribers er stations, which collect finest data related to temthe novel’s scene, she vissupremacist sympathies, you news chan- perature, humidity, among the rapidly mushrooming aridity and other its Calpurnia, her old nanny, to need to not have read To Kill a environmentaldiscover factors. that The company hastran300 love cannot Mockingbird in your youth. I did, such stations today. scend power and privilege, that but I was unmoved, finding AttiWeather founded Sonu Agrawal, has the womanby she took to be a surThe reader will shed Risk, cus dull and homiletic and Scout’s no cosy tears. a network of nearly 1,000 weather stations rogate mother was an employAnd for precocity irritating. In English nine including Rajasthan, Uttar ee doing her job. that alone,across Go Set a states class that year, I must have been Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh any case, black people,and livWatchman is the Bengal, In about 14, we also read Alan Paton’s Maharashtra.

His includes ing,clientele breathing black farmers, people, more interesting, if Cry, The Beloved Country and transporters, banks and other financial are beside the point in instiboth not better watched the 1951 film adaptation. I tutions, insurance companies as well as FMCG books.

Essentially, these are constructed, novel remember our teacher, a slight, players. The company’s focus, howevnovels primary about fathers and well-meaning Canadian, admiter, is crop insurance.

BasedRace on an agro-meteordaughters. relations, howting that he felt ashamed of his ological model, the they company captures ever large loom over both whiteness. His showy self-flagelladrought risks in the form of aalways formula.

For innovels, were ‘incidention ingrained in me a lifelong prejudice tal’, stance, if therealises, rainfall in village in July less as Scout “toathe issue... yourisown against both novels. Paton, maybe, deserves private than, say, 100mm then that the crop and war”.

Realising yourcould fatherfail is just better but I remain unconvinced that Lee aresult hugecontradictory, losses. “We would need put man,in weak, fallible, andtofinddoes. To Kill a Mockingbird, by so loading the ing up room a weather station in that diminished village; andfigto in your heart for dice, by so deifying Atticus, makes it easy for ure priceisthe insurance product, we would called growing up. Who better need than the reader to indulge, as my teacher did, in the Harper forecastLee based on historical weather data as to remind fans of To Kill a Mockingfaux mortification that is really a pat on the bird well as an Atticus understanding the Claus, situathat Finch, of likewhat Santa back for having moved on from those igno- doesn’t tion could be in July,” says Agrawal. Besides exist. rant days to the enlightenment of the present. farmers in 15 states, power companies utilise dasgupta a Delhi-based journalist Go Set a Watchman may not be as evocative, shougat his services in a bigisway.

Perfect day for business

From aviation and shipping to farmers and governments, everybody is willing to pay for accurate weather predictions and a host of private forecasters are making hay

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he 140-year-old Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast a deficient monsoon this year, only to be proved wrong by the 16 per cent surplus rains in June and the above-normal reservoir levels countrywide as of July 23. Not many were surprised however, as the IMD’s success rate for monsoon forecast is barely 50 per cent — in recent times, it failed to predict the droughts of 2002, 2004 and 2009. Interestingly, directly contradicting the official weathermen, a barely 12-year-old private forecaster, Skymet Weather Services, had predicted a normal monsoon this year.

Similarly, thanks to an app from Kolkatabased Express Weather, potato growers in West Bengal not only know when it will rain next but also the humidity levels, temperature and other climate parameters for the week ahead. This helps them plan their schedule for here has been muchsowing anguish spraying pesticides, irrigation, orover harthe publication Harper Lee’s Go vesting. With its weatherofupdates, the app Set a Watchman, including the serimakes agriculture preventive, rather than corous ethical concern theforecast. partialrective, and non-dependent onthat IMD’s ly deaf and blind, near-nonagenarian Lee was In Chennai, transporter PR Venkatesan is in no instructing shape to condone thedrivers publication of busy his truck to cover what in effect a first draft of To Kill a Mocktheir was vehicles with waterproof sheets as ingbird. reading the novel I was WeatherHowever, Risk has after alerted him about the likeligrateful that itrainfall had been published.

Go“With Set a hood of heavy en route to Delhi.

Watchman, its obscure Biblical title the detailed from information, I can equip my drivthrough 280 pages of uneven, uncomfortable prose, is no classic. It is in every way inferior to its polished predecessor (successor?). To Kill a Mockingbird was wrought from the ruined clay of Go Set a Watchman, with Lee encouraged by her perspicacious editor to revise the manuscript to reflect more of her protagonist’s early recollections of life in Maycomb, AlabaGo Set a Watchman ma. The result was an indelible fable of a shelHarper Lee tered small-town childhood, narrated in part Random House by a precocious six-year-old girl, alongside the Fiction ₹540 story of a trial that laid bare this idyllic small town’s bigotry, its murderous hatred of the black people it once kept as slaves.

Standing undaunted against the mobs is the girl’s father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer assigned to defend a black man falsely accused Grey area In its of raping a white woman. Before the law, Atti140-year existence, the Indian cus believes, all men are equal. This paragon of Meteorological integrity, of rectitude, was further marmorealDepartment has got its ised in an Oscar-winning performance by Gremonsoon forecast right only half the time gory Peck, square and handsomely earnest (or thulasi kakkat earnestly handsome) as he implores a white

Future tense

Unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, which was so perfect it was cloying, Go Set a Watchman is imperfect and unbeautiful

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Angshujyoti Das, founder and CEO, Express Weather

Beyond Indian meteorology Weather Risk’s monitoring station in Tanzania

Eye on the sky An automatic weather monitoring station installed by Kolkata-based Express Weather

Powered by data Power distributors use weather forecasts to estimate electricity demand over the next ten days. “With our research we know clearly when it is going to be hot and humid, leading to higher power consumption for air-conditioners; when the temperature falls below 28 degrees Celsius, the demand goes down. Power companies plan their supply accordingly,” says Agrawal.

Additionally, the power companies can manage costs better. They usually procure power from the grid a day ahead, as spot buying is costlier. However, purchase of extra power leads to penalties, which the companies can avoid with the help of demand forecasts from Weather Risk.

The key to accurate forecast lies not only in sourcing data accurately but also processing it well. Dr Kanti Prasad, weather scientist and former director-general of IMD, explains that modern-day weather forecast is based on mathematical models, which are run on supercomputers. “The data for running these models is generated by observatories across the globe. Additionally there are conventional weather stations, while remote-sensing data is available from satellites, aircraft, radar, land and ocean-based stations.”

This data is free of cost and flows into the global telecommunications system maintained by the World Meteorological Organisation and accessed by forecasting centres all over the world. The number churning then

It’s raining money Skymet’s Singh says his company was profitable from day one. Ditto for Express Weather and Weather Risk. That also explains the interest shown by private equity firms. Skymet raised ₹4.5 crore in its Series A round of funding from Omnivore in August 2011. Last year, it raised ₹27.6 crore in its Series B round led by Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. Das, too, is “in discussions with four to five large players — both strategic and financial investors”.

The private players also boast higher success rates for their prediction. “In the long range, we have not got a single monsoon wrong yet,” says Singh, claiming a 75 per cent success rate for his company’s monsoon preJatin Singh, founder and CEO, Skymet diction. Das says at Express Weather the accuracy is plus-minus 2 degrees Celsius for temperature, 5-7 per cent for relative humiditakes place and the computers ty, and 80-83 per cent for generate forecasts for the short rainfall. range, medium range and long But unlike Singh, he is unrange. Weather forecasting willing to dwell on IMD’s inacWith our research we companies customise the recuracy. “I don’t want to see the know clearly when it is sults for users and price them IMD as a competitor as it is an going to be hot and accordingly. old organisation with huge inhumid, leading to higher It is here that private weathfrastructure and financial power consumption for er forecasting services have an muscle. Any private player air-conditioners edge over IMD. They not only cannot think of creating such have meteorologists, scientists, infrastructure,” Das says. programmers and developers Also, unlike IMD, the private on board, they are also focused forecasters do not wish to limon reaching out to user groups. Not surpris- it themselves to India. Express Weather is alingly, all these companies are profitable. ready operating in foreign countries, including Zambia. “We are creating infrastructure to bring in data services and integrate farms to markets,” Das says.

Agrawal’s Weather Risk plans to double the number of its stations to 2,000 within a year.

Outside India, it is working in Africa, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Skymet’s Singh, on the other hand, prefers to stay focused on India for the moment. “I very well understand this subcontinent, the monsoon and winter pattern, and so on. Weather is highly geographyspecific and it takes at least two years of R&D to enter a new country,” he says.

But the forecaster that he is, his reading is that in the long term Skymet will be a global weather brand capable of long-range forecasting for the rest of the world.

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It’s our right The failure to implement One Rank One Pension (OROP) tells of an obstructive lower bureaucracy and a fourth estate that hasn’t fulfilled its role countability. My few stints in Delhi in the corridors of power lend credence to this claim — one seldom finds an IAS bureaucrat or politician who is likely to negate what has been discussed and recommended on file. I am sanguine in my accusation that it is this lot across ministries which has delayed/denied OROP. The IAS lobby doesn’t direct its subordinate staff to expedite the case, or negate the notings on file, or give a positive recommendation on file for the political masters to approve. Herein lies the malaise which no one seems to have unearthed. It is the file which matters, not sentiments or chest-thumping.

Where are the OB vans?

Another reason for the impasse is the lack of media support and the fact that the Armed Forces do not constitute a major vote bank.

The common lament is that the Armed Forces Modernist Upendranath Ashk was inspired to write Falling Walls after he came to know of Virginia Woolf the hindu archives cannot offer the media much in terms of their TRPs and economic viability. On the other hand, media support is crucial to sustain a movement and help it achieve its goal. To garner electronic media support one has to have a continuous flow of celebrities. Where are the army children — Kirron Kher, Priyanka Chopra, Gul Panag, Sushmita Sen, Anushka Sharma, Neha Dhupia, Lara Dutta or, for that matter, Shah Rukh Khan of Fauji or Hrithik Roshan of Lakshya fame? Where are Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who adorned the Forces’ uniform when conferred his topic has been subject to legal political leadership and the babu (read IAS). with honorary ranks? Why have they not henanalysed we can by findexperts an Indian scrutiny, and way. Ashk’s act of writing the novel was a come sidelines of thetoHarivallabh Sangeet forward further the cause of Sammethe real Shakespeare, if it hapcommented upon. Iteven has become an Eye struggle be modern, like Chetan trying to heroes. of thetostorm lan, blacksmiths craftsmen, andofa Similarly, and thereother are many children pens to for be the a certain Kalidas emotive issue veteran com- Ibreak of his context, he was is breaking have afree different take. Thefor politician too bu- the soda-bottle maker — as if who Ashkhave is fumbling to Forces in the media failed the whorequiring predatesearly the closure bard byfora sy munity and a topic many literary the day.

He was ensuring heconventions continues to of rule the roost.

The nest find that his native creative spawned them.lineages. It’s a highly millennium, would it be difficult to locate an IAS the politico/bureaucratic combine, dependinsistent that his whatever wasaccredited expressedstate/ was self-conscious babu, after stint in the novel, whereMantar many characters Dozens of trips to Jantar in the last Indian Marcel DaisytoRockwell, an union ing on which endProust? one chooses be in. done through the characters’ lives, events, territory cadre, finds himself in the cen- few lookmonths, like disguised ideas.

Chetan’s brothand the 10km Vijayelder Diwas run American translator, However,academic, facts need to be stated,writer which Iand am tral conflicts and entanglements government.

Thereafter and he not through er, an idle card-player, is a Kuan voracious reader of from Dhaula to Jantar Manpainter, traces the French novelist sure the reader would pardon me for.to a loca- is long speeches debates.

Heawanted to let novels. He reads at the mercy and of the DoPT for indiscriminately, tar in Delhi on July 26Premchand have been tion the blighted streets ofI posting Is as it improbable ‘pension’ oras ‘deferred payment’? the noveltospeak through and not as well as pulp. a ministry or descriptions departthe standstill, cramped life an In eye-opener for me.

One met pre-Independence Jalandhar. the ment. would say it is the latter, as hasTranslating been approved be didactic was mostly Theylike toowhat are drawn intobeing written of a poor neighbourhood Jalandhar, it indihundreds of inproud soldiers in latethe Hindi writer Upendranath Ashk’s by Supreme Court.

It is my belief thatnovel pen- the at that time. government game of ‘Musicates a hunger for newer worlds and faraway their dhoti/kurta/pyjamas and a It is the file which Girti is Divarein, first of a seven-volume sion given tothe a government servant whocol‘re- calBut Proust?

Chairs’ — soon as they are fathat anThe escape handful of offers widows. glowfrom has matters,places not — anything lection,Inshe it similar to miliar tires’. thefinds Armed Forces in themany only ways soldier Those who rush expecting rev- or with the job in at hand, theyromantic thechest hopeless faded stagnation Hunar from around. their eyes.

TheySahib, have sentiments Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Gener- are who retires is at the rank of Lieutenant eries,transferred. longwindedThey sentences, exquisite remiremain a nationalist been poet, areduced scamstertowith shadywhich antepenury, thumping modern and Indians condemned deriva- ‘Jack al, Are equivalent, above the age of to 60.a Others niscences andmaster immersion into of all and of none’.

I cedents window to they hadand not Chetan’s bargained for. They tive discourse, on forever lagging the would ‘superannuate’ reaching the behind maximum fine prose willwrong be a in bitstating disapnot be the literary world of Lahore, an look helpless.

The nation ishas Westofinthe social andthey political age rank held.expression?

This varies When from that pointed.

Ashk has no pretensions a large percentage of these expertthem. plagiarist who passes off failed you read translation, yougeneral. cannot babus around 35 Rockwell’s for a sepoy to 58 for a major of the sublime, orby the aristocratic are driven subordinate couplets of by famous poets as his I will end quoting a General fault her for her Western lens. Falling is a staff These ranks, which constitute almostWalls 99.9 per elegance of Proust.

But he too in day-to-day functioning. own to unsuspecting admirers from the Army who is not affected by OROP. Many of the keenly modern novel the Ashk was inspired to rambles, finds moments that cent, have been denied privilege of serving his brother.

He chidedlike

by Chetan a seniorand bureaucrat about characters When look like write after he came to know of Virginia Woolf. Down up to 60 years, for lack of vacancies. triggerthe long lineflashbacks, and has stand for this Ashk’s struginseems this to ‘nautanki’, General disguisedpartaking ideas It This is a is rambling account a lower middlemainly due to theofpyramidical struc- Who written seven volumes tostaff’? tell the is this ‘subordinate They are from stated that he glewould to be original writing prefer towhile be called a classof boy’s life in Jalandhar and Lahore asnehe the ture the Forces, which is an operational autobiographical tale ofServices a writer.

Central Secretarial (CSS). This lot ‘Dharna General’ in a than borrowed Western style. a ‘Matlabi General’. struggles becomebea tampered writer, trying toHence break constitutes cessity andtocannot with.

He records his in suchthe abuntwolifecadres, clerical cadre Rockwell’s immense research The OROP fight is for the 85 per cent that freeterm of stifling society, oppressive conventions the ‘deferred payment’.

Accordingly, this (LDCs, dant detail it turns out toand be the officer constitutes personnel UDCsthat and assistants) shows inbelow her deft translation, officer rank and and disabling poverty.

In hiswas ambition toatfind deferred payment (pension) pegged 50 cadre. the history histhe time.

You glimpse Proust in the They of are well-entrenched lot who where nothing jars as she effortlessly conveys widows, who have been short-changed by a personal forand creative Che- provide per cent forspace officers 70 perexpression, cent for personAshk especially in his incursions into an continuity tosideways the various offices they theungrateful local colour.

ThereTheir are no irritating explanation. demands must be tan below reminds one of Stephen Dedalus to in 33 James nel officer rank, as compared per function character’s any of hurry in.lives Theywithout are theshowing custodians the met. nations thatiswould put off theitEnglish OROP not negotiable, is theirreader right.

Joyce’s Portrait of theThis Artist as alargely Youngdone Man. to In files/rulings, cent forAthe civilians. was to get the plotpolicies going. and the unwritten dik- The andSupreme amuse the Hindi one. the HinCourt has saidShe so. moves Any further depre-Independence India, Chetan’s was a very compensate for the extreme disparity be- tats Protagonist is the consciousness of lay pertainingChetan to vexed issues.

Considering di text the English reader but knows willtowards be tantamount to contempt.

European — what political thinker that tween theendeavour lifetime earnings of government Ashk.the Chetan’s yearning for a modern life re- how government follows the Whitehall far hum it can be pushed its get terrain.

OROP le kar rahenge from (We will our Sudipta Kaviraj call ‘the was invention of system, servants.

In 1973,might the pension standarflects inall Ashk’s conscious experiment with decisions have to be taken on file.a OROP).

Therefore, herhaq translation willis our speak to the Sadda aithe rakh (It right). private dised tolife’.

50 per cent across the board, by those The modern formon — file a rambling, nov- Hindi notings emanateself-absorbed from the section as well theand English reader. This novel So help me as god the uniform I wore for Thehad autobiographical novel mirrors Ashk’s who mastered the art of feathering their officer, el that makes a point to show, not tell. Howevwho could well be a promotee from almost must be36read, years.not least for its description of own pursuit ofthey the European style. He wanted LDC/UDC nests, because were the decision-makers. er, at theorcore of this modern novel isthese the our a direct inductee.

By nature forgotten literary cultures and a subaltern (Views are personal.) to Who depictisthe inner mindfor of the characters, ad- officers responsible three-decaderealisation its ownand derivativeness. are history of pre-Independence times. areof negative have a chipThere on their miring how delay Woolfand hadindecision told an entire story by shoulder. long denial, towards One numerousHere descriptions ofhave dyers, folk poets, is a lot who unlimited au- brig (retd) kn mehra is a third-generation army dharminder kumar is a Delhi-based commissioned in 1969, Parachutejournalist Regiment way ofOne a morning walk in herusually novel Mrs DalloRank Pension?

Fingers point to thority streetside poetry jams and on the andstorytellers, minimal responsibility ac- officer,

Proust in Jalandhar?

A pre-Independence novel breaks out of the literary conventions of the day, but any comparison to the French novelist is questionable

Up in arms Ex-servicemen strike over the delay in implementation of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi shanker chakravarty

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PRESENT IMPERFECT

This obsession with normal

katerina davidenko/shutterstock

Blinded by the ‘picture perfect’, our popular culture has no room for the ‘different’

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

wenty minutes into the latest Pixar film Inside Out, I felt my heart sink.

The movie, if you haven’t heard about it, is set inside the head of a little girl and the protagonists of the movie, as it were, are five emotions — Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear. From reading up about the movie, I figured this might be a good, if not necessarily entirely scientific, way for my nineyear-old daughter to understand why she feels what she does.

So one Sunday evening, I shepherded my daughter and her best friend (forever!) to the theatre and we settled in, 3D glasses on our noses, popcorn on our laps to watch the life of a ‘regular’ girl. Except, the girl was too regular.

Scene after scene depicted a ‘happy’ family — daddy, mummy and little girl, who are always together — on car rides, skating rinks and movie halls. Daddy and mummy hold hands, tickle her and then each other. They roll their eyes in tandem at the kid’s antics and sit side-byside and cheer loudly when she’s playing ice hockey. There were Pixar perfect shots of everything you imagine a happy family to be, and here I was with two kids from single-parent homes. As is wont to happen, after the movie, over milkshakes and chicken nuggets, there was a long discussion on whether the movie was good or bad, what each one liked and which part they hated. The kids didn’t bring up the subject of the standard ‘happy = twoparent family’ bit. I don’t know if they have a blind spot to it or if they are in active denial, but I wasn’t sure if it was in anyone’s interest to raise the issue with them, so I kept quiet.

It isn’t that on watching Inside Out I was jolted awake to the reality that popular culture is consistently depicting two-parent families as

‘happy’ ones. That happened over a year ago perfect picture. It is much easier to ride along when, in a completely civil and entirely con- with the prejudices of the majority. Why risk sensual manner, my husband and I decided it the wrath of some, the revulsion of others? I was best we lived separately. We took our haven’t seen the data that marketing managdaughter into confidence at every step of the ers work with, but the argument, I am told, is way, encouraged her to talk about her anxie- that when the tired Indian ‘consumer’ comes ties, if any, and ensured that even in the new home from work, he does not want to trouble scenario, she had access to both her parents at his mind with notions of equality, fairness or all times. She seemed fine. It was while sitting justice. He perhaps, really, only wants to nurse with her and watching some show on a kids’ a drink and watch a fully-formed cute child channel that it first struck me. All advertise- roll his eyes from one side to the other, while ments had smiling mummies and daddies. his mum and dad swipe on their iPads and Not one show even remotely suggested that compete on what to buy. Why should Amazon some people may possibly be livIndia’s successful ad line ‘aur diking in a different kind of a family hao’ be interpreted to mean structure. ‘show me a different kind of famSingle-parent homes aren’t the ily or character’ when all it seeks only narratives that are missing to say is, ‘aur products dikhao’?

Where is the story in plot lines. It’s all kinds of differPerhaps, as we are now a popences. How many children’s of a prodigious violin ulation that aspires mindless player, who, books talk of adopted children? consumerism above everything incidentally, How many television shows? else, all we really want to see is the is autistic?

How many movies feature charac‘normal’. Even if we know, from ters with disability? In Bollywood, our own experiences living in the if there is someone with disabiliseemingly regular families, that ty, it is an adult who is meant to be there is no happiness as eternal as laughed at. If they do feature kids the fake happiness we watch. But at all, they are often merely props the real failure is in the assumpto invoke pity. Where are the kids in wheel- tion that anything that varies from standard chairs who are the leaders of their gangs? cannot be good; that, for example, no family Where is the story of a prodigious violin player with a special child could be happy. who, incidentally, is autistic? When was the My own single-parent household is an absolast time we watched a roguish, visually chal- lutely wholesome and predominantly happy lenged 10-year-old? When was the first time we one. All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t hurt to see watched him? some validation of this once in a while in a moThe counter-argument, I am certain, would vie hall or a television screen. But I am not be that when so much money is riding on a holding my breath. movie or a product that is advertised, no one t@veenavenugopal wants to take a ‘risk’ by presenting a less-than-

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by Ashokamitran offerauthor a richly storied account thereturns ’50s filmtoworld, as seen Afterbooks two decades in the Capital, and publisher AnitaofRoy Somerset, from Gemini UK, pulled

by Studios the promise of fresh air and green grass, and pushed out by the desertification of the landscape trisha gupta

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eaving Delhi after 20 years was both a been fixed: the move seemed like an inevitable reer move! And anyway, if I was so keen on long-drawn and tortuous process next step rather than a fearful leap. It felt like roots, I’d be moving to Calcutta not Delhi.

Two decades on, my return to England feels and surprisingly quick and easy. The the very force that I had been struggling former had to do with the arduous against was on my side, and me and my boul- much, much more a return to ‘roots’ than my trip the other way. But, postand frequently painful task of disentangling der could coast along now that Alex Haley, white folks don’t family relationships which felt, at times, like we were over the peak. have roots; ‘roots’ is a darkunpicking an embroidery made of nerves and Some people put my desire skinned, ‘ethnic’ thing, reganglia. The latter surprising because of some- to return to England down to a served for ‘the natives’. Something I’d not noticed before: that with any big midlife crisis — the urge to just Homing towards middlething you need to dig around or difficult decision — in my case, moving my shake everything up (or buy a class Buckinghamshire for — a buried part of your self. son 4,000 miles away from his father, his sports car) that kicks in as the sounded much less Homing towards leafy, midschool and his friends; packing up, selling off half-century looms. Others put exotic, less ‘rad’ (as the dle-class Buckinghamshire and giving away all our stuff; leaping from the it down to planetary alignyouth are wont to say security of a lovely and full-time job into the ment. When I was planning my sounded altogether much less these days) exotic, less ‘rad’ (as the youth murk of the unknown; from a flat of our own move to Delhi 20 years back, are wont to say these days). to a not-sure-what-of-a-not-sure-where — there most people assumed I wanted But homing I was. As in picomes a tipping point. Until about January to discover my ‘roots’ (being geon. Something very primal 2015, it felt like I was engaged in a Sisyphus- half-Bengali, but brought up in like task, threatening to be crushed at each England). I would bristle and roll my eyes: this and physical was pulling me westward. The Those were the days Stills from Gemini blockbusters Chandralekha and (right) Avvaiyar the hindu step by the boulder I was pushing. But then, al- was not some dippy hippy trip to get in touch German word zugunruhe is used for the anxmost unnoticed, things started to fall into with my inner Indian, f’god’s sake. I’d got a job ious behaviour exhibited by animals and as the studio in Indian cin- dealing mainly birds just before they migrate — ‘zug’ place. The decision had beenera taken, dates had offer! With Oxford University Press!

It wasMost a ca- was with the “assault of the visitors”.

Pather Panchali. ema its most colourful, or is it were turned away with masterfully obfuscatoInsaniyat also marked the end of the studio just that it has had the fran- ry responses. “But a film studio can’t afford to era. Until 1955, Vasan had really been the Boss: kest chroniclers? “When Naj- turn everybody out. It can’t take chances with all his projects flowed from his own ideas and mul Hassan ran off with Devika Rani, the guests of income tax commissioners and cou- intuitions, and “[t]he scores of men and womentire Bombay Talkies was in turmoil,” begins sins of joint secretaries. Also traffic constables. en needed for a film were all his employees”.

Sa’adat Hasan Manto’s vivid essay on Ashok Or the airlines people.” Ashokamitran mines “But from the early 50s, he would have to take Kumar. Manto’s sketches of film personalities these visits for a terrific vein of observational into consideration the whims and fancies of in Stars from Another Sky offer glimpses of the humour: “[I would] let them sit on the swivel men and women who may not have had the workings of several major Hindi film studios chairs of the makeup rooms and say, ‘This is slightest feeling for him, or may have been far of the 1930s and ’40s: Filmistan, Bombay Talk- the very mirror Madhubala sat in front of’. Vis- less mature or wise, but who enjoyed at that ies, Hindustan Movietone, VS Shantaram’s itors ever (sic) could never resist the tempta- moment the adoration of the film-going Pune-based Prabhat. tion to adjust their hair.” masses.” The rise of the star-based era also But Manto did not focus on a particular stuOther visitors included some unlikely big meant the jettisoning of many studio employdio. Recently, I came across a book which does. names: the Chinese Premier Chou En-lai “sat ees — writers, song-writers, musicians, techniThe acclaimed Tamil writer Ashokamitran, it through an hour’s shooting of a cians, even actors and actresses. turns out, spent his youth at the Public Rela- dance by a large princess wrigAshokamitran describes some tions Department of SS Vasan’s Gemini Stu- gling with abandon”, while the of these unsung heroes lovingly. dios, which produced huge hits such as poet Stephen Spender made a But he also drew on those years The rise of the starChandralekha, Avvaiyar and Samsaram. In the baffling speech. Gemini Studios to produce a meditative novel based era also meant called Manasarovar, about the ’80s, Pritish Nandy, who was then editor of the may not have been quite the the jettisoning of Illustrated Weekly of India, persuaded Ashoka- place for Spender, but Ashokaunexpected bond between a stumany studio mitran to write a series of reminiscences — in mitran makes it apparent that dio scriptwriter called Gopal and employees English — about his years at Gemini. These SS Vasan, though he may have a Bombay star. The film world were later published in the form of a (very) been a “hundred per cent free that appears here is terribly proslender book called My Years with Boss. It cov- enterprise man”, had respect for saic, and still shunned by miders only five of those 14 years, but brims with poets and artistes. One of the dle-class morality: wives are wry, entertaining anecdotes of how things book’s highlights is the lifelong battle be- suspicious of husbands who work in films, were done at what was then among India’s tween Vasan and C Rajagopalachari, over even studio drivers judge stars for talking to grandest film studios. many things including the loyalty of the huge- junior artistes. The portrait of tragic hero SaTo start with there is Ashokamitran’s de- ly popular writer Kalki. Another brilliant story tyan Kumar, son of a fruit seller from Peshascription of his own job, which he describes as involves Vasan’s arrival in Calcutta for the pre- war, derives much from the real-life Dilip “respectably insignificant”. It seemed to con- miere of his star-studded Hindi film Insaniyat Kumar, even down to his special relationship sist, first and foremost, of cutting out news — pause here to think about this remarkable with Nehru. It is an odd, melancholic book. clippings about the film industry and filing world, in which the only film starring both Di- Ashokamitran’s unornamented prose sculpts them under various heads from ‘Aarey Milk lip Kumar and Dev Anand was produced by a a profound contrast between the scriptwritColony’ to ‘Zoroastrianism’. “Seeing me sitting Madras studio and premiered in the capital of er’s dry-eyed response to personal tragedy and at my desk tearing up newspapers day in and Bengal — to find that a strange sort of Bengali the star’s near-breakdown, heaving with tears. day out, most people thought I was doing next film, that no one had expected to be more The actor who must channel grief for practito nothing,” he writes. Magazines were not al- than a stopgap between the previous film and cally every film has no idea how to deal with it lowed to be cut up, so chosen articles had to be the Gemini production, was running very in real life. The book ends with a final nod to copied out in long hand. “If Baburao Patel had well. Vasan insisted on the contractual ar- the strangeness of performance. ‘You know only known how I rewrote the majority of his rangement, and on September 30, 1955, the how to bathe in a river, don’t you?’ Gopal says editorials and the ‘Bombay Calling’ pages of film was stopped for the release of Insaniyat. to Satyan Kumar, and then adds: ‘Of course Film India...” writes Ashokamitran.

But he was intrigued enough to take the un- you do. You have done it in so many films!’

Other parts of his job are more recognisa- subtitled reels back to Madras, and Ashokamible: such as bringing out special souvenir vol- tran, who saw them soon after in the studio trisha gupta is a writer and critic based in Delhi umes before the release of a big film, or theatre, remembers being stunned. The film t@chhotahazri

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Catch me if you can (clockwise from below) Akbar Hunting, folio from an Akbarnama; an incomplete sketch from the Rajput court at Kota; Maharana Sarup Singh inspects a prize stallion, Rajasthan; Maharana Amar Singh II riding a Jodhpur horse courtesy the metropolitan museum of art

Picture perfect I moved back to the UK because I wanted to smell that specific smell, redolent of all my childhood springs anita roy

indistinct save for robust leaving elephant and a times as polluted as aLondon, Beijing clutter of war-like banners. not-very-close second.

The hunt an occasion for nobles to ex“You livedwas in Delhi?” one woman exclaimed hibit the valour had yet to show (or at a dinner partythey in Somerset a couple of would never on thethat battlefield.

Its even marweeks back. show) “Goodness, must be London.” tial analogy could teeter into farce. In one immore crowded than I didn’t know what toMewar, say to that. age from 18th-century Sangram Singh Clearly, needed some statistics.

II leads a Ibright cavalcade of men on horseI think must havebravely said something like back.

TheyI all gallop towards their “Yes.” perspicaciously, quarryOroneven the more far right of the page: a“There’s few deno comparison really.” But, of course, there is spondent rabbits. comparison — in of some sensewas there only The symbolism the hunt stillisdeadly comparison.

There not here. Youshows are not I. serious. A page fromisan Akbarnama the She is quite like him, but less like her. It is swirling action within a qamargha, a how corwe make sense order the world. to doned-off area of inand which animals wereBut conmarshal any meaningful to fined so as tokind makeoftheir slaughterresponse a little less people like(In thea dinner lady,setI knew I’d strenuous. similar party stockade up in Lahave some more stats. hore to in get 1567,together Akbar managed to kill a veritable WhenArk I got I googled around and Noah’s of home, creatures, including jackals, came up withand some broad-brush but nonetheblackbucks, hare.

He used trained cheeless numbers.

With a population of tahs hard to expedite the massacre.)

At the centre, around 18 million, has from almost twice as Akbar lashes out atDelhi animals horseback. many people as London but in considerably Beneath the futile scamper of musk deer, a disless space.

TheHamid population density London graced noble, Bhakari, is ledin away on a is around sq km; is his pushing donkey, his5,300 headper bowed and Delhi shaved, body 25,500 five times as manypower, peoplethe in naked. — It that’s is a vision of absolute the same space.

Justsway to put that in perspective, monarch’s terrible over both the natural taken a county, Somerset has… wait for it… worldas and the affairs of mankind.

0.5.Hunting Yes, whereas a couple of months I was wasn’t only the provinceago, of men. sharing my square kilometre 5,299 Several Rajput paintings showwith women onoththe ers, now it’sladies just me — with my bottom half chase.

Two in flowing robes ride after waaaay over there. blackbucks in 18th-century Bikaner. ElseI lovea it whensitar English people moan where, female player enchants anabout antethe It’sAso charming.

So when lopedreadful with hertraffic. music. huntress shoots deer the at the orderly four-car fromBrits the sigh backand of atut horse in one image from queue at the Kangra; traffic lights Waitrose, 19th-century in theoutside same painting, sheI can while timewho, by telling themaims that makes loveaway to a the hunter mid-coitus, Delhi has with 8.43 his million registeredsexual vehicles, at a tiger bow, melding and compared with Mumbai’s 2.33 million, Beijmartial prowess. ing’s London’s paltry) The5 million Mughal and paintings in (frankly the exhibition 2.6 million.

And they all doing a U-turn tend to surpass theirwere Rajput counterparts. and honking, on Aurobindo Marg my There is a stiffness to the work of outside the Rajput house, at the sameemphasis time. Or at ateliers,allwith greater onleast formthat’s and how it felt, mostly. pattern.

That formality still conjures striking Another I found myself leaping to Delimages liketime, the tiger hunt of Rawat Gokul Das hi’s a well-educated, Bengali II of defence Devgarh,against who sits in the foreground of a NRI journalist wholandscape announced that he roudense and detailed of forest, mountinely tells all hisascetic female friends and coltains, towns, and holy men, while an leagues to nottiger go to India.

At the all. range Underofany unsuspecting comes into his As though they would land in to temperate pleasures: less phasers set to circumstances. bow. But Mughal miniatures (particularly Delhi promptly be setare upon by gangs of stun than windscreen wipers to intermittent. those and of Akbar’s period) subtler in their assailants.

I found semi-yelling, I also wanted to spend more time with my priapic movement and colour, in myself the depth of expresin Delhi for 20 and yearsinand I’ve never parents; I wanted my son to have at least part “I’ve sion lived on individual faces, their balance raped! And I’mand notshadow. the only one!” And of his childhood in England; I wanted to be been of diaphanous light I cannot deny of the feelings among people who would instinctively get my yet,Nevertheless, thethat mostone remarkable imagesI not having, I live in Enjokes because we shared a set of cultural refer- most in thelove exhibition come now fromthat the Rajput court that little, but daily, internaldrawn struggle ents. These were some of my ‘pull’ factors. The gland, at Kota.isBoth are ‘studies’, sketches by I had about what to wear. I pushes were equally strong: the an artist in preparation for a fuller painting. would take out a t-shirt absolute horror — nothing less — Their incompleteness is appealing to the modandofwonder if I had at what was happening to my imern eye. In one study a hunt from 1690,that an extra oomph, mediate environment, and the at elephant wraps its necessary trunk around the neck of a I longed not for generic thatastiffness of spine, that times wholesale, hell-in-a-handrhinoceros.

It is only partial image, uncoltrees for specific Mughalapproach and Rajput ateliers between the 16thbutoured resilience to go of with theorVbasket to development save for sporadic splashes blue, species: gulmohar or and early 19th centuries. neck. that was unfolding around me at ange, and white that the How artiststupid. used toHow testpetthe neem The huntspeed. was a In ritualised Be- wouldn’t How ridiculous. bebreakneck a word: version mall- of war. palate. do, The Iviewer’sty.attention focusesHow on the beech and fore embarking on the and thicket littling of the theelephant’s human culture (okay, that’s two chase, words sultans needed of brush strokes around oak and sycamore alarmed maharajas assembled spirit. glad I am now but…)

In another word:their Modi.re-In eye How and the straining of as they would mobilise to be able toInwear old atainers third word: Gurgaon. the rhinoceros. theany other anEach army.

In anwords 18th-century notaworry. of these demand study thing fromand 1760, tiger roars painting from Udaipur, I miss Delhi?

Of many, many more than IJagat have within aDo snaking lattice of trees.

Singh’s spreads courseis Ibarely do. Did I hate livspace forentourage in this article, but I out can- The hunt is a vision of The hunter visible at the across tumbling ing there?

Didof I love it? Absolutely.

I renot notthe mention the landscape air. The English — for power, edge the painting, only aDo feathabsolute the Yes. in divisions of and cavalry and footleaving?ering Not of at lines all (at least, the notsolid yet, whom griping moaning is a national pas- gret around monarch’s terrible men as the monarch squarely anyhow). grassMan greener in Somerset?

Littime — cannot quite — grasp the extent of the beard. is marginal and the sway over both the Is the in the middle of parts the frame yes, and there’s lot more of it. stage.

Metaproblem in other of the — world.

In April forest and atiger take centre natural worlderally, and the launches a hawk against phorically, I’m But I do know is this year, Londoners were upainrearms ataffairs the lev-of mankind It not is asure. scene ofwhat phantasmagoric giment cranes. in Inthe thecapital field, city — dread- that I can walk out of my door and 10 minutes els of airof pollution wonder, of the wild mystery that the court deploy cunning and trees ful! theywould cried.

Ghastly!

We Must Do away are fields inspired every and huntstreams and thatand evmanoeuvresAbout to outflank and the Blackdown hills and a Something It! The particularly nasty hedgerows and ery hunt sought to extinguish. trap their prey. A 17th-century of clouds. form of particulate matter known as PM2.5 wide blue sky full (‘Royal ImageryWhat of thewouldn’t Hunt in In-I Mughalatpainting camouflaged hunt- trade in for a till breath of fresh airatand V-neck tspiked 57 (for a depicts few days), six times higher dian Art’ runs December 2015 TheaMetropolismenthe using leafy screens limits. to guide Not much, turns out, not much at all. than recommended Inantelope Delhi, itinis shirt? tan Museum of Art,itNew York) to the path of the approaching hunting party; on average around 215 — 23 times the recomroytharoor is a writer,iseditor and publisher kanishk the author of the forthcoming the viewer can just about make out party mended limits.

In fact, if you take allthe types of anita Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories in the upper right of the page, hazyisand air pollution intocorner the equation, Delhi 10 www.anitaroy.net

Tiger, tiger at the end of my arrow

meaning move, and ‘unruhe’ meaning restlessness. My last few years have been characterised by my feeling itchy, jittery and distracted, like the caged songbirds that list in the same direction as their migrating fellows.

It was an urge not so much to change the circumstances of my life — job, house, routine etc — but the physical, the sensory aspects of it.

I longed not for generic trees but for specific species: gulmohar or neem wouldn’t do, I needed beech and oak and sycamore. I wanted not just ‘flowers’ but cowparsley and nettle, foxgloves and bluebells. I wanted fields that were edgedne with hedgerows of hazel ofthick the great vanishings of and the hawthorn. modern I wanted that specific agetois smell the hunt.

Many peosmell, redolent of all mythe childhood springs; to ple around world still go into swap parakeet blackbird the screech wild tofor kill animalswarble. because I wanted clouds — lots them — andisbig, they need to or want to, of but hunting no wide skies, not the Tata Steel lid of that passes for longer the standard recreation ruling classaessky initDelhi.

Indian weather — at in my that was for millennia.

Just asleast urbanised part of the country — is from like anagricultural extreme sport: societies are estranged life, gruelling staminafrom and the enso too arestretches urbanisedrequiring elites distanced durance by heady adrenalin passionspunctuated of blood sport.

Golf now servesrushthat es.

The March to Julythe climb of the mercury till purpose, enacting royal hunt in metait shudders 40-plus forfor daysattendant and nightshuntand phor: swapatthe caddy weeks on endthe so arc that itwith breaks oh, smen, replace of when the ball the — flight when breaks and — thewhat sheeryou relief is responsible of theitarrow, have left is the for half the songs the subcontinent and same age-old dramaon of man’s swaggering conthree-quarters quest of nature.of its romantic poetry. So it’s notInthat I’masnot to the flood of feeling unIndia, in alive western Asia, Europe, and elseleashed by the monsoon rain, or theritual thrill and of a where, the hunt was a pre-eminent winter’s day withpower. hot samosas and metaphor ofchill, political The Met is chai, now or the languorous of the of first ripe hosting a small butloveliness lively exhibition Indian mango of summer.

But perhaps, as alongside I pass my depictions of royal hunting.

Shown own personal tipping point —and the vernal equiantique hunting daggers matchlock nox of the my 50th birthday — I’m more inclined guns, paintings originate mostly from

A lively exhibition of images from royal hunts that reveals the age-old drama of man’s swaggering conquest of nature

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Look beyond the glitter Life goes on as usual in Thrissur, the town synonymous with jewellery, even as gold prices plunge to a ďŹ ve-year low across the world

The eyes have it An artisan gets down to the detail at a manufacturing unit

Man and the mould An artisan gives life to earrings

Strength in numbers Thrissur accounts for 70 per cent of the gold jewellery Kerala buys each dayy

Work is home Thrissur has around 10,000 artisans from states like West Bengal and Bihar

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Hot metal Bangles moulded into shape

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Strings attached Finishing touches to a necklace for a bride

Sparkle, please A bangle gets its polish

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ive-year global low; in India, a four-year low — the shiny metal is in the news again, with the steady drop in prices causing concern across the world. But in Thrissur, the backbone of Kerala’s gold industry, this news is welcome. The town has over 700 jewellery shops and more than 3,000 manufacturing units. Scattered across suburbs like Venginissery, Chiyyaram, Koorkenchery, Vallachira and Perinchery, these units provide bread-and-butter to about 50,000 artisans, including 10,000 migrants from West Bengal and Bihar. Kerala is the highest consumer of gold in the country. And 70 per cent of the gold jewellery the state sells every day is crafted in Thrissur.

The city’s tryst with gold started centuries ago, with the arrival of Roman and Arab traders traversing the Silk Route. The second gold wave was courtesy of Shaktan Thampuran, the ruler of Cochin in the 18th century.

He invited 50 Syrian Christian families to set up businesses in Thrissur.

Many jewellers in the town trace their roots to the families that arrived on the Raja’s invitation.

Thrissur’s High Road is packed with 500-800 sq ft jewellery shops, which are cheek by jowl with the massive showrooms of bigger names like Kalyan Jewellers, Avatar, Malabar, Alukkas (Joy, Francis and Jos), Chemmanur and Lulu Gold. Last year, TS Kalyanaraman of Kalyan Jewellers and MA Yusuff Ali of Lulu Gold were in Forbes India’s list of richest Indians. There are, of course, no big bucks for the painstaking labour that goes into crafting gold. The pay and living conditions of the artisans are dismal. kk mustafah

Small is beautiful Light earrings for the less ornate

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saturday, august 1, 2015

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14 10

Delhi, Adieu Studio sagas PICTURE THIS

Two

by Ashokamitran offerauthor a richly storied account thereturns ’50s filmtoworld, as seen Afterbooks two decades in the Capital, and publisher AnitaofRoy Somerset, from Gemini UK, pulled

by Studios the promise of fresh air and green grass, and pushed out by the desertification of the landscape trisha gupta

L

eaving Delhi after 20 years was both a been fixed: the move seemed like an inevitable reer move! And anyway, if I was so keen on long-drawn and tortuous process next step rather than a fearful leap. It felt like roots, I’d be moving to Calcutta not Delhi.

Two decades on, my return to England feels and surprisingly quick and easy. The the very force that I had been struggling former had to do with the arduous against was on my side, and me and my boul- much, much more a return to ‘roots’ than my trip the other way. But, postand frequently painful task of disentangling der could coast along now that Alex Haley, white folks don’t family relationships which felt, at times, like we were over the peak. have roots; ‘roots’ is a darkunpicking an embroidery made of nerves and Some people put my desire skinned, ‘ethnic’ thing, reganglia. The latter surprising because of some- to return to England down to a served for ‘the natives’. Something I’d not noticed before: that with any big midlife crisis — the urge to just Homing towards middlething you need to dig around or difficult decision — in my case, moving my shake everything up (or buy a class Buckinghamshire for — a buried part of your self. son 4,000 miles away from his father, his sports car) that kicks in as the sounded much less Homing towards leafy, midschool and his friends; packing up, selling off half-century looms. Others put exotic, less ‘rad’ (as the dle-class Buckinghamshire and giving away all our stuff; leaping from the it down to planetary alignyouth are wont to say security of a lovely and full-time job into the ment. When I was planning my sounded altogether much less these days) exotic, less ‘rad’ (as the youth murk of the unknown; from a flat of our own move to Delhi 20 years back, are wont to say these days). to a not-sure-what-of-a-not-sure-where — there most people assumed I wanted But homing I was. As in picomes a tipping point. Until about January to discover my ‘roots’ (being geon. Something very primal 2015, it felt like I was engaged in a Sisyphus- half-Bengali, but brought up in like task, threatening to be crushed at each England). I would bristle and roll my eyes: this and physical was pulling me westward. The Those were the days Stills from Gemini blockbusters Chandralekha and (right) Avvaiyar the hindu step by the boulder I was pushing. But then, al- was not some dippy hippy trip to get in touch German word zugunruhe is used for the anxmost unnoticed, things started to fall into with my inner Indian, f’god’s sake. I’d got a job ious behaviour exhibited by animals and as the studio in Indian cin- dealing mainly birds just before they migrate — ‘zug’ place. The decision had been era taken, dates had offer! With Oxford University Press!

It wasMost a ca- was with the “assault of the visitors”.

Pather Panchali. ema its most colourful, or is it were turned away with masterfully obfuscatoInsaniyat also marked the end of the studio just that it has had the fran- ry responses. “But a film studio can’t afford to era. Until 1955, Vasan had really been the Boss: kest chroniclers? “When Naj- turn everybody out. It can’t take chances with all his projects flowed from his own ideas and mul Hassan ran off with Devika Rani, the guests of income tax commissioners and cou- intuitions, and “[t]he scores of men and womentire Bombay Talkies was in turmoil,” begins sins of joint secretaries. Also traffic constables. en needed for a film were all his employees”.

Sa’adat Hasan Manto’s vivid essay on Ashok Or the airlines people.” Ashokamitran mines “But from the early 50s, he would have to take Kumar. Manto’s sketches of film personalities these visits for a terrific vein of observational into consideration the whims and fancies of in Stars from Another Sky offer glimpses of the humour: “[I would] let them sit on the swivel men and women who may not have had the workings of several major Hindi film studios chairs of the makeup rooms and say, ‘This is slightest feeling for him, or may have been far of the 1930s and ’40s: Filmistan, Bombay Talk- the very mirror Madhubala sat in front of’. Vis- less mature or wise, but who enjoyed at that ies, Hindustan Movietone, VS Shantaram’s itors ever (sic) could never resist the tempta- moment the adoration of the film-going Pune-based Prabhat. tion to adjust their hair.” masses.” The rise of the star-based era also But Manto did not focus on a particular stuOther visitors included some unlikely big meant the jettisoning of many studio employdio. Recently, I came across a book which does. names: the Chinese Premier Chou En-lai “sat ees — writers, song-writers, musicians, techniThe acclaimed Tamil writer Ashokamitran, it through an hour’s shooting of a cians, even actors and actresses. turns out, spent his youth at the Public Rela- dance by a large princess wrigAshokamitran describes some tions Department of SS Vasan’s Gemini Stu- gling with abandon”, while the of these unsung heroes lovingly. dios, which produced huge hits such as poet Stephen Spender made a But he also drew on those years The rise of the starChandralekha, Avvaiyar and Samsaram. In the baffling speech. Gemini Studios to produce a meditative novel based era also meant called Manasarovar, about the ’80s, Pritish Nandy, who was then editor of the may not have been quite the the jettisoning of Illustrated Weekly of India, persuaded Ashoka- place for Spender, but Ashokaunexpected bond between a stumany studio mitran to write a series of reminiscences — in mitran makes it apparent that dio scriptwriter called Gopal and employees English — about his years at Gemini. These SS Vasan, though he may have a Bombay star. The film world were later published in the form of a (very) been a “hundred per cent free that appears here is terribly proslender book called My Years with Boss. It cov- enterprise man”, had respect for saic, and still shunned by miders only five of those 14 years, but brims with poets and artistes. One of the dle-class morality: wives are wry, entertaining anecdotes of how things book’s highlights is the lifelong battle be- suspicious of husbands who work in films, were done at what was then among India’s tween Vasan and C Rajagopalachari, over even studio drivers judge stars for talking to grandest film studios. many things including the loyalty of the huge- junior artistes. The portrait of tragic hero SaTo start with there is Ashokamitran’s de- ly popular writer Kalki. Another brilliant story tyan Kumar, son of a fruit seller from Peshascription of his own job, which he describes as involves Vasan’s arrival in Calcutta for the pre- war, derives much from the real-life Dilip “respectably insignificant”. It seemed to con- miere of his star-studded Hindi film Insaniyat Kumar, even down to his special relationship sist, first and foremost, of cutting out news — pause here to think about this remarkable with Nehru. It is an odd, melancholic book. clippings about the film industry and filing world, in which the only film starring both Di- Ashokamitran’s unornamented prose sculpts them under various heads from ‘Aarey Milk lip Kumar and Dev Anand was produced by a a profound contrast between the scriptwritColony’ to ‘Zoroastrianism’. “Seeing me sitting Madras studio and premiered in the capital of er’s dry-eyed response to personal tragedy and at my desk tearing up newspapers day in and Bengal — to find that a strange sort of Bengali the star’s near-breakdown, heaving with tears. day out, most people thought I was doing next film, that no one had expected to be more The actor who must channel grief for practito nothing,” he writes. Magazines were not al- than a stopgap between the previous film and cally every film has no idea how to deal with it lowed to be cut up, so chosen articles had to be the Gemini production, was running very in real life. The book ends with a final nod to copied out in long hand. “If Baburao Patel had well. Vasan insisted on the contractual ar- the strangeness of performance. ‘You know only known how I rewrote the majority of his rangement, and on September 30, 1955, the how to bathe in a river, don’t you?’ Gopal says editorials and the ‘Bombay Calling’ pages of film was stopped for the release of Insaniyat. to Satyan Kumar, and then adds: ‘Of course Film India...” writes Ashokamitran.

But he was intrigued enough to take the un- you do. You have done it in so many films!’

Other parts of his job are more recognisa- subtitled reels back to Madras, and Ashokamible: such as bringing out special souvenir vol- tran, who saw them soon after in the studio trisha gupta is a writer and critic based in Delhi umes before the release of a big film, or theatre, remembers being stunned. The film t@chhotahazri

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Catch me if you can (clockwise from below) Akbar Hunting, folio from an Akbarnama; an incomplete sketch from the Rajput court at Kota; Maharana Sarup Singh inspects a prize stallion, Rajasthan; Maharana Amar Singh II riding a Jodhpur horse courtesy the metropolitan museum of art

Picture perfect I moved back to the UK because I wanted to smell that specific smell, redolent of all my childhood springs anita roy

indistinct save forasaLondon, robust leaving elephant and a times as polluted Beijing clutter of war-like banners. not-very-close second.

The hunt an occasion for nobles to ex“You livedwas in Delhi?” one woman exclaimed hibit the valour had yet to show (or at a dinner partythey in Somerset a couple of would never on thethat battlefield.

Its even marweeks back. show) “Goodness, must be London.” tial analogy could teeter into farce. In one immore crowded than know what toMewar, say to Sangram that. ageI didn’t from 18th-century Singh Clearly, needed some statistics.

II leads a Ibright cavalcade of men on horseI think must havebravely said something like back.

TheyI all gallop towards their “Yes.” more perspicaciously, quarryOroneven the far right of the page: a“There’s few deno comparison really.” But, of course, there is spondent rabbits. comparison — in of some sensewas there only The symbolism the hunt still isdeadly comparison.

There not here. Youshows are not I. serious. A page fromisan Akbarnama the She is quite like him, but less like her. It is swirling action within a qamargha, a how corwe make sense order the world. to doned-off area of inand which animals wereBut conmarshal any meaningful to fined so as to kind makeoftheir slaughterresponse a little less people like(In thea dinner lady,setI knew I’d strenuous. similar party stockade up in Lahave to 1567, get together some more stats. hore in Akbar managed to kill a veritable WhenArk I got I googled around and Noah’s of home, creatures, including jackals, came up withand some broad-brush but nonetheblackbucks, hare.

He used trained cheeless hard numbers.

With a population of tahs to expedite the massacre.)

At the centre, around 18 million, hasfrom almost twice as Akbar lashes out atDelhi animals horseback. many people as London in considerably Beneath the futile scamperbut of musk deer, a disless space.

TheHamid population density London graced noble, Bhakari, is ledin away on a is around sq km; is his pushing donkey, his5,300 head per bowed and Delhi shaved, body 25,500 five times as manypower, peoplethe in naked. — It that’s is a vision of absolute the same space.

Justsway to put that in perspective, monarch’s terrible over both the natural taken a county, Somerset has… wait for it… world as and the affairs of mankind.

0.5.Hunting Yes, whereas a couple of months I was wasn’t only the provinceago, of men. sharing my square kilometre 5,299 Several Rajput paintings showwith women onoththe ers, now it’sladies just me — with my bottom half chase.

Two in flowing robes ride after waaaay over there. blackbucks in 18th-century Bikaner. ElseI lovea it whensitar English people moan where, female player enchants anabout antethe It’sA so charming.

So when lopedreadful with hertraffic. music. huntress shoots deer the at the orderly four-car fromBrits the sigh backand of atut horse in one image from queue at theKangra; traffic lights Waitrose, 19th-century in theoutside same painting, sheI can while the timewho, by telling themaims that makes loveaway to a hunter mid-coitus, Delhi has with 8.43 his million registered vehicles, at a tiger bow, melding sexual and compared with Mumbai’s 2.33 million, Beijmartial prowess. ing’s million and London’s paltry) The5 Mughal paintings in (frankly the exhibition 2.6 And they all doing a U-turn tendmillion. to surpass theirwere Rajput counterparts. and honking, on Aurobindo Marg my There is a stiffness to the work of outside the Rajput house, at the sameemphasis time. Or at ateliers,allwith greater onleast formthat’s and how it felt, mostly. pattern.

That formality still conjures striking Another I found myself leaping to Delimages liketime, the tiger hunt of Rawat Gokul Das hi’s a well-educated, Bengali II of defence Devgarh,against who sits in the foreground of a NRI journalist wholandscape announced that he roudense and detailed of forest, mountinely tells all hisascetic female friends and coltains, towns, and holy men, while an leagues to nottiger go to India.

At the all.range Underofany unsuspecting comes into his As though they would land in to temperate pleasures: less phasers set to circumstances. bow. But Mughal miniatures (particularly Delhi promptly be set upon by gangs of stun than windscreen wipers to intermittent. those and of Akbar’s period) are subtler in their assailants.

I found myself semi-yelling, I also wanted to spend more time with my priapic movement and colour, in the depth of expresin Delhi for 20and years I’ve never parents; I wanted my son to have at least part “I’ve sion lived on individual faces, inand their balance raped! And I’mand notshadow. the only one!” And of his childhood in England; I wanted to be been of diaphanous light I cannot deny of the feelings among people who would instinctively get my yet,Nevertheless, thethat mostone remarkable imagesI not having, I live in Enjokes because we shared a set of cultural refer- most in thelove exhibition come now from that the Rajput court that little, but daily, internaldrawn struggle ents. These were some of my ‘pull’ factors. The gland, at Kota.isBoth are ‘studies’, sketches by I had about what painting. to wear. I pushes were equally strong: the an artist in preparation for a fuller would take out a t-shirt absolute horror — nothing less — Their incompleteness is appealing to the modandofwonder if I had at what was happening to my imern eye. In one study a hunt from 1690,that an extra oomph, mediate environment, and the at elephant wraps its necessary trunk around the neck of a I longed not for generic thata stiffness of spine, that times wholesale, hell-in-a-handrhinoceros.

It is only partial image, uncoltrees for specific Mughalapproach and Rajput ateliers between the 16thbutoured resilience to goof with theorVbasket to development save for sporadic splashes blue, species: gulmohar or and early 19th centuries. neck. that was unfolding around me at ange, and white that the How artiststupid. used toHow testpetthe neem do, Iviewer’sty.attention The huntspeed. was a ritualised Be- wouldn’t How ridiculous. bebreakneck In a word:version mall- of war. palate. The focusesHow on the beech and fore embarking on the and thicket littling of the theelephant’s human culture (okay, that’s twochase, wordssultans needed of brush strokes around oak and sycamore alarmed maharajas assembled spirit. glad I am now but…)

In another word:their Modi.re-In eye How and the straining of as they would mobilise to be able toInwear old atainers third word: Gurgaon. the rhinoceros. theany other anEach army.

In anwords 18th-century notaworry. of these demand study thing from and 1760, tiger roars painting frommore Udaipur, I miss Delhi?

Of many, many than IJagat have within aDo snaking lattice of trees.

Singh’sforentourage spreads course do. Did I hate livspace in this article, but Iout can- The hunt is a vision of The hunter is Ibarely visible at the across tumbling ing there?

Didof I love it? Absolutely.

I renot notthe mention thelandscape air. The English — for power, edge the painting, only aDo feathabsolute the Yes. in divisions of and cavalry and footgret leaving?ering Not of at lines all (at least, the notsolid yet, whom griping moaning is a national pas- terrible around monarch’s men as monarch squarely anyhow). grassMan greener in Somerset?

Littime — the cannot quite — grasp the extent of the beard. is marginal and the sway over both the Is the in the middle of parts the frame yes, and there’s lot more of it. stage.

Metaproblem in other of the — world.

In April forest and atiger take centre natural worlderally, and the launches a hawk against phorically, I’m But I do know is this year, Londoners were upainrearms ataffairs the lev-of mankind It not is asure. scene ofwhat phantasmagoric giment cranes. in Inthe thecapital field, city — dread- that I can walk out of my door and 10 minutes els of airof pollution wonder, of the wild mystery that the court deploy cunning and trees ful! theywould cried.

Ghastly!

We Must Do away are fields inspired every and huntstreams and thatand evmanoeuvresAbout to outflank and the Blackdown hills and a Something It! The particularly nasty hedgerows and ery hunt sought to extinguish. trap their prey. A 17th-century of clouds. form of particulate matter known as PM2.5 wide blue sky full (‘Royal ImageryWhat of thewouldn’t Hunt in In-I Mughalatpainting camouflaged hunt- trade in for a till breath of fresh airatand V-neck tspiked 57 (for adepicts few days), six times higher dian Art’ runs December 2015 The aMetropolismenthe using leafy screens to guideInantelope Not much, turns out, not much at all. than recommended limits.

Delhi, itinis shirt? tan Museum of Art,itNew York) to the path of the approaching hunting party; on average around 215 — 23 times the recomroytharoor is a writer,iseditor and publisher kanishk the author of the forthcoming the viewer can just about make out party mended limits.

In fact, if you take allthe types of anita Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories in the upper right of the page, hazyisand air pollution intocorner the equation, Delhi 10 www.anitaroy.net

Tiger, tiger at the end of my arrow

meaning move, and ‘unruhe’ meaning restlessness. My last few years have been characterised by my feeling itchy, jittery and distracted, like the caged songbirds that list in the same direction as their migrating fellows.

It was an urge not so much to change the circumstances of my life — job, house, routine etc — but the physical, the sensory aspects of it.

I longed not for generic trees but for specific species: gulmohar or neem wouldn’t do, I needed beech and oak and sycamore. I wanted not just ‘flowers’ but cowparsley and nettle, foxgloves and bluebells. I wanted fields that were edgedne with hedgerows of hazel of thick the great vanishings of and the hawthorn. modern I wanted smell that specific agetois the hunt.

Many peosmell, redolent of all mythe childhood springs; to ple around world still go into swap parakeet blackbird the screech wild tofor kill animalswarble. because I wanted clouds — lots them — andisbig, they need to or want to, of but hunting no wide skies, not the Tata Steel lid of that passes for longer the standard recreation ruling classaessky initDelhi.

Indian weather — at in my that was for millennia.

Just asleast urbanised part of the country — is from like an extreme sport: societies are estranged agricultural life, gruelling staminafrom and the enso too are stretches urbanisedrequiring elites distanced durance by heady adrenalin passions punctuated of blood sport.

Golf now servesrushthat es.

The March to Julythe climb of the mercury till purpose, enacting royal hunt in metait shudders 40-plus forfor daysattendant and nights and phor: swapatthe caddy huntweeks on endthe so arc that breaks oh, smen, replace of when the ballitwith the — flight when breaksand — thewhat sheeryou relief is responsible of theitarrow, have left is the for half the songs the subcontinent and same age-old dramaon of man’s swaggering conthree-quarters quest of nature.of its romantic poetry. So it’s notInthat I’masnot alive to the flood of feeling unIndia, in western Asia, Europe, and elseleashed by the monsoon rain, or theritual thrill and of a where, the hunt was a pre-eminent winter’s day withpower. hot samosas and metaphor ofchill, political The Met is chai, now or the languorous of the of first ripe hosting a small butloveliness lively exhibition Indian mango of summer.

But perhaps, as alongside I pass my depictions of royal hunting.

Shown own personal tipping point —and the vernal equiantique hunting daggers matchlock nox my 50th birthday — I’m more inclined guns,of the paintings originate mostly from

A lively exhibition of images from royal hunts that reveals the age-old drama of man’s swaggering conquest of nature

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It’s our right The failure to implement One Rank One Pension (OROP) tells of an obstructive lower bureaucracy and a fourth estate that hasn’t fulfilled its role countability. My few stints in Delhi in the corridors of power lend credence to this claim — one seldom finds an IAS bureaucrat or politician who is likely to negate what has been discussed and recommended on file. I am sanguine in my accusation that it is this lot across ministries which has delayed/denied OROP. The IAS lobby doesn’t direct its subordinate staff to expedite the case, or negate the notings on file, or give a positive recommendation on file for the political masters to approve. Herein lies the malaise which no one seems to have unearthed. It is the file which matters, not sentiments or chest-thumping.

Where are the OB vans?

Another reason for the impasse is the lack of media support and the fact that the Armed Forces do not constitute a major vote bank.

The common lament is that the Armed Forces Modernist Upendranath Ashk was inspired to write Falling Walls after he came to know of Virginia Woolf the hindu archives cannot offer the media much in terms of their TRPs and economic viability. On the other hand, media support is crucial to sustain a movement and help it achieve its goal. To garner electronic media support one has to have a continuous flow of celebrities. Where are the army children — Kirron Kher, Priyanka Chopra, Gul Panag, Sushmita Sen, Anushka Sharma, Neha Dhupia, Lara Dutta or, for that matter, Shah Rukh Khan of Fauji or Hrithik Roshan of Lakshya fame? Where are Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who adorned the Forces’ uniform when conferred his topic has been subject to legal political leadership and the babu (read IAS). with honorary ranks? Why have they not henanalysed we can by findexperts an Indian scrutiny, and way. Ashk’s act of writing the novel was a sidelines of thetoHarivallabh come forward further the Sangeet cause of Sammethe real Shakespeare, if it hapcommented upon. Iteven has become an struggle be modern, like Chetan trying to lan, Eye of thetostorm blacksmiths other craftsmen, andofa heroes.

Similarly, and there are many children pens to for be athe certain Kalidas emotive issue veteran com- break of his context, he was is breaking I have afree different take. Thefor politician too bu- soda-bottle maker — as if who Ashkhave is fumbling to the Forces in the media failed the whorequiring predatesearly the closure bard byfora many munity and a topic literary the day.

He was sy ensuring heconventions continues toof rule the roost.

The find his native creative nest that spawned them.lineages. It’s a highly millennium, would it be difficult to locate an insistent the politico/bureaucratic combine, dependthat his whatever wasaccredited expressedstate/ was self-conscious IAS babu, after stint in the novel, whereMantar many characters Dozens of trips to Jantar in the last Indian Marcel DaisytoRockwell, an done ing on which endProust? one chooses be in. the characters’ lives, events, union through territory cadre, finds himself in the cen- look like disguised ideas.

Chetan’s brothfew months, and the 10km Vijayelder Diwas run American translator, However,academic, facts need to be stated,writer which Iand am conflicts and entanglements tral government.

Thereafter and he not through er, an idle card-player, is a Kuan voracious reader of from Dhaula to Jantar Manpainter, French novelist sure the traces reader the would pardon me for.to a loca- long speeches debates.

Heawanted to let novels. He reads is at the mercy and of the DoPT for indiscriminately, tar in Delhi on July 26Premchand have been tion the blighted streets ofI the Is as it improbable ‘pension’ oras ‘deferred payment’? noveltospeak through and not as well as pulp. posting a ministry or descriptions departthe standstill, cramped life an In eye-opener for me.

One met pre-Independence Jalandhar. the be would say it is the latter, as hasTranslating been approved didactic was mostly ment.

Theylike toowhat are drawn intobeing written of a poor neighbourhood Jalandhar, it indihundreds ofinproud soldiers in late Hindi writer Upendranath Ashk’s by the Supreme Court.

It is my belief thatnovel pen- at time. thethat government game of ‘Musicates a hunger for newer worlds and faraway their dhoti/kurta/pyjamas and a It is the file which Girti Divarein, first of a seven-volume sion is given tothe a government servant whocol‘re- calBut Proust?

Chairs’ — soon as they are fathat anThe escape handful of offers widows. glowfrom has matters,places not — anything lection, it similar to miliar tires’. Inshe thefinds Armed Forces in themany only ways soldier Those who rush expecting rev- or with the job in at hand, theyromantic thechest hopeless faded stagnation Hunar from around. their eyes.

TheySahib, have sentiments Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. who retires is at the rank of Lieutenant Gener- eries, longwinded They sentences, exquisite remiare transferred. remain a nationalist been poet, areduced scamstertowith shadywhich antepenury, thumping modern and Indians condemned al,Are equivalent, above the age of to 60.a derivaOthers niscences andmaster immersion into ‘Jack of all and of none’.

I cedents window to they hadand notChetan’s bargained for. They tive discourse, on forever lagging the fine ‘superannuate’ reaching thebehind maximum prose willwrong be a in bitstating disapwould not be the literary world of Lahore, an look helpless.

The nation ishas West social andthey political age ofin the rank held.expression?

This variesWhen from pointed.

Ashk has no pretensions that a large percentage of these expertthem. plagiarist who passes off failed you read translation, yougeneral. cannot of around 35Rockwell’s for a sepoy to 58 for a major the sublime, orby the aristocratic babus are driven subordinate couplets of by famous poets as his I will end quoting a General fault for her Western lens. Falling is a elegance Theseher ranks, which constitute almostWalls 99.9 per of Proust.

But he too staff in day-to-day functioning. own to unsuspecting admirers from the Army who is not affected by OROP. Many of the keenly modern novel the Ashk was inspired to rambles, finds moments that cent, have been denied privilege of serving his brother.

He chidedlike

by Chetan a seniorand bureaucrat about characters When look like write he came to know of Virginia Woolf. trigger up to after 60 years, for lack of vacancies. long Down the lineflashbacks, and has stand for this Ashk’s struginseems this to ‘nautanki’, General disguisedpartaking ideas It This is a rambling account a lower middleis mainly due to theofpyramidical struc- written seven volumes tostaff’? tell the Who is this ‘subordinate They are from stated that he glewould to be original writinga prefer towhile be called class boy’s life in Jalandhar and Lahore as nehe autobiographical ture of the Forces, which is an operational tale ofServices a writer.(CSS). This lot ‘Dharna General’ the Central Secretarial in a than borrowed Western style. a ‘Matlabi General’. struggles tocannot becomebea tampered writer, trying toHence break He cessity and with. records his lifecadres, in suchthe abunconstitutes two clerical cadre Rockwell’s immense research The OROP fight is for the 85 per cent that free of stifling society, oppressive conventions the term ‘deferred payment’.

Accordingly, this dant it turns out toand be the officer constitutes personnel (LDCs,detail UDCsthat and assistants) shows inbelow her deft translation, officer rank and and disabling poverty.

In his was ambition toatfind deferred payment (pension) pegged 50 the history histhe time.

You glimpse Proust in where cadre.

Theyof are well-entrenched lot who nothing jars as she effortlessly conveys the widows, who have been short-changed by aper personal forand creative Che- Ashk cent forspace officers 70 perexpression, cent for personespecially in his incursions into the provide continuity tosideways the various offices they local colour.

ThereTheir are no irritating explaan ungrateful nation. demands must be tan reminds one of Stephen Dedalus to in 33 James nel below officer rank, as compared per character’s any of hurry function in.lives Theywithout are theshowing custodians the nations thatiswould put off theitEnglish met. OROP not negotiable, is theirreader right.

Joyce’s Portrait of theThis Artistwas as alargely Young done Man. In cent forAthe civilians. to to get the plotpolicies going. and the unwritten dik- and files/rulings, amuse the Hindi one. the HinThe Supreme Court has saidShe so.moves Any further depre-Independence India, Chetan’s was a very compensate for the extreme disparity be- tats Protagonist is the consciousness of di pertainingChetan to vexed issues.

Considering the English reader but knows laytext willtowards be tantamount to contempt.

European — what political thinker Ashk. tween theendeavour lifetime earnings of government Chetan’s yearning for a modern life re- how that the government follows the Whitehall far hum it can be pushed its get terrain.

OROP le kar rahenge from (We will our Sudipta might call ‘the was invention of flects servants.Kaviraj In 1973, the pension standarinall Ashk’s conscious experiment with system, decisions have to be taken on file.a Therefore, herhaq translation willis speak to the OROP). Sadda aithe rakh (It our right). private dised tolife’.

50 per cent across the board, by those modern formon — file a rambling, nov- Hindi The notings emanateself-absorbed from the section as well theand English reader. This novel So help me as god the uniform I wore for Thehad autobiographical novel mirrors Ashk’s who mastered the art of feathering their el that makes a point to show, not tell. Howevofficer, who could well be a promotee from must almostbe36read, years.not least for its description of own ofthey the European style. He wanted er, nests,pursuit because were the decision-makers. at theorcore of this modern novel isthese the our LDC/UDC a direct inductee.

By nature forgotten literary cultures and a subaltern (Views are personal.) to Who depictisthe inner mindfor of the ad- realisation responsible the characters, three-decadeits own and derivativeness. are history of pre-Independence times. officers areof negative have a chipThere on their miring how delay Woolfand hadindecision told an entire storyOne by numerous long denial, towards descriptions ofhave dyers, folk poets, shoulder. Here is a lot who unlimited au- brig (retd) kn mehra is a third-generation army kumar a Delhi-based officer, commissioned in is 1969, Parachutejournalist Regiment way a morning walk in herusually novel Mrs DalloRankofOne Pension?

Fingers point to streetside poetry jams and on the thority andstorytellers, minimal responsibility ac- dharminder

Proust in Jalandhar?

A pre-Independence novel breaks out of the literary conventions of the day, but any comparison to the French novelist is questionable Up in arms Ex-servicemen strike over the delay in implementation of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi shanker chakravarty

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PRESENT IMPERFECT

This obsession with normal Blinded by the ‘picture perfect’, our popular culture has no room for the ‘different’

Not Marilyn Everybody loves Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, except for Truman Capote, the author of the book

courtesy everett collection/ the hindu archives

PAPERWALLAH

katerina davidenko/shutterstock

Page vs. screen

Hollywood adaptations that fail their books as they are too shiny and happy

janice pariat

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t’s a debate as old as the movies. memories, and revelled in colour and symbol- anced than Michael Cunningham’s book).

One I’ve been hesitant to broach. ism. Yet in all honesty, if I hadn’t read the book Deftly interweaving the lives of three women, Books versus their film adaptations. An I’m uncertain I would’ve followed. The narra- Virginia Woolf in 1930s England, a 1950s Amerwenty minutes into the latest—Pixar endlessly looping discussion like Kim ‘happy’ That happened a year ago perfect tiveones. resembled Emmentalover cheese — punched picture.

It is much easierand to ride along in ican suburban housewife, a publisher film Inside Out, I felt my Kardashian or the meaning of heart life, is sink. there any when, in a completely civil and entirely con-prop through with holes.

Franklin is a mere with modern-day the prejudices ofYork, the majority.

Why risk exNew the movie achieves The movie, if you haven’t heard sensual point? manner, my husband and ISwinton decidedisitmarwhile Eva — even though Tilda the wrath of some, thebetween revulsion of others?

I ceptional balance dialogue and quiet about it, isI’ve set inside themany head of a lit-withAdmittedly, enjoyed films was vellous best we— lived separately. took our haven’t loses her gloriousWe complicatedness. seen the marketing managrestraint.

Thedata lookthat on Julianne Moore’s face as tle girl and the protagonists ofbooks the movie, as itthem: out knowing there were behind daughter into confidence every step of the Grudgingly I watchedatas memorable scenes ers work with, buther thefamily argument, am told, is Or she sits with at theIdining table. were,Forrest are five emotions — Joy, The Sadness, Anger, Gump, Good Fellas, Pianist, Jaws, Reqway, and encouraged to talk about were her anxiedialogueher from the novel sliced off, that Nicole when the tired lying Indian Kidman in‘consumer’ the garden,comes gazing at a Disgust and FromCool reading about uiem forFear. a Dream, HandupLuke, Dr the Strangeties, if any, and ensured that even the new details unceremoniously leftinout.

Before home I dead from work, he does not want to trouble sparrow. movie, I figured thisabout might be a good, not love.

But what movies basedifon books scenario, hadsounding access to both her parents at his mind comeshe away irrationally embittered, notions equality, fairness or Thewith other rarity of is Sam Mendes’ Revolutionnecessarily entirely scientific, way for my nine- all times.

I’ve read and loved? seemed It was while sitting justice. He perhaps, may She I clarify I’m fine. no literary really, wants toas nurse ary Road — asonly devastating Richard year-oldHerein daughter understand why she feels with fascist. lies to the rub. her andI recognise watching some show on a kids’ a drink and Yates’ the need watchbook. a fully-formed cute child The tale of Frank and April what she does.

I’ve been prompted now by the fact that I rechannel that it firsttext struck for sculpting intome. big-All advertise- roll his eyes Wheeler from onewrestling side to the other, with thewhile ‘hopeless So cently one Sunday evening, I shepherded read Lionel Shriver’s We Needmy to Talk ments had shape. smilingTomummies screen pare away,and daddies. his mum and dad swipe their iPads and life emptiness’ of on American suburban Sam Mendes’ daughter herand bestimmediately friend (forever!) to watched the Not one aboutand Kevin after show even remotelyplot suggested that compete on what leaving behind buy.to Why should Amazon (they to hope move to Paris to start Revolutionary Road theatre and Ramsay’s we settledadaptation. in, 3D glasses on our Lynne Shriver’s novel, someessentials. people may possibly be livIndia’s ad line ‘aur dik-shot. afresh)successful is beautifully, tragically is as devastating as noses,written popcorn our lapsform to watch the life of Eva in on epistolary as letters from ing in aMany different kind of aago, family summers at hao’ interpreted to mean Justinbe Haythe, the screenplay writer, Richard Yates’ book a ‘regular’ girl.

Except,husband the girl was too regular. to her absent Franklin regarding structure. university, a group of us Tol‘show of interview famadmitsme in aadifferent New Yorkkind Times Scenetheir aftertroubled scene depicted a ‘happy’ family —of its Single-parent son, drew me in because homes aren’t the kien fans watched The Felily or Mendes character’nudged when all it seeks that him to “find daddy, mummyvoice. and little girl, who are always only lowship particular narrativesof that missing the are Ring.

We to say to is, ‘aur productswhat dikhao’? ways externalise Frank and Where is the story together — is ona car rides, skatingnarrator, rinks and mo-unreEva witty, engaging often in plot lines. It’s into all kinds emerged theof differDelhi Perhaps, wetoare now a popApril do notassay each other”. a prodigious vie halls.

Daddy mummy hold hands, tickliable andand entirely absorbing; you spend ences.

How many children’s dusk, alternatively proclaimingoflove and dis- violin ulation that aspires I think the greater sin (yes,mindless Samar, even player, who,worse than le herhours, and then eachinother.

They rollunravelling their eyes the or days her company, booksmay, talkbut of one adopted children? among us was distraught.

“They consumerism above leaving out Tomeverything Bombadil) is in tandem atthat’s the kid’s antics sit side-bytragedy befallen herand family.

The book is How left many television shows? out my favourite character,” incidentally, he wept. adapting else, we really to see version is the of theall movie into want a ‘happier’ is autistic? side and cheer loudly when she’s playingand ice self, expansive, detailing love, familial How “Who?” many movies feature characwe enquired.

As far as we could tell, the book. ‘normal’.

Even if atweTiffany’s, know, from Take Breakfast for examhockey.

There were Pixar perfect shotscommitment, of every- ters with grief, fears about motherhood, In Bollywood, theydisability? were all there.

The elf, the dwarf, various ple. (Apparently, our own experiences living the also Capote loathed theinfilm; thingsuccess. you imagine a happy to be, Through it all,family running likeand a fault if there is someone disabiliwizards, and of with course the gang of hobbits. seemingly regular families, that the he’d wanted Marilyn Monroe to play here line, I wasiswith kids crime from single-parent the two horrific young Kevin has ty, it is an adult who is meant to be “Tom Bombadil.” there happiness as eternal as this haunted, lostis no Holly Golightly).

While homes.

As is wont happen, committed — to you and Evaafter and the the movie, world wonlaughedAnd at. Ifnothey do feature kids amount of persuasion would con- might be the fake happiness watch.

But and Audrey Hepburn’swe most revered, over der milkshakes andtochicken why. I came the end,nuggets, feeling —there surely as at all,vince they him are often props that amerely character who appears briefly beloved,the real is in true the assumprole, it failure is also least to the origiwas aalllong discussion on you whether movieBereft good books make feel —the hollow. to invoke pity. are thedispensable. kids in wheel- tion nal. on page 23 Where was, perhaps, that The anything that varies standard characters in the from novella are darker, was good or bad, what each one liked and chairs who of company. are the challenge, leaders ofthough, their gangs?

The greatest doesn’t lie cannot be damaged. good; that,The formovie example, no can family more ending only be which part theyout hated.

The kids didn’t bring I sought the movie as comfort for loss.Where theculling story of violin inis the (ora prodigious not) of detail, but player in translatwith called a special child could be happy. a massive Hollywood cop-out — and the up the In subject the standard short,of it was a terrible ‘happy idea. = two- who,ing incidentally, is autistic?

When the a vastly interior world ontowas an external Myexact own opposite single-parent household is an of what happens in absothe book. parent family’ bit. I don’t knowfaded, if theyI noticed have a imAs the opening credits last time we watched a roguish, landscape.

The element that visually makes achalbook like lutely(Did wholesome and predominantly happy nothe filmmakers think we wouldn’t blindmediately spot to it the or ifabsence they areofinher active denial, voice.

The sudlenged When was the first time we In The10-year-old?

Catcher in the Rye famously ‘unfilmable’. one. tice?

All I’m wouldn’t hurt to see Or saying worse, is, notitcare?) but I den wasn’t if it Give was in flatsure silence. it aanyone’s chance, Iinterest told myself. watched him? commentary for House of Sand and the actors’ some validation this once a while in a mo- lop A word ofof advice?

Axein minor characters, to raise theall, issue withmust them,be sojudged I kept quiet.

After movies according to TheFog counter-argument, amAndre certain, would (originally a novelI by Dubus III) Ben vie hall or a television screen.

I am notdiveroff extra sub-plots, slash theBut emotional It isn’t that on watching Inside Out I was joltappropriate criteria, as visual projects and reibe that when explains so muchhow money riding on Kingsley it is is toughest for aan acholding my breath. gences, but remember, always, always keep ed awake to the reality that popular culture is movie maginings.

Here, Ramsay’s work was admiraproduct that of is interiority advertised,in noa one torortoaconvey pages glance. the tragedy. t@veenavenugopal consistently depicting two-parent families as of ble. If she did away with the intimacy wants to take a ‘risk’not by presenting But perhaps impossible?a less-thanvoiceover, she introduced a splintered streamThink of the silences in Stephen Daldry’s The janice pariat is the author of Seahorse of-consciousness cinematic style that layered Hours (I’d venture to say it’s a lot more nu- t@janicepariat

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Double take For readers who remember Atticus as a saint — immortalised by Gregory Peck on screen — the revelation that he might be a racist is naturally a kind of blasphemy reuters

as vivid as To Kill A Mockingbird but neither is it sentimental. The reader will shed no cosy tears. And for that alone, Go Set a Watchman is the more interesting, if not better constructed, novel.

It is set in the mid-1950s, a couple of decades on from To Kill a Mockingbird, just after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Jean Louise (or Scout) catches a train back to Maycomb from New York City for a fortnight’s holiday.

Now 26, she finds herself in a place familiar to anyone who has ever left home, at once alienated and nostalgic. We need for our home to remain fixed; that it does not, just as we do not, is tragic.

The most lyrical passages in Go Set a Watchman are when Scout recalls her childhood in Maycomb, her brother Jem, her friends Dill and Henry Clinton, and when she finds “a delight almost physical” in the landscape, the gently undulating pastureland, the black cows, the “red earth... and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards”. The rural grace, Jem and Dill, Calpurnia and Atticus are already familiar from To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite Go Set a Watchman apparently being written earlier, it is difficult to imagine reading this book without having read To Kill a Mockingbird, without already being familiar with Maycomb. Henry Clinton though is new, a childhood friend whom Scout is considering ers suitably and avoid wastage of goods as as nels then.husband. For a 100 pages the a back potential well as delay in transportation,” he says.

For Express Weather founder and Angnovel meanders through a series of CEO amusing shujyoti it was the memories, complete her lackflirtof set pieces,Das, through Scout’s Buying a forecast weather on her the Sunderbans led conhim ing with data Henry, mild ribbingthat of her In a country with vastly differing climatic re- ventional, to the business of forecasting.

“We were impleliterally corseted aunt. gions — from tropical in the south to temper- menting a sustainable in In chapter eight, she ecotourism discovers a project pamphlet ate in the north and heavy snowfall in elevated on Sunderbans and Unesco forwas some wind her father’s desk: “On asked its cover a drawareas — accurate weather forecasting is emerg- ing data.ofOn the IMD, we above were told an approaching anthropophagous Negro; the ing as a key requirement for businesses and drawing they didn’t have the data,” he says. was printed The Black Plague.” Sickagriculture alike. Several enterprises have ened, Though Sunderbans project eventuagainthe literally, by what Scoutwas interprets emerged in recent times to fill this need. allyher shelved, ventured deeper as heroicDas father’s betrayal of into his weathprinci“The demand for forecasting erAtticus data sourcing and ples, she finds and Henry at aresearch, council services is increasing. From aviaand of combined it with crop scimeeting, a sort panchayat populated by tion and shipping to farmers ence data toFrom support decisionmen fearful of the future. here the novel and governments, everybody by farmers. unravels intomaking hysterical speechifying (Scout) needs accurate weather predicand evasive casuistry (everyone else — Atticus, Singh’s weathertions,” says Skymet founder and Formula for the Henry, an uncle devoted to day Victorian literaforecast service CEO Jatin Singh. boasts arture). But it isExpress in theseWeather inchoate pagesthree that Go found ready He set up the Noida-based eas becomes of expertise — it generates a Watchman something special, subscribersSet among company after his former boss seven-day weather forecasts ussomething unbeautiful. the rapidly jury set an innocent mancomfree. Atticusmushrooming fails, at a to Hindi news channel ing open-source mod-a To Kill a Mockingbird was sonumerical fully realised of course,about as he the must if only to allow a scene inchannels plained lack of reliaels developed USitsand novel, so perfectly modulatedintothe create efnews both book anddata film in in which ble weather India. the As town’s black fects, that it was modified for cloying.

In Indian Go Set aconditions; Watchman, people in respect for his noble Singh’srise father happened to be a failure. it has to developed an isapp Atticus is revealed be what he — acalled wellFor readers who remember supplier of computers and other Atticus as a born Southern Farmneed to loath combine crop gentleman to give up scihis saint, the revelation he might equipment to IMD, that he was well be a racist is world as he’sence and microit. weather data, always known Scout, too, for naturally a kind of blasphemy.

Perhaps, to ap- all aware of the dynamics of weather prediction. andher thishumanist is being used by over 25,000 farmers; protestations, shares her faprove of Go Set aSingh Watchman, in which is ther’s In 2003, when launched his Atticus weatherand it attachment installs and to manages automatic weaththe trappings of birth.

In indeed revealed to he harbour white subscribers er stations, which forecasting service found ready collect data the novel’s finestrelated scene, to shetemvissupremacist sympathies, you news chan- perature, humidity, among the rapidly mushrooming aridity andnanny, other its Calpurnia, her old to need to not have read To Kill a environmentaldiscover factors. The hastran300 thatcompany love cannot Mockingbird in your youth. I did, such stations today. scend power and privilege, that but I was unmoved, finding AttiWeather founded Sonu Agrawal, has womanbyshe took to be a surThe reader will shed Risk,the cus dull and homiletic and Scout’s no cosy tears. a network of nearly 1,000 weather stations rogate mother was an employAnd for precocity irritating. In English nine including Rajasthan, Uttar ee doing her job. that alone,across Go Set a states class that year, I must have been Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh any case, black people,and livWatchman is the Bengal, In about 14, we also read Alan Paton’s Maharashtra.

His includes ing,clientele breathing black farmers, people, more interesting, if Cry, The Beloved Country and transporters, banks and other financial are beside the point in instiboth not better watched the 1951 film adaptation. I tutions, insurance companies as well as FMCG books.

Essentially, these are constructed, novel remember our teacher, a slight, players. The company’s focus, howevnovels primary about fathers and well-meaning Canadian, admiter, is crop insurance.

BasedRace on an agro-meteordaughters. relations, howting that he felt ashamed of his ological model, the they company captures ever large loom over both whiteness. His showy self-flagelladrought risks in the form of aalways formula.

For innovels, were ‘incidention ingrained in me a lifelong prejudice tal’, stance, if therealises, rainfall in village in July less as Scout “toathe issue... yourisown against both novels. Paton, maybe, deserves private than, say, 100mm then the war”.

Realising thatcrop yourcould fatherfail is and just better but I remain unconvinced that Lee aresult hugecontradictory, losses. “We would need put man,inweak, fallible, andtofinddoes. To Kill a Mockingbird, by so loading the ing up aroom weather station in that village; andfigto in your heart for that diminished dice, by so deifying Atticus, makes it easy for ure priceisthe insurance product, we would called growing up. Who better need than the reader to indulge, as my teacher did, in the Harper forecastLee based on historical weather data as to remind fans of To Kill a Mockingfaux mortification that is really a pat on the bird well as an Atticus understanding the Claus, situathat Finch, of likewhat Santa back for having moved on from those igno- doesn’t tion could be in July,” says Agrawal. Besides exist. rant days to the enlightenment of the present. farmers in 15 states, power companies utilise dasgupta a Delhi-based journalist Go Set a Watchman may not be as evocative, shougat his services in a bigisway.

Perfect day for business

From aviation and shipping to farmers and governments, everybody is willing to pay for accurate weather predictions and a host of private forecasters are making hay

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he 140-year-old Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast a deficient monsoon this year, only to be proved wrong by the 16 per cent surplus rains in June and the above-normal reservoir levels countrywide as of July 23. Not many were surprised however, as the IMD’s success rate for monsoon forecast is barely 50 per cent — in recent times, it failed to predict the droughts of 2002, 2004 and 2009. Interestingly, directly contradicting the official weathermen, a barely 12-year-old private forecaster, Skymet Weather Services, had predicted a normal monsoon this year.

Similarly, thanks to an app from Kolkatabased Express Weather, potato growers in West Bengal not only know when it will rain next but also the humidity levels, temperature and other climate parameters for the week ahead. This helps them plan their schedule for here has been muchsowing anguish spraying pesticides, irrigation, or over harthe publication Harper the Lee’sapp Go vesting. With its weatherofupdates, Set a Watchman, including the serimakes agriculture preventive, rather than corous ethical concern theforecast. partialrective, and non-dependent onthat IMD’s ly deaf and blind, near-nonagenarian Lee was In Chennai, transporter PR Venkatesan is in no instructing shape to condone thedrivers publication of busy his truck to cover what in effect a first draft of To Kill a Mocktheir was vehicles with waterproof sheets as ingbird. reading the novel I was WeatherHowever, Risk has after alerted him about the likeligrateful that itrainfall had been published.

Go“With Set a hood of heavy en route to Delhi.

Watchman, its obscure Biblical title the detailed from information, I can equip my drivthrough 280 pages of uneven, uncomfortable prose, is no classic. It is in every way inferior to its polished predecessor (successor?). To Kill a Mockingbird was wrought from the ruined clay of Go Set a Watchman, with Lee encouraged by her perspicacious editor to revise the manuscript to reflect more of her protagonist’s early recollections of life in Maycomb, AlabaGo Set a Watchman ma. The result was an indelible fable of a shelHarper Lee tered small-town childhood, narrated in part Random House by a precocious six-year-old girl, alongside the Fiction ₹540 story of a trial that laid bare this idyllic small town’s bigotry, its murderous hatred of the black people it once kept as slaves.

Standing undaunted against the mobs is the girl’s father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer assigned to defend a black man falsely accused Grey area In its of raping a white woman. Before the law, Atti140-year existence, the Indian cus believes, all men are equal. This paragon of Meteorological integrity, of rectitude, was further marmorealDepartment has got its ised in an Oscar-winning performance by Gremonsoon forecast right only half the time gory Peck, square and handsomely earnest (or thulasi kakkat earnestly handsome) as he implores a white

Future tense

Unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, which was so perfect it was cloying, Go Set a Watchman is imperfect and unbeautiful

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Dressed for the occasion A bakery in Chatori Gali with its alluring display of sheermal, rusk and other savouries; (inset) seekh kebabs at Jameel Hotel zac o’yeah

Angshujyoti Das, founder and CEO, Express Weather

Beyond Indian meteorology Weather Risk’s monitoring station in Tanzania

TUMMY TRAVELS

It’s raining money Skymet’s Singh says his company was profitable from day one. Ditto for Express Weather and Weather Risk. That also explains the interest shown by private equity firms. Skymet raised ₹4.5 crore in its Series A round of funding from Omnivore in August 2011. Last year, it raised ₹27.6 crore in its Series B round led by Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. Das, too, is “in discussions with four to five large players — both strategic and financial investors”.

The private players also boast higher success rates for their prediction. “In the long range, we have not got a single monsoon wrong yet,” says Singh, claiming a 75 per cent success rate for his company’s monsoon preJatin Singh, founder CEO, Skymet corners, and all of and a sudden the city comes to diction.

Das says at Express Weather accupacked with burqa-clad women, pastthe a trumlife. It’s a completely different picture at night; racy is plus-minus 2 prayer degreescaps Celsius for pet seller and a shop for that even the narrow streets are chock-a-block and the temperature, for relative humidihas one shiny5-7 redper fezcent on sale, past Jalebi Waltakes and theincomputers meatsplace are stewing restaurant pots, signall- las, Biscuit Corners, ty, and cent Cenfor Silk80-83 Stores,per Chikan generate the short ing that itforecasts is time tofor eat some gourmet food. rainfall. tres, shops that sell the glitzy bead-decked range, medium range long targets. Am- purses that Bhopali As usual, I have a setand of definite But artisans unlike Singh, he is unare famous for, range.

Weather forecasting bitious food-googling has resulted in the until I find myself willing to very dwell on IMD’s inacon the opposite side of With our research we companies customise re- hottest tables the old town from names of a few locationsthe for the curacy.

“I don’t want to see the where I started out. know clearly when it is sults for—users them in town one isand an price alley in the old town, ChaIMDsaying as a competitor as and it is an But as the old goes: seekh ye going to be hot and accordingly. tori Gali, and another is a fancier suburban shall find kebabs. oldNot organisation with huge infar from the Jama Mashumid, leading to higher It is here that private weath- where table- jid (a quaint old fine dining option, in Koh-i-Fiza, frastructure and financial and comparatively smallish power consumption for er forecasting services have an cloth can be expected. muscle.of aAny player mosque in the centre sort private of roundabout air-conditioners edge I tryover the IMD. latter.They I findnot theonly restaurant Filfora bazaar) I come cannot think of creating such to a street corner with lots of have meteorologists, off Sultania Road, in scientists, a backstreet of a Bhopal bakers who sell infrastructure,” Das says. sheermal and buttery rusk, and programmers and developers Development Authority suburb. Nice-looking it turns out to beAlso, the unlike turningIMD, for the theprivate fabled on they are also andboard, upper-crust, withfocused kids at forecasters notarea wishitself to limChatori Gali.do The is on out to user groups. Not surpris- it themselves called onereaching table celebrating a birthday. to India.

Express Weather is alIbrahimganj and a stroll ingly, all these companies areadprofitable.

Strangely though, a poster ready operating in foreign here past loomingcountries, ancient vertises South Indian food and including Zambia.

“We areon creating buildings, any dayinfrastrucor night, I come to ature street then the waiter claims emphatito bring will in data integrate take services you backand to the days of corner with lots of cally that they serve no Bhopali farms to markets,” Das says. the Mughals. bakers whoAgrawal’s sell cuisine. When I draw his attenWeather Risk plans the Jameel Hotel is to ondouble the right, sheermal and buttery tion to the menu, which has ‘Filnumber of its with stations to 2,000 within a year.

Jameel Chicken Corner on rusk, and it turns out fora specials’ mentioned in it, he Outside India,the it isleft. working in Africa, The kebab grill isBanglasmokto be the turning for Cambodia. argues that the cook is on leave. desh and Skymet’s Singh, on the ing up front.

Inside, a waiter, fat the fabled Chatori Gali prefers Besides, their famous mutton biother hand, to stay focused as a laddoo, slaps downon theIndia meryani isn’t available, but I can try for the moment. well understand this nu,“I very which is thoroughly the chicken one if I want to. It’s a subcontinent,smeared the monsoon andfat. winter patin animal nice place, otherwise, but I head tern, and so on. Weather is bowls highlyof geographySoon steel rich mutto Chatori Gali — home to cheap, spicy, calorie- specific and it takes at least two years of R&D to ton korma (₹90) appear, as does mutton biryaladen and 99 per cent non-veg grub. Some enter a new country,” says. the best in the ni (also ₹90), up thereheamong food bloggers rave about one particular eat- world, But the forecaster that he garlicky is, his reading is accompanied by the yoghurt ery, Jameel Hotel, which, supposedly, is the that inburani. the long Skymetseekh will be a global sauce, Theterm crispy-fried kebabs on place for Bhopali cuisine and even Wikitravel weather brand(₹7 capable long-range forecastwooden sticks each)of arrive by the cartload, crowned its biryani the best in town. Google ing forwith the rest the world. along hotofrotis.

Including cold drinks, Maps places Jameel somewhere around the the feast comes to ₹243. Hungry families, who pratap bus stand off Hamidia Road, which seems rashmi must have been fasting all day, keep walking handy as my hotel is just down the road, but it in, quickly filling the place to capacity. turns out to be wide off the mark.

My tummy has found a second home.

The only way to find it is to ask in virtually every other shop and get pointed deeper and zac o’yeah is a Bengaluru-based author, travel writer deeper into the glittering night bazaars, jam- and literary critic

At home in Bhopal

A walk through a tangle of lanes and by-lanes is sure to work up an appetite. The city of feisty begums rewards such perseverance with a divine spread

I

Eye on the sky An automatic weather monitoring station installed

by Kolkata-based Weather happened to be Express in Bhopal during Ram-

zac o’yeah

zan and couldn’t help but notice how the fasting month affects the city’s daily Powered by data rhythm.

I went out shopping for new Power distributors weather esshoes one morninguse (mine had forecasts started totodistimate electricity demand overshowers) the nextonly ten solve courtesy of the monsoon days. our research know where clearlyI to find“With that few shops in the we old town, when it is going tobefore be hotnoon. and humid, leading was staying, open to Even higher consumption air-condiin power the middle of the day,for the bazaars tioners; whenempty, the temperature fallstobelow are relatively making it easy stroll28 at degrees Celsius, the goes Powleisure. So instead ofdemand shopping I dodown. a round of er companies plan(also theirmore supply accordingly,” Bhopal’s mosques or less empty at says that Agrawal. hour). The Moti Masjid, or ‘Pearl Mosque’, Additionally, the power companies can which is a very agreeable structure with redmanage costs better.

They procure dish sandstone minarets andusually white domes, is power the gridMoti a dayMasjids ahead, — as the spotother buyone of from five famous ing costlier.

However, purchase extra four is being in Agra, Delhi, Karachi andofLahore. power leads to penalties, theold-timer compaIn the courtyard I meet a which bearded nies avoid withinthe help of demand forewho can speaks to me, very refined and carefulcasts from English, Weather about Risk. how a ‘lady begum’ ly worded The key accurate forecast lies to not only in erected thetomosque.

He’s referring Sikandar sourcing databuilt accurately butAccording also processing Begum, who it in 1860. to Wiit well. Dr Kanti Prasad, weather and kipedia (that wonderful sourcescientist of informaformer ofthe IMD, explains that tion anddirector-general disinformation), begum dressed modern-day weather forecast is based as a man, which ‘led Bhopal to be known for on its mathematical models, which are run on surelatively liberated, progressive women’. percomputers.

“The data runningbag these Anyway, the handle of myfor shopping has models is generated observatories across just broken, making itby tricky to carry back subthe globe.

Additionally there Iare conventional stantial souvenirs, so maybe wasn’t meant to weather stations, while remote-sensing is buy any new shoes.

After drinking somedata nutty available fromIsatellites, aircraft, radar, lassi in a stall, spot a tailoring shop andland ask and ocean-based the begum insidestations.” if she would mind stitching freeitofuntil costitand the myThis bag.data Sheisfixes is asflows goodinto as new, global telecommunications but when I dig out my wallet shesystem waves itmainaway tained the World Meteorological with a, by ‘Welcome to Bhopal.’

I start toOrganisafind the tion andofaccessed by forecasting begums Bhopal very likeable. centres all over the early world.

The number churning then In the evening I stand outside what is purportedly Asia’s biggest mosque, the Taj-ulMasjid, and two cannon shots are heard echoing across town, which is the signal for breaking the fast. Iftar snacks — fruits, dates, cold drinks — are served from pushcarts at street

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Lost in transition (clockwise from top left) An archival image of Elphinstone Picture Palace, the country’s first permanent cinema hall; the dilapidated mansion of Raja Subodh Mullick; Basubati in north Kolkata; Chaplin, a later avatar of Elphinstone Picture Palace, was demolished in 2013 arnab banerjee

For old times’ sake The box of delights

dipankar

A recent campaign to preserve Kolkata’s old residential neighbourhoods compels a look at its historic buildings that are prey to neglect and government apathy Television chef and author Rukmini Srinivas’s new cookbook, Tiffin tempers our nostalgia ecorative iron grilles. Red-oxide ifice that is Telephone Bhavan. The Institute ment it continues to get from the city adminfloors. Shuttered windows. found aitnew home in 42 Jhowtala Street, in the istration. Declared a heritage building in 1998, for homemade food andStained the bonds builds and nourishes

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glass windows with floral patterns.

It is not unusual for a Kolkata house — even a modest, middle-class one — of the ontological desire to carry your early 19thhe century or later to have some of homeifeverywhere is at the centre of these features, not all. Sharing space with practices.

Be it your apspecimensallofculinary ‘Bengali’ architecture on the for ghar-ka-khaana orBritish. yearncityscape petite are structures built by the ing forsome feedback a homemade what While enjoyon protection underdish, the ‘heriyou’retag, really craving slicemercy of the household tage’ others areisata the of realtors you grew up in. straight-laced post-Inwho belong to In theour ‘multi-storey’ school of ternet age,Bhooter nostalgia isn’t cool(Future anymore, thought.

Bhabishyat of but the the aroma — of‘bhoot’ food inmeans tiffin both boxesinstill evokesa Past/Ghost Bengali), memories.

The where the tales of film released in kitchen 2012, is aispoignant reminder grandmothers come alive: theirshows innovative of this loss of heritage.

The film how a recipes,oftheir concern one’s residents health, cleanbunch happy, noisyfor ghosts, of a ing lunchboxes in the company of old their film palatial zamindari-style house, saves songs and lamenting the gradual home fromsometimes, the clutches of an unscrupulous death ofwho culinary excesses.

After all, who can builder can only think of luxury malls. resist a skilled granny’s is piping creamy Kolkata’s architecture back hot, in the news soup on a chilly winter evening? with a campaign led by author-singer Amit Grandmothers were often our first intimate Chaudhuri.

In an appeal to chief minister Mafriends and theChaudhuri food theyand served (even the mata Banerjee, a host of other bland stuff)citizens tasted like heaven.

When Italian prominent (artists, filmmakers, acaphotographer Galimberti was about demicians andGabriele architects) have asked for a to settooff a globetrotting assignment, his stop theondestruction of buildings with the doting grandmother askedtouch. how he unique Bengali-European Thewould camfeed himself.

Galimberti that he paign has attracted muchswore attention onwould social only eatnot in other grandmothers’ media, just for its cry to savekitchens. heritage The but result was an award-winning coffee table book also showing how such neighbourhoods can — where from Ethiopia to Latvia to be turnedgrannies into tourist attractions.

America were photographed, alongside their Kolkata’s Raj-era buildings, too, need immespecial recipes —Many called Kitchen: Stories diate attention. of In theHer mighty Victorian and Recipesstand from peeling Grandmas the World. buildings andAround decaying, while Clearly,were grandmothers and their food are powseveral demolished without as much as a erful cultural markers, a function they fulfil by murmur in protest from the city’s historians being memory catalysts. and intellectuals.

WhenDalhousie author and television chefinRukmini The Institute, built 1865 at Srinivas (aka Rukka) firstas shared family anwhat was once known Tank her Square (now ecdotes about tiffins daughters, BBD Bagh), was one with such her casualty.

It wasthey dereplied, “Amma, us more recipes”.

Srinimolished in 1950,send making way for the ugly ed-

garden house of the celebrated General Jayan- the house, now a University of Calcutta propto Nath Chowdhury. erty, was supposed to be developed into a venIn another blow to the city’s colonial heri- ue for conferences. The only reminder of the vas tells us, significantly, that this at was a detage, the Senate House, built in 1872 a cost of building’s times, the overriding concerns uniformity glorious past is aare dust-covered mand stories”.

In the quest to plaque ₹5 lakh,for was“more demolished in 1960.

It was the ofand standardisation. however, — it states thatSrinivas, Sri Aurobindo livedwants here assemble these stories, she created an from fice of the vice-chancellor andhas registrar of the each of us to to 1907. remember our meals, and bond 1906 heirloom ofofrecipes.

HerThe cookbook Tiffin takes University Calcutta. building, with its over what we eat.

Baghbazar’s Basubati is luckier. If things go us on a and gastronomical jaunt, found tracingitsthe variportico imposing pillars, way in- as planned, this historic mansion will become ousmany branches of her family tree. to books on history, architecture and aTies that lasthotel under the Harsh Neotia heritage It is not an autobiography se,Walter but its even education.

It was designedper

by Sir B Group.

Family bonding over food has been known to It was here that Rabindranath Tagore structure is firmly memoir territory. typi- conducted Granville, the man in behind other stately Abuildbe therapeutic.

Where I come from,ceremony in Assam, a mass Raksha Bandhan cal chapter consists of Post notesOffice, collected fromMudi- between ings like the General Indian tiffin is known as and jolpan, a snacktoconsisting of Hindus Muslims protest the aries, and cookery classes, seum the High Court.vignettes from her partition pitha (rice-cakes), so on. of Bengalladdoo,

by Lordpayosh Curzonand in 1905.

A erstwhile hostel first messpermanent and family experiences: During folk festivals The country’s jolpan would plaque atlike theBihu, old palatial house all of which in Picture the recipe for a vege- kick-start a host cinema hall,culminate Elphinstone of other events.

My tiffin proudly boasts the same.

The for intarian snack.

Unlike in a (better typical recipe-book, school wouldteriors Palace at Hogg Market consist of Bihu jolpan, a welof Basubati, off limits for here Srinivas is not overly smitknown as New Market), was come relief after the tourists, came alive in monotony Srijit Mukten with glossy photografounded in 1907food

by Jamshedji of the first fourSrabon. classes.The Myplot mothherjee’s Baishe of The building, with its phy. Her detailed Framji Madan.

It was culinary rechriser would “Don’t eatthriller them dark insist: psychological portico and imposing this memories a better compantened twicefind — first Minerva, and all by yourself, must learn revolves aroundyou a renegade popillars, found way You won’t findits cutlets ion inChaplin.

Mohit Suneja’s meticuthen In 2013, Chaplin how to share your tiffin”.

Our liceman.

Basubati — with its into many books on here, but you may lously was razed, leaving cross-hatched the city’s Holschool captain, another glutton, crumbling walls, antique furnihistory, architecture learn how to make illustrations.

Perhaps the aulywood lovers heartbroken. wouldmassive declare,pillars “Ask with not how ture, lion and evenvegetable education Appa’s thor’s intention to remind the In the ’80s, theisruling Left govmany assignments are due, ask motifs — works beautifully as the cutlets. Srinivas’s reader of the importance of perernment wanted to paint the what’s in my tiffin.”

Today,played in retlair of the lead character father taught her how sonal touch. names of the copula of the The grand Ochterlony rospect, this reminds me of Stanby National Award-winning acto make them recipes emphasise fact red. too.

Monument (Shahidthis Minar) ley, Prosenjit the boy without tiffin in Amol tor Chatterjee.

You won’t here, but Plans were find afootcutlets to demolish the Town Hall, faGupte’sMackinnon film Stanley&kaMackenzie Dabba. It The magnificent you may to make Ap- architecture. building at Fairlie mous forlearn its how classical Doric explored inner Road faculties of Placethe on Strand is also pa’s vegetable cutlets.

Srinivas’s Strong voices of dissent — Satyajit Ray being set for a new lease children who were of of life.

After yearsterrified of neglect, father howthe to make them, and she atheir one of taught those —her forced government to rethHindi teacher (aka Khadoos, fire in the late ’90s spared nothing meaning of the inremembers having the them with Amma’s green teriors ink.

More recently, Trinamool-led govern‘grouch’), whobuilding. would greedily hogtaken the “fourof the It has been over chilli relish. ment faced stiff opposition when it by compartment wala” tiffins.

To plans escape the Diamond Group, which to him, conThe story aofplan these is, as is usual for vert announced to cutlets fill the historic Lal Dighi Stanley and‘Diamond his friends devisedOnly a plan: they it into Heritage’. the origithis Great book,Tank) a taletoof howway an for exotic culinary (the make a second ver- nal trickfaçade the teacher eating will at a be spot where he of the by building kept intact, style/procedure was Building, indigenised. by with sion of the Writers’ the Inspired state secrecan’t afind them. When they eventually get new structure behind it. This will be the the silver-coated tariat dating backVictorian to 1777. metal grinder (and first caught, Stanley is suspended from class, example of ‘facadism’ in eastern India.beVictorian meatsign recipes), Srinivas’s father de- cause he doesn’t carry food. Yet, somehow, his The ‘Danger’ outside the palatial house is asneak Kolkata-based cided to Subodh experiment with in vegetarian cutlets. arnab of Raja Mullick central Kolkata friendsbanerjee manage to in foodmarketing for him so he who also conducts walking tours of the city In the franchise ethos of contemporary speaks volumes food for the stepmotherly treat- professional, wouldn’t go hungry.

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ly because of their tiffins moving all the way from Poona, Madras to Jabalpur and intermingling with the culinary cultures of these places. In Jabalpur’s Gol Bazaar, she was introduced to Bengali delicacies. Mrs Ghosh, maker of a delicious malpura (malpua), shared the committee with her Amma and they both traded recipes over a Holi tiffin.

Srinivas later modified Mrs Ghosh’s payosh (rice pudding) by adding less jaggery and more condensed milk. This is also why her recipes are so user-friendly, and less rigid. She compiled these memories in Boston, where she taught courses on South Indian vegetarian food.

Learning to re-use leftovers is, for me, the hallmark of a good cook. Srinivas’s book shares several efficient ways of using leftovers, like kuzhi appam, which is made of overripe bananas, a South Indian version of Danish aeSmall is big Stanley ka Dabba is a film that celebrates friendship that starts with food shared during recess in bleskivers. This chewy snack when served hot schools; (below) Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox is about a tiffin carrier that reaches the wrong address with tea or coffee is very refreshing indeed. Another such recipe is bread upma, which doesn’t need deep-frying and can be garnished with green vegetables as per your taste.

The BBC The challenge ofOpinion cookingmaker lies in mastering manufactured the art of patience.World AfterService her marriage to the a Western consent noted sociologist MN Srinivas, shearound moved to global issues, which helped Berkeley. Due to the improbability finding British foreign policyofpunch good vegetarian food at Berkeley, Srinivas preClaudio above its actual weight ferred, once again,Divizia/shutterstock to skip meals. With time and research, her husband and she found AGENDA Greek stores in San Francisco that sold spices required for her tiffins. It is a happy coincidence that author RK Narayan (‘Kunjappa’ in the book) was a close friend, and he wanted ulundu vadai (deep-fried, spongy doughnuts Crisp comfort Author Rukmini Srinivas of split black bean batter) for an afternoon talks about her love affair with bondas bite. (As an aside, we are told that Narayan was nagara gopal still sceptical about the fate of Raju and Rosie An intriguing story of Indianising the mas- from his iconic novel Guide.)

When her daughters Lakshmi and Tulasi ter’s taste, the word tiffin comes from the o wonder the sun never set on word up, Srinivas how Britain dosai, the ‘tiffing’, meantlocal eating and drink- grew promised andwhich unreliable” news sources, tain resigns as ataught worldthem power”. is the British empire, because ing card of South Indian tiffin”, is much in between mealtimes. is British also known to “trump the BBC subtly helped push It the agenda becoming as important as Luxembourg in ineven God would not trust the have diverse than is made out to be. light snacks that the more acrossoriginated the world.from And the sometimes this connect ternational affairs, hegenerally wrote, with a smaller arEnglish in the dark,” went one British can match the perfect fondpolicy of. Tiffin way of Nothing betweenwere foreign andwas BBCtheir journalism my, reduced globalhaving thinking, and leddosais by a of Shashi First bitesTharoor’s best zingers from his viral coping tiffin along with a cup whose of filter prime coffee. Iminisagree sultry Indian weather.was ‘To tiff’ was notwith eventhe subtle, and its influence not in parochial government speech at culinary the Oxford Union debate.

Well, Mathe is Srinivas’s experiences in Queen here,since whenre-election she talks about the also a common slangcolonies. for afternoon sexual with restricted to the former ter’s Srinivas first speech reflected English must grown trustworthy ry’s College in have Chennai quickly made herand de- encounters. of dosai in India; the English is not as outlandish connec- heterogeneity “The BBC This World Service was the aprincipal that small thinking. non-threatening since She then,made because melanpendent on the tiffin. it a apoint to tion — pancake and — don’t—capasofit engaging might appear at first: remember means listeners behind the Iron translations “Confronting a world ofcrêpe challenges incholic darkness nowthe looms over Britain’s sta- Shah subsist mainly on breakfast menu: idli, the Greece’s nuancespossible that thisexit dishfrom has to Rukh Khan’s Curtain, who weretriumphant otherwise tiffin-holding unreachable, ture cluding theoffer. euro, a tus as a global Rabchallenging Ne Bana Di Jodi?

His colleagues leaderunder- massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, sambar, dosai,power. utthapam. She skipped other in and the authoritarian The because most recent symptom of Britain’s that now that marital tiffin during has ar- Taste meals they were “potatoes in one stand is the winnerstate, Russia’s continued inships of Central andthe Eastern Europe Ukraine’s perilous shrinkage the Now worldthis is another round of rived, sexWar,” can’taccording be far behind. form or thefrom other”. is true for hostel traditionthe of tiffin in our is exhausthe Cold to historian Dr Alban The transigence, advance ofcountry the Islamic State funding squeeze at theit?British Broadcasting food everywhere, isn’t In such a scenario, Webb, author of the 2014 book titled London tive, because we build memories inside East,” these and the continuing chaos in the Middle Corporation — it announced 1,000 life the BBC World Service and the little tiffin carriers(BBC) are a saving grace. Veryover soon, she Dollops But, just likechose all traditions, thea Calling: of Britain, wroteboxes.

Zakaria, “Cameron to talk about job cuts in July.ofSince its inception in 1922, the Packing bonda, dabba undergoing changes.in A your husband became a fan the mouth watering Cold War.food “Thefor government, priplan toisensure that hospitals BBC hasdosai beenand an important toolavailable of British golden brown coffee at forthe is Google HWGO (Helping an oldthrough trope, ifthe youForeign go by popmarily Ofthe United Kingdom willWomen be beteign policy, influencing globalRoad, opinion-makmobile canteen van in Beach Madras. ular Get Online)oncommercial filmsaand in interest India. Takfice, took veryads close in ter staffed weekends.”shows a ers, particularly thewith English-speaking elites of en The vendor, happy the hostel’s feedback mother finding a snack recipe pinch of the with Worlda Service, notsalt, just this beThe rise of China, India and The food the sheBritish cooked Neither the erstwhile Asia andtiffin Africa. and business,colonies began in cooking on de- romanticisation online.

Similarly,economies children over are well bebeto cause it funded may it, but also other emerging duringnor herthe fasts, like public current “If a with communal riot loudly broke out, or ifTamil the silence mand, his vehicle playing full withdecade glucosehas biscuits andinin-a that come cause itthe wasproblems considered such an the past resulted her brand of gossip, Tory government monsoon failed, it was the BBC that songs for had good measure.

Srinivas and gave her with stant noodles their power, lunchboxthe middle-class obsession important tool in getting the big shift in in global in couldtobe imitated seem believe that us the most news,” friends beganreliable, to feel atup-to-date home once again.wrote with es.

In aEurope television for refined the point institution of marriage.

British of view heard which andadBritain have only“British with great care the point of Ramachandra Guha that recently in The Guardian, There is a saying family gossip never Ritesh oil, a grandmother Batra’s 2013 film The throughout the world.” come out net losers. gets into an view” is important to departs from this rocriticising the BBC cuts.

“Not surprisingly, ends, not even afterjob the food is over.

Coming Lunchbox argument with the hospital But neither the British public Even in Washington’s pecking the world anymore a woman when Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, from a middle-class Brahmin family, with manticisation. nurse, to feed her innor the currentIla,Tory governorder, for thewanting focus has decisively husband is having anthe afthe BBC broke the news of her hours be- whose strict rules about feasting anddeath fasting, Srinijured ‘daal ki do the chamment seem to believe that movedgrandson to Asia Pacific, with US thinks sheofcan rekindle her conjugal life mach’ (two spoonfuls fore the AIR did.” athai) would often indulge fair, vas’s aunt (Annam of dal).

The problem is “British point view” is imporreaching out to Japan and India a new likesconversations of Guha, thewith post-colonial in The lengthy her. She hadelite, tre- with tiffin still counted as tant to therecipe world(provided anymore.by Ac-the older ‘Aun- that the grandmother’s to tackle China, which it now Mrs Deshpande, husband in ‘baahar grew up with an aspirational Britishness via tie’, mendous discipline and observed all the fasts (food from outside), procording to several whose polls, own Britons find isthe sees as ka its khaana’ main threat.

Britain, often lamluck would and haveannual it, her tiffin deliv- hibited their as they listened to The Beat- coma). in thetransistors, Hindu calendar.

The old woman doesn’t £145.50As compulsory BBC islicence poonedto asthe thepatient. primary satellite of American to widower Fernandes. ex- give les,The Testmerrier cricket side and of unmatched global news Annam athai was re- ered up, policy, and brings extra that tiffinspecial for the in nurse fee outdated.

WithSaajan traditional mediaThey models foreign is noan longer the letters the boxes, coverage BBC. Through this vealed inon thethe bawdy folksongs of generation weddings, change grandson’s birthday. No prizes for disrupted by inside the digital shift,each withsharing social on Stateher Department either. of dominating loneliness, sorrow and failed marriagof Commonwealth coconuts (brownThe outside, childbirth and puberty ceremonies. food tales what happens media the new discourse, the guessing So while many will be next. upset over the shrinkThese become a kind of release white inside), the Empire, or at least propashe cooked during her fasts, like herits brand of es. has led a full life: both in herspace own need for aexchanges publicly funded broadcaster has di- ingSrinivas of the BBC, it will now have to share urbanIn inhibitions for Ilathe andBBC Saajan.

And considerable ganda, lived after it had died. gossip, couldon bemuch imitated only with great care. from achievements, andRussia, as a wife and minished.

2016, when charter with global broadcasters from China puli aval (flattened riceBBC withWorld addedSerra- though is awith testament to the same. thefor film’s endinga doesn’t satisfy In the former colonies, the Athai’s mother; comes up renewal, radical quite overhaul in aand Qatar,Tiffin in line the changing worldHer orsam flavour) made with freshly and recipes remind us to keep that romantic lot, it substantiates thelead many vice manufactured a Western consentroasted/ around the funding is expected, which would to rean accounts der. The heady days of ‘Cool Britannia’ are over. avalBritish (an uncooked, pounded spiceswhich and kesari corner of is our minds the place reof modern-day marriages. It is also a elusive global issues, helped foreign alities even smaller BBC. ‘Small Britannia’ now herealive: to stay. dabbawalas. aromatic sweet dish)itswere twoweight. of them.

An- fine for love,The stories necessarily documentation ofbest Mumbai’s policy punch above actual By setAnd ‘small’ is what describes Britain’s served (Disclosure: writerand wasthat a BBC employee abbenam athai was a rebelstandards in her own In overall thinking now. As David Cameron and stract called taste. ting the international for right. journaltween notion 2007-2011.) of the pastgot re-elected earlier this those days, when more public and more officers were ism, by dominating discourse and Flavours the Conservatives sambuddha mustafi the founder The barmanmitra is an MPhil studentisat Jamia MilliaofIslamia, and herFareed fatherZakaria were flexible their rini succumbing ‘British tastes’, it the“indetiffin Srinivas information, to widely perceived aswas being year, journalist wrote in a stingPolitical traditions.

This was partthat allowed to resist colonial to imposition.

DelhiIndian t some_buddha pendent and her accurate” compared the “com- approach ing articletoinculinary The Washington Post titled “Bri- New

Shrinking Britannia

The BBC faces another funding squeeze as Britain ceases to be a world power

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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Who’s who?

Basic instinct CREATURE FEATURE

S

tudents of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) are still fighting the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan.

While thisAhas been the mostat vocal protest against political appointment, it is not the only Since May 16, closer look the glory lilya— which has been used to one. cure many ills — reveals how 2014, many institutions are seeing a churn. Who are the people heading India’s top educational and cultural andRashtriya chemicals ensure in the institutions? colours Affiliates of the Swayamsevak Sanghsurvival (RSS), feminists whowild believe crying babies are the mother’s problem, and scholars and actors dabbling in the mythological epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. In the last nine months, fourrom topthe officials havepoint resigned from important institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical vantage of my priviResearch (ICHR), theleged National and Training (NCERT), and the Indian Institutes of 21st Council century of life,Educational I think backResearch to ambika kamath the time of our earliest human Technology at Delhi and Bombay.

The processes ofancesappointing chairpersons and vice-chancellors to Institutes of with bodies terror of and awe. education How did and culture have regularly come under the scanner. While national importance tors and apex higher they figure out what they could and couldn’t interference in academic matters is nothing new, the eminent scholars have rightly pointed out that government eat, what would hurt and what would heal? scholarship of the new appointees is worth scrutiny. As historian Ramachandra Guha puts it, “One must distinguish Walking through a cornfield today, it’s easy to here between the work done by intellectuals andBut that done by ideologues.” Priyanka Kotamraju and P Anima put see that corn is meant to be eaten. thoutogether a list, not exhaustive, appointments made since last year. sands of years ago,ofcorn didn’t grow in neat

F

rows or bear such inviting kernels. Ancestral maize seeds were tiny, brown, and hard, borne on plants that look, to the untrained eye, like any other grass. But our forefathers still recognised these plants as sources of nutrition. Or take coffee. How long, how bitter was the procChairperson, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla ess of figuring out that coffee berries must be washed, cleaned, ●dried, ground, and of the 51-year-old institution. Appointed in First roasted, woman chairperson brewed with boiling water? 2014, her candidature was suggested by HRD minister Smriti September In a literal embodiment of thevice-chancellor cliché that Irani. Previously of Maharaja Ganga Singh University, Rawhat doesn’t kill jasthan us makes usprofessor, stronger, many ends, lies in the chemicalshe colchiand political murderous studies at Banaras Hindu University, plant extracts thatwas in small can save Colchicine interferes with important also aquantities National Fellow at IIAScine. in 2003-04. ● Hasquantities, 88 research papers to herproteins credit, and has published books our lives will, in larger cause death.

— tubulins — that several make up our cells’ Manisha Agradoot: Pandit Madan women’s studies as Bhartiya But when I came on across the glory lilysuch in a boequivalents ofke bones and arteries. in Dharmashastras: Phenomenological and Malaviya, tanical garden a Mohan few days ago, theWomen thought The glory lily Aprobably produces colchicine and Feminism, Traditionto anddissuade Modernity (edited).all of Critical (edited) that this plant could helpAnalysis or harm me didn’t for protection, animals, In her new role, Padiaatplans oncells workcontain that probes India’s intelleceven cross my mind.

I stopped to look it on-to focus whose tubulins, from eating it. tual tradition ly because of its pretty flowers. and third world feminism.

But the flower doesn’t benefit from scaring In Feminism, Tradition and Modernity: Essay inInRelation ManusmriGlory lilies have● been used across the world away allan animals. fact, its to showy petals exist Padia “The freedom forsolely women which the feminists of which today will ti,of to cure all manner ills, writes, from haemorrhoids to for attract certain animals, cryofis taken to mean equality regarded as its mere sameness.

But let us pause to head-lice. Many the uses that humans transfer pollen to other glory lilies. The for a involved while andkilling consider whether such a view of equality is workable.facing found for glory lilies somecombination of the flowers’ downward What I mean is or simply Pay equal the different needs and polthing, be they parasitic worms otherthis. peomale attention parts (theto anthers covered in yellow capacities of men and women, themupward appropriate ple. This plant’s potency, serving medicinal or and len)then andgive a sharp turnopportuin its female nities for work. How many of our male participants present here would welcome being assigned the task of assuaging crying babes in the absence of their mothers? Here, it is obvious, the mothers have to lend a helping hand.”

Chandrakala Padia

Burning bright The glory lily uses its colourful petals to entice animals that will help transfer its pollen to other flowers ambika kamath

parts (the green style tube ending in three stigmas) make it near-impossible for pollen to fall from the anthers onto its own stigmas, preventing it from fertilising itself.

Some neuroscientists think that similarities in our brains might explain why flowers are attractive to birds, bees, and me. Perhaps our brains see beauty in the contrast of the glory lily’s colours against a green background, perhaps from its symmetry. If I had lived 5,000 years ago, I doubt my brain could have deduced if the glory lily would kill or cure me, but I think that it would still have found these fiery flowers beautiful.

Let’s talk about sex

Mukesh Khanna

Chairperson, Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI)

Appointed in April this year after Amole Gupte, director of child-centric films like Stanley Ka Dabba and Hawaa Hawaai, rement made now to the Prasar Bharati signed in June 2014.

Rules, 2000. As per earlier rules, the ● Khanna played the Indian suchairperson got only a meeting allowperhero Shaktimaan. In the seance of ₹1,000 per meeting, subject to a ries that began in the ’90s, he maximum of ₹5,000 per month. The some ofsuperhuman it on the fly — Howard thesalary manyand routes you might take For example, while waiting to catch frogs in willing to learn attains powers chairperson getsfno no offithe lives of animals, a path the act, Howard raises the question of how ex- doesn’t definethrough some basic terms (expect to The see intense meditation. cial vehicle. Now,into an official vehicle has ‘sub-hothat takes you through the varied, actly male and female frogs decide when to terms like ‘sexual seriesdimorphism’ proved crucialand to Khanna’s also been provided.” quickly explains difficult conweird, andand thoroughly ● Author of several books articles entertain- migrate to the breeding ponds in which they minin’), and appointment as chairperson to Vice-Chancellor, thisnodal bookbody apartforfrom most ing world of affairs, animalPrakash, reproduction mate with each other. Turns out this is a ques- cepts. What sets on parliamentary in a is perhaps India’s children’s about theascience of animal we don’t really know the answer to. In ex- popular writing you 2014: may not admit taking. ButBanaras em- tion piece one titledthat ‘Verdict Sonia-Manmofilms.

“He has very good credenHindu is Howard’s willingness to voice barrassment subject of ani- amining the mysterious lives of bdelloid reproductiontial han Punished forsurrounding Decade-longthe Conof working in a famous chilUniversity an opinion on some of paves the most is unwarranted.

Because temptmal for sex Hindu Majority’, writes, “… almost all rotifers, which never have sex, he dren programme.

That the problematic aspects of how peocreatures onthe it to reproduce, sex has ponders why sex evolved in the this column willdepend focus on Congress way for him to lead the organisaple have studiedcapacity,” and talked tremendously in shaping the first place.

Party’sbeen insolent behaviourimportant towards the tion in creative PTI about Shravan animal Kumar, sex. Foremost By balancing stories of whatUniversity, Tripathi was world, and this any attempt to understand ● An RSS man, formerly with Allahabad Hindunatural majority which, writer bequoted CEO, CFSI The woods, gardens, we as dovice-chancellor know about animal sex 2014. among theseappointment. is our tendency to depends upon understanding sex. appointed in November In a conflict of lieves,animals did maximum damage to its proon Khanna’s zoos, and museums impose human valuesBhishma and inseanimal sex can lead you to with about whatcommittee, we ● Khanna also played in interest, the questions Search-cum-Selection which recomspects inContemplating this election. With the passage of his and native know, by talking to old andassociate curities about sex onto theseries anithink some of mostthat puzzling quesBR Chopra’s epic television mendeddon’t his candidature, included RSSEngland icon of time, theabout party began tothe believe are filled withMalaplenty mal world. Why else has it taken in country biology, with so setjust aside learning from thegrandson scientists Justice who (retd) Mahabharat in the 1990s.

Madan Mohan Malaviya’s Giridhar it can tions run the theyour sup-prudishness of organisms with scientists to acknowlspend their lives IIT-BHU’s asking these forthe a while, and minorities. go read Sex on Earth: A Celebra● Khanna, so in long an interview last viya. Reportedly ignoring list of candidates, the HRD port of religious Therefascinating sex lives Sex onTripathi Earth shows us edge that Reproduction.

Jules Howard year, said females “I have play beenastoimporevery ministryquestions, also appointed as chairperson of the institute. fore, tion one ofof Animal the first acts of the how really works. tant a inrole in while sex as males? doesn’t travel far or wide fordisfirst-hand● After ac- the V-Cscience appointment, TripathiBut is reported to have visited corner India campaignSonia-Manmohan Combine was to don’t expect large revela- temple and the VishWhat’s abhorrent tendcounts the oddest on the planet. the Kal Bhairav temple,any Kashi Vishwanath ing for with BJP.” our He also appeared in tort the factsofvis-à-vis the animal Godhrasex inciency to describeadvertisements some animal woods, gardens, zoos, and museums ofwanath his tions about life on According earth or the temple on campus. to reports, the V-C has also tele-marketing dent. The Egged on by pseudo-secularists, as ‘rape’? And whyrudraksha. do we speculate, onnative England are filled with plenty of orgahuman condition when reach the end of sexfood asked students to go vegan andyou consume non-vegetarian for the In anon interthe Sonia-Manmohan combine institutHindu, Khanna sugnismsthat with fascinating sex lives,reand this book book — itAisprofessor better read a series of essays, ly the shakiestview of scientific about outside this the campus. ofas economics, a Google scholar with Thefoundations, ed a probe produced a spurious filmmakers make the length ofgested an erect T-rex penis? Howard occasionally repetitive citations and some decidedly the stories of duckshad with explosive search reveals no publications, or papers to his name. port includes saying that the karsevaks ● In June 2015,than at the International Conference for Communal themselves setand firecorkscrew to the trainvaginas, compartanimated of but the also Rabetter others. takes on such questionsversions forcefully penises the sex arenas and Nation building, organised Students of Is- and the ment.ofThis piecerace of fiction line raised Harmony mayana Mahabharat.

“Our funnily, result and is a refreshing account retired horses,was andin chicks by a There are many, many articles by andthe books and the political science department at with the of history resorted children need to imbibe Indian about the science of animal reproduction of BHU, animal reproduction. pairfalsification of male flamingos named Carlos andlamic Fer- Organisation in a five-minute address, echoedbiologists.

RSS and VHP to by leftist historivalues. Fortunately, our mythonando.and Butpseudo-secular investigating the “sex lives ofTripathi, the written for people who aren’t I intellecambika kamath studiesserials organismic tuals, saying, “Therecommend planet is a family.

Our way to of life ans everyday” owing quickly allegiance to theto the limits logical are evolutionary educative and wouldn’t Sex on Earth youisifprescribed leads Howard UniversityIndian culture.” bhavantu and vasudhaiva kutumbakam.” by sarveyou Nehru-Gandhis.” promote know sukhinah nothing about biology and aren’t biology at Harvard of our knowledge about animal reproduction. ●

A collection of essays that Girish makes for a refreshing read on animal reproduction

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A Surya Prakash Chairman, Prasar Bharati

Sex on Earth: A

Celebration of veter● Appointed in October 2014, this Animal Reproduction

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an journalist is also aJules Distinguished FelHoward low at the right-wing think tank Non-fiction Bloomsbury FoundaVivekananda International ₹1700 tion. Previous government appointees from the think tank include Ajit Doval, Nripendra Mishra and PK Mishra. ●In June 2015, The Economic Times reported that Prakash “has got a fat hike from the government and could now possibly take home ₹1 lakh a month.”

The report adds that “this is an amend-

Chandra Tripathi

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Baldev Bhai Sharma Furry friends or pests?

Chairman, National Book Trust Baldev Sharma was appointed in March 2015, after the HRD ministry cut short veteran Malayalam writer A Sethumadhavan’s term as Chairman, NBT. A seasoned journalist, he spent five years as editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya. In his 35-year career, he has also worked at Dainik Swadesh, Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala. Sharma was also visiting professor at Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya. ● In an interview to DD News in April, when asked about his eligibility and relationship with the RSS, he said, “Is a man of the RSS non-transparent? Will you boycott him from taking any responsibility for the nation? And all those who are of anti-Sangh ideology, they can occupy any position?

Whatever ideology that talks about the country’s progress, its sanskriti, this thought process is the best. To see it as bhagvakaran (saffronisation) is the weakness in your thinking. You can’t see history or books in parts or divisions, as Left or Right.” ●

Travelling with Emotional Support Animals is tricky

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lying is a pain in the ass at the best of times. Now imagine that your co-passenger is a rooster in a pink tutu, a pig with odious body odour or a peacock with a luscious tail. In these days of crazies, all of the above have been reported as Emotional Support Animals. Which means they don’t stay in their carrier or travel in cargo. Na ah. They sit in the seat beside you along with their owner and crow and oink, while you slowly, but surely go cuckoo.

So the next time you have a bawling baby beside you, be grateful it is not a barnyard animal.

Unusual suspect Is Uttar Pradesh like this only?

Cat curfew in Oz Officer wants to save threatened mammals by Pahlaj Nihalani keeping domestic felines indoors

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Drunk as a skunk

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astern Uttar Pradesh is the original home of the dreaded daaku. First there was Dadua, then Thokiya, followed by Balkharia. All male, middle-aged, and much dead (Balkharia is suspected to have died early this month). However, according to the Uttar Pradesh police, there is another fearsome dacoit on the loose. A twoyear-old from Basti district. Police officials visited Vivek’s home, charging him with a crime committed in 2013, when he was not even born.

Forced by the cops to sign on the notice, the child’s father had to ask the district magistrate to intervene before the case went any further.

Anything for a drop in the crime rate, UP Police?

Appointed in January 2015 after Leela Samson resigned citing government interference. ● Nihalani has produced films like Aankhen, Talaash: The Hunt Begins... and Shola Aur Shabnam. He also produced Ilzaam in 1986, which marked the debut of Govinda, and Aag hi Aag introducing Chunky Pandey. He played a cameo in Halla Bol and directed Avataar in 2012. He also produced the promotional video ‘Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’, which was released on social media ahead of the general elections. In an interview with The Hindu, he said, “I feel that he (Modi) is a guardian.” In another interview to NDTV, he said, “Narendra Modi is my action hero. I am proudly saying I am a BJP person.” ● After Nihalani took charge, the CBFC released a list of 28 English and Hindi words, including Bombay, that cannot be used in films. In recent months, other censor board Chairperson, Central Board of Film members have raised allegations against his ‘autocratic’ approach. uriosity(CBFC) may or may not kill the cat. A curfew will. That’s what cat owners in Certification Australia want to tell Gregory Andrews, the country’s threatened species commissioner, who has made enemies of the island-nation’s cat lovers. In a bid to save native mammals and prevent matings with feral cats, the man wants feline companions kept indoors 24/7. Vets have trashed the idea, saying the curfew could cause serious health and behavioural issues. A cat that cannot scratch trees, mark and explore its territory can have bladder problems and anxiety. ●

A badger recovers after heavy days and nights of boozing

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Yellapragada Sudershan Rao

Lokesh Chandra

Chairperson, Indian Council for Historical Research

Chairman, Indian Council for Cultural Relations

● Appointed in July 2014 by the HRD minister Smriti Irani. He was earlier a professor of history at Kakatiya University. Rao headed the Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), the history wing of the RSS. ● In his ‘Indian Caste System: A Reappraisal,’ Rao says, “The system was working well in ancient times. It is often misinterpreted as an exploitative social system for retaining economic and social status of certain vested interests of the ruling class applying the Marxist jargon which has no respect for the ancient systems and philosophy whether Indian or the other.” He is also working on a project that aims to fix the date of the Mahabharat war. ● In April, historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya resigned as chief editor of Indian Historical Review, the journal of ICHR. In May, the ICHR disbanded the 22-member advisory committee to the journal. Gopinath Ravindran, member secretary of ICHR, quit in June though his term expires in 2016. ● Rao told The Hindu in May that the time had come to research the traditional sources of knowledge and look at the traditional ways in which history has been written. In January, he recommended Narayan Rao, Ishwar Sharan Vishwakarma and Nikhilesh Guha, members of the ABISY, to the top panel of ICHR.

● A Congressman, an Indira Gandhi loyalist, son of noted Indologist Raghu Vira, Lokesh Chandra was appointed as Chairman ICCR in October 2014. The 87-year-old Vedic scholar’s CV says he is fluent in 20 languages, and has published more than 576 books and 286 articles. Twice member of the Rajya Sabha, he has previously served orth Korea has put as vice-chairman ICCR, and also as chairmusic on mute. Worman of ICHR. ried about the power of ● In an interview with the Indian Express, music in stoking a revoluhe hailed Modi as a “reincarnation of tion, Kim Jong-un has god.” He says, “He (Modi) doesn’t have forbanned not only foreign eign bank accounts and black money. He tunes in his country, but doesn’t have a son or son-in-law. For him some desi ones too. The the country is the son and son-in-law. Molist of banned songs is diji, in some aspects, supercedes Gandhi, long and households are when it comes to a practical approach.” being scoured for CDs and ● At the January Indian Science Congress, tapes. On the banned list in a session called ‘Bharat ko jano’, Chanare the soundtracks of Im dra reportedly said that “the mathematiKkeok Jeong, a movie based cal sign for infinity was originally derived on a Robin Hood-like figfrom Sheshnag — the mythical snake ure. The popular track ‘Nawhose coiled body forms the throne on tion of no Tears’ has been which Lord Vishnu reclines.” In the Indian axed too. No music, no disExpress interview, Chandra says he wants content it is, to Kim “to connect India to Southeast Asian counJong-un. tries through programmes based on the Mahabharata and Ramayana.”

No music, no cry Popular tunes get the axe

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n the Baltic seaside town of Reval, at a cosy animal shelter, a female badger is slowly recovering from a bout of hard drinking and partying. The black-and-white party animal reportedly stole beer bottles from unsuspecting tourists at the beach. Using her teeth to pull the lids open, she took them to a thick bush to have her party. She was found unconscious, surrounded by seven bottles of beer. Knocked out for two days, phew! she is now on a sober diet of water and chick meat. Apparently, badgers are known to have an alcoholic streak — in 2009, German police found a badger “drunk as a skunk”, high on full-flavoured fermented cherries. Hic hic.

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

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ugust 1 is the great Sir Frank Worrell’s 91st birth anniversary. While remembering the cricketer revered around the world for his talent and statesmanship, this week’s quiz looks at people honoured and remembered in foreign lands.

here,there & elsewhere

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or several weeks now, I’ve been watching a TV serial called Scandal on Netflix. I find it so exciting that I spend all my time either getting ready to watch an episode or watching an episode or recovering from what I’ve just seen and, finally, trying to decide whether or not to watch the next episode right away (the answer is usually ‘yes’).

We don’t have a TV, so the only way to watch TV shows, news or movies is on the computer. Needless to say, Bins does not watch what I watch. But technology has its benefits: I have two laptops and many sets of earphones. My wi-fi service provides just enough juice to feed both addictions separately. So while I watch Scandal, Bins scrapes his nerves raw by looking up news shows from India such as what he calls ‘Abuse Night with Aardvark Bore-Swami.’

Sometimes it gets too much for him. Whereupon he leans across the shared work-table and tugs off my earphones. “Listen to what Aardvark said,” he begins today. “STOP DOING THAT!” I snarl, reaching for the cord.

But he doesn’t let go. “Don’t watch that rubbish programme,” he tells me.

“Just listen to what Aardvark said —” I stuff my fingers in my ears, yelling, “I won’t! I WON’T!’” Unplugging the

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headphones isn’t an option because the computer’s audio is too meek and mild to drown out Bins at full volume.

“You’re being very childish,” says Bins, pouting. “So are you,” I retort. “You never want to watch the news —” he says. “Scandal is a lot like the news,” I say. “It’s set in Washington and it sort of mirrors real-life scandals in American political circles.” “Pooh!” snorts Bins.

“Commercial propaganda JUNK!” “How would you know, when you only watch Indians and Pakistanis roaring on camera?” I say. “At least my programme is about real people and real lives,” says Bins, with a sneer. “Mine’s no different,”

Accolades abroad

I insist, “but with better editing and more attractive bodies.”

“What do you mean? What ‘bodies’?” asks Bins. “Well, it’s about this woman called Olivia Pope —” I begin. “Which ‘Pope’? Is it set in Rome, as well?” says Bins. “The woman’s NAME is ‘Pope’,” I say. “She’s super smart and megaefficient. She has a way of fixing things.

She’s also having an affair with the President —” Bins looks more alert now.

“Really? THIS President? Is she black or white?” I clutch my forehead. “Bins, that is a ghastly racist remark — and in fact, she IS black but the President is white and he’s a Republican —” “Oh-HO!” says Bins grinning broadly.

“So it’s about the EARLIER guy? George Wishy-washy? And the black lady with the buck-teeth and the curly-helmet hairstyle —?” “BINS!” I am frankly screaming now. “It’s unacceptable to make remarks like that in today’s world!” He is nodding happily. “I remember her: Condimental Rice,” he says. “Wow. She had an affair with Wishy-Washy? And someone made a programme about it?” I give up. “Stop please,” I say, tiredly. “Go on and tell me what Aardvark’s been up to these days.” manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

1

In February every year, the Cricket Association of Bengal celebrates Frank Worrell Day. For what particular reason is he remembered in Kolkata?

2

The Bolivian Ministry of Tourism promotes a trail which leads from the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz through the villages of Valle Grande and La Higuera. Which foreigner’s life is the inspiration for this trail?

3 4

In which religion is a foreign head of state’s visit on April 21, 1966, celebrated as Grounation Day, the second holiest holiday of the religion?

A 1928 Sergei Eisenstein film was based on a book written by an author whose life was the subject for a 1980s film which won an Oscar for best direction. Name the author, one of the few Americans to be buried in the Kremlin.

5 6

Who is currently the only active sportsman honoured on an Austrian stamp? Hint: He’s not Austrian!

In 2006, which American was posthumously awarded a Padma Vibhushan, many years after he won both the Nobel Peace Prize and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom?

7

The Peoples’ Friendship University, started in 1960, is regarded as one of the top five universities in Russia. By what name was it known between 1961 and the end of the communist rule?

8

If you entered the Rose Bowl in Hampshire to watch a cricket match, you would be walking or driving on a road named after which international cricket great?

9

Who was bestowed honorary Cambodian citizenship in 2005 for purchasing 60,000 hectares of forest land and turning it into a wildlife reserve?

10

In 1967, a ceasefire was declared in the civil war between Nigerian General Gowon and the secessionist forces of Biafra. Which international sporting hero’s appearance in a game in Lagos prompted the ceasefire?

Answer

1. He was the first to donate blood to Nari Contractor after the Indian cricketer fell to a Charlie Griffith bouncer in a match in 1962. The CAB organises a blood donation camp every year to commemorate his gesture 2. Argentine Che Guevara. He died in an ambush in Bolivia 3. Rastafarian. The visitor to Jamaica was Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, regarded a living god by Rastafari 4. John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World.

The 1980s film was Reds, directed by Warren Beatty 5. Roger Federer. The Swiss also released a stamp in 2007 6. Norman Borlaug, regarded as one of the fathers of the green revolution 7. Patrice Lumumba University, named after the Congolese head of state, who died in a plane crash 8. Marshall Drive, named after the great West Indian cricketer Malcolm Marshall, who lost his life to cancer in 1999 9. Angelina Jolie 10. Pele, playing for Brazil

joy bhattacharjya is a quiz master and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj Errors In BLink issue dated July 25, physics was inadvertently spelled as ‘physikcs’ on the cover page. In the story, Revolution@25kmph, CEO of OMC Power was referred to as Anant Raj, his name is Anil Raj. We have been sloppy. Apologies.

- Editor

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