SPAN: May/June 2010

New Approach on Nuclear Securitv eaders of more than 40 nati ons gathered in Washington, D,C, on April 12 and 13 to attend the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Barack Obama to enhance international cooperation in preventing nuclear terrorism , a danger he has identified as the most immediate and extreme threat to global security, ", , ,Today is an opportunity- not simply to talk, but to act. Not si mply to make pledges, but to make real progress on the security of our people All this, in turn ,

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requires something else, which is something more fundamental. It wi ll require a new mindset-that we summon the wi ll , as nations and as partners, to do what this moment iif'history demands," President Obama said in his opening remarks, "I believe strongly, that the problems of the 21 st century cannot be solved by anyone nation acting in iso lation, They must be solved by all of us coming togeth er " President Obama and Prime Minister Dr, Manmohan Singh met on the margins of the summit. The two lead ers vowed to continue to strengthen the robust relationsh ip between the people of their countries and agreed on th e need for India and the United States to work together on global deve lopment issues, includ ing economic infrastructure, food security and poverty reduction, They also discussed regional and global issues, including counterterrorism and nonproliferation, President Obama reiterated his comm itment to visit India this year http!/www,ameri ca,~ ov/relat i ons/nonpro l iferation,himI

May/June 2010

SPAN

Cover package

Front cover: Collage by Hemant Bhatnagar.

Images from Š AP-WWP, Getly Images and Apple Inc.

VOLUME LI NUMBER 3 Publisher: Editor in Chief: Editor: Associate Editor : Hindi Editor : Copy Editors:

Art Director: Deputy Art Directors: Editorial Assistant : Production/Circulation Manager: Research Services :

Michael P Pelletier Lisa A. Swenarski de Herrera Laurinda Keys Long Deepanjali Kakati Giriraj Agarwal Richa Varma Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Hemant Bhatnagar Kh ursh id Anwar Abbasi Qasim Raza Yugesh Mathur Alok Kaushik Bureau of International Information Programs, The American Library

By Anjum Naim

48 * Art: Seattle's Sticky Situati on

By Kaitlin McVey

Behind the Scenes in Monument Valley

By Tony Perrotlet

50 * Education: Environmental Educationfor Every Student

By Kaitlin McVey

54 * Food Business: Adventures Beyond the Spice Shelf

By Jane Varner Malhotra

By Steve Fox

57 * Media/Radio: Lend Me Your Ears

7* The Secrets of Screenwriting

By Richa Varma

By Laurinda Keys Long

10

59 * Achievers: Radha Basu

Movies: Action!

By Manohla Dargis

Readers' Memories On the Lighter Side

14 * Hollywood: Face to Face with Martin Scorsese

By Krishan Gabrani and Arun Bhanot

19

Rock Music: Elvis, the Young King

By Randy Lewis

Published by the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 23472000), on behalf of the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited, 18/35 , Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121 007. Opinions expressed in this 68-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

* Articles withastar may be reprinted with permission.

Thosewithout a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted Contact SPAN at 01 1-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

22 * Opera: Striking theRight Note

By Erica Lee Nelson

25 * AYoung Indian American Takes Up Opera

By Sebastian John

For subscriptions or address change:

subscriptionspan@state .gov

PUBLISHER et another area of commonality between India and the United States is the power and reach of our entertainment industries. From Hollywood to Bollywood (and Kollywood and Tollywood and beyond!) , American and Indian popular culture entertain the world. Movies, music and television programs are among our most high-profile exports, bridging cultures and making friends along the way. Funny stories, dramatic scenes, rock 'n' roll, and witty dialogue ar"e appreciated across borders.

In the United States, going to a concert or seeing a first-run movie is part of the summer experience. Nowadays though, we don't necessarily go to a movie theater or a concert hall. SPAN's cover story by Steve Fox gives an overview of the new technologies that bring entertainment to our home, office or wherever we are- like the iPad tablet, the Kindle for electronic reading, digital videos, and computer programs that stream music, drama and comedy shows.

It's an exciting new world for consumers, entrepreneurship, manufacturing and trade. But what does it mean for the artists, whose work is now accessible in myriad ways? The financial implications for them are daunting as new technology can lead to greater piracy and copyright violations. These forms of theft reduce the profit for those who make music, movies and books.

If the problem is not dealt with, it could become unprofitable to make more new products.

We are celebrating the historic Oscar award that Kathryn Bigelow won in March for her movie, The Hurt Locker, becoming the first woman director to win. As part of our 50th SPANniversary series, we've reprinted an exclusive interview SPAN conducted with Hollywood movie director Martin Scorsese in 1996, when he was in India to make his film Kundun about the Dalai Lama.

A long line of Hollywood personalities have come to India to make movies, to make friends, and to do good work, represented by the faces on our cover: Richard Gere, Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Screenwriter Tinker Lindsay, interviewed by Laurinda Keys Long for this issue, also came to India to make a movie, about the early life of the Buddha. Lindsay shares interesting insights into what goes into creating the dialogue and story that we see on the screen.

We've also presented a travel article on the Navajo Tribal Park in the southwestern United States. You 've probably seen this scenic area as it has been featured in countless movies, mostly old westerns. And we are celebrating, along with people around the world, the 75th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, the "king of rock 'n' roll, " with photos from his early years.

Michael Macy touches on the same era in his amusing piece on how Americans viewed India and Indians through television shows in the 1950s and '60s. Look for stories about radio, and opera singers in India and America in our pages, along with articles on subjects other than entertainment: environmental education at U.S. universities, Indian grocery stores in America, and the Honey Bee Network that helps inventors produce and market their products.

We hope you enjoy this issue, and your summer.

Y

2 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

By STEVE FOX

'"

how Americans enjoy entertainment.

Retailing at prices ranging from $499 to $829, plus $15 to $30 a month for wireless Internet connectivity, the iPad enables consumers to download and watch movies and videos, listen to music. read books, newspapers and magazines, play games and surf the Web. It also perfonns many of the functions laptop computers do. Competing devices are on the way from Google and Hewlett-Packard, with Nokia and Microsoft also promising slate computers aimed at

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

3

undercutting Amazon's hugely popular Kindle electronic book reader.

At slightly under 25 centimeters, measured diagonally, the iPad 's screen is unlikely to supplant either traditional movie theaters or the enormous fiat-screen televisions that now dominate many living rooms in the United States. But like the iPad, the latest TVs arrive Internet-ready and can access Web sites that archive and ~ • D:: stream new and old mOVieS, network 1l. shows, songs, music videos and games.

The TVs also usually come with or con- ~ nect to devices that can record, store and ~ play back whatever is downloaded. In z~ . addition, many viewers now "talk back" to ~ their TVs, posting ongoing critiques and ~ comments about what they are watching'" - - on Web sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. During the 2010 Oscars, there were as many as 70,000 tweets an hour about the awards, according to Trendrr, a Web-based consultancy that tracks digital and social media activities.

Empowered and enabled by ever accelerating technological change, Americans "are consuming, creating and commenting ~ on entertainment in ways unimaginable @'" just a few years ago. Entertainment is no z longer Iinear--consumers watch or listen ~ on their own schedule, dipping into a wide ~ array of devices whenever and wherever 2 they please. in Port Washington, New York.

The old paradigm is not dead. According "From the consumer's standpoint, the to the NPD Group, Inc., a global consumer experience is essentially the same. But for and retail market research firm, about 80 content creators, there's a problem-at percent of Americans still plop down on some point all these different technologies the couch every week to watch at least 10 start to cannibalize each other because we hours of TV programming; about the same only have so much time and with so many number listen to five hours of AMIFM options, something has to give." radio every week, and some 60 percent get The major entertainment companies are their music via CDs. At the same time, well aware of the intensifying competition entertainment delivery SOUl'ces and sys- for consumers ' time. Discussing the terns are fragmenting, with implications media conglomerate's lackluster 2010 fisthat artists, media companies, advertisers cal first-quarter results, Walt Disney and consumers are still unscrambling.

Company Chief Executive Robert Iger "Network TV is very domisays: "What we're generally nant, but clearly these other seeing in the DVD market is ways of accessing TV, whether continued pressure. Clearly, it's DVR, Hulu, YouTube or the economy is one factor. something else, are becoming Another factor is more secucomplementary, and the induslar in nature. There's more try is moving toward a place competition in the marketwhere all of that integrates," place for people's time, parsays Russ Crupnick, vice presiticularly time spent on enterdent and senior entertainment tainment." industry analyst at NPD, based The younger generation

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4 SPAN MAY/JUNE 20 10

Above: The first customer with an iPad leaves Apple's Hollywood store in Los Angeles, California on April 3, the day the iPad was launched in the United States.

Left: A woman uses a Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon w hile riding the subway in New York.

Below: Russ Crupnick.

is responding to time competItIOn very simply-they watch TV, surf the Web, ten to music and play video games simultaneously.

"Kids have turned the idea of multitasking into an art form," says Crupnick, while noting that adults also are accessing entertainment through multiple mediums.

"You used to have to be a rocket scientist to get at some of this stuff, but now all the devices are much easier to use. A grandmother who gets a smart phone can listen to Pandora, so now you ' ve got the Baby Boomers onboard. A lot of the technical barriers have come down, and that makes everything more democratic more quickly than it might have been," he says.

Pandora is an advertising-supported Web site that creates individual "radio stations" tailored to each visitor's individual music preferences.

For some people, engaging with entertainment while others around the globe are doing the same has become a form of entertainment itself.

lis-

"Entertainment is atomizing," comments Terri Saul, a writer in Berkeley, California.

"The sources for fi nding entertainment are multipl ying, as well as the devices for engaging with narratives: fi lmic, interactive or musical. People write about entertainment more and more--citizen journalists, bloggers, ordinary tweeters. We sift through multiple layers of meta-entertainment and arguments, including dramatic online arguments, a k a smack-downs. We're engaging not only with the artwork, but also with the critics and the art of criticism itself."

Saul observes that her 14-year-old daughter, Lydia Warren, "occasionally likes to download films to her iTouch, but only when she's going to be traveling far without books. She sometimes watches TV series after school on my computer with her friends. She finds a show she likes and then watches every episode. She

wastes as little time as possible on ads or commercial breaks this way."

Tuning out advertising is increasingly common-some TV recording devices automatically skip the commercials-and of increasing concern to sponsors who realize that it's tough to reach consumers who are engaging in several forms of entertainment and communication simultaneously.

"It's something everyone is trying to get their head around now, and people are not entirely sure what it means," says Martin Olausson, director, digital media strateg ies for Strategy Analytics, a research and consulting firm.

"If someone is watching TV at the same time they 're surfi ng around on their

laptop and texting on their mobile phone, are they absorbing any advertising? The larger problem is how to balance the new world with the old world. The movie and TV studios are still getting the vast majority of their revenues from traditional delivery channels, but that's changing

---------------------------1'" Above: Martin Olausson.

Right: A Samsung Internet TV on display at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Digital Pirates Pose Major Problem lor Entertainment Industry, Artists irated movie DVDs used to be terrible- grainy videos shot surreptitiously inside a theater with a camcorder, complete with audience noise and people walking in front of a distant screen .

Not today. For a few dollars, high-quality DVDs of the latest films are readily available in most major cities around the world, sometimes before they have even opened in theaters or gone on sale in retail stores. Shoddy versions still predominate, but digital duplication, programs that crack encryption software, and online file sharing over

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ever-increasing bandwidth speeds are making copies of stolen originals a huge and growing problem for media companies and artists alike. Technology's dark side is a major threat to the entertainment business and those it employs, either directly or indirectly.

The prototype for entertainment piracy was the music industry, where free file-sharing Web sites like Napster bega.~ to devastate sales of legitimate .:..CDs in the 1990s.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, U.S. sales of recorded music fell by 60 percent from 1999 through 2008. Apple's 2003 introduction of 99-cent legal ~ downloads of individual songs over ~ its iTunes Music Store brought ~ some order.back to the music mar~ ket, but uncounte9, billions of songs !J! are now routinely and illegal ly exchanged by consumers who simply are no longer accustomed to paying for music.

The problem is global and hard

to combat, partially because profit margins are high, law enforcement has other priorities and many consumers don't see the harm in copies. Blockbuster, a U.S. movie rental chain, closed all of its stores in Spain a few years ago, claiming that pirated DVDs were more common than legal versions. Hollywood and Bollywood have joined forces to fight counterfeiting in India, where pirated DVDs shot with camcorders are widely available. The Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's main trade group, has forged similar anti-piracy coalitions in Europe and Hong Kong.

It's not just the establishment entertainment companies that are

worried. Some 12,000 content creators in The Copyright Alliance, a grassroots group, signed a letter to President Barack Obama last year asking his administration to pursue policies that support artists' rights.

The group includes authors, photographers, songwriters, graphic deSigners, filmmakers, musicians, publishers, jewelry deSigners, Web designers, photOjournalists, illustrators, video game developers, architects, cartoonists, composers, playwrights, voi ce actors, animators, sculptors, painters and videographers.

Stiffer legislation seems like ly in the United States, but as always technology is outrunning the law, and this time the pirates are getFor more information: ting hurt. The spread of fiber optic cableand other advances in highCopyright Al liance speed Internet transmission is http://www.copyrightalliance.org/letter/ gradually making pirated DVDs obsolete- it' s easier and cheaper Protecting Creativity, Expanding to just exchange stolen material Consumer Choice over the Web. - S.F.

Michael Robertson, founder of MP3tunes .

and the new digital channels are still developing," Olausson says. "Media companies can easily end up losing out- in the music industry, sales of traditional

"Whether you ' re doing e-mail or bankplayable CDs have gone down very quickly and online distribu- ing or whatever, it's all moving to the tion hasn't grown fast enough to cloud," he says. "Music and books are offset that." moving to the Internet and the same thing Ultimately, entertainment in all is coming for movies and games. What's forms will reside "in the cloud" (the causing consternation is that the licensing Internet) and simply be accessed model doesn't accommodate the new whenever consumers want, says technological model. But eventually conMichael Robertson, a serial Internet entre- tent will be available on every device, not preneur whose latest company, MP3tunes, trapped on some device." ~ allows users to store their music on the Web Steve Fox is a freelance writer, former newsand play it back on virtually any digital paper publisher and reporter based in Ventura, device.

California.

but the odds are awfully long. There are now about 13 million music profiles on MySpace alone, according to a spokeswoman for the Web site.

By comparison, there are 4,000 or so artists signed to major record companies, according to a recent report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The federation says 8 major labels invest $5 billion every year in musi- ili cal talent, with promising new artists or groups typically getting an advance of $200,000, a package of three videos that cost another $200,000, with an additional $300,000 spent on promotion and marketing in a total package of about $1 million.

Then there's Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned, which recently used a Web site called Kickstarter to raise $3,782 so the eight-member, Albany, New York group could travel to the SXSW (South

by Southwest) music, film and technology festival in Austin) Texas. Part of the money went to repair the band's aging van, with backers who invested $100 each getting their names plastered on the side as tour sponsors "We really needed the money; we couldn't go on tour without it, " band member Alex Muro explains. "Mostly we thought of it as a clever way 'T erra Naomi is a talented musician who to ask our parents for money, but I was almost " gained international fame after her original like sort of touched by the number of people who song "Say It's Possible" won a Best Music Video Award in 2006 on YouTube. Naomi, who Above left: Terra Naomi writes and performs her own songs and plays performing in New Delhi. guitar and piano, was subsequently signed by a Right: Sgt Dunbar & the major record label, toured in Europe and in 2009 Hobo Banned. appeared before audiences in Mumbai , Bangalore, New Delhi and Sri nagar.

Like many before her, Naomi waited tables, booked her own shows and performed in small towns across the United States before being "discovered" on the Internet. Her story is cited as evidence that artists can find success on the Web,

were willing to help us."

Kickstarter and similar Web sites like Sellaband and Slicethepie (slogan: help yourself to a piece of the music industry) enable musicians to attract investors who help fund tours, make albums and cover promotional expenses.

"They're kind of like modeled after stock markets, enticing people to invest in a band as an investment; that's kind of their pitch," Muro says.

"Kickstarter is a great fund-raising tool, but you can use it too much-you don't want to be abusing Yflur fans."

Muro and fellow band members gave about 75 shows last year, bringing in about $6,000 plus another $2,000 from CDs. They're keeping their day jobs, which include banker, waitress, truck driver, computer programmers and two members who work at a music shop.

"We never tried to go the major label route," Muro says. "It's just not going to happen for us and it's not part of our goals set at all. The major labels are making less every year because people aren't buying CDs as much, and they only invest in bands they think are going to make -them money. They'll drop you if you don't make money on your first record. But we're doing better and better at making money from our shows and we're doing music we like."

-S.F.

Lindsay's entry into the world of professional screenwriting some 14 years ago was like a scene fro m an improbable movie. Separated from her husband, dealing with the end of her marriage and contemplating her children growing up, she took up running, something she had never done.

Then, sh,e wrote about it, somethin& she had told herself years before that she could never do well. She gave her essay to a friend. It reached a British director who called Lindsay and said, "I read your piece. I need someone with an American female voice to co-write a screenplay that MGM wants . .. " "I've got to tell you that never happens," Lindsay laughs as she relaxes in her big writing chair in an office piled with books, papers and photographs, in the revamped gatehouse of her sprawling, charming home beneath the famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, California. She now prepares scripts for stars and studios, including work as a consultant for Hannah Montana: The Movie in 2009.

Most screenwliters toil for years, writing and rewriting, pitching their ideas, even getting hired on a project only to see it dissolve before production, due to finances, a change in studio management, a new fad, a scandal in the life.of the actor face was to "open" the movie. As it tu dut, that first that Lindsay worked on with director Peter Chelsom in Lll)!,1i:lll\4 in the late 19908 never got made. Th ached the ~_m~actor Tony Shalhoub ~_rtish

actress Vanessa Redgrave reading the script for a studio head, who ultimately said, "No, I don' t think this is what we want."

Lindsay 's essay also got an option for development by another award-winning screenwriter/director who mentored her into what became her second screenplay. Lindsay was thinking, "Screenwriting was pretty easy stuff; I thought all I have to do is throw out an essay. I thought 'I have arrived.' And seven years later I still hadn't done an actual movie. I was back into the normal reality, which is working, working and working."

Although it "never happens" that a director just calls and says, "Let's write a screenplay for MGM," and though that particular script did not tum into a movie, Lindsay got paid for her work, and most importantly, she was ready when the opportunity came.

Her preparation began with a good education, and by following the axiom : "A writer writes."

"I always wanted to be a writer, and .. .1 worked first for the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson," says Lindsay, who grew up in the eastern United States. "I had to compete to get on the paper and I had the honor (I found out later) of writing the worst first story in the history of the Crimson, but I was also considered the most improved. She ended up as an editor of the paper.

Meanwhile, Lindsay found that she enjoyed writing features and think pieces, but had a hard time being objective. So she took a seminar about using fiction techniques in non-fiction writing, but entered the seminar in the middle of the year. "Everybody had already gone through all their awful first pieces and their second pieces and I came in and just wrote this embarrassing piece called 'Freshmanitis.' I overheard people talking about it, making fun of it, and I decided, 'I guess I am not a writer.' But the good news is I did a lot of other things for the next almost 30 years. I went to England, I taught meditation classes, I manied an actor, I travelled all over the world, I started a school. So when the time came that I asked, ' What am I going to do with myself.. .. I woke up one morning and I thought, 'I am going to write.' " During her 19 years of married life, while raising her children, Lindsay read scripts for her husband, actor Ned Beatty, who has appeared in more than 100 films, such as Deliverance, Network, Nashville and Superman. She advised him on which scripts to accept, and in the process she learned which ones make good movies. When she read the script for Hear My Song , a British film about the Irish tenor Josef Locke, Lindsay said she urged Beatty, a singer in his youth , to take the part. It earned him a nomMiley Cyrus appears as her character Hannah Montana, a Disney TV program made into a 2009 movie, directed

by Peter Chelsom with creative consultation

by Tinker Lindsay.

8 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Actor Ned Beatty. (c~nter) and his wife, screenwriter Tinker Lindsay (right), at the Emmy Awards show in Los Angeles in 1990.

ination for a Golden Globe Award in 1991, and it brought Lindsay an introduction to Chelsom, the director who later called her to write a screenplay and who remains her writing partner.

"I was also around filmmaking a lot and I was able to see what happens when a script becomes a movie, because it changes; it is very collaborative," she says. When actors are playing a scene, if they feel the words don't work, they say so. Some directors, such as Spike Lee, are improvisational in their technique. If they like something they may tell the actors, "Keep doing that. " "So I learned very quickly that if I was going to be a screenwriter my words were not precious and sacrosanct the way they can be if you are writing a book or a play," Lindsay says. "I also understood how completel짜 critical the vision of the di rector was ...If they didn ' t take ownership of the script in their own particular way that script was not going to come to life. This is the main reason why 99 percent of the time I write or co-write with directors. Because your first draft is more like the second draft and your second draft is more like the fourth draft because you are already collaborating with someone else." She also finds it helpful that directors have a more visual approach, balancing her own word orientation. "Sometimes when we are stuck (in the storyline) he could picture how it would move and then we could write about it," she explains.

Because movie-making is so collaborative, a script can have more than one writer, an editor or two, a developer and a conceptual editor. Lindsay does all of these jobs. With Chelsom they also do director development: find an interesting script, craft how they can make it stronger and then pitch their vision to a studio, an actor or a producer. "Sometimes we will get the job to do the rewrite but more often if they already have a screenwriter that they like, we will work with that screenwriter, and go through and say, 'Well, these scenes are going to end up on the cutting room floor, so cut that out of the script. '" This is the work that Lindsay and Chelsom did for Hannah Montana: The Mo vie, which Chelsom also directed. The 2009 film was developed from the Disney Channel's TV program, which is also broadcast in India on the Disney Channel.

Although it was based on a TV situation comedy with broad humor and aimed at a narrow audience of young girl s, Lindsay said she read the script when Disney called Chelsom's agent and asked him to direct. "There was something about it. It had a lot of

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_ _ ;;nJ~." ~ sti ll following some ki nd of order underneath it ~ all. For example, the movie Memento did a heart, and on the other side, it already had the 1), structure that was completely backwards. cast. It was a 'go' movie." There are a handful of 搂 actors-such as Matt Damon, George Clooney ro "With a screenplay, more than anything else or Sandra Bullock at the moment-whose name .r==;= 'iiiJ ~ my job as a writer is to give the reader the sense on the movie will bring in an audience. If these very quickly that whoever is driving this story actors are interested, a studio will be interested. ~ has their hands firmly on the wheel. So they will _ O Some directors also have that cache. With f ~ just go where I take them , because it's almost in Hannah Montana, the star-teen pop icon ______________.. 1 our DNA, there is a kind of mapping out of what U makes a story satisfying. You have to honor that.

Miley Cyrus- and her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, r"Also, how we talk is not actually what a were already famous from their TV show and inker Lindsay says screenwriting is not "just screenplay is. If this were a movie it would make music, so the movie was going to be made. visualizing and writing it down. " Lindsay recommended that Chelsom go ahead you crazy the way I am repeating myself and and direct. "It wasn't a movie yet, but it had a "Most screenplays, " she explains, "fol low a saying 'you know' and the answers and the 'ers. ' fairly traditional three-act structure. The first act You have to distil l the actual dialogue of a movie kind of sweetness to it, it had a lovely premise is the fi rst 20 to 25, sometimes 30 minutes, into th e most dramatic and key and insightful and so we worked with the writer, we came up whi ch equals pages of the screenplay It's usu- ways Even if you are not saying what you mean, with some ways that were more visual to express ally a minute a page The second act is between that has to be perfect, so that everybody heari ng this kind of budding romance between Miley's Hannah Montana character and a cowboy she 60 and 75 minutes, or pages And the thi rd act wou ld say, 'Oh, I know what they mean.' meets. Instead of letting the characters talk on is between 20 and 25 minutes.

"Of course , the other element of a movie is "What makes the fi lm satisfying, if you are about action, about things that happen. In a book and on about their feelings and plans, the team cut the dialogue way down and introduced more watching as the audience, is that in the beginning you might have much more leeway to go inside sophisticated physical comedy. Chelsom was you get to know everybody and usually pretty a person's head and write about what they are very involved in choice and placement of songs soon some problem is thrown up By the end of feeling as they are doing something else. I read to replace dialogue, similar to Bollywood. the first act there is a major turn .. .. So the second a lot of scripts and I have noticed that, because act is all about the complications If it's a love we are in an age of texting and e-mailing and Another similarity is that the teen characters' story, it's boy meets girl, boy versus girl, boy gets Facebooking, everybody is constantly telling chaste k(ss at the end is not actually visible. girl. First is to have them come together. The sec- each other what they are doing. So now these "Our goal was to create a movie which adults would take their kids to the first time ond act is all the things that come between them screenplays are coming out where it's just pages because they had to, and the second time actually getting together. The third act is usually and pages of people telling each other what they because they wanted to," Lindsay says. She they do get together, if it's a romantic comedy, a are doing and how they are doing it-and nothreceived an on-screen consultant credit and the ing actually happens My job as a screenwriter is happy ending That part is the resolution. work has generated further interest in collabo"There are, of course, movies that may turn to create, with actions and key pieces of diarations . Screen credits are important mainly for this structure upside down, play with it, mess logue, situations in which there is a gap that the with it. But I can guarantee you that if they are viewer then gets the pleasure of leaping over. It's other people in the movie business to see, successful, whoever has written it has written so satisfying. It's 'Ahl Of course, I knew it!' but in a admits Lindsay, so she doesn't mind hearing that Indian audiences, like many in America, many that he or she so deeply und erstands the good way. It's very hard to do we ll. It takes structure that they can mess with it and they are years .. of viewing, and li stening and reading." stand up and leave before the credits roll.

"Once you have this on-screen credit, people logue. "All writers are creative creatures and realize , 'Oh, you can actually do this,''' For more information: notoriously, insanely sensitive," notes explains Lindsay. They feel more secure in hir- Ti nker Lindsay Lindsay. "Getting notes is really like being ing you for the next project. http://tinkerlindsay. com/index.hlml asked to do surgery on your child. It's a realThe insecurity of Hollywood compare路s 路 to Hannah Montana: The Movie what Lindsay encountered in Mumbai when she ly excruciating process for the writer. I have came in 2007 to rewrite a script she had created http://disney. go. com/hannahmontanamovie/ learned not to say anything while getting notes because my fIrst reaction is a combiwith Gujarat-born director Pan Nalin about the Buddha: A Pan Nalin film nation of deep hurt and rage." She has also first 30 years of the life of Prince Siddhartha http://www.buddhalhemovie.com/ learned that often those suggesting changes Gautama. After two other almost-offers of funding fell through, they met with one of India's largest companies, are trying to fIx something they' re not always sure how to fIx. The which wanted to get into movie-making, mainly Bollywood- key is to understand what is really bothering them and deal with style. But the company liked Nalin 's pitch for a crossover, that, which often leads to a stronger script.

Engli sh-language film on a subject that would have international The reason we have not yet seen this movie about the early life appeal. They committed substantial funds into the pre-production of Siddhartha is because midway through pre-production, the globof the film . Nalin and Lindsay spent months working with the al fInancial crisis hit, causing the company to rethink their commitcompany officials and receiving suggestions, called "notes" in ment to fIlmmaking. After receiving three draft script rewrites they the movie industry, about changes in the script. One executive pulled the plug on the project. Nalin is currently in Paris seeking wanted a particular word for a Buddhist concept to be in the dia- funding to make the movie. ~

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What 1 -tl-ng Screenwrl

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SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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By MANOHLA DARGIS

~e take on Kathryn Bigelow is that she is a great female

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director of muscular action movies, the kind with big guns, scenes, themes and camera movements as well as an occasional fist in the face, a knee to the groin. Sometimes, more simply, she's called a great female director. But here's a radical thought: She is, simply, a great filmmaker.

Because while it is marginally interesting that she calls "action" and "cut" while in the possession of two X chromosomes, gender is the least remarkable thing about her kinetic filmmaking, which gets in your head even as it sends shock waves through your body.

Her latest is The Hurt Locker, [the Oscar-winning] film about men and war. Set in Iraq in 2004 and shot just over the border in Jordan, it centers on a three-man American bomb squad that sifts through the sand day and night disabling explosives. It was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in September 2008, where it was greeted with rapturous praise and some misapprehension.

Mostly, it seems, because its extraordinary filmmaking, which transmits the sickening addiction to war as well as its horrors in largely formal terms, doesn't come wedded to a sufficiently obvious antiwar position. One British critic went so far as to say that while the film had "excellent acting, camerawork and editing, it could pass for propaganda."

The Hurt Locker doesn't traffic in the armchair militarism of Hollywood products like Top Gun and Transformers, but neither is it an antiwar screed. It's diagnostic, not prescriptive: it takes an anal ytical if visceral look at how the experience of war can change a man, how it eats into his brain so badly he ends up hooked on it.

And, like all seven of Bigelow's previous feature films, this one is also as informed by the radical aspirations of conceptual art as it is by the techniques of classical Hollywood cinema.

She might live and sometimes shoot within driving distance of the major studios that have distributed if not financed her films.

But in many respects she remains an industry outsider.

"I've never made a studio film," Bigelow gently reminded me

10 SPAN MAY/JUN E 2010

'"

The first woman to win an Oscar for best director, Kathryn Bigelow makes movies that get in your head even as they send shock waves through your body.

during a leisurely conversation. Although most of her movies have been released by studios, they have been bankrolled by independent companies, which nonetheless don ' t necessarily grant the autonomy any artist seeks. The experience of making The Hurt Locker-the "purity" of it, as she puts it-marks her return to liberating conditions under which she thrives . She hasn't had this kind of freedom since her 1987 breakthrq,ugh, Near Dark, an erotically charged vampire movie made on the cheap, or her 1995 science fiction thriller, Strange Days, which came with some heavy protection courtesy of one of its producers: her former husband, James Cameron.

It's hard to imagine Bigelow letting anyone push her around.

She's unfailingly gracious-and tends to speak in the second person, preferring "you" over "I"-but there's a ferocious undercurrent there, too, as might be expected. She works to put you at ease, but even her looks inspire shock and awe. Because she was early for our interview and already tucked into a booth, I didn't realize how tall she was until we both stood up, and I watched, from a rather lower vantage, her unfurl her slender six -foot frame. It was like watching a time lapse of a growing tree. Like a lot of tall women she describes herself as shy, but she has learned to take up space.

At first that space wasn't on screen but on a canvas. An only child, she was born in 1951 and raised in a town, San Carlos, 40 kilometers south of San Francisco, where she first nurtured a lifelong love of art and horses. (When we meet again her arms are flecked with bruises after a perilous ride on her mare.) She was a student painter at the San Francisco Art Institute and later the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, where she studied with Vito Acconci and Susan Sontag. She joined a conceptual art group, appeared in the feminist movie Born in Flames and earned her master's in the film division of the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York, where 'she immersed herself in theories about signs and meaning and the cinematic spectacle.

Copyright Š 2009 The New York Times Company

For more information: Kathryn Bigelow http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000941 / The Hurt Locker http://www.lhehurtlocker-movie.com/ The Academy Awards http://www.oscars. org/awards/academyawards/i ndex. hIm I

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divorced in 1991; she's now in a relationship she prefers to keep private.) It was poorly released by its studio, which seem ~d unsure of how to sell it (kinky sex ? millennial meltdown?), and it flopped. The Weight of Water, a trickily plotted drama that toggles between two bad malTiages in separate time periods, and notably her only movie to touch on matrimonial life, followed and disappeared on impact. Two years later, in 2002, she returned to blockbuster form with K-19: The Wido wmaker, an unnerving, very human thriller about the first Soviet nuclear submarine. It too died a quick box-office death.

She had to scale back for the next one. "I definitely wanted to have full creative control and final cut," she says of The Hurt Locker, which was written by Mark Boal and based on his experience working '!~ . an embedded journalist in Iraq. She wanted up-and-coming actors who weren't so famous that their characters couldn't die, even if their names wouldn ' t mean much in the ads. She also wanted to shoot in the Middle East. Her security

"Film," she says, "became the interchange where all these ideas were intersecting."

As she moved between uptown and down, she also made her first film, The Set-Up (1978) , a short in which two men (Gary Busey included) fight each other as the semioticians Sylvere Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over. Although she now plays down the film, it seems like a template for much of her later work, with its emphasis on men, masculinity, violence and power. A few years ago she elaborated on its themes: "The piece ends with Sylvere talking about the fact that in the 1960s you think of the enemy as outside yourself, in other words, a police officer, the government, the system, but that's not really the case at all, fascism is very insidious, we reproduce it all the time."

That enemy lurks in the anomie of the motorcycle biker (Willem Dafoe in his screen debut) who motors through her 1982 debut feature The Loveless (made with Monty Montgomery) and in the bloodstream of the young cowboy initiated into a gang of vampires in Near Dark, the western-holTor hybrid that made her a cult favorite . It sneaks into the head of the ID ~~~~'*~;i.,..",",,!~~";;'.~. undercover FBI agent in Point Break (1991) who's philosophically seduced by the koan-spouting Jeremy Renner as a bomb technician in The Hurt Locker. leader of some bank-robbing surfers. And it slips into the rigid body of a devout 19th-century immigrant wife in The Weight of detail talked her out of filming in Iraq, though she inched close Water (2000), who, after sharing a chaste bed with another to the border. Given her demands and the scant interest that woman, responds to her awakened sexual desire with a murder- American audiences have expressed in fiction films about the war, she looked outside the country for financing. The French ous swing of an ax.

Much as she does in her far-out 1990 feminist freak -out Blue company Voltage Pictures gave her money and control.

Steel, about a female cop (Jamie Lee Curtis) literally seduced by " It was a no-note experience," she says , referring to the suga male killer who fondles her gun with lethal results , Bigelow gestions that movie executives like to issue- and enforceisn' t just playing with genre. She's having her unruly way with "absolutely zero interference." She laughs when I ask if she gender, sometimes by inverting tradi tional masculine and femi- might become addicted to the freedom , much as the bomb tech nine roles, as in Strange Days, a future shock love story that also played by Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker becomes hopped explores voyeurism and the pleasures of violent spectacle. Shot up on war. It's a ludicrous comparison, granted. But moviemakin a Los Angeles still hurting from its 1992 civil unrest, it fea- ing is littered with broken spirits, and there's something improbtures Angela Bassett (whose bare, sculptured arms outmuscle able about the longevity of her career in the mainstream. Partly those of Michelle Obama) rescuing a hapless white man (Ralph because, yes, she's working in a sexist field where even fem ale Fiennes) who, despite being the narrative's center, never studio chiefs are loath to hire female directors, but also because becomes its hero. of the stubborn persistence of her artistic vision and intellectualStrange Days originated with Cameron, who wrote the first ism. She's still investigating signs and meaning, but now draft before handing it over to her. With Jay Cocks, she finished through genres she deconstructs and sometimes immol ates .

It's telling, then, that after she made The Loveless, a postmodthe script and made the film her own. (She and Cameron

12 SPAN MAYIJUNE 2010

Kathryn Bigelow with cinemaphotographer Barry Ackroyd on the set of The Hurt Locker.

ern motorcycle movie in which she stretched narrative to the limit, she started receiving scripts for high school comedies, which she quickly realized was considered a suitable subject for her gender. "It was an intersection of absolutely inappropriate sensibilities," she said, though I would love to see what havoc she could wreak on that genre. She was living in New York in a condemned building without heat and electricity. A juvenile comedy might have paid the bills, but instead she accepted an offer from her friend, the artist John Baldessari, to teach at the California Institute of the Arts, just north of Los Angeles.

Hollywood was the inevitable next step. Through the director Walter Hill, she landed a deal at a studio, but it led to nowhere.

It was at this point, she said, that she understood "if I had a prayer of shooting something that intrigued me, I was going to have to be the architect of my own fate. " She went off and made Near Dark, a vampire film steeped in the kind of hot, sticky, shocking violence that's alternately exciting and appalling. It was the perfect vehicle for a director discovering that we go to movies for what they do to our bodies and not just the ideas they plant in our heads. She wants to take you on a mental journey: "To transport you to an event or a physicality or a location or an experience or an emotional odyssey that is purely experiential."

Her use of the word odyssey seems significant. I can ' t imagine her sitting at home and weaving.

If anything, her refusal to make the types of movies most associated with women suggests that in American movies , at least, genre is destiny, to repurpose a familiar Freud maxim about gender. She's steered clear of the industry ghetto to which

female directors are usually consigned, bypassing the dreaded chick flick for stories and archetypes traditionally if reductively seen as the province of men. She still makes relationship movies , but the relationships evolve both through the chatter at which women are supposed to excel and the contact of bodies, often male, sometimes female, running, surfing, parachuting, living and dying out in the world. She learned from the masters-De Kooning, Peckinpah, Goya, Pasolini, Rembrandt and on and on- in order to become her own woman.

The number of male mentors and aesthetic influences seems instructive as does her seeming discomfort when I ask why she likes to make movies about men. It's one of tue few times when she searches for her words. She mentions Richard Serra, whom she's known for years, and "Torqued Ellipses," his curvilinear steel sculptures that weigh about 40 tons apiece and which she describes as "real statements of power." Suddenly I'm reminded of the moment in K-19 when the camera glides between two submarines sitting parallel on the surface of the water, a glorious image of heavy metal that is itself a statement of power. When she was painting, she says, she loved "big, gestural, visceral, raw, immediate pieces." She starts to move her fingers, as if she were sewing.

"Nothing really struck me," she says , of the art she first loved , "that was tight and precise and patient and careful and perhaps more introspective. Perhaps," she laughs , "it's just a sensibility ~ defect."

Manohla Dargis is the co-chief film critic for The New York Times.

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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For our 50th anniversary this year, SPAN is reprinting articles from past editions that reflect on issues we are reporting about today. This article from the April/May 1996 issue features an exclusive SPAN interview with Hollywood director Martin Scorsese.

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One of America's most paSSionate and inventive filmmakers, Martin Scorsese has often based his work on his own experience, exploring his Italian American, Catholic heritage and confronting the themes of sin and redemption in a fiercely contemporary yet universally resonant fashion. In March 1996, Scorsese visited India in connection with his new film, Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, and gave the following exclusive interview to SPAN's then-managing editor and then-associate editor.

You are in India, we understand, in connection with your new film project on the life of the Dalai Lama, called Kundun.

How did you come to have this title, which is a Hindi word?

Kundun means "the precious one." That's the title Melissa Mathison, who wrote the script, gave it. We've kept the title. And they do call him Kundun at times in the story. She gave me this script about four years ago, and since then we've been working on it, to get the film made. You say it's a Hindi word.

Yes. It means "the pure."

That's interesting. It's the precious jewel. That's the idea. I'm going to talk to Melissa about that.

Several of your films deal with violence, mobsters and the Mafia.

Three of them do-Mean Streets, GoodFellas and Casino.

How did you change gears and opt for this apostle of peace and nonviolence?

I've elways been very interested in religion, and I really wanted to do a film that was further away from the world that I grew up in, which was the world of urban New York, Lower East Side-Little Italy- an area where there were organized crime figures. As a child I didn't know that. They were human beings to me then. You know I'm a Sicilian American. My grandparents come from Sicily. So crime was very much part of our culture, for better or for worse.

In the past 24 years that I've been making films-I think I've made about 16 films-only three of them deal with organized crime figures. , But, violence... ... yes, violence's been a strong part of my movies. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, of course. In Raging Bull the man's job is to go and hit people and be hit. It's like a very primal basic exploration. And we were able to use it as a metaphor, I'm afraid, for life. But, I've done a number of pictures that are not viol~ftt. Even The Color of Money is not a violent film. Then I've made After Hours and The Age of Innocence, which is a story about the New York aristocracy. And Kundun was another one that I wanted to make-the story about the Dalai Lama-to take me into another world.

When did you come to know of the Dalai Lama as a person with a larger-than-Iife persona?

A good question. I remember his escape from Tibet. I remember that as a young person. I remember a photograph of him on the front page of a newspaper. But I became aware of the loss, the physical loss, of the culture of Tibet in about 1986-87. I -saw a number of programs on television in America, and the shock of the tragedy affected me strongly. What it also meant to me was that the Dalai Lama had left Tibet but he had "taken" Tibet with him.

And that would be an interesting story because, if anything, what

the world needs is more of a society where people could look in rather than look out.

That's what our Indian scriptures teach us.

That's what's so fascinating about India. It's fantastic. And it took me all these years to get here.

Is this your first visit to India?

Yes. What are your first impressions-of the people, of the country?

Overwhelming. I was up in Dharamshala, also Jammu. I'm amazed by the varieties of people-the different ways, the different languages, the look of the country, which is something I never had known.

I was eight years old when I saw the first movie about India, Jean Renoir's The River, which was so beautiful, full of the sense of color and smell. From that fIlm you could smell the different spices and the incense. I think Satyajit Ray also worked on that fIlm. Yes. He assisted Renoir during the filming.

So, all these years I wanted to get to India, to have an excuse to come here. I don't travel very often.

Talking of Satyajit Ray, you've recently been involved in the restoration of eight of his films. But even in the early 19608 you made a statement that The Apu Trilogy was "one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life." How come at that time, when you were just a young boy in New York, you got interested in this filmmaker?

I was about 15. Experiencing The Apu Trilogy together-to see all three films as I did, five-and-a-half hours straight-was really like reaching over to the other side of the world and becoming totally understanding of people in different cultures and different points of view but still seeing them as human beings. It was so different from us, so different from our cultural setup in New York.

But at that age, to feel so intensely about... ... very intensely, especially the first one, Pather Panchali, and the last one, The World of Apu. The middle one, Aparajito, was also good, but the first and the last were overwhelming. You can' t deny the power of these stories. And it seems very simple, but it's very hard to shoot.

How would you rate Satyajit Ray? He's certainly one of the all time greats. There is no doubt. I think one reason why I reacted to his fIlms the way I did was that when I was a child in New York I saw Italian films on televisionOpen City, The Bicycle Thief, and many others-and when I saw The Apu Trilogy it reminded me of those. Even to think about this film now is so moving.

Interestingly, Ray was deeply influenced by The Bicycle Thief SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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Left: A scene from Raging Bull, showing Robert De N iro (center) and Joe Pesci, in a white jacket.

Left below: Actor Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Howard Hughes in a scene from The Aviator.

Below: Martin Scorsese, center, on top of camera platform, confers with a cameraman during the filming of The Age of Innocence, in Troy, New York in 1992.

Right: Scorsese accepts the Oscar for bes t director for The Departed at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007 in Los Angeles, California. It was Scorsese's first and, so far, only Oscar.

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In fact, I feel so strongly about the Italian cinema that we're going to do a documentary on the Italian cinema, starting from The Bicycle Thief and taking it all the way up to Federico Fellini ~ and Bernardo Bertolucci and a few of the other filmmakers now. ~ I have just completed a three-hour-and-45-minute documentary ~ on American cinema to work as a guide. A personal view. It's not ~ a view of the Academy Award winning films but of different 5 movies that I experienced and enjoyed as a child and as a young ~ filmmaker. .. .I was thinking about it. Well , also at that time I was at the You've made some of the most memorable films. Which of preparatory seminary, training to be a priest. I didn ' t make it to the your films would you rate as your best and why? priesthood because I was veering toward films. And the humanist I have a very strong personal connection to Mean Streets which approach of Ray was what affected me. I wanted to make films I did in 1973 . Then I made a film on my mother and father, a doc- like that, films that reached across cultural barriers and national umentary. Very simple story. No story, actually. Just having dinner barriers, to humanity, to everybody. That is what I think is the danwith my mother and father on a Sunday afternoon and asking them ger now in America. Americans don 't look at foreign films anyquestions about how they were raised-and about my grandmoth- more. And that is why I'm trying to change them. I tried to release er. It was a very simple documentary, less than an hour. It was some old French films. I re-released Rocco and His Brothers by called ItalianAmerican. I learned a great deal about them. I Luchino Visconti. That's also why I helped Ismail Merchant in the learned they had a life before me [laughs]. They'd been married restoration of the Ray films . It's very important how he supported 42 years at that time. the showings of the Ray films in America.

Coming back to Ray. When you first experienced him, you One interesting parallel in your films and Ray's is that for couldn't have, at that young age, been thinking of becoming a most of his films Ray had Soumitra Chatterjee as the common filmmaker or... male protagonist and you've had Robert De Niro in almost all

16 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

your mms. Is it because a director looks for the ideal actor who can express what the director wants to say?

Basically, we had such a tight relationship that I had to say very little. He doesn' t even act, he sort of behaves. He becomes this person, theJilm's character, and, like ajoke, we usually say: "Is Jake in this morning?" [Jake LaMotta is the character De Niro plays in Raging Bull.] "Is he on time?" "Yes, he's on time." "Okay, we'll go see Jake now." We usually call him by the character's name.

Is it also because you're both from the same background?

Yes, we have a similar background, although, interestingly, I grew up in the Lower East Side with different groups of young boys, some of whom went to college, some went to organized crime, and some became lawyers. That's just the way it was, and still is, I think, in Little Italy. And Bob De Niro was also down there, although he lived four blocks away. We knew each other and he would come and visit me and we would hang out together.

Bob came from a very different background. His father was a famous painter and his mother was a writer. I came to know of that only after we had known each other for two years. And my people were j ust working class people. There were I)o.books, no literature in our house. They could read and write bul they were hardworking Italian Americans trying to stay away from "the mob" and make a decent living. Bob's father died in 1993-three months before my father. He would visit his father in the hospital and then cross the street to visit my father.

For more information:

corsese Martin Scorsese http://movies.nytimes. com/person/11 0533/Martin-Scorsese/biography Shutter Island trai ler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = HYVrH kYo Y80& feature = re lated The Departed trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= SGWvwjZOeDc

Martin Scorsese's Movies Since 1996 1999: Bringing Out the Dead.

2002: Gangs of New York. The first collaboration between Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, it won two Golden Globes, including for best director.

2004: The Aviator, starring DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett. It was the most nominated film at the 77th Academy Awards and went on to win five Oscars. It also won three Golden Globes.

2006: The Departed, starring DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon. It won a Golden Globe and four Oscars, including Scorsese's first, for directing.

2010: Scorsese's latest film , Shutter Island, starring DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley, released in February.

'----

Whom would you rate as the greatest mmmaker in the world of cinema?

I like many types of films, so it's difficult to say. But among Hollywood filmmakers I like Orson Welles and John Ford. Welles, because he made me understand what a director does. I could see the camera moves, I could see the angle, the surprise of the editing. But most of alii liked the way he told a story. The story wasn't straightforward. In America now the studios always say Act I, Act II, Act III of the script or the film . But I say: "Why do you want to do that? That's theater. This is film. A film is like music.

It has to flow. There can be five sequences, there can be 25."

I found that Welles didn 't tell stories that way. He told a story visually. Ford told stories visually, too, but he is simple. The same thing with Ray: the poetry. It's just like John Ford.

The characters in your mms are always on the edge, or-to put it another way-you depict them in extreme situations. But at the same time you have made some beautiful documentaries on music like The Last Waltz and Woodstock (as coeditor), and last year you produced a documentary on blues guitarist Eric Clapton.

I was executive producer of the Clapton film and what I worked SPAN MAY/JUNE 20 10

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I Above: Scorsese (left) in conversation with SPAN's then-Managing Editor Krishan Gabrani at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi.

Above right: A letter of appreciation for the article, sent by lyricist Guizar to Gabrani. Guizar shared the 2009 Academy Award for original song for Jai Ho with composer A.R., Rahman.

on there was to ensure that there weren' t too many cuts in the music. I wanted to keep intact the power of his performance.

What attracts you to rock music? How do you really relate this to your cinematic themes?

The key thing is music. For me, when I hear music-it could be rock ' n' roll, blues, Indian music, or it could be classical music- I imagine images and I imagine sequences. I usually play music whether I'm working on a script or drawing pictures.

I play the music for the film . Take Casino. There is maybe three hours of music there. That's enormous. And for that I played some old 1950s rock 'n' roll and I played Bach-two contrasts, because that is the story for me. It's like a tragedy, only it is a tragedy of gangsters.

Have you ever been exposed to any Indian filmmakers other than Ray? Shyam Benegal. I was with him in China in 1983 or 1984. We did a symposium along with a number of other directors. Some of the Mrinal Sen films, and some new films also.

Have you seen any commercial Hindi movies?

Yes, I watch the Indian news on Sunday morning at home in New York. I see cuts from Hindi movies. I don ' t understand them because they don't have subtitles. But I do understand that cinema is a fantasy, the way Hollywood cinema was in the 1930s during the Depression when everyone wanted to see musicals.

When TV came to America it was predicted that it'll be the demise of cinema. But that didn't happen. And now TV has come to India in a big way. You think it will have either a good or bad influence on Indian cinema?

I think it'll certainly change the way films are made here.

Because many of the films will be made directly for television.

There's a danger it may hurt the cinematic quality, the way of telling a story in pictures. Because when you make a film for TV-some of them, of course, are brilliant-it's not being made for experiencing by a big audience. There's a danger in this, and that's what is happening in America. If you look at some of these films made in the past, many of them are very popular and are

18 SPAN MAYIJUNE 20 10

well-made films, excellently acted and well directed, but basically television films . A number of Americans are attempting to make real cinema-films where they utilize the visual image-or trying to tell a story with pictures. It's very dangerous because the budgets are getting higher and we've got to take less chances then .

Brian De Palma, for example, is doing a mission impossible, going back to the TV show but which is really a big movie. I think he is one of the great directors, the way he tells a story visually.

It's extraordinary.

Coming back to Kundun, are you going to be filming it here?

I hope to, shooting up in the north in Ladakh or places like that. I hope to shoot some .of it here anyway. That's ~he reason we're here.

The movie is, of course, about the Dalai Lama. But is there a central theme?

Well, it is the story of the boy. They find the boy at the age of 3 and the ftlm takes him all the way to the age of l7 or 18 when he escapes into India. And when he moves into India, he just says that one day he hopes to return to Tibet. That's the end. That's all.

Basically, what we're trying to do is to show the personal story, the spiritual side, of the boy as he grows into a young man. A personal film. There would be some spectacles in the sense of ritual processions, things like that. But not the destruction of Lhasa. We don't have a big budget. Also, that is not the idea. There is very limjted confrontation with the Marxist government. That's something else. Arguments, arguments and confrontations.

The main thing is the spiritual side of the boy becoming a man, having been enthroned at a very young age and then the idea of the escape. Instead of being an escape it is really a journey for the preservation of the spiritual nature of Tibet. And he takes Tibet with him, all around the world.

Have you selected the cast?

They ' ll all be nonprofessionals, all Tibetans. And that's going to be a tough call because we need three Dalai Lamas-a 3-yearold, a 12-year-old, and a l7 -year-old. We went up to see the Dalai Lama in Dharmshala and we met a lot of Tibetans up there.

This was your first audience with the Dalai Lama?

No. I met him a number of times over the past four years', in New York, in Washington, D.C.

*****

Elvis Presley meets a fan from Long Island outside the Hudson Theater in New York before his appearance on "The Steve Allen Show. "

the Young King

By RANDY LEWIS

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Photographer Alfred Wertheimer captured Elvis Presley at the moment his fame ignited. Some of those images form the heart of a new Smithsonian traveling exhibition which debuted on January 8, 2010, Presley's 75th birthday. It is traveling to museums across America through 2013.

s an aspiring freelance photographer fresh out of the Army, Al Wertheimer was pretty jazzed one late-winter day back in 1956. A record company publicist had phoned and asked him to head down to a CBS-TV studio in New York City to take some sh0ts during the variety show hosted by big-band leaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

"I thought it would be great-Tommy Dorsey was one of my heroes," Wertheimer recalled .. .from his home in New York. "I told her I loved all that stuff: Benny Goodman and the big bands. She said, 'I don 't want you to cover Tommy Dorsey. I want you to cover Elvis Presley.' There was a long silence, then I said, 'Elvis who?' " It was one of the last times that Weltheimer, or pretty much anyone, ever had to ask that question. The young singer born in Tupelo, Mississippi, shot to stardom on the TV exposure he got that day and over the next several months from appearances with the Dorseys, then on Milton Berle's and Ed Sullivan's variety shows.

Wertheimer ultimately shot hundreds of photos of the soon to be king of rock ' n' roll during the period before his manager, Col. Tom Parker, began to control the star's public image.

A few dozen of those photos are the heart of "Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer," a Smithsonian InstitutionLos Angeles Times. Copyright Š 20 J 0

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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Elvis Presley, known as the king of rock 'n' roll, was born January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi. In 1948, Presley moved with his parents, Vernon and Gladys, to MemphiS, Tennessee where Elvis graduated from high school, started his Singing career, and made his home. His 1967-1973 marriage to his wife, Priscilla, produced one daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. He died of a heart attack, believed linked to a prescription drug overdose, at the age of 42, on August 16,1977 at Graceland, the mansion at 3734 Elvis Presley Boulevard, which he bought in 1957.

Elvis Presley with his mother, Gladys, at home in Memphis, Tennessee on July 4, 1956. She is showing him a present-a bottle of cologne she had received from Barbara Hearn , his high school sweetheart, who is waiting for Elvis in another room.

photographer during part of his stint in the Army, captured Presley at the mom.ent his fame ignited. In fact, one of his most celebrated shots"shows the singer looking out across the audience during a homecoming concert in Memphis.

Wertheimer's lens opened just as a fan at the back of the crowd snapped a flash, giving Wertheimer's shot the look of a sun exploding above Presley's head, symbolizing his emergence as a newly formed star.

"When I saw that photograph, it represented for me a wonderful piece of luck," Wertheimer writes in Elvis 1956, the catalog that accompanies the traveling photo exhibition. "Instead of ruining the frame, it actually enhanced it."

Wertheimer, who recently tumed 80, exhibits a down-to-earth sense of self-deprecating humor in discussing his own life as well as the time he spent photographing Presley over a span of several months more than half a century ago.

He said the one photo p,eople invariably ask about first is the shot he calls "The Kiss," in which Elvis and an un identified woman playfully embrace in a darkened hallway.

Wertheimer notes that it was taken shortly before Presley was due to step onstage in Richmond, Virginia. As palt of the traveling entourage that also included guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black and drummer DJ. Fontana, Wertheimer looked around the dressing room where they were preparing for the show and noticed that Presley was missing.

The photographer went down a flight of stairs and spotted a young couple silhouetted against a window at the end of a corridor. It was Presley and a woman he'd met in a luncheonette earlier that day.

He moved in and began shooting, wOlTying that his subject might tum at any moment and tell him to get lost or even fire him. He soon realized he was never in any jeopardy.

assembled traveling exhibition that had its first stop at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

"Elvis isn't studied in school," the Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, said recently, "even though when you consider the postwar period and you think of the people who define us as Americans, you mention the Beatles, even though they were from England, you mention Bob Dylan, and the one who towers above both is Elvis. That has been forgotten, and ***** That and many other Wertheimer photos have become iconic that's the goal of this exhibit."

The Grammy Museum's Presley exhibit also includes rare per- representations of the man whose death at age 42 left his millions formance footage, interactive displays in which visitors can of fan s stunned and grieving. Strangely, Wertheimer's shots punch up samples of his recordings, two of his earliest guitars and remained practically uncirculated during Presley 's lifetime.

"For 19 years .. .1 did not get one single phone call for an Elvis several artifacts on loan from Presley's Graceland mansion and Presley photograph," Wertheimer says. museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

"But from that moment on, the phone hasBut the focal point is Wertheimer's For more informalion: n' t stopped ringing for 32 years." photos, first collected in the book Elvis Elvis Presley '56: In the Beginning published shortly http://www.elvis.com/ after his death on August 16, 1977 ....

Elvis 1956, photographs by Alfred Wertheimer Randy Lewis is a music critic at the Los Wertheimer, who had studied photog- nttp://www.welcomebooks.com/elvis1956/ Angeles Times. raphy in college and worked as a military

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20 SPAN MAYIJUNE 2010

The Elvis Presley Fan Club India http://elvisfanclubindia.tripod.com/ -----'

44

Elvi Ev

HI

Michigan.

• 8th Annual Tampa Elvis Festival/Contest, on July 17. in Florida, • Elvis Week 2010. from August 10 to 16. in Memphis. Tennessee.

The daily Viva ELVIS show by Cirque du Soleil at Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

• New England Elvis Festival . from September 3 to 5, in Manchester, New Hampshire. http//www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/vivaelvis/default.aspx • Elvis Fantasy Fest, from October 8 to 10. at Woodland Park Community Center in Portage.

International Elvis Motor Classic Car Show. from May 27 to 30, at Graceland in Memphis. Tennessee.

Indiana.

LakeGeorge.com Elvis Festival. from June 3 to 6. in • Pocono Mountains Elvis Festival, from October 29 Lake George, New York. to 31 . at Fernwood Resort in Bushkill .

Pennsylvania.

Tupelo Elvis Festival. from June 4 to 6, in Tupelo.

• The Elvis Cruise 2010. from November 4 to 8, sailMississippi. ing from Jacksonville. Florida to Nassau. Bahamas.

The Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, from June • Graceland Christmas Lighting Ceremony, on 4 to 6. at Pechanga Resort &Casino in Temecula, November 19. at the front gates of Graceland.

California. http//www.elvis.com/festivals/ Michigan Elvisfest, on July 9 and 10. in Ypsilanti ,

'Aslew of events have been planned across the United States to celebrate the life and legacy of Elvis Presley in the 75th year since his birth.

•

• • • • •

.

Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer April 4 to June 20 at Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida.

July 10 to October 10. Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

October 30, 2010 to January 23. 2011 at the Nati onal Portrait Gallery in Washington. D.C. February 19 to May 15, 2011 at James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania. www.sites.si .edu/exhibitions/ exhibits/elvis_at_21 /main.htm

~ Above: Elvis Presl~y with bass player ~ Q

Bill Black, gu itarist Scotti} Moore and Sun Records and Memphis recording studio head Sam Phillips at an early recording session in Memphis in 1954.

Above left: Presley is shown between takes at his firs t RCA Victor recording session in Nashville, Tennessee in January 1956.

Far left: Presley during his theater tOllr in the summer of 1957. Scotty Moore is on guitar and Bill Black is playing the stand-up bass.

Left: Presley shakes, rattles and rolls as he pelforms at the M ississippiAlabama State Fair in Tupelo, Mississippi, in September 1956.

SPAN MAYIJUNE 20 10

21

Christine Matovich Singh, an American opera singer, has made a new life in India, where she spreads appreciation and understanding of this dramatic art.

By ERICA LEE NELSON

22 SPA N MAY/JUNE 20 10

Below: Christine Matovich Singh at her home in New Delhi.

Right: Singh in a scene from the opera "Orphee et Euridice" shown in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

highly. And then you would have the interfering auntie, or a sorceress."

Singh-a soprano who has performed with the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra-has played many roles in her U.S. stage career. Now she is taking her classical voice training in new directions, such as collaborating with the chart-topping Punjabi musician Rabbi Shergill on his new album, to be released this year. Beyond pelforming, Singh is working to bring opera understanding and appreciation to more people in India.

How did an American opera singer find herself living in New Delhi? The story itself would make a good Bollywood script. Singh married Indian novelist and editor Avtar Singh after a three-year, long-distance courtship, and the couple now have a 2-year-old son, Jagat.

Singh admits to being worried about how her career would take shape after she moved to India. Yet opportunities kept coming. "My life here has become what it's meant to become without me having to have consciously chosen it," she says.

"It's the phone call in the middle of the night which says - 'We're looking for the opera singer for Slumdog Millionaire; are you available?'''

Creating anew life The music room at her home is a space for serious vocal training-sometimes for unexpected members of the family.

"Figo, aa jao ..." she calls to her lanky Dalmatian, peppering her speech with Hindi words. Figo jumps up to place his front paws on her lap as she begins to sing his name in one long, drawn-out note, "Fiiiiiigo." Each note gets successively highh, the drama. In one scene a mother despairs for her lost er, and Figo begins to leap and bark along with her, getting louddaughter. In another, the relentless suitor presses on er as well. "He does match pitch!" she shouts over him. Avtar through multiplying hardships, all in order to get the girl. and Jagat come to see what all the noise is about, laughing along Not to mention the long interludes in which characters with Christine. sing about falling in love.

The couple first met in 2003 at the wedding of Avtar's sister in At first, this might sound like a typical Bollywood script. But New York City. "He was wearing a turquoise turban and looking Christine Matovich Singh knows the real source: "The Magic very charming," she recalls. They danced together and went out Flute," a German opera written in 179 I by Wolfgang Amadeus on two dates before he traveled back to India. Despite such a brief Mozart. Though opera characters don' t usually run around trees meeting, they kept in touch. Sometime later, she had some extra when they sing, Bollywood and opera have a lot more in com- vacation days and decided to visit him in Goa where he was mon than one would think. working on his novel, The Beauty of These Present Things.

"The soprano would be the young girl who falls in love with But it took another three years before she could, in her words, the boy the family doesn't want," Singh says. "The alto would "make a logical leap" to move to India. They were married in probably be the mother, or the mezzo soprano, who disapproves May 2006. Since then, Singh says, her life has been full of happy

I

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

23

ately make a mash-up to drop," Khambata explains. "I thought the East versus West juxtaposition would make for a good mash-up ....

I remember we dubbed her the one-take diva, because she nailed each recording in one take. There was no throwaway."

Amusical education

Above: American harpsichordist Justin McCarthy (from left), Indian soprano Sara Chatterjee and Christine Matovich Singh rehearsing for their baroque music recital, titled "Doctrine of the Affections," in New Delhi in December 2009.

Right: Singh with husband, Avtar, and son, Jagat.

surprises. Like, for instance, being part of a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2009.

Crossing anistic boundaries Singh says that it all started when she received an e-mail from a London-based casting director who had seen her opera performances mentioned in the Indian press. They were looking for an opera singer for a scene in Slumdog Millionaire where the main character, Jamal, watches a performance from the opera "Orphee et Euridice" on television and remembers his mother's tragic death . She was skeptical but willing to see where it led, and then later, she got a late night phone call from director Danny Boyle himself.

She was pregnant at the time, but Boyle made sure that the costumers worked with her so that it wouldn' t be obvious on camera. Though it was certainly a memorable experience, she had no idea how far the movie would go.

Her venture into pop music with Rabbi Shergill had a similar start to her film debut-an unsolicited phone call asking for her collaboration. Singh was honored, and describes Shergill as "very gracious and simultaneously focused on exactly what he needs musically to create a piece that is uniquely in his own style."

Even before she met her husband, Singh was involved in Indian culture and music. Her love of multiple music styles led her to work with DK For more information: Khambata, a k a Bollygirl, The New York Phi lharmonic an Indian American musi http://nyphil.org/ cian and disc jockey from New York City. Singh American Symphony Orchestra sang opera vocals over http://www.americansymphony.org/ CD tracks to blend in with The Metropolitan Opera Khambata's desi-themed http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/ sets.

"As a DJ you hear a Opera News track you like and very http://www. metoperafamily. org/operanews/ often you want to immedi-

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24 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Singh clearly remembers the day she fell into her lifelong love of opera. As an adolescent, she saw a performance by Jessye Norman, an African American opera singer, in San Diego, California. "She was singing this aria while lying down on her stomach, propped up in a half cobra," Singh says. "I never saw music portrayed with such complete passion. I was hooked."

She studied vocal performance for her B.A. at California State University in Fullerton and eventually went on a study abroad course in Italy, which led her to the Fiesole Conservatory-the same music school where the late Luciano Pavarotti trained. The vocal style she is trained in is also the same as Pavarotti's-bel canto. It literally translates as "beautiful singing," and Singh explains that involves lots of lyricism and agility, tending more toward Mozart versus the more dramatic styles of composers like Richard Wagner. â&#x20AC;˘ She now teaches bel canto to her Indian vocal students, and during the day works at the American Embassy School as a music teacher. She has performed with the Bombay Chamber Orchestra, the Neemrana Music Foundation, Aravali Centre for Art & Culture, designer Manish Arora's fashion show, and charity fundraisers for Ritanjili and CanKids. Singh has also traveled as part of the American Center's outreach programs, presenting operatic singing to Indian youth through the song "Kajra Re." "It has been a combination of a concert and an outreach, which I like, because if I am just performing to the same audience, it's not really benefiting anybody," she says. Though many of the famous operas are sung in European languages, Singh wants to make sure that opera is easily accessible to Indians and tries to sing mostly in English. Soon, she is planning to debut a song in Hindi, as part of a performance of ragas set to Western styles of music.

Given her love of Indian culture, if she could make any Bollywood film into an opera, what would it be? " Devdas is an ideal opera. I would say [Italian Giuseppe] Verdi would compose the music for it. If I were to say a romantic composer who knows how to get into the emotional angst and dissonance .. ." she pauses, looking up and considering her answer. "Yes, definitely Verdi." Directors, take note.

Erica Lee Nelson is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who is studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Zeshan Bagewadi is a 22-year-old Indian American tenor pursuing a Master's degree in voice performance and literature from Northwestern University in Illinois. Already, he has performed at the Apollo Theater in New York, in Italy and the United Kingdom and has sung bhangra boliyan for Indian dance competitions in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Chicago. He has experience singing in 11 languages and speaks Italian, Urdu and Hindi.

Though opera is his main focus, he has trained in Hindustani classical music under vocalist Nagarajarao Havaldar in Bangalore. He also works as a campus activist with the Inner City Muslim Network in Chicago, an organization that works for social justice and cultivates the arts in urban Muslim communities. In an interview with SPAN, he describes how his parents embraced his career path and the tough training required to be a top singer.

Why choose opera? Is your family musical?

My parents were not musically trained, but they sincerely appreciate music, and from a young age they encouraged my sisters and I to pursue it. For what it's worth, my father is from the northern region of Karnataka, which is the birthplace of some of the greatest stalwarts in Hindustani music: Bhimsen Joshi, Mallikarjun Mansur, etc. My dad always enjoyed singing. So maybe there's something in the water out there in northern Karnataka!

My [high school] choir instructor, Ross Heise, spoke with my parents and told them that I had a foreseeable future in opera and that I should get my bachelor's degree in music performance. My parents were all for it.

SPAN MAY/JUNE 20 10

25

Zeshan Bagewadi sings "Non ti Scordar di Me" Northwestern University Bienen School of Music http://www.music.northwestern.

They were very supportive and encouraging, and I am eternally grateful to them for that.

Western classical music is a genre that has stood the test of time, and it will live on long after I'm gone. I believe that it's my calling in life to do justice to the composer, to the very best of my ability. I kp.ow that may sound like some cheesy Hallmark card, but it's genuinely how I feel.

How much training does one have to go through to be able to carry a significant role in an opera production?

First and foremost, you have to be musically sound. Second, you have to be dramatically sound. I like to compare the singer 's voice to a painter's palette. The painter has a palette of different colors, and he uses them to paint the picture or create an effect.

Similarly, the singer 's voice has different colors, and the singer must learn to use those different colors to bring out different human emotions: love, hatred, joy, sadness, fear, anger, etc.

I'll give you an example. Let's say I'm singing something sad and melancholy. When people cry, are they breathing properly?

Probably not, right? They are more likely to stagger-breathe or even gasp. So then I go about finding how I can incorporate this aspect of sadness in my singing, while still singing the line properly. Believe it or not, it's actually a lot of fun to do this.

How are you perceived as an Indian singing opera?

Are people surprised?

Oh, yes! People are definitely surprised ... both Indians and non-Indians, but especially Indians. I can understand this, though. It's because it is not the career path that desis would expect another desi to follow.

The most common question I get from other des is is, "So did your parents support your decision?"

Once I was even asked if they had kicked me out of the house. Well, the way my dad explained it to me was, "We have plenty of doctors. Do something different!" I'm considered by many to be a pioneer in this regard, because there aren't any Muslim Indian opera singers in the field.

What influence does Indian classical music have on you? What are the differences in singing the two genres?

In 2007, I became a disciple of...a Hindustani vocalist from the Kirana Gharana,

Zeshan Bagewadi practicing during the Bhangra Blowout competition in Washington, D. C. in 2009.

26 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Nagarajarao Havaldar. I went to Bangalore and studied with him, and for this, I received course credit from Northwestern's School of Music. It was an unforgettable experience for me. I had been so used to singing Western music that was written hundreds of years ago, and learning it from a score, so it was completely different to learn Hindustani music, which is an aural tradition.

I'd say that the main difference in singing the two genres is the technique. In Hindustani music, the larynx is in a more natural, higher position, and in a concert setting the singer is almost aiways aided by amplification (microphones). This is in contrast to opera, where the throat is more opened and the larynx is in a lowered position. The result is a more full-bodied sound that can be heard througp' an orchestra, and there is seldom any amplification.

Have you ever performed in India?

My guru had arranged for me to perform at an ashram in Bangalore. It was well attended and people were surprised that I had learned so much in such a short amount of time. I hope to perform in India again in the future .. .1 would love to sing in a fully-staged opera there ....

What surprised you the most when you started studying opera?

The sheer amount of coordination required to sing on stage.

You have to build a solid singing technique. You have to know the music in and out. You're playing a character. You're in costume. You're interacting with other characters on stage and telling a story. You â&#x20AC;˘have to be watching th conductor and be in sync with the orchestra. So many things you have to juggle when you ' re up there!

But at the present time, for me, the most challenging aspect of all of this is solidifying my technique (i.e., breath support, placement of vowels, positioning of jaw and mouth, posture, etc.) Opera singing is no j oke. If you sing with improper technique, or if you sing repertoire that is not right for you, you could ruin your voice faster than you think.

Will I figure it out someday? Yes, inshallah . My voice is still very young, and it hasn' t fully matured, yet. And t can tell you that when I finally solidify my technique, it won't stop there. The greatest ~ opera singers of all time 'l remained students fo r their ;:::~ entire lives. They continued to ~ study and di scover more ~ about their voices, even when at the height of their careers, and I plan to do the same.

Sebastian John is an Indian journalist living in Washington, D.C.

The Indian Enigma on

â&#x20AC;˘

merlean

By MICHAEL MACY

Television shows and performers supposedly showing the "real" India fed Americans' fascination for the country in the 1950s and '60s. n the 1960s and 1970s young Americans by the thousands became fascinated with India, taking up meditation, studying the sitar and finding myriad ways to approach the subcontinent. What was their first, real-time exposure to India? What did that generation see that led to a fascination with India? For many, it was when they were watching television as children. Young Americans throughout the 1950s and early '60s were introduced to India while sitting at home watching television. But what India were they getting to know?

Television was one of the wonders of the time. Before TV, the average American seeking to be entertained by motion and sound had to go to the cinema. There, they watched the newsreels for information and movies for entertainment. Television sets meant people could watch the world in .'. their own homes. The screens might have:¡. Sabu in Elephant Boy. been small and black-and-white, but Americans could now see all the places source of income for many American they had only heard and read about in their ports. The Peabody Essex Museum in living rooms, as they sat on their sofas, Massachusetts has more than 300 log eating a newly marketed TV dinner. To books from sea voyages to India. Despite have India on TV was like waving a magic these ties, for most Americans in the midwand over the collective American imagi- dle of the 20th century the only Indians nation. India had captured that imagina- they had ever "seen" were Mohandas K. tion centuries ago.

Gandhi on a newsreel and Sabu, a film Yankee traders had visited India since actor.

1785, less than a decade after the United Sabu, son of a mahout from Mysore, first States declared independence from Britain. appeared in the British film Elephant Boy in The voyages became more frequent and in 1937. He went on to appear in more than 20 the 1860s, trade with India was a major films, taking time out from acting to enlist

I

in the U.S. Air Corps during World War II. He served as tail-gunner on a number of combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Unfortunately, he passed away aged just 39 in 1963. Even so, by that time television was providing millions of Americans with a variety of Indian characters. The only problem was that none of them were Indian.

One of the earliest television shows to feature an Indian theme was the children's show "Andy's Gang." Most episodes would see the host settling into an easy chair and reading from a large book titled Andy's Stories. Most of them were set in India, SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

27

sort of. The stories revolved around two young friends , Gunga Ram and Rama.

The context was supposed to be the India of the 1950s, but the more discerning viewer would have said it appeared more like 1850s India. The stories would typi cally feature Rama and Gunga Ram having various adventures and eventually solving some problem or the other for the local ruler, the Maharaja of "Bakore."

"Andy 's Gang" provided the children of America with what was purported to be a view of contemporary India, but Gunga Ram and Rama's adventures had little to do with the real India.

Both characters were played by Italian Americans- Vito Scotti and Nino Marcel.

Scotti had spent most of his childhood in Naples, Italy. Lou Krugman played the Maharaja of Bakore.

Clearly, Americans who watched "Andy's Gang" weren ' t seeing much of India when they were treated to the adventures of Gunga Ram and Rama. Most of the action scenes were shot just outside Los Angeles, though the show also used some stock footage from the real India.

The overall impression young Americans would have come away with was of a country where people harvested teak with elephants. India was portrayed as a country sans modem conveniences, with multi ple maharajas' palaces guarded by mounted lancers. It was undoubtedly exotic but hardly a total picture of India circa 1955.

For the American who wanted to see life in the India of the late 1800s, there was the TV program "Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers." The show revolved around the

28 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

adventures of three officers in a fictional This was a substantial sum to spend on the Indian cavalry regiment during the British setting for a weekly television show. But Raj. But the storylines and plots were the the fort wasn' t in India; it was near same as a western. The clue lay in the way Vasquez Rocks, a park in northern Los it was described-as an eastern-or, as Angeles County. The Vasquez Rocks have one reviewer said, "a western where the often been used as a film set (for the Star cavalry wore helmets and the Indians wore Trek movies and the 2009 film A Single turbans." But at least one of the leading Man) , for television programs and music characters was the nationality of the char- videos, (including "Rehab" by Rihanna and acter he played. Colonel Standish was Justin Timberlake). Twenty-six episodes of played by Patrick Whyte, an Irishman who "Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers" were had served in the Indian Army in the last produced and broadcast during the 1956days of the Raj. That was as close to authen- 57 season. A respected series, it was nomticity as the series would get. The two lieLl: inated for an Emmy. For many young tenants were played by Americans, 'on~ Americans the program represented the whose character was supposedly Canadian, exotic East, but at least it never purported perhaps because the actor who played him to show the real India. Viewers knew that was from New Jersey and could not be it wasn't filmed in India, any more than coached to produce a credible British "Gun smoke," a popular western , was accent. The Indian characters were proba- filmed in 1870s Dodge City.

But this honesty was absent from anothbly played by American actors of Italian, er show, "Korla Pandit's Adventures in Greek, Jewish or Native Amelican origin.

The production quality was fairly high Music." It claimed it was hosted by a real for a TV show of its time. Screen Gems Indian, who represented the mystery and Productions supposedly spent $120,000 mysticism of India. Pandit claimed he was on reconstructing a period fort. At today's born in New Delhi and was the son of a prices, that would be more than $800,000. Brahmin priest and a French opera singer.

Abov e left: Midnight the Cat and host Andy Devine on the NBC show "Andy's Gang."

Right: Karla Pandit.

Below: The Pandit family on the cover of TV-Radio Life.

He claimed he had been educated in go, let God, and you can be changed."

I;:ngland and moved to the United States.

Pandit's teachings arguably paved the He appeared to personify all that America way for the Beatles to sing "All You Need expected of an Indian musician, a mix of is Love" and the popularity of the maharDeepak Chopra and Ravi Shankar. His pro- ishis , gurus , pirs and rinpoches who gram consisted of him staring dreamily attracted a whole generation of young into the camera while he used the piano Americans. Another expression attributed and organ to perform "Favorites of yours to Pandit, "I do not like to use labels, and mine, played on the 'Healtstrings of because labels become liable," might have Time'." Mostly, he relied on the "universal been a clue to the Pandit mystery. He had language of music" to communicate with no connection to India at all. his audience. He never spoke during the Born in St. Louis, Missouri his real program, but his aphorisms were collected, name was John Roland Redd. That was including his observation: "In India we probably as far east as he had traveled. He believe that music never dies, but ever belonged to a family of musicians and materializes into beautiful forms ." ministers and as a young man, elected to He became one of early televi-

OHA路MDU

sion's first superstars. Femaleadmirers would send him pianos and millions of viewers would tune in to watch him perform his "music of the TH E MAGIC IAN Exotic East" along with a blend of waltzes, tangos, cha-cha-chas and tunes of the ' 40s and ' 50s, with the occasional classic such as Claire de Lune or The Swan thrown in for good measure. Pandit was known for playing both"his favorite instruments-the Hammond organ and piano- simultaneously, working the piano with his right hand and the organ with his left.

An adept performer, he had started Irene Ware (from Left), Bela Lugosi and out composing theme songs for radio pro- Edmund Lowe on a poster of the 1932 movie grams like "Chandu the Magician." He Chandu the Magician. "Chandu the also performed on a number of other Magician " was also one of the longest artists ' recordings, including records by running radio adventure serials. It aired in the Sons of the Pioneers, a group once led the 1930s and was revived in the 1940s and by one of TV's famous cowboys, Roy 1950s. Korla Pandit composed music for the Rogers. But Pandit's real calling was pre- radio program. senting the East to the West. As he said: - -- - -- - - -- - - - -- "Music is the golden union of East and follow his musical side. By the time he West." For millions of Americans he pre- was 17, he was making a living as an sented a taste of India's mystical tradi- ':" -organist in Iowa. Soon after, he followed tions. In some ways, he prepared people his sister to California, where like so for the New Age that was to follow, with many young people before and after him, his philosophical exhortation: "Love and he reinvented himself.

It was in California that Norma Jean respect yourself, and be aware of yourself.

Then we can begin to visualize the state Baker became Marilyn Monroe, Ramon we are seeking and feel the reality of it. Estevez was reborn as Martin Sheen, Then relax, and it will come to pass. Let Marion Michael Morrison found fame and fortune as John Wayne, Allen Konigsberg For more information: metamorphosed into Woody Allen and Korla Pandil Thomas Mapother IV wowed the world as awp. rutgers. edu/Facls/Eleclions/P Tom Cruise. John Redd was no different.

Soon after he arrived in California he Korla Pandil-" Miserlou " http://www.youlube.com/watch?v = G9ylSC8rz84 started to remake himself.

Racism was endemic at the time, so he OX

Sajid Khan 's "Maya" theme http://www.youlube.com/walch?v= _6eqn6fXwEA

PI(TUR拢

may have had more reason than most to reinvent himself. In the 1940s Los Angeles, opportunities for African Americans were extremely limited. Redd ftrst changed his name to Juan Rolando, implying a Hispanic background. Shortly after that, he married and created the Pandit character with his new bride. They concocted more than the name. They created the history and the story ofPandit, the turban-wearing, musical mystic from India. Perhaps it was the ingenious craftsmanship, perhaps it was an unslaked American thirst to be entertained

by India, but Pandit became a huge success, performing on more than 900 television programs, continuing to perform right up to his death.

It wasn't until 1967 that an .~ American television show was pro~ duced in the real India, using real ~ Indian actors. Titled "Maya," it was ~ about an American boy who teams up ~ with an Indian friend and his elephant (Maya) to find his missing, presumed dead, father. It offered American audiences a look at the real India and Indians-actors Sajid Khan, Iftekhar, Prem Nath and I.S . Johar.

Unfortunately, it lasted just 18 episodes because of production costs.

But by the time "Maya" was broadcast, young Americans did not need television to explore India. Both the Beatles and Rolling Stones had used a sitar on popular recordings . The Beatles' " Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" featured the instrument on the LP "Rubber Soul" in 1965. A year later, Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones used the sitar in "Paint It, Black." By then Ravi Shankar had played at the Monterey Pop Festival in California and "head shops" all over the country were selling sandalwood incense, Indian print bedspreads and Rajasthani mirror work . There was a steady stream of young people headed to Rishikesh and Goa, looking for enlightenment, drugs and themselves.

The stream hasn't stopped since, broadening into a river that takes in academics, artists, businesspeople and seekers of all kinds. But the start of America's fascination with India was neither so promisingnor real. ~

Michael Macy is the culturaL affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

SPAN MAYIJUNE 2010

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Behind the Seen 路 M0nume

The vast Navajo tribal park on the border

of Utah and New Mexico stars in Hollywood movies but remains largely hidden to visitors.

s Lorenz Holiday and I raised a some little-known Anasazi ruins. Now, It was dark by the time we reached the cloud of red dust driving across the joined by his brother Emmanuel, 29, we summit, and we were too tired to care valley floor, we passed a wooden were going to camp overnight at Hunt's about the lack of a view. We started a sign, "Warning: Trespassing Is Mesa, which, at 365 meters, is the tallest campfire, ate a dinner of steak and potaNot Allowed." Holiday, a lean, monolith on the valley 's southern rim. toes and turned in for the night. When I soft-spoken Navajo, nudged me and said, We had set off late in the day. Leaving crawled out of my tent the next morning "Don ' t worry, buddy, you ' re with the right Lorenz 's pickup at the trail head, we the whole of Monument Valley was people now." Only a Navajo can take an slipped through a hole in a wire stock spread out before me, silent in the purple outsider off the 27-kilometer scenic loop fence and followed a bone-dry riverbed half-light. Soon the first shafts of golden road that runs through Monument Valley framed by junipers to the mesa's base. sun!jght began creeping down the buttes' Tribal Park, 37,200 hectares of majestic Our campsite for the night loomed above red flanks and I could see why the direcbuttes, spires and rock arches straddling us, a three-hour climb away. We began tor John Ford filmed such now-classic the Utah-Arizona border. picking our way up the rippling sandstone westerns as Stagecoach and The Searchers Holiday, 40, wore cowboy boots, a escarpment, now turning red in the after- here. black Stetson and a handcrafted silver belt noon sun. Lizards gazed at us, then skitThanks to Ford, Monument Valley is buckle; he grew up herding sheep on the tered into shadowy cracks. Finally, after one of the most familiar landscapes in the Navajo reservation and still owns a ranch about an hour, the ascent eased. I asked United States, yet it remains largely there. In recent years, he has been guiding Lorenz how often he came here. "Oh, unknown. "White people recognize the adventure travelers around the reserva- pretty regular. Once every five years or valley from the movies, but that's the tion . We had already visited his relatives, so," he said with a laugh. Out of breath, he extent of it," says Martin Begaye, prowho still farm on the valley floor, and added: "This has got to be my last time. " gram manager for the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department. "They don ' t know about its geology, or its history, or Left: John Ford in about the Navajo people. Their knowlMonument Valley edge is very superficial." (c. 1939) on the set of Almost nothing about the valley fits Stagecoach. easy categOIies, starting with its location Below left: This is a scene within the 67,340-square-kilometer Navajo â&#x20AC;˘ from The Searchers reservation. The park entrance is in Utah, (1956), with Jeffrey but the most familiar rock formations are Hunter, John Wayne and in Arizona. The site is not a national park, Harry Carey Jr. like nearby Canyonlands, in Utah, and the Ford made seven movies Grand Canyon, in Arizona, but one of six in Monument Valley.

Navajo-owned tribal parks. What's more, the valley floor is still inhabited by Navajo-30 to 100 people, depending on the season, who live in houses without running water or electricity. "They have their farms and livestock," says Lee Cly, acting superintendent of the park. "If there 's too much traffic, it will destroy their lifestyle." Despite 350,000 annual visitors, the park has the feel of a mom and pop operation. There is one hiking trail in the valley, accessible with a perWhen actor John mit: a 6.4-kilometer loop around a butte Wayne first saw called the Left Mitten, yet few people the site, he know about it, let alone hike it. At the park entrance, a Navajo woman takes $5 and declared: "So this tears off an admission ticket from a roll , is where God put like a raffle ticket. Cars crawl into a dusty 'the West." parking lot to find vendors selling tours, horseback rides, silver work and woven rugs.

All this may change. The park 's first hotel, The View, built and staffed mostly

by Navajo, opened in December 2008.

A

32

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Film crews stayed in Harry Goulding's two stone cabins, which expanded into a motel in

ners of the Southwest, helped protect it Navajo, the federal government moved to from the outside world. There is no evi- pacify the area by relocating every Navajo 1953. dence that 17th- or 18th-century Spanish man, woman and child to a reservation explorers ever found it, although they 563 kilometers to the southeast, in Bosque The 95-room complex is being leased by a roamed the area and came in frequent con- Redondo, New Mexico. But when U.S. Navajo-owned company from the Navajo flict with the Navajo, who called them- soldiers under Colonel Kit Carson began Nation. In December 2009, a renovated selves Dine, or "The People." The Navajo rounding up Navajo people for the notorivisitors center opened, featuring exhibits lived in an area today known as the Four ous "Long Walk," many fled the valley to on local geology and Navajo culture. .S::orners, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado hide out near Navajo Mountain in southThroughout the 19th century, white sete:'. and New Mexico meet. They called ern Utah, joining other Native American tiers considered the Monument Valley Monument Valley Tse Bii Ndzisgaii, or refugees under the leadership of Chief region-like the desert terrain of the "Clearing Among the Rock," and regard- Hashkeneinii. The Navajo returned in Southwest in general-to be hostile and ed it as an enormous hogan, or dwelling, 1868 when the U.S. government reversed ugly. The first U.S. soldiers to explore the with the two isolated stone pinnacles to its policy and, through a treaty, gave them area called it "as desolate and repulsive the north-now known as Gray Whiskers a modest reservation along the Arizonalooking a country as can be imagined," as and Sentinel-as its door posts. They con- New Mexico border. But Monument Captain John G. Walker put it in 1849, the sidered the two soaring buttes known as Valley was not initially included. It lay on year after the area was annexed from the Mittens to be the hands of a deity. the reservation's northwestern fringe, in Mexico in the Mexican-American War. "As The first non-Indians to stumble upon an area used by the Navajo, Utes and far as the eye can reach .. .is a mass of sand the valley were probably Mexican soldiers Paiutes, and was left as public land. stone hills without any covering or vegeta- under Colonel Jose Antonio Vizcarra, who Travelers from the East were almost tion except a scanty growth of cedar." captured 12 Paiutes there on a raid in nonexistent. In the Gilded Age, American But the valley 's isolation, in one of the 1822. In 1863, after U.S. troops and tourists prefelTed the more "European" driest and most sparsely populated cor- Anglo settlers had skirmished with the Rockies and the forests of California. This SPAN MAY/JUNE 20 10

33

oil there," says Robert McPherson, the control the weather. (Ford evidently author of several books about Navajo his- ordered "pretty, fluffy clouds.") The tory. "Only when white people thought it movie, released in 1939, was Stagecoach was useless for mining did they finally and starred a former stuntman named give it back to the Navajo." At a meeting John Wayne. It won two Academy Awards in Blanding, Utah, in 1933, a compromise and made Wayne a star; it also made the agreement granted the Paiute Strip, part of western a respected fi lm genre. which is in Monument Valley, to the Ford would go on to shoot six more Navajo Reservation . At last, all of the val- westerns in Monument Valley: My Darling ley was Navajo land. But the deal that Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), would clinch the valley's peculiar fate She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The occurred in Hollywood.

Searchers (1956), Sergeant Rutledge In 1938, a "tall, lanky cowboy in the (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). In style of Gary Cooper," as one studio addition to introducing the valley 's specacquaintance described him , walked into tacular scenery to an international audiUnited Artists Studios in Los Angeles and ence, each movie pumped tens of thouasked a receptionist if he could talk to sands of dollars into the local economy. someone, anyone, about a location for a The shoots were usually festive, with hunwestern movie. Han'y Goulding ran a dreds of Navajo gathering in tents near small trading post at the northwest rim of Goulding's trading post, singing, watching Monument Valley. A Colorado native, stuntmen perform tricks and playing cards Goulding had moved to the valley in 1925, when the land was public, and had become popular with the Navajo for his Each movie shot in the valley cooperative spirit and generosity, often pumped tens of thousands of extending credit during difficult times. dollars into the local economy The Depression, a drought and p ~ob lems created by overgrazing had hit the Navajo and it soon became fixed in and the trading post hard. So when popular imagination as the Goulding heard on the radio that archetypal Western landscape.

Hollywood was looking for a location to shoot a western, he and his wife, Leone, nicknamed Mike, saw a chance to late into the night. Ford, often called "One improve their lot as well as the Indians '.

Eye" because of his patch, was accepted "Mike and I figured, 'By golly, we're by the Navajo, and he returned the favor: going to head for Hollywood and see if we after heavy snows cut off many families in can't do something about that picture,''' the valley in 1949, he arranged for food he later recalled. They gathered photo- and supplies to be parachuted to them . graphs, bedrolls and camping gear and It's said that when Wayne first saw the site, he declared: "So this is where God drove to Los Angeles.

According to Goulding, the United put the West." Millions of Americans Artists receptionist all but ignored him . might agree. The valley soon became until he threatened to get out his bedding ': ' fixed in the popular imagination as the and spend the night in the office. When an archetypal Western landscape, and executive arrived to throw Goulding out, tourists by the carloads began arriving. In he glimpsed one of the photographs-a 1953, the Gouldings expanded their two Navajo on horseback in front of the stone cabins into a full-fledged motel with Mittens-and stopped short. Before long, a restaurant manned by Navajo. To cope Goulding was showing the images to 43- with the influx (and discourage, among year-old John Ford and a producer, Walter other things , pothunters in search of Wanger. Goulding left Los Angeles with a Anasazi relics), conservation groups procheck for $5,000 and orders to accommo- posed making the valley a national park. date a crew while it filmed in Monument But the Navajo Nation's governing body, Valley. Navajos were hired as extras the Tribal Council, objected; it wanted to (playing Apaches), and Ford even signed protect the valley's Indian residents and up--for $15 a week-a local medicine preserve scarce grazing land. In 1958, the man named Hastiin Tso, or "Big Man," to council voted to set aside 12,066 hectares

for more information: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park htlp://www.navajonationparks.org/htm/monument valley.htm Goulding's Lodge ----------------------~ www.gouldings.com ----------------~

of Monument Valley as the first-ever tribal park, to be run by Navajo on the national park model, and allocated $275,000 to upgrade roads and build a visitors center.

The park is now the most visited corner of the Navajo reservation. "The Navajo Nation were really the trailblazers for other Native American groups to set up parks," says Martin Link, former director of the Navajo Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, who helped train the first Navajo park rangers in the early 1960s.

Goulding's Trading Post is now a sprawling complex of 73 motel rooms, a campground and an enormous souvenir shop. (Harry Goulding died in 1981 , Mike in 1992.) The original 1925 store has been turned into a museum, displaying film stills and posters from the dozens of movies shot in the valley. Even the Gouldings' old mud-brick potato cellar, which appeared as the home of Captain Nathan Brittles (Wayne) in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, remains. A small cinema shows John Wayne movies at night.

For the end of my trip, following my overnight atop Hunt's Mesa, I decided to camp on Monument Valley's floor among the most famous monoliths. To arrange this, Lorenz Holiday took me to meet his aunt and uncle, Rose and Jimmy Yazzie, whose farm lies at the ' end of a spidery network of soft sand roads. The elderly couple spoke little English, so Lorenz translated the purpose of our visit. Soon they agreed to let me camp on a remote comer of their property for a modest fee.

I built a small fire at dusk, then sat alone watching as the colors of the buttes shifted from orange to red to crimson. In the distance, two of the Yazzies ' sons led a dozen mustangs across the valley, the horses kicking up clouds of dust.

John Ford, I imagined, couldn't have ~ chosen a better spot.

Tony Perrottet is a historian and travel writer who frequently contributes to the Smithsonian.

SPAN MAY/JUNE 20lO

35

Roaming Roemer

Snippets from Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer's blog

I visited ISRO organization in Bangalore today I'm really Impressed with their accomp lishments and our partnersh ips on a wide variety of issues. From helpIng to detect water on the moon to col lecting water from the ocean for predicting weather patterns Our collaboration touches all walks of human ende~vor!

- Bangalore ViSit, February 17, 2010

Since his arrival in August 2009, Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer has been travelling across India. In early February, he started blogging about his experiences. From visiti ng water and sanitation projects in Orissa to playing basketball at a Lucknow college, Ambassador Roemer records it all at http://blogs. usem bassy.gov/roemer/ You can also comment on his posts. He might reply!

Cricket in India is right up there with Bollywood entertainment and famil y weddings! We cheered and pounded our thunder sticks with 50,000 enthusiastic fans in Delhi as the Daredevils whipped the Knight Riders 177 -137. ... Now, I am hooked on cricket and cannot wait to take in I visited the Karamat Husain ollice - Rich history and bright .(Iiy,:next match-maybe the great Sachin?- Hooked on It was also a pleasant surprise Muslim Girls PG College where I 's Lucknow March 16, cricket, March 30,2010 -future: UP ' i~; me when I came across your played basketball, discuss~d the the Internet I immediately 2010 U S Strategic Dialogue with blog on . , I the tweeted about il on l wltter or h t I~dia, and answered Questlo~s basmatl nce and Rala Hasna'rn Naqvi says benelit of those who don't know t a {\mencans love t as Indians had a about President Obama Ove d March 17 , 2010 spices Irom India \USenence {\mellca's seven thousand girls are educate Dear {\mbassador Roemer, you blog. chance today to ex: icy pistachiOS, 'Aadab' Irom lucknow. It was won- limothy J Roemer Says delicIoUs apples, P d mouth watenng dertul 01 ~ou to take. ou~~~~~ of March 18, 2010 Midwestern popcorn an d me to pICK my our precIous time ,or .

Ca\ilornia prunes, \tending the event aSKe , It was a y Your collnlry ilsell IS Hi Rala, . \ .\\ l W lUcKno ... , . own It was an amaling top Ihat WI pecan ple l he ~re~s:ment on (\Ighanlstan pol~C~ot speaK with very rich in history and it IS your never forgel. lhanKs lor the suglavonte lood an c Ke my Mom's adVice an 2010 enerosily, spirit of tolerance and geslion about lwilter ~~ the way, great opportunity ~ ta thful of delicacies at AAHAR ' ;espect for diflerent cullures that has hoW do you say "tweet In Urdu? my mouth lull l- ou made you lake some time oul from March 11, 2010 our buSY schedllie and come to tucKnow to gel an underslandlng 01 at this school lhe luture 01 this my state, or whorn do I contact? our cily's unique culture. country is very bright II many 0l Timothy J. Roemer says: I was impressed to see one of these Envirofit these women end up in POSltIO;~ stoves in Delhi. I was learning about a USAID April 7, 2010 01 power running companies a Hello Angela, smart move to be interested in program in Sonia Vihar outside Delhi Friday cookstoves and new technology that can improve running lor po\itlcal~............._ _ morning and happened to see awoman cooking in her yard. Three water buffalo were tied up to their rnoorings all around her as After visiting Rashtrapati Bhavan in the aftershe prepared her lunch for her husband and noon I trave led down Rajpath to India Gate son. She looked comfortable working over I stopped and jumped out of my car to show the orange colored stove and when asked some Iriends the view and have a qUick PiCthrough atranslator, said she was hesitant ture snapped lor their photo albumnl :~an approached me, introduced . to get the newdevice, but nowwas very walking briskly back to the c~r whe rickshaw" on my recent trip to Bihar happy since it was faster and healthierlg himself, and thanked me lor drlvln a throughout India "-The Value of Green chulhas changing lives everywhere, d and "providing dignity to rickshaw rivers February 20, 2010 Dignity, February 27, 2010 your health and the environment, and ensure better foodl Angela Ralte says March 30, 2010 I recornrnend that you visit 5,500 and climbing!

Following his excellency in his journey through http://www,mchstar,org/policyAnalysisAdvocacy/ That's the number of Facebook fans the American this blog has help me see good things and this advocacyEvents,htm It's people like you that are Centers in New De lhi and Mumbai, and the consu late concept of green ch ulhas is very interesting, Where going to make important changes in the world, generals in Chennai and Hyderabad, have drawn since can I learn more about this and see its feasibility for Good luck l 2009. Info about events, photos, interesting news, on line contests and useful links keeps fans updated and starts . n the mercury reach- . up lively discussions. Become a fan at: blistering \'lOt, Wit . s only appropnate http://www.facebook.com/americancenternewdelhi lne weatner was \" 10 degrees f ) , yet It W!an water Journeying e http://WWW.facebook.com/amcentermumbai . ing 42 degrees ussing access to cool , cl orted water sanitahttp://WWW.facebook.com/chennai .usconsulate tnat we were diSCnturing out to a US{\ID SUP\u gi residents http://WWW.facebook.com/usconsulategeneralhyderabad to Orissa, and v~ ananagar , I interacted Wlt~ c~lture, people: tion project In Y1'1' hygiene tecnnlo,ues ... g nealt ler . e I/Jater and lltllilin NR9ilBI<. drinKing and ~SI~~pS~~ Orissa, April 8, 20:/~WWW.youtube.com/~atch.N~0N7V partnershiP路 Y ador Roemer http, \lideo blog by {\mbass

SP Raiashekhar S. Patre, Banga/ore I was studying at Central College, Bangalore during the late '50s. During those years, one of my favorite places in Bangalore was the U.S. Information Services Library (now known as the American Corner). It was here that I first came across the first copy of SPAN magazine. It was the friendliness and warmth of the staff and the large collection of American periodicals and books that made me a regular visitor there. The magazines, including SPAN, kindled my desire to go to the U.S.A. for higher education. I spent two years at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1959 to 1961. Those two years were most memorable and the best years of my student life. I found American people very friendly and helpful.

The things that impressed me most were the largeheartedness of ordinary Americans, their dignity of labor and the spirit of volunteerism.

Soon after my return from the States in late 1961 , I became a subscriber to the magazine and continue to do so. Over the years SPAN has highlighted many stories of ordinary Americans and Indians. It has brought them much closer and thus SPAN has become a great bridge of understanding and friendship between the most powerful and the largest democracies in the world. My association with America is five decades old and it is wonderful to read that SPAN, too, is cel.. ebrating 50 years of its publication in India.

When I came to the University of Arizona, as I was looking for cheaper accommodation, I was advised to visit the International Students Lodge, which was just off the campus. I

met Edmund McCormick who was then the counselor and he readily agreed to take me. Soon after I joined the lodge, McCormick had to go back to his native Vermont. His place was taken by Robert Allen Braund, who was then working for his doctorate in education.

Although he was older to me by about 14 years, he had taken an instant liking for me and in no time at all we became the best of friends. In order to take care of his mother, who was a heart patient, he never got married. For nearly a quarter of a century, he took care of her so diligently, which is indeed a rare thing in Western society.

The friendship that began in 1959 in Tucson lasted for more than four decades. Even after my return from the United States in 1961 , we continued our correspondence with each other. My wife and I visited him in 1973, 1988, 1994 and 2002. He came to visit us in 1991 as well as in 1998. He tol d me that the trip that we all took together to Rajasthan was indeed, "a trip of a lifetime." He has been a remarkable and great friend not only to me but also to the entire fami ly.

I always considered that it was indeed my good fortune that I met him and his friendship has enriched our lives immensely. For nearly 47 years, we had been constantly in touch with each other by letter, e-mail or phone. He was a fine human being, a gentleman of high integrity and a great soul. What an amazing friendship it has been between individuals of diverse cultures while being separated by thousands of miles of land and sea.

Rajashekhar S. Patre (left) visits Robert Braund at his home in California.

â&#x20AC;˘; ..._I CD

I

.

" If YO lt want breakfas t iI/ bed, ),ou should sleep on' the kitchen table. " "AI/d you call yourself a bundle of joy!"

Reprinted from The Safllrday Evening Post magazine. © Saturday Evening Post Soc iety.

Copyright © 2010 Saturday Evening Post Society.

Reprinted wi th pelm ission.

, I' " I' ve been on the job f or a week. Is it too SOOIl to ask fo r a sabbatical ?"

Copyri ght © T ri bune Media Services, Inc.

All ri ghts reserved.

38 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

" We 've iI/vested heavily-if liot always wisely-in talent. " Cat1QOn by Patrick Hardin.

Copyri ght © 2008.

All over the world, there are people with problems and innovators with solutions. The Honey Bee Network connects some of them to help make their dreams come true.

magine an automatic food making machine that does away with the trouble of cooking. "Wouldn ' t everybody like thatT asks Abhishek Bhagat, a student of the Adwait Mission Public School in Bhagalpur, Bihar. The 17-yearold has made just such a device. The idea came to him when he was making tea for his mother at home in their village of Nauguchia.

"So, I got in touch with the Honey Bee ..~etwork," he explains enthusiastically. .; . "They provided me with the technical

I

support I needed for making the printed circuit board and copper containers I needed. Without this, I would not have been able to make my prototype."

Honey Bee Network is the channing name for an organization that has worked since 1987 to encourage such grassroots innovations across India. Thousands of beneficiaries have received support from it.

Bhagat's machine, for instance, runs on electricity. It has boxes that hold different ingredients. For each dish to be cooked, a pre-timed card is used. Different ingredients Above: Anil K. Gupta, founder of the Honey Bee Network, leads innovative farmers, students and scientists through villages in Dhemaji, Assam in 2009. Local innovators are honored and scientific information spread during these marches.

Left: Abhishek Bhagat with his automatic food making machine, Kitchen King, that is programmed to make tea and Indian dishes.

SPAN MAY/JUNE 20 10

39

fall into the main cooking vessel according to set timings. Once the cooking is done, the machine rings an alarm.

"I have programmed my invention to make chai, chola and chura fry," says Bhagat, who wishes to become a researcher in robotics. "But, if a company takes it up for commercial manufacture, it can be programmed to make any number of dishes."

The Honey Bee Network bridges the distance between those who have problems and those who are thinking up economical and ecologically sound solutions to them. Thanks to the network, a handful of small innovators have been able to patent their work. This is normally a very difficult task for them.

"The general challenges facing grassroots inventors in India are the same as those of inventors in other countries," explains Tom Turano, an attorney with K&L Gates, a law firm originally based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (but now with 36 offices around the world) that helps the Honey Bee Network's innovators file patents in the United States. "High on the list of challenges is the fact that inventors typically are not familiar with patent laws," he says. Patent applicants often do not know that they should not use their invention in public or have it featured in

any media. This can result in a loss of intellectual property rights. "Also high on the list is that individuals may not be aware of what has already been invented in the field," says Turano, who has been working with the Honey Bee Network for almost a decade. "As a result they spend a good deal of time and effort reinventing something that has already been invented.

This is also where groups like the Honey Bee Network help immensely."

The Honey Bee Network tries to bring inventions to the attention of patent attorneys early on. This goes a long w~y toward protecting the inventor's intel1ectual property rights. "One of the great ideas to come from this process is an agricultural machine that is powered by a motorcycle," says Turano.

Thanks to the efforts of the Honey Bee Network and Turano's firm, Mansukhbhai Jagani, a 46-year-old farmer and manufacturer from Gujarat, is the holder of U.S. Patent Number 6,854,404 for a technology that converts a motorcycle into a multipurpose ploughing machine that can be used for weeding, sowing, tilling and spraying pesticides.

This technology could be useful for small gardens, big vineyards or for big greenhouses in the United States. In India, it is used extensively in Saurashtra,

Gujarat with groundnut and cotton crops.

All over, in developed and developing nations, people with ideas create inventions, often informally in their homes, garages, fields and as students, to make the world a better place. Many of these ideas result in workable solutions. The Honey Bee Network enables sharing of ideas across the world.

For instance, a large number of sustainable agricultural practices from India are just as likely to work in the United States.

In one example, growing okra as a border crop keeps pests away from cotton. In another, spraying j aggery mixed with water attracts black ants that kill pests.

Check out www.sristi.org or www.honeybee.org for many more examples of farming without using ecologically harmful chemical pesticides.

"I have known the Honey Bee Network since its inception," says Calestous Juma, a professor of the practice of international development at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Massachusetts. "I have followed it since then and seen the network gain national and international recognition. It pioneered docymenting the importance of local innovations and has helped to bring this topic to international attention." Juma feels the Honey Bee Network is a rare expression of

oney -Bee'SfTASA Connection he Honey Bee Network was recently invited to be a part of LAUNCH Water, the first in a series of global initiatives for a sustainable future held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida against the backdrop of the launch of Space Shuttle Mission STS-131 in March.

LAUNCH wants innovators, no matter which part of the world they come from , and whether they are working in garages, enterprises or charities, to meet the foremost challenges of a sustainable future: water, aid, food , energy, mobility and sustainable cities.

But although innovators are constantly struggling to share their knowledge, they frequently face problems related to funding, design, management or marketing "Early in the development of LAUNCH during 2009, it was clear that we needed to think about innovation in a way that was inclusive of cultural , geographic and economic diversity," says Victor E. Friedberg , executive director of LAUNCH , which is primarily based in Washington , D.C. It has satellite offices in the Bay Area as we ll as at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.

Friedberg believes that sustainability will ultimately be addressed not by one game changing idea or technology, but the cumulative power and the collective imagination of innovators across the planet.

T

"This was important for LAUNCH to understand and get right as we developed ," he says. "There is a tendency, especially here in the Bay Area, to look at innovation solely as devotion to high tech , high investment and capital intensive processes.

"LAUNCH was a name chosen to reflect our mission to hel p launch innovation that supports sustainable development into the world ," explains Friedberg "For decades, the Kennedy Space Center has launched innovations literally and figuratively into the world. " The name also reflects the alignment with NASA. The Honey Bee Network was among 10 innovators selected from around the world to have collaborative dialogues with the LAU NCH team and the LAUNCH Council, to which Network founder Anil K. Gupta has been added as a member. Besides NASA, the foundin g partners include USAID, the U.S. State Department and Nike.

"I was at the Kennedy Space Center as a founder member of th e LAUNCH Accelerator project," says Gupta "It's one of NASA' s ways of addressing larger social problems. This year their focus is on water and they are interested in the solutions available with the Honey B.ee Network. " - V.I. http://launch .org/

Above: These brothers, Mehtar Hussain and Mushtaq Ahmed Dar, designed the Bayukal (left), a bamboo windmill powered by a hand pump.

to share it with their community. So, it follows, if we make any use of local knowledge and it generates some returns, then a fair share of it must go back to the people.

Now, these are the three principles we Taking flight started with."

Here's how it all began. "I have been As the Honey Bee Network grew, three working on the subject of nurturing the .ipstitutions were set up in Ahmedabad that technology of the common people for some .:' . supported its work in important ways. The time," says Anil K. Gupta, founder of the Society for Research and Initiatives for Honey Bee Network. "You see, a honey Sustainable Technologies and Institutions bee does what we intellectuals don't do. It (SRISTI) was established in 1993 to scale connects a lot of flowers," says Gupta, who up grassroots innovations. The Grassroots is also a senior academician at the Indian Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, was set up in 1997 to convert grassroots Gujarat. "By this, I mean that people-to- innovations into viable products. By the people knowledge transfer can only take tum of the millennium, the need to make place in local languages. Secondly, the India a technologically advanced society flowers don't complain when the nectar is and a global -leader in sustainability was taken, which means we don 't make people felt. To do this, the National Innovation anonymous, we don 't exploit them, instead Foundation was established with the supthey are acknowledged. And third, not all port of the Indian government's Department the honey is kept by bees-they are ready of Science and Technology. All three organ-

lifelong dedication by one individual committed to giving visibility to the creative talents of millions at the bottom of the proverbial economic pyramid.

izations work in synergy to help Honey Bee innovators.

Among those innovators are Mehtar Hussain and Mushtaq Ahmed Dar, brothers who live in Sipajhar in the Darrang district of Assam. They became a part of the Honey Bee Network after Gupta led a group of innovative farmers, artisans, students and scientists on a trek by foot through villages to find new ideas and share experiences and new methods. "I come from a family of farmers and I wanted to do something for farming ," says the diffident, 30-year-old Mushtaq Dar. His family has a two-acre plot of land, typical for millions of India's marginal farmers. The brothers ' economical and useful invention came about, Dar says, because he wondered, "how to get the wind to give water like rain." He found his answer in the Bayukal, which means "wind pump." The device looks like a large, bamboo windmill. It is powered by a hand pump that can pull water from 15 to 18 meters beneath the surface of the ground and it helps the farmer save on fuel costs. As part of the Honey Bee Network, the brothers received funding from the National Innovation Foundation.

"We provided him with approximately Rs. 300,000 to develop his workshop so that he and his brother and other grassroots innovators of the region can use the facility to develop their innovations," says Nitin Maurya, senior fellow and innovation officer at the National Innovation Foundation. "The idea was to have a micro incubator there, which is a place where work on grassroots innovations of SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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ยง: advanced

economies who innovate ~ because they need to use the innovations; '< jj they are users. So we study the same type ~ of innovators in different contexts." ยง 8 User-innovators are increasingly displacing producer-innovators in modern economies because of advances in computerized design tools and because of low communication costs enabled by the Internet. These are the forces that, for example, have made open source software projects so important in advanced economies.

"It is very interesting to me to see sim~ ilar behaviors carried out in low-tech settings by innovators in the Honey Bee Network," says von Hippe!. "The contrast helps us to understand the phenomenon more deeply."

He also suggests that readers who are interested in learning more about this pheEric von Hippe!. nomenon of innovation by users can download a book that he has authored, the region can be done locally."

Democratizing Innovation, from his MIT The Bayukal can be manufactured for as Web site http://mit.edu/evhippel/www/ little as Rs. 4,000. In the workshop, Dar books.htm at no cost. works against orders for his device and has delivered 20 units so far. The Ahmedabad- The wind beneath their wings based wing of Grassroots Innovation Support came in different forms over Augmentation Network is exploring the the years. "In 1992-93, I was ... nominated possibilities of using this technology in for the PEW Conservation Scholar Award, given to 10 scholars around the world," Gujarat.

Already, a few Bayukal windmills are says Gupta, who is also a member of being used by salt farmers in the Rann of India' s National Biodiversity Authority Kutch in Gujarat to pump out brine from and the newly established National the ground. Soon, the Society for Research Innovation Council. The PEW award, and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies administered by the World Research and Institutions will step in to help Dar Institute in Washington, D.C., came with a $150,000 grant. expand his business.

Thanks to the PEW award, Gupta was "I never thought I would have a workshop one day," Dar says. "I just started off able to visit American and European thinking, 'Let us see if this works.' Now, I patent offices and study their systems.

This gave him the depth of understanding will try to make something else new."

"In 2008, I visited some rural entrepre- that was required to establish SRISTI in neurs of the Honey Bee Network in 1993. "I could do a lot of things because India," says Eric von Hippel, a professor of the PEW scholarship and not worry in the Sloan School of Management at the about anything," he says. "I could ask the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. sort of questions that bothered me. So, all "It's very impressive work. Our work is my work got an impetus thanks to the related; I also study users." What he award money. means is that Gupta studies rural innova"They asked me what my goals were tors in India who generally develop inno- and whether I had achieved my own goals vative products, not necessarily for com- to the extent I wanted to, which was a mercial gain, but to solve their own needs; very gratifying, honorable and trust-based they are users of the innovations they system," says Gupta, who now serves as a develop. Von Hippel says, "I study inno- consultant to several national and internavation by firms and individuals in tional organizations. "It gave me the abil42

SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

ity to do a lot of research that I would not have been able to do otherwise."

Having started with a few hundred innovations and traditional knowledge practices in 1987, the Honey Bee Network's database crossed 140,000 ideas this February, though not all of them are unique.

Innovations also happen when people rich with experience, if not form al degrees, find solutions that are technically, economically and locally feasible but can be transplanted anywhere. T.R. Rajesh lives in the temple town of Thrissur in Kerala although he has travelled allover India. A construction worker, Rajesh felt inspired to innovate a simple baffle system for a septic tank because he felt the existing system was too expensive.

"The baffle helps to reduce the disturbance of the settled sludge and keep the solids and scum in the tank," explains Maurya at the National Innovation Foundation. "In the conventional septic tank, two baffles made of concrete are used. However, in Rajesh's innovation, only one baffle made of PVC pipes is necessary. Rajesh ' s circular baffle, which consists of three chambers, works as a diviqer and filter."

"My head is always running full of ideas," says Rajesh. "I have some 50 to 100 inventions that I wish I could work on. I have received a lot of encouragement from the Honey Bee Network ."

The Honey Bee's innovations are wideranging. Susant Pattnaik, a friendly teenager who lives in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, has devised an unusual wheelchair. It helps people who are completely immobilized to communicate on their own. The device uses an electronic circuit to decode breathing patterns and translate them into a communication system similar to Morse Code. "In this way, the disabled can be self-reliant," Pattnaik says. "The Honey Bee Network has already helped me a lot in making this dream come true. Now, my prototype is ready and I am hopeful that some company will manufacture it and make it available widely."

Far and wide Gupta has delivered talks on the Honey Bee Network at American universities including Harvard, MIT, Cornell 'and UCLA, Berkeley. For a course at Colby College in Waterville, Maine on "Nature as

~

edge, especially in the context of climate ~ change," he says. "Traditional societies ~ follow practices that conserve water and ~o energy and are respectful of all natural resources ." _ "The knowledge of the developing world is often called 'traditional knowledge,' " ~ explains Madhavi Sunder, a professor of ~ law at the University of California, in U Davis. "We have a stereotype of people in the developing world as traditional, communal, and engaged for millennia in imbibing tradition without creating anything new. But this is an incomplete picture, and is sometimes simply false! " The Honey Bee Network illustrates the ingenuity of people, including poor people, in every corner of the Earth. Everywhere, there are individuals putting their minds to solving current problems, improving their quality of life, and even inventing to find love. harvest from ," he notes.

Gupta tells the story of one gentleman Gupta says he also gained insights who developed an amphibian bicycle so he from working with the Zunis, who live in could go and meet his lady across a lake. He the desert that stretches across the border tells of a young college student who inventbetween the United States and Mexico. ed a pedal-powered washing machine so For example, one could see potholes on she could complete her chores quickly and the road and find fields that had not been have more time for her studies. cultivated for centuries. The Zunis had As Sunder says, "The Honey Bee tried to revive old peach trees by applying Network has documented the stories of dung manure on the stumps. The sprout- real individuals with modern concerns ing of new shoots led to a revival of the and a modern sensibility for creatively germ-plasm that had been lost for several solving problems." In fact , folkloric decades, if not centuries, says Gupta. knowledge can be very useful in finding "Indigenous communities in America too solutions to contemporary problems. For face the same dilemma that their know 1- example, indigenous architecture across edge is not valued by society and yet they the world has evolved in such a way that have some of the most precious knowl- homes stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter, naturally, without electricalMadhavi Sunder. ly-enabled temperature c路ontrol. ffi Although it began in India, the Honey 11 til Bee Network has grown to be a movement, with a newsletter that reaches peo! ple in more than 75 countries. ~ "Innovators exist everywhere," con8 cludes Gupta. 'There are a lot of people who are ready and willing to share and become part of this global community of innovators. Sustaining a movement requires collective effort. Individuals can galvanize but they cannot sustain. The Honey Bee Network is not one person's work; it is the effort of many, many people." ~

1 i

Susant Pattnaik from Bhubaneshwar in Orissa demonstrates the use of his breathing sensor apparatus. The device uses an electronic circuit to decode breathing patterns and tranf1Jate them into a communication system similar to Morse Code.

a Metaphor for Designing Technologies, Institutions and Social Networks," Gupta took students out to meet innovators in their own community.

"Among the innovators we met was Andrew Smith, a farmer at Newport's Mineral Spring Mushroom Farm, who was using some very interesting methods in mushroom cultivation," Gupta says.

"So, when the students asked him what he would do if they took his idea and started using it themselves, he said he was cool with it, that he would buy mushrooms from them and work on something else and create more value." Gupta notes that Smith did not have any problem with sharing his knowledge. "It's a stereotype to say people don't want to share, that they are greedy for more money. It's not true. Instead, there is a lot of encouragement and enthusiasm."

In the high-crime, Iron Triangle area of Richmond, California, near Berkeley, Gupta says he met wonderful people who were encouraging kids to grow fruits and vegetables in an abandoned railway yard and sell them by the roadside. "They are 'open source gardens ' that anybody can

!

Vaidehi lyer is a journalist and editor based in Chennai.

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lolhe .'.

Text by ANJUM NAIM Photographs by GAUTAM SINGH

heikh Manzoor sells boiled eggs at wife's meager jewelry."

Kurla railway station in suburban Manzoor thanks God for saving his life, Mumbai. Manzoor, 42, originally saying everybody is not as lucky as he was. from West Bengal, used to bring his He has a point: There are so many victims daily stock of eggs to the station in of rail and road accidents who are not as the morning, right after his prayers. Now, he lucky as Manzoor to be quickly taken in an depends on his 17 -year-old son to bring him ambulance to a hospital. to the station on the carrier of his bicycle, According to a World Health Organization along with the eggs. survey in lO countries in Southeast Asia, an Manzoor remembers the day, December estimated 288,768 people died due to road 26, 2007, when he lost both his legs after he traffic injuries in 2007. Of these, 73 percent fell under a running train while crossing the occurred in India. Besides, an estimated 2 tracks. "I lost so much blood that my pulse Below, from left: Staff at the 24-hour control was beating faintly. Policemen picked me room track calls using Coogle Earth and up, put me in an ambulance and took me to global positioning systems on each ambulance; a hospital. 1 don ' t remember for how many a computer grab f rom Coogle Earth; a patient days or weeks 1 remained there, but I being carried down a staircase by paramedics; remember that I lost all the money I had and placed in a waiting ambulance; an saved over the years. Also gone was my ambulance caught in Mumbai traffic.

An emergency medical service started in Mumbai by American physicians ( 44 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Indian origin aims to provide quick and timely treatment.

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45

million people in India have a disability that results from a road traffic crash, according to the organization.

There is a significant difference between rail and road accidents: 20 percent of road accident victims die, compared to a 50 percent death rate among rail accident victims.

Experts attribute the excessive fatalities to lack of enough mobile trauma centers and ambulance services.

In the past few years, voluntary organizations have started to address this problem.

The Illinois-based American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin launched an emergency medical care service in June 2008, involving'26 Mumbai hospitals, 10 of them private. They are all linked by a common phone number, 1298. The service is largely the result of the efforts of Dr. Navin C. Shah, a urologist and former president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

Asked whether the service is provided free of charge, the CEO of the emergency medical care service, Pramod Lele, says, "No. We are not in favor of free service. The poor can have a free service, but we charge common people, because people are not interested in something that comes for free."

Dial 1298 ambulance service is part of the project. Fifty ambulances with up-todate equipment are stationed in various areas of Mumbai. Some of these ambulances have been donated by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin's emergency service. The ambulances have global positioning system trackers, and dispatchers are on duty in the control room round the clock. As soon as they receive a call for help, they relay it to the ambulance closest to the site, or to some other place desired by the caller.

Depending on the problem and the severity of the case, the ambulance staff decides where to take the patient.

Sweta Mangal, CEO of Dial 1298 ambulance service, adds, "We take only half the fee from patients going to government hospitals compared to those going to private nursing homes and hospitals. For instance,

for a large ambulance going to a government hospital we charge Rs. 750 and for a small ambulance Rs. 250."

Dial 1298 was started in 2004 by five young Indian professionals educated in the United States. In its first months, 1298 established a 24-hour control room and developed an ambulance tracking system using Google Earth maps and global positioning systems on each ambulance to provide minute-by-minute location updates.

The company invested in radio communications so that all its ambulances could be reached, even during disasters when mobile phone networks tend to fail.

"For the project's success it was not enough to just establish the infrastructure, but to let every income group know what is 1298 and what are the advantages of using an ambulance," says Mangal, adding For more information: they ran an advertising campaign to drive Dial 1298 for Ambulance home the point. One of the posters put up all over Mumbai said, "An ambulance http://www.1298.in/ American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin starts treatment before you reach the hospital. A taxi doesn' t." http://aapiusa.org/ ------------------ Another advertising campaign addressed

46 S PA N MAY/JUNE 20 10

Top: A doctor conducts a CPR workshop to train paramedics to save the lives of heart attack victims.

Above: Fire brigade personnel, ambulance staff, doctors of Mumbai hospitals and paramedical students participate in a daylong ambulance service mock drill in 2008.

the difficult traffic situation that requires behavioral changes for the life-saving ambulance service to function smoothly, not only in Mumbai, but in other Indian cities. The slogan was, "Save a life. Make way for an ambulance."

Dr. Kishore Sathe, a medical officer at Hinduja Hospital's department of emergency medicine, says, "The traffic scenario in Mumbai has become so pathetic that every month we end up losing five to six patients on an average while they are on the way to a hospital. A majority of these are cardiac cases."

The project is a byproduct of Dr. Shah's three years of work with emergency medical services in the United States'. In American cities and towns, one need only make a free call to the number 911 and the

emergency medical service anives within a few minutes to take the patient to the nearest trauma center, without bothering about the patient's financial status, he explains.

Sufficient staff is available at the hospital to immediately start treatment. Police inquiries and other fOlmalities begin only after the patient is completely stabilized, Dr. Shah adds. After treatment, a bill for the ambulance service may be sent to the patient or the insurance company. But in many cases, the service is provided free by the local government.

It took several years to organize the ambulance service in Mumbai in collaboration with Hinduja Hospital. Part of the mission was a day-long ambulance service mock drill in 2008 in which fire brigade personnel, staff of the 1298 ambulance service, doctors from B.M.G. Hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital and Hinduja Hospital, and paramedical students of the Mumbai-based Lifesupporters Institute for Health Sciences pat1icipated.

Led and supervised by experts from New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University and the New York City Fire Departm~nt, the drill showed the participants how to take survivors of a terrorist attack to get medical care.

A major problem for emergency medical cat'e service in Mumbai is a state law which stipulates that a doctor must be present in every ambulance. "In the neighboring states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, it is legal to have paramedical staff in an ambulance instead of a doctor. Besides, we need public-private partnership to facilitate such work. We are not able to provide the kind of service to people that we intend to. Dr. Shah has been in talks with officials and we hope to get some positive outcome," Lele says.

Maharashtra's secretary of medical education, Bhushan Gargani , says the government is aware of the need and action is underway. "We are facing these problems because we do not have an Emergency Services Act, nor have we established a paramedical council so far. The state government has prepared a format for both.

After passage of the appropriate legislation these problems will automatically be solved," he says.

Ill-equipped vehicles are often used as ambulances in India. "But when we are talking of an ambulance we mean only the vehicle fully equipped with world-class

Dr. Navin C. Shah, who helped set up the emergency medical service.

Since Dr. Shah says he wants to run the emergency medical service and trauma center on world-class lines, a natural quesequipment. A normal ambulance costs tion arises: If the ambulance can ' t get around Rs. 10 lakh and a cardiac ambu- through traffic to reach the patient, maybe lance costs about Rs. 30 lakh. We are talk- the patient should just be put into the nearest autorickshaw which can weave in and ing of such vehicles only," says Lele.

"We are merely fulfilling our social out of traffic and get to the hospital faster?

In many countries, including the United responsibility. All that we want is to intervene in the 'golden hour' and take the States, cars, buses and trucks move to the patient to a hospital in time. If we succeed left or right lanes and stop to make sure in our project, this service would reduce there is a path for ambulances to get accident-related mortality by 90 percent," through when the siren is heard. In India, Lele says. He is referring to the hour after a cars usually stay in their lanes driving or trauma is suffered when the chances of sav- stopping in a jam and blocking the ambuing the person's life are much higher than if lance. This defeats much of the purpose of treatment is delayed beyond that period, an ambulance. due to shock, blood loss and infection.

"Like anybody else I have also observed the obstacle race that an ambulance has to undertake while navigating to reach its destination," says Dr. Shah. "The basic func"For the project's tion of the ambulance is not only transport success it was not of a patient to the appropriate hospital but also to provide emergency treatment on the enough to just establish spot and while in travel. In addition, during the infrastructure, but to this time the receiving hospital is in contact with the ambulance for quick treatment at let every income group the arriving point. The participating hospi. " know what is 1298 tals in the (emergency medical service) and what are the have . .. dedicated staff to receive and treat the patient on a priority basis." advantages of using Dial 1298's Mangal adds that they have an ambulance." been emphasizing cooperation with the - Sweta Mangal , CEO, Dial 1298. traffic police. "In more serious cases we call them, asking for help to quickly get the ambulance through traffic. They help by providing us with direction and clearing traffic. We have got their permission to use the other lane in case of a jam. That makes ~ things easier."

Anjurn Nairn SPAN.

IS

the former editor of Urdu

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Text by KAITLIN MCVEY Photographs by JEREMY LAING

ike Place Market overlooks the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington. Opened on August 17, 1907, it is one of the oldest continually operated public farmers' markets in the United States. Fresh food of every kind-from colorful produce, justpicked herbs, to fresh-caught fish--can be found among the market's stalls. The stalls also feature handicrafts fabricated by local artisans from local materials (available as souvenirs, of course), antiques, flowers , ethnic cuisine, and a menagerie of curiosities tucked into every nook and cranny of this 3.6 hectare market.

One of the lesser-known attractions of the market, but one of the oddest, is the Gum Wall. This unusual attraction is considered by many to be a "living art installation" and is sought out by curiosity seekers and photographers wanting to capture the often odd-ball but enchanting spirit of Seattle. While there are those who would consider the Gum Wall a self-perpetuating act of vandalism, the majority of onlookers see the wall as an ever evolving communal public art project that presents just one more slightly wacky facet of Seattle's Pacific Northwest personality, blending creativity with impromptu selfexpression.

This must-see stop on a trip to Pike Place Market only requires a stroll dbwn Post Alley. As its name implies, the wall is covered with gum, as in Bazooka bub-

P

48 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Far left: Kaitlin McVey at the Gum Wall in Post Alle1j, outside the Market Theater in Seattle, Washington.

Left and below: Following tradition, Kaitlin McVey adds her contribution, SPAN spelled out in colored chewing gum, to the living art of the Gum Wall.

blegum, Wrigley's chewing gum, gums that freshen your breath, gums that whiten your teeth, and any other variety of gum that passersby are chewing. This rainbow collage Qf gum, haphazard at first glance, is actually neither static nor chaotic: rather it is a dynamic, organic, ever-evolving "people's work of art."

Sean Wood and Eric Torres, two Seattleites, return to the wall whenever they are at the market to check on its current state. "Every time I come here, there is always something new. As a true admirer of the wall, I, of course, always make sure to leave a piece of gum after each visit," Wood comments as he unwraps his bubblegum. While each glob is a splash of color-bubblegum pink, minty green or licorice black-pieces are often linked together to tell a story. Some strings of gum spell out a name, others proclaim eternal love, and some create pictures.

Wood explains, "There are different methods for putting gum on the wall. You can simply push the gum to the wall, creating a moon-like effect. If one wants to be more creative, a hardcore gummer can spell out their name or write a message with their

For more information: Gum Wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gum_Wall Pike Place Market www.pikeplacemarket.org

gum. This obviously takes more pieces, more chewing to soften up the gum, and more time." Gummers also use gum to anchor objects to the wall, such as coins (mainly pennies, nickels and dimes), cigarette butts, and oddities such as bottle caps, bobby pins and baseball cards.

Besides being a public artwork in progress, the Gum Wall is also the exteri or wall of the Market Theater, running along Post Alley. The wall developed in the 1990s, when according to Market Theater employee Jay Hitt, "Theater attendee lines would wrap around the building. Waiting in line is boring, and theater goers began killing time by affixing/encasing coins in colorful gum blobs, giving the wall a shotgun effect of metallie bull's-eye dots." According to Hitt, . '~::rhe Market Theater long ago gave up the .: futile effort of trying to clean the gum off the wall. No sooner would the wall be stripped bare, when another line would form and up went more gum as those in line whiled away the time creating their own personal artistic statement."

The theater management has come to view the Gum Wall as an impromptu work of art by theater patrons that mimics the improvisational works that are presented on the stage inside. While the Gum Wall will always be a part of the theater, if for no reason than it is a structural load-bearing wall, it has taken on an identity and life of its own. Testimony to this is that the

Gum Wall is now featured in promotional advertisements for both the theater and the Pike Place Market. Today, it is li sted among Seattle's top attractions in the company of the Space Needle tower and the Experience Music Project and is prominently highlighted on the Pike Place Market fold-out tourist map. "The Gum Wall has become a part of the theater. We even offer a Gum Wall cocktail at our bar, and the Gum Wall is often a feature of our back-drop for improvised ski ts," says Hitt. The city keeps the surrounding environs gum-free (as best it can), but leaves the Gum Wall to grow.

Kaitlin McVey is a writer living in Seattle, Washington.

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49

erican university and college campuses are increasing sensitivity about environmental issues and guiding students toward positive actions by giving everyone-from engineering majors to budding journalists-the chance to take ourses in ecology. The hope is that they will then solve climate-related problems Jor themselves and their societies. And the efforts are not just aimed at students. The schools are also working to equip faculty, staff and administrators with the knowledge and skills to address global sustainability challenges.

At many institutions, core general education requirements for all degrees are being realigned to include classes in environmental literacy. Some colleges are also integrating environmental Iiteracy into existing liberal arts and specialty courses.

One example of the trend is that all state universities and colleges in Minnesota require undergraduate students to take at least one course under the component "Humans and the Environment," which is offered through social science and humanities as well as natural science courses.

At the University of Georgia, all students are required to complete a course requirement in environmental literacy, which means "that they must attain knowledge of basic principles concerning environmental issues." The students can choose classes offered by the environmental department on climate change, population growth, biodiversity or environmental ethics.

Environmental literacy, as defined by the Environmental Education & Training Partnership Organization, educates people on how "their daily choices affect the environment, how those choices can help or harm the environment, and what they need to do-individually or as part of a community-to keep the environment healthy and sustain its resources, so that people enjoy a good quality of life for themselves and their children."

Paul Hawken, a noted American author and environmentalist, focused his commencement address last year at the University of Portland, on

l

Far left: At Yale University graduation ceremonies in Connecticut, stlldents from the School of Forestry decorate their academic caps with plants, flowers alld other symbols of the enviro1lment.

Left: University of Washington graduate students measure possible effects of rising sea levels on the beach of Elliott Bay in Seattle.

for more information: Environmental education http://www.epa. gov/Education/ Paul Hawken's commencement address http://www. up. edu/commencemenVdefaull.aspx?cid = 9456 combining education with environmental awareness. "If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren ' t pessimistic, you don' t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this Earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren' t optimistic, you haven' t got a pulse," he said.

According to James Porter of the University of Georgia, the standard norm for U.S . higher education has been to produce analytical thinkers, but he thinks there is also a need to empower and educate students with the skills required to make positive societal changes. Porter, who teaches ecology courses, has found that "students are frightened by the world that they will inherit. They want knowledge and solutions to these problems. Students feel that problems are so large and complex that they can't do anything about them, which can lead to apathy and cynicism."

Erica Cowman Schetter, who recently graduated as a premedicine student from Harvard University in Massachusetts, says, "In our increasingly sophisticated and globalized culture, it is easy to lose touch with our local surroundings. Most people realize that environmental policy is important, but sometimes it feels like an abstract concept affecting faraway places."

As Hawken told the graduates, knowledge should empower students to create a better society, instead of overwhelming them and rendering them passi ve.

Porter maintains that all of today's students will be "consumers of the future, and thus, need to full y comprehend the environmental problems awaiting them. " Additionally, he attempts to provide them with the skill s to cope and implement Below: Students in ocean literacy classes at the University of Washington.

52 SPAN MAY/JU NE 2010

change effectively throughout society.

A national "Survey of the Environmental Education of Students in Non-environmental Majors at Four-year Institutions in the USA" was conducted in 2001 to find out to what extent sustainability concepts and environmental literacy were being incorporated into higher education. Out of the 496 responding institutions, 11 .6 percent reported that all students were required to take environmental courses, while 55 percent offered students the choice. The remainder offered such courses only to those with environment-related majors.

At the University of Washington, all students must take some subjects offered under the range of "natural world" courses. At Unity College in Maine, all students, regardless of major, are required to take fi ~.interdis ciplinary core courses that foc us on "ecoliteracy," plus a capstone environmental stewardship course, which, according to their Web site, is "designed to teach important academic skills, knowledge and dispositions through ... courses that stress the connections and inter-relatedness of the various disciplines .... " Northern Arizona University, Northern Kentucky University and Emory Uni versity in Georgia are among colleges that have embedded environmental literacy into courses in diverse disciplines. These institutions have chosen to include issues of the environment in courses on ecology, anthropology, biology, economics and political science. At Emory University issues such as sustainable development and management of global and regional resources, are not considered solely ecological, economic, nor social problems, but rather a combination of all three.

According to the nationaJ survey, students taki ng as little as one course in envi ronmental literacy develop more enVironmentally responsibl e behavior. Students develop an increased caring about the future of society, an increased belief that they can make a difference, and an increased willingness to participate in solving societal and environmental problems.

Porter of the University of Georgia feels that students seek out these courses because "they understand that the world is changing and the importance of knowledge." Students commented that they feel engaged in the large ecological problems and issues at

both the individual and community l<tvels, while understanding the global impact.

Trey Lord, who received his B.A. in philosophy from Georgetown Uni versity, currently works for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. on the international climate team. His specialty area is in finance, climate adaptation, and reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation . His introduction to envi ronmental issues was through a class For comp lete details and downloadable application material , please visit USIEF's Web site: in college called "Environmental History of the Americas" where he learned about deforestation in tropical rainfo rests of Central and South America, and depletion of buffalo herds on the Great Plains. from other disciplines are encouraged to apply. In previous years, "Oddly enough, despite my limited undergrad education in students have represented biology, genetics, geography, Spanish, environmental policy, I am fully steeped in it now. Because of Latin American studies, education, landscape architecture, anthrothat, I do massive amounts of reading outside of work to supple- pology, journalism, horticulture, art and international agriculture, ment my limited background . Thi s shouldn ' t be a problem in the among other fields. As Porter says, "B usiness and the Internet future, however, because I am getting a masters in Global have gone global. So has the teaching of environmental science."

Environmental Policy and get an unlimited amount of on the job The planet has environmental problems that threaten every type training," he says. of ecosystem. One of the things Erica Schetter learned in Tonya Overell, a psychology major at the Univers ity of "Introduction to Botany" at Harvard University was that "humans Washington, took an introductory .class on environmental sci- are making changes to the environment without the proper underence and a class called Wildlife in the Modern World because standing of the effects and consequences of their actions." As a she always had a concern fo r the environment and how it is inte- part of her course she took a trip to Arnold Arboretum and learned grated with her lifes tyle. She chose these classes because she about local forest ecology. "It helped me to fee l more invested in was interested in "producing sustainable systems in order to the local environment in Massachusetts. In our increasingly maintain and protect our wildlife and ecosystem." sophisticated and globalized culture, it is easy to lose touch with "A growing awareness is spreading amongst groups and indi- our local surroundings," she says. Schetter knows that educated viduals who are trying to change our ways in order to save decisions will have to be made in personal, business and governnature. Studying environmental science has allowed me to be ment arenas to address the environmental challenges of the future. aware of coexisting with nature and the environment," she says.

Dennis Hartman, the interim dean of the College of the Overell is looking to incorporate the information she learned Environment at the Uni versity of Washington, has seen an into her future career in human resources. She hopes to align increase in the popularity of cl asses and degrees involving ecolbusiness practices to become more environmentally ogy and environmental sciences, He has also seen increased fri endly. enrollments in basic ecology and envi ro nmental courses. As According to Porter, today's college students think non-science major students continue to seek aut these courses, about environmental problems from a global perspec- Hartman feels that "universities and colleges will need to contintive. There may be many nations'i ,ut there is only one ue to design and create courses that provide basic content in planet. Through his teachings he has fo und that "stu- compelling format that reso nates with students fro m a range of dents kno w that the big environmental problems, majors." He feels that "faculty will need to continue to increase such as global warming, will require unprecedented efforts to help students see how ecological content is relevant to cooperation between rival nations, like the U.S. and a range of careers."

China." This has caused a significant increase in According to Porter, 'The future belongs to interdiscipli nary study abroad courses which are now as likely to study. Law, politics, conservation, business and ecology are all emphasize environmental sciences as traditi onal lan- interconnected. Ecology is not an 'ivory tower' discipline anyguage and culture courses. more. 2 1st century student acti vism is more likely to be recyThe University of Georgia purchased and runs a cling drives than protest marches. This generation wants to work campus called the San Lui s Research Station in the on environmental solutions, not just lament about environmental Costa Rican highland rainfo rest of Monteverde. There, problems. My optimi sm comes not from the numbers I study, but professors teach environmental science, conservation from the students I teach." and international law and policy courses. Most students have an ecology-centered major, but students Kaitlin McVey is a writer living in Seattle, Washington .

www.usief.org.in

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s I munch down a certain favorite, sweet-and-sour, Indian snack mix, I recall my first time enjoying this zesty, crunchy treat back in the 1990s. My husband's mother arrived from overseas and brought half a dozen bags for him. He was overjoyed. Hugs all around. She nodded knowingly-his American wife could never have guessed that this was the missing ingredient in a happy household 's kitchen cupboard! And, of course, some ground-roasted cumin, garam masala, good tea, and a dozen other food items that I found intriguing, mysterious and flavorful.

After one spoonful of the snack mix, I understood why its arrival meant celebration.

These days, one need not wait for a friend or family i'nember to arrive from India with a suitcase full of savories and sweets from the homeland. South Asian grocery stores are located throughout the United States and number in the thousands, according to online listings. High concentrations in Califomia, Michigan, Texas and New Jersey reflect the density of the Indian populations in those states.

Most mid-size towns have at least one Indian shop, often functioning not only as a place to pick up grains and lentils in bulk, but to connect culturally with the local South Asian community.

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Closer to home When Peeyush Jain and his parents first moved from India to Iowa in 1968, he recalls a less convenient shopping experience for his family. "The closest Indian store was in Chicago, a four-hour, 220 miledrive away. It seemed like that one shop catered to most of the Indians in the entire Midwest. And if you were going to Chicago from Iowa

Far left: Shoppers browse through the lentil section of Dana Bazaar in Iselin, New Jersey. Above left: Indian posters and mangos at Lakshmi Bazaar in San Jose, California. Above: Children always get a lollipop while shopping at Desi Bazaar in Columbia, Maryland.

City, you 'd take orders from the 20 other Indian families in town and come back with a trunk full of food. Sometimes people ordered directly from the store, but that meant you had to pay for shipping ,~whjch people didn' t like to do."

Now Jain, who lives outside Sa~ Jose, California in Silicon Valley, has half a dozen, well-stocked Indian markets to choose from within eight kilometers of home. He shops most often at Kumud Groceries in Cupertino, which opened three years ago just three kilometers from his house.

Like most Indian grocery stores in the area, Kumud is all vegetarian . The store is busy, with three cash registers and constant shelf restocking. Steady traffic flow means products tum over frequently and are fairly fresh, says Jain, another improvement in recent years. With increasing competition, many shops in the area offer better produce in a cleaner environment. "It used to be that the big store with the wide selection of produce wasn't very clean, but now you have more choices," he explains.

Items he finds at Kumud that he can't find at the American supermarket include fresh chickpeas and long I-Rdian green beans.

They also carry a wide valiety of Indian '~quashes like lauki.

Recently they started carrying a line of organic Indian dairy products such as paneer and ghee.

Awider varietv Joy Annamma, originally from Kerala, shops regularly at Lakshmi Bazaar in San Jose, California. "I moved here in 1999.

Then, sometimes, you couldn ' t fmd what you need, but now you find all the items here. So many items. I came today for ripe mangos to make pickie," she smiles, holding up her bag with two green mangos.

She comes in sometimes with her grandchildren to buy samosas and snacks, too. "Everything is here," she says.

"We have a selection that surprises many people," agrees Lakshmi 's manager, Shashi Satyanarayana. The store first opened

in 1998, but in 2003 changed ownership, and by 2008 the small shop had doubled its size. "Parents who come to California from India to visit their children are surprised that you now get everything here," she says. "They can't believe that we even carry Indian vegetables and fruits."

"In our frozen section, we now can'y surti papdi lilva-a surprise even to me," Satyanarayana laughs. She fondly recalls her own childhood experience, when her mother would travel to Bangalore for these beans and dry them to store and use later. Also known as avarekai or hyacinth beans, items such as these are hard to find even in big cities in India, according to Satyanarayana.

"There, shops tend to cany only products popular in that local region, but here in California, our customers are from all walks, coming from all over India, not just from one particular region. So people ask us for certain items, and our distributor goes and searches in India, and then gets them for us to carry."

Ataste 01 the homeland For Urvashi Narain, shopping at her local Indian market in Rockville, Maryland offers a taste of home beyond the food . "It's very Indian. You feel like you're back in Delhi," she says. "It's badly organized, but it's chock full of stuff in a tiny space. The people working there are very sweet and friendly. And they try to make you feel like you're getting special Indian discounts," she says with a wink.

Narain shops for spices that are difficult to find at the typical American supermarket. "We also buy pm路athas, frozen foods, bhelpuri mix-lots of savory things from India that we love to get-things that I don' t have time to make myself. Or knowledge," she laughs. She buys her go/gappas to try and recreate the typical Delhi chaar house experience. "Of course, it's not the same," she admits. "But you have to settle."

Step into any of these shops and experience the familiar smell of ripening mangos and asafetida, the soft sound of two aunties chatting in Hindi, rows and rows of rice, spices and chutneys, and a wall of Bollywood DVDs featuring posters of Shah Rukh Khan . It all comes together to create a pocket of India that feels like home for the South Asian community. Colorful signs adorn shop windows, advertising services and classes that appeal to the SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

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""~ Bazaar's front door you can see two other bustling Indian grocery stores. People come from across the region for spices and grains at bulk prices, wedding shopping, snack and sweet shops, and a generally festive atmosphere full of South Asian friends and families getting the necessities.

Not just lor Indians Loehmann 's Plaza in Falls Church, Virginia.

Rosie Iapalucci of Washington, D.C. visited an Indian grocery for the fIrst time last year when her husband, Mike, returned from typical customer: an Asian beauty salon offering eyebrow thread- a two-week business trip to Bangalore. "He was obsessed with ing, an upcoming classical Indian music performance, a lecture by Indian food. He came home and bought several Indian cookbooks, an Indian guru and yoga classes. but when we saw the recipes, there were a lot of ingredients we didAt Dana Bazaar in Iselin, New Jersey shoppers come from all n' t know or couldn't get at our regular supermarket. So we found over the East Coast to purchase items in bulk. Several different out about an Indian '~ore and went there to buy amchur (mango) brands of rice are sold in small quantities in up to 18-kilogram powder, a ton of spices and frozen naan. I couldn 't believe how bags. Others shop here weekly for all their staples. According to many foods they were selling that I had never even heard of."

Shopkeepers report a gradual increase in non-Indian customers the young, bubbly clerk, Phumi Patel, whose father manages the store, the main things people buy here are milk, rice and chapati in recent years. Satyanarayana of Lakshmi Bazaar says when they flour. fIrst opened, it was only the Indian population shopping there, but Hasan ZafIr and Pratima Mudbhari, who moved to New Jersey now they have 10 to 15 percent non-Indians: "I think this is due to from Nepal , come to Dana Bazaar once a week to stock up on veg- an interest in the Indian food we offer, such as samosas and sweets, etables, spices, rice and dal. "I'd say we buy 95 percent of our gro- made fresh here in the kitchen at the back of the store. And a lot of ceries in this shop," explains Zafir. "We live about 20 miles from non-Indians come in asking for spices. The Chinese customers here, but we enjoy coming to the area and having lunch, and come in looking for henna for hair dye. Lately, they' ve been askthere's a large shopping mall nearby." ing for tUlmeric powder. I think there was an article about the Mudbhari asks Patel if they have chai masala powder. "No, medicinal value as a cure for cancer. They' re really crazy about it." sorry, we don 't carry that," shrugs Patel with a smile.

Iapalucci would like to go back to the Indian shop in Maryland to They could probably fInd it within a short walk at any of the refresh her supply of spices, but it was located in a far-out suburb in dozen other Indian grocery stores in this small town teeming with a nondescript shopping center. "I'd go again but I can' t remember sari shops, Indian jewelers and fast food joints. From Dana what it was called or where it is exactly," she admits with a laugh.

elail espite some concerns in India regarding foreign direct investment (FOI) , Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of the retai I and consumer goods consulting firm Third Eyesight, has witnessed many improvements in the Indian supply chain as large U.S. companies, such as McDonald's, have set up operations here. He recalls the improvement in skills, technology and quality the company imparted to Indian vendors as it required them to meet its exacting global standards.

In the retail sector, the government of India allows FOI of up to 51 percent for single-brand retailers, and 100 percent for wholesale cash and carry multi-brand outlets which are open to businesses but not individual consumers. While multinational companies have preferred franchise models, more are now seeking joint ventures and greater control over their presence here.

Today many U.S. retailers want to own and operate their own stores in India. Dutta explains that this is motivated from the need to take

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By ERICA LEE NELSON

advantage of core business competencies and control quality. When they are in a new market abroad, "brands that are used to retailing directly to consumers naturally want that ability," he says. "When you actually have the ownership it becomes that much easier to transfer knowledge, transfer skills and transfer people."

Retail models are also an issue of geography.

The U.S. market is much more consol idated with large , vertically-integrated national players, whereas the Indian market has more layers and suppliers that don't sell directly to consumers. It is their concerns, as well as those of consumer groups and small retailers, which are reflected in the Indian government's current policies, Dutta says. Giving the example of international fashion brands, he explains there is a feeling their deeper pockets and global brand image give them an advantage over Indian clothing brands.

That's not to say that Indian retailers are running scared from interna-

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tional competition, though. Dutta believes that over time fears about increased FOI levels have decreased. "Indian retailers have gained in scale ... they feel more confident to compete now," he says. Dutta also advises that foreign companies can help limit these fears by aiding manufacturing and supply chains in India. "It can only be tackled by working on a model that is truly a win-win, " he says, "both for the foreign entrant and for the local economy."

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Erica Lee Nelson is a Washington, D.C.based journalist w ho is studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

"It was in the back of a strip mall, maybe near College Park, Maryland, but you can't see the shop from the road. It's behind a restaurant and then down a long hallway. I need to find it again!"

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Many of the shops are run by family members. Husband and wife team together, father and daughter, or father, mother and sonin-law as at Desi Bazaar in Columbia, Maryland.

"My wife's father bought this shop from the previous owner, also a relative, in 2006," explains Pratik Patel, who relocated to Maryland in 2009 to begin his residency for medical school. He works part time at the counter to help out. He notes that business has increased steadily although they do no advertising or marketing. Instead they are known by word of mouth. "They've increased business by their good nature and customer service," he says.

Chhanalal Patel chose voluntary retirement from a 28-year career as a middle school science teacher in India, and immigrated to the United States, where he began work at Target, a large discount retail store, in Ellicott City, Maryland outside Baltimore.

There, he says, he learned a lot about American culture and shopping habits, and experienced every type of holiday-Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day. He came to help his friend at Desi Bazaar on weekends and eventually purchased the store when his friend retired.

"The best thing about this shop is having our own store. We do the work ourselves. No boss," he smiles.

Pratik Patel notes that Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and lots of Americans shop here. The' Americans tend to like the frozen foods-pre-cooked samosas, curries and papad. The most popular item is the chapati flour, followed by rice and lentils-especially toor dal. They also sell stainless steel cookware, henna, hair oil, incense, lots of spices and snacks. And they rent and sell DVDs. The busiest time is around Diwali, when they sell sweets and lamps.

"Our customers are like a family," he says. "Just last month our computerized register system broke down and several of our engineer customers offered to repair it for no charge. They are ready to help us if we need anything."

Satyanarayana of San Jose's Lakshrni Bazaar agrees that the connections with customers are rewarding. "The best part of this job is interacting with people from different walks. You have to be patient, and a good listener, to hear what the Gustomer needs. It's a challenge to try to meet the requirements of each person and you learn a lot of things that way. It brings your own potential out. You come to know your plus points and your minus points," she smiles. "You learn a lot about yourself and other people's cultures from our different food habits."

The community that arises around neighborhood Indian shops may be changing as competition grows, and as more customers buy their goods from an increasing number of online retailers. I happen to know that the sweet and sour crunchy snack I like is available through Amazon at a competitive price with a minimal shipping charge. But I'm not tempted, because there's nothing like stepping into an Indian grocery store and enjoying the sensory awakening, and the friendly folks working at the counter.

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Jane Varner Malhotra is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

Lend Me Your Ears

By RIeRA VARMA

Heading one of American public radio's most respected shows, Madhulika Sikka has a job cut out for her.

s dawn breaks over Washington; D.C., Madhulika Sikka begins her daily ritual of multitasking-reading the papers, shooting off work-related e-mails, listening to the first feed of "MOlrung Edition," the American radio program she heads, and packing off her daughters Priya, 13, and Maya, 11, to school.

Arriving at work a little after 7 a.m., Sikka typically sifts through mounds of information and breaking news that feed the show's 13 million listeners. "Morning Edition" runs on National Public Radio (NPR), a privately supported, nonprofit broadcaster, and draws on reporting from correspondents in 17 countries and 17 locations across the United States. The show airs weekdays on more than 650 stations across America.

As executive producer, Sikka, 47, plans and helps develop the broad themes for the show. "We provide an excellent range of hard news, features and arts coverage that we hope

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James Millward, Priya Millward, Madhulika Sikka and Maya Millward during a family outing.

will set you up for the day and allow you to partake in the daily conversation whatever the topic," she says.

That philosophy and a loyal fan base have made the two-hour, 30-year-old program one of American public radio's most venerable and listened-to news magazines.

"It's a challenge to get the right balance of hard news, features and things that are slightly 'off' the news, but that's what makes it fun," Sikka says, while acknowledging the support of the show's "amazing staff and two superb hosts."

Sikka joined NPR in 2006 as supervising senior producer and quickly made her way to the top. A recipient of four Emmy Awards and three South Asian Journalists Association awards, Sikka's career included stints on three major American TV networks-ABC, CBS and NBC. "I think you' ll agree that 'Morning Edition' has never sounded better," Ellen McDonnell, director of NPR's morning programming, said in an article on the South Asian Journalists Association Web site after Sikka's promotion in 2009.

"She has elevated both the journalism and production of 'Morning Edition' ... . She has proved herself a skilled manager and generous mentor within the News Division," McDonnell said in an internal office memo.

Speaking about the impact and relevance of radio today, Sikka says radio has many advantages over television. "Radio is a much more intimate medium than television and thus I find it more revealing in some ways. People seem a little more comfortable without lights and cameras around them," she says.

Sikka credits her Indian and British upbringing for her different perspectives. Born in New Delhi, Sikka moved to London, where her father, K.L. Sikka, was posted as a diplomat with the

For more information: Madhulika Sikka http://www.npr. org/templates/story/story.php?storyld = 99818887 "Morning Edition" http://www .npr. org/temp lates/ru ndowns/rundown. php?prgld = 3 58 SPAN MAY/JUNE 2010

Indian Foreign Service, when she was three months old. Though he left the Foreign Service in 1967, he still lives in London with the rest of her family, including one brother and two sisters. Her mother has passed away.

With a bachelor of arts degree in economics and politics from the University of London in 1985, Sikka went on to pursue a master's in development economics and politics from Cambridge University and graduated in 1987.

That year, she moved to the United States after she married James Millward, an American professor of history specializing in China at Georgetown University. During one of their visits to India, Millward, who is also a musician, was intrigued by the sitar. "He got himself a sitar and then found himself a teacher here in D.C.," Sikkf,t says proudly of her husband.

Sikka says Indian food is a tradition she grew up with. Today, her daughters are very conscious of their Indian heritage, which manifests itself most often through food and clothing. The family also celebrates Indian and American festivals together though they tend to do a scaled down version of Diwali in America, while in England "there is a broader celebration of Indian culturallituals since my family is still there."

Sikka adds that while she doesn't get to visit India much, she lives vicariously through her father who travels regularly. Her father, she says, was particularly proud when she received the Special Award for Excellence from India Abroad newspaper in March.

Reactions from listeners are mostly predictable when "Morning Edition" invites Indian celebrities on the show, Sikka says. "I think South Asians are always thrilled if there is something that speaks to us-whether it's Shah Rukh Khan'4 or a story about cricket or profiles of Indian politicians," she says.

"Listeners have a lot of opportunity to engage with NPR, particularly with the tools that digital media provide, be it comments on the Web, tweets, Facebook or something I haven't thought of yet."

Sikka often writes about issues that reflect her Indian heritage besides other interests such as reading. In an opinion piece on NPR, she recounts a childhood incident that details her love for Indian mangos. "For me, an Indian who grew up in London, my memories of mangos are sweet. My grandmother and aunt would ship us a box at the beginning of the mango season (probably violating all sorts of rules about food shipments) and its arrival was greeted with joy and anticipation," she writes.

Branding herself an old-fashioned book lover with a pile of books stacked on her bedside table, she has fun walking "down the aisle of a plane or a train and seeing what everyone's reading." Sikka likes to read in what little spare time she gets and Jhumpa Lahiri is her favorite Indian American author.

"I'm also a knitter and find it very satisfying to pursue a hands-on project that results in a tangible product at the end," she says.

The secret behind "Morning Edition's" continued success, she says, is that it tries "to enlighten and entertain the listeners without insulting them .... As an audio medium we are at a competitive advantage in a world where more and more people are walking around with ear buds in their ears. I'm bullish on our future in the world of new media." ~

Radl1a Basu

On aLong Adventure

Anudip Foundation helps the poor learn skills so they can earn a living.

By RANJITA BISWAS

adha Ramaswami Basu is a bundle of energy as she flits from one engagement to another, despite the hot Indian summer and the fact that she is far away from her home near San Francisco , Cal ifornia. She has to attend to umpteen chores, including visits to villages, related to the Anudip Foundation for social we lfare, a nonprofit organization based in Kolkata, which she set up with her engineer husband, Dipak Basu, in 2006.

Anudip aims to provide work and entrepreneurship training to the marginalized rural poor of West Bengal.

Anudip: the name seems a little unusual. "Frankly, the name was decided at the spur of the moment as we went for registration, conjoining the first letters of our names. We hadn't thought about a name yet.

Happily, it has a meaning, too, as most Bengali names do," says Basu, whose maiden name was Anuradha. It means micro-light "if translated from the two Bengali words, anu=atom, dip = light. " Anudip was born out of a realization that "we could use our skill to train people in the hinterland who often migrate to metros in search of livelihood," she adds.

And skill and experience Basu has aplenty. The student who had to convince her trad itional parents in Chennai to let her go for a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1973 ended up becoming the general manager of Hewlett-Packard's International Software Organization in 1989, overseeing eight offshore software centers around the world. Earlier, she had set up the company's office in India, building it up from scratch and earning many accolades for her work and entrepreneurship.

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â&#x20AC;˘ Basu's resourcefulness was in evidence even when she was a student.

"When I arrived in the U.S , I had little money for food, so I started scanning the university bulletins and found that every day there was a launch or orientation program at a department in the huge university, and they always had food! So I made a list of those I wanted to attend.

Besides, I also came to know many people and developed my communication ski lls," she recalls with a twinkle in her eyes. This stood her in good stead later when she became a leader in .the student community and her "coniession" about her foodscamming habits in the student bulletin even won her admirers. "We could do that, too," many said.

Basu also had the guts to leave her cushy job and start her own company, SupportSoft, which provides support automation software, in 1998.

The company has since been renamed Support.com. Then the chairman and CEO felt the need to do something more-to do something for the less fortunate.

Strangely, or perhaps providentially, that moment came during long

mountain hikes. "Both I and my husband enjoy trekking and have been taking every opportunity to be outwhether to Peru, the Himalayas or the Himachal region. " She finds trekking involves three elements: it expands your vision- a realization of one's "own small place in the universe, an experience almost spiritual;" it is inspiring- to strive to do something worthwh il e; and it builds resilience.

"You're on your own. There 's a goal to reach and your confidence grows."

On one such trip Basu observed the sherpas, the people who carry equipment for trekkers. "How patient they were! Despite the hardship they always had a smile on their faces and were ever ready to help others." Basu realized she wanted to expand her horizon.

She and her husband put their heads together, studied the problems and found that it was unemployment that troubled the rural population in West Bengal. "When we made a survey, we found what they most wanted was work and to be self-sufficient."

"We decided it was not charityproviding monetary help-that we wanted to do. We believe in social enterprise, to make people secure

through financial stability, " Basu emphasizes. She believes real empowerment comes from skillbuilding, which leads to sustainable Iiving through a process of "learn and earn."

With the aim of bringing India's ITenabled prosperity to rural and sem iurban areas, Anudip trains local men and women to develop into skilled and successful professionals and business owners. Some of the early trainees have become Web designers and even have customers abroad. For this, Anudip links up with community NGOs for partnerships, after a rigor0us selection process. There are 22 such centers across West Bengal. "I spend approximately four months in the year in India; it wi ll probably increase to six months in coming years. This is because Anudip is growing significantly and starting to have substantive social impact," says Basu.

Basu's involvement in community work is an extension of her earlier work in the United States. Even as she was a busy executive, she cofounded Maitri, a support group for South Asian women. She also serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations Interplast and CEO Women in California. .

At the moment, Basu's attention is focused on expanding the Anudip model to a wider geographical area.

There have been enquiries from ~ Cambodia, Bangladesh and South Africa about the initiative. ...

Basu says that she has learned from her American experience "that failure ~ is not an issue, you can learn from your ... mistakes. For me, it has been a long adventure indeed. " ~ 1:1

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Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkatabased journalist who writes on travel, film, women and gender issues. She also translates fiction and writes short stories.

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Major S.S. Khosla, Ludhiana, Punjab .

The January/February issue of SPAN took me nostalgically down the memory lane not only 50 years but even beyond that.

The photographs of Vice President Nixon and J.F.K. took me to the early '60s and that of the great actor Charlton Heston to the late '50s when I saw Ben-Hur in Simla. J. F. K.'s life-size portrait on the wall of Punjab Jail Training School , Hissar came alive in my memory. The portrait was made by one of the prisoners, who was a painter of merit and I was doing an advanced course in criminology as deputy superintendent of jails.

And when I saw the photograph of Keki Daruwalla it took me to the early '50s, when he was my collegemate in Government College , Ludhiana. Not only that. his fathe r, N.C. Daruwalla, was my English teacher during my early college days in 1950-51.

Jyotibhai Kanaiayalal Desai, Vedchhi, Gujarat I have perhaps the unique experience of having known about the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence through Lawrence H. Hoover, Jr. a member of the Board of Trustees. Hence, the article to me is a real gift and bonusI I met him at the Moral Rearmament Centre at Panchgani , Maharashtra at an international conference in 1970. Since then Hoover and his friends have visited us at Vedchhi. He stayed later with his wife, Pat, for a week. This article in SPAN is a very special treasure for our families.

Mr. Hoover has been a lawyer with a commitment to absolute frankness, absolute honesty, absolute truth and absolute love. Indeed , it's a privilege to have had the closeness to such a person. In 2007, he did send me Rev. Desmond Tutu's speech that was delivered by him at the first Mahatma Gandhi Award ceremony. I translated it into Gujarati for our Gandhian bimonthly magazine. It was published in its issue of October 2008 to coincide with Gandhiji 's birthday.

That the Carters were honored with that award last year was also known to me through Mr. Hoover. I wrote to the Hoovers that Jimmy Carter deserved the honor very much for his efforts to understand Cuba and the Middle East and thus to enhance the efforts to create a peaceful , nonviolent world.

Indeed, the article has provided greater details of what 's happening at the center at James Madison University. I hope to send the article to the Hoovers and let them get the joy that their effort is spreading allover India through SPAN!

Dr. Ali Khwaja, Bangalore It was a pleasure to see your March/April issue focusing on the various projects taken up by simple and unassuming Indians or Americans who are making the environ,ment better and greener. I feel such people eventually achieve more'by their ripple effect than highly organized government programs If publications like yours continue to highl ight their miniscu le but far-reaching efforts, many more wi ll be inspired to follow in their footsteps.

InCidentally, the cover photograph of the sequoia tree that has been burnt at the base, and continues to grow, reflects the spirit of the common man in today's age of terrorist attacks and threats, where life continues to grow and rise higher despite the burns we suffer from time to time.

S,M, Goyal, Ajmer, Rajasthan The article "An EnVironmental Activist Brings Hope to Ragpickers " (March/April) kindles a faint hope- pray it turns out a bright

~~~~,iI::: ~~\~iJ~~~~~:~~~~~t :~;~,e;~~Vi~i~~O:~~~:~::(to Prodipta Maulik, Hoogly, West Bengal I am highly thankful to you for publishing the article titled "An American Icon Enters India" in the March/Apri l issue. HarleyDavidson means freedom and ageless sex appeal. Now Harley-Davidson has become a lifestyle statement. I have seen movies based on HarleyDavidson. It is true that HarleyDavidson has a universal appeal for those who want adventure.

The U.S. consul general in Kolkata, Beth Payne, joined in the celebrations at the Bihu festival in Sibsagar, Assam on April 15. Also present were dancers and singers from various tribal groups, senior government officials and the governor of Bihar. "Seeing the beauty and energy of the Bihu dance, I had to join!" said Payne.

Osmania University Vice Chancellor T. Tirupati Rao, U.S. Public Affairs Officer Juliet Wurr and United States-India Educational Foundation Executive Director Adam J. Grotsky opened a Satellite Information Center on March 23 at the Osmania University Center for International Programs in Hyderabad.

Here students from the area can receive free information about studying in the United States.

Landscape architect Lindsay Bacurin is using her Fulbright scholarship to compare the planning of the cities of Gandhinagar in Gujarat and Chandigarh in Punjab and Haryana. A graduate of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, she is based at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University in Ahmedabad , where she is also studying Hindi at Gujarat Vidyapith .

Fi lm loving enthusiasts cheered actress Priyamani (left) as she kicked off "Oscars 2010" with B. Ramakrishnan, president of the Indo Cine Appreciation Foundation , Bess Simkin, Consul General Andrew Simkin and K.S. Govindaraj (not shown) , the executive vice president of the Madras Film Society on April 19 in Chennai.

The film festival featured movies that won or were nominated for Oscars: A Serious Man , Julie & Julia, Inglourious Basterds and Up .

Since 1960, SPAN has had more than 40 front covers on entertainment.

In keeping with the theme of this issue , we are featuring some of them here.

SPAN

CoverArl

SPAN is celebrating 50 years of its successful journey of bridging U.S. -India relations.

Through this competition we want to share the celebration with our readers, who have been the most crucial part of this journey. SPAN invites artists and photographers to send designs, photographs, paintings, graphic arts, images of sculptures or installations or mural art to ezinespan@state.gov by September 1.

Exciting prizes to be won: • An iPad • The winner will be invited to spend a day at SPAN's Art Studio ' We also plan to put the winner's artwork on the first cover of SPAN's 51st year, the November/December 2010 issue.

Finalists will be asked to submit their original artwork for further evaluation.

Themes

Contest Rules

Guidelines

Eligibility

• Entrepreneursh ip • U.S. -India Science or • Technology cooperation • U.S.-India Relations • Education • Democracy

The entry must be the original work of the entrant. No copyrighted material can be used.

Winners will be required to give rights for publication of their work on U.S. Embassy Web sites and in print publications.

One entry per person.

All submissions must be jpg or tif files (8x10, 300 dpi tif file) and include the artist's full name, e-mail address and contact information.

Submissions must contain details of the medium. The artist is welcome to send along a short textual description of the work.

Open to Indian citizens age 12 and over.

Employees of the U.S. government and their immediate family members are not el igible to participate

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