ISSUE
VOL
SEPTEMBER 2011 `100
AGENTS of change TOMORROW WAS YESTERDAY Corruption / Terrorism / Xenophobia / Climate change / Gender discrimination
+
Fashion: Re-engineer your style Cars: Ripping it on a Formula One track Travel: Adventures on an Arabian moonscape
6 9
www.celio.com
EXCLUSIVE OUTLETS: MUMBAI: Palladium Mall-Lower Parel; Colaba Cause Way; Inorbit Mall-Vashi; R-City Mall-Ghatkopar; Growel Mall-Kandivli(E) BANGALORE: Brigade Rd; Indira Nagar-100ft Rd; Mantri Mall-Malleswaram. 27th Main, HSR Layout. CHENNAI: Ampa Mall-Nelson Manickam Rd; Expre Road. PUNE: Koregaon Park, Market City-Vimannagar. GF 14, Amanora Mall.
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); Korum Mall-Thane; Infinity Mall-Malad. DELHI: Khan Market; Great India Place Mall-Noida; DLF Promenade-Vasant Kunj; District Center-Janakpuri. ess Avenue-Roayapettah. KNK Road. HYDERABAD: Jubilee Hills-Rd No. 36, Somajiguda-Rajbhavan Rd. CHANDIGARH: Sector-17C. AMRITSAR: Mall
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September 2011 > contributors > mail call > from the editor
[contents]
038 FOOD Cocktail corner Exclusive shoot with Sandeep Varma of The Mozart Cafe, New Delhi
> Features
050
050 Trapped by television Coming soon, to a television near you 054 10 haunting heartbreakers We have our list. Feel free to disagree
098
106
058 No small fry Plan your vacation next time around some of the best restaurants, and their celebrity chefs, from around the world 066 Divine intervention Amish Tripathi, author of The Secret of Nagas, on his passion for Lord Shiva and his ďŹ ght against evil 098 The Arabic desert moonscape Sights and sounds of Wadi Rum in Jordan 106
Ripping it on an F1 track The Audi A6 burns some rubber on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Formula One track
> REGULARS 018 026 030 032 034 036 037 048 130
Style Observer: Fashionwise M Girl: Nathalia Regina Quick take: Lucky Ali & Kailash Kher Indulge: M tried and tested Good to know: Dining and wining First bite: Ummami, New Delhi India 2020: Shiamak Davar Flick Show Last laugh
1 2 3 7
5
4 6
On the cover Julian Assange / Getty Images; Vandana Shiva / Getty Images; Anna Hazare / India Today Group/Getty Images; Mike Pandey / Riverbank Studios; Michael Pollan / Martin Roe /Retna Ltd./Corbis; Shirin Ebadi / Getty Images; Helen Bamber / Rob Kim /Retna Ltd./Corbis
[fashion]
110 THE
GUIDE TO
Re-Engineering
Your Style
Not bored of copying just yet? Tired of the sermons and counselling on what to wear, when? It’s time to step out and be noticed, effortlessly. We tell you how 128
STOCKISTS
[feature es]
074
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
Never has India been so united in a cause since the struggle for Independence. Is it such a stretch to imagine that we, its citizens, also hold the key to solving some of the world’s foremost problems today?
25 AGENTS OF CHANGE
CORRUPTION / TERRORISM / XENOPHOBIA / CLIMATE CHANGE / GENDER DISCRIMINATION
… IT WAS ALWAYS BURNING by Sandipan Deb
TOMORROW WAS YESTERDAY by Alam Srinivas
IT’S NOT APOCALYPSE NOW by John Dayal
photograph : Deepak Malik
Contributors 1
1. Sandeep Varma // executive chef The Mozart Cafe New Delhi [When Mr. Wong... page 038]
7
10 4
2
2. Sanjiv Nair // freelance writer [Film icks / Trapped by television; page 048 / 050] 3. Bijoy Venugopal // freelance writer / blogger [10 haunting heartbreakers / Last Laugh; page 054 / 130] 4. Chitra Subramanyam // freelance writer [Divine intervention; page 066]
8
5. Manidipa Mandal // freelance writer [Spontaneous combusion / 25 Agents of change; page 074 / 082]
11 5
6. Sandipan Deb // senior journalist [‌ It was always burning; page 080] 7. Alam Srinivas // senior journalist [Tomorrow was yesterday; page 090]
9 3
8. John Dayal // senior journalist [... Apocalypse Now; page 094] 9. Sanjay Austa // travel writer [The Arabic desert moonscape; page 098]
6
10. Hari Govind Nair // auto enthusiast [Ripping it on an F1 track; page 106] 11. Hari Nair // freelance photographer [Re-engineering your style; page 110]
Mail Call ISSUE
VOL
AUGUST 2011 `100
6 8
I like M because it takes me on a trip everytime I ip through its pages. From the land of godmen to the beaches of Manila, from a cup of tea to the psyche of Farhan Akhtar, the vast subjects that I am introduced to give me a wholesome satisfying experience. Talking about a trip, literally, I am in awe of Phillipines and its beaches after I read it in your magazine. Just like M, Philippines too is a perfect mix of calm and excitement, wether you talk about its exotic aquatic life, or rocking nightlife. After reading the about the whole journey, all I really wanted was treat myself to a Filipino spa and its four hand harmony massage. I wonder how will the amazing combination of different strokes work on my body. But till the time I pamper myself to this experience, here’s congratulating all of you on one more power-packed issue. M is about being different, and each month I wait anxiously to see what you put in your issue. Arunoday Singh, New Delhi
Hello,
LIFE
Farhan Akhtar seems to be living a life all of us only dream of. Each one
Farhan Akhtar on living it up
+
Indulge: The best perfumes for men Feature: Religion, opium for the masses Athletics: Running aground Hot wheels: Racing the bar
COVER_M#51.indd 62
7/24/2011 2:10:07 PM
of us wish to live life on edge and still ďŹ nd the calm amidst the madness. As a director, he gave us the iconic Dil Chahta Hai. I am yet to come across anybody of my generation who says he/she didn’t like the ďŹ lm. The success of the ďŹ lm may have put that much extra pressure of expectation on him. Unfazed, Akhtar went ahead and broke the shackles by pushing his limits and presenting himself as an actor and a singer to the audience in Rock On. And all this, while living in the shadow of his illustrious parents. It intrigues me to read that Farhan lives by his talent but also away from it. He is of course a person you could both relate to and aspire to become. Thanks Nivedita, and indeed M, for introducing us to Farhan in such a different way. Shishir Kunder, Mumbai
I am a far cry from this breed of metrosexual men. I am tolerant to those who claim to be but I can’t bring myself to take so much care of how I look (to put in a mild way). The chauvinist in me can never think of having a facial or foot or hand treatment. So frankly, I was not really interested in reading your ‘Massage in a Bottle’ article. It so happened that I was thoroughly bored on my way back to ofďŹ ce and eventually ended up reading it to overcome my boredom. And what a surprise it has been for me. I must say M, I am a transformed man now. For your information, I am already planning to book a spa session for myself in Bangalore. I particularly liked the ‘Good for’ part of all the treatments which actually pushed me to try out for my own relaxation and treating problems like sleeping disorders. Once again, thanks M. Suhel sharma, Bangalore
F L O R A L UN JARDIN SUR LE TOIT In n2 2003, the Year of the Me M e Mediterranean, Hermès perfumer Je Jea J e ea a Jean-Claude Ellena was inspired tto o ccreate the ďŹ rst garden-perfume, tthe he Un Jardin en MĂŠditerranĂŠe. It w was a homage to the secret g gar ar garden of LeĂŻla Menchari, director of d decoration at Hermès, on the T Tun Tu un un Tunisian shoreline. Two years later, he h e sset off to the island gardens in th delta of the king of rivers (Nile) the to iinvent Un Jardin sur le Nil. In to 2 200 0 00 the Year of Indian fantasies 2008, invi nvvi invited him to glorify India’s rebirth a afte af fte ft the life-giving monsoon rains, after with wit wi w ith Un Jardin après la Mousson. IIn n2 2011, Hermès takes us to 24, Fau F Fa au a u Faubourg Saint-HonorĂŠ, Paris, th the he agship store. Hovering he their u un une ne n e unexpectedly above the House of He H er er Hermès, in a secret rooftop garden, can ca an be found an apple tree, a pear ttree, tr tre tree re a magnolia and plenty of “wild p pla l plantsâ€?. Jean-Claude Elena, the in-h iin n-h h in-house perfumer, describes the ssmell sm m that rises from this garden as ‘the scent of sunlight and as as, p ple le e pleasure‌ a fruity botanical oral’.
SCENTS SENSIBILITIES
Notes: A fruity-oral composition No with a green dimension, the with fragrance opens with notes of apple frag fra rag ag and an nd green grass, plus a peppery nd effect. eff effe ef ffffe The heart twines magnolia with wi h a rose tonality. The base wit reveals waves of damp earth and re rev evv oa ak moss (evernia prunastri). ak oak
A cut of the ďŹ nest perfumes you can lay your hands on. Take your pick from three
Packaging: It comes with a greenPac hued h hu hue ue e base this time. The package is g graced with a drawing of the city off P Paris, including a view over th ze Ho Hou House of Hermès’ rooftop garden.
categories: Floral, fresh and woody Compiled by Ritoo Jhha
Price:
Pri
Your M recommends in the last issue on scents for men was mindblowing. I love to spend on fragrances but it is always a tough task to buy the right kind when I enter a mall and your nostrils are bombarded with so many scents. But thankfully M gave me the perfect guide to know what is in and what is out this season. Everytime you ip through magazines, they just drop in a few high brands without giving details about the fragrances and that completely disappoints me. I was delighted to see the whole range which included everything from fresh to woody to oral. Thanks to you I have added to my collection and all them my I am really proud of. And like always, your issue last month had everything I have come to expect from the magazine. Since last month, I have become a keen follower of travellingteadom.com. And yes, it was indeed a surprise to read an interview with the legendary Mike Powell. Abhay Sekhon, Chandigarh
KENZO POWER The power of a ower! In continuation with the brand’s most successful launch ever for women, Kenzo Flower, this new range for men is subtler in conveying the message with a thin sketch of a tulip like ower on the bottle.
Notes: Created by Olivier Polge, it opens with a blend of spices and zest, giving it a fresh, invigorating impact. At its heart is an expression of abstract orality. The woody and amber notes that follow make the fragrance manly with tolu balm, cedar wood and labdanum.
Packaging: The minimalist, streamlined jar, originally a sake bottle, was created by Kenya Hara for Masuichi Ichimura. Price: 021 | AUGUST 11
We want more mail, please. Bouquets, brickbats, an article/interview you’d like to see featured, a burning topic or two you’d like to comment on: Direct it all to feedback@imagesfashion.com
editor-In-Chief amitabh taneja executive Editor bobby john varkey advisory r s roy, anjali sondhi sr. associate editor / bureau head nivedita jayaram pawar (mumbai) sr. feature writer ritika kumar sr. fashion stylist carlton desouza fashion stylists rakhi biswas, sania momin (mumbai) creatives art director azad mohan layout designer kaustubh fuloriya sr. photographer vipin kardam Asst. photographer deepak malik photo coordinator kamal kumar publisher s p taneja business development vice president harjot singh luthra assoc. vice president - circulation anil nagar general manager - advertising bindu pillai (mumbai) assoc. vice presidents & regional heads waseem ahmad (mumbai), piyali roy (kolkata) sr. manager - advertising tushar verma (delhi) sr. manager - circulation rp singh (mumbai) managers - advertising nayan shetty (mumbai), anirban sarkar (kolkata) manager - circulation r parthasarathy (bangalore) deputy managers - circulation ranjeet yadav (delhi); operations rajesh kumar (delhi) executive - advertising sneha sinha (bangalore) production general manager manish kadam manager manoj soni services general manager - logistics rajeev mehandru general manager - customer relations hemant wadhawan subscriptions rajesh kumar sr. executive - logistics shambhu nath images consumer media pvt ltd delhi: s-21, okhla industrial area phase II, new delhi - 110 020 t: +91-11-40525000, f: +91-11-40525001, email: info@imagesgroup.in mumbai: 1st oor, bharat tin works compound, off marol military road, opp. borosil glass works, andheri (e), mumbai - 400 059 t: +91-22-42567000, 29200043/46, f: +91-22-42567022 email: waseemahmad@imagesgroup.in bangalore: no. 523, 7th cross, 10th main, (jeevanbhima nagar main road), h.a.l. 3rd stage, bangalore - 560075; t: +91-080-41255172 41750595/96, f: +91-080-41255182 email: bangalore@imagesgroup.in kolkata: 30-b anil roy road, ground oor, kolkata - 700 029 t: + 91- 33-40080480, email: piyalioberoi@imagesgroup.in All material printed in this publication is the sole property of Images Consumer Media Pvt. Ltd. All printed matter contained in the magazine is based on information from those featured in it. The views, ideas, comments and opinions expressed are solely of those featured and the Editor and Publisher do not necessarily subscribe to the same. Printed & Published by SP Taneja on behalf of Images Consumer Media Pvt Ltd; printed at International Print-O-Pac Limited, C/4-11 Phase II, Hosiery Complex, Noida 201301, and published by SP Taneja from S-21, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase II, New Delhi 110020. Editor: Amitabh Taneja In relation to any advertisements appearing in this publication, readers are recommended to make appropriate enquiries before entering into any commitments. Images Consumer Media Pvt. Ltd. does not vouch for any claims made by the advertisers of products and services. The Printer, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the publication shall not be held for any consequences in the event of such claims not being honoured by the advertisers. Copyright Images Consumer Media Pvt Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited. All disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only. M does not accept responsibility for returning unsolicited manuscripts and photographs.
For subscription related queries, email: subscription@imagesfashion.com. Visit us at www.m-magazine.in.
/from the editor “If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” Jack Dixon Popular wisdom suggests change is always good. It invigorates, excites, keep us on our toes and help us move forward. But the truth is, change, or the idea behind it, also makes you anxious. It makes you feel unsafe, unsure, even insecure. As we go to print, the momentous “people’s movement” to rid India of the scourge of corruption has come to a visibly victorious conclusion. Now it is time to brace for the more difficult, critical and long-term grind. I call it hard because the onus now is on all of us Indians to help redefine the very basis of our Indianness. Apathy or ignorance won’t do any more. More than any time, we need to be proactive now for this movement to bear any meaningful fruits. As usual, M is in the vanguard of the movement for a better tomorrow, to help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our cover story this month, to put it succinctly, is different. We celebrate 25 icons from all over the world who are fighting against the odds to make this world a better place for you and me. Human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, Julian Assange, Franny Armstrong, or Maria Bashir may not yet be in our collective consciousness like Anna Hazare. But make no mistake about their contribution. You don’t need to fly the flags they carry, you may disagree with their methods or even personal politics, but it is difficult to deny these men and women their impact on our planet. We salute them. They are our heroes. This issue is our tribute to Anna Hazare and his struggle to make India a better place for all of us. This month, we try in our own little way to remind you that all of us are equal stakeholders for a better tomorrow. Don’t just be a passive witness. It’s time you too led the charge.
amitabh Taneja
Photograph by Hari Nair NAVY BLUE SUIT BY ZEGNA // LIGHT BLUE BANKER’S COLLAR SHIRT BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA // TIE BY ASHISH SONI
| informed. in STYLE |
The Style Compiled by Ritika Kumar
SO HOT RIGHT NOW
WALK LIKE AN ITALIAN
T
hey say, if you are a designer worth your salt, it’s an address to die for. Yes, Italy, the mecca for all things fashion. This month we pay tribute to the typical Italian sense of elegance which uphelds the very best in tradition and approaches tailormade clothes with playful self-assurance. A perfect Italian suit is famous for its clean cuts and detailing in linings, pockets, collars and sleeves. This is one tailor-made menswear trend that has become a rage on international ramps. Designers have been experimenting with double-breasted jackets with wider lapels and narrow shoulders to accentuate the natural shape of the torso. A piece of wisdom? Ditch that black and make your wardrobe more diverse. Think midnight blues, greys or tans and you just cannot go wrong with that perfect style statement.
CANALI
GUCCI
018 | SEPTEMBER 11
JOHN RICHMOND
Observer
FASHIONWISE NEWS SEPTEMBER 2011
GET THAT PERFECT FIT So you have invested in a new suit, but didn’t care much beyond the cloth, colour or style. Gentlemen, stitch... err, stick to the basics and get the fit right. We tell you how. Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Make sure that the sleeves of your blazer or jacket don’t rest at your thumb knuckles when your arm is extended. The collar of the jacket must leave about an inch of your shirt’s collar visible. When looking for trousers, try them without shoes. They should touch the floor. With shoes, it should ideally cover one-third of your footwear. But remember, pants do shrink after a wash. So go for a shade longer than what you actually need. Dont belt your trousers too tight as it bunches the fabric at mid-section. When hemming your pants at the waist, place them below your belly button.
CANALI
SALVATORE FERRAGAMO
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA
019 | SEPTEMBER 11
The Style Observer
SEPTEMBER 2011
TOP STUFF
CUFFLINK CORNER
F
rom the simple glass buttons that appeared in the early 16th century to today’s bejeweeld studs, cufflinks have come a long way. It certainly adds a class to your elegant Italian suit, making you a hit in both the fashion and functionality department. Since we talk about fashion and re-engineering your looks, we recommend this as one of the must-have accessories in your collection. A cufflink always suggests the kind of personality you have. While the fun part of you would go for a Paul Smith’s collection, the royal in you would be attracted towards Rajesh Pratap’s recent collection. Check out our choices and pick the one that best suits your style.
PAUL SMITH
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA
RAJESH PRATAP SINGH
MONT BLANC
020 | SEPTEMBER 11
CORNELIANI
CANALI
The Style Observer
SEPTEMBER 2011
APPLE SMART COVER >> `4000
TUMI >> `5500
TUMI >> `5500
FENDI >> `5850
BELKIN >> `1799
TOP STUFF
COVER STORY
T
he cool tech savy in you has gone ahead and got this new in thing in the market and now you want to flaunt it. The trick is to do it in style. Go for one of those many covers on the shelves. The best we found is the Apple Smart cover: A four-segmented folding, flexible cover. It can lay flat with the iPad’s screen, fold up behind it into a pyramid shape so that it can stand up tall for viewing or giving it a slight rise to use its on-screen key-
board. To our delight it has a microfiber surface that wipes off the fingerprint, magnets to wrap itself for the cover and put in on sleep mode when it’s closed. We have other options for you. If you like colours, go for the Fendi’s new collection. While Belkin’s is sweared for its economical price, Italian brand Canali’s leather Ipad will be your thing if you are one of those black and suave kinds. And yes, Tumi’s Grey Lizard Ipad cover gets our thumbs up for being the most stylish of them all.
CANALI >> ON REQUEST
021 | SEPTEMBER 11
The T he Style Stylle Observer Obserrverr
PUMA
7 FOR ALL MANKIND
IN FOCUS
THE DENIM DYNAMICS
A
nd you thought you are too much of an alpha male and denim shirts are not for your kind. No, denim shirts are not the exclusive preserves of cowboys or rockstars. Now that you stand corrected, how about getting that extra zing in life and include a few denim shirts in your wardrobe.
7 FOR ALL MANKIND
DIESEL
022 | SEPTEMBER 11
All the top brands, from Diesel to Esprit, have this as a must have in their fall winter collection. Each colour is a hit whether its royal blue, indigo or greys. Meet the new breed which is a cross between the cowboy sturdiness and the rockstar charm.
SEPTEMBER 2011
2 3
1
4
5
6
BUTTON UP
1 to 3 > ESPIRIT From `1500 to `2000
4 > DIESEL
`55,295
5 > DIESEL
`56,895
6> 7 FOR ALL MANKIND `7995
023 | SEPTEMBER 11
The Style Observer
The Indian connection L
eading Italian menswear brand Etro is celebrating its Indian paisely connection by launching its limitededition jackets. Available in four editions, what you see here is solid midnight blue velvet adorned with striking contrast trims and linings and the other adorned with paisely design. They also have lush black and brown printed velvet in paisley patterns, a black wool edition with a proportionate burst of small gold thread paisleys and a black sheen wool with an allover tone on tone black jacquard paisley pattern. Price: `61,000/- onwards
GO ECONOMICAL
THE BUTCH WAY
San Frissco, a leading play player iin the footwear market, helps you to set yo your b best foot forward with the launch of its all-new economy range of footwear for men. Whether you wear a 3-piece suit or jeans and a t-shirt, San Frissco promises you the most fashionable men’s shoes that will have you strutting through the year offering a more distinguished look. These formal, highly comfortable moccasins and lace up shoes by San Frissco are especially designed for office going people. Apart from being stylish they are also protective in nature. These authentic men’s moccasins are made from genuine high grade leather that gives you years of relaxed wear.
DSquared2 eyewear brings to you a collection modeled to complement your macho style.The specially-crafted range is identified by the rich metal and wood used in each frame which expresses a unique macho personality through its distinguishing finish. So complement your features with the latest polishedwooden frame design by DSquared2 which boasts of its USP of not being too loud. Being simple and yet classy. So if you are looking for something to add character to your face but not take away any of your own attributes, then try out a pair from theri collection.
Price: `1095 to `1295
024 | SEPTEMBER 11
Price: `1900/-
SEPTEMBER 2011
ZIP IT IN STYLE Zip through the most mundane process of security checks during all your travel and travel fast with Victorinox new travel gear equipped with security fast pass. For all the travelers for whom time is of much essence, this feature helps reduces the baggage checking hassles and gives you the peace of mind essential for frequent corporate traveler. Security Fast Pass™ makes getting through airport security quick and easy by allowing laptops to remain inside the dedicated, protective compartment during checkpoint screenings. It front compartment features an internal divider to keep important documents organized, while the bottom panel features pen slots, business card holders or other electronic device storage. The top panel features two electronics pockets and music port. Price: `12,830/-
REDEFINE CLASS (PEN) Want to make a dazzling impression? Cruiser Pen has come out with their special swarovski studded range which promises the perfect blend of a superior writing experience courtesy its superfine German ink with classic good looks customized to appeal to your aesthetic senses. A premium pen which epitomizes class and redefines luxury and elegance, its elegant body is beautifully crafted in sterling silver 925, making it aesthetically and visually appealing and a must have for any pen connoisseur. Embedded with swarovski crystals and equipped with the finest writing technology, the Cruiser is a classic ball point pen which will enchant its audience with its sparkle. Price: `11,000/-
BLENDING EAST WITH WEST
SMOOTH TO TASTE
Some men live between two worlds, carrying in themselves a blend of West and East just as perfectly balanced as Yin and Yang. You can find them in Europe or America, although business, love or destiny will inevitably set their path towards the East. Ermenegildo Zegna celebrates these fascinating and deeply contemporary individuals by devoting the 2011 Fall/Winter collection to China, a country very well known to the brand: Zegna arrived there first 20 years ago, and has been successfully established ever since.
Allied Blenders and Distillers forays into the semi premium whisky segment with the introduction of‘Officers Choice Blue’. Smooth and exquisite, Officer’s Choice Blue is an intricate blend of pure grain whisky blended with Scottish vatted malts sourced from highland and isle. Price: `499/-
025 | SEPTEMBER 11
BIKINI TOP AND SHORTS FROM A SELECTION
Ola Nathalia, Como está? (Hello, how are you?) Namaste, tudo bem (everything ok in Portuguese) That’s all I know in Portuguese! So how long have been in India? It’s been two months now. And I am not going any time soon. What is that one thing a man should never tell his woman? Lies 026 | SEPTEMBER 11
What shocked you about India? Surely the traffic. At any given time of the day, there is traffic on Indian roads, and irrespective of where they are going, everybody always drives in the centre of the road. You are from the land of soccer. Can you kick the ball? Hardly. But I would love to learn cricket! What’s the worst lie you have ever told?
That I never lie. We are not complaining either. So how do you find Indian men? Intelligent, charming and gentlemen… Well most of them! You are invisible… what would you do Get inside a candy shop and wipe it clean! The one place you really want to visit and why. China. It would be fun to know how
nathalia
Regina
Girl Styling by Carlton Desouza & Sania Momin Hair and Make-up: Avni Rambhia
INTERVIEW
Interview by Nivedita Jayaram Pawar Photographs by Shweta Walavalkar
Hottest guy in India…who comes to mind?
John Abraham. He’s really hot. On seconds thoughts I like Imran Khan as well. SHORTS FROM A SELECTION // CUTWORK HEELS BY TRESMODE // GOWN BY VIYZON
027 | SEPTEMBER 11
life goes in a busy city that never stops. Tell us about the last time you embarrassed yourself? I was wearing my highest heels in a party and I fell down... in front of the most famous designer from my city in Brazil. I wanted the earth to part and take me in. What’s your greatest indulgence? Chocolates. Have you ever broken the law? Just my own ones. Tomboy or a princess? Tomboy for sure. I grew up with three brothers and didn’t have dolls for company. But that helped me with all my relationships. Your biggest regret? Oh God, why did I buy these shoes? I don’t need them! Trust me, I have this dialogue with myself very often. The one thing you’d like to learn before you die? How to perform reiki. What’s in your bag? Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. If you opened a specialty restaurant, where would it be and what would it serve? It would be in India serving Brazilian food… Feijoada (Black beans stew with pork, dried beef and spicy sausages) and pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread). You are shocked by? Stray animal’s roaming on the road. Do pick up lines work on you? Yes sometimes. It’s how you use them. But I would be much more interested in a guy who is straightforward and strikes a conversation with me. But any guy who seriously thinks I will fall for his wooing cliché needs to get a clue. If your partner cheated on you, you would… Turn the page and move ahead. In love, I can forgive, but I refuse to be a fool. What do you find attractive in a man? Self confidence. What’s a complete turn off? Body odour. What in a man sets your pulse racing? His humour. If you were the fashion police for a day you would ban men from wearing Sport shoes with formal pants. SHORTS AND JACKET FROM GOD MADE ME FUNKY // BRA FROM A SELECTION // BOOTS BY TRESMODE
INTERVIEW M GIRL
What’s that one thing from a man’s wardrobe that needs to be burnt?
Floral shirts! Hate that crudely coloured Hawaiians the sort of print you expect on curtains and wallpaper. Not on a man’s shirt! NET TOP FROM GOD MADE ME FUNKY // BRA FROM A SELECTION // SHORTS BY LECOANET HEMANT
029 | SEPTEMBER 11
Lucky Ali On his nomadic streak, his father Mehmood, and his unconventional music. Yes, he still sees UFOs! by Nivedita Jayaram Pawar
YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING ON YOUR ALBUM RAASTA MAN FOR SIX YEARS. WHAT TOOK SO LONG?
never really paid attention to it. Now when I sit with musicians, they correct me and I learn.
It wasn’t ready. I didn’t take any support or money from any music company. I utilised my own resources to complete the album. I wanted to monetise the online medium but realised it will take a few more years to mature.
YOU HAVE BEEN A REBEL... RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME, DEMOTED IN SCHOOL AND SO ON. WAS GROWING UP TOUGH FOR YOU?
WHY THE UNUSUAL NAME? That’s me. It’s the person next door – someone you don’t even look at.
FROM BREEDING RACEHORSES TO SELLING CARPETS AND WORKING AT AN OIL RIG… YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OFF THE BEATEN TRACK? WHY? It comes naturally to me. I did what I thought was right. It’s aright… it’s been a great journey.
WAS IT DIFFICULT GROWING UNDER THE FAMOUS MEHMOOD’S SHADOWS?
WHY SO LITTLE IN SO LONG?
Not at all. He just told me ‘don’t ever beg’. Drive a rickshaw if you have to. But don’t beg.
For me less is more. The more you try to express, the less people get you.
WHAT’S YOUR MUSIC? I do alternative music bordering on mature content. Not childish. I listen to my heart.
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH WHAT’S CHURNED OUT AS MUSIC TODAY? It doesn’t affect me. I didn’t make it. What affects me is what I do.
YOUR AUNT MEENA KUMARI WAS A MUCH CELEBRATED POET. DO YOU WRITE? Yes I do pen down my thoughts. I carry a pencil and a notebook. The pencil should have an eraser at the back. Just try it – you will be amazed at what thoughts come.
FOR SOMEONE WHO’S HAD NO FORMAL TRAINING IN MUSIC, APART FROM BEING THE CHOIR BOY, YOU HAVE DONE REMARKABLY WELL. Photograph: Rajiv Namathirtham
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I rebelled against things I never understood. I needed to understand. I was never running away but running to understand. I’d run from my father in Bangalore to my mother in Bombay. Once I ran off to England and then to America. When I look back, I think I was seeking my dad’s attention. The further I went away, the more he’d call me.
Maine music seekha nahin. Par upar wale ki rehmat se ho jata hain. I should have learnt but I
DO YOU STILL SEE UFOS? Yes. I saw one in March. You won’t believe what a sight it was. They are from the Federation of Light. They play with lights. I filmed it.
HOW COME ONLY YOU SEE IT? Because I look to the skies. I look at the stars. Just open your eyes, look to the sky and you will see all the glorious things. Thoda upar bhi dekho na.
YOU ARE A WANDERER. WHERE IS HOME NOW? Home is where the heart is. It’s not about wandering. I let my mind wander but I let myself travel. There is no road that contains me.
OTHER THAN MUSIC, WHAT ELSE INTERESTS YOU? I like planting. I just finished planting onions, palak, methi, beans, corn, coriander, thyme, sage and basil and garlic.
WHAT NEXT? Back to Bangalore… Rest.
on being a yogi, stardom, his ‘goofy music’ and his new album Kailasa Rangeele by Ritika Kumar
Photographs by Deepak Malik
WHAT’S WITH THESE FANCY WATCHES, COOL T-SHIRTS AND THE BLACKBERRY YOU FLAUNT THESE DAYS. TRYING HARD TO CHANGE YOUR IMAGE? I have always been a yogi at heart and I would like to remain one always. I am wearing this watch on the orders of my father-in-law. I have not changed. Aaj jeans pehani hai kal dhoti pehan lunga.
A YOGI WHO IS A SUFI SINGER. RIGHT? Sufi singer? I am not a sufi singer. I am a goofy singer. Yes. My music is about tickling people the right way. Make them happy and touch their soul. So there is no genre as such.
OK. IT WILL TAKE TIME TO GET USED TO THAT “GOOFY” PART. BUT HOW HAS THE JOURNEY BEEN... FROM ABSOLUTE ANONYMITY TO BEING FAMOUS? I also haven’t been able to figure it out. In the beginning, no one wanted to listen to my voice and now it’s loved. I don’t get the dynamics of it. And that is why I think I am no one to “think” or “plan” anything.
People call me mad and yes I am. I never behave the way I am expected to. I should have been depressed. But I wasn’t. I kept on doing small things, singing jingles and playback assignments here and there. And then one fine day I met my band members, Naresh and Paresh, and we started making our kind of “goofy” music. Suddenly everyone liked it.
A PIECE OF ADVISE FOR YOUNGSTERS. I think honesty is the best policy. You should
AND THEN CAME THE STARDOM...HOW never let that kid which is full of purity and truth die in you. It is rare these days and that is why it DID YOU DEAL WITH THAT? I would be stupid to think myself as a star. I have spent my childhood roaming around in the streets of Mayur Vihar (Delhi) and I still do it. I was then happy in that anonymity as well. The only difference now is that people feel happy when I am around. But when there is too much drama around me I always tend to look inwards, reassuring myself that this is transient.
YOU CERTAINLY TALK LIKE A GODMAN. I think I can look through people. I look for innocence. It is there in everyone, no matter the age. That gives a refill to my energy levels.
YOU EFFORTLESSLY CONNECT WITH THE PARTICIPANTS OF ‘SA RE GA MA PA LITTLE CHAMPS’. DO YOU LOOK (Gives a broad smile) I did not handle it any way. AT YOURSELF AS A GURU WHO IS HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO HANDLE REJECTION IN THE BEGINNING?
RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR FUTURE? I am no one to give them a future. They have something which is bigger than me and that is their talent. I chose to walk with them in this journey till the time I can and guide them. The rest is their devotion.
clicks with people. These are the set principles in life which would never change no matter what happens. I strongly believe in karma and dharma... Dharma production. (he winks).
YOU ARE ALSO COMING WITH YOUR NEW ALBUM IN SEPTEMBER. It is called Kailasa Rangeele and this time we are going a step further. After three albums, the audience know our thought process and our kind of music. But this time we want to give them something different. We are coming with this new concept called the concert album which I think will be a first for India. It will have 7-8 tracks and each one of them would have a video with it but all of them will be connected to each other with a same story. Something like a musical. 031 | SEPTEMBER 11
THE HUB FEATURES
Kailash Kher
by Nivedita Jayaram Pawar
LIGHT AND SOUND SHOW
K
nowing where to spend a Saturday night in town is as important as knowing a 24-hour chemist in your locality. Everyone wants to have the time of their life, especially on a weekend and the brains behind the newest night club in Delhi, Kitty Su, at The Lalit, have been working overtime to make sure that your evenings are well spent. What would have otherwise been just another hip place in the capital has instead now emerged a lively, dramatic and somewhat bizarre space decked out with evocative sculptures from Khajuraho, depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra and carved totem poles at the gold-gilded entrance. The music ranges from electro to pop, house to disco. Sumptuous tapestry in skilled patchwork and intricately-carved wooden jalis cover the walls while the uorescent LEDs in bright colors play hide-and-seek with your senses. There is a private area which is accessible only to a privileged few (read Bollywood) through electronic key cards. Kitty Su is also the place to drink without a care as the hotel promises drop services to the guests. Cheers to that!
The Lalit, New Delhi; Tel: (011) 44447666
FAST FOOD FUN
T
his new casual dining restaurant at the Fun Republic in Mumbai brings a fresh approach to classic American comfort foods. It also points out, albeit subtly, that fast food can go beyond the realm of burgers and fries. Wild Wild West serves a blend of American and continental cuisines with an assortment of sizzlers, pizzas, grills, sandwiches and cheesecakes.
The bar boasts some fresh fruit cocktails, Texas iced tea, Miami iced tea to its signature house drink – Moscow Mule, which is served in copper mugs. Pay attention to the daily specials scribbled on a black board. Desserts here are just as Americans like them: big enough to share, toothachingly sweet and over-the-top extravagant. Appealing, too. This is the best place to grab a bite after that late night movie. And if you so want, you could also catch amateur gigs here.
Fun Republic Building, Andheri West; Tel: (022) 26732916, 26732917
INTO THE WILDERNESS
SO SPA-TACULAR!
Y
ou don’t need to strip yourself of your masculinity when stripping down into a bathrobe, but you do need to leave your troubles at the door for the Heavenly massage at Westin Hotel, Mumbai. This 90-minute therapy is the ultimate in spoiling yourself. Heated herbal compress is used to relax muscles before essential oil blends are massaged into the body. This creates a multi-sensory experience through a balance of scent, touch and warm herbs. The masseur (ask for Mary Soni) digs out every recalcitrant knot with the vigour you always ask for but rarely get. Even palms and toes are attended to. The kneading improves circulation and rejuvenates sore muscles (you know, from all those workouts at the gym). Try the sauna afterwards and then hit the restaurant for some fine Italian dining. After all, food is a great healer too.
f your idea of a perfect weekend is more than lying on the beach and turning your back to the sand comes easy to you, head to 19 Degree North at Aamby Valley. A destination for the audacious, daring and brave-hearted this adventure sports facility spread over 540 acres of land is just perfect for starved sports enthusiasts. Crawling around in a boulder field, hauling down a whooped out trail in an ATV, climbing a wall of more than 35 feet, or zipping across a cable at the height of more than 200 feet are things that satiate the wild side of any man. And yes fulfill your dreams of driving those earth moving machines. The less daring can trek in the Devgarh plateau or learn to fly remote controlled aircrafts. Lastly don’t miss the jungle safari where you explore the uncharted path, atop a Gypsy. Experienced marshals take you on an exhilarating ride across the picturesque Sahayadri Mountains. Speeding over winding paths, wading through flowing streams, feeling the wind in your hair and rain on your face, this is an experience that literally leaves no bone unturned.
Tel: (022) 39807444
The Westin Mumbai Garden City, Goregaon (east); Tel: 22 6147 0000
BANDRA COMES TO POWAI!
O
ut of the Blue (OTB), Bandra’s favourite casual dining restaurant with its quirky and fun spirit, has opened its heart and doors to Powai! Great ambience, drool-worthy continental food and a stage that comes alive with live music and entertainment, bazaars, art events and more… OTB is the perfect place to unwind after a hectic day. Famous for its sizzlers, pastas and fondues, OTB also does a good range of salads, dips and sumptuous desserts. M particularly loves the ‘Sunset Supper’ every day between 5:30 pm and 8 pm when the drinks come free! Also find out what the stars have in store for you at the ‘Destiny Bazaar’ held every Wednesday with tarot card readers, face readers and astrologers. OTB Powai has created an air-conditioned courtyard with no rain but umbrellas, no trees but parrots and lots of foliage to give the feeling of a courtyard! The décor is rustic and the lighting ambient, albeit with a few quirky twists – like the lopsided tunnel which teases your mind when you enter!
Level I, Haiko Mall, Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, Mumbai; Tel: (022) 2517344 033 | SEPTEMBER 11
REGULA REGULARS ARS
I
by Zahid H. Javali
Wining and dining women wasn’t easy until now
( (
ver wondered why your date didn’t call you back after that cocktail party? Did something go wrong somewhere? Women are a picky species and they can spot everything under the sun, including that little bit of shaving foam behind your ears you forgot to wash off. You could dismiss her saying she’s not your type. But what if she is? Therefore, all you need to do is sharpen your wining and dining skills right down to the last sip. The road to temptation heaven is in the details. In vino veritas. In wine, there is truth. And impressing women on a date isn’t difficult. But men do the stupidest things and end up eating crow. Some of the silliest reasons quoted by women for dumping their men include: bad hair, smelly mouth, did not carry enough cash, wore too much perfume, low self-esteem, wore gypsy jeans, had pink streaks on his hair, his watch didn’t work, his shoes were worn out and he used my phone to make a call. Surprised? Well,, don’t be. The list goes on. p g What you need to remember is to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes. Wining and dining women begins with the way you groom yourself. Here goes the route map to Temptation Island.
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After dining Take a walk. This is the time where your hearts are racing and things have worked or not worked. Get funny and have her laugh. Enjoy it. Turn the atmosphere into a highly romantic one. Honestly, confess to yourself. What are you looking for? Do you really want to jump into bed with her on the very first date? Even if you want to, don’t initiate it. It’s always better to try that the next time you meet. But if she’s the one who initiates it, it’s better to not miss out on yet another opportunity to impress her.
On bed, if and when
Dress rehearsal
While dining
Take a bath. Smell good. Musky deos work wonders. Feel good – we are talking about clean hair and good oral hygiene, not mood-enhancing drugs. Dirty and long nails on men are as repulsive to women as butter on the corner of your mouth. Keep them trimmed and your lips moistened (what if she wants to kiss you?). Wear anything you’re comfortable with. Don’t dress up to make an impression. Be yourself and you’ll have her trailing you. Take care of your shoes and don’t forget to wear fresh socks.
Do not get too drunk (if you are drinking). This will scare her, unless she is a more voracious drinker. Eat slowly and tidily. Only talk after you’ve swallowed your food in full. Imagine bits and pieces flying across and parking themselves on her pretty face. She’d be mortified. Give her the freedom to choose the menu, unless there is something exceptionally nice that you want her to try. Do not seem frivolous. And yes, even if you are over excited about meeting her on a date, play hard to get. Talk sense and do not bore with cricket updates or WWF details. She will think you are like the rest of the species: stereotypical and uninteresting. Don’t make yourself seem like a wannabe shouting out loud about your accomplishments either. Women love to talk. So ask them the right questions. Give them enough attention. It’s okay to ask them about favourite restaurants, movies, foods, but for temptation’s sake, don’t ask about her ex-boyfriend or her y current husband she wants to get away from. Make sure your talk stays interesting. Choose interesting topics and discuss at varying lengths. Impress her with your ideas. They could range from aura reading
At the restaurant Choose the finest table, the more minimalistic, the better. Make sure you get enough privacy and a flower bouquet on your table. Candle-lit restaurants are more romantic; even ethnic ones with subdued lighting. If you’re the first one to arrive, make sure you don’t seem agitated, and g , even if you y are. Be gracious g stand up when she arrives. Do all that chivalry demands. And do not let her pay p the bill, even if she’s more loaded than n you are. And do this every time. You will wiill earn your dividends later.
Yes, everybody has watched porn. But porn sex is not real sex, so do not attempt it. Make sure you know what her likes and dislikes are and then go about working out your plans. Do not lose control in bed. Go about it slowly and blissfully. It works wonders for both of you. Not to mention, exploring new positions, aromas and mood lighting.
Dinner and a movie If you want to escape the big screen, surround sound and the crowds, surprise her with your cooking skills. Cook her a meal at home loaded with aphrodisiacs like pine nuts, asparagus, garlic, avocados, arugula, prawns, nutmeg, leeks, mustard, star anise and bay leaves. Not to mention, chocolate. Spice up the affair by telling her the merits of each aphrodisiac while serving them to her. After dinner (by candlelight, if you’re a romantic), pop in a DVD of a mutually favourite movie classic or a foreign film you won’t find at the theatre. The rest will happen, with or without a generous helping of the aphrodisiacs. You’ve impressed her enough. She’s yours.
Footnote: You know you’ve impressed a woman when she g gets back to yyou. Take that as a call forr the next dine out. But if you think can you ca an skip the dinner and go straight to act, the act t, don’t. Dining and wining is what attracted attract ted her to you. Lose wine and you lose your yo our woman. %(* | SEPTEMBER 11
REGULARS
to candid photography to bungee jumping to photographing nudes a la Titanic. If you find her the adventurous kind, pretend to read her palm and forecast the night ahead in lurid details. If she laughs and your eyes meet, you’ve tamed the shrew.
THE HUB REGULARS
THE FIFTH ESTATE F
amous American author William Wright once wrote, “One of the nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
the pomegranate reduction adds to the mouth-watering taste. An otherwise non-vegetarian recipe, watch out for an innovative twist for vegetarians by chef de cuisine by Raman Preet Singh Ahluwalia.
So, this weekend celebrate that break from the routine at Ummami, a multicuisine restaurant offering Mediterranean, pan-Asian, Japanese and Indian dishes in Gurgaon.
If the meat-eater in you is looking for more, try the Nut Crumbed Snapper Fillet. The Red Snapper fish is known for its firm texture and sweet, nutty flavour. But to give us the rare ummami taste, Ahluwalia blended it with olives, red tomatoes, yellow peppers and green and yellow zucchinis. From the Indian section of the menu, the chef decided to give us a taste of the melt-in-mouth Kakori kebabs.
Ummami in Japanese means ‘the fifth taste’, after the four basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. It is this rare fifth, the feeling of sumptuousness you get after a great dish. The chefs here claim to be experts in fulfilling each of your senses (don’t get us wrong here, they only mean food). Drop in to taste their delicious sushis or try out the innovative steamed sweet dish. You can also order a pizza customised specially for you. In case, you want more, go in for Ummami’s vintage wine collection
THE FOOD We started with the Mediterranean cuisine and opted for a light starter called Carpaccio of Pickled Beet. It is sprinkled with goat cheese and black olives, and 03+ | SEPTEMBER 11
While we were still savouring the kebabs, the chef ordered the restaurant’s most sought after item: the sushi. Ahluwalia says the sushi should be turned upside and dipped lightly in the soy sauce. Otherwise the rice part of the dish will soak up too much sauce, ruining the flavour balance. For dessert, we were treated to Star Anise Scented White Chocolate Bao Zi, popularly known as steamed sweet momos. These little dumplings of heaven have a filling of corn kernel and white chocolate wrapped in small pastry discs
by Ritika Kumar
made of wheat and potato starch dough, which melts in the mouth.
THE DÉCOR Ummami decor seems tailor-made for a romantic dinner with your special one. The interiors are elegant with brown and beige furniture. The high ceiling, made of wooden rafters, is embellished with chandeliers that sparkle over the dining area. The open kitchens, with chefs tossing yellow, red peppers, add to the experience. The restaurant also has reserved dining areas for large groups.
WHAT WE SAY It is a high-end restaurant for luxury eating, where you enjoy the ambience, the food and the company of that someone special. But if you are in a mood for a quick bite, try their delectable desserts and sushis.
Facts Ummami 1st Floor, Global Foyer, Golf Course Road Sector 43, Gurgaon, Haryana -122002 Tel: (0124) 4558000 Price: Meal for two `2000-2500 without alcohol
TEN YEARS TO TOMORROW A special series of essays
Shiamak Davar Renowned for introducing contemporary jazz and western forms of dances in India, Shiamak Davar has choreographed for a number of hit Hindi films, including Dil To Pagal Hai and Dhoom 2. He is also a popular TV personality, judging reality shows such as Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and Dance Premier League.
I
I see our country dancing to a bright future in the next decade. Today our society has become more open and receptive to new ideas, thanks largely to the maturity of the youth of our country. Despite the influence of western culture, there is a strong belief in our roots. For me, India is moving in the right direction: And as younger leaders enter the political scenario, I see a future that is not shackled by bureaucracy!
Dance is in our genes. We Indians have this fervour for life that gives us the ability to find joy in even the smallest things; and find a reason to dance and celebrate! India has a vast culture and we take pride in celebrating life. India also has a plethora of talent and I’m on a mission to find this talent, especially from the interiors of the country. This is the reason why I keep bringing international faculty here. This helps people get the right knowledge and training. Of course, I also personally train my dance company so that my students get complete knowledge.
dance company performs people love it because they see the real India through dance movement. India knits various ethnicities together. And Bollywood represents the entire nation: It holds the essence of all these cultures. Today, Bollywood is huge internationally. Bollywood dancing is an individualistic style and has gained so much popularity. I am often asked whether dance in the future will be solo performances or group performances. There will be both. A visual is created through group performances, dancers feed from each others’ energy and this makes a group performance special. A dancer’s solo performance shows their individual skill and artistry. So I feel the two will continue to thrive together.
I am still teaching at the SDIPA. This is the purpose of my existence. That is the beauty of performing arts – once you realise your gift and share it with others, it stays with you forever. I feel that just being able to move well does not make you a professional dancer. Yes, In the next 10 years, I am confident that I do believe that dance is the greatest stress our dance forms will reach the interiors of buster and makes people happy. But if one the country. That is where the actual talent wants to take it professionally, a lot of training is hidden, waiting to be discovered. My is required. Giving hopefuls this opportunity confidence stems from that fact that today is the reason why I have started a One-Year parents are ready to give an opportunity to Program which is a structured course to help their children. Kids have so much love in them become professionals. Reality shows them and their energy is so great, that each give you fifteen minutes of fame, but you need time I dance with them or see them on stage I the right knowledge, training and technique to feel I’m in a better place. Dance has the power sustain and pass on the gift. to heal, and this will continue to be a factor in the future too. I have always promoted new talents. All the instructors at my institute do professional Of course, our traditional dance forms will stay shows with me and assist me in films, shows forever. Our culture is the greatest thing we and events. See Master Marzi from the TV have. Their beauty, detailing and expressions show ‘Dance India Dance Doubles’ – he did are unmatchable. My style of choreography, an excellent job as a judge! There is no greater which is popularly called the Shiamak Style, satisfaction than sharing your gift, and teaching is unique because it has a strong traditional dance to people. This is the reason why most Indian influence. Internationally, when my instructors stay away from doing films and this 03, | SEPTEMBER 11
is the reason why I’ve done such few films. Dance defies age. Look at my guru, Debbie Allen. She is still so fit. If you take care of your body, and treat it like a temple, it will never fail you. Respect it as God’s creation and it will always stay with you. Yes, of course at a younger age your body is more agile and you have more stamina, but there is still no limit to the age up to which you can dance and perform. Over the next decade, I would still like to learn new forms of dance. The art is constantly evolving globally, so there is always scope to learn. Everyday I learn something new. Each time I dance I learn something more. Everyone has an individual style, so I learn as much from my instructors as I teach them. And the more you give, the more you get. There is no end to learning. (As told to Jigar Shah, Bollywood News Service)
KINKY WITCH Method Glass
Build up Hurricane
Ingredients
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Dark Rum Amaretto Brandy Kahlua Lime juice Coke
15 ml 15 ml 15 ml 15 ml 5ml Top up
Garnish
Lime wheel
COCKTAILS
:KHQ 0U ALL JACKED UP Wondering who is Mr. Wong? It’s you who knows how to have a good time. We asked Sandeep Varma of The Mozart Cafe in Gurgaon to help you get more from your drinks. His suggestion: Don’t go by the book... just go wild Photographs by Vipin Kardam Styling by Azad Mohan Assisted by Deepak Malik
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PURPLE BUTTERFLY Method Glass
Build up Brandy Balloon
Ingredients Vodka Raspberry puree Lime Juice Red bull
60 ml
Garnish
Frozen Raspberry
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15 ml 10 ml To top
CO CO COCKTAILS OCK CKT CK TA AIL ILS
THIRD DEGREE Method Glass
Shaken and double-strained Martini
Indgredients Vanilla Vodka 60 ml In House Spice Syrup* 15 ml
Garnish
Star Anise
*For 1 ltr in-house spice syrup: Take 6-8 numbers of Star Anise; 14-15 Cloves; 3-4 sticks of Cinnamon; 1 kg sugar; 1/2 ltr water. Mix all of them in hot water kettle keep it for 15-20 minutes. Filter and pour into the bottle.
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KYOTO Method Glass
Muddle, shaken and double strained Martini
Ingredients Lemon Grass Infused Vodka* 60 ml Fresh pomegranate 20-25 seeds Pomegranate Syrup 5 ml Lime juice Dash
Garnish
Lemongrass Stick
*Reci pe for 2 ltrs of Lemon Grass Infused Vodka: Take 8-10 sticks of Lemon Grass. Cut them into small chunks. Put 2 ltrs of Vodka for boiling. Add chunks of lemon grass after crushing them slightly to release the oils. Bring Vodka to simmer. Add 250 ml of distilled water.(Vodka evaporates on boiling and concentrates when covered from top.) Cover from top with the lid to reduce evaporation. Take off the burner after 8-10 minutes of boiling. Let it cool for 45 minutes. Press the boiled lemon grass to extract more flavour. Filter and bottle the infusion.
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COCKTAILS
KIWI-MELON MARGARITA Method Glass
Shaken or blended Margarita
Ingredients Tequila Triple Sec Melon syrup Kiwi syrup Lime juice Sugar syrup
45 ml 15 ml 15 ml 15 ml 15 ml 5 ml
Garnish
Melon Ball
ROSMARINO Method: Glass:
Muddled and double strained Martini
Ingredients Rosemary Infused Vodka* 45 ml Fresh Orange chunks 4ml Orange juice 15 ml Lime Juice 5ml Triple sec 15 ml
Garnish
Tangerines with rosemary
*Reci pe for 2 ltr of Rosemary Infused Vodka: Take 2-3 bunches of Rosemary. Put 2 ltrs of Vodka for boiling. Add bunches of rosemary after crushing them slightly to release the oils. Bring Vodka to simmer. Add 250 ml of distilled water. (Vodka evaporates on boiling & concentrates when covered from top.) Cover from top with the lid to reduce evaporation. Take off the burner after 8-10 minutes of boiling. Let it cool for 45 minutes. Filter and bottle the infusion.
Garnish 044 | SEPTEMBER 11
Tangerines with rosemary
MOJITO Glass
Muddled and mixed Hi Ball
COCKTAILS
Method
Ingredients Bacardi White Fresh Mint leaves Lemon chunks Mojito syrup Lemon juice Soda
Garnish
60 ml 8 to 10 4 to 5 15 ml 15 ml To Top
Fresh mint leaves
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YO MELONA Method Glass
Muddled and double strained Martini
Ingredients Vodka Watermelon Fresh mint leaves Watermelon syrup Mojito syrup
60 ml 8 chunks
Garnish
Few roundels of watermelon with 3 mint leaves on satay stick
8 to 10 7 ml 5 ml
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COCKTAILS
MR. WONG ALL JACKED UP Method Glass
Muddled Old fashion Fashion
Ingredients Jack Daniel Triple Sec Apple Juice Fresh grapes(white and red) Apple chunks Orange chunks
45 ml 15 ml 10 ml
Garnish
Black grapes
6 to 8 4 to 5 3 to 4
by Sanjiv Nair
Sukiyaki Western Django
C’era una volta il West
(Once Upon A Time in the West) Italy (1968)
(The Mole) Mexico (1970)
(Director: Takashi Miike; Starring: Hideaki Ito, Masanobu Ando, Shun Oguri and Quentin Tarantino)
(Director: Sergio Leone; Starring: Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards)
(Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky; Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio and David Silva)
I
ne of the trippiest movies of all time, El Topo is a western like no other. Chock-full of allegories, the movie dabbles with subjects like Christianity, Latin American philosophies, spirituality and enlightenment. The criterion collection box set would have you believe that this is a spaghetti western. A western yes, but a spaghetti western it most certainly is not. The movie begins with a legendary gunslinger, El Topo, travelling through the deserts on horseback with his naked son. His first endeavour has him killing the bandits who slaughtered an entire village. The bandit leader’s slave, a beautiful woman then instructs the gunslinger to kill the four great gunmasters to become the greatest in the world. El Topo’s subsequent journey through greatness, stigmata, purgatory and redemption is captured beautifully in this cult classic. The movie has served as inspiration for the greatest of talents including David Lynch, John Lennon Bob Dylan and Dennis Hopper. The poster featuring El Topo on a horse with his naked son is one of the most iconic images in world cinema and the movie to this date remains one of the greatest albeit a rather flawed western.
(Japan) (2007)
A
hidden treasure in a remote western town becomes the motivation of conflict between two warring tribes – The ‘Red’ Genjis and the ‘White’ Heikes. Into this town walks a highly skilled gunman whose value as a mercenary is made immediately evident to both tribes who try to lure him through promises of wealth, power and women. The gunman, with his own clandestine motives triggers a bidding war between the two, with due payment being made with a high toll of dead bodies. Takashi Miike’s genius is well renowned and amongst his most illustrious fans is the prodigious Quentin Tarantino. The story of a gunman with his own hidden agenda, who walks into a town with two warring factions, is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. The gattling gun of Django and references to the Tale of Heike (the epic story of the great wars in the 12th century in Japan which brought about the era of Samurai domination), all noisily fall into place as the action packed Sukiyaki rolls into the final standoff between, no less than four different groups, each of course, with their own agenda. Tarantino himself makes a guest appearance as Piringo, a legendary gunrunner who also happens to be quite the motor mouth.
M Factor: Tarantino, Miike, a Gattling Gun and hot Jap women. Reeeee- spect! 0)- | SEPTEMBER 11
t is a daunting task to preview Once Upon a Time in the West. As an unsuspecting viewer anyone might pick this DVD up for the acclaims endorsing it. But a western is a western – Guns, dust, towns in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of guys with worn out hats and itchy trigger fingers. These stereotypes are omnipresent in Once Upon a Time.., but never before have they been elevated to such dizzying levels of mythological significance. The story is set in the fictional town of Flagstone. A land tussle over a railroad construction forms the backdrop for a vendetta of vengeance between the slick, cunning and seasoned gunrunner Frank, played by the suave and oh so evil, Henry Fonda and the silent, brutal and enigmatic nameless man with a dubious agenda, played impeccably by Charles Bronson. To enjoy the movie in all its glory and to avoid ridiculous and jarring pans, which are a travesty to the film’s brilliant cinematography, ensure that you watch the widescreen version. The paradigm for all cowboy westerns.
M Factor: Claudia Cardinale – Google her and stop asking stupid questions.
El Topo
O
M Factor: Mexican women getting their sexy on. Often with each other. Bliss!
(Let the Bullets Fly) China (2010)
L’expérience secrete (Blueberry) France (2004)
Blueberry
(The Good, the Bad and the Weird) South Korea (2008)
(Director: Jiang Wen; Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Jiang Wen, Carina Lau, Ge You)
(Director: Jan Kounen; Starring: Vincent Cassell, Juliette Lewis, Michael Madsen, Djimon Honsou)
(Director: Kim Ji-woon; Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, Jung Woo-sung)
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àng Z Dàn Fi is as much a complex and witty narrative of political conspiracies as it is a brazen, neverrun-out-of-ammo, action-packed gun fest. The warring years of the 1920s in provincial China forms the backdrop of this Oriental Western. Notorious bandit chief ‘Pocky’ Zhang (Jiang Wen) usurps the title of Governor of Goosetown from Old Tang, who is a small time imposter himself. His plans to derail the corrupt governance of the town hits a roadblock as he comes up against the immoral mayor and local mobster Master Huang (Chow Yun-Fat). The deceptions and ambuscades come thick and fast as mind games and a battle of wits juggernaut into the blood soaked climax with a final showdown between the two power hungry protagonists – followed by a round of entertaining banter between the two while they grab a smoke. Classic stuff! Packed with dark humour and stylish repartees, it is most definitely the most loquacious of all films on the list. Directed with panache and stylishly shot, it rides firmly on the back of its continuous action sequences. This one is not for the faint of heart.
M Factor: Men never running out of bullets, Chow Yun Fat returns to form and Zhao Ming goes topless. The Orient doesn’t get any better than this.
ean Giraud, more popularly known as Moebius is renowned as a revolutionary surrealist comic book artist. The niche which his alter ego, Moebius, has carved for himself is in fact so strong that it has significantly overshadowed the works of Jean Giraud himself. But before the inception of his doppelgänger, Jean Giraud had created one of the most memorable, atypical, non-conformist and sadly, underrated Franco-Belgian comic character – Michael Steven Donovan aka ‘Blueberry’. Donovan was the racist son of a rich farmer from the southern states of America, who flees from home after being framed for a murder he did not commit. He is saved by a tribe of Native Americans who take him in as one of their own. A reformed Blueberry, returns as a remarkable mix of a cowboy and Indian, championing the Native American cause. Renegade Dutch filmmaker, Jan Kounen stays true to Jean Giraud’s plot to this point, after which he completely rehashes it and transforms it into a bizarre tale, reminiscent of Giraud’s alter ego Moebius’s work.
M Factor: A Frenchman playing a cowboy is as cool as cool gets. Not just any Frenchman mind you – This is ‘The’ Vincent Cassell aka Monica Bellucci’s husband. Out with them notebooks while you take down notes.
t’s the 1930s and in the deserts of Manchuria the fates of an ice cold bounty hunter, a notorious gang leader, and a bike riding train robbing weirdo are intertwined over a map with an unknown treasure. To the madness are added the volatile and unpredictable Japanese army and a bunch of bungling bandits and the resulting bundle of chaos, anarchy and hilarity is what Joheunnom Nabbeunnom Isanghannom is all about. High stakes action, kick started by a terrific train robbery are what follow in this roller coaster Korean western.
One of the most expensive films in South Korean film history the film pays homage to Sergio Leone classics and is quite a spectacular film by its own merit. Incredible set designs, breakneck edits and a talented cast led by the awesome Song Kang-ho, the film is as much fun as you can pack into a film. In its blistering pace it mashes in the spontaneity of an Indiana Jones flick and inspite of the rare moment of gravity, the movie never takes itself too seriously. The Good, the Bad and the Weird is genre busting fare and has quite aptly been baptised the first ‘kimchee western’. Watch!
M Factor: The most fun you will have while watching a movie, this side of Indiana Jones.
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Ràng Z Dàn Fi
Joheun Nom Nabbeun Nom Isanghan Nom
TT rapped
by
M’s fortresse de Style et de la Survie seems to have relented the tight
hold it exercises on its feverishly stonewalled secrets,
especially after the overwhelming success of our guide to the summer of
BLOCKBUSTERS. This time around, the powersthat-be unleash the five mantras which will give
you omniscient vision into the world of primetime television. These mantras, however, might result in a stroppy addiction to the boob-tube. You have been warned‌. by Sanjiv Nair
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Holmes loves crime. So does ScorsWese.
BBC’s modern-day rendition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic has a metrosexual Sherlock sporting the tag of a sociopath with as much comfort as his made-to-fit suits and his Asperger-ish tendencies. Sort of like a younger Dr. Gregory House; minus the limp and the fake-genuine American accent. He gratifies viewers by guiding them through the simplest paths to the most gloriously arcane deductions. Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the contemporary Sherlock with the furious energy of a riptide, all the while flipping the analytical equivalent of a middle finger to dim-witted cynics. Sherlock loves to SMS and bask in the miasma of multiple nicotine patches. He also betrays a hesitant affection, which borders suspiciously on the homoerotic, towards Watson. The plot is tight, the production resolute, the twists unpredictable and the show, inspite of its hour-and-a-half runtime, a
ton of fun. Just one question though. Where the bloody hell are the women? Much like his British cousin, Martin Scorsese’s romancing of the mob has been as ubiquitous as romances get. Not satiated by the Italian mafioso and their ‘wise guy’ lore he has dabbled with the history of the notorious Irish gangs and the villainous hordes from the United States of Jack Nicholson. Legend has it that the creator of ‘The Sopranos’, approached Marty, with his concept of a television series with (Steve) Buscemi about the life and times of crime kingpin Nucky (Jones). Marty in turn got in touch with his friend Marky (Wahlberg) and together they became executive producers of Boardwalk Empire, the show with the most number of schmuck-named people under a single asbestos roof. The show has broken several records, not the least of which is the record of the ‘most expensive pilot episode in the history of television’, an episode directed by Scorsese himself. If you still need a reason to watch, we’ve got two words for you – Golden Globes.
MANTRA #2
Abrams and Nolan join Jesus to create primetime havoc More often than not, fantasy team ups in the entertainment industry disappoint – Big stars getting together with bigger filmmakers – it happens all the time. Remember Joel Schumacher getting Chris O’ Donnell, Schwarzenegger, Clooney, Uma Thurman and Alicia Silverstone together for Men with Rubber Nipples Batman and Robin. The catastrophic nature of the project can be summed up by the vapourized careers of everyone attached to the project. Barring Clooney, of course. He still never looks people in the eye. Up, down and all around but never straight in the eye. Person of Interest, thankfully enough is not another mega team up from hell. Ironically enough, its roots lie in another Batman film. Jonathan Nolan, while writing the Dark Knight, conceptualised a story about future crimes and their prevention. Jim Caviezel, a highly underrated actor, whose career nosedived since his portrayal of Jesus in Passion of the Christ, plays Reese, a former CIA agent who reappears while the world presumes he is dead; sort of like a second coming. Michael Emerson aka Benjamin Linus from Lost, plays Finch, a reclusive and eccentric billionaire who has developed a program that can determine future crimes. Ben and Jesus team up to chastise would-be sinners with cool action sequences, and insane explosions, funded by the moneys of executive producer and the Jew with Midas’s touch JJ Abrams. Person of Interest holds the US record for the most watched pilot episode of a drama in the past 15 years.
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MANTRA #1
MANTRA #3
Sitcoms get a shot of testosterone
Ever noticed how sitcoms have spelt doom for good old-fashioned masculinity? Call it a raving conspiracy theory, but the rare powerful female archetypes are becoming the norm and men are not even aware of it. Monica overpowers Chandler, Lily overpowers Marshall and Sofia Vergara overpowers aaaayyverybody. The alpha males, Joey, Barney Stinson and their ilk, have been reduced to ‘comic relief’. NO MORE! Roars a reinvigorated Tim Allen as he unleashes chest pounding, muscle encapsulated humour from the glorious 1990s. In Last Man Standing, he is the man with the coolest job since his stint as a power tools salesman in Home Improvement – marketing director for an outdoor sporting goods store. While his job has him calling the shots, at home he is rather out of place with his wife and daughters ruling the 05' | SEPTEMBER 11
roost(er?). Driving a pick-up truck and armed with a powerdrill, he kapows his manliness back in place with humour which might be antique, but is still quite funny. After all, any show which asks ‘What’s Glee?’ deserves our rapt attention. The second show completely empathizes with the child in us and quite aptly is called Man Up. ABC’s riotous new comedy is about men with childish addictions to Playstations, porn and sports channels (sound familiar?) who decide that the confines of domestic life have suppressed the manliness in them for way too long. In order to fix just that, the three embark on the most hilarious of misadventures which has them gate-crashing weddings, playing basketball with men twice their size and, of course, the chefd’oeuvre – multiplayer video gaming. The pilot is hilarious with humor reminiscent of Arrested Development. As the French would say – Bring on the beer!
MANTRA #4
Medieval fantasy is rated R and awesome
Postpartum depression is the closest comparison to the despair felt by LOTR fans when the franchise came to an end. Honour, friendship and bravado on a scale as grand and a world as mythical would rarely be seen ever again. In search of gratification, fans spread themselves thin watching every medieval fantasy movie the world had to offer. Satiation however, would lie nearly a decade away with a story disparate in premise and treatment but with its rich production laden heart in a jewel encrusted right place Game of Thrones is a medieval fantasy based on George R.R. Martin’s series of best-selling novels titled A Song of Ice and Fire. Set in the kingdom of Westeros, Game of Thrones chronicles the violent conflicts between warring factions for the throne. Deceit, lies and a plot with more twists than a plateful of medieval spaghetti ensure the lack of even a single dull moment. The production design is incredibly intricate with a focus on the minutest of details, right down to the brownish crumb of dried blood on hazardous weapons. The action is epic and the performances superb. The women are sensual and often in a state of undress, not a measly attempt at improved show ratings, but a genuine faithfulness to the source. Sean Bean in the lead as Eddard Stark is royal and full of gravitas, but the show stealer has to be the remarkable Peter Dinklage as the conniving Tyrion Lannister. The show is due to premier soon on HBO. Keep both eyes and a seeing stone out for this one.
MANTRA #5
Spielberg’s fixations are slightly perverse. Thank god for that!
Terra Nova, in the simplest of terms, is a pre-historic, sci-fi, adventure-drama show which borrows heavily from Avatar, Total Recall and a bunch of time travel and end of the world flicks and dumps it into a blender with dinosaurs. The byproduct of Steven Spielberg’s depraved Jurassic fixation, the show’s two-hour pilot which debuted in this year’s comic con, has wowed audiences enough to have inspired him to sanction Jurassic Park 4 (Oh the horror!), but never mind that. Terra Nova looks brilliant, is technically spiffy and has special effects which are awe inspiring – definitely by a TV show’s standards at least. In the year 2149, mankind is threatened by extinction with their only hope being a journey through a
time machine to a very green place, 85 million years ago. Quite why do they have to land bang in the middle of a jungle full of dinosaurs and not a civil society somewhere in the midst of the renaissance is anyone’s guess. The point is, now that they are in the idyllic preserve of primeval and stunningly scenic nature, who will protect them from the dangers of T Rexes, Velociraptors and belligerent budget cuts? To the rescue jumps Duke Nukem’s 60-year-old lookalike, the inimitable Stephen Lang from Avatar. His demeanour betrays leadership, but his sardonic face betrays treachery and cunning. Of course, there is the minor matter of the Shannon family, who are oblivious of the dangers their voyage into the past, reflective of the falling standards of grade school education in a hundred years. For all the sarcasm though, we highly recommend this show, thanks to the initial rushes. We only hope that the show is broadcast in India in HD as well, because visually it is magnificent. 05( | SEPTEMBER 11
10 Haunting heartbreakers
Back in the foggy ruins of time, an English Romantic poet waxed lyrical that our sweetest songs tell of our saddest thoughts. Well said, Shelley. A perfectly aimed heartbreaker can crack the toughest carapace and, if you deem yourself harder than nails, seek out your Achilles Heel. Here are 10 that tear me up. Feel free to disagree! by Bijoy Venugopal
Photographs: Shutterstock
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10. Wild World
Cat Stevens
Unless your first listen was of the Mr Big version, you’d know that the mind behind the charmingly naïve Wild World was Steven Demetre Georgiou, better known as Cat Stevens, who had a dalliance with model and actress Patti D’Arbanville. After they split, Stevens, ever the raconteur, was compelled to spin his heartbreak into a ditty. Wild World is thought to be a wrenching farewell to his estranged love, laced somewhere with a sardonic sprig. Decades later, Stevens (now answering to Yusuf Islam following a leap of faith) denied this, averring that the song was more about his “losing touch with home and reality”. But then, who can forget that insistent strumming intro, his racked voice and the infectious trail-off to the chorus? The song appeared on Stevens’ third and most popular studio album Tea for the Tillerman (A&M / Island, 1970). By the time he issued his fourth, most of the pain had evidently been soothed, for that album contained
the madrigal-inspired Lady D’Arbanville, in which he metaphorically interred his love. Heartbreaker: But if you wanna leave take good care/ Hope you have a lot of nice things to wear...
9. Georgia on my Mind Ray Charles
While songs of estrangement are cathartic, songs of reconciliation redeem. Listening to Ray Charles’ soulful Georgia on My Mind, you can be forgiven for imagining that he wrote it. In fact, the song was three decades old when the blues stalwart covered it for The Genius Hits the Road (ABC Records, 1960). Written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, Georgia… is the official song of the American state of the same name. The original had a first verse that was later excised. Covered by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Glenn Miller among a host of heavies, it was Charles, born in Georgia, who recorded
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the most-played version. Call it homesick ditty or paean of longing, it’s hard to get out of your head. Heartbreaker: Still in peaceful dreams I see / The road leads back to you...
8. Forever Young Bob Dylan
The sincerest love song is written for a child, free as it is of desire’s stranglehold. Of Forever Young there are versions and versions – some that Bob Dylan has himself mangled without pity – but the earliest recording from Planet Waves (1974), recorded with The Band, shines brightest. Though Dylan, true to character, is cryptic about its origins, many believe the song was written for son Jakob (frontman of Wallflowers). There’s also a treasured live version from an early Newport Folk Festival that has Joan Baez powering the anthemic lift at the end. Heartbreaker: May your hands always be busy / May your feet always be swift / May you have a strong foundation / When the winds of changes shift...
7. Vincent
Don McLean
A poet fumbling for a foothold on the great slippery wall of pop, Don McLean became famous for singing cryptically of “the day the music died” on the title track of American Pie (1971). But it was Vincent that undid the heart-strings. Never one to dignify garden-variety heartbreak, McLean intellectualised his personal suffering – he was coping with a crumbling marriage – by drawing an adroit analogy with Vincent Van Gogh, the doomed lover that history has much misunderstood. McLean has said that he was inspired by a book he had read, written by the Dutch painter’s brother Theo. Torn by depression, Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum where he painted the night sky from memory. That painting, Starry Night, inspired the song that lit McLean’s way through the darkest one of his life. Heartbreaker: And when no hope was left in sight / On that starry, starry night / You took your life as lovers often do.
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Photographs: Shutterstock
6. Tragic Comic Extreme
The Extreme we love, fronted by androgynous shampoo-ad models Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt, is better known for the lovely but haplessly overplayed More Than Words and the cleverly mawkish Hole-Hearted. The music video of Tragic Comic, showing Bettencourt as a bumbling, fumbling romantic wooing a woman who goodhumouredly suffers his goofiness, was fashioned after Charlie Chaplin. The track, from the band’s last studio album, didn’t enjoy chart success, but remains eminently listenable, touching and endearing. Heartbreaker: I’m a hapless romantic / stt-tuttering p-poet/ just call me a tragic comic/ cause I’m, in, in love with you
5. Shine on you
Crazy Diamond Pink Floyd
After the exit of Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, the band was recording
Heartbreaker: You were caught in the crossfire between childhood and stardom…
4. Diamonds and Rust Joan Baez
There are breakup songs, and there are breakup songs that haunt ten years after. British metal band Judas Priest’s cover of Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust may have more listeners today but no amount of angst-addled growling or gnashing guitars can outdo the tender simplicity of Baez’s original. Baez and Dylan, who sang many onstage duets in the 1960s, had a brief but celebrated love affair that crashed and burned after they went different political ways. Diamonds… is her reaction to his phone call (whether real or imagined is debatable) in the middle of the night, ten years later. Heartbreaker: Now you’re telling me / You’re not nostalgic / Then give me another word for it / You who are so good with words / And at keeping things vague…
3. Too much love will kill you Brian May
Everything about this Queen classic speaks of Freddie Mercury though it was Brian May (with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers) who wrote and composed it. Intended for Queen’s album Miracle (1989), it eventually appeared only on Made In Heaven (1995), four years after Mercury’s death of complications arising from AIDS. May performed it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 and also issued it on his solo album Back to the Light.
A version appeared in 2003 with tenor Luciano Pavarotti on vocals. It’s perhaps the one song where May outshines Mercury as singer, bemoaning the passing of his friend with a heart-spun dirge so true that it inspires a giant tidal wave of bitten-back tears in anyone who knows their story. Heartbreaker: I used to bring you sunshine/ Now all I ever do is bring you down…
2. Famous Blue Raincoat Leonard Cohen
Just the combination of Leonard Cohen’s tobacco-grained voice and Babylonian lyrics can stun the most sentient heart into silent, smitten stupor. After Suzanne has run icy fingers through your brain, Chelsea Hotel has left you emotionally pillaged, and Hallelujah has redeemed you somewhat, you might fool yourself into thinking you are prepared. Not for Famous Blue Raincoat. Composed like a letter, apparently to someone who has come between the singer and his love, its cold, septic moroseness infects you with a yawning, gnawing incompleteness. Cohen himself said of it, “I’ve always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear.” Heartbreaker: And you treated my woman to a flake of your life / And when she came back she was nobody’s wife
1. Crash into me
Dave Matthews Band
The definitive heartbreaker, this is the Dave Matthews song that reels in a lifetime fan. Beautifully guilty, innocently furtive and adolescently klutzy all at once. With Matthews’ drunken bourbon voice leading you through this “boy’s dream”, Crash into me is so imaginatively written and performed by the band with such panache that it envelops you in its synaesthesia of woozy warmth. What’s it about? Quite simply: A boy secretly watching a girl undress. Voyeurism has never been tenderer. Heartbreaker: Hike up your skirt a little more / And show the world to m
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when a bald, overweight man with shaven eyebrows came into the studio and, among other bizarre actions, started brushing his teeth while jumping up and down. None of the band members recognised him. Frontman Roger Waters broke down upon learning he was Barrett, now reduced to a schizophrenic wreck. The band dedicated the song they were recording to their old mate. It remains among the top requested Floyd songs along with Brick in the Wall, Comfortably Numb and Wish You Were Here.
Here’s an idea you will thank us for long. Next time, plan your vacations around one meal at a famous restaurant! Believe us, it will be special. Kuhu Sen dishes out a sumptuous list of chefs and their creations from the world that are as famous as the cities they are based in, if not more.
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Noma
by Chef Rene Redzepi Copenhagen scepticism because he junked the foie gras and the ratatouille. In came the musk ox from Greenland, seaweed from Iceland, sea urchins from Norway, birch sap from Denmark and shrimps from the North Sea and whatnot. And anyone who sank his teeth into the shrimps wrapped in sea lettuce and bathed in rhubarb juice, the langoustine served with oyster emulsion, or the white asparagus, romaine roots and pine shoots served with poached egg yolk, was immediately transported to culinary heaven. Redzepi’s food even inspired a Copenhagen University professor to develop a new Nordic diet to help reduce obesity. His first English-language cookbook is out this month and that’s only another feather in this two Michelin-star chef’s hat.
Strandgade 93 1401 Copenhagen K Lunch: Tuesday to Saturday: 12.00 am to 1.30 pm (12.00 to 4.00) Dinner: Tuesday to Saturday: 6.30 pm to 10.00 pm (6.30 to 1.00) Phone: +45 3296 3297 E-mail:noma@noma.dk
Nihonryori RyuGin
by Chef Seiji Yamamoto Tokyo
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harity begins at home as do many other things… Cooking, for example. That’s what happened with Chef Seiji Yamamoto, who started cooking with the aspiration of impressing his mother. Whether he succeeded or not in that mission is something we do not know, but people worldwide swoon over Yamamoto’s creations. In December 2003, Yamamoto opened his own restaurant, Nihonryori RyuGin, in Tokyo. In 2008, Michelin awarded it two stars and the 2010 addition
Fact File
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hat wonders one can do with a derelict warehouse is something we can all learn from Chef Rene Redzepi, the culinary artist who rules the roost at what was recently voted as the ‘World’s Best Restaurant’ by the Restaurant magazine. The 40-cover Noma in Copenhagen now receives more than 100,000 booking requests a month for its innovative eight-course menu. That’s a clear 2,000 per cent jump since last year’s survey by the same magazine, in which Noma was ranked third. The accolade has silenced Redzepi critics who ridiculed his Scandinavian creations as ‘stinky whale food’. Till recently, French was the haute cuisine in Denmark and everyone greeted the Redzepi venture in Copenhagen with
of San Pellegrino’s 50 Best Restaurants ranks it at number 48. The menu is traditional kaiseki with elements of molecular gastronomy. Watching the chef in action may give you many Tarantino-esque moments. He is said to have chopped the head off a live fish and run a piano wire down its back, which made the fish go limp. The technique seemed to prevent from rigour mortis from setting in, thus changing the texture of the flesh.
Nihonryori RyuGin Side Roppongi Bldg. 1F, 7-17-24 Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo Phone: +81 (0)3 3423-8006 061 | SEPTEMBER 11
Schauenstein
by Chef Andreas Caminada Switzerland
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Fact File
ith a restaurant of only 26 covers, Chef Andreas Carminada has already carved a delicious niche for himself in the world of new gastronomy. The Swiss-German chef already boasts three Michelin stars and runs Schauenstein from one of the restored castles in Switzerland’s Graubunden canton. Now you could assume that no one goes to Graubunden for a meal. Wait till the reservation desk sends you a mail with a date more than six months
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away… Caminada and his wife’s ideas resulted in the renovation and conversion of the old castle into a restaurant and hotel. Caminada’s cooking philosophy is not high flying or extraordinary. He believes in keeping things simple and has no strict formulae for sourcing ingredients. So, at Schauenstein, you will get the scampi, the truffles, the basic duck liver as well as fresh veggies from the garden. His enthusiasm, beautifully complemented by his staff, is infectious.
Schloss Hotel Restaurant, 7414 Fürstenau, Fürstenau, Switzerland Phone: +41 (0) 81 632 10 80 Website: www.schauenstein.ch
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by Chef Grant Achatz Chicago
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chef who cannot really taste his own food – Grant Achatz lived with this predicament for years as he battled Stage IV tongue cancer, only to emerge a clear winner. The lean, athletic chef’s love affair with the kitchen started in his family’s humble Michigan restaurant. He began as a ‘dishwasher’, standing on a milk crate so that he could reach the sink where he scrubbed utensils.
Fact File
In seven years, at the age of 12, he was a cook on the line, making
omelettes, roast chicken and beef stew. His claim to fame is Alinea, his first restaurant in Chicago, where he served food heavily influenced by molecular gastronomy. He followed it up with the launch of NEXT, a concept restaurant in the same city as Alinea. He began the NEXT journey by recreating the smells and tastes of Paris in 1906 – the year the iconic Ritz Hotel opened with the legend Auguste Escoffier heading the kitchen. NEXT is currently serving a 14-course Thai menu.
953 W Fulton Mkt (at Morgan St) West Loop, Chicago Phone: (312) 226-0858 Dinner: Wednesday–Sunday
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Pujol
by Chef Enrique Olvera Mexico
T
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his chef has been leading the new wave of culinary artists giving gastronomes in Mexico City reason to rejoice. Pujol, Chef Enrique Olvera’s gift to the city he hails from, was born more than 10 years ago, when he was just 24. The restaurant found its way into the prestigious San Pellegrino List of the World’s Fifty Best Restaurants this year, in a fitting testimony to the popularity it has enjoyed since its launch. Simplicity, in both technique
and choice of ingredients, is what defines the culinary philosophy of Olvera, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Upon graduation, he did a stint at Everest, one of Chicago’s most noted eateries. He subsequently returned to Mexico City to open Pujol, where he successfully showcases Mexico’s culinary heritage with a twist – think coffee, corn and flying ants toasted and ground into a powder, stuffed into a dried pumpkin and wrapped in corn leaves.
Francisco Petrarca 254 Polanco, Mexico City, 11570 Monday–Saturday (1:30 pm–4:30 pm; 7:30 pm–11:30 pm) Phone: +52 55 5545 3507 Email: info@pujol.com.mx
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Mugaritz
by Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz San Sebastian (Spain)
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Fact File
hen tourists plan vacations around one meal at a restaurant, you know it’s got to be special. That’s what happens at Mugaritz, a rustic restaurant set in the backdrop of rolling hills and farmland outside the city of San Sebastian in Spain. And the man who has made it all happen is Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, a wunderkind who likes to play with flowers, berries, essences, herbs and even clay (!) to craft unique dishes. He sources ingredients from street markets and the restaurant’s own herb garden. Also known as ‘Foie Gras King’ Aduriz spent two years at
a liver research clinic to study the organ. He then went on to apply his learning to make such dishes that earned him the moniker. Making up your mind is not an easy job when it comes to the menu at Mugaritz – so it’s best to go for the tasting menu. Expect gastronomic delights like flourless gnocchi made with kudzu starch and Idiazábal cheese, served with an Ibérico ham broth; lamb shoulder, cooked for 30 hours, paired with root vegetables and glazed with a slightly bitter honey. For dessert, you may be served violet ice cream with chocolate shavings and almonds.
Aldura Aldea 20-Otzazulueta Baserria E - 20100 Errenteria, Spain Phone: 943518343; Website: http://www.mugaritz.com 065 | SEPTEMBER 11
The Press Club Restaurant by Chef George Calombaris Melbourne
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Fact File
nyone who knows what Masterchef is all about, would also know how much the judges at the reality show bring to the table. If not for the contestants, viewers tune in to watch the judges in action. Perhaps no one would raise a brow if I say that Chef George Calombaris was the main attraction of the reality show’s Australia chapter. Born and bred in Melbourne, this Greek-origin chef opened his first restaurant at the age of 26. The Press Club Restaurant in Melbourne is now a foodie Mecca, where Calombaris
dishes out Greek recipes with a modern twist. It was almost inevitable that he opens a restaurant in the country his family is from. That’s when The Belvedere Club in the paradisiac Mykonos island in Greece happened. Two more Melbourne restaurants came up soon after before Calombaris opened his fifth in May this year. St Katherine’s, also in Melbourne, is a rotisserie and Turkish grill. Calombaris’s latest trophy, however, is his son, born less than two months ago.
72 Flinders Street Melbourne 3000 Australia Lunch: Monday–Saturday (12pm–3pm) Dinner: Monday–Sunday (6pm–10pm) The Little Press & Cellar Monday–Friday 7am until late Saturday & Sunday: 12noon until late
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Malling+Schmidt
by Chef Thorsten Schmidt Denmark
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hat would you think of a chef who makes ice-cream from the bark of an oak tree? Wizard, magician, or simply ‘weird’? Chef Thorsten Schmidt, another celebrity from the Nordic region, is all three rolled into one. A visit to Malling+Schmidt (Malling being his wife), his gourmet restaurant in Aarhus, Denmark, is a lesson in creativity peppered with madness. In fact, Noma’s Chef Rene Redzepi calls Schmidt
“one of the pioneers within Nordic regional cuisine”. Schmidt takes daily trips through the forests of Aarhus hunting for things that grow naturally in the area. He also has a huge botanical garden in the outskirts of the city. Schmidt’s unconventional cooking and choice of ingredients prompted the Aarhus University to start a project called “Seaweed on the Plate”, under which the chef was asked to make healthy food products using seaweed.
Malling+Schmidt Grenavej 127, Risskov Phone: +45 86177088 Email: info@mallingschmidt.dk
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At 36, 36 banker-turnedbanker tur d author Amish Tripathi is the antithesis off a traditional, me mercurial riter ite ter er. er rr. He hhas as battled innumerabl innumerable writer. rejection social rejectio ejection jection ctiion sslips, lipps, s, successful ssuccessfully uccessfu f y used edd sso ocial media medi self-promote and ttoo se sel lf-ppromo romotee aand nd market his book, okk, an ok, nd hhas as ridden high success rid idden den en hig hhi iggh on iigh on th tthe he uunprecedented npreeceddeeennted succe ceees ess ss of of tthe he Shiva Trilogy, Immortals off ffirst irst iinn th tthe he S hiva T rilogyy, Thee Immo ortals o or Meluha. The 1.25 M eluha. T he bbook ook ssold old nnearly earlyy 1.2 .2 25 lakhh ccopies opies iinn sorts. The IIndia In ndia – a record r rd off so orts. T he second instalment instal allment ooff tthe he The Secret off tthe Nagas, ttrilogy, riillog llooggyy, T Th he S ecret o he Naga N Nagas g s, ha hhas as ffinally inall lly hit hiitt bookshops, booksh kshhops, promising ksh ks prroomising ttoo ttake ake reader readers rss oonn a bbreathless reathleesss ride across man who acro acr ccrro ross ss ancient ancient India, India, ffollowing ollowing a m ollow an wh w ho became God, Tripathi becam ame am me a G od, aass hhee bbattles attless eevil. vil. Tripath T rripathi ipath Chitra Subramanyam speaks ks to Chitr Chit C hitra S ubrra ramanyam ram ramany many about bout out his ppassion pass assion sion ffor oorr Lord Shiva, discovering ering ring a llo love ove ffor writing, and the fight against evil.
I had never written fiction, not even a short story; just some very bad poetry. I was basically a sports guy. One day, my family and I were watching a programme on television and we discovered something interesting. The Persians called demons daivas and the Gods, Ahuras. It is exactly the opposite of what ancient Indians believed. We got talking and wondered what would happen if the ancient Indians and Persians met. Their god would be our demon and their demon, our god. Who would be right? Obviously neither. I thought about the philosophy of evil and then decided to write it down. In the beginning, it was more of a thesis, a pure philosophy.
The transformation: From a philosophy to a novel Once I finished writing it, I shared it with my family. They said it is very boring. My brother and sister-in-law told me to write a story and let the philosophy come along with it. The idea was to make it, at the surface, an adventure with all the elements: “Is main romance hai, tragedy hai, masala hai, aur mirchi hai (It has romance, tragedy, and the spice). But, at a deeper level, it has some statements I want to make: about the caste system, honour killings, about immigrants. But it’s not a gyan session. At the deepest level,
the books, for me, convey a philosophy that has relevance in today’s world.
The creator versus the created When I realised that I needed to convert a philosophy thesis into a story, I did the standard MBA thing. I bought self-help books, a lot of them. The books had it all laid out: standard one-page character sketches, creating backgrounds, making a date plan, writing in a disciplined fashion. It was very nice and logical. And in all seriousness, I created an Excel sheet with all the character sketches. The story started off, but I was struggling. Certain incidents would emerge and none of the characters followed their character sketch. There was one character in particular. His fate was so terrible, I would think of it, and end up crying. No matter what I did, his fate wouldn’t change. My story ground to a halt. That’s when my wife helped me. She told me to “stop trying your stupid MBA corporate strategy on the characters. They aren’t your team. They won’t do what you tell them to do. They are alive and living their life. You have no control, accept this basic fact. Don’t approach this story with the arrogance of a creator, but the humility of a witness.” I gave up control and started writing. Before I realised it, the story grew and grew, and I knew I had to break it
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In the beginning, there was a germ of an idea
up into three parts. I realised I couldn’t release a 1,200-page book. It would break people’s wrists. But it is a continuous tale. You have to read book 1 before moving to the second and third part.
The success that is the Immortals of Meluha I think I am lucky I am writing at a time suited for the story. If this same story had been written 15-20 years ago, it wouldn’t have succeeded. At that time, people wanted to read the more westernised stories – on the British Raj or NRI story. Not their own stories. Today, people are less insecure. India is one of the top 10 economies of the world. They want to read about what happened in their own past history and past. They say, “These are my stories. I identify with them.” But publishing has been slow to accept this change. The movie industry has accepted it, they moved from the angry young man
stories to more relevant ones. As has the television world, making reality shows, because they work, because they reflect a modern India – whether we like it or not. It is perhaps important for the publishing industry now to become more Indian. Even the English I use in the books is different from the Raj-era English. The people who like that English tend to look down at the normal everyday English we use. But, both the biases are unfair. That westernised writing was suited for that era, just like this era suits my kind of stories and writing.
The passion that is Shiva
MBA types. My scheme of things involved becoming a banking head honcho. Today, I am a Shiv bhakt. I do the Maha Mrityunjay every day. I go to the Shiva temple every Monday. If you connect the dots, my grandfather was a pandit in Benaras. My family is liberal, we discuss and debate a lot, but we are religious. The atmosphere of mythology and religion has always been in our family. I have heard all the stories that were there in the book, while I was growing up. But, I heard them as interesting stories, I didn’t really believe in them. Everything you like in the books is a blessing of Lord Shiva. Everything you don’t like is because of me.
I didn’t pick Lord Shiva. I honestly think he picked me. I don’t think there is anyone more undeserving than me to write Lord Shiva’s story. I was one of those crazy, idiotic types who never entered temples. I was one of those extremely aggressive, hyper competitive,
A lot of the younger generation, in their feedback, say they thought Shiva was their grandmother’s God. But now, they think he is the dude of all Gods. And if you look at the myths, he was genuinely, the
The modern-day God
Photograph: Jason Maehl / Shutterstock.com
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The philosophy of evil I know the entire story – right down to the last line of the book. I have left clues in each of the books and it’s only when you finish Book 3 that you will realiase
the clues I have left behind for the readers. I want the reader to go in the opposite direction. Because unless you have gone through Books 1 and 2 and reach Book 3, you will not understand the philosophy of evil. There are many times when you can’t understand a philosophy unless you have had a conversation. That’s what this does.
Hard-core, competitive management guy to a full-time writer My family saw how happy I was writing. That’s when my elder brother told me to quit my job and start writing fulltime. These days I am writing a lot of articles and am extremely busy with the promotion of The Secret of the Nagas. I like to be stay connected to marketing. I don’t just hand over the book, especially the briefing on the cover. For me, that is very important. There is a lot of
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ike all bookworms brought up on a steady diet of the great Classics, I am a bit of a book snob. So, I tend to ignore a lot of the new-gen Indian novels, discarding them after reading the first few pages. Yes, I admit, it is a rather myopic way of reading. That’s perhaps why I surprised myself earlier this year, when, while browsing in a bookshop, I reached for The Immortals of Meluha. I had seen it often enough, leaning against several other books from its generation. Perhaps it was the cover, the back of a taut, muscular, scarred Shiva with Mount Kailas in the background. Perhaps, it was simply that I was curious. I love fantasy novels. I thrive on well-written fantasy novels – the ones with a simple plot and words that let you live the world. So, yes, perhaps I was curious. And I was hooked. Amish Tripathi’s Shiva, whose story he tells so lovingly, fascinated me. He is so different from the revered god I read about in the Amar Chitra Kathas. Instead of God, here is a man – with a sense of humour, adventurous, a warrior, struggling to understand his space in the world. So us, really. So, human. So, needless to say, when I got to The Secret of the Nagas – the much-awaited, part two of the trilogy, which hit the stands last month – I was excited. For here was a chance to read more of the story. The scarred image of Shiva is back on the cover, a cobra wrapped around his wrist. In the background, is Varanasi, an imagined one, from the distant past. If you look closely, the Indus Valley script meanders its way across the cover. The book begins exactly where The Immortals of Meluha left off – right where the action is.
The Secret of the Nagas by Amish Price: `250 Westland by Chitra Subramanyam
Shiva begins his hunt for the Nagas, the serpent people, because that’s the source of evil. Or so he believes. As Shiva, the immigrant, Tibetan warrior searches for the truth, he comes face to face with his demons, even as he is forced to question some of his beliefs. True to the style of the Immortals, Amish crafts well-known legends and myths into human faces and descriptions that leave you stunned. There are many little surprises along the way. And they are welcome surprises. In no way do they take away from the tale.
symbolism on the cover. There is logic to every symbol and the colour. The seal on spine of the book has a symbol. They are all closely related to the philosophy of the book – the destruction of evil. The Indus Valley script is my interpretation of how Shiva would be spelt in that script. Just like the images on the cover. It’s not just about making the cover look good. There is a meaning to each and everything.
The future I am busy with the promotions and it will be October by the time I sit down to write Book 3. I like going off on a holiday to write my books. Or, switch on some music while writing. The word do not matter. Lord Shiva’s story will be a trilogy. But, I have lots of stories to tell. Perhaps, after the trilogy, I will write about Lord Rudra’s story, my version of Manu’s story, or the Mahabharata. Inshallah, I will write them all.
Honestly however, it is difficult to review a novel like this in isolation. It needs to be seen within the context of The Immortals. For many, this may seem a roadblock. But as any reader who loves fantasy knows, you need to know the beginning before you can understand the end. It is marginally irritating, but only just. I reread Book 1 before grabbing Book 2. And it served me well. I didn’t realise how many characters I had forgotten until they made their appearance in The Secret of the Nagas. Of course, when you hit the end of Nagas, the sudden break seems unfair. It is at a crucial juncture and literally leaves the reader hanging in mid-air. But, the breaks as they are, are also deliberate, Amish Tripathi told me in an interview. It’s to maintain continuity, to remind the reader that this is a trilogy. “When you read Book 3, The Oath of the Vayuputras, you will realise that there was no other way to end the second book,” he says. Another thing that jumps out is the language. It is every day. It is exactly how you and I talk. It’s deliberate on Amish’s part. It’s a reflection of today’s era, he says. These little issues fall by the wayside when you look at Amish’s imagination. He takes a tale of a God told countless times, over generations, and gives it a decidedly modern twist. He places it in context. Unlike a lot of writers, he doesn’t obscure the story with beautiful words. He tells it the way he sees it. He tells you a story. And that is where the book succeeds. No matter what the message, it is a story that, it almost seems, the author needs to tell. Or perhaps, it’s because Tripathi has picked a legend so easy to relate to. After all, who doesn’t want to give God a human face with human failings? 0+. | SEPTEMBER 11
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dude of all Gods. He never takes himself seriously. He is the God of the masses, fighting for the oppressed. He won’t care if you are a deva or an asura. If you have done your karma, he will bless you. In the temples, the goddesses are often at a slightly inferior position, except for Shiva and Parvati. You see Shiva holding the children, one of whom is not his own child. He is the fierce warrior, a fun prankster, he treats his wife as an equal, drinks bhang, dances brilliantly, and is the creator of yoga. He is a passionate lover, but a one-man woman. He is a modern God. I can’t think of a better God than Shiva. And he is not so different from us. He is actually a very cool God.
Gripping and fictionalised on a solid base of history, Empire of the Moghul, the series by Alex Rutherford (pen name of Oxford scholars and avid travellers Diana and Michael Preston) takes you back to the grand Mughal era. The three books are about men of steel: How inheritance and life-threatening challenges forced them to mature at a young age, and the strategies they devised to rule over half the world. The books are also about the human frailties that consume a powerful king and his vulnerable son – where a ruler as wise as Akbar is completely lost when it comes to understanding his heir. by Ritoo Jhha
Empire of the Moghul: Raiders From the North / Brothers at War / Ruler of the World Author/s : Alex Rutherford (aka Diana & Michael Preston) Publisher: Headline Publishing Group (Hachette)
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abur’s heart quickened as, in the distance, he made out the Jaxartes river and his home. The robust little castle of Akhsi, half built into the cliff above the river, was the place of his earliest and fondest memories. At this moment, the glories of Samarkand could not compete and he felt tears rising. ‘Majesty, it is dangerous to go further tonight.’ Wazir Khan’s eyes, too, were bright with tears. ‘They’ll be watching for us. We should stay concealed until I’ve sent out scouts.’ Babur wanted to gallop to the gates and demand entry, but Wazir Khan was right. He got shakily down from his horse, feeling feverish ache in his limbs, and listened as Wazir Khan selected his two best and swiftest horsemen to ride onwards and find out what they could. The fortress was at least an hour’s journey, perhaps more in the gathering darkness, and the scouts would need to take care not to be seen. It would be some while before they returned. Perched as Babur and his men were high on the side of a hill and reluctant to retreat back over the crest, their position was too exposed to risk a fire to warm themselves or cook over. Not that they had much to cook. In the six days since Babur’s recovery, they had travelled too fast to forage or hunt. Instead they had relied mainly on now mouldering bread, cheese, apples and dried fruit they had brought from Samarkand. Babur wrapped himself in a blanket and chewed a strip of dried melon. Its sweetness disgusted him and he spat it out, taking a long draught of water to rid himself of the cloying state. The scouts returned two hours before dawn, and the news was bad, as Babur had suspected it would be. The castle gates were barred and many defenders were keeping watch from the walls. According to a herdsman the scouts had surprised as he sat around his fire in a riverside pasture with his two young sons, who had been too terrified to speak anything but the truth, many of the nomadic tribal leaders had sworn to support Babur’s half-brother. It didn’t
surprise Babur to learn that the chieftain whose men he had ordered hacked to death for stealing the peasant’s goods and raping his wife outside Samarkand was among them. And of course, Jahangir’s grandfather. Babur thought of the sly-faced old man who had brought Roxanna and her brat to the castle. He should never have taken them in – but what else could he have done? Jahangir was his half-brother. Blood was blood. As the sun rose behind Mount Beshtor, making the ever-present snow on the summit sparkle like crystal, Babur wrapped his cloak round him, and, signalling he wished to be alone, began to tramp up the hill on which they had camped. The emerald-green grass was slippery with dew beneath his feet. It smelled fresh and sweet. But before long winter would descend and these slopes would be frozen hard and white. It was a worrying thought. How could be campaign in winter? The sun had risen high in a bright, cloudless sky when Babur heard the distant thud of hoofbeats coming from the west. Leaping up, he turned to look behind him and, sure enough, in the distance, he could see a long line of riders coming along a valley. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to count them – perhaps two hundred, maybe more – and caught the flash of a green standard. It must be the advance guard sent by Baisanghar.
Raiders from the North Pages: 401
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aiders from the North explores Babur’s meteoric rise in the face of a series of lifethreatening challenges. Driven out of his small kingdom in Ferghana, Central Asia, in 1494, after his father’s sudden death, he is inspired by the tales of Timur, a brutal, yet powerful ancestor who used fear and fire to trample and control far-flung territories. The book is about the trials and tribulations of a life under constant threat: You don’t know who your enemy is... he could be your cousin, or even the half-brother he grew up with. Yet Timurid blood ties and honour rise above all differences as Babur fights the brutal Uzbeks who destroy and loot and instill fear as an end in itself. He loses his sister to Shaibani Khan, the most brutal Uzbek of his times. Still, he spares no means, including bowing before a Shia ruler, the Shah of Persia, to regain Samarkand and his beloved sister.
‘You are sure they are our men?’ ‘I’m certain. They carry the green banners of Samarkand.’ ‘I will send a patrol to guide them to us, Majesty.’
The women in the book are more than mere duds in a harem. Instead, they come across as powerful and thinking personalities who support Babur in his struggles. These women don’t flinch even once when they have to give up their luxurious life to support Babur as he moves towards his dream of ruling Hindustan. It’s about loyal lieutenants and war strategies, of instilling fear by psychological warfare, where battles are won in the minds before they are played out in the field.
Heart pounding, Babur watched the men gallop off. Now we’ll flush those scum out of the castle. Tambal will repent his treachery and as for the rest... Babur ran to his saddlebad and unstrapped his father’s sword.
Rutherford draws extensively from Baburnamah, perhaps the first autobiography in Islamic literature, in the Raiders from the North. While Mughal historians may have a lot to add or take away from this brave attempt, it is indeed a book for those who love history.
Feeling new energy surging through him, driving out the despair, he turned and ran down the hill towards the camp, slipping and rolling in his eagerness. ‘Wazir Khan, the troops are coming,’ he shouted, as he ran into the camp.
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mmediately, Humayun knew that this must be Kamran’s fate. His threat would be extinguished with his sight. No rebellious chief could ever again consider Kamran a rival to Humayun. Yet his half-brother would have time to consider and perhaps to repent before he was called to eternal judgment. Such a punishment would be harsh, but Humayun knew that in inflicting it he would be respecting his instinct to show some mercy and also be taking some account of his father’s injunction not to be provoked into unthinking violence against his halfbrother.
that the punishment has been inflicted on my specific orders and I alone take responsibility for it. Therefore, you will bring my half-brother to me a little before the time of evening prayer tomorrow.’
Closing the ivory covers of Babur’s memoirs, Humayun descended the stairs. ‘Call my advisers to me straightaway,’ he told Jauhar. Within five minutes they were standing around him. ‘I have decided that my half-brother Kamran must be blinded, both as a punishment for his consistent misdeeds and to obviate any threat he might continue to pose to my rule here and to our recovery of our possessions in Hindustan. The punishment will be carried out tonight an hour after sunset. I ask you, Zahid Beg, to take charge. I wish the method to be the quickest known to the hakims and my half-brother to be given no warning so that he does not have time to fear what is to come. I do not wish to see his agony and suffering. Jauhar, you will be my witness. However, Kamran needs to know
Photographs: Shutterstock
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Brothers at War Pages: 436
he world has changed! Babur has bequeathed Hindustan to his son Humayun to rule with his brothers. Brothers at War is about the inner struggles of a wonderful human being: Humayun and his evolution into a king, his loneliness, and his desperate attempts to hold on to power and command respect by drawing from the last reserves of his never-saydie spirit. His flawed character doesn’t make this struggle any easier for him: He trusts his brothers unflinchingly, forgives and forgets too quickly, and, more importantly, falls prey to the entreaties of his stepmother that leads him to a self–destructive addiction to wine and opium. He is obsessed with astrology that eventually spells doom for him when he loses all that his
father had built to a ‘mere upstart’ – Sher Shah who was backed by Humayun’s cousin’s in their filial jealousies. Brothers at War is about his efforts to rebuild the empire stone-by-stone, fighting against all odds to re-establish everything he had lost. It’s also about a Mughal king’s singular dedication to his wife Hamida, a woman with extraordinary powers to foresee events, his partner for life. This time the authors draw from original historiographical works, including Humayunnamah, a biography by Humayun’s sister Gulbadan Begum, Tadhkirat al-Waqiat by his attendant Jauhar, and Abul Fazl’s Akbarnamah.
‘I understand I will continue the campaign in the Deccan. Our borders to the north, east and west rest on rivers and mountains. The south provides the greatest opportunity for expansion.’ ‘Second, always be alert for rebellion.’ Salim thought for a moment that Akbar was still reproaching him, but there was no hint of that in Akbar’s face as he continued. ‘One of my historians tells me I’ve overcome more than one hundred and forty rebellions during my reign. They break out when armies have no prospect of campaigns or booty to distract them from plotting.’ Salim nodded. ‘Be tolerant to all, whatever their position or religion, and be merciful whenever you can. It will help unite our subjects. But when your mercy is misinterpreted or the crime heinous, act decisively and ruthlessly so that all may know your power. Avoid the mistakes of my father Humayun. It is better a few die early as an example than many later.’ ‘I will try not to lash out but to react firmly and with though,’ Salim replied almost mechanically. What his father was saying was obvious and certainly not new. Perhaps Akbar was congratulating himself as he reviewed his life rather than truly seeking to help him. But then, as if reading Salim’s thoughts, Akbar said, ‘Now for knowledge I have gleaned the hard way from my mistakes.’ Salim started. It was the first time he had heard his father admit any but the most trivial mistakes. ‘Pay attention to your family. Our dynasty is now so much stronger than any potential external rival that the greatest threat to our power must come from dissension among ourselves. My father indulged his half-brothers too much. I wanted to show that power could not
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irst, remember never to let the empire stagnate. If it does not grow and change by responding to events it can only decline.’
be shared and that my authority was absolute. I still believe that is true – that only one man can rule at a time. However, when you are your brothers grew, I expected you to develop my attributes and share my attitudes while unquestioningly obeying my instructions. I did not understand that the two were scarcely compatible. It would never have been in my own nature not to raise questions or to seek independent command if my own father had lived.’ Salim saw Akbar wince, whether through the pain in his abdomen or the recollection of his behaviour, and said, ‘I will try to make allowances for the ambitions of my sons, but I have already begun to understand how difficult it is.’ ‘I’ve not helped by unsettling you all, by constantly testing which of you might be the most suitable successor. But even had I not, the longer I have lived the more clearly I have realised that the relationship between parents and children is an unequal one. The parent concentrates his future hopes as well as his love on the child and hence scrutinises and guides his closely. The child resents the burden and longs to strike out independently. He sees all his failings, faults and frustrations as due to his parents and his virtues and successes as solely his own creation. He believes he can do better than the parent if only given a chance.’ ‘I see that more clearly now,’ Salim acknowledged, ‘now that my sons are growing older. But I also felt in awe of you and your great and unique achievements. It made me awkward and surly around you. It should not have.’ He paused, but then after a moment continued quietly, ‘I am truly sorry for the pain I gave you.’
Ruler of the World Pages: 401
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hen he was just 14, Akbar was given the impossible task of carrying on his father’s legacy. Four years into his rule, he became independent of the guardianship of Bairam Khan, the regent, and undertook to rule with a vision. One of the few Mughal rulers who was absolutely illiterate, Akbar didn’t let that deter him from laying the foundation of a mighty empire. He realised very early that assimilation was the only way to rule well in a country as vast and populated as Hindustan. Taking the radical step of marrying outside his religion, tinkering with the idea of a new religion that amalgamated the good in all, laying down the principles of governance that have carried on to this day, at the same time conquering with stealth and steel whenever required, were some of the principles that helped him become a great king. Though Ruler of the World lacks the gripping nature of the other two in the trilogy, it retains absolute interest because it is about Akbar and his obsession with creating an edifice of authority for posterity. In his passion for building such edifices, he seems to have missed out on the function of connecting to his eldest son and heir. The book is also symbolic of how positions of power crowd you out from those closest to you. The ups and downs of his relationship with son Salim, made worse by his Rajput wife’s hatred for him, form the undercurrent of Akbar’s reign which dispels any doubts of Mughal weakness but also lays the foundation for its ultimate demise: The fragility of father-son bonds.
‘And I for that I inflicted on you. But I now beg only this of you. Learn from the past but look to the future.’ As he spoke, Akbar extended his dry hand towards his eldest son. Salim silently took in his own, feeling closer to his father than he had done since his early childhood, united with him in their hopes for the dynasty.
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COVER STORY
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
Photograph: Deepak Malik
Never, we hear, has India been so united in a cause since the struggle for Independence. While the rhetoric in mass media largely sidesteps serious debate on the merits of Anna Hazare’s proposal over the government’s, the searchlight on the scapegoat (politicians) casts in shadow the most powerful authority for change in any democratic nation: its citizens. The power of individuals, alone or massed together, can change regimes (remember Egypt?) or bring a powerful nation to tears (think 9/11). Is it such a stretch to imagine that we, its citizens, also hold the key to solving some of the world’s foremost problems today? by Manidipa Mandal
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emal Legesse de Santis, 28, died in the rubble of the World Trade Center during the fateful 9/11. He was one of 30-odd Muslims killed by jihadis that day in the air and on the ground. One of them was an unborn child – the young mother was seven months pregnant. Yet some of their families were barred from the memorial service – for being Muslims. Soon after, the wearing of a beard or a turban drew deep suspicion, even attracting searches and interrogation of American citizens, the very posited target of terrorism that day. The US government’s frantic, suspicious reaction during the ‘war on terror’ drew both criticism for suspension of democratic rights as well as sympathy for prejudicial stereotyping as a preventive measure. But terror is hard to kill; the faces it may wear make better targets. Yet is memory so short that we have forgotten when terror wore other masquerades? For Indians, the Englishman of Jallianwalabagh; for Americans, the Japanese airplanes of Pearl Harbour; for much of Europe, the spectre called Hitler.
Yes, one man decided to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. Yes, he worked with other men who decided the same. Yes, the same thing happened in Mumbai. Yes, they were all Islamic. So is Islam the guilty party, every Muslim nation and every Muslim in every other nation? Really? This sort of responsibility can be harder examination in the face of violence – and of to pin in terrorism outside war. If Pakistan scapegoating – to recognise that blame attaches disowns the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorto the individual perpetrator. It takes personal attacks, does it still stand guilty by association? probity not to attack those painted guilty Does every Pakistani citizen, whether or not by association of kinship, religion, race and they had knowledge of it? Or simply, every nationality. That way lies ‘righteous terrorising’ complicit individual – of any country? – also known, among other names, as jihad. Yes, one man decided to fly a plane into the World Trade Center. Yes, he worked with other men who decided the same. Yes, the same thing happened in Mumbai. Yes, they were all Islamic. So is Islam the guilty party, every Muslim nation and every Muslim in every other nation? Really? It is easy to identify scapegoats through eyes clouded by blood and tears. It takes great personal fortitude and careful ethical
It takes personal courage, too, to stand up to the emotional masses and to call for rational, humane behaviour in the face of fear and grief. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s individual brand of it became a plan for the Ground Zero mosque to enshrine an alternative identity for Islam than ‘terrorists’ – and to serve as a reminder, when we are less than reasonable in our sorrow and anger, that the people of Allah were not only on the side of the terrorists that day, but also among its victims.
It is well too to remember that in the aftermath of World War II, a third of all German women in Berlin were raped by occupying Russian troops. Anger at the Nazis ‘explained’ such excess – but who was the victim and who was doing the terrorising here? The UN was created and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 passed. The Geneva Convention followed, making ‘war’ untenable as an excuse for an individual violating another’s human rights except in combat. Countries go to war, sometimes over the actions of a few individuals – and on both sides, individual bystanders and individual soldiers show phenomenal courage, grace under fire, and unexpected care for fellow humans (even those serving under the wrong flag at times). It is individuals who fall, who bleed, who lose a limb or a loved one... who die. And sometimes, individuals exhibit a shocking appetite for atrocity. It is, ultimately, the individual who decides to commit a war crime. Orders from above (the infamous Nuremberg defence) mitigate culpability but do not nullify it. Au contraire, a commanding officer is guilty for omission to control subordinates. Which places responsibility where it belongs: on every individual who commits or countenances a crime. Photographs: Shutterstock
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COVER STORY
Terrorism
Xenophobia ‘W
ho are these people? Who do we blame?’ When the London riots broke out last month, across news channels and Internet, these seemed to be the burning questions. Opinions were diverse, often contradictory. The looters were mostly Black ghetto-dwellers; the looters were mostly White middle-class kids. The South Asian immigrants were at the root of it; the South Asians were mounting a close-knit community response. The haste to tick racial and socio-economic boxes was astounding – and there was hardly a single forum where the ‘it started with letting in all these immigrants’ card did not get tabled at least once. Parallel to this drive to lay the blame was a rage directed at the police and government. If only they weren’t such a feckless lot, Britain would be safe for Brits (who were neither rioters nor police, certainly not politicians on holiday). The name of the game was finger-pointing. It was unthinkable that there might be no one to extract that retributionary pound of flesh from. Yet strangely, given thousands of commenters, not one seemed to personally know someone who’d been out looting – the troublemakers were always unknown quantities, never ‘one of us’. Of course it was never ‘me’ that did it! It’s human nature of course. Distress and
rage look outwards for a scapegoat. And sometimes, a clever leader builds up a culpable strawman to consign to the flames of popular disappointment. It was behind the Nazi Holocaust; it was behind the Gujarat riots and the Babri Masjid incident; it resulted in a ‘war on terror’ that painted targets by race, nationality and religion. Often the scapegoat is proved to be somehow foreign (an ‘Other’). Thus the Muslims were ‘alien invaders’ in India (which presumably the earlier-invading Aryans are somehow not) and terrorism-prone zealots (which presumably Christian groups such as the Ku Klux Klan are not). But while such extreme forms of xenophobic violence are easily identified, stereotyping of a more casual, insidious type goes daily unchallenged. Thus the English can’t cook; ‘White men can’t dunk’; Blacks like rap (never classical opera); ‘chinky’ girls from the North-East are ‘easy’; the Pakistanis are always out to get us (and not just on the cricket field); the Brahmins are oppressors; the Biharis are stealing jobs from the Marathi Manoos; and Indians are a backward people who still manage to get American jobs outsourced to them. Immigrants get your jobs, so close those borders already! It is but a small step from stereotyping to denouncing and victimising. Apartheid may
It’s individuals who demonise whole groups. It is individuals who become messiahs. Either way, it’s good to remember that while humanity begins at home, it extends beyond the man in the mirror.
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be only recently dead, but it lived a long and full life. It is a rare individual, and an inordinately brave one, who can turn around and silence the communal ‘jokes’, cry down the hate speech, point the finger back at their own. It takes a Dalai Lama to defend Islam postSeptember 11. It takes an anti-apartheid activist like Tim Wise to make it his life’s work to lecture on White privilege as a White man, to write Colourblind. It takes (also White) Ged Grebby to ignore slurs of ‘Grubby Grebby’ and get star players from 40 English football clubs to support his Show Racism the Red Card campaign – in the face of death threats. What, you’ve never heard of Grebby? Well, he’s an ordinary bloke, not famous like the Dalai Lama – just like you or me. On the receiving end, when you are the target, it can take almost suicidal bravery to stand up to the bullying and the stereotyping. Not everyone can be Ambedkar or Gandhi. But it is worth remembering Rosa Parks, the lone Black woman who wouldn’t give up her seat for a White man on the bus in 1955, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Martin Luther King. It’s individuals who demonise whole groups. It is individuals who become messiahs. Either way, it’s good to remember that while humanity begins at home, it extends beyond the man in the mirror.
COVER STORY
Climate change A
ddressing the problem of global warming is simple. We need to get atmospheric carbon down to 350 parts per million (see www.350.org). The problem isn’t identifying the solution; it’s just that who knows when our governments will wake up and deal with it. Till then, we can only sit and moan. Right? Not if you ask ‘No Impact Man’ Colin Beavan. This American took a year out for the No Impact Project, realigning his lifestyle to reduce environmental impact to... ZERO. Did he abandon his life, his wife, his baby and become a sanyasi? Not quite – but he did give himself (and them) a hard time. His story became an eponymous book and a movie, proof that doing your personal best takes nothing more – and nothing less – than willpower to commit and personal integrity to keep you going. We all know this, really. The arguments of ‘what can I do’ are often but excuses. Because as Al Gore pointed out in An Inconvenient Truth... it’s inconvenient to actually do anything at all. But how inconvenient? Harder than paying higher electricity bills because the summer temperatures hit a new high? Harder than recovering from losing your home to a tsunami? Take the highest contributor to the global carbon footprint. World Resources Institute data from 2000 showed clearly that it came from using heat and electricity – that’s nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Now, many people will be incredulous, but most of that consumption is not in factory and commercial buildings, but homes (9.9%). So you see, it’s up to us to turn off the lights, fan, A/C, TV, computer; get off the phone... and find less energy-guzzling recipes to cook. Did you know rice cultivation has a significant carbon footprint? Yes, that’s culturally one of our staple foods, and no, it isn’t convenient to ask the poor to eat kaju barfi instead. Yet it is possible to grow paddy without flood irrigation – it has been done in parts of our own country (Andhra, for example) – harvesting more rice with half the water! Just how inconvenient is it to find out if you can buy food more sustainably grown? Instead of getting together at tea time with your padosans to moan about the garbage dump round the corner, can you buy a composter
Put
your money where your mouth is. If fasting until the powers that be clean up our climate is a bit too radical for you, find an environmental initiative and pledge a small monthly donation. (Of course if you can do both, more power to you!) for the entire complex? Less garbage to dump; free fertiliser; maybe even money for a kitty party from selling the excess. Teachers can make it a class science project, reaching dozens of families at once. There’s lights on all along your street at high noon, again. Can you call your local electricity supply or municipality office and tell them so? If it’s a regular affair, can you write to them? If not... exactly why not? Is it harder than signing up for a Facebook campaign? (Only, you don’t get any ‘likes’ for behind-the-scenes Gandhigiri.) You do know that using solar-power heaters and photo-voltaic cells gets you a state subsidy, right? What’s stopping you – inconvenience? We Indians are famous for jugaad. So why
aren’t more of us using that famous ability to cut corners or sniff out bargains to find solutions that use fewer resources? Hardly smart to pay for electricity and a washer-dryer when the sun does it gratis! You have a dozen dabbas at home; why accept plastic bags to buy dal-chawal, sugar and spices – which you put into dabbas anyway? Bring your own box, dude! Where roads are better suited to bicycles, why buy a car and fume over potholes and parking space? Carpool to work; let the kids enjoy the freedom of taking the metro home. Oh, and put your money where your mouth is. If fasting until the powers that be clean up our climate is a bit too radical for you, find an environmental initiative and pledge a small monthly donation. (Of course if you can do both, more power to you!) 07, | SEPTEMBER 11
Gender discrimination A
s of 2011, India has 940 females for every 1,000 males. Nature normally produces only 105 baby boys to every 100 girls. Female infanticide clearly thrives in India, despite outlawing sex determination. But assuming that all goes well and her life is saved, is the girl child’s life worth living? No, not every girl grows up to be a Roop Kanwar. Not every woman is raped or beaten up. But is there a single girl you know, dear reader, who hasn’t at some point in her 18 years of girlhood been singled out just for being ‘a girl’? Have you ever met an Indian woman who has never been molested or harassed? Punitive laws and reservations get us only so far. What use is legislating employability if women must earn less than a man at the same job (even in ‘progressive’ UK, the gender pay gap is over 20 per cent) – does it make their lives any fairer? It takes more than a Widow Remarriage Act to make sure that widows actually find husbands: it takes a Vidyasagar to make sure his son marries a widow, starting a trend and legitimising the law. And let’s not forget that gender
It’s t’s not hard to avoi avoid gender dis discrimination, discriminatio really. Because the funny thing is that gender is, in the final analysis, an unimportant thing – or should be. All you have to do is be careful to address the human being and not address their gender. discrimination’s target is not only the female, but all femaleness, and indeed all nonmaleness, in turn confusingly defined as female... well, you get the picture: clear as mud muddy and entirely arbitrary. So gender discrimination targets anything tainted in the smallest way by association with whatever we decide is ‘female’. The man with the highpitched voice is effete. The boy who likes to ‘dress up’ is derided as gay. The youth who would rather be a classical dancer is insistently nudged towards computer programming. And if you’re at all ambiguous in your ‘biological sex’, you may as well be outside the pale of humanity – in India, you certainly aren’t part of ‘society’ unless you can defend your place through socioeconomic privilege. Who decided this should be so? You did. Did you see the young girl get eve-teased
on the bus and turn away, because it wasn’t your business or it was ‘nothing’? Did you say ‘boys will be boys’ when your nephews shunned their sisters at cricket, because it’s ‘only a phase’, and anyway the girls can go do a rangoli? Did you buy the girls a doll and none for your son, or get your daughter the gun she wanted? Did you smile when your colleague nudged and winked over the new boss and her short uniform skirt? Did you choose a less experienced male candidate over the killer CV of the female intern because she would want leave to get married and have babies on company time? Did you neglect to check that your workplace had childcare facilities? Did you suggest your student should reconsider her choice of profession because it is a hard place for girls? Did you tell the victim of sexual harassment that she should have dressed ‘decently’? Did you ever tell your (male) best friend he wasn’t ‘man enough’, or your (female) best friend she should wear a saree more often because it ‘looks pretty’? Did you ask your cousin when he’d find a nice girl and settle down, while his boyfriend stood by? That’s when you decided to play the game. It’s not hard to avoid gender discrimination, really. Because the funny thing is that gender is, in the final analysis, an unimportant thing – or should be. All you have to do is be careful to address the human being and not address their gender. Gender’s not that different from the clothes you choose. It’s no essential part of any individual human’s identity. No one’s basic needs – hunger, thirst, sleep, companionship – are based on their gender. A primal emotion like joy is not based on gender, nor is sorrow, anger, fear. Gender is accidental, incidental, mutable. How, then, is gender such an important thing? Why have you made it so important? Why have I?
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COVER STORY
Corruption A
popular forward doing the rounds proposes that the `1,456 lakh crores of black money residing with our corrupt politicians be put to better use: to strengthen Indian borders, to open 1500 ‘Oxford-like’ universities and 2000 hospitals, build homes for 95 crore people, dole out 100 crore per village and 60,000 crore per district. Excellent ideas. But I wonder, where did this money come from? While we turn out the bureaucratic pockets, what of the citizens who filled them – did they write it off as a ‘business expense’? If you are complicit in bribery, you are as corrupt as a giver as the recipient. Anna Hazare’s Lokpal Bill wants to hold Indian politicians accountable for corruption. Well and good. (Though oddly, some punitive measures are harsher in the government’s bill and the Lokpal’s powers more focused on actual corruption; Hazare’s version is an overarching enforcer who also taps your phone at will.) Meanwhile, on television and Internet forums, his supporters often shut down debate and dissent. ‘What is your solution?’ they ask critics. The suggestion is that you have no right to talk unless you have a solution. But the solution already exists: Stop the corruption yourself. If not paying a bribe means you are out of a job and your children suffer, so be it. But then, it is easier to let someone else do the fasting for you, and offer them loud and colourful lip service over the long weekend, isn’t it? Wait, even if this lip service implies signing away your rights as a democratic citizen? Because that is precisely what Hazare’s myway-or-the-highway stance implies: That the people’s elected government is to have an authority of ‘elites’ positioned over it, reverting to precisely what the drafters of the Indian Constitution tried hard to avoid – an oligarchy. Unfortunately, setting up false gods will not
Photograph: Deepak Malik
win us freedom from corruption. Taking personal responsibility for this state of affairs will. That responsibility should certainly take the shape of not doling out a bribe after running the traffic lights so as to avoid an inconvenient court appearance. But it could – and should – also take the form of putting yourself out to enter administrative services and politics, and having arrived there, to remain incorruptible. Or at the least, to question yourself before voting – for a bill, a political candidate or a symbol – about the consequences to yourself, your neighbours, your locality, your state, and your nation. Personal social responsibility includes being political – to educate yourself about ‘democracy’, to examine what ‘corruption’ means. (Not all dissent from our personal idea of moral rectitude is ‘corruption’: it is not ‘corrupt’ to run a licensed liquor store, or even to be an alcoholic; nor is it ‘corrupt’ to disagree with Team Anna). It is also our democratic responsibility to not silence debate
Actual corruption, we all agree, is undemocratic and immoral. We agree unanimously that a
government free of corruption is our right. But rights come with responsibilities, the Constitution clearly explains.
and dialogue over mere disagreement. Actual corruption, we all agree, is undemocratic and immoral. We agree unanimously that a government free of corruption is our right. But rights come with responsibilities, the Constitution clearly explains. (It also, counter to Hazare’s proposal, separates the judiciary precisely to thwart corruption.) An honest citizen’s responsibility in a corrupt state may include civil protest. But pressurising the government to bypass due Constitutional process is a corruption of democracy, no matter how appealing the rhetoric; and there is nothing unpatriotic about saying so. For that is no democracy; it is ochlocracy, rule of the mob that seeks to intimidate legitimate authority – legitimised by our vote. The democratic solution is simply to seek transparency and accountability – from our democratically elected representatives, and even from ombudsmen who investigate corruption – and to be transparently honest ourselves. The mechanisms to end corruption exist; more can be added. But let’s ask ourselves: who will watch the watchmen? Answer: the citizens. Who should have been watching all along. The government is made up of we, the people. If I (the Indian) am Anna, I am also the corrupt politician and the corrupt citizen. The responsibility for our democracy and its corruption lies with ourselves. It is, too, our responsibility to remember that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
... It Was Always
BURNING
by Sandipan Deb
Photograph: Deepak Malik
I
was waiting for my car outside the mall when two young men came out of the metro station. They wore Gandhi caps with “Main hoon Anna (I am Anna)” written on them, and carried Indian flags. It had rained heavily in the evening, and their clothes were still wet, even after the long journey from Ramlila Ground to Gurgaon. They looked like young executives, in their early 20s, the sort you just know are completely up-to-date on the newest apps on their latest-model cellphones, the sort of kids you would expect to see dancing in strobe-lit nightclubs late in the night. It was the fifth day of Anna Hazare’s fast. Back home, sitting at my computer, I found what a friend had posted on facebook: “But the Anna I
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had always wanted to see drenched in the rain was Kournikova!” The sound of agitated voices was wafting in from the TV in the next room: vilifying, extolling, squabbling, hectoring – a slice of the daily dose of legalese, moral stances, ethical sermons, hypocrisy, outrage, appeals. There was no way one could avoid a 74-year-old man who was refusing to eat till his demands were met. An unreasonable 74-year-old man. I use the word “unreasonable” without any value judgements attached to it. Unreasonableness can be a key characteristic of great men who change the world for the better, and also the meanest minds to walk the earth. Gandhi was certainly an unreasonable man – what normative person would exhort
Indian lives a life of quiet desperation, the helpless prisoner of a massive yet illusory system that erodes self-respect, maims dignity, sniggers at ethical behaviour and attempts to extract whatever it can of whatever is left after that. people to go get their heads bashed in by the police without offering any resistance? – and so was Hitler. I mention these two names with a purpose; because Anna Hazare has been compared with both – he has been called the second Gandhi and also a totalitarian fascist. But time and again through human history, it is unreasonableness that induced multitudes of common men to discard their commonness and come out on the streets, to join battle, and do so with reckless abandon and iron-clad faith. It was Anna’s sheer unreasonableness that made the people of his native village Ralegan Siddhi give up smoking, drinking, non-vegetarian food, shun all political parties and elections, and live the life that he preached. Whether one considers that community a pristine utopian oasis or a fascist’s wet dream come true, it is undeniable that the entire project is founded on an unreasonable extremism. And it is precisely this that Anna has now brought to the national stage, and – surprise! – galvanised lakhs of Indians, and hustled crores of them up the road from apathy to at least passive support, with pit stops at scepticism and incredulity. To figure out the reason for this does not require rocket science. I believe that most human beings, given a choice, would like to lead an honest and peaceful life. The trouble is that whereas honesty should – by rational logic, and also according to our teachers in school – lead to peace of mind, it’s hardly so, at least in today’s India. The average Indian lives a life of quiet desperation, the helpless prisoner of a massive yet illusory system that routinely erodes self-respect, maims dignity, sniggers at ethical behaviour and attempts to extract whatever it can of whatever is left after that. It grinds away at us, till we are all corrupted, for the alternative appears impossibly grueling, if not totally unworkable for an average citizen. Bribery rules all the way up the food chain – the bribe-taker in one government office has to perforce become a bribe-giver to get his work done in another, one pays bribes to get a posting which offers higher bribe-earning possibilities, and so it goes on. And at the upper levels of the food chain, bribery and loot form a perfect symbiotic relationship. But mostly everyone below those loot levels are, quite frankly, fed up. And then this man appears out of nowhere. And he appears at the right moment. Men of my generation – those who are in their 40s and 50s now – were born to parents who had seen
India gain independence, and then witnessed the degeneration of that hard-earned freedom into a filthy mess. Over the years, disappointment turned into a bleak unrelieved cynicism. This affected most men of our generation in one or more of three ways. One, we internalised their cynicism and casually watched the rot spread. Two, we blamed our parents’ generation who were young when we achieved independence for just standing by as the hyenas and jackals moved in. Three, we tucked into the unholy feast with gusto and wolfed down as much as we could and more. The burden of history we carried in our heads either paralysed us or corrupted us. The two wet young men at the metro station, with their Gandhi caps and flags, are, however, untouched by the despair that our parents’ generation felt and the cynicism that we inherited. Not only are they far lighter because they carry no baggage of a failed past, they are also far less confused. Their formative years were spent in a period when, perhaps for the first time since Independence, we as Indians began to feel good about our country. In a way, we got rid of a collective inferiority complex that, to be fair, most of us may not have even been aware of. Yes, it also led to some overconfidence and rather pointless preening, but overall, we felt comfortable with our identity as a people and nation. Indians who are in their twenties today have only faint recollections – if any – of the all-pervading cynicism of the old India. They are far more confident than we were at their age, and don’t feel embarrassed to be passionate about a cause. Are they more innocent than we were? I hope so, and I hope they stay that. Middle class fantasy? But it’s a canard that it’s only the middle class which is supporting Anna. Mumbai’s dabbawallahs, who went on strike for the first time in 120 years, can hardly be called middle-class. So too, the large majority of people thronging the Ramlila ground. And carping that most of Anna’s supporters don’t have a clue about what actually the dispute is between the government and Team Anna is irrelevant; all of them understand that lives in this country – from tribal families displaced by fatcat mining lobbies and petty shopkeepers paying weekly hafta, to yes, even decently-paid corporate executives – are blighted by corruption, that our political class cannot be trusted to do anything effective to curb it, and that finally, a man has emerged who is almost demented in his cussedness. It does not matter to the average Indian whether Anna Hazare is a deluded autocrat or a true messiah; to him, it’s Anna’s cause that matters, and that cause is right. It was empirical logic and coldly reasoned-out self-interest that made entire generations of Indians cynical, corrupt, and timid in their aspirations. But today there’s a whole new young unfettered generation out there, cutting across all income classes, who are confident enough to demand a future of their choice, and who are not shy to express their passion in all its intensity. And they seem to have found a leader whose utter unreasonableness mirrors their impatience perfectly. %-& | SEPTEMBER 11
COVER STORY
The average
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AGENTS OF CHANGE Some of them are global icons; others hardly recognised outside their own little corner of the world; none of them is likely to be the next ‘people’s princess’. But each of them is changing the world around them, one skirmish at a time, and not all of it is Gandhigiri or radical activism (or even anything in between). You may disagree with their methods and personal politics, or embrace their cause as your own. Whether you fly the same flag or not, it is hard to deny these individuals’ impact on our nation and planet in recent years. Just do not idolise them – poor is the country that needs a hero. by Manidipa Mandal
Jean Dréze
Irom Sharmila
‘(H)
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Hunger / employment / education e does most of the work and I get most of the credit,’ Amartya Sen supposedly said of his co-author. A developmental economist of Belgian origin, Dréze came to India in 1979 and is now a naturalised citizen. He once lived as a villager in Palanpur, farming and rearing animals, as part of a research project. Dréze is best known for drafting – and campaigning for – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The former Delhi University professor has also carried out fieldwork and policy analysis on famine, rural employment, childcare and education, and gender inequality. Among the movements he has been involved with is the Right to Food campaign. He also did signal work on the PROBE (Public Report on Basic Education) (1999) team, on primary education at the grassroots level.
Civil rights
he 38-year-old Sharmila has been on the world’s longest hunger strike to campaign for the repeal of the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in effect in her home state of Manipur and surrounding areas for several decades, allowing citizens to be indefinitely detained or even shot on mere suspicion. It started with the Malom Massacre, when para-military armed forces allegedly shot 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop, including a former recipient of the National Child Bravery Award. Sharmila was then 28. For her pains, the ‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ has been incarcerated: charged with ‘attempt to suicide’, she has been confined to a hospital ward and force-fed through a nasal tube these many years. She is released for a couple of days each year, and arrested again – the suicide charge cannot carry a sentence of imprisonment for more than one year.
Vandana Shiva
Biodiversity / food security / women’s empowerment hen Shiva – a physicist by training and environmentalist by inclination – talks about grassroots, she could be speaking literally. Navdanya, her countrywide network of seed banks that collects and propagates indigenous heirloom and traditional crop plants by organic agriculture, is the tip of her alternative-globalisation projects. Having begun with the Chipko movement of the 1970s, the causes she has since identified and served include campaigning on ‘biopiracy’; criticism of the so-called Green Revolution and genetic engineering; and the eco-feminist Diverse Women for Diversity movement for biological and cultural diversity, which she sees as resting in women, especially women farmers.
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Hugh Herr
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ometimes, activist actions speak louder than words. Director of the biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab, Hugh Herr isn’t the most vocal person on our list. But his daily work is life-changing, and cannot but bring about social – and often economic and health – benefits. At 17, rock-climbing prodigy Herr lost both legs to a blizzard. So he went to MIT and Harvard, studied engineering and biophysics, designed his own prosthetic limbs – and kept climbing, winning against able-bodied competitors. His work benefits many, from war veterans to double-amputee athlete, fashion model and disability activist Aimee Mullins. But Herr is also famously a member of the team of experts who evaluated South African track athlete Oscar Pistorius, resulting in a recommendation that qualified him as the first disabled athlete to compete in a mainstream Olympic event.
Sebastião Salgado Photo-activism
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n Unicef Special Representative and Goodwill Ambassador, Brazilian photojournalist Salgado has been documenting the lives of the world’s dispossessed, filling 10 books and numerous international exhibitions. With an avowed aim to initiate discussion and raise concern rather than necessarily garner material benefits, Salgado published his first book in 1986: Other Americas, focusing on the indigent of Latin America. He has worked on projects on droughthit Africa (Sahel: Man in Distress); labourers around the world (Workers); migrants, immigrants and diaspora (Migrations); and homeless children (The Children). Many of his works and exhibitions are pledged to fund-raising and use for humanitarian causes. Salgado is currently working on his epic eight-year compendium Genesis, begun in 2004, an exploration of the last hopeful, ‘pristine’ ecological spaces left on earth.
Sridhar Rangayan LGBT rights
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CREATIVE COMMONS Awesome Inc.
is film The Pink Mirror/Gulabi Aina (2003) remains banned by the Indian Censor Board for its homosexual content. Though screened at international festivals, where it won awards – under cover of a humorous narrative – it explores the gay and especially the traditional transsexual communities of India. This cold reception that ensures it is barely known in his own country did not deter Rangayan, a founder-member of the Humsafar Trust for gay rights and former editor of Bombay Dost. He kept the cameras rolling with Yours Emotionally (2006) and 68 Pages, the latter highlighting the stigmatisation of the HIV+ in India. Last year, Rangayan served as director of the Kashish queer film festival in Mumbai, the first such to be held at a mainstream multiplex venue (PVR). 083 | SEPTEMBER 11
COVER STORY
Disability
Maria Bashir Women’s rights
I
t takes guts to open a clandestine school for women under the Taliban regime. It takes gumption as well as great optimism to function as the sole female chief prosecutor in a territory (Herat, Afghanistan) where the stringent laws protecting women against domestic violence and child marriage are observed more often in the breach. Add to that death threats, actual abuse and even an assassination attempt targeting her children, and it is not surprising that Bashir is shadowed by an armed guard provided by the US government. It’s not just women she fights for; this 38-year-old civil servant’s other target is corruption.
CREATIVE COMMONS Medill DC
Gayle Rubin
Judith Butler
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Sex-positivity
hird Wave feminist activist and anthropologist Gayle Rubin’s most influential works have been on the ‘political economy’ of gender and sexuality, the ethnography of sexual subcultures (such as the ‘leather community’). Writing in the 1970s, Rubin belongs to a generation of theorists who repudiated biological determinism and shaped our understanding of the sex/ gender/sexuality system (Thinking Sex), including the valorisation of some sexual behaviours as inherently good/natural or bad/unnatural. Besides gay/lesbian activism, her crucial contributions include the criticism of the anti-pornography movement from a feminist perspective and the repudiation of charges of misogyny inherent in BDSM. Like B.R. Ambedkar in governance, in retrospect Rubin sometimes seems way ahead of her times (though her cohorts may have disagreed, having been on the same page), given the current debates still raging in the mainstream on LGBT, fetish, sex positivity, censorship, pornography, prostitution and polyamory.
Queer politics
hile this post-structuralist gender theorist’s most recent work focuses on Jewish identity and Zionism, Butler is most influential through her earlier writing (Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and Undoing Gender) on gender identity as performative. Highlighting the artifice of gender as social construct, constantly created in action, Butler’s work interrogates the framing of gender identity not just for ‘sexual minorities’, but for everyone – pretty much revising the minority-majority divide to make gender politics an universal issue... and a nonessential one! Many current activist conversations, actions and negotiations on non-normative gender and sexuality (consciously or unconsciously) draw on Butler’s fundamental work in queer theory – including critiques of gender essentialism and heterosexism – for their underpinning. For herself, Butler caused a furore at Berlin Pride last year by refusing an award from organisers she considered tainted by homonationalism; she is also an AIDS activist.
CRAETIVE COMMONS JavierPsilocybin1
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Mary Warnock
Shirin Ebadi
A
former British educator and academic, Warnock has had an opportunity to appreciate the extremes where life seems to be an irredeemable gift card, rather than a gift. She never got to know her eldest sibling, born with severe mental handicaps and autism, who lived and died in a care facility. An author on existentialism, it is perhaps not all that surprising that Warnock has been a vocal pro-euthanasia advocate – not just for the terminally and painfully ill, but also for patients of dementia. Her statement in 2008 that “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service” caused quite an uproar. Warnock has also served on an advisory committee on IVF technology, paving the way for stem cell research in the UK, and advocated for children with special needs being educated in mainstream schools.
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Yuichi Kaido and Mizuho Fukushima
Ron Bruder
Anti-nuclear environmental activism)
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or the last three decades, lawyers Kaido and Fukushima have questioned the safety and advisability of the Japanese nuclear programme – one in courts, the other in parliament – ever since the Three Mile Island incident raised doubts among environmental activists. The recent Fukushima Daiichi disaster has since validated their position. They couple met as students, both drawn to progressive and environmental politics. Kaido has fought cases against utilities operating the nuclear power plants and campaigned privately, even though this conflicted with his father’s career at Mitsubishi Electric. Fukushima chairs the Social Democratic Party of Japan, which has an anti-nuclear agenda too. (The couple have not married because Japanese law requires married spouses to share a last name.)
Human rights
he first (and only) female Muslim Nobel laureate, Iranian lawyer and the country’s first female judge at 23, Ebadi has repeatedly locked horns with government and clerics in her bid to secure democratic human rights for women and children since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. She continued to practice pro bono when women judges were forced out of office, taking on controversial cases – from political dissidents to those on interpretation of Islamic law. She founded the Human Rights Defender Centre in Tehran in 2001. A university professor, she continued to lecture and write on human rights. The Centre was closed down by the authorities in 2008; Ebadi has been in exile in Canada since 2009. She has said her Nobel award was seized by the authorities while she was travelling in London that year.
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ducation is a child’s fundamental right, but those struggling to find earning opportunities, whether due to poverty or local conditions, often wonder what use education is unless it leads to employment opportunities. Jewish-American entrepreneur Bruder founded the Education for Employment Foundation to provide vocational and technical training to youth in the Middle East and Northern Africa. He was motivated by the 9/11 attacks, which led him to wonder what circumstances they originated from. One issue that caught his attention was the high rate of unemployment. EFE now functions across a range of political climates: Egypt, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia. Bruder’s model is simple – identify sectors of the economy that could do with more trained personnel (say, airconditioner repair); plug the gap with education. An interesting side-effect: local curriculums have started to adapt to provide the same skills!
Wael Ghonim
C
C
anadian journalist and sociopolitical activist Klein is the author of No Logo (2000), pretty much the unofficial manifesto for campaigners against corporate-led globalization and consumer culture. Her last, more controversial book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, suggests that certain regimes have routinely used the aftermath of unrest, upheaval, and calamity to push through fundamentalist free-market policies without sufficient dialogue or debate among citizens.
CREATIVE COMMONS Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Employment
Naomi Klein
Corporate globalization
COVER STORY
Euthanasia
CREATIVE COMMONS World Economic Forum
Peaceful revolution
omputer engineer for Google by day, Internet activist by night, Ghonim created a Facebook page title ‘We Are All Khaled Said’, referring to the young victim of police brutality in Alexandria. Administered by Ghonim under a pseudonym, the memorial page became a rallying point that he used to mobilise demonstrations, civil disobedience and non-violent protest activities. He then suddenly ‘disappeared’, taken into custody, but he had left behind instructions for just such an eventuality. The juggernaut he had set rolling on 25 January continued, despite the government’s attempts at stalling it by shutting down Twitter and Facebook (both were being used to organise and coordinate), turning into the peaceful revolution that ousted the autocratic Hosni Mubarak regime. 085 | SEPTEMBER 11
Aparajita Gogoi
Helen Bamber
N
T
Maternal health
ot too many women even in the metros have actually heard of the international White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. But that’s alright, because it is women outside our cities, where 100,000 pregnant mothers die each year from lack of healthcare, that need national coordinator Aparajita Gogoi’s advocacy the most. In 2001, the Alliance’s campaign took the form of a march to the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum of another young woman who died in childbirth: the empress Mumtaz Mahal. The White Ribbon Alliance’s crusade helped legalise the work of midwives to supplement the paucity of medical personnel in rural areas. She is also director of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), which runs an Innovations in Family Planning Services programme to support and train community workers, and the Better Life Options programme that facilitates non-gender-stereotypical education for children, among other projects.
Rehabilitation from war/ torture rained as a psychotherapist, Bamber was 19 when she arrived in Germany to work with Holocaust survivors from the concentration camps in 1945. Her experiences led to the creation of Amnesty International on her return to Britain a couple of years later; she also founded the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture. Bamber went on to research government torture also in Chile, the Soviet Union, South Africa and Northern Ireland. As her ambit grew, she found herself also confronting children’s welfare and the trauma of sextrafficked women. Ultimately, in 2005, she established the Helen Bamber Foundation for the support and rehabilitation of victims of all sorts of human rights violations – it is currently chaired by actress and activist Emma Thompson.
Michael Pollan Food politics
H
CREATIVE COMMONS CENTER for American Progress
ow does a professor of journalism at UCLA, Berkeley, become one of the world’s most popular heroes of the food politics discourse? It probably helps that he is no scientist, but is undeterred by reams of research. But the biggest appeals of Pollan’s best-selling books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, may be the accessible prose and the fact that at least some of his solutions – like the pithy slogan ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants’ – are easily applicable at the personal level, even as there are bigger industrial-level challenges outlined for committed campaigners to target.
Franny Armstrong
Bindeshwar Pathak
D
S
Climate change
ocumentary filmmaker Armstrong’s first film was McLibel (1997), following the longest-ever court trial in the UK, over 10 years with a crew of unpaid volunteers. Her second was a documentation of one family’s fate tied to the Narmada Dam project: Drowned Out (2002). It is with her third film that Armstrong found her activist raison d’etre: The Age of Stupid (2009), a docu-drama on climate change bankrolled in a very innovative fashion – ‘crowdfunding’ of small donations from a large bunch of people. This led to Armstrong’s 10:10 campaign – an effort to encourage and facilitate a 10 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2010 for anyone who would sign up, an individual or an institution... the London tube, the mayor himself, or an entire university. Of course, the year ’10 is over, but the campaign continues – after all, 10 per cent is such an attractively achievable goal for gradual change.
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Public sanitation
afety and dignity have been the watchwords for Bindeshwar Pathak’s efforts to provide hygienic, environment-friendly sanitary facilities to 650 million Indians with no access to a toilet. It started when he, as a fresh graduate from college, joined the Bhangi-Mukti cell for the reintegration of the scavenger community, considered ‘untouchables’. His Sulabh project began as a solution to the problem of manual scavenging, and then became an effort to provide affordable, hygienic and culturally acceptable facilities. Apart from the more conventional pay-per-use toilets familiar in many cities, Sulabh International developed pour-flush composting toilets that generate biogas and runs an educational facility as well. Pathak is a recipient of the Padma Bhushan as well as the Stockholm Water Prize, among other laurels.
CREATIVE COMMONS University of Hull
Liu Xiaobo
Aruna Roy
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is Nobel Peace Prize for ‘long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China’ could not be handed over because Liu was in captivity. An outspoken critic of China’s one-party political system since his days as a professor at Beijing Normal University, he had been sent to labour camp for his views before. But at Tiananmen Square in 1989, his intervention saved hundreds of students (of whom he had also been critical), persuading them to leave when they were getting ready to face the army. He has been arrested and imprisoned repeatedly since. He has been criticised as an apologist of US policies and cultural nihilist. Like fellow pro-democracy Nobel laureate activist Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, it is possible that Liu’s most important achievement has been to serve as a symbol of dissent, attracting global scrutiny to his nation.
B
efore the Lokpal came the RTI. The hugely popular Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 resulted from the Right to Information movement, in which Roy was a prominent agitator. It began with her work in Rajasthan, where alongside Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh, she partnered with peasants and workers to form the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, with a ‘barefoot college’ for rural self-sufficiency. Practising jansunwai and citizens’ audits of government funds in the 1990s, it brought about the Rajasthan State Right to Information Act, which in turn seeded the national movement. A former IAS officer and recipient of the Magsaysay Award for community leadership and international understanding, Roy has been member of both National Advisory Councils so far.
Ray Chambers
.Julian Assange
A
T
Malaria eradication
campaign to rid Africa of malaria deaths by the year 2015, Ray Chambers’ Malaria No More promotes the use and distribution of mosquito nets, raises awareness and educates vulnerable populations on the risk and spread of the disease, and even uses cellphone networks to monitor outbreaks in remote villages to provide timely assistance. Raising funds through highprofile programmes like American Idol’s Idol Gives Back charity, partnering with commercial insurers through the NetGuarantee scheme, Twitter campaigns, sports and entertainment events for fund-raising, Chambers has been named the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria. He also works with various youth welfare projects, having co-founded and funded several himself.
Social activism / political empowerment
COVER STORY
Democracy
Internet activism
he editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks created a new avatar for whistleblowers and pretty much singlehandedly made Internet activism and citizen journalism forces to be reckoned with when he released some 250,000 American diplomatic cables online. A teen hacker-turned-computer programmer, Assange was to become ‘Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker’. Even as an young adult, he wrote down ethical rules for his band of brothers, the International Subversives, to protect the systems they were breaking into. When he founded WikiLeaks in 2006, his stated objective was to ‘radically shift regime behaviour’ by targeting ‘secretive or unjust’ organisations. Among various exposes, his uncovering of extrajudicial killings in Kenya won him an Amnesty International award. Photograph: Shutterstock
Mike Pandey
Conservation / Animal welfare
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orn in Kenya, filmmaker Mike Pandey’s work has been silently battling apathy towards India’s treasure of flora and fauna for nearly half a century. His wildlife documentaries The Last Migration (1994) and Vanishing Giants (2004) didn’t just serve as eye-openers on the plight of the Indian elephant in the wild and in its encounters with humans, but triggered enough awareness for the government to ban brutal methods of trapping the animals. Both won the Green Oscar, the Wildscreen Panda Award, as did Shores of Silence (2000), which resulted in a ban on the killing of whale sharks on Indian shores. His decade-long TV series Earth Matters has spotlighted not only animals in danger and endangered, but also medicinal plants in our forests and the struggles of local peoples making their livelihood from these wild spaces with little education and technology to prevent harm on either side.
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THE MAN FOR A
1963
BILLION FACES
Anna enrolled with the army on April 14, 1963 and completed his training in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. He started his career as a driver and during his 15-year tenure, he was posted to several states, including Sikkim, Bhutan, Jammu & Kashmir, Asssam and Leh. He was given five medals for his service: Sainya Seva Medal, Nine Years long Service Medal, Sangram Medal, 25th Independent anniversary Medal and Paschimi Star.
1965 During the Indo-Pak war, he was posted at Khemkaran border, and on 12 November, when Pakistan launched air strikes on Indian base, a military convoy that Hazare, who was a driver at the time, was attacked. All the other soldiers he was travelling with were killed, but Hazare survived. This was the turning point in his life that prompted him to devote his life to social service.
1978 Post retirement from the 9th Maratha Battalion as a sepoy, Anna Hazare returned to his native village and was disappointed to see the abject living conditions there. With an annual rainfall of just 400 to 500 mm, water tankers were the only means of drinking water and almost 80 per cent of the villagers were dependent on the neighbouring villages for food grains. He steered the villagers to work towards water conservation. Thanks to Anna Hazare’s initiatives, Ralegan Siddhi is regarded as the role model of an ideal village.
The gap between the rich and poor is increasing. hers are struggling Some are living to eat, while others to eat enough to be able to live.
1991 He started the Bhrastachar Virodhi Jan Andolan (BVJA) when he found that about 40 forest a e officers had duped the state government of crores of rupees. Even after he submitted the evidences, the government was reluctant to take action against the erring officers. In protest, Anna returned the Padmashree he was awarded a year earlier. He also returned the Vriksha Mitra award given by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The government relented only after he went on an indefinite hunger strike, and prosecuted the accused officers. Six ministers too were we w e fforced orcced d to resign on the issue.
1997 He alleged that the then Mahrashtra social welfare minister, Babanrao Gholap’s wife Shashikala was involved in dubious land purchases in the state. He even forwarded the documentary evidences in support of his allegations to the then governor P. C. Alexander. A year later, Gholap filed a defamation suit and on 9 September 1998, Hazare was sentenced a simple imprisonment for three months by the Mumbai Metropolitan Court. The arrest came
under heavy public protest and the state government eventually ordered his release from the jail. Gholap resigned from the cabinet in April 1999.
2003 Anna Hazare raised corruption charges against four ministers of the Congress-NCP government and when his accusations fell on deaf ears, he started a fast unto death in August. He broke his fast only after the then chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde formed a one-man commission, headed by retired judge P. B. Sawant to look into the accusations. The report submitted two years later re eport was su u in February, indicting Suresh Jain, Nawab Malik and Padmasinh Patil. Jain and Malik resigned from the cabinet in March 2005. The same year in July, he went on an indefinite hunger strike in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan to protest against the government’s reluctance to pass the Right To Information Act. After 12 days, the President of India signed the draft of the Act and ordered the state government to implement it with effect from 2002. The same draft was used as the base document for the National RTI Act, 2005.
Money alone does not bring development, but it certainly corrupts.
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Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare aka
Anna Hazare Born on
15 January 1940
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orn to unskilled labourer parents (Baburao Hazare and Laxmi Bai) in Bhingar village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, Anna Hazare was raised by his aunt in Mumbai and could not continue his studies beyond Class VII. Unmarried, he has been living in a small room attached to the Sant Yadavbaba temple in Relgan Siddhi since 1975. In April this year, he declared his bank balance of `67,183 and `1500 in hand. He owns .07 hectares of family land in Ralegan Siddhi which is used by his brothers. He gave away two other pieces of land, donated to him by the Indian Army and a villager, to the village. His only income is the pension he receives from the Indian Army. Anna Hazare once reportedly contemplated suicide and even wrote a two-page essay on why he wanted to end his life. Seeking answers to the purpose of human existence, reports suggest that he chanced upon a book on Swami Vivekananda at New Delhi railway station and decided to dedicate his life in service of his fellow humans. Inspired by the teachings of the Swami, Hazare gave up alcohol and meat, and chose to stay unmarried and celibate.
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FOOD
Name
TWOA SMY O R R O W E S T E R D A Y by Alam Srinivas
Over-confidence, or arrogance,
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he era began by being the best of times – for both the ruling class and the middle-class beneficiaries. Suddenly, without clear warnings and within two or three years, it ended up being the worst of times for both these powerful segments. The simmering people’s anger then erupts into a volcano of a spontaneous movement, whose hot lava engulfs the entire nation. Finally, the civil confrontation peters out within 18 months, but it still leaves a defining mark on the country’s history. This, in essence, is the summary of the three mass and middle-class agitations in post-Independence India. The similarities between the three demonstrations are uncanny, almost surreal. The leaders behind them too have several resemblances, as if they were simply transported through time and space to start a fresh confrontation with the government in power. Anna Hazare’s current campaign against corruption has many commonalities with V. P. Singh’s Jan Morcha Party (1987) and the JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) movement in 1974. Therefore, a study of these three movements provides key insights into the makings of a mass leader, and the beginnings of a nation-wide stir. In 2009, as in 1971 and 1984, the ruling Congress Party achieved remarkable popular support in the national elections. After splitting the party in 1969, Indira Gandhi won over two-thirds seats in Lok Sabha. Rajiv Gandhi went a step further in 1984; his party’s was the largest-ever majority in Parliament. And under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, although the Congress formed a coalition government, the party won more seats in 2009, compared to 2004. All these three regimes had the people behind them. Garibi Hatao and nationalisation (of banks) were successful slogans in 1971, Rajiv Gandhi’s technology missions (like water, literacy and telecom) were believed to be steps that the country needed to eradicate poverty, and UPA I and II’s initiatives like RTI and NREGA were heralded as visionary steps. There was a belief, an expectation, and a hope that the respective governments will finally deliver tangible results. The economy was on a high. In 1969-70 and 1970-71, growth was over 5 per cent; between 198081 and 1983-84, there were two years of over 7 per cent annual growth; and UPA II came to power promising
was one factor for past governments to become complacent. They failed to read the writing on the wall; they were unable to gauge the pulse of the nation. They didn’t take decisions, or took those they thought were right, without any direct consultations with the people. double-digit rates. There was euphoria on the foreign relations front: Indira had won the Bangladesh war in 1971 and conducted the nuclear test in 1974, Rajiv had signed an accord with Sri Lanka to send Indian troops there in 1987, and Manmohan was on a high because of his civil nuclear treaty with the US, which finally acknowledged that Pakistan was the hotbed of terrorism. One would not be unfair to contend that these three periods were picture-perfect in social, economic, political and diplomatic senses. But then the story went from sweet, sour to bitter. It left a bad after-taste in the mouth of the middle class that had enthusiastically supported all the three governments. One after another, all the pillars that supported this segment’s prosperity came crashing down. In addition, there rose a leader, almost from nowhere, who was willing to stand for their rights.
Political vacuum Over-confidence, or arrogance, was one factor for these governments to become complacent. They failed to read the writing on the wall; they were unable to gauge the pulse of the nation. They didn’t take decisions, or took those they thought were right, without any direct consultations with the people. Factionalism within the party (or coalition) was another reason for the lack of this will to rule. Thanks to Congress’ electoral victories, the political opposition (BJP and Left parties) was in shatters, and could not provide the checks and balances to force the policy makers on the right track. Therefore, when decisions were taken, they were not implemented properly and used to stymie criticism, both within and outside the party. In many cases, there was a sense of policy paralysis. Indira used FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act) and
Photographs: Deepak Malik
If history repeats itself, and if the past can offer clues to what may happen in the near future, then we should learn a few lessons from the JP and VP demonstrations. JP’s charge was
stopped mid-track within 18 months. VP was dislodged as the PM within the same time-frame. MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) against her opponents, and to stop from being financially supported by foreign money, or black money of Indians stashed abroad. Rajiv was forced to act against his own finance minister, V. P. Singh, who used tax raids as a means to act against corrupt businessmen. Manmohan himself admitted that he does not have a magic wand to solve the country’s problems, and has blamed coalition compulsions for the lack of apparent leadership. In the 2G scam, he stood and watched, when he could have intervened, as spectrum was sold cheap by A. Raja in 2008 at 2001 rates. Arun Jaitley, the Opposition BJP leader, voiced the country’s sentiments when he told the Rajya Sabha that what the PM needs is a will, not a magic wand.
Scandals in the family Crony capitalism reached its abysmal zenith in all the three regimes. Indira’s government selected her 23-year-old son to build a factory to manufacture 50,000 Maruti, a small car model, out of 18 applicants. Loyal politicians, like Bansi Lal, Haryana’s CM, gave him 290 acres of land, purchased at below-market prices. Industrialists and nationalised banks bent over backwards to extend money for the project. Sanjay had neither the technical expertise nor business experience to manage a car plant; his claim to fame was one-year apprenticeship at a Rolls Royce factory in Britain. In 1987, Rajiv’s government was rocked by the Bofors scam; it was believed that the Swedish defence manufacturer had paid `64 crore as bribes to the Gandhi family and its friends to bag the contract to supply Bofors Howitzer guns to India. Although his involvement was never proved, the name of Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman and a friend of Rajiv’s wife, Sonia, was linked to the scandal. Recently, the CBI dropped all charges against Quattrocchi in the Bofors case. In the case of Manmohan, who is perceived to be honest, his name has been linked to the selection of a corrupt Central Vigilance Commissioner, appointment of Suresh Kalmadi as Chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, and turning a blind eye to the 2G scam perpetrated by Raja. In his case, it is more of an act of omission, rather than commission. He may have not committed the act, but he did allow it to happen through inaction.
India against corruption Indira, Rajiv and Manmohan (with Sonia) were hailed by the middle class largely because of their 092 | SEPTEMBER 11
public commitment to fight and eradicate corruption. Political pundits gloated how the three would bring in transparency and make this country corruption-free. Ram Nath Goenka, the former head of The Indian Express Group, said that he could now die in peace after Rajiv became the PM. But infuriated by the scams, they turned their ire against the same leaders. The disgusted and disappointed middle class followed suit. It saw corruption all around it. In every walk of life, they had to pay bribes. Even if they didn’t, they heard about it from their friends. At the same time, they read (in the 1970s and 1980s) and/or saw (1990s) how the politicians and crony capitalists made millions of rupees by corrupting and manipulating policy makers. Corruption, as it rotted and rusted the system, threatened to destroy the Great Middle Class Dream. However, the three PMs felt that they had done enough to tackle this black menace in the society. They thought that they had enacted powerful laws, and that was enough to achieve the objective. Indira had faith in FERA and MISA, Rajiv in his new technocrat coterie (which included Sam Pitroda, the chairman of the technology missions), and Manmohan in RTI, cash-for-subsidies, and UID. Little did the trio realise that the middle class knew they were not working at the ground level; the latter felt that like all other laws, these too were being misused by the people in power.
Economic downturn The middle class was impacted by the slowdown in the economy and the growing tentacles of inflation, especially the rise in food prices. By 1974, the annual growth had slipped to 2.9 per cent, and wholesale inflation was 30 per cent. In 1984-85, the respective figures were 4 per cent (down from over 7 per cent the previous year) and 8 per cent (up from 4 per cent). By 2009, the effect of the global financial meltdown (2008) was visible and inflation raised its ugly head over the next two years. Among the urban and rural well-to-do families, the dream of continuing materialistic prosperity turned into a nightmare as they struggled to balance their household budgets, cut costs, postpone savings and investment decisions, and feared loss of jobs. Slowly, but steadily, it resulted in pockets of urban unrest. Over time, people spontaneously revolted in their localities. Students, professionals, white- and bluecollared workers and sections of honest bureaucrats picketed in pockets of unrelated protests. But it was still not a mass and pan-India movement. So, the governments ignored them.
Birth of a new leader
Ironically, none of the three leaders – JP, VP or Anna – were in political or any other limelight. JP had retired from politics after vainly battling against Indira. VP was shifted out of finance to defence by Rajiv; in 1987, he quit the Congress and most experts thought that was the end of his political career. After all, since 1947, very few politicians had survived outside the party. Anna was never the torch-bearer for the civil society; he was happy to change the world in his village.
FOOD
They were aggressively goaded and pressurised to don the hat of a leader. JP was asked, time and again, by the students in Bihar colleges to head their agitation. VP succumbed to the demands to start a new party, Jan Morcha, by the likes of Arun Nehru, Arun Shourie, Satpal Malik and Arif Mohammed. Anna was seduced by Kiran Bedi, Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal. All the three knew that they were taking charge of fringe movements that may not influence national politics. However, they had great advantages over other existing leaders. They were brutally honest, had integrity, and could take on the powers-that-be as they had no stakes in the existing system. They could represent the middle class, whose ideals were based on these traits. Therefore, the JP movement instantly spread from Bihar to several states in north India. VP became the cynosure of the nation and became the next PM once Rajiv’s Congress was booted out in the 1989 elections. And lakhs of people took to streets across the country in the name of Anna.
Future Imperfect If history repeats itself, and if the past can offer clues to what may happen in the near future, then we should learn a few lessons from the JP and VP demonstrations. JP’s charge was stopped mid-track within 18 months. VP was dislodged as the PM within the same time-frame. None of them could really lead and carry the mass movements for a long time. Within no time, both were relegated to the dust-ridden pages of contemporary history books. VP, in fact, ended up being hated by the middle class. More importantly, both these confrontations with the governments of their times resulted in radical – and dangerous – changes in the socio-economic-politics fabric of the country. The effects of these cataclysmic transformations are still being felt; their reverberations are still echoing in the 21st century. Thanks to JP’s success, Indira imposed the Emergency in 1975. It was possibly the darkest phase in independent India’s history with all its excesses and extremes. In a bid to broaden his support, in an attempt to win elections on his own without support from coalition partners, VP changed the polity of this country. He took out the Mandal Commission report from the shelves, re-dusted it, and imposed it on the people. The middle class revolted as it meant job reservations on the basis of castes, and not merit. It spawned the rise of caste-based regional political parties like BSP, Samajwadi Party, and many others across India. So, will Anna’s success in forcing the government to accept Jan Lokpal Bill result in a powerful super-cop institution which could misuse its vast powers in the future? Can this good cause lead to a fatalistic event, which will undermine the country’s democracy and Parliament? It is time to think about these questions for they may tomorrow haunt the same middle class which stands behind Anna today. 093 | SEPTEMBER 11
Don’t hold your breath for
Apocalypse
Now by John Dayal
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W B Yeats
I
would would ld b bee a llousy C Catholic ath tholilic nott tto o hope for a Second Coming of Christ. But I am not holding my breath for Apocalypse Now, iinnocently Ap lp N tl reading di the events of the past to fit the matrix conjured by the poet. Surely much could seemingly fit, disasters natural and man-made, human monsters and dictators in the mask of the anti-Christ, charlatans and pretenders, and political and economic phenomenon no less potent than the unexpected earthquake in Washington DC and the predicted but still cataclysm quake-tsunami- nuclear-meltdown triple whammy in Japan. The first World Wide Web bubble-burst seamlessly morphed into the financial meltdown triggered by the sub-prime 09) | SEPTEMBER 11
multltiiplle mortgage multiple morttgage h housing ousiing lloans oans iin n tth the he US US b byy greedy banks and their millionaire managers. That, in turn, spawned a second meltdown thatt iis swallowing th ll i country t upon p country t iin United Europe, with repercussions in South and East Asia. The National debt of the US catapults China into an economic monster threatening India as much as the rest of the world. Irrational development, the growing absolute control of right wing politics and the unrelenting class of corporate giants, including the media, and the banks has led to poverty enclaves not just in European Union countries such as Greece and Portugal, but even within the United Kingdom. The recent “poverty riots” of London and Birmingham, in which twenty thousand people are said to have participated putting a big part of the cities to the flame for almost a week – and
four the process the four llilives ives were llost ostt iin n th he pr p ocess – shook sho h ok k th he west. The coalition British B government does not seem to have lear learnt rnt a lesson, and harsh police development p li action ti iis itits response sponse to a de elopment crisis where funds are not being spent on education and job creation in the inner cities for children from broken families living on the margins of the social conscience. And the political mess in the Mid-east and shooting oil prices brings poverty within reach of the most well-healed across the globe. Politics and security keep pace with the economic crisis, and in fact are irrevocably interlinked in the industrial military combine that has retained its overwhelming power through two world wars, a Cold War and innumerable other localised crises. The trauma of global terrorism, which
COVER STORY Photographs: Shutterstock
many ttho many thought houg ught ht had had p pea peaked eake ked d in i th the he aatt he attack ttac ackk on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York has not been diminished by liquidation Hussain the liq idation first of Saddam H ssain and then of Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, and the imminent exit of Libya’s Gaddafi. Terror continues to bleed Afghanistan, as also Pakistan, that big exporter of terror to India and a few other countries. The advent of the Unmanned Aviation Vehicles has not reduced the American body bags even as it swells the number of dead women and children as collateral damage. The so called “flower revolutions” that ousted the old statues of rulers in Egypt and Algeria may yet touch Syria and Jordan, but hold no hope for real democracy in the river plains and desert dunes of the rest of that
region which the rise various regi re gion on w whi hich ch sstill till ill fears f th he ri ise of vari ious us aand nd d vicious forms of the Muslim Brotherhood. And vast parts of Africa, and the south Asian neighbourhood neighbo rhood continue contin e to suffer s ffer under seemingly benign but deeply rooted xenophobic governments. Worse still, the uni-polar dispensation after the demise of Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, the WashingtonLondon-Nato pressure machine has bid bold to intervene in the internal affairs of every other nation on earth, demolishing one set of tyrants and installing another set.
all Africa, poverty stalks called all of A Afr fric icaa, aand nd p over erty ty ssta talk lkss ev even en so so ca cal llled d oil rich in the continent. In the graveyard o of the Soviet Union, the many nuclear bomb bombs bs remain a threat, threat some of them are on the auction block, a few apparently stolen, some form the kernel of the arsenal of nations who are still to declare themselves as nuclear powers. These include not just the old suspects Israel and the Iran, but perhaps also Saudi Arabia and North Korea. In fact, North Korea remains a flashpoint for a future Great War.
Often enough, its perceptions go wrong, and nations sink into a worse morass than before. Iraq is just one example. It remains to be seen if the birth of South Sudan after two rounds of civil war offers a ray of hope in that part of Africa. Peace remains partial in
Patently, India has not remained untouched. The old insulation of the Non-Aligned Movement and a closed and partially nationalised economy with stock exchanges and the good old rupee totally isolated from 09* | SEPTEMBER 11
Murdoch does not fully own a newspaper though his Wall Street Journal and Star TV have a foothold in the land. Presumably therefore, he cannot bribe police and politicians as he did in London and tried in Australia and Washington. Not that he has to in India. His Indian staff can be trusted to sell his line and protect his interests. They are used to working over and beyond the call of duty for their paymasters. There is little doubt that liberalisation, which has created a 200 million strong middle class through the call centres and financial bourses, (and which is now flexing its political muscles in the public space, of which later), has changed the economic and political landscape. But it has also widened the divide between the rich and the poor, the cities and the agricultural fields. Repeated journeys across the country and deep into forested districts whose names may not be on the popular tongue, reveal the state of poverty. The rate of population growth is declining and there has been an increase in life expectancy even in rural India. But the infant mortality rate still remains alarming high in forest villages and the districts of central India where water is scarce and medicare non-existent. But the main reason for poverty is the lack of money. There is no real cash transfer. Government schemes leak like a sieve, and even in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, combined with the sale of food grains to the “below poverty line” families remains a badly executed and non-comprehensive programme with little real impetus to the raising of the quality of life quotient. Living conditions in the villages, the lack of drinking water, the absence of electricity and roads, schools without teachers and books, and medical centres without doctors and medicines brings “real India” at par with the worst of the lands of Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Very little to boast of when the growth in agriculture India is really less than a third of the 9 per cent growth spoken for India Inc, and the glass and aluminium mushrooming of Industrial suburbs and SEZs in the map of the first decade of the 21st Century. Most of the Maoists do not really have to hide in forests. They live in the security of their homes, because they retain the trust of the village. They are the fruit of the rural development crisis. world economies has much eroded, though its shards still remain and occasionally save India from the worst of the western meltdown and the crumbling of the Tigers of the far east. Economic liberalisation, let loose in the post-Rajiv Gandhi era by Prime minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, who lived long enough to see the first fruits of his action, married the Indian economy in a lose wedlock with the west. The then finance minister Manmohan Singh brought freedom 09+ | SEPTEMBER 11
for Indian monopolies from the shackles of government controls of the licence raj. Incidentally, the Indian giants, be they the Ambanis or the emerging entrepreneurs of the IT, Mobile and Internet revolutions, still sought protection from western giants. The Indian retail sector, the legal profession and even the established tycoons of Education are still seeking a defence against being overwhelmed by western talent and capital. India is among the few countries where
The economic divide could have been addressed if the political and constitutional institutions had further strengthened themselves to cope with the challenges of globalisation and modernisation, a trial even for the oldest Parliament in Britain as we have seen in the recent crisis in that country. The political class, however, has almost lost its importance, position and strength in the country since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
COVER STORY
imposed the State of Emergency in 1975. The extra constitutional centres of power and authority that emerged then by overwhelming parliamentary structures and processes and norms of democracy were reviled correctly once the Emergency was lifted. But they also in a manner legalised the short circuiting of parliamentary democracy whenever it suited either those in power or those seeking power. The involvement of the government machinery in the pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and against Christians in 2008 where the State was but a mute witness, have to be seen in this light. The same process provides both the cause and the strength of the so called movement against corruption launched by the likes of Yoga tele-evangelist Ramdev and Maharashtra serial hunger strike icon Hazare. Both are anti-democratic and have little, if any, respect for Parliamentary due process. But they have been able to become heroes of the middle class ire against rampant corruption. The people in the villages and fields are the worst hit by corruption because they cannot pay bribes and lose their real wages to the intermediaries and the government staff. The middle class does not have to become a victim of structured corruption. It does not have to pay a bribe to get its salary from Infosys or Tata or even the smaller paymaster. It requires no licences for its every day existence. The only place or reason the middle class, the students, the housewives and their husbands, have to pay a bribe is when they want to jump the queue, when they want a privilege or a benefit out of turn. That is the bribe they pay. They are not so much victims of corruption as the creators of corruption. If they had bothered to wait a day more, if they had not sought admission in a course where they had failed in the entrance examinations or were not fulfilling the criteria, if only they had observed the traffic rules and not jumped the red light, they would not have had to bribe the policeman. If only they had that courage. The middle class lacks courage, because it is not in the habit of suffering, as the men and women in the village have had to for want of a voice. They call it the Second Freedom Struggle, a vacuous slogan that mocks at the martyrdom of those who fought India’s freedom truffles in 1957 and the 1940s. The middle class also overestimates its power, basking in the glow of the force multiplier that is the 24x7 private channel network which finds it easy and cost effective to cover the protest of “people like us” in Ramlila grounds rather than spend money on covering stories of poverty. No TRPs there. And incidentally, the middle class which shows no respect for Constitution and Parliament, is not asking for the private sector to be brought under the purview of
If they had bothered to wait a day more, if they had not sought admission in a course where they had failed in the entrance examinations or were not fulfilling the criteria, if only they had observed the
traffic rules and not jumped the red light, they would not have had to bribe the policeman. If only they had that courage.
Lok Pals and ombudsman. But still there is no reason to expect an apocalypse. Reviled as they may be, abused and corrupted as they may believed to be, India’s saviours are its Constitution and the institutions it has birthed – Parliament, the Judiciary, and the executive. The press too is a child of the Constitution, born of the right of the individual to freedom of speech and expresses ion. The Constitution, through the general elections, gives voice to the common people, not just the middle class. We need to remember that the middle class had reconciled to the Emergency. Many were happy the trains were running on time. Many more were happy that slums had been bulldozed from beautiful Delhi. Some were happy that the minorities had at last been silenced. Those taking bribes were of course active. And the tycoons were happy bribing the new coteries. The nuanced sharing of power between the Parliament and the government, the overseeing eye of the judiciary, the shared
roles of central and state governments, and the absolute control of the civilian government over the military have kept India out of deeper trouble and adventurism. Even votaries of absolute globalisation and liberalisation who crib that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is delaying on early promise, agree it is the gradual nature of loosening the reigns that saved India in mauling of the Asian Tigers and the first global meltdown of the west. It will also salvaged the economy from the shadow of the second crisis in the western markets. A strong governmental focus in improving the countryside and supporting the agriculture sector to bring it par with industry in the national thinking, would go far in averting disaster. The middle class would do well to take time off its candle light vigils and encourage the governments at New Delhi and in the States to give a thought to amelioration of poverty. You do not want a rebellion of the poor and the deprived, do you? The Ram Lila ground would not be able to contain it. 09, | SEPTEMBER 11
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Wadi Rum:
THE ARABIC
ESERT
MOONSCAPE
FEATURES Photographs and text by Sanjay Austa
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Indeed, Wadi Rum after Petra is almost like Fatehpur Sikri after the Taj Mahal. But I am glad we made a dash for it, cutting short our Petra itinerary. The highway from Petra to Wadi Rum is smooth as it is beautiful and the landscape changes piecemeal by piecemeal: Something like the road journey in Ladakh I thought, seeing the scenery morph from scrubby farmlands to ocher-pink desert sands. Small sculpted mountains grow from insignificant mounds into magnificent skyscrapers and before you know it, you are in the heart of it all. If Petra is Jordan’s historical heritage, Wadi Rum is its Arabian Nights. Its in Wadi Rum where folklore meets imagination. No matter which part this small peaceful Middle-Eastern country you travel in, all reference points are invariably of the desert. Its just as well. Over thousands of centuries, the life of the Jordanians have been shaped by the deserts. Almost 75 per cent of Jordan is desert-like, much of it uninhibited. The civilisation is squeezed around a narrow strip around river Jordan and the Dead Sea.
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some of them, like our waiter serving us Arabic tea, simply refused to be photographed. There are bedouins who still have a nomadic existence. They wander with their flock of goats all over the Middle-East, living a life not very different from their ancestors in Biblical times. But most of them have now settled around the tourist hot-spots like Wadi Rum and Petra becoming an integral part of the thriving Jordanian tourism industry. They are well adapted to the modern way of life and love to keep in touch on facebook and twitter. Many bedouins I photographed told me to add them on facebook and tag their photos so they can see themselves when they log in. Some of them are however still very orthodox in their beliefs and you must certainly ask them before you take their photograph especially if you have not bought anything from them. Modern or orthodox, all bedouins have very distinct looks. They can be identified by the surma in their eyes and their very peculiar beard that is shaved on each side of their under lip.
We arrive in Wadi Rum late in the afternoon. All tourist camps here look like the goat-hair tents of the bedouins. In fact everyone, from the manager down in these tourists camps dress up like these desert dwelling Arab nomads and its hard to tell a bedouin from the other Jordanians.
Wadi Rum desert safari can be done on foot, on camels or on 4WD’s. Hiking is, of course, the best way to get the feel of the desert but the distances between one mountain and the other are so vast that it is popular only with few intrepid travelers who have the luxury of time. Camel safari comes next and can give you an authentic feel of the desert. Hiking was out of question but we had no time for camels either and were happy to hop onto the 4WD’s that are increasingly becoming the first choice for lazy travelers like yours truly. The best time to see the fantastic granite and sandstone mountains of Wadi Rum is of course the early mornings or late evenings. Not only does it make for great photographs, the soft slanting sunlight accentuates the age old weathering on these mountains bringing out every detail.
Most of them will pose happily for pictures but
There are many tourist points in this vast desert
ARABIAN NIGHTS IN BEDOUIN TENTS If you visit Wadi Rum, a night’s halt is a must. Not just for the stars that shine so lustrously in the desert sky but for the exotic and authentic Arabian experience it accords. Thankfully there are no hotels in this desert. So the only way you can have a lay over here is in bedouin-like camps. From the food to the interiors, the camps compete with each other in giving the best bedouin experience. The sofas in the lounges and rooms are all upholstered maroon and black the two tent colours uses by the beduoins themselves – though their tents
are made of goat hair. The staff is dressed in the traditional bedouin regalia often more meticulously than the bedouins, who can be seen sporting a denim sometimes. The food is a fine spread of a variety of Arabic cuisines, mainly Lebanese, and is cooked in large open kitchen in front of you. In the middle of the camp sit bedouin musicians playing their simsimiya and singing soulful desert ballads. There is no alcohol in this country but it does not take too much time before one is intoxicated by this Arabian Night experience. 103 | SEPTEMBER 11
FEATURES
A
fter visiting Petra in Jordan, it takes a bit of resolve to make the onward journey towards Wadi Rum. The magnificent ancient city of the Nabateans falls two hours before the deserts of Wadi Rum on your linear journey southward. The sites at Petra had left me so overwhelmed that I knew any further travel would only lead to disappointments and comparisons.
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At one point the halt was longer than others. A craggy sandstone mountain here accorded opportunity for amateur mountaineering. A small gully lead up the mountain to a small ledge at the top. I climbed up to the ledge and was rewarded with fantastic views of the other mountains far out and below me. We were almost 300 meters above the valley but the sands had crept up an entire portion of his mountain not far from where I stood. Coming down a mountain is never easy but in Wadi Rum we simple had to wade down the mountainside. There is another place where the mountains form a sort of gorge from where the wind sweeps at you in a furry enough to knock you off your feet. All such points usually accord grand views of valleys or the desert mountains. But its not just nature and adventurer in Wardi Rum. There is a lot of heritage and history too. Wadi Rum mountains have paintings, etchings and rock inscriptions left over by inhabitants dating as far as the Nabateans. The best way to see these paintings is on a trek. No matter which desert one visits, you have to live in for a day or two to experience it. There are no hotels but there are many camps catering to all budgets at Wadi Rum. In the night the mountains silhouette against the starry night and make for an enduring image of a desert moonscape your carry with you forever.
MOUNTAINEERING HAVEN Known as `Valley of the Moon’, Wadi Rum is not just a nature lover’s moonscape. Its also a great place for sport aficionadas. The sheer cliffs and escarpments of Wadi Rum offer enough challenge to the hardiest of climbers. No wonder, serious mountaineering and trekkers flock to these huge sandstone mountains all the year around. However, sports activity in Wadi Rum are not done without a measure of caution. Wadi Rum has cultural and historical significance. The sandstone mountains have etched on their surface painting,
etching, going back to thousands of years. Recognising its hertage value, it was granted World Heritage Status by UNESCO only this year in June. So if you want to do some mountain climbing here, there are some mountaineering tools you must leave behind. Because of the archaeological treasure on the mountains, you cannot use fixed protection. This includes drilling placements, blots, pitons and in-situ threads. Route of both treks and climbs cannot be marked with any paint or structure. If you want to summit any peak here, the bedouin are your best bet. 107 | SEPTEMBER 11
FEATURES
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and if you are on a 4WD, you will be driven from one point to the next at top speed. Driving on the sandy desert road is far from easy but thankfully its usually a skilled bedouin behind the wheel. The 4WD’s are open and its fantastic to get a good 360 degree view of the desert. But if you are tailing other jeeps like we were, you will be sprayed along the journey with fine desert sand.
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FEATURES
Don’t we all love doing things in style? When Hari Nair got a chance drive the brand new Audi A6, he took it for a spin at the Yas Marina Formula One track in Abu Dhabi... He nearly died of excitement.
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O
OVERVIEW
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Audi A6 2.8 FSI
Audi A6 3.0 TFSI quattro
Displacement: 2773 cc
Displacement: 2995 cc
Power: 150kW @ 5250-6500 rpm
Power: 220 kW @ 5250-6500 rpm
Torque: 280 Nm @ 3000-5000 rpm
Torque: 440 Nm @ 2900-4500 rpm
0-100 kph: 7.7 seconds
0-100 kph: 5.5 seconds
Top Speed: 240 kph
Top Speed: 250 kph
Price: `39,90,000
Price: `47,00,000
As far as India is concerned, the A6 has been a pivotal reasons for a constitution change. As Michael Perschke, Head, Audi India said, “When Ravi Shastri won the 3rd generation A6 in 1985 for becoming the Man of the Series for a cricket series, the Indian government waived off taxes on prizes won by sports persons.” For the rest of the tales and how this 7th generation performed … stay hooked and keep reading. It’s not everyday that one gets to test a sedan on a Formula One track. So on getting behind the wheels of the new A6 at the Yas Marina circuit, we decided to sweat it out on the unforgiving tarmac of this race track. The Yas track has lots of tricky bends, hairpin turns and pretty sweet arrowstraight stretches. But before hitting the tracks, we took it for a nice spin in the city to get a feel of the machine and see how the engine responds. So let’s get inside and enjoy this palace of vice. With a long hood, low but sweeping roof-line and the aggressive lines flanking its sides, the new A6 has a very athletic and dynamic look and feel. The first thing you notice is the really evil looking LED cluster enclosed in the headlamps which, unlike in certain other manufacturers, looks a part of the whole deal than an after thought. While driving during the day, when these LEDs flash in your rear view mirror, it won’t be surprising if an electrifying chill passes throughout the body. Though the A6 is quite massive in size, but due to the use of extra light yet strong material, it’s very nimble when on the move and also the noise levels inside the cabin are
kept to a bare minimum. The best thing about its exterior design is that it has a very timeless feel. It’s so simple but still manages to pass on the message that if needed, aggression is round the corner. The interior of the A6 is quite in contrast to its athletic approach on the outside. You can find all the creature comfort features one wants in a luxury sedan and apart from that some more. A feature which really caught our eye was the MMI operating system. This feature is right out of the new A8L and what it does is provide a one-point control for all infotainment components. From Bluetooth telephone to radio to multimedia and navigation, this track pad makes access to to these functions quite a breeze. Moving on to the drive at the track, we belted this machine at corkscrew curves at speeds over 90 kmph and the A6 stayed in the exact line where we wanted it to be. Though we did burn quite a lot of rubber, it was nevertheless the machine which was defying the laws of physics when we took it through the paces at some of the most unforgiving curves. And in this process there were lot of times when we ended up redlining the engine but what was surprising was the insulation of the cabin where we didn’t feel any decibels from the engine but only the force of motion. Due to the use of air suspension with electronically controlled damping, the vehicle remains smooth, be whatever be the kind of surface. Some features which we found quite useful were the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and its park assist. The ACC is a technologically advanced driver assistance system in which a radar cruise control regulates the speed and the distance of the sedan to the vehicle ahead by accelerating and braking in a range from 0 to 250 kmph. So all that you need to do is set your speed and handle the steering. The car takes care of the braking and acceleration. The park assist feature not just parks the A6 in parallel parking on its own but also taken the car out of tricky situations when you’re not confident of taking it out without denting the sides. Quite useful in our conditions we guess! Finally let’s talk about the engine options. The A6 comes with four powerful engine: 2.0 TDI, 2,8 FSI, 3.0 TDIq and 3.0 TFSI q. Overall the A6 has the looks, features and the right engine options to scare other competing German models but what is to be seen is if our business class has evolved to appreciate its very futuristic feel.
Audi A6 2.0 TDI
Audi A6 3.0 TDI quatro
Displacement: 1968 cc
Displacement: 2967 cc
Power: 130 kW @ 3750-4200
Power: 180 kW @ 4000-4500
Torque: 380 Nm @ 1750-2500 rpm
Torque: 500 Nm @ 1400-3250 rpm
0-100 kph: 8.2 seconds
0-100 kph: 6.1 seconds
Top Speed: 222 kph
Top Speed: 250 kph
Price: `37,70,000
Price: Rs 46,95,000
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FEATURES
T
here was a time when business sedans used to be the epitome of prim and proper. When one thought of them adjectives like suave, calm and sophistication came up. But then we test drove the new Audi A6 and there was nothing but surprises which were thrown at us. Instead of suave, we got saucy, the calmness was replaced by pure evil and the sophistication was booted out for a lethal feel. Though over the last few years Audi has made a conscious effort to break free from the various stereotypes set by the other stalwarts of the automobile industry, this time with the A6 they have surely gone a step ahead and given us a product which is very different from its competition. From the first look itself it has a ‘Dare to take on me?’ kind of an appeal.
THE
GUIDE TO
Re-Engineering
Your Style Photographs by Hari Nair Text by Ritika Kumar
Fashion Stylist : Rakhi Biswas Hair And Make Up : Anu Kaushik Models : Manu Bora ( Anima Creative Management ), Tamara Moss
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FASHION
The Godfather of fashion We start with a rhetorical question. What is so striking about Marlon Brando in The Godfather? His Italian elegance even when he LV at his ruthless best, we say. And our man, a keen disciple, vows by that. Here, he is styled for the kill. His sharp look is accentuated by broad shoulders and the slim waist of his single-breasted blue velvet blazer. He teams it with slim-cut black trousers to perfect that look, and the white shirt complements the blazer, muting the loud, dazzler effect of velvet just a notch. He knows style is about getting the smallest details correct. The look, thus, is touched off with a pocket square; he chooses a white one for the formal get-up. You could also experiment with pink or orange, which would very effectively cut through the monotony of blacks or greys. Let’s not forget that a black bow-tie is always a winner with a black suit.
On Manu: BLUE VELVET JACKET BY RAJESH PRATAP SINGH // WHITE SHIRT BY GAURAV GUPTA // BOW TIE BY TIE RACK LONDON // TROUSERS BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA On Tamara: DRESS BY GAURAV GUPTA
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Dare with prints
On Manu: PRINTED SUIT, PINK SHIRT BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA // WAYFARERS BY RAYBAN FROM SEVENTEEN ARCADE On Tamara: TANKTOP , PINK SKIRT BY ZARA // GREY LEATHER GLOVES BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA
When our man is in the mood of some fun, he really doesn’t care about the rules. Ditch the all-black look and take a U-turn with an ink-blot print suit. Don’t hold yourself back from overdoing things, sometimes. Gone are the days of checks and stripes. Now, prints score high on the individuality and stand-out barometer. Our man walks in style simply because a) he is daring; and b) the fact that many just don’t know how to coordinate native prints. If you think an all-over print is a tad too bold, a subtle flash of print on collar, cuffs or even the trims is still a perfectly respectable nod to the trend.
FASHION
The quintessential trench coat
On Manu: BLACK DOUBLE-BREASTED LONG COAT BY ZARA // SHIRT BY GIOVANI // TIE BY TIE RACK LONDON
... because never in the history of mankind has a piece of apparel been so popular, and stayed so popular over time. Because every well-dressed man must have a wearwith-everything coat in his wardrobe. Because it is one of those closet staples that you’ll turn to time and again to add finess to various ensembles. Because our man respects traditions and will continue to do it to be a complete man. A trench coat on you adds the polish of a military man, the muse to designers around the globe this season. A slim-fit, mid-length trench coat flatters lean builds of all heights and the its clean lines and military styling will, without doubt, command attention.
Midnight blue charm Women want their men to wear blue because they associate it with reliability and dependability. Men, take note: Before you came in her life, she was looking for a man who promised to be faithful and honest, and blue reflects these qualities. And guess what? Blue is a hit this season in the fashion circuit. When worn with a pinstrip suit, it sits ideal for the businessman with an idea. A beautifully tailored pinstripe suit can address many important occasions, and most of all, it speaks of a powerful, polished and professional image. Besides, it also gives our man a more sartorial look, differentiating him from his one-dimensional counterparts. To get the suit’s true stellar with a modern touch, go for a contrast collar, french cuffs and a thickly-knotted tie.
On Manu: NAVY BLUE SUIT BY ZEGNA // LIGHT BLUE BANKER’S COLLAR SHIRT BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA // TIE BY ASHISH SONI On Tamara: GREY TRENCH COAT BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA // LACE SHORTS BY GAURAV GUPTA
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FASHION
The time is ticking A woman, that´s like a German clock, still a-repairing, eer out of frame, and never going aright, being a watch, but being watch´d that it may still go right! Shakespeare Well, your girl might not be on the same page as the Bard, but she definitely agrees that a watch can work wonders for your personality. A classic time-piece is undoubtedly the single most important accessory for men. Never mind the conservatives who say it is the only jewellery a man should wear. That’s a completely different school of thought. Our man treats the watch as a subtle means to announce his personality and status rather than just as an accessory to decorate himself. He knows that a decent watch for different ocassions not only talks about his sense of style but speaks volume about his econmic power and prestige. Investing in a timepiece is indeed an indulgence in vanity. Go for it.
WATCH BY OMEGA
On Manu: WHITE DRESS SHIRT BY GIOVANI // BOW TIE BY TOM FORD On Tamara: BLACK VELVET LONG CAPE BY RAJESH PRATAP SINGH
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FASHION
Printed shirt with tuxedo It is a said norm that a tux is made for formal ocassions, dinners and parties. Strictly formal. Right? Wrong. Tuxedos, one of the smartest attires for men, has long been worn boringly. You look at any award function’s red carpet and you will see the same suit being repeated by almost all A-listers time and again. The media scrutiny forbids them to take any liberty. Thank God you are not a star, and can afford to bend a few rules. You might not be the guy who gets to make it to the red carpet, but of course you could look like one and that too with a difference: A printed dress shirt and no neckwear with the tux jacket. The look is relaxed, yet elegant... straight yet flirtatious.
On Manu: BLACK SUIT BY GIOVANI // PRINTED SHIRT BY LECOANET HEMANT // SHOES BY TODS On Tamara: BLACK TULLE DRESS BY VARUN BAHL // BLACK BIKINI BY SHIVAN NARRESH // SHOES FROM A SELECTION
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Leather jacket This season is all about leather. From jackets to blazers to pants, the rugged and forever-favourite fits all. It is a classy material you just can’t go wrong with, and rest assured that you can wear it in the seasons to come. The fact that leather jackets can be worn for both casual and dressy look makes it all the more irresistable. Create that rockstar-with-class image this season and invest in leather.
On Manu: LEATHER JACKET BY VARUN BAHL On Tamara: PEACH GOWN BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA // SHOES BY DEBENHAMS
Paisley prints emerged in the late 60s when men had just begun to acknowledge their feminine side. They were ready to push the limits and try whatever looked good on them. And since then paisley pattern has become an icebreaker. Also since the pattern is born from Indian motifs, a paisley jacket is a perfect fusion between the east and the west. The grey short jacket here downplays the otherwise bold pattern for the perfect balance. You could go all ethnic with a printed shirt or be suttle with a plain shirt and slim fit trousers.
JACKET BY ETRO
Spicy scent (Marc Jacobs) A perfect perfume is the fastest way to communicate with a woman, and our man is fully aware of it. Many women have confessed that a man with good fragrance is always on their hitlist. A whiff of a spicy woody perfume conjures up an image of a macho man – and that is precisely what Marc Jacobs’ ‘Bang’ is. It starts out with a masculine but elegant waft of black pepper and dries down to a mild vetiver with pepper undertones.
PERFUME BY MARC JACOBS
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FASHION
Paisley Jacket
Geometric patterns Geometric patterns with a concrete and powerful use of line produce a more rigid and structured canvas. That means a very formal look, but you can play around with it. When worn with a little creativity, these patterns can give you that distinctive look. Contrasting colours can make a staid pattern appear lively. You could even mix and match patterns like stripes, plaid or checks to create something new. Twisted diamonds arranged in fine columns and rows, the houndstooth design, is a popular choice for men when it comes to fine blazers and is due for a resurgence in popularity. Broad windowpane pattern works best with solid-coloured ties or ties with a very broad power stripe. A word of caution here: don’t try to look too busy.
On Manu: NAVY SHIRT WITH DETAILED COLLAR, BOLD CHECK JACKET ALL BY ASHISH SONI On Tamara: PLUM DRESS BY ZARA
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WALLET BY MONT BLANC
Accessories
CUFFLINKS BY PAUL SMITH
BROWN BROGUES BY ALBERTO TORRESI
PRINTED BAG BY PAUL SMITH
Accessories are all about jazzing up the whole look. A litle fun coupled with sophistication gives a new definition to your clothes. Don’t you want your image to exude success and style? Complete the look: From the excuisite Oxfordstyle men’s dress shoe you’re wearing (go for brown, grey this season) and the unique vibrant Paul Smith bag in your hand, to the wallet (while black would never go out of fashion, try camel colour which is new and different this season).
FASHION
Turquoise blazer and polka dot bow tie Grabbing eyeballs is what a shawl lapel turquoise blazer coupled with a polka dot bow-tie is meant for. Turquoise is an edgier colour this season, which you must try. It generally has easy similarity with many basic colours like white, light blue, dark blue and even purple dress shirts. These colours can complement any combination of patterns – such as checks, fine or bold stripes – and make your suit look refreshing each time. Bow-ties are enjoying a surprising return to respectability after several decades of languishing in fashion limbo. Today, the bow-ties are symboles of chic, breaking the monotony of a formal look. The colours and designs of bow-ties have exploded and they are now being reassessessed as a fashionable alternative to men’s neckwear. The polka dot turquoise one here adds that extra zing to the blazer.
On Manu: BLUE SHAWL COLLAR JACKET, BLACK TROUSERS, BOW TIE, CUMMERBAND, POCKET SQUARE ALL BY TOM FORD // WHITE DRESS SHIRT BY GIOVANI // LEATHER LOAFERS BY ZEGNA
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STOCKISTS >> ASHISH SONI 326, Second Floor DLF Emporio Nelson Mandela Marg Vasant Kunj, New Delhi Tel: (011) 46060955
>> LECOANET HEMANT Tel : (0124) 4215300/5306
>> DEBENHAMS G-27-28, Oberoi Mall International Business Park Oberoi Garden City Goregaon East, Mumbai Tel: (022) 40213370
>> OMEGA Tel: (011) 4151 3255
>> ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Apollo Bunder, Mumbai Tel: (022) 22844000 DLF Emporio, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi Tel: (011) 46060999 ETRO G-7, Palladium Phoenix Mall Lower Parel, Mumbai Tel: (022) 43412294 >> GAURAV GUPTA DLF Emporio, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi Tel: 9250112762 / 9971005594 www.gauravguptastudio.com GIOVANI UPG-20, West Gate Mall Raja Garden, New Delhi Tel: (011) 45508075 GOD MADE ME FUNKY Hira Villa,3 Pali road Bandra, Mumbai Tel: (022) 26407893
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>> MONTBLANC The Taj Mahal Hotel, Colaba Mumbai. Tel: (022) 22871631
>> PAUL SMITH Shop No. 212, DLF Emporio Nelson Mandela Marg Vasant Kunj, New Delhi Tel: (011) 46040734 >> RAJESH PRATAP SINGH No. 9, Main Market Lodhi Colony, New Delhi Tel: (011) 24638788, 40534583 ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA D-19, Second Floor Defence Colony, New Delhi Tel: (011) 46528256 Mumbai: (022) 22872882 >> SEVENTEEN ARCADE M- Block market, Greater Kailash 1, New Delhi Tel: (011) 29232457 SHRIVAN NARRESH 12 Hauz Khas Village New Delhi www.shrivannarresh.com >> TIE RACK LONDON DLF Promenade, Nelson Mandela Road, Vasant Kunj Phase 2, New Delhi Tel: (011) 46152725 www.tie-rack.co.uk
TRESMODE Shop 10, First Floor 1 High Street Phoenix 462, Senapati Bapat Road Lower Parel (W), Mumbai Tel: (022) 24913515 TOM FORD Shop No 125 DLF Emporio Mall Nelson Mandela MG Vasant Kunj Tel: (011) 41033059 TOD’S Shop No. 4 Galleria Hilton Tower Nariman point, Mumbai Tel: (022) 30277099 >> VARUN BAHL B-41, Sector 2, Noida Tel: 09512043103/68/69/70 VIYZON 23 A, Near 6 Ballygunge Place Bengali Restaurant Ballygunge Place, Kolkata Tel: (033) 32531207 >> ZARA DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj Nelson Mandela Marg New Delhi Tel: (011) 41057408-09 Zara Store, Palladium Mall Lower Parel, Mumbai www.zara.com
STOCKISTS
Photographs by Hari Nair PEACH GOWN BY ROHIT GANDHI AND RAHUL KHANNA
LAST LAUGH
by Bijoy Venugopal
A
n American president once declaimed that the only thing to fear was fear itself. Ironically, his was the country that exported the cockroach.
Photographs: Shutterstock
Periplaneta americana, that large ugly reddishbrown insect, has been shipped the world over since the 1600s. They are now found in Spain, Greece and Turkey among other exotic locales, so consider that when you plan your next holiday. India, with its warm tropical climate and cornucopia of garbage, welcomed the creatures with a red carpet. Some, I am sure, slithered back home and became NRIs. If you haven’t guessed, I’m mortally afraid of cockroaches taking over the world. After watching a movie as innocuous as Wall-E, I was left with the horrible prescience of having to spend the evening of my life in a dump full of decaying e-waste. That part I didn’t mind. But to spend those twilight years amid cockroaches… shudder! Science, which compulsively finds names for the most irrational phenomena, calls my condition Katsaridophobia. I recognise it as an inbuilt warning system – a combination of sight, smell, hearing and ESP – that alerts me to the presence of roaches within a radius of 200 metres. It’s a complex defence mechanism that has evolved from a childhood of abuse. Yep, my dirty secret. As a kid I spent summers in a Kerala village where my roots supposedly lay. Decades before cable TV infected our lives, hot days were spent among bored country cousins who found perverse ways of amusing themselves. Nights, untroubled by electricity, were inky dark. Those entrusted with minding me couldn’t cope with my fascination for creepy-crawlies. Lizards, frogs, mice, caterpillars, dragonflies, spiders… I cradled them gently in my toddler’s palms, cooing sweet nothings. Oh, to watch those overgrown, hirsute boys shrink back from a praying mantis or a centipede! When I was older, the privilege extended to snakes. Not naturally afraid of the dark, I had become impossible to control once I had set my mind on playing St Francis of Assisi. That’s when one of many uncles that swept through my childhood like harvesters overrunning a cornfield decided to invent something for me to fear. First, he whispered of 13% | SEPTEMBER 11
ghosts in the darkness but I, already a rationalist at seven, demanded proof. One evening, as we played an inept game of cricket not unlike the performance Dhoni’s boys recently pulled off in England, I chased a ball into a dark kitchen cellar. Once in, I heard the door latch behind me and muffled snickers from outside. Dingier and mustier than a bat-cave, the cellar just ate up the light. I fumbled for the ball on the dank floor and detected an unpleasant odour that, for unexplained reason, troubled me. A rat squeaked as I stepped on it. And then something cold, moist and many-legged crept over my foot. There was the whirr of wings, and then the thing began to explore my cheek. Screaming in panic I thrashed about, knocking over urns of pickles. Satisfied giggles trickled in from behind the door. Down on the ground in that wet, sticky mess, I was besieged by a garrison of those execrable insects. Desperately feeling my way to the door, I pounded at it and drew more sniggers. After the worst ten minutes of my life, someone opened the door and I fled the cellar, screaming and redolent of mango and vinegar. My relatives bristled with victorious relief. Thereon, the mention of cockroaches deterred me from doing anything I wanted to do or going anywhere I wanted to go. Thirty years later, that incident still gives me nightmares and the smell of mango pickles makes me uncomfortable. Faced with a cockroach to dissect at my school biology practical exam, I froze upon discovering
that the subject in my petri-dish wasn’t entirely dead. Its antennae were twitching ever so slightly. My classmate Ali, whose bandaged toe had given him an excuse to wear slippers to school, was happy to help. Taking aim, I brought his rubber chappal down on the roach until it was certifiably dead. I had to borrow an antenna and a few legs to pass the exam. I bumbled about life stepping clear of cockroaches. Until I came of age. Advertising my ideal mate on a marriage portal, I declared in all seriousness that my significant other should be willing to “cook, clean and kill the cockroaches.” As you can guess, I got no hits. I married eventually in a rush of happy hormones with barely any time to factor in roaches. On our honeymoon, I discovered to my utter horror that my newly acquired wife was even more terrified of roaches than I was. One night as we turned in, hands linked, we noticed we had company. Two amorous roaches had occupied the bed ahead of us. Uttering a war cry powered more by fear than martial instinct, I rushed at the fornicating insects with a bathroom slipper in either hand. One I slaughtered, the other got away. My wife’s eyes brimmed with proud, grateful tears. “My hero, my gladiator,” they seemed to say. I felt suddenly emboldened. There was nothing to fear. Well, almost. Send us your feedback at feedback@imagesfashion.com