Lounge 16 May 2009

New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Pune

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 19

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH COGNIZANT’S FRANCISCO D’SOUZA >Page 6

FIRST LADY OF SOUL Why we’ve been swinging to Lata Mangeshkar’s voice for more than half a century >Page 15

ART FOR A SONG HIGH WINDOWS

MUKUL KESAVAN

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>Page 10

THE GOOD LIFE

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y maid’s son gets epileptic fits. His name is Gerald and he is a young handsome boy of 16. Every now and then, sometimes three to four times a day, he gets these fits and simply falls down on the road, unable to move. People in the neighbourhood carry him home. Many days, my maid Teresa doesn’t send him to school because she is worried about the fits. Teresa is young, slim and cheerful, except when she talks about her son.

Then, her pretty eyes get teary. >Page 4

WITH PRIDE BUT NO PREJUDICE The story of a fledgling television channel that’s trying to take the middle path >Page 16

Collector Khushroo Kalyanwala with a mixed media painting

by Dhiraj Chowdhury, which he bought for Rs50,000 two years ago.

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

CAN IDEOLOGY BEAT ACCESS WHERE IT FACTIONALISM? MATTERS MOST s a consumer of news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Indian elections are ideology-free. Pundits are always saying that votes are bought, coalitions are constructed out of caste fractions, politicians defect, political parties switch sides with frictionless ease and the policies contained in party manifestos are irrelevant to the democratic process because they’re never seriously discussed. Add up these defects and what India seems to have by way of elections... >Page 4

Not quite, but you can still save up a bit and buy original works of art without having to sell your house

SAMAR HALARNKAR

STEAMED UP, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

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ive years ago, I gave my in-laws a really hard time. They were going to the US—as they often do to meet their son—and asked what they should get me. “A bamboo steamer,” I said, prompted no doubt by some dumplings I’d had (I don’t really remember) recently. A steamer, if you don’t know, is that exotic wooden thing they produce with a flourish at Chinese restaurants, usually to serve fragrant dumplings, spare ribs, steamed squid and other delightfully delicious (and ultra healthy) delicacies. >Page 18

THE PAINTED VEIL Bangalore’s Muslim women are ready to experiment at the Islamic Boutique >Page 18

DON’T MISS

Ask your vendor for a copy of Mint’s Special Election Issue tomorrow

HOME PAGE L3

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE REVIEW | ROCKMAN’S BEER

PRIYA RAMANI

ISLAND, AMBIENCE MALL, GURGAON

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY MANAS CHAKRAVARTY HARJEET AHLUWALIA JOSEY PULIYENTHURUTHEL ELIZABETH EAPEN VENKATESHA BABU ARCHNA SHUKLA ©2009 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

THE JOKES (AND THE REALITY) ABOUT MARRIAGE

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his past weekend I attended a raucous wedding. The groom was an old friend; growing up, he was so much into the concept of one true love we always thought he would be the first to find her and institutionalize it. As it usually happens, he ended up being almost the last to get hitched. So there we were, his friends, all married people, drinking around a table, and the men started cracking the usual clichéd jokes about the death of life after marriage.

“Hey guys, marriage is fun.

I’m happily married. I love it,” I said weakly.

“Never believe those who scream their happiness from rooftops,” one stranger said.

“I swear I’m still in the honeymoon period,” I said. “Maybe it’s because we don’t have children?” (yes I know children are LOVE God’s gift, but no children also means no fights over who will feed, clean and entertain them/do their homework/manage their tantrums).

“I’m sure your husband would tell us a different story if he were here,” the stranger said (while a friend gestured with an imaginary whip. Crack, crack). “How long have you been married?”

“Ten years in December,” I said.

“And you?”

He was a three years, two children kind of married man. Totally in love with his wife. But, seemingly, always alert to the possibilities of life on other planets.

Two days later I happened to ask my mother’s driver if he had seen the new Marathi movie everyone was talking about. He looked in the rear-view mirror and drawled: “Jab se shaadi hui hai aadhi duniya bhool chuka hun (since I got married, I’ve forgotten half the world).

Of course, any healthy/happy marriage takes work.

Coordinating daily likes and dislikes for one. Vegetarian vs meat lover. Tragic foreign films vs happy Hollywood blockbusters. Fiction vs non-fiction. Active exerciser vs couch potato. Stay-at-home type vs party animal. Spontaneous vs a planner. Jazz vs rock. Picnic in the park vs five-star brunch. Early bird vs after-dark animal. Sea person vs

A Happily ever after rule No. 1: Each spouse must have his/her own television. mountain person. Outdoors vs indoors. Organic vs processed.

Chatterbox vs strong and silent.

You get the point.

And, of course, when you adjust to each other’s likes and dislikes, you have to deprioritize some of your likes. Like switching channels from CSI (just when they’re on the verge of uncovering the climactic forensic clue) to watching tiger cubs being rescued. “No, love, you take the remote tonight. I insist.

You’ve had a rough day,” you might say. My parents solved this one a long time ago by buying two television sets.

Of course, in any successful marriage, you’ll find that the big things are usually in sync. It’s certainly easier to stay married if you agree on money matters; that stray dogs need love too; that temples and mosques shouldn’t be mentioned in party manifestos; and that both of you will respect and love each other’s parents.

Then there’s the staying focused angle.

There are all kinds of attractive people out there—and many of them are magnetically drawn to happily married people such as yourself. It’s so much easier for a 30-plus married person to have an affair than for a 20- or 30-plus sin-

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com REDISCOVERING RAY Thank you for featuring Satyajit Ray in ‘Ray’s World’, 2 May. He was also featured on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine once as one of the 10 top directors of the world.

As a young man in the 1960s, I would see one of his just­released films and then wait for the next one. The wait would always be worthwhile, with beautiful and thoughtful posters ahead of the release, which created the right ambience.

‘Pather Panchali’ might have caused an explosion in Shyam Benegal’s head, but it received very lukewarm response in Kolkata. Halls were going empty until it got rave reviews in the foreign press. The literary magazine of Bengal, ‘Desh’, got it right though and hailed it as a turning point in Indian film­making.

Years later, when told that ‘Pather Panchali’ still remained his best, Ray is supposed to have remarked, “So I have not learnt much all these years.” I read somewhere that Ray considered ‘Charulata’ his most technically and aesthetically competent film.

The last sentence of Ray’s interview with Benegal is rather revealing: “...perhaps because life itself is ironic when you juxtapose it with death”.

For a man of action and meticulous planning, this side of his personality was always a mystery.

MANOJIT BHOWMIK NEW DELHI

LARGER THAN LIFE Feroz Khan was undoubtedly the real “Khan”, a style icon ahead of his time, (‘The bad­boy gentleman’, 2 May). So exclusive was his screen persona that the youth could only applaud him, emulating him would need guts!

I wonder why the writer missed referring to ‘Safar’, a film where Khan portrayed a character caught in a triangular relationship that wrecks his marriage.

SUDHIRENDAR SHARMA NEW DELHI

gleton to find true love (unless that singleton is looking for true love from a happily married person).

An acquaintance whose little black book spills over with the phone numbers of bored married women says cheating really helps him stay focused on his marriage.

My theory is that people cheat because meeting someone new you click with always makes you feel younger and more attractive. Like you’ve got a while to go before your sell-by date. You have to experiment (or stay away periodically) to keep the chemistry going with your lifelong partner, but a stranger who wants to jump you? One you don’t plan to grow old with? Just this once? Or twice? You’re already feeling hot, aren’t you?

The only way to stay married, and not be overly distracted by life on all these other shiny planets, I believe, is if you’re sure you’re in it for the long haul. That and a clear cheat-and-I’ll-kick-your-butt-outof-this-marriage policy.

Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut

s I entered Bavarian, the pub at Rockman’s Beer Island (RBI), I figured that since it was the mall’s day off, my friends and I would be the only ones there that evening. However, by 7pm, it was clear that people in Gurgaon have a taste for freshly brewed beer.

RBI consists of Bavarian, and Keg and Barrels (a restaurant and bar) and Rockdome (an auditorium with a projection screen). We chose Bavarian because it promised some German flavour.

The good stuff If, like us, you don’t want a half-litre glass of beer, ask for free samplers of each. For me, the Wheat Beer, or Weissbeer, won hands down. It had a slightly sweet taste.

We were told the secret lay in the fact that it was brewed with 100% wheat malt. The Lager Strong with the highest alcohol content (around 7%) had a sweet top note, but left a bitter aftertaste. Yet most people on our table gave this a “thumbs up”, too.

The appetizer menu at Bavarian had a few German specialities such as Nürnberger sausages served with sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), two types of mustard sauces and pretzels, and Munchnerteller (cold cuts served with sausages, cheese and pretzels). The dishes were a welcome change from the usual chicken tikka or kebab starters, and the mustard sauces were to die for.

The not­so­good Of the four beer varieties on the menu, only three were available.

That’s unacceptable when you only

have four options to pick from because the place only serves house brews.

The Rockdome, the prized zone (our table attendant insisted on giving us a tour) of RBI, was, to put it bluntly, tacky. Do you seriously want to see two false flame moulds in bright red on either side screen while watching a match or have bright green and red laser lights dance all over you and your food?

The biggest problem at Rockdome, though, was the screen. It was a white projection screen typically used for PowerPoint presentations. The seating arrangement is in the shape of a “D”, which means that if you are seated anywhere from 0-40 degrees or 140-180 degrees, you have no chance of getting a glimpse of the match on a “large” screen.

Also, at Bavarian, there were no munchies such as chips or peanuts. With each glass of beer costing at least Rs200, and the starters menu priced from Rs400, Bavarian is not a place for someone on a tight budget.

Talk plastic At the Rockdome, you get two half-litre glasses of any beer for Rs995, plus you have access to the buffet which has two starters, a biryani and a pasta dish. A half-litre glass of lager is priced at Rs205, Lager Strong at Rs210, and Wheat Beer at Rs230. Taxes and service charges extra.

For bookings at the Rockdome, call 0124-2700000.

Seema Chowdhry

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUKUL KESAVAN HIGH WINDOWS

Ideas, not narrow self­interest, drive our politics

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PRAKASH SINGH/AFP

s a consumer of news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Indian elections are ideology-free. Pundits are always saying that votes are bought, coalitions are constructed out of caste fractions, politicians defect,

political parties switch sides with frictionless ease and the policies contained in party manifestos are irrelevant to the democratic process because they’re never seriously discussed. Add up these defects and what India seems to have by way of elections is the mechanism of representative government without the large ideological contestation that is, or ought to be, a democracy’s reason for being.

This is wrong in so many separate ways that you would need a scroll the length of a toilet roll just to list them, but let me try. Let’s start at the top, with the great political coalitions that have ruled India in recent times. The received wisdom about coalitions is that ideology matters less than pragmatic accommodation and it’s true to say that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has cohabited with parties that aren’t hectoringly “Hindu” to cobble together governing majorities both at the Centre and in the states.

But if you, as a voter, were to examine the composition of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), its ideological coherence would become apparent. Its main constituents are the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U).

The first four of these five parties are natural ideological allies because their politics is founded on a common premise: the belief that religious majorities should be hegemonic in their home territories.

The Akalis think it’s proper for Sikhs to dominate Punjab; the AGP, which champions the cause of Assam’s Hindu majority, was born out of the massacre of Muslims in Nellie in 1983; the Shiv Sena specializes in stoking the anxieties of Marathi-speaking Hindus in Maharashtra and the BJP performs the same service for Hindus in general at an all-India level. Ideologically, these parties are made for each other; the proof of this is that it is impossible to see any of them switching sides to join the Congress.

The reason the fifth party, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), has been in the news recently is precisely because it’s obvious that it’s ideologically distinct from its allies in the NDA. The alliance between the BJP and the JD(U) has been a durable marriage of convenience, but given Kumar’s secular, socialist pedigree, it isn’t surprising that both the Congress and the JD(U) have indicated in coded ways their openness to post-election negotiations.

It’s worth noting in this context that Orissa’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which had a long-standing alliance with the BJP,

that it represents a narrow self-interest that is antithetical to the great universal ideas that ought to animate a democratic republic, is silly.

Whether you think caste quotas or reserved constituencies for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are right or wrong will depend upon your reading of Indian society. If, like the Left parties, you think that the faultlines in Indian society correspond to class, you’re likely to take one view; if, like Jotiba Phule, B.R. Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram, you think that India’s social contradictions are based on caste, you’ll take another.

Both are ideological positions that deserve to be Turnaround: Did Patnaik’s distaste for ethnic taken seriously. cleansing make him break from the NDA? The Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) ambition of opted out of the NDA before the assembling a coalition of plebeian castes elections citing the Sangh Parivar’s and communities, opportunistically involvement in the violence against allied to select upper caste groups, to Christians in Kandhamal last year. Given capture political power is as respectable that Orissa is an overwhelmingly Hindu a part of democratic politics as the state, the alienation of minorities strategy of social democratic parties in wouldn’t have done significant electoral Europe to merge organized labour and damage to the BJD’s prospects. Breaking sections of the middle class to produce with the BJP, though, carries a real a governing majority. electoral cost because dividing the A staple indictment of electoral erstwhile alliance’s votes benefits the politics in India is that it is vitiated by BJD’s main enemy in Orissa, the an unseemly populism. Populism in this Congress. The BJD might have reckoned usage denotes a politics that panders to that its success in local elections was a public need without rationally counting sign that it could go it alone but it’s clear the costs of the promises made. Thus, that Naveen Patnaik’s ideological distaste promises to sell rice at Rs1 or Rs2 per kg for ethnic cleansing in his home state are routinely derided as populist. M.G. played a role in his break with the NDA. Ramachandran was accused of Similarly, the idea that caste-based populism when he instituted free politics diminishes India’s democracy, midday meals in government schools in

Tamil Nadu. The midday meal scheme has since come to be seen not just as a nutritional supplement but as an enabling measure that helps draw children, specially the girl child, into the educational system. Some would argue that using populism as a pejorative description of subsidy is itself an elitist feint intended to close off ideological debate about the proper role of the state in shoring up the livelihood of the poor.

The simplest way of illustrating the viscerally ideological nature of Indian democracy is to look at the two issues that have remade electoral politics over the past 20 years: the BJP’s campaign to build the Ram Mandir and the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s quotas for other backward classes (OBCs). We might disapprove of both Mandal and Mandir as political projects but no one who has lived through the last two decades in India as a politically aware adult could seriously argue that factional self-interest has replaced ideological contestation as the engine of democratic politics. Individual and factional ambition, and the greed and calculated fickleness that it engenders, has played its part in colouring electoral politics in India, but the context for this ambition, the arena itself, has been shaped and landscaped by large political ideas.

Mukul Kesavan, a professor of social history at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, is the author of The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions. Write to Mukul at highwindows@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Mukul’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/mukul­kesavan

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

The case for a well­paid village doctor

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INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

y maid’s son gets epileptic fits. His name is Gerald and he is a young handsome boy of 16. Every now and then, sometimes three to four times a day, he gets these fits and simply

falls down on the road, unable to move.

People in the neighbourhood carry him home. Many days, my maid Teresa doesn’t send him to school because she is worried about the fits. Teresa is young, slim and cheerful, except when she talks about her son. Then, her pretty eyes get teary. Like most poor people, she is able to set aside her troubles and smile. She giggles as she works and has the capacity, if not the circumstances, for joy.

Doctors tell me that epilepsy is curable. With the right medication, it is possible to remain symptom-free, they say. My sister-in-law, a paediatrician practising in Florida, examined the boy and asked Teresa why she had kept Gerald in this condition for 10 years.

Teresa’s answer was plaintive: Where do we go for medical advice that we can trust? They had taken their child to every type of hospital within their reach. The Chinmaya Mission hospital, free government hospitals, the local Ayurvedic doctor, and even her village equivalent of a shaman. Now the boy was on homoeopathic medicines that they got from a doctor in Chennai.

My view of my maid’s condition boils down to a single word—and I am hardly saying anything original here—access.

This access, or the “on-ramp” as my husband calls it, isn’t simple. If it were,

my maid would have solved her son’s epilepsy problem. It isn’t simply a question of setting up 23,236 primary health centres (PHCs) across rural India, although that is necessary. My cousin works in one and the number of patients he treats every day would give a US healthcare company determined to squeeze the maximum out of its doctors pause. Like the residents of “Hotel California”, my cousin “can never leave”—not to visit his daughters, attend family weddings or even take care of his own health. His clinic is next door to his house and his “compounder” dispenses an array of green, red and white pills.

The patients come from villages all around and wait for hours to see him for 5 minutes. The diseases he treats, however, are his old friends, brought on by poor sanitation and nutrition; lack of health education and safe drinking water. Simple things. Easily solvable.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Not in the least, according to my cousin.

I come from a family of doctors and here is what I know about physicians.

They take pleasure in healing. Their calling is to cure people, rid them of illnesses, dispense medication, treat complications. Managers, they are not.

And Indian healthcare, in my humble opinion, needs managers more than it

Village voice: A rural health centre run by the civic body in Katapahari, West Bengal. does doctors. Simply posting a doctor in Kalakkad village isn’t enough. Just as Lincoln Center has a manager and the conductor sharing the top slot, doctors and healthcare administrators ought to be deployed in tandem, maybe as husband and wife. The doctor dispenses pills; the administrator executes plans.

The healthcare administrator’s job, I would argue, is more important than the doctor’s. Except, in most villages, such a job doesn’t exist. The PHCs are manned by doctors and the panchayat leader squeezes in the sanitation and nutrition work amid her other duties. The ASHAs (accredited social health activists) do a decent job and are one of the most innovative schemes that the Indian government has come up with. But they are stretched. Just as the government recruited local women into becoming ASHAs, they can perhaps climb the ladder to becoming rural health supervisors. This supervisor’s job would be part PR, part brute-force execution

and part infrastructure. She needs to convince the people who live on the banks of the Krishna that streaming their wastewater into the river will cause water-borne diseases downstream. She needs to cajole and coerce the village panchayat into installing toilets rather than having people defecate under the great blue yonder.

Part of the problem is that doctors, let alone administrators, don’t want rural postings. In late February, then Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss announced that he was going to make rural postings compulsory even though, as many Indian medical blogs noted, they have “failed miserably” in the past.

One medical education blog written by a Dr Anshu said that after being trained in medical colleges with sophisticated equipment and colleagues, doctors found the “learned helplessness” of rural postings frustrating.

This is one instance where I believe throwing money at the problem will

help. Rural postings can only become attractive when they afford job satisfaction. Private charitable hospitals are doing a great job with this. Teresa is now taking her son to the Sathya Sai Baba hospital in Whitefield, Bangalore.

We got her son an appointment via email and the neurologist is treating Gerald without taking a penny. The Mata Amritanandamayi Hospital has a waiting list of doctors wanting to serve, I am told.

I am not a follower of “Amma”, or Sathya Sai Baba for that matter, but I would urge them to set up their institutions in remote rural spaces. The global manpower and funds they can draw will ensure a facility that will serve as a draw for not just patients but doctors and therefore, a thriving medical community that gives job satisfaction in rural postings.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that the jobs that were the least satisfying ought to be paid the most? Of course, by that logic, a street sweeper ought to be paid more than a CEO. By that same logic, a rural medical posting ought to get more than the measly Rs10,000 that it commands. Double their wages, I say, to compensate for the intellectual isolation that doctors complain about. In this recessionary economy, that would make doctors flock to villages in droves.

By Shoba Narayan’s logic of pay scale being inversely proportional to job satisfaction, she ought to be paid next to nothing. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

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SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

L5

Eat/Drink HOW’S YOUR DRINK? | ERIC FELTEN

Sampling absinthe’s dubious charms DYLAN CROSS/WSJ

The ‘green fairy’ is a mouthful to swallow, despite its almost iconic reputation

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or Robert Jordan, in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, absinthe is a bite of Proustian cake. All his memories of Paris “came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tonguenumbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy”. Not wanting to share any of his last bottle of the stuff, Jordan is glad that a gypsy he offers a cup to finds it repulsive: “It smells of anise but it is bitter as gall,” says the gypsy. “It is better to be sick than have that medicine.”

For the better part of a century, that medicine wasn’t even on the market in most countries.

Absinthe—flavoured with, among other things, wormwood—gained a reputation as a toxic hallucinogen. In 1915 it was banned in France, the country that had embraced it all too enthusiastically, and soon absinthe was illegal in most Western countries. In the past decade, those prohibitions finally started to fall away, first in Europe and then, two years ago, in the US. The new rules allow real wormwood-flavoured absinthes to be sold as long as they contain only small amounts of thujone, the wormwoody compound long thought to be responsible for any psychoactive qualities the old absinthes may have had. There’s been a proliferation of absinthe brands hoping to snatch up drinkers curious about the liquor’s transgressive mystique.

But even urban hipsters drawn to the mythology of the “green fairy” find the bitter herbal soup a bit much to swallow. Pernod, a century ago the dominant absinthe brand, was reformulated as a wormwood-free “pastis” when absinthe was banned. Now, Pernod has reintroduced an honestto-goodness absinthe to its product line. But it isn’t exactly flying off the shelves. “It’s a new flavour profile for mainstream America,” says Pernod’s US brand manager, Brian Eckert. When the company sponsors tastings, such as a string of recent events at Morton’s steakhouses, “the reaction is often ‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would

be’.” Not the most ringing of endorsements.

A resistance to the dubious charms of absinthe is no rap on American tastes. Oscar Wilde, who was always looking for a way to burnish his bohemian bona fides, liked the idea of absinthe much more than the taste. “I could never quite accustom myself to absinthe,” he said, “but it suits my style so well.”

Even when the bitter liquor was all the rage in France, it had very little following in the Anglo-American sphere, finding its main stateside market in that Gallic outpost in the Gulf, New Orleans. The forces of temperance in the US didn’t have to devote much attention to absinthe because even bartenders were opposed to it. “The free use of absinthe is injurious,” wrote George J. Kappeler in Modern American Drinks, a bartender’s guide published in 1895. “Never serve it in any kind of drink unless called for by the customer.”

The attitude in England wasn’t any more favourable. “Of all the liqueurs absinthe is the most pernicious,” Edward Spencer declared in the 1899 cocktail guide The Flowing Bowl. He wrote, “The evil effects of drinking it are apparent: utter derangement of the digestive system, weakened frame, limp muscles, pappy brain, jumpy heart, horrible dreams and hallucinations, with paralysis or idiocy to bring down the curtain.” Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you like your drink?

Charles H. Baker Jr, in his indispensable treatise on dispensables, The Gentleman’s Companion, describes the effects of regular absinthe-bibbing: “It does nibble the keen edge off the brain until a man becomes a sorry sort of thing; aimless, listless, and generally—shockingly—lacking.”

As a young man, playwright Eugene O’Neill acted out the other main stereotype of absinthe-drinkers: the dangerous madman. While at Princeton in the 1906-07 school year, he went on an absinthe bender, smashing the furniture in his room to kindling. “O’Neill had

Good/very good Mata Hari, $52.99 (Rs2,600) A distinctive and appealing alternative for those of us not quite so ambitious in the absinthe department. Light on the liquorice, with a muted and subtle herbal complexity. Can be taken with ice water and a little sugar, with something resembling pleasure.

Good Lucid, $64.99 Potent, viscous, and herby in the extreme. A favourite of hard­core absintheurs.

Pernod, $75.99 Classic anise­forward absinthe.

Flavourful without being strident.

Could do without the yellow dye that brightens the green liquid.

Kübler, $55.99 Approachable Alpine meadow flavours balanced against the liquorice. This Swiss product is a ”white”, not a ”green”, absinthe—a colourless liquid that, when mixed with water, looks like Milk of Magnesia.

Yuck Le Tourment Vert, $49.99 Redolent of Vicks VapoRub. Dreadful chemical colour. Who knew there was a distillery at Love Canal?

Trick or treat: Absinthe, previously banned in some Western countries, has anise and liquorice flavours. gone berserk,” some classmates later recounted. “The room was found in a shambles, with O’Neill glassy-eyed and still in a frenzy so great it took three to pin him to the floor where he shortly collapsed and was put to bed.” Yikes.

Of the raft of new absinthes starting to get dusty on liquor-store shelves, Pernod is a pretty good middle ground—flavourful, but not overly intense. The Swiss brand Kübler is also reasonably

Putting the squeeze on at breakfast time

approachable, with Alpine meadow flavours balanced against the liquorice. Kübler, I should note, is a “white” absinthe—a colourless liquid that, when mixed with water, looks not unlike Milk of Magnesia.

The brands favoured by the hard-core absintheurs, such as the American-made Marteau and the French-made Lucid, are much more potently flavoured, and claim to be accurate reproductions of the Belle Époque absinthes that caused

all the fuss in the first place. I have to admit that I am neither particularly fond of absinthe nor the least bit acclimatized to it, which makes me an imperfect judge of these demanding spirits. Lucid, in particular, tastes to me like an herbalist dumped his collected pharmacopoeia into a blender with Everclear and olive oil.

For those of us not quite so ambitious in the absinthe department, there is one brand that offers

Machine made: (from left) Breville Die­Cast Citrus Press, OrangeX Chrome Juicer, Hamilton Beach Manual Commercial Juicer, Metrokane L­Press Citrus Juicer and Metrokane All­Chrome Mighty OJ.

Which new age juice presses will squeeze out every last drop and which won’t B Y J OSEPH D E A VILA The Wall Street Journal

···························· ometimes orange juice from the carton just won’t do. Manufacturers have been improving the designs of juice presses to make it easier for breakfasters to squeeze their own juice from fresh oranges and grapefruits.

Of the models we tried, the ones that worked the best tended to be big and heavy. Although the smaller ones took up less space, they didn’t have the mechanical strength we needed to squeeze the fruit. Here’s our

S

Eric Felten is the author of How’s Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture and the Art of Drinking Well.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

OrangeX Chrome Juicer Price: $100 Availability: WilliamsSonoma.com Comment: This was one of the smaller and lighter presses that we tried, which was a plus. But extracting juice was a struggle, requiring us to exert more pressure than was comfortable. In the end, we were left with half-squeezed oranges and grapefruits.

Hamilton Beach Manual Commercial Juicer

take on some of the latest juice presses in the market.

Metrokane L­Press Citrus Juicer Price: $100 (around Rs5,000) Availability: Metrokane.com Comment: This was our favourite press. Tall and sleek, the machine looks great, and it was lighter than other presses of similar size. The long mechanical arm gave the device lots of leverage to easily squeeze all the juice from citrus fruit. It also comes with a stainless-steel cup that catches the juice as it’s squeezed. Cleaning it was a breeze, too.

a distinctive and appealing alternative—Mata Hari. Made in Austria, Mata Hari is promoted as a Bohemian-style absinthe, most notable for leaving out the liquorice-taste of anise that dominates the French/ Swiss school. It has a lovely herbal complexity that is muted and subtle in comparison with its histrionic cousins. It louches nicely—that is, it gains a cloudy opalescence with the addition of water—and I can bring myself to drink it, with water and a little sugar, with something resembling pleasure.

Not that I plan to drink a lot of it.

Eugene O’Neill—who clearly knew more about the drink than most—put a bottle of it in the hand of a character in the opening scene of The Hairy Ape. “Absinthe? It’s doped,” a buddy warns. “You’ll go off your chump, Froggy!”

DONALD GEORGE/WSJ

Metrokane All­Chrome Mighty OJ to accommodate some of the and Williams-Sonoma.com Price: $50 Availability: Metrokane.com Comment: This compact juicer fit well on our small counter tops.

But performance left us unsatisfied. The machine felt flimsy to use and it left unsqueezed pulp on the rim of the cut citrus fruit.

The squeezing area was too small

larger oranges we tried out. Also, some of the edges of the machine were a bit sharp and hurt when we accidentally grazed them during cleaning.

Breville Die­Cast Citrus Press Price: $189.99 Availability: Brevilleusa.com

Comment: We liked the stainless-steel design. Since the pr ess is el ectric, w e didn ’t need to apply much pressure to get the juice out of our oranges and grapefruits. But its large size and weight might be issues for people with tight counter space.

Price: $292 Availability: Hamilton beach.com Comment: This press is bulky, heavy and not very attractive, as you’d expect from a commercial device. But it worked amazingly well. We got every last drop from our grapefruits and oranges with little physical effort on our part.

However, the high price might be an issue for some price-conscious consumers.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

Business Lounge FRANCISCO D’SOUZA

Unique strategies for a flat world One of the youngest chief executives in big IT on how adaptability is helping his company swim against economic currents

Young gun: D’Souza sold his first piece of software 25 years ago.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

B Y V ENKATESHA B ABU venkatesha.b@livemint.com

···························· ust a few minutes on the open rooftop at Taj Connemara’s popular Raintree restaurant, and I hasten back inside. Even the azure waters of the pool facing the restaurant cannot mitigate Chennai’s evening heat. I retreat into the comfort of the enclosed, air-conditioned portion of the restaurant, order a watermelon juice, and wait for my guest. Francisco D’Souza is the CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (CTS), the fourth largest Indian information technology (IT) company, with revenues of $2.86 billion (around Rs14,000 crore) last year, and around 70% of its 62,000 employees based in India. Two years ago, when 38-year-old D’Souza took over as CEO, he became one of the youngest heads of a major technology company in the world.

D’Souza walks in exactly on time and orders a pineapple juice while a colleague of his, who has joined us, gets a beer for himself.

Clean-shaven, almost babyfaced, D’Souza has an easy smile.

He drapes his jacket over the back of his chair and sits down, looking informal in a formal shirt open at the neck.

These are not exactly easy times for chief executives of IT companies—technology spending, especially in the key US and Europe markets, has seen a slump. But D’Souza seems unfazed. Sipping on his juice, he posits the view that Cognizant is better placed than most players “because of our strengths. In fact, the current slowdown will help us pull further away from competition”.

The confidence comes from having survived and thrived in various environments while growing up. The biggest influence was his father, an Indian Foreign Service officer. “Every three years, he would get transferred and we would be uprooted and thrown into a new milieu,” he says. Born in Kenya, D’Souza has lived in 11 countries and has studied in places such as erstwhile Zaire (now Congo), Panama, Hong Kong and New York.

And unlike several expatriates, D’Souza says, his parents did not want to leave their children in boarding schools in India or put them in “international ones”.

Instead, they enrolled their children in local schools wherever they were posted. That crosscultural adaptability, he says, became a key strength.

A precocious child, he says his fascination with technology started at 13, when a friend of his father’s got a computer. He learnt programming on his own and, at age 16, sold his first piece of programming—an inventory management system for the Trinidadian army: “Though don’t remember how much I got paid, I still have a letter of appreciation on their letterhead.” When he was 18, D’Souza’s father was posted to Hong Kong.

Those days, most day colleges there taught only in Cantonese so the young D’Souza joined an evening college and spent the mornings working as a teller at a branch of the Indian Overseas Bank.

He noted that the bank was using an antiquated punch-card system to store data and volunteered to write a software program for the bank’s Olivetti computer—he did it successfully. “I have always loved technology and deploying it to enhance efficiency and deliver cost savings,” explains D’Souza.

A year later, he teamed up with a friend to build a mass fax machine:

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“My friend built the hardware and I did the software part wherein the machine would do what is today’s equivalent of email spamming— sending out several hundred faxes advertising our products,” grins D’Souza. He adds that he learnt a lot about entrepreneurship from Hong Kong’s gritty trading houses.

After five years in Hong Kong, he moved to the US to pursue a master’s degree in business administration at the Carnegie Mellon University, a mecca of computer science. After the programme, he was recruited on campus by conglomerate Dun and Bradstreet (D&B), a credit information services provider.

In 1994, when D&B was looking at entering the Indian market, D’Souza jumped at the opportunity to return. As a part of regulatory approvals, D&B had to agree to export software services. Thus, he became a part of the founding team of D&B’s India outsourcing arm, which eventually morphed into CTS. D’Souza’s reminisces on the origins of the present-day IT behemoth between nibbles of cottage cheese dipped in basil sauce.

Few thought CTS’ model of providing MNC-quality services at Indian prices—so unlike the models followed by domestic heavyweights such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Wipro Technologies—would work. The company, however, has proved many critics wrong. Over the last four-five years in particular, it has clearly shown that its model is working. D’Souza explains: “Look at the growth we have had since, say, 2003 onwards. The results you see today are a vindication of the strategy we have followed.”

I am meeting D’Souza a few days before the announcement of the company’s annual financial results and I ask him about revenue guidances from CTS that many analysts deemed too aggressive.

“We have taken all factors into consideration before guiding the market and I am confident that we will meet it,” says D’Souza, dismissing analyst concerns (when first quarter results were announced on 5 May, CTS’ revenues had jumped by 16%, vindicating a guidance of

10% growth for the full year).

But what makes this model unique? What sets the company apart from traditional Indian IT services vendors? CTS gets about 75% of its revenues from just three verticals: healthcare, life science and financial services. Twentyseven of the top 30 life sciences companies in the world and at least six of the top 10 global healthcare companies do business with D’Souza’s company. “In these segments, our competition is from the likes of Perot and Accenture rather than Indian IT companies,” says D’Souza.

And conveniently for CTS, many of these focus areas, such as healthcare and public sector companies, have weathered the downturn, helping to prop up its business as the competition struggles.

Large Indian IT companies may be growing at a slower rate for the first time, but D’Souza is confident Cognizant will do well.

“Yes, we will be affected by the external environment to some extent. But we believe that we have the skills and offer enough value for our customers to continue growing. Our adaptability to changing market conditions is one of our biggest strengths.”

D’Souza learnt adaptability as a child—and that is what he is now teaching his two children. “We learnt to survive and thrive in a flat world even before the term was in vogue,” he says. His Brazilian wife of Portuguese extraction speaks to their children only in Portuguese and he talks to them in English.

“It’s not just language skills, but the ability to work with and across cultures which is key.”

Even as he grapples with the business challenges of increasing CTS’ growth from close to $3 billion in revenue, D’Souza talks about a domestic challenge—battling his son on a Nintendo Wii. As we tuck into the main course, he explains: “Playing with my children or reading up a legal thriller on the inevitable long flights is the way I relax.”

And no, the downturn isn’t getting in the way of his relaxation: “It is both exciting and challenging times for both the company and the industry. I like nothing better than tackling challenges.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

FRANCISCO D’SOUZA BORN

23 August 1968

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s in business administration (BBA) from the University of East Asia, Hong Kong, and a master’s in business administration (MBA) from Carnegie Mellon University, US

CURRENT DESIGNATION

President and chief executive officer

WORK PROFILE

Part of the founding team at CTS, which started in 1994. He was named CEO at 38

BIGGEST INFLUENCE

His father, who was an itinerant diplomat, writer, accomplished portrait painter and social worker. D’Souza says he was a true ‘Renaissance man’

THE FIRM FAN

D’Souza is a huge John Grisham buff.

On long­haul flights, he is either flipping through technical material or digging into Grisham’s latest, preferring to read for hours rather than sip wine and sleep

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

L7

Play WEB

Searching for the next Google Google’s many competitors still struggle to live up to the title of ‘Google­killer’; Wikia Search shut down after just one year B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· fter three months of development and much online hype, Wolfram Alpha, a search engine conceived by mathematician and physicist Stephen Wolfram, will launch early next week. After a pre-release demonstration of the service at Harvard Law School in late April, many pundits have already dubbed Wolfram Alpha the next “Googlekiller”. Stephen Wolfram would do well to be wary.

On 31 March, in a brief entry on his blog, founder Jimmy Wales announced that he was shutting down his own crowdsourced search engine project called Wikia Search. It was a rare setback for the founder of the popular online open encyclopedia, Wikipedia. When launched in January 2008, Wikia Search was touted as yet another Google-killer—the latest in a clutch of Internet search engines that were supposed to somehow unseat Google from Internet searchengine supremacy. Wikia Search’s “big idea” was to replicate Wikipedia’s secret—it would let users modify and reprioritize search results to reflect real-world relevance.

When enough users got on board, Wikia Search would hopefully deliver results more accurate than Google’s muchtouted computer algorithms.

Like many so-called Googlekillers before it, Wikia Search tried, and eventually failed, to beat the San Francisco-based company at the search game.

Ever since it launched as a student project at Stanford University and then spun off as an independent company in 1998, Google has increasingly

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established a monopoly on Internet search. Most estimates put Google’s current share of the global search market at 60-75%. Over the last decade, several search start-ups have tried to upstage Google.com, only to flare out when initial interest died.

Along with Wikia, we profile a decade’s worth of select Google-killers, all of whom fell victim to the leader’s superlative popularity and search algorithms. Meanwhile we await Wolfram Alpha eagerly.

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Alltheweb 1999 (www.alltheweb.com)

Alltheweb was based on Tor Egge’s doctoral thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The site went online in 1999, and by 2002, it could boast of an even bigger website directory than Google. The engine also has a number of additional features, including clustering and customizable themes.

But it never achieved significant popularity. After a number of mergers, it is now part of Yahoo.

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Teoma 1999 (www.teoma.com)

Teoma used a different algorithm than Google that not only looked at how popular an Internet page was, but also the relevance of the content. Let down by a poor index of websites, the site was eventually acquired by rival search engine Ask Jeeves on 11 September 2001. The brand was finally discontinued in 2006.

3

WiseNut 2001 (www.wisenut.com)

Launched in September 2001, WiseNut was immediately heralded as a challenge

Cyber swinging Now, play at some of the most famous golf courses—from inside a shopping mall B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· hree generations of the Sarna family, and a few members of the training staff, crowd around the hi-tech golfing simulation machine at the Select Citywalk mall in Saket, New Delhi. The youngest Sarna, Amrita, is poised over a golf ball that sits precariously on a tee pushed into a patch of nylon grass. Her palms are curled around a mighty golf club that is almost as long as the young teenager is tall. She pulls back, waits for a moment, and then uncoils in a flash. The club whizzes through the air before striking the ball.

Everyone’s head snaps to the right, where the real ball hits a huge projector screen and falls to the ground, while a digital ball

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to Google. It had a sizeable database and received good reviews for automatic categorization of search results.

Despite positive reviews, WiseNut struggled for a few months before it was bought out by LookSmart. A redesign and relaunch did not work, and WiseNut shut shop in September 2007.

4

Quaero 2005 (www.quaero.org)

Quaero was announced as a joint Franco-German project and as a viable challenge to Google’s domination. Eventually the Germans quit and now the project is an exclusive French endeavour. But with just government funding to use against Google’s massive research and development might, no one is holding their breath. Quaero was a blip on the radar in 2006 after then French president Jacques Chirac mentioned it in a couple of speeches. That moment passed quickly, the project continues, and Google remains king.

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Wikia Search 2006 (www.search.wikia.com)

Jimmy Wales first spoke of a open-sourced competitor to Google in late 2006. Initially called Wikiasari, it would eventually be labelled Wikia Search and launch in 2008. The rest, as we have already mentioned, is history. Or lack thereof.

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Exalead 2006 (www.exalead.com)

When the engine was launched in 2006, as a by-product of the Quaero initiative, founder François Bourdoncle said he would like to kill a Google or two. The search engine began with a blast and Bourdoncle proudly stated that the engine had already indexed at least eight billion websites.

However, nothing much seems to have changed since then.

Exalead, meanwhile, seems to have moved on to catering to corporate clients.

7

Powerset 2008 (www.powerset.com)

Microsoft’s next big salvo in the search engine wars could be powered by its July acquisition of Powerset, a natural language search engine where users simply type in questions. Powerset grabbed headlines last year when it let browsers test it by searching

through Wikipedia content.

Rumour has it that Microsoft’s new Kumo search engine could have Powerset technology in it.

8

Cuil 2008 (www.cuil.com)

Cuil, pronounced “cool”, made its debut in July to unprecedented media hoopla.

Unfortunately for Cuil, the launch was an unmitigated disaster. The engine was slow, the results were poor and errors aplenty. And some searches unwittingly threw up completely unrelated pornographic images. Dave Burdick famously said in The Huffington Post blogpost: “This search engine is stupid.”

TAYLORMADE

continues to sail through a digital sky before dropping into a narrow digital valley. Immediately, one of the technical staff punches a few keys into a computer keyboard. The projector screen changes instantly from a green valley with smooth-peaked mountains to a spreadsheet with dozens of numbers. There are readings for yardage, spin, ball speed, club speed, maximum height, launch angle and plenty more that the coaching staff read knowledgeably. Romit Bose, her professional golfing coach, begins to tell Amrita how to improve her drive.

This recently installed hi-tech machine made by US company AboutGolf is housed inside a big glass-walled cabin in one corner of the TaylorMade golfing goods store in the mall (the simulation service, however, is managed by another company called G-spot).

“It’s one of the best simulators in the market and authorized by the Professional Golfers’ Association,” explains Bhaskar Samuel, one of TaylorMade’s full-time coaches. “Players can use it for serious work or just for amusement. There are dozens

Tee party: The AboutGolf machine lets you take your pick of classic courses such as the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland. of real-world courses in the computer, including some fantasy ones for children.”

The AutoGolf machine uses sophisticated radar tracking and up to five cameras to capture every aspect of the player’s swing and the ball’s flight. A staff member explains that the technology used in the simulator originated from missile design and tracking systems.

While amateur or beginner golfers can perhaps just smash a ball or two on the virtual driving range—in air-conditioned comfort—serious players can use the full computational facilities and a coach to work on their swings and even choose the right club.

Amrita, her father Sunny Sarna explains, is doing a little bit of both. She is practising her swing

under the watchful eye of her coach—she has a tournament coming up soon in Jakarta. She is also, meanwhile, trying out a few clubs before buying a new driver.

“Romit is really tech savvy, so he knows how to use the machine’s readings to improve her game,” explains the father. Grandpa Sarna, meanwhile, is lounging on a sofa, smiling as his granddaughter smashes ball after ball into the screen.

G-spot has a range of packages for users, starting from Rs150 for a 15-minute smashfest on a driving range, to Rs4,500 for fitting sessions for an entire set of clubs. There are weekly, monthly and quarterly deals available as well. TaylorMade is also running Golf Skool, a set of training programs for beginner, intermediate and advanced players, at the store.

For details, contact Bhaskar Samuel, TaylorMade, S-17, Select Citywalk mall, Saket, at 09311192299. www.livemint.com Sidin Vadukut blogs at blogs.livemint.com/playthings

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www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

Insider HOMES

Living in the pop­culture zone PHOTOGRAPHS

A mix of antique motifs and neon colours gives designer Bhupal Ramnathkar’s home a retro feel

BY

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

···························· right pink faces with doorknobs on their foreheads greet visitors at Bhupal Ramnathkar’s 13th-floor haven in Prabhadevi, Mumbai. Coupled with a neon green acrylic nameplate, the entrance to the apartment is as bold and offbeat as what lies within.

Ramnathkar, dressed in a blue floral shirt and white linen trousers, complemented by a pair of blue glasses, says he relied on his personal taste and professional expertise (he’s the managing director of graphic design firm Umbrella Design) to create a vibrant home, which cost him approximately Rs15 lakh.

“We didn’t have a big budget, but we have creativity,” says Ramnathkar. He and his wife mixed Victorian motifs, French Art Nouveau posters, and bright acrylic neons (dominated by his favourite neon green). With so many eye-catching elements, it could have been a disaster, but Ramnathkar left the decor minimalist and offset the bold accessories with white walls.

The two-bedroom apartment is breezy in mid-summer, and has a view of the newly constructed Bandra-Worli Sea Link.

Work on the interiors was completed three months ago but many of the things in the apartment have been collected over the years and most of the furniture has been designed by Ramnathkar himself. “Everything in the house is mismatched, yet they are parts of a whole.”

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The flooring company sent Ramnathkar the wrong sample: a grey wood print, with daisies scattered about (see inset). Luckily, he loved the quirkiness of the design and used it throughout the house.

The kitchen cabinets have been made in the same style as the wardrobe. Ramnathkar used bottles he bought in Morocco to decorate the swinging kitchen doors.

Ramnathkar found this jukebox, which doubles as a cassette player, in Paris.

Framed Art Nouveau posters hang on the entrance walls. Ramnathkar says he loves to collect such works.

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In the bedroom, Ramnathkar laser­printed designs on the furniture and then covered them with coloured acrylic sheets.

Ramnathkar’s balcony overlooks the Bandra­Worli Sea Link.

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www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

L9

Style NANCY OSTERTAG/GETTY IMAGES

ACCESSORIES

Padma Lakshmi’s jewellery secrets Hanut Singh: Aquamarine and diamond crescent moon ice­pick earrings, available by appointment from Hanut Singh, A7, West End Colony, New Delhi, Rs1.20 lakh.

How a few well­chosen pieces can take you from office to a party and how not to let your jewellery upstage you

B Y C HERYL L U-L IEN T AN ···························· here’s an error women sometimes make when they wear jewellery, says Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi: “You notice the jewellery more than you notice her smile or her face. Jewellery should not upstage you.”

To avoid that, Lakshmi has a simple strategy. “I pick one hot point on my body that I’m going to highlight,” she says.

“Let one area do the singing—you don’t want to hear three songs at once.”

For example, Lakshmi, who just launched a jewellery line that started selling at Bergdorf Goodman in April, sometimes wears an eye-catching stack of bangles on her wrist, with small earrings and no other jewellery. Or she’ll wear long earrings to draw attention to her neck and collarbone and slip on a pinky ring as a small, additional touch. “You want to have one main story and one backstory, and that’s it,” she says.

Because her days often stretch from morning meetings to evening events, with no break in between to go home and change, she builds ensembles that will take her from day to night, relying on adding layers of jewellery to make the transition. She’ll sometimes wear a dress with a blazer, finishing off the outfit with noticeable yet not overwhelming earrings and a thin gold necklace that extends to her belly button, bearing small details such as tiny cardamompod-shaped gold nubs.

Before her evening event, she’ll

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Dior: ‘Diorette’ long necklace in white gold, diamonds, amethyst, sapphire, pink sapphire, garnet and lacquer, available on order at Dior, Emporio Mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, €7,400 (around Rs4.98 lakh).

Amrapali: Beaten gold bangles in 18 karat gold, at 39, Khan Market, New Delhi, Rs22,000 each.

ASK TERI

Montblanc: Rhodium­plated, sterling silver necklace with four separate chains that can be fastened in different ways, at Montblanc boutiques in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs19,100.

Gold rush: Lakshmi favours jewellery that moves or dangles. take off the blazer and throw on one or two more strands of thin gold necklaces. “It creates this beautiful, drippy, layered, feminine look,” Lakshmi says.

She is partial to jewellery that moves, such as rings with little pendants dangling from them or layers of necklaces. “It catches the light and twinkles as you move,” she says. “If you have big earrings that are stiff and just hang there, they can look very ornamental.”

It’s for this reason that she loves dressing up an outfit with a stack of bangles of varying styles and width; she is careful to keep the stack from stretching beyond 5 inches.

While she’ll mix bangles with stones of different colours in these stacks, she makes sure that the metal, whether it’s gold or silver, is the same in each piece so the look isn’t haphazard.

“Also, when you’re stacking PHOTOGRAPHS

Two ways to suit up B Y T ERI A GINS

The workhorse every man should have; and wearing sweatpants to non­sporting events

The Wall Street Journal

···························· I am 33, and I wear mostly grey-toned or khaki suits to work most days, because it can really get hot. But my girlfriend keeps saying I would be set for going out if I just had one nice black suit. I could wear it for two fancy weddings we are going to in July and November. But will I get enough use from the suit after that?

Say yes to the black suit, which is a workhorse for every man’s closet—a dressy equivalent to jeans. To start with, you’ll look refined at both weddings.

A black suit can also be tuxedo-like when worn with a stiff piqué shirt and perhaps a silvery or black satin tie. For clubs and nice restaurants, try your suit with a French blue open-collar

dress shirt. Think of US President Barack Obama, who looks hip as well as elegant in his black suits.

Keep a couple of black dress slacks for those times when you aren’t wearing a jacket. If you expect your black suit trousers to do double duty as pants for other occasions, they will wear out too quickly.

You’ll look taller and slimmer in a black suit, especially if it’s in a modern, close-to-the-body silhouette, with everything altered to fit perfectly. But black can also be unforgiving, drawing attention to worn-out belts or scruffy shoes. And shiny spots from general wear or too much pressing really show up on black fabric.

Black tailored clothing is dressiest when it comes in the darkest inky black. When you’re shopping, look at the

Statement piece: (above) Arjun Rampal wears his black suit with a slim tie; Malaika Arora Khan dresses up her sweatsuit with heels.

BY

bangles, wear it at home and then walk around or pour yourself a cup of tea—if it makes too much noise, it’s not appropriate at work,” she says.

Although people sometimes try to match the colour of their jewellery to their outfits, pairing a navy blue dress with blue sapphire earrings, for example, Lakshmi tries not to be too matchy.”

She adds, “Contrast makes for a much more interesting choice.”

She likes pairing a hot pink dress she has with a turquoise pendant on a gold chain, for example, and favours using coral jewellery to spice up crisp white dresses and yellow gold to do the same for black ensembles.

Lakshmi tends to put aside her precious stones during spring and summer because she feels the ruby red and emerald green colours are better suited to darkercoloured fall clothing. When it’s warm, she prefers stones such as grass green peridot, watery blue aquamarine

and citrines that “look like a drop of honey”.

When it comes to buying jewellery as gifts—for mothers, for instance—Lakshmi says the most important thing is not to impose your own style on others.

“If she’s heavy-set, don’t buy her a cuff or a choker or anything that’s too tight.”

She also suggests avoiding big dangling earrings for women who are shorter than 5ft 4 inches, as “the space between her neck and shoulders is going to be smaller than on someone who’s taller”.

Long necklaces that extend to the belly button work well for petite women, she notes, as they elongate the torso.

The main thing to remember is the person you’re shopping for. “Think about her body and think about her life,” she says.

“If you’ve never seen her wear a bangle, don’t try to reinvent the wheel.”

garments in natural light to make sure that’s the colour they are.

elasticized bottoms. You are seeking a slim, streetwear fit, just like you’d want in a pair of knit pants—no sagging crotches or too-short legs. Consider pants with a boot cut, such as yoga pants. I believe that navy or dark charcoal grey look the best. Most black fleecewear is off-black and looks faded. Instead of clunky sneakers, wear walking shoes, casual driving loafers or short boots. What goes on top: a mock turtleneck, a polo shirt, a fancy T-shirt without graphics, a wellcut jean jacket or a leather jacket.

The key to pulling this off is saving a pair of “good” sweatpants that retain their shape and crispness. Retire them to your gym bag at the first sign of baggy knees or pilling. Fortunately, most fleece pants are under $30 (around Rs1,500)—and these days, there are many stylish versions on the market from labels such as Champion, Russell and Hanes. For me, the size medium has a drapier and dressier fit than the size small that I buy for wearing around the house.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

YOGEN SHAH

Except for softball games, are sweatpants ever appropriate to wear in public?

Most people reserve sweatpants for jogging and lounging around the house.

But yes, you can turn sweatpants into goodlooking casual sportswear—provided you choose them carefully. My official travel uniform for long plane trips is my nicest sweatpants, which aren’t the least bit s l o p p y (what’s more, they are as comfortable as pyjamas).

Here’s the deal. You need to experiment with different fleecewear brands and shapes— avoiding all styles with

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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COVER L11

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

† House on a staircase Tanmoy Samanta Gouache on paper, 10.5”x12” Rs50,000 Gallery Espace, New Delhi

† Untitled

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Rohini Devasher Mixed media on somerset paper, 11”x19” Rs18,000 Project 88, Mumbai

Kala ajooba Shreyas Karle Archival print on waterford paper, 11”x33” Rs15,000 Project 88, Mumbai

†

Wave particle duality equals advaita equals zero

Not quite, but you can still save up a bit and buy original works of art without having to sell your house

Untitled

Rajesh Ram Watercolour on paper, 21”x28” Rs39,000 Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi

B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

····························· his tale of two art shows— only four months apart—is instructive. In the first week of December, Bhavna Kakar, who runs the Latitude 28 gallery in New Delhi, hosted a group show titled Class of 2008, featuring new masters’ of fine arts (MFA) graduates from the faculty of fine arts, MS University of Baroda.

Kakar was cautiously optimistic. “I was not really expecting a sell-out,” she says. The market was bad, but the experimental works were good and were priced under Rs1 lakh each. Among the featured artists were Shreyas Karle and Sandeep Pisalkar, who were already beginning to make a name for themselves.

But not many came to see the show and only one work sold.

Naturally, when Kakar curated another show, Re-claim/Re-cite/ Re-cycle, in April, she says she had “zero expectation”. There were installations, paintings, photos and sculptures by established artists such as Atul Bhalla and Manjunath Kamath, as well as by newer names such as Prajjwal Choudhury and Rajesh Ram. She was in for a pleasant surprise. “The response was fantastic,” she says. Many works were sold. Kakar currently has two ongoing shows—one in Delhi and another in Dubai.

After a boom of five-six years, the art market in India has been in the grip of an unforgiving downturn since September— prices have crashed, some art galleries have shut shop and many

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Shalini Saran Digital print, 9”x11” Rs10,000 Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi

artists are sitting idle, with no takers for their works.

And yet, this could be a good time for a buyer to enter the brave new world of contemporary art— even if you are not rich. For, despite everything, a spirit of resilience is in evidence from the sheer number of art shows in the Capital before the season winds up for the summer.

Over the last few weeks, Delhi’s art calendar has been chock-ablock with shows by established artists such as Jatin Das, Nilima Sheikh and Ranbir Kaleka, as well as newer artists. This sense of optimism in some quarters, coupled with the fall in prices of artworks, augurs well for the new collector on a budget.

While the art fraternity—artists, gallery owners, curators and dealers—benefited from the boom, it now welcomes the bust. “There was an extraordinary scale of speculation taking place,” says Vivan Sundaram, one of India’s leading contemporary artists and an active figure on the art scene since the mid-1960s. “Art was escalating faster than the most fancy blue chip shares. From the auction house to the mutual fund—they were supplying art to those who had the money but no interest in art.”

Greed had reached absurd proportions, says artist Atul Bhalla, with talk of selling artworks by size, much like real estate. “Some auction houses were saying that we will sell (artworks) by the inch,” he says. “That is stupidity.”

The plummeting market brought the party to an abrupt halt. Three reasons are usually cited for why this may not have

been such a bad thing—financial speculators with no genuine interest in art have disappeared; prices have come down to realistic levels; and the quality of art on offer in these lean times is better.

“There are lots of works out there with crazy discounts,” says Anubhav Nath, a Delhi-based art consultant. He recalls advising someone to try and sell a painting for Rs40 lakh. “Please get rid of it for 30 lakh,” was the desperate client’s response.

“Artist(s) and gallerists are reducing prices by mutual understanding,” says artist Gigi Scaria.

“There aren’t enough buyers and there isn’t enough demand.” It’s an opportunity for those who are new to the art scene and have smaller budgets—ranging from Rs10,000-1 lakh.

The advice to a novice on a tight budget is simple—don’t be in a rush to start buying art; begin by visiting galleries and attending exhibitions to educate yourself

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Padhoge likhoge hoge nawab—III

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song for a

Mahesh Baliga Watercolour on paper, 15”x13” Rs30,000 Project 88, Mumbai

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Art

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Abhishek Hazra C­print, 40”x40” Rs50,000­70,000 Gallery Ske, Bangalore

Ganesh Haloi Serigraph, 17”x28” Rs20,000 Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi

COLLECTORS

Private eyes Two veteran buyers on how and where to find good affordable art Khushroo Kalyanwala ARCHITECT/ARTIST

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Artist(s) and gallerists are reducing prices by mutual understanding. There aren’t enough buyers and there isn’t enough demand.

GIGI SCARIA

Offshore: Kalyanwala has found artworks in old ships.

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

Khushroo Kalyanwala is an architect and an artist who has had three solo shows of his digital artworks, but it doesn’t take long to find out that his real passion in life is collecting. He began as a child—collecting stamps, comic books and currency—and now, collections of 80-year-old Dutch ceramic plates, buffalo horn cups from Bhutan, masks and gargoyles adorn the walls of his sumptuously and tastefully appointed New Delhi flat. The living room display shelves are stocked with old glass bottles, ceramic jars and quaint stoneware “spirit” jars—all roughly 100 years old.

Also hanging on the walls are original artworks collected over the past 15 years at prices ranging from Rs10,000-75,000.

Among them, a pastel drawing

by S. Harshvardhan, mixed media works on paper by Dhiraj Chowdhury and abstract watercolours by Yogendra Tripathi.

There are two limited edition prints by M.F. Husain which Kalyanwala bought together for Rs20,000 from the Rimari Art

Gallery in New Delhi in 1996.

Over the years, the market value of these works has gone up significantly, though Kalyanwala has not kept track of how much.

Like most long-term buyers, he is full of anecdotes about his collection. A contemporary sculpture of a stoneware bull, a gift from a friend, rests on a side table. “I could tell from the nice lines that it was by a good artist,” he says.

He spotted a similar sculpture at the Delhi Art Gallery and found out that the bull had been made by sculptor Jai Zharotia.

Once every year, Kalyanwala, who grew up in Ahmedabad, heads off to the Alang shipyard in Gujarat where old ships from the world over are dismantled and the scrap sold. “Ship-breaking yards have huge doors, windows, light fittings and cutlery,” he says. “But old ships also have artworks that you can pick up for a few hundred to a few thousand rupees.” Some years ago he spotted two original landscapes on paper that he liked, and bought them for Rs700 each. A closer look revealed that they dated back to 1921 and had been painted by the European artist J. Reinhold. Similar works by the artist are worth €1,200-1,500 (around Rs80,500-1 lakh now) in the international market.

His advice to art buyers on a budget is to go to galleries: “Any gallery, even the big ones, has a lot of stuff (that is affordable) in their stock.”

Devjani Roy TEACHER To begin with, Devjani Roy would cut pictures of paintings out of calendars and frame them to decorate her walls. She has come some way since then; original paintings, drawings and sculptures now adorn her Gurgaon home. Roy, who teaches economics at the Sanskriti School in New Delhi, has been buying artworks for 20 years now and the most she has ever paid for a piece in Rs45,000—for a colourful oil painting of a trapeze artist by Bhadra that she bought seven years ago.

She used to buy works by art college students but admits that she doesn’t do so any more. “I don’t like works by students as (now) I can see the raw hand,” she says. Roy still goes to the annual senior students show at the Delhi College of Art, though of late the prices there have usually been beyond her budget.

“The students have been told by their teachers not to sell their works cheap,” she says. “Today, I won’t pay the price they ask for.”

When Roy travels, visiting local galleries is usually on her agenda, whether she is in Goa, Indore or Jaipur. One destination she loved and wants to visit again is the university town of Santiniketan, where she says you can still buy art that is “so ridiculously cheap”. She loved the contemporary treatment of tradi-

tional terracotta paintings she saw there.

To avoid paying gallery commissions, Roy prefers buying directly from the artist and she hit upon a novel place to find good art at a good price—framing shops. That is where artists get their works framed and that is where she would go looking for a good deal. If she liked something, she would ask the framer for the artist’s phone number.

She first saw the portrait of a lady that hangs in her dining room—a tempera wash painting by a young artist who she says sells in lakhs now—at a framing shop and paid Rs17,000 for it.

She still regularly visits framing shops in Kotla, the Santushti shopping complex and the Hauz Khas market in Delhi.

In her drawing room is a beautiful clay sculpture of two slightly amorphous Ganeshas stuck back to back. “I saw this bronze Ganesha sculpture that I couldn’t afford but would keep coming back to admire,” she recalls. “The sculptor, Vikas Rao, finally asked me how much I could pay for a work and I told him Rs5,000.” He then made the twin clay Ganeshas for her.

She has one more tip for buyers—artists make a lot of charcoal drawings to prepare for their paintings; these often make for great cheap art.

Himanshu Bhagat

L12 COVER

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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Change the ways we heal E.H. Pushkin Acrylic on canvas, 43”x29.5” Rs75,000 Gallery Espace, New Delhi

Untitled Paramjit Singh Serigraph, 24”x32” Rs20,000 Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi

† Untitled Sudarshan Shetty Perfumed rubber and acrylic container approximately 6”x4.5”x10.5” Rs50,000 Gallery Ske, Bangalore

† Dialogue with tradition—1

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Shoaib Mahmood Gouache on photographic paper, 6”x 7” Rs70,000 Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi

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K. Laxma Goud Intaglio 3/3, 7”x5.5” Rs65,000 Gallery Espace, New Delhi

John Tun Sein Acrylic on board, 16”x12” Rs30,000 Gallery Art Motif, New Delhi

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and develop “an eye”; and talk to artists when possible.

Here are some tips, based on the insights and experience of gallery owners, curators and artists, both new and established:

1. Educate yourself “A new buyer is like a new student of art,” says Johny M.L., curator and consultant, who covers contemporary art in his online magazine Artconcerns.com.

“They need to educate themselves for a year to understand what they like and what they don’t like.” Something that is sorely required, according to Peter Nagy, who runs the Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi.

“Most people here who buy art don’t even know what art is,” he says. “They go by the buzz factor.”

The way to educate yourself is to visit galleries regularly, go through the catalogues of the shows they host and identify the artists you like. There are many private as well as public galleries, such as the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, Mumbai and now Bangalore, with a collection of modern and contemporary art.

Many young and emerging artists are not represented by a private gallery and show their works at public galleries such as the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Triveni Kala Sangam and Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi.

Shree Goswami of Mumbai’s Project 88 gallery also advises reading books on art and learning about newer artists on the Internet. Most galleries are now online and showcase images of works by their artists. Younger artists who tend to be more Net-savvy upload images of their works on sites such as Flickr and Facebook.

2. Go step by step Vivan Sundaram’s advice to the new buyer on a budget is to start bit by bit, by buying drawings or small paintings. Love of art, he points out, tends to grow on you, “They (artworks) become a part of life; a personal need that grows and develops.” Goswami feels that ideal buys for a new player are flatworks, i.e. artworks that can be hung on walls, by newer

artists—besides paintings and drawings, these include photographs, prints and etchings.

“Look at younger artists and for that, look for a good gallery; one that has a reputation and has an eye,” she advises. Among those which promote young artists, besides her own gallery, she mentions Chatterjee and Lal in Mumbai, Gallery Ske in Bangalore, and Nature Morte and Anant Art Gallery in New Delhi.

Johny advises dealing only with established galleries for reliability and authenticity of works purchased. “Galleries are not structured on price, they are structured on artists,” says Nath. “Now every gallery is giving a good bargain; they are bending over backwards.” In other words, a gallery with canvases by masters such as M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza priced at many lakhs of rupees is also likely to have an inventory of watercolours or prints by them, many of which could be priced under Rs1 lakh.

3. Trust yourself It is important to buy what you like, not what others say is good.

Don’t follow the herd, don’t give in to hype and don’t buy what you don’t like. “It is important to like and connect with the artist’s works,” says Mala Aneja of Gallery Art Motif. “The connection must be there (because) you buy to enjoy (the artwork).” But inputs from gallery owners on the artist and his work are important, she adds.

A cautionary tale of herd mentality, going back to the early 1970s, is offered by curator and writer Sunil Mehra. He recalls how artist Jaya Wheaton’s works of women with “Vogue-like faces in Rajasthani cholis” were the rage then.

“People bought these huge canvases,” he says, adding that the works haven’t stood the test of time and now look like pretty picture postcards.

4. Remember, it’s not just a long­term investment Buy a piece of original art only because you like it, but it is no crime to also see it as a way of storing your wealth. However, as many are discovering now, art is not something to buy and

sell in the short term. “They ask me, is it good investment and I say, I don’t know!” says Nagy. “It has to be seen as (a) long-term investment.” Aneja agrees: “As a gallerist, I don’t comment on the appreciation in the value of an artwork. Good quality would appreciate over time.”

5. Don’t ask for discounts!

Artists are wary of buyers who want a discount because they “love” the artist’s works. Their unanimous advice—don’t come looking for a bargain on an established artist’s works, instead look at newer and younger artists. “Some want to bargain and some don’t,” says Bhalla. “Often, those who bargain turn out to be the richer ones.”

Earlier this year, Delhi-based artist Mithu Sen decided gave away 150 of her original artworks—with a market value of at least Rs1.5 crore—in exchange for letters written to her. “As an artist, I was feeling pressurized by the market,” explains Sen. This was her way of reiterating that art cannot be reduced to a commodity. But she too is wary of “art lovers” who want her works on the cheap. “I can’t devalue my work,” she says. “They weren’t there when I was starting out.

Now don’t ask for a Honda for the price of a Maruti!”

“If you reduce your prices, it can become like (a) fish market— who do you reduce your price for and who you don’t,” says artist Rohini Devasher. “If you love art (then) it is no different from buying furniture or a vase—you save up, (just like you would) for those Bose or Sony speakers.”

Kamath points out that in his experience, around 80% of buyers are interested only in reselling. “When the market was up, I would get calls every day saying, ‘you are my favourite artist, I would like to acquire your work for my house.’” That seldom turned out to be the real story if he sold it to them. “Within a week, the work was in the market,” he adds wryly.

EXPERT VIEW | SWAPAN SETH

PRICE NO BAR

A seasoned collector says the art world wants the budget buyer

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om Wolfe once called the contemporary art world a “statusphere”. In parts, an observation that does great justice to the art world which, peacock-like, is prone to strut around and, on occasion, display its feathers. But also one that does immense disservice to the world of art.

Art is for public consumption.

If art is a commentary on our times and its cultural bridesmaid, its supply must be unfettered. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. The world of art has over time become a game of manipulation and perception. And its unaffordability is the kernel of that perception.

The art world encourages that insularity. It has created corridors of power and control around it. Jeff Poe, a dealer, once said, “Quiet control, mediated by trust, is what the art world is all about.”

Some art has always been affordable. Affordability is a context not in terms of value alone but timing too. Ten years ago, Subodh Gupta was immensely affordable. Those who collected him then bought affordable art (it is another matter that to the posh Francois

Pinault, Subodh may still well be quite affordable). I bought Bala at Rs40,000 some years ago. Ditto for a T.V. Santosh. I am always on the lookout for art that appeals to my commercial and aesthetic sensibilities.

I think Shreyas Karle is a very fine artist and I think he is commendably priced.

That is also my opinion of Sandip Pisalkar and Baptist Coelho. Even Prajjwal Choudhury. I am also of the firm opinion that great artists such as Seher Shah, too, are excellently priced. It really depends upon the size of the work and the medium employed. Photographic work, which also appeals to me, is still right priced. Take Yamini Nayar, for instance. Even Annu Mathew. Or Swapan Parekh.

New media (sound, video and interactive work) may well be considered affordable today.

But for me, it’s not about the value of the work as (much as) it is about the timing. It’s more about encouraging gallerists and artists to push the envelope.

And here is where I think credit must be given where it is due. The gallerist is no longer garrulous (the odd rotten apples will always be part of this happy

harvest). Equally so, the artist is no longer rigid. Is it because of the downturn? I think not.

I personally believe that the artist, the gallerist, the dealer and buyers are sitting together around the table of brotherhood drinking the house wine rather than the Mouton Rothschild 2005. I think artists and gallerists want their work to go to more and more homes. And this is what makes it a wonderful time for those with the humblest of budgets to commence their march into the arena of art.

On my part, I always encourage colleagues and friends to invest in art. And I always tell them that there is great art available at every budget. As the artist John Baldessari said: “You can’t use money as an index of quality.

That is a fallacy. That will drive you crazy.”

Because you know what?

There is such a heap of crap that sells at Rs15 lakh.

But that’s another piece.

Swapan Seth is managing partner, Henry S Clark, an art advisory and investment firm.

Write to lounge@livemint.com HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

SEE RELATED STORY >When less is more, Page 17

Owner’s pride: Seth with the video artwork We all fall down by Priyanka Dasgupta at his Delhi office.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

L13

Travel MACAU

Fair bet: (left) Cranes still loom over a booming Macau; and roasted suckling pig at Fernando’s.

On the cusp

PHOTOGRAPHS

Despite the global downturn, Asia’s gambling capital is putting its flashiest face forward

B Y M ELISSA A . B ELL melissa.b@livemint.com

···························· y most accounts, in 10 years Macau will no longer be Macau. The taxi driver, the gambling man, the restaurateur, the bungee jump operator, all agree: The sleepy little Portuguese fishing village just off the Hong Kong harbour will soon be a distant memory.

Macau, ruled by the Portuguese until 1999, has always attracted mainlanders and the “Hong Kong people”. They dabbled in the gambling games of Mahjong, Fan-Tan and Pak Kop Piu. Till 2002, a governmentgranted monopoly gave the run of the islands to one man: Hong Kong-born entrepreneur Stanley Ho. His authority kept the casinos downtown and allowed the rest of the Macau Special Administrative Region to continue on its quiet path.

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However, as soon as his 35-year-old control over the gaming industry ended, Las Vegas bigwigs invested billions in new hotels, giant resorts and flashier casinos. Despite the downturn and reports that the casinos are losing money, construction still booms. All of which means one thing to locals: Peaceful Macau will soon be overshadowed by bright fluorescent lights.

By daylight, the casinos seem like costumed showgirls stripped of their make-up. So we hail a cab to the farthest of the three islands that make up Macau.

On the road out of town, dubbed the Cotai Strip, looms The Venetian, sister to the Vegas hotel of the same name. Inaugurated in 2007, this monolith is the future of Macau, with seven more casinos on the same strip of road, either newly opened or in the works.

The Venetian and the other casinos will be islands unto themselves: They could be in Macau, or anywhere else in the world.

Unlike its soul-sister city Las Vegas, which arose spectre-like in the middle of a desert, Macau has a rich past—it became a centre of Portuguese trading in Asia from the 16th century. Old Macau still has beautiful colonial homes that invoke a more genteel era. But modern encroachments are obvi-

BY

ZACKARY CANEPARI

ous: Many homes have been bulldozed to make way for apartment complexes for the swarms of staff required to man the pleasure palaces. Our taxi driver, of ChinesePortuguese descent, bemoans the loss of his childhood home and laments the fact that all his friends have left for Portugal, finding no solace in the new Macau.

On the far-flung side of Macau, Fernando’s, a famous old Portuguese restaurant, holds on to the lazy days. In the low-slung wooden building, under slowly spinning fans, stuffing ourselves with char-grilled cod, roasted suckling pig and sangria, it is possible to imagine a Macau that subscribed to a single way of life.

At a nearby table, a lone patron wakes up from his postprandial nap and starts to sing a plaintive tune. Up front, the owner orders rounds of sangria for his friends and regales us with stories of the notorious Ho

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

and his uncompromising hold on the gambling business.

We stumble back into the bright sun, drunk off the bonhomie, where a stroll down the coast-to-downtown main road Avenida da Doutor Stanley Ho epitomizes the walk between modernity and tradition. To the left, old churches cling to seaside cliffs above a tiny harbour and red-tiled roofs covered in plants hang over cobblestoned streets.

To the right, the massive casinos are just turning on their neon lights in the late afternoon light.

The disconnect doesn’t end there. In the heady rush to recreate Las Vegas, the new casinos failed to consider the decidedly different approaches to gambling in Macau and Nevada. Here, Chinese men sip tea and intently concentrate on the numbers of spinning wheels. There, drunk, boisterous crowds pull levers and roll dice and shout and constantly prowl for the bigger, the brighter, the newer.

Steve Wynn’s casino mirrors its Western cousins. Crystals drip from the ceiling and pink lights create a rosy hue. But there is an eerie silence. The hotel is determined to create a more jovial atmosphere: Upstairs, a live CanCan show is being staged conveniently in front of the floor’s largest bar. Want to get a close-up of the Russian beauty’s high kick?

Order a drink, please. But businessmen stand slack-jawed and silent around the bar, no backslapping or hooting here.

Which is a shame. To me, casinos should never be about the gambling, especially for notorious losers such as myself.

Instead, it is about sitting around a table, jawing with strangers, and enjoying the carnival around you.

At 4am, we find ourselves in a packed ferry terminal. The casinos, while not the most exciting in the world, are entertaining for their totally over-the-top worship at the altar of the almighty buck.

But Macau’s real charm lies in the quiet corners that may not be there in a few years. Or perhaps I’m just bitter: I lost all my money at the Black Jack tables. www.livemint.com Melissa A Bell blogs at blogs.livemint.com/theexpatblog

Eat your way Exotic tastings in Hong Kong; and the all­in­one Bollywood venue

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f Bollywood celebrities against kitschy backdrops isn’t quite your idea of fun, maybe this will prompt you to book your tickets East. Hong Kong, whose “otherness” is now a carefully nurtured selling point for the Chinese government, is celebrating Food and Wine Year till March 2010. Only the second Feast in the East: From tandoori to Asian city to have its congee, Hong Kong has it all. own Michelin Guide (after Tokyo), Hong Kong offers palate-pleasing cuisine for all, whether it’s the desi looking for a tandoori bird or the very local congee, topped up with whatever takes your fancy—including, hold your breath, bacon and eggs—for breakfast. There’s loads more than noodles and rice, and rice noodles though: Chinese barbeque, hot pots, dim sums and, of course, unfamiliar seafood that you may not want to see too closely.

While all travellers to Hong Kong over the next year will be able to partake of the festival, gourmands may want to schedule their trip between 30 October and 8 November, when the Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival will be held on the West Kowloon waterfront promenade, Lan Kwai Fong and Soho. To plot your trip, read the experts’ takes on Hong Kong food and zero in on likely restaurants and must-try delicacies, log on to www.hkfoodandwineyear.com. The site will have you salivating for more.

SPOT THE STAR

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wards season now runs six months in Bollywood, with the biggie IIFA (International Indian Film Academy) Awards bringing up the rear from 11­13 June.

Playing host this year is Macau, Asia’s answer to Las Vegas. The 10th edition of the awards will be held at The Venetian Macao (they prefer to spell it the official Chinese way) Resort Hotel. It promises “shopping, dining, leisure and recreation” under one roof. All this Unmasked: Bachchan’s and lots of going to be rubbernecking, in Macau too. this June.

UDAY TRIPATHI

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

The eternal glow In Edinburgh, the sun almost never sets on a city that inspires poetry with its beauty

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or a boy growing up in the tropics, certain that the sun would set punctually around 7 each evening, the twilight hour seemed almost like a miracle, when the sun glowed, giving light, not heat. And yet, there I was, in a vast field, the sun looking pink, the sky cloudless and blue, and my watch oddly telling me it was 9 at night. It was my first trip across the ocean, and I had heard of jet lag, where your body clock fails to keep pace with the local time. But here, my watch seemed to be racing ahead, indicating a time that did not coincide with the colours of the sky.

Such was my introduction to the flawless hues of Edinburgh’s sky. The year was 1979; depart-

ment stores played songs of ABBA, and Bjorn Borg strode like Jesus Christ on the centre court at Wimbledon, holding aloft the trophy nonchalantly, vanquishing all rivals with the kind of methodical precision Scottish Presbyterians would approve of.

I was in Edinburgh as a student on an exchange programme. I looked at the city like the gawky teenager I was. Along the way, I had seen rivers and mountains that I’d have called streams and hills, but politeness had prevented me from saying so, and miles of patchwork-quilt country had passed by, looking pristine. When we emerged from Waverley Station at Edinburgh—perhaps the

Highland: An Edinburgh castle watches over a city of cobbled streets. only railway station named after a novel—the imposing sight of the castle was striking.

We were tourists; those who lived here saw it differently: Renton, the narrator in Irvin Welsh’s novel Trainspotting, was never amused by what he saw, but even he was moved to admit: “But when ye come back oot ay Waverley Station eftir bein away fir a bit, ye think: Hi, this isnae bad.”

We kept putting off going to the top, to the castle, because it was always there, visible from many parts of the city, its massive silhouette overlooking the city, rising as if

it was carved out of the black basalt, giving the city dour solidity.

Hardy stone seemed like a recurring leitmotif of Edinburgh.

I recall our cab bumping along the cobblestoned street, making an ordinary ride seem as adventurous as a journey in an armoured tank. As we walked on the footpath another evening, the clippety-clop of the horse-carriage took us further back in time, and the unseasonal mist surrounding the street lamps made the landscape appear menacing, making us feel more important than we were, as though we were charac-

ters in a mystery novel.

From the top of the hill, the view the city offered was staggering.

You could see as far as the port of Leith at one end, where once you could find the poet Robert Burns, to Salisbury Crags on the other, the city finding its way into Muriel Spark’s fiction.

It was Stevenson who insisted that the best view of Edinburgh was to be had from Calton Hill.

From here, on one side, you could see the Georgian New Town. On the other side lay the Old Town, with its buildings tall for their time.

There, the tower of St Giles Cathedral; over here, the spires of St John’s; and then the Royal Mile, stretched as far as the eye could see before streets merged and the landscape ceased being a photograph. The American writer Washington Irving felt so enchanted, he reflected, “I don’t wonder that anyone residing in Edinburgh should write poetically.”

Before leaving Edinburgh that year, we went towards the estuary of the river Forth, as it makes its way to the North Sea, between Fife and Edinburgh. The cantilever railway bridge was an engineering marvel, sturdy and solid, often disappearing in the mist.

It was after two decades that I

came to Edinburgh again. We were on our way north, to the town of Pitlochry, nestled in the southern highlands. The streams gurgled here, and the people were friendly, looking with wry amusement at a bunch of Indians walking through slush in search of a distillery called Edradour, Scotland’s smallest. Three men work there, and the single malt they produce is light and sweet.

That night at our hotel, as we opened a bottle, I could see its thick liquid gleam like molten gold, reminding me of the twilight I had first seen decades ago. Then, I had learnt to distinguish between heat and light: All that glows and shines brightly need not burn you.

The glow I experienced that night was different, though. We had, in our hands, what Robert Burns called “a cup o’ kindness”.

My loved ones were by my side; the light around me glowed as the fire crackled, filling warmth within us. Auld Lang Syne.

Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

L14

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SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

Books

City beats: Much of the book’s backdrop is Grant Road, Mumbai.

ASHESH SHAH/MINT

EXCERPT

The curious case of Arzee This debut novel is about an uncharacteristic and unique Mumbai hero—and his triumphs, failings and loneliness

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handrahas Choudhury’s novel Arzee The Dwarf tells the story of the troubles of a very short and very bitter man in a very big and very frightening city, Mumbai. In this exclusive excerpt, Arzee is seen on his way to work. He is exultant because he has just been promoted to head projectionist of Noor, the theatre at which he works, and is looking forward to the day he will be married.

(Author’s note: the phrase “the room in the sky” is a reference to the projection room of the Noor.)

As Arzee went skipping down the staircase, he stopped on the first floor to peep into the corridor, but there was only a cat there, prowling with its tail raised. Arzee grinned and went on his way.

All the way down he could hear the clamour, and when he arrived on the narrow street, he found himself swamped by shrieking schoolchildren in their whites and navy blues, hurtling past after being ejected from the gates of the school at the other end of the street, just by where he lived. The sight of children always dismayed Arzee. Although they were no more than ten or eleven, they were all taller than him. Their smooth cheeks seemed to be laughing at his stubbled blue, their growing limbs flexing and showing off in front of his stopped ones. Their curious looks disconcerted him—they couldn’t be allowed to roam like this! He stopped till the head of the storm had passed, leaving trails of stragglers licking icecreams, trading marbles, or flying paper rockets.

He walked past these last ones, meeting their stares with stares till they looked away. In the grey

sky, clouds seemed to be idly grazing like sheep, and the rumbling from behind them was curiously soothing.

“So it’s come to this,” he mused, and his compacted body seemed to pulse with these stirrings. “It’s not the best result, but it’s something, and something’s better than nothing. Ha—that’s what everybody always told me to believe, that’s something’s better than nothing. They told me to be thankful that I wasn’t an orphan, or blind, or jobless—that my only burden was to be small. They couldn’t understand what this being small was like—it was only two words to them. But enough of crumbs! On the move! This sky’s so low, I feel I could touch it with a jump. And even if I can’t, I’m still going to be able to reach it in a little while, because now the room in the sky’s all mine.” He raised his arms towards the vastness above, and felt all his life’s tribulations redeemed by this moment. “Make way, all, because I’m coming! And I’ll keep talking to myself, I’ll keep the words coming. How hot these words!

Today I am made anew.”

Exultant, he felt pity for the friends he had just left behind, because their lives were so small and narrow, and their humdrum world had none of the peaks and troughs of his. They lived in a middle zone, and never knew what it was to really feel something. And from his friends, his mind moved now to his mother— his old mother, who like all mothers still thought of him as a child, and worried that he was suffering if even a fly came to rest on his arm. How pleased Mother would be to hear this news! Her happiness would

top his own, and crown it.

And, roused, he began to think of the wife who was coming for him, the girl with hips, breasts, and long hair, bangles and earrings, who would change his life from the moment she set foot inside his little home. His brother Mobin would have to move out of the room they shared between them, and in would come his wife—that certainly was a great bargain! Arzee laughed aloud when he imagined Mobin’s frame, long as his own was short, stretched out on the drawingroom sofa, his feet sticking out resentfully, while he, Arzee, took his pleasure inside. Food cooked in a different way—he was tired of the work of his mother’s free and sloppy hand. A new kind of talk at home—he was bored of the same half-dead conversations about Mother’s medicines and the quality of the vegetables in the market.

And a body coming to rest next to his at night, and then all the lights off, and someone close, soft, breathing up and down, waiting to be touched, in all that darkness and silence, by walking fingers.

He’d take it! He thought of the five thousand that was the margin between the head projectionist’s salary and his own, and all the little satisfactions that were now in his power: beads and necklaces

Arzee The Dwarf: HarperCollins India, 184 pages, Rs325.

for his mother, and bangles and trinkets for his wife, and something for Mobin, and peppermints and candied cherries, white shirts from the export-reject shops, a belt with a dragon buckle, tickets for the lottery, crates of mangoes in summer, fat fish, plump chickens, perfume and deodorant spraying away! It seemed to him that the whole world was available for sale in chunks of five thousand.

And his mind kept wheeling, whirling, and sometimes he thought some thoughts and sometimes it was the thoughts that seemed to think him.

He passed the grey building which was his home, and then the empty school, its blue gate being locked by the watchman.

Instead of going on straight, he turned into a passage between two buildings, so narrow it was almost invisible. It was a kind of wasteland where everyone threw rubbish which no one then cleared. A broken toilet seat was lying here, and a red plastic chair with three legs. The ground was covered with a squelchy slop of plastic bags, vegetable peelings, and eggshells. Long grasses had sprouted up near the walls, carrying bits and pieces of garbage within their limbs like diseased flowers. Little frogs the same col-

It seemed to him that the whole world was available for sale in chunks of five thousand. And his mind kept wheeling...

our as the muck were hopping from one spot to another with springy leaps, and becoming invisible once again as soon as they landed. Arzee’s shoes sank into the wet earth, and when he looked back to see if anyone had seen him enter, he could only see his footprints following him all the way in. He arrived now at a low stone wall, on the other side of which thin whispering sounds could be heard. He hitched up his trousers, hoisted himself up onto the wall, using the crevices as footholds, and arrived at the top. He looked down into the silky waters.

Yes, there was a nasty stench here, but also a lovely still and calm. No one bothered to come out here, and all the pleasures of the place were just for him. As if to mark his arrival, a milky sun had come out over his head, and his reflection in the sewer was backlit, as if there was a halo around him. He studied himself closely, and saw what he already knew: that his forehead was high, his hair wavy and thick, his lips full and pink, his black eyes somewhat crabby and disconsolate. He was good-looking—there was no doubt about that. But what of it? Looks weren’t just about shapes and colours, but also about size. Even in his reflection there was something irredeemably odd and stunted about him, like a thought that had come out all wrong in the speaking. The acrid whiff of the sewer was so strong that it felt as if his nostrils were burning. But even so, fish or other forms of life—algae, perhaps, or microbes—seemed to inhabit it, making the surface bubble in little spasms. There was a kind of peace to be had in watching the water go by. Arzee thought of that lost one, that past one, whose current had fallen away from his, and how she’d missed this day in his life. She’d gone, but he’d carried on, and learnt to be strong, and now he

was all right, only he thought of her sometimes. He spat into the water, as if expelling the thought.

How strange! It seemed to Arzee that somebody was calling out his name: ‘Arzee!’ ‘AR-zee!’

‘AR-ZEE!’ In fact, what with all the echoes of this bounded retreat, it seemed as if the voice was coming out at him from the inky deeps below him. Arzee looked around, disoriented. Perhaps it was a trick of his brain: his brain did sometimes play games with him.

But somebody was calling out his name. And Arzee recognised that voice—he’d been trying to avoid the person whose voice it was! He turned slowly, dreading the sight. A familiar gaunt figure was advancing up the alley towards him, hungry as a hound dog and just as alarming to look at. Arzee trembled. What an idiot he was! At the exact moment when he was being hunted for, he had to be standing here in a place cordoned off on three sides, his figure sticking out halfway into the sky! He darted left and right like a bird, but his agitation was useless.

The figure advanced further and, looking up at Arzee, said in a hoarse voice: ‘Got you at last, you little bastard! Don’t think you can hide too long from Deepak! Even when you hide, it’s actually Deepak who’s giving you permission to hide, waiting for you to get your act together. Keep hiding and skulking like this, and he sniffs you out and comes over to collect, and then either you pay, or else you really pay. Now come, my little birdie. Get down from your perch and tell me: where’s my money?’

Chandrahas Choudhury is the book critic of Lounge. His debut novel, Arzee The Dwarf, will be out in the last week of May. Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

BIOGRAPHY

The first lady of soul LATA MANGESHKAR...IN HER OWN VOICE/NIYOGI BOOKS

Flashback: Five­year­old Lata (centre) with her parents and two of her three sisters in Sangli in 1944; (below) the singer as an adolescent.

Why we’ve been swinging to Lata Man­ geshkar’s voice for more than half a century.

And why her life can inspire and intrigue B Y L ALITHA S UHASINI ···························· lot has been said, heard and written about Lata Mangeshkar, undoubtedly the biggest icon of the Indian music industry. But hearing the diva clear the air about some famous myths about her and recollect experiences from her fascinating life beats all other narratives hands down. There’s no doubt that it’s Nasreen Munni Kabir’s meticulous research and understanding of the film industry that has helped define the personality of the star so vividly in her new book on the legend.

The book is based on a documentary series that Kabir directed for Channel 4 in 1991, Lata Mangeshkar...In Her Own Voice, with updated references to music composer A.R. Rahman in the wake of the double Oscars, besides some other points.

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Lata Mangeshkar...In Her Own Voice: Conversations With Nasreen Munni Kabir: Niyogi Books, 268 pages, Rs1,500.

If you’re looking for a salacious, opinionated piece of music journalism, this is not it. Raju Bharatan’s Lata Mangeshkar: A Biography, published in 1995, leans in that direction. What Kabir offers instead is a page-turner which, if you’ve read any of Kabir’s works (Talking Songs With Javed Akhtar/Talking Films With Javed Akhtar), draws from her experience as a dedicated chronicler of Indian cinema. In her characteristically refined tone of narrative, Kabir manages to throw in per-

Are our leaders readers?

FINDLAY KEMBER/AFP

The key to knowing our politicians could be what they read B Y S AMANTH S UBRAMANIAN & S IDIN V ADUKUT ···························· ast week, a refreshing photograph appeared in a few newspapers—refreshing because we rarely see candid, Obama-esque shots of our politicians in their private lives, doing something as solitary and simple as reading. It was a picture of Rahul Gandhi in a private jet, poring over a thick book splayed open. Had we been on that flight with Gandhi, we would have cheerfully sprained something trying to peek at the cover.

This is because we rarely know what kind of books our politicians read. Clearly, Gandhi is not afraid of big, fat books, if at least to capitalize on a photo-op. L.K. Advani has blogged about books such as The Monk Without Fron-

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Diversions: Rahul Gandhi finds time to read on the campaign trail. tiers—Reminiscences of Swami Ranganathananda and India: A Timeless Celebration.

When it comes to appreciating literature, Natwar Singh is probably our most interesting politician; in one of his books, Heart To Heart, he writes about his experiences with (and readings of) authors such as R.K. Narayan, E.M. Forster and Octavio Paz. In an interview, Kurt Vonnegut once said it was crucial to know

what politicians were reading “so that all these would-be writers can find out that nobody of any importance is ever going to pay attention to them.” It’s a side of literature often forgotten—the ability to influence the people who matter. But to be able to do that, as Vonnegut pointed out, writers need to know what our leaders read, or if they read at all.

So what was Gandhi reading on the plane? The angle of the photo

sonal anecdotes, allusions to rare songs and some other aspects of Mangeshkar’s professional life with equal ease.

The book also gives us the entire trajectory of the icon’s life—how the childhood bully became a young girl who had to turn breadwinner after she lost her father, and how, after years of struggling in the industry, she dethroned her competitors.

It’s inspiring when the legend recounts how she fought for recognition (Filmfare Awards introduced the best singer and lyricist categories in 1959 after Mangeshkar had a showdown with composers Shankar-Jaikishan and refused to sing at the show because it didn’t recognize singers and lyricists) and royalties. These weren’t merely personal battles; they would have a bearing on the playback singer fraternity in the years to come.

Mangeshkar also speaks of her contemporaries in a manner so candid that the reader feels she’s sitting right next to her at her Prabhu Kunj residence, watching her laugh and reminisce about the good times. There are other instances that might come as a shock to some—for example, a cook was slow-poisoning the singer in the 1960s!

Kabir uses some instances from the singer’s life to cleverly craft a glimpse of Indian history through her eyes, with references to the day India won independence and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The section where iconic composers, such as Naushad Ali, discuss the technical details of Mangeshkar’s voice and contemporaries such as Manna Dey show what a formidable force she was in the studio, and are extremely interesting to any music enthusiast. The book also has some rare photographs, including a landscape shot by Mangeshkar herself.

Of course, like most interviewers, Kabir too allows some element of awe to creep into her questioning, but in relation to the overall quality of the work, this is a minor flaw.

That the publishers chose to launch the book in the year the diva turns 80 is either great coincidence or deliberate—none of this should, however, make a difference to diehard Lata fans. Go for it the moment it hits the stands.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Highs and lows of being Lata

hides the cover. Not to be thwarted, we obtained a high resolution version of the picture and magnified it enough to just make out a couple of phrases on the page: “Jews from Caesarea” and “a kibbutz was set up in 1942”.

A straight Internet search for both phrases threw up little insight. Instead we hunted for both phrases using the search function in Google Books (Books.google.com). Surprisingly “Jews from Caesarea” threw up more results, 26 to be precise, than the other more universal sounding phrase. According to Google Books, the phrase “a kibbutz was set up in 1942” appeared in exactly one book.

After double-checking for the presence of both phrases, and for their appearance on the same page, it can be said with confidence that Gandhi was reading Martin Gilbert’s 1998 epic Israel: A History. And he was reading around page 113.

So why exactly is Gandhi reading this book? Google doesn’t know everything. Yet. samanth.s@livemint.com

READING ROOM

TABISH KHAIR

THE CHARDONNAY SIPPERS’ CLUB Bolaño for beginners I hate to echo those literary-liberal types, the Chardonnay sippers of the West. But in this case I have to: Read Roberto Bolaño!

Born in Chile in 1953 and having lived in Mexico, France and Spain, Bolaño died at the age of 50. The author of acclaimed fiction, he left behind a manuscript, 2666, which was published to further praise in 2004. This year Picador has brought out the English translation, which sustains Bolaño’s reputation as the author of The Savage Detectives (novel) and Last Evenings on Earth (short stories), two of the best works of fiction in recent years.

While I agree with the endorsement of Bolaño by diverse Chardonnay sippers, I do so for different reasons. For instance, The Guardian, a major centre of Chardonnay sipping in the UK, praises Bolaño for championing “the importance and exuberance of literature”. This seems true, for Bolaño’s narratives are about writers and writing. But in Bolaño, literature is not championed for the sake of literature, as many Chardonnay sippers assume; it is a refraction of life in all its beauty, sadness, violence, hope, triviality and complexity. This saves Bolaño’s writing from the flaccidity and smugness of much of literature that sets out to celebrate literature.

But let’s not be hard on the Chardonnay sippers of the West.

Having lost various gods (divine, civilizational, socialist and now even consumerist) over the past few decades, they have little option but to cling to the god of literature. So, yes, overlook the reasons for their endorsement and simply read Bolaño.

BLOOMBERG

MUNSHI AHMED/BLOOMBERG

Slowing down?

Toni Morrison has been called “the nearest thing America has to a national novelist” by another centre of Chardonnay sipping, The New York Times.

And once again, alas, I have to nod in agreement. How can one do anything else in the face of Jazz, Sula and, my favourite (with its New roles: (from top) Will Morrison regain disturbing the spark of her early works?; Tharoor’s now Gothicized exorcism connecting with the masses. of the ghosts of slavery), Beloved, undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 20th century?

Morrison’s latest novel, A Mercy, is a prelude to Beloved, though it does not feature the same characters. But if Beloved took up slavery in the 19th century, A Mercy narrates the slave trade around 1680. Powerfully written, exhibiting her trademark boldness in exploring violence, A Mercy nevertheless lacks the force and compulsion of Beloved.

Is this just a pause in a great oeuvre, or does it mark the sort of slowing down that Nobel laureates often evidence in their later years? I pray it is the former.

Forgotten facts Ian Almond recently told me that there is more awareness of the intricacies of Hindu-Muslim relations in India than there is of Muslim-Christian relations in the West. His newly released book, Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched With Christians Across Europe’s Battlegrounds, sets out to further this awareness.

Thoroughly researched, Almond’s book documents how “Europe” has been constructed in exclusive terms in recent decades. He writes about “Norman kings with a knowledge of Arabic, Byzantine rulers who speak Turkish”, Ukrainians fighting for the Turkish cause, Polish regiments in Muslim armies, and of course Muslims and Christians battling together (mostly against other Muslims and Christians).

Sounds familiar? But then, perhaps, if the need in the West is to recover such memories, the need in India is to keep such memories from being forgotten.

The ‘real’ India Shashi Tharoor, the renowned Indian English writer, is running on a Congress ticket in Kerala. If he wins, which I hope he does, will it finally stop critics from glibly accusing Indian English writers of being out of touch with “real” India?

Tabish Khair is the Bihar-born, Denmark-based author, most recently, of Filming.

Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

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www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009

Culture LOK SABHA TELEVISION

With pride but no prejudice Watching over: LSTV’s studios are housed in the Raj Rewal­designed library complex next to Parliament House.

Armed with a lofty mandate and plenty of enthusiasm, a television channel is trying to take the middle path

BY S I D I N V A D U K U T sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· bout a week ahead of 16 May, when the results of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections will be out, Sunit Tandon looks adequately hassled. The chief executive of Lok Sabha Television (LSTV) is busy working out the logistics for the channel’s election day coverage. “We don’t even have a broadcast van like all the private channels or Doordarshan,” explains Tandon in the trademark baritone that made him a popular news presenter on national broadcaster Doordarshan for many years.

Top on his mind is the issue of access to the data feed from Doordarshan—the stream of numbers from various locations where votes are counted. Access to this is critical for LSTV’s counting-day plans. Without the massive cast of reporters and bureaus that other channels depend on, LSTV is pegging its plans on this data feed coming through.

Every few minutes a little red light flares up on Tandon’s telephone. Between calls, staff members walk into his office and hand him a file or document, already peppered with signatures, for one more.

Still, Tandon manages to talk about the channel that he describes as the “only one of its kind in the world”. “There are other TV channels in the UK, US, Australia and other places that are dedicated to broadcasting what happens within the legislative assemblies. But none of them are actually directly attached to parliament itself,” says Tandon.

Lok Sabha Television, launched in 2006, is the brain-child of out-

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going Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. Tandon explains that Chatterjee wanted the channel to bring citizens closer to the functioning of Parliament: “The intention is to help anyone in the country observe what is being discussed and debated by (the) government. So that there is transparency in the government’s functioning (the channel’s focus on transparency also means that Lok Sabha Television does not accept any advertisements from the private sector).

“We largely broadcast advertisements for public sector companies and public service campaigns. Jaago Grahak Jaago, for example,” says Tandon.

This then requires LSTV to be a lean operation with a limited budget. But it has been adequately supported by the government. For instance, the studios are housed in the Parliament library complex, right next to Parliament. And in his capacity as the head of department of spa ce, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh handed LSTV a free transponder on Insat 4A to broadcast

RAMESH PATHANIA/MINT

signals (Procuring a new transponder and setting up an earth station, including initial licence fees, can cost up to Rs2 crore).

The 24-hour channel broadcasts proceedings live when Parliament is in session and fills the rest of the time with programming that revolves around parliamentary issues and debates.

And it is not averse to the odd award-winning film or documentary either (on 11 May, the channel broadcast On Death, a documentary made by Vidhu Vinod Chopra when he was still studying film-making).

This is the first general election since the channel’s launch and despite some initial misgivings—Tandon himself wasn’t sure there was a point in LSTV covering counting day on 16 May, when the private channels would pull out all stops, but “my team was really enthusiastic so we decided to plan something”—LSTV has put together a 6-hour schedule of programming.

Spearheading this initiative will be Pankaj Saxena, the executive director of programming at the channel. Saxena is a 10-year veteran of documentary broadcast-

ing at Discovery Channel, a selfproclaimed “parliamentary democracy nut” and is just over six months into his stint with LSTV. On a wall-mounted TV in one corner of Saxena’s office, LSTV is broadcasting the usual 2pm lecture. This one’s on “What Indians can expect from President Barack Obama”.

One of Saxena’s first tasks at LSTV was to draw up a programming schedule for the channel that would bucket different types of shows into various time slots.

“Viewers should know what to expect when they switch on our channel. It should not be random,” Saxena says.

The 6 hours of programming today, Saxena explains, will be divided into three slots of 2 hours each. The first slot will look at trends as vote tallies are obtained from various counting centres. The second will consolidate results and analyse candidate performance. The final slot will have experts looking at coalition arithmatics.

“People always complain that we are a pure studio-based analysis channel. I am not bothered by that,” says Saxena. “We play a different role from the private channels with their provocation and breathless anchors and debates.”

Tandon expands this idea further: “We are an extension of the Speaker’s office. Which means we must be prudent with our spending and also be as unbiased as possible. Sometimes I remind my anchors that unlike private channel presenters, their job is not to provoke the guests.”

Now with a new government and Lok Sabha Speaker just days away, does Tandon have any apprehensions about Chatterjee’s pet project? Will it be affected by a change in government? Tandon says: “I can’t predict the future.

But institutions don’t change just like that. There is a role LSTV needs to play. We will do our best to keep doing it.” www.livemint.com Sidin Vadukut blogs at blogs.livemint.com/playthings

Lost homeland A film festival on Tibet and what it means to be a Tibetan in the modern world B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· he annual Tibetan Film Festival has travelled out of New Delhi for the first time.

Around 20 films—some documentaries, a few docudramas and some motion pictures— tell engaging narratives about what Tibet has lost and how we can think about its land and people differently.

Many of these films, to be screened in Bangalore, are made by Tibetan film-makers and writers in exile, and taken together, their works are a key to understanding what it means to be a Tibetan in the modern world.

Organized by the New Delhibased The Foundation for Uni-

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versal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the festival goes to Taiwan in July and Mussoorie in August.

Thupten Tsewang, programme director of the foundation, says, “We are finalizing dates and venues for Mumbai and other Indian cities through summer.”

Tsewang spoke to Lounge from Bangalore, where the foundation is hosting a 24-member inter-community religious dialogue programme, coinciding with the film festival.

Some of the films in the sixday festival are biopics on the life and message of the Dalai Lama, including a few by filmmakers from Europe and the US, but the ones that look most promising are those that portray the lives of ordinary Tibet-

Spotlight: (left) Dreaming Lhasa is a docudrama; Kundun is directed by Martin Scorsese. ans—at “home” and away.

In Dreaming Lhasa (2005), Karma, a Tibetan film-maker based in New York, goes to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s exile headquarters in India, to make a documentary on former political prisoners who have escaped from Tibet. She wants

to reconnect with her roots but is also escaping a deteriorating relationship back home. One of Karma’s interviewees is Dhondup, an enigmatic ex-monk who has just escaped from Tibet. He confides in her that his real reason for coming to India is to fulfil his dying

mother’s last wish, to deliver a charm box to a long-missing resistance fighter. Karma finds herself unwittingly falling in love with Dhondup.

Directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, this film is a powerful docudrama on the Tibetan situation.

PLAIN VIEW A selection of LSTV’s flagship programming Lok Manch (Hindi) and Public Forum (English): Live studio debates, with phone­in questions, on issues of contemporary political relevance. u

Sansad se Sadak tak (H): Experts discuss how recent parliamentary legislation translates into changes in the common man’s life. u

Women in Power (E): A programme that showcases women members of Parliament (MPs), anchored by journalist and author Kalyani Shankar. u

Surkhiyon se Parey (H): An offbeat news features programme that covers stories such as a series of audio books being produced by FM station Radio Mirchi and the National Association for the Blind for visually challenged children and women. u

Public Domain (E): Excerpts from hand­picked lectures, talks and conferences largely held in and around Delhi. u

In Transit (E): Actor and playwright Sohaila Kapur in conversation with celebrities on short visits to Delhi. u

While Parliament is in session, LSTV broadcasts shows specific to each day’s proceedings Agenda (E): Broadcast every weekday morning, it takes up topics that are to be discussed by Parliament later that day. Experts, including MPs, outline the implications of various Bills in a layman­friendly fashion. u

Sansad Nama (H): MPs are roped in during the lunch break to talk about the events so far. u

House Highlights (E): An end­of­day wrap­up show on each day’s parliamentary proceedings with MPs. u

LSTV schedule information Daily schedules are available at http://164.100.24.209/lstv/ dailyschedule.aspx u

A 24­hour live webcast of the channel can be viewed at: http://loksabha.nic.in/ls/audio/ live_proceedings_of_lok_sabha.htm u

Recordings of events such as budget speeches and the President’s address are archived at http://164.100.47.134/newls/ events.htm u

The Cup (2003) is a guerrillastyle feature film made by a reincarnate lama or rinpoche, Khyentse Norbu. Set in a monastery in Bhutan, it is a humorous story of desperation, optimism and the innocence of childhood during the course of a night—the night when the World Cup Soccer final is telecast on TV. To make the documentary Art In Exile (2005), Nidhi Tuli and Ashraf Abbas met activist poet Tenzin Tsundue, the former Tibetan Youth Congress president-poet Lhasang Tsering, and the rock band JJi Exile Brothers to showcase multiple narratives on an alternative revolution of Tibetan artists in exile.

And if you must watch a Dalai Lama biopic, catch Kundun (1997), directed by Martin Scorsese, that also has a haunting music score by Oscar-nominated composer Philip Glass.

Tibetan Film Festival 2009 is on at the Choe Khor Sum Ling centre, Bangalore, till 19 May. For more details, visit www.furhhdl.org

CULTURE L17

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ART REVIEW

RAAGTIME

When less is more

SAMANTH S

LESSONS FOR A LIFETIME

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There’s no dearth of good art and new talent in these lean times B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

··························· n Ritesh Meshram’s multiframe canvas, the humble mooli (radish) gets a quirky makeover. Its insides are dissected, and its importance in the rural kitchen described in a few catchy words.

An artist who has grown up around farms in Khairagarh, Chhattisgarh, Meshram draws the mooli—and vegetables such as the brinjal—as a student of botany would: graphic, in the most literal sense.

But they become art in Meshram’s mixed media works of charcoal and acrylic because he lends them an abstract, pop twist and it forms a narrative about Indianness and his own personal roots around them.

Most of his canvases are small in scale, and are available anywhere between Rs15,000 and Rs30,000, but like all the other artists in Studio Practices, a group show at the Chemould Prescott Road space in Mumbai, his work is worth the tasteful collector’s attention.

Curator Sandra Khare of Chemould Prescott presents 15 emerging artists in this

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Postcards: (top) An untitled work by Srinagar­based artist Rakesh Kumar; and two untitled works by Shruti Mahajan. show—most of them are in the 30-35 age group and she has known and observed them since 2005. Studio Practices is not “curated” in the strict sense—there is no common thread or conceptual premise for showing these artists together. It’s like a group of solos under one roof.

The show’s significance lies in the fact that it provides collectors and buyers a timely opportunity to look beyond the sought-after names and buy good work in a range of Rs30,000 to Rs1 lakh.

A few days before the show began on Friday, three of the artists—Rupali Sontakke-Angre, Vijay Bondar and Sarita Chouhan—were allotted spaces in the gallery to finish an artwork each, to bring out, in the final work, the relationship an artist shares with his studio.

Most of the artists are not from Mumbai. Rakesh Kumar, a postgraduate from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, returned to his hometown Srinagar after completing his studies. He now teaches fine arts in Srinagar, and continues to paint. Three of his large abstract works (priced at Rs80,000-90,000) are part of this show. He’s an artist inspired, or rather provoked, by the “curfews and violence” in Srinagar, and his canvases are surprisingly vibrant and chromatic.

Shruti Mahajan’s project, which is based on memory and reconstruction, includes photographs, an installation and small paintings on her ancestral home in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh.

Sontakke-Angre’s themes are intensely personal—the act of sleeping, insomnia and intimacy.

In one of her untitled works,

which has a stark white background, a line of beds float along an undetermined watery course, upheld, surreally, by petals.

Shruti Chauhan, the seniormost in the group, draws on the linear quality of flora, and somewhat like Meshram, is interested in “the seed” or “the living core” of her flowers.

The Chemould gallery has been regularly showing works of some of the biggest names in modern Indian art, such as Bhupen Khakhar and Tyeb Mehta, and some influential contemporary names. By showcasing emerging talent with this show, it breaks another boundary—and also embraces the zeitgeist.

Studio Practices is on at Chemould Prescott Road, Fort, Mumbai, till 13 June.

met Radha Krishna—Radha maami, as we called her—last summer, when I was hunting for a Carnatic music teacher in Delhi. I got lucky: She lived a comfortable autorickshaw ride away, had slots open for students, and was perfectly willing to teach people like me, who filled the voids in their talent with enthusiasm, who couldn’t practise every day or make it to every class with hair-splitting punctuality.

Radha maami was in her mid-seventies, and her voice, hoarse and cracked, had already been defeated by age. But that didn’t deter her; class after class, she aimed that voice unerringly towards the right notes. She sat in her chair leaning forward, back slightly bowed, and began every session by offering her unflinching opinions on the subject du jour—the musicians of today, Delhi’s auditorium administrators, with whom she often warred, the inability of so many of her students to speak Tamil.

This catharsis over, she settled down to teach, and she’d be terrific. She accorded you her fullest focus, subtly goaded you into the correct vocal grooves, and wrote into your notebook reams of notes and lyrics from memory. As the best teachers should, she made generous allowances for lack of natural skill but never for lack of effort or concentration.

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT In her youth, Radha maami and her sister Nagalakshmi performed as the Trichy Sisters, touring south India as exemplars of the Alathur tradition of music. After moving to Delhi in 1963, she started accompanying the leading dancers of her day, such as Yamini The guru: Radha maami celebrates a Krishnamurthy and festival at her home.

Sonal Mansingh, and she began teaching simultaneously. “I can’t take the music with me,” she’d say, and so she taught compulsively for 46 years, six or seven days a week, almost all day. It was a rich musical life, one that ended suddenly a few weeks ago, not even 48 hours after she began teaching me the first few lines of a new song in Raga Pantuvarali.

It struck me that Radha maami’s generation, or possibly the one after it, might be the last to turn out large numbers of such selfless teachers, who welcome students of every denomination of talent and share music for itself. Teaching amateurs can feel thankless, and it is certainly less glamorous than singing at the Music Academy. There are perhaps too many compulsions today for new teachers to groom students exclusively for the big stage.

In a way, this professional emphasis is a blessing, because it produces the ranks of dedicated singers we see today. But for classical music to thrive, as Carnatic music has, it needs not just a singer on the stage but an audience in the seats, an audience that knows and appreciates the difference between Kalyani and Sankarabharanam, or the value of a 30-minute alapana of Thodi. For that, we need legions of Radha maamis, to patiently teach us when we are reluctant children, to somehow make these lessons stick, and also to welcome us back into the fold when we return as regret-filled adults.

Write to Samanth Subramanian at raagtime@livemint.com www.livemint.com Samanth blogs at blogs.livemint.com/bookends

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

THE ALPHABET SOUP

S

everal young directors working in Bollywood often profess a love for movies that are part of a genre best described as “so bad it’s actually good”. These directors, who’re mostly male and upwards of 30, appreciate the nuances of such nuggets as Kaatil Jawani and Haseena and swear by the inherent cool of films such as Agent Vinod and Wardaat (the latter’s lead character, Gunmaster G-9, is referred to in Slumdog Millionaire). However, tackiness isn’t the preserve of the talentless.

In recent times, some of the most prestigious banners have rolled out movies that deserve to be classified as straight Bs. And characters who could have ruled a B-movie universe have made a

bold pitch for A-list glory.

The idea of a B-movie originated in the late 1920s in Hollywood, the industry that has most significantly influenced films made in Mumbai. Back then, American audiences were treated to double features, and the cheaply made B-movie was what ran after the big budget main attraction. The B-movie gradually became notorious for its often salacious and shocking content.

Years after the B-movie faded out, directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez paid their tributes through pastiche, the art of looking at an old form with new eyes.

The Hindi film industry’s understanding of B-movies has been somewhat different. We have had our fair share of B-grade movies, mostly involving

sexually deprived men, generously endowed women and venereal disease doctors. Then there’s also the B-centre movie.

Hindi film distributors classify movie releases according to the territories in which they are distributed. The cream of Bollywood’s output flows first to the A centres, which include the metros. B centres, such as Raipur or Jhansi, are lower down in the hierarchy of importance because they don’t have as many screens and purchasing power as A centres. The C centre, which includes such towns as Haridwar and Mathura, often receives the latest Bollywood blockbuster weeks after its original date of release. The system has changed somewhat in the age of piracy and the multiplex—thanks to the multiscreen cinema hall, the gap between A and B centres has shrunk somewhat.

Grade C: Tashan was an exercise in excess in formulaic film­making.

It isn’t always easy to separate a respectable Hindi film from a pretender. Ram Gopal Varma betrays vast expertise in the mechanics of B-movie production. He shoots fast and cheap, he works with mostly unknown actors, and he loves to shock. He has especially mastered the art of making A-list actors shed their artistic pretensions. Example: Amitabh Bachchan in Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag.

The younger lot, whose heads and shelves are stuffed with many more influences than their predecessors, try to quote a Wong Kar Wai in one frame and a B. Subhash in the next.

Obviously, things get a bit outlandish. Screenplay and dialogue writer Vijay Krishna Acharya made his inglorious debut with Tashan (2008), a putative homage to the excesses of formulaic film-making.

Acharya used four leading

actors and a very healthy budget to deliberately mount an illogical and tacky film.

Acharya, who wrote the so-silly-it’s-actually-sublime dialogue for the Dhoom movies (sample from Dhoom:2: Are you, like, checking me out?), was trying to do a Rodriguez. He ended up imitating Subhash instead, with none of the latter’s staggeringly entertaining bad taste. Acharya was unable to pastiche a film-making form that is already a pastiche of various genres, the way Pankaj Parasher did in Peecha Karo (1986).

B-movies in Bollywood don’t always refer to the runt of the litter. Often, the B can, quite simply and baldly, stand for bad.

Nandini Ramnath is film editor, Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

BANGALORE BHATH | PAVITRA JAYARAMAN

The painted veil PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

The city’s Muslim women are ready to experiment; think burkas with crystals and hijabs with bouffants

In vogue: (above) Mannequins display headscarves at the Islamic Boutique; the duplex boutique has burkas and hijabs inspired by trendy designs in Dubai, Iran and other countries.

L

ike many other neighbourhoods in Bangalore, Frazer Town’s original flavour has been almost drowned in the bustle of concrete and glass. Buildings with glazed glass facades, coffee shops and supermarkets punctuate the few old tea stalls, bakeries and bungalows that hang on in this predominantly Muslim and Christian locality.

So, as you drive past Mosque Road, get on to Coles Road and spot the Islamic Boutique, it makes you stop and wonder.

This unusual six-month-old landmark that seems to straddle both worlds is the city’s only boutique that designs clothes for Muslim women—from abayas (the long trench coat-like attire also known as the burka) and hijabs (headscarves) to purdahs (headscarves that cover the forehead or the face) and accessories.

The Islamic Boutique has all the trappings of a snazzy store in a mall—neon-lit mannequins, stylish display of clothes. But it’s distinct, and that’s evident the moment I step in. An overwhelming aroma of incense greets me.

Mannequins wearing hijabs and modelling abayas of different shapes are placed strategically around the duplex store.

Asma, a 22-year-old commerce graduate who works as a salesperson, walks up to me. A store full of Muslim women’s attire and accessories is a whole new world for me, so

I start with a basic question: What’s the most popular piece of clothing here? She points to what she is wearing: an all-black abaya tailored to fit the shape of her body, with a buttoned-up front, and a black hijab.

A tad too plain, I realize, so Asma picks out a similar piece with lines of white crystals making the pattern of an inverted fountain across the front and the sleeves.

This, Asma tells me, is the current trend.

Ladies come to the boutique asking for burkas embellished with Swarovski crystals, available in the Rs4,000-22,000 price range. For everyday wear, the working woman prefers them with simple thread embroidery.

The more well-defined the cut

of an abaya, the better. The one Asma is wearing, with the buttons down the middle in front like a regular shirt, can also be worn with the buttons on the front left, which, she says, is “the Islamic style”. Then there is the Raaz Purdah, loosely designed on the kaftan, and the Butterfly Purdah, made with loose, pleated satin sleeves.

While the boutique does stock coloured abayas, black ones are the most popular among the city’s women.

A visit to the boutique is an education in fashion trends in the Islamic world. The Iranian abaya, which falls like a trench coat, is becoming all the rage in Bangalore. It can be worn over pants, and teamed with a matching scarf (satin or wool; rectangular or square) to be

worn as a hijab. The boutique also stocks hijab pins and hair pieces that can be worn as a bouffant under the scarf. “This is in vogue in Dubai now,” Asma says. The two-piece Malaysian burka, a straight skirt and loose top, is worn with a matching scarf, mostly in colourful floral prints.

“We import bales of material from Dubai, Japan and Korea and then our designers cut and stitch,” says Junaiz K., the store proprietor. Satin is the preferred material because cotton crumples easily and doesn’t look as elegant.

“All the women in my family used to love shopping in Dubai and pick up stylish purdahs from there. That’s when I thought that maybe I could import finished products and PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

SAMAR HALARNKAR

STEAMED UP, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS ive years ago, I gave my in-laws a really hard time.

They were going to the US—as they often do to meet their son—and asked what they should get me.

“A bamboo steamer,” I said, prompted no doubt by some dumplings I’d had (I don’t really remember) recently. A steamer, if you don’t know, is that exotic wooden thing they produce with a flourish at Chinese restaurants, usually to serve fragrant dumplings, spare ribs, steamed squid and other delightfully delicious (and ultra healthy) delicacies.

This was not a kind thing to do. The vexing bamboo steamer was not available at those faceless, sprawling American malls. Many days, awkward inquiries and false leads later, they found a bamboo steamer in Seattle’s Chinatown. It was carefully packed and taken on a transcontinental flight to India.

My in-laws, obviously, have not forgotten the bamboo steamer.

I am ashamed to say, I forgot

about the contraption after the initial rapture of receiving it.

Until last week.

I was idly watching the water for tea boil one steamy, summer morning—this is just so you know I make tea for my wife, come rain or storm—when I realized I was being a fool.

My excuse for not using the steamer all these years was that I couldn’t find the right vessel.

You see, a steamer is powered by, well, very hot steam, which floats through its slatted bottom. The heat from the steam cooks the food. You can do this with almost no oil.

The other excuse was just that, an excuse: What do I know about steaming? But for someone who has freely experimented in the kitchen, this was a wimpy excuse.

So, as the water boiled, I quickly rummaged through the kitchen shelves and there it was, forgotten and forlorn all these years. The steamer.

The lid was a little ill-fitting—warped, no doubt, by years of storage, the wood

Step by step: (clockwise from top left) Line the steamer with banana leaf; place it atop boiling water; voila, mackerel with fresh basil.

expanding and contracting through winters and summers.

That night, I put it to use, steaming five pieces of king fish (surmai) with a light marination of sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice and pepper.

I am happy to report it was delicious. Nothing could be easier. It took all of 10 minutes after the water started boiling.

As I write this, I have just had my second go at steaming. It really works! My wife is out of town, so I haven’t steamed any veggies yet.

Next week, I will try those too (for

pavitra.j@livemint.com

SAMAR HALARNKAR

OUR DAILY BREAD

F

sell it here, but that worked out to be very expensive and the customer ended up paying twice the price of what they’d pay in Dubai,” says Junaiz.

Barely half a kilometre from the boutique is the workshop, where about a dozen workers are cutting and stitching clothes.

Salman Shabir Pasha, a 25-year-old designer, tells me that an abaya with detailed thread or crystal work involves a whole day’s work, so there are days when the team of 12 can only turn out seven-eight pieces. Pasha, who used to be a salwaar-kameez designer, says designing abayas makes him “happy”. Part of Pasha’s job is to keep track of the latest trends in Dubai.

Like him, his 30-year-old sister Ishrat Salma, who also

works for the boutique, hand-embroidering various pieces, learnt her skills from their mother. She has always worn a burka, and used to improvise on the plain ones that she would buy from the narrow lanes near Commercial Street.

Sales at the boutique, Junaiz says, have grown at around 30% a month since it opened—an indication that Bangalore’s Muslim women are willing to experiment. A 15-year-old once told Pasha she wanted to wear abayas because they looked stylish, although her family didn’t expect her to wear one.

The boutique already has another outlet in the city (on Nehru Main Road, Kammanahalli), one in Belgaum, and will soon open in Mangalore. It also has two stores in Erode, Tamil Nadu.

Orders can also be placed online at www.islamicboutique.in—the boutique delivers within India.

The next time you pass by the Islamic Boutique, drop in to look at the new design imports.

The burkini (a type of swimsuit) might just be in stock too. “I am getting in touch with manufacturers of the burkini in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) so we can import it if anybody needs it. If someone places an online order, we should be able to source it and deliver it to them in India,” Junaiz says.

those results, you’ll have to visit my blog—for which, of course, this is a shameless plug).

The great thing about steaming is that you can do something different each time.

You can use a variety of spices, fresh herbs, sauces, anything really.

Just remember that heavy Indian spices—such as garam masala—are not a good idea because these need to be fried.

Of course, you will need to get a steamer, which I hear you can now buy in Mumbai, Gurgaon

and, maybe, Bangalore.

If you don’t have a steamer, you can simply place a wire mesh over a boiling pot of water, cover it with a lid and, hey presto, a steamer.

It’s just that bamboo steamers impart a delicate, woody fragrance to the food.

What I will share with you now is the fish I just made. Here goes:

Steamed king fish/ mackerel Serves 2 Ingredients 2 medium-sized mackerel (or 2 large steaks of surmai, or 1 small pomfret, or 4 fillets of any firm fish) with slits on the sides 2 tbsp ginger (or galangal, Thai ginger) julienne 2 tbsp spring onion stalks (from just above the bulb), sliced diagonally 6-7 kafir lime leaves 1 tbsp basil leaves Salt to taste For the marinade 1 tsp sesame (or olive) oil 1-2 tbsp of soy sauce Juice of 1 large lime

Method Add fresh ground pepper to the marinade and mix well. Apply the marinade to the fish, rub into the slits. Clean and cut a banana leaf (or butter paper) to line the bottom of the steamer. Place the fish pieces next to one another.

Sprinkle the fish with ginger, spring onion, kafir lime leaves and basil. If you want a little spice, it’s a good idea to add some paprika or red chilli powder to the marinade.

Heat lots of water (fill to just below the brim) in a vessel that is largely the same size as the steamer. Make sure the steamer bottom and the vessel rim are a good fit. When the water is boiling briskly, place the steamer on top and close the lid. Watch the clock. Your fish will be ready in 10 minutes. Serve hot.

If the ingredients I used sound complicated, do it Indian style: Marinate the fish in a little oil, red chilli powder, tamarind water (or lime juice) and a little turmeric.

This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes a blog, Our Daily Bread, at Htblogs.com. He is the managing editor of the Hindustan Times.

Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com

www.livemint.com Every Monday, catch Cooking With Lounge, a show with video recipes from well­known chefs, at www.livemint.com/cookingwithlounge