Leisure

deepa-mehta-s-latest-i-am-sirat-is-about-a-transwoman-battling-dual-identity

Sat May 25 14:12:56 IST 2024

Whether it is her elements trilogy or her last film, Funny Boy, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta is not scared of touching the untouchable. The more provocative her subject, the more compassionate her treatment. The forbidden love of two women, the violence of a gang rape, the devastating consequences of partition―her stories are of hope in the midst of suffering, of perseverance in the face of pain. Her latest, I am Sirat, is no different. The story of a trans woman who lives a dual life, I am Sirat captures the conflict in Sirat’s mind, while not letting go of her joy and hunger for life. While the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, it is being screened in India for the first time.

Mehta first met Sirat four years ago, during the filming of an episode of her drama series Leila, in which Sirat plays a transman. “I found her to be very daring and honest during the workshops,” says Mehta. “She was eager to learn. We kept in touch. Last year when we spoke, she called me ‘ma’ and asked me to make a film on her.”

Mehta says the central battle in Sirat’s life―between duty and self-determination―is one we are all, in some form or the other, familiar with. Sirat lives a double life in the chaotic streets of Delhi’s Tilak Nagar: as her mother’s son Aman when at home, but as the woman she is at heart while at her government job or while partying with her friends. Belonging to a Sikh family, she covers her head to hide her long hair from her mother, who refuses to accept her identity as Sirat. On her way to work, she stops at her one-room rented house where she transforms into Sirat―padding her bosom with double bras, letting her hair loose, applying makeup, and shooting a quick reel on Instagram―before stepping out.

It is the reels which inspired Mehta to let go of the film’s creative control. As a result, the entire documentary is shot using phones, often through Sirat’s own reels, which Mehta felt, gave Sirat the freedom to be herself. “The idea to shoot on cellphones―Sirat shooting her narrative arc vertically and me filming her horizontally while she did so―was based on pure logic,” Mehta tells THE WEEK. “To have a whole film crew would have been invasive of Sirat’s privacy and might have inhibited her.”

As the world stifles her with its strict social mores, Sirat finds freedom in her rented home, where she dresses up, dances and sings to herself. She cries when she receives her transgender identity card after running from pillar to post for it. “I feel like I have been reborn,” she says, proudly displaying it.

Just like how Sirat uses Instagram reels to express her feelings, Mehta uses songs in the film. “Music through Insta reels plays an integral role in Sirat’s life,” she says. “She uses the lyrics to express the joy, pain and ambiguity of her life.” The film ends with Sirat, with her eyes shining with hope, letting her hair down as she croons Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhengey’. In doing so, she sheds her identity as Aman and becomes whole as Sirat. “Sirat had asked me what song, for me, conveyed hope in adverse circumstances. I told her it was ‘Hum Dekhenge’. She proceeded to learn and use it,” says Mehta.

Like in her other movies, Mehta brings out the universal through the specific, commenting on the sad state of transgender persons in the country who remain marginalised and are forced into begging and prostitution. “I am attracted to subjects that make me curious,” says Mehta. “When I made Fire (1996), it was not about the LGBTQ community or of two women falling in love, but about the emotional arc becoming physical and who judges it, where do misogyny and patriarchy stand in it? Self-determination in women is always interpreted as selfishness. And so, coming back with Sirat’s story was like completing a full circle.”

When Mehta reunited with Nandita Das (one of the protagonists of Fire) at the 15th edition of the Kashish Pride Film Festival recently in Mumbai, they spoke about the evolution of LGBTQ+ representation in cinema. “Fire sparked a crucial conversation about LGBTQ+ issues at a time when such dialogue was virtually non-existent,” said Das. “Revisiting this journey was profoundly moving. It reminded me of the power of cinema in driving social change and the importance of continuing this advocacy.”

According to Mehta, freedom of expression is one of the most vital tools we have as a society. It is essential for growth. But like anything worth fighting for, it has its challenges. Mehta is now working on a biographical film based on Forgiveness, a memoir by Mark Sakamoto, and will then focus on Troilokya, about an Indian woman known to be a serial killer.

Her film Funny Boy (2020), a love story set amidst political tensions in Sri Lanka, became a Netflix hit in other countries, but not in India. Even while dealing with themes like love and longing, she stands by what Toni Morrison once said, that “all art is political”, and what is political today may not have been 10 years ago. Even in that, perhaps, there is hope. In a world that is fast changing, perhaps the unacceptable―like a trans woman finding joy in something the rest of us take for granted: her identity―will become accepted. Until then, there will always be those like Mehta to tell their stories.

if-anyone-can-breach-the-chasm-between-chef-and-actor-it-is-ranveer-brar

Sat May 25 11:31:08 IST 2024

Over a plate of Lucknowi nihari (slow cooked meat in a blend of spices), yakhni pulao and quiwami sewai for dessert, Rajveer, a dishy chef at a Goan restaurant, woos singer Manzu. As the aroma of the simmering meat fills the room, love blossoms between the two men, ultimately culminating in a happily-ever-after. The story of Rajveer and Manzu is one of the six episodes of Modern Love Mumbai (2022), directed by Hansal Mehta.

It is easy for Chef Ranveer Brar, who plays Rajveer, to nail the role; he has a lifetime of practice in using food as a medium to convey love, lust and longing. The kitchen, after all, is his home turf. This was Brar’s baptism into the world of acting, but in many ways it is difficult to tell where Brar the chef ends and Brar the actor begins, because in real life, too, Brar cooks as if he is in a rom-com.

When Brar is in his element―whether it is as the judge of MasterChef India or as the host of his YouTube channel (which has over seven million subscribers)―he is at his most emotive. From smiles to smirks, sarcasm to satire, his expressions are on overdrive. When Mehta was asked why he chose Brar as his protagonist, the director said he could see an actor in him. He referred to the chef's YouTube series “where you can see there is a certain romance that is going on between him and his food”.

Brar, as Manzu's lover, was charmingly handsome with his lean, six-foot frame and a high-voltage smile. He sailed through the role without any of the jitters of a first-time actor. And now he has been bitten by the acting bug, he is looking forward to the release of The Buckhingham Murders, with Kareena Kapoor Khan, and the Amazon Prime reality show, Ma Ka Sum, in which a teenage math genius is on a quest to create an algorithm to find the “perfect match” for his vivacious single mother.

Not that Modern Love Mumbai was the first time Brar was offered a role. He has said that he has been offered the same role several times―that of a villain in south Indian films. Now, he does not want to dabble, but dive into the world of cinema, even as he is acutely aware that the journey from a “chef-who-turned-actor” and “the-actor-who-was-once-a-chef” is going to be a long and trying one.

A Punjabi kid hailing from Lucknow, Brar cooked his way up from a hotel management graduate to the youngest executive chef at an Indian five-star at 25. Soon, he became one of the most popular travel and food show hosts, and handled banquets at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the prime minister's residence. He launched his restaurants in the US, judged MasterChef India, and got rated as the second-highest earning celebrity chef on the Forbes India 2019 list. There have been dead-ends and disappointments, including his Brooklyn restaurant that failed to perform. But Brar remains upbeat; life, after all, cannot always be a cakewalk. His recently opened restaurant in Dubai, Kashkan, became popular when his video of the dal served there went viral. The '24-carat gold-infused tadka dal' is touted to be the most expensive dal in the world, reportedly priced at Rs1,300 a plate.

Now, it is time to shift courses: from chef to businessman and actor, treading the path of others before him that he looks up to, like Sanjeev Kapoor and Vikas Khanna. "I have realised that acting makes me richer,” says Brar. “Doing this has given me the confidence that if a character that I play adds something to my life, then I should be trying to do more with this medium.”

Brar, in person, takes you by surprise. If anyone has seen him cook on live TV or on his channel, they will be charmed by his wit, humour and that signature smile. In person, however, he is more subdued and no-nonsense, a stickler for perfection. We are in his studio where he shoots his YouTube videos. The space is chock-a-block with his kitchenware―cast-iron pots, spatulas, ceramic crockery and chopping boards. Brar appears to be a pro, as he suggests camera angles, lighting and how to frame the photos. As the camera comes on, he is in his element, and I instantly recall his umpteen shows that I have watched. I see the humourist who juggles sarcasm with self-deprecation, and takes as many potshots at himself as at anyone else. Maybe it is this versatility that feeds the actor inside him.

Not that he is giving up his love for yakhni pulao. “I'm still a chef at heart,” he says. “Cooking has gotten me this far and I will never forget my roots.” Apart from pan-Indian, he has dabbled in Afghani, African, Hawaiian, Moroccan, Oriental, Swiss, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese. But does he cook at home? “Nope. My son Ishaan doesn't like my cooking,” he says. “He likes my wife's." Does he want his son to follow in his footsteps as a modern celebrity chef, with that rare amalgam of culinary, marketing, and business skills, and now acting talent? "No," he says with a smile. "Let him find his own journey.” Brar, on his part, might have found himself in the kitchen, but he wishes to grow on set.

matilda-the-musical-theatre-review

Sat May 25 11:26:44 IST 2024

Never before has the story of the fight against injustice―of free-spirited rebellion against bullying and shaming―been so impactful and poignant than when told by a young and spunky six-year-old girl who loves books.

Having read Matilda―the 1988 children’s novel by British author Roald Dahl―at an early age, I was always fascinated and inspired by Matilda, a smart but lonely school girl with secret X-Men-type superpowers, the clarity of her thought and the gumption to stand up to authority. So, watching Matilda The Musical, put together by The Royal Shakespeare Company, was a moving, nostalgic and a memorable experience.

The play opens with the famously enchanting number―‘My Mummy Says I'm a Miracle’―where pampered and happy children prance about joyfully at a birthday party, standing out starkly against the dark and obnoxious ma and pa of the story's titular and pint-sized lead, Matilda, who loathe her for being born a girl. They cannot fathom her affinity towards Bronte, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Eyre, all of who she finds more appealing than television. While that's the situation at home, her school is no better, run by the appalling, huge and grim Miss Trunchbull (James Wolstenholme), a hideous disciplinarian, who hates children, calls them maggots, grabs them by their pigtails and whirl them around their heads. Matilda, played by Donna Craig, seeks refuge in Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch)―a gentler and loving teacher at the school―who’s delighted to learn of Matilda's talent and abilities and nurtures her, in the face of parents who are uninterested.

The story is a lesson in the victory of good over evil, of faith over self-doubt, of love over hate, shown beautifully over the course of two-and-a-half hours, as Matilda liberates the school from Trunchbull’s tyranny and her ignorant parents hand her over under Miss Honey's care forever. The performance pulls one in, especially Matilda’s own talent for composition and storytelling, each time she starts inventing a story at the library which she frequents. Craig has pulled it off brilliantly as she essays the lead girl's mannerisms. This is accentuated further by fantastic sound and music that surrounds the audience inside the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre’s (NMACC) The Grand Theatre and the stagecraft that is finely managed across seamlessly changing sets.

One thing I felt could have added to the experience was to have Trunchbull seem more menacing than she was in the character played by Emma Thompson. Every experience was beautifully captured for the stage. The lights, especially when they hit the eyes, was a put off, but at other times they added to the drama. At times I felt the accent was not clear enough for me to understand what was being said. Music is all-encompassing and inspiring with its scores, and a multitude of styles. My personal favourites were ‘Revolting Children’, and ‘When I Grow Up’, both hilariously lyrical. Everything was brilliant and worth gaping at―from the music to the costumes and set design.

Penned by the inimitable Dennis Kelly with original music and lyrics by comedian-songsmith Tim Minchin, Matilda The Musical, which plays till June 2 at NMACC, is a total must watch. Is it better than the book? Well, if the book led you to imagine Matilda's world, the play is the real manifestation of that imagination.

the-new-season-of-bridgerton-could-have-been-a-reflection-of-reality-rather-than-an-escape-from-it

Sat May 25 11:24:00 IST 2024

Get your satin slippers ready, ladies. For the ton is back with the season’s first dances. The first part of Bridgerton season 3 is out, and it is as delectable as ever, immersing us once more into the world of stays and petticoats, feathered hats and powdered wigs, tulle and topaz, men with titles and women setting their caps at them.

The show has often been called a floozy fantasy, popcorn escapism and distraction from the real world, perhaps not entirely without reason. After all, who wants to read about geopolitics or global warming when you can instead listen to Lady Whistledown’s verdict on the viscount’s new waistcoat. Yet Bridgerton, especially season 3, has such potential to be more―not to be a distraction from reality, but rather a reflection of it. Because it has at its heart not a heroine who is picture perfect.

Penelope Featherington (played by a brilliant Nicola Coughlan), on the other hand, is awkward, clumsy and overweight. She is the wallflower who literally stays near the wall at every ball or gathering of the ton, the spinster decidedly ‘on the shelf’ after two seasons out. In other words, she is the embodiment of each of our deepest fears. Despite our circumstances―whatever they might be―there is a Penelope in each of us. It is the voice in us that is constantly striving for contentment, yet always reaching for more.

That is why season 3 of Bridgerton has such unexploited potential. It could have gone so much further than just cotton-candy romance. Penelope’s pain could have been harvested into something purer. So many themes that we grapple with today―body shaming, anxiety, social ostracisation, and the pressure to belong―could have been explored more thoroughly. Penelope could have been a metaphor for our times. Bridgerton’s bow has been pulled back just enough for the arrow to hit a happy ending. Yet, if it had been pulled back just a little further, the arrow might have travelled beyond, to somewhere far more fulfilling.

Some might say that Bridgerton would not be Bridgerton without its snob value. It is a world where women do nothing but search for husbands and learn embroidery (in order to find a husband), and men do nothing but go pheasant hunting, gamble, and discuss their ‘conquests’ over whist and whiskey at the gentleman's club. But must all that forced laziness translate into side plots that really lead nowhere? Like the love triangle between Francesca Bridgerton, Lord Samadani and the Earl of Kilmartin; or Benedict Bridgerton’s illicit affair with Lady Tilley Arnold. Even the sex scenes, like Kate and Anthony’s bedroom romp or Colin’s threesome, are somewhat gratuitous. Sex for sex’s sake often lacks sex appeal.

And it is not like there is no precedent for a more layered exploration of themes in Bridgerton. The Bridgerton prequel Queen Charlotte―that dealt with King George’s deteriorating mental illness―was a masterpiece in nuanced story-telling. It took the topic of mental health and spun it into gold, never letting the solemness of the subject take away from its levity. All Queen Charlotte lacked was a happily-ever-after, and Penelope’s story made leeway for that; if only it also had space to air out her pain and her pathos. In fact, the pain would only have heightened the joy in the end. Suffering has a way of making life―and regency romances―sweeter.

how-indie-artistes-are-driving-the-phenomenal-rise-of-malayalam-music

Mon May 20 18:03:35 IST 2024

In the 2012 Malayalam blockbuster Thattatthin Marayathu, the protagonist is a hopeless romantic who makes desperate efforts to woo a girl. At one point, he and his sidekick encounter a slender youth in dark glasses who delivers the bad news that they have competition―a stud named Imthias is also trying to woo her. “He is gonna screw you guys,” the youth warns them.

The youth was played by Sushin Shyam, who is now a rockstar music director in the Malayalam film industry. Two years after Thattatthin Marayathu, he began churning out hits―from soulful melodies to straight-up headbangers―that have been heralding excellent news for the Malayalam music industry.

Sushin is a member of the thrash metal band The Down Troddence, popularly known as TDT. As music director, he has come to be an important bridge between two streams of Malayalam music―film-driven work and indies. Songs composed by him have helped obscure artistes achieve mainstream recognition. They have also been attracting millions of listeners across the globe every month on platforms like Spotify.

Sushin is a standard-bearer of the Malayalam music industry’s remarkable rise in recent times. Recently, on the fifth anniversary of its launch, the streaming giant Spotify unveiled some intriguing statistics about how Malayalam music has been performing well despite its financial limitations. “Since the launch, the consumption of music from India on Spotify has grown significantly globally, with 85 per cent year-on-year growth in 2023 alone,” Dhruvank Vaidya, Spotify India’s head of music and podcast, told THE WEEK. “The growth in consumption spans several local languages, with Malayalam being the fastest-growing [Indian language] for music consumption worldwide, growing more than 5,300 per cent since launch, followed by Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi and Hindi.”

Vaidya says Spotify’s flagship Malayalam language playlist, ‘Hot Hits Malayalam’, has grown by more than 200 per cent in the past one year. The playlist ‘Trending Now Malayalam’ is apparently the most listened-to playlist among south Indian languages.

Sushin has become, arguably, the chart-topping Malayalam artiste. His nine-track album for Aavesham, the Fahadh Faasil mobster-comedy that recently became a blockbuster, was third in Spotify’s global list of biggest album debuts in the April 19 weekend, just below Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter. For the album, Sushin collaborated with many indie artists, including Dabzee, MC Couper and HanuMankind. In Sushin’s words, “the audience of Malayalam music has evolved”. “The new generation is into hip hop,” he said.

Spotify numbers show this shift. “Our playlist Hip Hop Malayalam has grown by over 300 per cent in the last year alone,” said Vaidya.

Streaming platforms like Spotify, JioSaavn, Gaana, Wynk Music, Amazon Prime Music and YouTube, as well as social media platforms, have been transforming music consumption in India, democratising music distribution and making independent music from various languages more accessible. The surge in Malayalam hip hop is linked to this shift, and to the increased reach that Malayalam films have now outside Kerala.

Malayalam had its first taste of hip hop in 2004, when singer-composer Jassie Gift mixed reggae and rap for his chart-busting album for the film 4 The People. In 2009, artistes Rajeev M. and Haris Saleem founded the alternative hip-hop collective Street Academics, which fostered the fledgling Malayalam rap scene. In 2019, the mainstreaming of Malayalam hip hop gained momentum with the success of songs such as ‘Pani Paali’ by actor-singer Neeraj Madhav, ‘Voice of the Voiceless’ by Vedan, and ‘Malayali Da’ by Thirumali. Spotify commenced its India operations the same year.

The pandemic was a golden opportunity for indie artistes, especially hip-hoppers. With the film industry ceasing to churn out music, these free-spirited artistes could showcase their work. Shambhu Ajith, aka MC Couper, a hip-hopper from Thiruvananthapuram who is a law graduate and former sports journalist, said he and other artistes could break into the scene during this period. “I had been writing verses in hip-hop style since my college days, but it wasn’t until I quit my job in 2019 and returned to my hometown that things started to change,” said Couper. “Collaborating with my music-producer friend Parimal Shais on a track (‘Nerchappaattu’) gave me confidence to take music seriously. As I delved into music in 2019, I realised the power of social media and YouTube. When Covid struck, more people turned to social media for entertainment, including discovering new music.”

Only a few such as rapper Fejo could establish themselves in the mainstream before the pandemic. But the lockdown-related surge in online activity led to an influx of new artistes. “The indie scene exploded, with its ripple effect becoming evident in both films and music festivals after the pandemic,” said Couper.

Filmmakers began weaving indie works into their films. The 2022 blockbuster Thallumala, for instance, had the hit track ‘Manavalan Thug’ by Dabzee and SA, which blended hip hop with elements of the Mappila Muslim culture in Malabar. Hip hop even became a narrative tool, as seen in director Krishand’s police procedural Purusha Pretham (2023), which has a rap battle unfolding along with the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The battle features tracks composed by Ajmal Hazbulla and sung by MC Couper, Fejo and J’mymah. “The fact that our audience has embraced hip hop marks a significant change,” said Sushin.

The scene is evolving fast. Within Malayalam hip hop, Malabari hip hop has become a sub-genre with the success of tracks such as ‘Malabari Banger’ by the collective Manushyar, and ‘Kaayi’ by Baby Jean. “Ultimately, hip hop is about embracing one’s identity,” said Couper. “Audiences crave authenticity and originality. These artists have embraced their unique style, doubling down on it and presenting it in a refreshing manner. Just as hip hop evolves globally into various subgenres, we are witnessing its evolution in the Malayalam hip hop scene as well.”

James Thakara, frontman and lead singer of the band Thakara, which blends folk, funk, pop and progressive and alternative rock, told THE WEEK that Kerala is witnessing the “golden age of indie musicians”. He could well be right: Early this year, the Malayalam film industry had its biggest pan-India hit ever, Manjummel Boys, which had an album imbued with indies.

Sushin, who composed music for Manjummel Boys, told THE WEEK that he treated the whole project “like an indie album”. The four-track album had him collaborating with rapper Vedan, lyricist Anwar Ali and singers Pradeep Kumar and Urmila Krishnan.

“These are not cinematic songs,” says Sushin, “and people are embracing this change.”

the-tale-behind-the-tune-that-went-viral-with-fahadh-faasil-s-avesham-head-dance

Sat May 18 15:43:25 IST 2024

Fahadh Faasil’s iconic ‘head dance’ in the Malayalam blockbuster Aavesham may have spawned a million memes―with even cricketers such as Pat Cummins and Sunil Narine joining in―but few people know the tune they are dancing to. It is from a Malayalam folk song called ‘Karinkaliyalle’, created by two artistes with a working-class background―composer Shaiju Avaran and lyricist Kannan Mangalath of Irinjalakuda in Kerala’s Thrissur district.

Kannan, 41, was doing cable-related work for a local TV network when THE WEEK contacted him. “I have had various jobs in my life, including an apprenticeship in an electronics repair shop, artwork for a local advertising agency, and now this,” he said.

Kannan and Shaiju started working together more than a decade ago, when they were offered an opportunity to create folk songs for local dance groups performing Onakkali―a unique art form that has men depicting tales from the Ramayana.

‘Karinkaliyalle’ was initially conceived as an ode to the goddess Kodungalloor Bhagavathy.

“We crafted the first four lines a few years ago,” said Shaiju. “It was well-received within our friend circle. Then, after Covid, we created a video featuring the famous festival Kodungallor Bharani. Surprisingly, the song went viral and a producer who owned a YouTube channel approached us. Together, we created a full version of the song. That version also went viral and sparked an Instagram trend.”

Apparently, it again went viral after the Kochi Metro featured it in a promotional video. “The Aavesham team contacted us for the song, and we signed an agreement,” he said.

‘Karinkaliyalle’ had amassed nearly 40 million views on YouTube before it was included in Aavesham. Fahadh's ‘head dance’ has added another two million views. “While we are elated that our song has gained global recognition, there is a tinge of sadness,” said Shaiju. “We remain overlooked and unacknowledged. THE WEEK is one of the rare media outlets that has told our story.”

we-need-to-engage-more-with-communities-says-designer-aratrik-dev-varman

Sun May 19 10:58:18 IST 2024

Excerpt from 'The Risha: History in a Narrow Weave':

Visuals can be a tell-all. To understand the centrality that risha weaving had in the lives of the Tripuris and how the garment's use and importance changed with changing political dispensations and migratory inflows, some photographs from the 1970s, showing women of all ages in risha-s and rignai-s, give historical context.

Retrieved from the archive of the Tripura government's publicity department, these were among the few that were still intact prior to their digitization, as yet untouched by the region's humidity. Many old textiles, heirlooms and artefacts in the state were also destroyed when clashes broke out between the "tribal" and Bengali populations in the summer of 1980. Mobs burnt down entire villages. In the colossal damage to life and property that resulted, several alam-s or glossaries of motifs consulted by each tribe were tragically lost. Such violence is particularly inconceivable in the face of photographs which tell of a gentle and leisurely tribal way of life, with its rhythm of routine activities-winnowing grain, weaving and fetching water from a stream. In this volume, however, we stay with the material's history more than political allegiances per se and the cultural contexts of risha weaving and wearing.

Interview/ Aratrik Dev Varman, Designer

Designer Aratrik Dev Varman of the label Tilla has long been a lover of history. One could comfortably call him part-aesthete, part-archeologist, for his clothes dip into vintage styles of the Kutch, Sindh, Balochistan and Afghanistan, bringing alive antique styles and crafts. Tilla, the store and atelier, are situated on a tree-lined avenue in Ahmedabad. There is also a small, chic cafe in its courtyard that serves the best coffee in town. Tilla repurposes old pieces of textile into festive, celebratory, and high-end garments. Its clothes tell stories of many hands and many histories, using old mirror work, tinsel, or cowrie shell embellishments, just the way Varman intends it to be.

Varman―an alumnus of NID, Ahmedabad, and EnsAD design school, Paris―has lived in Kolkata and Chennai, two cities steeped in tradition and culture. His family hails from Tripura, where he spent his summers growing up. He initiated The Tripura Project a few years ago, in which he collected several pieces of the risha, or a breast cloth worn by Tripuri women woven from an indigenous textile. The project has now turned into a book, The Risha: History in a Narrow Weave, published by Marg (an art book publisher) and released this month. Varman speaks exclusively to THE WEEK about his work and his book:

Q/ Tilla is now 12 years old. Yet it is a relatively small and niche label that functions out of sleepy Ahmedabad.

A/ It is small and niche, because we take time to do things. When one scales up one has to be responsible for the quality one has envisioned. We are a high-end luxury, boutique brand and we like that. That said, we have grown from two tailors to 30. We stay away from techniques that simulate handwork. We believe in handmade luxury and that belief is never going away. We also work with the same set of people, so we have grown as a family.

Q/ What is at the core of Tilla?

A/ Well-crafted and handmade clothes and objects, often with a contemporary interpretation. Authenticity is at our core. From here on, we may do something more revivalist in spirit or interpretive, like a derivation. But we spend time with the community that makes the craft, and this makes us internalise it. We retain the authenticity it was created with. Our brand is not about me or my creative expression, it is about understanding the traditional form. This is where we are different.

Q/ Tilla means a hill.

A/ When I created the brand, I brainstormed, and after much hemming and hawing, arrived at the name. My family home in Agartala is built on a hill. I have spent all my summer holidays there. It is my grandma’s home and my parents live there now. It's important to me.

Q/ In an earlier interview with me, you said you believe in self-reliant craft, or continually fine-tuning what we already have. Can you elaborate on this?

A/ Craft in India, in our context, is so sustainable. By its very nature, it is decentralised. It uses local materials and skills that have been around for generations. We can do this at home without a large set-up. It is independent and dignified. As designers, if we make very few changes, we can support many communities, and then the future of craft is very sustainable. We need to engage more with communities, they already have what it takes to make a sustainable product. Concepts are slightly unfamiliar and that is where we come in. Craft is a living tradition. It doesn’t belong in museums. There are people who still have these skill sets and we have access to them.

Q/ You showcased Tripura craft at the Lakme Fashion Week in 2019. Is this what gave birth to The Tripura Project?

A/ The show was the culmination of a grant the British Council had given us. It was titled 'Crafting Futures', if I remember correctly. We worked all through 2018, and presented it in 2019. At the time, the Council’s agenda was to work with women-centric craft. I chose to work in Tripura and thus, the project. I was a textile student at NID, so this was a natural extension of my learning. I had started collecting textiles, and realised I needed to document them. They are well-documented in other states in the northeast, but not in Tripura. I collected a lot of rishas and studied them because of this grant. I travelled with my colleague Jisha Unnikrishnan (a designer and illustrator with Tilla). I also stumbled across a family album that belonged to my aunt. She had documented these prints of Tripura royalty from the late 1800s; they were the earliest prints in India.

Q/ Weaving in the northeast is largely a woman’s activity, unlike in the rest of India. Does this mean they are more empowered?

A/ Women of all social strata, including princesses, wove their own rishas up until the 1900s, after which this disappeared. It was interesting to discover that regardless of status, women would weave. Then, the royals stopped marrying girls from Tripura's tribal communities. The late king Birendra Kishore Manikya married six women, all from Nepal. But in Tripuri villages, people wove and wore the risha proudly. We found a whole set of archived prints from the 1980s, and even the 1970s, where many women in the interiors of Tripura wore the risha. Our second inquiry was why the villagers stopped wearing this garment. We found that there were violent riots that broke out between Bengali and Tripuri communities concerning the resettlement of refugees from Bangladesh. An insurgency followed. The local police managed it, and the centre did nothing. The tribals did not feel safe, and began to migrate to cities. They faced pressure to assimilate into the more dominant Sanskritised culture of the Bengalis. This is told in the way the risha evolved. It used to be worn over a blouse, then it became a little wider. The risha is also worn as a sash, stole or turban now, and is used in ceremonies. In its symbolism it has survived, but it is not so functional any more.

As for women weavers, so the North East is made up of tribal communities where the village functions as a unit and a lot of castes are community-based. Everyone was self-sustainable. They wove for themselves and their family, it was not a commercial activity. Everywhere else in India, weaving was for trade, to be sold. The North East was isolated because of the terrain, but also linguistically and culturally. Within that isolation, they've had to survive. The women or the men didn't have an idea what money meant. Their economic systems were very different, their basic needs were met and they lived life on their terms. This is now beginning to change. Unlike frame looms or desk looms, the loin loom that women of the North East use is made up of sticks. It can be rolled up and is thus mobile. The loom itself empowers the woman to work on her own. In that sense, it's closer to embroidery than weaving, because women can embroider at home. This ensured her agency. But the loom is kept in tension by the body, so it is hard work. You have diversity between 19 tribes so a fantastic, nuanced, design language.

Q/ So this 10-inch breast cloth, symbolising women’s indigenous history, led you to a book by Marg.

I took our manuscript to Naman Ahuja or Marg and I’m glad he took an interest in it. I am a reader and a huge admirer, as they stand for scholarship. It's an institution I look up to. Naman was very encouraging, he played a huge role in the bringing out of this publication. Jisha and I are designers, not anthropologists. Nandini Bhaskaran from their team was so helpful too.

indian-actor-adarsh-gourav-interview

Sat May 11 16:08:44 IST 2024

Interview/ Adarsh Gourav actor

The first time Adarsh Gourav made an impression was in Ramin Bahrani's 2021 film The White Tiger, a gripping adaptation of Aravind Adiga's Booker-winning novel. In the character of Balram, an ambitious lower-caste servant in a rich home who pulls himself out of the shackles of servitude, Gourav was unmissable and sharp, especially in a hard-to-like role and in the shadow of co-stars Rajkummar Rao and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. It was not his first film—he played the young Shah Rukh Khan in Karan Johar's My Name is Khan in 2010. We also saw a lot of him in the past three years in the teen drama Hostel Daze, Guns & Gulaabs and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan.

Gourav is that actor who is not running the race; he is moving at his own pace and doing his own thing. He has studied music and drama and hopes to take lessons in direction. He is currently in Bangkok shooting for Noah Hawley's series Alien. “Here, every day on the set is like being at an amusement park,” he says on a Zoom call. “Everything is so new for me; the Central World building is so incredible that I'm fascinated and overwhelmed. I'll be playing one of the key characters in season 1.” The show will be out next year.

Gourav has also put his music lessons to good use in his latest composition, his new single Bechaini, an ode to teenage love, in collaboration with OAFF. “I like trying out different things; it drives out the monotony,” he says. His Superman of Malegaon is due to release this year. He also has plans to fulfil his dream of working with Alia Bhatt, Wamiqa Gabbi and Nimisha Sajayan. Excerpts from the interview:

Q\ We have not seen you in a while. Tell us about Bechaini.

A\ My love for music has been passed onto me from both my parents' sides. My paternal grandmother wrote poetry and composed, but it was in a small village. She was not famous, but had the skill. Likewise, my maternal aunts sang and played instruments. I was lucky to get the right kind of opportunities to do something bigger with my talent in the sense that I could make it commercially viable. I have always been into music; I started learning it when I was five. It was Hindustani classical vocals that I began with. I trained under the Prayag gharana when I was in Jamshedpur. I learnt under two different gurus and when I moved to Mumbai I went to Ajivasan Music Academy and learned under Padma Wadkar. She saw some potential in me and encouraged me to sing for a few films in chorus parts.

In Mumbai, I reached a stage in life when I got bored of it and was looking for something more exciting, relevant and appealing. Then I started venturing into punk rock and metal, and sang for a few bands in college. So there had been an entire circle with music at 23, and I got back in touch with classical and realised that it essentially forms the roots not just in terms of music but the way of life. That's when I started doing riyaz again and wrote a lot, scribbled a lot, and then Bechaini was one of the songs I wrote. OAFF and I were just sitting and chatting and I was talking about childhood when I was in love with this girl, and the lyrics of Bechaini was the result of that casual conversation. Then we composed it. Everything has to be personal for it to have a connect. I'm sure I will sometime in the future feel I have to sing what I write. It makes more sense to sing what one genuinely feels.

Q\ How do you rate yourself as an actor?

A\ I have always been a keen observer and driven by curiosity. I don't even know why I was acting for the first seven or eight years. I was on autopilot. I didn't know if I was good at it and if I wanted to do it. I was just going with the flow. And most of my acting was like doing advertisements; I wasn't doing films full time. Maybe once in a few years I would get one small role in a film or show. But I really started enjoying it after I trained myself to be an actor in 2016-2017 at the Drama School Mumbai. I started questioning why I was doing what I was doing and what were the kind of stories I was interested in and the plays and films I liked. The techniques used to understand the character and to transform myself into somebody with your voice and body changes... that is when I started really taking an interest in it. Even though I was acting before this, it was then that I got clarity about what I was doing and why. I think drama school made a huge impression on my life.

Q\ What is on your wishlist?

A\ I would love to work with Ari Aster, Jordan Peele, Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling, Vikramaditya Motwane and Zoya Akhtar, and Farhan Akhtar, who is a fantastic storyteller.

Q\ Which of your films do you think made your career?

A\ It has to be The White Tiger. It helped me put my name out there for people within and outside the industry. More importantly, it gave me a lot of faith and confidence in myself and my abilities as an actor. Actors often feel the imposter syndrome and they constantly feel like they are bad and untalented and that their choices are wrong. I guess you need a certain amount of confidence and faith to back yourself up as an actor, and The White Tiger did that for me. Also, sometimes when I think about the crazy journey I went on, before the film started, whether it was living in the village or working at Saket. It is almost like I am watching a movie about my own life. It feels so unreal that all of that happened just three years ago.

Q\ Acting, music and what is next, direction?

A\ I haven't planned this journey. I am into writing and I feel like whenever the time is right I will jump into direction. I would really love to change gears and push myself and start talking to people about how I can actually make direction happen, and find producers who could back me. But it will be a journey and it is going to be a bit before that happens.

sheetal-mallar-in-her-photobook-braided-uses-hair-as-a-metaphor-to-tell-a-story-that-is-personal-yet-universal

Sat May 11 12:13:30 IST 2024

Hair has always been a part of a woman's identity. Be it short, long, thick, fine, curly, straight or wavy, it plays an important role in shaping her persona. I remember watching my grandmother comb out her thick, long, straight hair that fell beyond her waist. It was black with streaks of silver and looked like a magical waterfall to an eight-year-old me.

I also recall whispering in her ear, “I want hair like yours.” And thanks to her carefully crafted hair-care regime, I had thick, waist-length hair till my late teens. My relationship with my curls fell through when they started misbehaving and the straightening bug bit me. Each woman's journey with her hair is different.

Model-turned-photographer Sheetal Mallar's photobook Braided conveys just that and more. Some of the pictures in the book evoke nostalgia; some are poignant, while some others are portraits of Mallar's mother and grandmother. The book also comprises illustrations, done by Mallar, and personal notes.

As one flips through Braided, one realises that this is Mallar's ode to her relationship with her mother and grandmother. “We have been very tight-knit. My grandmother lived with us for several years. I have been very close to her,” she says. “Mothers and daughters generally tend to have a close bond. But then, it is also a bag of mixed emotions. At one point, you tend to rebel. You want to go away, do things your way. The bond is very interesting; it shapes your life in many ways. You choose to do or not do certain things because she (your mother) might have done it. You realise more and more as you grow up emotionally.”

Explaining the very first picture, which has a side note stating that she and her mother cut her grandmother's hair while she was asleep, Mallar says it was because her grandmother has Alzheimer’s. “She would think that she has combed her hair, but then she wouldn't have. Her hair started getting matted,” she says. “So, we decided to cut it.” Considering the “feisty matriarch” that her grandmother was, they could dare cut her hair only while she was asleep. Mallar says it has been a treat to revisit the village of Padubidri in Karnataka where her grandmother grew up. “Sometimes our memory fails us, so this book is a way of keeping them close,” she says.

Mallar has looked at hair metaphorically to look at all the rituals we have around it. “Braiding each morning before school is something that has happened for several years. I miss that intimacy, the bond the ritual formed, the quiet time. The whole thing goes deeper than hair and that's what I wanted to bring about, an apt beginning to the story I wished to tell,” she says.

In her book, Mallar has showcased everyday objects like sari, remote control, talc and comb as part of the narrative “to evoke a sense of nostalgia”. As she rightly puts it, sometimes just smelling the talc or the soap can remind you of a person. Mallar's Braided is just what you need if you crave for some nostalgia, much like a warm lihaf (quilt) on a cold Delhi winter evening or a cup of filter coffee on a sultry afternoon in Chennai, or in my case, dosa and sambar after a long weary day.

Mallar says she was always attracted to the visual medium—be it photography, drawing or painting. So, when she quit modelling, she took up one of these mediums. She does stay in touch with friends from her modelling days, like Jesse Randhawa. The self-published memoir is not a money-making exercise for Mallar; it is just something she wanted to do for her and her mother—a keepsake of sorts.

camouflaged-forgotten-stories-from-battlefields-book-by-probal-dasgupta-review

Sat May 11 12:10:40 IST 2024

Few Indians know that thousands of Indian volunteers fought in lands unknown to them in Europe for the British empire during the Great War in 1914, even though they were looking for India’s eventual independence from British rule. Around 90,000 died there. Their sons and grandsons followed them into the profession of arms, with some families having served in an Indian Army regiment for over a hundred years. The Indian Army’s history is long and has not been covered in this book. Only the essence of what drives men in uniform has been brought out in the 10 deeply researched stories, sourced from museums, libraries, regiments of the Indian Army, war diaries and personal accounts.

This book is a fascinating collection of their stories—often untold—that author Probal Dasgupta, a former soldier, has collected after meticulous research and through interviews of 40 sources in over 400 hours of discussions. It is a fresh initiative to tell stories that have remained limited to military circles. Governments since our independence preferred to keep these tales of valour outside the public discourse, claiming that all those who had fought for the empire had betrayed the cause of our independence. On the contrary, these soldiers upheld the image of India, as this collection of tales shows. The stories range from the battlefields of Europe and Africa to the Indian subcontinent, the 1962 and 1971 wars and the 26/11 terror attacks.

Few of us know that two Indian fighter pilots—Hardit Malik and Laddie Roy—broke the ‘20-minute’ jinx that British pilots feared in World War I. Or, that the gallantry of Lance Dafadar Gobind Singh got him the Victoria Cross. And though his gallantry at Cambrai in Europe inspired a Hollywood film that earned a few Oscars, he got no mention beyond military circles in India! Partly because we as a nation have been in denial of the deeds of our gallant men, and only the India Gate in Delhi is an exception that stands in commemoration to India's massive contribution in World War I. Sadly, there is no such memorial for World War II, which by some accounts was really India’s war when over a million Indians participated in the battlefields of Africa and Europe. The British left India in a hurry after that war and the governments that followed chose to ignore the sacrifices of the Indian soldiers.

Beyond these great wars, as one story in the book brings out, Indian troops fought border wars and insurgencies in Kashmir, remaining morally upright despite dealing with unethical Pakistani-trained terrorists—as one story brings out. The details of how the 26/11 terror attacks unfolded are equally interesting, even though much of its details are known to some of us.

However, Dasgupta must be complimented for bringing out these stories in the most readable collection to show that soldiers are not just daring men, but also humane. This book must be widely read by our younger generations to know that an Indian soldier of the empire was as fine an example as that of the Indian Army today: honourable, versatile and determined to deliver, whatever the odds. We need more such books, as India has more war stories of the past century than most other nations. And they need to be told.

Camouflaged: Forgotten Stories from Battlefields

By Probal Dasgupta

Published by Juggernaut

Price Rs699; pages 318

code-dependent-by-madhumita-murgia-shortlisted-for-the-women-s-prize-for-non-fiction

Sat May 11 12:05:44 IST 2024

Over a decade ago, when Madhumita Murgia was starting out in journalism (she had studied biology and clinical immunology at Oxford and then worked on developing vaccines for HIV), she became curious about the world of data brokering—where shadowy companies “collect data about our online lives and turn them into saleable profiles of who we are today, and who we will one day become”. To make the story more tangible, she decided to track down the profile of someone she was intimately familiar with—herself. She contacted an ad-tech startup to decode the information collected about her from her own web browser. The report they sent her of an ‘anonymised version' of herself included her profile put together by Experian, a credit-rating agency that doubled as a data broker.

The report was shocking, not just because of the personal details it contained—from where she worked and lived and how she spent her money to the holidays she had taken in the past year—but also because it detailed her opinions, interests, and personality traits, from her TV-watching habits and food preferences to her level of ambition and political leanings.

This was really her baptism into the murky world of data colonialism, big tech, surveillance, and artificial intelligence. “My life—and yours—is being converted into such a data package that is then sold on,” she writes in her new book, Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI. “Ultimately, we are the products.”

One of Murgia’s greatest strengths—who currently works as the AI editor of Financial Times—is that she has a skill for humanising her stories. So, if she told the story of data brokering through her own life, she tells the story of AI through the lives of ordinary people at the ‘back end’ of the technology. These are usually the individuals and communities that are already “othered, floating in society’s blurry edges, fighting to be seen and heard”, whether they be women, black and brown people, migrants and refugees, religious minorities, the poor or the disabled.

So her story careens from the lives of data labourers in Kenya (those who help train AI software by tagging and labelling big data-sets); to the victims of nude deepfakes in the UK (or hyper-real fake images and videos of a person created through AI) uploaded on pornographic websites; to minorities and dalits in the slums of Hyderabad monitored via facial recognition technology; to teenagers in Amsterdam listed by the government as potential future criminals with the help of machine-learning algorithms.

When we think of AI, we think of tech geniuses like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg sitting in the air-conditioned confines of Silicon Valley and working towards a future where artificial intelligence percolates everything—from health care to robotics to farming to retail. We hardly think of people like Hiba—a data labourer for a Bulgarian startup called Humans in the Loop, (whose workers are primarily refugees and migrants from the Middle East who have been displaced by political conflict and war). For each image she tags, Hiba is paid the equivalent of 60 cents. She makes a minimum of four euros per hour of work. She has trained her family also to tag data for AI companies in the west, and between them, they earn anywhere from $600 to $1,200 a month. Their expenses are roughly $1,600 a month, so they just about make ends meet by supplementing their earnings through helping run a nearby beauty salon.

“Giving people work is not charity,” Murgia quotes a Kenyan lawyer in the book. “It is not enough to simply pay people. You may be lifting them out of poverty, while still disenfranchising them and treating them as ‘pawns with no agency’.” The irony is that these people are working on something that might ultimately put them out of work, and they are not even aware of it. Hiba, for example, has no views on the impact of what she is helping to build. She just wants steady work.

Code Dependent is gripping because it shows us an aspect of AI that very few of us grapple with—away from flashy driverless cars and chatbot therapists. Murgia is deeply empathetic—and perhaps a tad angry—for those disempowered by this technology and at the mercy of those profiting from it. And that is why she reiterates the importance of accountability.

“One of the things that struck me [while researching this book] was that I had written a lot about how AI as a technology can be flawed,” she tells THE WEEK. “It is a statistical predictive system so it is never going to be 100 per cent correct. And it makes errors all the time. But what was surprising to me was that in the stories I tell, what was hurting people was not the flaws in the technology necessarily, but the human failures in how we implement it. Like trusting AI too much and therefore not building any backups for when it goes wrong. Or the lack of accountability in introducing a system like facial recognition or a criminal justice prediction algorithm.”

Murgia gives the example of a computer scientist she cites in the book, who took on some work with Uber Eats. What he learnt was that there was no human he could get to at the other end to show what the technology was not getting right and how to correct it. So that failure turns up again and again when we trust AI too much, says Murgia. We don’t build guardrails for when it makes errors.

And then there is of course the question that she must have fielded time and again since becoming an AI editor. Does she think AI is going to become sentient? Murgia smiles in response. No, she says. She does not think so. However, when people interact with ChatGPT, they tend to humanise or anthropomorphise it, she says. They tell it secrets they don’t even tell their friends or family. And so, currently, it is a lot more about us viewing it as sentient, and what that means for our society, than it actually becoming sentient. “If we start to treat this as human-adjacent in some way, how is this going to change our relationship with each other and how we function as a society?” she asks.

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

By Madhumita Murgia

Published by Picador India

Price Rs699; pages 336

unique-names-are-becoming-popular-in-many-parts-of-the-world

Sat May 04 15:40:16 IST 2024

On June 6, 1944―otherwise known as D-Day―the biggest seaborne invasion in history took place in France’s Normandy, when the Allied forces retook it in an operation codenamed Neptune during World War II. The operation made Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded it, an overnight sensation. He would go on to become the 34th president of the United States. Exactly 11 years after the D-Day in Normandy, another kind of D-Day was happening to a Christian couple thousands of miles away. On that day, unbeknownst to President Eisenhower, his namesake was born in Oonjapara, a small agricultural village in Kerala.

So how did a Malayali boy get named after the American president? Some might call it a tale with a twist. When he was studying in the first standard, the boy, who was baptised as Issac, would bawl during attendance because his teacher, Varkey saar, would not call out his name. Not that he himself was sure what his name was. As punishment, an older student was asked to carry Issac home every time he started crying. This, however, only raised the decibel level of his wails. Fed up with all the ruckus during roll call, the teacher finally asked Issac why he was crying. “Because you don’t call out my name,” he replied. Varkey saar immediately took corrective measures and put down Issac’s name in the first standard register as ‘Isenhower’, who was the most powerful man in the world then and who had visited India a few months before his namesake joined school. The name stuck. Little Isenhower had no problem with it. He thought it was the English version of what he was called at home―‘Ise kunju’.

Years later, in 1966, when Isenhower got admission to a Sainik School, his father went to collect his Transfer Certificate, and was alarmed to see his son’s name printed as Isenhower in the document. He tried to tell the headmaster that the boy’s real name was Issac K. Joseph. “The name has been recorded in the list sent to the Assistant Education Officer and cannot be changed without a formal application, which might take some time,” the headmaster told him. And that’s how Issac officially became Isenhower, and, some time after he joined the Army, ‘Colonel Isenhower’. He says he has checked in the population register; he is the only one with this name in the country.

“The only pitfall is that I have no surname,” says Isenhower. “So, to buy train tickets and fill application forms, I use my rank―‘Colonel’―as my first name. Another problem with having a unique name is that everyone wants to know the story behind it. So, this must be the two thousandth time I am repeating my story.”

His story might be unique today, just like his name, but soon, it might no longer be. We might be approaching a day when Isenhowers will be the rule and Issacs, the exception. This is happening already. In many parts of the world, it is raining babies with unique names. Take Scotland, for example. 2023 was a record year for unique baby names. According to the National Records of Scotland (NRS), there were a record 2,362 boys with unique names and 2,983 girls with the same last year. Boys were named ‘Boy’, ‘Demigod’ and ‘Howl’, while girls got stuck with ‘Costly’, ‘La’, ‘Na’, and ‘Pasty’. Neither are babies ‘Banksy’, ‘Jihad’ and ‘Alloy’ likely to have it easy in life.

Similar trends are being observed in Japan and the UK. Last year, The Japan Times published a piece on baby names getting more creative. “Do more unique monikers mean Japan is becoming more individualistic?” it asked. In the UK, Sophie Kihm from Nameberry (a website devoted to baby names), told Metro, “Years ago, parents may have chosen a name because they liked the sound or it had a family connection, but today more than ever, baby names are seen as an opportunity to showcase style, culture, and hopes and dreams parents have for their child.”

So, how do unusual names impact a child’s personality? Surely, Baby Jihad could not go through life without at least one ‘What happens when a terrorist walks into a bar’ joke being lobbed at him. Experts, however, say it might not all be doom and gloom with unusual names. In fact, the opposite might be true. According to one study conducted at the Arizona State University, CEOs with unique names were found to be more creative and confident than their peers. Other research suggests that a person’s name can influence what job they get, who they marry, where they settle, and even what stocks they invest in. One study even concludes that we look like our names. Professor Anne-Laure Sellier and her team asked subjects to pick a name from a list of four or five options for the photo of a person that they showed. The subjects chose correctly more times than was likely to be accounted by the law of chance. To belong to their “tribe”, people tend to align themselves―through their clothes, glasses, tattoos, and hairstyles―to what they think someone with their name would look like, felt Sellier.

Unlike in the west, where names are chosen for their individualism, originality, and simplicity, in India, names are deeply rooted in custom, culture and ancestral roots, says Professor M.J. Warsi, chairman, department of linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, and president of the Linguistic Society of India. “Children's names in India are determined by several variables, such as cultural and religious customs,” he says. “Names express ideals, beliefs, and heritage, and are frequently associated with religion and caste. To pay tribute to family legacy, children are frequently named after grandparents or other elders. Family history and origin play a major role.”

On the other hand, in the west, parents frequently value unique names, he says, taking cues from literature, popular culture or individual tastes. Gender-neutral names are becoming increasingly common, indicative of changing attitudes on gender and identity. Surnames are used to identify families, with less emphasis on religion or caste.

Not that unusual names, religion and caste neutral, are absent in India. We have a cricketer named Napoleon Einstein and a Meghalayan politician named Adolf Lu Hitler Rangsa Marak. There is a Reddit thread on people with unusual names in the country, which includes a science teacher who named his three children ‘Proton’, ‘Electron’ and ‘Neutron’. “My father gave me my name, but I don’t know why. He didn’t get it from a novel or anything. He told me: ‘I just got this feeling to name you Rinklet’,” says Rinklet Varghese, who works in real estate. “Of course, there are shortcomings with a name like mine. Friends used to tell me it sounds like something to eat. Also, very few people know how to pronounce it correctly. I’ve been called ‘Ringly’ quite a few times. Still, I like my name as it makes me feel unique. I don’t know of anyone else with my name. It has given me a sense of confidence.”

Not so lucky is Dr Loosamma Joseph, who says she hates her name. “It was supposed to be Lucy, but I studied in a convent school, where the nuns believed in adding ‘amma’ to girls’ names,” she says. “But I did not even realise that my name was spelt as ‘Loosamma’ until I saw my birth certificate just before taking my SSLC exams. Those days, there was no concept of changing your name, so I was stuck with it. During my MBBS, people used to call me ‘Loosy Loose’. Even now, there are those who call me ‘Loose’ (a slang for mentally unstable in Kerala).”

Names with a negative connotation can have a permanent impact on people since you tend to remember negative incidents more, says clinical psychologist Anita Rajah. “It is a survival mechanism of the brain,” she says. “Every time you are slighted, you tend to remember previous incidents of being slighted. Names are connected to emotions in a big way.”

Once upon a time, giving unusual names to their children was the preserve of celebrities. Naming their children ‘Sunday’ (the daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban), ‘Wolf Webster’ (the son of Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott), ‘North’ (the daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West), 'Blue Ivy' (the daughter of Beyonce and Jay-Z) and ‘Moroccan’ (the son of Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon) was just another working day in Hollywood. In fact, The New York Times carried a piece in 2006 titled ‘Why Stars Name Babies Moxie, Moses and Apple’.

“You're likely to be the only one in any normal-size group with that name,” it quoted actor Penn Jillette, who named his daughter ‘Moxie CrimeFighter’. “'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean 'chutzpah,' and that's nice. Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it. It is only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think. They're named Dave.”

In a world in which everything celebrities do is increasingly cut, copied and pasted, Ms CrimeFighter might indeed have the last laugh.

salman-rushdie-latest-book-knife-meditations-after-an-attempted-murder

Sat Apr 27 14:44:48 IST 2024

Five is a life-changing number for Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses was his fifth book. The Satanic Verses―which, he said, was his least political―changed his life forever. His second book, Midnight’s Children, had only changed the world of English literary writing. And after four divorces, Rushdie is married again. Rachel Eliza Griffiths is his fifth go at the fuzzy feeling. But with Griffiths, the feeling is very much the 'print it on a T-shirt and wear as a slogan' kind. (He was not looking for love, he says).

A poet, Griffiths often goes by her second name. Like him. Rushdie's first name is Ahmed. (Nobody has ever called me Ahmed except my mother when she was cross with me, he writes in Knife, his much-awaited memoir after the attack on his life in 2022.) He is in love. And this time it is happiness.

Knife―Meditations After an Attempted Murder is a brave, unflinching chronicle of the attack on a writer. It is his most accessible book and certainly his most important work. Rushdie is out of hiding. He lays himself bare. He has survived, and has lived to tell the tale. There is the detailed, vivid chronicling of his own recovery. (Griffiths has a documentary, too.) Details include finding a bump during his prostate examination. (Not cancer, though they thought it was.) Then there were the urinary problems, fears of going blind, and pain. And this book about almost dying is his most life-affirming work.

His attack lasts 27 seconds. The same time it would take to recite the Lord’s Prayer, if you were religious, he writes. Or read out his favourite Shakespeare’s sonnet 130. “Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, octave and sestet,’’ he writes. He describes sitting in an amphitheatre in Chautauqua on that fateful day to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe. “My first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was: “So it’s you. Here you are,’’ he writes.

He escaped, but not unscathed. He has lost vision in his right eye. The dark glass that covers it gives him a rakish look. (Very rockstar-writer-gladiator). The wound in his neck caused a partial paralysis of the right side of his lower lip, which an $18,000 prosthesis clipped on to his teeth attempts to hide. It is not obvious when you see him smiling defiantly out of the book cover; but it is, when he speaks.

Like the weapon used on him―a knife―the tender, deeply-felt memoir tells of his fight back, of his survival, of family, of the staggering courage of a man who made his home in literature, and more importantly, love.

This is not Rushdie’s first memoir. In Joseph Anton: A Memoir, which came out in 2012, he writes about living a hunted life in the shadow of the fatwa. Written in the third person, Anton offers insights into his life, his relationship with his father, the drinking and the fits of rage fuelled by it―but at a distance. Knife, however, is personal and political, almost an all-access pass to his private world.

It is a book of survival―urgent, heartbreaking, witty and unforgettable. Rushdie writes with abandon about being in love, his sons, his sister Sameen and, of course, Griffiths. She “literally knocked him out’’, as he likes to say to his friends. Their “meeting cute’’ involves Rushdie walking through a glass door and bruising his nose. The sheer rush of love, delightfully bubbly like the best champagne, is infectious. The trial by blood―this time an extended hospital stay and a rehab―continued for Griffiths as she became the rock by his side after the attack. The dedication in her debut novel, Promise, reads, “Let our love show this impossible world that nothing is impossible. I love you with every heart and story that has ever lived in me and every story to come.’’

Rushdie said at PEN America in 2022 that a poem will not stop a bullet. “A novel cannot defuse a bomb. Not all our satirists are heroes," he said. But Rushdie is. And he has. He still writes. We must then read.

salman-rushdie-knife-meditations-after-an-attempted-murder-book-excerpts

Sat Apr 27 14:43:21 IST 2024

IN MY OWN MEMORY, strangely, there's no record of pain.

I remember lying on the floor watching the pool of my blood spreading outward from my body. That’s a lot of blood, I thought.

And then I thought: I’m dying. It didn’t feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable. Yes, that was very likely what was happening. It felt matter-of-fact.

It’s rare for anyone to be able to describe a near-death experience. Let me say first what did not happen. There was nothing supernatural about it. No “tunnel of light.” No feeling of rising out of my body. In fact, I have rarely felt so strongly connected to my body. My body was dying and it was taking me with it. It was an intensely physical sensation. Later, when I was out of danger, I would ask myself, who or what did I think the “me” was, the self that was in the body but was not the body, the thing that the philosopher Gilbert Ryle once called “the ghost in the machine.” I have never believed in the immortality of the soul, and my experience at Chautauqua seemed to confirm that. The “me,” whatever or whoever it was, was certainly on the edge of death along with the body that contained it. I had sometimes said, half-humorously, that our sense of a noncorporeal “me” or “I” might mean that we possessed a mortal soul, an entity or consciousness that ended along with our physical existence. I now think that maybe that isn’t entirely a joke.

As I lay on the floor, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. What occupied my thoughts, and was hard to bear, was the idea that I would die far away from the people I loved, in the company of strangers. What I felt most strongly was a profound loneliness. I would never see Eliza again. I would never see my sons again, or my sister, or her daughters.

Somebody tell them, I was trying to say. I don’t know if anyone heard me, or understood. My voice sounded far away from me, croaky, halting, blurry, inexact.

I could see as through a glass darkly. I could hear, indistinctly. There was a lot of noise. I was aware of a group of people surrounding me, arching over me, all shouting at the same time. A rackety dome of human beings, enclosing my prone form. A cloche, in food-world terminology. As if I were the main course on a platter―served bloody, saignant―and they were keeping me warm―keeping, so to speak, the lid on me.

I need to talk about pain, because on this subject my own recollections differ considerably from the memories of those around me, a group which contained at least two doctors who had been in the audience. Members of this group said to journalists that I was wailing with pain, that I kept asking, What’s wrong with my hand? It hurts so much! In my own memory, strangely, there’s no record of pain. Maybe shock and bewilderment overpower the mind’s perception of agony. I don’t know.

It’s as if a disconnect had appeared between my “outward,” in-the-world self, which was wailing, et cetera, and my “inward,” within-myself self, which was somehow detached from my senses and was, I now think, close to delirious.

Red Rum is murder backward.―Red Rum, a horse, won Grand National Steeplechase three times.―’73, ’74, ’77.―This is the kind of random nonsense that was cropping up between my ears. But I did hear some of what was being said above my head.

“Cut his clothes off so we can see where the wounds are,” somebody shouted.

Oh, I thought, my nice Ralph Lauren suit.

Then there were scissors―or maybe a knife, I really have no idea―and my clothes were being torn off me; there were things that people really needed to attend to urgently. There were also things I needed to say.

“My credit cards are in that pocket,” I mumbled to whoever might be paying attention. “My house keys are in the other pocket.”

I heard a man’s voice saying, What does it matter.

Then a second voice, Of course it matters, don’t you know who this is.

It was probable that I was dying, so what did it matter, indeed. I didn’t expect to need house keys or credit cards.

But now, looking back, hearing my broken voice insist on those things, the things of my normal everyday life, I think that a part of me―some battling part deep within―simply had no plan to die, and fully intended to use those keys and cards again, in the future, on whose existence that inner part of me was insisting with all the will it possessed.

Some part of me whispering, Live. Live.

Excerpted with due permission from KNIFE by Salman Rushdie, published by Penguin Random House India. © Salman Rushdie, 2024.

Knife―Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By Salman Rushdie

Published by Penguin Random House India

Price Rs699; pages 209

amal-allana-s-biography-of-her-father-ebrahim-alkazi-is-as-much-personal-as-it-is-historical

Sat Apr 27 14:42:03 IST 2024

There are stories waiting to be told, stories that must be told and stories that tell themselves. Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive―a biography of the theatre titan, penned by his daughter and theatre director Amal Allana―is a bit of all three.

The book begins when Alkazi is around 14 and immediately thrusts the reader into a world where a loud condemnation of Mulk Raj Anand’s work about the underdog is countered by an equally passionate argument that cites Bhimrao Ambedkar’s writing on the annihilation of caste. The setting is Poona (now Pune) and interested as he is in these discussions, the young Alkazi is more beholden by the fact that there could be an entire magazine devoted to theatre. At home, the lad, supported by his father, is building a library in a small room of the family home, which bears the handwritten sign ‘Literrati’.

Born to parents of Arabian descent, there was an ‘otherness’ to Alkazi that came from his parents striving to stick to their roots and an India that was rapidly being reconstructed under British rule. In a particularly touching piece, Allana mentions her grandfather, Hamed Al-Qadi, pointing to a box of sand carried from his desert homeland, extolling his children to never forgo its honour just as never to betray the land that had made them its own. This dedication to an Indian identity remains strong in Alkazi as an individual (his boyhood joy at being recognised as a Hindustani, and not a Jew or a Parsi) and as an artiste (who is deeply imprinted by Mahatma Gandhi’s manner of delivery of his message―effective yet unpretentious). These would go on to fuel his desire for making cultural rootedness the objective of theatrical communication, and then the greater aim of neither trying to be an insider or an outsider, but someone who drew from the most liberal ideas of the day.

The title of the book itself comes from a scribble on a piece of paper discovered the day Alkazi died. Talk of serendipity, of stories that shape themselves! Allana remembers a blisteringly hot day in 2016 when she was looking through some old tin trunks lying in a shed on the small farm that the family owned on the outskirts of Delhi. “I was on the last trunk (one of my mother’s), and my husband, Nissar, was urging me to continue this sorting on another day when the weather was more bearable,” said Allana. She asked for just a few more minutes and bingo! “At the bottom of the trunk, to my surprise, I discovered a largish bundle,” she recalled. “Wrapped in an old bedspread were 100-odd drawings and paintings made by my father in the 1940s. I was shaking with disbelief. My God! I had only heard about these works, but never seen them. Studying these works that my father had made when he was barely 23―the very inception of his career―allowed me to gain valuable insight into the direction he was pursuing both thematically and stylistically and as both a theatre director and a visual artiste.”

Another chance ‘discovery’ for Allana was the 1951 correspondence between Alkazi and Leonard Elmhirst, the British philanthropist. Alkazi, on completing a course at Dartington Hall, had requested Elmhirst for money to make good the shortfall towards his return passage to India. Elmhirst, who barely knew Alkazi, obliged without hesitation. This was one of the many influences that would shape Alkazi’s ethos―the necessity of helping needy young students at crucial moments during their education.

Allana uses the anthropological tool of participant observer―for she writes as an offspring, a student and theatre artiste to paint the picture of a man whose expansive influence on modern culture included laying the foundations of the National School of Drama. She does not falter in the role. There is the well-placed admiration for her father who was one of the main architects in freeing Indian art from ‘colonial mimicry’, as there is gentle ribbing for his hyperboles in the letters he wrote to his wife, Roshen, an integral part of Alkazi’s journey as an artiste and as a human.

“In writing a biography one is committing to be as faithful and as truthful as possible in order for the work to be credible,” said Allana. “My parents… were artistes…. They believed in leading lives that were truthful, and that did not necessarily abide by societal norms and niceties. This was part of the way they asserted their freedom―to live according to their own sense of truth. It was what made them strong and courageous and worth writing about.”

Allana’s prose is simple but effective. There is profuse use of dialogue and a treasured offering of artwork, posters, catalogues, drawings and photographs. At places, it ventures into the poetic and extremely sensitive. The death and sexuality of Sultan Padamsee (Roshen’s eldest brother) is one such example. There is also the walking off of Alkazi’s brother―a festering wound that the family avoids mentioning.

Holding Time Captive is not a book to be read in a hurry. It is to be savoured, gently. There is such a flurry of names and ideas that weave in and out of Alkazi’s life that each introduction would encourage the theatre-inclined to probe further.

Allana’s target readership though is not limited. Much like her father, she believes that art is not an elitist preoccupation or an intellectual pursuit, but should be available and comprehensible to all. “My hope is that his thoughts and ideas will reach a large cross section of people, as they could provide us with valuable insights towards inculcating a more inclusive approach, one that can accommodate differences and help us move away from a narrow, blinkered approach in our search for coexistence,” she said.

The book is as much personal as it is an important historical perspective on the sociopolitical landscape of the India that Alkazi lived through. This juxtaposition offers valuable insights into the dynamics that shaped Indian society and culture. That is equally important as Alkazi’s own churnings about his craft―the introduction of movement over mere vocal gymnastics, the contemplations of stage design, the debate between style and form.

To theatre enthusiasts, it could well bring to mind his son Feisal Alkazi’s book, Enter Stage Right. But on its own, this is a worthy read that captures adequately the movement of time―both in the moment and as an act of leaving a legacy behind.

In that, it is a story that must be told, and must be understood.

Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive

By Amal Allana

Published by Vintage Books

Price Rs1,299; pages 672

butterfly-research-centre-in-bhimtal-boasts-3500-butterfly-and-moth-specimens

Sat Apr 20 11:57:23 IST 2024

UNTOLD STORIES

Peter Smetacek has done for butterflies what few others in India have done. He is the founder of the Butterfly Research Centre in Bhimtal in Nainital, Uttarakhand, and is known as the butterfly man of India.

The lepidopterist has dedicated his life to conservation of butterflies and moths, amassing one of the largest private collections of them in India. His passion for butterflies goes back to his childhood, and he has been studying them for as long as he remembers. His father, Fred Smetacek, a central European immigrant, had established an insect collection at their home in 1946, long before Peter was born. After World War II, the family moved to the hills of Uttarakhand, eventually relocating to Jones Estate in Bhimtal in 1951. It was here that Smetacek’s fascination with butterflies found wings. Surrounded by international butterfly experts who trooped into their house to meet his father, young Smetacek absorbed the knowledge like a sponge.

His colonial era abode, which is over 150 years old, serves as a sanctuary and laboratory. It is enveloped by a dense forest, rich in biodiversity, hosting 243 species of butterflies and more than 800 species of moths. “This is what forests all over India should look like. Forest should grow naturally, not the planted ones,” said Smetacek, advocating natural forest growth and emphasising its significance in bolstering biodiversity and water security.

Smetacek founded the Butterfly Research Centre in 2010, showcasing an extensive collection that includes India’s largest butterfly, the Golden Birdwing. One of the four rooms in his bungalow is devoted only to butterflies. Well-made wood and glass frames hang on the walls. Each frame has some 30 to 40 specimens of butterflies.

When Smetacek was invited to deliver the Oxford University Entomological Society lecture series at the age of 25, he discussed the use of butterflies and moths as bioindicators—a topic still pertinent. Over the years, he has identified numerous species, contributing significantly to scientific literature. Recognised globally, Smetacek serves on the editorial board of the journal, Conservation Evidence, advocating evidence-based conservation practices.

“There is still no measure for the health of a forest. It has been a long and slow process, because in order to understand bioindicators, one needs to know the names of the various moths and butterflies one is studying,” said Smetacek.

During the 1990s there were hardly any experts on Indian moths. So, for about 30 years, Smetacek has focused on identifying and naming new species of moths and butterflies and documenting them. He has described three new butterfly taxa and about 20 new moth species.

While he was gaining expertise in the field, Smetacek’s collection swelled with new additions from all over the country; today, his collection of moths and butterflies is the largest private collection in the country, with over 3,500 species and over 10,000 specimen.

Smetacek conducts courses at the Butterfly Research Centre, welcoming enthusiasts and scholars alike. He publishes Bionotes, a peer-reviewed journal, and has contributed to cataloguing Indian and Nepalese butterflies. Now in his late 50s, Smetacek remains dedicated to his passion, and his selflessness has earned him the soubriquet rishi muni, meaning sage.

randeep-hooda-may-have-proved-his-acting-credentials-with-biopics-but-typecast-him-at-your-own-peril

Sat Apr 20 11:44:37 IST 2024

Getting into the skin of his characters comes easy to Randeep Hooda, but convincing his parents to let him do that not so much. They had had enough with his latest Swatantrya Veer Savarkar.

“My parents made me promise that I won't do this again… that they wouldn't stay with me in Mumbai if I did it again,” said Hooda. Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, he said, has been the most challenging for him so far―“one that was emotionally, mentally and physically draining to the point that I had to keep popping pills in order to keep exhaustion and anxiety in check”.

With this film, he was more than an actor―he was also the co-writer, a first-time director and co-producer. And, there was mounting pressure to finish the film that seemed to be taking forever―one-and-a-half years to complete a 55-day shooting schedule. His health took a beating, and his morale a dip. Hooda shed more than 30kg to portray Savarkar’s Cellular Jail stint in the Andamans.

The problem was Hooda had to keep switching between this state of “deprivation” (relying only on almond oil and dry fruits) and “revenge eating”, leading to a “near death experience”. “I will never do this again,” said Hooda. And then, after a pause, he added, cheekily, “But then again, never say never.”

To see Hooda in the film is akin to seeing Savarkar in flesh and blood. So poignant and moving is the actor's portrayal of the revolutionary, especially as a political prisoner, that one cannot unsee it long after it is over. The prolonged torture, both physical and psychological, that he endures through the solitary confinement stands out. In that “God-forsaken, hell-on-earth kind of place”, a weak and worn-out Savarkar, with rotten teeth and a skeletal body, occupies a dark and dingy room, ridden with vomit and human faeces, with no water to wash and after a point with no space to rest or sleep. Hooda's portrayal of this grimness shocks and stirs, and makes one wonder at the metamorphosis an actor undergoes to breathe life into his character.

It is the latest reaffirmation of Hooda's naturalistic approach as a performer, one rooted in the realm of method acting. Especially in the genre of biopics, which is on every actor’s wish-list as it provides them with ample space to explore their craft and display their prowess. Ever so often, Hooda uses this medium to the hilt, beginning with Main Aur Charles (2015). He nailed the chameleonic flamboyance, swag, mystique, even the grin of Charles Sobhraj, one of the most notorious con artists. Even as the film failed at the box office, it earned Hooda critical acclaim.

He then doubled it up with Sarbjit (2016), wherein he evoked in the audience a heartfelt sympathy for a farmer wrongfully convicted of spying. Now, post Savarkar, Hooda said he is being offered more biopics, as Bollywood is wont to do―it uses actors as formulas until the actor reaches a saturation point. But not Hooda. This tall, well-built Jat with a rustic look―wide jawline and narrowly set eyes that conceal more than they convey―knows how to keep his offerings varied.

Hooda came into the spotlight as a sexy gangster who makes love with his sahib’s wife in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster (2011). “It remains one of my favourites to this day,” said Hooda. But he came on screen a decade before that. He was in Monsoon Wedding (2001). In time, Hooda gave us profound characters in varied avatars, from the baddie who has a change of heart in Highway (2014) to the rogue-turned-saviour Saju in the global thriller Extraction (2020), where Hooda worked with Chris Hemsworth and delivered a fascinating, samurai-like character in the garb of a former Para Special Forces lieutenant colonel. The latter was his attempt to make a dent in the “real action genre”, and do it in a way that only he could. “Going through my filmography, I feel I have been around for a while and I put in enough good cinema and performances.”

Yet, his work has somehow long gone under-recognised―blame it on sloppy writing or below par direction. Ask him if he could name an underrated actor in Bollywood, and pat comes the reply, “Me. I am sure (my work) has got its due or will get its due… whatever is due in the eyes of the people,” he said.

Hooda is the kind of actor who regales us with his talent each time he comes on screen, the problem is that it is very rare. We keep seeing him more on the racecourse (thanks to his love of equestrian sports) than on film sets. So, why don't we see enough of him? “Because I spend two to three years method acting in movies,” he said, laughing. “It is just the kind of way of working that I got into, but now I am going to change that.”

Over the years, Hooda has worked with multiple directors and studios, including Yashraj and Dharma. He has also done indie films, and has worked with more than 25 first-time directors. “It will be great to have a big studio-backed movie that I can bite into,” he said. “I am looking for more genre-breaking stories as of now. I am a very funny guy in real life. I have got a really deadly Jat sense of humour. Most of the work that I did in theatre was comedy. So yes, I could explore that.”

Hooda comes from a Punjabi Haryanvi family that has no connection to Bollywood. His father was a surgeon and mother a social worker. His sister specialises in metabolic medicine and helps him with his weight loss/gain regimens, and his brother is a software engineer in Singapore. When it came to pursuing a career, Hooda had two choices―equestrian sports, in which he had earned medals for the nation, or acting, which he was equally good at, having performed on stage in school and college. He chose the latter. “But a few films down the line, I bought my own horses and revived my love for [the sport],” he said. “Very recently, my horse gave birth, and I also have a three-year-old who has been put in on the saddle. So I am really looking forward to competing on horses that I have bred and I will have my own brand on it.”

For now, Hooda is looking forward to holidaying with wife Lin Laishram in the jungle, where he can also pursue his love for wildlife photography and nurse his injured knees.

Only Hooda would go to the wild to recuperate!

a-history-of-ancient-and-early-medieval-india-upinder-singh-book-review

Sat Apr 20 11:41:05 IST 2024

Most history buffs have been mystified by the Harappans' script, their coinage, their state system—all of which we know little of. At the same time, we know a lot about their bricks, buildings, streets, products, exports and, of course, their sewage system. But what did the Harappans eat?

Few have asked that question, and fewer still have sought to answer it. This book, by one of India’s finest historians, asks the question and seeks to answer it. Upinder Singh says the Harappans ate wheat, millets, pulses, meat and dairy.

The dietary habits of the Harappans are only a small episode in this book, which is actually an exploration of Indian history until the late 12th century. The book delves into the rich tapestry of ancient and early medieval India, offering a comprehensive examination of its social, political, economic and cultural aspects. The author navigates through the complexities of the era, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of the historical landscape. The good thing is that she has presented these in a well-organised, chronological manner. In short, it is not a boring sociological account of the past, but a depiction of ancient India’s human drama.

The book stands out for its ability to strike a balance between being comprehensive while maintaining a level of intricacy. The inclusion of fresh research, notable sites, credible sources and thought-provoking theories further enriches the overall reading experience.

The original edition of the book had garnered praise from history enthusiasts, educators, scholars and students alike. The second edition includes the latest findings and advancements. The author also emphasises the significance of modern technology in archaeology. Through such discussions, the author gives deep insights into the significance of Attirampakkam (Tamil Nadu) in pushing the date of Stone Age of India earlier than 1.3 million years ago. She also vividly describes the amazing commercial network maintained by the Harappans that procured and distributed raw materials for their craft. This description is backed by provenance analyses of minerals, the discovery of megafauna like rhinoceros existing in the western part of India during 3rd millennium BCE, which are depicted in Harappan seals. You also get to know of the dates of earliest rice cultivation at Lahuradeva (Uttar Pradesh) touching 7th millennium BCE, as also about the exciting excavations of Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan (which Sylvain Levy believed was the Alaknanda of ancient Indians), which revealed connections of post Mauryan India with parts of Afghanistan and so on.

In this edition, the author also gives a renewed focus to the eastern region, delving into its early history, empires and state formations. She also explores Neolithic traditions, such as megalithism, which have endured to this day in the region.

There is also much discussion on the science and mathematics found in ancient texts, which have become topics of great interest these days. The book broadens its scope to encompass various regions of south Asia, going beyond India and giving insightful sections on Buddhism in the Maldives and the Mesolithic era in Sri Lanka.

Overall, the book effortlessly guides readers through the complex historical landscape while refraining from oversimplification. The reader's comprehension is enriched by the inclusion of visual elements like maps, illustrations and timelines, along with fresh visuals and an updated design. Singh provides a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of India's history, presenting a well-rounded perspective that incorporates a diverse range of sources.

A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century (second edition)
By Upinder Singh
Published by Pearson, 2024
Price Rs1,999 (hardbound); pages 817

actor-vidya-balan-interview

Fri Apr 12 11:50:21 IST 2024

Interview/ Vidya Balan, actor

In an industry obsessed with fillers and filters, calling someone a chameleon could invite ire or scorn. But how else do you describe Vidya Balan, the actor? Not that she would mind. For, she would rather we talked about her body of work than her body.

Balan breathed nuance into Lolita, the lead in Parineeta (2005), bringing the innocent yet playful and resilient character to life. That was only her beginning in Bollywood. It brought her critical acclaim. Commercial success followed the next year with Lage Raho Munna Bhai. But if one were to gauge the true impact of her powerhouse performances in her nearly two decade-long career, it would be in the way she has redefined female characters in the Hindi film industry―she headlined films at a time when heroes called the shots, be it in Ishqiya (2010), No One Killed Jessica (2011), The Dirty Picture (2011), or Kahaani (2012). The Dirty Picture, based on the life of south Indian actor Silk Smitha, stands out―not for the ‘boldness’ of its theme, but for the sheer audacity with which she played the character. She piled on kilos for the role, but shed inhibitions about the ideal Bollywood body. Balan, who is currently shooting for Bhool Bhulaiya 3, made body positivity cool long before the term entered the ‘woke’ generation’s lexicon.

And, it shows even now when she talks about her favourite garment―the sexy sari. “… the only garment that embraces you and doesn’t expect you to fit into it,” says the award-winning actor in an exclusive interview with THE WEEK while promoting her upcoming Do Aur Do Pyaar. Excerpts:

Q\ Do Aur Do Pyaar has built a lot of expectation among your fans. What is the film about?

A/ Do Aur Do Pyaar is getting released on April 19 in the theatres, and I urge all to come and watch it. Choti muh badi baat hogi, lekin humne ek bahut mazzedar film banayi hai (It might seem like too big a claim but we have made a very entertaining film). It has romance. I am a hopeless romantic and I thoroughly enjoyed doing the film. It has lovely music and lovely actors― there is Ileana D’Cruz, Pratik Gandhi and Sendhil Ramamurthy with me. I am waiting for April 19.

Q\ How was it sharing screen with the three actors?

A/ I have had the good fortune of working with very good actors always. It is fantastic because acting is about reacting. So, when you are faced with a good actor, you up your game. So, I think whether it is Pratik, Sendhil, Ileana―they are all superb and I enjoy working with them. On the sets, we used to trouble Pratik a lot. There were so many women on the set. We just wouldn't allow him to talk. After a while, he said he might forget how to talk. With Sendhil, it was the opposite. All the women were crushing on him and were only waiting to see what he says! It was funny with both of them. And of course, Ileana and I were enjoying every moment of it. It has been fun. It is always great to work with good actors.

Q\ Sendhil Ramamurthy, an American actor of Indian origin, is a sensation. How was it filming romantic scenes with him?

I will just say, ‘Wait and watch!’ But yes, the film is full of romance. It is unexpected and lots of fun. And there is not just one angle of romance. I will leave it at that. With Sendhil being so good looking, naturally romance happens!

Q\ You still haven’t revealed much about the film.

A/ At this point, I cannot reveal much. My producer, Tanuj Garg, is here! (laughs)

Q\ The film’s soundtrack has a great mix, from big commercial names like Lucky Ali, Armaan Malik, Vishal Dadlani to indie ones like Lost Stories, The Local Train and When Chai Met Toast.

A/ I think the story is so unpredictable that the music also had to be that. We did not want music from any one composer. Shirsha Guha Thakurtha, the director, has a very keen sense of storytelling and she brings in a lot of fun. And music is Tanuj's forte. He is very passionate about it. I have done Tumhari Sulu (2017) with him before this and that film also had lovely music. I think it is a big strength, especially because it is a romantic comedy.

Q\ Is the film a bold take on marriage and modern relationships?

A/ The film is about modern relationships, but it is not a bold statement. It is just a sneak-peek into what happens between four people. It is teasing at some level. It teases your imagination. It is real, but it is fun and commercial.

Q\ Among all your films, we all have a favourite film. Which is yours?

A/ Oh! That is very tough to say. But as an audience, I enjoy the lighter films more. As I usually end up doing a lot of intense roles and films as an actor, I am actually very thrilled to have got a film like Do Aur Do Pyaar. But if you ask me which character is closest to you, I would say, ‘Sulu’ (from Tumhari Sulu) and also my personality traits in Kahaani. I would pick these two films, and even Shakuntala Devi (2020) and my role of ‘Silk’ in The Dirty Picture. Don't ask me how similar I feel to Silk and in what way! I loved playing the role of Silk.

What’s the kind of homework you usually do before shooting a film?

A/ I sit with the director and I pore over the script, ask questions. If there is a skill to be acquired, I do that. For every film that I need to drive, I relearn driving because I don't enjoy driving a lot and get very tense if I have any driving shots. If my character demands learning a new language, I will. For Shakuntala, I learnt a bit of Vedic mathematics. But don’t ask me anything about maths, I don’t remember it (laugh). Only my short-term memory is good.

Q\ You are considered a serious actor. Does that affect the kind of roles you are offered?

A/ It is actually unfortunate because I am actually not a serious person. I feel I only do my work seriously. But I do think that a lot of women-oriented films have a serious tone to them. I pick up these roles because stories about women are so new to cinema. But I also think that is changing, especially with films like Do Aur Do Pyaar, where you see women having very prominent roles that are fun and exciting. The characters are normal like any of us.

Q\ You have a unique style and are often spotted draped in a sari. What’s behind your love for saris?

A/ I absolutely think that the sari is the sexiest garment ever. It (the choice of sari) just depends on your mood. If you are going to a temple, you wear the sari a certain way. If you are going to a party, you wear it another way. If you are coming to work, it is draped differently…. I think it is the most versatile garment and the only garment that embraces you and doesn't expect you to fit into it, which is why I love the sari.

Q\ If Vidya Balan is not shooting, what is holding her attention?

A/ A lot of people who know me tell me that I hibernate in between films. I don't get out of the house as much as possible. I spend a lot of time with my husband and my family, just staying at home and doing things I like. While I am home, you can find me sleeping a lot, watching, reading and relaxing or even meeting people.

tca-raghavan-views-the-story-of-the-independence-movement-through-the-prism-of-friendship-love-and-loyalty

Sat Apr 06 17:25:42 IST 2024

In his new book, diplomat-turned-historian T.C.A. Raghavan offers a different view of India’s most well-known story―the independence struggle. Till now, notwithstanding the well-known bromances between big leaders, the story of the independence movement has never really been told through the prism of personal friendships. Raghavan does just that in Circles of Freedom: Friendship, Love and Loyalty in the Indian National Struggle.

At its heart, the book is about three men and their friendship with poet Sarojini Naidu―lawyer-politicians Asaf Ali, who became the first Indian ambassador to the United States, and Syed Mahmud, who became deputy minister of external affairs, and journalist Syud Hossain, India’s first ambassador to Egypt.

“I don’t think anyone was ever was blind to the fact that they were not in the foreground [of the freedom struggle],” says Raghavan. “The question I was asking was not about the big political issue or even about the big Hindu-Muslim issue, because those, of course, are there. The question I ask [is about] people and their personal feelings―love, friendship, loyalty. How was that part of the big political struggle?”

Naidu’s feisty, fearless and sometimes even flirty relationship with the men form the circle through which Raghavan views the politics of the time. “Radiant and restless, full of sparkling life and laughter”, is how Asaf describes Naidu, a mother of four in her thirties. “They (the men),” says Raghavan, “came from cloistered backgrounds, and nothing in their social experience prepared them to meet someone like her.”

Naidu soon became their guide and expanded their world. A fierce proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, she did more than just preach. “I didn’t know the extent to which she invested in her Muslim friends,” says Raghavan.

The book offers a glimpse into her inner world, which included friends such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah. (There was a rumour that she and Jinnah were lovers, but she eventually became a “pillar of emotional support to Ruttie”―aka Rattanbai, Jinnah’s wife.) There are mentions of Naidu’s illness, which still remains a mystery. In one of her letters to her children, the 11-year-old Ranadheera in England, Naidu writes, “You know, a family is like a piece of machinery. Each separate part must be in good order… for the machinery to keep going.”

From the Khilafat movement to the partition of India, Raghavan steers his tale through the undercurrents of religious polarisation in the freedom movement. He also focuses on an unusual and ‘explosive’ marriage―between Asaf and activist Aruna in 1928 that, Raghavan writes, prompted an “explosion of political opposition”. “There were very few [such marriages], and they were not in this class,” he says. “Asaf Ali was no Jinnah. He was not even Motilal Nehru when he was in the struggling middle class.”

The Hindu Mahasabha threatened to harm the couple. “Apart from the obvious religious divide and the considerable difference [between them] in age, what was unusual was that this was not a union following a sudden infatuation or dramatic falling in love, but seemingly carefully thought through by both parties,” writes Raghavan.

Even Naidu, he says, was a bit shocked by the marriage. “It comes across in one or two of her letters,” he says. “‘It will not be a success,’ Naidu told Syud in 1928.”

Yet, the marriage held. Aruna emerged out of Asaf’s shadow to become a revolutionary in her own right, and refused to accompany him to Washington, even though Gandhi suggested that it was her “duty” to do so.

They also never had any children. “I don’t know why,” says Raghavan. “We can only take a guess. Somebody who worked with Aruna speculated that it was because she didn’t want to have a child. Because she felt it would be a huge burden on the child, given the Hindu-Muslim issues and the fact that the child would be largely [in a] Muslim ecosystem. But we don’t know that. Aruna does not appear to have left any kind of memoir papers.”

Raghavan brings to life the chaos and the complexity of the time―the breathless fight for free-India, the attempts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity, the pressures of religious fervour on the freedom movement, and the impacts all these had on personal lives.

But in the age of the big, fat history book, Circles of Freedom has very much an offbeat, arthouse feel. For this is a compelling story of the lives that are often just out of focus.

The book is also littered with delicious details. When Asaf and Syed are locked up in Ahmednagar jail with such leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru, J.B Kripalani, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Vallabhbhai Patel, a jailer brings the inmates bread and butter in a thali. This sends Maulana into a “towering rage”, writes Raghavan. Tea was refused unless it was served in cups and on trays.

There is also the story of the almost-marriage of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to Syud. There was an elopement, but Gandhi and Motilal Nehru quickly stepped in. Under the watchful gaze of Gandhi, Pandit is packed off to the Sabarmati Ashram.

There have been many explorations of the independence movement, but Raghavan’s is the first to present it through the prism of friendship, love and loyalty. His protagonists may not be icons, but they are still worthy heroes. Read the book.

Circles of Freedom: Friendship, Love and Loyalty in the Indian National Struggle

By T.C.A. Raghavan

Published by Juggernaut

Price Rs799; pages 408

never-never-land-namita-gokhale-book-review

Sat Apr 06 17:22:27 IST 2024

Never Never Land is slim, but crams within its 176 pages a universe of friendship, love, family and belonging. Evocative, elegant and hugely satisfying, the book weaves a story of timelessness in a place where time stops.

Iti Arya―middle-aged, single, a freelance editor and an aspiring novelist―moves to The Dacha in the Kumaon to live with her grandmother, Badi Amma Lila, and Rosinka Paul Singh. It is where she spent her childhood and was happy. At the heart of the book is the relationship between her grandmother and Rosinka. “Friendship can be a good substitute for love,” writes Iti. “You need courage for both.” Her grandmother worked with Rosinka as a housemaid till she was “elevated to a Pahadi lady-in-waiting”. Rosinka refers to her as Lily. Their friendship―with its secrets, camaraderie, silence and its complexity―propels the book. There is, of course, an inequality as Rosinka suddenly switches the power equation to mistress. Despite the undercurrents, the ease of the relationship is at contrast with Iti’s own friendships, which are accessed digitally.

As Iti, unable to work on her new novel, chronicles the memories of the two women, their past gets entangled with the present and with folk tales of the mountains as well as Russian artist Nicholas Roerich and his paintings. And, Gokhale conjures up this shadowy, dream-like world from ageing memory as well as different perspectives evocatively. There are secrets that lie buried as well as relationships unresolved―Iti and her mother, her own failed romances and the appearance of Nina.

It is at The Dacha that she encounters Nina―a Gen Z, with straight bleach blonde hair, who refers to herself as Badi Amma’s granddaughter. This Iti knows is not true. And getting to the bottom of this ‘truth’ is another layer. “Every relationship cannot be so easily categorised,” says Rosinka. And it is in this lack of clarity, in the margins of messiness that life, love and friendship exist. It is a world dominated by women―those who have lived their lives and are unwilling to disappear quietly.

But the book is also about the mountains. When she was young, Iti imagined the mountains as wise men with long beards who spoke to her. When she told Badi Amma about them speaking, she told her, “You must listen carefully when the mountains speak to you.... They don’t speak to everyone.”

Gokhale is a writer who has listened to the stories of the Himalayas, bringing to the fore their magic, mysticism, mystery and their majesty. Never Never Land is no different. The mountains, a constant in Gokhale’s canvas, loom large over the story.

In Gokhale’s last novel―The Blind Matriarch―born out of and one that chronicles the pandemic, the main character is a woman at the end of her life. It was a book about dying. In Never Never Land―like J.M. Barrie’s fairytale utopia―Rosinka, over a 100, and Badi Amma, who is 90 something, may be frail but they are far from fading. It is very much a novel about life and living, and being alive.

Grab a book―and savour it―and go back again.

Never Never Land

By Namita Gokhale

Published by Speaking Tiger

Price Rs499; Pages 176

inside-an-exhibition-of-bengal-modernist-gobardhan-ash-s-artworks

Sat Apr 06 17:18:35 IST 2024

A new exhibition in Kolkata offers a retrospective of the pioneer Indian modernist artist Gobardhan Ash, offering a glimpse into four decades of his work from 1929 to 1969. Curated by Brijeshwari Kumari Gohil and Harsharan Bakshi, the exhibition showcases more than 100 artworks, featuring Ash’s diverse creative range, including sketches, landscapes, self-portraits, portraits, rural Bengal scenes, the iconic Avatar Series from the late 1940s, vibrant pastels from his outdoor studies, and his poignant Children Series, capturing the myriad moods of children.

“Our approach was twofold: to underscore Ash’s dedication to each phase and to illuminate the thematic evolution evident in his oeuvre,” said Bakshi. “As such, the exhibition primarily adopts a thematic approach, celebrating Ash’s enduring commitment across various periods of artistic exploration.”

In a year-long research on Ash and his body of work, the curators uncovered the remarkable diversity within each decade, reflecting distinct creative phases in his artistic journey. “Our aim has been to highlight each of his themes, styles and experimentations during these four decades,” explained Gohil. “These span from his time being part of and forming various groups and movements. It is a diverse portfolio, ranging from social realism to creative expressionism and experimentation.”

Rural Bengal is one of the main themes of Ash’s landscape paintings. His famine works in shades of dark and pale brown were painted in different phases in 1943. A skilful portrait artist, he depicted human faces in both line and colour. His Children Series―a collection of 16 oil paintings and 45 sketches painted in oil between 1957 and 1967―stemmed from his fondness for children. His avant-garde Avatar Series, exhibited at the Joint Show of the Calcutta Group and the Progressive Artists’ Group in 1950, inspired experimentation and dialogue.

“The retrospective consists of a world with many worlds, containing philosophies, political beliefs, social realities and visions of an idyllic society,” commented producer, publicist and curator Ina Puri. “It focuses critical attention on one of the most remarkable Bengal modernists of the last millennium, who spent his lifetime restlessly exploring different genres, never content to rest on his laurels for long.”

Born in 1907 in Begampur, West Bengal, Ash hailed from a simple family, living with his parents, three sisters and three brothers. Since childhood, he had a penchant for painting. In 1926, he joined the Government Art School in Calcutta, where he met Jamini Roy for the first time in 1929. Though he left the art school the following year, Ash’s creative life was shaped more by his experiences and relationships than by academic credentials. In his early years, Ash was defiant of the then-British way of teaching art. “Ash forged his own path and did not accept the British academic way of teaching art,” said Gohil. “He was also soaking in what he was witnessing around him during this time period, an important chapter in Indian history as a whole.”

Further, Ash embraced social realism, which is evident in works like Village Girl of Bengal, depicting rural life's realities with the utmost sensitivity. “Ash’s introspective self-portraits, empathetic social realism works, and versatile depictions of old Kolkata, rural Bengal, and animals exemplify his keen observation and artistic versatility,” said Bakshi.

In 1931, he trained at the Madras School of Art under the mentorship of painter and sculptor Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury. The same year, he played a pivotal role in founding the Young Artists’ Union.

“While Ash considered Atul Bose to be his mentor, the prolific art practitioner had occasions to work alongside some of the most distinguished practitioners of his times when he started The Art Rebel Centre in 1933 with the purpose of making art that was fearless, anti-sentimental and bold; and later, when he joined The Calcutta Group, with Gopal Ghose, Nirode Mazumdar, Abani Sen, Zainul Abedin and Ramkinker Baij among others,” informed Puri. Though short lived, the Art Rebel Centre served its purpose, giving rise to several other larger factions and groups by the 1940s and paving the way for Ash’s artistic mastery to come forward, added Gohil.

“Alongside his peers, he drew inspiration from the common man, a labourer, a farmer toiling in the fields or stable hands, later moving to the turbulent time of the Bengal famine, painting powerful compositions of the starving multitudes thronging the city’s streets begging for a little bowl of rice water,” elaborated Puri. “Apart from these searing works are beautiful portraits of the family, self and spiritual leaders like Sarada Maa and Ramakrishna Paramahansa.”

Throughout his journey, Ash delved into self-portraits, showcasing his evolving artistic identity and mastery of techniques like cross-hatching. “There is a level of intricacy and depth in Ash’s self-portraits where he journals his own identity and its development,” said Gohil. “Given how frequently he dwelled into making self-portraits, it is almost as if he is also exploring different artistic styles of communicating, reflecting and building a visual diary for himself.”

Beyond his artistic contributions, the comprehensive showcase also highlights Ash’s enduring legacy as a mentor and influencer within the Indian art community. “As a dedicated teacher, he established the Fine Art Mission Free Art School in Begumpur in 1956, driven by a profound desire to impart his creative knowledge to future generations of artists,” said Bakshi. “He generously provided art supplies to his students, fostering a nurturing environment for artistic growth.”

In the realm of art history, Ash stands out as a figure of profound significance, and this exhibition bears testimony to this. “Ash embraced his love for his surroundings,” said Gohil. “Several of these human and natural observations not only depict his love for nature and human life, but they are also a way of expressing the human predicament, the struggles. He is journaling his surroundings with these works, but creating statements in the process. There is a strong sense of spirituality to these emotive works.”

‘The Prinseps Exhibition: Gobardhan Ash RETROSPECTIVE’ will continue till April 21 at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity.

when-top-dogs-of-pop-and-rock-came-together-to-help-ethiopians-four-decades-ago

Sat Apr 06 15:32:08 IST 2024

When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all

But if you just believe there's no way we can fall

Well, well, well, well let us realise

Oh, that a change can only come

When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah...

THEY STOOD TOGETHER despite their gargantuan egos, creative differences and even adulation for each other, to pull an all-nighter. They tried, improvised and perfected their lines. And they made a change, worth $63 million, for the famine-affected people in Ethiopia. ‘We Are The World'―penned by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, and released in March 1985―was a fervid appeal to human compassion and decency, a call to action like no other, as the people behind it knew that a beautiful song has the power to unite the world. Jackson called it “a love song to inspire concern about a faraway place close to home”.

Between 1983 and 1985, a famine in Ethiopia, caused partly by drought and partly by a debilitating civil war, is estimated to have killed between four lakh to five lakh people (according to some accounts, the death toll is about 10 lakh) and displaced more than 20 lakh people. The desperation and deaths, which reminded people of the kifu qen (evil days) or ‘Great Famine’ that happened a century earlier, decimating nearly up to one-third of Ethiopia's population, moved the world to tears.

Singer, activist and The Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, who learned about the “biblical famine” from a BBC news report by Michael Buerk, had, in December 1984, brought together a charity supergroup―Band Aid―of predominantly UK and Irish singers that included the likes of Paul McCartney and Sting, and came out with a single, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', to raise money for the victims of the famine.

Inspired by 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', civil rights activist and singer Harry Belafonte wanted to do something similar―bring together the finest American musicians and make them perform a song to raise money for the Ethiopians in distress. Belafonte pitched the idea to Lionel Richie through Ken Kragen, who was a music producer and manager for some of the popular stars then. In the Netflix documentary, The Greatest Night in Pop, Richie recalls being approached by Belafonte, “‘We have white folks saving black folks. We don’t have black folks saving black folks. We need to save our own people from hunger.’ He was trying to get us, the younger group, involved in what was happening in Africa. I said, ‘Of course.’” Richie roped in Jackson, who was excited about the project. Soon, Kenny Rogers was on board. Kragen initially thought of having about 10 to 15 artists, but eventually the number swelled to over 40.

From Richie to Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Rogers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles, the recording room from where the song of collective empathy arose had the greatest musicians of the generation. Except Prince. But then the isolationist that Prince was, it would have been a miracle bigger than 'We Are the World' if he agreed to be in a room full of people, which included Jackson with whom he was having an ongoing professional feud.

Belafonte, Kragen and Quincy Jones, who set up the greatest lineup ever of superstar singers―USA for Africa, knew that most of them would be present at the 1985 American Music Awards on January 28. And so, this turned out to be the day the marvel that 'We Are The World' was born. Those who would not be present at the event, like Springsteen, too, managed to reach A&M Studios by the time the awards show, hosted by Richie, ended.

Not that all was rosy in the recording room, despite the note outside the door that read 'Check Your Ego at the Door'. Legendary loner Dylan was visibly uncomfortable; Sheila E. thought she was brought in only to charm Prince in; Cyndi Lauper reportedly said, “It sounds like a Pepsi commercial”; there was a debate over the word 'brighter'; and Waylon Jennings walked out midway after Stevie Wonder suggested that a line be sung in Swahili. As time passed, the realisation that they had just one night to pull off this wonder crept in. And they did just that. Setting aside their style, aesthetic and creative differences, (and in Lauper's case, her ornaments as well because they were jingling too much), they made a song that stayed on top at Billboard Hot 100 for a month and won four Grammys in 1986.

As the song turned 40 in March 2024, a group of rock musicians and music aficionados, under the banner of All For Rock (AFR), came together to pay tribute to this timeless and iconic anthem of solidarity. AFR, formed by Joe Peter―a singer who was part of bands like Exodus and Evergreen in the late 1990s, and who currently is a music/theatre director with GEMS school in Dubai―and two fellow music enthusiasts in 2003, was a collective of musicians who swear by the belief that ‘music is the best intoxicant’. However, the fraternity became defunct after Joe moved to the UK and got busy with other bands there. More than two decades after its initial launch, Joe, with a group of like-minded musicians―T.J. Gopinath, Suraj Pallan, James Peter, Moncy Francis and Alisha Mathew―decided to revive the community, and do it with a bang, by paying tribute to 'We Are The World'.

Joe tells THE WEEK that it was The Greatest Night in Pop that gave him the idea of a tribute. “I thought it would be a great idea to bring together the stalwarts of rock music in Kochi and Kerala to pay a tribute,” he says. “We had our doubts, but it was easier than expected.” The collective of musicians―Vinod Varma, Joe Peter, Darshan Shankar, Rose Johny, Alisha Mathew, Isabel Maria George, Ancel Edwin, Captain B.K. Iyer (GoGo Samy), George Peter and V.J. Traven―released a cover tribute to 'We Are The World' on March 24, at Kochi's Gokulam Park Convention Centre on an evening filled with the untamed energy of rock and roll.

“‘We Are The World’ holds a lot of memories. We look up to all these singers, and all of them on one stage together, it is quite a jewel of a moment,” says George Peter, lead singer of the band 13AD.

Nearly four decades after its release, the song continues to be etched into the collective memories of music aficionados across the world, transcending time and space, and embodying values of altruism, hope and universal brotherhood.

how-beauty-entrepreneur-diipa-bullerkhosla-stays-on-top-of-her-game

Sat Mar 30 16:26:16 IST 2024

Going through Diipa Büller-Khosla’s Instagram feed is like sitting in the front row of a glitzy couture show. There is Büller-Khosla in a red Rahul Mishra ruffled number at the Lakme Fashion Week; posing with a Burberry shield bag; modelling for Valentino at its first Mumbai store; wearing designer Hamda Al Fahim at a Cartier exhibition in Abu Dhabi; clad in ski gear at Cervinia, Italy. And going by the comments and likes of her 2.1 million followers, it is not just us who is blinded by all the dazzle.

And yet, despite seeming to live within the pages of a Harper’s Bazaar issue, Büller-Khosla is not perfect, and this combination of verve and vulnerability is what is so appealing about her. In one post, for example, she details the non-glamorous aspects of her life. Her biggest insecurity, she says, is the post-partum stretch-marks on her belly. No matter what she achieves in her life, she thinks it is never enough. She struggles with balance. “If I am working, I feel guilty for not spending time with my family, and if I’m enjoying life I feel like I’m not working hard enough,” she says.

Büller-Khosla was one of the first to get into the social media game, long before the words ‘influencer’, ‘digital native’ and ‘content creator’ had entered the public imagination. Although she earned her bachelor’s degree in international human rights law and interned at the UN, it was while doing another internship at one of the first influencer agencies in Europe that she really came into her own. What is admirable is not that she became one of the first influencers in the world at a time when Instagram was just starting, but that she stayed as one. The early bird might catch the worm, but can it keep it?

What followed for Büller-Khosla was an illustrious list of ‘firsts’, when she dared to wade into uncharted waters. In 2018, she became the first global influencer to walk the Cannes red carpet. In 2020, she became the first Indian to address the British House of Commons. In 2022, she became the first Indian female influencer to speak at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos. She also became the first Indian influencer to speak at Harvard Business School (She was invited to speak on ‘diversity in the beauty industry’). In 2023, her beauty label, ind¯e wild (which she founded in 2022), became the first to host a red carpet at Cannes, where she teamed up with singer Raja Kumari and influencer/actor Dolly Singh to celebrate South Asian women at the forefront of change.

Within nine months of founding inde wild, which is based on the concept of Ayurvedistry (combining Ayurveda and chemistry), it had launched in four countries―the US, the UK, Canada and India. Some of their innovative products include the AM vitamin C serum and a lip balm in which they have used biotechnology to mimic ghee and make it vegan. The company has grown 200 per cent to 300 per cent since its founding. It will soon become the first Indian brand to be available in Sephora―the French personal care retailer―in the US and the UK. “I believe it was destiny that pushed me to create the brand,” says Büller-Khosla. “My mother is a doctor and is interested in Ayurveda. When I had really bad acne for about 10 years of my life, it was a combination of Ayurveda and chemistry that solved it. In the beauty market, I did not see any brands combining both. So, that is what I did with ind¯e wild. Since then, things have been crazy, and products are getting sold out.”

She credits her mother―who invested €300 for her wardrobe when she first started out as an influencer―with her success. “My mom is my mentor, confidante, and best friend,” she says. “Being able to do business with my mom is so special because, when I was working as an influencer, I was not able to see her much. Maybe once a year, and this made me sad. But now, working together―bringing her hair oil to the world, and sharing her recipes―has been special. I think our community views it that way, too. The brand feels homely―it is by a mother-daughter team.”

And when the online space gave her so much, she wanted to give something back, and that’s how she started the NGO, Post for Change, with her husband Oleg, a former Dutch diplomat, in 2019. Post for Change mainly addresses gender issues by harnessing the power of social media. It has partnered with celebs like Manish Malhotra, Diana Penty and Manushi Chhillar for the Red Dot campaign, to dispel period myths. It has also worked with UNICEF to create awareness on menstrual hygiene. “I have, from a young age, observed how girls were treated differently from boys, be it at home or school,” she says. “When I became a content creator and started gaining traction, I quickly realised that there was so much power in what I was doing. So why was I not using it to do some good? Also, my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, was working as a UN diplomat. We thought about bringing our worlds together. And we started Post for Change, which is social media for change, where we work with NGOs, talk to influencers, and spread awareness online.”

When she is not jet-setting around the world, Büller-Khosla stays in Amsterdam with her husband, three-year-old daughter Dua, and pet pooches Kubii and Bimbo. Days are spent cycling, rowing, or visiting friends. Or simply sitting by the window and watching the kaleidoscopic life by the canal outside their home. For now, Diipa Büller-Khosla is offline.

actor-director-prithviraj-sukumaran-interview-the-goat-life-aadujeevitham

Thu Mar 28 17:34:38 IST 2024

Interview/ Prithviraj Sukumaran, actor-director

The name Prithviraj means ‘one who rules the world’. Actor-director Prithviraj Sukumaran dreams of the Indian film industry, particularly his home industry Mollywood, ruling the global entertainment landscape with quality content.

The 41-year-old, who has been in lead roles for 22 years, is considered a great visionary in Mollywood. He has been a successful director, playback singer, producer, distributor and action choreographer.

His latest film, The Goat Life, directed by the National Award-winning director Blessy, takes Malayalam cinema to a global audience. An international coproduction involving companies in India and the US, The Goat Life is an adaptation of the bestselling Malayalam novel Aadujeevitham by Benyamin. The novel is based on the experiences of Najeeb, a Malayali labourer who was forced into slavery as a goatherd on a secluded, Saudi Arabian farm.

Prithviraj spoke to THE WEEK about The Goat Life and its grand vision, and the struggles he and Blessy had to go through to complete the shoot. Excerpts:

Q\ The Goat Life is based on a novel about the experiences of Najeeb. Did you talk to him before undertaking the film? What insights did he share?

A\ The first time I spoke to Najeeb was after the last shot of the film. He was on location that day. So I did the final shot, the director said cut and wrap, and that is when I walked behind the camera and spoke to him for the first time. We recorded and shot the conversation, and I think it should be releasing very soon. My interpretation of Najeeb is largely dependent on the book and Blessy’s vision of the story.

Q\ As a filmmaker yourself, how would you assess Blessy’s efforts in bringing the book to the screen?

A\ I don’t think anybody else could have done it better. Blessy is a truly gifted filmmaker. The kind of time and conviction he has thrown behind this project―taking 16 years of one’s life to do the best version of the film that he wanted to do―is just incredible.

But one thing Blessy was acutely aware of is that you cannot make the entire book into a film. The book is narrated in micro-detail. And if you set out to make that entire narrative into a feature film, you would probably end up with a nine-hour film. We should also be aware of the fact that each person who read the book would have imagined his own world and his own Najeeb. So the effort and the idea was to make the audience feel what Najeeb must have felt in those days. So the dots are connected through his emotional arc, and that is what Blessy wanted to do and that is what he has spectacularly pulled off.

Q\ You underwent a significant physical transformation, and as a star who meticulously maintains your physique, did you ever find yourself questioning the toll the filming process took on your body?

A\ I said yes to this film back in 2008-09, and even then I knew that taking up this challenge involved going through this transformation…. I took it upon myself, and decided that I am going to do it, and I went all the way. But, of course, what was completely unanticipated was the pandemic and the fact that we had to postpone the shoot for almost a year and a half in between, which then meant that I had to go through the entire process of transformation twice. That was not easy at all. My doctors, trainers and nutritionist told me not to do it. But we were already neck deep in the film and we did not really have a choice. I am happy I was able to pull it off. I am happy my body responded to it twice.

Q\ You have a great vision for Malayalam cinema. With the release of The Goat Life, a mega movie with a worldwide audience, do you believe Malayalam cinema has finally claimed its place on the world stage?

A\ I don’t think it is a destination that you reach, put your legs up and relax. It is a constant journey; each time you hit a glass ceiling, something else comes around and you realise there is more to go. So when you say we have finally arrived, there is no place to be arriving at. Malayalam cinema still has a lot of potential and we are yet to discover a lot of untapped markets. We are yet to delve into churning out even more complex content; I think film lovers across the world are ready to be entertained by more complex content. And I am glad Malayalam cinema is leading the way in terms of making such films and coming up with good content.

Q\ Your father, Sukumaran, was known for his distinctive acting style, while your mother, Mallika Sukumaran, continues to be a prominent actor. When evaluating your own acting style, whose influence do you believe is more prominent in your acting?

A\ I think I am a very, very different kind of actor in comparison with my dad and mom. Let me let you into a secret―as actors, we are deeply narcissistic, so all of us believe we are the best in the world. It will be unfair asking me to judge myself. But I think as a filmmaker, because I have directed my mom, and have seen a lot of films with my dad, I am inclined to think and believe that as an actor I am quite different from both of them. They are both great actors. My dad was very good at what he used to do and my mom, I still think, is the most talented actor in the family.

Q\ Blessy, known for outstanding films like Thanmatra (2005) and Kaazhcha (2004), brings a wealth of industry experience to the table. But it has been a decade since his last feature film. As a prominent actor, was this a concern when committing to The Goat Life?

A\ Not at all. If anything, I am truly flattered that I am a part of a filmmaker’s vision behind which he threw 16 years of his life. And make no mistake, Blessy is not trying to make his first film. He is a National Award-winning filmmaker, and [doing] a Blessy film is a box that pretty much every actor in the Malayalam industry wants to tick off. [The fact that] he decided that he is going to spend a decade and a half into making his dream project and that I am the actor he wants is great.

Q\ I read that the crew encountered significant challenges, including a 70-day stint in the Jordanian desert from March to May 2020 because of Covid restrictions. And eventually you returned to India through the government’s Vande Bharat Mission. Could you elaborate on the obstacles and hardships faced in completing this ambitious project?

A\ Frankly, there were no hardships. I know the popular narrative here was that we were starving with no food and water, but we were in a wonderful desert camp in the middle of a spectacular terrain with a lot of food. We were playing cricket and all that. But, of course, what was worrying was that none of us knew when we could come back home. And there were rumours that it could take a year… so, of course, that played on all our minds. But, after the shoot stopped, the way the production house took care of the entire crew was truly commendable.

haiti-born-jimmy-jean-louis-on-making-his-indian-debut-in-the-film-the-goat-life

Thu Mar 28 20:43:03 IST 2024

The Goat Life is a story of resilience and of the indomitable human spirit in the face of extreme adversities as the character of Najeeb (Prithviraj Sukumaran) defies death and desert to escape to freedom. Actor-producer Jimmy Jean-Louis plays Ibrahim Khadiri in the movie, who, according to him, is a "godsend kind of character, like an angel, like a Moses who comes from nowhere" to help and guide Najeeb in his arduous journey through the desert to freedom. He describes the film as a "very intense and lonely movie" as the protagonist is fighting extreme adversities―"the climate, the sand storm, the animals, the hunger and thirst". "Every time you think that he is on top of the hill, there is another hill and another hill...," he tells THE WEEK.

Haiti-born Jean-Louis, too, is no stranger to struggles. He came to Paris with his parents as a young boy in the hope of finding a better life, but had to hustle hard before finding success in Hollywood. There were times when he was a homeless squatter as no doors were opening for him. He travelled halfway across the world in search of work―he did musical theatre in Spain, and modelling in Italy, South Africa and England, before moving to the US. He switched from modelling to short movies, documentaries, and indie movies, before getting better gigs in Hollywood.

After a series of uncredited and small roles in movies like Tears of the Sun (2003) and The Bourne Identity (2002), and shows like The Shield (2002-2008) and Arliss (1996-2002), he landed a major role in the superhero series, Heroes, in 2006. Over a career spanning two decades, Jean-Louis has an impressive body of work across languages, including French, Nigerian, Haitian, and English. The actor has won several awards to his credit, including the best actor in a supporting role at the Africa Movie Academy Awards 2023.

The Goat Life marks his entry into Indian cinema. Perhaps, there is a bit of Najeeb in Jean-Louis―and in everyone who dares to rewrite the narratives that circumstances force upon them. That is possibly why Najeeb's story, which the actor calls "inspirational", resonates with him. He says Najeeb and his character, Khadiri, barely speak to each other in the movie as they don't understand each other's languages, but Khadiri empathises with him. "There is so much depth in the movie, and at the centre of it is humanity. The character that I play is someone who comes out of nowhere, helping someone who is in need without expecting anything in return," says Jean-Louis.

Despite having limited knowledge about Indian cinema, he was excited to be on board as The Goat Life was based on a true story, and he believes true stories usually make for good movies. Basic research familiarised him with the works of director Blessy and Prithviraj. He calls the coming together of Blessy, Prithviraj, and Oscar winners A.R. Rahman and Resul Pookutty for the film as "an A-team put together”. "I had no reason to doubt that this was going to be a great project. When you are in the business for long, you can easily identify the key players, and that's why, without a doubt, I said yes to the project," he says.

From facing homelessness in Paris once to "mingling with the most powerful people, the most powerful heads of state", Jean-Louis has had quite a trajectory in life. He recalls meeting Nelson Mandela when he was living in South Africa. “These people (Mandela, Najeeb) with heavy life stories are just amazing,” he says. “Of course, I don't necessarily want to live that deeply and that brutally. But at the same time, when you come out of [such struggles], you become someone with an understanding of life that is completely different from everybody else's, because you know what it is to touch rock bottom. I am always attracted to such strong and heavy stories."

While accepting the role of Khadiri was a "no-brainer", the actor had to learn a new language, Arabic, and make a character that was "almost god-like" as believable as possible. He does have a method for internalising his characters. "When I have to portray a character, I often look at my life to see whether I have met a guy [like that] already or was I that guy at one point in my life,” he says. “Most likely, I was or I know of tWhat person, and that's how I craft my character. The fact that I have travelled a lot opened my mind to different cultures....”

The actor in him is hungry for more roles in Indian cinema. All that matters, he says, is that he understands the character. "Not necessarily the lines, which come last,” he says. “I need to know who the person is, and get a full sense of the person."

Much like Khadiri who came out of nowhere to help Najeeb cross the desert, the actor has been using his resources, fame, and popularity to be of assistance to people in need in Haiti. He says this came naturally to him. "When I was part of Heroes, which was very successful, I got a lot of attention,” he says. “I had access to many people. I was also going back and forth to Haiti, and I could see how people were struggling in the country. That's how almost automatically the thought occurred―what can I do to get the Hollywood community together for Haiti? So I came up with the foundation, 'Hollywood Unites for Haiti'. I got a bunch of people to come and speak about the problems in Haiti, and have done great work, including building schools." While the foundation has been defunct since 2020, his philanthropic activities haven't stopped. "I still work with other groups that are doing amazing work in Haiti," he says.

established-malayalam-filmmakers-and-writers-are-taking-up-lead-roles

Sat Mar 23 15:03:39 IST 2024

In Indian film industries, there is a prevailing belief that pan-India success is reserved for mega-budget films featuring larger-than-life characters capable of executing extreme action. The monumental, nationwide success of Tollywood’s epic film Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) laid the foundation for this notion. Post pandemic, Malayalam cinema gained significant traction and appreciation across India, thanks to its content-driven offerings on OTT platforms. However, attempts by the industry to crack the pan-India success code by emulating the style-over-substance formula, successfully executed in Tamil or Telugu cinema, resulted in dismal failures. But February 2024 brought with it an epiphany of sorts for Malayalam cinema―it realised that it could maintain its focus on content-driven filmmaking and still achieve pan-Indian appeal.

Dubbed “super February”, the last month saw a diverse range of Malayalam films sending cash registers ringing countrywide. Director Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys was the biggest blockbuster. Based on a real-life story from 2006, it shows 11 young men from Manjummel near Kochi on a fateful mission to save a friend who fell into a crevasse during their trip to Guna Caves in Kodaikanal. With a budget nearing Rs20 crore, this survival thriller has grossed more than Rs200 crore and continues its successful theatrical run. Gireesh A.D.’s Premalu (Rs10 crore), a romantic comedy, has crossed the Rs100-crore mark, while Rahul Sadasivan’s horror film Bramayugam (Rs27.73 crore) has raked in over Rs85 crore.

“The success of our films proves that hereafter our attempt should not be to copy the format and style successfully pulled off by technicians from other industries,” Gireesh told THE WEEK. “For instance, the Telugu industry is well-versed in creating ‘mass’, larger-than-life characters. They have mastered it. But that is not the case with an industry like Malayalam. So we have to stick to our strengths.”

In addition to these box-office triumphs, another notable trend peaked in Mollywood during this season: prominent directors and writers transitioning into established actors. Manjummel Boys stands out by featuring the highest number of directors in acting roles. Soubin Shahir, who portrayed the lead character in the film, started out as an assistant director in 2003 (Chronic Bachelor); he donned the director’s hat in 2017 (Parava). Shahir is no stranger to acting though―he made his acting debut in 2013 with a supporting role in Annayum Rasoolum. In 2018, he won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for his stellar performance in Sudani from Nigeria.

But, for accomplished directors Jean Paul Lal and Khalid Rahman, it was their first proper foray into acting. Ganapathi S.P., casting director for Manjummel Boys, said that it was not an intentional decision to cast directors in acting roles.

“Prior to filming Manjummel Boys, we conducted interviews with all the real-life individuals involved in the Guna cave incident,”said Ganapathi, who also played a significant role in the film. “We did the casting based on their mannerisms and lifestyles. The real-life Siju, played by Jean Paul, exudes swagger, style and possesses a unique fashion sense and distinct slang. Although Jean Paul has previously portrayed some small, villain roles, his humorous flair and style haven’t been fully utilised in any films until now. Additionally, Siju is the brother of Sixon, played by Balu Varghese, who is Jean Paul’s cousin. We saw an opportunity to leverage these unique dynamics on screen.”

Ganapathi saw in Rahman an unassuming and innocent Prasad, the driver of the Toyota Qualis that the friends hired for the trip. Rahman had impressed him on the sets of Sulaikha Manzil (2023). “Rahman has a limited number of scenes in Sulaikha Manzil,” said Ganapathi. “However, in those scenes, his innate calmness and natural acting stood out. We needed someone that serene to portray Prasad’s character.”

In Bramayugam, a horror classic by Sadasivan, director Siddharth Bharathan portrayed a distinctive and mysterious character. Despite debuting as an actor in the 2002 campus drama Nammal, Bharathan has acted only in a few films over the past two decades. Why did Sadasivan cast him alongside a formidable actor like Mammootty? “I envisioned this character to harbour a sense of mystery,” explained Sadasivan, who is known for delving into the profound reflections and tribulations of the human psyche and bringing them to the fore in his films. “I felt Siddhu could bring forth the irritability and subtlety required for this role.”

When it comes to Premalu, it was not an established director who took on a new role as an actor, but rather National Award-winning screenwriter Syam Pushkaran (Maheshinte Prathikaaram, 2016). Premalu was produced by Bhavana Studios, cofounded by Pushkaran with actor-director Dileesh Pothan and actor Fahadh Faasil. Interestingly, the people behind Manjummel Boys and Bhavana Studios played a significant role in establishing Mollywood’s most successful brand of ‘director-turned-actor in lead roles’ in recent years―Basil Joseph.

Joseph landed his first lead role in Jan.E.Man (2021), which was Chidambaram’s directorial debut and Ganapathi’s debut as a casting director. The character of Joymon in Jan.E.Man required a certain “boy-next-door” appeal to resonate with the audience. “We sensed a Joymon-like quality in Basil’s real-life persona, which is why we approached him for the role,” said Ganapathi.

Chidambaram and Ganapathi approached Joseph for the lead role in Jan.E.Man during the pandemic. “Even before Covid, some lead roles were offered to me, but I declined them,” recalled Joseph. “Supporting roles typically require a commitment of only 10 to 15 days, which isn’t the case with lead roles.” He confessed that he finds more enjoyment in his directorial ventures as he has control over the creative process. “However, during the pandemic, there was a dearth of work, and I found the character in Jan.E.Man appealing, so I accepted the offer,” he said.

Though more such offers came his way, he turned down most of them, except for Bhavana Studios’ Palthu Janwar (2022), Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022), Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham and Falimy (both 2023). Interestingly, all of them became hits.

“After three consecutive successful projects, numerous offers poured in, and at one point, I felt overwhelmed; I felt pressured to participate in projects even if I didn’t want to,” said Joseph. Being a lead actor has its comforts, realised Joseph―decent income and fewer risks compared with directorial ventures. It was tempting to stay in that comfort zone. What made it more confusing for him were the conflicting advice he received from various quarters. “Some advised me to fully concentrate on directorial ventures at this stage of my career, while others expressed a desire to see more of me on screen,” he said.

However, Joseph seems to have found a balance and is now focusing on scripting a mega project, which is rumoured to be a pan-India one. “I have found that my profile as an actor is now complementing my profile as a director, and vice versa,” he noted. “My directorial profile helps me to say yes only to good scripts and projects, while my acting career provides me with the time to work meticulously on my directorial project and scripts. I no longer feel the need to take on too many directorial projects simultaneously.”

Financially, this has provided a sense of stability and peace of mind for Joseph. However, because he is engrossed in a mega project, he hints at taking an acting break for at least two to three years. After all, he is a former engineer from Infosys who sacrificed a secure IT career to pursue filmmaking.

indian-photographer-deepti-asthana-photos-projects

Sat Mar 23 14:57:28 IST 2024

A woman laughing uninhibitedly, her head thrown back, her hair fanning about her. Two women lolling by the river enjoying an unguarded moment. A girl clutching a laptop in a straw cottage. Kalbelia dancers from Rajasthan applying makeup on their faces. What Deepti Asthana wants to document through these photographs are not snapshots of rural India, but rather stories of its people. She wants to tell the stories of the girls in Uttarakhand who spend hours fetching water every day, which impact their education and their health. She wants to tell the stories of the elderly women who are fighting to save the rivers and mountains of their villages, even though they are now getting too old to take care of themselves or ever enjoy the fruits of their labour. She wants to tell the story of the two women forest guards struggling in a male-dominated field, one a widow and the other having suffered miscarriages.

Asthana―who was recognised as ‘Global Talent Asia 2020’ by the World Press Photo and received a National Geographic grant in 2022 to document the water crisis in Uttarakhand―says much of her fascination with the lives of women in rural India comes from her own childhood. She grew up in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. Having lost her father at the age of four, her mother took care of her and her two siblings. The constant threat of being driven out of their house, which belonged to her father’s family, led to a deep sense of insecurity in her. And seeing her mother struggle made her passionate to tell the stories of women like her. She herself was abused by a relative and, as she says, it made her shy and submissive. It took the exposure of living in big cities to restore her self-confidence. “I had to put so much into changing the person that I had become,” she says. “There is so much of conditioning that when you are coming out of that environment, it takes a lot of energy to fight with yourself and live the life you really want to live.”

That is why the lens she trains on her subjects is such an empathetic one. It takes a special kind of person to go deep into the lives of rural women and capture the spectrum of their troubles and their triumphs. Because she has gone through it, she feels she can do justice to these stories. “Sometimes when I tell people about life in rural India, they are surprised,” she says. “They ask me whether this is still happening. I tell them that this is not what happened 10 or 20 years ago. Women in rural India are still fighting for basic things―for safety, for the right to education, for the right to choose their life partners.”

In many ways, for Asthana, her photography is a response to her own emotional state. She looks at it as self-therapy. Over the last few years, she sees her work growing intensely spiritual. During the pandemic, for example, she stayed for three years in Shillong. Living near the forest, she found the isolation to be healing. There, she did a portrait project, for the first time focusing on her own life. It looked at the journey of a woman who wanted to escape social mores, and so seeks refuge in the forest. Living close to nature, she learns life lessons that no books could teach her.

Another project close to her heart is documenting the Narmada Parikrama, a pilgrimage of three years, three months and 33 days by the Narmada river. “The pilgrims take nothing with them except some extra clothing,” she says. “There is so much of trust and surrender that they will find food and shelter. That was a wonderful project because I met so many people who might not have seemed very sophisticated, but yet had so much of wisdom.”

And everyone she has met in her own pilgrimage through life has taught her something. “I come from a very normal educational background, so my main education has been through meeting people who face so many difficulties and yet find so much joy and peace in life,” she says. She gives the example of a fisherman she met in Tamil Nadu’s Dhanushkodi while working on a project for the Serendipity Arts Festival. An accident while blast fishing had deprived him of an arm and his eyes. His face was completely deformed. And yet, she says, he was one of the happiest people she had ever met. He would still go to work, sing the loudest while pulling in the heavy nets and laugh the heartiest at the smallest of things. “He jumped into the sea just so he could show me how he could swim with one arm,” she says. “Seeing these people really changes your perspective on life. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.”

For Asthana, there is no compartmentalisation between her life and her work. She is constantly in touch with the women and girls she has shot. Over the years, witnessing the shifts in their lives has often been rewarding, she says. She refers to the photographs she took of a few girls in Uttarakhand when they were 10 or 12 years old. When she returned many years later, they had become young women and the changes in their behaviour were stark. “They laughed a lot when they saw their childhood photographs that I had shot,” she says. “It was probably the only photographs of themselves that they had ever seen.”

j-robert-oppenheimer-through-the-eyes-of-his-biographer-kai-bird

Sat Mar 16 11:45:45 IST 2024

There is one question that haunts many viewers of Christopher Nolan’s film on the creator of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—J. Robert Oppenheimer—which swept the Oscars this year. Did Oppenheimer endorse the use of the bomb on an essentially defeated enemy? And if so, how can we hail such a man as a hero? One of the reasons he endorsed it might be because of his ego. He had spent three years building the bomb with his team at a secret facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and now he wanted to see the consummation of his efforts. Greatness was within his grasp. Also, he reasoned that the bomb’s power would ensure the end of all wars in future.

But the truth might be more complex than this, and encapsulated in a scene in the film right after the Trinity test, when the bomb was first successfully tested on the plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range. While giving the victory speech to the thumping cheers of his colleagues and friends, Oppenheimer (played by a brilliant Cillian Murphy) blanks out and in the flash of a blinding light, he sees a woman’s molten skin. As he walks out, he imagines stepping on the ashen remains of a corpse.

“Oppenheimer knew the exact human suffering that his bomb would cause,” says Kai Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the theoretical physicist’s biography on which Nolan’s film is based. “Yet this is the same man who gave instructions on the altitude at which to drop the bomb in order to inflict maximum damage.” Bird was speaking at a session of the Jaipur Literature Festival in February.

This complexity in Oppenheimer’s character is converted in the film into a meditation on the complexities of the universe from which the bomb’s power is harnessed.

Bird feels that what made Oppenheimer a great scientist was that he was a polymath. He read Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, and the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. “He was never good with his hands and failed in Cambridge as an experimental physicist,” says Bird. “But when he discovered quantum physics in the 1920s, he could hear the music of the science that explains this world, and he had the imagination to ask the right questions. He predicted the existence of black holes when we did not have X-ray telescopes. When we could not see anything out there in the universe, he could imagine it. He was a brilliant scientist precisely because he was a humanist.”

Interestingly, in the film, this versatility is shown through a sex scene when Oppenheimer’s paramour, a young communist named Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh), gets up from the bed and rifles through his collection of books. She picks out the Gita and asks him to translate a passage in Sanskrit. She is not satisfied by his attempt to paraphrase it. “No, read the words,” she tells him. And he does: “And now I am become death. The destroyer of worlds.” The camera focuses on the electric gaze of Oppenheimer. It is almost as if he knows that the words are a prophecy whose fulfilment hinges on him.

That is why, says Bird, Nolan was the right person to make the movie on Oppenheimer. Because there is much that is common to the filmmaker and his subject—both are interested in the human condition, in poetry and in stories. THE WEEK meets Bird during the JLF. The sessions are winding up for the day and he looks tired. Yet, he obliges us sportingly. He has answered questions on Oppenheimer countless times since the release of the book and the movie, but he shows no tiredness in recycling his views. He is mild-mannered, yet with a steadfastness that reminds one of the many scientists at Los Alamos, but Bird laughs it off. “My only link with science is the course on physics I took in college. It was called ‘physics for poets’,” he chuckles. “So yes, I had to try and understand a little quantum physics to write this book.”

In fact, it was Bird’s co-writer, Martin J. Sherman, who started researching American Prometheus back in 1979. In 20 years, he had collected “some 50,000 pages of interviews, transcripts, letters, diaries, declassified documents and FBI dossiers, stored in seemingly endless boxes in his basement, attic and office”. By 1999, he had got what Bird calls “the biographer’s disease”, when you cannot start writing because you want to do one more interview or visit one more archive. So, he enlisted the help of Bird, his friend who had by then written two biographies.

Initially, Bird refused, but Sherman was persistent. “He told me that if I didn’t agree to co-write the book, his gravestone would read, ‘He took it with him’,” says Bird with a laugh. The book released in 2005 to much critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Unfortunately, Sherman died of lung cancer in 2021, the same year that Nolan read the book and was gripped by it. Within five months, he had finished writing a screenplay.

He asked to meet Bird in September to discuss the book. “We met at a small boutique hotel in downtown Manhattan. And we spent two and a half hours drinking tea,” says Bird with a laugh. “Nolan is half British, and he is a great tea drinker.” He says that there is nothing frivolous about Nolan. He is very intense, and does not do small talk. “My first question to him was whether he had managed to include in the screenplay Oppenheimer’s favourite toast when he was mixing his gin martinis. Which was, ‘To the confusion of our enemies’. Nolan laughed and told me that it had been in the screenplay initially, but he had to take it out for reasons of space,” says Bird.

Instead, what Nolan attempted is the sketch of a man who drew too close to the sun not to be scorched by the heat of what he discovered. The power of the universe is too wild to be tamed, and anyone who attempts to do so must pay the price. There is a scene in the film where Edward Teller, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” (played by Benny Safdie), tells Oppenheimer: “Nobody knows what you believe. Do you?” And in history’s final reckoning, do we? Are we to hail him as the “father of the atomic bomb”—as TIME did when it featured him on its cover—who forced us to confront our own mortality? Or is he to be remembered as the “destroyer of worlds” because of whom, as Bird says, we teeter on the precipice of Armageddon?

hoping-on-to-the-4am-biryani-trend-in-hyderabad

Sat Mar 16 16:18:11 IST 2024

While most people have 3am friends, Hyderabadis have 4am biryani for company. And, it smells like team spirit, for hordes of people—foodies, techies and locals alike—throng the numerous 4am biryani joints that have popped up across the city in the last few months.

With social media doing what it does best, the 4am biryani outlets need no other promotion. Countless food vlogs and reels have brought with them a sense of FoMO (fear of missing out) among those who are yet to join this pre-dawn daawat (feast). So, we, too, went on a nocturnal adventure to join the 4am club.

Our first stop was Sai Anna 4am Biryani, located close to Madhapur, the city’s IT hub. Many of these eateries have found a sweet spot in the IT zone, strategically targeting techies and corporate employees who spend late nights in office. Most eateries open at around 2am and 3am and shut down by 6am.

Sai Anna runs his biryani business from a kiosk in an open area. As you near the kiosk, you smell the biryani before you see it. The biryani is cooked in huge vessels under Sai Anna’s supervision. “I come here once a week,” said Yashwanth, a startup employee. “This biryani tastes good only when eaten at this time. Try it and you will know what I am talking about.”

A plate of chicken biryani costs Rs200, and mutton biryani Rs300. The mutton biryani is essentially pudina rice cooked with medium-sized mutton pieces. A plate of chicken biryani consists of flavourful rice at the bottom of the plate, with deep-fried chicken pieces—cooked separately—on top. The flavours are unique, deviating from the typical Hyderabadi biryani, and the biryani is not too spicy.

A true-blue Hyderabadi never stops with just a plate of biryani, and so we headed next to Masthi 4am Biryani, which is quite a sensation online. While the menu is quite similar to Sai Anna’s, Masthi has ample seating and largely caters to families. The crowd swelled as the clock neared 5am. Here, the mutton was more tender, and the chicken packed an extra punch of spice.

A young couple was busy making an Instagram reel, while a couple of women were happily gorging on the biryani. “When the entire city is trying the 4am biryani, where’s the fun in missing out!” said Alekhya, an interior designer in her 20s.

We wanted to visit another joint, but the sun came up and the shutters went down. The 4am biryani was gone, and so were the biryani enthusiasts.

Burp! Time for burpees now.

love-jihad-and-other-fictions-book-review

Sat Mar 16 11:37:18 IST 2024

Have you heard the theory about actor Shah Rukh Khan propagating ‘population jihad’—the Muslim plot to overthrow Hindus by producing more children? There is, of course, no evidence for this except the fact that Khan has three children. Once upon a time, such theories would have seemed laughable. But now, they no longer are. Mostly because of two factors that are explained in the book, Love Jihad and Other Fictions: Simple Facts to Counter Viral Falsehoods, written by three journalists—Sreenivasan Jain, Mariyam Alavi and Supriya Sharma. First, these theories are increasingly getting political backing, with powerful ministers and MPs endorsing them. Second, they are having serious consequences—death, destruction and widespread prejudice and bigotry.

One example the writers give in the book is that of cow slaughter, or what PM Narendra Modi repeatedly called the ‘pink revolution’ while campaigning in 2014. Within months of his party’s victory that year, the attacks by the ‘gau rakshaks’ had amplified significantly. To find out the extent of the problem, the writers analysed media archives on the internet to count the number of cow-related attacks across two time periods—from 2009 to 2014, during the tenure of the UPA government, and from 2014 to May 2023, during the BJP-led NDA rule. While there was only one instance of cow-related violence in the former period, in the latter, there were 136 instances. At least 66 people were killed, of whom at least 70 per cent were Muslims. Even if simply relying on media reports is not an airtight way of finding out the truth, the overall trend from their research is clear, they say: cow-related violence has witnessed a dramatic spike since 2014.

In this post-truth age, when blatant falsehoods are endorsed widely, Love Jihad and Other Fictions is an important book. In it, the writers tackle four myths that have become truths: Love jihad, population jihad, forced conversions and Muslim appeasement. In each case, they take specific claims and systematically disprove them. For example, the claim of Muslim appeasement (the idea that Muslims are given preferential treatment to get their votes) being real in India. Contrary to what this implies, the writers prove the reality of Muslim backwardness on most social and economic indicators, including living standards, literacy and education, salaried jobs and business.

Or the claim that population jihad is real, because Muslim growth rate is off the charts. The writers cite experts and draw from census data to disprove this. Even though the Muslim growth rate is higher than that of Hindus, it is steadily coming down, because the Muslim fertility rate is dropping, they conclude.

The book is rigorously researched. The writers use conventional journalistic tools—ground reporting, government records, official surveys and polls, RTI applications and expert views—to uncover the truth. There are charts, graphs, illustrations, and elaborate endnotes to back their conclusions. The methods they use are so diametrically opposite to the ones used by the conspiracy theorists that one feels like one is sitting in the same cinema hall and watching two different movies. At a time when hindutva is becoming so powerful, it takes courage to take on the system. And in a land that has turned upside-down, it is nice to be shown what it means to stand upright.

Love Jihad and Other Fictions: Simple Facts to Counter Viral Falsehoods

By Sreenivasan Jain, Mariyam Alavi and Supriya Sharma

Published by Aleph

Price Rs799; pages 184

meet-nina-metayer-the-worlds-best-pastry-chef

Mon Mar 11 13:35:49 IST 2024

In late 2023, during a ceremony in Munich, the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners named a French woman the world’s best confectioner. It was the first time a woman had received this prestigious award in its 92 years. That historic night in Munich may not have transpired as it did without a French girl’s visit to faraway Mexico 19 years ago.

Nina Métayer was born in La Rochelle, a coastal city in western France. She prefers to keep details about her parents private, only revealing that they gave her a taste for good food. She grew up with two younger sisters and spent 10 years in Alsace in the northeast of France. A young Nina enjoyed playing the piano and theatre, and took art classes in school. She was particularly interested in travelling. So, naturally, when a student exchange programme gave her a chance to go to Mexico for a year, she took it. There, she met a French couple who ran a bakery, and inspiration struck.

She felt that French baking skills could be successfully exported to Mexico and went back to France with a plan.“I was dreaming to go back and live in Mexico,” Nina told THE WEEK. “My goal was to start a bakery in Playa del Carmen or Tulum, booming tourist destinations. So, after the baccalaureate, I started a vocational training course to become a baker.” She then moved to Melbourne and practised her craft there. But, the desire to go further in terms of technique and creativity pushed her to get trained in pastry-making at the renowned Ferrandi school in Paris.

She began her professional career at a Parisian five-star hotel and later became head pastry chef at another. Her first signature dessert, Lîle Flottante Exotique (Exotic Floating Island), was hailed by the press as the third best sweet discovery of the year. Nina’s accolades and accomplishments since then are too many to enumerate. She has also worked with several international establishments, which include contributions to projects in London, Shanghai and two exclusive collections for Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 1931 Cafés in locations around the globe.

In 2020, alongside her business-to-business services, she launched her first patisserie, named Delicatisserie. It was fully online―customers would place orders online and then either choose a collection point or opt for delivery. “The concept was consistent with my belief that excellence, ecology and social commitment are as necessary for a sustainable future as they are economically viable,” she said. Delicatisserie offers made-to-order pastries in plastic-free packs and has a zero-waste policy―fruit peelings, for example, are used in syrups, toppings or coulis.

Nina is happy that sweet tooths have followed her vision. All the same, the success of the business prompted her to expand offline, too. “I opened an outlet in 2021 in Paris, then in 2022 at Issy-les-Moulineaux (a Paris suburb),” she said.

Looking back, Nina said every moment has been essential, starting right from being introduced to the materials that go into food and pastry-making. “Apprenticeships in bakery, then in pastry-making, that required me to surpass myself; meeting the pastry chef Camille Lesecq and the kitchen chef Jean-François Piège was both important for me,” she said. “And, every day, my work alongside my teams is memorable.”

She said her greatest challenges were with herself. “I have had to acquire skills that I did not think I could achieve, outdo myself constantly, sometimes going against my character, for example, not being patient, and learning to be confident.” Nina said that when she started, the bakery profession in general was male-dominated. “In pastry-making, women rarely reached the position of chef,” she said. “It pushed me to prove people wrong when they told me I could not do it, and to give my best to show that, even if I was a woman, I could reach a high level.”

And reach a high level, she did. How did it feel at the summit? That night in Munich. “It is an honour and a great source of pride, especially since this award is recognition of a career path and, above all, of the day-to-day work of my teams,” she said. “It is awarded not for a ‘feat’ or a competition, but for a body of know-how, commitment to our craft, entrepreneurship, our capacity for innovation. And, as it is the first time this title has been awarded to a woman, it is even more gratifying.”

Nina is quick to add that the most important aspect of her work is the chance to share joy, make gourmets and her teams happy, and express feelings through pastries. She said it was essential to transmit both skills and “gestures” through the craft.

Gestures?

“The starting point can be smell, a landscape, the discovery of a town or countryside, a texture, a sound, an encounter, a memory,” she explained. “Everything that arouses in me an emotion, a sensation or a curiosity that I want to share to please people. That is where the creative process begins, always with its many missteps, that allow us to move forward and arrive at the desired result.”

Her 2020 galette des rois is an example. (Galette des rois translates to king cake. Also known as three kings cake, it is associated with the Christian festival of Epiphany.) The cake was a tribute to the majestic rose windows of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. She worked with a designer for the motif, which was then printed using a 3D printer used to make food-grade silicon moulds.

While “gestures”―the art―are an essential part of her work, taste is at the heart of it. She said taste highlights the know-how of the pastry craftsperson. But, does the focus on taste raise concerns about health? Nina was candid. “Patisserie is a sweet pleasure and should remain so, but without [sweetness] masking the flavours,” she said. “Less refined sugars, such as muscovado (from sugar cane) are also interesting. So is using ripe, naturally sweet seasonal and local fruits. The use of high quality butter or cream in artisanal pastry is not a health issue [compared with] industrial products made with too much bad fat and added sugar.”

Having achieved everything she has by the age of 35, what is next? “I really love my life, both personal and professional, as it is,” she said. Her husband, Mathieu Salomé, is the general manager of her business. Her two daughters, one aged six and one aged three, are regular sous-chefs on her Instagram and YouTube accounts. She has close to 3.5 lakh followers on Instagram and just over 31,700 subscribers on YouTube.

“My priority is to take care of all our customers, as well as my teams, to give our best every day,” she said. “We do, of course, have plans, such as a new outlet in Paris, to expand a little in France and also to continue to work internationally.” The mention of working internationally begs the question whether she was considering coming to the Indian market.

She pointed out that she has to expand the business in a reasoned way, but, does not rule out the possibility. “India is an interesting country we would like to discover,” she said. “We may consider coming, one day.”

to-kill-a-tiger-documentary-film-shatters-the-silence-around-rape-in-india

Sat Mar 09 16:27:03 IST 2024

To Kill A Tiger, one of the five documentaries competing for an Oscar on March 10, opens to the early morning hum of a village in Jharkhand. After meandering a bit, it takes us to a farmer’s house where a young girl in a school uniform is combing her hair. We watch as she deftly weaves an orange ribbon into the ends of her two plaits. But instead of tying a simple, neat bow with two loops, she folds the ribbon over and over again to create a burst of orange festivity on either plait, like two big, messy marigold flowers. Or smiling dahlias, perhaps. This is 13-year-old Kiran, Ranjit’s eldest daughter and an inconvenience in her village.

One of the basic etiquettes expected of rape victims in India is that they remain anonymous and invisible. That is mandated by law, and also our culture.

Depending on how ardently rape victims adhere to this rule, we either celebrate and venerate them with lofty epithets like Nirbhaya (fearless), or interrogate survivors, their statements, their past, their behaviour and clothes.

Indo-Canadian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja’s powerful documentary, To Kill A Tiger, snatches that comforting buffer of anonymity and brings us face-to-face with Kiran (a pseudonym that means ‘ray’ in Hindi) as she laughs, cries and recounts how, at a family wedding near her house on April 9, 2017, three men grabbed her by the hair, dragged her to an isolated spot and raped her.

A traumatic, triggering, but also heartwarming tale of a girl’s courage and a father’s gentle determination to seek justice for her, To Kill A Tiger intimately follows Kiran, her family and members of the NGO supporting them in their court battle until the three men were found guilty and sentenced to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment in 2018.

Celebrated at several international film festivals and released in theatres in the US last year, To Kill A Tiger is being backed by some eminent Hollywood celebrities. Director Deepa Mehta, actors Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra-Jonas, among others, have come onboard as executive producers to give the film’s Oscar campaign some glamour and heft.

Chopra-Jonas called it a “hard-hitting piece of art” and the film is a top contender to take home the Oscar on Sunday.

In India, however, where rape continues to be linked to shame―for the victim, the family and the nation―To Kill A Tiger has neither been released, nor is it talked about. The little chatter about it on social media is critical of the film’s “western gaze” that “exotifies” the Indian victim. Last week, Netflix acquired the film’s rights and is scheduled to release it in Hindi, with English subtitles, on March 8. There has not been much publicity around it.

Part of this unease and silence comes from Indian law that prohibits anyone― media, police, lawyers, courts, even family members―from revealing the identity of rape victims, especially minors. A necessary safeguard for the lives, livelihood and reputation of the over 30,000 women who are raped every year in India, this restriction can be waived by the survivor at 18 years or above. To Kill A Tiger declares at the onset that Pahuja took Kiran’s consent before filming her. But the film was shot when Kiran was a minor. Pahuja also states in the film that she waited till Kiran turned 18 to take her consent, and only then did she release the film.

That does not matter because a larger part of our discomfort comes from our upbringing, our culture of silence, of the hush that surrounds sexual abuse and assault in our homes and families. Used to maintaining a distance from rape victims and incidents, we prefer to identify them by the places where they were committed―Kathua, Unnao, Shakti Mills, Suryanelli or Park Street.

Kiran’s perpetrators, too, tried to impose silence with threats. If she told anyone, they said, they would kill her.

But when she collapsed on her way home, and her father asked her what happened, she told him what Kapil, Langdu and Ishwar Munda had done to her.

Ranjit lodged a complaint and in court, the judge received a sealed envelope that contained documents about the internal injuries Kiran had suffered.

This almost paternal promise of anonymity and protection to rape survivors from prejudice, further victimisation and harassment does not extend much beyond court premises. In Kiran’s village, the elders, the women and the mukhiya (village chief) would often speak of “compromise”, and insist that she marry one of the perpetrators instead of ruining three lives.

We watch Kiran sob when she hears of the threats and intimidation her father faces, and when her little brother says, “If papa dies, I will also die”. We watch her go to school though no one speaks or plays with her, and say softly, quite casually, “I was born to do the right thing”.

In a country where rape survivors are invisiblised for their own good, so that the focus stays on the crime and not on them, To Kill A Tiger is discomforting and disruptive, because it draws our attention to Kiran, to what happened to her on the night of April 9, 2017, and thereafter, when she refused to be shamed or silenced.

The film humanises and honours her by letting her tell her story. It lets us watch Kiran as she walks into the court in a blue sleeveless kurta, wearing a bindi and lipstick. Her father later says that though she was crying, she continued to tell the judge what had happened that night. To Kill A Tiger is a film about Kiran, a rape survivor. It’s also a film that shatters the silence imposed on rape survivors to celebrate a tenacious young girl who is palpably anxious as she leaves the court, but when asked what she is looking forward to doing next, says, “Going home and eating mangoes.”

indian-air-power-contemporary-and-future-dynamics-book

Sat Mar 09 12:03:03 IST 2024

On February 21, Turkey successfully conducted the maiden flight of its fifth generation fighter jet KAAN, becoming one of the few countries in the world to master the cutting edge technology. India's fifth generation fighter, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, remains a work in progress. In the history of aerial warfare, Turkey was the first victim, notes Air Marshal Diptendu Choudhury (retd) in his book, Indian Air Power: Contemporary and Future Dynamics.

On October 22, 1911, Italian pilots used aircraft to bomb a Turkish army camp at Ain Zara (in present day Libya) during the Italo-Turkish war. The audacious move by the Italians threw open endless possibilities and soon “command and control of the air” became the “key outcome and the dominant narrative” for air power thinkers and strategic experts. Just about two decades after the first air attack, in October 1932, the Indian Air Force was launched formally.

In Indian Air Power, Air Marshal Choudhury attempts a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the Indian Air Force. In 14 chapters, the book explains how the IAF transformed itself into one of the key guarantors of national security. The book is a timely addition to the scholarship on national security, especially with the unprecedented rise of China as a global power, rivalling the United States.

Beijing's aggression in the South China Sea and in north Ladakh and its deepening partnership with Pakistan “serve as a reality check that the days of peace and tranquility on the borders are over”, says Air Marshal Choudhury. He warns that the IAF's combat squadrons dropping below the required critical mass has become a major national security problem that should be addressed at the earliest. Time has come, he says, to take into account the enduring structural aspects of air power and consider doctrinal and paradigm changes that are relevant for the future.

Apart from conventional warfare, India's strategic leadership also needs to consider future vectors of aerospace power as it increasingly becomes a vital cog in the national security calculus. Space technology is the next frontier and Air Marshal Choudhury observes that while the US remains the world leader in this domain, China's confident strides in the field are likely to lead to the militarisation of the global commons. He says India needs to integrate space into a war-fighting domain in national security without any further delay.

Air Marshal Sir John Steele, India's Air Officer Commanding in Chief from 1931 to 1935, was initially dismissive of the ability of Indians to run the Air Force. “Indians will not be able to fly and maintain military aeroplanes. It's a man's job,” he said. Air Marshal Choudhury says it was the “sheer grit of the intrepid Indian airmen that not only proved Steele wrong, but earned the enduring respect and admiration of sceptics”.

The IAF's doctrinal and strategic evolution has been a critical element in the Indian defence ecosystem and the book suggests that more needs to be done to prepare it for future endeavours.

INDIAN AIR POWER: CONTEMPORARY AND FUTURE DYNAMICS

Author: Air Marshal (Dr) Diptendu Choudhury (retd)

Publisher: KW Publishers

Price: Rs1,480; pages: 244

author-nikhil-alva-interview

Sat Mar 09 11:57:41 IST 2024

Interview/ Nikhil Alva, author

Nikhil Alva’s first novel, If I Have To Be A Soldier, is shaped by his childhood journeys to the northeast. Thriller-like, vividly told and set during the Mizo insurgency, the book preserves the painful memory of the bombing of Aizawl―a fact forgotten, but which has found a new life in fiction. Excerpts from the interview:

Q/ Why did you choose to write this book?

A/ My mother was in charge of the Congress in the northeast. She took us on road trips. In the 1970s, insurgency was at its peak in Nagaland as well as Mizoram. For a young boy, this was quite scary. We couldn’t drive at night; security forces [were] all around; and there was this fear that permeated every exchange. We would be introduced as say, ‘Oh, they’ve come all the way from India, please welcome to India.’ I didn’t understand where that was coming from. My interest in the northeast started there.

I got hooked on to the idea when I first heard of the mautam 15 or 20 years ago. (Mautam is a cyclic ecological phenomenon that creates widespread famine in the northeast every 48 years.) I was fascinated by the linkage―the causality of the bamboo flowering once every 48 years, which leads to this plague of rats, which leads to this massive famine. Because it is mishandled, thousands die and that leads to this brutal 20-year insurgency, where thousands more lose their lives. It is a very powerful story with layers.

Q/ The leap into fiction is not always easy. Why fiction, rather than nonfiction?

A/ I chose the medium of the novel because I felt that nothing else will do justice. The insurgency is quite old now. Very few insurgents are alive, [and] they are quite old. I didn’t have the experience, the expertise or the volume of research that will be required for a nonfiction book. I felt that a novel with fictional characters, but against the backdrop of historic events, was perhaps the best way for me to get into this story.

Q/ You write about Aizawl being bombed. It is a memory that has been wiped out. Could you really talk about that memory?

A/ The tragedy is that there is so little information available of what actually happened. Sometimes we like to forget uncomfortable events or truths in modern history. Among all the uncomfortable events, the bombing of Aizawl stands out. It is the only time in our history where we used our Air Force to bomb our own people. [Many] innocent civilians lost their lives. We have no count of how many people died. It is all anecdotal evidence. We denied this bombing completely for the longest time.

But it is not just the bombing. The other terrible thing that happened was this concept of progressive villages―where over 80 per cent of the Mizo population were, at the barrel of the gun, relocated. These villages [were] nothing but internment camps, along the highways and behind barbed-wire fences. Traditional villages were just burned to the ground. We don’t talk about it. We don’t write about it. It doesn’t feature anywhere. It’s like, it didn’t happen.

That is dangerous because history is not always glorious and wonderful. There are things that have happened that, as a people, we should not forget. If you forget, you tend to repeat the same mistakes again.

Q/ Do you see a parallel with what happened then and what is happening in the northeast now? This idea that there is this conflict still burning at the edge of India, and we don’t understand it.

A/ The most important commonality between these different incidents is a lack of dialogue. The Mizo insurgency could have been averted well before 1966. There was resentment. There was anger. They felt they were being taken for granted. Their voice was not being listened to. No one really paid attention. The insurgency finally got resolved with the Indian government conceding that there was a lack of dialogue.

These problems have been simmering for a long time in Manipur. There has been very little dialogue, little attempt to get both sides to the table to sit down and resolve differences peacefully. It will take years now to heal the wounds of [what happened] last year. We will need to give people an opportunity to be heard, to listen to those voices. Not from a perspective of tokenism, but actually listen, which means engaging in a meaningful dialogue.

Q/ You talk about meeting insurgents as a child and being struck by their sadness and sense of loss.

A/ As a child, I didn’t really understand these concepts. I knew that there was trouble. I knew that there had been violence. I had listened to conversations because of my mother’s work, I [used] to meet some former insurgents who had come out of the so-called underground and into the political mainstream.

They had stories to tell. Some of them would be lighthearted and funny, but with this underlying sadness for the number of years lost to violence. I picked up emotions―sadness, the feeling of betrayal―without fully understanding the intellectual and ideological side of what actually happened.

The intention is not to make [the novel] political, but to say that violence impacts regular people who are trying to lead perfectly normal lives. They get caught up in a swirl of events, and their lives get shaped by them.

if-i-have-to-be-a-soldier-nikhil-alva-book

Sat Mar 09 11:52:59 IST 2024

Every half century or so, a cyclic ecological phenomenon sees the whole of Mizoram (and many parts of the northeast and Myanmar) awash with the flowering of the mautak (bamboo species). Old-timers say that when the mautak flowers, mautam (bamboo death) follows close behind, bringing with it untold misery, death and destruction.

On the face of it, TV producer and entrepreneur Nikhil Alva’s impressive debut novel―If I Have To Be A Soldier―is a love story―boy meets girl, falls in love, but they are forced to separate over a misunderstanding. But simplifying this story to just that is akin to saying James Cameron’s Titanic is merely the story of Jack and Rose. For it isn’t love, or the bamboo, that blossom here―Alva adds to it the heft of history. Looming in the background, nay foreground, is history, politics, even geography, as a series of events unwrap to take potshots at the star-crossed lovers and the world around them.

Delhi-bred, Kannadiga-born Nikhil, the son of Congress leader Margaret Alva―who was in news for his social media makeover of Rahul Gandhi―dextrously positions his tale in the salubrious environs of the Mizo hills. But the timing isn’t all that breezy. The year is 1966, the mau (bamboo) has blossomed, and tam (death) is not far behind. Greater Mizoram is burning, with the Mizo National Front (MNF) calling for independence and prime minister Indira Gandhi swearing to crush the armed rebellion by sending in Delhi’s military might.

In the massacre and mayhem that follow―including the shocking instance of India bombing its own citizens in Aizawl on March 5, 1966―loyalties are tested and resolves are broken, as Alva’s fictional hero Sammy, a captain in the Army, finds himself on the run with dreaded MNF commander ‘Che’ Sena he was supposed to interrogate. Only, Sena is his childhood friend-turned-foe (and insurgent) and the brother of the love of his life.

As inculcated doctrines of a national narrative, jingoism and military discipline stare in the face of cultural identity, human bonding and, above all, love; often there are no victors, only victims. That is the reality the Sammy-Sena combine has to come to terms with when they get swept away in the great power play in motion, even as it forces them to confront demons, both personal and the political, along the way.

Considering that this is Alva’s first book, it ticks all the right boxes. The book is also an enchanting eye-opener into the rich tapestry of the Mizo way of life and history.

Alva’s prose is ironically matter-of-fact and non-judgemental, letting the reader form their opinions.

The scale of the story is grandly visual, and it is no accident considering that Alva initially wrote it as a screenplay, before he felt “only a novel could do justice”. The action, and the bodycount, is relentless, especially once Sammy and Sena go on the run, offering possibilities for a web series if not a twin-part movie. Throw in the human element of love and loss, and this becomes a screen wannabe. The story of India’s secret war in Mizoram, and how its stoic populace met it with dignity and resilience, is a tale that needs to be told.

IF I HAVE TO BE A SOLDIER

Author: Nikhil J. Alva

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Price: Rs499; pages: 318

crime-grime-and-gumption-case-files-of-an-ips-officer-o-p-singh-book

Sat Mar 09 11:49:37 IST 2024

Temperatures (and tempers) are going to rise this summer in the north, as it will soon be soaked in the dust and heat of electioneering. As Uttar Pradesh, the most powerful state electorally, prepares for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it will be yet another test for police officers who will be fighting crime and more to pave way for a smooth election of the political executive. The very same executive that makes the police “subordinate”, but not “subservient”, points out O.P Singh in his memoir. Singh oversaw the smooth conduct of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as chief of Uttar Pradesh Police―the country’s largest police force―till he hung up his boots in January 2020.

“If the management of law and order during Kumbh Mela of 2019 was not enough of a responsibility, the Lok Sabha election in the months of April and May further stretched the capacity of the UP police,” Singh writes in Crime, Grime and Gumption. The book is more than a memoir, as it delves into the case files of an IPS officer who fights the “chakravyuh” or trap of caste, underworld and politics to earn the trust of the political executive in a way that he could roll out measures for strengthening the state’s policing system.

Singh spent 37 years in service, commanding three police organisations, but the time spent in his “karmabhoomi” in Uttar Pradesh, he says, took him on a journey like no other. His early khaki days saw him sailing through the “tsunami years” of the Bahujan Samaj Party-Samajwadi Party coalition government. Apart from ensuring law and order during the Kumbh Mela, one of the biggest gatherings in the world, Singh came up with a proactive policing strategy during the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya temple verdict, which came close on the heels of the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. He also established the long-awaited police commissionerate system in Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath government. Each of these events was a challenge, writes Singh.

Ahead of the Ayodhya verdict, Singh recalls getting a call from the office of then chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. “This was an unprecedented move, never before had the court directed UP DGP for such a briefing,” he writes.

Singh was born in the serene town of Gaya, where his father Sheo Dhari Singh was popularly known as “barrister saab” for his qualifications from the prestigious Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London. He, however, lost his father when he was 14. He left the hamlet of Mira Bigha, and moved to Delhi for higher studies. He prepared for the civil services and finally entered the Uttar Pradesh cadre, where, like a senior police officer had told him, he had his “baptism by fire”. He was Lucknow’s senior superintendent of police during the SP-BSP regime. BSP’s Kanshi Ram and Mayawati demanded his resignation over the killing of Mahendra Fauji, a terror in western Uttar Pradesh, but Samajwadi’s Mulayam Singh Yadav refused them. But he eventually had to budge. Barely had he spent 37 days in office when Singh was called to Yadav’s residence. “You are not being suspended, but being transferred,” said Yadav, not meeting Singh’s eyes. Singh had never seen a powerful leader in such a hapless state. “I felt flattered and bemused at the same time to become a potential reason for the fall of a government,” he writes.

Before Singh’s tenure ended, the Yogi Adityanath government announced the commissionerate system in Lucknow and Noida. “I used the chief minister’s trust for wresting benefits for the UP police, system building and strengthening the institution of the DGP,” he writes.

Singh’s accounts and personal experiences make the book a must-read for police officers and aspiring civil servants, even as it enthrals readers with his evocative writing.

CRIME, GRIME AND GUMPTION: CASE FILES OF AN IPS OFFICER

Author: O.P. Singh

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

Price: Rs499; pages: 256

golden-eye-chef-cooking-contest-for-the-visually-challenged

Sun Mar 03 08:41:44 IST 2024

Esref Armagan was born blind, but boy can he ‘see’!

Born in 1953 into an impoverished family in Istanbul, Armagan paints, in colours, shapes and shades. His art―rarely abstract, mostly landscape―has astounded many, particularly because his paintings have the right scale and perspective. He has even been the subject of a 2008 study by the University of Toronto and Harvard University. Researchers monitored his brain and found his visual cortex lighting up as he sketched, just as it does for people with sight. Armagan and his art challenge our ideas about colour and understanding of sight. It took him decades of work and perseverance to master the method of using his fingertips and mind as visual aids. And yet, some critics have discredited his work―exhibited in Turkey, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic―as not his own. Armagan’s amazing ability has been often dwarfed by his disability. And, he is not alone.

Participants of Golden Eye Chef 2023, an annual cooking contest for the blind since 2019, know what it means to have your identity distilled down to your disability. “When we held the competition in 2019, we went live on YouTube, and one of the first comments we received was ‘even they feel the need to cook now? They are blind, how do they even eat?’” recalls Akhil Srivastava, managing trustee of NGO Antardrishti and the brain behind the competition. “People do not know what they are capable of. We realised that more than motivating blind people, we need to create awareness among the sighted.”

The 2019 event was held in Agra, where Srivastava is based, and was restricted to participants in India. In 2020, the pandemic struck and the competition went online―participants were asked to send videos of them cooking a dish, and were judged on parameters like how well the recipe went with the theme of the competition, how accessible the kitchen was, how the participants had arranged the ingredients and how skilful they were, says chef V.K. Iyer, who has been part of the jury for the last three editions. In 2022, the contest went international, with five overseas participants sending in videos. Last year, there were 32 participants, 11 of whom were from countries like the US, Uruguay, Mauritius and North Macedonia. Unfortunately, prejudice knows no borders.

Poland-born, Mexico-based Katarzyna Agnieszka Bukowska, 46, would know. The former languages teacher (Polish, English and German) has been asked some very inane questions―how do you brush your teeth? Why get married when you cannot see your husband? That is why she started her own YouTube channel “to try to overcome this kind of prejudice”.

Bukowska won the jury award for best recipe among the totally blind. She was born with visual impairment, but could read with help of glasses. “As a teenager, I developed glaucoma,” she says, “and then as an adult, I lost sight completely.” Keeping with the theme of the 2023 contest―traditional recipe with locally sourced ingredients―she made green salsa chicken tamales, a Mexican dish.

Bukowska has been living in Mexico for 18 years with her husband, Juan, who helped record the video, dog Imbir (meaning ginger in Polish), and cat Nebbiolo, named so after the Italian wine. Around the time she was finishing her master’s in English philology, with specialisation in cognitive linguistics, she wanted to move out of the family home in Mlawa, Poland, and was wondering what to do and where to go next. “Around that time, I was Skyping a lot with people and that is how I met my husband,” she recalls. “After finishing my master’s thesis, I felt like I needed some kind of reward and went to Mexico on vacation.” Mexico was warm and welcoming, and she just stayed put.

Bukowska’s love for cooking comes from her mother. As a child, she went to boarding school, but would visit home on weekends, most of which were spent observing her mother whip up a yummy cake with just some flour, eggs and butter. “I thought, ‘This is magic’,” she says. She baked her first cake when she was 11 under her mother’s supervision and has not looked back since.

If cooking is magical for Bukowska, it is an adventure for Daniel Aronoff, 44. He won the people’s choice award for best recipe and was the second runner-up in the jury award for the same among the totally blind. He lost his eyes to a tumour around the optic nerve, which first showed up when he was all of three.

As far as he can remember, Aronoff has always loved cooking. He wanted to be a chef when he was 20, but admits that he did not have the skills for it then. “It has taken years of trial and error,” says Aronoff, who had a website, called the Blind Taste Test, where he would post restaurant reviews. “My wife [Ania] is from the Basque Country in Spain, I am from New York. Just having that relationship, learning about new food, it inspired me to do more―to try different cuisines, do more cooking of my own.”

Ania, adds Aronoff, has been a constant source of inspiration. It was Ania who encouraged him to participate in the contest, even as he was following its social media handle and retweeting its posts. And his dish―hake (a local fish in Basque Country) in green sauce (made from parsley) reflects his admiration and gratitude for his wife. Aronoff met Ania online in 2011. “She had questions about cupcakes in America and places to eat in New York,” says Aronoff, who has a double master’s degree in social work and visual rehabilitation therapy. “And then we met the next year in person and got married two years later.” They have a four-year-old son, Mikel.

Aronoff, who now lives in Basque Country with his wife and son, finds it frustrating when someone asks who cooks for him. “Excuse me? I have a million gadgets in my kitchen. I use my stove with my iPhone. I have talking thermometers,” says Aronoff, who now teaches English online. He says he cannot understand why people think blind people cannot cook when there are so many good cooks like Christine Ha, the first-ever blind person to win the MasterChef title. “Obviously, taste is very important to us,” he says. “It is one of those senses that we use a lot. With our four senses we do what you can with five.” It might take them some time, some different trials, different alternative techniques, he says, but they can do what they set their mind to.

Aronoff’s parents are chuffed about their son’s cooking skills. “They actually exaggerate to their friends,” says Aronoff, laughing. “They say, ‘Our son is doing gourmet things in the kitchen.’ And I am like, I am making a piece of fish; it is not gourmet.”

Not all parents are as encouraging though, at least not initially. Annpurna Kaur, 28, was 13 when she first made a dish on her own. Her parents and sisters were away when she made aloo ki sabzi (a side dish made of potatoes). The dish turned out okay, but she got an earful for cooking when there was no one at home. “But slowly my father supported me,” says Kaur, who won the jury award for best recipe among the partially blind. “Whenever he would cook, he would make me sit next to him.”

Kaur was born with visual impairment and underwent a surgery at three that gave her partial vision. She made vegetarian momos, her speciality, for the competition. She has her own restaurant called Krafty Momos near Delhi University’s north campus. She never saw cooking as a challenge, she says. “Initially, it took me time to distinguish between the masalas, but I figured it out,” she says. “It was more difficult to convince my parents and society.”

The reluctance to let visually challenged people cook or do just about anything on their own largely stems from safety concerns. Navina Gyawali, 33, from Kathmandu was often dissuaded from cooking for fear of sustaining burns or injuries. “I then asked my family, ‘You can also get burns, right? How is it any different from when I get them? I get burns not because I am blind, but because I am not mindful,” says Gyawali, who was born blind. “I need to cook to survive, right?”

Her family finally saw reason in her argument. Today, when there is a puja at her house, it is a given that she will make the pickles and side dishes. Her cooking skills improved when she went to the US to study international relations and US history at the University of Southern Indiana on a Fulbright scholarship. She was living alone there and missing Nepali food, so she got cooking. Convincing her family that she can cook and also teaching her blind husband to cook have been her biggest achievements, says Gyawali.

For the Golden Eye Chef, she made dhido (black millet porridge) and gundruk (fermented leafy vegetable). But what probably got her the jury award for the most creative recipe among the totally blind was the effort she put in to make it as traditional as possible. Dhido and gundruk were staples almost a century ago when people did not have enough to eat, says Gyawali. She not only dressed like a woman of that time but also travelled 300km to cook in a mud house with a chulha (earthen stove). That is why, she says, she was expecting an award for her creativity.

But David Bogacz, 66, from Montevideo, Uruguay, was not even sure he would participate in the contest. He always loved cooking but never had a chance to learn it. Last March, the now retired neurophysiologist began taking cooking classes, and it was his teacher there who pushed him to participate. “My family (wife Mariella, a psychologist and theatre actor, and two sons) was surprised with my decision to participate,” he says. “They were very happy when I won [the jury award for most creative recipe and the people’s choice award in best recipe among the partially blind]. They are happy not just for the prize but for the fact that I am able to accept the challenge.”

Bogacz, who makes a mean pizza that he learnt from his mother, made Kenny’s Lamb for the competition. “I wanted to cook something that was relatively new, with some ingredients that were typical to my country. I discussed it with my friend Kenny, who is a good cook but not a professional,” says Bogacz, who developed vision problems in 2001. In 2009, he lost vision in the right eye and then began to have problems in the left eye, too.

Bogacz wants to continue cooking and try his hand at making Indian dishes, as do Bukowska and Aronoff. Bukowska is hoping she can travel to India this year as the competition may have an offline edition. Aronoff is a huge Julia Child fan and is exploring French cuisine through her shows, videos and books. Kaur, meanwhile, wants to employ other blind people at her restaurant to create awareness in society and also provide job opportunities to those like her. Gyawali, who runs a small kitchen called Tick Tick Bites in Kathmandu (tick tick comes from the sound the white cane used by the blind makes), wants to open a restaurant run fully by the blind and expand the work of her NGO Supportive Action Towards Humanity (SATH).

“I think making all these videos [for the contest] gives people a glimpse into our kitchen, into our lives,” says Aronoff. “It shows them that we are no different from the next person.”

Clearly, the competition will have a ripple effect, at least in the community. As for the society, Gyawali has a request: “Please do not connect everything with my blindness. My blindness comes with me, not before me.”

grammy-winner-rakesh-chaurasia-and-his-flute-are-teaching-the-world-many-a-new-tune

Sat Mar 02 11:36:45 IST 2024

Rakesh Chaurasia was not expecting the Grammy. In fact, with just minutes left for the ceremony, the virtuoso flautist was not even sure if his troupe had reached the venue. Tabla maestro Zakir Hussain had just flown in after a concert and, fighting jet lag, reached just in time. “My family was expecting it, but not me,” said Chaurasia, who won two Grammys on the night―one for the track ‘Pashto’ (Best Global Music Performance) and As We Speak (Contemporary Instrumental Album). “I was wondering how I would face my family if I lost. Until the moment I got it, I did not know the Grammys were so huge.”

He had flown from Mumbai to Los Angeles alone to “play it safe”. “I did not want to make a mockery of myself in front of my family,” the 53-year-old said with a laugh. A few minutes after winning, Chaurasia had called one of his disciples, Bharat Raj B., and asked him how his practice was going. “There he was, at the biggest stage in the world for music, and yet, there was no over-the-top excitement in his voice,” said Bharat. “It was as if, in a fraction of a second, he had already moved on, and was thinking about getting on with more practice to polish himself further.”

Listening to As We Speak, it feels as if the quartet―Chaurasia on flute, Hussain on tabla, the Americans Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer on the banjo and the double bass―is talking to each other through their instruments. Across a dozen songs, they take the listener on an immersive journey that shifts between the complexities of Indian ragas and the high-octave beats of bluesy bass lines.

For Chaurasia, As We Speak was a stroke of serendipity. While he was on tour in the US with Hussain, whom he calls Zakir bhai, the latter was scheduled to meet Fleck and Meyer. “He suggested that as I was there, I should meet them,” he said. “So we were at Zakir bhai’s home in San Francisco and we all kept jamming together from 10am to 7pm.”

The trio, which had already earned global fame, was figuring out if the flute could be part of their music. Chaurasia, though, simply could not understand their music―their instruments were constantly singing while he needed gaps to breathe while playing. “My flute was a contrast to their instruments, which I realised was exactly what they were looking for,” he said.

They then called him on stage during a bluegrass festival in San Francisco, as a guest, only for two songs. “I was surprised to see close to 70,000 people for this kind of music, which we are not too familiar with in India,” said Chaurasia. “But there, things are different. In Hindustani music, we are trained to improvise, as if we have been given the Google Map showing us the way, and it depends on us which route or detour we choose to reach the destination. But there, the room for improvisation is limited.”

The group toured for a year before they decided to cut an album―12 songs in two days. So, in between tours, in Fleck’s huge studio in Nashville, Tennessee, the group recorded the album with zero post production. Everything was live. For someone who had spent more than half his life practising under the tutelage of his legendary uncle, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, aka Pandit ji, this was not a problem. “Yet, I have only reached up to his knees as a flautist,” he said. “He always has something new to give as a performer. When I used to accompany him on stage, I remember how he would change the plan as per the audience profile, and that was entirely different to what we had discussed in the green room.”

Both Chaurasias have long collaborated with Hussain, with Rakesh accompanying his uncle for many performances as a child. The first time he played solo with Hussain was in Scotland, about a decade ago. “Bhaiya (Chaurasia) was very nervous; he told us he closed his eyes and played just about 10 minutes with the tabla as he was that scared. Then Zakir came to him and said, ‘Don’t you like to play with me?’... that is how it started,” said Bharat.

And now, in a recent tour, he did 17 concerts in 20 days with Hussain and the group. They travelled in a trailer with no stopovers, covering 1,500 miles. “Their work ethic is crazy,” said Bharat. “They can afford to take a gap of one month between each concert, but even after achieving everything that a musician can think of, they are like, ‘Why waste time, let us do more’.”

We are at Chaurasia’s duplex in Mumbai. White is the dominant colour. A temple on level one with a Saraswati idol and Krishna holding the bansuri adds a sense of calm. Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia’s unpolished 42-inch bamboo flute adorns the wall. Chaurasia’s wife, Nandani, is busy arranging the bouquets that had come home the previous evening when the society threw him a celebration. “We have never had so many flowers before. I just do not know what to do,” she said.

Continued Chaurasia: “I am very low profile. I have never tried for any Indian award either. Many still consider me a child who is vying for the limelight in the shadow of his uncle.... They even remarked on how we could get a Grammy. But now, I am realising the importance of knowing how to market and sell yourself.”

This is evident in the way he functions―there is no PR or secretary. His disciples read his emails and messages, and his son teaches him the tricks of technology; he struggles with social media. Bharat, an IT engineer from Mysuru who handles the flautist’s communications, once told him he had replied to 7,500 messages on the maestro’s behalf, to which Chaurasia cheekily replied, “Send me the bill.” “All I know is how to play the flute and that I think should suffice,” he said with a smile.

To that end, he looks after his fitness with rigour. “After all, it is in the genes,” he said. “I cannot remain without a good workout whenever possible.” The Chaurasias are known to have been a wrestling family, with the senior Chaurasia being the first to turn to music. “Once, I was with Rakesh bhaiya in a hotel and was nicely hogging,” said Bharat. “I saw him eating only a single serving of upma. He said if you keep eating loads as a performing artist, your health will go for a toss and there will be no stamina to perform. He eats only two meals a day. One meal is only fruits, and one complete meal.”

Like his uncle, Chaurasia has also been in tune with Bollywood. Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya, the 1997 film starring Aishwarya Rai and Bobby Deol, was a landmark in Chaurasia’s career because he established, alongside Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, his own trademark style of playing the flute in Bollywood.

However, he said he misses the spark of the old stuff. “It has become monotonous,” he said. “Music should be situation-based, which used to happen earlier. There is a missing link between the film and the songs.”

Bollywood aside, the two Chaurasias have a lot in common. “Both are lefties, both begin practice early in the morning and go on for hours, both tell disciples to have a Plan B ready before taking up music, and both believe in saving money and never indulge in self pity,” said Bharat.

Chaurasia has told both his sons about having a Plan B, too. He himself never thought of it as a career himself. “I did it for sheer passion,” he said. “I would just copy my babuji. I would wear a kurta, take my position on stage, and spray water on myself to show off my sweat, similar to his. Each time, he would tell me to not leave my job. Sleep less if you must, but do not leave the job for music.” That is the advice he gives his disciples, too. The Chaurasias run a gurukul in Mumbai where they mentor a limited number of students in a five-year residency programme.

“Once, when I told him that I am not playing to my heart’s content, he told me about how Pandit ji would leave Bombay at 5am, reach Chennai to record with Illaiyaraaja and others, reach Hyderabad for another recording before moving on to Bangalore for a 4pm recording and then end with a 10pm stint with Bollywood composers,” said Bharat.

That work ethic is ingrained in Chaurasia. In fact, he is still uneasy and restless and yearns for more. “Some time ago, he told me he was contemplating going on chilla (spiritual practice of solitude) for 40 days because his practice was not up to his expectations,” said Bharat. “Imagine!”

the-real-story-behind-the-amazon-prime-series-poacher

Sat Mar 02 11:29:53 IST 2024

It all began in May 2015, when an emaciated man walked into a forest office in Kerala and confessed to a crime. He was part of a gang of ivory poachers with links to middlemen of an international ivory trading racket.

Kunjumon became Aruku in Emmy-winning filmmaker Richie Mehta's hard-hitting show Poacher, which released on Amazon Prime Video on February 23, and has Alia Bhatt as executive producer. Mehta, however, has remained true to the story and as a result, the show is receiving rave reviews.

The suicide of a prime accused at a pineapple plantation, a race against time, inter-departmental squabbles, the country's largest ivory raid at a secret location in Delhi―these are all fiction rooted in fact, says Jayan Menon, the reporter who exposed the racket on the front page of the Malayala Manorama on June 29, 2015. Menon sketched out how 20 wild elephants were killed by poachers in the forests of Kerala. Here, he tells THE WEEK what really transpired, and how, sometimes, the truth really is more gripping than its own dramatisation.

Poacher, the web series on Amazon Prime Video, comes at a time when several man-animal conflicts are being reported from Wayanad in north Kerala. The story of the large-scale poaching in the forests of Kerala in 2015 was broken by me when I was the Malayala Manorama's chief reporter in Thiruvananthapuram. As depicted in the series, it all started with a physically and mentally broken man―Kalarikudiyil Kunjumon, 62―approaching the Karimbani forest station in Kerala with a confession that he was the cook in an ivory poaching gang. He said they went hunting five times, killed seven elephants and extracted their tusks on four occasions, which were then sold to a person from Thiruvananthapuram. He was paid Rs57,000 by the gang.

The officers at the forest station, however, did not believe him and thought he was deranged. He then went to another forest station with his confession. When the forest officials conducted a preliminary search, they found the remains of an elephant at the spot shown by Kunjumon. A court remanded him in custody for 18 days. Though he gave the mobile numbers of seven culprits, no detailed inquiry was conducted.

Then came an honest forest officer, whose sincerity and commitment to the truth are proof that even hardened elephant poachers can be brought to their knees by the efforts of one man. When forester N. Sivakumar of the Perumbavoor Flying Squad came to know of what was happening, he alerted me. In fact, his role has been taken out of the show and that, according to me, is its one missing link. Unlike in the show, Nimisha Sajayan's character came into the picture much later. But other than this, the show is spot-on in portraying the reality, except for some obvious dramatic elements, like a love interest and a cancer diagnosis.

Sivakumar told me that nothing had been confirmed and the investigation had just begun. Both of us tracked the leads for days. Two weeks later, he came to see me in Thiruvananthapuram with Kunjumon's recorded statement. He was disappointed at the apathy of top forest department officers, three of whom had dismissed his conclusions, despite him providing concrete proof.

After the Malayala Manorama broke the story of large-scale elephant poaching in Kerala, efforts were made to suspend Sivakumar for bringing the forest department into disrepute by colluding with the media, but the authorities were left helpless as each poaching incident was brought to light through the newspaper.

Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, who was the Kerala forest minister at the time, ordered an investigation, and one by one the ivory poachers were trapped. Following the news, the forest department launched a high-level inquiry into the killing and dehorning of 20 wild elephants from the Vazhachal and Athirapilli forest areas in Kerala. The investigation was led by Surendra Kumar, additional principal chief conservator of forest vigilance. The forest guards searched the valley in three teams. The gang members mentioned in Kunjumon's statement were taken into custody. The forest guards went into the “unexplored forest” with them.The remains of five wild elephants―mostly bones and teeth―were found. These samples were sent for testing.

Even though there were efforts from within the forest department to thwart the investigation, ultimately nine people were arrested after Preston Silva, who bought ivory from the poachers, and a few of the gang members surrendered before forest vigilance. Then it was discovered that the racket extended internationally, after the investigators found out about a Kolkata woman, Thenkachi, who was smuggling the tusks abroad. Currently, she is still at large.

Another middleman in the ivory trade was Umesh Agarwal, who was arrested from a four-storey house in Delhi's swanky Shakarpur area by a team of forest rangers, members of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and the Delhi Police as part of 'Operation Shikar'. Within 24 hours, Agarwal was brought and remanded in the Muvattupuzha court. The call records of Aji Bright, Preston and Eagle Rajan, who were arrested from Thiruvananthapuram, helped nab Agarwal. He had bought ivory from them, carved it into sculptures and smuggled them to countries like China, Japan and Nepal. The workshop operated from the ground floor of his house. He had been trading in ivory since 1990, but this was the first time he had been caught.

In August, the government handed over the probe to the CBI, as there was inter-state and international involvement. But the CBI did not find anything more than what was found by the forest department. Nineteen cases initiated by the forest department are still in court. Kunjumon, who gave the first statement and became a prime witness in the case, died in 2022. A case that would have ended with the arrest of one man finally led to the arrest of 73 people and the recovery of ivory worth around Rs25 crore, thanks to the intervention of a forest employee and a journalist. A pen, sometimes, is mightier than a poacher's gun.

Menon is currently chief of bureau of the Malayala Manorama in Kozhikode, Kerala

arisi-rice-grains-of-life-dance-show-throws-light-on-the-role-of-rice-in-the-life-of-asians

Sat Mar 02 14:45:58 IST 2024

Tell an Asian to exercise, and she will probably hear it as ‘extra rice’. There is more than a grain of truth in that old joke. For Asians, rice is life.

So it came as a shock for Aravinth Kumarasamy, artistic director of Apsaras Arts Dance Academy, Singapore, when his friend, a schoolteacher, told him that students in his class thought that rice came “from a packet in the supermarket”. He was taken aback by the fact that in a country where rice is a staple, students had no clue about its origin. A few days later, he visited an Indian school in Singapore. He noticed a patch of paddy on the campus, and asked the principal about it. “The children think that rice comes from the supermarket,” said the principal. Hence the show and tell.

That is when Kumarasamy thought that the younger generation needs to be educated on rice. He did not want to be preachy, and so Arisi: Rice-Grains of Life―a multidisciplinary dance show involving bharatnatyam and Balinese dancers―took form.

Rice is the staple food for at least half the world’s population, connecting cultures and civilisations. “I thought that this should be a subtle message and the main show should talk about the rice cycle and the rice culture,” says Kumarasamy, a Sri Lankan based in Singapore. He sat down to write the script with that one-liner in mind. But before that, he travelled the world, researching the significance of rice in the life of Asians. So, Arisi takes you through the paddy fields of Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur to Indonesia’s Bali, weaving in the traditions, festivals and celebrations rooted in and around rice.

The diversity shows through in the production, too. Kumarasamy brought together creative minds like Mohanapriyan Thavarajah of Apsaras Arts, Balinese arts Prof I. Wayan Dibia and dramaturg Lim Ho Ngean for choreography and other aspects of the production. In November 2022, bharatnatyam dancers from India and Singapore, Balinese dancers, dramaturgy experts from Singapore, lighting and set designers, and members of the Singapore-Chinese orchestra came together for the first show in Singapore. Today, the 75-minute dance show, tracing the journey of a new generation farmer from Thanjavur to Singapore, has been performed in rice bowls across the world.

In Chennai, 20 dancers―seven from Bali and the rest from India and Singapore―performed the show during the Margazhi music season in January. Singaporean Wong Chee Wai put up a unique set with around 600 rice stalks, each about 1.6m tall. “This is played around with to show a paddy field, a decorative element and rainfall,” said Kumarasamy.

Apart from the props, what made the stage come truly alive was the music. At one point, a baby’s cry rent the air. For a while, the audience thought there was a toddler among them. But then the curtains went up, and it was clear the baby’s cry, signifying the connection between rice and childbirth, came from the stage.

The music was by Indian composer Rajkumar Bharathi, who blended his compositions with Balinese instruments. The lyrics have elements from the works of Tamil poets like Manickavasagar, Kambar and Subrahmanya Bharathi. “We had to work through several challenges, such as integrating Chinese notes, western music and Indian ragas,” said Bharathi. “I was very particular that we should not mimic each other's genre and worked towards getting a perfect synergy. The whole production was a surreal experience, and I wanted the audience to experience a seven-dimensional sound with both recorded music and live orchestra.” Ace music producer Sai Shravanam was in charge of the engineering and sound design, and light design was by Gyandev Singh from India.

Sound? Check. Lights? Check. All set, it was a moonwalk (figuratively, of course) for the dancers. But why combine bharatnatyam and Balinese dance? “The southeast Asian-Indian link has always fascinated me,” says Kumarasamy, who has trained in bharatnatyam from Kalakshetra in Chennai. “Bharatnatyam and Balinese dance are rooted in natyasasthra. Also, Bali’s rice culture is very strong―Indonesia was the first country to export rice in the 10th century BCE.”

There may be several cross-cultural references in the production, but it all comes down to this core idea that Kumarasamy had―“I only want to tell people how rice is rich in culture and tradition,” he said, “and how it is something more than a grain.”

herpetologist-rom-whitaker-s-new-memoir-is-a-rollicking-ride-through-his-early-adventures

Sat Feb 24 15:21:39 IST 2024

If Rom Whitaker had his way, the serpent would not be frolicking in the Garden of Eden. He would have caught it with a hook, scooped it up gently and put it in a pillowcase―as he did all his life with his mother’s linen―and studied it.

Whitaker was four when he realised he would always be Team Serpent. Turning over a rock to look for earthworms to use as bait, he and his buddies once encountered a snake. “Snake!” they yelled, and pounded it to death with stones.

“Not having seen one before, I was fascinated but afraid. After the boys stepped back, I squatted near the battered creature and examined it. I carried it home on the end of a stick against their advice,” he writes in his memoir Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: My Early Years. His mother looked at the snake and told him that it was a harmless garter snake and made him promise that he would never kill a snake. Breezy―as his mother called him (his sister was Gail)―readily agreed and his life changed.

“That was the bane of my mother’s existence, because I used all her pillowcases to put snakes in,” says Whitaker, in a Zoom interview. “But she was so instrumental in this whole evolution of my life, in terms of loving wildlife and loving creatures, as she had the same feeling that I do about creatures, but perhaps not snakes. But suddenly, I started bringing snakes home when I was four or five years old. And so, like it or not, she got into it. And she just encouraged me all the way. Which mother would do that? Which mother would be crazy enough to let her kid bring home snakes?”

His mother, Doris, was an artist, and after she and Whitaker’s father were divorced in the US, she remarried and moved to India.

The first snake Whitaker brought home was a milk snake. His mother took a photograph of it with him. As a teen, he acquired a pet python bought by his mother’s friend at Crawford Market in Mumbai. “And they remained friends,” said Janaki Lenin, laughing. Lenin―author, conservationist and Whitaker’s wife―co-wrote the memoir.

Whitaker’s pet python brought him adventures that possibly tested the friendship. It almost ate Trichy, Doris’s pet cat. (He had rescued it from a train station.) The python also lived with him in his school dorm at Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu. He kept it under the bed of a truck, feeding it rats.

Everyone thought he would outgrow snakes, he writes, especially in his teenage years, when he loved motorbikes. But the love for snakes never waned; it grew instead. He learnt the proper way to catch a snake. “When you pick up a snake, you usually look at both ends,” he says. “One end is the sharp end, so to speak, which can bite you… so usually you would put a hand around the cloaca, which is near the tail. So you don’t get crap all over. But sometimes it does, of course.”

By 15, Whitaker had a sand boa, water snake and Russell’s viper as pets. Apart from the pet python in school, he also had parakeets.

Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll is the first of three volumes, and it offers a rollicking journey through Whitaker’s life till he turns 24. Vivid, funny and evocative, the memoir captures not only Whitaker’s unusual love, but also a life that possibly could not have been lived today. “I yearn for that time gone by,” he says. “Everything was seemingly so much simpler, and less complex and less threatening.”

The memoir is brilliantly told, and written almost tenderly, with adjectives not usually used for reptiles. The ring-necked milk snake, for instance, is described as “gorgeously patterned”. “The eastern diamondback rattlesnake in the US actually has quite a sweet smell,” he says. “I even thought of putting it into a perfume. Can you imagine?”

The memoir offers a delightful, ringside view of his family. His stepfather, Ram Chattopadhyay, was the son of social reformer Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. “I kind of regret not knowing her much,” he says.

From a childhood where he learnt to fish, shoot, stuff birds, catch snakes and experiment with fireworks, to his military stint in Vietnam, his days in Lovedale in the Nilgiris (which he hated) and encountering snakes in America, Whitaker has had an extraordinary life pursuing his unusual passion. So has this rubbed off on Janaki? “I didn’t think about snakes before I met Rom,” she says. “Obviously, they weren’t in my world. The thing is, his enthusiasm is infectious. We were living in the Crocodile Bank, and you are surrounded by these captive creatures that you are taking care of. I was a filmmaker at that time. And I was always wondering what is that cobra thinking? How is it perceiving the world? It is so alien. I don’t think, in a million years, we will ever be able to figure out how the snake sees us and the world.”

It is, well, hiss story worth reading. “I just lucked out,” says Whitaker. “I didn’t mess with the hard snakes till I was 12 or 13. By then, of course, you know everything. You know exactly what to do. Let’s put it this way: I am probably lucky to be alive.”

Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: My Early Years

By Romulus Whitaker

Published by HarperCollins India

Pages 400; price Rs699

jairam-n-menon-s-debut-book-masala-chai-for-the-soul-is-delightfully-tongue-in-cheek

Sat Feb 24 11:15:16 IST 2024

In the realm of literary concoctions, Jairam N. Menon's debut book, Masala Chai for the Soul, is a delightful blend of wit, humour and insightful observations on the quirks of human nature. Menon's ability to capture the essence of mundane moments and elevate them to comic or catastrophic heights is reminiscent of the legendary P.G. Wodehouse.

I remember reading Menon's witty contributions in THE WEEK. I am sure that like me many readers must have relished his selection of topics and the ease with which he expressed his thoughts. Masala Chai for the Soul is a testament to Menon's ability to transport readers to savour prose in slow motion. He effortlessly expands characters, trivialities and plots to create a tapestry of humour.

Menon's facility to make words dance to his bidding, the eloquent turns of phrase and a profound understanding of human foibles are evident throughout the book. Each chapter is a testament to his storytelling prowess, making the reader laugh, ponder and nod in agreement.

One of the standout features of the book is Menon's ability to infuse wisdom seamlessly into his narratives. In a chapter on quotation marks, he humorously suggests that to clinch arguments or to appear knowledgeable, borrowed wisdom is your best ally.

Menon's writing transcends the boundaries of a typical humour book, offering readers not just laughter, but a profound understanding of human nature.

MASALA CHAI FOR THE SOUL

By Jairam N. Menon

Published by Rupa Publications

Pages 224; price Rs295

indian-actress-janhvi-kapoor-about-her-movies

Thu Feb 22 16:14:31 IST 2024

This has to be the year of Janhvi Kapoor. The actor, who made her debut with Dharma Productions’ Dhadak in 2018, has three films releasing in 2024. This is unusual, especially for Kapoor, as all her films have seen her play the lead role or the protagonist, and not just a love interest.

And yet, when we meet at her Bandra home, the 26-year-old actor says she is not having the best day. “I just received the dialogues of Devara last night, and all I want to do is sit in my room and learn my lines,” she scowls.

The Telugu film Devara is unarguably the biggest film she has been signed for. It is a major production―an action film directed by Koratala Siva―and she stars opposite the celebrated N.T. Rama Rao Jr. One would think it ironic that Telugu lines make her nervous, since she is the daughter of India’s first female superstar Sridevi, who frontlined Hindi as well as every south language film. “I never learned Telugu and it is something I am ashamed of,” she says. “I can understand it phonetically, but I can’t speak it. Yes, it is one of my biggest regrets.” Now, she feels the film is bringing her closer to her south Indian roots. “This part of me had been dormant for a while. But the Devara team is very patient and helpful. They are working with such stalwarts and I am so grateful they are just a call away to help me with my lines,” she smiles. The film also co-stars Saif Ali Khan and Prashant Raj.

The other two films releasing this year are Mr and Mrs Mahi, in which she is again cast opposite her Roohi hero Rajkummar Rao, and a political thriller called Ulajh. “Sharan Sharma, the director of Mr and Mrs Mahi, discussed the film with me while we were shooting for Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, which he had directed, too,” Kapoor says. “So I feel it has been a long time coming. He had this idea of a romantic film sprinkled with cricket. I fell in love with it. Its casting had its own journey, but I feel I have almost willed it back into my life,” she smiles. Kapoor adds the film has been trying; she lost nine kilos and dislocated both her shoulders training for it. “The process was long and strenuous, but I’m so proud of it,” she says. The film releases in April. Ulajh, she says, also borrows greatly from Kapoor’s life experiences and personality.

She has also recently been signed on for four new films, all of which will release in 2024 or early 2025. She has been cast opposite two southern mega stars: Ram Charan for RC 16, and Suriya for Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Karna, a two-part mythological drama where she plays Draupadi. She is also said to have been signed on for Shashank Khaitan’s next under Dharma Productions, alongside Varun Dhawan. There are rumours of yet another major film being signed on for Dharma.

“My father (Hindi film producer Boney Kapoor) has gone and made some announcement, and I don’t know what he has said. It’s too early to talk about the other films. My father has definitely not spoken to me or my producers,” she laughs. “I wish I belonged to a universe where you just shoot films, you didn’t have to announce, clarify or deny them.”

What Kapoor will discuss is how excited she is about the many collaborations between Bollywood and films from the south. She is working in three. “As an artist, I have always been an advocate of Indian cinema. We have diverse cultures and a diverse audience. Regional cinema is also Indian cinema and we have seen them do the kind of businesses that mainstream cinema does. That says where we are culturally, as a society: we seek truth, we seek new ideas and honesty in our art. The pan-India format allows us to do all of this. Look at Kantara,” she says of Rishab Shetty’s Kannada film of 2022, that was made on a meagre budget and went on to make nearly Rs400 crores globally. “I don’t think this is a phase. I think we are stronger together. Cinema brings us together. It is amazing that we could, hypothetically, have a film with Allu Arjun acting, Sanjay Leela Bhansali directing, and have Sai Pallavi or Roshan Mathew, or some amazing Bengali actors in it. The possibilities are endless.”

Inter-state films dipping into each other’s fan base is a big plus, too. “The south industry has been cultivating its audiences for a very long time. Telugu and Tamil films dubbed in Hindi have been getting great ratings,” she explains.

Kapoor has starred in six films in five years―Dhadak (2018), Gunjan Saxena and a short in Ghost Stories (2020), Roohi (2021), Good Luck Jerry and Mili (2022), and Bawaal (2023). None of these have fared well at the box office, save her debut. But almost each one has seen her receive rave reviews for her performance. She was even nominated for two Filmfare awards for best actress (Gunjan Saxena, Mili).

Does the blockbuster film elude her? “I think a box office success would have made a difference to me and to my producers to get bigger budgets for their films. But I am fortunate they signed me for my talent. That said, nothing feels as good as people filling the theatres. No review or critical acclaim can match that,” she says.

There is always so much talk around kids of actors or industry folk, but Kapoor has taken her career very seriously―she moved to California to Lee Strasberg’s film institute to hone her craft. “Can I be honest? I learned nothing there,” she says. “I’m often told I am too honest for Bollywood and that has burnt me. But at least I sleep well at night. The thrill of moving to California was in the anonymity it gave me. I was not someone’s daughter for once, and that was so refreshing. But the school’s format was so rooted in Hollywood and approaching its casting agents. I actually realised I am not a method actor. Secondly, I wish I had spent more time with my people and in my language. I am telling stories from India and I need to relate to Indians. Sitting in LA and going to Malibu on weekends actually made me feel more detached.”

Kapoor’s public image is far removed from the characters she plays. She portrays herself as a glamorous girl, working out in the gym, practising kathak, painting, or making awesome comedy reels. What is her relationship with her image like? “I enjoy social media, but there is nothing I enjoy more than being on a film set,” she says. “I haven’t been on one in a month now and it is driving me crazy. Getting my dialogues yesterday was like getting a life jacket thrown at you. I don’t want anything to dilute my art.”

There are also rumours of a budding romance with Shikhar Pahariya; she almost admitted to having him on her speed dial on Karan Johar’s talk show. “I even have my manager on my speed dial,” is all she’s willing to admit.

She will admit, however, that she loves her younger sister Khushi Kapoor’s debut, The Archies (2023). “I thought she had a very likable, soft and honest energy on screen. She is an internal actor, not a demonstrative one. I told her there would be a lot of instructions thrown at her for not fitting into a conventional mould,” says Kapoor.

She would know, she has been making and breaking moulds for a few years already.

the-ultimate-restaurant-ratings-might-be-india-s-answer-to-michelin

Sat Feb 17 10:17:52 IST 2024

A cursory glance at author and award-winning journalist Vir Sanghvi’s food writing shows fervour and flavour. A piece on why leftover food tastes better the next day? The nation wants to know. Another on why the world of seafood is so mystifying? Yes! (And you thought you were the only one who did not know the difference between crayfish and lobster.) A story on why Gujarati food does not get the respect it deserves? Hit us with it.

That’s why Sanghvi is probably the right person to helm India’s first annual star rating system for restaurants. “The majority of restaurant awards in India is done on a sponsorship basis,” he says. “Often many of them will charge you for the award, and accept sponsorships from restaurant companies, so there will be people who are getting awards who will be listed as sponsors, the hotel where the awards are held complimentary will be called hospitality partner, and the airline will be called airline partner, so there is a problem with the credibility of these awards.” Ultimate Restaurant Ratings, on the other hand, were established “with a mission to recognise and award culinary excellence without any form of outside influence”.

And when the foodie is ready, the financier appears. Sanghvi met Sameer Sain, co-founder and CEO of the Everstone Group, before the pandemic and together, they founded Culinary Culture, which they describe as “the country’s only authoritative culinary movement”. Other than the Ultimate Restaurant Ratings, Culinary Culture has a few intellectual properties―like the Gourmet Delivery Awards for food delivery and Food Superstars to rate India’s top chefs.

The Ultimate Restaurant Ratings were roughly modelled after the Michelin. To judge the best restaurants in the country, 50 ‘food hunters’― mostly food writers, critics and bloggers―were selected to anonymously rate over 3,000 restaurants in six locations: Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Goa and Kolkata. The shortlisted restaurants were visited by a member of the jury (Culinary Culture prefers to keep details of the food hunters and the jury confidential) and their decision ratified by Sanghvi and Sain. “We rarely interfere, but if there is a major dispute, then we may adjudicate,” says Sanghvi. The process began in 2020, and the awards―where over 50 restaurants were given three, four or five stars based on the criteria of taste, technique, presentation, and service―were announced this month.

There were surprises. And a few quibbles from social media users: Why was Lupa in the list? Bomras should have received four or five stars. Sublime in Goa should have been included. But as Sanghvi intimated, rating food will always be subjective and there are bound to be disagreements.

Sanghvi himself was surprised by some of the findings. “The highest number of three-star restaurants were from Mumbai, and I thought Delhi would do better,” he says. “Also, in Mumbai, most of the restaurants that made it were non-hotel restaurants. There was a time when hotel restaurants had the best chefs and used the best ingredients. I think that has changed. Also, many of the Michelin-starred restaurants in Asian cities specialise in European food. That’s not the case in India. Of the three restaurants which got the five-star rating in India, Avartana in Chennai does modern south Indian food, Farmlore in Bengaluru does ingredient-based food with south Indian influences and Indian Accent in Delhi again does modern Indian food. It is interesting that we are developing an Indian restaurant cuisine that is independent of tandoori chicken, that is innovative and is being accepted by audiences and markets.”

Even as Culinary Culture aims to expand the list to 10 cities in the next edition, which will probably include Amritsar, Hyderabad and Kochi, THE WEEK spoke to the chefs behind the three five-star restaurants in the country. After all, no one has boiled, broiled or braised India as these chefs are doing.

Farmlore, Bengaluru

Waiter, there is a fire ant on my plate!

Many of the dishes at Bengaluru’s Farmlore do not just tell a story, they make a statement. Take the seataphor―a dish that is a metaphor for how we destroy our oceans with plastic and oil spills. It is made with Kochi snapper, a blue algae called spirulina, coconut, which reached various shores through ships, and edible plastic, made with potato starch. “One has discovered that when ocean ecosystems are given time and space to recover from detrimental human activities, they can rebound at an astonishing rate, so it is never too late [to save them],” says Chef Johnson Ebenezer, co-founder and chef patron at the 18-seater restaurant, located on a 37-acre farm.

In fact, the ocean has a special significance for Ebenezer. He started his career working with Carnival Cruise Line in Miami. “My uncle used to work for cruises, and he used to send me postcards from different parts of the world,” he says. “Seeing them, I too decided I wanted to travel around the world. But my father is an ordinary cop who did not take bribes, so he could just afford to give me a normal education. That’s how I thought of going outside India to make money. Once I started travelling, I started understanding different cultures and foods, and soon, cooking became a passion.”

Ebenezer started Farmlore with Kaushik Raju, the COO of the Atria Group, in 2019, after helming Nadodi, a celebrated restaurant in Malaysia. The menu at Farmlore changes every day and is dictated by what is produced on the farm. He refuses to let his cuisine be defined by any specific category and describes it as “eclectic with locavore sensibilities”.

“When you say farm-to-table, the food sometimes tends to look boring,” he says. “We did not want that. We wanted to have fun with our dishes.”

And that’s where the fire ants and the gin gummy bears come in. “We collected fire ant nests from the mango and citrus trees in the farm, crushed the ants, added some Teja chilli and shallots and made a chutney out of them,” he says. Just as playful is the gin and whiskey gummy bears. “These are locally made whiskey and gin,” he says. “We give them as a takeaway as well. They are very cute and when you see them, you feel like popping them into your mouth.”

But at Farmlore, the fun is never frivolous. “The dish should make sense in terms of flavour pairings,” says Ebenezer. “I could never do something that is completely eccentric. It has to appeal to the senses―to the eye and most importantly, to the palate.” Well, mission accomplished! All the Farmlore creations on its Instagram page―the pork belly with mustard espuma and charred purple cabbage, the poached egg with moringa, turmeric and crispy seaweed, the Christmas pudding with pine needle ice-cream―look like they could be framed and hung on a wall.

And if the Valentine’s Day specials were anything to go by, they might have tickled your literary sensibilities as well. The theme was Cupid taking revenge on Shakespeare for all his tragedies. An innovative spin was given to references like the quote on garlic and cheese in Shakespeare’s play, Henry IV. So if you were served crispy cheddar pork chops with garlic at FarmLore on February 14, you have King Henry to blame.

Indian Accent, Delhi

The Maggi man who makes a mean dal Moradabadi

Chef Manish Mehrotra of Indian Accent grew up in Patna in a vegetarian household. His father and grandmother never allowed even onion and garlic in the dishes. His mother used to feed them eggs, but only on the terrace, on separate sets of crockery. Living in a household without onion, garlic or any non-vegetarian food did leave an impact on the celebrated chef. It taught him that you only need few ingredients to cook delicious food.

And that, in a nutshell, is the culinary ethos at Indian Accent―simple flavour profiles with innovations that do not compromise on taste. There are certain rules Mehrotra follows while experimenting on new dishes. First, he will not mix two Indian cuisines in one dish. At Indian Accent, you will never find a paneer chettinad or idli in Kashmiri spices.

Then, he gives international classics an Indian twist. “For example, pork ribs will always go with something sweet and sticky, whether it is the South East Asian version or the Texas version,” he says. “So I thought, why not pair it with a sweet mango pickle sauce? This dish has been a best-seller at the restaurant from the day we opened. Or take bread and cheese, which is again a classic combination. So we decided to try out a blue cheese naan. Blue cheese is a bit of a wild flavour for the Indian palate, and that’s why we toned it down by stuffing it in hot naan. After getting cooked in tandoor, there is a hint of blue cheese, but it is not too overwhelming for the Indian palate.”

Indian Accent, now with three outposts in Delhi, New York, and Mumbai, is no stranger to awards and acclamation. It has been on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list since 2015. It was recognized by Time magazine as being one of the world’s 100 greatest places to visit and was voted the no.1 restaurant in India by Conde Nast Traveller. The five-star recognition by Culinary Culture is the icing on its cake.

The Indian Accent in Delhi is completing 15 years this year. “Yes, there is pressure to maintain the quality,” says Mehrotra. “You must be on your toes all the time. There are legendary restaurants like Bukhara (in ITC Maurya, Delhi) where the menu has remained unchanged for the last 35 years. They don’t need to, because they have specialised so well in certain dishes. That’s not the case with Indian Accent, where we keep innovating and experimenting and providing our guests with new experiences regularly.”

And for Mehrotra, innovation comes from travelling, visiting relatives all over the country to learn more about eclectic Indian dishes and poring over cookbooks―he has over 1,200 of them and he says every two months, he searches out new ones. It began from the time he shifted from pan-Asian cuisine (while working with Oriental Octopus at the India Habitat Centre) to modern Indian food when he started Indian Accent in 2009. “It was really difficult to make the shift. I researched, practised and studied so much. If I had studied half as much in school, my parents would have been very happy, and I would have become a doctor, engineer or scientist,” he quips.

And what is the go-to food for the chef extraordinaire, whose doda burfi treacle tart, pulled pork phulka tacos and galautis stuffed with foie gras are now the stuff of culinary legend? “I’m more of a 2am Maggi kind of guy,” he says with a laugh.

Avartana, Chennai

Put your mouth where the south is

If James Bond had asked for a martini at Chennai’s Avartana, he would have been in for a surprise. For instead of “three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet”, he would have been served an ancient potion said to have been brought to Madurai by the Saurashtrians in the 16th century―distilled tomato rasam.

Sure, the rasam at the modern south Indian restaurant, served in a martini glass, has been given a sexy facelift―it is made over two days with bruised tomatoes hung from a muslin cloth for several hours for the flavour to drip through. But at its heart, it is still the soothing concoction that even our colonisers could not resist (they renamed it as mulligatawny in an attempt to anglicise it).

The story of rasam is also the story of Avartana―authentic south Indian flavours creatively reimagined. So, there are dumplings inspired by the famous ‘kozhikatai’, yogurt spheres in crispy chili potato and multi-layered panna cotta coated with pulled sugar. There is also the famous sago yogurt, one of the first dishes created even before the opening of the restaurant, inspired by a well-known family of gourmands in Chennai.

Somebody once said that order exists so that good things can run wild. Whether it is the jackfruit seed fritters and potato crackers or the butter toffee wrapped with beetroot and spiced aubergine sheet, there is discipline in the playfulness, effort in the effortlessness.

Avartana, which opened at the ITC Grand Chola in 2017, now has two more outposts in Kolkata and Mumbai. Guests are offered a range of seven to 13 tasting menus. Interestingly, the person behind the restaurant’s success is not south Indian. Chef Nikhil Nagpal, executive chef and brand custodian at Avartana, was born in Kolkata. “Having travelled to multiple cities in my childhood gave me a varied experience of flavours and dishes,” he says. “I decided to be a chef in high school and since then have been inspired by food cultures across the world. Over the years, I have loved to travel and soak in experiences from various cities around the globe.”

For someone who could not boil rice without burning it in college, Nagpal sure has come a long way.

a-clutch-of-war-writers-at-the-jaipur-literature-festival-spoke-about-finding-hope-amidst-hopelessness

Sat Feb 10 14:59:36 IST 2024

On June 17, 1987, American journalist Charles Glass was seized in Lebanon by 10 Hezbollah men with Kalashnikovs. When he tried to escape, they clubbed him with their rifle butts. He was held captive for 62 days, during which he would push notes for help in English, French and Arabic through a bathroom window. Two months after being chained by his ankle and wrist, he managed to escape.

“When captors pick you up, you disappear,” Glass later wrote. “You are vulnerable to whims and caprice. People from your country and the other side are making deals you know nothing about. You are expendable. Whether you die or achieve your liberty is someone else’s decision. Your impotence is total. Except over your thoughts. The Israeli-Palestinian poet and former political prisoner Fouzi al-Asmar wrote: ‘With all the might of their hatred that tears this life apart/They cannot put my mind in jail.’ You listen for clues―as if a guard’s tone of voice will tell you if he is going to kill you or let you go. Your senses are sharpened. You escape in sleep and dreams, remembering your life and imagining your life to come, if it is to come.”

Glass, who has covered wars in Syria, Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina, was at the Jaipur Literature Festival from February 1 to 5 to promote his latest book, Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry and Mental Illness During the First World War. Elaborating on the difference between writing a book and covering war, he told THE WEEK, “A book is basically a long article. So, you just have to do more research, more interviews, and go through more archives, to be able to tell a story at length, which is a great luxury. Often, when you have the deadline pressure of daily journalism you cannot do that. It is probably a more interesting, but less exciting activity.”

Glass was not the only one. At a time when the world is witnessing two wars―Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas―a number of war writers at the JLF spoke about what it is like to cover conflicts in the most dangerous parts of the world, of living with fear and of witnessing the most extremes of human nature.

“There is no point in hiding that there is fear,” said Pulitzer prize-winning war reporter, Roger Cohen, during a session on war moderated by Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, president (international), of The New York Times Company. “The anticipation is the worst.” He talks about the uncertainty of deciding whether to go somewhere or not. For example, he was planning on visiting the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv the day it got badly shelled. “Should I go or shouldn’t I go, I wondered,” says Cohen. “You don’t need good luck in war, you need the absence of bad luck, because shrapnel can fly anywhere.”

Cohen, currently the Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, has worked for the Times for 33 years as a foreign correspondent, foreign editor and an opinion columnist, and has authored five books. According to him, war can never be looked at through an objective lens. It is always personal. “We are human beings,” he said. “Each of us brings our sentiments, feelings, and who we are into what we write. So, objectivity is a long word that I think is impossible and probably not even desirable to attain.”

Ukrainian historian and writer Olesya Khromeychuk would agree. After all, it does not get more personal than writing a book on losing a brother to war. “My book, [The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister], is about my brother who volunteered to fight in the Ukrainian armed forces back in 2015, and was killed in action in 2017,” she said at a session. “This was at a time when Ukraine was entirely forgotten, and the war there was not seen as a war, but as an internal conflict. It was claiming thousands of lives, but the number of deaths matters when it comes to making headline news, so it wasn’t claiming enough lives to get global attention. I was living in London―where life went on as usual―and grieving for a brother who was killed in the frontline on the other side of Europe. I was looking to explain the situation in a way that others would know and care. I could not find that way as a historian, but I found it as a grieving sister. So, I decided to tell the personal story of grief for my brother, which people can relate to, and through that tell the story of the larger historical and political context of this war.”

Khromeychuk says that until February 2022, when the war escalated, the story of Ukraine was told either through Russia’s propaganda machine or by international observers who did not know the country well. “So, we found ourselves being portrayed as a small nation of 40 million people with no clear identity, and that is exactly how the Russians wanted the world to see us,” she says. “The story of how Russian imperialism and cultural violence then led to physical and military violence needed to be explained to a wider audience.”

According to these writers, war exposes humanity at its most naked. You see extremes of courage and cruelty, and it always leaves a mark on you. Cohen describes children in Beirut not being able to sleep unless they heard the sound of shelling (“silence was terrifying to them”), observing a waiter folding and refolding napkins and arranging them on the table elegantly while war raged around him, and women in Sarajevo walking around in high heels and makeup as a sign of protest at the height of the siege. “I remember going out on the fourth day after 9/11 and seeing these photographs of missing people,” he says. “A woman had put up her ultrasound, and written beneath: Looking for the father of this baby. Seeing that, I broke down. Sometimes it is hard to contain the emotion that we experience.”

But in the depths of hopelessness, there is always hope, says award-winning Indian journalist Anjan Sundaram, who has reported mostly from the Congo and the Central African Republic, and has written three memoirs―Stringer, Bad News and Breakup. He studied mathematics at Yale, but shifted to journalism when he saw a report in The New York Times, buried somewhere on the fourth page, about four million people having died in the war in Congo. It shocked him, and he wondered why it did not make front page news. Finding mathematics too abstract and removed from the real world, Sundaram pivoted to war reporting, so that he could more directly impact people’s lives.

“In all the darkest places I go to, I find the most inspiring people,” Sundaram told THE WEEK. He narrates the story of finding a Polish abbot in the Central African Republic who was on his way to a church located in an extremely dangerous rebel territory. The church was attacked by the government who stole its door, leaving the altar exposed. The priest was now sleeping in the open. The abbot was going there to get the door replaced as a mark of protest. Sundaram asked if he could tag along, and at every village where they stopped, the abbot would honk and someone would run out of the forest, where the villagers were hiding, and thrust a piece of paper into the car. On it would be the names of all the people who were sick in the village and what medicines and other assistance they required. The abbot would pass on these slips of paper to the NGOs in the main city. “Collecting information by hand when the telephone antennae had been destroyed was an incredibly brave thing to do,” says Sundaram. “In the 21st century, where we think we have access to too much information through social media and other means, this is still how information is collected in a war zone.”

It is a hard life, and often these writers must live with the guilt of surviving when so many others did not. Yet, they say they would not give it up for anything. Said Cohen, “If somebody were to put a gun to my head and ask what were you put on this earth to do, it would be to be a foreign correspondent, arriving somewhere you don’t know, somewhere completely new, and just trying to understand―seeing, feeling, smelling, intuiting. There is no substitute for boots on the ground.”

rajen-mehra-s-never-out-of-print-is-a-memoir-of-not-just-a-man-but-also-rupa-publications-and-the-growth-of-indian-publishing

Fri Feb 09 15:03:01 IST 2024

It is a freezing day in Delhi’s winter that has outlived its novelty. The door of the Rupa office in the chaotic grey of Yusuf Sarai, with endless rows of shops, opens and music from the newly opened coffee shop wafts in.

Rajen Mehra arrives right on time. “I am actually two minutes early,”he says. At 77, Mehra is spry, with the restless energy of a self-made man. At 22, Mehra travelled across India on a train to learn about publishing, a journey that changed his life. He was waiting to join a management school, but the train journey from then Calcutta to Kerala taught him much more than he would ever learn in books. He would, however, sell them.

Never Out of Print is a memoir of not just a man but also Rupa Publications and the growth of Indian publishing. This book or the idea of it started when he was in hospital for severe breathlessness in 2010. When he got home, he wrote. He first faced rejection from a friend, till the book emerged in this form―breezy, interspersed with pictures, memories and vignettes of his life.

His great-grandmother had told his granduncle, who started Rupa, that if his first customer was a Muslim, his business would thrive. As it happened, the man who stopped to buy the Collins English Dictionary on August 17, 1936, at his stall was Humayun Kabir. “At auspicious occasions, I will always invite a Muslim to do that,” says Mehra. “People get upset about it. What is to get upset about? They are humans, we are humans.”

Mehra recounts the journey of Rupa from its Kolkata home near the coffee house to Delhi. The coffee house was where the city’s brightest gathered for adda. Mehra once got a cigarette for Kanu Sanyal, founder-member of the naxalite movement: “He paid for it,”says Mehra, smiling. Satyajit Ray, another visitor to the coffee house, designed the first Rupa logo.

Rupa has now become a much-established name in India’s thriving publishing scene under Mehra. It moved from being the distributor for giants like Penguin and HarperCollins to publishing. “We expanded into nonfiction, and nonfiction in an area Penguin would not get into and not get, like food,” he says. Over the years, this expanded to include big politicians like L.K. Advani to cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar―each of them having been scouted by Mehra.

“I shot the picture for the cover for [Gavaskar’s] second book, Idols,” says Mehra. “We had no budget. The company was going through the traumatic effect of leaving Calcutta. Photographers were not willing. Once they heard it was Sunil, they wanted to charge Rs10,000. So I took him to the DGCA ground and he was practising and I took some photos.”

The story of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is well known. But Mehra has his own. “The manuscript was with Penguin and they gave it to me to read,” he says. “They were worried about some passages in the book. I gave it to two of my trusted Muslims; they were highly literate people. They said there is nothing in this.” So Rupa imported 500 copies. “The next day, (journalist and newsreader) Tejeshwar Singh called to say, ‘The book may be banned.’ Our office was in the Jama Masjid area. He was very concerned. I said, ‘We will see what happens.’ At 9pm, I was listening to the news. And Tejeshwar announced the book was banned.”

The next day, Mehra got to office early. “I used to drive an Ambassador car, and I put all my stocks into the car,” he recalls. “The first call came at 9am. Mr Sham Lal, editor of the Times of India, wanted five copies.” By the end of the evening, 400 copies were sold. “I had ordered 10,000 copies with special permission to import. But it had to be stopped at Heathrow,” he says.

Everything Mehra has learnt is through grit, hard work and enterprise. “Publishing takes years to build,” he says. “It is very difficult to destroy, because if you have good literature, you cannot destroy it.”

NEVER OUT OF PRINT: THE RUPA STORY: THE JOURNEY OF AN INDEPENDENT INDIAN PUBLISHER

Author: Rajen Mehra

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Pages: 504; price: Rs500

talat-mahmood-the-definitive-biography-is-a-befitting-introduction-to-a-singing-genius

Sat Feb 03 11:26:57 IST 2024

To encapsulate the life of a man often described the ‘King of Ghazals’, though he was much more than that, is no easy task. Just for attempting that, Sahar Zaman deserves applause.

Talat Mahmood, born in Lucknow and trained at what was then the Marris College of Music (now Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya) was a singer unlike any other. His natural velvet voice bore a slight quiver. It is a quiver which singers take years to cultivate. Musically termed vibrato, this quick and subtle change of voice between notes which are pitched very closely conveys emotions more powerfully than lyrics. When used without dedicated cultivation, a vibrato sounds contrived and the unevenness of breath can be made out by the trained ear; but when it comes naturally, it is as smooth as the wax and wane of emotion. Yet, in his early years in Mumbai, Mahmood strove to hide this unique quality, attempting often to sing in the nasal tones of his idol K.L. Saigal. This would not last long as Anil Biswas, a composer he had worked with for long, angrily walked out of a recording studio asking Mahmood to return only when the real Talat was found.

Ghazals came first to Mahmood because of his affinity with Urdu, and also because of the cultural bearings at home. His father, Manzoor Mahmood, who was a member of the Indian Medical Mission to Ottoman, would often sing to pep up his fellow travellers, while his sisters were flawless renderers of the nath (songs in praise of the Prophet), and his elder brother, Kamal, too, had a rich singing voice. While everyone in the family had strong voices with good throws, Mahmood’s was tuned differently. It was far gentler, almost like a dewdrop caressing a rosebud. It was the kind of voice that could dull the impact of the unkindest of blows. In the 2022 release Gangubai Kathiawadi, for instance, when the lead character learns of being sold to a brothel by her boyfriend, there is a snippet of a song that plays in the background. Mahmood's voice is like a gentle nuzzle that softens the harsh truth.

Pathos was the most marked emotion of Mahmood’s voice. It was the embodiment of a disembodied, deep sadness. No wonder then that ‘Tragedy King’Dilip Kumar spoke of him as the ‘true musical speaker of my soul’.

Mahmood’s musical life was a rich amalgamation of traditions and languages. Under the name Tapan Kumar, he was a leading voice of the modern Bengal Music movement in which lyrics became as important as the music. He sang in 16 languages including Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada. And while you can close your eyes and imagine him most readily as a dejected Dilip Kumar pictured behind gauzy, fluttering curtains singing ‘Shaam-e-Gham ki qasam’ (On the promise of this sadness soaked evening), close them for some more time and you will just as easily picture him as a boyish Raj Kapoor singing ‘Main dil hun ek armaan bhara’ (I am a heart full of desires), a song that lends itself most readily to the waltz.

As a singer he had many firsts to his name, including being the pioneer of world tours. His pleasant face (which incidentally is also the meaning of Talat) made him a singing-actor and he also dabbled in composition. To audiences in the USA, he was introduced as the Frank Sinatra of India. He became a recognised voice, courtesy All India Radio, at just the age of 16. The book records a delightful incident in which the young Mahmood was accosted by a group of girls in Lucknow to sing as he cycled his way to his music college. Among that gaggle of fans was Qurratulain Hyder, who would go on to become a famed Urdu writer.

He was also a man deeply devoted to the larger cause of his art. He raised his voice for the payment of royalties to singers and also became a part of programmes to raise funds for senior, out-of-work artists. He joyfully gave away songs to Mukesh when he was going through a rough patch. His delight in singing for troops and in encouraging new talent all made him a perfect gentleman, a word often used in the book to describe him.

Biographies can never be divorced from the times that their subjects lived in. Thus, we read in bits about the decline of the film industry in Kolkata after the partition of Bengal, the government’s press for the Bhoodan movement, for which Mahmood sang; the start of recordings in sound-proof rooms; the introduction of multi-instrument orchestra for playback singing; and the rise of version songs. We also read of how the Partition tore apart Mahmood’s family. In a particularly poignant recollection, his father asked his elder son who would water the plants in the courtyard if he left for Pakistan (he did anyway).

The book at places digresses from a linear telling of Mahmood’s story and moves to talking about other stars of the time. This could appear jarring to some, but it is perhaps inevitable given that Mahmood’s journey was intertwined with those of others. One example being that of the actor Shyam, whose death resulting from an accident on a film set is talked about in some detail, to later merge it with the fact that his last three songs, sung by Mahmood, became ‘locked’in his voice.

If you are looking for a book which offers an undeviating narrative of Mahmood’s life, this perhaps is not it. This book reads more like a collection of anecdotes―some known, some not so well known. His gentleness is a quality emphasised throughout the book. He earned it perhaps from spending his formative years with his paternal aunt Mahlaqa Begum. We also come to know that he was a keeper of his words―both to friends and the girlfriend he left in Kolkata.

To those who have known the music of Mahmood, this book is a ready reckoner of his songs and will send you to listen to those you have loved and search for those you have forgotten. To those who do not know the music of Mahmood, take this as a befitting introduction to a singing genius. To do both in under 500 pages, in easy language, peppered with countless photos of the handsome Mahmood, is Zaman’s biggest achievement.

TALAT MAHMOOD: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY

Author: Sahar Zaman

Pages: 480

kiran-rao-second-film-laapataa-ladies-kindling-productions-divorce-with-aamir-khan

Fri Feb 02 16:14:46 IST 2024

It has been 13 years since her last film release, but Kiran Rao has proved to be worth the wait. Her second film as director, Laapataa Ladies, releases on March 1, and has already won a standing ovation at September’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Rao, 50, says it’s just the kind of response she needed after not showing a film to an audience for over 10 years. “I was nervous,” she says of the Toronto screenings. “A lot of the film’s humour is in its dialect, in its cadence of writing. Plus Bhojpuri is such a sweet language, I wasn’t sure how all of this would translate via subtitles and we would lose the rural flavour. This was a paying audience, so I felt very validated.”

We are sitting at an office of Aamir Khan Productions in Mumbai’s Bandra. The same building houses Khan and his extended family. The film has just been privately screened for THE WEEK and we are probably the first people outside the office to have watched it. It’s an endearing tale of two brides getting swapped on a train in rural India, only to discover themselves and their personal goals, all along questioning their misleading veils, patriarchy, and dropping empowerment quips and tips. It stars newbies Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel and Sparsh Srivastav in lead roles, along with Ravi Kishan.

“When Aamir first told me about the story, I thought the hook was delicious,” Rao lets in. The film is based on a screenplay writer Biplab Goswami had submitted in a competition where Khan was a judge. “In a sense it is a coming-of-age film, with a little mystery about how things would unfold. I read the story and I thought the women characters could be developed a little more. It could have been a dark film, but we wanted it to be more of a fun comedy,” she says.

Rao’s favourite scene is one where the women of a family are sitting together and having a giggle as friends. “Let’s not be relatives,” one of them says, “Let’s be friends”. Another favourite is a song by the river that has been edited out of the film. “I hope I can turn it into a music video and release it. It’s shot on a river with drones, and shows a newly-wed couple with the river as a metaphor for life,” she says.

Was the decision not to have any established actors deliberate? “Yes, and Aamir was very supportive. The story needed to be rooted and authentic, and the faces needed to be believable,” Rao explains.

Aamir is not playing a cameo either. “Aamir actually did a look test with hair and makeup for the part of the slimy cop. He actually auditioned for the role, and Aamir being Aamir was really good at it. We even had a long discussion on how much he wanted to play this character. But when we saw Ravi Kishan’s audition, I thought he was apt for the role. He brought a certain juiciness to the part. Aamir sort of sets up expectations for the character. So yeah, I rejected Aamir Khan,” she laughs. “But by the end of it Aamir agreed with me.”

Most of the film is filled with actors from theatre groups across Indore, Jabalpur and Bhopal. “I wanted everyone to feel that a place called Nirmal Pradesh (the fictional state where the film is set) really exists. We wanted people to be comfortable with the dialect and the families to look like families.”

Kiran’s first film, Dhobi Ghat, was set in Mumbai. It was a big-city film, with snatches of class interdependence and creative professionals dealing with urban existence. Laapataa Ladies is as rural as it can get. “I wanted to speak to a broader audience, and still keep my aesthetic,” she says. “I felt like someone had tossed me a challenge. The hard part was actually making a comedy, because I thought I was good at drama. So editing the film and hitting the right notes of a situational comedy was not easy.” Rao says a lot of things can happen to women who end up in places they don’t expect to be, but she wanted the story to be one of hope and optimism.

Why has it taken her so long to release her second film? “I was writing and producing, I was quite involved with Dangal and Secret Superstar. I also gave a lot of time to my family and enjoyed raising Azad (her son with Aamir, now 12). I had a child at a stage when I knew I wanted one. He’s a great kid and a companion for life. The writing was slow and subconsciously I wasn’t ready. That said, I started writing Laapataa in 2020.”

Rao has also launched her own production company Kindling Productions. “I am still an adviser in Aamir Khan Productions and I will always have strong ties with it,” she says. “But Kindling is my own imprint. It has all the projects I’ve been developing for the last decade. We are working on two series. One is a contemporary comedy about two women. The other is a historical, set in Kolkata and Darjeeling, involving three generations of women with the whole geopolitical backdrop of the Anglo-Burmese and Bengalis.”

Rao is also a founder at Paani Foundation, along with Khan, his first wife Reena Dutta and Satyajit Bhatkal. It offers solutions to Maharashtra’s drought crisis. “We are at an exciting juncture where 75 talukas have just competed for a water management prize called the Water Cup,” she says. “We find that as soon as villages have sufficient water, they start growing commercial but water-intensive crops like sugarcane again, and the cycle continues. We’ve realised that farmers need to work collectively with the best practices to be ecologically and economically sustainable. We hope to close the loop between producers and sellers and turn farmers into entrepreneurs. Our pilot Farmer Cup is between farmer collectives, and many all-women collectives are being formed, too.”

Rao says she is still “hung over” from Aamir’s daughter Ira’s wedding, which concluded just two weeks back. “The wedding was so beautifully curated by Ira and Popeye (her fiance Nupur Shikare), keeping each of us in mind,” she says. “We are a large family with varied interests, like music and sports. So we had an obstacle course, and a sangeet where we teased each other.”

Ira also had personalised gifts for her family. “She gave me a little oil painting of me on a street in Berlin,” she says. “I thought that was so special to make, in the middle of planning her wedding.”

Visuals of Aamir Khan, with his two former wives, make a modern, happy divorce a very practical, respectful idea. “We are all naturally inclusive. We all get together for dinners on Monday nights. We live in a community and our homes are all in the same housing society. I hang out with Reena (Aamir’s ex wife) and Nuzhat (Aamir’s cousin) independently of Aamir, too. These are relationships you shouldn’t lose if you get divorced. Aamir and I didn’t have an acrimonious divorce; we may have parted as a couple but we are very much a family,” she smiles. “Even at the end of a marriage, you’ve put so many years in a relationship and that should count for something.”

adman-prahlad-kakar-s-memoir-is-no-malicious-but-delicious-read

Sat Jan 27 11:40:08 IST 2024

Not many know that it was a short ad film, barely four seconds long, shot by a maverick adman that led to the discovery of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. It was the early 1990s―a time when ads were not skipped but etched in our memories, thanks to catchy slogans and jingles―and a young Prahlad Kakar was looking for a face for his next Pepsi commercial. That’s when Aishwarya, then a student of architecture, and her male colleague walked into his office, with a fat portfolio in hand. The duo had come to consult Kakar’s wife, Mitali, when his assistant spotted Aishwarya. “What struck me first were her grey-green eyes, which would change colour depending on her mood…. Even now when she is angry, they become green. When she is happy, they become grey-green,” writes Kakar in his latest book Adman Madman: Unapologetically Prahlad. Many years later when they became friends, Kakar brought her a pair of jade earrings from Myanmar that matched the colour of her eyes.

Aishwarya’s first ad shoot was anything but easy―20 takes to say one line: “Hi, I am Sanju. Got another Pepsi?” He narrates how they did a free hair and a wet hair look. He wanted her body language to be just right, hence the many takes. “She was close to tears,” writes Kakar. “She was very young, and very inexperienced, protected, studious and had never even dated. I wanted her to get a room full of guys to fall for her but the problem was that Aishwarya herself wasn’t convinced that she was good looking enough to get a room full of men to fall for her. And then, when she delivered, destinies, both hers and ours, changed forever.”

It is noon on a weekend when we meet Kakar at his home in suburban Mumbai. He is at the dining table, nursing a glass of what looks like carrot-and-beetroot juice. He is warm and welcoming and breaks into an animated chatter the moment I ask him to sign a copy of his book. “Isn’t it unputdownable?” asks Kakar, 75. I say it is. “We ad people have so much to say; for every project, there is an entire story behind a story which can become a film in itself,” he says, as a domestic help combs his signature salt-and-pepper locks.

His latest book is a compendium of his years as an ad filmmaker―close to four decades―with anecdotes from some of the most memorable campaigns he has done for prestigious clients and corporates. The book is divided into chapters that begin from his early “mad hostel years” to training under a “reluctant mentor like Shyam Benegal”, whom he credits for teaching him the art of storytelling and how to capture it on celluloid, to his time at Genesis, an ad firm he cofounded, and everything in between. Tell him what a fat book he has penned and he says, “Not fat enough. I left [out] so much of what I had to say. I think I will have to write another one now.”

The book is a breezy read, peppered with his irreverent humour and sarcasm. “As far as I can remember, I have always―without exception―been thrown out of respectable institutions for being at the right place at the wrong time, and for not being able to keep my mouth shut,” writes Kakar. “The glee I got from it came much later when I decided to have fun while being thrown out.”

And, he has been thrown out of hostels and paying guest accommodations, of course, but he has also gate-crashed his then girlfriend’s wedding, trying (and failing) to elope with her and gifting her a mangalsutra as a parting gift in front of the full gathering. So, does he find himself at the right place at the right time now? “Well, now I have started enjoying needling the establishment,” he says, laughing. “It is like, ‘let’s see what it takes to get thrown out.’ I think that has been my evolution. Occasionally, I must be thrown out of places, otherwise they will call me old and that I have lost the plot.”

The 1990s saw an abundance of memorable ads, and Kakar was at the peak of his career then. “My clients kept coming back to me for 25 years on the trot,” he says. “I worked with Pepsi for 15 years, with Nestle for 25 years on Maggi. So the bar of the industry was raised entirely by Genesis. The 1990s was the time when the best work came out of this country in advertising.”

The success of Pepsi has been close to his heart. “Nobody ever looked at a Pepsi film and said this is not about Pepsi but about Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh [Khan] or Sachin [Tendulkar],” says Kakar. “It always was a Pepsi film.”

How did he ace the 30-second ad filmmaking? “Purely by gut reaction, instinct,” says Kakar. “I would close my eyes and try and visualise it. But they never understood that and thought I was being arrogant…. Filmmakers should be able to read scripts and see the film. Because if he cannot see the film, he is the wrong person to make the film.”

Called Indian ad industry’s feared and beloved leprechaun, Kakar was also known to change scripts. He writes about an ad he had to do for P&G, which he found “crushingly boring and atrocious”. So he “would shoot it their way, get it out of the way and then shoot it my way”. “Sometimes the client would hate his version and end up liking mine,” he says. “Right now nobody does two films. They only do it for the client and the money that comes with it. They all forget about their own brand and only remember the star as against in films that we used to do―the star was always the second lead; the brand was the main [lead]. And, scripts were written around the brand.”

Ads of today are only mediocre, says Kakar. “It is evident from the consumer reaction to ads nowadays,” he says. “During our time, they would prefer watching the ads over the content. But now it is the reverse. Ads have become irritating for the viewer and she is opting for content without ads by paying extra. Unfortunately, clients are not understanding this.”

But the free hand he had at Genesis would have been restrained if not for the “iron fist in a velvet glove”―his wife, Mitali. They got married when he was 36 and she 22 and have three sons. “The first thing she did after our wedding was to take over the finances of Genesis, leaving me free to dream and create. She even put me on a stipend so that I wouldn’t run the company into the ground,” he writes. She seems to have forgiven him for having forgotten about their wedding even as the preparations for the same were on.

Kakar is now associated with quite a few OTT projects, and is also mentoring a production house and vetting their scripts to “see whether they are worth making or not”.

So, what makes Kakar rock after all these years? “I have no filters,” he says. “I don’t need them. I say it the way it is and you take it the way you want to. I have no malice towards anyone because I see people in shades of grey.”

Adman Madman: Unapologetically Prahlad

By Prahlad Kakar with Rupangi Sharma

Published by HarperCollins India

Price Rs799; pages 526