ALONE TOGETHER Tour packages today address individual demands and wants, be it women who want to travel alone or those with special needs p4 saturday, november 21, 2015
dharminder kumar
Today’s political, social and religious unrest in Punjab has the same root cause — farm failure and a Green Revolution that has gone wrong p9
Seeds of rage
QUITE PLEASANT STUFF Vikram Seth is both inspired and hollow in his latest collection of poetry p17
WHASS(O)UP’ Served cold or hot, creamy or clear, there is a story in every bowl of soup p21
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The many Tipus To understand the legacy of Tipu Sultan in today’s context, one must acknowledge both his genius and his prejudices
Making noise South African cricketer Dean Elgar (right), seen here with captain Hashim Amla during the recently-concluded test match with India at Mohali, said the wicket is not a ‘good cricket wicket’. The visitors lost by 108 runs ap/tsering topgyal
BEYOND THE FIELD
Be on the ball For test cricket to remain relevant, we don’t need better pitches but greater application of mind and technique from its participants
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lmost every time a test match is of bowler or batsman that it is meant to assist, team playing at home wouldn’t go away. Enplayed in India, the nature of the is a pitch that can last five days; a pitch that quiries are rarely conducted when South Afrisuhrith pitch comes into sharp focus, and is can, if evenly matched teams play to reasona- ca or Australia produce a bouncing, speedy parthasarathy often the subject of harsh criticism. ble potential, take a match into the fifth day track to assist their pacers, or when English It was no different when India played South with the possibility of at least one of the sides pitches leave more than a tinge of grass when Powerat and glory Tipu Sultan an ace in military leader who gave theaBritish many a scare. Here, a gem-encrusted gold tiger from his throne is on from display Asia. at the However, Africa Mohali earlier thiswas month, the first securing victory. playing visiting teams afp “I don’t Metropolitan Museum four-match of Art, New York test of its ongoing series. Contrary to what many have argued, the when India or Sri Lanka play host on wickets think it’s a very good cricket wicket. It is my pitch at Mohali, in all respects except the ulti- that take spin, the pitch is deemed unsuitable ny opinion onDean the rule Tipu Sul- mate ing the rule of Chikka Devaraja Wodeyarno inevithe for personal opinion,” said Elgar,ofthe opener’stest andmatch Tipu’scricket. push into Malabar. A 17-year-old scorecard produced, contained tanfor inthe Mysore willatbe early decades of the 18th century. ing batsman Proteas, theincomplete end of the dence Tipu had given thethis: British a fright by of any failure to contain these What’s true is regardless of gallopwhere without mention the political The Wodeyar kings, ruling cricket first day’s play. “It is a resultofwicket, whichsitis ingredients. ing with his army intowhat the East Indianeed CompaIt may not who have had beenbeen the perfect is being played, we don’t is a uation prevailing in But andkudos around Mysore for over only nominal expected when you come here. to test ny’s garden housethe near the beach in Madras. match pitch.300 Butyears, had were the batsmen, as a pitch that makes sport an unequal conMysorethey towards the end ofgoing the 18th century. collective rulers by then andof theatactual India, are obviously to prepare He rattled soinmuch themakes governor whole, least power one ofwas thewieldtwo test. A pitchthem bathed grass,that which batMysore,like which hadagainst emerged the ruins of teams, ed by their prime ministers, or ‘dalavai’. wickets these us, from I’m sure. And we there fled offshore in a small boat. A series of showed even the most ting difficult even with proper the Vijayanagara empire, was moulded into Tipu’s father,toHaider Ali began his career in four Anglo-Mysore know coming here, it was going to be very dif-a basic wars started in 1767. These aptitude play patiently application and technique, is small but dynamic Hindu stateto. primarily durMysore as a soldier ferent from what we are used So it’s not a on hitherto unknown Kingdom of whataround was, at 1749 its worst, an at- under one of propelled thejust as bad as a veritable dust these powerful ministers. He used his tact and Mysore into the very good cricket wicket but it is a result wick- tritional powder rooms Europe and wicket, the match bowl. But the factofthat a pitch Enquiries are rarely braveryhave to certainly stave offproduced Maratha et which can go either way.” America. would might assist a certain kind of into Mysore, fought conducted when South bowler, A mere glance at the scorecard of the test araids The first war saw Mysoreof dicmore compelling contest. during the course a Africa or Australia against the British barring and expandmatch at Mohali might appear to vindicate Eltating termsdoes to England the Unfortunately, a test match, not, on itsatown, produce a bouncing, ed Mysore’s territory gar’s statement. India made scores of 201 and handful gates Madras; the second war of batsmen — Vijaydown and makeof a wicket unsuitable. Even in the midst of track to assist wasLike south to coastand of wealthy Cal- speedy 200 in their two innings; none of its batsmen Pujara Tipu’s brightest moment. ofthe India, AB de Vilevery other team, India At is war he wrote of their pacers icut. He thus himself into barring Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara liers the battletoof Pollilurpitches (1780),that the and, to eased a lesser extent, entitled produce receiving silkworms the titleAmla of theof‘sarvadhikari’ or made meaningful contributions; South Africa, Hashim sun-and-tiger-stripes of South Africa — help its best bowlers. banner No doubt, to create the silk ‘regent theplayers kingdom’ in 1760. in reply, were bundled out for 184 in their first none Tipu’s Mysore oversaw the worst ofofthe displayed on certain occasions in the past, factories of Mysore After Haider’s death of in 1782, Tipu innings; and in their chase the visitors man- even disaster ever befell anthat Ena semblance applicaIndia hasthat produced wickets tookrequired over hisatfather’s position, aged a paltry 109. The match was over in three tion glish army in India. against Out of 3,000 this level. Even had made batting spin keeping the Wodeyar a days, with none of the batsmen managing to these men increating the British army, only batsmen who didking makeasreasonable con- rather impossible, in the process proxy but failed publicly continuing completely conquer the apparent demons on tributions about contests. 400 survived. to convert their starts into rather unattractive But the surface at to put on a and showalmost of respect. Tipu’sdismissals appropri- Mohali the pitch. But, in reality, as is so often the case, big With wasn’t these two the mood Enscores, all their onevictories such instance. Theincritiation to ofpoor this batting. position would not have been cism, scorecards can only tell us so much. glandifbegan to change and viciousshould, propaowed any, about the first testa match possible without the assistance of meant some to of therefore, A test match is meant to be a stage where, ganda and diplomatic campaignanagainst This India-South Africa series was focus on what’s becoming alarmHaider’sThe closest friends and that advisors as well as ing over a period of five days, cricketers can show- enthral. Mysore began. former is a side is often exceltrend in test cricket: the inability of modthe acquiescence of the local case their finest technical skills. This often re- lent By 1785, one into seven Englishmen in India in home conditions and populace, the latter who is a ern-day batsmen grind their way through had by then comelost to see a stronger and more quires a sustained and supreme mental and team was imprisoned By this to time, the Britthat hasn’t a test series away from difficult periods. by ForTipu. test cricket remain relprosperous Mysore under Haider and the physical effort from the participants. For the home ish hadwhat wonwe in Plassey the whole of since 2006. That the first test match at evant, need isand notBuxar; necessarily better young Tipu. viewing audience, a test match can go Mohali India except the Punjab and the Marathas had produced such a tame contest was a pitches, but greater application of mind and through both troughs and peaks, but its ap- consequence not so much of the pitch as it technique capitulatedfrom to them. Tipu’s Mysore stood as a its participants. Giving the English a fright peal, at least partly, stems from the sport’s glo- was of poor batting. bulwark against the British. What rankled the parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer From Madras, the British cautiously ob- suhrith rious unpredictability. What we want in a test British even more was that here was a native Yet, the questions about were the morality of prowritert @suhrith as they branded all of them serving pitches the rise of Mysore resented Haid- and match pitch, therefore, regardless of the kind ducing Hero to some Local leaders celebrate Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary in Hassan, Karnataka prakash hassan ruler — or ‘despot’, that assistand a subcontinental
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Divisive figure Members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad along with BJP supporters stage a rasta roko against the recent violence in Madikeri around the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan pti
— who was different from the others. He did not while away his time in pleasure orgies, nor leave the management of state to some palace coterie; and not once did he ask the British for help against his neighbours. He created an army which, in the words of his nemesis Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington), was “the best fighting force in the whole of India”. He took advantage of the enmities being played out in Europe, recruited the French as willing allies and drilled his army in modern European manoeuvres. Mysore was the first state to demonstrate the efficacy of rockets in war by modifying what was until then a mere firecracker into something that could carry a sword or wooden blade with it. Tipu even sent back French weapons with a letter stating they were substandard compared to the ones in his arsenal. Able administrator
Cosplay A little boy dressed as Tipu Sultan in Vijayapura rajendra singh hajeri
Working almost 18 hours a day, he kept meticulous records of revenue and personnel across his kingdom. He created a set of revenue regulations that rationalised land taxes and even offered subsidies to farmers if they farmed more land. Landowners and temple trusts with excess landholding were asked to hand it over to landless or tenant farmers. He created a navy that sent ships with his diplomats to meet the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople and the French emperor in Paris. An elite group of Brahmin civil servants was nurtured during his early rule to make sure that revenue was properly collected. His forts were among the strongest in south India and his currency so beautifully minted that the Mughal Emperor felt slighted at receiving coins more beautiful than his own. He even minted coins with Hindu deities on them. Even
in the midst of war he wrote of receiving silkworms to create the silk factories of Mysore. Sugar and paper factories were established for the first time under him. Sword blades and gunpowder were manufactured locally. He was also liberal with gifts to Hindu religious establishments in Mysore, and Malabar after subduing it.
worked hard to fulfil Haider Ali’s dream of creating a successor to the mighty Vijayanagara started to be sidelined and divested of posts to accommodate Muslims. Persian was made compulsory in the Srirangapatna court even though Kannada was also retained at all secondary levels. Discrimination permeated even state-paid jobs such as those of wood-cutters. Muslim householders paid less taxes comTroubles in Mysore pared to Hindus. Campaigns in Malabar and The third Anglo-Mysore war in 1792, with Corn- Coorg were called, in Tipu’s own words, ‘jihad’ wallis at the helm of the British army, did not and prisoners taken in battle converted en go well for Tipu. He was hard-pressed by the masse to Islam. British-Maratha-Nizam allied powers to surOne may argue that those times were differrender half his kingent and Tipu only did it to ensure more dom, submit to a war Muslim participation in Mysore’s govindemnity of ₹3.3 crore ernment, which until then was reand deliver two of his served only for certain Hindu It was expected that sons as hostages to the communities, or that the conversions someone with as British. Thanks to his fihappened outside of Mysore in Malamodern a world view nancial prudence, he bar and Coorg and only in cases of treaas Tipu would also managed to pay the Britson. But one would expect that for inculcate that similar ish their ransom and someone with his modern worldview, modernity in his have his sons released a Tipu would inculcate a similar modernreligious thought year earlier than the ity in his religious thought. It was, after stipulated three years. all, the age of Enlightenment. Tipu’s This period between friend and contemporary Napoleon 1792 and the fourth Myhad already emancipated the French sore war in 1799 was one of great tribulation Jews at the risk of discord with the church. for Mysore. Rebellions raged and finances Tipu’s legacy to us can only be understood if were tight on account of the indemnity paid. we are ready to discuss him honestly. The preHowever it is to Tipu’s credit that not once sent outcry over his birth anniversary celebraduring his rule, in the midst of almost inces- tions was only a reaction to government sant war, did his subjects suffer from famine intentions that may not have been aboveor pestilence. At the same time in British Ben- board. That being said, it must not be lost upgal, millions of Indians perished in a famine. on us that Tipu was a symbol of exemplary bravery and strove to bring together the MaThe flip side rathas and Nizam against the British, who — But Tipu has another side, which not only he alone among Indian kings understood — plagues his legacy but, in my opinion, also were here not for trade alone but to expand hastened his downfall. Tipu called his king- their empire. Also, Tipu’s fiscal prudence was dom ‘sarkar-e-khudadad’ or ‘god-given gov- far ahead of his time and worthy of admiraernment’. He envisioned Mysore along the tion and emulation. However, we must also lines of a benevolent Islamic state, not a theo- admit that his adamant attitude and pursucratic one but where the tenets of Islam would ance of imprudent religious policies played a be followed. This line of thinking, along with part in depriving Mysore of its independence. his tenets of administration, meant Muslim subjects were shown undue favour in govern- nidhin olikara is a Shimoga-based businessman who runs a blog The Seringapatam Times on the history of ment positions. The largely Brahmin clerical cadre that Mysore under the reigns of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan
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IFootloose spy a smugglers’ den and fancy package deals
Romantic stories of fishing and illicit trade go hand in hand in the narrow, cobbled lanes of villages in Cornwall’s southeast quarter We stopped at The House on the Props, an atmospheric tea room with low wooden beams, tucked away in one of the town’s narrow alleys. Over a pot of Cornish tea, complete with scones, clotted cream and raspberry jam, I took small bites of its history — the cottage had a secret staircase leading in from the river and was involved in ‘Cornish free trade’, the local euphemism for smuggling. “A woman who stayed here, fashioned out an innovative way of warning smugglers of the approach of excise men. She put a doll dressed as an Englishman in her shop window,” said the lady of The Props. From a sleepy little fishing village, Polperro became a syndicate of smuggling under the careful watch of a local merchant, Zephaniah Job, who was dubbed “the smuggler’s banker”. With my childhood association with Pears soap, I was excited to reach our next stop, Mevagissey. It was home to Andrew Pears, the founder of the brand, and is made distinct by its twin harbours. Yet Mevagissey was one of the biggest smuggling towns in the southeast of Cornwall. False-bottomed boats hid contraband goods and smugglers became cannier to beat the coast guards. In tandem, Methodism Country pleasures The Looe river sunders the town into East and West Looe; (below) Cornish tea, scones, clotted cream and raspberry jam photos by arundhati basu grew and it frowned upon smuggling. In those last days, the smugglers started publishver since I got sucked into the vortex For, time has a habit of standing still in ing their memoirs in the 1890s, some of which of Daphne du Maurier’s mysterious Cornwall. Romantic stories of fishing and are available in old bookshops in Cornwall. novels, the Cornish landscape, in my smuggling go hand in hand with the narrow, On our last night in Looe, we spent time on fanciful mind, has been branded cobbled lanes of these hilly outposts of the the sandy stretch of the beach where smugwith swashbuckling smugglers, hidden coves, Cornish southeast quarter. glers unloaded their contraband goods. I stormy seas and vast swathes of moors. RealI was on a four-day break with my husband could picture it. The silhouette of a ship as it ity, however, has a habit of cutting in with a and a few friends, staying in a Victorian cot- pulled in with 400-500 men on board but scythe. A bright summer’s day of ice creams, tage in the fishing town of Looe. Positioned mooring a little away from the shore. Then coffee and a soul-satisfying, greasy breakfast high up on a hilly road, its French windows smaller boats being sent out to the beach with in a local café in Fowey, in the south of En- opened to a view of an aquamarine sea and booties of brandy, rum and gin. The men scurgland, was a perfect foil to such perceptions. cottages clinging to the sides of cliffs, which rying to get their goods in under the cover of Smuggling fills the imagination with ro- dipped dramatically into the sea. When the the night. And to my mind came unbidden ‘A mantic connotations but the tide came in, we could see seawa- Smuggler’s Song’ (Rudyard Kipling): If you Whereverwas I may roam during The decade-old caters to the needs women who choose explore the world theira own courtesy: club picture bleak the WOW (Women on Wanderlust) Club ter flowing into theofLooe river, waketoat midnight, andon hear horse’s feet/wow Don’t 18th century when an economic which sunders the town into go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street/ crisis had Britain in its grip. East Looe and West Looe. Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie/Watch story goes“Ithat hen Jayanthi Prasad,The a senior Fighting the American War of Inam a single allLooe, practical pur- the andwall Morocco. “We also trekking andgo rafting Weparent, were infor East the more my darling whiledothe Gentlemen by. the landlady of Yeand realised executive in a Bengalurudependence proved too expenposes, just where as I wanted bustlingthat quarter, a grid to of adventure holidays besides wellness and rejuJolly Sailor hid a my basu is says a freelance writer based in basedTaxes MNC,were decidedOlde to travel sive for the country. travel with son, there were other mothers venation breaks,” Senapaty. streets is populated by pubs that arundhati contraband keg UK by Quality herself, salt, her worst fears out there with at an all-time high. a similar she says. Vig’s relatively new company organised 15 were once need,” the haunt of smug- Northampton, beneathtoher petticoat came true —from from not-too-friendly imported Brittany and strangers That sparked off the ideashops, for herand Mom and specialised trips in 2015, and is chalking up glers, pasty booka sudden raid encountering many who wereduring ready to Spain, which was keymore to preservKid packages. more than 20 for next year. Anshops along with a smattering of takepilchards a lone woman for a ride. ing in thetraveller fishing comBasu joined happily cafés withand her bakeries. other category of travellers crêperies, Worries over cheating, theft munities of Cornwall, wasand personal son. “The idea of mom andaschilwhose needs are finally being Pubs such Smugglers Cott Getting there safety took theItfun such trips. heavily taxed. wasoff a matter of It was then dren travelling was inrecognised are those with physiandtogether Ye Olde Jolly Sailor,Informerly London there are three ways the beginning, I hadFrom that Prasad discovered a travel firmfrom that caters desperation, and about 500km West- smuggling teresting. Ithaunts is different from thetheir share cal disabilities. A clutch of travel in Looe, have of to beg friends and of going to Cornwall — a sleeper only to women andwas takes them the most exminster, the scene ripe forto smuggling. It thrilling usual family vacations. So I gaveintofamily tales. While digging a hefty car hire are or a now flight putting to the toto join us. Now,train,agencies citing destinations. Whether it’scommunity, rafting in lunch became a way of life for the entire it a shot. it is aCott, new we ex- heard gether services at Moreover, the Smugglers about across age airport at New Quay.that make holiwomen Rishikesh or Christmas in Europe, Cape of an vicars and teachers often included. perience to go with old tunnel that wasunfamiliar discovered there, leadgroups travel with us, days accessible, fun and Staymemorable for globe-trotters Good Hope in South Africathe or Land Dangling my legs from wallsof ofThunder the har- ing people, allway of whom to travall the to the love fishing quay. Meanwhile, alone or with kids Go glamping (glamorous Dragons Bhutan,the themachinations WOW (Womenofon bour, I watched theWanan- the el,” story says the publisher. with special needs. camping) goes that the landlady of Ye Olde Jolly to Pencuke derlust) Club town allows explore the Sailor cient seaport of women Fowey —tothe turquoise The hid leisure and recreation It wasFarm in December 2009 that a contraband keg beneath her petti(www.pencukefarm.co.uk/) in North world on own andbold caters to their every coat waters of their its estuary, gulls swooping needsduring of a growing chunk in-knitted away Pagir (People’s Action Group for a sudden raid of and Cornwall. Or stayand off-grid at The apneed along theand way.wailing harshly as painted with across the sky dependent-minded womenwere now searched. ToInclusion Rights) poise as her quarters Coach House The Another LabyrinthInAs for Sayoni Basu, who runsFerryside, Duckbill Maupub- day, boats sailed in. Across it stood meanshark serious business, WOW Club founder Gouthami, CEO of at Travel angling andas crabbing have taken proachedOld in Looe. lishing house, the idea of holidaying with her over rier’s whitewashed family cottage with bright Sumitra Senapaty realised early on. dia (TAI), (www.thelabyrinth.org.uk/) to draw up an itinerary for guests in popularity from smuggling. young son tempted her to try the Mom and blue shutters, in the hamlet of Bodinnick. The firm now specialises in Following the trail of the smuggling villag- with disabilities. Tip Special packages KidDuring package travel firm,I es, thatfrom time Shibani of idyllicVig’s contemplation, for wheelchair-users, and the we reached Polperro. The pretty town on tours to Ladakh Do not miss out on Tintagel, Wonderful sensed the need for it specould relateWorld. to the Vig writer’s fascination in the The Pol decade-old company today undertakes growing. river, about 6.5km from Looe, is a pop- demand isMinack Theatre and St Michael’s cialised travel services when she was her 30s the 1920s when, as a 19-year-old, shein noted in ular closeresidence to 100 trips year, with the 50 destinaTAI alsoMount, customises range of packages forevery artists. I loved way its whicha are rather unique tofor anddiary: her friends wereisnot to accompany her “All I want to beable at Fowey. Nothing old tionsfishermen’s on offer within India and outside from guests with disabilities. “We carry our own cottages, unsullied by— time, the Cornish landscape. her on and no holidays. one else.” Ladakh, the Kerala and to Japan, Iceland ramps,” Gouthami says. hugged sides of Kashmir, the harbour.
The leisure needs of a growing chunk of independent-minded women now mean serious business. And for people with special needs, money is often no bar, lack of accessibility is
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A similar effort is underway in Bengaluru. Abha Saxena’s Enchanting Escapades is planning its first accessible tourism trip from Leh to Nubra Valley and Khardungla Pass to Pangong Lake. “There are not many destinations that are accessible to people with disabilities. Only in Leh-Ladakh have some hotels modified facilities to meet the needs of the differently-abled,” says Saxena. Gouthami, however, sees this as a market with a huge potential. “There are people with disabilities who have sufficient money to travel… If more destinations can be made accessible, there will be a boom in this niche sector,” she says. Vacation highs Within 10 years of launch, Senapaty’s special travel service for women is witnessing a rise in demand. “There is a clear 80 per cent growth in our turnover, with a 15 per cent growth in the number of trips as well as women travelling with us,” she says. Vig, too, is seeing a transformation in her customers. “In the beginning, I had to beg friends and family to join us. Now we have women across age groups travelling with us alone or with kids.” WOW Club’s packages are priced from ₹21,000 for a domestic trip to ₹7 lakh for a three-week holiday in South America. Senapa-
Sumitra Senapaty set up the WOW Club travel platform for women 10 years ago
ty says there is no dearth of takers, as everything is well-managed and taken care of — hotels, sightseeing, some of the meals, transfers, services of a guide, coach travel and unique experiences such as a balloon ride over the Nile, an opera show in Vienna, Russian ballet performance, wine-tasting in South Africa or a wildlife safari in Africa. Vig’s clients are mostly in the late-30s to
Ramp ready Travel Another India specialises in tours to Ladakh for wheelchair-users courtesy: travel another india
Two by two A Mom and Kid trip organised by Wonderful World
early-50s, and nearly 80 per cent of them are working women. Each trip also attracts a fair share of senior citizens. “They are definitely looking for company and have the disposable income. Many have lost their husbands,” she adds. The oldest customer so far at Wonderful World is a 78-year-old woman, who recently returned from a trip to Turkey. “The concentration of single mothers on our last Mom and Kids trip was pretty high — at about 70 per cent of the group,” says Vig. To be able to offer a personalised experience, both WOW Club and Wonderful World keep the group sizes small. Senapaty signs up no more than 16-20 women, most of whom are financially independent and in the 25-70 age group. Both companies attract the highest number of travellers from Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Ahmedabad. Now they are discovering a new demand in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Enquiries and travellers are trickling in from smaller centres like Thrissur, Ludhiana, Mysore, Jaipur, Jammu, Baroda and Manipal. Additionally, Senapaty says her company manages to recover all costs from the trips. “Of course we break even on every trip,” she asserts. Vig’s two-year-old firm, on the other hand, is able to recover costs only “on some trips”. She points out that as margins are very thin, the number of trips should increase to make the business lucrative. “And therein lies the problem, as expansion could lead to a reduction in service quality,” she says. She prefers to take a path of slow growth, both in terms of the number of trips as well as group size. “The experience that people get on these holidays is most important for us at this stage,” she adds. Meanwhile, Senapaty’s WOW Club, which currently has offices in Delhi and Bengaluru, intends to open a third branch in India in the near future. “We also plan to offer customised tours for women,” Senapaty says. Setting her sights even higher, she hopes to open overseas franchises. “We envision all-woman groups coming to India to explore it,” she says. However, when it comes to the challenges of the business, the biggest of them all is faced by Gouthami and Saxena. While they do their best to customise packages, they are completely dependent on hotels and transportation services to make facilities accessible to the disabled. Diversity and inclusivity… these are, clearly, the markers of a brave new world of travel. rashmi pratap
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Playing one’s part Talking point APPROACHING EYE LEVEL
What is the role of the public intellectual in creating a just society?
tion, the philosopher Sundar Sarukkai imposEven the smartest rocket scientist needs the shrink to be able to focus on what really matters es a seeming contradiction by substituting “or” with “and”. The answer, he says, is to question and not to question. The cognitive act of donequestioning with the prelude. occurs on an ideological substraThrough histhe seeming kindness, all tum and truth simple and falsehood of itanswers cameare out — the longing, the vicious gameoften assessed against pragmatic touchplaying andEvery fragility my messed-up youngstones. act of knowing was also an act of person world. Most importantly, gave meof a the doing, self-consciously so initthe case placepublic to go intellectual. week after week, and cry because of The “ethical dimensions my heart was broken andhad I had thought we for, critical questioning” to be accounted wereinvolving meant to be. The particulars didn’tAside a seeming act of really empathy. matter. It didn’t matter we were politicalfrom knowing thethat “other” in any social enminded and complicated everything, he gagement, there was also the needthat to imagine was the bisexual, that I was attracted to bloody“other”. mindedness. was sad and that was alland thatsocieDhruv IRaina, a scholar of science mattered. I don’ttoremember what my the therty, responds propositions about quiesapistcence said of tothe mescientific but in acommunity, few months, the an attitude sharpest edgeto ofthe theingrained pain faded. contrary image of science beI’ding have I had other people to talk bythought axiom and procedure entirely consisto, that the democracy. precise moment I was tentbeing with Thatwhen comfortable flourishing with school friends, stillIn its nostrum mayold have exhausted its the utility. current of college theruns hearty veryfriendships organisation, scienceand today on the (andpatronage jittery) friendships with people I shared of governments and giant corporapolitical beliefs with. But I democratic couldn’t speak any tions. The underlying ethos is not truths to taken any offorthem. Imagine telling to be granted or asserted as athe matter truthofto thebut woman despised me forwith faith, provenwho in active engagement breaking with my previous boyfriend to be socialup and political realities. with this one. Orscientist the college whodecomposguilePolitical Peterfriend DeSouza lesslyessaid, well, ifofyou hadn’tintellectual decided to into the “Oh construct a public be with I’d have.” Or the friend whose He two him, components: autonomy and advocacy. hair takes had gone grey from dealing with his own inup three notable instances of public break-up. In front of anyup of for them, thejustice failure tellectuals speaking social in the Stage fright Do India’s intellectuals choose silence or do they choose to speak out deymos.hr/shutterstock part very of love failure would me Bandifferent milieus of have India,struck Israel and moregladesh. than theAnd lovewhile part of it. Not that I didn’t acknowledging the dark n rather sombre mood, eminent histori- Today’s intellectual landscape, she had said, talk about In that particular instance of mitimes it. that prevailed in 2014, DeSouza identian Romila Thapar delivered the Nikhil features “specialists in various professions” sery fies (unlike some others) I couldn’t talka number of vantage pointsstop where public Chakravartty memorial lecture in Delhi and perhaps “many more academics than exing. But no variation, no listener ever eased my outinterventions could promote just future in October 2014. She recalled Chakravart- isted before”. But there was a difference from heartcomes: the way the weekly hour the uncomreason, freedom ofin thought, environty’s role as a journalist and political commen- earlier times, in that they preferred “not to fortable government-issue chair did. participation ment, livelihood, democratic tator who witnessed the first five decades of confront authority even if it obstructs the In and the enterprise. case of my friend with the therapist India’s independence and never relented in path of free thought”. An “acknowledged prowho refused discuss the Jawed mother-in-law, it all of a Mediatopractitioner Naqvi speaks shutterstock/nasir khan his commitment to speak up for public inter- fessional status” makes autonomy in all its suddenly came peculiar andtogether persistentafter areamonths. of silenceThe among est. It was, she continued, an attitude that forms a viable choice. But the nature of acatherapist trying to particularly get her to ain point India’swas intellectuals, the advoyou in therapy? Do you know storydemic went re missing in the years that followed. in which a man writes his girlfriend’s partnerships andtoassociations — both where she’d feel rested and andsocial competent atThe tak-early cacy of secularism justice. someone who is? Thapar’s anxiety was evidently sharpened shrink, arguing she no longer needed denational andthat international — seemingly ing care of incubated her child, this last the point being what belief during freedom struggle, Somechanges days I wrought look around the the by political through therapy. She was more than fine, he said, she she was defensive that manded that “critical assessabout. modernisation A few months later, would room and everyone I know is either year. It seemed a time when, after muddling was wonderful. And sotto if shevoce”. stopped going to not only did hostilities ments... remain simmer down, there prove an effective solvent for all in therapy, avoidingearly therapy or thinkalong actively for six decades, national committhe shrink, she couldpublished buy the in In a response was the eveniniquities a spontaneous mo- has of tradition, ing about it asocial weirdjustice #Firstworldmentstherapy. to equityIsand went off the grand piano she wanted. The sto-Neethis volume, the historian of tearful reconciliation. rather hollow. Equal citiEvery act of knowingmentproven problem? it like people with all consolidated manner of itrails. AIsregime had seemingly ry argued against therapy ladri Bhattacharya drawsbut attenFor years after my firstdisadvanenzenship for those was also an act of apps self andinparaphernalia when authority with for littlerunning challenge and less still somehow tion to made whatit perversely seemed an doing, self-consciously counter withbya therapist, I didn’t taged caste and by their walking, plainfor oldthe walking, andtradipatience liberal in andsalwars inclusive romantic. In any something omission oncase, Thapar’s part. The I don’t anyone who in reof believed an ostracised so inremember the case of the knowmembership cheaptions kedsthat wereinvested good enough their par- with India’sfor early years got me to a therapist in NIMEuropean enlightenment was a whatpublic onlyminority, people who narrat-a disligious remains my therapist intellectual therapy, ents?great Is therapy quinoa the mind? promise. Thefor question was whether to HANS, a psychiatric hospital. template, among many others, said to me, but in a ed variations of a self-defeating tant prospect. The debates on A good friend recently several sesquestion or not, said spent Thapar. Credentialled Mythat therapist was examples young, still she drew from few months the anecdote: I knew as in that ses- and secularism statefirst policy sionsmembers at therapy, because she want- who offrustrated the intellectual collectivity in training and hadvalue no pretenon the salutary of the in- sharpest edge of the sion Isecularisation was so much smarter than end as a desirable The Public Intellectual in India ed tohad discuss rage she felt her sionstellectual lapsedthe into timidity andtowards silent conformto intellectualism. So un-conwith a social pain faded my therapist, so what was the of civil society, needed to inteRomila Thapar et al mother-in-law herup fluffy therapist ity, neededand to step and speak up. kept pretentious marvel at the science. he’d But these intellectuals soon became grate thatwhole brutepoint? fact into their premises. Aleph and The Book asking her pointless questions about her sleep cuIn the months following, the organisers size of the book was reading in blinding them to prisoners ofIanother dogma, I wish off I had I neverwith tolda nuThapar rounds the but anthology Review Literary Trust Non-fiction and rated her baby. end of published her tether,alongside my the waiting a setAt of the responses, room — a Harry Pot- the penumbra of anced response injustices in regions beyond these sceptics: Does it matter? Itwith to all her interlocutors, ₹499 friend was determined to dump her shrink be- As the lecture in The Public Intellectual in India. ter orthe something equallyBhattacharya unchalenlightenment. also demurs the construct doesn’t thatsociety you are a the of amatter just future being fore she dumpedthe herrelease mother-in-law. it emerged, of the volume virtually lenging. Thoughreading he was of just couple years sceon Thapar’s theacontemporary rocket scientist. All it matters is that your overarching theme. Undoubtedly thetherimaginThecoincided first timewith I went to therapy, I wasby 22.writers, In older,nario, a wave of protests he seemed he was a world far away. wherelike he sees hope and many points of apisting is trained in therapy andisyou of a state of justice the aren’t. foundation for thosehistorians, first two months after the man I thought social scientists, artists and others During months, I began crying within for Myconcrete light:those “the fight for meaningful education, so-young therapist’s abilitymake to help me actions that could that possiwas the love my lifeand (weacademic were meant to be, the first from theofcreative communities, five and minutes of sitting down andsecularism cried focusble. justice equality, for tolerance, on what really mattered came from This volume, by an accident of this timing, we were meant to be, we looked so good to- all the all very public. way till the end.among Every week beginmore and democracy”, manyI’d others fact —may we all live out of a limited of the well beour thelives theoretical buttressset that gether These in thewere mirror) said bye-bye, I alarmed significant enough for a historibravely, making jokes, beingsuch self-deprecating, specifically directed, as movements scripts. The particulars just costume. And a “October protests” are have sought, to enable everyan auto-driver Bengaluru by cryingprotests”, riv- doing to describeinthem as the “October all the things I’d learnt at 22 to deal with we are “against big dams and tribal displacements... hopelessly distracted by costume. sense of purposive striving for redeeming the ers. Something someone suggested thera term that or may gain traction in future narrabeingland an awkward mess. look at me, acquisition andThen the he’d demarcation of spe- promises of India’s independence. t@chasingiamb apy. tives Perhaps it the wascurrent the Donald Barthelme not unkindly, about Indian regime. but plainly me to be and cial economic zones...waiting nuclearfor armaments Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of sukumar muralidharan is an independent writer Have the worries voiced by Thapar then for peace”. the feminist website The Ladies Finger been assuaged? It is perhaps too early to say. In his response to Thapar’s rhetorical ques- and researcher based in Gurgaon and Shimla
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COSMOPOLIS
The spectacle of solidarity It is worth considering why some tragedies can stake a greater claim on the global imagination than others
Mourning Paris, wrongly CST in Mumbai lights up in solidarity, but ends up showing the colours of the Dutch flag. Gestures of solidarity, though invariably noble, are also rather easy, and at times lazy prashant nakwe
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Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories, a forthcoming collection of short fiction
n the spring of 1821, the Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy turned down an invitation to dinner in Calcutta because he was feeling glum. “I am afraid I must be under the necessity of denying myself the pleasure of your society this evening,” he wrote to his host. “My mind is depressed by the late news from Europe.” He had learnt that monarchist forces had squashed a liberal uprising in Naples. “I consider the cause of the Neapolitans as my own, and their enemies as ours,” he explained. “I am obliged to conclude that I shall not live to see liberty universally restored to the nations of Europe and [Asia].” A very self-serious way to avoid a dinner party, Roy’s note was also an example of the nascent internationalism of his time. It was a powerful and imaginative feat for a Bengali to make “the cause of the Neapolitans” his own, to forge bonds of sympathy and allegiance across borders and oceans. I thought of Roy while scrolling through images of candlelight vigils in Calcutta last week, of 21st-century Indians responding to sad news from Europe in the wake of the Paris attacks. In our age of instant communication and ubiquitous information — so accelerated since Roy’s time — we have grown accustomed to the spectacle of solidarity. The Empire State Building in New York City, the CST station in Mumbai, the Sydney Opera House, and many other global monuments were illuminated in the colours of the French flag. In solidarity, football matches in Europe observed a moment of silence before kick-off and strains of the Marseillaise played before ice hockey games in the US. Statesmen, business leaders, and celebrities queued up to insist that they “stood in solidarity” with the people of France. The problem with solidarity is that while these sorts of gestures are invariably noble, they are also rather easy. For sentient people, it should be the minimum response. There is a numbing routine to the expression of solidar-
ity in the internet age, its swift generation of hooked to the West, it is inevitable that tragic memes and hashtags, how quickly it allows the events in Paris hit closer to home than those in personal a share of the universal. In the early Beirut or Karachi or Mogadishu. There is also an 19th century, Roy’s solidarity with the Neapoli- unfortunate racial and cultural dimension to tans was ambitious, original, and somewhat the response, the sense in the West that the vicimplausible. Today, it is right to mourn the vic- tims in Paris “were like us” — a disappointing retims of the Paris attacks, but mourning them is frain in the coverage of the attacks — and also inescapable. implicitly worthier of attention and emotion. I find global solidarity more revealing in its But the main reason for this deficit is a great absence than in its manifestation. Many observ- division in the imagining of the world. Violence ers have noted the different reactions to attacks and chaos are the preserve of other places. Terin Paris and Beirut. The day before the ISIS rible things happen “over there,” but not here. bloodbath in France, ISIS bombings in Beirut Paris shocks and appals because it pierces the killed over 40 people. Nobody in the West (or in border between separate worlds, making forIndia, for that matter) played the eign horror native. Lebanese national anthem in This tendency can be seen at a sporting stadia, or lit up their smaller scale within countries. buildings with the design of LebaConsider, for example, the reParis shocks and non’s cedar flag. Journalists specmove with which Indians reappals because it ulated about the considerable spond to violence in the pierces the border psychological trauma endured by Northeast, or how Americans can between separate the people of Paris, its doctors, seturn a blind-eye to the routine worlds, making curity personnel, and civilian sur- foreign horror native deaths of black and Latino men in vivors. That same human concern the inner cities. That disinterest is is rarely extended to terrorised a measure of how incomplete the people outside the West. “we” of a society is, of how the Of course, a few recent excepimagined broad collective is not tions come to mind; the world recoiled in dis- really broad at all. To paraphrase George Orwell, gust at the abduction of hundreds of we’re all human, but some of us are more huschoolgirls by Boko Haram in Nigeria and at the man than others. Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar. But that Atrocities have a way of kindling the gentler outrage was tempered by a kind of resignation, qualities in all of us, of conjuring, however and soon fell away from Western media atten- briefly, a sense of huge community. What’s sad tion. In India, the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai were about these warm displays of global, human followed closely around the world, in part be- spirit is that they remind us of how there is no cause they were at the time (and still are) fre- truly universal “we” at the heart of the “internaquently described as attacks on “Western” tional community,” that we remain imperfectly targets within the city. global. The West retains a disproportionate The carnage in Paris was barbaric and deeply claim to universality, and it was ever thus. Roy upsetting, but it’s worth considering why some may have mourned the lost cause of the Neatragedies can stake a greater claim on the glob- politans, but how many Neapolitans ever cared al imagination than others. about him? At a mundane level, the cause is logistical. t@kanishktharoor With the engine of global media still largely
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READER’S DIE JEST
Of severed limbs and love Is the latest Cormoran Strike novel a murder mystery or a messy office romance?
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h, Cormoran, sighed Robin as she bility of spending a night on the road with imagined his stubbly, smelly, Cormoran. As she casually tailed herDare quarry, to differ Our arunava sinha wounded, unwashed body, meld- using her training to stay out of sight, she system, education and indeed ed against hers as they gave chase wondered whether her boss would book one our teachers, promote to a serial killer who liked to keep souvenirs room or two. conformism from his dead victims in the form of their The thought made her go weak at the knee and frown upon limbs and appendages. and stumble, thus avoiding the wild swipe of a It should enterprise. She was now irrevocably (hmmph! snorted blade that the murderer had made in an other at- way be the shutterstock round Rowling, JK) engaged to the handsome but ir- tempt to dismember her. But oh no! What resolute and jealous snob Matt, which only have you done, Robin? You have disobeyed AGENDA made her boss, the detective with no income, Cormoran wilfully, wench. appear all the more attractive. He will now sack you. It had all begun when she had joined him as Naturally, he did. And naturally, this only ina temp three novels ago, her eternally roman- creased your love for him, even though you tic self dying to be a crime-buster rather than had made up with Matt in a moment of weakbring home the salary that Matt felt she de- ness, you miserable cow, and agreed to go served. Or, now she came to think of it, the sal- ahead with the marriage, which was now just ary that he wanted his wife to earn, the days away. How would this romance — no, it’s a classist, annoying, whining… oh but this was murder mystery, idiot — be resolved? Who her fiancé! would the killer turn out to be? Mortified, Robin bought some Who cares. The real question was, more pasta to cook him his favouwould Robin still marry Matt rnst and Young says by 2030 rite India dinner andthe allowed her hearttored company’s early developers. He later though hertop heart foris still on focus at India’s businessbeat schools Meanwhile, will have 140 million people in theto rise beat again at the thought turned angel investor, helping aCormoran number ofwas Sil- producing Cormoran? herds of management graduates college-going age group, and one thatinit would Monday soon some and started icon be Valley start-ups, by his stuMeanwhile, wasof disin as cogsCormoran in the wheels big corpodiscovering that who fit four graduates in the world willshe be awould once again be potential. within dents, reach their covering that sex was the only rates, not ones who can chart their own course sex was the only product of Indian higher education. Thetouching optidistance of Cormoran. After Motwani’s accidentalthing drowning in through thing enterprise. that bound him to Elin. The that bound mistic view is that this demographic will not if she Why, hadBrin played cards 2009, paidher a rich tribute tohim his mentor: number of times he had allowed In some ways micro-entrepreneurship eduto Elin only drive India’s economy, but also be the en- the“…his right otherlegacy day when the seand personality lives on in the cation himself picture different parts has atoricher history in India. In governgine of global growth at a time when bothvered Chi- legstudents, had arrived in thatand packprojects, companies he has tou- ment of Robin’s emotional centres, and physical skill development attendees are na and Europe’s populations will be ageing. age marked to Today, her, she could have ched. whenever you use a piece of tech- encouraged anatomy, despite hissmall insistence on to build businesses with But there is a roadblock to this cheerful sce-panting been in his arms. nology, there is a good chance a little bit of their maintaining the financing. romanticWhile dis- this has skills and small nario, one that could turn the demographic At theRajeev thought of which, Robinit.” began to tance that Motwani is behind their professional relationship dehad some success, these micro-entrepreneurs dividend into a demographic nightmare: the her teeth gnash gently,legacy muttering, ‘bugger!’ Motwani’s also has a very as important manded are — sleeping the secretary was so unlikelywith to create large-scale businesses state of India’s higher education itself.she The recollected thatthe it was someone else en-top corporate! lesson for professors in India’s tech- that — he wondered whether he hadn’t provide jobs to hundreds of workers. Alproblem with Indian higher education istirely that who panted inbusiness Cormoran’s armsWhile thesemany nology and schools. IIT her sacked that the so, deliberately, the messageso appears to untouchbe that entrepreit is geared to produce job-doers, not job cre- andstudents days, her name Rich,part cool are was nowElin. a crucial of and India’s ability excit- barrier was dismantled. neurship is only for the unskilled and ators. The abysmal state of entrepreneurship probablying great in bed.ecosystem, ‘Bugger!’ (many of them are Would start-up be- unemployable, Cormoran break upthewith Elin?tech and not for brightest education in this country is only one sympBut true love alwaysbyfinds a way, gentle read- Would ing helped their alumni networks), how Robin accept that they loved each othmanagement students of the country. tom of a larger problem: our educationer,sysbeforemany false love takes overare again. And so ittheirer? IIT professors mentoring stuWould she herneeds wedding yet again,shift, and Thiscancel mindset a paradigm tem stifles student initiative and enterprise, wasinthatdents Robin off her engagement thebroke way Motwani did? How manythis pro-timethat permanently? wasbythis change can Where be driven therogurus: the favour of conformist herds. with Matt — forinreasons we cannot go into mance cunningly camouflaged fessors India are ready to leave nov-tech and professorsasofa crime our best As inheritors of the gurukul system, we be-— while here continuing to live in the behind the old guru-shishya rela-same el series going to take business everyone in Book Four of is perschools. There Career of Evil be put on a pedestal, lieve the teacher must house with him. and Sleeping on the with sofa, of the series? tionship, collaborate haps a need to educate the educaA Cormoran while the student is supposed to meekly fol- their students to build technolocourse. (This monthly column helps talkinnovation about a tors to you put and Strike Novel India’s professors low ordersRobert without challenging the teacher. As a result, withinstitutions the limb-gatherer murder- will gies and that change book, without having toentrepreneurship read it.) at the heart of Galbraith, have to stop JK Rowling not entrepreneurs This breedsakaconformists, ing morelives? women, there being ashave many as being gurus, and Do and Indian professors tech and business education in Sphere Books arunava sinha translates classic and contemporary who think differently, not visionaries who are three suspects who needed to be stalked, Robthose ambitions, or do they conthe country. But to do that, Instart treating their ₹699 Bengali fiction and non-fiction intoprofessors English t@arunava ready to challenge conventional normsinand foundsider herself the breathtaking possi- students it with beneath themselves to dia’s will also have to as equals build institutions that create jobs and wealth build companies along with stop being gurus, and start treatfor the larger society. Conformism and enter- their students? ing their students as equals. prise do not go together: our education sysThere is also a fundamental Here is something else Brin tem, and indeed our teachers, promote the misunderstanding in Indian acawrote in his tribute to Motwani: former and frown upon the latter. It should be demia about what constitutes entrepreneur- “In addition to being a brilliant computer scithe other way round. ship education. Business entry is entist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started fundamentally different from managing es- person and his door was always open. No matGoogle, one of their earliest mentors was a tablished companies, which is what is taught ter what was going on with my life or work, I Stanford University computer science profes- in our business schools. New product testing could always stop by his office for an interestsor born in Jammu — Rajeev Motwani. Along and development, equity negotiations, idea ing conversation and a friendly smile.” with Page and Brin, Motwani wrote an influen- protection and ambiguity tolerance are inHow many professors in India leave their tial paper on the PageRank algorithm, which trinsic to early stage start-ups, but may not be doors open? went on to become the basis for Google’s needed in established companies. The typical search operations. management courses in India still do not in- sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of partha pratim sharma Motwani sat on Google’s board and men- clude these streams in their curriculum. The The Political Indian t@some_buddha
Gurukul to guru cool
India’s tech and business professors need to contribute more to the entrepreneurship ecosystem. They can start by leaving their doors open
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Punjab in turmoil A botched Green Revolution has distorted the economy, society and culture in so many ways that the thumb rule to understanding every disturbance in the state today is: follow the farmer
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o you know which one is this?” the American wife of late Balwant Gargi — Punjabi writer, gossip and card-carrying bohemian — asked him, pointing at a pressed flower in her scrapbook. Gargi shook his head. She showed him another flower and he shook his head again. She turned page after page, showing him flowers she had gathered during a Seattle summer, and he kept shaking his head. When he couldn’t bear it anymore, he blurted out, “Look, I am from Bathinda. I have seen only two flowers, rose and marigold, but I can recognise dozens of types of sand.” Gargi could recognise one more flower, the cotton blossom — the flower of the desert sands of the Malwa region in Punjab. It was
the only flower that could bloom happily in the dust storms called kaali-bauli (black and crazy), which turned scorching afternoons into dark nights. The Malwai folklore as well as Gargi’s salacious plays are suffused with the beauty of the snow-white October blossom (katte di kapaah), the passion of burning sands and the abandon of the kaali-bauli. When the hybrid cotton varieties during the Green Revolution raised the yield manifold, lovers would longingly wait for the cotton plants to grow high enough for a rendezvous hidden from the prying eyes of villagers. But like many other reversals of the Green Revolution, crop after crop of the Malwa cotton was ravaged by American bollworm in the early ’90s. Tonnes of pesticides failed to
The fog settles The Green Revolution is collapsing in innumerable ways. For nearly two weeks a thick smog hung over Delhi. It was the smoke from the paddy stubble burnt by farmers in the fields of Punjab. The practice has been banned, but farmers say it is costly to uproot the stubble and cart it away afp/roberto schmidt
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kill it but ended up poisoning the earth. Be- state today is: follow the farmer. Ditto for the Bhindranwala 2.0 fore the Green Revolution, the pests were not recent protests against the desecration of the After Bhindranwala, or Sant Jarnail Singh as greedy and hostile as bollworm. If they at- Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib in a Malwa Bhindranwale as he is known reverentially tacked the crop, they still left enough for the village, which led to the Sarbat Khalsa confer- (yes, he is still revered by lakhs of Sikhs in Punfarmer. The pest and the farmer were part of ence by hardliners and separatists. jab and abroad) was killed in Operation Bluesthe great natural equilibrium. White fly destroyed 75 per cent of the cotton tar in 1984, a charade began. The Lahore radio, Two decades after Gargi’s confession, when crop this year. Many thought Bt cotton, which which blared Khalistani propaganda in Punbollworm had eaten off the Malwa cotton for was popular with farmers for being pest-re- jab from across the border, announced that he many years, the government promoted an sistant, had met its American bollworm in had crossed over to Pakistan and would apalien crop — rice — with guaranteed purchase white fly. But later it was found farmers were pear on the radio soon. Several times the date and a minimum price. The sandy plains of scammed with spurious seeds and pesticides. of his appearance was fixed and then moved. Malwa turned into lush paddy fields. There That’s why the crop could not resist the white Gradually everyone accepted that he was weren’t any flowers but a village in the cotton fly. A top agriculture official was arrested in works were delightful nostaldead, but hesome did come back and two rather decades later belt would look like tropical paradise on au- this case. The whole of Malwa broke out in pro- gic images from one of the but pioneers ofback Indian — not on the Lahore radio on the of tumn evenings. Bollworm-stung farmers tests. Farmers blockaded roads and rail tracks photojournalism, Raghu We see a dapper cars and trucks. That prideRai. of place was hitherheaved a sigh of relief. The kaali-baulis abated. for more than a week. The government agreed Rai looking into the mirror, flanked by his two to reserved for freedom-fighter Bhagat Singh. Before the cotton crop returned with the in- to pay ₹8,000 compensation for an acre but children and with his ‘third child’ — hisSingh camBhindranwala became the new Bhagat troduction of genetically modified Bt cotton they wanted more as the cost era — in his lap. for many Sikh youths. Bhindranin early 2000s, rice had wreaked the ecology. per acre was about ₹20,000. The This early ‘selfie’ is touched with tenderness wala-on-the-back-of-the-car Unsuitable for the sandy Malwa, it required Parkash Singh Badal governand speaks volumes about the act seeing youths were hardly theofKhalistafive times more water. Canal water was suffi- ment was cornered once more. and being seen. It also takes us into not just nis of the terrorism days; they All of Punjab’s politics cient for cotton; but for rice, water was That’s when the torn pages of Rai’s world as a photojournalist on agroping quest, were the lost generation too is agriculture pumped out of earth by nearly a million tube the Guru Granth Sahib were but also his for personal space, revealing small an honest, larger-than-life wells. In just 15 years, the water table fell from found in Bargari village in Faridvulnerabilities and And moments of gentleness. leader. when other religious 80 to 500 feet, probably the sharpest drop in kot district. The farmer agitation “You never stop being photographer,” groups in athe country weresays asIndia. The fast-depleting water table can turn fed into the more charged relithe icon, whoserting sharedthemselves, many of his Bhindranwapearls of wisthe Malwa cotton belt back into a desert — gious protests initially, in which two people dom with younger photographers in thepride. talks la became their symbol of community without the beauty, passion and abandon of were shot dead by the police. Sukhdarshan and section. So itseminars didn’t matter that most of them being the old Malwa that Gargi’s plays celebrate. Natt, a member of the CPI (ML) state secretar- clean-shaven No photo-exhibition is ever complete would not have been withSikh But that’s not the news that breaks from iat, who has been at the forefront of farmer out tipping hat to some of thehad historically enough for its Bhindranwala, who become Punjab. At least not as loudly as anything with struggle in the Malwa area, claims the sacri- important In this instance it famous asphotographers. a religious preacher exhorting Empathy black andin white Flander three years documenting the wordinKhalistan it. A Australian botched photographer Green Rev- Ianlege wasspent a conspiracy to drown the outbleak cotton was Parekh’s seminal on thedays, BanSikhsKishor to keep unshorn hair.work In those courtesy delhi photo festival lives of a group enslaved sex-workers in Phnom Penh photos olution has of distorted the economy, society farmers’ protest. “Our agitation was as usual gladesh War of 1971. was hair a lonewere voicethe at Bhindranwala and Parekh the shorn and culture in so many ways that the thumb planned, well-organised and disciplined. They the time, and self-assigned, covertwain thatself-funded would never meet. Most of them alhe stress onevery socialdisturbance documentary rule to understand in was the could Nevertheless, photography, unlike not have derailed it in any way,painting so they ing the atrocities in East so don’t seem to committed share his views onPakistan. Hindus. evident the moment one stepped or writing, still operates realm the re- His resorted to in allthe this. Theofgovernphoto-book and still a veryand imTheyearly would not callwas, Hindus ‘Talliis Ram’ into the IGNCA, the venue for the al — in that it works whattoisthe physically ment waswith pushed wall af- portant history. after him. Nor do they ‘Chhalli part Ram’ofderisively third Delhi Photo Festival 2015 (Oc- present, rather than someblockade,” imagined he vision. ter the railway says. seem Moving awayone from theneeds documentation to think Sikh to kill just of 35 tober 30 to November 8). ‘Naturally so’, one PhotographyWhatever is ultimately theabout truthpeople, behindplacthe mankind the them objects created by them, DaniHindus toto wipe out. Bhindranwala 2.0 is would say, as the photograph is about captur- es and the sacrilege, objects touched by deny their that lives. no one can it la Tkachenko’s images explore abana sanitised, non-violent versiondesolate, of the Hinduing — whether aesthetically or abstractly — a Whether posed candid, sensational or subwasorthe farmers’ agitation that doned Russia. Theinbleached, hating landscapes bigot. Thereinmight come future a slice of human life. tle, the images are crafted of the stuff of ev- snow-covered bolstered theout religious protests. make the objects — an Bhindranwalaexpanses 3.0, an icon of minority rights. It is about telling an untold story or expos- eryday life. The radical Sikh conference sur- abandoned or an amphibian plane, You can evensubmarine expect to read essay on him by ing the ‘truth’, even though contemporary The festival’s curator, Prashant said or prised everyone byPanjiar, gathering a formerRoy mining that has been turned Arundhati (shetown addressed a press conferphotography has long questioned the photo- in an almost playful tone, “Every the Delhi more than a lakhyear people, but into testing field forinbombs appear even ence awith Khalistanis Delhi a— few years ago). graph as ‘a document of truth’. In her re- Photo Festival getsthe a lot of ‘conflicting’ com- more dramatic. when organisers were arrestSikhs Hindus? nowned treatise, On Photography, Susan ments. The photojournalists feel thatcame we have ed not even a thousand out Are “Humans are always trying to own ever Brothers in arms Sontag writes: “Photographs, which fiddle made our selection too artsy and abstract to protest. They used to say agri- more thancommunist they have,” says Tkachenko onsays his A radical leader in Punjab Sukhdarshan Natt is with the scale of the world, themselves get re- while the artist andisfashion-photographers culture all that Punjab has in website, “this is the source of technical prothey won’t think twice before backing Bhingathering a front of distressed farmers and duced, blown up, cropped, retouched, docfeel that we have focused more on documenthe name of culture. One can add gress. The by-products of this are vardranwala sympathisers if progress the Rashtriya businessmen in Mansa tored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the tary photography. makes feel that our ious all its This politics, too,me is agriculture. commodities wellturns as the of Swayamsewak Sanghas(RSS) into tools a bigger and adjoining areas usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; standard is quality of work and not genre.” violence in order to hold power over others.” they become valuable, and get bought and His team for the festival included the likes Equally noteworthy was the one-of-a-kind sold; they are reproduced.” Hence they are of Sohrab Hura, a talented young photo-book exhibition curated subject to all the limitations that most art- photographer from Delhi. “The by Austrian gallerist and phoworks operate within, even while attempting intention this year is to showcase tographer Regina Anzenberger, to be a part of the larger ‘truth.’ a selection of contemporary phoas also a unique exploration of tography from around the the medium by French photogPhotojournalists feel Change Culmann, of equation and world,” Panjiar said. rapher Olivier that we have made Dalit construction This year there certainly was Dutch photographer Rob Hornour selection too labourer Angrej Singh, an emphasis on humanity. stra’s compelling documentaartsy and abstract a CPI (ML) member of Whether it was Australian Ian tion of theGehle 2014village Winter Games in in Mansa district, is better off Flander’s shadowy black-andSochi, Russia. Hard times When thanspan marginal Mukhtiar Kaur got whites that capture the bleak Given the andupperthe variety caste farmers who will married 40 years ago, lives of a group of enslaved sexof the imagery, one came away not even work as she and her husband workers in the Cambodian capital, Phnom with a rather overwhelming yet fulfilling senconstruction had 20 acres, today Penh, or the exuberantly colourful frames be- sation, almost as if all of humanity were labourers she has only one longing to Bangladeshi Debashish Chakrabar- squeezed within the confines of IGNCA to disty, who captures the virtual and surreal lives of cuss and interface. Of course, no exhibition ‘gamers’ in China, the focus was quite clearly can ever be exhaustive enough, and hopefully on the human condition. next year, there will be newer visions on disFlander spent three years in Phnom Penh, play, even as we hark back to history. building bridges with the sex workers, who “I think that it’s impossible to point out Last straw Bhola to take were trapped in a web of trafficking, drugs what direction photography is going High and dry Major Singhold-fashioned of Mansa, a and dependency. His gaze is one of deep emin the future. I am a rather phoSingh and Gurmail labourer now, had to pathy, and he was moved to go beyond the act tojournalist who cannot even shoot with a Kaur of Gharangna sell his three acres to of just making photographs. ‘smartphone’. There are speculations village in Mansa makeeven ends meet. He district have lost most “On November 12, 2014, the information I that images in the future will madetoby an alsent hisbe nephew of their land. Kaur says by paying ₹5 peosupplied the NGO resulted in the rescue of gorithm and not evenLebanon by cameras and life was better before lakhold-fashioned,” to agents. Some said eight women and three children from the ple… but then, I am a bit the Green Revolution, Punjabi youths prefer brothel, along with the arrest and prosecution Panjiar, a former photo-editor of India Today. when farming costs even war-torn areas to of the traffickers,” said Flander. and personal needs Big daddy Pioneering photojournalist Raghu Rai’s Punjab all photos were low art writer early ‘selfie’ with his children dharminder kumar Contrasting these social documentary georgina maddox is a Delhi-based
At the third Delhi Photo Festival, the focus was quite clearly on the human condition
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Read between the lines The radical show Proud moment Chemmeen was the of strength at the first Malayalam film torecent Sarbat Khalsa win the National Best conference proved to Film Award the hindu be a ploy to distract attention from the agrarian crisis
FILM FATALE
Golden milestone
threat. The Punjabi Hindus are traditionally Congress supporters and RSS has never been able to find more than a toehold among them. But after the BJP formed the government in the centre, RSS has revived its old project of bringing the Sikhs under the Hindu nationalist banner. Sikhism shares many philosophical assumptions with Hinduism and can be called a story goes that mixture ofhe Vaishnavism andThakazhi Vedanta. SivasanThe Guwrotewith Chemmeen in eight ru Granth kara SahibPillai is replete Pauranic illusdays. But for even a lifetime is not trations and praises the avatars of Vishnu. enough process this 1956 Damdami Taksal,toBhindranwala’s ownnovel semby thehad legendary Jnanpith-winning Malayainary, in its liturgy prayers to Hindu gods lam writer, orincluded its film adaptation from 1965. and its texts one Hanuman Natak. I was introduced to Chemmeenthat earlyworked in life Despite reformist movements although as a child growing up in Delhi in the against Hinduisation of Sikhism, so steeped pre-DVD, pre-Internet non-Hindi cinema was the religion in theera, Hindu lore that Bhinwas alwayshimself difficultwas to access. It is a measure of dranwala mythologised with the the success of myths. Hindi language politics inaour help of Hindu He was said to have dicountry that it was (and still is) hard learn vine mark — long arms that reached histoknees. to read and write ourfrom mother tongueswhere — unThe reference came Ramayana, ajanubhuj, the less Hindu that mother tongue is Hindi or English — the god Rama is called one arms reach his knees.other than in if wewhose attend school anywhere all references theSikhs statesay of our origins. in Sikhism to Hindu gods andasgoddesses and Sadly, a result, I are stillmerely cannotsymbolic read or write it is a Brahminical conspiracy to portray SikMalayalam, and though I have read Anita hism a Hindu sect. If theofGuru Granthbook, SahibI Nair’sas English translation Thakazhi’s praises Vishnu, it original also clearly have notthe yetavatars read theofnovel in its lanprohibits worship of gods guage (I will, some day). and My goddesses. parents, fortuMany Hindus one of the reasonswas benately, ensuredthink that Malayalam hind the Khalistani theitbelief extensively used at movement home, so I was speak with that Sikhs are Hindus itand confidence and not understand wellSikhism enough.isI against Hinduism. Theto idea that not am telling you all this help youSikhs fullyare appreHindus definite shape during the introearly ciate thetook circumstances in which I was 20th reformepic movements and after a ducedcentury to this screen by Doordarshan. belligerent Arya community Samaj challenged Sikh reSet in a fishing in Kerala, Chemformist groups. around a lower-caste Hindu meen revolves Whatever the historical or theological isfisherman’s daughter Karuthamma (played sues, today her Sikhism is athe different for by Sheela), love for Muslimreligion fish trader all practical(Madhu), purposes. Bhindranwala used to Pareekutty and her subsequent mar(Hindus say are kesha-dhari riageif toSikhs the Hindu fisherman Hindus Palani (Sathyan). with hair,before as theorRSS calls thenbeen Indian Never since hasthem) the ocean so (HinMuslims must be sunnat-dhari beautifully captured on screen Hindus as a benevodus circumcision). RSSInwants to enlist lent with yet fearsome creature. Chemmeen, the Sikhs service of Hinduism as its are sword watersinofthe Kadalamma (Mother Ocean) inarm. Sikhs will happily become the sword arm trinsically linked to a belief among fisherfolk of India neverisoftied thetoHindu religion. that Herbut largesse the sexual conformism of women in their society and that She A revolution gone wrong would swallow up a man whose wife was unThe Badal government faithful to him while he wasmust at sea.have been shocked by thewatching radical show strength the Years after the of film, I readatthat
afp/narinder nanu
recent Sarbat Khalsa conference. But Gurmail even to businessmen in towns, who are also Kaur of Gharangna village, in Mansa district, defaulting on loans — and committing suicide insists that it is all the doings of the Badals to as do the farmers. “A few years ago, commisshift attention from the real issues of farmers. sion agents pasted posters on walls in Mansa People are not talking of Khalistan or the RSS calling us more dangerous than terrorists as in the cotton belt but of loans, dwindling re- we incited farmers who default on loans. Toturns, crop prices and cancer — and, of course, day, when they default, they too come to us for the Badals whom they hold responsible for ev- help.” In Mansa and the neighbouring areas, ery ill. CPI (ML) has forged an unlikely alliance of Gurmailwas andcriticised her husband, Singh, had farmers Thakazhi in hisMajor lifetime by ratioand businessmen, who have by tradiThe brilliant book was supplemented the seven ago.perpetuated One of their superstisons is a tionally nalistsacres who 10 feltyears his book beenof thegeniuses. parties atDirector war. “Rising corpofilm’s team Ramu Kacar mechanic the other tills land con- ratisation tions. To meand though, even as aonchild, has hit included small businessmen. The riat’s collaborators Hrishikesh Muktract. Majorwas Singh’s parents died of cancer. Chemmeen an indictment of society’s de- general decline in the state has herjee asagricultural an editor, Salil Chowdhury as music Gurmail Kaurtoherself cancer termination curb asurvived woman breast in every con- impacted even commission and factodirector and Manna Dey as agents a singer, making after a long Singh a ry ceivable waytreatment. including Major using the fearinvested of divine owners,”asays Natt. Chemmeen rare,Sukhdarshan truly pan-India project. lot of money in linking a boringher machine, retribution and family’swhich fate to did her Malwai folkispoet Ram Udasi had writWhy then this Sant National Award-winning ‘Jatt lagg ke seeri de facgal not bringas sufficient morality defined bybusiness, society. and spent a ten popular song, filmabarely known outside Kerala? Several which spoke of First, an upper-caste Jatt farmhuge sum on cancer treatment of three family Karuthamma is ridden with guilt all her life rowe’, tors are at play here. Malayalam cinema on the shoulder of his Dalit sharemembers. It was possible without a loan and is treated asnot if she cheated on her hus- er hascrying not promoted itself across India as well as after a crop failure. Theindustry’s song pointed from moneylender. Thehave cycle of interest band,the when all she did was feelings for a cropper Hindi. Second, the Malayalam deouton thethis absence relations was rapid thatshe in 10 years hisof Palani. manso long before even knew featist attitude frontofiscaste compounded among the that poor.it“Today, we have land was reduced from seven to Chemmeen is also about how by the fact has lower budgone a step ahead. Now a buddisless than anofacre. This year the threat ostracism andthey the gets (ergo, lower marketing tressed Baniya cries on the shoultoo sown cotton onare whatevfearhad of religion/nature used gets) than India’s three richest Sikhs will happily der of the farmer,” Natt says. er theypeople’s have. “We don’t have to land restrict choices; and industries: Hindi, Tamil and Telubecome the sword before or ahow tubesuperstitions well of our own. havea armNever canWebe gu. Third, a mix of political propof India butocean never Seizing the day since has the to buy water fromwho big farmers weapon to those do not aganda and irresponsible of the Hindu religion been so beautifully Decades agohas when failed who get electricity free,”delushe necessarily buy intoforthese journalism led crops to false nocaptured on screen due weeds or is pests, thenationPunjasays, inequities sionshighlighting but will cite the them when it tionstothat Hindi India’s bi took it inthe hisHindi stride,film atof state policies. A helpless suits their convenience, as Gur“the al farmer language, that tributing it toBollywood the general mail does notscripture know how devil”Kaur might “cite for industry, namely is Inhis world. considered part they will get out of this vicious cycle. Hers is transience ofdia’s his purpose”. largestHeindustry anditrightthedeserves challenge Punjabis havethan facedthe forrest. centutheInstory of most Karuthamma’s small and marginal farmers Chemmeen, people seem of fully more attention the invaders who loot all thatorthey in notPunjab. to care so much about her affair with Pa- ries: Which came first, thewould poor marketing the saved. So therethe was misconceptions a song that told the When input began to rise get andjealous prices had reekutty until costs her father’s rivals misconceptions, or nu lagg gaya to seize the day: ‘Kanak stagnated in the early ’80s,boat big farmers merely when he purchases a new and nets. Like- farmer media indifference? It’s hard to tell, but there narme nu lagg gaya lost but small farmers began losing gulli-danda, wise,profits when women in Palani’s neighbourhood is no doubt that if Chemmeen was taila/Maujan a great Hindi (wheat would be chaloitschali da mela livelihood. That’s feel threatened by herwhen success Bhindranwala at selling fish, lutt filmmitra marking golden jubilee, it would have by weeds celebrated and cottonbybythe pests/Make emerged, along with the of the they initiate a boycott offirst her, signs claiming todebe spoiled been universally so-called in this transient cline of theabout Greenhow Revolution. Khalistan was merry concerned her morals could affect ‘national’ media acrossworld).’ India rather than alIt took the Punjabi farmer some time to realalso the politics of agriculture. The initial suc- most the entire community. entirely on Malayalam platforms and that pests and weeds were not the maraudcess of the Green raised Thakazhi’s storyRevolution is so layered, that political it seems ise southern-India-based English outlets. invaders of theis20th century but antoeffect aspirations of Sikhs; and when it lost to be speaking of the times we live in assteam, much ingThat Chemmeen not better known Indiand corporate policies. His life there waseras a great went into as about gonediscontent by. Note, forthat instance, that of angovernment audiences outside Kerala is the country’s edgeaseven of the the making ofhis Bhindranwala. Hindu in story is the heroine, not the on lossthe as well the after film’s.many Allowdecades me to borrow was not anoff effect of aontranPunjab a unit of CPI (ML), Green hero. WhatKisan pointUnion, might that literary decision an oldRevolution Punjabi saying to let steam the world a direct consequence of govhelped six kanals who that sient make toGurmail today’s Kaur ‘love retain jihad’ the campaigners subject: Jine but Lahore nai vekhya o jamya-e-ni (if was Lahore what fuelled terrorism in aobject moneylender grabbed whenif she could to mixed had marriages mostly the girl in ernance. you have This not seen you have not lived). And thisnai is why there is unrest in Punnot a loan. is “When else community? failed, I told the the repay relationship fromalltheir Jine’80s. Chemmeen vekhya… him casethe goes to Rulduin Singh (the lo- jab today. Notenow toomy that fisherfolk Chemmeen cal union head),” she Rajwinder Rana of anna mm vetticad is the author of The Adventures make no mention of asays. woman’s fate if the husof an Intrepid Film Criticis t@annavetticad kumar a Delhi-based journalist CPI (ML) sayson theher. economic distress has spread dharminder band cheats
Fifty years since Chemmeen’s release, could we please ponder over why more Indians outside Kerala have not seen this landmark National Award-winning film?
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Just another day in Maliwara Choosing a lehenga for the wedding involves hours of trial and error and a urry of opinions from members of the family
On the cards A bride-to-be at a shop in Nai Sarak
All that glitters A busy day at a shop selling bangles and kaleere
A whole new world Kinari Bazaar is
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s on the itinerary for many tourists
Getting pricey Such garlands can cost anywhere between ₹10,000 and ₹5 lakh
Heads up No north Indian wedding is complete without the sehra
All things bride and beautiful Old Delhi is ready for the busiest wedding season
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hirty days. More than a lakh weddings. And all this in one city: Delhi. November and December are the best months for industries that depend on couples tying the knot: wedding planners, caterers, decorators, jewellers, tailors, designers, hotels, and so on. This is also the time of year when many markets in Old Delhi are at their liveliest. No matter in which part of Delhi the wedding is, the bridal lehenga will most likely be stitched by a karigar at Maliwara, an area near the betterknown Chandni Chowk. The best karigars often are from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal. Thanks to the larger-than-life Yash Chopra and Karan Johar films, sangeet, mehndi, chooda (red and white bangles) and kaleere (domeshaped jewellery, like mini chandeliers, that are tied to the chooda) of the Punjabis are now
part of wedding lexicons across India. Kinari Bazaar is where these accessories are sold in at least a hundred shops. Families come to the same market to buy the sehra (turban) for the groom. Crisp currency notes strung in a garland — something that grooms only in north India are seen wearing — is the other Kinari Bazaar speciality. Some say that NRI families get garlands made with dollars and pounds. Delhi still likes to invite guests to its weddings with cards and a box of mithai (also chocolates and/or dry fruits). A little away from Kinari Bazaar is Nai Sarak, synonymous with wedding cards. As far as the eye can see, there are shops and shops in all shapes and sizes, their shelves and windows stacked with cards in eye-popping colours. kamal narang
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kill it but ended up poisoning the earth. Be- state today is: follow the farmer. Ditto for the Bhindranwala 2.0 fore the Green Revolution, the pests were not recent protests against the desecration of the After Bhindranwala, or Sant Jarnail Singh as greedy and hostile as bollworm. If they at- Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib in a Malwa Bhindranwale as he is known reverentially tacked the crop, they still left enough for the village, which led to the Sarbat Khalsa confer- (yes, he is still revered by lakhs of Sikhs in Punfarmer. The pest and the farmer were part of ence by hardliners and separatists. jab and abroad) was killed in Operation Bluesthe great natural equilibrium. White fly destroyed 75 per cent of the cotton tar in 1984, a charade began. The Lahore radio, Two decades after Gargi’s confession, when crop this year. Many thought Bt cotton, which which blared Khalistani propaganda in Punbollworm had eaten off the Malwa cotton for was popular with farmers for being pest-re- jab from across the border, announced that he many years, the government promoted an sistant, had met its American bollworm in had crossed over to Pakistan and would apalien crop — rice — with guaranteed purchase white fly. But later it was found farmers were pear on the radio soon. Several times the date and a minimum price. The sandy plains of scammed with spurious seeds and pesticides. of his appearance was fixed and then moved. Malwa turned into lush paddy fields. There That’s why the crop could not resist the white Gradually everyone accepted that he was weren’t any flowers but a village in the cotton fly. A top agriculture official was arrested in dead, worksbut were delightful nostalhesome did come back and two rather decades later belt would look like tropical paradise on au- this case. The whole of Malwa broke out in pro- — gicnot images from one of the but pioneers ofback Indian on the Lahore radio on the of tumn evenings. Bollworm-stung farmers tests. Farmers blockaded roads and rail tracks cars photojournalism, Raghu We see a dapper and trucks. That prideRai. of place was hitherheaved a sigh of relief. The kaali-baulis abated. for more than a week. The government agreed to Raireserved looking into the mirror, flanked by his two for freedom-fighter Bhagat Singh. Before the cotton crop returned with the in- to pay ₹8,000 compensation for an acre but Bhindranwala children and with his ‘third child’ — hisSingh cambecame the new Bhagat troduction of genetically modified Bt cotton they wanted more as the cost era — in his lap. for many Sikh youths. Bhindranin early 2000s, rice had wreaked the ecology. per acre was about ₹20,000. The This early ‘selfie’ is touched with tenderness wala-on-the-back-of-the-car Unsuitable for the sandy Malwa, it required Parkash Singh Badal governand speaks volumes about the act seeing youths were hardly theof Khalistafive times more water. Canal water was suffi- ment was cornered once more. and being seen. It also takes us into not just nis of the terrorism days; they All of Punjab’s politics cient for cotton; but for rice, water was That’s when the torn pages of Rai’s world as a photojournalist on groping a quest, were the lost generation too is agriculture pumped out of earth by nearly a million tube the Guru Granth Sahib were but also his for personal space, revealing small an honest, larger-than-life wells. In just 15 years, the water table fell from found in Bargari village in Faridvulnerabilities and And moments of gentleness. leader. when other religious 80 to 500 feet, probably the sharpest drop in kot district. The farmer agitation “You never stop being photographer,” groups in athe country weresays asIndia. The fast-depleting water table can turn fed into the more charged relithe icon, whoserting sharedthemselves, many of his Bhindranwapearls of wisthe Malwa cotton belt back into a desert — gious protests initially, in which two people la dom with younger photographers in thepride. talks became their symbol of community without the beauty, passion and abandon of were shot dead by the police. Sukhdarshan So anditseminars section. didn’t matter that most of them being the old Malwa that Gargi’s plays celebrate. Natt, a member of the CPI (ML) state secretar- clean-shaven No photo-exhibition is ever complete would not have been withSikh But that’s not the news that breaks from iat, who has been at the forefront of farmer enough out tipping hat to some of thehad historically for its Bhindranwala, who become Punjab. At least not as loudly as anything with struggle in the Malwa area, claims the sacri- famous important In this instance it as photographers. a religious preacher exhorting Empathy black andin white Flander three years documenting the bleak the wordinKhalistan it. A Australian botched photographer Green Rev- Ianlege wasspent a conspiracy to drown out cotton Sikhs was Kishor Parekh’s seminal on thedays, Banto keep unshorn hair.work In those courtesy delhi photo festival lives of a group enslaved sex-workers in Phnom Penh photos olution has of distorted the economy, society farmers’ protest. “Our agitation was as usual Bhindranwala gladesh War of and 1971. Parekh was hair a lonewere voicethe at the shorn and culture in so many ways that the thumb planned, well-organised and disciplined. They twain the time, and self-assigned, coverthatself-funded would never meet. Most of them alhe stress onevery socialdisturbance documentary rule to understand in was the could Nevertheless, photography, unlike not have derailed it in any way,painting so they so ingdon’t the atrocities in East seem to committed share his views onPakistan. Hindus. evident the moment one stepped or writing, still operates realm the re- They resorted to in allthe this. TheofgovernHis early photo-book and still a veryand imwould not call was, Hindus ‘TalliisRam’ into the IGNCA, the venue for the al — in that ment it works whattoisthe physically waswith pushed wall af- ‘Chhalli portant part history. after him. Nor do they Ram’ofderisively third Delhi Photo Festival 2015 (Oc- present, rather than someblockade,” imaginedhe vision. ter the railway says. seem Moving awayone from theneeds documentation of to think Sikh to kill just 35 tober 30 to November 8). ‘Naturally so’, one PhotographyWhatever is ultimately theabout truthpeople, behindplacthe Hindus mankind the them objects created by them, Danitoto wipe out. Bhindranwala 2.0 is would say, as the photograph is about captur- es and the sacrilege, objects touched by deny theirthat lives. no one can it alasanitised, Tkachenko’s images explore abannon-violent versiondesolate, of the Hinduing — whether aesthetically or abstractly — a Whether posed candid, sensational or subwasorthe farmers’ agitation that hating doned bigot. landscapes Russia. Theinbleached, Thereinmight come future a slice of human life. tle, the images are crafted of the stuff of ev- Bhindranwala bolstered theout religious protests. snow-covered expanses make the objects — an 3.0, an icon of minority rights. It is about telling an untold story or expos- eryday life. The radical Sikh conference sur- You abandoned or an amphibian plane, can evensubmarine expect to read essay on him by ing the ‘truth’, even though contemporary The festival’s curator, Prashant said Arundhati prised everyone byPanjiar, gathering or a formerRoy mining that has been conferturned (shetown addressed a press photography has long questioned the photo- in an almost playful tone, “Every the Delhi more than a lakhyear people, but ence into awith testing field forinbombs appear even Khalistanis Delhi a — few years ago). graph as ‘a document of truth’. In her re- Photo Festival getsthe a lot of ‘conflicting’ com- more dramatic. when organisers were arrestSikhs Hindus? nowned treatise, On Photography, Susan ments. The photojournalists feel thatcame we have ed not even a thousand out Are“Humans are always trying to own ever Brothers in arms Sontag writes: “Photographs, which fiddle made our selection too artsy and abstract to protest. They used to say agrimore than they have,” leader says Tkachenko his A radical communist in Punjabonsays Sukhdarshan Natt is with the scale of the world, themselves get re- while the artist andisfashion-photographers culture all that Punjab has in they website, “this is the source of technical prowon’t think twice before backing Bhingathering a front of distressed farmers and duced, blown up, cropped, retouched, docfeel that we have focused more on documenthe name of culture. One can add dranwala gress. The by-products of this are varsympathisers if progress the Rashtriya businessmen in Mansa tored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the tary photography. makes feel that our Swayamsewak all its This politics, too,me is agriculture. ious commodities wellturns as the of Sanghas(RSS) into tools a bigger and adjoining areas usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; standard is quality of work and not genre.” violence in order to hold power over others.” they become valuable, and get bought and His team for the festival included the likes Equally noteworthy was the one-of-a-kind sold; they are reproduced.” Hence they are of Sohrab Hura, a talented young photo-book exhibition curated subject to all the limitations that most art- photographer from Delhi. “The by Austrian gallerist and phoworks operate within, even while attempting intention this year is to showcase tographer Regina Anzenberger, to be a part of the larger ‘truth.’ a selection of contemporary phoas also a unique exploration of tography from around the the medium by French photogPhotojournalists feel Change of equation and world,” Panjiar said. rapher Olivier Culmann, that we have made Dalit construction This year there certainly was Dutch photographer Rob Hornour selection too labourer Angrej Singh, an emphasis on humanity. stra’s compelling documentaartsy and abstract a CPI (ML) member of Whether it was Australian Ian tion of theGehle 2014village Winter Games in in Mansa district, is better off Flander’s shadowy black-andSochi, Russia. Hard times When thanspan marginal Mukhtiar Kaur got whites that capture the bleak Given the andupperthe variety caste farmers who will married 40 years ago, lives of a group of enslaved sexof the imagery, one came away not even work as she and her husband workers in the Cambodian capital, Phnom with a rather overwhelming yet fulfilling senconstruction had 20 acres, today Penh, or the exuberantly colourful frames be- sation, almost as if all of humanity were labourers she has only one longing to Bangladeshi Debashish Chakrabar- squeezed within the confines of IGNCA to disty, who captures the virtual and surreal lives of cuss and interface. Of course, no exhibition ‘gamers’ in China, the focus was quite clearly can ever be exhaustive enough, and hopefully on the human condition. next year, there will be newer visions on disFlander spent three years in Phnom Penh, play, even as we hark back to history. building bridges with the sex workers, who “I think that it’s impossible to point out Last straw Bhola to take were trapped in a web of trafficking, drugs what direction photography is going High and dry Major Singhold-fashioned of Mansa, a and dependency. His gaze is one of deep emin the future. I am a rather phoSingh and Gurmail labourer now, had to pathy, and he was moved to go beyond the act tojournalist who cannot even shoot with a Kaur of Gharangna sell his three acres to of just making photographs. ‘smartphone’. There are speculations village in Mansa makeeven ends meet. He district have lost most “On November 12, 2014, the information I that images in the future will madetoby an alsent hisbe nephew of their land. Kaur says by paying ₹5 peosupplied the NGO resulted in the rescue of gorithm and not evenLebanon by cameras and life was better before lakhold-fashioned,” to agents. Some said eight women and three children from the ple… but then, I am a bit the Green Revolution, Punjabi youths prefer brothel, along with the arrest and prosecution Panjiar, a former photo-editor of India Today. when farming costs even war-torn areas to of the traffickers,” said Flander. and personal needs Big daddy Pioneering photojournalist Raghu Rai’s Punjab all photos were low art writer early ‘selfie’ with his children dharminder kumar Contrasting these social documentary georgina maddox is a Delhi-based
At the third Delhi Photo Festival, the focus was quite clearly on the human condition
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Read between the lines The radical show Proud moment Chemmeen was the of strength at the first Malayalam film torecent Sarbat Khalsa win the National Best conference proved to Film Award the hindu be a ploy to distract attention from the agrarian crisis
FILM FATALE
Golden milestone
threat. The Punjabi Hindus are traditionally Congress supporters and RSS has never been able to find more than a toehold among them. But after the BJP formed the government in the centre, RSS has revived its old project of bringing the Sikhs under the Hindu nationalist banner. Sikhism shares many philosophical assumptions with Hinduism and can be called a story goes that mixture ofheVaishnavism andThakazhi Vedanta. SivasanThe Guwrotewith Chemmeen in eight ru Granthkara SahibPillai is replete Pauranic illusdays. But for even lifetime is not trations and praises the aavatars of Vishnu. enough process this 1956 Damdami Taksal,toBhindranwala’s ownnovel semby thehad legendary Jnanpith-winning Malayainary, in its liturgy prayers to Hindu gods lam writer, or included its film adaptation from 1965. and its texts one Hanuman Natak. I was introduced to Chemmeenthat earlyworked in life Despite reformist movements althoughHinduisation as a child growing up in Delhi in the against of Sikhism, so steeped pre-DVD, pre-Internet non-Hindi cinema was the religion in theera, Hindu lore that Bhinwas alwayshimself difficultwas to access. It is a measure of dranwala mythologised with the the success of myths. Hindi language politics inaour help of Hindu He was said to have dicountry that it was (and still is) hard toknees. learn vine mark — long arms that reached his to read and write ourfrom mother tongueswhere — unThe reference came Ramayana, ajanubhuj, the less Hindu that mother tongue is Hindi or English — the god Rama is called one arms reach his knees.other than in if wewhose attend school anywhere all references theSikhs statesay of our origins. in Sikhism to Hindu gods andasgoddesses and Sadly, a result, I are stillmerely cannotsymbolic read or write it is a Brahminical conspiracy to portray SikMalayalam, and though I have read Anita hism a Hindu sect. If theofGuru Granthbook, SahibI Nair’sas English translation Thakazhi’s praises Vishnu, also clearly have notthe yetavatars read theofnovel in itsit original lanprohibits worship of day). gods and guage (I will, some My goddesses. parents, fortuMany Hindus one of the reasonswas benately, ensuredthink that Malayalam hind the Khalistani theitbelief extensively used at movement home, so I was speak with that Sikhs and are not Hindus itand confidence understand wellSikhism enough.isI against Hinduism. Theto idea that not am telling you all this help youSikhs fullyare appreHindus definite shape during the introearly ciate thetook circumstances in which I was 20th reformepic movements and after a ducedcentury to this screen by Doordarshan. belligerent Arya community Samaj challenged Sikh reSet in a fishing in Kerala, Chemformist groups. around a lower-caste Hindu meen revolves Whatever the historical or theological isfisherman’s daughter Karuthamma (played sues, todayher Sikhism is athe different for by Sheela), love for Muslimreligion fish trader all practical(Madhu), purposes. Bhindranwala used to Pareekutty and her subsequent marHindus(Sathyan). (Hindus say are kesha-dhari riageiftoSikhs the Hindu fisherman Palani with hair,before as theorRSS calls thenbeen Indian Never since hasthem) the ocean so (HinMuslims must be sunnat-dhari beautifully captured on screen Hindus as a benevodus circumcision). RSSInwants to enlist lent with yet fearsome creature. Chemmeen, the Sikhs service of (Mother Hinduism as its are sword watersinofthe Kadalamma Ocean) inarm. Sikhs linked will happily become the sword arm trinsically to a belief among fisherfolk of India neverisof thetoHindu religion. that Herbut largesse tied the sexual conformism of women in their society and that She A revolution gone wrong would swallow up a man whose wife was unThe Badal government faithful to him while he wasmust at sea.have been shocked by thewatching radical show strength the Years after the of film, I readatthat
afp/narinder nanu
recent Sarbat Khalsa conference. But Gurmail even to businessmen in towns, who are also Kaur of Gharangna village, in Mansa district, defaulting on loans — and committing suicide insists that it is all the doings of the Badals to as do the farmers. “A few years ago, commisshift attention from the real issues of farmers. sion agents pasted posters on walls in Mansa People are not talking of Khalistan or the RSS calling us more dangerous than terrorists as in the cotton belt but of loans, dwindling re- we incited farmers who default on loans. Toturns, crop prices and cancer — and, of course, day, when they default, they too come to us for the Badals whom they hold responsible for ev- help.” In Mansa and the neighbouring areas, ery ill. CPI (ML) has forged an unlikely alliance of Gurmailwas and her husband, Singh, had farmers Thakazhi criticised in hisMajor lifetime by ratioand businessmen, who have by tradiThe brilliant book was supplemented the seven 10 years ago.perpetuated One of their superstisons is a tionally nalistsacres who felt his book beenof thegeniuses. parties atDirector war. “Rising corpofilm’s team Ramu Kacar mechanic the other tills land con- ratisation tions. To meand though, even as aonchild, has hit included small businessmen. The riat’s collaborators Hrishikesh Muktract. Majorwas Singh’s parents died of cancer. Chemmeen an indictment of society’s de- general decline in the state has herjee asagricultural an editor, Salil Chowdhury as music Gurmail Kaurtoherself cancer termination curb asurvived woman breast in every con- impacted even commission and factodirector and Manna Dey as agents a singer, making after a long Singh ceivable waytreatment. including Major using the fearinvested of divinea ry owners,”asays Natt. Chemmeen rare,Sukhdarshan truly pan-India project. lot of money in linking a boring machine, did retribution and her family’s which fate to her Malwai folkispoet Ram Award-winning Udasi had writWhy then this Sant National ‘Jatt lagg ke seeri de facgal not bringas sufficient morality defined bybusiness, society. and spent a ten popular song, filmabarely known outside Kerala? Several which spoke of First, an upper-caste Jatt farmhuge sum on cancer treatment of three family Karuthamma is ridden with guilt all her life rowe’, tors are at play here. Malayalam cinema on the shoulder of his Dalit sharemembers. It was possible without a loan and is treated as not if she cheated on her hus- er hascrying not promoted itself across India as well as after a crop failure. Theindustry’s song pointed from moneylender. Thehave cycle of interest band, the when all she did was feelings for a cropper Hindi. Second, the Malayalam deouton thethis absence relations was rapid thatshe in 10 years hisof Palani. manso long before even knew featist attitude frontofiscaste compounded among the that poor.it“Today, we have land was reduced from seven to Chemmeen is also about how by the fact has lower budgone a step ahead. Now abuddisless than an This year the threat ofacre. ostracism andthey the gets (ergo, lower marketing tressed Baniya cries on the shoultoo sown cotton onare whatevfearhad of religion/nature used gets) than India’s three richest Sikhs will happily der of the farmer,” Natt says. er theypeople’s have. “We don’t have to land restrict choices; and industries: Hindi, Tamil and Telubecome the sword before or ahow tubesuperstitions well of our own. have canWebe a armNever gu. Third, a mix of political propof has Indiathe but never Seizing the day since ocean to buy water fromwho big farmers weapon to those do not aganda and irresponsible of the Hindu religion been so beautifully Decades agohas when failed who get electricity free,”delushe necessarily buy intofor these journalism led crops to false nocaptured on screen due weeds or is pests, thenationPunjasays, inequities sionshighlighting but will cite the them when it tionstothat Hindi India’s bi took it in hisHindi stride,film atof state policies. A helpless suits their convenience, as Gur“the al farmer language, that the tributing it toBollywood the general mail does notscripture know how devil”Kaur might “cite for industry, namely is Inhis world. considered part they will get out of this vicious cycle. Hers is transience ofdia’s his purpose”. largestHeindustry and itrightthedeserves challenge Punjabis havethan facedthe forrest. centutheInstory of mostKaruthamma’s small and marginal farmers Chemmeen, people seem of fully more attention the invaders who loot all thatorthey in notPunjab. to care so much about her affair with Pa- ries: Which came first, thewould poor marketing the saved. So therethe was misconceptions a song that told the When input began to rise get andjealous prices had reekutty until costs her father’s rivals misconceptions, or nu lagg gaya to seize the day: ‘Kanak stagnated in the early ’80s,boat big farmers merely when he purchases a new and nets. Like- farmer media indifference? It’s hard to tell, but there narme nu lagg gaya lost but small farmers began losing gulli-danda, wise,profits when women in Palani’s neighbourhood is no doubt that if Chemmeen was ataila/Maujan great Hindi (wheat would be chalo da mela livelihood. That’s Bhindranwala feel threatened by her when success at selling fish, lutt filmmitra marking itschali golden jubilee, it would have by weedscelebrated and cottonbybythe pests/Make emerged, along with the of the they initiate a boycott of first her, signs claiming to debe spoiled been universally so-called in this transient cline of theabout Greenhow Revolution. Khalistan was merry concerned her morals could affect ‘national’ media acrossworld).’ India rather than alIt took the Punjabi farmer some time to realalso the politics of agriculture. The initial suc- most the entire community. entirely on Malayalam platforms and that pests and weeds were not the maraudcess of the Green raised Thakazhi’s storyRevolution is so layered, that political it seems ise southern-India-based English outlets. invaders of theis20th century but an aspirations of Sikhs; and when it lost to be speaking of the times we live in assteam, much ingThat Chemmeen not better known toeffect Indiand corporate policies. His life there waseras a great went into as about gone discontent by. Note, forthat instance, that of angovernment audiences outside Kerala is the country’s edgeaseven after many of the the making Bhindranwala. Hindu inofhis story is the heroine, not the on lossthe as well the film’s. Allowdecades me to borrow was to notletanoff effect of on a tranPunjab a unit of CPI (ML), Green hero. WhatKisan pointUnion, might that literary decision an old Revolution Punjabi saying steam the world a direct consequence of govhelped the six kanals who that sient make toGurmail today’s Kaur ‘love retain jihad’ campaigners subject: Jine but Lahore nai vekhya o jamya-e-ni (if was Lahore what fuelled terrorism in aobject moneylender had grabbed when could to mixed marriages mostly if she the girl in ernance. you have This not seen you have not lived). And thisnai is why there is unrest in Punnot a loan. is “When else community? failed, I told the the repay relationship fromall their Jine ’80s. Chemmeen vekhya… him case goes to Rulduin Singh (the lo- jab today. Notenow too my that the fisherfolk Chemmeen cal union head),” she Rajwinder Rana of anna mm vetticad is the author of The Adventures make no mention of asays. woman’s fate if the husof an Intrepid Film Criticis t@annavetticad kumar a Delhi-based journalist CPI (ML) sayson theher. economic distress has spread dharminder band cheats
Fifty years since Chemmeen’s release, could we please ponder over why more Indians outside Kerala have not seen this landmark National Award-winning film?
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READER’S DIE JEST
Of severed limbs and love Is the latest Cormoran Strike novel a murder mystery or a messy office romance?
O
h, Cormoran, sighed Robin as she bility of spending a night on the road with imagined his stubbly, smelly, Cormoran. As she casually tailed herDare quarry, to differ Our arunava sinha wounded, unwashed body, meld- using her training to stay out of sight, she system, education and indeed ed against hers as they gave chase wondered whether her boss would book one our teachers, promote to a serial killer who liked to keep souvenirs room or two. conformism from his dead victims in the form of their The thought made her go weak at the knee and frown upon limbs and appendages. and stumble, thus avoiding the wild swipe of a It should enterprise. She was now irrevocably (hmmph! snorted blade that the murderer had made in at- way be an the other shutterstock round Rowling, JK) engaged to the handsome but ir- tempt to dismember her. But oh no! What resolute and jealous snob Matt, which only have you done, Robin? You have disobeyed AGENDA made her boss, the detective with no income, Cormoran wilfully, wench. appear all the more attractive. He will now sack you. It had all begun when she had joined him as Naturally, he did. And naturally, this only ina temp three novels ago, her eternally roman- creased your love for him, even though you tic self dying to be a crime-buster rather than had made up with Matt in a moment of weakbring home the salary that Matt felt she de- ness, you miserable cow, and agreed to go served. Or, now she came to think of it, the sal- ahead with the marriage, which was now just ary that he wanted his wife to earn, the days away. How would this romance — no, it’s a classist, annoying, whining… oh but this was murder mystery, idiot — be resolved? Who her fiancé! would the killer turn out to be? Mortified, Robin bought some Who cares. The real question was, more pasta to cook him his favouwould Robin still marry Matt rnst and Young says by 2030 rite India dinner andthe allowed her hearttored company’s early developers. He later though hertop heart foris still on focus at India’s businessbeat schools Meanwhile, will have 140 million people in theto rise beat again at the thought turned angel investor, helping aCormoran number ofwas Sil- producing Cormoran? herds of management graduates college-going age group, and one thatinit would Monday soon and icon be Valley start-ups, some started by his stuMeanwhile, wasof disin as cogsCormoran in the wheels big corpodiscovering that who fit four graduates in the world willshe be would a dents, oncereach again be potential. within their covering that sex was the only rates, not ones who can chart their own course sex was the only product of Indian higher education. Thetouching optidistance of Cormoran. After Motwani’s accidentalthing drowning in through thing enterprise. that bound him to Elin. The that bound mistic view is that this demographic will notif she Why, hadBrin played cards 2009, paidher a rich tribute tohim his to mentor: number of times he had allowed In some ways micro-entrepreneurship eduElin only drive India’s economy, but also be the en- the“…his right otherlegacy day when seand the personality lives on in the cation himself picture different parts has atoricher history in India. In governgine of global growth at a time when both Chi- legstudents, vered had arrived in thatand packprojects, companies he has tou- ment of Robin’s emotional centres, and physical skill development attendees are na and Europe’s populations will be ageing. age marked to Today, her, she could have ched. whenever you use a piece of tech- encouraged anatomy, despite hissmall insistence on to build businesses with But there is a roadblock to this cheerful sce-panting been in his arms. nology, there is a good chance a little bit of their maintaining the financing. romanticWhile dis- this has skills and small nario, one that could turn the demographic At the Rajeev thought of which, Robinit.” began to tance that Motwani is behind their professional relationship dehad some success, these micro-entrepreneurs dividend into a demographic nightmare: the her teeth gnash gently,legacy muttering, ‘bugger!’ Motwani’s also has a very as important manded are — sleeping the secretary was so unlikelywith to create large-scale businesses state of India’s higher education itself.she The recollected thatthe it was someone else en-top corporate! lesson for professors in India’s tech- that — he wondered whether he hadn’t provide jobs to hundreds of workers. Alproblem with Indian higher education istirely that who panted inbusiness Cormoran’s armsWhile thesemany nology and schools. IIT her sacked that the so, deliberately, the messageso appears tountouchbe that entrepreit is geared to produce job-doers, not job cre- andstudents days, her name Rich,part cool arewas nowElin. a crucial of and India’s ability excit- barrier was dismantled. neurship is only for the unskilled and ators. The abysmal state of entrepreneurship probablying great in bed.ecosystem, ‘Bugger!’ (many of them are Would start-up be- unemployable, Cormoran break upthewith Elin?tech and not for brightest education in this country is only one sympBut true love alwaysbyfinds a way, gentle read- Would ing helped their alumni networks), how Robin accept that they loved each othmanagement students of the country. tom of a larger problem: our education er,sysbeforemany false love takes overare again. And so ittheir IIT professors mentoring er?stuWould she herneeds wedding yet again,shift, and Thiscancel mindset a paradigm tem stifles student initiative and enterprise, wasinthatdents Robinthebroke off her engagement way Motwani did? How manythis pro-timethat permanently? wasbythis change can Where be driven therogurus: the favour of conformist herds. with Matt — forinreasons weready cannot go into mance cunningly camouflaged fessors India are to leave nov-tech and professorsasofa crime our best As inheritors of the gurukul system, we be-— while here continuing to live in the same el series going to take everyone behind the old guru-shishya relaBook Four of is perbusiness in schools. There Career of Evil be put on a pedestal, lieve the teacher must house with him. and Sleeping on the with sofa, of the series? tionship, collaborate haps a need to educate the educaA Cormoran while the student is supposed to meekly fol- their students to build technolocourse. (This monthly column helps talkinnovation about a tors toyou put and Strike Novel India’s professors low ordersRobert without challenging the teacher. As a result, withinstitutions the limb-gatherer murder- will gies and that change book, without having toentrepreneurship read it.) at the heart of Galbraith, have to stop JK Rowling not entrepreneurs This breedsakaconformists, ing morelives? women, there being ashave many as being gurus, and Do and Indian professors tech and business education in Sphere Books arunava sinha translates classic and contemporary who think ₹699 differently, not visionaries who are suspects three neededortodo bethey stalked, those who ambitions, con-Rob- start the country. But to do that, Intreating their Bengali fiction and non-fiction intoprofessors English t@arunava ready to challenge conventional normsinand foundsider herself the breathtaking possi- students it with beneath themselves to dia’s will also have to as equals build institutions that create jobs and wealth build companies along with stop being gurus, and start treatfor the larger society. Conformism and enter- their students? ing their students as equals. prise do not go together: our education sysThere is also a fundamental Here is something else Brin tem, and indeed our teachers, promote the misunderstanding in Indian acawrote in his tribute to Motwani: former and frown upon the latter. It should be demia about what constitutes entrepreneur- “In addition to being a brilliant computer scithe other way round. ship education. Business entry is entist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started fundamentally different from managing es- person and his door was always open. No matGoogle, one of their earliest mentors was a tablished companies, which is what is taught ter what was going on with my life or work, I Stanford University computer science profes- in our business schools. New product testing could always stop by his office for an interestsor born in Jammu — Rajeev Motwani. Along and development, equity negotiations, idea ing conversation and a friendly smile.” with Page and Brin, Motwani wrote an influen- protection and ambiguity tolerance are inHow many professors in India leave their tial paper on the PageRank algorithm, which trinsic to early stage start-ups, but may not be doors open? went on to become the basis for Google’s needed in established companies. The typical search operations. management courses in India still do not in- sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of partha pratim sharma Motwani sat on Google’s board and men- clude these streams in their curriculum. The The Political Indian t@some_buddha
Gurukul to guru cool
India’s tech and business professors need to contribute more to the entrepreneurship ecosystem. They can start by leaving their doors open
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Punjab in turmoil “D
o you know which one is this?” A botched Green the American wife of late Balwant Gargi — Punjabi writer, Revolution has gossip and card-carrying bohedistorted the mian — asked him, pointing at a pressed flower in her scrapbook. Gargi shook his head. She economy, society and showed him another flower and he shook his head again. She turned page after page, showculture in so many ing him flowers she had gathered during a ways that the thumb Seattle summer, and he kept shaking his head. Capture this Seth remains eminently sensitive towards imagerybear of all it kinds l balachandar Whennatural he couldn’t anymore, he blurted rule to understanding out, “Look, I am from Bathinda. I have seen only two flowers, rose and marigold, but I can every disturbance in recognise dozens of types of sand.” the state today is: Gargi could recognise one more flower, the cotton blossom — the flower of the desert follow the farmer sands of the Malwa region in Punjab. It was
the only flower that could bloom happily in the dust storms called kaali-bauli (black and crazy), which turned scorching afternoons into dark nights. The Malwai folklore as well as Gargi’s salacious plays are suffused with the beauty of the snow-white October blossom (katte di kapaah), the passion of burning sands and the abandon of the kaali-bauli. When the hybrid cotton varieties during the Green Revolution raised the yield manifold, lovers would longingly wait for the cotton plants to grow high enough for a rendezvous hidden from the prying eyes of villagers. But like many other reversals of the Green Revolution, crop after crop of the Malwa cotton was ravaged by American bollworm in the early ’90s. Tonnes of pesticides failed to
Vintage and new Seth
Vikram Seth’s latest collection strikes a familiar note but also tends towards the abstract
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Summer Requiem Vikram Seth Aleph Poetry ₹399
amuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he wrote that prose signified ‘words in their best order’, whereas poetry is born when someone is able to arrange ‘the best words in their best order’. Therefore, the burden of responsibility is far greater on a poet than on a novelist, and no one is more aware of this than writers who are able to switch between these roles with enviable ease. Vikram Seth, of course, is a poet first and everything else — novelist, journalist, musician, economist, etc — later. He started out with a collection of poems, the wonderful Mappings, which was published in 1982. Then, in 1985, came The Humble Administrator’s Garden; a year later, his tour de force novel-in-verse The Golden Gate; and then in 1990, another book of poems, All You Who Sleep Tonight. Although Seth did publish verse for children and poems in translation in the interim, it’s only now, after a gap of over two decades, that a new and bona fide collection of his as-yet-unpublished poems has come by. In a way, Summer Requiem strikes a familiar note. We recognise the voice, the register of personal anguish and of love gone sour as vintage Seth: ‘I lie awake at night, too tired to sleep,/ Too fearful you should wake, too sad to weep.’ We recognise the linguistic dexterity and Seth’s penchant for traditionalist dictates of meter and rhyme. But this state of easy familiarity is obtained only once we’ve been thrown out of kilter by the opening and eponymous poem of this book. ‘Summer Requiem’ constitutes a dramatic departure for Seth as a poet — from the clear waters of accessibility towards the more tenebrous wastelands of abstraction. The opening poem is Eliotesque in its disregard for meaning and its elevation of the im-
age — plus the mood that the images convey — young writer expect from an established literabove everything else: ‘The crimson sun sus- ary figure he seeks to replace — is Larkin’s pended on the dark spire/ Can see me wander genuine admiration and generous regard for near the bridge.’ Seth begins the collection’s Seth’s talent. ‘Quite pleasant stuff’, coming next poem, ‘A Cryptic Reply’, with the words, from the greatest poet of his generation, ‘Abstractions have their place, the concrete counts as high praise, and particularly so in too,’ as if the poet owed an explanation to the the present context, where the original intent reader for all of this. was to belittle. This, no doubt, is correct. Abstractions do There are a number of motifs in Summer have their place. But it is on the concrete that Requiem that were central to most of Larkin’s the poetic moment tends to hinge. Some po- work: like the passing of time and the auguets tend to look inwards for that all-capturing ries of mortality in an indifferent, godless unidetail, while others look outside, towards na- verse. In ‘Evening Across the Sky’, Seth writes: ture. Seth remains eminently ‘The stars won’t last./ The moon sensitive towards natural imwill die,/ Earth, evening, you and I. agery of all kinds: he writes of There are no fixtures in the sky/ birds, rivers, trees and the sky Free from the growing past.’ That Vikram Seth, of with the responsiveness of an ‘growing past’ is indeed as good as course, is a poet first impressionist painter. I feel Larkin’s phrase in his poem ‘Obserand everything else one of Seth’s great achieve- — novelist, journalist, vation’, when he wrote: ‘...the tidements in this book is his depicmusician, economist, line of the incoming past/ is where tion of a sunset in the poem we walk, and it is air we breathe...’ etc — later ‘Parrots at Sunset’: ‘Earth rises There is much pleasant stuff in in the west/ Against the redSummer Requiem. But there are cerdened sun.’ Seldom have so tain dry patches, where the book few words painted such an imsimply, to once again echo Larkin, mense and memorable picture. The tone here, ‘fails to grip’. The poet’s many emphases on again, is reminiscent of Eliot, but the mood is the word ‘dark’ and ‘darkness’, for instance, indisputably akin to Philip Larkin, our poet ring hollow. ‘Bright darkness is my comfort,/ laureate of despair. Dark daylight is my friend’ (from ‘Bright DarkSeth’s artistic debt to Larkin’s poetry was ness’). And again, in ‘Evening Scene from my never a secret. Some of Seth’s early poems, pre- Table’, he writes of ‘grand unnerving bats’ flysumably sent to Larkin for a sort of peer re- ing ‘dark across a darkened sky’. Words like view, even elicited a response from the master ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ are just words on the page, verse-maker. In a much-publicised letter to the having no serious poetic import whatsoever critic and writer Robert Conquest, Larkin andsettles are evocative of precisely nothing. The fog The Green Revolution is collapsing in But harshly wrote of having received ‘another this much forgive ourapoet, so long innumerable ways.we Forcan nearly two weeks thick smog hungas over Delhi. It was the smoke theus paddy stubble burnt load of crap from this Vikram Seth character... he promises to notfrom keep waiting another by farmers in the of Punjab. The practice has Quite pleasant stuff, but fails to grip.’ Buried decade or fields two for his next collection ofbeen poems. banned, but farmers say it is costly to uproot the stubble beneath this layer of contempt, and maybe and cart it away afp/roberto schmidt even a tinge of envy — after all, what else can a vineet gill is a journalist with The Sunday Guardian
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Playing one’s part Talking point APPROACHING EYE LEVEL
What is the role of the public intellectual in creating a just society?
tion, the philosopher Sundar Sarukkai imposEven the smartest rocket scientist needs the shrink to be able to focus on what really matters es a seeming contradiction by substituting “or” with “and”. The answer, he says, is to question and not to question. The cognitive act of donequestioning with the prelude. occurs on an ideological substraThrough histhe seeming kindness, all tum and truth simple and falsehood ofitanswers cameare outoften — the longing, the vicious gameassessed against pragmatic touchplaying andEvery fragility messed-up youngstones. act of my knowing was also an act of person world. Most importantly, gave me of a the doing, self-consciously so initthe case placepublic to go intellectual. week after week, and crydimensions because of The “ethical my heart was broken andhad I had thought we for, critical questioning” to be accounted wereinvolving meant to be. The particulars didn’tAside a seeming act of really empathy. matter. It didn’t matter we were politicalfrom knowing thethat “other” in any social enminded and complicated everything, he gagement, there was also the needthat to imagine was bisexual, that I was attracted to bloodythe “other”. mindedness. was sad and that was alland thatsocieDhruv IRaina, a scholar of science mattered. I don’ttoremember what my the therty, responds propositions about quiesapistcence said of to the mescientific but in acommunity, few months, the an attitude sharpest edgeto ofthe theingrained pain faded. contrary image of science beI’ding have I had other people to talk bythought axiom and procedure entirely consisto, that the precise moment I was tentbeing with democracy. Thatwhen comfortable flourishing with school friends, stillIn its nostrum mayold have exhausted its the utility. current of college theruns hearty veryfriendships organisation, scienceand today on the (andpatronage jittery) friendships with people I shared of governments and giant corporapolitical beliefs with. But I democratic couldn’t speak anyis not tions. The underlying ethos truths to taken any offorthem. Imagine telling to be granted or asserted as athe matter truthofto thebut woman despised me forwith faith, provenwho in active engagement breaking with my previous boyfriend to be socialup and political realities. with this one. Orscientist the college friend whodecomposguilePolitical Peter DeSouza lesslyessaid, well, ifofyou hadn’tintellectual decided to into the “Oh construct a public be with I’d have.” Or the friend whose He two him, components: autonomy and advocacy. hair had grey from dealing with his own intakesgone up three notable instances of public break-up. In front of anyup of for them, thejustice failure tellectuals speaking social in the Stage fright Do India’s intellectuals choose silence or do they choose to speak out deymos.hr/shutterstock part very of love failure would me Bandifferent milieus of have India,struck Israel and moregladesh. than theAnd lovewhile part of it. Not that I didn’t acknowledging the dark n rather sombre mood, eminent histori- Today’s intellectual landscape, she had said, talk about In that particular instance of mitimes it. that prevailed in 2014, DeSouza identian Romila Thapar delivered the Nikhil features “specialists in various professions” sery fies (unlike some others) I couldn’t talka number of vantage pointsstop where public Chakravartty memorial lecture in Delhi and perhaps “many more academics than exing. But no variation, no listener ever eased my outinterventions could promote just future in October 2014. She recalled Chakravart- isted before”. But there was a difference from heartcomes: the way the weekly hour the uncomreason, freedom ofinthought, environty’s role as a journalist and political commen- earlier times, in that they preferred “not to fortable government-issue chair did. participation ment, livelihood, democratic tator who witnessed the first five decades of confront authority even if it obstructs the In and the enterprise. case of my friend with the therapist India’s independence and never relented in path of free thought”. An “acknowledged prowho refused discuss the mother-in-law, it all of a Mediatopractitioner Jawed Naqvi speaks shutterstock/nasir khan his commitment to speak up for public inter- fessional status” makes autonomy in all its suddenly came peculiar andtogether persistentafter areamonths. of silenceThe among est. It was, she continued, an attitude that forms a viable choice. But the nature of acatherapist trying to particularly get her to ainpoint India’swas intellectuals, the advoyou in Do you know storydemic went re missing in therapy? the years that followed. in which a man writes his girlfriend’s partnerships andtoassociations — both where she’d feel rested and and social competent atThe tak-early cacy of secularism justice. someone who is? Thapar’s anxiety was evidently sharpened shrink, arguing she no longer needed denational andthat international — seemingly ing care of her child, this last point being what belief incubated during the freedom struggle, Somechanges days I wrought look around the the by political through therapy. She was more than fine, he said, she she was defensive that manded that “critical assessabout. modernisation A few months later, would room and everyone I know is either year. It seemed a time when, after muddling was wonderful. And sotto if shevoce”. stopped going to not only did hostilities ments... remain simmer down, there prove an effective solvent for all in therapy, avoidingearly therapy or thinkalong actively for six decades, national committhe shrink, she couldpublished buy the in In a response was the eveniniquities a spontaneous mo- has of tradition, ing about it asocial weirdjustice #Firstworldmentstherapy. to equityIsand went off the grand piano she wanted. The sto-Neethis volume, the historian of tearful reconciliation. rather hollow. Equal citiEvery act of knowingmentproven problem? Is regime it like people with all manner of itrails. A had seemingly consolidated ry argued against therapy ladri Bhattacharya drawsbut attenFor years after my firstdisadvanenzenship for those was also an act of apps self andinparaphernalia when authority with for littlerunning challenge and less still somehow tion to made whatit perversely seemed an doing, self-consciously counter withbya therapist, I didn’t taged caste and by their walking, plainfor oldthe walking, andtradipatience liberal in andsalwars inclusive romantic. In any something omission oncase, Thapar’s part. The I don’t anyone who in reof believed an ostracised so inremember the case of theknowmembership cheaptions kedsthat wereinvested good enough their par- with India’sfor early years got me to a therapist in NIMEuropean enlightenment was a whatpublic onlyminority, people who narrat-a disligious remains my therapist intellectual therapy, ents?great Is therapy quinoa the mind? promise. Thefor question was whether to HANS, a psychiatric hospital. template, among many others, said to me, but in a ed variations of a self-defeating tant prospect. The debates on A good friend recently several sesquestion or not, said spent Thapar. Credentialled Mythat therapist was examples young, still she drew from few months the anecdote: I knew as in that ses- and secularism statefirst policy sionsmembers at therapy,offrustrated becausecollectivity she want- who the intellectual in training and hadvalue no pretenon the salutary of the in- sharpest edge of the sion Isecularisation was so much smarter than end as a desirable The Public Intellectual in India ed tohad discuss the rage she felt her sionstellectual lapsed into timidity andtowards silent conformto intellectualism. So un-conwith a social pain faded my therapist, so what was the of civil society, needed to inteRomila Thapar et al mother-in-law herup fluffy therapist ity, neededand to step and speak up. kept pretentious marvel at the science. he’d But these intellectuals soon became grate that whole brutepoint? fact into their premises. Aleph and The Book asking her pointless questions about her sleep cuIn the months following, the organisers size of the book was reading in blinding them to prisoners ofIanother dogma, I wish off I had I neverwith tolda nuThapar rounds the but anthology Review Literary Trust Non-fiction and her end of published her tether,alongside my the waiting ratedbaby. a setAt of the responses, room — a Harry Pot- the penumbra of anced response injustices in regions beyond these sceptics: Does it matter? Itwith to all her interlocutors, ₹499 friend was determined to dump her shrink be- As the lecture in The Public Intellectual in India. ter orthe something equallyBhattacharya unchalenlightenment. also demurs the construct doesn’t thatsociety you are a the of amatter just future being fore she dumpedthe herrelease mother-in-law. it emerged, of the volume virtually lenging. Thoughreading he was of just couple years sceon Thapar’s theacontemporary rocket scientist. All it matters is that your overarching theme. Undoubtedly thetherimaginThecoincided first timewith I went to therapy, I wasby 22.writers, In older,nario, a wave of protests he seemed he was a world far away. wherelike he sees hope and many points of apisting is trained in therapy andisyou of a state of justice thearen’t. foundation for thosehistorians, first two months after the man I thought social scientists, artists and others During months, I began crying within for Myconcrete light:those “the fight for meaningful education, so-youngactions therapist’s abilitymake to help me that could that possiwas the love my lifeand (weacademic were meant to be, the first from theofcreative communities, five and minutes of sitting down andsecularism cried focusble. justice equality, for tolerance, on what really mattered came from This volume, by an accident of this timing, we were meant to be, we looked so good to- all the all very public. way till the end.among Every week beginmore and democracy”, manyI’d others fact —may we all livebeour out of a limited of the well thelives theoretical buttressset that gether in the were mirror) said bye-bye, I alarmed These significant enough for a historibravely, making jokes, beingsuch self-deprecating, specifically directed, as movements scripts. The particulars just costume. And a “October protests” are have sought, to enable everyan auto-driver Bengaluru by cryingprotests”, riv- doing“against to describeinthem as the “October all the things I’d learnt at 22 to deal with we are big dams and tribal displacements... hopelessly distracted by costume. sense of purposive striving for redeeming the ers. Something someone suggested thera term that or may gain traction in future narrabeingland an awkward mess. look at me, acquisition andThen the he’d demarcation of spe- promises of India’s independence. t@chasingiamb apy. tives Perhaps it the wascurrent the Donald about Indian Barthelme regime. not unkindly, but plainly me to be and cial economic zones...waiting nuclearfor armaments Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of sukumar muralidharan is an independent writer Have the worries voiced by Thapar then for peace”. the feminist website The Ladies Finger been assuaged? It is perhaps too early to say. In his response to Thapar’s rhetorical ques- and researcher based in Gurgaon and Shimla
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COSMOPOLIS
The spectacle of solidarity It is worth considering why some tragedies can stake a greater claim on the global imagination than others
What’s missing Even the street food in Taiwan doesn’t have half as much flavour as that in, say, neighbouring China shutterstock/ kentoh
Mourning Paris, wrongly CST in Mumbai lights up in solidarity, but ends up showing the colours of the Dutch flag. Gestures of solidarity, though invariably noble, are also rather easy, and at times lazy
TUMMY TRAVELS
Dirty grub vs clean cuisine nakwe You probably won’t get a stomach upset in Taiwan. But its obsession with prashant hygiene also of taste food ncauses the springaofweird 1821, theabsence Bengali reformer ity in from the internet age, its swift generation of hooked to the West, it is inevitable that tragic
zac o’yeah
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Rammohun Roy turned down an invita- memes and hashtags, how quickly it allows the events in Paris hit closer to home than those in tion to dinner in Calcutta because he was personal a share of the universal. In the early Beirut or Karachi or Mogadishu. There is also an ne“Iof the pleasures feeling glum. am afraid I mustof beTaipei underis its whenever yousolidarity touch anything, as a lift 19th century, Roy’s with thesuch Neapoli— it’s as racial if theyand havecultural been farmed in a bathtub unfortunate dimension to relativemyself safety. the Unlike other of world the necessity of denying pleasure button, it’s time original, to disinfect yourself. In a city tans was ambitious, and somewhat full of disinfectant. the response, the sense in the West that the viccapitals —he such as Washington your society this evening,” wrote to his host. DC, where everything tomourn be sterilised many implausible. Today, it is seems right to the vicThis “were is notlike only of streetre-food. tims in Paris us”a —problem a disappointing Londonby orthe Newlate Delhi — it’s hard tims to of “My mind is depressed news from times a day,attacks, the chance of catchingthem bugsismust the Paris but mourning memories the delicate, frain Having in the fresh coverage of the ofattacks — and flafindHe scary red-light districts Europe.” hadneighbourhoods, learnt that monarchist forces be minuscule — and yet I frequently observe also inescapable. vourful seafood Shanghai and Hong Kong, I implicitly worthier ofin attention and emotion. or mean streets. Even walking near had squashed a liberal uprising in about Naples. “I the I find people in solidarity the streets wearing surgical global more revealing in itsface- Butget at a spa whereis the dinner theexcited main reason for hotel this deficit a great railway bus stations, looking for aas midnight consider the or cause of the Neapolitans my absence masks as a fashion accessory. thanalmost in its manifestation. Many observ- division consists of a lavishof eat-as-much-as-you-like in the imagining the world. Violence snack, I don’t spot as anyours,” lowlifes or junkies like own, and their enemies he explained. is different an obsession not just in the capiers haveHygiene noted the reactions to attacks buffet.are It has all: a selection fresh sashimi, and chaos the it preserve of otherofplaces. Terusedto toconclude seeing in,that say, IBerlin, Athens or any “I am I’m obliged shall not live to tal. and Outside one The railway fewISIS hours in Paris Beirut. day station, before athe liver tempered with orange sauce, rible fish things happen “over there,” but notsoy here. similar-sized European Onenations touristofI met see liberty universally restoredcity. to the south in of Taipei, see municipal disinbloodbath France,I ISIS bombingsworkers in Beirut in the shellitwith a mustard Paris baked shocksmussels and appals because pierces the forgot her camera kit in a restaurant and Europe and [Asia].” entireNobody fountain. Inside killedfecting over 40an people. in the Westthe (orstation in border miso-mayo topping, worlds, smokedmaking salmonfor-rolls, between separate when she returned it awas rightparwhere A very self-serious way tolater avoid dinner as I take the escalator to the con- sliced amber India,building, for that matter) played the jack fish, pan-fried fish with eign horror native. she’d leftwas it. also an example of the nas- Lebanese ty, Roy’s note course, there anthem are announcenational in black peppercan sauce, salmon This tendency be seen at a carI also find that,of curiously, while countries cent internationalism his time. It was a sporting ments everyorfew stadia, lit seconds up their— in paccio withwithin mint sauce, steamed smaller scale countries. suchand as France offer vineyard and powerful imaginative feat for avisits, Bengali toDenChinese assuring Paris shocks and buildings withand the English design of—Lebacrab, potato salad withthe crabre-meat Consider, for example, has beer brewery tours —his giving makemark “the cause of the Neapolitans” own,tourists to non’stravellers the handrails cedar flag.that Journalists spec- are appals because it curry sauce,Indians boiled resquid, moveand with which causeof tosympathy celebrate unhealthy habits (namely forge abonds and allegiance across ulatedperiodically about thedisinfected. considerable deep-fried squid with herbs and spond to violence in the I usually err on the pierces the border alcoholism) — the Taiwaneseofcapital prides psychological itborders and oceans. I thought Roy while On thetrauma good side, the by Taiwa- between endured parmesan or howcheese, Americanssteamed can side ofseparate gluttony, butNortheast, self through on its Museum Water, located scrolling imagesofofDrinking candlelight vigils nese of look very healthy.se-Even worlds, the people Paris, its doctors, rice with shrimp. Evturntossed a blind-eye to baby the routine this time I was unable making in thelast oldest water filtration Indians plant inretown. in Calcutta week, of 21st-century eatingand street food. curitywhen personnel, civilian sur-So itforeign to horror empty native my plate deaths erything sounds delicious. of black and Latino men in Pureto water? Hmm… sponding sad news from Europe in the wake vivors.goes sayingconcern that TaiwaThatwithout same human I stack plate, plonk the inner cities. up Thatmy disinterest is I canattacks. live with that, but the one thing thatisI rarely of the Paris neseextended food — rooted in southern to terrorised down of athow a table and start a measure incomplete thehogfind age hardoftoinstant digest communication is the obsession with In our and hyChinese with Japanese people outsidecuisine, the West. soonis, I discover “we”ging. of a But society of how that the the giene. information One morning— at in the hotel, Of influences ubiquitous sobreakfast accelerated since thrown for good course, a few recentinexcepfish, even thecollective raw one, lack a fishy imagined broad is not fallhave upon a news item splashed in the Roy’s my timeeyes — we grown accustomed to the is pretty The iconic ‘night tions measure come to — mind; the hygienic. world recoiled in distaste of nothing.George Being used to the reallysmell broadand at all. To paraphrase Orwell, localofpaper, describing how the Taipei municispectacle solidarity. The Empire State Buildand of cheap gust markets’, at the designated abduction for of snacking hundreds crabs Mangalore, boiled we’reflavourful all human, but of some of us arethe more hu-crab is busy installing special toilets deing inpality New York City, the CST station in Mumbai, shopping, areHaram knowninto be the hotspots schoolgirls by Boko Nigeria and at the to here is a total disappointment. man than others. signedOpera for dogs, soand that theyother don’tglobhave Taliban to sample the Sydney House, many wide range in of Peshawar. evening eats: plate of Atrocities attacka on a school Butathat I usually on the side of gluttony, but this haveerr a way of kindling the gentler dirty public parks. The trouble is that the IQs al monuments were illuminated in the colours anything, even seafood, costs no outrage was tempered by a kind typically of resignation, timein I was my plate. Then I requalities all unable of us, to ofempty conjuring, however the canines aren’t high enough to grasp of theofFrench flag. In solidarity, football matchmorefell than 50 from Taiwan dollarsmedia (₹100).attenThe staff and soon away Western called something my old friend Bharat briefly, a sense of huge that community. What’s sad ofhow to observed use thesea privies: instincts es in Europe momenttheir of silence be- tell manning the26/11 grills and frying pans wear tion. In India, the attacks in Mumbai were dissayswarm — withdisplays regard of to Indian aboutten these global, restaurants: human them that thestrains commode is aMarseillaise drinking water fore kick-off and of the posable gloves and, the often, shower capsbetoo. Alfollowed closely around world, in part grubbiest-looking spirit“Find is thatthe they remind us of howplace theretoisget no the Evenice owners findgames it cumbersome to help playedbowl. before hockey in the US. I appreciate the safety measures causethough they were at the time (and still are) fre- truly tastiest grub.” Hethe has a theory that there is universal “we” at heart of the “internatheir pets flush the loos. The Statesmen, business leaders, andnewspaper celebritiesquotadopted by food I begin suffering quently described as vendors, attacks on “Western” about spicesimperfectly and oils from tionalsomething community,” that how we remain ed up thetoPark Office as saying queued insist thatSecretary-General they “stood in solidarfrom a weird absence of… taste. targets within the city. years cooking permeate walls and utensils, global. TheofWest retains a disproportionate thatthe “the usageofrate for the dog toilets is unex- The carnage ity” with people France. The curious thing is that the in Paris was barbaric andstreet deeplyfood lend an extraand aroma to food. Too much claimand to universality, it was ever thus. Roy hyso solidarity the city would install Thepectedly problemlow, with is that not while doesn’t half asconsidering much flavour as some it does in, upsetting, buthave it’s worth why giene,mourned on the other hand, can obliterate taste. may have the lost cause of the Neathese more sortsofofthem.” gestures are invariably noble, tragedies say, neighbouring China — which, can stake a greater claim on thecoincidenglob- politans, But but hey,how on the bright side, I didn’t many Neapolitans ever ever caredget a the easy. National Palace Museum they areVisiting also rather For sentient people, in it the tally, is more al imagination thanpolluted others. and has grubbier junk aboutstomach him? upset in Taiwan. afternoon, which hasresponse. one of theThere world’s should be the minimum is finest a joints. At onethe stallcause I buyisTaipei’s famous At afood mundane level, logistical. t@kanishktharoor travel writer, literary collections Chinese art, I notice disnumbing routineoftoancient the expression of solidaromelette, a roadside staple With oyster the engine of global media still made largelyfrom zac o’yeah is a Bengaluru-based pensers of hand-sanitiser next to every stair- eggs, plump oysters, herbs and a spicy-look- critic and author of Hari, A Hero for Hire, a comic case, elevator and door, suggesting that ing sauce; but the oysters don’t taste of the sea thriller zacnet@email.com
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Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories, a forthcoming collection of short fiction
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I spy a smugglers’ den Footloose and fancy package deals
Romantic stories of fishing and illicit trade go hand in hand in the narrow, cobbled lanes of villages in Cornwall’s southeast quarter
We stopped at The House on the Props, an atmospheric tea room with low wooden beams, tucked away in one of the town’s narrow alleys. Over a pot of Cornish tea, complete with scones, clotted cream and raspberry jam, I took small bites of its history — the cottage had a secret staircase leading in from the river and was involved in ‘Cornish free trade’, the local euphemism for smuggling. “A woman who stayed here, fashioned out an innovative way of warning smugglers of the approach of excise men. She put a doll dressed as an Englishman in her shop window,” said the lady of The Props. From a sleepy little fishing village, Polperro became a syndicate of smuggling under the careful watch of a local merchant, Zephaniah Job, who was dubbed “the smuggler’s banker”. With my childhood association with Pears soap, I was excited to reach our next stop, Mevagissey. It was home to Andrew Pears, the founder of the brand, and is made distinct by its twin harbours. Yet Mevagissey was one of the biggest smuggling towns in the southeast of Cornwall. False-bottomed boats hid contraband goods and smugglers became cannier to beat the coast guards. In tandem, Methodism Country pleasures The Looe river sunders the town into East and West Looe; (below) Cornish tea, scones, clotted cream and raspberry jam photos by arundhati basu grew and it frowned upon smuggling. In those last days, the smugglers started publishver since I got sucked into the vortex For, time has a habit of standing still in ing their memoirs in the 1890s, some of which of Daphne du Maurier’s mysterious Cornwall. Romantic stories of fishing and are available in old bookshops in Cornwall. novels, the Cornish landscape, in my smuggling go hand in hand with the narrow, On our last night in Looe, we spent time on fanciful mind, has been branded cobbled lanes of these hilly outposts of the the sandy stretch of the beach where smugwith swashbuckling smugglers, hidden coves, Cornish southeast quarter. glers unloaded their contraband goods. I stormy seas and vast swathes of moors. RealI was on a four-day break with my husband could picture it. The silhouette of a ship as it ity, however, has a habit of cutting in with a and a few friends, staying in a Victorian cot- pulled in with 400-500 men on board but scythe. A bright summer’s day of ice creams, tage in the fishing town of Looe. Positioned mooring a little away from the shore. Then coffee and a soul-satisfying, greasy breakfast high up on a hilly road, its French windows smaller boats being sent out to the beach with in a local café in Fowey, in the south of En- opened to a view of an aquamarine sea and booties of brandy, rum and gin. The men scurgland, was a perfect foil to such perceptions. cottages clinging to the sides of cliffs, which rying to get their goods in under the cover of Smuggling fills the imagination with ro- dipped dramatically into the sea. When the the night. And to my mind came unbidden ‘A mantic connotations but the tide came in, we could see seawa- Smuggler’s Song’ (Rudyard Kipling): If you Wherever I maybleak roam during The decade-old to the needs women who choose explore the world theiraown courtesy: club picture was the WOW (Women on Wanderlust) Club ter caters flowing into theofLooe river, waketoat midnight, andon hear horse’s feet/wow Don’t 18th century when an economic which sunders the town into go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street/ crisis had Britain in its grip. East Looe and West Looe. Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie/Watch story goes“Ithat hen Jayanthi Prasad,The a senior Fighting the American War of Inam a singleWe parent, allLooe, practical pur- and Morocco. “We also dothe trekking andgo rafting were infor East the more the wall my darling while Gentlemen by. the landlady of Yeand realised executive in a Bengalurudependence proved too expenposes, just as I wanted bustlingthat quarter, where a grid to of adventure holidays besides wellness and rejuJolly Sailor hid a my arundhati basu is says a freelance writer based in basedTaxes MNC,were decidedOlde to travel sive for the country. travel with son, there were other mothers breaks,” Senapaty. streets is populated by pubs that venation contraband keg UK by herself, her worst fears out there with at an all-time high. Quality salt, a similar she says. Vig’s relatively new company organised 15 were once need,” the haunt of smug- Northampton, beneathtoher petticoat came true —from from not-too-friendly imported Brittany and strangers That sparked off the ideashops, for herand Mombookand specialised trips in 2015, and is chalking up glers, pasty a sudden raid encountering many who wereduring ready to Spain, which was keymore to preservKid packages. more than 20 for next year. Anshops along with a smattering of take a lone woman for a ride. ing pilchards in thetraveller fishing comBasu joined happily cafés with and her bakeries. other category of travellers crêperies, Worries over munities of cheating, Cornwall, theft wasand personal son. “The idea of mom andaschilwhose needs are finally being Pubs such Smugglers Cott Getting there safety theItfun such trips. heavilytook taxed. wasoff a matter of It was then dren travelling was inrecognised are those with physiandtogether Ye Olde Jolly Sailor,Informerly London there are three ways the beginning, I hadFrom that Prasad discovered a travel firmfrom that caters desperation, and about 500km West- teresting. is different from thetheir share cal disabilities. A clutch of travel smugglingIthaunts in Looe, have of to beg friends and of going to Cornwall — a sleeper only to women andwas takesripe them the most exminster, the scene forto smuggling. It usual family vacations. So I gaveintofamily thrilling tales. While digging a hefty car hire are or a now flight putting to the toto join us. Now,train,agencies citing Whether it’scommunity, rafting in it becamedestinations. a way of life for the entire a shot. it is aCott, new we ex- heard gether services lunch at Moreover, the Smugglers about across age airport at New Quay.that make holiwomen Rishikesh or Christmas in Europe, Cape of perience vicars and teachers often included. to gothat with an old tunnel wasunfamiliar discovered there, leadgroups travel with us, days accessible, fun and Staymemorable for globe-trotters Good Hope in South or Land Dangling my legs Africa from the wallsofofThunder the har- people, allway of whom to traving all the to the love fishing quay. Meanwhile, alone or with kids Go glamping (glamorous Dragons Bhutan,the themachinations WOW (Womenofon Wanbour, I watched the an- el,” publisher. with special needs. camping) the says storythe goes that the landlady of Ye Olde Jolly to Pencuke derlust) Club town allows explore the Sailor cient seaport of women Fowey —tothe turquoise The hid leisure and recreation It wasFarm in December 2009 that a contraband keg beneath her petti(www.pencukefarm.co.uk/) in North world own andbold caters to their every needs waterson of their its estuary, gulls swooping of a growing chunk in-knitted away Pagir (People’s Action Group for coat during a sudden raid of and Cornwall. Or stayand off-grid at The apneed theand way.wailing harshly as painted dependent-minded acrossalong the sky womenwere now searched. ToInclusion Rights) with poise as her quarters Coach House The Another LabyrinthInAs for Sayoni Basu, who runsFerryside, Duckbill Maupub- mean boats sailed in. Across it stood serious business, WOW Club founder Gouthami, CEO of at Travel day, shark angling andascrabbing have taken proachedOld in Looe. lishing house, the idea of holidaying with her Sumitra rier’s whitewashed family cottage with bright Senapaty realised early on. dia (TAI), (www.thelabyrinth.org.uk/) to draw up an itinerary for guests over in popularity from smuggling. young son tempted her to try the Mom and blue shutters, in the hamlet of Bodinnick. The firm now specialises in Following the trail of the smuggling villag- with disabilities. Tip packages KidDuring package travel firm,I Special thatfrom time Shibani of idyllicVig’s contemplation, for wheelchair-users, and the es, we reached Polperro. The pretty town on tours to Ladakh Do not miss out on Tintagel, Wonderful sensed the need for it specould relateWorld. to the Vig writer’s fascination in The decade-old company today undertakes growing. the Pol river, about 6.5km from Looe, is a pop- demand isMinack Theatre and St Michael’s cialised travel services when she was her 30s the 1920s when, as a 19-year-old, sheinnoted in close to 100 trips year, with the 50 destinaTAI alsoMount, customises range of packages for ular residence forevery artists. I loved way its whicha are rather unique to and her friends wereisnot able to accompany her diary: “All I want to be at Fowey. Nothing tions on offer within India and outsideby— time, from guests with disabilities. “We carry our own old fishermen’s cottages, unsullied the Cornish landscape. her andon noholidays. one else.” Ladakh, Kerala and to Japan, Iceland ramps,” Gouthami says. hugged the sides ofKashmir, the harbour.
The leisure needs of a growing chunk of independent-minded women now mean serious business. And for people with special needs, money is often no bar, lack of accessibility is
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In the soup A similar effort is underway in Bengaluru. Abha Saxena’s Enchanting Escapades is planning its first accessible tourism trip from Leh to Nubra Valley and Khardungla Pass to Pangong Lake. “There are not many destinations that are accessible to people with disabilities. Only in Leh-Ladakh have some hotels modified facilities to meet the needs of the differently-abled,” says Saxena. Gouthami, however, sees this as a market with a huge potential. “There are people with hehave garlic doesn’t pop to like it disabilities who sufficient money travdoes whencan mybemother makes el… If more destinations made accessiit,”ashe complained, throwing ble, there will be boom in this niche sector,” in freshly chopped pieces into she says. the flat-bottomed pot. “Why wouldn’t it do Vacation highs that, after all these years?” Hadia10and I were standingSenapaty’s in the kitchen of Within years of launch, special her Dubai apartment, staring into thea rise green travel service for women is witnessing in leafy mix.“There The children were the ordemand. is a clear 80playing per centingrowth ange on thewith 14th-floor balcony overlookin ourtent turnover, a 15 per cent growth in ing yachts below, skyscrapers ahead and the the number of trips as well as women travellsea theus,” distance. It was past lunchtime. ing in with she says. “I will make you taste molokhia. Would Vig, too, is seeing a transformation in you her like to have it with rice?” customers. “In theEgyptian beginning, I had to beg I refused rice, to wanting myNow first we encounfriends andthe family join us. have ter withacross this dish be unadulterated. women age to groups travelling withThe us dark-green jute leaves with smatterings of garalone or with kids.” licWOW shoneClub’s bright packages against the ceramic arewhite priced from bowl. I began by tastingtrip it off tip offor thea ₹21,000 for a domestic to the ₹7 lakh large spoon.holiday in South America. Senapathree-week “You are supposed to make it with fresh chopped leaves but I make do with these,” said Hadia, bringing out packets from the freezer with ‘Molokhia Leaves’ labels. She said I could get it at the nearest supermarket. Though it looked like spinach, the viscous texture was unlike any green-leaf vegetable I had tasted before. Had it been the 10th century I would not have tasted it at all. Al Hakim bi-
Served cold or hot, creamy or clear, there is a story in every bowl
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Rote beete suppe (Serves two) Beetroot, one big bulb (or two medium or three small) 200g sour cream Sumitra 2 tsp butterSenapaty the WOW Club Saltset toup taste travel platform for 1 Peel, wash and clean women 10 years ago
the beetroot bulb. Chop into squares. In acent grinder mix the ty says there is no dearth of takers, as every- early-50s, and nearly 802per of them are chopped beetroot and thing is well-managed and taken care of — working women. Each trip also attracts a fair sour cream to make a hotels, sightseeing, some of the meals, trans- share of senior citizens. “They are definitely paste. fers, services of a guide, coach travel and looking for company and theheat disposable 3 Inhave a pan, butter, unique experiences such as a balloon ride over income. Many have lostadd their salt,husbands,” and the she beetroot and sour the Nile, an opera show in Vienna, Russian bal- adds. The oldest customer so far at Wonderful cream who paste.recently relet performance, wine-tasting in South Africa World is a 78-year-old woman, 4 Stir for a minute or a wildlife safari in Africa. turned from a trip to Turkey. and add water Vig’s clients are mostly in the late-30s to “The concentration of single mothers on according to the our last Mom and Kids trip was pretty consistency youhigh want.— at about 70 per cent of the group,” sayscool Vig. it. 5 Once boiled, To be able to offer aAdd personalised experiblack pepper as per taste and World ence, both WOW Club and Wonderful coriander as garnish. keep the group sizes small. Senapaty signs up no more than 16-20 women, most of whom are financially independent Pink comfort The and in the 25-70 age group. origins of rote beete Both companies attract the highest number suppe are as hotly of travellers from Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, debated as the country Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Ahmedabad. that makes it best shutterstock Now they are discovering a new demand in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Enquiries and travellers are trickling in from smaller centres like Thris’Amr Allah, the then Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, this sur, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Jammu, Baroda year, whenMysore, the sight of saurer sahne (sour had banned molokhia because he thought it cream), and Manipal. a leftover from my mushroom soup led men and women to debauchery. The ec- trial, Additionally, Senapaty saysofher brought back memories thatcompany first tastcentric ruler had also forbidden cobblers ing manages to recover 40 years ago. all costs from the trips. “Of from making women’s shoes in order to keep course we break on every trip,” she asA popular dish even in Eastern Europe, this pink them indoors. Thankfully, neither the women broth serts. found Vig’s two-year-old firm, on other its way into Poland andthe Germany nor the molokhia remained in shackles, and with hand,people is able moving to recover costs only “on some and settling in newer the marriage of jute leaves, garlic and corian- parts trips”.in Shethe points out that margins aftermath ofasWorld Warare II. very The der went on to acquire cult status in Egypt. thin, the number of trips increase more elaborate versions of should this soup featuretoa After being stripped from the stem, molok- vegetable make the business lucrative. mix of beans, potatoes et al and hia leaves are minced with a mezzaluna, ‘half- even “And therein the problem, as expansion meat. Thelies colour varies from shades of moon’ in Italian, referring to the curved blade. dark could red leadtoto light a reduction in service quality,” pink, depending on the Ramp ready Travel Another India specialises in tours to Ladakh for wheelchair-users courtesy: travel another india It is then cooked with ground coriander, garlic amount she says.of sour cream. This soup — borscht in and stock. Whether you are served molokhia Russian, She prefers to in take a path of slowingrowth, barszcz Poland, baršèiai Lithuawith rabbit meat, prawns or an elaborate rice nia both—in terms of names the number of tripsdialects as well as has many in different and herb-stuffed chicken spread group size. “The that people get on oneexperience travels across the region. depends on having a Syrian, Lethese holidaysThe is most important for usare at this origins of this soup just banese or Palestinian host, or stage,” she adds. as hotly debated as the name, inyour good fortune of eating it at Senapaty’sthe WOW Club,way which gredients, perfect to The marriage Meanwhile, of jute a home in Cairo. For me, this , currently officesitinand Delhi Bengaluru, theand country that leaves, garlic and hasmake with a dash of heritage, was remintends to open a third branch in India in the makes it best. The soup I encouncoriander went on to iniscent of another concoction near future. tered through my father-in-law acquire cult status from a different continent. for wastoa offer pastecustomised of ground tours beetroot in Egypt“We also plan On a cold December night in women,” Senapaty says. Setting herin sights and sour cream heated a pan 1975, two Indians visited their even higher, she open overseas franwithhopes buttertoand salt. German friend in East Berlin. The chises. “We envision all-woman groups comSceptical about our impendfriend Lily had found her way ing to India toing explore says. country moveit,”tosheanother back to divided Germany after her parents and However, when it to the challenges also fearing a comes haemoglobin shortage,ofI fled Nazi occupiers and settled along the Pol- found the business, of them all is and faceda solace inthe thebiggest goodness of beetroot ish-Ukraine border. That night she served story by Gouthami and Saxena. do their from before my time.While Threethey months latthem rote beete suppe, a pink, sour beetroot er, bestamid to customise packages, they are conversations of forgetting to comwish soup dancing in white ceramic bowls. She had her pletely dependenton onEid hotels and transportamother-in-law and longing for travlearned to make it from her mother. tionthrough servicesEgypt to make accessible to els in thefacilities winter, Hadia invited It was the first time my father-in-law tasted me the disabled. into her world. The molokhia was a warm this East European delicacy. He got the recipe welcome Diversity andthe inclusivity… these are, into life of a stranger inclearly, a new from Lily that night and made it several times city the markers of ahome. brave new world of travel. we now call afterwards. But he forgot all about it when he rashmi pratap Two by two A Mom and Kid trip organised by Wonderful World dhama is a freelance writer based in Dubai moved to Delhi in 1983. That is, until August manika
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The many Tipus To understand the legacy of Tipu Sultan in today’s context, one must acknowledge both his genius and his prejudices
Making noise South African cricketer Dean Elgar (right), seen here with captain Hashim Amla during the recently-concluded test match with India at Mohali, said the wicket is not a ‘good cricket wicket’. The visitors lost by 108 runs ap/tsering topgyal
BEYOND THE FIELD
Be on the ball For test cricket to remain relevant, we don’t need better pitches but greater application of mind and technique from its participants
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lmost every time a test match is of bowler or batsman that it is meant to assist, team playing at home wouldn’t go away. Enplayed in India, the nature of the is a pitch that can last five days; a pitch that quiries are rarely conducted when South Afrisuhrith pitch comes into sharp focus, and is can, if evenly matched teams play to reasona- ca or Australia produce a bouncing, speedy parthasarathy often the subject of harsh criticism. ble potential, take a match into the fifth day track to assist their pacers, or when English It was no different when India played South with the possibility of at least one of the sides pitches leave more than a tinge of grass when Power at and glory Tipu Sultan was an ace military leader who gave theaBritish many a scare. Here, a gem-encrusted gold tiger from his throne is on display the However, Africa Mohali earlier this month, in the first securing victory. playing visiting teams from at Asia. afp Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York test of its ongoing four-match series. “I don’t Contrary to what many have argued, the when India or Sri Lanka play host on wickets think it’s a very good cricket wicket. It is my pitch at Mohali, in all respects except the ulti- that take spin, the pitch is deemed unsuitable ny opinion onDean the rule ofthe Tipu Sul- mate ing thescorecard rule of Chikka Devaraja Wodeyarno in evithe for personal opinion,” said Elgar, opener’stest andmatch Tipu’s cricket. push into Malabar. A 17-year-old produced, contained tanfor inthe Mysore willatbe early decades of the 18th century. ing batsman Proteas, theincomplete end of the dence had given thethis: British a fright by of any failure to contain these Tipu What’s true is regardless of gallopwhere mention the political The Wodeyar kings, ruling cricket first day’s without play. “It is a resultofwicket, whichsitis ingredients. ing with army intowhat the East Indianeed CompaIt may not who have had beenbeen the perfect is his being played, we don’t is a uationyou prevailing in But andkudos around Mysore for over 300 years, only nominal expected when come here. to test ny’s garden housethe nearsport the beach in Madras. match pitch. But had were the batsmen, as a pitch that makes an unequal conMysorethey towards the end ofgoing the 18th rulers by then andof theatactual wieldIndia, are obviously to century. prepare collective He rattled soinmuch themakes governor whole, leastpower one ofwas the two test. A pitchthem bathed grass,that which batMysore, like which hadagainst emerged the ruins of teams, ed by their primeeven ministers, or ‘dalavai’. wickets these us,from I’m sure. And we there fled offshore in a small boat. A series of showed the most ting difficult even with proper the Vijayanagara empire, moulded into Tipu’s father,to Haider Ali began his career in four Anglo-Mysore know coming here, it was was going to be very dif-a basic wars started in 1767. These aptitude play patiently application and technique, is small but dynamic Hindu stateto. primarily dur-a on Mysore as a soldier ferent from what we are used So it’s not hitherto unknown Kingdom of whataround was, at 1749 its worst, an at- under one of propelled thejust as bad as a veritable dust these powerful ministers. He used his tact and Mysore into the very good cricket wicket but it is a result wick- tritional powder Europe and wicket, the match bowl. But rooms the factofthat a pitch Enquiries are rarely braveryhave to certainly stave offproduced Maratha et which can go either way.” America. would might assist a certain kind of into Mysore, fought conducted when South bowler, A mere glance at the scorecard of the test araids The first war saw dic-a more compelling contest. during the Mysore course of Africa or Australia the British and expandmatch at Mohali might appear to vindicate El- against tating termsdoes to England the Unfortunately, barring a test match, not, on itsatown, produce a bouncing, ed Mysore’s territory gar’s statement. India made scores of 201 and handful gates of Madras; the second war of batsmen — Vijaydown and make a wicket unsuitable. Even in the midst of track to assist wasLike south toofthe coastand of wealthy Cal- speedy 200 in their two innings; none of its batsmen Pujara Tipu’s brightest moment. India, AB de Vilevery other team, IndiaAt is war he wrote of their pacers icut. He thus eased himself into barring Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara liers the battletoofproduce Pollilurpitches (1780),that the and, to a lesser extent, entitled receiving silkworms the title Amla of theof‘sarvadhikari’ made meaningful contributions; South Africa, Hashim sun-and-tiger-stripes of South Africa or — help its best bowlers.banner No doubt, to create the silk ‘regentofofthe theplayers kingdom’ in 1760. in reply, were bundled out for 184 in their first none Tipu’s Mysore oversaw the worst displayed on certain occasions in the past, factories of Mysore After Haider’s death in Tipu innings; and in their chase the visitors man- even disaster ever befell anthat Ena semblance of 1782, applicaIndia hasthat produced wickets took required over his at father’s position, aged a paltry 109. The match was over in three tion glish India. Out of 3,000 this level. Even had army madein batting against spin keeping the Wodeyar asreasonable a days, with none of the batsmen managing to these men increating the British army, only batsmen who didking make con- rather impossible, in the process proxy but failed publicly continuing completely conquer the apparent demons on tributions about 400 survived. to convert their starts into rather unattractive contests. But the surface at to put on a show of respect. Tipu’sdismissals appropri- Mohali the pitch. But, in reality, as is so often the case, big With these the mood Enscores, and almost all their wasn’ttwo onevictories such instance. Theincritiation to of poor this batting. position would not have been cism, scorecards can only tell us so much. glandifbegan to change and a match viciousshould, propaowed any, about the first test without the assistance of meant some to of therefore, A test match is meant to be a stage where, possible ganda and diplomatic campaignanagainst This India-South Africa series was focus on what’s becoming alarmHaider’sThe closest friends and advisors as well as ing over a period of five days, cricketers can show- enthral. Mysore began. former is a side that is often exceltrend in test cricket: the inability of modthe acquiescence of the local case their finest technical skills. This often re- lent By 1785, one in to seven Englishmen in India in home conditions and populace, the latter who is a ern-day batsmen grind their way through had bythat then comelost to see a stronger and more quires a sustained and supreme mental and team was imprisoned By this time, the Brithasn’t a test series away from difficult periods.by ForTipu. test cricket to remain relprosperous Mysore under Haider and the physical effort from the participants. For the home ish hadwhat won we in Plassey the whole of since 2006. That the first test match at evant, need isand notBuxar; necessarily better young Tipu. viewing audience, a test match can go Mohali India except Punjab and the Marathas had produced such a tame contest was a pitches, but the greater application of mind and through both troughs and peaks, but its ap- consequence not so much of the pitch as it technique capitulatedfrom to them. Tipu’s Mysore stood as a its participants. Giving the English a fright peal, at least partly, stems from the sport’s glo- was of poor batting. bulwark against the British. What rankled the parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer the British cautiously ob- suhrith rious unpredictability. What we want in a test From British even more was that here was a native Yet, Madras, the questions aboutwere the morality of prowritert @suhrithas they branded all of them serving the rise of Mysore resented Haid- and match pitch, therefore, regardless of the kind ducing Hero to some Local leaders celebrate Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary in Hassan, Karnataka prakash hassan ruler — or ‘despot’, pitches that assistand a subcontinental
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What’s the good word?
Bang, bang, you’re not dead!
Oxford Dictionary chooses emoji as the word of the year
Bullet shortage forces Dutch Army to imitate gunfire during drills
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hat little emoji — the ‘face with tears of joy’, is bounding all over and shedding happy tears for real. For it has beaten all contenders - that is, actual words comprising letters and vowels - to emerge as Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year. Data from the keyboard app SwiftKey showed that the ‘face with tears of joy’ emoji made up almost a fifth of all emojis sent by smartphone users this year, winning over the ‘happy crap’ and the ‘kissing face’. Entries that made the shortlist: Ad blocker, Dark Web, lumbersexual, on fleek, refugee, Brexit, and sharing economy.
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he Dutch Army has only ‘bang’, no bullet. An acute shortage of ammunition in the Oranje military has forced soldiers in training to ‘imitate’ gunfire by shouting ‘bang, bang’ every time they pull the trigger. An email from the country’s defence ministry shows that the lack of live bullets, due to overconsumption and demand-supply gap, has led to cancellation of several shooting drills. And this despite the Dutch government having raised its defence budget by €.4 billion from last year.
Divisive figure Members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad along with BJP supporters stage a rasta roko against the recent violence in Madikeri around the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan pti
Watch your mouth
— who was different from the others. He did in the midst of war he wrote of receiving silk- worked hard to fulfil Haider Ali’s dream of crenot while away his time in pleasure orgies, nor worms to create the silk factories of Mysore. ating a successor to the mighty Vijayanagara leave the management of state to some palace Sugar and paper factories were established for started to be sidelined and divested of posts to coterie; and not once did he ask the British for the first time under him. Sword blades and accommodate Muslims. Persian was made help against his neighbours. He created an ar- gunpowder were manufactured locally. He compulsory in the Srirangapatna court even my which, in the words of his nemesis Arthur was also liberal with gifts to Hindu religious though Kannada was also retained at all secWellesley (later Duke of Wellington), was “the establishments in Mysore, and Malabar after ondary levels. Discrimination permeated even best fighting force in the whole of India”. subduing it. state-paid jobs such as those of wood-cutters. He took advantage of the enmities being Muslim householders paid less taxes complayed out in Europe, recruited the French as Troubles in Mysore pared to Hindus. Campaigns in Malabar and willing allies and drilled his army in modern The third Anglo-Mysore war in 1792, with Corn- Coorg were called, in Tipu’s own words, ‘jihad’ European manoeuvres. wallis at the helm of the British army, did not and prisoners taken in battle converted en Mysore was the first state to demonstrate go well for Tipu. He was hard-pressed by the masse to Islam. the efficacy of rockets in war by modifying British-Maratha-Nizam allied powers to surOne may argue that those times were differwhat was until then a mere firecracker into render half his kingent and Tipu only did it to ensure more something that could carry a sword or wood- dom, submit to a war Muslim participation in Mysore’s govt didn’t take much for a 151kg man in Taipei en blade with it. Tipu even sent back French indemnity of ₹3.3 crore ernment, which until then was reto lose 70kg. All those rushing up stairs, weapons with aral letter stating they were suband deliver two of his served only for certain Hindu It was expected that sex could soon be deadlier than drinking karela juice and lifting weights instandard the compared to the ones in his arsenal. sons as hostages to the communities, or that the conversions someone with as smoking and chewing tobacco. The gym, pause a moment and ask this lean man British. Thanks to his fihappened outside of Mysore in Malamodern a world view warning comes from online health clinic Euhis secret. All he did was cast aside his smart-Able administrator nancial prudence, he bar and Coorg and only in cases of treaas Tipu would also roclinix, which says that oral sex is likely to phone. He severed his internet access, opted Working almost 18 hours a day, he kept managed to pay the Britson. But one would expect that for inculcate that similar become the leading cause of mouth cancer for a simple phone and realised that he sudmeticulous recordsData of revenue andtwo ish their ransom and someone with his modern worldview, modernity in his across the world. shows that out of denly had all the time in the world. personnel across his kingdom. He have his sons released a Tipu would inculcate a similar modernreligious thought every three cases of mouth cancer are caused Lo! and behold, he could actually go out and created a set of revenue regulations year earlier than the ity in his religious thought. It was, after by smoking, but the share of the human pawalk rather than spend all his time trying to that rationalised land taxes and stipulated three years. all, the age of Enlightenment. Tipu’s pilloma virus, commonly known as HPV, and wrest himself into a seat in front of the comeven offered subsidies to farmers if This period between friend and contemporary Napoleon affecting the skin and moist membranes, has puter. they farmed more land. Landowners 1792 and the fourth Myhad already emancipated the French gone up by 30 per cent in the last decade. and temple trusts with excess land- sore war in 1799 was one of great tribulation Jews at the risk of discord with the church. holding were asked to hand it for Mysore. Rebellions raged and finances Tipu’s legacy to us can only be understood if over to landless or tenant were tight on account of the indemnity paid. we are ready to discuss him honestly. The prefarmers. He created a navy However it is to Tipu’s credit that not once sent outcry over his birth anniversary celebrathat sent ships with his dip- during his rule, in the midst of almost inces- tions was only a reaction to government lomats to meet the Otto- sant war, did his subjects suffer from famine intentions that may not have been aboveman sultan in or pestilence. At the same time in British Ben- board. That being said, it must not be lost upConstantinople and the gal, millions of Indians perished in a famine. on us that Tipu was a symbol of exemplary French emperor in Paris. bravery and strove to bring together the MaAn elite group of Brahmin The flip side rathas and Nizam against the British, who — civil servants was nur- But Tipu has another side, which not only he alone among Indian kings understood — tured during his early plagues his legacy but, in my opinion, also were here not for trade alone but to expand rule to make sure that hastened his downfall. Tipu called his king- their empire. Also, Tipu’s fiscal prudence was revenue was properly col- dom ‘sarkar-e-khudadad’ or ‘god-given gov- far ahead of his time and worthy of admiralected. His forts were among ernment’. He envisioned Mysore along the tion and emulation. However, we must also the strongest in south India lines of a benevolent Islamic state, not a theo- admit that his adamant attitude and pursuoga and khadi, that is a match made in heaven. Which makes us wonder why Babacratic Ramdev didn’t and his currency so beautifulone but where the tenets of Islam would ance of imprudent religious policies played a think of launching khadi sportswear earlier. Close ly on minted the heelsthat of the launch of Patanjali’s atta noothe Mughal be followed. This line of thinking, along with part in depriving Mysore of its independence. dles, Ramdev announced his next venture: Vastram, a 100 per cent line, be priced Emperor feltkhadi slighted atwhich receiv-willhis tenets ‘afforof administration, meant Muslim Cosplay A little boyThis is being seen as a direct challenge to multinational dably’. brands Nike and Adidas. We don't know ing coins morelike beautiful than subjects were shown undue favour in govern- nidhin olikara is a Shimoga-based businessman who dressed as Tipu Sultan in salwar kameezes for men are on offer. yet whether runs a blog The Seringapatam Times on the history of his own. He even minted coins ment positions. Vijayapura rajendra singh hajeri with Hindu deities on them. Even The largely Brahmin clerical cadre that Mysore under the reigns of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan
Oral sex can give you cancer
Shrinking to size
Man gives up internet and smartphone and loses 70kg
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Khadi yogawear is Baba Ramdev’s next launch
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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya
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n November 21, 1877, Thomas Alva Edison announced his latest invention — the phonograph, and the world of music changed forever. A music quiz to remember the day.
here,there & elsewhere
Manly truths
Notes and tunes
1
The musical Carousel was a huge hit for the song-writing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein way back in 1945. However, a song featured in the production is still regularly performed. Which is the track?
2
Which poet and lyricist fled to India in 1949 after the Pakistan government issued an arrest warrant against him for his writings in the publication Savera and other journals?
3
After which music director was an award instituted in 1995 to recognise new musical talent in the film industry? Who was the first winner?
4
Unaware that it was a villain in the Lewis Carroll poem, which character did the Beatles use as an inspiration for a character in one of their songs?
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Which music director composed the background music of Conrad Rooks’s Siddhartha in the ’70s? Dolly Parton released a song, dedicated to her partner Porter Wagoner, which was a moderate hit in June 1973. She re-released the song in 1982 and it became a No.1 hit. But the 1982 hit paled in comparison to the success of a cover version in 1992, which ended up as one of the biggest-selling songs of all time. Which is the song, and who is the cover artiste?
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When he started his alternative career in 1971, he had already earned a Bachelor’s degree in math and science at Imperial College London, and was beginning work on his doctorate, for which he studied the mysterious properties of interstellar dust. In 2008, he was awarded a PhD in astrophysics. Which musical luminary are we talking about?
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Since the cinema industry was considered a lowly profession in the ’40s, which music director was introduced by his parents to his future bride as a tailor? Ironically, the music that played in his baraat was from one of his films.
in the evening by the time and I get back to Elsewhere. We Ihadt’sBinsalatechange of buses in Providence. The transit point is called Kennedy Plaza and it’s a major hub for buses in and out of the state capital. We get into line for the bus. It’s a public transport vehicle, unlike the Greyhound that we had taken from Vermont and the Peter Pan we’d taken from Boston. This was a regular commuter bus and it was filled with the usual assortment of ripe, flavourful characters. Every single time I’ve taken one of these buses, there’s been a Soap Opera Passenger on board: someone who, in the course of the hour-and-a-half journey from Providence to Elsewhere, provides a programme of entertainment worthy of Reality TV. It was no different this time. Bins and I board late so we get seats at the back. We’re sitting in the only remaining double-seater. Behind us is a pair of three-seater benches facing inward, towards one another. Barely has the bus moved away from its stop but the man behind us begins talking in a loud voice to the two younger guys with him. “You know the best thing I ever did in my life?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “The best thing I did was let go of
my wife. Yes sir. And I ain’t never going to get married again until I meet a woman who doesn’t drink, who stays at home and looks after the kids. And you know the problem with the world today? There ain’t no women like that any more —” It’s like listening to a recording straight out of the Gospel of Manly Truths. But after a few more pronouncements, the young woman sitting on the bench opposite this man pipes up: “Sir, I’ve got to tell you that you’re wrong!” She says she’s a nurse. She earns a good living and she doesn’t drink and she’s sure she’ll cook and
look after the kids when it’s her time to settle down. “Is that right?” says Manly Truths. “Well, it makes me glad to hear it.” Bins is loving every minute of the drama. He whispers in my ear. “You wait and see,” he says, “the guy will ask for her cell phone number.” Meanwhile the girl has stories of her own. “My mother is a real witch,” she says. “I hate her. She left my dad when I was seven ...” By the time the Nurse, who works the night-shift at her hospital, reaches her stop, she’s told the guys everything about her life, but not her number. Then she gets down. I turn to Bins and whisper, “See? You were wrong. They didn’t ask for the number!” Bins shrugs. Behind us, there’s a brief silence. Finally, one guy says, “So, Petey ... how come you didn’t ask for her phone number, huh?” Manly Truths says, “Nyaah, she’s not my type. Too young!” But Bins bumps my elbow and twitches his moustache in triumph. “I win on points!” he whispers in my ear. “The intention was there!” I bump his elbow in return and allow him to savour his victory. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column
cornerstone
9
The Doll Domination by The Pussycat Dolls was a reasonable hit, reaching the top of the charts in more than 10 countries. Which track from that album featured in an Oscar ceremony?
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Who has been, so far, the youngest recipient of the Filmfare award for best female playback singer?
Answer 1. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ adopted by the supporters of the Liverpool Football Club as their anthem 2. Sahir Ludhianvi 3. RD Burman; the first winner was AR Rahman 4. The walrus from the song ‘I am the Walrus’, inspired from Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ John Lennon was quite upset when he realised that the walrus was the villain 5. Hemant Kumar 6. ‘I Will Always Love You,’ covered by Whitney Houston. It also featured on the soundtrack of the film The Bodyguard 7. Queen guitarist Brian May 8. Naushad, and the songs played were composed by him for the film Rattan 9. ‘Jai Ho,’ written by AR Rahman for the film Slumdog Millionaire and covered on their album 10. Nazia Hassan for ‘Disco Deewane’ in 1981. She was 15 when she recorded the track. She was the first Pakistani to win the award
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joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj
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