TALK SEPTEMBER 13,2012

talk

Volume 1 | Issue 7 | September 27, 2012 | Rs 10

the intelligent bangalorean’s must-read weekly

As Bangalore delivers a record 60 surrogate kids this year, Sanchita Sen and Savie Karnel examine a business that’s giving childless couples joy, and bailing out women, especially garment workers, from financial crises Pages 12-15

BABY BAZAAR CRICKET Ranji teams bank on coaches from Karnataka 6

AYYOTOONS Jayalalithaa, the Bangalore beauty 9

MARTIAL ARTS Sensei Avinash Subramanyam on the way of Budo 16

MUSIC Thermal And A Quarter’s new album is a 3-disc whopper 20

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mail

Junk food, junk book Finally, someone who calls a spade a spade! After reading Prachi Sibal's article (Issue 5), I remembered being dragged to an Oxford bookshop ‘opening’ where Sudha Murty was hawking her book titled The Magic Drum or something, another waste of precious resources.

It was a scene straight out of The Emperor’s New Clothes, but here the brats were busy polishing off the free snacks, and not heeding the sycophants on stage.

Anyway, the gushing audience, who I assume have never read anything but this sanctimonious drivel, was lapping it all up. The only (slim) silver lining was that I got the book free. Or else I would have stood up and jeered, “Look, she has no talent!”

Kamal, by email Interesting mix I read with interest Savie Karnel’s articles on St Mary and the disabled athlete Girisha. Sridhar Chari’s take on individuals and groups was good, and I hope in the future he will discuss the concept of Muslim Umma, which drives the Wahhabi strain of Islamic fundamentalism.

Prachi Sibal’s review of Sudha Murty’s book was brave, but is it a true picture of the book? Also, C H Hanumantharaya’s column about his father was a revelation. Keep up the good work.

Capt Johann Samuhanand by email A weekly treat At the outset, my hearty congratulations on conceptualising and developing a weekly treat, amusingly titled Talk. I have had the privilege of reading the last few issues and I must say your magazine can become the ‘talk of the town’ in the near future. The articles are crisp and have a lot of life, with the photographs and graphics adding to the overall flavour. The enterprise stories in the last issue (by Sandra Fernandes) were inspiring.

Ayyotoons reminds me of a typical potboiler; please make it a full page like in the latest issue (dated Sep 20, 2012). To make the magazine even better, I would suggest regular columns on sports, music and movies, food, besides a bit of Sandalwood and

team talk EDITORIAL S R Ramakrishna Editor Sridhar Chari Consulting Editor Prashanth G N Senior Editor Sajai Jose Chief Copy Editor Savie Karnel Principal Correspondent Basu Megalkeri Principal Correspondent Bhanu Prakash E S Senior Reporter Prachi Sibal Senior Features Writer Sandra Fernandes and Maria Laveena Reporters and Copy Editors Anand Kumar K Chief of Design Shridhar G Kulkarni Graphic Designer Ramesh Hunsur Senior Photographer Vivek Arun Graphics Artist

EXECUTIVE TEAM Sumith Kombra Founder, CEO and Publisher Ralph Fernandez Manager - Marketing Aaron Jones Asst Manager Marketing Abhay Sebastian Asst Manager - Sales Aman Preet Singh Asst Manager - Sales Kishore Kumar N Head - Circulation Vinayadathan K V Area Manager Trade Mahesh Javvadi Asst Mgr - Corporate Sales Yadhu Kalyani Sr Executive Corporate Sales Lokesh K N Sr Executive Subscriptions Prabhavathi Executive Circulation Sowmya Kombra Asst Process Manager

Printed and published

by Sumith Kombra on behalf of Shakthi Media Ventures India Pvt Ltd FF70, Gold Towers, Residency Road, Bangalore -560025 and printed at Lavanya Mudranalaya, Chamarajpet, Bangalore-560018.

Editor: SR Ramakrishna. Editorial Office: FF70, Gold Towers, Residency Road, Bangalore 560025 Email: info@talkmag.in Phone: 08049332100, 08040926658. © All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.

sense of monotony. Hope the Bollywood. These would make for a magazine remains unpredictable. It complete package.

Sunil Ramachandran imparts a fresh feel.

Anand S by email Malleshwaram A fresh feel Do something catchy Talk gives the feeling of variety. The choice of stories is good and reflects From science to film, sports to food, there is a good choice to read in a wide range, though this can be Talk. While the range is good, you enhanced still. The stories are not will have to find a way of making an routine and one does not get a

impact on people’s minds as other magazines too have similar subjects.

From time to time, something very catchy and attention-drawing will have to be done. This should be good, not gimmicky.

Srinivasan M, Vijayanagar

What do you think of this edition? Write to letters@talkmag.in

fdi watch

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Wonder who will save Kingfisher RAMESH HUNSUR

Pioneer of India's budget airline industry says Vijay Mallya must bring equity of his own if he wants to attract investors to his floundering airline CAPT G R GOPINATH oreign direct investment in aviation should help the country and the aviation sector as a whole, and not any single airline.

A lot is being said about the crisis in Air India and Kingfisher. The first is a public-sector airline, and its problems are different from those of Kingfisher, run by Vijay Mallya. As we know, Kingfisher is in huge debt. It has virtually collapsed, with few aircraft now flying.

Whether the FDI announcement will work for Kingfisher depends entirely on what the investors make of the situation-of the airline’s value, and of whether it will break even within a given time.

FDI is definitely an opportunity for Kingfisher. More money can be infused into it to get it off the ground, but given the huge debt, I really wonder who will come forward to invest in it. The next move depends on what Mallya brings to the table, what plans he formulates and how he can convince investors that the airline can be turned around.

The least he could, if he wants to spur FDI, is bring in equity of his own. Where that will come from has to be seen, since we’re talking of something like Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 3,000 crore. This is not easy for Mallya. He and he alone must figure out ways of getting over the crisis. The investors will just want to look at the plans.

Perhaps the banks will step in and

F

What’s in store

 Fares will come down.  Kingfisher is too deep in debt to find investors.

 If government plays fair, all airlines will benefit.

 Indian banks may lend to airlines.

IN THE RED Vijay Mallya’s airline debt is estimated at Rs 7,000 crore

start investing in the airline business. I am be launched from scratch by any foreign guessing. If they don’t invest, why would investor who collaborates with a local people deposit money in the banks? And entrepreneur.

This will open up more flights to banks wouldn’t lend without estimating profits. I understand public sector banks in newer destinations. For example, India have the highest deposits. Their Bangaloreans can travel directly to investments will spur business sentiment, Lucknow, Guwahati, Tirunelveli, and which in turn will encourage public invest- Bhopal without stops mid-way. More airlines means more ment in banks. It’s not routes as all of them a bad idea for the We recently held won’t do the same banks to lend to the routes. Also, more airline industry. a Global become availBut I don’t know Investors’ Meet, seats able, so fares go what exactly the and can’t down. Air travel is banks or Mallya will likely to become do in the case of oppose FDI in cheaper.

Kingfisher. We must retail blindly.

One recent remember Kingfisher Murugesh R Nirani trend has me woris just one among sevKarnataka Industries ried. The government eral airlines, and FDI Minister, saying he won’t seems to be making applies to all. There has been concern that necessarily follow the BJP policies for individual Jet and Indigo are not central leadership line airlines—for Jet once, Indigo next, and then for FDI because they don’t want competition. SpiceJet and Kingfisher. We have to create a collective Indigo have up to 49 per cent foreign climate where all airlines and ordinary citiinvestment in some form. Whether they zens benefit from the government’s decisions. are keen on FDI has to be seen.

In principle, FDI enhances competiMore and more money is being pumped into Air India. The question now is tion, which drives down prices, and not how much money needs to be infused benefits citizens. Air travel becomes more into it, but what returns will come and popular, and more passengers means more revenue. All airlines will have to operate on when.

From another perspective, FDI could a rational cost basis, given that aviation in be a boon for the ordinary citizen. This is India works in a highly inflationary envian opportunity for start-ups and brand new ronment.

(As told to Prashanth G N) airlines to spring to life. A new airline can

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editor talk This has been a week of much action.

Shamed by Coalgate, and looking for something to divert the nation’s attention, the UPA government sprang a surprise by announcing it would allow foreign direct investment in aviation and retail. The government’s sharpest critics were forced to stop talking about the coal block-allocation scandal, and respond to decisions that will fundamentally change how we buy and fly. Predictably, the BJP called a bandh. Bangalore, a city fuelled by investments in software and outsourcing since the 1990s, is watching these developments with interest. It was from this city that Capt G R Gopinath challenged the cartels in the airline industry, and made flying affordable. In the article you see on this page, he tells us how foreign investment in aviation could play out.

Our cover story is about the surrogacy business, and its quiet, exponential growth in Bangalore. Our principal correspondent Savie Karnel visited a home for surrogate mothers in the suburb of Rajarajeshwari Nagar, off Mysore Road, and brought back fascinating details. Surrogacy is not new: history speaks of altruistic women delivering babies for others to raise. But outsourced motherhood, as we know it today, works almost like the flashy new American-inspired businesses now thriving in Bangalore.

Sanchita Sen spoke to clinics treating infertility, and also American couples who had hired wombs in Bangalore.

According to the International Institute of Population Sciences, 60-80 million couples suffer from infertility, with 1520 million being in India alone. A staggering 10 per cent of urban Indians in the reproductive age are said to be infertile. Ethical and emotional aspects of surrogacy remain muted even as Bangalore sees a huge business opportunity here.

We trust you will also like P Radhika’s brilliant profile of Sensei Avinash Subramanyam, who speaks with insight and clarity about the spirituality behind martial arts.

Happy reading!.

S R Ramakrishna ram@talkmag.in

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The oh-so-awesome family of awe

Awesome SAVIE KARNEL savie.karnel@talkmag.in hat if we were to say God is awful? Some centuries ago, it would not be offensive. In fact, it would have been the most appropriate word to use. The story of words in the family of awe is, as we say these days, awesome!

The word awe entered the English language around the 13th century from the Old Norse word agi, meaning ‘fright’ or ‘terror’. The W verb ‘to awe’ meant something that instils reverential wonder or fear.

The original meaning of awful was ‘something full of awe’, or ‘something that needs to be respected and feared’. Only someone like God could be awful. Over the years the word was used so much, and even for trivial things, that it came to denote something really bad. Perhaps awful The Talk was used for somecolumn on word origins thing so bad that it

W

made one fear or despise it. With awful losing its original meaning, a new word had to take its place. It was then that awesome was used in its place.

In fact, awesome entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598. Not surprisingly, back then, the meaning was different.

Awesome meant someone feeling awe rather than someone inspiring it. It could have been used like this: ‘I saw the bolt of lightning, and I was awesome.’ In the 1630s, awestruck entered the dictionary, which denoted someone filled with reverential fear. It was not long before awesome could be used with a new meaning.

In 1664, a Presbyterian sermoniser wrote, “The sight of his cross is more awesome than the weight of it.” This is the first recorded appearance of the word in its non-traditional meaning, according to journalist Robert Lane Greene, who wrote about it in More Intelligent Life magazine.

In 20th century translations of the Bible, awesome was used to describe God. There are many verses in the Old Testament where God is, well, awesome.

For instance, Psalm 68 has a verse which says, “You are awesome, God, in your sanctuaries.”

In the meantime, the change in the

K E Y

O R D S

usage of awesome had already begun. A of the trendier ones. Radio jockeys at the new FM stations started using the word 1980 bestseller The Official frequently for anyPreppy Handbook, a thing even mildy tongue-in-cheek good. These days, guide to ‘prepTV channels are py’ using awesome(American ness to describe slang for either themgraduate selves or their student) programmes, in life, was an (awful!) one of the attempt to make first to give the noun form of sanction to the the word stylish. current But recently, usage of the word. It an advertising camdefined awesome as ‘terpaign of a clothing brand rific or great’. Within no had hoardings all over that used time, this meaning took familiar buzzwords over, and soon was being like dude, and aweused all over the US for anything remotely good. some, but with Awesome in ironic overthis new form, tones, perhaps hit the Indian signalling that shores with the their cool quoBPO industry. tient is now Along with their dipping.

American accents, young trainees also picked up American words, with awesome being considered one

Political diary

Game over, Yeddyurappa?

Former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa had this to say at a public gathering in Haveri earlier this week: “K S Eshwarappa has been inefficient in handling the responsibilities of deputy chief minister, party president and revenue minister. If he has any moral responsibility towards the party, he should resign immediately.”

And this in excise minister M P Renukacharya’s house in Honnali: “More than our rival parties, we have infighting and chaos. I am putting up with a lot.

I don’t know

when I’m going to explode. If there is personal humiliation I won’t be in the party. I can quit anytime. Some leaders in the party are waiting for me to quit.”

Ayanur Manjunath, BJP RS member from Shimoga, known to be close to Yeddyurappa, said in Shimoga: “Transport and Home Minister R Ashok and JD(S) state president Kumaraswamy have been close friends.

Ashok agrees to everything that Kumaraswamy says. It’s better for Ashok to open an office in Kumaraswamy’s house.

Ashok has failed at every step in giving good administration. Then why is he in the BJP? Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar should teach him a lesson. Or else both can resign.”

So is Yeddyurappa finally leaving the BJP and forming his own? The indications are, yes. And even the BJP high command seems to have decided to live without him.

BSY is a mass leader who enjoys the support of the majority Lingayats. He can win 60 to 70 seats for the party in the 2013 elections. If he goes out, he can dent its prospects. But he faces many cases, and has caused enough damage to the party’s image.

His arrogance has alienated him from seniors in Delhi. The BJP high command is now giving the impression that they want him to quit.

Cong leader slams factionalism

Turning a deaf ear

Former Union Minister and MLC M V Rajashekharan has spent the 67 years in the Congress, and at 85, is one of the party’s most respected leaders.

A Lingayat, he is upset that a group from his community is out to demand the replacement of KPCC(I) President G Parameshwara, a Dalit, with Lingayat leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa. In a chat with Talk, he severely criticised factionalism in the party. “Forming groups, bringing in caste, fighting for power, behaving selfishly—all these go against the Constitution. This group says it represents Lingayats. Do they really know how the Lingayat community was born?

Basavanna (the founder) never took sides against any caste or creed. But they are forming groups and heading all the way to Delhi asking for powerful positions.”

He recalled Lingayat leaders Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil, and B D Jatti as “belonging to every community”.

Today, politics is a highway to crime. I have even written a letter to Sonia Gandhi to look into these problems,” he said.

Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda’s son and chief ministerial aspirant H D Revanna was in Kolar for an event to promote dairy products.

He shared the dais with central ministers M Veerappa Moily and K H Muniyappa.

Wary of Revanna, Moily and Muniyappa praised him as they paid their tribute to Amul guru Dr Verghese Kurien.

When it was his turn to speak, Revanna said, “The state is facing a drought. The central government has released Rs 198 crore. They need to release Rs 750 crore.

You’ve been in the central government, why don’t you pressure them? Don’t just talk…”

Muniyappa intervened, “Mr Revanna, the Central Government has released Rs 750 crore.”

But Revanna went on with his tirade, and Moily and Muniyappa’s faces grew longer and longer. The truth is that when Moily and Muniyappa were delivering their speeches, Revanna had stuffed his ears with cotton!

net practice

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In demand on the cricket field:

Gurus from Karnataka Team Baroda’s recent win of the national T20 title has turned the spotlight on an interesting phenomenon—coaches from our state quietly turning around the fortunes of Ranji teams all over the country

Looking back, stalwarts like Roger Former Indian all-rounder Sunil Joshi, who picked up Hyderabad’s reins after they were Binny have coached teams like Bengal, but demoted to the Plate Group (consisting of this is the first time coaches from Karnataka are at the helm of severaroda ended their decade-long the second-tier of Ranji teams), al state Ranji teams title drought in domestic crick- had a fantastic debut season as a simultaneously. et in March this year when they coach.

And back home, even the Though he could not help won the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Karnataka team is being coached championship. It was their first Hyderabad win any silverware, by former Karnataka batsman J national title since winning the Ranji he ensured that the team was Arun Kumar. So what is it about back in the elite league. The Trophy a decade ago in 2001. the cricket gurus from Karnataka While the win brought cheers to the icing on the cake came when that other teams find so attractive? cricketing fraternity of Baroda, known for Hyderabad sprang a surprise by Sanath Kumar Arun Kumar says, “They are its great cricketing history, there is a qualifying for the national finals Karnataka connection to savour. Former of the Vijay Hazare trophy ahead of much well-equipped to handle elite players as they are technically sound when compared Karnataka cricketer and Ranji coach Sanath fancied Tamil Nadu.

Today, Kumar and to coaches from other states.” Arun Kumar Kumar is the Baroda coach. It Joshi aren’t the only helped Karnataka reach the finals of the was his first national assignCoaches from coaches from Karnataka Ranji Trophy in 2010 after a long gap of 11 ment when he took over two in charge of Ranji teams years. years ago.

Karnataka are “Coaches from the old school of of other states. Former Baroda’s success not more technically Indian pacer and former thought want to believe they are masters of only proved his mettle as a sound, says state India bowling coach the game. But new age coaches realise they coach, but was also an indicaVenkatesh Prasad has and the players share a symbiotic relationtion why coaches from coach Arun been appointed coach of ship... and coaches are seen as support Karnataka are so much in Kumar Uttar Pradesh, while for- staff,” he explains. demand on the domestic cirMost coaches from Karnataka are mer India batsman cuit these days.

Kumar isn’t the only coach from Sujith Somasundar will be guiding the young, and they can vibe with young players from any state. “And once there is a comfort Karnataka to taste success last season. Kerala Ranji team.

ANGSHUMAN DEB BARMA

B

SYMBIOSIS: Modern coaches and their players share a special relationship built on trust and understanding . Karnataka spinner Sunil Joshi (in white floppy, 2nd from right) with the Hyderabad team

net practice level between the coach and the players, out relentlessly, they are inspired to emuthe results are automatically visible on the late me. Similarly, when I bowl at the nets for long spells, the boys ask me how I manfield,” says Arun Kumar. age without a break. My answer Somasunder adds good comto them is simple—I enjoy what I munication skills to the mix: do. That’s their cue—when you “These days, communication is a start enjoying what you do, big challenge for coaches. If you results are bound to show,” says take a look at coaches from Joshi.

Karnataka, their communication His success last year could skills are decent. They can underalso be credited to the fact that stand the players and today, that he was still active on the domesmatters a great deal.”

Sunil Joshi tic circuit when he took over The former Karnataka opener believes coaches can strategise well only Hyderabad. “Since I have been playing the if they understand the players. “These days, game, I’m aware of the demands of domesduring Ranji Trophy matches, one can no tic cricket. That’s an advantage when it longer shout and give directions from the comes to motivating the boys,” Joshi says.

There are other factors. Karnataka’s boundary line. So planning becomes a key young coaches have worked their factor for any coach,” says way up through a structured sysSomasunder, who is already maktem on the cricket field. ing a difference to the Kerala “Cooperative competition is team. a term I use to describe cricket in In fact, just after Karnataka. While there is Somasunder took over, the young immense competition among Kerala side managed to reach the the players, we also share knowlfinals of the Buchi Babu cricket edge,” says Somasunder. tournament in Chennai earlier Venkatesh Prasad Coaches from Karnataka use this month.

Not all coaches have the same style. the same method while coaching other Sunil Joshi, a more senior professional, teams, and in most cases, the results are likes to lead by example. “I am a fitness favourable. When coaches from Karnataka freak and when the players see me work work outside, they go with an open mind,

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VICTORS’ SPOILS: Coach Sanath Kumar (in white floppy) between Irfan and Yusuf Pathan. The Baroda team won the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament in Mumbai earlier this year, their first title since 2001

and no prejudices.

“And players find us different from local coaches, who usually take the players for granted. Even the players open up easily and feel free to share their views,” says Arun Kumar. When he used to play, he recalls, coaches would simply pick flaws.

For teams like Hyderabad and Kerala, a coach from Karnataka also gives insights into the opposition when they play Karnataka in the South Zone tournaments.

But coaches don’t set much store by that ‘advantage’.

“Yes, knowledge about the opposition does help, but these days, most teams know enough about their opposition. It might

help if a player is making his debut and the coach has seen him play local cricket. But that’s inconsequential,” explains Somasunder, whose team lost to Karnataka in the Buchi Babu finals.

In any case, when the new Ranji season gets under way next month, it will not only be the Karnataka players who will be fighting it out for the championship, but also cricketers-turned-coaches from the state who will want to guide their teams to glory.

(Angshuman Deb Barma is a freelance sports journalist and has been following Karnataka cricket closely)

fun lines

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rural distress

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Impassioned chronicler of an

invisible catastrophe

RAMESH HUNSUR

One of the few Indian academics to have extensively studied the wave of 2.5 lakh farmer suicides since the ’90s, A R Vasavi explains to Talk how the crisis is of our own making

SAJAI JOSE sajai.jose@talkmag.in

he numbers may vary, but the consensus is that an unprecedented wave of farmer suicides began in the late ’90s, a wave that is yet to subside. Journalist P Sainath, calls it “the largest catastrophe of our independent history—the suicides of nearly a quarter of a million farmers.”

A R Vasavi, who hails from Chikmagalur in Karnataka and lives in Bangalore, is one of the few aca- tion for rural youth.

Excerpts from an interview. demics in India to have devoted their energies to studying the crisis. Until Farmer suicides, extreme debt, even recently a professor of social anthro- cases of a desperate populace putpology at the National Institute of ting up entire villages for sale—the Advanced Studies, Bangalore, she picture that emerges from your book recently published Shadow Space, a is shocking. What ails rural India? probing study of farmer suicides and Complex trends operating both at rural distress. The first such study to the level of rural society and the appear in book form, it draws on her Indian state account for these dismal extensive research work in the most conditions. Rural society is undergoseverely afflicted states over a ing complex and contradictory social changes. For one, decade. She dismissthe caste system is es the standard portrayal of farmer The State is largely not withering away, as is popularly suicides as isolated accountable for assumed. Instead, tragedies, and forces rendering Indian there is a consolidathe reader to see villages into killing tion of caste-based them for what they interests and priviare: a largely humanfields leges, with a made and therefore simultaneous avoidable catastrophe. It’s a catastrophe that continues increase in caste-based deprivation and impoverishment. For instance, to take its toll.

Vasavi, who has taken a sabbati- gains from commercial agriculture cal from academia (to escape “the and decentralised administration or citadel of institutionalised think- Panchayati Raj have accrued mostly ing”), now works with rural to dominant castes. Attendant with communities in Chamarajanagar dis- this are problems such as fragmentatrict in Southern Karnataka, tion of land holdings, decrease in concentrating primarily on educa- rural livelihoods, the fatigue of the

T

SHADOW SPACE Suicides and the Predicament of Rural India Three Essays Collective Rs 350

Green Revolution, and increasing environmental problems. To add to all this, there is the continuing inability of rural citizens to mobilise themselves politically for their rights.

The State is also largely accountable for rendering rural India into killing fields. Over the past two decades, there has been significant neglect of policy, and a failure to address key problems surrounding the distribution and use of resources such as land, water, capital, technology, and knowledge. In the absence of well-thought-out policies, the deployment of populist programmes (such as free electricity), which do not benefit the majority of marginalised agriculturists, only helps make the vulnerable even more fragile.

You compare agrarian suicides to the preventable famines of the colonial era. Is the ‘agrarian crisis’ a manufactured one?

This contemporary distress is not deliberately ‘manufactured’, as were the famines of colonial India, but a result of deliberate neglect and failure to address the distress and the structural factors causing it.

Historically, such large-scale agrarian distress provokes violent upheavals. Why do distressed Indian farmers choose to kill themselves instead?

The fragmentation of rural India, the delinking of the rural elite from agriculture, and the vacuum in leadership account for this.

Currently, there is no significant farmers’ movement in any of the regions or at the national level. In addition, many agriculturists want to quit agriculture and do not see much hope in mobilising. One of the reasons for farmers to resort to self-destruction or suicide lies in the fact that agriculture is increasingly an individualised experience. Risks and losses have become individualised burdens borne by persons who internalise blame and shame—such as failure of crops, inability to repay loans, and so on—within themselves.

Pressures are placed on them, in the form of repeated notices. The creditors threaten to auction their land and houses, and paste posters in public places with defaulters’ names, and all this has added to the farmers’ feeling that they have lost their honour.

rural distress It is under such conditions that marginal cultivators feel it is not worth living.

You contrast the government’s quick and effective response to the potential failure of just one IT giant—Satyam Computers—with its own callous response to farmer suicides.

The farmer suicides started in 1997 and by 2008 nearly two lakh had killed themselves.

By 2004, the agricultural sector had decelerated and was contributing less than 25 per cent to the national economy. And the government did little until 2005 when a ‘relief package’ was announced, and the NREG (National Rural Employment Guarantee programme) was initiated. Yet, in 2009, when the Satyam scam hit the headlines, the government was very quick to step in and take emergency measures to halt any negative impact on the IT industry and its export earning potential. Within three days,. the government reconstituted the company’s law board, appointed persons to oversee a change of hands, and then facilitated the sale of the company.

Within a few months the company was back to functioning as usual. Such marvellous damage control! Why were similar measures not undertaken in the case of the continued agrarian distress?

Surprisingly, the most number of farmer suicides have taken place in states with high economic growth like Maharashtra and Karnataka. What explains this?

States such as Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka have been in the forefront of promoting commercialisation of agriculture including into the semi-arid belts. In such regions, commercial cultivation of crops such as cotton, pulses, vegetables, and sugarcane have spread by deploying new technologies, commercial and new seeds, and through an increasing dependence on capital.

Agriculturists who sought to enter into such commercial cultivation have typically been either large landholders or small and marginal holders. The very poor and the land-poor have not been affected as they do not undertake such commercial cultivation.

Large landholders are able to negotiate the market—its prices, fluctuations,

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access to capital—and are also able to bear production losses. However, the burden is heavy on small and marginal holders, who typically own or cultivate less than five hectares of land. They become victims of the fluctuations in prices, the vagaries of rainfall, and of production failures due to spurious seeds or spread of pests and diseases.

In a 2008 interview, the then Union finance minister P Chidambaram said farmers are doing badly because agriculture cannot support so many of them.

It is this attitude and economic belief— which even many middle class people hold—that accounts for this neglect.

Subscribing to this dominant idea, drawn from Western experience and theories, encourages the belief that all nations and all populations can and must march towards industrialisation and urbanisation. This is evident in many of the policy and planning documents at both the national and state levels. The failure and inability to see that the standard types and levels of industrialisation

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and urbanisation cannot cater to such large numbers (more than 700 million) has led to double disasters. There is the ongoing depletion of rural population and economy and the burgeoning population is then placed in miserable conditions in the towns and cities. The failure to recognise that agricultural and rural livelihoods must have a legitimate place in the economic imagination is also contributing to these distorted policies.

You argue that the celebrated Green Revolution has had a largely negative impact on Indian agriculture...

While the Green Revolution may have had a legitimate rationale in the 1960s, in the face of acute food scarcity and a burgeoning population, it has had a largely negative impact since then. Briefly, it retained the key problem of Indian agriculture —its caste-based and highly skewed distribution of land—but undermined its key strengths: its evolved, plural, complex and locally suitable body of agricultural patterns and knowledge. In its place, it promoted commercial and artificial fertilisers, seeds, pesticides etc. The displacement and loss of local knowledge and skills has subsequently led to dependence on external knowledge and inputs.

surrogate mothers

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MOMMY TOURISM Bangalore is delivering a record 60 surrogate children this year. Sanchita Sen reports on a business thriving on rising infertility and readily available wombs Bangalore, with its network of modsurrogate mother is told beforehand, “You can’t see your ern hospitals, is becoming a favourite baby.” That’s the rule: though destination for surrogacy, with childless she bears the child for nine couples from many neighbouring states months, she does not catch and some even from abroad making a beeline here. even a glimpse of her new-born.

“Women from lower socio-economic Surrogate mothers are counselled backgrounds usually become surrogate even before conception, and mothers. They use the every now and then during money to bail themselves their gestation, to make In most cases, out of money worries,” sure they don’t get emosays K R Chandrakanth, genetic parents tionally attached to the General Manager of baby growing inside their do not show Shrushti Global Medicare wombs. the new-born to and Research Foundation.

The business of makthe surrogate The centre for pregnant ing babies for the benefit of women run by the foundainfertile couples is boommother tion is located in the ing in Bangalore. In 2007, suburb of Rajarajeshwari Shrushti Global Medicare and Research Foundation, the only Nagar, off Mysore Road.

His organisation is among the many centre for surrogate mothers in Karnataka, delivered three in Bangalore offering fertility services, babies. This year, it has although it is the only one with a centre already delivered 30, and a that takes care of surrogate mothers all similar number is due in through their pregnant months. Surrogacy can be altruistic, where women offer to the next few months.

Although the his- bear children out of a desire to help, or tory of surrogate commercial, where the mother is paid a fee motherhood (where a for her service. Although ethical questions woman bears a child for are raised about poor women being another to raise) is traced exploited for procreation, fertility clinics to antiquity, its modern, believe they are helping them find a way medically assisted form came out of financial difficulties.

The clinics tell stories of how some into the spotlight in 1986, when an American woman refused to cede custody of a surrogate baby to its genetic parents. That incident gave rise to a debate on the Cost of a surrogate baby in India many ethical and emotional dimensions Foreigners come to India because of of surrogate motherhood, but in the cost advantage here. The entire Bangalore, going by the doctors, the procepackage, including hospital and dure is understood well by women who legal costs, is Rs 40 to 50 lakh in offer to stand in as mothers. the West, while it starts at Rs 11 Recently, film star Aamir Khan and his lakh in India. For local couples, a wife Kiran Rao announced their baby had surrogate child costs even less, as been delivered by a substitute mother, raisthey have to pay no legal fees. ing public awareness and acceptance of the concept of surrogacy.

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Rs 11 lakh

surrogate mothers

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Who can be a surrogate mom?

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, a surrogate mother must:

Be between 21 and 35 years.

Be mentally and physically fit.

Sign a consent letter, endorsed by family.

Not volunteer more than three times.

Dr Kamini Rao of the Bangalore Assisted Conception Centre

The guidelines do not specify any fee. Genetic parents and the surrogate mother usually get into an understanding on the money bit. Facilitating agencies pay Rs 2-3 lakh to the surrogate mother.

women, who would have committed cannot directly contact a surrogate suicide because of poverty, are doing mother: they have to go with a recomwell after they volunteered as surro- mendation from a fertility clinic, where the wife is certified as incapable gate mothers. tion of economic disparity,” she says.

Not all women qualify as surro- of bearing a child.

As of now, no centralised agency “We follow strict guidelines to gate mothers. “This is a sensitive issue.

The woman is responsible for deliver- ensure that women don’t opt for surro- exists to govern the intricacies of suring a baby of a childless couple. So her gacy because of factors like a rogacy, but once the ART Bill is passed, nature and character are important demanding career. That’s why a doc- the grey areas may acquire clarity.

Infertile couples ask the doctor to tor’s recommendation is a must,” says parameters,” says Chandrakanth.

Since ‘nature and character’ are Dr Kamini Rao, member of the draft- help find a surrogate mother, but in ing committee, Assisted some instances, they come with their hard to define and discern, own choice of surrogate mother, usuReproductive clinics usually ally someone from the family. “One of Technology choose women (Regulation) Bill. The the most touching cases that I have referred to them by STAR KIDS bill is expected to be come across was that of 35-year-old women’s organisaAamir Khan and Kiran introduced in parlia- mother becoming a surrogate mother tions. The brief is to Rao, Sarah Jessica to the baby of her own 22-year-old ment soon. scout for good-natured Parker and Matthew Three persons are daughter. The surrogate mother was women in need of finanBroderick, Kelsey Grammar, Dennis involved in the surrogacy actually the grandmother of the baby, cial help.

Quaid, and Ricky process: the biological but once the ART Bill is passed, such “During the gestaMartin have all become mother and father, and things may not come to pass because it tion period, we take care parents with the help of surrogate mothers. the woman who makes stipulates that a surrogate mother has of their food, stay and her womb available for to be someone from the same generawell-being. We also gestation. Each country is tion,” explains Rao. ensure that they don’t While surrogacy is a boon for governed by its own legislamiss any tests or tion, and the law varies from many childless couples, it requires appointments with their docultra-sensitive handling. “We prevent one country to another. tors,” says K T Gurumurthy, “Cross-border reproduction care breastfeeding by the surrogate mother embroyologist and Managing Director, because that leads to bondis on the rise, with India being one of Shrushti. ing with the child,” says Dr Life changes for the surrogate the most sought-after destinaRamesh B, CEO, Dr Ramesh mother. For one, she stays away from tions for fertility tourism. But there is Hospital, Rajajinagar. her family for nine months. Her family some hostility and mudslinging Whether to show is allowed to meet her, and she can go between the surrogate mother the baby to the surrogate home on the condition that she is and the fertility centres on mother or not is the bioaccompanied by a supervisor. The clin- many issues, including money,” logical parents’ decision, ic keeps an eye on her all the time to explains Rao, who also runs the but in most cases, they Assisted ensure she does not have sex with her Bangalore prefer not to. Children are husband: if he is HIV positive, the child Conception Centre. introduced to artificial The question of the runs the risk of infection, too.

Bab feed right after birth. If A centre for surrogate mothers nationality of the child born Deliveriesy boom surroga at Shrushti the biological parents live houses women in different stages of through surrogacy needs to cy c 2007 — entre abroad, babies are certified pregnancy. In the past five years, be addressed. India is tak3 2008 — fit to fly home within a Bangalore doctors say they haven’t ing the lead in evolving a 2009 — 7 month. In the past couple of come across a single case in which a law that safeguards the 2010 — 10 2011 — 14 years, Dr Ramesh has oversurrogate mother was reluctant to give interests of all parties 2012 — 21 seen 25 surrogate children 3 concerned, including the up her baby.

0 * *so far, more du being sent to their genetic Of 85 babies delivered by surro- child born through assiste parents abroad. However, he is gate mothers at Shrushti in the past ed reproductive technology not treating couples from across five years, 30 were for childless couples (ART).

“The global trade in assisted the border now because of “bureaufrom abroad, mainly from countries reproduction challenges us to balance cratic hassles.” like the US, UK and Australia.

Once the ART Bill is passed, docFertility centres from Tamil Nadu the rights of individuals across nationand Andhra Pradesh also seek surro- al borders, especially since some tors will feel more confident about gate mothers in Bangalore. Parents groups are more vulnerable in a situa- taking up cross-border cases.

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IN FIRST PERSON ‘I want to keep it a secret’

I know the baby boy I have delivered belongs to a couple from America. I have two daughters, aged four and six, and they mean the world to me. Once I got my remuneration, I used it to pave the future of my own daughters. We were so poor, as a family we were contemplating suicide. My husband is an auto driver. We had run up a huge debt that was almost impossible to pay off. This option came as a boon. We have repaid the loan, and I have even started a small tailoring business.

We are financially stable. With my husband's consent, I offered my womb, but I will never want my children to know I was a surrogate mother. I was strong enough not to develop any bonding with the child, but I can’t think of being a surrogate mother again.

Induvati 29, name changed, surrogate mother

‘I learnt about it on the Net’

I have a one-year-old baby girl delivered by a surrogate mother in Bangalore. After trying to conceive for almost five years, I was told my medical condition was such that surrogacy was my only option. When I researched on the internet, I noticed India was described as a country where surrogacy was managed well.

And we chose Bangalore as we had heard about the city emerging as a medical tourism hub. We gathered the weather, food and accommodation were good. We found everything smooth and well taken care of, and I now have my bundle of joy in my arms. But I will never want her to know anything about this.

Not even when she grows up.

Sharon Murphy 38, name changed, advertising professional, resident of California

‘She’s a living God’

The woman who delivered my baby boy is next only to God. I respect her a lot, but will never want my child to know anything about her. It was only because of a medical complication that I was advised to opt for a surrogate mother. Bangalore is not very far from my city. Everything was arranged in time. The doctors were helpful and always kept us informed. We used to visit the surrogate mother every month and we stayed in Bangalore the last month. We have not told anyone in our family about taking the services of a surrogate mother. It is a secret my husband and I will live with for ever.

Vijaya Shekar 37, name changed, homemaker, resident of Coimbatore

surrogate mothers

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RAMESH HUNSUR

HIRE A WOMB: At Shrushti, in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, surrogates lead a confined existence during their pregnancy. They receive good care and nutrition, and get to rest for the first time in many years.

Inside a baby-making unit Garment workers trying to overcome financial difficulties are a majority among surrogate mothers.

Talk meets pregnant women who display an unsentimental acceptance of their job: delivering children for others

SAVIE KARNEL savie.karnel@talkmag.in

hen we set out to visit the centre housing surrogate mothers in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, off Mysore Road, we only had a vague address.

Every time we asked for the phone number of the centre, the coordinator of Shrushti Global Medicare and Research Foundation turned us down. That was to maintain confidentiality, and we were soon to understand the importance of confidentiality in the business of surrogacy.

What we knew: we had to get to a bluecoloured house with a glass front. When we finally located the place, we realised it wasn't exactly a house; it resembled a corporate office with a glass façade. The guard wouldn’t let us in before we had spoken to his boss over the phone.

Once we got in, it was clear it was no ‘home’. For all practical purposes, it was a professionally run office, with beds in place

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When the guard announced that someof cubicles. The women were there simply to one from a newspaper had come for a story, do a job: deliver babies.

The three-storey building holds about a surrogate mother called out to the rest.

30 women who have rented out their The women whispered among themselves wombs. The surrogate mothers are housed that the boss might scold them if they didn’t on all three floors. The ground floor has a talk to the reporter. It was a school scene living room, and a kitchen that doubles up as where students are scared of the principal, and do whatever he orders. a recreation room. Each But then, their ‘boss’ floor has about 20 beds in was not so bad after all. two rows, and looks like a Families of When a surrogate mother dormitory. Every bed has surrogate mothers called out to him, he told the same hospital-style blue her she was under no comsheet and blanket. Two narcan meet them to talk or get herself row, long tables, arranged only at the clinic, pulsion photographed. The women in an L-shape, are used for not at the centre could speak only if they dining, and playing carwished to, and refuse the roms. A water dispenser and a wooden cabinet with steel plates and photography request.

The women are clear why they are tumblers stand in a corner. Pictures of nursthere: to earn money and get out of a finaning mothers are hung on every wall.

Life at a surrogate motherhood centre cial crunch. “Our womb is for hire,” said is insulated from the rough and burly of the Sunita (29), in a matter-of-fact tone. Before outside world. The women step out only for coming here, she used to work in a garment periodic tests and scans. Their families can factory where she was paid Rs 3,000 a visit them, but only at the clinic, and not at month. Interestingly, a majority of surrogate mothers here are garment factory Shrushti.

surrogate mothers workers. Tired of poor working conditions, they find a new opportunity in surrogacy.

After a woman gives birth, she gets Rs 2 lakh, and a gift worth Rs 30,000.

Since conception, Sunita has received a month salary of Rs 3,000, and the parents she is helping pay for her stay and food.

“With the money I will pay off my debts, and try to secure the future of my sons,” said the mother of two.

While she is here, her husband and mother look after her children. Sunita sounds pragmatic when she says, “I know the child in my womb is not mine. I am just helping a couple who are in turn helping me financially.”

The counselling sessions provided by the centre seem to have worked. I expected at least Madhu to have some emotional attachment to the child she was carrying, but she bluntly says she feels no such bonding.

Madhu (24) was married when she was fifteen and bore two sons. Four years ago, one of her sons died. The seven-yearold banged his head into Madhu’s sewing machine, and died of a blood clot in the brain. “We tried to save him, for which we took a loan of Rs 2 lakh,” she said. Madhu borrowed from a pawn broker who charged her 10 per cent interest every month. Her husband works as a security guard and earns Rs 5,000 a month. Madhu is a tailor

who used to earn about Rs 3,000 a month. acceptance, ethical and emotional dilem“Our earnings are spent on running mas arise.

Surrogate mothers come from social the house, and part of it goes towards the interest. With our income, we will never be backgrounds where awareness about what able to pay off the principal, and so I chose they are going through is low. Many in to be a surrogate mother. I know the child their family circles have never heard of assisted reproduction. is not mine, and don’t want to keep it,” she medically Sometimes, people suspect the surrogate says.

Many surrogate mothers here say they mother has had sex with the recipient feel distanced from the children they are father. A pregnant woman raises many eyegoing to deliver. “We have opted for this brows, especially if she is a widow, or pregnancy to better the lives of our own abandoned by her husband.

“After my husband's children. Why would we death, I have been strugwant to keep this child Some surrogate gling to make ends meet with us?” asks Sunita, by working in a garment pointing to her bulge. mothers face factory. When a colleague Within these walls, ethical and told me about surrogacy, I there are no apprehenemotional took it up. I could certainsions of caste and creed. dilemmas ly not live in my locality Nagaratna (30) is a with this bulge. People Brahmin priest’s wife, and doesn’t care what caste the child in her would have talked ill about me,” says womb comes from. “I have spoken to the Kaveri.

She has not even told her brothers. “I parents over the phone. I don’t know much about them,” she says. Her husband works had to tell my mother because I wanted her in a temple, and she used to work as a sales to stay with my two children. My brothers assistant in a pharmacy. She hopes to save will not understand,” she says, but without any visible despair. the money for her 13-year-old daughter.

The mothers want to keep surrogacy While the commercialisation of surrogacy stares us in the face, we cannot deny it hidden from their biological children. is helping childless couples on the one “When they see us, they understand there hand, and poor women in need of money is a baby in my womb. They expect it to be on the other. But, despite their clinical a sibling. My children are told I have gone

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out to work and am living in a hostel. That is not a lie, in any case,” says Kaveri.

In the case of Nagaratna, whose daughter is 13, dressing up the truth is not so easy. “We haven’t told her anything. But she has somehow figured it out. I will someday talk to her about it,” says the priest’s wife. The mothers are satisfied with the conditions of the place they are housed in, which they find more comfortable than their own homes. Pramila, who came here as a surrogate mother, gave birth to twins two months ago, and has stayed back to work as the warden of the centre. “I like it here,” she says, beaming. She has her weekends off, when she goes home to visit her husband and son.

Many hope not to go back to their previous lives. “Life is tough in a garment factory,” says Kaveri. She wants to start a small business of her own. “While we are here, we do a beautician’s course. I hope I can put those skills to good use,” she says.

The centre follows a strict diet for the mothers, with fruits and milk. Both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food is served.

The food is nutritious, and usually better than what they could afford during their own pregnancies. The freedom from toil is valued, too. It is for the first time in many years that the women are given care, and allowed to relax.

(All names changed)

martial art guru Over four decades, Avinash Subramanyam has travelled to the world’s greatest senseis and mastered the most difficult of martial arts. He shares with P Radhika his insights into training, body intelligence, everyday life and spirituality

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AWAKENING Training is not just for combat, but also to understand the self, Avinash Subramanyam tells his students

COMING! Starting next week: An exciting series on self-defence

by Avinash Subramanyam, shot specially for Talk. Make sure you’re warmed up and ready!

hat is important in budo, the ‘martial path’ or the ‘way of the warrior’, is not merely the destination but the journey itself. This is one of the many lessons you come away with after meeting Avinash Subramanyam, one of India’s foremost martial arts practitioners.

Avinash, as he likes to be called, excels in various forms-Karate, Ninjitsu, Tai Chi, Dao Yin, Lian Gong and Qi Gong. The website of his centre (www.seefar.in) lists his achievements, but no list can adequately capture the man who likes to describe himself as ‘ordinary’.

Looking at him in jeans and t-shirt, you could mistake him for any other. But there is something to this ‘ordinary man’ that warrants a story.

Thirty-nine years ago, his martial arts journey began in Hyderabad, “perhaps to overcome intimidation by people around me”.

Beginning with boxing and judo at 13, he subsequently learnt karate for 15 years. “But there was something lacking,” he recalls. This void set him on a journey that took him all across the world, from China to Japan to Canada, and to teachers in the remotest of places.

Bruce Lee was not a name in India when Avinash started learning martial arts. But in the mid-1970s, he was becoming a phenomenon in India, and as a result Chinese martial arts gained popularity. At 24, Avinash was already teaching karate to about 1,000 people in the Indian army, and a 1,000-photo documentation of his training sent to a karate master in Japan earned him his first travel abroad to learn the art. But the locale was not of the slightest interest to Avinash, who did not even cross a road to see Tokyo or take in any of Japan’s tourist attractions. All his wanderings were limited to the realm of the arts he was learning.

And they were no less exciting. He realised the martial arts were “not about aggression or fighting an opponent but fighting the inadequacy within oneself.” Avinash has trained, over the last four decades, under the greatest teachers, some the very founders of art forms: Tai Chi (Grand Master Feng Zhiqiang), Dao Yin (Grand Master Zuang Guangde) and Lian Gong (Grand Master Zhyuan Yuan Ming).

“It is enough to know each

was unique; they had unbelievable knowledge.

In comparison, I am nothing. But names are not important, for how can I do justice to the innumerable nameless people who have shown me what budo means-a five-year-old child in Japan who corrected my technique, showing me in a single move what I, as a martial arts teacher, was struggling to grasp, and an 80-year-old teacher who effortlessly sliced through wooden blocks with a katana (a Japanese sword) when I, with all my training, couldn’t even manage to hold the blocks in place?”

Simplicity and humility not only marked the lives of great masters but also their martial arts. One of Avinash’s teachers told him to spend a year each mastering just one punch, one block and one kick, since “one technique is all techniques”. He also got a word of caution to keep his kick simple: “The higher you kick the harder you fall”.

At 14, proud that he could do a hundred push-ups, Avinash asked his teacher how many he could do. The answer left him sceptical: 5,000! The teacher then stood upright and pushed his hands upwards. He smiled and said, “You waste your whole life pushing downwards, but I lift the sky”. The upward movement embodied a way of life measured not by big, strong arms and muscles but by internal freedom and strength.

Training at Seefar focuses on developing internal energy or the life-force called qi, or what is known in India as prana. To put it in the words of Master Shifu of Kung Fu Panda, it helps “harness the flow of the universe” to achieve the impossible. Avinash recounts watching wrinkled 80year-old Japanese masters, bent with age, who could, without any ado, slice through rolls of mats with a sword.

It is possible qi accounts for the inexplicable events in Avinash’s own life. He once survived an electric shock that ripped through his body when he came into contact with a 11,000-volt live wire. Defying medical logic, he managed to drive himself to the hospital, and then come

out unscathed. The point is not to question medical science, he says, but to recognise possibilities beyond reason and logic.

Martial arts training reveals something vastly undermined: body intelligence. Usually, we process our thoughts and actions through our brains. But if we acknowledge the existence and vastness of knowledge that lies beyond analytical reasoning, says Avinash, we begin to understand body intelligence. He cites his experience: “I learnt to kick well when I let my leg kick; I learnt to punch better when I let my hand punch.” That does not mean the mind is not important. “Ultimately”, he observes, “we need to achieve synergy of mind, body, spirit and soul.”

Body intelligence also explains why animals play such a central role in Avinash’s life.

Chinese martial arts have drawn on movements of the tiger, snake, crane and monkey in forms such as Qi Gong, Wing Chung and Wushu. But essentially, Avinash says, what we need to learn from the animals is their uninhibited freedom when they fight. When a leopard weighing 60-100 kg attacks a bison weighing 1,000 kg, it goes for the enemy fearlessly. It is not technique or muscle but this freedom, uncontrolled by reason, that is the key to a good punch or kick. The inner force arising from freedom can help one scale

‘impossible’ h bat or in life.

Avinash limited to th four dogs (o and cares for You will find his walk to f doctor to tre acquired by pulled a stra the doctor sa he placed it i out twitchin and ate witho constitutes t For him underneath a years, and w unveil. And bond with st elty inflicted If this images of an pher, it is fa admits he is phy. He can b off his chair and Hardy. P how slapstic

heights, whether in martial com. h’s connect with animals is not heir fighting ability. He lives with nly because he can’t have more!) r many around his neighbourhood. d him stop his car or pause during feed stray dogs and cats, or call a eat their wounds. This love wasn’t will: “It is just there”. Once, he ay cat out of the gutter, and when aid it required warmth to survive, inside his shirt, slept with it withng a muscle, and brushed his teeth out disturbing it. This selfless love he essence of Avinash’s life. m, the truth of each person’s life lies all the muck accumulated over the which martial arts training can Avinash’s truth lies in his special trays, defenceless against the crud on them. picture of Avinash conjures up n austere, robe-wearing philosoar from the truth. Avinash readily not a man of intellect or philosobe the absolute prankster, and falls sharing a joke or watching Laurel People around him tease him for ck and unserious he can be. He

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they need to be accompanied by concrete internal training.

How else does training in the martial arts benefit a person?

It is a mistake to think martial arts is merely for those interested in learning combat. In fact, it’s a way of life. Training builds great body language. It vastly improves your health because you train to react to the world at the level of the skin and not with your heart and mind. This reduces the body-mind damage manifested through illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, cancer and depression. At the level of the psyche, internal training builds tremendous confidence, security and energy.

It increases your threshold to bear hunger, thirst, sleep and pain. Negative emotions such as fear, insecurity, jealousy and anger diminish. You feel so internally secure that you need very little externally, in terms of work and relationships, to make you happy. That is true joy.

enjoys his Absolute and Glenfiddich, his Marlboros and Dunhill ultra lights. He is an ordinary man, but one living it in an extraordinary manner.

In a freewheeling interview over four sittings, he explains the connection between martial arts and karma, spirituality, and intuition.

You say martial arts training cuts through the identities we are known by, clearing away the muck, and shows what’s the real self. What does this mean in concrete terms?

Largely, we identify ourselves through the experiences of our life and a conscious understanding of those experiences. Training helps us get a glimpse of the internal universe built not consciously but on body intelligence. If you take the film The Bourne Identity, after Jason Bourne is riddled with bullet injuries in his head, he loses consciousness and has no memory of the past. But, when the doctor throws a gun at him, he breaks it into bits and pieces. He can take on seven people in combat.

His consciousness doesn’t know that he can open a gun but his body knows it. This is body memory, body intelligence.

When you practise martial arts like Tai Chi, with a focus on internal training, there is a cleansing of the body through the awakening

of qi. This happens because martial arts draws largely from animal styles, and helps the body synchronise with nature, which in turn awakens qi. We need to realise that this is a bodily awakening, not that of the mind or the brain.

Even in yoga, for example, the awakening in the kundalini is represented with a serpent at the tip of the spine and not in the brain. This awakening creates internal harmony that leads to a realisation of a whole new self.

Management gurus talk about the importance of intuition and gut feeling. Are you saying something different when you talk about body intelligence?

Intuition is part of a higher experience that develops when you confront danger and death.

A mountain climber develops intuition because he confronts death at every step.

When you practice weapon training, you know even a small mistake can lead to injury. But what experiences of a management person can help build intuition? Intuition is body language honed by real life experience, by long years of training. You cannot teach instinct on a blackboard. You can’t ask 20 questions and decide whether a person has instinct or not.

Also, how much can outbound activities like monkey crawl and spider web help develop instinct? Management concepts are right but

Though you emphasise internal or spiritual training, you are not a guru in saffron or white. What do spirituality and religion mean to you?

Spirituality is an understanding of self, an acknowledgement of internal changes that occur with training. If you take my own example, when I was young, I did not believe in God. I believed that everything that happened in my life was because of me. But life and training taught me differently. They led me to believe in nature, universe and God beyond the ‘me’, the ego. I have experienced how with training a person becomes less hard and rigid. My greatest teachers were the kindest and gentlest of people. For me the most spiritual people are those who accept their mistakes, come out of the hard and brittle ways of life, and empathise with others. This quest for inner knowledge, to know who you are and what makes you tick, is an expression of spirituality. This is different from a mere practice of religious rituals.

Martial arts’ training that focuses on internal freedom sheds you of religious dogma and restriction. You are not bound by anything, and you walk tall, walk free. You learn to accept all paths as having some value. You may say martial arts is a religion with its own discipline. But it does not prescribe dos and don’ts; it doesn’t say that our path is the only path to truth.

During your college going years, you were free and rebellious—a drag-racing, 501 jeans-wearing man. How do you explain your transition?

True, when I was young I was a biker, racer and rebel, but I was also training. I was disciplined.

And training changes you. I realised to rebel for the sake of rebelling was not cool. I did not wear torn 501 jeans because it was fashionable.

I continue to wear 501s for 40 years because I believe it reflects me. The holes release the tension in the cloth, making it more comfortable. It makes it easier for me to move and kick in an emergency. When I see the holes, I also see it as reflecting my life (smiles): it makes me humble.

(Radhika is a post-doctoral researcher at Nimhans, Bangalore and a student of Avinash Subramanyam)

back stage

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Revisiting a classic, from the light box Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden is common on the English theatre circuit. Which is why our reviewer decided to watch it from a different perspective, literally intensity levels. The setup is quite elaborate and precise. Some of the transition lights are automated, giving those on the light board time to rgentine-Chilean writer sift through the script and keep pace Ariel Dorfman’s Death with the action on stage.

We could hear a flurry of footand the Maiden, a play about the encounter of a steps and knew the audience had rape and torture victim entered the theatre down below. I with her torturer, is a modern classic. watched as one of the technicians That is to say, it has been done to braced himself for the show with a short prayer. There was worry in the death.

Having seen nearly half a dozen room as a neighbor in the locality had performances over the years, I won- taken to playing loud devotional music. Mattresses dered how I could were hurriedly fixed make it a little more on the windows of interesting for Set in the Chile myself. of 1973, the play the lighting booth to minimise the sound I’ll watch it from tells the tale of a entering the perthe theatre’s lighting political prisoner formance area. It booth, I decided, to clearly wasn’t worksee if that casts the ing too well. The play in a different light (ahem!). Gautam Raja, technical real relief came when one of the staff director of the theatre, found the idea members darted in to say that the a bit bizarre, and tried to warn me neighbour had agreed to stop the about the perils of watching a play music for the day.

From here, while the facial through reflective glass, but was expressions had a lower impact, the eventually persuaded.

Jagriti’s lighting booth is the activity on the stage itself was magnionly lit up area of the theatre fied. The lighting transitions could be apart from the stage, and offers a anticipated and one’s attention would bird’s eye view of the hall. The be drawn to them naturally. The technicians manning the booth shadows made for interesting watchlooked at me with a sceptical ing too. The audio was perhaps the smile, but generously offered only trouble, as the sound could hardme a high stool. The light ly make its way into the sealed room. board was a combination of I was rescued by a technician who sliding switches and buttons lent me his headphones and resorted with an attached number pad to a copy of the script for himself.

Directed by Ashish Sen, the play where values of the exact light intensity required could be itself proved to be an unadulterated punched in. A monitor displayed version of Dorfman’s original script.

PRACHI SIBAL

prachi.sibal@talkmag.in

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ROLE REVERSAL In Death and the Maiden, a political prisoner and rape victim, played by Arundhati Raja (below), puts her tormentor (Salmin Sheriff, right) on ‘trial’

Set in the time of the 1973 Chilean coup, when the country’s democratically elected President Salvador Allende was removed and later murdered by a group led by General Pinochet, the play tells the story of Paulina Salas (played by Arundhati Raja) and her husband Gerardo Escobar (Jagdish Raja).

Taken political prisoner during the time of the unrest Paulina lives with horrific memories of being raped several times by a stranger under the supervision of a sadistic doctor who played Schubert’s wellknown composition Death and the Maiden during the crime.

An unknown visitor, Roberto Miranda (Salmin Sheriff ) comes knocking at their door one evening and Paulina recognises her tormentor. She ties him up and decides to put him on trial, on her own terms.

The husband in turn is caught between his wife’s unrevealed demons and the fairness of her trial of the visitor.

The play has been adapted for stage and for screen several times and is a perennial favourite of directors because of its emotionally powerful scenes.

While the script leaves no room for lack of intensity, the per-

formances in Sen’s version matched it in emotional strength.

Salmin Sheriff was a delight to watch on stage despite having very few actual lines. He took the character of the frightened doctor to a new level. What perhaps broke the stereotype here was the use of older actors in comparison to other stage adaptations and the films based on the script in both English and Hindi.

Arundhati Raja’s performance though convincing was quite easily forgotten during Jagdish Raja and Salmin’s debates. Overall, the director’s contribution to the production seemed minimal and the actors’ comfort in their characters quite natural.

For those new to the play this could well be a minimally flawed and direct telling of the classic. For others well-acquainted with the script, the performance merely revisits the play without much creative improvisation. I was glad I did some improvisation of my own, at least in the watching.

Death and the Maiden will be staged at Jagriti Theatre, Whitefield on September 22, 8 pm and September 23, 3 pm and 6.30 pm

jockey life

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

19

Flowers, chocolates, and threats The obsessed fan is every celebrity's nightmare.

Bangalore’s RJs sometimes get their share of unwanted attention

Facebook page that I was dead,” she recalls.

Monica is not the only one. RJ Pavitra from Radio One had a fan who would come to the FM station often to meet her, and buy her chocolates and other gifts.

“I don’t like people presenting me with gifts and so I refused to take SANDRA M FERNANDES anything from him. Whenever he sandramarina.fernandes@talkmag.in turned up, I would ask my assistant to tell him I was out,” Pavitra said.

One Saturday morning, howevn a lonely world, the disembodied voice over the airwaves, er, he came to the studio and waited friendly, teasing, understand- for more than an hour. “Finally, when ing, seemingly talking only to I was done with my show and was you, establishes a connect like about to leave, he just grabbed my no other. And the best radio jockeys arm saying that he wanted to buy me (RJs) have mastered this art, winning coffee. I was really scared as there was them legions of fans. But there is a no one in the office. I had to tell him dark side, as many of the city’s RJs someone was waiting for me and he left. Even after that, he kept visiting, have discovered.

Unwittingly, their on-air intima- but I didn’t entertain him. I guess he cy hooks disturbed minds, who begin finally got the message and stopped.”

Dr Shyam Bhat, psychiatrist, to feel that they have a right to the RJ’s special attention. Some stop at says that some listeners can end up sending flowers and chocolates, and feeling they understand the RJs on an emotional level. are satisfied with a “Since they lissmile or a handRJs are stalked ten to them very shake. For others, it mostly by often, they relate to becomes an obsesthem, and in some sion. Enter the youngsters who ways they are relatstalker… look normal and ing to an aspect of RJ Monika educated themselves that (name changed) they want to develfrom a popular FM station, was stalked by a young man op,” he explains.

RJ Punitha, from Fever 104, was for over a year. “Initially, I thought he was just like any other fan. But what out one evening with a colleague, scared me was that he would come to when a man approached her. “He all our outdoor broadcasts and just asked if I was Punitha. I said yes and stand and stare at me, which was very spoke to him for a minute and then excused myself,” she said. creepy,” she says.

“After that, he insisted on buying He would bombard her with emails and phone messages. This me drinks. He asked me if I could would include death threats which dance with him, which I politely would take the form of predictions— refused,” she said.

“Later on he started dancing that she would hit a truck and smash her head underneath it, for example. right behind me, commenting about “At times, when I went off-air for me and my personality. I confronted a few days, he would write on my him. I complained to the manage-

I

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD (From left) RJs Shraddha, Pavitra and Punitha have all had unpleasant experiences with crazy fans

ment and left the venue eventually.”

In another incident a man met her at the radio station and gifted her some chocolates. “Since I was in a hurry, I couldn’t thank him properly.

So I called him many times from the office phone, but he never picked it up. Finally I messaged him from my personal number. Since that day he constantly keeps messaging me and calling me,” she says.

After that incident, she has never given out her personal number to anyone.

These incidents usually involve young individuals.

Monika says the young man stalking her looked “very normal and educated.”

She had to seek a friend’s help.

He spoke to the stalker and put a stop to the harassment.

It is not uncommon for fans to visit radio stations to meet their favourite RJs. Usually, the RJs chat with them, offer them coffee and a tour of the station.

Some approach them for ‘help.’

Shraddha remembers a paranoid fan. “She would come every day to meet me at the station and tell me that some-

one was going to kill her. I would have coffee with her, try to calm her down, and she would then leave,” she recalls.

One day the disturbed fan stopped coming.

Radio stations have security at the reception. RJs are given strict instructions on how to interact with fans. “We are told not to give any leads to our listeners, or mislead them in any way. If some listener asks to meet us over coffee, we do not encourage that,” says Shraddha.

RJs are taken through an induction process, where they are told how to manage their image on air.

“They are trained to understand and decode phone calls. If they suspect something is wrong, the callers are taken off air,” says Trigam Mukherjee, Senior Associate, AR&R Communications.

Occasionally, the police are called to handle unruly fans.

Social media technologies have given fans another way to connect with celebrities. “Yes, with Facebook, fans can reach out to us, but if they post something inappropriate, I delete their comments quickly. Criticism is fine and appreciated, but not posts that are personal in nature,” says Shraddha.

With Facebook, fans can easily access RJs’ profiles and know where they are when they go on an outdoor broadcast. But RJs don’t always see that as a problem, as most fans are friendly.

liner notes

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

20

For those who still like their music ‘long-form’— listening to what a band can do with a full album rather than just play around with a catchy tune or two—Bangalorean rock band Thermal And A Quarter presents a 28song, three-disc whopper

We do classic rock,

with no deliberate Indian additions TAAQ’s 16-year history that the band is working with a record label. EMI, which counts acts like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Iron Maiden ixteen years after it was and David Guetta in its roster, and first formed, the hugely has come on board to distribute the popular Bangalore band new album in its physical and digital Thermal And A Quarter formats.

3 Wheels 9 Lives was recorded in (TAAQ) released its fifth studio album, 3 Wheels 9 Lives, to a Bangalore, at the bands own rousing reception at Hard Rock Cafe, Taaqademy studios. It was mixed by the band, along with engineer Bangalore.

Niranjan Shivaram The band is on in the city, and masan India tour to protered by Donal mote the new album, For the first at Hafod three years after it time in 16 years, Whelan Mastering, UK. inducted a new the band is Lyrically, the bassist, and hot on album covers themes the heels of TAAQ’s working with a ranging from Singapore-US tour record label Bangalore’s autorickearlier this year, shaws to musicians which saw performances at the Mosaic Festival, and then John Coltrane and Cat Stevens, from at pubs and theatres across New York, children’s stories to the urban Indian condition.

Dallas and Seattle.

Musically, the listener will find 3 Wheels 9 Lives has no precedent in the Indian independent music everything from arena-rock to bluescene—it’s a sprawling triple-disc grass, jazz to acoustic, and prog-rock to punk to folk—the unique mélange pack offering with 28 songs.

It also marks the first time in that TAAQ calls ‘Bangalore Rock’.

PRASHANTH G N

prashanth.gn@talkmag.in

S

BANGALORE ROCKERS (From left) Prakash K N (bass), Rajeev Rajagopal (drums) and Bruce Lee Mani (guitars and vocals)

The album is available exclusively on the Nokia Music Store for a limited period, after which it will be sold on a variety of Indian and global digital music platforms. Physical CDs come after that, and will be distributed across the country.

Over the last 16 years, TAAQ has played all over India, and toured the United Kingdom, West Asia and South-East Asia. It has opened for big acts like Deep Purple and Jethro Tull, and won several awards.

Bruce Lee Mani (guitar and vocals), Rajeev Rajagopal (drums) and Prakash K N (bass) spoke to Talk about the band their new album.

Bangalorean—having to pay one and half times over and above what the fare meter shows in the autorickshaw — Meter Mele One and A Half!

The album comes after bassist Rzhude David parted ways with Thermal.

What’s the difference?

Thermal has had good times with Rzhude, and it’s been three years since we went our ways. Prakash K N has been our bassist since then. We took our time to cut this album given that a newcomer into any band would want to settle down to its sound and ways of seeing life. 3 Wheels 9 Lives is about new collaborations we make in life, one time or the other, and how we get along and move on. While the What should we look forward to in Thermal touch continues, the album your new album 3 Wheels 9 Lives?

It’s unprecedented for any band in brings new ideas and a new vision, a India to launch a 3-CD, 28-song new way of looking at collaborations, album at a time when people down- sound, and life in this city. load singles on the Net, and have no time for long form music. The album What’s it like performing in India and has varied styles, all of which we call abroad?

Everything’s been done in the West, a Bangalore rock.

The new album has one particu- lot needs to be done back home here. lar song reflecting a very common The music scene is evolving and experience of the average maturing, so the hurdles and chal-

liner notes lenges are greater, and therefore the excitement. Here you’ve to get people to listen, there, listening is taken for granted. Here you build your audience from scratch, nothing’s ready and given, which means more time, effort and risk. But with risk comes the excitement. But of course an Indian band performing in the West is a different ball game. You need to do good stuff there.

How big is the Indian rock music market?

Truth is, you may not build a house and buy a car with the gigs you do, but you can sure pay your bills now. You do music of any kind now, you can be sure somebody will listen. That much of a market is guaranteed. We’re not talking of stadiums, halls of the Royal Albert kind. All the same, you’re talking more venues now—a lot more pubs, cultural spaces and forums host live music. There’s confidence that listening will happen. Only, deliver good stuff.

And how has Bangalore’s music scene changed?

Music still happens in the colleges, but there’s been a movement to the city centre, to the public space. Bangalore is incredibly cosmopolitan, open to new styles, and has people who know stuff, who’ll sing with you. Clearly, it is a far

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

more open city than it may have been in the past.

How do Delhi and Mumbai compare with Bangalore?

Delhi competes closely: it is open, welcomes change rapidly, has many places to perform, and people with plenty of energy. Thermal’s had it very good in Delhi. If we weren’t from Bangalore, we’d probably say Delhi is as good if not better than Bangalore. Mumbai also is good. But Bangalore might just have the edge in its response and ability to absorb diverse influences. I’m Bangalorean at heart, so my vote is for Bangalore.

What’s your assessment of your reception abroad?

Thermal has received five-star reviews in the papers. People warned us if we didn’t have anything Indian about us other than being Indians, if we didn’t have a sitar or tabla, we wouldn’t make it. We were sure we wanted to do rock the way it’s done: classic with no deliberate Indian additions. And we pulled it off—the UK gave us a great reception, so did the US. People were open to our music and style. If the music had been bad, if the rigour hadn’t been there, if we’d been merely imitative, we wouldn’t have been hosted, and we wouldn’t have lasted the tours.

21

No baby!

Baby, as an affectionate if sometimes patronising form of address for a friend, especially girlfriend, has always been ubiquitous in rock vocabulary. Think back, for example, to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Hey Baby’ at the end of the iconic Dancing in the Dark.

But it is deliberately left out of Bangalore rock band Thermal And A Quarter’s lexicography. They prefer the simple ‘girl.’ And it is no different in their fifth album 3 Wheels 9 Lives. Lead vocalist and guitarist Bruce Lee Mani’s riffs are as good as they always were.

Thermal is good at blending hard and psychedelic rock, jazz, funk, punk, folk and, and blues. It is hard to pin-point the band’s precise sound.

Everybody agrees Thermal keeps to the grammar of each genre. They define this mix as Bangalore rock, which aptly evokes life in Bangalore. A key lyrical focus, as reflected in the title, is this city’s autorickshaw. The song Meter Mele One and a Half gives expression to the painful negotiation Bangalore’s citizens with the city’s auto drivers.

Bruce believes life in Bangalore is inevitably Thermal's concern. Very early on Thermal talked of Brigade Road and traffic. Then the band had a reference to urban apathy about voting, conjured up in the song Shut up and Vote, as part of a voting campaign launched by NGO Jaago Re. Bangalore has other hues—it’s a multicommunity city with a diversity of music and culture, entrepreneurial energy, and a global reputation unlike anything it has known in the last 50 years. Thermal, one hopes, will look at these shades of Bangalore in the coming years.

L I S T I NGS

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

theatre

music Miss Meena

Rainer Pusch 7.30pm 9620604479

 Miss Meena: Directed by Rajiv Krishnan of Chennai-based Perch Performance Collective, the play is about a film star who returns to her village Pichampura to shoot her final film. The play shows while she left her village, the village slipped into a state of poverty and is now bursting with energy on her arrival, as she can be their savior. Ravi, her lover who is now a shopkeeper is pushed forward to appeal to her on the village’s behalf.

She does make the village prosperous but also asks for a price in return.

Ranga Shankara, #36/2, 8TH Cross, 2nd phase, JP Nagar, till September 23, 3.30 pm and 7.30 pm 26592777

 Aadaddella Olithe: The play is about a middle aged couple, Bhageerathi and Kapanipathi whose children live in different cities. They quarrel over small issues and receive letters from their son and daughter. The son writes to them asking them to visit him during Diwali, while the daughter wishes to come down to the village with her French husband. This Diwali surely brings them a lot of surprises as Bhageerathi wants to visit the son and Kapanipathi wants to be there when the French son in law comes home. The play is directed by Pramod Shiggaon.

Ranga Shankara, #36/2, 8TH Cross, 2nd phase, JP Nagar, September 25 and 26,

retail therapy  Weekend shopping spree: Head to Socie-Tea’s Weekend Bazaar this weekend and shop from a wide range of products.

Choose from paintings, confectioneries, jewellery, clay and terracotta products, apparel and more.

Socie-Tea, 84/3, 13th Main, Indiranagar, September 22 and 23, 10am 9535884969  Flea market mania: This Sunday shop from over 40 brands such as Pink Jalebi, Color Tree, Stylite and Color Tribe.

You will find jewellery, apparel, footwear, food stalls complimented with music.

Flea Fever, Phoenix Market City, Whitefield road, Mahadevpura, September 23, 11am 67266111  Silk Sarees for you: Sarees that you can wear all year long are here.

Choose from a wide range of silk sarees, handloom silk, traditional weaves and more. Prices start at Rs 4,500.

Palaam Silks, 9th C Main Road, 5th Block Jayanagar 26537777  Look Fab this season:

22

 Jujubee: Directed by Rajiv Krishnan, the play is about an evil king, a kingdom of rules and a heroine. It is filled with larger than life situations, music, dance and colourful masks.

The crazy ruler is called Idi Minnal (thunder and lightning in Tamil) and announces his bizarre judgements through a bird called Jujubee (small fry) who lays ladoos in place of eggs. A group of people plot to take control of Jujubee.The play is in Tanglish (Tamil and English) and has been performed in Chennai. Tickets are priced at Rs 100.

Ranga Shankara, #36/2, 8TH Cross, 2nd phase, JP Nagar, September 22 and 23, 26592777  Dramatised reading of ‘Copenhagen’: Copenhagen is based on an event that took place in Copenhagen in 1941, where two physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg met. The play is written by Micheal Frayn and shows the discussion between the two on nuclear power, the justification behind making or not making an atomic bomb.

Atta Galatta, 75, 2nd main, 1st block, Koramangala, September 22, 6 pm 30181626

Mahajan on keyboards, Matt Littlewood on saxophone, Ramjee Chandran on the guitars, Suresh Bascara on drums and Keith Peters on bass as they perform their new tunes. bFlat, 100 Feet Road, Above ING Bank, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, September 22, 8.30 pm 41739250

 Music and festivities: Watch M D Pallavi who will perform devotional and film songs followed by Arun Kumar and Giridhar Udupa with 50 Indian percussion instruments this weekend as a part of the Ganesha Utsava.

A P S College grounds, DVG road, Basvanagudi, September 22, 6 pm 26611786

6 pm 9590443016  UNK’s new album: Watch Bangalore’s very own band UNK perform live this Saturday as they launch their new album called I Only Have Eyes for You. Watch Radha Thomas on vocals, Aman

 Musical maestro live: Watch iconic composer Illayaraja live as he performs as part of the Ganesha Utsava. Known for his compositions across Indian films in different languages, he is also an instrumentalist, a songwriter and a singer.

National College grounds, Basavanagudi, September 23,

 Dual performance: Watch the Rajan brothers perform film songs this weekend. Ritwik Rajan has many accolades to his credit including the Da Re Bendre competition three times in a row and being featured on the NDTV programme The Sound of Music.

National College Grounds, Basvanagudi, Spetember 23, 6pm 9590443016  When carnatic and jazz come together: Rainer Pusch on saxophone and Manickam Yogeswaram on vocals perform this weekend in the city. Watch this amalgamation of carnatic vocals and jazz accompanied

by Abhishek Mangla on bass, Jigmee Dortee Sherpa on the guitars and Reuben Narain on drums. bFlat, 100 Feet Road, Above ING Bank, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, September 21, 8.30 pm 41739250

food Shop till you drop at Fabindia outlets as the brand brings to you Colours of Autumn, garments for both men and women. The new range has garments made from cotton, silk, linen and has embroidery and prints.

Available at all Fabindia outlets  Shopping madness is here: Mommies and daddies have more reasons to shop. This festival season shop at Westside and buy one T-shirt for Rs 199 or two T-shirts for Rs 299. Choose from a wide range of brands and designs.

Available at all Westside stores  Chic is in: Get that sophisticated chic look this autumn as Rahul Khanna and Rohit Gandhi bring to you their latest offering ‘Cue.’ The range includes sequined dresses and tops in chiffons and knits.

Prices start at Rs 6,000.

Evoluzione, #14, Vittal Mallya road, September 21 41121088

marinated with hung curd, gulab ke gilawat kebab, lamb mince flavoured with dried rose petals and beetroot juice.

Dumb Pukht Jolly Naboos, Golf Course Road, till September 23 22269898  Flavours aplenty: Enjoy cuisine from Delhi and Continental specials this weekend. Get your hands on dishes of chicken, fish and lamb and sample these with beer or wine. The meal is priced at Rs 499.

Burgundy Deck, Royal Orchid suites, Whitefield, till September 22 42512345  Non vegetarian extravaganza: At Gilawat ki Dawat you can relish lagan ki boti, lamb cooked in traditional Indian lagan on dum, shikanje ke kebab, thin slivers of lamb

 Mexican Fiesta in city: Gorge on Mexican delicacies such as smoked chipotle chicken quesadilla, special BBQ chicken tostada, Bahama mama chicken tender burrito, American corn & cheddar cheese samosette and orange tequila prawns with smoked chipotle.

Hard Rock Café, #40, St Marks Road, till September 23 41242222  Coastal delicacies to taste: Savour a range of sea food such as koonthal nandu saaru, prawn porichathu, chapa vepudu, nandu melagu podimas, singa eral

manga kuzhumbu, ayala vattichathu, nandu saadam and more at the Coastal Food festival.

Jamavar, #13, near Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road, till September 26 30571344 For those lazy Sunday brunches: Enjoy a range of food such as sausages, fruit platters, muffins, tea, pastries, waffles, pancakes and more. A live omelet station will whip up your choice of omelet right in front of you.

Boca Grande, # 606, 8th

Block, Near Bethany High School, Koramangala, September 23 41105183  Lebanese lunches: Go Lebanese over lunch with this food festival that brings you specialities from the region. Known for other Mediterranean specialities too, the restaurant will host the festival for lunch and let you sample dishes like Tabouleh and varied mezze.

100 Feet Restaurant, 100 Feet Road, Indiranagar, till September 28, 12 pm to 3 pm 25277752

L I S T I NGS

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

film

pet show Theatre- 1.35 pm, 7.10, 9.55 Sri Srinivasa Theatre, Padmanabanagara- 2.30 pm, 6.30, 9.30 Urvashi Digital- 11 am, 9.30 pm

 Heroine Hindi The movie is about the life of an actress who goes through all the dark sides of Bollywood. Directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, the film stars Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Randeep Hooda in the lead. The film reveals many sides of the industry that is entertaining, shocking and scandalous.

Heroine will show the audiences what an actor goes through in the film industry.

The success and the failure, the back biting and everything else, Madhur Bhandarkar style.

PVR Cinemas, Koramangala10am, 12pm, 1, 2.20, 3, 6, 9, 9.20 Q Cinemas ITPL,

23

Whitefield- 10 am, 12.30 pm, 1.10, 3.20, 4, 6.20, 7, 10 Innovative Multiplex, Marathahalli- 10.35 am, 1.15 pm, 4, 6.45, 9.45 Inox, Swagath Garuda Mall- 12.30 pm, 3.25, 4.30, 6.20, 9.15 Inox, Malleshwaram- 10am, 12.10pm, 12.55, 3.10, 3.55 6.10, 7.10, 9.10 Inox, Magrath Road, Garuda Mall- 10am, 12pm, 12.55, 3, 3.55, 4.55, 6, 6.55, 9.05 Gopalan Cinema, Bannerghatta Road- 10am, 2.45pm, 5.30, 9.15, 10 Gopalan Mall, Mysore Road10am, 1.15pm, 4, 7.20, 10 Vision Cinemas- 10am, 1pm, 4, 7, 9.45 Mukunda theatre2.30 pm, 9.30pm Manasa Cinema, Konanankunte- 11 am, 1.45pm, 7, 9.45 Rex

 Cyber Yugadhol Navayuva Madhura Premakavyam [I L U] Kannada Starring Gurunandan Gowda and Shwetha Srivatsav in the lead, the movie is directed by Madhuchandra. The film is a portrayal of a young generation love story.

Anupama- 10.30am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Navarang10.30am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm, Ullas10.30am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm, Veeresh10.30am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm PVR Koramangala10.30 am, Inox Mantri Mall- 10.30 am, , Rockline cinemas Jalahalli cross- 10.30 am, Gopalan mall Rajarajeswari nagar- 10.30 am, Gopalan mall, Sirsi circle- 10.30 am  Dredd English

A little known town in USA, Mega City and its dwellers live in fear. The judges, law enforcers, juries and executioners are the ones attempting to impose order in the urban chaos. The epitome of these judges is Dredd. The Chief Judge gives Dredd a mission that is to test a rookie judge, the powerful psychic Cassandra Anderson. What follows next is a series of action packed sequences as the judges are hunted down.

Starring Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey in the lead, the movie is directed by Pete Travis.

3D Q Cinemas ITPL, Whitefield- 10.20 am, 3.30pm, 7.45 Gopalan Cinemas Bannerghatta Road10.15 am, 8.15 pm Inox Magrath Road, Garuda Mall- 2.55 pm, 9.50 Inox Mantri Mall Malleshwaram- 10 am, 5.15 pm PVR-10.05am,

12.40pm, 10 2D Innovative Multiplex, Marathalli- 1.30 pm, 6 Gopalan Mall, Mysore Road3.15 pm Inox Jayanagar Garuda Swagath Mall- 10 pm  Charulatha Kannada Directed by Pon Kumaran, Charulatha is a horror film starring Priyamani in the lead. The film inspired by the Thai horror film Alone, and is about conjoined twins. The one of the win is innocent while the other is a tomboy.

Narthaki -10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Navarang10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Uma- 10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Siddeshwara- 10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Govardhan- 10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Krishna- 10.30 am, 1.30, 4.30, 7.30pm Prasanna- 10.30am, 1.30pm Veeresh- 4.00 pm, 7 Inox, Malleshwaram, Mantri Square- 10.30am, 3.45pm, 6.30 Gopalan Cinemas, Bannerghatta Road12.45pm, 4.45 Gopalan Mall, Mysore Road- 12.45pm,5 Inox, Swagath Garuda, Jayanagar- 7.25pm PVR1.30pm, 4, 6.50

 Pamper your pet: This weekend join your pet as he or she steals the spotlight. 'Pet It' a pet show will witness pets displaying their tricks and strutting their stuff. There are contests such as My pet strongest, Dressed to kill, Trick and Treat. In addition to this, pets with the cutest name and the most obedient pet stand a chance to win. Watch them perform tricks, walk the ramp and have fun.

‘Pet-IT’ The mega pet show, Forum Value Mall, Whitefield, September 22, 3.30 pm 25043800

restaurant week Food lovers in the city are in for a treat as the Restaurant Week kicks off on September 24 till September 30. This event is being held in Delhi and Mumbai too. This week long food festival will showcase culinary skills of chefs from various hotels and restaurants in the city. Customers will have a wide selection of cuisines to choose from at a reasonable price of Rs 750 exclusive of taxes for a three course menu.

Indian to Mediterranean, Chinese to Italian, you name it and it will be up for tasting.

Reservations for the same can be made on www.restaurantweekindia.com.  Baluchi (mushrooms with goat cheese and onion, tandoori chicken in beetroot based sauce ,green apple infused with cinnamon cooked on tava and more) Cuisine: North Indian The Lalit Ashok, Kumara Krupa High Grounds, 30527777 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Bene (grilled vegetable anti pasti, pizza con salami and spaghetti ice and more) Cuisine: Italian Sheraton Bangalore Hotel at Brigade Getaway, 26/1 Dr. Rajkumar Road, Rajajinagar, Malleshwaram 42521000 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Benjarong (Crispy broccoli in apricot sauce, green curry with vegetables, date pancake with ice cream and more) Cuisine: Thai

12/1, Ulsoor Road, Ulsoor 32569029

Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Blue Ginger (Fish in hot bean sauce, steamed jasmine rice, strawberry and basil pannacotta and more) Cuisine: Vietnamese Taj West End, Race Course Road, 66605660 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Café Noir (Crab meat with marinated red radish with guacamole stuffed ginger tulie, farandole of veg home made ravioli, raspberry chocolate mousse served with crispy hazelnut paste and raspberry coulis)

Cuisine: French Unit no 206, The Collection, UB City, #24 Vittal Mallya Road 40982050 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Capeberry (crabmeat cornets, porcini risotto, interpretation of meen moilee and more) Cuisine: Italian / Spanish / Basque / Tapas 48/1 Ground Floor, The Estate, 121 Dickenson Road 9845177162 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Dakshin (tarkari sagoo,

bendakkai vepudu, eleneer payasam and more ) Cuisine: South Indian ITC Windsor, 25, Windsor Square, Golf Course road 22269898 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Dum Pukht Jolly Nabobs (khus khus kebab, semolina bread sprinkled with poppy seed and aniseed, rich creamy ice cream with almonds and cornstarch vermicelli in herbal syrup) Cuisine: Indian ITC Windsor, 25, Windsor Square, Golf Course Road 22269898 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Fava (fig and roasted tomato salad, lamb mousaka with tomato sauce and garlic toast, warm apple tart and more) Cuisine: Mediterranean The Collection, UB City, 24, Vittal Mallya Road, 9845177162 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax Graze (fig salad, spiced

tomato compote with vegetables and fresh basil, roasted yellow pumpkin soup, dark chocolate mud cake) Cuisine: European Vivanta by Taj, 41/3 , MG Road 66604444 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Likethatonly (Thai crunchy salad, spinach, corn and bamboo soy, mirin & chili marinated beef tossed with noodles and vegetables, lemon curd tart with crème chantilly and more) Cuisine: Asian and grills

14/31 A, Hagadur Road, behind Forum Value Mall, Whitefield 65475610 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Mynt (char grilled potatao stuffed with artichoke and sundried tomato, baked lasagna with pesto, warm chocolate pudding and more) Cuisine: Mediterranean Taj West End, Race Course Road 6660 5660 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Olive Beach (wine cured grape and goat cheese salad, chicken bitseeya, roasted tomato tart, malt ice cream and more) Cuisine: Mediterranean #16, Wood Street, Ashok Nagar 41128400 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Shiro (chicken gyoza dumplings, prawn fried in tempura butter, coconut and pecan tart and more) Cuisine: Asian 222, Triple Height, 3rd Floor, UB City, Vittal Mallya Road 41738861

Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Sunny's (angel hair pasta with tomatoes, Black pepper fettuccine with shitake mushrooms, Paris brest with almond pastry cream and whipped cream and more) Cuisine: Italian No 34, Embassy Diamante, Vittal Mallya Road, Opposite Canara Bank Vittal Mallya Road 2224 3642 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  Teppan (burnt garlic and mixed vegetables fried rice, Tori salad and more) Cuisine: Japanese Ulsoor Road 32217201 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax  The Pink Poppadom (gomashio aloo and bishop's paneer, Coorg chicken and kasundi fish with ghee bhath, coconut crème brulee & pineapple jalebi and more) Cuisine: Indian 1/1, Ista Hotel, Swami Vivekananda Road, Ulsoor 25558888 Price: Rs 750 exclusive of tax

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

Casting for a comedy Well-known film director KM Chaitanya is making a new Kannada film. His first feature film Aa Dinagalu won several awards, including the Filmfare award for Best Director and Best Feature Film, in 2007, and was selected by The Week as one of the top 10 Indian films of that year. He is now looking for an actress to play the female lead in his new production, billed as a romantic comedy. Applicants should look 18. Send profile with photographs to cinemakayaka@gmail.com

Student achievers, take note

Krause shares fascinating insights into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive, and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and

A website of her own

Talk’s sister-publication, The Students Magazine, and Idea Cellular have begun the process to receive applications for the Idea Students Awards. The initiative, the first of its kind, aims to identify and reward achievers in several fields. Awards will be given in these categories: Innovation and Invention, Entrepreneurship, Sports and Adventure, Social Service, Performing Arts, Creative Arts, Unique Talent and International Student. Candidates from 3,000 colleges across the state are expected to apply. The last date for nominations is October 5, 2012.

Eligibility criteria: Applicants must be between 16 and 26 years (born after January 1, 1986 and before December 31, 1996) They should have lived in Karnataka for more than 12 months.

Achievers can apply directly.

Sounds of the forest In The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, musician and naturalist Bernie Krause, one of the world’s leading experts in natural sound, chronicles the 40 years he spent discovering and recording the sounds of nature. Krause, who has worked regularly with the likes of Bob Dylan and George Harrison (of The Beatles), has over the years sought out the truly wild places where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.

24

prey. But natural soundscapes aren’t vital only to the animal kingdom: Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged. In a recent interview, he said, “A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening.

Things are beginning to quiet down in the pristine habitats. The fragile weave of natural sound is being torn apart by our seemingly boundless need to conquer the environment rather than to find a way to abide in consonance with it.”

The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man’s pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of the music of the wild.

Nominations are also welcome.

Distance education students can apply.

For rules and regulations and to download the application form, log on to www.ideastudentsaward.com

A photo contest for all seasons The JGI Group is inviting entries for its photography contest titled ‘Hues of Indian Seasons.’ Entries should depict the Indian seasons in their vibrant hues, showcasing them through landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, wildlife, nature, and animal, bird and human portraits.

The contest is open to all, but entries by amateur and professional photographers will be judged together. The jury will look for factors such as

relevance, creativity, technical excellence and rarity of events.

The copyright remains with the photographer. However, the selected images may feature on the 2013 New Year calendar of The JGI Group. Photographers will be given credit if their work is used. The deadline is 30 September.

For more details, write to info.jgi@gmail.com or call 43431000

Talking Cranes, a newly launched website for women from South East Asia, is that, and more. Discribed as a social site started by San Francisco-based Hyma Menath and Oxford-based Aneeta Madhavan, Talking Cranes isn't one of those that help women find the nearest grocery store or salon. Its selling point is that it caters to those looking for solid reading on topics that interest South East Asian women. Subjects range from arts, lifestyle, food and workplace issues. The articles are original and come from a team of writers, both men and women, belonging from various walks.

The website also has a section called ‘Talk’ (we like the name!) where absolutely anybody can express an opinion on any subject. Though there is an option of signing up, most parts of the website are accessible to guest visitors.

The home page gives you a snapshot of the latest stories in each section and the hottest topics on the site. The design reflects a certain seriousness and has barely any frills. We were quite happy to see both sports news and recipes being covered on a single website for women.

For more, log on to www.talkingcranes.com

food talk

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

26

Not my cup of cake!

Unknown to those outside the charmed circle, cupcake mania is taking over the city, but the fuss only makes Shubangi Sunder wish it would go away

ocial disasters come in all shapes. Here’s an anecdote by a friend about a party that ended in tears, in her own words: “I had made cupcakes for everyone, but also one extra. Everyone took theirs, and just as I feared, Kavita went for the extra one. But when she noticed my husband also aiming for it, she stuffed the entire thing into her mouth.

There was icing on her nose and her chin. The whole room burst out laughing. She was so embarrassed, she actually burst into tears.”

You would think that a small piece of dough wrapped in sugar and butter would be something inconsequential; but that only shows you have no clue about the parallel universe of cupcakes.

The craze for cupcakes has reached epidemic proportions in Bangalore, so much so that it has everyone from Mrs Porwal to Mrs Chettiar renovating their kitchens to suit the trend. Turn the corner of every park in our tech-loving ‘garden city’ and you will find (perhaps hidden due to the lack of signage) a cupcake baking pro. Or an amateur.

The overwhelming majority of them are like Mrs Dubey, who, after her son left for college, found herself with a lot of time on her hands. “I called up my friend, who suggested I try baking cupcakes. The trays are available easily nowadays, so I said chalo, why not!” she says, laughing.

At the Sunday Soul Sante at Palace Grounds in June this year, you could catch a glimpse of the mania. I was making my way to a soft drink stand when I saw the first

S

one. And then the second. And then the third. That kept happening till I counted a total of eight cupcake stands. And that’s just in a space that couldn’t have measured more than 6,000 sq ft.

The cupcake is everywhere; apparently, so is the cupcake maker. If you feel this is an exaggeration, try a simple experiment. Log on to your favourite social networking site and type ‘Cupcakes, Bangalore’. There you have it—dozens of Facebook pages devoted to cupcakes, live Twitter updates on the latest baking experiment (or disaster), whole websites offering tips and advice. Yes, social media is where many a cupcake-baking reputation is made and broken.

I had casually requested on Facebook for recommendations of cupcake makers in the city. Big. Mistake. In a span of six hours, my inbox was flooded with notifications from 15 different speciality cupcake makers in Bangalore alone. It was then that I realised that the impending doom of 2012, which we had heard so much about, had officially begun.

How, you ask? Internationally, from the Jewish bar mitzvah celebrations to kitty parties, the go-to treat is the cupcake. It has since filtered eastward, all the way to Bangalore, where, believe it or not, you already have dog owners ordering cupcakes to honour

their pooch’s birth.

According to cupcake specialist Shruti Panjabi of The Cake Lady, the craze, which surfaced circa 2008, is not about to subside anytime soon.

“In the next couple of years, it will spread much faster across the country,” is her ominous forecast.

And worse, cupcakes are changing how we eat dessert. “People eat just one”, says Sumi, whose dream wedding proposal is to have a roomful of cupcakes that she has to eat through to find the ring. “I love cupcakes, but eating one is just cruel.”

Cupcake makers unanimously consider them ‘perfectly sized’. And these makers take client satisfaction and deadlines to a whole new extreme. “A client wanted a specific liqueur in her cupcakes. So, they had the liqueur sent over so I could cook with it”, says Heena, owner of Do It Sweet, one of the 20-plus (that’s right) successful cupcake outlets in Bangalore alone.

One would think a house-hold business of this sort would have you floating through the kitchen, with hair perfectly coiffed, ’50s style. But reality is bed-head, cement skin and the distinct smell of dough that will not leave you till the day you put away that spatula. Ms K Cupcakes’ Katherine reveals the dark side of the business when she says, “I turned off every other switch in the house so

Oven maven

How to build your own cupcake business in five easy steps

1

Brush up on your baking skills

2

Start baking and giving out samples, using relatives and neighbours as guinea pigs

3

Once/if they are hooked, ask them to place orders (for a price, of course!)

4

Establish territory by building a good network in and around your neighbourhood

5

Create a Facebook page— and then publicise, publicise, publicise!

that my oven could work on back-up.”

Is a cup-sized cake so much better? A couple of years ago, you couldn’t fathom being satisfied with a whole slice of regular cake. Today, a mini-cupcake has you giggling like a fool. It has you stuffing it whole into your mouth, just so the person next to you doesn’t get to eat it. It makes you shut off all the electric devices around you, just so your oven can bake them, and them only. “They are the shoes of the gastronomic world”, says Katherine. Bring back the round cakes, I say!

memoirs

The birth of

a professional It took an eventful decade of apprenticeship under a hard-nosed, eccentric advocate before the author could start an independent practice radually, the frequency of my visits to my village came down.

Earlier, I used to go home from Bangalore every day, but my visits dwindled to once a month. My friends in the village teased me, “You have developed a craze for city life.”

W a s the thrill of Bangalore holding me back there?

No, I had no craze for liquor, films, or live bands.

“It is my office that keeps me there,” I used to explain. But my friends and relatives would not be convinced.

I had become inseparable from my workplace, a lawyer’s office, and I wanted to oversee everything.

VIVEK ARUN

G

When I showed up at the office a day after my wedding, my colleagues made fun of me.

Devadas, the senior advocate under whom I was training, objected fondly, “Nothing would have been lost here in your absence. You should have taken a break of some 10-15 days.”

Devadas slowly became dependent on others. Old age and worry were taking their toll. As he grew more and more stressed, I noticed, his paunch got bigger. I often felt he was looking for affection outside as he could not get it from his children.

For example, he could not wear socks because of his protruding tummy. He started going out wearing shoes without socks.

Occasionally, I would go to his house before he set out for court.

Whenever I saw him struggling to wear socks, I would help. It became his practice to wear socks only on the days I was around. He was happy with my service. He would frown at his children when they passed by.

I would mostly land up at his house before eight in the morning.

Devadas would chide his son

who would have just woken up, yawning, “See, Hanumantharaya is behaving like a Brahmin even though he is a Shudra. You are yawning like a Shudra, being born a Brahmin.”

His son Shailendra would shout at me, “It’s all your fault. You are making him scold us by turning up so early.” In his young age, Devadas was arrogant because of his intellect and scholarship. But, it had made him lonely in the twilight years. With strained relationships, his personal life had gone awry. He was engaged in the futile exercise of attracting human relationships through his earnings and scholarship, I felt.

Devadas usually studied case files at night. But old age had sapped his energy, and he could not keep up the practice. He had to depend on me. Even his wife Sharadamma would not sleep till 12 pm. Devadas would stretch out on his bed and I, sitting beside him, would read out the cases to him. He would take decisions just by listening to my reading.

It was just six months since I had got married. Sometimes, it was past 2 am by the time I left for home. No autos would be available near Devadas’s house at that hour. I would walk up to High Grounds Police Station and look for an auto.

Sometimes, Devadas would drop me in his car. His wife Sharadamma would accompany us.

When I was required to stay late, Sharadamma

crime folio

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

28

Fabled ranconteur and Bangalore’s top-notch criminal lawyer brings you moving, sensational and bizarre stories from 40 years of his practice

C H HANUMANTHARAYA

would sometimes ply me with delicious food. There was pork in the fridge all the time. It was embarrassing for me to eat non-vegetarian food in the presence of Devadas. I used to cover my face with my left hand. “Why are you masking it?

What if I am a vegetarian? Do you think I don’t love people who eat non-vegetarian food?” Devadas used to say, smiling at Sharadamma.

When I left for home, Sharadamma used to say, “Poor fellow, he is going alone. Give him his auto fare,” and make her husband giving me a hundred-rupee note. I will never forget her affection.

One night, I was reading a file for Devadas. He started sweating and belching and seemed nauseous.

He probably had indigestion, and looked drunk. I stopped reading, thinking he might throw up. And he did. Without thinking and with the intention of protecting the bed from getting dirty, I extended my palms and held the contents coming from his mouth. It messed up my white shirt and the stink made me nauseous, too.

Sharadamma came to the bedroom. “Why did you get your hands dirty? You should have let it fall on the bed and it could have been washed,” she said.

Devadas was gazing at me. I looked up at him. I saw a twinkle in his eyes that I had never seen before, and would not see again. That might be what they call the blessings of the master, I thought.

But his bad nature simultane-

memoirs ously came to my mind, and I was confused. A majority of cases coming to Devadas were murders. The murders took place mostly among the Vokkaliga, Reddy, and Muslim communities. Devadas had given me the responsibility of getting details of the cases from the clients.

Devadas was pleasant with his clients only when he was collecting his fees from them. After that, the clients were too scared even to talk to him. He would raise the fee when the case reached the argument stage, breaching what he had agreed on at the time of taking up the case. If they didn’t agree, he would throw the case files across the room and chase them away. To pacify him, the clients would have to bring smalltime leaders or village elders to talk to him.

Once, Devadas hiked the fee drastically for a case when it came to the final stage. The client was poor and he was shocked. He came to me and pleaded, “I have no money. If he insists, I have to sell off my buffalo, in which case my family has to starve. Please convince your senior.

I swear on God, I will pay him after the case is done.”

When I was driving with Devadas, making sure he was in a good mood, I mentioned the client. “Poor fellow, he is not able to pay that much. If he sells his

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

me more than he was paying the other buffalo, his family has to starve.”

He cut me off and said bluntly, “We juniors in his office. But it was not must not sympathise with a murderer. enough for me to run my family. I had put The court will let him off only because he in nine years as a junior to him, but I was is my client, so I punish him. He pays for not able even to afford a scooter.

Plans of opening my own office his crime by paying me a stiff fee. You are began to grow in me. But still a boy, you won’t I was hesitant, thinking it understand all this.”

‘The court lets would upset Devadas. He By then, I had starthad some 60 murder ed handling murder cases him off the cases with him, and I was on my own and Devadas hook because handling the files. I used to teach me the key he is my client, couldn’t leave him in the points. I assisted him in a so I punish lurch.

I went to hundred cases that he Manjunath, a friend from fought. I was also arguing him. He pays college. He was a big cases independently. I did for his crime by influence on me. I used not pester clients for paying me a to call him Manju. He money. So they were stiff fee,’ said had a knack of getting to close to me. And their the heart of the matter. irritation towards Devadas Manju was distantly Devadas grew stronger related to Devadas: he day by day.

Even Shailendra was upset with the was a cousin of my senior’s son-in-law. way his father Devadas was treating his Manju, and even Shailendra, encouraged clients. He used to tell clients, quite often, me to open my own office. That gave me “Why do you come to him? Can’t you find moral strength. Meanwhile, my college guru M R Janardhan shifted his office any other lawyer?”

Some clients, and the village elders from Avenue Road to Brigade Road. A they used to bring along, used to tell me, son-in-law of the Maharaja of Mysore was “Start an office of your own. We can’t take his junior, and the Maharaja, thinking the Avenue Road office was cramped, had your senior’s short temper.”

It was true that Devadas was paying given him a spacious and well-furnished

29

office on Brigade Road.

When I met Janardhan, he said, “My office on Avenue Road is vacant. You can use it if you want.” On night, after the day’s work was over, I hesitantly mentioned this to Devadas: “Sir, Janaradan’s office is vacant. He has asked me to use it…”

Devadas hit back, with a caustic smile, “why are you hiding facts in front of a criminal lawyer like me? Say it straight that you want to be independent.”

I came out without saying a word.

The next day, I didn’t go to his office.

Within a week of my opening an office, I had a handful of cases. At the court, I avoided meeting Devadas.

One day, Devadas’s wife Sharadamma came to my office and said, “He is getting impatient in your absence.

He needs your help in many cases. Why don’t you come till those are closed?”

She had been affectionate to me and I could not say no to her. I said I would come for two hours a day. I assisted Devadas for six months more. I then opened my office at Gandhi Nagar with Devadas cutting the ribbon.

At last, I had come out of my mother’s womb.

Translated by B V Shivashankar

T I M E P A SS

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

31 Prof Good Sense  When I found out that my boyfriend was cheating on me, I broke off. I am deeply hurt and have lost my selfconfidence. A few weeks ago, a colleague proposed to me, but given my previous experience, I am very suspicious of men. He is the friendly sort, and is known to be close to girls, and I feel jealous about that too.

Gomati, K R Puram

Off The Mark

Don't be an emotional extremist! Friendship is a safe bet here. I suggest you get to know him as a good friend before you decide to get into any other kind of relationship. And like birds, you should leave behind what you don't need to carry— grudges, sadness, pain, fear, regrets, and ego. Fly light, life can be beautiful.

By Mark Parisi

I am sensitive to criticism and get angry quickly when someone says negative things, or makes catty remarks, about me. I feel this spoils my equations with people, although nothing becomes starkly different.

How do I get rid of this oversensitivity?

Mansi (name changed), by email

1st Cross

Talk’s weekly crossword for Bangaloreans who know their way about town (1,8) 14 One of Bangalore's oldest temples (4) 16 Karnataka lies on India's ___ - ___ coast (5-4) 17 Hard hitting West Indies batsman in the Royal Challengers Bangalore squad (5,5) 18 Bangalore doctors recently celebrated World ___ Day (6)

5 8 10 12

1 2 3

DOWN Irish pub on Sankey Road (6) Northernmost district of Karnataka (5) Act the government threatened to

Last week’s solution Across: 2 Shivanna, 5 Hampi, 7 Kodigehalli Ring, 8 Comic Con, 9 Margosa, 14 Dubare, 15 Factory, 16 Drinking, 18 Biligundulu, 19 Beer, 20 Mandur.

1 4 5 6

Across __ ____ House: Oriental restaurant at Kedia Arcade (2,5) Dynasty which ruled the Kingdom of Mysore from 1399 to 1947 (7) Turn "a bridge" around to get a popular road (7) One of our Deputy CMs (1,6)

7

9 11

____ Government PU College was in the news recently when a student jumped off the second floor (6) Karnataka's major river (7) Prolific writer and authority on Kannada folk art who passed away at a literary event recently

Down: 1 Sangama, 3 Fali Nariman, 4 Virat Kohli, 5 Hingasandra, 6 Pandhi, 10 Kabab, 11 Dirk Nannes, 12 Karandlaje, 13 Borewells, 17 Iruppu.

13 15

invoke if the 15 Down strike was not called off (4) Karnataka tourist destination known for it's sculptures and red sandstone cliffs (6) Aishwarya Rai was born in this Karnataka City (9) CM Shettar recently promised total security for them (10) Minister in charge of higher education in the State Cabinet (1,1,4) Restaurant on M G Road renowned for it's deep fried Bhindi (6) Transport body which went on indefinite strike recently (5)

Isn’t it unhealthy to expect people to like us in all situations? Whether we like or dislike a person is an intensely personal affair. To overcome your sensitivty, you need to develop a dispassionately self critical attitude. That might help you face this world and yourself.

Prof M Sreedhara Murthy teaches psychology at NMKRV First Grade College. He is also a well-known photographer.

Mail queries to prof@talkmag.in

Roach delicacy My husband and I had a long distance relationship for nearly two years.

While I stayed in Mauritius, he lived in Bellary and stayed in touch through Skype and Facebook. Once, when we were chatting with each other, I told him my mother made cockroach pickle and that it's a tradition for all Mauritians to eat it every day. I didn't know it then, but he had truly fallen for it. When I flew down from Mauritius ahead of our wedding, imagine the shock I got when I learned that he had actually saved some cockroaches so that I could continue following my 'tradition' here!

Jenny Solomon, by email Share the humour in your life, multiply the fun! Keep those anecdotes coming to: features@talkmag.in

talk|27 sep 2012|talkmag.in

MacGabbar, and lovin’ it!

It had to happen. Sholay, the biggest Bollywood hit ever and now deemed a classic by the pundits, was screened by the Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY) as a curtain-raiser for its Year of India programme. Never mind if much of the inspiration for the blockbuster actually came from Hollywood’s cult-hit ‘spaghetti Westerns as Once Upon A Time In The West and The Magnificent Seven, themselves inspired by Japanese classics like Seven Samurai. But the sentimental dosti of Veeru and Jai, Basanti’s melodrama, and Gabbar Singh’s exaggerated antics all make Sholay more Indian than any of the exotic, self-consciously Indian films made by NRI filmmakers, no?

32

Malaysia, truly Asia In Malaysia, homophobia is an official sentiment. The country's government is now organising ‘seminars’ to help teachers and parents spot signs of homosexuality in children. So far, 10 seminars have been organised by the Teachers Foundation of Malaysia, and the last one attracted as many as 1,500. An advice sheet handed out to attendees said signs

of homosexuality in boys might include preferences for tight, light-coloured clothes and large handbags. It also said signs of homosexuality in girls were less obvious, claiming that lesbians have ‘no affection for men and like to hang out and sleep in the company of women’. Duh? Don’t they know, in much of the world, Pyar gay aagbittaite!

More weirdness follows It’s that time of the year when the world's cranks, monomaniacs and overachievers of all stripes get their annual due. The 2013 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records has been released with much fanfare, and includes such showpieces as Egypt’s Mostafa ‘Mo’ Ismail, whose biceps, at 31 inches, are bigger than many waistlines (no wonder, because he eats 15 eggs for breakfast), Archie, the world’s shortest bull, is just 30 inches high, and Dr Mark Temperaton, is the American owner of a 340-piece drum kit, the

world’s largest. In other words, enough weirdness to last you a whole year.

Being animal According to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, just released by a prominent group of scientists and witnessed

by Stephen Hawking, humans are not unique in ways that matter, because all mammals and birds possess the

same “neurological substrates” as us. The scientists say animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are, and ought to be treated better.

So, if you had ever flinched on being called “animal!” by a furious ex, you had flinched in vain. For you are one— quite literally — and so is your tormentor.