The Sunday Guardian 20

march 29, 2015 | Vol.6 Issue 13 | neW delhi |

MuMBai

| Rs. 5.00 | Rs. 10.00 wIth the sunDay guaRDIan

Postal Regn. no. : Dl (s)-17/3366/2013-15

jump queue, bleed blue

inSide INTERVIEW: hirst and the dotted line 3 Damien Hirst, one of the most important artists in the southern part of Devon, speaks to a D i t ya mani JHa about all the skulls he has ever examined, including his own.

COMMENT: Bollywood witch-hunt

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Bollywood has shut down! Chunky Pandey’s appointment as top-cop has led to multiple arrests of famous tinsel town celebrities and a whole lot of despair, writes akHil sooD.

REVIEW: y your books are numbered, chetan

CHetan BHagat, the oracle of new India, has penned the memoir we were all waiting for, paper bags on standby. Payel maJumDar read this gogetter’s manifesto and survived to tell the tale.

IllusTRaTION a aTION : dEV kabIR MalIk dEsIgN

India’s defeat to Australia was, in fact, a gift by our selfless skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni to the Swami Army, a legion of obsessive Indian cricket fans. Cricket expert & funnyman Gaurav Kapur traces the events, from Michael Clarke’s complaint to the CA and the ECB joining hands.

S

omething strange happened a few days ago.

(No, no, Arnab did not start speaking sense in a soft voice. I said strange, not apocalyptic.) The occurrence I speak about is Australia’s cricket team captain Michael Clarke requesting Australian supporters to buy some tickets and come support them in the big semi-final match against India. The cascading domino effect of this seemingly inconsequential occurrence has brought world

cricket to its knees. The story is that 70% of the tickets for said match had been bought

by Indian fans. Clarke was worried that the Australians would be boo-ed into orbit and India would surf on the tidal testosterone wave straight into the finals of the World Cup. The thing is, this match was not to happen at the Eden Gardens or the Wankede Stadium. This was a match being played in Sydney. Even so, according to the Australian think tank,

the home advantage was being negated by the fans of the Indian team, using their hard-earned dollars to buy up a majority of the seats at the beautiful Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). Dollars that they could’ve wired back home to buy full states, considering the steadily rising exchange rate. Dollars they could’ve used to buy cheap beer such as the one that is Australian for goat’s urine.

It was like India was playing a home game against Austra-

lia, but in Australia. The very idea of a predominantly blue stadium was making Clarke and his boys a little blue (mandatory “boys in blue” reference, my apologies).

In the days leading up to the semi final, the appeal moved from an innocuous one to a serious legal one that landed at the door of the ICC. An appeal that saw England’s Cricket Association joining their Cricket Australia counterparts in the petitioners’ column. A clev-

er chess move to align with their Ashes enemies, for it reminded the world that England still plays limitedovers cricket.

The appeal by the two nonsubcontinent cricket superpowers to the ICC does not involve the BCCI though, nor anything that transpires within the field of play. It’s not to help finally figure out what goes into Ravinder Jadeja’s beard shampoo, or the address for Shahid Af Afridi’s fountain of youth. The

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a few bytes at the sartorial apple

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appeal, or the complaint, involves the fans.

Presented here is an excerpt from the press conference held by representatives of the England and Australia cricket boards to explain the fracas.

Q. So...what is the problem, exactly?

A. We want a cap on the number of Indian fans who can buy tickets for matches continued on Page 2

Steve Jobs may have worn the same turtleneck for about 10,000 public appearances, but Apple’s smart new clothing line ensures you can talk about over-hyped gadgets without looking like a dork, writes azeem Banatwalla.

The Best of Your Week Ahead 29th Sunday

30th Monday

31St tueSday

SeinFeld at parking42 p RunwAy AAy no 3, igi AiRpoRt 6 p.M.

World Cup Final Ruins of AgRAsen ki BAoli 9 A.M. We may have had to “give it back”, as much as we insisted we wouldn’t, but cricket enthusiasts should show up at the ruins of Agrasen ki Baoli nonetheless, to watch Australia battle New Zealand for the World Cup on special TV screens playing the game at half the speed (0.5x), leaving no scope for doubt or replays.

Elusive funnyman Jerry Seinfeld will perform in India after all. To avoid parking or traffic jam issues, the concert will be held at the IGI airport runway. Organisers have promised to shift the show to the hangar in case of untimely rains.

Meditation SeSSion With Zayn Malik BudhhA JAy A Anti pARk, dhAulA kuAn Ay 7 p.M. Taking a break from his band — One Direction — and life, Zayn Malik has decided to take a sabbatical in India, meditating and praying for a direction in life. Malik calls out to all his fans for a stress releasing session, hoping also to ease their disappointment.

1St WedneSday

2nd thurSday

3rd Friday

proteSt by let’S get oFFended (lgo) JAntAR nt MAntAR ntAR nt ntAR 11 A.M.

SuMMer exhibition delhi Zoo gARden 12 p.M.

Gather in large numbers at Jantar Mantar for a protest, as the protest group Let’s Get Offended (LGO) calls out to those who have been sharing their frustration on social media platforms. Considering the soaring level of angst, LGO has declared that the exact nature and subject of protest will be decided on the spot.

Boltas hosts this special exhibition presenting its new line of personal air-conditioners that will not only cool individual bodies but also bring down electricity bills and, in turn, tempers.

For free servicing, bring your ACs and coolers along to the exhibit.

india’S SoCkS – a heartrending Wardrobe doCu-draMa CentRAl pARk, ConnAught plACe 8 p.M. A deep and meaningful documentary portraying the life of a lost sock that was forced to let its partner go, under pressure from the bizarre ongoing war against wearing a matching pair.

4th Saturday a aturday

p What you Want pay Roop gAli, pReM nAgAR, kholi no 420 11 A.M. The Free Art Collective invites you to India’s first-ever pay-what-you-want auction, featuring artists like SH Raza, Anjolie Ela Menon and Atul Dodiya, driven by a belief that art should free itself from snobbery and reach more and more people everyday.

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Artbeat

t he s un day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

Jump Queue, Bleed Blue

Body song Victoria richards

Flaunting the scars of wisdom and maturity

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coNTINuED from Pg 1

India plays on foreign soil so that our boys don’t have to feel like the visiting team in their own home grounds.

Like they say in India, home chicken is treated like lentil.

Not that our boys are chicken in any way (mild chuckle).

Q. Fair enough, what’s the opposition?

A. The majority of revenue comes from Indians the world over. The broadcasters, too, want Indians in the stands. They have to spend less on graphics and animation because there is no sloganeering more graphic and no face more animated than that of the average Indian fan. Point a camera in any of their faces, and you will know what I’m saying.

A

fter just these two questions, the press conference was interrupted because one of the cameras turned to point to the Indian journalists present there, who then promptly painted their faces in the tricolour and started doing the bhangra while sounding like hyenas in heat.

The drama played out behind closed doors over the next few days, but in a world of “accidental” leaks and the internet, nothing is really behind closed doors anymore.

In a surprising move, the ICC has hinted that only 25% of the allocated tickets will be given to Indians for matches held outside India.

The problem actually lies with the faction of Indians settled abroad. Second or third generation, tax-paying and holding Australian or British passports. They could very well sneak a ticket and then change sides and support India once inside the stadium. To counter this, the ICC has proposed that fans will have to provide their passport, family tree (going back five generations) and proof of country of origin while buying a ticket to the cricket match.

The Barmy Army has objected to this ruling. In a statement issued yesterday, they have said that this will inconvenience the bona fide British and Australian fans wanting to see the game and drive them away from the ticket windows. In a sternly worded letter to Cricket Australia, the ECB said that all Australians are originally from England, and then hijacked the appeal process.

The situation reached an impasse with the Swami Army (an organised army of Indian fans) jumping in to say that this was racial profiling. Leading fairness creams also jumped into the mix saying they would pay good money to be associated with the ICC, offering customised shade cards to decide whose papers get checked while entering the stadium.

The UN issued a statement against the concept of skin colour deciding who gets stopped and who doesn’t,

In a surprising move, the ICC has hinted that only 25% of the allocated tickets will be given to Indians for matches held outside India. The problem actually lies with the faction of Indians settled abroad. Second or third generation, tax-paying and holding Australian or British passports.

They could very well sneak a ticket and then change sides and support India once inside the stadium.

sending airport authorities in all western nations into hysterical fits of laughter.

Not to be left behind, Benetton promptly issued an advertisement saying they have clothes for everyone, irrespective of colour. The Indian government promptly banned both Benetton and all fairness creams for inciting divisiveness, saying

that only they had a monopoly on such behaviour.

The ban on fairness creams was lifted after matrimonial websites lobbied to say that they would shut shop without the support of fairness creams. Three Indian cricketers promised to marry “wheatish” girls in support of an organisation called the Sab Rang Sangh.

The Honourable PM of India tweeted in support of all parties. He also instructed Mr Shah to promote MS Dhoni to a Brigadier and, in the spirit of friendly competition, Clarke to a Gazetted Officer.

The BCCI has come out strongly in support of Indian fans, thus deepening the rift between the top boards of world cricket.

M

eanwhile, the Ambanis have offered to buy the SCG and move it to Jamnagar so it can serve as an actual home game for the Indians, thereby ending the issue altogether.

The way out of a sticky situation was once again showed by MS Dhoni, the iceberg shaped as a human.Wednesday night saw a hastily convened meet-

ing between the aggrieved cricket boards, the Barmy and Swami Army, the Pakistani Chacha, Sachin’s fan, the man who wears tricolour lenses from a Ramsay horror film. It also had unnamed members of the Indian and Australian squads in attendance. According to a source, it was Dhoni who suggested that India lose the semi-final match so as to destroy this notion of home advantage and put this matter to bed. There was applause, some happy tears, lots of hugs and handshakes. The attendees, according to our source, then signed a nondisclosure and an undertaking to place no bets, and went on their way.

So before we feel bad about India not making it to the World Cup finals, we must remember the sacrifice they made for us, the fans. They killed their own dreams so we could go unhindered to another lovely foreign stadium, where the beer is cold and seats have numbers.

Where the food is edible and the restrooms have walls and doors. He protected our haloed turf. A small piece of India in a foreign land.

Edit: The appeal to the ICC has since been withdrawn.

The Ambanis are being persuaded to buy New Zealand instead and make it an Indian state, while the rest of us wait for the Prime Minister’s next tweet congratulating everyone for a peaceful resolution.

CoMPLeteLy unreLated: sidhuisMs on Life and Beyond there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s that of an approaching train.

Eddie Nichols is a man who cannot find his own buttocks with his two hands.

that ball went so high, it could have kissed an air-hostess on its way down.

third umpires should be changed as often as nappies, and for the same reason.

if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there would be no tinkers.

in the garden of opportunities, it’s much better to pluck the friut rather than to wait for it to fall.

right now he’s looking like a cheshire cat that’s had loads of cream!

You cannot make omelettes without breaking the eggs.

they are so timid, they wouldn’t say boo to a goose!

in times of prosperity, friends are plenty. in times of adversity, not one in twenty. runs are flowing like the fare in an indian taxi.

he is like an indian three-wheeler which will suck a lot of diesel but cannot go beyond 30!

you’ve got to have a long spoon! a hair on the head is worth two in the comb! indian team without sachin is like a kiss without a squeeze.

God is always on the side of the heavier battalion.

the bowlers were so clueless, they could have gone into a topless bar and come out sucking their thumbs.

they have dug their own grave with their teeth and god gives the toothless nuts to chew on.

the chain is as strong as its weakest link.

Wickets are like wives — you never know which way they will turn!

in London they drive on the left, in india we drive on what is left.

strong men and waterfalls channel their own paths.

statistics are like miniskirts, what they hide is more important than what they show.

troubles are like babies, the more you nurse them, the more they grow.

When you are dining with the demon

e’re experiencing something close to a body revolution at the moment, a backlash against the unrealistic ideals of female beauty — and it comes from a somewhat surprising place: for sisters (thank you Eurythmics, Aretha Franklin) are doin’ it for themselves.

US photographer Jade Beall has made it her mission to celebrate the shapes of women after they have given birth in “a world that thrives off women feeling insecure” with her new book, The Bodies of Mothers. Rachel Hollis, a motherof-three, recently posted a photograph of her postpregnancy “flabby” belly on the beach on her Facebook page, where it’s been seen over 10 million times.

Rachel captioned the shot with an inspirational message for all women: “They aren’t scars ladies, they’re stripes and you’ve earned them. Flaunt that body with pride!”

At last, we’re celebrating “real” bodies, and in the process, we’re redefining what it means to be beautiful — and it couldn’t come soon enough. For we’re still living in a time where celebrity magazines delight in pointing out the — “shock! horror!” — cellulite of the rich and famous, each garish “bikini body” or “baby bump” spread designed to taunt and to tantalise. Some women are lauded for snapping back into shape in record time after giving birth, amid talk of delivery room lunges, diet tips and unrealistic, post-natal training sessions. Others are lambasted for not ‘getting their pre-baby body back’ fast enough.

Self-styled lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow, she of the kale believes there is “no excuse” for not juice andquinoa detoxes believ losing your baby weight. “Every woman can make time — every woman,” she said after giving birth to her second child in 2006.

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ut while Gwyneth may claim to be “incredibly close to the common woman”, she also has the resources — and childcare — to work out for two hours a day with a celebrity trainer, whereas the vast majority of “normal” mums can barely move at all after giving birth (other than from the bedroom to the sofa, and then for the remote control to weep hormonally through back-to-back episodes of Girls or Orange Is The New Black).

Given time, once you’ve kicked (or just got used to) the pain, shock and sleep deprivaSome women are lauded tion, there’s a plethora of options, from ‘buggy for snapping back into fitness’ in the local park shape in record time after to post-pregnancy yoga — and lugging a 10lbs giving birth, amid talk of infant around certainly delivery room lunges, diet helps tone your biceps. tips and unrealistic, postBut here’s a novel idea: why don’t we take the natal training sessions. competition and presOthers are lambasted for sure off being “perfect”, not “getting their pre-baby and pile on the support and acceptance? Praise body back” fast enough. those that have been through the exquisite trauma of childbirth, and have come out on the other side, forever altered; teach new mothers to be proud of their C-section scars, rather than hiding them away; and stop listening to those who tell us to be ashamed of our flabby stomachs and oddly-sunken belly buttons.

Of course, just as there is no “perfect” size 10, we can’t expect a “one size fits all” approach to the way people feel about their bodies, either. At six months pregnant, I agreed (read: was gently coerced) to “do a Demi Moore” (the actress shocked the world in 1991 when she posed nude for the cover of Vanity Fair, while seven months pregnant) and took part in a naked photoshoot for a magazine. I too had stretch marks to worry about, and was concerned about what friends and family generously called the “softening” of my body — but did it nonetheless, curious to document how it would make me feel, and determined not to shy away from the truth about what I looked like with a new life inside me. And while it’s not something I display on the living room wall — and I certainly wouldn’t post it to Facebook — I still keep a copy of that centrefold tucked away inside my wardrobe door, next to the mirror, to remind myself of that amazing journey.

For me, a daily reminder of my once-swollen belly — now a vibrant three-year-old — is proof enough that all bodies are beautiful: lumps, bumps, cellulite, scars even “softening”.

So celebrate your stretch marks, have a party for them if you like — for as Rachel Hollis would say (and, no doubt, Aretha), you’ve earned them. THE INDEPENDENT

words of wisdom

“ I wear a necklace, cause I wanna know when I’m upside down.”

Mitch Hedberg

Artbeat 3

th e s u n day g u a r d ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 | n ew d elh i

The spoilt brat of Britart speaks out Aditya Mani Jha

D

amien Hirst, despite being one of the richest and most successful artists in the world, is still somewhat of an enfant terrible. Since the beginning of his career, he has been criticised harshly. Leading collectors and art scholars have said that his work is “worthless”, that there is “f***all there at the end of the day’ and that Hirst himself is a derivative talentless sensationalist at best, and a plagiarist at worst. In an exclusive with Guardian20, Hirst opens up about why glass terrifies him and how dots are turning his world around.

Q. You recently said that despite the hoopla over your sales figures, you believe “Art is more powerful than money”. Isn’t this hypocritical for someone who also said that the only difference between the “dot” paintings made by him and those by his assistants “is the money”?

A. First of all, I don’t think my assistants — even Rachel — are destitute or anything like that.

They have money; I just happen to have a lot more of it than they do. Secondly, the only people who end up earning big money are the ones who convey the impression

“ I don’t think my assistants — even Rachel — are destitute or anything like that. They have money; I just happen to have a lot more of it than they do.”

that money is the last thing that they need.

Take the platinum skull, for example (For the Love of God, a 2007 work made by recreating a human skull in platinum, adorned with 8,601 diamonds). Any fool with an anatomy book can create a skull. One of my ex-girlfriends was a medical student who would do that sort of thing for fun. But to create an absurdly expensive skull, one that cost £15,000,000 to manufacture: now that’s called art. That’s called thinking outside the box! (points at his own skull and laughs) How much are you being paid to write about me, by the way?

Q. Never mind that. I also wanted to ask you about your first exhibition of paintings, No Love Lost, which was just about the only series you have made that hasn’t divided critics; everybody thought it was rubbish. Did that hurt? Does it still hurt?

A. Not really, to be honest. I have never hankered for critical attention, except for when it has suited me, of course. Here, I was just bored of fiddling around with glass and animals and picking up a paintbrush just seemed like the thing to do. It seemed… I don’t know, artistic. That people didn’t much like it was predictable be-

Damien Hirst and (right) his 2007 piece For the Love of God.

cause I don’t really paint much as a rule.

Q. Tell us a little about how the Mickey Mouse paintings came to be. A lot of people felt that this was just another thing you borrowed from Warhol and the rest of the pop art brigade. Why did you decide to take Disney up on their offer?

A Paint-By-Number War

A. Look, Mickey Mouse is no more a kiddie thing than Alice in Wonderland, alright? I think it’s this incredibly beautiful thing, a complex, complicated piece of art that has the potential to be very, very dangerous as well. You saw how, in the 2008 American presidential elections, someone put “Mickey Mouse” on the ballot and there was this huge hullaba-

loo about it. Remember, kids aren’t dumb; in many cases, they make connections and leaps of logic that regular, boring old-grown-ups like you and I just aren’t equipped for.

A lot of people said that I used 12 dots to make Mickey Mouse because I wanted to make some kind of statement about the revival of minimalism but that’s all baloney.

The truth is that my drawing skills

are at par with those of a moderately talented 12-year-old. I wanted to make something which a child can easily recreate, hunched over his little drawing book with sketch pens.

Q. And now for the question that most artists (and journalists) dread: what are you working on currently?

A. I’m glad you asked that, actually: I have two very exciting projects in the pipeline. The first is called Never Say Never, and it’s an installation piece. All that I am allowed to say about this one is that it involves a live, beating human heart. It deals with the concept of resuscitation and how some people make living wills or DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate) so that they are not hooked on to a machine, kept alive without any meaningful mental activity.

The other one is a piece commissioned by the website Ashley Madison, which has been doing quite well of late. It is a video of people having sex, of course, but it’s not quite a porno, although I could have easily managed that.

The idea is to show adultery as a mode of artistic rebellion against life as we know it. Who needs conformity when you have commercial, commissioned art, you

know? (laughs, scratches head)

Art dealer dupes collectors into buying child’s doodles

BY OUR CORRESPONDENT

War, What is It Good For? was the last finished work by the late American artist Ruler Amespaint (1919-1956). According to the artist, the central red blotch symbolises bloodshed while the grey represents “the grey areas in all of our lives”.

The Delhi police arrested noted art dealer Ajay Sharma last week, charging him with fraud after it was revealed that “Apocalypse Postponed”, a series of paintings he had sold for Rs 50 lakh last week, was in fact a collection of his four-year-old son’s doodles. In a statement released by Mr KK Jaiswal, Assistant Commissioner of Police, it was mentioned that “He (Sharma) had been an honest man for most of his life, but had developed criminal tendencies only since last May, when a conversation with a critic from London convinced him that trying to understand art was futile.” Jaiswal added: “We have recovered a total of seven paintings, each of which sold for Rs 5-10 lakh at an event held at Sharma’s gallery Summerland last Sunday. The buyers were all established art collectors who will soon be compensated by him.”

The fraud was exposed following a timely intervention by Simranjeet Kaur, who teaches art at the kindergarten where Sharma’s son, four-year-old Tarun, studies. Kaur is also the wife of one of the collectors who bought Tarun’s doodles, believing them to be the work of an anonymous modern master, who died after years of alcohol and drug abuse. Kaur said: “He had convinced everybody that his friend, a man who wished to be anonymous even in death, had painted this series of abstracts. The series was supposed to be a cautionary about the effects of prolonged drug abuse on the human body.” Kaur got suspicious after a piece that her husband showed her seemed very similar to what young Tarun had made in class.

“I immediately showed my hus-

One of four-year-old Tarun Sharma’s doodles, which sold for Rs 10 lakh.

The fraud was exposed following a timely intervention by Simranjeet Kaur, who teaches art at the kindergarten where Sharma’s son, four-year-old Tarun, studies. Kaur is also the wife of one of the collectors who bought Tarun’s doodles, believing them to be the work of an anonymous modern master.

band what Tarun had drawn in class,” Kaur said. “At first, he wouldn’t believe me. He even demanded to know how I knew this late, anonymous artist. After a while, he took a different track and said that the boy must be a prodigy, or that he consciously copied something he saw in his father’s room. Eventually,

he realised that the child wasn’t fooling him; the father was.”

Another collector, who prefers to go unnamed, said that the auction was mostly a result of Sharma’s clever baiting of collectors wanting to score points over one another. “He (Sharma) has known these people for a long time now. He knows where

each one’s weakness lies. He knows their habits, their likes and dislikes.

All he had to do was to play them off each other. For instance, during the first painting, he made a snide remark about one collector not having anything made after 1940 at his house. Later, he politely informed another one that brochures for the show would be handed out at the gallery doors on the way out, knowing well that this particular collector was insecure about his knowledge of modern art. What Sharma does at auctions is art in itself.”

Sharma is currently in police custody and will appear before a judge in a fortnight’s time. His ex-wife, given the extenuating circumstances, has been granted sole custody of Tarun.

the buzz

Mondrian estate upset at record sale The estate of late Dutch painter Piet Mondrian sued the auction house Christie’s after a record-breaking sale left them richer by millions of dollars.

“Piet led an ascetic lifestyle all his life.

He would have laughed at the suggestion that an artist could be rich or indeed, be rich enough not to have a day job,” a representative from the estate said. “This is a travesty. We request the auctioneers to kindly return the money to the unfortunate buyers. Surely spending millions of dollars on a stupid painting is a bad idea?”

Subodh Gupta launches kitchenware line The Patna-born and Gurgaon-based artist Subodh Gupta launched his selftitled line of kitchenware last week. In collaboration with the kitchenware brand Prestige, Gupta has designed pots, pans, griddles, pressure cookers and knives. A PR representative from Prestige said: “Gupta showed the world that at the end of the day, all of us crave a good, solid, home-cooked meal.

With ‘Line of Control’, his

mushroom cloud of utensils, he created poetry with kitchenware; he has now done the same for us.” In a promotional video for the new line, Gupta is seen preparing a

traditional Bihari meal using Prestige products. He chops vegetables, pounds chunks of ginger and garlic and even prepares his own spice powders by roasting whole pepper and coriander seeds. After what appears to be hours of hard work, however, Gupta is seen smacking his lips at a red brick placed inside one of his pans. He then faces the camera and says, “Nobody knew what artists cook up. Until now.” The

51-year-old Gupta, trained as a painter, has worked across a variety of media. But this is his first stint as a commercial designer. Upon being asked if he feared rejection or failure, Gupta shrugged off these concerns. He said, “Life is too short to worry about hypotheticals. In the words of the great philosopher Navjot Singh Sidhu, ‘If my aunt had been born with a moustache, she would have been my uncle.’”

Cruise claims he is a performance artist In a shocking revelation, actor and producer Tom Cruise announced last week that his public persona, including but not limited to his belief in Scientology, was actually an extended performance piece titled Me, Myself and Katie. Cruise said, in a statement released on YouTube: “Let me repeat, what you have heard and seen is not the real Thomas Mapother. In real life, I play the piano, make furniture and write modernist poetry under the pen-name Bradley Pitstop.” Mapother has since been unavailable for comment.

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Artbeat

t he s un day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

A duologue with our brand new Cultural Guardian A restaurant with an exhaustive menu serves as the backdrop to Guardian20’s enriching conversation with Rajendra Sriram Srivastav, about chicken and the Censor Board’s fresh approach. tell you that it doesn’t just extend to animals. I will give you another example — if a terrorist in a film is shown carrying an assault rifle, he can carry either AK-47, AK105, or Desarrollos Industriales Casanave SC-2005 [the rifles approved by the CBFC]; if he carries a different assault rifle, such as AK-74, AK-101 or Wimmersperg Spz-kr, those scenes will be censored as well.

R

ajendra Sriram Srivastav, 65, the Central Board of Film Certification’s (CBFC) newly appointed Cultural Guardian, has constantly made news in the last few weeks. Since Srivastav’s appointment, the CBFC’s Advisory Panel has changed in both size and character: the previous members of the Advisory Panel — consisting of film critics, screenwriters, directors — totalled to 23; now they are more than 800, including doctors, engineers, ventriloquists, ornithologists, archaeologists, fishermen, rickshaw pullers, horologists, among others — so that, according to Srivastav, “We don’t offend anyone.” Guardian20 met Srivastav at a restaurant in Andheri West, Mumbai, to talk about the future of film certification in India.

Q. You have been heading the CBFC for over two months now. What have been some major achievements of the board in the period?

A. Unlike the previous Censor Board, we have a fresh approach towards certifying films. Our board, for instance, wants to take a strict stand against all “double meaning” dialogues, especially because the problem was about to reach an alarming proportion. So we asked ourselves, “What leads to ‘double meaning’ dialogues?’” The answer was simple: “Dialogues.”

We arrived at the consensus that getting rid of dialogues can solve the problem. Because no dialogues means no “double meaning” dialogues. As simple as that.

We want to remove entire chunks of dialogues from certain scenes. Because we realised that beeping them was not as effective; you could still make out the cuss words, which was just unacceptable. Also, it’s not just about what you hear, but the characters’ underlying intentions, so most dialogues are not safe.

And removing dialogues will enhance the quality of

Q. What problem does the board have with butter chicken?

A. Mintu hates butter chicken.

Q. Who is Mintu?

A. My five-year-old son.

Q. But don’t you think these policies are a little too haphazard?

A. I am hungry. verbal and non-verbal cues of donkeys were analysed to understand their response to scenes involving their kind in a film. v

films and take them closer to the origins of Indian cinema, when everything was almost... perfect.

Q. The silent era?

A. Yes, going back to our roots, in my opinion, is the only solution to our problems. Why do you need an ordinary present when you had a glorious past?

Our board, for instance, wants to take a strict stand against the “double meaning” dialogues, especially because the problem was about to reach an alarming proportion. So we asked ourselves, “What leads to ‘double meaning’ dialogues?’”

The answer was simple: “Dialogues.” We arrived at the consensus that getting rid of dialogues can solve the problem. Because no dialogues means no “double meaning” dialogues. As simple as that.

Q. What are some other areas that the CBFC intends to focus on?

A. We have expanded the CBFC core members to include specialists who have the necessary expertise to judge films.

Q. You mean people who are well-versed with dif different kinds of films?

A. No, members who are relevant to the story of the film; we are looking for experts. So, for instance, if there’s a film on cops, we need to have police inspectors on the board. In fact, we have already begun that process. Recently, a film about a notorious serial killer [Sanshey Sood, charged with 61 murders] was submitted to the board. We, of course, didn’t have a serial killer on the panel, but we weren’t deterred. We travelled across the country to find a suitable serial killer who could understand and censor the film better. We eventually found one, and

Chicken tikka is a-okay. Butter chicken is not.

the film will soon release with 62 cuts. Then, a key scene of another film involved donkeys, so we made apt provisions for that too.

A bunch of donkeys were shown the film, and we considered their decision while certifying the film and suggesting cuts.

Q. Donkeys?

A. I know what you are thinking but, trust me, it’s a foolproof method. We closely analysed their verbal and non-verbal cues to arrive at a consensus for that particular scene. In fact, it’s worked so well that we are planning to extend it to any scene involving animals.

Q. Have there been some other changes that you are proud of as well?

A. After a lot of meticulous research, we have successfully catalogued what the Censor Board deems offensive. So, for instance, anything related to cows is offensive, and it will be censored. That’s not even a question. But when it comes to chicken, it’s a little tricky: an on-screen character eating chicken tikka is okay, but butter chicken is not. These rules apply to other animals as well. It all depends on the scene. We don’t have an agenda; we just go with our gut. And before you think we’re being biased in any way, let me

Q. I am sorry... ?

A. I want to order food.

[Srivastav waves at a waiter, who gestures him to wait because he’s busy taking orders at a different table. He waits for a minute or so, and waves at the waiter again.

No luck; the waiter is still caught up. Srivastav waits for another minute before standing up and screaming: “Do you have any idea who my son is, you [cuss word redacted]?” The waiter comes rushing towards him, apologises and asks what he will like to eat.]

RS: Do you serve beef?

Waiter: Yes sir, we do.

RS: Okay, get me a rib-eye steak, medium rare.

W: Would you also like something to drink?

M: Do you have cow urine in a PET bottle?

The waiter nods.

RS: Make sure it’s chilled.

W [now facing me]: What would you like to have, sir?

G20: Butter ch... actually, just get me a plate of chicken tikka.

RS: Can I light a cigarette here?

W: Sorry, sir, this is a smokefree zone. And, anyway, smoking is injurious to health because itna zada taar aapko bimaar bahut... [a lot of tar can make you very... ] RS: ... Bahut bimaar bana sakta hai [... very sick]. Just get the food quickly. I am starving.

internatiOnaL MusiC rOund-uP Kanye West attacks himself

Notoriously hotheaded rapper Kanye West was filmed by a surveillance camera all alone in a hotel aisle beating the crap out of himself, repeatedly screaming: “F*ck y’all, paparazzi, f*ck y’all.” West was allegedly taking a selfie — a self-portrait with his cellphone camera — in the aisle in front of a large mirror. He flipped out right after, going Ed Norton on himself, in protest against the paparazzi shoving cameras in his face to get a good photo. A tweet from West’s account after the incident read, “They be clickin ma photo, I hatin. I be Yeezus.” [sic]

Coldplay’s stage dump

Chris Martin, the frontman of famous British “music” group Coldplay, has been arrested after a performance in London where he turned his back to the crowd, undressed

Mick Jagger turns into a fossil

himself, and took a giant dump in their direction. Many members of the audience were shocked at the audacity and filed a police complaint after the gig, following which Martin was arrested. He remained unrepentant at the charges, saying: “You’re the douche. What’s the difference? I’ve been feeding them my cr*p for years; why the outrage now?”

Legendary singer Mick Jagger recently celebrated his 100th birthday at a wild party organised at the Buckingh a m P a l a ce .

After cutting the marijuanas p i ke d ca ke , Jagger announced yet another Greatest Hits world tour with the Rolling Stones. He was then seen snorting cocaine off a stripper’s stomach when, suddenly, he turned into a fossil. The fossil has now been preserved and is being showcased at London’s Museum of Ancient History, where it will soon be joined

by Paul McCartney.

Bono comes out

World leader and bit-part musician Bono, the U2 frontman, has always maintained a dignified silence despite facing years of intense speculation and wild conspiracy theories about his sexual orientation. However,

he has finally put to rest all rumours about what floats his boat and what team he plays for. In a public statement aired on over 700 TV channels across Africa, Bono said: “I am a Bonosexual, and I am proud of it. I love myself, NOT young African children, NOT global self warming activism, NOT world peace, just myself. And cameras.” While Bono claims to be a loud and proud Bonosexual, it is believed that the confession materialised as a compromise following a leaked photo of him licking a mirror at a world peace summit in Geneva, an image that has now been dismissed as Photoshopped.

free verse sumana roy

The film Hrishikesh Mukherjee could not make

B

etween Shah Rukh Khan’s “Cool” and Amitabh Bachchan’s “Coolie” lie much more than two vowels.

For long before Shah Rukh Khan wore the “Cool” pendant in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Amitabh Bachchan was to wear something even more outrageous. It was a pendant with the word “Fool” that hung from a gold chain on his hairy chest. Bachchan, like most actors of the time, rarely wore any jewellery in his films, but this he had specially got Hrishikesh Mukherjee to order from a reputed jeweller in Bombay. This was in 1984, and Mukherjee was trying to weld the seriousness of Abhimaan with the humorous tone and treatment that would become his trademark — Chupke Chupke, Golmaal Naram Garam, to name a few. He had, of course, made maal, Bawarchi with Rajesh Khanna and Jaya Bhaduri a year before Abhimaan, but it wasn’t just the tragicomic air that he wanted to abandon for this new film. Mukherjee, whose films would give us the Common Man like no other filmmaker did, was also looking for a door to move beyond the restricting archetype of the Middleclass Indian Man. The men in his films were simple, honest, affectionate and hardworking folks who loved a laugh when they could find it. They found themselves in tricky circumstances that demanded common sense — and this Mukherjee’s heroes seemed to have in inexhaustible measure. Their sense of humour annotated our estimate of them, but it wasn’t always necessary to their persona. Goodness gave them their spine, but that goodness was never naiveté.

Mukherjee now wanted to make a film about a man who had never found a home on his camera — the fool.

And so he called this film April Fool Fool. Amitabh Bachchan was to star in the titular role. The actor did not need much convincing — one can be an Angry Young Man only for so long.

The Emergency and Operation Bluestar had left him and his audience claustrophobic — a laugh was the only cure. It was all set: the film would release on the 1st of April, 1985 even though it was a Monday. Jaya Bhaduri needed convincing.

She had last acted in Silsila three years ago, having decided to spend more of her time with the children. Also, she thought she might look a little old for the part. April, the character she was to play in the film, was, after all, a Christian girl in her mid-twenties.

A

pril Fool was scripted as a caper story, and it feels a bit strange to say this today that it might have been a great ancestor of Bunty and Babli Babli, a caper made exactly two decades later. But as the schedule began to be drawn up, the Bachchans began to grow uncomfortable. Several climactic events had changed the contours of their lives since Mukherjee had first narrated the script to them — Indira Gandhi’s violent death had made He called this film April Fool. his closest friend Amitabh Bachchan was to star the Prime Minister of the country. Rain the titular role. The actor jiv Gandhi, on his did not need much convincing part, was insistent — one can be an Angry Young that his childhood friend contest the Man only for so long... It was Parliamentary all set: the film would release elections as a Congress candidate in on the 1st of April, 1985 even the Allahabad conthough it was a Monday. stituency. Reluctant at first, Amitabh Bachchan had caved in to the emotional plea eventually. This he found difficult to explain to Hrishikesh Muherjee — would his electorate be able to trust a “Fool” as their representative? The Angry Young Man was a vote-catcher, a hopeful figure for the masses waiting for a political and economic miracle in the country. But a Fool?

Jaya Bhaduri, happy contrarian and always educated in her opinions, tried to reason with her husband — the Fool was, after all, the wisest figure in all of Shakespeare. But who would explain that to Amitabh Bachchan’s constituency, both literal and figurative? One could say “the haemoglobin in the atmosphere” in a song and return to the seriousness of the world, but to have people laugh at you for three hours was something else. Amitabh was certain that he did not look like Shakespeare’s Feste or Touchstone, but how was one to explain this to Hrishikesh Mukherjee now?

And so the arguments began to be stacked up in Pratiksha.

A film with the same title had been made by Subodh Mukherji exactly two decades ago. Based on the ways of a prankster who finds himself at the receiving end of a practical joke, the film starring Biswajeet and Saira Banu had not fared too well at the box office. Would it not turn out to be an April Fool joke on the filmmaker himself?

When Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan went to see Hrishikesh Mukherjee at his Bandra residence, the filmmaker was busy finalising dates and travel plans to Fulbari (spelled as “Foolbari” in Mukherjee’s notes) in northern Bengal. They got to the point soon enough — Amitabh had been busy campaigning for the elections and now that he had won from Allahabad, it was doubtful how much of his time he would be able to devote to the movies. The other apprehensions also began to scale the wall.

Hrishikesh Muherjee did not speak for a long time. Being let down at such an advanced stage of the prepping process of the film came as a shock of course.

“Hrishi-da,” said Jaya Bachchan, tying a bracelet on his hand.

The “Fool” of Amitabh Bachchan’s pendant had found a suffix.

“Foolproof”. The words sat on Mukherjee’s wrist.

And all was well.

(This is an April Fools’ joke.)

Artbeat 5

th e su n day g u ar d ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e Su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 | ne w de l hi

Beginning of the end? Bollywood under fire, 117 key players jailed

Thanks to newly appointed Chief Commissioner of (Entertainment) Police Chunky Pandey’s recent arrest spree, Bollywood has been forced to introspect, after years and years of making execrable cinema. Akhil Sood conducts a timely post-mortem.

COMMENT

W

e were separated by the prison bars in front of us. On the other side, from a room in the back, two prison guards brought director Anurag Kashyap forward, holding him by the shoulders. They uncuffed him.

There was a little chair in the middle of the little cell on their side, but Kashyap chose to stand instead, gripping the bars and facing us with intensity. He was afforded the privilege of putting on a clean white shirt and brown trousers for this special interview that we had with him despite his status as a prosecuted criminal; it required clever political maneuvering by our legal team to convince the prison authorities to grant us this controversial interaction with Kashyap. A week after we met him and recorded our chat, the authorities changed their mind and told us to “destroy all evidence” of the chat, or they will do it for us, so we backed up our data.

“It’s like the plot of a Tarantino movie. It’s like the plot of a Tarantino movie that I would rip off and make for my intellectual fans,” Kashyap told us. He was speaking, of course, about the exodus of the Bollywood industry into

prison. At last count, 117 important participants of Bollywood have been arrested and put behind bars. They have all been stationed at the Arthur Road Jail, giving Sanjay Dutt some company. Dutt, of course, was shifted from Yerawada to Arthur Road Jail because his new prison is a lot closer to his residence, which makes it easier for him to take weekends off for furlough to tend to “important family matters”. Kashyap was not fully sold on the attack against the industry by law enforcement: “It’s a big conspiracy is what it is.”

The inquest, it can be said, began a few months ago, when international movie superstar Chunky Pandey returned to India, and was immediately installed as the new Police Chief Commissioner of Maharashtra.

At a press conference, he stated categorically that the increase in high-profile arrests was purely coincidental, a result of an immediate clampdown on illegal activities in the financial capital of the country. “It’s not just Bollywood megastars. We have also arrested homeless people, north Indians, cripples, women, senior citizens and mentally challenged truants,” he said proudly.

While that remains the official line, our sources inside the state secretariat suggest otherwise. Allegedly, the arrests are a result of Pandey

Salman Khan, one actor who is on the radar, was in fact willing to plead guilty in an old driving case from years ago. However, his blood samples, which would have indicted him had they been properly preserved, had turned into alcohol and were not permissible as evidence anymore.

illustration: dev kabir malik design

and a few unnamed liberal political bigwigs trying to teach the film industry a lesson. “I’m tired of this s**t, boss. How long they can do this? How much? It needs to stop.” The deteriorating quality of films made in the name of freedom of expression has apparently pissed off the top brass of the executive to an extent where there is an informal witch-hunt

against Bollywood. “It’s not even true,” protested Kashyap. “Haven’t you seen my films? They’re like Kubrick.

But better. Have you seen the quality and precision with which I made Dev D? The emotional depth Gangs exudes, the…” our recorder malfunctioned at the time so we had to excuse ourselves.

Among the big guns, Akshay Kumar was jailed for

damage to public property and risking the safety of himself and others with a video of an old TV advertisement for Thums Up, where he jumps off a building on to a moving truck; this was used as evidence in court to sentence him to five year Rigorous Imprisonment (RI). Shah Rukh Khan was arrested for talking back to a policeman who scanned his luggage at the

domestic airport. The cop, inspector Pranjal Shinde, told us that he merely questioned SRK about the weight of his bag. “He was smiling when he responded but he spoke so fast that I didn’t understand a word and I figured he was insulting me.”

Aamir Khan was busted on some top secret charges that have not been revealed to the public. “That’s all fake,” our source confessed. “We just locked him up because he’s a pretentious f***ing d**k.”

Uday Chopra, known for having a high two-digit IQ, was arrested on DUI (Driving Under Influence) charges. Chopra was considerably slathered on flavoured vodka shots after leaving a nightclub in Bandra last week.

He got into his car, which was being driven by a hired driver, who rammed into an empty, parked SUV on Carter Road. But before the police could arrive and press minor charges against the driver, Chopra, for reasons best known to him, switched

places with him in a misguided attempt to use his influence, and he was duly arrested. “Kya banda hai, yaar,” said our source. “He wasn’t even on our radar.”

S

alman Khan, one actor who is on the radar, was in fact willing to plead guilty in an old driving case from years ago. However, his blood samples, which would have indicted him had they been properly preserved, had turned into alcohol and were not permissible as evidence anymore. Khan wanted to be reunited with his old friend Sanjay Dutt, and was willing to be put away. Instead, Khan was convicted for hunting for and killing black bucks, endangered species that they are, and he has been put in animal jail for now; he is currently under solitary confinement at the Delhi Zoo after he was pictured by a visitor beating up a langur.

Khan has been consulting with lawyers and is, according to our sources, ready to go

on the stand and say that he was actually aiming for Saif Ali Khan but the animals got in the way. Another reason he wanted a stint at Arthur Road is because he had armtwisted the authorities into awarding the annual prison catering contract to Royal Challenge whiskey.

Joining the camp set up inside Arthur Road Jail was Hrithik Roshan for being a public nuisance, after he was spotted dancing to loud music at a promo event inside Infinity Mall in Andheri (W).

“Extra ungli karta rehta hai, saala,” said our source, also explaining to us why 40 of the inmates were female actors. “Chhokri log ka kapda fit nahi aahe. Indecent exposure, sab ke sab. And what will all the boys do with no ladies for company?”

As an understandable consequence of the fishing expedition against anyone remotely famous in Bollywood (except Chopra), movie theatres in Mumbai have been playing the National Anthem on loop. One popular tabloid, called Bombay Slimes, had to lay off its entire staff due to a shortage of any material to write about. Its distraught employees ransacked the paper’s headquarters, a stone’s throw away from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and were photographed eating old copies of the paper with tears streaming down their eyes.

I n d i a ’ s f i n e s t S u n d a y n e w s p a p e r. P u b l i s h e d s i m u l t a n e o u s l y f r o m N e w D e l h i , M u m b a i a n d C h a n d i g a r h .

6

Bookbeat

t he s un day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

Taseer and Nemade teach us how to read and write Aatish Taseer and Bhalchandra Nemade have closed the English vs Bhasha writing debate; Taseer with his impressive anger and Nemade with his impressive moustache, writes Anbhigya.

review

aatish taseer. t

The Desi Angrezi Manifesto Bhalchandra Nemade and Aatish Taseer Published by the authors Pages: 666 Price: Rs 10,000 for English speakers Rs 0 for Sanskrit speakers

I

t was as if I had stepped into a mirror and shook hands with my reflection,” writes Aatish Taseer in the introduction to The Desi Angrezi Manifesto, the sprawling tome he has co-authored with the veteran Marathi author Bhalchandra Nemade. “A grumpy, moustachioed old rabble-rousing reflection, that is; as heavy as the fall of the evening, suddenly as real as the crack of dawn. We didn’t converse a lot that day. We didn’t need to. All that we needed to say had already been said with pristine, perfect, subconsciously Sanksritic brilliance.”

Over the past month or so, both Nemade and Taseer have made harsh critiques of Indian writing in English. Nemade, upon winning the Jnanpith award, had blasted Indian English writers, Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul in particular. “What is so great about English? There isn’t a single epic in the language. We have 10 epics in the Mahabharata itself. Don’t make English compulsory, make its elimination compulsory,” Nemade had said in the felicitation ceremony.

Rushdie, not to be undone, had responded in characteristic fashion on Twitter, questioning whether Nemade had even read the works that he criticised so fiercely. Rushdie tweeted: “Grumpy old ba****d.

Just take your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you’ve even read the work you attack.”

Earlier this month, Taseer had written a New York Times op-ed called “How English Ruined Indian Literature”. In it, Taseer had argued that in India, English wasn’t a lan-

Bhalchandra nemade.

For most of its 666 pages, The Desi Angrezi Manifesto works as a fictionalised treatise on the English vs Bhasha divide in Indian literature. Perhaps its greatest achievement is that by the 100-page mark, nobody really cares about the outcome of the debate; such is the power of Taseer’s and Nemade’s ping-pong jugalbandi.

guage so much as a class. “India, if it is to speak to itself, will always need a lingua franca. But English, which re-enacts the colonial relationship, placing certain Indians in a position the British once occupied, does more than that. It has created a linguistic line as unbreachable as the colour line once was in the United States.”

Now, with the shock release of The

Desi Angrezi Manifesto, Nemade and Taseer revealed that they had been working together for the past year or so. The modus operandi was simple, as Taseer explains in the book. “He (Nemade) would write 50 pages, which I would read over the course of a single, coruscating afternoon filled with scotch, cigars and fishing with a beautiful girl. I would then hammer out a

100 pages of critical notes (in Sanskrit, of course) on the work within days. He would translate some of it to Marathi and read the rest with gnashed teeth, marking out passages with a mor-pankh dipped in indigo dye. Eventually, this inscrutable nation would find a way of making it work.”

A

lthough it is not delineated where one writer’s work ends and the other’s begins, dedicated readers will find that this differentiation is easier than making sense of Taseer’s frequent neo-Vedic interventions. Like this passage, about a fictional reader who finds himself in an existential dilemma, even as he dreams about ploughing his father’s fields.

“I am Bajirao. Yes, yes, that’s who I am, Baz E. Row. That is what I

meant, bapu. I ask myself again, am I Bajirao or just Baz E. Row dreaming that I am Bajirao? Difficult to tell with all this wind blowing across my father’s field, all the weight of the centuries bearing down on my shoulders. It’s enough to make me throw up, give up all that I ate today; bacon and bhakri for breakfast, burgers and shalgam for lunch. The gentle jamaal-ghotaa pull of irritable bowel syndrome beckons...”

For most of its 666 pages, The Desi Angrezi Manifesto works as a fictionalised treatise on the English vs Bhasha divide in Indian literature.

Perhaps its greatest achievement is that by the 100-page mark, nobody really cares about the outcome of the debate; such is the power of Taseer’s and Nemade’s ping-pong jugalbandi. A particularly stirring passage sees an anglicised critic desperately asking for directions at the Anand Vihar train station. Needless to say, the critic misses the train because of his poor Hindi skills.

“Someone help me jaldi jaldi, said the critic. But nobody did. The coolies laughed at him, tears streaming down their faces, staining their red shirts. No English, saheb, they said, their faces gleaming with righteous mischief. All the glowing Amitav Ghosh reviews he had written flashed before his eyes. Only God or Naipaul could save him now.

Time, tide and the Shramjeevi Express waited for none, they said.

If only he had spent his college years reading Agyeya instead of Faulkner. If only he hadn’t laughed at his Hindi-speaking colleagues all his life. If only he hadn’t destroyed his English-to-Hindi dictionary in a drunken stupor last week...”

The Desi Angrezi Manifesto has been priced at a princely Rs 10,000 for English speakers, but if you can quote from Kumarasambhavam at will, the book is yours free of cost.

The last section of Taseer’s introduction tells us why. “Why should only mediocre Indian English writers get to rake in the moolah, I mean the moolya, with their overpriced books? A book like this, acutely aware of its origins and its polysyllabic glory words, also deserves its chance at authorial larceny.”

The front cover of the book also indicates the purity of the authors’ intentions: it is a screenshot from the “Sanskrit Primer” app on the App Store. The message is simple: if you are angrezi enough to use an iPhone and desi enough to understand the front cover, you are the perfect reader for The Desi Angrezi Manifesto. “This is a brave new day for Indian literature,” goes a blurb on the back cover, by noted foreign correspondent Andrew S. Shole.

We are inclined to agree.

early reviews of classic novels A Strange and Sublime Address Amit Chaudhuri “There is no plot in this book, and that’s a great thing because Chaudhuri is not a very good storyteller. I salute him for this bold, plotless triumph of a novella.

This writer cheered loudly when its 100-odd pages were finally over and poured himself a stiff drink; the same is recommended for the reader.”

The Secret History Donna Tartt “Tartt has penned a fascinating tribute to friendship.

Who among us has not wished to bump off their best friend within the first three pages? The amusing side-tracks of incest, Bacchanalian violence and disposing a warm corpse just add to the feel-good air. I will re-read this when I’m done carving up my roommate.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez “A handy how-to book, it offers several pearls of wisdom for parents: never use currency notes as wallpaper, especially in the nursery. Levitation is not a suitable sport for teenage girls. Always have more than two names in reserve while naming infant boys. Military coups are not prescribed for 10-year-olds.”

Midnight’s Children Salman rushdie “The most honest report about the prostitution business that I have ever read.

The 500-plus age segment among sex workers had been severely under-represented in the existing literature and with Tai Bibi, Rushdie has filled this void like only he can. May he never get arrested on solicitation charges.”

infinite Jest David Foster wallace “Tennis might be a minor sport, but what Wallace has given us is a major achievement. A moving study of how sheer will, hard work and the right cocktail of performance-enhancing and anxiety-reducing drugs can do for you. A must-read for all those who spend sleepless nights on opiates and Rafael Nadal YouTube clips.”

Oliver Twist Charles Dickens “Mr Dickens can scoop out a blessing from the bleakest of stories. Here, even as we witness the noble entrepreneur Fagin succumbing to the machinations of Oliver, a young sociopath, we know that even in his defeat, ‘The Jew’ is destined to be an inspiration for those striving to feed homeless kids. God bless you, Mr Dickens!”

Bookworm alley NICK CLARK

Folio winner Sharma says writing his novel has left him ‘damaged’

F

ew authors, after receiving a prestigious literary prize, wish they had not written the winning book. But Akhil Sharma, newly crowned winner of the Folio Prize, is no ordinary author — and the traumatic 13-year process of writing his acclaimed novel, he said, has left him “damaged”.

Family Life, the prize-winning work, is an intensely personal novel which fictionalises his family’s move to the US — a move that was shattered by a devastating tragedy. He started writing at the age of 30, and now, at 43, and on the night of the award, said that the effort had “shattered my youth”.

Sharma was born in Delhi and moved with his family to America at the age of eight. Two years later, his brother Anup, who was then 14, dived into a pool and hit his head on the bottom. He was underwater, stunned, for three minutes, and was left with severe akhil sharma. brain damage when they pulled him out. The first response — after William Fiennes, chair of the judges for this year’s Folio Prize, read out Sharma’s name — was unexpected. “It was shame,” he said, explaining that he felt he had received “too much luck” while his brother had none. With time to reflect on his victory, Sharma said that the shame had “gone away. What is left is anxiety about what it means.”

Reliving the story for his novel and carrying it around for 13 years was “damaging”, he told The Independent. “Things occur now and I panic much more than I would have before I started writing this book. All the trauma of writing it comes back.” The author then echoed the sentiment from the previous night’s press conference: “I’m proud of the book; I just wish I hadn’t been the one to write it.” Sharma said he had written all his life — but after attending Princeton University and then Harvard Law School, he joined the Wall Street investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. From the start, he loathed the banking culture and lifestyle. “I hated it because I could not care less about the industry; yet it was also enormously stressful and demanding.”

H

e had kept up his writing — and during his time at the firm his first novel, An Obedient Father Father, was published. It had taken nine years to write and won the PEN/Hemingway Award. After three and a half years, Sharma left Wall Street. “I just couldn’t stand it,” he says, but writing brought its own challenges: “I didn’t think it would be easy, I just didn’t think it would be this hard.” Family Life, Sharma is currently his second novel, was, by working on a collection his own admission, nine years overdue — and the of short stories which process “felt like chewing should be released later stones”. this year. He said that The protagonist, Ajay, is closely modelled on the after the difficulty of the author, and the descriptwo novels, he had taken a tions of his initial wonder at arriving in America at conscious decision to shift the age of eight reflects to the shorter form — and Sharma’s own. The novel turns tragic, yet “My own writes five hours a day, life was so much darker,” timed with a stopwatch. says Sharma. “I wanted to preserve certain things, but knew there was stuff I couldn’t put in without driving the reader away. All the physical illness.”

His brother remained alive for 30 years, 28 of which were in his parents’ house, but he died three years ago. “I wanted him back, no matter how sick he was, I wanted him back. I don’t care about the misery, I just wanted him there.” While he is unsure if his mother has read the book, and sure that his father has not, he did consult with them. “I see this as a love song to my parents and my brother,” he says. “They endured the unendurable. But everyone will have to go through it, people get sick and die, and it is unendurable. And then you’ll endure it. Initially I wanted to write it because it was an interesting story. It became really hard, but part of the reason I stuck with it was because I wanted to memorialise my family,” he says. “I don’t want what happened to my brother to be forgotten.”

Sharma was not writing any other fiction during the first eight years of writing the book, and was supported by his wife, who he met in law school. Yet the collapse of her firm, Lehman Brothers, in 2008 meant that Sharma had to find a new job, and he started teaching creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark, where he is still assistant professor.

It had a positive effect on his writing. “First, getting a pay cheque made me much less anxious and meant that I could concentrate on writing more fully,” he says, adding that it made him more confident and able to see different perspectives on his own writing. He dedicated the book to carers and said that he was hugely proud that it was being taught in medical schools around the US. He has also started lecturing to medical students on dealing with patients and families in long-term caregiving.

Sharma is currently working on a collection of short stories which should be released later this year. He said that after the difficulty of the two novels, he had taken a conscious decision to shift to the shorter form — and writes five hours a day, timed with a stopwatch. “I don’t have the emotion in me to now at least.” write another novel — well, for no the indePendent

Bookbeat 7

TH E su N Day g u ar DIa N 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 | n ew d elh i

A modern master opens up about life in the bright lights Payel Majumdar reviews the much-awaited autobiography of the bestselling English-language writer in the country and is floored by the creativity and work ethic of the book’s marketing team.

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Sawaa Chetan Pauna Bhagat Chetan Bhagat Rupa (Frontline) Pages: 144 Price: Rs 99 (Duh!)

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hetan. Naam toh suna hoga; Bhagat’s new novel floored us from its opening line, with its subtle references to the glacier from where India’s culture flows — Dilwaale Dulhania Le Jaayenge. Bhagat has been celebrated for many things — his marketing skills, his efficiency when it comes to writing books, his marketing skills — but he revealed his biggest struggle yet in life in his autobiography Sawaa Chetan Pauna Bhagat — to lose some of his chubby self and become “Reebok fit”.

Weight watchers can find several quotable quotes to take back from the book as keepsakes for bad days: “If you stop investing in your fitness, you will become unfit again”, “For fitness, you always have to work out” and “If you feel hungry, just eat man.” Bhagat’s books are for simple people. Not for him the heavy tomes, the many limitations of serious literature; he’s writing a damn book, not doing something serious, after all. That stuff is

best left to the erudite lot who pretend to read. They own books only for their coffee table or for Instagram cred.

Sawaa Chetan Pauna Bhagat Bhagat, a brave, self-flagellating joke on his fulsome figure and lean mind, is very uncharacteristic for him, since Bhagat, generally, is very happy with himself. The book is an attempt at introspection and Chetan bares his life in front of his reader’s concentrated gaze.

The book is full of inspirational quotes as Bhagat builds himself up as the guardian of the younger generation and gentle critic of liberals, or in his words, “people who think too much of themselves and their English-speaking skills.” As we speak, Bhagat has been nominated for a bunch of accolades with his current venture. Even though it looks like the Sahitya Akademi award and the Booker prize are going to elude him for some time, he will be walking the ramp at Flipkart Fashion Week for not one, but two designers very soon, and is a special guest on Karan Johar’s tenth season of Koffee with Karan along with Salman Khan and Jacqueline Fernandez, reviving the fond memories of Kick.

This literary superstar’s autobiography is a goldmine for earnest aspirants seeking “success”, and in a genius move by the packaging team, every chapter comes with a pull quote poster attached to it. Behold these golden words of wisdom from the Bhagat Puran: “I always end up doing things that may make my neighbour ask, “What is this dude on?”, but ultimately make him realise “Oh Em Gee, how did he even...”

“If someone says thank you, say welcome.”

Chetan bhagat.

Sawaa Chetan Pauna Bhagat, a brave, self-flagellating joke on his fulsome figure and lean mind, is very uncharacteristic for him, since Bhagat, generally, is very happy with himself. The book is an attempt at introspection and Chetan bares his life in front of his reader’s concentrated gaze.

“Big words are nothing but tiny alphabets strung together.”

“Love is the only free drug, and it is the most abused one.”

We are talking about the man who has introduced millions to the sort of Eng-

lish fiction that isn’t a picture book and has a font size smaller than 20. His books have sombre and neat love stories, are in English on the whole, and have appealed to an entire generation of firsttime readers. But that is not the Bhagat we come to know

in the book. We are privy to a rare glimpse of his private side: Bhagat talking about how he likes to walk his dog in the morning or how he thinks flossing is a ritual nobody should miss. There are pictures of him moonwalking in his apartment, his white kurta fluttering in the air, clearly a preparation for his debut on reality TV.

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hagat is a natural entertainer; he cannot help but make those around him laugh out loud.

The first Indian author to become famous enough to judge a dance show, Bhagat’s success knows no boundaries. For those who haven’t heard the good news, Bha-

gat will be judging the seventh edition of the iconic dance show Nach Baliye as a relationship guru, giving pointers about the couple’s chemistry in his own words.

After his guest appearance as a fairy godfather during the Shaadi.com television commercial, such an honour was a natural progression.

Our favourite author is also a selfie aficionado and admires our Prime Minister for always being game for photo sessions. The last section of Sawaa Chetan, Pauna Bhagat has been dedicated to his rare collection of selfies.

We have one with the Finance Minister (or Fin Min, as Bhagat affectionately calls him) taken right after the budget session, his gorgeous selfie with the star cast of Comedy Nights with Kapil Kapil, selfies with the who’s who of Bollywood , Lewis Hamilton, Virat Kohli, Barack Obama, the Pink Panther, Malala Yousufzai; you name it, Bhagat produces a selfie with it. This rare documentation of the leaders of today and tomorrow is part of his grand plan of motivating the youth to go out and achieve what they want in life. Bhagat ends his life with about a 100 blank pages, an aesthetic choice on the author’s part.

Bhagat said that he intentionally left them blank and was very hurt by the Twitterati who claimed that they enjoyed the epilogue of the book the best. Bhagat clarified his stand in an interview and said the last 100 pages symbolised the long life that he had left ahead of him, and the colour white proved how innocent and pure it would be. Needless to say, we wish him the very best in his endeavours. After all we believe he may have a point when he says, “Do not take yourself too seriously, it is not it.” w worth

rECommENDED rEaDINg for PrE-TEENs

Blindness Jose Saramago A mysterious epidemic that makes everyone blind: what better way to teach children that video game time must be rationed? The societal breakdown will teach them that one must obey one’s teacher, one’s doctor and one’s doctor’s wife, in that order. Oh, and the famine will make sure they finish everything on their plates.

the Road cormac mccarthy Okay, so a novel with no commas or semi-colons isn’t the best grammar lesson for your pre-teen.

But on the upside, somebody gets bumped off every other page and a fair few of the victims are children who end up on somebody’s dinner table. Let’s toughen up those kids post-apocalyptic style. the Painted Bird Jerzy Kosinski It’s tough out there for a 10-year-old, and Kosinski’s 1965 classic will tell you why. Through the eyes of a Holocaust survivor, they will learn the value of courage under fire. Should they not be too spooked by the incest and the bestiality, they might even learn the value of standing up for one’s rights.

the talented t mr Ripley Patricia Highsmith Highsmith’s Tom Ripley checks all the boxes. Murdering your friend when on a cruise? Check. Commit largescale forgery and pocket said friend’s fortune? Check. Retire to the countryside after committing a string of subsequent murders? Check.

Is there a more resourceful, energetic role model for children? We don’t think so.

Bitter Fruit Saadat Hasan manto Valuable life lessons all around in this collection of short stories: you never have a shouting match with an amnesiac, you never trust your pimp, you never flip off your jailer, you never travel with a libidinous movie star and whatever you do, you never, ever have sex with a corpse. Listen well kids, this is a wise man speaking.

Giles Goat-Boy John Barth Does your child have an animal cruelty problem?

Treat him to John Barth’s postmodernist classic Giles Goat-Boy, where a boy raised as a goat can be admitted into a university. In fact, the world is a university, which should inculcate respect for education in the child; once he looks past the ironic racist jokes that is.

God is Dead Ron currie Jr. Ever been annoyed by the question: “Where does god live?” Hand your child a copy of God is Dead, whose title does a fair job of answering it. Should your child require details, he or she will read the riveting story of god’s stay in war-torn Sudan, where she (yes) is eventually murdered in a bomb blast.

choke chuck Palahiuk Kids, too much of anything is bad. Too much candy, too many anti-depressants, too much Vicodin... you get the picture. And for the love of god, please chew your food properly, otherwise that chicken bone will get stuck in your throat and the doctor will use a needle on you; a very big needle indeed. the War of the Worlds H.G. Wells “Daddy there’s a monster under my bed!” Go back to bed, sweetheart, there’s no such thing as a monster. That overgrown onion is just an alien who came from Mars with a death-ray, some poisonous smoke and other nice things. Too bad he’s caught a chill; hand him a paper napkin, will you?

Ex LIbrIs AMANDA CRAIG

Alice in Wonderland completes 150 years

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his year, Alice in Wonderland is 150 years old, marked by a slew of shiny new editions, and a splendid book by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice, exploring how a shy unmarried Oxford don came to write the first true classic of children’s literature.

Of all the spells laid on me by books, Alice’s is both the most frightening and perhaps the most influential. Since I was eight, I have spent years puzzling over her. At primary school, she was always the character I chose to dress up as, and the poems Lewis Carroll wrote were the first I ever learnt by heart.

The image of Alice has been so overlaid by Sir John Tenniel’s drawings of her as prim that it’s easy to miss how challenging she is. As Douglas-Fairhurst says: “Carroll’s stories would permanently alter how reade r s t h o u g ht about children on and off the page.” Her adventure is not the kind of boring book she (and we) ought to be reading, a still from Tim burton’s Alice in (“‘What is the Wonderland (2010). use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’”) and her own story, by contrast, is full of both pictures and conversations. Some of the oddest of these are the conversations that Alice holds with herself. She is the first fictional character in children’s literature to possess what academics now call “interiority”. For a child to encounter this in a fictional child is astounding, even if children can, and do, talk to themselves all the time. Whatever else he was, Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name) was a keen observer of what Robert Macfarlane calls “Childish”, the language particular to the creativity of children.

Nowadays, we are so used to the idea of a magical land that its originality is hard to recall, but before Alice, children had little but adult novels ((Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, The Pilgrim’s Progress), the Bible and fairy tales to entertain them.

Alice is the first children’s protagonist to go into a different world, and to do so by going underground. Curdie and Irene in The Princess and the Goblin, Jill and Eustace in The Silver Chair and Colin and Susan in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen — as well as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit — are all put to what every reader instinctively recognises as a kind of supreme test of courage. Traditionally, this journey is climactic and characters are re-born the stronger for it. But Alice’s trials underground are unique in being experienced alone, and for her the adventure is just beginning

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othing in Wonderland is reliable. Language slips and flips into puns, Alice’s body shrinks and grows in a parody of puberty, white roses are painted red, flowers as well as animals speak and almost everyone is of offended, rude, patronising or angry. Alice never loses her sense of curiosity, her manners, her truthfulness or her sanity — though as she says, “the way all the creatures argue…

It’s enough to drive one crazy!” No matter what happens, she remains the same clever, dreamy, indomitable little girl who is never afraid to answer back. She won’t hold her Carroll neither instructs tongue, especially not in nor condones. He shows a court of law that wants to impose “sentence first, a mother, the Duchess, afterwards”. Quite being monstrously cruel to verdict right, too. Encountering her baby, and the trusting that sort of dauntlessness is something you never oysters being tricked and forget. When I was hit in devoured by the Walrus the face by a teacher rather like the Red Queen (this and the Carpenter. kind of thing being comHis Wonderland is a monplace in the 1960s), Alice was the one who dangerous place. showed me that bullies are “all a pack of cards”.

Or, as Douglas-Fairhurst puts it: “The Alice stories are about a different kind of heroism. They offer a triumph of wit over brawn… in which the leading character is not a muscular warrior or mysterious god but an ordinary little girl.”

Her humour is the humour of children, and it is so very English that it’s a question whether, as Zadie Smith has said in an essay, “the latter has been moulded around the former”.

Yet not everybody shares this kind of vision. There are people who would be horrified by the thought of a baby “growing up to be a dreadfully ugly child but… rather a handsome pig”.

The comedy in Bertie Wooster, Saki and Monty Python is loved by millions but it’s too arch to appeal to everybody. No matter: even to find it in one book would be enough.

These days, a child is more likely to encounter surrealism through the adventures of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Toll Tollbooth, or St Exupery’s Le Petit Prince, written some hundred years later. Though gentler, they are more didactic in their explanations of the capricious adult world. Carroll neither instructs nor condones. He shows a mother, the Duchess, being monstrously cruel to her baby, and the trusting oysters being tricked and devoured by the Walrus and the Carpenter.

His Wonderland is a dangerous place, although the playfulness which must have struck Carroll’s original audience as delightfully subversive now reads as ponderous. Sadly, despite Tim Burton’s 2010 film, few children now actually read Alice. Yet the bookish, quirky, inquisitive child still cleaves to her. She was never meant to be fashionable, or a cult, just eternally herself.

THE INDEPENDENT

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Young & Restless

T he s un day gua rdIa n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

Cell phone cameras spread Black Plague, authorities ban ice cream akhIl sood

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en students from a college in Delhi University — six male and four female — were placed in quarantine at AIIMS, New Delhi in late January after showing worryingly similar symptoms. They had all presented with a strange facial deformation, wherein their lips were protruding outward and perched together, with a clear soullessness in their eyes visible even while asleep. Initial fears were that this was a minor outbreak of a virus known as Duckface, spread through excessive exposure to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Tinder.

However, in March, 25 young professionals working at a respected media house in Noida were then hospitalised at the city’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. The males among those, 12 in number, were believed to be suffering from a muscle disorder where their biceps and abdomen muscles (abs) were found to be in a permanently flexed state; a light beard/ thick stubble remained on their faces even after hospital staff shaved them.

The women, on the other hand, were stuck clutching the sides of their waist, communicating only in a sideways posture with a dimpled smile and a side fringe haircut. Some of them were found biting their lip, either cutely or suggestively ac-

378 young urbanites showing symptoms of the Black Plague have been placed in quarantine.

cording to different accounts by doctors present. This condition, usually a symptom of something greater, as Dr Rawal, head of surgery, told us, is called Thinnitus Vanitus in medical parlance.

Another batch of 30 people, from an ad agency in Bandra (W), Mumbai, was quarantined at Breach Candy hospital along with their selfie sticks after presenting with the same symptoms.

The authorities sprung into action immediately upon realisation that this was not a “minor outbreak” of anything. A preliminary investigation by the newly-christened Ministry of Spiritual Healing (MOSH; formerly the Ministry of Health) discovered this to be a widespread outbreak of the fatal Black Plague, which spreads through cell-phone

“ I called her a ‘f*ckface’ as a joke. That’s what all the American kids call each other,” Thakur said. The auto-correct feature on her iPhone changed the word to “duckface”, leading to the eruption of the disease, supposedly last September, although strains of it have been in existence for close to two years now.

cameras and attachments and remains specific to urban individuals between the ages of 18 to 35.

We spoke with Manisha Thakur, a student at Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, who is thought to have been responsible for the disease spreading in the country. She had recently travelled to the US on a family trip; upon returning, Thakur was having a conversation over chat/text

Pen & Stink

Akshar Pathak

interface WhatsApp with a classmate. “I called her a ‘f*ckface’ as a joke. That’s what all the American kids call each other,” Thakur said.

The auto-correct feature on her iPhone changed the word to “duckface”, leading to the eruption of the disease, supposedly last September, although strains of it have been in existence for close to two years now.

In a belated attempt to tackle the Black Plague “ear-

ly and comprehensively”, MOSH set up a subcommittee of doctors, psychologists, public health professionals and college union leaders to devise a four-point plan. The committee acted swiftly with a report that demanded for a temporary ban on 2G and 3G network connectivity across the country. But involvement of major players, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication and the Tatas, led to an appeal against the recommendations.

The telecom giants were joined, surprisingly, by free speech luminaries Varun Gandhi, Sakshi Maharaj and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Also part of the protest team were all the people who had benefitted from 2G and 3G tenders granted, receiving royalties in the process. One of them spoke to us, saying: “They cannot take away my gorment-sanctioned pension. Theek hai?”

A new committee, called the Biswas Commission and comprising judges, IAS of officers and Members of Parliament across party lines to allay any possibility of bipartisan politicking, was appointed.

The committee members were provided with an all-expense paid trip to Switzerland (for research, naturally), and upon returning, their findings called for an immediate ban on... ice creams.

The official spokesperson for the committee, JJ Iyenger, rebuffed our initial attempts

for clarification, acquiescing only after our offer of some hot tea and water. He told us how it was important to treat the disease, not the symptoms, and that it was essential to get to the root of the problem instead of reactionary measures: “What do young peoples do? They do drugs. We banned. They eat b**f. We banned. They start NGO and speak out about our culture. We banned.

They watch morally indecent videos on internet.

We banned. Bacha kya? Ice cream, hai ki nahi? So we banned.”

The ice cream ban, which was implemented nationwide last week, has not yet had any tangible effect, with 48 more hospitalisations this Tuesday, this time in Bangalore. “Sabhar rakhiye, reporter sahib. This is a war against chemical terrorism,” Iyenger said. That being said, there has been considerable outrage against the ban. Meanwhile, former child actor Darsheel Safary, now 18, has been speaking at schools across the country, accompanied by his mentor, Jugal Hansraj.

“When I was younger and I was forced to get braces and go through painful dental treatment, my only solace was eating ice cream at India Gate every Sunday.

We will not take this lying down.” He revealed to us that there will be a candlelight mass suicide by kids under the age of 13 at India Gate this Sunday evening.

The manuscript, which he gave to Maureen, is on show today in the Manuscript Room at the British Library, along with several others on permanent loan from a kind person. The colours

TweeT beaT bea # Just got nominated for an Oscar

for my role as “man surprised his credit card was declined”

REACTIONS OF THE AUDIENCE MEMBERS DURING A WORLD CUP MATCH

@JosesLovesYou

WHEN THEY REALISE THAT THEY’RE ON THE BIG SCREEN START OF THE MATCH

#It’s been 13 years, hope my suits still fit. #XFilesReunion

EXCITED

HALFWAY THROUGH THE MATCH

@davidduchovny

#In ascending

SURPRISED

SHEEPISH

ELATED

INDIFFERENT

THE MATCH NEARING ITS END

order of sadness: Missing a flight Accidentally shooting self Getting dumped Watching Dhoni walk back to pavillion @thetanmay

WHEN THEIR TEAM IS WINNING

WHEN THEIR TEAM IS LOSING

# YES THAT’S HOW YOU SHOW THEM @sashwat_k

# Airtel: Be a manipulative dick to your dad so he buys you stuff.

Vodafone: Your dad is awesome.

Idea: Your dad needs to study. @hankypanty

# Silver Linings: - No more Dettol Dettol - No more YepMe - No more Gaana Gaana Gaana - Return to classic Indian fatalism

Real Madrid admit to selling Man Utd a dud The recent news surrounding Angel Di Maria’s transfer from Real Madrid to Manchester United has left the football world reeling. A Spanish tabloid reporter received a late night phone call from a high-ranking official from the Real Madrid hierarchy, who was heavily inebriated at the time. In a shocking revelation, said official, who wished to be anonymous because he didn’t remember his name, revealed that Madrid actually sold Manchester United a lookalike of Angel Di Maria for almost £60 million. Choking back hysterical

Angel Di Maria (left) and Mangal D Fariya (left) in a friendly kickabout.

laughter, he went on record to say, “I can’t believe they fell for it! We knew Ed Woodward was a bit slow, but this is just unreal! And that’s not even a

pun on Real!” before collapsing into a drunken stupor.

Upon further investigation, it has been confirmed that the real Angel Di Maria

secretly quit Real Madrid in the summer to follow his lifelong dream of playing the lead actor in the touring Broadway hit Pinocchio –

ANNA LESZKIEWICZ

One Direction’s Zayn Malik quits, fans distraught

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’m an intelligent, (mostly) stable woman in my mid-20s.

I have a real job. I pay my taxes, and sometimes even my rent. I have a serious, non-imaginary boyfriend. And yesterday I shed a tear for Zayn Malik, the doe-eyed, chiseljawed, single strand of hair-flaunting Bradford Bad Boi who, after being at the beating heart of the world’s biggest boyband for four years, eight months, and two days (who’s counting?), has left One Direction.

When I first heard the news, I was in denial. “He’s not leaving leaving,” I sighed to my co-workers, confident in my superior 1D knowledge. “He just needs some space. He’s on a break.”

Then someone pointed me towards the official statement.

No. This couldn’t be happening for real. Sure, Zayn was having problems, but what international pop syndicate like One Direction Zayn Malik. doesn’t have its problems?

They couldn’t do this to me. Not now. Not over Facebook.

I sank deeper into despair, and all I could hear were 1D lyrics.

Zayn. Tell me nothing’s going to change, and Tell me a lie, Za Tell me it’s not an illusion. Toyou won’t ever walk away. T gether we were so good, so Zayn, why are you tearing me apart? What happened to nothing can come between you and I? I thoug thought you were always coming back for me? You promised falling for you w wouldn’t be a mistake. Now being only half a blue sky: here without you is like I’m waking up to onl kinda there, but not quite. W Where do broken hearts go, Zayn?

Where do they go?!

It’s not like we had no warning. Zayn has struggled in the limelight since day one. Even before Simon Cowell put him in the band, he was coaxing Zayn to appear in front of a crowd when he refused to dance. He’s repeatedly referred to himself as “the sh shy one”, has bailed on meeting other celebrities due to nerves, and went AWOL for a significant portion of the press tour for Four.

Those gloriously high cheekbones provided a bone structure ripe for labelling “gaunt” and “haggard”, and eventually tabloid stories accusing him of cheating on his fiancée saw him sign off for stress. He’s still a self-conscious “little boy from Bradford” at heart, who needs to spend as many hours alone doodling on his bedroom walls as he does singing to thousands of girls on stage. With almost no time off from an insanely intense schedule over five years, it was only a matter of time before somebody cracked, and it was probably going to be our sweet prince, Zayn.

B

@mojorojo

azeem banaT ana walla anaT w

hearTbreak hoTel

The Musical. Upset that they would have to let their player of the season depart for free, top executives at Real Madrid devised a cunning plan after an Angel Di Maria lookalike named Mangal D Fariya was spotted playing football on Juhu Beach in Mumbai. Desperate for a star signing before deadline day, Manchester United did not find the time to run a background check on Fariya, and ended up spending £60 million on a player who’d never played professional football.

Asked for his opinion on the matter, Manchester United coach Louis Van Gaal replied, “I have to say this was not part of my philosophy.

But on the bright side, he’s making Ashley Young look like Cristiano Ronaldo in comparison, so it’s great for Young’s self-esteem. We looked into the possibility that we may also have signed a fake Falcao, but that is not the case — the sad truth is that he’s just rubbish.”

Fariya himself is loving life in Manchester, despite being vilified by the fans. “I am very excited because I have received a free UK visa, which is not easy for Indians these days. I don’t care if the fans don’t like me because they’re paying me £200,000 a week,” he said, before flinging wads of cash in the air and cackling maniacally.

ut really, this is all beside the point. The joy of One Direction, and basically all the obsession-inducing delights of this world, is that it’s a fantasy. I have a lot of feelings about that fantasy. The success of the band relies on presenting the dream as achievable. The narrative constructed around them, from their lyrics to their interviews to their PR coverage, all works to portray the boys as both the ultimate heartthrobs and the He’s still a self-conscious “little familiar boys-next door. It’s why they’re boy from Br Bradford” at heart, consistently prewho needs to spend as many sented as emotionally vulnerable yet hours alone doodli doodling on his playful and boyish, bedroom walls as he does sexually available but non-threatening, singing to thousands of girls absurdly famous but on stage. With almost no time grounded in their humble beginnings. off from an insanely intense (And of course, the schedule over five years, it girl of their dreams is was only a matter of time YOU. Yes, you, “Five foot something with before somebody cracked, the skinny jeans”.) and it was probably going to It’s why sane adults can get sucked into be our sweet prince, Zayn. an obsessive click cycle after stumbling upon a “ONE DIRECTION BEST BITS” video on YouTube. It’s why, when I introduced them to an (admittedly quite hungover) friend, she cried and whispered: “they’re just so perfect.”

Zayn’s departure tears a hole in the dream. The One Direction Fantasy™ doesn’t include difficult feelings or missing members. It rests on the idea that the only thing the boys could possibly love more than their fellow bandmates is the fandom, which means staying together forever, for each other and us.

It depends on a suspension of time, in which the boys are forever on the cusp of adulthood, never quite becoming men.

Now, it feels like it’s only a matter of days before the remaining members sprout beards, beer bellies and resigned expressions, heirs to the three sad Take That members, trying to fill the hole left by their absent comrades by squeezing into a too-small bed.

I always knew the dream was an illusion: a concoction of the teen imagination, perfected and sold by media giants, hoping to design a band as popular as possible with the widest variety of teenage women. I (sort of) knew they didn’t really love me. And I knew it could never last.

I just didn’t think it had to end so soon. The IndependenT

Young & Restless 9

th e s u n day g u a r dian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 29.03.2015 | n ew delh i

Here’s how you do it: Exemplary ways to help your child tackle exams payel majumdar

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he most dreaded test of character for parents around the country, the annual board exams are back. This time around, however, we are excited to report that the performance has been way above average, especially for students of Class XII. The national body that keeps a tab on parents and their performance released their results last night on the official THICKK website (Team of Highly Important Close Kin for Kids — Boards Chapter). These results serve as a marker of how successful parents have been in their efforts to support their children, by fixing their goals for them, learning their course for them, and even helping them to cheat better. Their subsidiary body CRAP (Concerned Representatives of Anxious Parents for IIT, JEE GRE and GMAT) immediately got to work on how to manage the upcoming challenge of competitive exams now that board exams are over.

Guardian20 managed to speak with Mr Vijay Hovekar, THICKK President and CRAP council member, who told us of the innovative techniques parents had

used to fight the system this time, “Well, we insisted every kid must chant the Pink Floyd anthem Another Brick in the Wall. They wrote it on a poster, inspired by the education system in our country. If possible, they must sing it to their shrine of books. A month before these vile board exams, we insisted that every parent sit their child down and learn the course as well as them, if not better. Grandparents were appointed to play good cop to the parents’ bad cops.

Sometimes we would mix it up, and ask them to switch places, to avoid monotony.”

While the mothers consistently outperformed fathers, (a pattern that is visible among the students’ results as well) by providing tasty snacks during prep, remembering to set the morning alarm and follow-up snoozes in the form of highpitched shrieks, and memorising the exam schedule.

Parents were provided a charter of chants to keep themselves from killing their children and/or running away, and the hashtag # WontGiveABack went crazy on Twitter for the duration of the board exams in March. The toughest decision this time was to come to a consensus about the cable TV situation. While Hovek-

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Parents have left no stone unturned to help their children pass the Board exams with flying colours.

Mr Asrani from Chhota Nagpur managed to hide himself in the AC vent an hour before the test and distributed sheafs of notes from his collection to each student who looked up with a quizzical look.

The invigilator, meanwhile, was tackled by another parent with a chloroform-soaked hand towel.

ar mentioned how it is traditional for all body members of THICKK to cut off their

connection during board exams, this year it was decided that it would be anti-

national to do so because of the World Cup. It was eventually agreed that parents would cut off the main connection, while retaining a secondary connection on the sly, and any/all matches would be watched soundlessly (or with headphones) within the confines of their bedrooms, threatening the kids locked outside that they'd get another sibling in case they didn't get into IIT. However, THICKK had to

delhi 36 oC

MuMBai 32 oC

Bulawayo 30 oC

Singapore 20 oC

MaCau 18 oC

Cape Town 16 oC

overcome major challenges when it was discovered that most children had a connection on the sly as well, using the same technique as their parents, under the pretext of studying.

We were also fortunate enough to listen in on the success stories of parents who managed to support their kids right till the end.

Not for them the token gesture of packing their kids pencil boxes on the day

of the exam. Some parents prepared elaborate cheat sheets and broke into schools despite the cruel security measures.

Sunita Verma from Durgapur disguised herself as the English teacher, convinced the invigilator to take a break, all to feed her child his 11 a.m. banana while the other kids looked on, envious of her little boy’s luck.

Mr Asrani from Chhota Nagpur managed to hide himself in the AC vent an hour before the test and distributed sheafs of notes from his collection to each student who looked up with a quizzical look. The invigilator, meanwhile, was tackled by another parent with a chloroform-soaked hand towel. Common methods used this time were the cheat relay, where parents hid behind school toilets to pass on cheat sheets to their group’s kids till the other parent showed up to perform his duty.

Surprisingly enough, when contacted, some of the teachers displayed displeasure at the parents’ dedication. “They treat us as unfeeling creatures when they use such tactics. Do they think we don’t care for the children? I would like to ask these parents if their kids actually deserved the 22/25

rawalpindi 29 oC

in their biology practical exams, just for identifying parts of the human body.”

THICKK and CRAP dismiss such complaints from teachers as meaningless, as they go ahead with the next year of planning already.

“We cannot catch a break.

There are more and more children being admitted to school every year. And our training starts as early as Lower KG, especially when it comes to mugging up stuff and sitting for over three hours. By the time they are in Class X, they are as well trained as commandos.”

THICKK plans to introduce summer workshops for Class III and IV students to test their handwriting and note-taking abilities.

IIT coaching will start for classes V-VIII while Class IX and X students will be put on a strict 14-hour study schedule, taking a break during their summer holidays only to prepare for their Engineering exams.

Both THICKK and CRAP have expansion plans that include opening official coaching institutes across India. The future looks bright and delightfully vague for our upcoming generation. Meanwhile, it seems parents will continue to provide their kids with as much support as they need.

BriSBane 24 oC

Beijing 6 oC

FML bats for lefties, nerds and the colourblind mihika jindal

India has set a solid precedent in offering to minority groups. Taking a cue from the government, a group of activists under the moniker Foundation for Motivational Living (FML), a not-for-profit organisation, have resolved to raise the flag for these little groups that haven’t been able to voice their grievances for the fear of social judgements.

The Lefties A quick look around can convince you that this universe was perfectly customised for the right-handed. Aakash Sangwan narrates how he can never get over that fateful day at school when he was made to stand in the sun because the entire class went the “right” way while he went left. But he was doing exactly what the teacher had asked him to do. She had said, “Assess the right direction from the hand we use for writing,” and Aakash had strictly followed instructions, only to be laughed at. Lefties have often had it tough. From getting a sari draped on the opposite shoulder to the raised left hand getting absolutely no high-five at-

A publication was also seen carrying extra dose of black & white picture essays. The FML team investigated and found exactly what they had feared; the person who was in-charge of the picture essay was colour blind and persistently gathering pictures in shades of grey under the garb of being "vintage" and "re-creating lost times".

tention, lefties have been suppressing their unease for far too long. When FML saw the dampened spirits of this group, they instantly knew that superstition was the only antidote to its own roots. They began popularising lefties under the pretext that money will double if handled by the left hand. Statistics now show a 23% rise in the visibility of lefties who are now seen distributing cheques at IPL award ceremonies and elite temple meetings.

The Colourblind FML recently discovered this minority group that has been unnervingly quiet while the world went crazy snatching hair off each other’s heads, arguing whether that godforsaken dress was blue and black, or white and golden; the colourblind. They have never spotted a number in those coloured bubbles (see diagram on right—unless, well, you can't). They can barely get their sartorial combinations right and even when they know what colour they want to wear, the best they can do is “my shirt resembles the colour of the outer side of the almond and the trousers are coloured similar to the inside of the almond.” A publication was also seen carrying extra dose of black

“Nerds face social exclusion so gradually that they don’t mind being missed.”

& white picture essays. The FML team investigated and found exactly what they had feared; the person in-charge of the

picture essay was colourblind and was persistently gathering pictures in shades of grey under the garb of being "vintage" and "re-creating lost times". The organisation has now started an employment drive especially for the colourblind by getting them jobs in fashion retailing, highlighting their talent of comparing colours to various things that have proven to become the trend. The survey shows that associating shades of brown to almonds, which are primarily consumed to better the brain, has boosted the sale

of earthy tones amongst office goers and scholars. Similarly, agro-researchers are now strictly adorning shades of green, which is improving their relation with nature.

The Nerds “Nerds were the most difficult to spot and deal with, because even when they are aware that their type is rare, they don’t quite show that they need to be

helped,” says Ayesha Khanna, an active member of FML. The situation is particularly grave for nerds because they face social exclusion so gradually that they don’t miss being missed. “Our research revealed that it is their incumbent need to throw around nuggets of knowledge.

Even though they do manage to suit the interest of a gathering by throwing relevant information, they seldom manage to match the light-hearted mood,” says Khanna. FML has now created www.oppositesattract.com, a dating portal that pairs up people on the extreme ends of the IQ scale. Their endeavour is to enhance the overall IQ levels of the country by coupling up “human encyclopaedias” with “the generally ignorant” as the latter will mostly offer a patient hearing to all the trivia their counterparts are bursting with, resulting in a happy symbiotic relationship.

FML strongly believes that even though one could pick up a Sunday newspaper to read about these minority groups and feel rather superior, the fun actually lies in being different from the mainstream and enjoying the journey away from social conformity.

10

Picture Essay

t he s unday gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

“My life has no meaning.”

non-humans of ‘bombay’

“Describe your life in three steps.”

“You’re born, you grow, and you get molested by Katrina Kaif.”

“If you had to give a piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”

“First of all, I’d like to clarify that I am not going to be answering this question.

I’ve written it myself, and it’s just so this write-up can be in the same format as the posts on this page, and the original Humans of New York page. It all started when my colleague and I were in office (Weirdass Comedy—we’re professional comedians and comedy writers) and were being super productive (browsing Facebook) and we came across a Humans of Bombay page…and we thought ‘hey…we should also do something like this…but with a humour element to it.’ So this idea came about, where we take good looking photos of inanimate objects throughout the city, and weave a (hopefully funny) story around them.

We started off by taking photos of objects that were around us, but after seeing the overwhelming response to the page, we actually started working hard and went out to click pictures. We’re really humbled with the response. What started off as a stupid, juvenile idea for a parody one afternoon in the office is now a viral Facebook page!

Oh, and I changed my mind. I will answer the question. My advice to a large group of people would be to use moisturiser.”

“How do you deal with so many people?”

“It’s tough bro, but this is just practice for when I go to Tomorrowland.”

“What do you hate the most about yourself?”

“You may have noticed that I have a huge bladder...but no control. It’s embarrassing.”

th e s u n day g u a r dian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to t h e su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 | n ew d elh i

“What is the sadde...”

“Hold up. How are you going to put this up? Tell me in detail.”

“Shooting with a DSLR. Editing and uploading on a Macbook. Monitoring progress on an iPhone.”

“You are pretentious enough. Welcome to Starbucks.”

“Do you have any bad memories from your past?”

“Once I went to a Bollywood party, and Govinda threw up on me.”

Picture Essay

“Why are you parked like this?”

“The other side is a pay n’ park. That sh*t is too expensive.” “...”

“What are you guys supposed to be?”

“Inspiration for Yo Yo Honey Singh’s next song.”

“We are on everyone’s Instagram right now. Window during the rains, cup of chai and a book. Only one thing is missing here.”

“What would that be?”

“200 fu**ing useless hashtags.”

11

12

Technologic

Wake up, smell the coffee cup: Telekinesis for everyone

geek eMPire Dial E for Ekta by imaginatrix Price: rs 25 Animation firm Imaginatrix have released an app called E For Ekta, inspired by Ekta Kapoor, the czarina of Indian television. If you’re a fan of Kapoor and her legion of K-serials, this app is a must for you. All you have to do is upload a story (in PDF format) or an existing video (.avi format) onto the app’s cloud servers. Within 24 hours, you will have an animated K-serial version of the same sent you via Dropbox. Now you can deal with your errant daughter-in-law on your own time, thanks to E for Ekta!

Noti-Brush

by callgate Price: rs 3,999 Troubled by the phone dropping into the sink every morning while brushing their teeth, the geeks at Callgate with foam-puffed cheeks realised it was time to innovate the time we all spent on brushing our teeth.

Unlike the rest of our lives, brushing our teeth has stayed as the only part of the day un-intruded by technology. With Noti-Brush, you needn’t even waste that much time. An electric brush that connects to the wi-fi as soon as it finds it, it lets you read texts and e-mails on-the-brush. Exciting third party apps have already been pouring in, and bulk orders have been placed by corporates for their employees this Diwali—so they can remain efficient even on their days off.

Blue Paani by mobile mundeer Price: rs 4 Do you wish to devour chaar botal vodka every night? Are you routinely hypnotised by the evening’s blue eyes? With Blue Paani, a revolutionary new app

by Mobile Mundeer, you can live life Honey Singh-size. Just select your favourite tracks from Grooveshark, Gaana or any other music app, collate them into a six-track playlist and let Blue Paani do the rest. Through the latest tone-correction techniques, Blue Paani will transform any song into a Honey Singh song. So crank up your gaddis, break out the daaru-shaaru and indulge in a happy lungi dance with Blue Paani.

Marco Polo

t he s un day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

by Punle Price: 50 After a dip in actual candy sales, the makers of Polo counterfeit, Pulo have decided to try their hand at technology. Their latest accessory, Marco-Polo is a tracing mint. Pop a mint and every electronic device in the vicinity will guide you to your misplaced phone/tablet with a dizzy game of Tingly-orNot in your mouth. Picking up on radio waves, the mint lets out electric impulses which get increasingly intense as you get closer to your communication devices.

Experiencing this technology [still under development] is like swallowing the red pill from the Matrix movie.” Put simply, instead of taking you to the Matrix, this technology brings the Matrix to you.

sanshey Biswas

W

hile CERN is famous for particle accelerators, it is also the first facility where the World Wide Web (WWW) was put into action. The World Wide Web has changed our lives and probably added another dimension to our species’ (and cats’) existence. It was never comprehended in the founding days that the WWW would have connected the majority of world’s population by 2010. The internet is not the only thing that scientists have worked on without realising its complete potential. Busy looking for particles that they wanted to study, scientists ignored the alternations in energy fields when the sub-atomic particles were rammed against each other until they stopped obeying the laws of physics. Every now and then, a particle would start moving in spirals or tangents for no reason. All anomalies were considered to be errors in

reading up to the point when objects in the facility started acting weird too.

Swamped with work, staring at his laptop, Dr Heir Senberg wanted to take a sip of coffee from his cup, but it was out of reach. Finishing the sentence he was in the middle of typing, he stood up to go get the cup but much to his alarm, it was right there!

Either he was hallucinating, or the cup had actually moved over from the edge of his desk to right next to his hand. Since the research lab’s LSD supply had run

website of the week

short just the week prior, it was clear: the cup had moved.

The only thing to do now was devise a hypothesis and test it. The coffee-cup study revealed that what Guy Bavli (an illusionist and magician) demonstrated on Stan Lee’s Superhumans was not merely a sleight of hand but physically possible in an accommodating environment.

The human brain produces magnetic waves with every thought because the only way to propagate thought is the electronic impulses between neurons. The particle accel-

www.happynewz.com

One with the ostriches

Morning dumps aren’t quite the same anymore. Each day, the newspapers greet their weary reader with more dreary details about the steady descent of humanity into base degradation.

Twitter blasts are a depressing affair; the rowdy news channels much the same.

It requires a thick skin or a strong sense of denial to cope with the situation. Assisting you with the latter, in burying your heads in the sand, is HappyNewz.com.

Updated daily, the website accumulates all the important national, international and local news of the day, through an exhaustive network of media publications that it has tied up with. It provides its subscribers with an alternate reading of the news,

wherein each and every story, no matter how miserable and disheartening, is presenting in a radiant, happy light, without altering any of the facts. For instance, if the headline tomorrow reads: “Man beats living daylights out of neighbour over minor parking dispute”, an all too common reality, the paper will alter the words in a way to make them seem uplifting or positive or just not dismal.

Expect a new headline that’ll say: “Man ripples contemporary sunshine resplendence away about friend aloft deposit brouhaha”, with the rest of the article about the incident reading much the same. Or it may simply read: “Man eats living daylights out of neighbour…”

It won’t always make very

much sense to be honest, but it does fuel the denial necessary to deal with modern reality. HappyNewz does this through an advanced algorithm (devised in consultation with Mark Zuckerberg) that uses rhyming schematics, synonyms, similar-sounding words, elimination, word replacement, and linguistic analytics to soften the nature of the news and make it innocent-sounding.

Without any hint of makebelieve, just clever amendments, HappyNewz makes the world a better place, a place filled with cheerful clowns, beaches, chocolate fountains, cuddly teddy bears, stupid little kittens and love. That said, it’s a project undertaken by the Government of India. — Akhil Sood

erator at CERN was creating energy fields that accommodated these particular (gamma) waves. Produced by the brain, these signals can have an impact on the physical world. These waves have allegedly been mastered by the monks of the Shaolin Temple to the extent that it lets them perform telekinesis. With the test showing positive results, the scientists at CERN realised that this wasn’t folklore. A dedicated facility is now testing the possibilities of mind over matter. The only thing to be careful of was this

getting into the wrong hands.

Like nuclear fission (a great discovery that led to the invention of the atomic bomb), if this technology gets into the wrong hands, it can’t end well. The only possible way was to contain the effect and regulate it before it got out of control. That’s when the frequent breakthrough news coming out of CERN took a break. We haven’t really heard from CERN in a while because this poten-

The only purchase that you will ‘like’ this year sanshey Biswas

Internet.org was just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook is now in talks with publications to publish their articles on Facebook itself, so that a user doesn’t have to jump to another tab to read an article.

The proposed scheme is that Facebook and the publication will share a part of the revenue that is generated by the user clicking on an article for their post. This approach is similar to Twitter allowing you to open articles whose links are embedded in a tweet rather than loading it in the browser.

What remains hidden is Facebook’s attempt to generate more moolah-per-clicks

by keeping users on their website for as long as they can. This could lead to a troubling situation. Like Internet. org, where you get internet access to Facebook-approved websites for free, money. org may soon pay sufficient money to its users (enough to support their basic needs) for spending a certain amount of hours on Facebook.

The probable system, Money.org, might not be that evil a cause that just supports the needs of Facebook by bringing more users to it but also provides financial and nutritional support to the strug-

comics from the web

REVIEW

akhil sood

In a landmark moment for science and technology in India, a group of scientists and researchers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have concluded a threeyear long study to finally discover that there is absolutely no life on earth. Dr VC Raman, Chairman, ISRO, was appointed in December 2012, instantly diverting funds to this particular research. He said: “For years, our smartest minds were too busy trying to find out about life on Mars, life on Venus, extraterrestrial life, going to the moon, all that crap.

That was stupid.”

Dr Raman channelled all financial and intellectual resources at the disposal of ISRO inward and began this study. “We were still hopeful of finding some form of life, no matter how primitive. But, after the alleged rape of a six-year-old girl by a 25-year-old, who also assaulted her with iron rods, in early March, we wrapped up our examination into life on this planet. It was the very last straw that broke our research’s back. Maybe there was some semblance of life on Earth hundreds of years ago — who knows? — but we have conclusive scientific proof that no such thing

EmotiBand PricE: Rs 42,999

exists anymore.”

Dr Raman and his team will be presenting their findings at a conference in Germany next month which will be attended by zero people. Dr Raman is a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Physics this year, but he doesn’t intend on attending. “We live in a bleak, apocalyptic period of time. People killing each other over ideology and belief, religion, rape, crime, persecution of the other, violence, jealousy, disrespect, you know. It makes me sad.” We also spoke with Dr Adi Das, disgraced former researcher at ISRO, who said, “Raman is a fraud. He stated the obvious; big whoop. What does he want — an award or something?”

For ages, the only solution to conditions such as bipolarity that cause mood swings could have only been pacified by medication that had affected the person’s personality and life beyond acceptable measures. EmotiBand is a smart wristband that helps you deal with more than the occasional burst of emotion.

Created in collaboration with healthcare researchers, the EmotiBand aims to make life easier and less exciting for everyone who can afford it.

A fine example of playful research and stressful engineering, the final product is a revolution like no other in social-life and health improvements. The impact of this device will be a ripple ef ef-

gling communities around the world.

Analysts have predicted that Facebook can cover the cost of one meal in most of the major cities around the world and still make enough profits if a user spends six hours on Facebook, clicking on sponsored ads and posts. This might be the largest employment and support scheme ever to be implemented. Af After selling the idea of a freeinternet to telecom providers around the world and huge dump of discarded phones that are still functional (that can be distributed by charities), the Facebook might be able to pull Money.org off and march towards fulfilling their mission of meme domination.

Chairman Of The BOar O d Oar Ram Jethmalani ediTOrial direCTOr Prof. M.D. Nalapat managing ediTOr Pankaj Vohra ediTOr Joyeeta Basu managing ediTOr (Chandigarh) Raveen Thukral managing ediTOr - guardian 20 Ravina Rawal Printed and Published by Rakesh Sharma for and on behalf of MJP Media Pvt Ltd. Printed at:

Scientists discover there is E-motion control made easy no life on earth GADGET fect not just in the users’ life but everyone around them.

Innovative technology for the ultimate state of mind.

Now living a zen-life is just a gesture away. Bosses will be calmer, and employees better behaved.

Once you put the band on and pair it with an app on your phone, it synchronises with the electronic impulses travelling through your nerves. The next step is to choose from a set of pre-set mood-management schemes, or create a customised one. Since everyone has a varied opinion, you will have to play around with the settings a bit in order to get it right. Linking it to your social accounts will automatically post your mood on your Facebook wall. If you’re angry at someone and the EmotiBand user is detected in your vicinity, the post will read, “Feeling angry at soand-so.” Researchers say this automation of sharing

tially game-changing discovery has taken up most of their manpower.

Once the science and technology is in place, the ripple effect will be limitless. This technology can turn your thoughts into action as easily as setting up a wi-fi router at home.

As Dr Senberg explains, “Experiencing this technology [still under development] is like swallowing the red pill from the Matrix movie.” Put simply, instead of taking you to the Matrix, this technology brings the Matrix to you.

Your world will be as malleable as the software running on your phones or laptops.

Physical objects behave like files, allowing you to cut, copy and paste them as you like. With enough practice, you’ll be able to change your appearance, blend the metaphysical with the physical till nothing makes sense and ev everything makes sense at the same time. For all we know, no matter how far-fetched our assumptions might be, the world will undergo an unfathomable transformation.

will give you time to do something better with your life.

The fun part, though, is sending and receiving emotions. Still in the beta stage, you can send pain, amusement, disgust or any emotion but only to a limited degree of intensity safe for the receiver’s heart condition.

Some hackers have claimed that this feature could be tweaked to induce heartattacks and even strokes.

To counter the effects, the developers have added a

safety-gesture (devil’s horns: \m/) that immediately shuts down the band. The gesture was chosen because of its abuse by kids who claim they’ve “got #sweg”. Also, having the band switch off at metal concerts (the only other appropriate place to use the horns) won’t matter because you already have enough adrenaline flowing through your veins.

As you can imagine, the implication of this innovation will change the world.

Users can watch cricket matches in cubicles without the fear of being caught because of a sudden burst of energy at the fall of wickets. Life might become less eventful, but at least getting into trouble will take a fall.

The EmotiBand brings us closer to being robotic than ever before, while robots are being taught to understand and replicate emotions. Giant leaps, fellas, giant leaps.

— Sanshey Biswas

Jagran Prakashan Ltd., D-210-211, Sector-63, Noida, Distt: Gautum Budh Nagar (U.P.) and published from B-116, Okhla Industrial Estate, phase 1, New Delhi -110020, Tel No. 0120-4369500 Dangat Media Pvt. Ltd. Mehra Centre, Marwah Estate, Off. Saki Vihar Road, Saki Naka, Mumbai -400072 Tel: + 91 22 42460909 Good Morning India Media Pvt. Ltd., Village: Sadhopur, Opp. Spring Field Public School, Ambala Chandigarh Road, Ambala, Haryana.

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isn 0976 - 0008 designed BY Dev Kabir Malik Design

Technologic

the su nday g u a rdi a n 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 | n ew delh i

Wear your heart on your sleeve: A new, smart clothing line by Apple fans are 100% more likely to accommodate requests and spend money when spoken to through Apple Earrings.

Azeem Banatwalla

After an overwhelming response to the newly-announced Apple watch, the Cupertino-based giants are preparing to make headlines again with an upcoming range of technological fashion products to entice Apple fanatics into further emptying their coffers. Some information about this new tech clothing line has been leaked and Guardian20 can offer you an exclusive sneak peek into what the future holds for your hipster wardrobe. iShoes The new range of Apple shoes will be able to monitor your heartbeat, count the number of steps you take in a day, and tell you how many calories you have burnt. It also has a smart “Android detector” that forcibly makes you jog in the opposite direction when you encounter a human being who is operating a Samsung phone.

Apple T-shirts Complete with a glowing Apple logo in the centre, the new range of Apple t-shirts will make you look like a hipster version of Iron Man. Thanks to Apple’s penchant for using unnecessarily expensive materials in its products, the shirt will be con-

iJeans The iJeans have been painstakingly woven from with recycled microchips of discarded iPhone 3GS’s across the world. With unprecedented levels of comfort and stretchability (a word coined

by Apple), the iJeans are the next generation of bottomwear. They also sync wirelessly with the iShoes to aid in running away from Android users rapidly.

Apple clothing concept (stock image).

structed from military grade titanium alloys, offering the wearer protection from radiation, dust, and projectiles launched at up to 500 km/h.

Tony Montana wishes he had one of these. iGlasses While Google has made the first move in augmented reality headsets, Apple is determined not to be left behind. The new Apple Glass will offer voice recognition, travel tips, detailed psycho-

logical analysis of all subjects in view, and fun augmented reality modes for the whole family. Our personal favourite is the mode that converts all human subjects in view to iPads and MacBooks so that the user feels more at home with his or her surroundings. iHat The Apple hat is a fedora, with an inbuilt antenna to boost network signal. However, it has no additional features, which makes sense be-

cause you just need a fedora to rock all Apple products with maximum swag. Works best at Starbucks.

is for dedicated fans. Warning: May cause asphyxiation to non-Apple users in the vicinity.

Apple Air While this may sound like another MacBook, it is not.

Apple Air is a trendy oxygen mask that provides the user exclusive oxygen manufactured in Apple’s very own laboratory. Regular oxygen is passé, and a true Apple fan must literally eat, sleep and breathe Apple. Apple Air

Apple Earrings Regular life sounds so boring, right? The Apple earrings not only look ultrafashionable, but also come with advanced digital sound processing algorithms and convert all incoming conversations into the calm, soothing cadence of Tim Cook.

Research suggests that Apple

iBoxers No fashion line is complete without innerwear, and Apple is determined to leave no stone unturned. The iBoxers will be available in stylish chequered patterns, including the limited edition “Steve Jobs boxers” with miniature faces of Steve Jobs printed across the garment.

All Apple boxers come with an inbuilt “clean-up” system to avoid embarrassment after the excitement that accompanies a new Apple product.

Apple’s new clothing line will soon be available at all Apple outlets across the world. However, watch out for cheap roadside duplicates. It’s easy to spot those: just look for the logo that says “Micromax” on it.

Photo forgeries

BLOG SURFER

Switzerland-based photographer duo Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger have been recreating iconic photographs sold for millions of billions of dollars — the Hindenburg crash, images from 9-11, JFK’s assassination, Abraham Zapruder’s Frame 371 — using miniature scaled-down models they craft themselves. They’re just having some harmless fun, and they always zoom out of the photo to ensure some elements of the framing, crafting and recreating process remain in the photo. But what if they didn’t? Wouldn’t these miniature imitations look exactly like the originals? And, more importantly, what if the “original photos” were actually miniature creations — much like these — that we were tricked into believing to be real? It confuses our brains. | www.ohnetitel.ch

13

BIO Wars ANDREW GRIFFIN

Woolly mammoth to walk the earth again

S

cientists have spliced DNA from the woolly mammoth into living elephant cells, opening up the possibility of bringing back the long extinct animal.

Over 3,000 years after the mammoth went extinct, scientists have successfully brought to live mammoth cells in a lab, they said yesterday. Scientists have replicated the genes that make elephants different from mammoths — their hairiness, bigger ears and fat beneath their skin — and successfully inserted

them into an elephant’s code.

Mammoths are closely related to Asian elephants, so that the Harvard scientists didn’t need to fully create a new cell. A new technique was used by George Church, a Harvard professor of genetics, which lets scientists make specific edits to DNA and copy and paste in certain bits of code.

The living cells represent the first time that mammoth genes have been alive since they went extinct roughly 3,300 years ago. The last of the species lived on an island in the Arctic Ocean, and scientists took genes from there for the experiment.

M

ammoth cells are easier to find than other animals of a similar time, because many of the remains have been buried in permafrost, preserving them like a freezer. That has led to particular interest in whether the mammoth could be revived through cloning — but not everyone agrees that cloning bringing the species back to life would be an ethical decision.

Scientists worry that the A new technique was cloning procedure could experimenting on used by George Church, involve many living elephants, scientists told The Independent in a Harvard professor November, when a new of genetics, which lets woolly mammoth was found.

Tori Herridge, an expert scientists make specific inDrmammoth anatomy from edits to DN A and the Natural History Museum, asked “whether or not copy and paste in the justifications for cloning a mammoth are worth the certain bits of code. suffering, the concerns of keeping an elephant in captivity, experimenting on her, making her go through a 22-month pregnancy, to potentially give birth to something which won’t live, or to carry something which could be damaging to her. And all of those aspects... I don’t think that they are worth it; the reasons just aren’t there.”

Cloning mammoths could also lead people to be lax about the extinction of living animals, according to other experts.

Professor Alex Greenwood, an ancient DNA expert, told The Telegraph: “We face the potential extinction of African and Asian elephants. Why bring back another elephantid from extinction when we cannot even keep the ones that are not extinct around?

“What is the message? We can be as irresponsible with the environment as we want. Then we’ll just clone things back?”

THE INDEPENDENT

game gear

Assassins Breed: Make love, not war Amit Goyal

The deadliest killers in the world are waging love jihad Platforms: PlayStation 5 and Xbox Two for Price: Rs 3,999 Back in 2007, Assassin’s Creed was an idea. It took a lot of risks with established norms by introducing settings such as the Third Crusade and the Italian Renaissance, which had never been seen before in gaming. It even challenged the way platformers were played, and the gaming world has never been same again —largely thanks to the charming, murderous rascal that was Ezio Auditore in Assassin’s Creed 2.

Seven years down the line and countless sequels later, Assassin’s Creed was no longer the symbol of innovation in mainstream gaming that it used to be. Additions to the

series were iterative rather than revolutionary, and even the generation leap of Assassin’s Creed: Unity failed to add much substance to staple offerings of the series. The developers knew they needed to shake things up before fatigue. Enter Assassins Breed.

The first thing you’ll notice is the lack of a number or sub-heading, something which the AAA gaming industry is increasingly getting allergic to. Set in the same universe as the rest of the games, this is an entirely new game with new gameplay mechanics that are truly groundbreaking.

Set in modern times, the repeated attacks by the templars have sent the assassins scurrying for cover and put a huge dent in their numbers.

You play as Romeo Bravo, a character inspired by the

eternal Shakespearean lover, Romeo and the eternal pickup artist, Johnny Bravo. Your job is simple: Spread the Assassin gene

by wooing and bedding as many ladies as possible so as to cause a 21st century “Baby Assassin Boom”.

Gone are the tools of de-

struction like the iconic hidden blade and swords and guns. To fulfil his task, Bravo must do anything and everything possible to impress

the ladies. The challenges offered in the game are far more varied than any previous entry in the series. In one mission, you’ll be court-

ing a single mom by collecting all the groceries she needs at the supermarket in time before her sick baby decides to throw up and make her unavailable for the rest of the evening.

In another mission, you’ll be tasked with a stealth date on top of the Eiffel Tower, where you must use your skills of persuasion to sneak your girlfriend and yourself across security for a truly romantic dinner. One wrong move, and both of you will be in jail where you must listen to the crazed rants of a homeless man about how the government is using video games to brainwash everyone.

And if the task of running around and completing random objectives in the main story is not enough for you, you can totally

run around and complete random objectives in the vast open world that captures all the excitement of 8 blocks of Parisian suburbs.

There are white roses to collect, goth kids to bully and even a Don Quixote costume to unlock if you find the letters with love-making tips from the legendary assassins of the past, most of which suggest pulling the hood over the head, smiling slightly and extending your arms.

To which we say: Shahrukh Khan has totally been pulling this trick and winning for over two decades.

In conclusion, Assassins Breed finally returns the series to its roots of innovation by breathing in new life (quite literally). What are you waiting for, Assassin?

Go do your bit.

14

Masala Art

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 29.03.2015 | new delhi

saJid khan is tired of ‘B’wood’s mediocrity’, wants to take a Break Sajid Khan is contemplating quitting Bollywood for good. The filmmaker, currently remaking Rajkumar Kohli’s 1979 classic, Jaani Dushman, said, “Bollywood is in a terrible state right now. Just look at the kinds of films we are making. I don’t belong here; I will most probably take a long break after my current film.” When asked what triggered this decision, Khan replied, “I recently saw a film that was so bad that it made me cry — a Saif Ali Khan film where actors were playing triple roles. How can such films continue to get made? Have some Bollywood directors given up on good quality cinema? I don’t want to be party to this cesspool of mediocrity.”

katrina Breaks up with ranBir to focus on candy crush career

The inevitable has happened. Katrina Kaif broke up with her current boyfriend, Ranbir Kapoor, because she believed their relationship didn’t give her enough time to concentrate on Candy Crush. “Madam is very serious about her Candy Crush career,” said her agent Ashish Cumar. “She’s been working really hard on the game and has reached level 436 in just eight days. As a result, she wasn’t able to spend enough time with Ranbir, and they had to call it quits. But there are no hard feelings; they are still friends.”

Johar comes out, admits making films only for critics Karan Johar appeared on Ekta Kapoor’s new talk show, Agar Hai Adhoori Toh Kkkaro Dil Ki Baat Poori, where he opened up about his filmmaking career. “I have been living a lie for close to two decades now,” said Johar.

“All my life, I have craved for critics’ acceptance. Box office numbers don’t do a thing for me. But I kept clarifying that I make movies for the masses, not for a select few. I was just being hypocritical. In fact, I don’t know why film critics get so much hate? They are doing an incredible job. We owe them so much.”

Sunny Leone to star in Sooraj Barjatya’s next film t taran nahata aha ahata

F

ilmmaker and producer Sooraj Barjatya has not eaten in the last 72 hours. He refuses to come out of his office or answer his phone. No one knows why. What is obviously clear is this: Barjatya doesn’t want to be contacted. But, as luck would have it, Barjatya has agreed to speak to me. I pinged him on Facebook, and the man got talking.

“Mah lyf is not gng anywhere [sic],” he replied when asked if everything was all right. My “Do you want to meet?” led to this answer: “Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.”

I took that as a y yes, and here I am in his office, a high-rise in Worli, where Barjatya faces me across a biggish table, and the wall frame posters of V some of his past releases — Vivaah, Main Prem Ki Diwaani Hun, Hum Saath Saath Hain — look down on him. “They are telling me that I am not making any sense,” says Barjatya, eyes stuck on the table, fidgeting with a bunch of pencils. “I have had enough. I am casting Sunny Leone in my next film.” Barjatya has fallen silent now. An awkward silence hangs in the room. Because how do you respond to life-changing moments: not just for Barjatya or Leone but for the entire Hindi film industry? Barjatya finally raises his head and looks me in the eye. “I want to move from making heart touching stories to hard touching stories,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I am forgetting my roots. The core of Barjatya movies — sanskaar — will be present in this film too.”

Barjatya’s next, tentatively titled Hum Aapke Hain Porn Star, is the story of a homely, small-town girl who wants to become an adult-film actress but only with the approval of her elders (all 26 of them). “It’s a coming-of-age story that we both deserve and need,” he says, now visibly spirited. “Do you mean a c-u-m-i-n-g age of story?” I want him to clarify, just for the record. Barjatya pretends to not hear me, and silently flips pages Playbo . I apologise and give him of Playboy some time to settle. After a few minutes, he sets the magazine aside and takes a hard look at me.

“You ha have no idea who the hero of my film is!” Of course, I don’t. I keep

Sooraj Barjatya.

Sunny Leone.

Barjatya’s next, tentatively titled Hum Aapke Hain Porn Star, is tthe story of a homely, small-town girl Por who wants to become an adult-film actress but only with the approval of her elders (all 26 of them).

quiet. “Alok Nath,” Barjatya pushes the stack of pencils towards me. I expect him to break into some sort of laughter, but he doesn’t. So what is the film about then? “You just don’t get it. We have got it all wrong over the

years,” Barjatya throws his hands in “Who doesn’t like sex? More the air. “W appropriately, who doesn’t like sanskari sambhog [cultured sex]?” The awkward silence comes back again.

It’s difficult to make out if I am inter-

viewing Barjatya, or he’s interviewing me. “But it’s not going to be a cheap film; I have thought long and hard about it.” There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I let that pass. All I let out is this: “But... Alok Nath?”

Barjatya’s voice booms all of a sudden. “Yes! Alok Nath. What’s your problem?” He pulls the stack of pencils towards him. “Alok is playing Sunny’s agent, but they fall in love later. I want to show people that love can blossom anywhere. Is that okay with you?” I am quiet. Barjatya goes on, “Sorry, I don’t want to discuss the plot further.” Still finding it difficult to believe Barjatya, I excuse myself for a loo break to call Leone. “Yes, it’s true. I have signed on Sooraj-ji’s new film,” she says. “I just got bored of playing the same roles. None of the Bollywood filmmakers had anything new to offer. At least Sooraj-ji came up with something fresh. My character, even though a porn star, has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering or something similar.

It’s a pretty challenging role.”

When I enter Barjatya’s office again, he’s speaking to someone over the phone. Once he’s done with the conversation, he gets up, dusts off his shirt, and tells me, “You can go and print this news in whatever way you like. Tell everyone that the Sun’s gonna shine bright on the Barjatyas from now.”

More B-town actors to change names for good luck azeem Banatwalla

Bollywood celebrities are no strangers to change, especially when it comes to their names. Many celebrities, such as Tusshar Kapoor, have experienced up to a 5% change in fortunes after expertly modifying letters in their names over the past few years, and 2015 will be no exception.

Salman Khan tops the list for this year and will be making the subtle shift to Salmon Khan, because that’s how most of his fans pronounce his name with their fake accents. This change of name may also provide a convenient loophole for any future

aamir khan puBlicly apologises for the aiB roast comment Aamir Khan was in a rare candid mood during one of the open forums at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Frames 2015 held last week. Khan felt he was “too harsh” in panning the All India Bakchod roast. “I was completely wrong. These kids were just having some fun and trying to push the envelope in their own way,” said Khan, Delhi Belly’s producer. “In fact, I identify with these guys at a fundamental level because they are just like me — socially conscious, irreverent and funny. My sincere apologies to everyone associated with the roast.”

Viveik Oberoi (the actor’s current spelling of his name).

developments in court cases.

Ajay Devgn also plans to take the next logical step by dropping a further vowel, making him Ajay Dvgn. It is said that this is a practical move since he plans to move to Slovakia next year and will be accepted

with open arms for having a name comprised entirely of consonants. He is widely expected to shorten it further to JyDvgn by 2017, and reports state that this is already his home wi-fi password.

A m o n gst t h e l ad i e s ,

Parineeti Chopra has filed the paperwork to officially change her name to Priyanka Chopra. An ace astrologer has suggested that this name can conceivably bring her far more success for “purely astrological reasons and not because there’s a successful person in her family with the same name”.

Riteish Deshmukh will be bucking the trend of adding or removing letters, and will simply be re-arranging letters this year. The proposed plan is to shift the “i” ahead and make it iRiteishDeshmukh so that it becomes not only a name but also an introduction at the same time. Astrologer Timin Cookeshwar is certain

that this will reap huge benefits in the long run and convince fans that Deshmukh is a premium product. One man who is no stranger to name changing is Vivek Oberoi. He has toyed with Viveik Oberoi and Vivek Anand to no great avail, but this year Oberoi will experiment with different hotel names. Vivek Taj, Vivek Marriott and Vivek Best Western have been proposed, though nobody knows which one Vivek will end up choosing. Chunky Pandey will also be adding an additional “k” to his first name as an experiment, although most astrologers have suggested that it will probably have little impact on his career.

rohit shetty’s next to star cars, not actors Rohit Shetty’s next film, titled Car-O-Bar, has an unlikely star cast: it features cars instead of actors. In fact, not just the leads, but even the side characters are cars. “Yes, it’s not a rumour,” clarified Shetty, when he held a press conference last week to announce his latest project.

“It’s an endearing love story between Mahindra Scorpio and Tata Nano.

Scorpio’s father, Bolero, is opposed to his son’s marriage because Nano is from a lower caste. I am very excited about this film; it’s going to have all the elements of a hit masala movie.”

Masala Art 15

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 29.03.2015 | n ew d elh i

WORDS

HOLLY

cinema scope tanul thakur

“Beauty is not skin deep.

Or, maybe it is, only if you are fat or something.”

CINEMA SCOPE

An astounding, breathtaking achievement worth celebrating

“Thinking mein bhi takla ho ja oooooon.”

CINEMA SCOPE

— Kim Kardashian defines beauty.

— salman Khan being eloquent as usual.

life

“Yeah, these things completely slip my mind at times.”

Director: God-or-Science Starring: Lunat Hatkur, Nobid Hatkur, Waspnil Jha

A

— shahrukh Khan says he suffers from short-term memory loss and frequently forgets trivial things such as carrying a phone, taking out the trash, acting, among others.

“It hurts to know that selfie, OMG and LOL have made it to the Oxford dictionary, but Cumberbit**es has not.”

— Benedict Cumberbatch stands for his fans.

t one point in the recently released mag mag-num opus Life, I was struck by the filmmaker’s audacity and vision: this movie, at the outset, takes refuge in that typical art-house film cliché — nothing really seems to happen during its runtime. But it would be unfair to slap the film with such reductive labels as boring, tedious or soporific. Because if you are ready to engage with the film, understand its intricate motifs and warm up to its grand scale, your viewing experience will be highly rewarding.

Right from its first scene — a top-down shot of a baby crying in a cradle, surrounded by joyous parents, doctors

and nurses — Life unfolds through everyday vignettes aplenty that are never preachy or pretentious; in fact, the filmmaker God-orScience shows a perceptive eye for detail and an astonishing grip over the subject.

Some may complain about Life’s lack of story or its long flexible runtime (a little more than 26 years for me, but that changes depending on the viewer), but it’s to Godor-Science’s credit that the film isn’t entirely dull. Sure, some years are more enjoyable than others, and there are bits that can get unbearably depressing or monotonous, but that stylistic choice is intentional: the filmmaker wants to challenge the audi-

ence and test their limits. Life is an inventive avant-garde film that doesn’t believe in serving the viewer; it’s always experimental, but not ostentatious; thought-provoking, not didactic.

Life also plays around a lot with almost every film form and the results are refreshing: it’s one of the few movies in recent times where 3-D is not used as a gimmick and is, in fact, indispensable to the content. But what’s really astounding about Life is this: the film unfolds through just one long take; however, unlike Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, where sundry scenes were smartly melded to simulate one long uncut sequence, Life doesn’t rely on visual trickery to achieve that feat — the film was actually shot for 26 years and not edited one bit.

Celebrities Celebrating photo-bombing

So what you see is what Godor-Science shot: raw footage whose rough edges have not been smoothed.

Life, like most films, has its share of flaws: amateur actors are, at times, incapable of truly realising Godor-Science’s ambition; the film’s frequently fluctuating visual language — switching from grainy, hand-held footage to plush production design — gets tiring in parts; its tone, too, keeps varying throughout, leaving you confounded about the kind of film Life wants to be. But Life, in so many ways, is unlike any other film: it’s not only genre-bending, but also magically malleable, unfolding differently for each viewer.

Life is dotted with plenty of scenes where nothing interesting or valuable happens, and God-or-Science’s indulgence or sadism feels unbearable — but the moment you think you have figured it all out, an ingenious plot point crops up, catching you off guard. And this unpredictability is one of Life’s major strengths: it is consistently observing, demanding, tormenting, delighting, asking questions and, most importantly, barely providing answers. And again, like any other film, I am not sure if you would enjoy Life or not, but here’s the thing about this beast: you liking or hating Life will speak less about the movie, more about you.

video drome AbhimAnyu DAs

Chris Rock’s Top Five rivals his funny, incisive stand-up acts

O

ne of the most consistently rewarding pop culture trends of recent years has been the migration of standup comedians to headlining positions in film and television. In and of itself, this is nothing new — Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen made the move decades ago — but the more recent transplants, represented by trailblazing artists like Louis CK and Larry David, have started their own distinctive creative renaissance. This fast-growing and iconoclastic canon is characterized by the frequent blending of autobiographical elements and loosely structured or even plotless narratives with biting social satire; the whole acerbic package wrapped in the lo-fi trappings of indie cinema aesthetics. Last year, Chris Rock added his own contribution to that movement with Top Five Five, a semi-autobiographical film that’s essentially an interrogation of his own public image and of the role of AfricanAmerican entertainers in general.

Top Five follows movie star Andre Allen (Rock, who also writes and directs) on a hectic day during which he’s being shadowed

by Chelsea (Rosario Dawson), a no-nonsense New York Times profile writer, while bouncing Chris Rock in Top Five (2014). between press junkets, wardrobe fittings and voiceover recording sessions.

A formerly edgy stand-up comic who subsequently found fame and fortune in a lowbrow franchise about a crime-fighting bear named Hammy, he’s looking to return to his socially relevant roots by starring in Uprize, an Oscar-bait 12 Years a Slave ripoff. Unfortunately, Uprize is shaping up to be a huge flop and the journalists assigned to interview him about that particular movie only seem interested in asking him about the next Hammy sequel or his upcoming televised marriage to a reality TV star.

L

ately, Rock has gotten more attention for his insightful and frequently provocative comments about race, class and American society (in, for example, a widely circulated New York Magazine interview) than for his work in film or television. Top Five gives him the opportunity to continue and complicate this conversation, using the New York Times interview as a convenient framing device. Folded into a meandering narrative structure akin to that of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise/Sunset Sunrise/Sunset, Chelsea and Andre travel around the city, debating topics both personal and political. Passionate though the discourse is, it never takes the form of a harangue.

Using the character of Chelsea, Rock constantly secondguesses himself, rarely presenting a point without also considering its counter. The rhythms of the resulting debates feel both naturalistic and involving, approximating the stimulation of intelligent conversation without forgetting that there’s an audience at risk of getting bored or feeling lectured. The filter of race and politics also allows Rock to get at the heart of both characters, peeling back their carefully constructed veneers to reveal troubled histories. It helps, The filter of race and on this front, that both politics also allows Rock performers are at the top of their game. Rock to get at the heart of both switches deftly between characters, peeling back comedic and dramatic their carefully constructed beats, giving Andre a genuinely conflicted veneers to reveal troubled air as he struggles to histories. It helps, on this reconcile his artistic ambitions with the front, that both performers temptation to sell out to are at the top of their game. the lowest common denominator. Dawson is also excellent, making the most of a chance to stretch her acting chops and give Chelsea her own emotional arc.

However, for all its weighty considerations of the intersection between personal and societal ills, the film is an exceedingly effective delivery system for laughs. Much of what works on the comedic front stems from the extensive verbal sparring that takes place between Andre and the various characters he interacts with over the course of the day. Many of the jokes — particularly the ones focusing on race — have roots in Rock’s standup. He is also on point when it comes to industry satire, casting a jaundiced eye over the more absurd aspects of making and selling a movie. Entertainment reporters take a special beating; a portrayal of the rote interviews conducted at press junkets is simultaneously hilarious and cringeworthy. Finally, it helps that Rock is backed by a supporting cast that draws heavily from his circle of friends and colleagues; JB Smoove (best known for his surreal role on Curb Your Enthusiasm), Cedric the Entertainer and Seinfeld himself all show up in memorable turns. If there are any false steps, it’s in a sudden mid-film segue into gross-out humor that feels like it emerged from one of the less successful Sacha Baron Cohen projects.

It’s a minor complaint, however, for a film that continues the burgeoning tradition of the standup-comedian-as-auteur, and one that feels ironically representative of the tensions inherent in being a successful black comedian in 21st century America.

Do you say what you really want to say and risk compromising your success? Or do you go with the cum joke and call it a day?

G-Style

16 th e su n day g u a r d ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 31.07.2011 | n ew tdhe elh s un i day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

Ditch the grapefruit, Yo Yo will get you your bomb figure payel majumdar

N

ew research has revealed that Sri Sri Yo Yo Honey Singh might be the clue to the world’s increasing obesity problem. A lot of people knew this from before about his music — how playing his songs made us run as fast as possible, but the incredible results of this research shows that it holds true in the gym as well.

The researchers Adam and Felix had been in India on yoga tourism last year when they stumbled upon a gym playing something that sounded like “an old machine droning to EDM” from a distance. Intrigued, they both climbed the stairs that were papered with muscled white-people-posters to reach the floor. “What we saw there will haunt us forever. There were people all over the place — on the cross trainers, the treadmill, the pulleys — working out like the sheer devil was after them. I particularly remember the face of one old man with a bun on top of his head going at the cross trainers so hard, I feared the handles would be pulped by the time he was finished with them.” They travelled the length and breadth of India (that is, Rajasthan, Kerala, Punjab, Agra and Delhi) interrogated the owners and trainers of several gyms on their way (it was very dif difficult to speak to these guys since they all had hoodies and looked like the jedis but they persevered) and decided India might have cracked the body’s secrets again. “India has always led from the front for billions of years, when it comes to making amazing food and then working it out. It is in your peoples’ genes. It gave the world yoga, chicken tikka, chai latte, ayurveda, and now it has given the world the mystical Honey Singh.”

The research was conducted with participants of Plati-

Honey Singh is very happy with the results, and has decided to join hands with the pair, and open modern-day akhadas (wrestling grounds) for today’s gym dude. Li’l Golu, his lyricist will be travelling with the researchers and Honey Singh.

Yo Yo with his beautiful wife excited about his honeymoon; (above) Punjabi Boy HD Wallpaper.

“India has always led from the front for billions of years, when it comes to making amazing food and then working it out."

num Gym from across the country and studied 10,000 people who fell in the age bracket of 12-75. Half its members plugged in to other

1

kinds of EDM dance numbers, while one half of the study exercised to a Yo Yo playlist. It was conclusively proven at the end of the

study after six months, that Yo Yo participants burnt twice as many calories as the other group.

Researchers further found that each song could be finetuned to a special exercise routine. Every song has the same mind numbingingly repetitive beat, ideal for any exercise session that does not require you to think. The

Dutch researchers claimed that it was best to begin a cardio session with “Blue eyes, hypnotise, kardi hai menu” or hypnotise “Yaar mera superstar desi kalaakaar” with their leisurely laakaar pace and cavalier attitude while you are on the treadmill, and then build it up to “Aaj din hai sunny sunny sunny” since by then you are too exhausted, to think of anything more complicated than the sun shining. If its’ your leg day, move it to “An-

greji Beat de” while working those gluteal muscles. Do the squats to ““Kudi tu butter” or Brown Rang Rang, if you are a desi girl; it is going to help get those stripper moves on.

If one is trying to regain one's confidence level and build some triceps, the research recommends singing along to the song Love Dose from Honey Singh’s album Desi Kalaakaar. The researchers put a rider here — it is safe to use this song in the background as long as it doesn’t make you angry, or you try and make sense of it to the point that you pop a vein and your brains get splattered across the linoleum. Some things are best left unexplained.

With incredible lyrics such as “Hello, Uncle, Namaste/ Chalo kaam ki baat pe aatein hain/ Ab aap ye puchhenge ki ki/ Aap kitne paise kamate hain?/ Bas jitna aapki beti beti/ Ek mahine mein udati hai/ Ek hafte me meri gaadi utna tel khaati hai hai/ Hai ghar, hai paisa, hai gaadi gaadi/ Ab do jodon mein ladki bhejo / Ladki hui hamaari hamaari”, rapped in the old-school style (remember the ritual Hindi recitation periods?) this is one heady mix of nostalgia.

Honey Singh is very happy with the results, and has decided to join hands with the pair, and open modern-day akhadas (wrestling grounds) for today’s gym dude. Li’l Golu, the lyricist of these new age national anthems will be travelling with the researchers and Honey Singh, as they figure out the dynamics of the akhadas while writing new songs for their gym. When contacted Honey Singh said, “I have always said I want to help my people with my songs. Today I feel I’m getting closer to my goal. My songs have been misinterpreted in the past, and I have been wrongly accused of many things, demeaning women among them. Now even women can join my gym along with men and get that bomb figure to go with that chhoti dress while enjoying my songs. Fin.”

Fresh Oven In tH e

chef tanul t thakur noida sector-16 metro station,delhi-nCr

vodka maggi 'n' cheese

IngreDIents Maggi 2 packets Vodka 30 ml Salt 1/4 tsp Salami to taste Chorizo sausages to taste Smoked ham or bacon, fried 1 rasher Amul cheese, grated to taste Blue cheese (as if) Eggs as per availability Capsicum 1 small Carrots (for justification) Peas (a handful) Butter 50 g Jalapenos (love that guy) Coriander (because, India) Mint (believe me) Onions, caramelised for garnish A lot of sobriety and some self-belief (the reverse order works just fine as well. #TrueStory) MetHoD: Pour one-and-a half cups of water into a cooking pan.

While you wait for the water to boil, you can mull over some existential questions, one of them certainly being, why am I even doing this? (Till you spot all the meat spread out on the table just for you.) At this point, refrain from eating it before cooking. Instead, take out a pan and caramelise some onions. Drain it, and put it aside. In the same oil, fry sausages, and keep aside. Scramble those eggs. Look around, the water has begun to boil. Add the Maggi masala to the boiling water. Now break the noodle cake into pieces, and throw them into the mix. If you are feeling restless, you can also stir the mixture, but it's not a big deal because you have to be an incredible hack to mess Maggi up. I know what you are thinking right now: Don’t touch the Vodka bottle. NO! NOT YET. When you are almost done cooking the Maggi, which will always be more than two minutes because we have been lied to all our lives, go bazooka with your vodka in the cooking pan. Add the meat and vegetables. Stir the new mixture vigorously for five seconds. Switch off the gas. That’s it. You are done! Garnish with onions, mint and coriander. Once you are done cooking, eating, and (hopefully) not passing out, spread the joy of Vodka Maggi around. Use the hashtag #VodkaMaggi to spread the joy. You are welcome.

THE

6

LUXe LIST

4 3

5 7

2 1 phantom candy cigarettes The next time your lame smoker friends whip out a cigarette and ask you to "suck it", here's what you do: You whip out this chalktasting candy with the ruby red top and tell them to suck it.

Price: Rs 10 Available at: Candy shops

2 Wooden smoking pipe Elite pleasures are fun when achieved at a nominal price.

Price: Under Rs 100 Available at: Dark lanes of Paharganj, Delhi

3 dog bobble head for cars Host a lost puppy on your car dashboard, but do not look into those puppydog eyes; they are believed to have hypnotic powers that may cause accidents.

Price: Rs 65 Available at: Traffic signals, South Delhi

4 lux soap What could be more "Luxe"? The soap'll make you feel fancy all day.

Price: Rs 24 Available at: Street cosmetic stores

5 Wire head massager Better than a d**do.Perfect gift for that stressed out friend who can't find time to visit the nearest spa.

Side-effects include embarrassing contorted facial expressions while you give or get a head massage.

Price: Rs 25 Available at: Dilli Haat parking, Delhi

6 Bufin soap strips It is worth remembering this age-old travel secret that has kept us off germs on the filthy Indian Railways.

Price: Rs 3 Available at: All Indian railway stations

7 mastercard For everything else that money can buy – a true cliché, or truly cliché.

Price: Free at issue of new card.

Available at: All leading banks

G-Style G-Style 37 17

th e s u n day g u a rd rdian ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar d ian | 29.03.2015 30.07.2011 | n ew delh d elh i

town Tinder to-go: Ola Cabs & about introduce dating services Kebab it up

Amour, The Patio Restaurant Cafe & Bar, Hauz Khas T: +91 96541 26687 Pep up your Friday evenings with Amour’s Kebab festival where you get to choose from a wide spread that includes fish, chicken, lamb, tenderloin and vegetarian kebabs. Choose from grilled spicy cilantro, moroccan fish kebabs, spanish chicken skewers, lamb souvlaki, tenderloin koubideh, hot mustard kebab to name a few. Team this with dips, salad and freshly baked pita bread along with three domestic beers.

Meal for two: Rs 2,500 plus taxes

Egg came first

We plan to have a pro photographer in the car, equipped with a DSLR to perfectly capture the emotions our travellers feel, awkwardness and boredom.

azeem Banatwalla

A

couple of weeks ago, Ola, the popular Indian taxi service launched an interesting new service to start delivering food to its customers, presumably to eat into the lucrative “dabba-wala” market. However, the innovations have not stopped there. As of next week, Ola plans to launch an in-car dating service.

The Ola app will reportedly sync with Tinder, and if a user finds a match in his or her area, the couple will be notified and given the opportunity to spend a romantic cab drive together, instead of meeting at a café or pub to take their fledgling love affair forward. The taxi driver will serve as the butler for this encounter, and be equipped with champagne that can be poured at traffic signals. It has been suggested that the driver will also moderate fun ice-breaking games like “Never have I ever” to further enhance this experience.

Competitors like Meru and Uber are rumoured to be looking into their own new expansions.

An overseas spokesperson from Uber, Mr CabbWeMett went on to detail some of his company’s new plans. “We are looking into

The future of dating? (Representative stock photo)

the possibility of having an in-car photographer for our clients so that they don’t have to resort to low-resolution front camera selfies while in our cabs. We plan to have a professional photographer in the car, equipped with a DSLR and a 60mm lens to perfectly capture the emotions our travellers feel while in our cars, namely awkwardness

and boredom. You will now also be able to pick a topic of conversation with your driver. Making a booking a few hours in advance will allow the driver to read up on the subject of your choice so that you may have an engaging conversation with your driver. Our drivers have almost figured out how to use the map app on their phones, so this

new education should be a piece of cake for them. They are currently comfortable talking about traffic and discussing profanities to yell at nearby drivers.”

Meanwhile, local rickshaw and taxi drivers are looking into the possibility of building their own solutions to counter the competition from the private sector. A rickshaw

union representation, Mr Mittar C. Jayga said, “These Ola and Uber people are eating into our market, and this is very unfair. But we are working on our own network, in which we will collaborate with watchmen of all buildings to call on us when required. Those who are interested in our beta testing phase can contact their watchman and he will install the new app on their phones. Currently the app is not ready, so he will just store his number on your phone and you can take it from there. We think this will be a great success. You can also customise the rickshaw as per your liking, with different degrees of suspension, actress photos, and a selection of over 1,500 Bhojpuri hit songs which can be played on mild fast-forward upon request for an authentic rickshaw experience.”

A personal botler before new Star Wars

Smoke House Deli, DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj T: (011) 4356 2820 The good old eggs are coming with a twist at Smoke House Deli’s egg festival. The all-day breakfast innovative menu offers options such as mommy style akuri with fried bread and tangy tomato salsa, curry benedict, cheese and eggs, poached eggs with devilled baked beans and hash browns, classic steak and eggs with french fries, among other delicacies. On till 23 May. Meal for two: Rs 3,000 plus taxes

Southern spice

Eggspectation, Jaypee Vasant Continental, Vasant Vihar T: (011) 2614 8800 Eggspectation offers authentic southern cuisine at Eggspectation and choose from dishes such as rassam, kuzhi paniharam, meen manga kozhumbu, kozhi chettinaad, vegetable poriyal, dal dosai and paysam served with banana and pappadum. On till 8 April.

Meal for two: Rs 2,500 plus taxes

R2-D2 and C-3PO. sanshey Biswas

Easter bunny

Tamra, Connaught Place T: (011) 4119 1010 The chefs at Tamra have curated a special menu to celebrate Easter Sunday symbolising hope, renewal and new life. Enjoy a grand brunch with free-flowing Moet Chandon champagne along with interesting activities and a bunch of Easter goodies for young patrons.

Meal for two: Rs 3,500 plus taxes

Hana matsuri

ranveer singh, our favourite prankster, spotted wearing the most atrocious outfit ever, and carrying it off in style.

Watch to get R2-D2 to obey you. If you own an Android Wear Smartwatch, R2-D2 will still follow you but he will be armed with sarcasm and annoying one-liner putdowns.

If you manage to get your hands on an R2-D2 despite limited stocks, it will be delivered to your door step on 1 December, exactly eight months after the auction on 1 April. The reasons you might want an R2-D2 are — 1) Star Wars; 2) Slave. This R2-D2 like the original, will follow you around everywhere by tracking your smartwatch.

It also doubles up as a backpack with enough space for a lunchbox, sipper, tablet, netbook and phone.

Croxedos the next big thing in fashion payel majumdar

Sakura, MG Road, Gurgaon T: (0124) 4200 950 Celebrate spring season with colours, flowers and delicious food with Sakura, known for their Japanese food, served with a glass of beer. You can start with Chef’s Special Sarada (salad) and move onto Chenmi Santanmori (three kinds of fish, edamame (soya bean pots), gyoza (pan fried pork dumplings) and Geso Karaage (fried squid). End the meal with fruits and ice cream. On till 30 April.

Meal for two: Rs 3,000 plus taxes

With the new Star Wars movie in its final stages, Lucan Arts has created a limited number of R2-D2 bots for auction. The production house plans to donate prof profits to charity. There are other R2-D2-like interactive bots available in the market, but the ones on auction will have at least one component from the original R2-D2 from the Star Wars series.

The life-sized R2-D2 is developed by Nuance technologies (creators of Siri), and will be able to interact with the owner in a very humane way. George Lucan told Guardian 20, “When I

went to CES this year, I found myself wondering why in the DeathStar would someone create a robot maid? But then, one day I was lying on my bed, too tired to get up and desperately in need of Vicodin. There was no one else at home. Like every other day,” as his joyful expression changing to a sad puppyface. That’s when Lucan approached Nuance to make R2-D2 a reality.

Going on sale this fall, The New R2-D2 is your personal butler and, as Joney Ive claims, “An example of artistic evolution and craftsmanship excellence whole root to the power of pie.” As you might have expected, you will need to own an Apple

Fashion can be outrageous at times, but this is not one of those times. For once, fashion gurus have shown us the way by coming up with the sort that makes the most sensible ensemble ever, that makes one go, “Why did I not think of that?” You did not, because you are not a fashion designer, silly. In a move that has left the fashion fraternity gaping, Crocs are the mood of the season, and Crocs and tuxes are a combination that has been working its way up the ladder, right into Vogue

Editor-in-Chief Carine Roitfeld’s office. “I wear them all the time, I pair my favourite Tom Ford Crocs with my pinstriped suits — put them on when I need to be the boss.

Vogue is a very deep word.

You are either Vogue or not Vogue. And Crocs-and-tuxes are definitely Vogue.”

The Crux trend has been endorsed by many celebrities, who are choosing to

put their best Croc forward at all events. Miley Cyrus, founder of the Dirty Hippie Foundation, reportedly said she couldn’t be happier about it. Cyrus put up a picture of herself in crocs and a blazer on the social media app Instagram with the following mysterious caption,

“Ouchyyyyyyy it be daaa moust bootyleecious thang in da whul wide verlllld”.

While the caption doesn’t make much sense, her ecstatic expression makes us believe she is digging this trend, since she was sitting on her pizza bedcover, and she never does so unless she is happy about something, like her pet pig.

The Crocs trend has a winter version, and that happens to be uggs. While Uggs have got a lot of hate since the year that they started existing, they too can do wonderful things to your attire. After all, it is all about the contrast.

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G-Style

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 29.03.2015 | new delhi

Bugatti Varun: Made for Indian roads (limited edition) Season’s guide on Fashion police

Rebecca gonsalves

akhil sood

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ugatti as a brand, its tremendous global suc c es s no t w it hstanding, hasn’t quite been able to cut the mustard in the notoriously demanding automobile market in India. The sports car segment that it generally excels in has been monopolised by Lamborghini and Ferrari over here, most of which are usually parked at expensive hotels as eye-candy or used in hit-and-run cases.

Nevertheless, the brand is set to ruffle some serious feathers with its entry into the subcontinent in the luxury segment, in the IMPC — Indian Made Foreign Car — category, with its snazzy new Bugatti Varun, whose tagline states how the car has been “made for Indian roads”. The Varun is a high-end sedan (“with a French twist”) priced at Rs 35 lakh (ex-showroom), and the promo literature doing the rounds mentions how the car will compete with Audi, Skoda and BMW sedans while also providing additional unique features that the company has devised specifically for the Varun, based on extensive R&D conducted in India over the past three years. It’s targeting mostly the metros, launching operations in the capital to begin with.

A short test drive doesn’t quite do justice to the limitless capabilities of the Varun, but we gave it a quick spin around town, with a company rep named (bizarrely) Varun, for a few hours to

very first thing the aggressor (who is often but not always the aggrieved) does, is to confiscate the keys of the opposing party through the window on the driver’s side to prevent quick getaways (before pulling out the driver and beat-

imaginable. It does prove a problem when it comes to the multitude of ditches and craters on Indian roads, and how the car reacts to those bumps remains to be seen.

ple of minutes to assemble or dismantle. In addition to airbags in the front for both the driver and the passenger, the trunk has its own set of airbags to prevent breakage of bottles. Realistically, the dicky is large enough to fit a fully grown human body (in case of a fun evening at the bar gone wrong).

All models of the car come with a spoiler at the back and a little message etched under it in flam-

A spacious boot enhances the experience, coming as it does with a modular bar-table that takes barely a couple of minutes to assemble or dismantle. In addition to airbags in the front for both the driver and the passenger, the trunk has its own set of airbags to prevent breakage of bottles. Realistically, the dicky is large enough to fit a fully grown human body

The Varun comes with an inbuilt music system with exceptional bass boost capabilities and a minimum playing volume of 10 instead of zero, in order to drown out the music playing from other cars on the road. Beneath the music system is a mini-refrigerator that the higher models come with, along with a now-customary pocket space to place your drink in while driving, with a little bowl next to it (obviously for chakna, aka light snacks).

A spacious boot enhances the experience, coming as it does with a modular bartable that takes barely a cou-

ing font, which says: “Don’t follow me. I am dangerous.” A screen next to the dashboard displays the view behind while reversing — sensors indicating the distance between you and any objects at the back.

The car also comes with a sensor in the front, which automatically detects when the distance between the car and any cows on the road drops to under five metres.

Customers have the option of choosing between two horns: one is your regular truck horn that promises to “scare the accelerator off the Qualis in front”, while the other horn is a limited

learn the ins and outs just the same. One of the very first things that grabs your attention with the car is the ignition slot. Unlike every single car out there, the slot to insert the keys is on the left side of the steering box, not the right. This takes some getting used to and

may cause discomfort to most right-handed/thinking people. It’s a blessing though, as it has been placed on the wrong side because every time there is an altercation on Indian roads, the

ing the sh*t out of him). No more. The Varun allows for easy ram-and-runs.

The ground clearance is approximately four feet in height to counter the threat of the biggest speed breaker

edition piece that screams out “Hatega bhen***d, g*nd maar doonga” each time you press it.

The (power) windows come with a factory-fitted 50% tint, the legality of which falls in the same vacuum as Schrodinger’s cat.

But the cool part about the window tint is that it can be manually adjusted through skeezy little buttons on the steering wheel to increase or decrease the shade and the sunlight entering the car. Officially, this has been made to deal appropriately with the extreme weather conditions in the capital but we all know it’s merely to mislead the pigs drooling at the mouth to challan rich brats or to indulge in some funny business on the backseat *wink-wink nudge-nudge*.

Furthermore, the Varun does not come with any indicators for turning because research found these indicators to be “ornamental and a complete nuisance” that no one uses and that “they just get in the way” of some casual lane-changing.

However, the brake lights do switch on, automatically, every time the cars grounds to a halt to reduce rear-ending possibilities. The seats are made of leather with a neon velvet finish, designed to ergonomic perfection.

Beyond ease of use and a comfortable drive, Bugatti is also aiming at user satisfaction through a 360˚consumer experience. This, evidently, is why they have provided a complimentary baseball bat with every purchase of the Varun.

Are private helipads the best thing to happen to Mumbai? aditi shah

The glitterati of Mumbai is in a frenzy, after the State has finally granted permission for the construction of private helipads in both residencial buildings and commercial areas. After much debate around noise pollution, safety and security risks, the government unexpectedly made a U-turn, and took back their previous verdict on Thursday afternoon.

This decision has got environmentalists and activists outraging on Twitter, stat-

ing that Mumbai is the third nosiest city in the world. The

THE B LIST

State seems to have made up their mind, and the files

are piling up high as those who have much awaited this

decision, flock to the concerned departments to get their paperwork in order, and their construction plans approved at the earliest.

While one-billionth of the city is exuberant about the thought of such a thrilling futuristic project, the rest remain not only uncertain, but also highly disappointed.

As always, there are petitions being signed against choppers jetting across and manoeuvring through our skyline. “Can we not see the huge safety hazard in this?”

But it doesn’t look like any of these petitions will make a

difference, as the “Big Boys” of Mumbai are not ready to let this chance slip through their fingers of turning Mumbai into a neighbourhood from The Jetsons.

The question remains whether the Mumbaikars are prepared for such futuristic developments.

Let’s get ready for an addition of constructions, buildings, and a whole lot of noise.

I think I heard talks of hovercrafts from Marine Drive to Worli Seaface and the Reclamation, just when I was getting used to drones.

Earplugs: Check.

3 Bollywood costumes up for auction Cleopatra meets methamphetamine

Admit it: you’ve always wanted to look like a cross between Cleopatra and a really tacky Wonder Woman impersonator.

Rekha’s iconic costume from Khoon Bhari Maang is another lot up for sale at our auction. This dress is nothing if not flexible: strip all the gold dangling and you have the perfect Victorian finery. Pair a tiara with those formidable wrist wraps and you have not one, but two sharp things at your disposal, to ward off unwanted creeps.

Lime green lehenga suit

The suit that launched a 1,000 tailor shops, Rani Mukherjee’s lime-green lehenga suit had the world gasping for breath when she wore it in the best film about filial ties, Hello Brother.

As she sauntered on screen she kept the eager audience guessing, “Is it a lehenga? Is it a suit? What is happening here?!”

Good news is that the auction at Phoenix Mills Mumbai on 1 April, will make at least one ardent fan very happy, if she/he manages to take the dress out of the mill unharmed.

Glow-in-the-dark headband

“I don’t wear a bandana very often, but when I do it drowns out the sun,” says Mithun Chakraborty with this black-shirtand-golden bandana ensemble. Also sold with this lot are those tighty-whitey trousers whose integrity is firmly bound with a neon orange faux-karate belt, just to show ‘em that you mean business. When you step out of your house wearing this, triumphant karate cry emanating from your mouth, everything will resemble a shiny disco ball.

how to wear nothing

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or an industry that is ostensibly concerned with clothing the body, there’s a surprising amount of nudity in fashion. A hint of nipple here, a buttock bared there, is all part and parcel of attending most fashion shows, and the flesh flashing only increases when it comes to the spring/ summer collections.

Catwalk collections are there to make an impact, to showcase the extreme version of a designer’s ideas. These are often modified for modesty by the time they are translated into the commercial versions that end up in store. Still, sheer fabrics abound this season, but can you incorporate them into real life without being arrested for indecent exposure, or falling foul of your company’s dress code?

“This trend can work in everyday life,” says Lauren Thurston, a junior buyer at Figleaves.com, a specialist lingerie and swimwear site. “The key is adapting it to suit your lifestyle.

You could wear a body under a sheer blouse to provide more coverage for work. Invisible lingerie allows the clothes to do the talking, while bright colours and neon make a feature out of your underwear for a night out. We wouldn’t recommend going for a sheer bra under a see-through top though.”

See-through fabric is one of the biggest trends this year.

Kelly Dunmore, a lingerie stylist at Rigby & Peller, agrees: “There’s a sliding scale to this trend, but the key thing to bear in mind is that your lingerie needs to complement the overall look not distract from it. Lingerie decisions need to look intentional — whether this is choosing a style and colour that works harmoniously or intentionally contrasts.” As Rigby & Peller is blessed with a Royal Warrant, one wonders if the Queen takes such sage advice to heart.

Regardless of style, fit is the most important factor when choosing underwear — diaphanous fabrics are often also clingy or tight, adding an extra element of exposure. “Wellfitting lingerie is an absolute must-have with this trend, regardless of size or whether you’re going for subtle or sexy,” instructs Dunmore. “Well-fitted pieces will not only help achieve the perfect silhouette, but ensure that layering stays in place and that lines remain clean and minimal. This is especially true with strapless or bandeau pieces, which can slip out of place and give you overspill, whatever your size.”

B

ut it’s not just a translucent top half that needs tackling: dresses, skirts and even trousers come in sheer fabrics this season, meaning that VPL (visible panty line, that Nineties’ sartorial scourge) is back While we offer a range at an unprecedented of nude tones, what our level. Dunmore thinks that Spanx shorts are customer is really looking a less than aestheticalfor is a good-fitting bra. We ly-pleasing solution, a fact that anyone who find that this is ranked higher has trussed themthan the shade of the piece. selves up in teeny-tiny Lycra can agree with.

Instead, she recommends invisible briefs for their smooth lines — thanks to a lack of seams — and full coverage, handy if an errant breeze threatens to recreate Marilyn Monroe’s infamous scene from The Seven Year Itch.

Whether you can see it or not, a correctly fitting bra will immediately change the way the clothes on top look, in part by shaping the body underneath, but also the way you feel. The link between underwear and emotional and physical wellbeing is obvious — feeling supported physically has an impact on posture and back health, as well as body image and selfconfidence. “Wearing a good-fitting and supportive bra can be a revelation,” says Thurston. “You feel more comfortable, supported and more confident.”

Priya Bal, lingerie and beachwear buyer at Harvey Nichols, agrees that fit is often a deciding factor, even for the department store’s trend-led customers: “Our customer is fearlessly stylish, and looking for a variety of styles they can experiment with. Many customers enter the department with an idea of what lingerie they are looking for, often more detailed pieces that are made to be on show. Once they speak to our expert stylists they realise that buying the right size bra can really make a difference to their shape, not to mention how it makes them feel.”

Interestingly, given how international Harvey Nichols’ customers are, a wide range of skin tones is not their first priority, says Bal. “While we offer a range of nude tones, what our customer is really looking for is a good-fitting bra. We find that this is ranked higher than the shade of the piece.”

True as this may be, having to choose between fit and colour-matching is nevertheless frustrating for women of colour. Not least Ade Hassan, who last year founded Nubian Skin, a range of lingerie and hosiery in tones from creamy coffee to rich brown, in order to redefine a concept of nude that, in the UK at least, has been too narrow for too long.

After all, whether you opt for sheer delights or not, shouldn’t everybody be able to build their wardrobe on a firm foundation?

the independent

G-Style 19

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 29.03.2015 | new delhi

Horse-loving Poitier CEO drones on about his life payel majumdar

B

elgian brand Poitier, one of the premier fashion and lifestyle brands in the world, from the country whose fashion sense no one really gets, recently launched their wrist watch couture collection that looks very similar to your regular wrist watch, but costs as much as an average temple elephant in Kerala. Poitier’s Brussels CEO Philippe Phillipe graced us with his presence in Delhi, for the launch of their new collection. The media went crazy (they were serving single malt and champagne during the day, WHATT?), as did Delhi’s well-heeled set, trying to get a photograph with yesteryear’s Hollywood cowboy figure Richard Gere. Two among the nation’s current favourite Bollywood stars also attended the event; both are currently known for their wonderful work in cereal commercials.

The advertisements are so good;

it makes you want to have masala oats and weight-loss cereal, and nothing else for the rest of your life. Anyway, let us not get distracted, and come back to CEO Philippe Phillipe, who also happens to be a horological expert, horse lover, an EDM genius (not to forget the grandson of the founder of the company).

In this interview he speaks to Guardian 20 about life in general.

Q. No, you did.

A. …

Q. Have you ever noticed how horology sounds so close to horror-logy, and watches are a big part of horror films — I’m thinking grandfather clocks and gothic horror here.

Ha ha, sh*t, I’m hiccupping, whoops. What are your thoughts on vampire movies?

A. Would you like a glass of water?

Q. So ... how’s life?

A. Good. We are very glad to be able to make it to this event. Poitier has always believed in…

Q. Would I, of course I would not. What a silly thing to ask. Anyway, I’m asking the questions.

A. …

Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did you end up with your name?

A. I’m sorry?

Q. Well for one, it rhymes?

Also why repeat stuff twice? On a completely separate note, we often call our dogs by such names.

A. I’m not sure how to respond to that.

Q. So since when have you been such a big horse trader?

A. I have been a horse lover all my life, if you are referring to my passion. single malt whisky; (below) weight-loss cereal.

Q. Since you are such a horse lover, did you know that horses are named

after Indians? They often have names such as Sardar, Shera or Amritkala, for instance — it doesn’t depend on their country of origin. Once in India, they must all have Indian names. This is not the case for dogs.

A. That seems slightly racist to me.

Q. You just called all of India racist.

A. No, you did.

Q. What do you think I am referring to?

A. Honestly, at this point, I have no idea.

Q. How are you so white?

A. Well, when I was young, they bathed me in milk every day, that had crushed almonds and the purest saf saffron in it brought from the Kashmir valley.

Q. You would not think of this as sarcasm if you lived in India. Brown babies who are lucky

enough to be born into rich families, go through that exact process, in a brass bathing bowl. Our science now has progressed so much, that we have creams to replace these traditional baths.

Does our culture look like a joke to you?

A. I was not joking.

Q. That is very convenient.

A. That may be so.

Wristwatches are notoriously hard to keep track of.

They keep slipping off, or the grooves to buckle them become loose, or the little rubber buckle-holding device falls off. Or the battery dies.

Or they’re too expensive. Or they get lost or broken. Or they get replaced; rendered obsolete by fruit companies.

Tackling this predicament is a group of renegades that calls itself The Inkfidels.

It’s a voluntary collective of heavily tattooed people from Mumbai who’re difficult to tell apart because their faces are also filled with colourful and permanent artwork.

The Inkfidels believe tattooing to be a way of life, a

fashion statement on their belief systems and how they approach existence. “We believe in complete freedom and liberation from the system; that’s why we get permanent tattoos on ourselves which cannot be removed without extensive, expensive, painful surgery. We’re bound by our tattoos because we are independent nonconformists,” said (apparently) the Inkfidels founder, Mansoor Mishra, known as Eminem to her friends. “Tattoo needles fill all the holes in our hearts.”

They believe that watches are a useless appendage, and have instead started a new movement, called Wristing, that they’re hoping will quickly catch on among the country’s youth. “What we

mansoor mishra, the founder of inkfidels (we think).

advocate is getting a tattoo of a wristwatch on your wrist.

We’ve all done it.” It’s stylish and sleek, and it requires zero maintenance. They suggest that most people don’t even look at the time on their watches anyway — “Everyone has smartphones that they whip out whenever they want to check the time”— it’s a useless showpiece that speaks of people’s material insecurities and nothing else.

“Wristing gives you complete freedom; you get to custom-create your dream watch from scratch. It will never malfunction, there’s no chance of water leaking into its circuit, the battery lasts forever, you can pick a colour and a style that suits your personality without paying

ANTONIA FILMER

French American actress Leslie Caron moves to London

O

n Wednesday 25th at a discreet venue just behind New Bond Street celebrity decorator Nicky Haslam gathered together 70 close friends to celebrate Leslie Caron, the French American film actress and dancer. Haslam wanted to make her feel at home in London following her recent move from France. Friends since 1965 they met at a party in Billy Wilder’s home in Hollywood. The delicately beautiful Miss Caron arrived in an oyster lace dress and steely grey

Q. You seem a little displeased. Have I offended you?

A. No, that’s alright. I’m of often quizzed about my personal life.

Q. Who do you think you are, Kim Kardashian?

A. Oh, I definitely do not think that.

Q. Good.

A. Good. Are we done?

Q. Almost. My photographer wants to take down your bathing solution recipe, in case you were being serious.

A. Oh lord.

Q. Oh wait, I have some horological questions.

A. Finally! Go ahead.

Q. I think we are done here. That was a good interview. Please ask your PR to get in touch with me with the photos and a press release.

Wristing, the newest trend in body art, replacing wristwatches akhil sood

london eye

an outrageous amount to get a gadget that will be obsolete in another three or four months. This, this lasts forever. You can never lose it,” says Eminem. The Inkfidels reveal they got the idea for Wristing from Rage Against the Machine’s bass player, Timmy Commerford, who has a giant tattoo covering his entire torso because he doesn’t like wearing T-shirts.

The trend has sparked some annoyance, especially among established watch retailers. Madhur Bose, CEO at watch company Tight One, said: “These young people… what do I tell you? We will take strict action against them. We are already speaking to our lawyers and we will destroy them. They are infidels.”

photograph from nicky haslam’s close gathering of 70 people in honour of leslie Caron.

sequinned cardigan, looking much the same as she did when she was the star of no less than 45 films, Miss Caron is unique in that she has danced with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Miss Caron’s best known films are An American in Paris, Lili, Gigi and The L Shaped Room, she has three Best Leading Actress Awards Miss Caron is unique in and a number of Lifetime that she has danced with Achievement Awards.

Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Miss Caron was seated between Ömer Koç the Rudolph Nureyev and Turkish art collector/ Mikhail Baryshnikov. Miss businessman and Alex Beard Chief executive of Caron’s best known films The Royal Opera House; are An American in Paris, the guests included Peers Lili, Gigi and The L Shaped of the Realm ( Baroness Rawlings), celebrities Room, she has three Best (Jerry Hall), actors (Richard E. Grant and Barnaby Leading Actress Awards Thompson), and columand a number of Lifetime nists ( Richard Kay/ Daily Achievement Awards.

Mail). Haslam hosted the dinner in the aptly named Gigi’s restaurant who prepared a feast of Italian delicacies, just before the pudding Haslam jumped into his crooner incarnation and serenaded Miss Caron with Johnny Mercer’s song “Somethings Gotta Give” which Fred Astaire sang to her as they danced together in “Daddy Long Legs”.

Haslam who has “always worshipped Cole Porter” came to singing by chance and later in Iife, following a friend’s dare to perform a Cabaret at Bellamy’s restaurant in London, his singing has turned into a proxy career with gigs at Annabel’s nightclub and the Savoy Hotel. For his next show he will be accompanied by pianist Tom Wakeley at the St James Theatre, London from 28-30 April.

Lose that double chin in five easy steps Malik breaks hearts the world. Stretch your lips out and tone the skin under your chin. Also, as an added benefit, posting these clicks on Instagram will get you endless followers (It’s okay!

You can thank us later).

mihika jindal

We understand the pressing need to lose that annoying double chin, the same double chin that you desperately try to crop out on Instagram. So here we are, letting the cat out of the bag: we’re confident you’ll lose that chin in a jiffy if you follow our suggestions. Go ahead and try it, if you don’t believe us.

Chew on badly-cooked meat You obviously missed the point each time you called the chef to complain about the badly cooked meat. You see, he was magnanimously helping you lose that hideous flab beneath your chin. So the next time you’re having some trouble gulping down that meat, just be patient

and chew on it, no matter how long it takes. Sync your chewing with the rhythm of the song playing at the restaurant for better results.

Mastering the pout For starters, get a phone with a high resolution front-

camera because this is going to be your source of inspiration; it’ll also keep a record of the before you and the after you. Sign-up on Instagram (if you aren’t already on it, loser) and spend at least half an hour every morning going through selfies from across

Nod. Agree.

Drop that ego and learn to agree with people more than you usually do. And when you do, best to keep your mouth shut; save your words for later and simply nod. Nod when they invite you for a party. Nod for a drink or two.

Nod to get on the table and dance. Nod in discussion even when you disagree. You may have to compromise your selfesteem a little, but remember the bigger picture .

Pantomime This is going to be easier if

you’re the designated joker of your cool gang. Go a step further and learn to mime.

Contort your face in neverseen-before expressions — extreme laughter or ultimate sorrow; it’ll only help stretch the sagging skin around your face. Embrace the lord and saviour Charlie Chaplin immediately, and you’ll notice positive results in no time.

Chisel it Desperate times call for desperate measures. When you start to lose all hope but none of that double chin, consider it time to take things (read chisel) in your hand... literally. It will surely hurt but you gotta do what you gotta do. Since you are attempting this for the first time, we recommend drawing a rough sketch of the desired jaw-line.

sahil shah

Global catastrophe has struck after Zayn Malik quit the band One Direction. The collective hormones of teenage girls across the world have become a weapon of mass depression and could be harmful if it goes into the wrong hands.

Egged on by their teenage daughters, world leaders have decided to talk to each other about this global catastrophe that makes only tissue companies happy, so much so that even Grumpy Cat videos aren’t getting any hits on YouTube. “This is indeed a dark time for the United States. Seeing her depressed (also that steak I had for lunch) makes my heart burn.

She doesn’t know oh oh that’s what makes her beautiful”, said President Obama from the White House.

When contacted the band manager told us “Yeah he just left. So we contacted his great uncle Anu Malik who told us it was raining, raining, it’s raining and then put the phone down. We’re as clueless as the rest of the world”. The world markets have shut down

Zayn malik

and will only be opened once this issue has been resolved. Citizens have been urged to stay away from young girls and report any incidents of teenage aggression to the police.

The band has offered it’s help to the UN to search the world for a replacement and restore world peace, through a new band called UN Direction.

20

Finalé

t he s un day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 29. 03. 2015 | new delhi

Still Life

Jack Nicholson plays the Joker, and so do we. Almost every word in this edition of The Sunday Guardian 20 is an unnecessarily elaborate joke. Happy April Fools’ Day from Guardian20, two days in advance!

a day the life

Horoscope Jhilmil (23) Production house intern Emoji Film City, Noidea

‘Do you want an autograph or something?’

Why did you decide to intern at a production house?

If I were to look back at a 23-year-old me, alone at home, waiting to hear if I’d bagged the job, I would try to give the same message Matthew “True Detective” Mcconaughey gives to his daughter Murph from the sixth dimension — S.T.A.Y. Then smash my phone, and concentrate on finding my sugar daddy producer who agrees to sponsor my life in art.

What is your daily routine like?

I sat through some whiskies at office listening to my boss’ murky divorce and alimony details(I was holding the ice bucket). Post three o’clock, her daughter had a dentist’s appointment (I was holding the spit bowl), and then I drove the little demon princess back for a nails appointment, came to office (holding a coffee for my boss)… then I went home around 3 a.m. and watched re-runs of Bigg Boss over suttas.

What are your ambitions in life?

I wanted to become an actor. They made me the casting director of the biggest flop of 2013 Bicchiya – The Noise.

Which film is that again?

It is the one with the art house budget, and a Rs 100 crorescript for a method actor. It began as a social experiment on the market, to see if we could make these movies cheaper.

The company that owns us is all for jugaad in mass production. For instance, the item song which had a budget of just a lakh, was shot in a public library, with the actual library crowd as extras. (We had 3D glasses for props since the character was playing himself, a method actor, for which role we even got a Naseeruddin lookalike.) Clearly the film bombed as badly as my phone connection, which incidentally belongs to the same company. Some people never learn.

What has your journey in Bollywood been like so far?

Rohan Sippy almost signed me on, but then he told me how he enjoys slapping his Assistant Directors on set. It had come to a point where even Ali Abbas (director, not the singer) kept me hanging, so I’m finally working with my boss, who might direct a film any day now. It is an honorary deal till then, of course. Do you want an autograph or something, for when I’m launched and become big s**t next year?

VEENU SANDAL

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

21 march - 19 april

20 april - 20 may

21 may - 20 june

21 june - 22 july

23 july - 22 aug

23 aug - 22 sept

It’s been a hard day’s night, and you’ve been working like a god. That’s your first mistake.

That’s just not how the song goes, either. Delegation skills and hand-waving are all very well, but the real test comes when your alarm rings in the morning and you forget to hit snooze before going right back to sleep. Where work is concerned, you’re likely to be late. In matters of love, the horizon is clear (read: empty). In money matters, you’d best invest in some lottery tickets because it sure as hell ain’t coming from anywhere else. But chin up, you are April’s favourite fool. Cake?

“I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign.” That’s going to be your mantra this month, and it’s going to make you lose all your friends.

There’s nothing you can do about either fact. Acceptance is the first step. The second step isn’t pretty; it involves matches and kerosene.

On the bright side...just kidding, this month is just not on your side at all, I don’t know what to tell you.

Maybe try Abba in May? Ace of Base were iffy even when they were in vogue (in aerobics classes across the country) back in the 90s.

Fame made you a balloon ‘cause your ego inflated when you blew; see, but it was confusing ‘cause all you wanted to do is be the Bruce Lee of loose leaf (whatever that means). Hit the lottery (oh wee !) but with what you gave up to get it, it was bittersweet; it was like winning a used mink. Ironic ‘cause you think you’re getting so huge you need a shrink. You’re beginning to lose sleep: one sheep, two sheep; going cuckoo and cooky as Kool Keith. But you’re actually weirder than you think ‘cause you’re friends with the monster that’s under your bed, get along with the voices inside of your head...

Blow a kiss, fire a gun. We all need someone to lean on. Unless Major Lazer’s the only guy around, in which case you should probably call it a night before anyone else notices what tangent you’re on. In other, more serious matters like health, this is a good time to focus on a six-pack that doesn’t contain 4.6% alcohol, and buy your French bulldog a new chew toy. A road trip is also on the cards — but do remember that Emergency Rooms of hospitals en route are best avoided. If you cross a dhaba with enough trucks parked outside, however, their mooli parathas are probably stellar.

Look at the stars, look how they shine for you. Everything you touch this month, you’ll turn to yellow. A poor man’s Midas, but a Midas nonetheless. In work and financial matters, things will pick up after themselves; at home, your OCD flatmate might do it for you.

Romantically, you’ll find melancholic inner peace, which some may call depression. On those days, it is advisable to switch off that goddamn Coldplay (I mean, seriously, it’s 2015) and repeat the mantra, “I am lion, hear me roar” instead.

It was a dark and stormy night... not that this is related to your zodiac sign at all, of course — it’s the first line of my Great Indian Novel. Moving on to you (pfft), this week is going to turn out pretty great. A close relative, who you never really liked but had to pretend to, however reluctantly, will finally learn to stop lecturing you because he will finally spot those earplugs you’ve been wearing to drown him/her out. Your boyfriend/girlfriend will stop sending you clingy texts because their phone batteries will die. Much the same with your boss. Careful crossing the road.

It is going to rain on Wednesday.

GEMS: Matte finish COLOURS: Blood red VAASTU: Headstand NUMBERS: 1-10, accompanied by deep breathing

GEMS: Shiny COLOURS: Dark black VAASTU:Far corner of a dark room NUMBERS: A train traveling at 72 kmph crosses a platform in 30 sec and a man standing on the platform in 18 sec. Find the value of X.

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

23 sept - 22 oct

23 oct - 21 nov

22 nov - 21 dec

22 dec - 19 jan

20 jan - 18 feb

19 feb - 20 march

You are mostly reading this because you are hoping there is at least one person (I am a real person) who can say something positive about your oh-so-screwed life. The news is rather sad. Because of the awkward position of Saturn, you will continue to travel long distances in the metro without a seat. The water bottle that you carry to work will leak and the cookie that you saved for the last ride at a late hour will drop on the escalator.

But worry not. You can totally get a grip on the situation if you feed a packet of Gems to your street dog.

For a change, your week will be filled with days that resuscitate your self-esteem; you will be as confident as John Travolta on a Scientology spree. Unfortunately, your fashion choices will also remind people of Travolta. Businessmen will reach heights touched by such luminaries as Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh. Lawyers and con artists will find their weeks eerily similar. If you are a traffic policeman, buy yourself a new baton and a handheld video game to pass the time. Avoid sharp objects, eat with your mouth shut, cross your fingers when you lie and remember to clean behind your ears.

Look at you, trying to figure out your week by reading a horoscope — do you feel bad about yourself? No? Anyway, no problem.

The next week looks, um, kinda messed up. You are likely to lose a lot of Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Linkedin endorsements. And if you aren’t careful enough, you can also get robbed at gunpoint. No, just kidding about the gunpoint part but, yeah, being watchful can’t hurt. However, if you want to reverse your fortune, wear a ring made of dead goat’s skin on your ring finger and chant Beedi Jalaile on a moonless night.

Let’s get this straight, you are a number 8. You will always be a number 8, whatever you do. What does that mean? The little bit of jam stuck in the bottle of jar that you know will never get out, but not for the lack of trying? That is you, bro. That does not stop you from having such an inflated head; it topples you over every eight hours on average. I know this horoscope doesn’t affect you (but do you?).

This is not a compliment, you are basically the most thick-skinned person you are ever going to encounter; you put a blue whale’s blubber to shame.

Brush your te e t h f ro m right to left this week because old age is catching up and there is a strong chance of toothpaste fraud in the stars, so be extra cautious.

Financially, there is a possibility that you will be run into lots of money this week. But be careful, it’s likely that the money will be in the form of loose change chucked your way with great strength.

Friends and family are going to stab you in the back so stay one step ahead and betray them first or lead a life of many regrets. Beware of shoe-bites. Straws are your enemy.

The nostrils have immense power when it comes to clues. That’s why dogs areman’s best friend. They will let you know when a natural calamity is coming, and so will your nose.

At least for troublesome situations. Every time you sneeze, take a step back and brace yourself.

The planet Mars is not happy with you. A mishap or hurdle is coming your way and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just wait for it and face it when the time comes. Similarly, when you smell something pleasant, make sure you have protection.

GEMS: Pink star diamond COLOURS: Blood red VAASTU: A packet of Benson & Hedges

GEMS: Coral, manic-depressive types

GEMS: Gems? M&Ms. Much nicer.

COLOURS: Redeye VAASTU: Lawn swing (and a miss) NUMBERS: 3.14e (pie)

GEMS: The blue one COLOURS: Eminem’s 2010 hair VAASTU: Tweezers NUMBERS: You ain’t getting any this week

GEMS: Aw... you are one!

COLOURS: Rosy pink VAASTU: Skull NUMBERS: They are clearly not working. Tried alphabets?

GEMS: A found earring COLOURS: White wine red VAASTU: Creaky chair NUMBERS: -47

GEMS: Nickname option, Geminis COLOURS: Shady VAASTU: Turn to the right as you get up from bed. No, really.

NUMBERS: Multiples of 6

NUMBERS: 42, 69, 007

GEMS: “I love to eat rajma chawal in the dhaba, they call me Snoop Baba.” — Baba Sehgal COLOURS: White and black, mixed VAASTU: Fishbowl fountain NUMBERS: 1, 2, 3, 4 (get on the dance floor)

COLOURS: Black VAASTU: Dental teeth impression NUMBERS: 8, 16, 24

GEMS: Citrus saphhire COLOURS: Ochre VAASTU: Balance the primary elements, that is, space, water, earth, fire and wind with the help of a Vaastu guru.

NUMBERS: Queen of hearts (12)

GEMS: Rubber COLOURS: Chocolate VAASTU: Downward dog NUMBERS: 666, 23, 71

Gems

Colours

Vaastu Guide

Powerful Numbers

Gems are not just a kind of candy loved by children and grown-ups alike. They are an essential part of astrology that retain relevance and high nutritional value.

Colours are known to exert powerful effects both on people and their surroundings. Here are the colours you should wear, bathe in, look out for, stay away from and more.

Objects, placing of objects, positions, they’re all an integral part of Vaastu shastra. Based on your sun sign, here are the best options available this week.

The science of astrology places numbers and words at its very heart, around which all nine planets revolve.

This week, the numbers mentioned will bring you considerable luck and fortune.