Memory and Desire
Omair Ahmad | Sarnath Banerjee | Sidharth Bhatia
Kaushik Bhaumik | Larry Burrows | Clea Chakraverty
James Crabtree | Atul Dodiya | Michael Hanlon | Justine
Hardy | Ranjit Hoskote | Adam Jacot de Boinod | Sadakat
Kadri | James Scott Linville | Lawrence Osborne | Sudhir
Patwardhan | Jerry Pinto | Ram Rahman | Rashid Rana
I.Allan Sealy | Sunil Sethi | Girish Shahane | Dayanita
Singh | Khushwant Singh | Sooni Taraporevala | Mark
Tully | Daisy Waugh | Peter Worthington
volume 1 | issue 1 | October-December 2012
In our increasingly complex and rapidly changing world, we need quiet reflection and informed comment more than ever. This is just one reason why it gives me such pleasure to announce the inaugural issue of Indian Quarterly
We hope IQ will be an oasis of calm thoughtfulness amidst the frenzy of our over-caffeinated, socially networked age, offering freshness and respite and positive inspiration.
In recent years there have been fewer and fewer magazine vehicles for the thoughtful longform journalism that so many of us love and enjoy. With IQ we hope to fill some of that gap and to provide a home for the best in essays, features, essay-reviews, photo-essays and travelogue.
At the same time we would like IQ to be symbolic not just of India’s new status in the world, but also of the sophistication, elegance and cosmopolitanism of the best Indian creators and their products. We have therefore aimed for a judicious mix of new and well-established writers and artists, and a balance of Indian and international talent.
It has been a long and fascinating road to bringing out this first issue. We owe particular thanks to our design guru and guide, Aurobind Patel for infusing these pages with his aesthetic rigour and flair.
IQ is a national and international magazine, whose experienced editors Madhu Jain and Jonathan Foreman hail from New Delhi and London respectively, but we hope that just as The New Yorker exhibits a distinctly Manhattan sensibility and always contains articles about New York City, IQ will manifest the fact that it is edited and published in Mumbai through its cosmopolitan and open-minded perspective on the world and on India.
In fact, we hope to provide a unique way of interpreting our ever changing culture, and to define our own experiences through the strength of thought, ideas and imagery, be it in the form of fact, fiction, poetry, illustration or photography. IQ is therefore a paean to the polyphonic nature of reflection and the creativity that is its outcome.
Indian Quarterly
Publisher: Anuradha Mahindra
Managing Editor: Madhu Jain Executive Editor: Jonathan Foreman
Associate Editor: Clea Chakraverty
Chief Sub Editor: Philippa Ingram
Assistant Editors: Chaya Babu; Michael Snyder
Production Assistant : Subhash Harinath Rajbhar
With thanks to: Brijesh Gajjar, Mala Vaishnav, Shraddha Jahagirdar-Saxena, Falguni Kapadia, Manjeet Kripalani, Akshay Mehta, Will Driscoll, Shirin Mehta, Daniel Morgan, Spike Novak, Venessa Parekh, Sameer More, Rahul Das, Vishnu Garg, Manohar Gaikwad, Priyanka Nagpal, Marie Salve, Pradeep Gorivale, Mukesh Lohat and the team at Verve www.indianquarterly.com
For subscriptions call: +91 95949 99978 Or email: subscribe@indianquarterly.com
Omair Ahmad is a novelist from Aligarh, India. He has worked as an analyst, reporter and political adviser in New Delhi, London and Washington. His published work includes the novels Encounters, The Storyteller’s Tale and Jimmy the Terrorist.
Sarnath Banerjee is an Indian graphic novelist, artist and filmmaker, and a co-founder of the comics publishing house, Phantomville. He currently lives and works in Berlin. He is the author of graphic novels Corridor, Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers and Harappa Files. He is part of the Pao Collective which promotes Indian graphic novels.
Sidharth Bhatia is a Mumbai-based journalist and author of the book Cinema Modern: The Navketan Story, published earlier this year. He writes on national politics for publications including DNA, The Hindu, The Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age
Kaushik Bhaumik is a Delhi-based writer and scholar whose work covers popular literature, history, art and identity politics. He is the author of The Indian Cinema Book and writes for periodicals including Economic & Political Weekly
Larry Burrows was one of the great photojournalists of the 20th century. Best known for his Vietnam combat photography, he began working for Life magazine in London at the age of 16 during World War II. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Laos in 1971.
Clea Chakraverty is a journalist based in Mumbai. She has written for Le Monde Diplomatique and is a freelance correspondent for French magazines and TV. She is the editor of Impressions magazine published by the Alliance Française de Bombay, and is working on her first book.
James Crabtree is the Financial Times ’ Mumbai bureau chief, having previously worked as Comment Editor. Before joining the FT, he was Deputy Editor of Prospect magazine in London. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Atul Dodiya is an artist based in Mumbai whose works have been shown at the Venice Biennale, the Tate Modern, London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the Raza Foundation Award, Sanskriti Award and Sothebys Prize.
Jonathan Foreman was a founding editor of Standpoint magazine. A former film critic and war correspondent for the New York Post, he is a frequent contributor to the Sunday Times Magazine and other publications, including India’s Verve. He used to be a lawyer.
Michael Hanlon is a UK-based science journalist who writes regularly for The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. He is the author of five books including Eternity - Our Next Billion Years, The Science of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Worlds of Galileo
Justine Hardy is the founder of Healing Kashmir, an integrated mental health project based in Srinagar, and a journalist who has covered South Asia for two decades. She is the author of seven books, including Scoop-Wallah, Bollywood Boy, The Wonder House and In the Valley of Mist
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, art critic and cultural theorist based in Mumbai. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including Vanishing Acts: New and Selected Poems 1985-2005, and a translation of the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded. His poems have appeared
in many publications and in the Norton anthology, Language for a New Century. He recently edited Dom Moraes: Selected Poems for Penguin Modern Classics.
Adam Jacot de Boinod was a researcher on the first series of QI, the BBC quiz programme hosted by Stephen Fry. He is the author of The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World, from Penguin, and the iPhone App Tingo - the Interesting Word Game
Madhu Jain is a New Delhi-based journalist and author. She has worked for India Today, Sunday and The Statesman and was Delhi correspondent for La Croix . She curated the landmark art show Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai in 2001. Her book The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema was released in 2005.
Helen Jones, an award-winning actress originally from Australia, is an art director and set dresser who lives and works in Bollywood. Some of the films she has worked on include Dev D, No One Killed Jessica, Desi Boyz and Heroine
Sadakat Kadri was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Harvard. A London barrister, he specialises in rule of law and human rights issues and has worked in countries from Turkey to Myanmar. He is the author of The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson and a winner of the Spectator/Shiva Naipaul travel writing prize.
James Scott Linville is an American screenwriter and journalist based in London. A former editor of the Paris Review, he has contributed to publications including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Monocle and Standpoint. His screen adaptation of Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden was released last year.
Raja Menon is a former career officer and submarine specialist in the Indian Navy. Based in Delhi, Admiral Menon is the author of The Indian Navy: A Photo Essay Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars and A Nuclear Strategy for India. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and at the National Maritime Foundation.
Lawrence Osborne writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek and is the author of several books, most recently the memoir Bangkok Days. His novel The Forgiven has just been published.
Sanjay Patel is a graduate student at Rutgers University and a native Mumbaikar. He has travelled all over South and South East Asia by motorbike.
Sudhir Patwardhan is one of India’s major contemporary artists and was until recently a practicing radiologist. A self-taught figurative painter best known for his portrayal of the working class and the marginal in Mumbai, his works have been widely exhibited in India and Europe. He lives in Thane, a Mumbai suburb.
Jerry Pinto, a journalist and poet based in Mumbai, has written several books on Indian cinema. He won a National Award for his biography of the actress Helen, The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, in 2006. He coedited Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai and is a guest lecturer at the Sophia Polytechnic’s Social Communications Media department in Mumbai. His first novel, Em and The Big Hoom, was published in 2012.
Ram Rahman is an Indian photojournalist, artist, designer and activist based in New Delhi, who
has participated in exhibitions worldwide. Among the shows he has curated are ‘Heat’ at Bose Pacia, New York, in 2003; and ‘Delhi Modern: The Architectural Photographs of Madan Mahatta’ at Photoink, Delhi, 2012.
I. Allan Sealy is a novelist, travel writer and passionate gardener based in Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas. His books include the Booker prize shortlisted The Everest Hotel, The Trotter-nama, Red, From Yucatan to Yukon: A Western Journey and Hero: A Fable
Sunil Sethi is a columnist and TV presenter based in New Delhi. One of the founding editorial team of India Today, his journalism has appeared in The Times of India, Indian Express, The Economist, The Boston Globe, as well as on the BBC and Channel 4. He is the author of The Big Book Shelf: Sunil Sethi in Conversation with Thirty Famous Authors. Since 2005, he has been the host of the “Just Books” show on NDTV.
Girish Shahane is a writer and curator, and Director-Art of the Skoda Prize for Indian Contemporary Art. He has degrees in English literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University and Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He was editor of Art India magazine and has been a columnist for Time Out. He writes regularly on art and cultural politics.
Dayanita Singh is a bookmaker working with photography and is based in New Delhi. She has published several books including Zakir Hussain, Myself, Mona Ahmed, Chairs, Go Away Closer, Blue Book, Dream Villa, Dayanita Singh and House of Love. She recently exhibited at the Peabody Museum in Boston.
Michael Snyder graduated from Columbia University in 2010 with a BA in English literature and comparative religion. After graduation, he spent a year in Santiago, Chile, before moving to Mumbai. His work has appeared in publications including GQ India, ELLE India, Open and The Caravan
Sooni Taraporevala is a filmmaker, screenwriter and photographer living in Mumbai. Her award-winning scripts include Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay and Such a Long Journey She directed her first feature film Little Zizou in 2007 She is also the author, photographer and publisher of PARSIS – the Zoroastrians of India –a Photographic Journey.
Mark Tully the Kolkata-born, New Delhi-based author and journalist, was the BBC’s Delhi correspondent for over twenty years. His latest book is Non-Stop India (published in the UK as India: The Road Ahead ). Sir Mark’s other books include India’s Unending Journey, India in Slow Motion, No Full Stops in India, and his only fiction work The Heart of India
Daisy Waugh is a novelist and columnist for the Sunday Times Magazine. Her most recent book Last Dance with Valentino was published by Harper Collins last year. She is currently writing a bad-tempered non-fiction book about modern motherhood entitled I Don’t Know Why She Bothers, to be published by Weidenfeld next summer.
Peter Worthington is a Canadian journalist who co-founded and was for 12 years the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Sun for whom he writes a column. A veteran of WWII and the Korean War, he is married, has six grandchildren and usually prefers animals to people.
Letter from the Publisher 04
Contributors 06
Talking Points 12
Brewmaster’s Bombay | Artistic entrepreneurs | Architectural deficit | American challenge | Dogged survivors
40 The Lion in Winter Mark Tully and Dayanita Singh visit a philosophical Khushwant Singh going strong at 98.
46 Walking Manto’s Bombay Ram Rahman wanders the Mumbai streets frequented by the short story writer.
58 Enter the Writers’Den James Scott linville examines writers’ workspaces to find the secrets of their success.
66 A Room of Her Own Daisy Waugh has the perfect spot for (not) getting down to work.
68 Too Much of a Good Thing Sunil Sethi surveys the subcontinent’s buoyant book scene.
72 Browser’s Corner William Dalrymple, Ruchir Joshi, Pritish Nandy and Bhaichand Patel on their favourite indian bookstores.
19 Promenade of Dreams
20 Sunday Morning – Marine Drive: Atul Dodiya limns the carnival of life next to the Arabian Sea.
22 The Making of Marine Drive Sidharth Bhatia explores the backstory of Mumbai’s bayside boulevard.
32 My Marine Drive Mornings Sooni Taraporevala and her iPhone camera take to the promenade.
74 Leaving New York lawrence Osborne loved his adopted city too much to stay there.
80 The Unhappy Valley Justine Hardy explores the mental desolation lurking behind Kashmir’s beauty.
86 Delhi to D.C James Crabtree interviews In Spite of the Gods author edward luce about his new book and life in America.
90 Back from the Future Michael Hanlon unravels the mystery of space exploration’s strange slowdown.
100 Not in the Streets! Clea Chakraverty considers a woman’s lack of freedom in India’s public spaces
106 War in the Clouds Peter Worthington saw first-hand India’s war with China in late 1962
Cinema
116 Old is not Gold, It’s Mackenna’s Gold Kaushik Bauhmik explains how a 1960s Western won India’s heart
The Dog Thrower of Chhote Qazipur, Fiction by Omair Ahmad
145 New Poems, by Ranjit Hoskote
Art
148 Up Close and Impersonal with Rashid Rana Girish Shahane profiles Pakistan’s most wanted artist.
156 Retreat from the Streets Sudhir Patwardhan examines his response to a changing city.
Travel
168 The Inner Way to Mongolia I. Allen Sealy voyages through a strange halfnew China.
174 King of the Jinns researches lead him to a place of magic in UP.
180 IQ Destinations Staff picks for IQ travellers
IQ Points
182 Raja Menon: What Your Language Owes to the Era of Sail
184 Sarnath Banerjee: Bicarbonates
187 Adam Jacot de Boinod: Adam’s World of Words
On the cover: Inside (acrylic on canvas, 2009) by Sudhir Patwardhan
The Indian Quarterly welcomes letters to the editor. Write to: IQ, c/o Indian & Eastern Engineer Co. Pvt. Ltd., Cecil Court, M B Marg, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai 400001 India. Or email: letters@indianquarterly.com
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By Michael Snyder
When the first beer was shipped by the British to India in the 18th century, it arrived at East India Company ports like Calcutta and Bombay, sour, flat and undrinkable after the hot three to five-month journey across the oceans. Clever brewmasters back home added hops and alcohol to prevent spoiling, lending a distinctive bitterness. Thus the Indian Pale Ale, or IPA, beloved of beer aficionados was born.
Though brewed specifically for export, IPA became hugely popular in Britain and then around the world. In the 1840s, the Dyer Brewery in Kasauli began producing its own IPA in India under the Lion brand.
But although IPA is perhaps the subcontinent’s greatest contribution to the long, rich history of beer, India Pale Ale has not been brewed in India for decades.
This is slated to change by November of this year with the opening of Mumbai’s first microbrewery: Seven Islands Craft Brewery. (Microbreweries are boutique, alternative beer makers; they have taken the US and UK by storm.)
For two years managing director Gregory Kroitzsh, who moved to India from the United States four years ago, has been working to bring India’s burgeoning microbrewing industry to the nation’s largest, wealthiest, most cosmopolitan city. In September 2011, he leased a space in a Lower Parel mill compound (near Café Zoe and Blue Frog), and several months later brought master brewer Ben Johnson to India from Alaska. Now, licences and construction permitting, opening is merely months away.
Both Kroitzsh and Johnson see Mumbai as a perfect market for more robust, exciting beers. Kroitzsh cites the inspiration of Sula, the Maharashtran vineyard that has almost single-handedly given birth to Mumbai’s nascent wine-drinking culture.
Moreover as Kroitzsh points out, Mumbaikars already have a taste for beer; the challenge then is to expand it.
Domestic lagers like Kingfisher and Carlsberg – among the only affordable beers on the market thanks to sky-high excise taxes – make a less than ideal accompaniment to the powerful flavour of most Indian foods. “We’re going to tailor the beers for the Indian palate,” says Johnson, “but at the same time, push the consumer.”
When it opens for business, the Seven Islands Brewery will boast a pub/restaurant serving a range of contemporary pub dishes, designed for pairing with house brews. These will include a rotating selection of seasonal or experimental beers and three constants: a blonde ale, a Belgianstyle witbier, and – two-and-a-half centuries after the first Company men guzzled those first hoppy pale ales on a small island fortress called Bombay – the city’s first IPA.
This print advertisement for a Bombay textile mill is part of a multi-disciplinary exhibition on display at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (until November 11). The exhibition, Social Fabric, focuses on the rise and fall of the textile industry in the city and features work by, among others, Sudhir Patwardhan, Archana Hande, Alice Creischer, Celine Condorelli and the Raqs Media Collective.
By Jonathan Foreman
Starbucks is finally coming to India. The global coffee-shop pioneer, which operates 17,000 branches in 57 countries, has teamed up with Tata and plans to open 50 stores later this year. But can the Seattle-based giant possibly succeed in a market already saturated with branches of domestic and international coffee chains – chains that long ago copied the Starbucks formula and adapted it for India?
It certainly looks like Starbucks might have left it too late to break into the Indian market. But it would be a mistake to count the US company out.
It is all too easy – and too common – amid the self-congratulation about jugaad, “innovative India”, and the spectacular global success of a handful of Indian corporations, to underestimate the adaptive skills of internationally experienced American brands.
After all, despite being handicapped by all the regulations, legal hurdles and bureaucratic burdens that foreign business must deal with in India, on top of cultural challenges, the American consumer companies that have dared to enter the Indian market since partial liberalisation have flourished to a surprising degree.
Take McDonald’s for instance. Its entry into the Indian market in 1996 was said to be doomed. How could a brand based on beefburgers possibly succeed here? Moreover, how could such a quintessentially American firm, presumably ignorant of subcontinental cultures and habits, imagine it could win over Indian consumers with their very particular and conservative tastes?
It turns out that McDonald’s has been almost as clever at adapting its formulas to suit Indian palates as it was at winning over the French. The company did massive research, took its time,
built kitchens with segregated veg and non-veg sections and marketed itself with care. The vegetarian and locally innovated dishes it developed for the Indian market, like the “McAloo Tikki” and “Pizza McPuff” are even being exported to the Middle East. The corporation and its Indian joint venture partners now have 235 “family restaurants” in 45 cities across the country.
Pizza Hut has similarly adapted to Indian tastes, as has the Subway sandwich chain.
What this means is that Café Coffee Day and other brands may well find themselves hurting when Starbucks branches start popping up around the country.
And it is not just coffee chains that should worry about underestimating the adaptive skills, market research and general agility of American challengers. Take an Indian brand like the Woodland footwear chain, whose products, stores and even logo are blatant copies of Timberland’s. It did well as long as Indian consumers mistook Woodland for the real thing or had no access to it.
But now that the Indian government has finally allowed foreign companies to operate single brand retail outlets, pukka Timberland products can be bought in real Timberland shops. Judging by a recent visit to the Timberland branch in Mumbai’s Phoenix Mills mall, glossy Indian consumers are more than willing to pay the price for genuine pairs of the company’s famously rugged boots.
In the early 1990s, an article in The New Yorker magazine predicted that Starbucks with its fancy coffee options and precious Seattle stylings (“grandes”, “ventes” etc) would never succeed in Gotham. New York consumers knew what they liked and liked what they knew, and there were more than enough old-fashioned coffee shops around. Now you can hardly walk five blocks in Manhattan without coming across a packed Starbucks. As the song goes, if they can “make it” there, they can presumably “make it” anywhere. Even in India.
By Sanjay Patel
What do the names Richard Rogers, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Rem Koolhaas, I.M. Pei, Norman Foster and Robert Venturi have in common? They make up an incomplete list of the world’s most celebrated contemporary architects whose creations adorn cities from Shanghai to London to Los Angeles. The other thing that they have in common is that none of them has designed a building in Mumbai.
Our city’s contemporary architectural mediocrity is a mystery as well as a sadness. Mumbai is the only commercial capital in Asia not to have at least one iconic contemporary building celebrated for its beauty, originality or even height. It is even stranger given that Bombay had great buildings – befitting its wealth and stature – long before cities like Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur or even Shanghai. Perhaps it is understandable that we were overtaken while our economy was hamstrung by socialism and the Licence Raj, at least in terms of private patronage; it is harder to understand why we have not raced ahead since liberalisation.
By the late 1990s, the showcase cities of Asia’s original tiger economies all boasted world-class towers by world-class architects. Then China joined the club. Today, Shanghai again boasts one of the world’s great skylines, and wealthy Guanzhou has a stunning opera house by Zaha Hadid. Gulf capitals like Doha and Dubai have left Mumbai far behind.
Indeed, with the exception of Charles Correa’s Kanchenjanga Apartments and perhaps Philip Johnson’s Tata Theatre or the Jehangir Art Gallery, there has barely been a major
architectural event in Mumbai since Independence. To the extent that people come to Mumbai to see buildings, those they look at are not the mediocre mid-rises that scar once beautiful sections of South Bombay, but rather our remaining stock of old mansions, our decrepit Art Deco and the unique Bombay Gothic and Indo-Saracenic of the Victorian era.
How can Mumbai have so little to show for being the financial capital of one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing economies? True, we have some spectacular private residences, and thanks to Sea Wind and Antillia, Mumbai has pioneered the plutocratic “vertical palace”. But Mumbai is unique among the great business cities of Asia in its lack of great business buildings and corporate headquarters.
The problem is not that the world’s top architects have deliberately ignored Mumbai, rather, that Mumbai has spurned them. Foreign architects are legally allowed to practise here. And they are responsible for a building or two, like Planet Godrej. But one foreign architect told me that his colleagues are wary of working here, worried that they won’t get paid or, worse, that the client and builders won’t listen to them. And it certainly seems that the work they do here is constrained by unimaginative clients and the perverse results of our FSI (floor space) restrictions and other forms of regulation.
But the main reason for our lacklustre skyline may be that our great companies take little interest in having a glamorous iconic HQ like the Bank of China or HSBC Towers in Hong Kong.
It does not help that our regulatory bodies seem as determined to keep out the new and interesting as they are unable or unwilling to protect the old and beautiful. Or that our powerful developers seem to suffer from an allergy to foreign architectural talent, perhaps because they are used to telling architects what to do rather than the other way round. Or that our home-grown architects may be only too happy to be protected from talented foreign competition. Whatever the case may be, Mumbai deserves better. And if any one of these groups started to think of itself as the standard bearer of a commercial capital then Mumbaikars might get a skyline to be proud of.
It is possible that Lodha Developers’ “World One”, which if completed according to plan will be one of the world’s tallest buildings – which is co-designed by the New York firm of Pei Cobb Freed – may finally put Mumbai on the modern architecture map.
But what is certain is that a great modern city like ours should have great modern buildings.
By Madhu Jain
Bureaucracy is an obstacle for major cultural initiatives in India, especially international ones. For instance, New Delhi’s Triennale-India is supposed to take place every three years, as its name suggests. Established in 1968 and run by the Lalit Kala Akademi, the country’s most prestigious state-run fine arts body, it was scheduled for last November. The preparations, however, sputtered to a halt. Bureaucratic bungling, ego clashes, red tape and
just plain old official inertia put the plans back in the deep freeze. It has now been seven years since the last “Triennale”.
However, two years ago a pair of enterprising Mumbai-based artists from Kerala, Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, set up the Kochi Biennale Foundation to organise a new three-monthlong event celebrating painting, sculpture, film, installation and performance art. Undeterred by the Triennale’s failure, they are forging ahead with their plans for a “Kochi-Muziris Biennale” this December.
Success depends on whether their organisation is as effective as their slick PR material suggests, and whether they can stay on the right side of bureaucratic and political interests in Kerala. Already there has been controversy, including allegations that the organisation has misappropriated funds given by the state government.
To raise money the Foundation is using a public-private partnership model. While its board of trustees includes government agencies in India and abroad, the organisers have made a sponsorship agreement with the BMW Group’s Global Cultural Engagement project and are looking for other corporate partnerships.
Perhaps this is the way to go. Government bodies in India have for the most part failed to create impressive 21st-century art institutions. Joint efforts by private organisations with local authorities seem to have more success. Last year, for example, the immensely successful Anish Kapoor exhibition held simultaneously at the NGMA in New Delhi and the Mehboob Studios in Mumbai was made possible because it brought together the Ministry of Culture, the British Council, Tata and Louis Vuitton.
In a clever move, Krishnamachari and Komu have linked Muziris, the legendary seaport on the Malabar Coast about 30km north of Kochi, to the name of their festival. In ancient times it was a landing point for ships from Rome, Persia and
China. By attaching the name of this site of ancient cosmopolitanism, the co-founders hope to affirm the cosmopolitan credentials of their Biennale.
The dissenting voices, mostly artists from Kerala who were not included in the Biennale, have not been completely silenced. However, the project is moving ahead, encouraged this summer by the Support Forum-Biennale 2012 consisting of prominent artists from various disciplines. Doubtless more hurdles will crop up as Krishnamachari and Komu move towards their goal. Hopefully, they will jump over them. If nothing else, the two have the audacity of hope.
By Jonathan Foreman
He has few friends. His alliances with human street dwellers are as informal and precarious as those of the first proto-dogs who guarded campfires in return for food. But for all his drab familiarity amid the untidiness of the urban landscape, the Indian street dog may be the subcontinent’s most under-appreciated zoological treasure.
For the Indian street mutt is a Darwinian super-dog. The product of a harsh evolutionary process, which has many ways of eliminating the slow, weak or stupid, he represents a demonstrably superior strain of canis lupus familiaris. Not only are street dogs better adapted to India’s climates than most of the breeds fashionable as pets, they tend to be cleverer, tougher, more resilient and remarkably handsome.
They make crossings of busy six-lane highways – a feat that a human child would be unlikely to survive, and which challenges even human adults.
In the heat of summer, street dogs find water. They somehow find food, which, though it
would kill a purebred, sustains them through their endless struggle for territory and survival.
Despite genetic hard-wiring that makes these dogs instinctively trusting of human beings – a disadvantageous trait in societies where canine friendliness is often met with stones or kicks – those that survive are able to distinguish between the hostile, the neutral and the friendly. And they can somehow tell the difference at a distance. After all, who hasn’t seen a dog that lives next to a busy chai stand suddenly get up and bark furiously at a particular individual?
Their origins are a mystery and a matter for debate. Many street dogs are clearly recently descended from well-established breeds like hounds, rather than from the indigenous Indian wild dog or the pariah dog. Some experts believe that many Indian street dogs had ancestors who belonged to the departing British and who became homeless after they left (the servants entrusted with their welfare having cast them into the streets). Over time, like all purebreds who mix randomly, they produce offspring who revert to a generic size, shape and colouring.
But whatever their origins, they represent yet another remarkable Indian triumph over adverse conditions, and an addition to the world’s dog breeds that ought to be celebrated, preserved and perhaps even exported. n
Our Face, Metaportrait of 30 unmarried girls in the ‘Bride Procession’ (Aizu Tajumil Gion Festival, Fukushima, July 2003) by Ken Kitano is part of the exhibition Hikari: Contemporary photography from Japan curated by Tasveer and recently exhibited in New Delhi and Mumbai. It will be on show at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Kolkata (January 12-22, 2013) and later in Ahmedabad and Bangalore. Kitano layers multiple exposures to create his composite portraits.
For the first issue of a magazine based in Mumbai it seemed appropriate to devote our city section to the city’s great iconic seafront highway with its vast majestic curve, its openness to sea and sky, its decayed elegance and its non-stop carnival of life.
Marine Drive – Sunday Morning
Atul Dodiya
The Making of Marine Drive
Sidharth Bhatia
My Marine Drive Mornings
Sooni Taraporevala
Atul Dodiya on his 1985 painting of Mumbai’s iconic seafront promenade
This painTing depicTs Bombay’s Marine Drive, with unknown tiny strangers on the street, and a looming Big B (Amitabh Bachchan) the only recognisable face on the canvas. In this city, it is incredible how the cow, elephant, horse can appear on the streets from nowhere, whether it’s at Marine Drive or Ghatkopar, and so I have made the cow a part of the picture. I believe that once a person comes to Bombay he is made a captive of the city and can never escape. With this thought in mind, I have painted the sea black - Kala Pani. Sound, noise, cacophony are an integral part of life here, in this city. But I wanted to add a more meaningful voice/ sound to the work, so I have over-laid couplets in Urdu from Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Paposh ki kya fikra hai, dastar sambhalo/ Payab hai jo mauj, guzar jayegi sar se. This roughly translates as: Don’t worry about your shoes, take care of your hat/ The wave which has come on your feet might go over your head. n
Beirut has its Corniche, Havana its Malecon, Cannes its Croisette; but none of these celebrated bayside boulevards is as heart-stirring as Mumbai’s majestic Marine Drive. Sidharth Bhatia delves into its history
The no. 123 double-decker bus used to run the most popular route in Bombay. Even those who didn’t live or work along its path loved it. It was a favourite with young couples, who would clamber aboard, rush to the upper level and settle down for the city’s most scenic ride. For on its way to and from Colaba at the southernmost end of the peninsula, the 123 trundled along Marine Drive between the vast expanse of the Arabian Sea on one side and some of the most beautiful buildings in the city on the other. That view of the promenade, the bay and the magnificent Art Deco structures that line the drive was one of the great bargains of Bombay – until some sourpuss bureaucrat stopped the double-deckers from plying the route.
Still, Marine Drive is where Mumbaikars
come for a few moments of freedom from the stresses of commuting, of high living costs, of cramped homes. It is a place that breathes possibility. Bollywood filmmakers have long exploited its majestic arc to show Bombay as a city that sets you free.
Amitabh Bachchan likes to recall the time when he slept on a Marine Drive bench at night. Years later, many of his films were shot here. In one, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, he rode a motorcycle down the road, rakishly dressed and singing with abandon. It was a statement of having finally arrived, proof that having made it in Bombay you can make it anywhere. After all, as the song from the 1956 film C.I.D. goes: “Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara hatke, zara bachke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.” (Oh my heart, it’s very difficult to live here, be careful and be warned,
this is Bombay, my love.) The song subsequently became the de facto anthem of this tough metropolis.
The three-kilometre stretch along the waterfront extends from Nariman Point to Chowpatty, disappearing into Walkeshwar and, beyond that, tony Malabar Hill. The famous Art Deco, buildings, however, run only along about one third of the drive; after them come the gymkhanas with their open cricket fields, followed by a run-down aquarium, a modern tower block that is a hostel for female students, and at the far end, Wilson College, built in 1889 in the Victorian Gothic style.
The apartments that overlook the drive house the wealthy; the promenade is more egalitarian, a wide stretch of pavement where locals and tourists, rich and poor, young and
old, portly businessmen and indigent students all mingle to “eat the breeze”, as the Hindi phrase goes. Young couples turn their backs on the world, cuddling and kissing, unmindful of the throngs behind them, throngs who generally leave them alone. In claustrophobic Mumbai, where privacy of any kind is at a premium, Marine Drive affords anonymity. Here, at least, Bombay lets lovers be; in any other Indian city they would be routinely disturbed and harassed.
Dhun Lentin (née Patel) is among the lucky few who live on the top floor of one of Marine Drive’s celebrated Art Deco apartment buildings. Her family moved to a fourth-floor flat in the brand new Soona Mahal building in 1939 when she was five. It was a grand, three-bedroom affair with a curved balcony facing the south-western seafront. Soona
Virgin territory
One of the earliest views of Bombay, taken by William Johnson and William Henderson, c. 1855
The familiar nexus of politicians, administrators, moneybags and fixers conspired behind closed doors, justifying their plans in the name of urban development
Mahal was on a corner plot, with attractive windows running down the front and a circular penthouse on the terrace. On the ground floor is the popular music-filled restaurant Pizza by The Bay (formerly called Talk of the Town) well-known for the political banners its owner flies above the corner.
The Patels were among the earliest residents of what was then a smart new address for the Bombay elite. The old money was in neighbourhoods like Malabar Hill, where high-ranking British officials and long-established wealthy Indian families lived. But by the early Forties, Marine Drive was becoming a preferred quarter for more modern families, Indian and European.
Dhun Lentin has lived all her life on Marine Drive. In 1961, she married a young lawyer who lived just four buildings up the road. Bakhtavar “Bomi” Lentin’s home was a sprawling, 2,500 sq.ft. sea-facing apartment
on the fifth floor of Chateau Marine, built by his grandfather.
Chateau Marine is a name that evokes instant recognition among old Bombay residents, especially those who know their popular film history. While Lentin himself went on to become a famous judge in the Bombay High Court, across the landing from his flat lived his childhood friend, a young gawky girl named Fatima. In time, Fatima would adopt the name Nargis and the world would hail her as one of Hindi cinema’s greatest stars. The home that Nargis lived in as child and young woman was presided over by her formidable mother, Jaddan Bai. She herself had been a well-known singer before becoming famous for her salons where actors, writers and producers, all hopeful of working with Nargis, assembled and paid court. The acerbic Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto regularly attended these events. He recalled
of his visits to the apartment in what he once called “Bombay’s most luxurious area” how Jaddan Bai used to discuss each and every detail of the films that her daughter would star in and kept a tight control over her money.
Movie star romance
Gossip was freely traded at these gatherings, especially about rival stars. Of particular interest to the Jaddan Bai household was Suraiya, the doe-eyed singing star of the 1940s who lived on the ground floor of Krishna Mahal, an elegant building further down Marine Drive. In an article on Nargis in the Urdu daily Afaq, Manto describes how Jaddan Bai said “Suraiya’s voice was bad, she could not hold a note, she had had no musical training, her teeth were bad and so on. I am sure had someone gone to Suraiya’s home he would have witnessed the same kind of surgery performed on
Nargis and Jaddan Bai.”
During the 1940s and 50s, gaggles of fans used to stand outside these two buildings, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars. The Marine Drive homes of both these actresses played a key role in their own lives and stories about them have become part of Bollywood lore. The first meeting between Nargis and her long term co-star and lover Raj Kapoor took place when she opened the door of her flat to let him in. Her hands were full of flour because she had come straight from the kitchen where she was making chappatis. Kapoor used the scene for a sequence in his film Bobby
The real-life drama at Krishna Mahal was even more intense. Suraiya’s handsome beau Dev Anand used to come to meet her under the watchful eye of her “grandmother” (she was in fact her mother). When their affair finally broke up, the emotional young actress
For a newly emerging Indian elite, Art Deco was a rejection of the architectural ethos of the British Raj
crossed to the promenade and threw his ring into the sea.
Marine Drive’s charm and hold on the collective imagination goes beyond such Bollywood legends of course. Its deep, graceful curve is perhaps the city’s most famous image (after the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel) celebrated on millions of postcards, tourist brochures and in scores of films. The romantic glitter of the long arc of streetlights – “the Queen’s necklace” – cannot be found anywhere else.
It is a bustling promenade today rather than the quiet, palm frond-fronted boulevard of an earlier era. Early photographs show just a few cars on the road; now it is a busy thoroughfare that gets jammed during rush hour. As Dhun Lentin recalls: “It was wonderful; I could stand on the balcony in the morning and could even hear snatches
of conversation from across the road. It was quiet and there were hardly any cars.”
A distant, if slightly hazy personal memory surfaces here from the late 1950s: I remember walking from Churchgate to Marine Drive and down towards the end of the promenade where the Oberoi Hotel stands today. The business district of Nariman Point did not then exist. The seafront tapered off into a jagged strip of land where every Sunday crowds used to gather to watch films projected onto a giant concrete screen. For a little Bombay kid, this was the highlight of the week. I remember vividly how busy Marine Drive was on Sundays even then. In a city starved of space, it was the one open expanse where everyone could gather for a few hours and feel liberated. Its openness to the sea and to lands beyond mirrored the city’s traditional willingness to welcome people, ideas and influences
from everywhere.
Like many a development in Bombay/ Mumbai, Marine Drive owes its existence to land reclamation and profiteering. From its early origins as a British trading outpost to its messy, chaotic present, the city has undergone several stages of reclamation: first to join together the seven islands that constituted it and then to keep expanding out into the water. Successive rulers dreamt up their own ambitious projects; investors and speculators were quick to move in. The familiar nexus of politicians, administrators, moneybags and fixers conspired behind closed doors, justifying their plans in the name of urban development.
One such push came at the turn of the 19th century when, after a devastating outbreak of plague, the British administrators decided to decongest the city and to reclaim
land at its southern end. The Bombay City Improvement Trust began with the reclamation that became Cuffe Parade. It was successful enough to inspire a more ambitious plan on the Backbay. It was not an entirely new idea – something on those lines had been thought of in the 1860s but was abandoned in the economic crash that followed the American Civil War.
The new scheme envisaged reclamation all along the western side of the southern tip of the city, a beautiful promenade that would not only have apartment blocks and office buildings but also public squares in the manner of Oxbridge quads. The homes were to be for the rich, but the proposal was marketed as if it would somehow decongest the crowded “native” areas.
Panorama from Rajabai Tower looking south, by Raja Deen Dayal, 1880’s. Watson’s Hotel is on the left, the Secretariat building at centre. At far left in Colaba is the former Royal Alfred Sailors Home, now HQ of the Maharashtra State Police.
The way we were Marine Drive in the 1940’s or 50’s taken by the celebrated Bombay photographer A.L Syed. A cricket match is probably the reason for the unusually large number of cars.
“We used to see rich Sindhi women, dressed in fine shiny saris and wearing their diamonds prominently, walk down the promenade. Marine Drive reminded them of Karachi.”
However, British administrators balked at cost estimates made in the first two decades of the century, and the Indian-dominated municipal corporation opposed an increase in the housing stock that might lower rents. Nevertheless, after private money moved in, the project began to take shape.
The Backbay reclamation scheme began in 1919. Stone and mud were quarried in the north in Kandivali, brought by train to the site and dumped into the sea. But the whole project was badly planned, the dredging of the sea inadequate. Soon there was no hope of finishing the project within five years, contrary to what investors had been told.
By the early 1920s it was clear that the development plan was a disaster. The scandal led to an official inquiry. Leading the public outcry was the nationalist lawyer Khurshed Framji Nariman. He wrote strident articles in the local press, whose headlines lambasted the reclamation plan as “Lloyd’s folly” and “Buchanan’s blunder” after the governor and engineer he blamed for the bungling. (Decades later, the new business district in south Bombay was named after him, an ironic twist given that there was a stench attached to this project too.) The government recommended that only four of the eight planned blocks should be reclaimed. The result can be seen when one stands at the jetty-like strip that juts out into the sea at Nariman Point and gazes at Cuffe Parade across the gap. Had it been filled in, Marine Drive would have been much longer. As it was, 16.6 acres emerged from the sea opposite the imposing Gothic headquarters of the Western Railway and Churchgate station, which had until then been on the waterfront.
Throughout the 1930s, modernist build-
ings – cinemas, offices and apartment blocks – began to rise: Eros cinema with its ziggurat, Liberty cinema with its piano keys running down the wall, New India Assurance building at Fort with its Indian motifs and friezes. All these buildings, which are such a strong part of the city’s identity, were conceived and built during that period.
The style we now know as Art Deco had already taken the world by storm – the seafronts of Miami, Alexandria and Havana all had a particular affinity to the style – Bombay would be no different. And Bombay Art Deco was more than just a design fad. For a newly emerging Indian elite (as well as royalty from all over India who rushed to buy properties on Marine Drive), it represented a breakaway from the grand Gothic and Indo-Saracenic imperial buildings that dotted the southern tip of the city. Indian merchants, financiers and professionals were implicitly rejecting the architectural ethos of the Raj and seeking a style that expressed their aspirations. Art Deco’s reinforced concrete and stucco fronts, its curving balconies, its absence of ornate Corinthian columns, and the idea of being connected with the latest international design trend all appealed to them. An Ideal Home exhibition held in Bombay in 1937, showcasing the latest furniture and decor styles, was a triumph; the new look, with its curved steel sofas and chairs, was perfect for these stylish apartments and the modern families who would live in them.
Many of Marine Drive’s buildings were financed, designed and built by Indians such as G. B. Mhatre, who is credited with some of the most stylish Art Deco architecture in the city, and who designed Soona Mahal among other buildings. The glamorous,
Every Sunday crowds used to gather to watch films projected onto a giant screen. For a little Bombay kid this was the highlight of the week.
cosmopolitan dreams of the builders are visible in the names: Oceana, Shalimar, Riviera, St James Court, Chateau Marine. (Interestingly, all of the buildings that came later, sweeping towards Chowpatty, have Indian names like Jyoti Sadan, Bharatiya Bhavan, Hemprabha and Meghdoot.)
Some of the names tell stories. The trio of identical buildings named Kewal Mahal, Kapur Mahal and Zaver Mahal were named by a wealthy Gujarati cinema tycoon after himself and two of his children. Al Sabah Court, on the other hand, was owned by the Kuwaiti royal family and was the home of a young prince during the 1950s.
As well as apartment buildings, there were new hotels and boarding houses. Sea Green South Hotel was commissioned by the army and the security services during the Second World War. The Natraj Hotel (now the Intercontinental) was originally the site of the Bombay Club. A place of leisure and residence for its British members, it was all Burma teak panelling and leather armchairs. There were also many boarding houses for bachelors, offering breakfast and dinner, with names like Chambre Deluxe, Continental Guest House and Norman Guest House (which is still in business). Marine Drive was the place to be.
Newspapers of the early 1940s are full of ads seeking “high-class tenants” for “ultramodern” flats. Some made it clear that “Europeans only” were preferred. However, the impressive and glamorous new apartments were expensive – the rent was around 250 rupees a month, way beyond the means of most citizens.
Present-day Bombay residents might be astonished to learn that Marine Drive’s new buildings were not at first in great demand: “I remember the buildings had boards announcing ‘To Let’ prominently displayed. Tenants were hard to come by and were very fussy,” says Dhun Lentin. Her grandfatherin-law, the builder of Chateau Marine, grew fed up with the constant demands of tenants who often used to rent only for a few months – mainly during the monsoons, to see the rains – and then insist on the rooms being painted to their taste. “He thought it was a losing proposition and sold the building to the then Maharaja of Baroda whose family still owns it.” The Lentins became tenants in the building they had constructed.
But the apartments were too attractive to remain ignored for long. As talk of Partition grew, wealthy Hindu families from the Pakistani side began moving to Bombay. “We used to see rich Sindhi women, dressed in fine shiny saris and wearing their diamonds prominently, walk down the promenade. They loved Marine Drive because it reminded them of Karachi.” A settled old order was giving way to a new one.
The buildings began filling up. While the British and the Europeans, many of them emigrés from a war-torn Europe, started to return home, the newly arrived Indians rushed to move in. Soon it became difficult to find a good flat at Marine Drive. The buildings were not only convenient, beautiful, well located, spacious and modern, but nearby Churchgate Street had become the epicentre of Bombay’s nightlife – restaurants, bars, jazz clubs – and the commercial district was within walking distance. Bombay was enjoying its own gilded jazz age, with bands from
all over the world swinging at the watering holes run by their European owners; a Marine Drive resident could just walk to any of them to soak in those music-filled evenings.
The new tenants also came to enjoy another advantage. The Bombay Rent Control Act was passed in 1947 and for decades after the rents were frozen at those levels. Even today some of the original tenants live in commodious apartments of up to 3,000 sq ft but pay sometimes as little as 300 rupees a month. Landlords have accordingly lost the incentive to refurbish, renovate or even paint their buildings. Many apartments are locked in litigation as the landlords try to get their tenants evicted. Some owners worked out deals with their tenants and sold the flats—inevitably, those buildings look better maintained. But all too often the buildings, hit by decades of salty sea breezes and shoddy upkeep, are in extremely poor shape. Residents complain of poor plumbing, rickety stairs and lifts, and balconies that could fall off any day. The general visual impression is one of frayed gentility.
Not surprisingly, the older tenants see no reason to give up their apartments. This has meant that newer owners and tenants do not move in; they find the buildings old and
decaying and the legal problems intimidating. Real estate prices for Marine Drive – assuming that anyone is ready to sell out – are much lower than those of other posh areas.
For nostalgists like me, with long memories, Marine Drive is as magical as ever. But I wonder if the brave new inhabitants of this ever changing metropolis feel the same way. To them, it may seem a relic of the past, not the symbol of a globalised Mumbai. Given the chance, someone with serious money to spend might not necessarily want to live here – in gracious old apartments that cost $2 million or more but where there is no space to park one’s car safely.
Do youngsters dream of making enough money to move into a Marine Drive flat one day? Difficult to say. It is pleasant enough to be in a neighbourhood where the pavements are free of hawkers and which offers a glorious vista as part of the deal. But anyone can get that sea view for free. That vista, part of and yet so different from the rest of Mumbai, calls out to us even today. Nothing else in the city compares with it. Take a stroll down the promenade and feel your heart sing out. n
This shot of Bombay University’s Clocktower and Convocation Hall, with the sea behind them was probably taken from Watson’s Hotel around 1878. These Gothic structures, funded by the philanthropic bankers Premchand Roychand and Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney, were among the city’s first great buildings.
The filmmaker and photographer Sooni Taraporevala finds inspiration and connection during her daily speed-walks along the promenade
The lovers are ouT, even aT seven in the morning, their backs to the world carving intimacy and privacy out of the most public of spaces, sharing the sea view with an assortment of stray dogs and fiendishly clever crows. I have been ordered to walk by my doctor. Unlike my exercise junkie father walking bores me, so I make it palatable by going to my beloved Marine Drive.
I grew up at Gowalia Tank, near the Chowpatty part of Marine Drive. For us “town” consisted of Fort and Colaba, and the roads to get there were either the “inside” road or the “outside” road.
Taking the outside road – Marine Drive
–was always a treat. Whether sandwiched between my parents on my father’s Vespa scooter, or sitting in an uncle’s car coming back from an evening in town, I found the neon advertisement on the Drive a source of endless fascination – a cold drink bottle emptying its contents into a glass that filled. Then the glass would empty and the bottle would fill. On and on in glistening shiny technicolour. It was the only neon advertisement in Bombay. Now, of course, neon ads are like wallpaper, ubiquitous and unremarkable.
The first time I set out on my morning walks I have my iPhone with me. I see a bunch of nursery-school children in uniform on the
seawall excitedly looking at the sea. Without having to break my stride I take a picture. Or, as the art establishment would say, I make a photograph. And another and another. Still walking I share them on Instagram. In the old days unless you had an exhibition or published a book there was no way of sharing photographs, so for me Instagram is addictive. Who would have imagined that I could take a photograph on Marine Drive and instantly share it with friends in Parel, Los Angeles, New York?
In the old days when I was a constant photographer I always intended to carry my 35mm camera with me everywhere. Though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak and
more often than not the camera remained in its case at home. Now, thanks to the late Mr Jobs, I have a decent camera with me always. The famous photographer Annie Leibowitz was so right when she named the iPhone the best point-and-shoot camera for this very reason.
Marine Drive mornings have become an enjoyable routine. The promenade reveals itself to be every bit as cosmopolitan as the city is, and as egalitarian as the city is not. Ladies in black burqas stride alongside Marwari matrons in starched saris and sneakers; a Sikh man in a Swiss flag Tshirt sings kirtans; boys who I imagine are from a madrassa read the morning paper.
And there’s always an amusing range of weird and wonderful exercise routines, involving flapping arms, nose sniffs or head twists, as well as the serious athletes training for the marathon.
Marine Drive is not only for us, the welloff leisure class who eat so much we have to lose weight and lower our cholesterol. It is also occupied by the poor and the weary. Every day I see a young woman, on the sea wall, near the Princess Street flyover with her baby and a dog guarding them. She seems to be homeless but happy with her baby, unlike the man I see asleep next to his dog – both of them wounded. Another man is curled up in the middle
of the pavement, his possessions in a plastic bag next to him. He has no shirt, no shoes; I catch a glimpse of his running shorts. I’m told he’s a drug addict. Was he once a sportsman before he fell by the wayside?
I’m happy that Marine Drive belongs to everybody, but most of all to the animals and birds who allow humans to coexist on their turf. I’m sure generations of their ancestors were there before us and I’m sure their descendants will still be around when all of us are gone.
But most of all I’m just so happy that Marine Drive hasn’t been renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Marg.
Khushwant Singh at 98
Text by Mark Tully | Photography by Dayanita Singh
KhushWant singh at 97, going on 98, is as gregarious as ever. He has lost none of his wit or his wisdom, and is as irreverent as ever, not hesitating to speak his mind. He revels in controversy and his weekly column is compulsory reading for millions. So, Khushwant’s company is still much sought after, and he has to be protected from the visitors who want to sit at his feet.
Gilly (Gillian Wright) and my visit had to be carefully negotiated with Khushwant’s son Rahul, and Khushwant’s daughter Mala was there to greet us in the garden outside his flat in Sujan Singh Park. The flat has old-fashioned thick walls and high ceilings. It’s one of the apartments in the first block of flats to be built in New Delhi. Khushwant Singh’s father, Sir Sobha Singh, was the builder. Inside the modest flat we found Khushwant sitting back in
“Any bullshit I write gets published. I am the most widely read journalist in English.”
an armchair with his bare legs draped over a stool turned on its side. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and checked shorts. It was the first time I’d ever seen him without a Sikh turban covering his straggly white hair. There was a glass of whisky on the table beside him.
First, Khushwant insisted that a bottle of beer was opened for me and fresh-lime soda was brought for Gilly. “Here I live a very feudal life,” he told us. “I have three servants,
old timers, my cook has been with me for 60 years. But I’ve spent my happiest days in your country, England. I wish I was living there now.” Then he paused and chuckled, “But if I was, I suppose I’d be in an old-man’s home and that might not be much fun.”
Khushwant studied at King’s College London and then he read for the bar. Later he served as a diplomat in India House, the Indian High Commission in London. He was the public relations officer. I had often wondered how the naturally non-conformist Khushwant survived, constrained by the straitjacket of diplomatic conventions. I wasn’t surprised when he told me he was not very happy with diplomacy. “I had to serve under that rascal Krishna Menon,” he explained. “My four years were unhappy except that I enjoyed living in London. I used to walk down the Strand every day from the Savoy Hotel to The Sherlock Holmes Pub for lunch.” The Strand leads from India House to Trafalgar Square and after lunch Khushwant would sit on the steps of the famous St Martin-in-the-Fields church watching Londoners and tourists feeding the flocks of pigeons there.
Although Khushwant had welcomed us warmly, I felt he might be a little bored at this stage in his life by yet another journalistic interview. We were slated to have a conversation, but that is really an interview by another name. When I suggested this to Khushwant he replied, “I don’t know why people want to come and interview me. I have always consciously tried to belittle myself. But only last week people came and gave me flowers, then they touched my feet, and gave me a cheque for a lakh of rupees. I couldn’t say ‘Don’t do this’, could I? They would have been hurt.” Laughing, Khushwant added, “Anyhow I never refuse money and a lakh means nothing now.”
But Khushwant does keep strict visiting hours and we were told we could only have half an hour with him. He has always lived a very disciplined life. Until he was 90, he
“I prefer women to men and I admire beauty so if that makes me a dirty old man, I am one. I have some very good-looking women living near me and they like to spend time with me.”
regularly got up at four in the morning to play tennis at the Gymkhana Club. On getting home he would have a cold shower. He would also swim at the Golf Club in the summer and walk in Lodhi Gardens in the winter. If you invited Khushwant to dinner, he wouldn’t tolerate the usual Delhi practice of eating late. You had to serve food by eight and allow him to go home to be in bed by 9.30 p.m. Although he can no longer play tennis and told us he only goes out to attend board meetings of the Meridien Hotel, Khushwant still keeps regular hours. He breakfasts at 6.30, has lunch at 12, his whisky comes at seven and he eats dinner at eight, now preferring easily-digested South Indian idlis to heavier Punjabi food.
Khushwant misses his more active life. “I am decrepit now. I have to be helped to move around the place,” he said sadly. “I don’t know why I am still here. The time has come for me to go, and I want to go, but I can’t.” He then recited Walter Savage Landor’s poem in a firm voice,“I strive with none for none was worth my strife/ Nature I loved and next to nature art/ I warmed my hands before the fire of life/ It sinks and I am ready to depart.”
He then turned to Tennyson, one of his favourite English poets, “Sunset and evening star,/ And one clear call for me,/ And may there be no moaning of the bar/ When I put out to sea.” I was amazed by Khushwant’s memory. He gave the credit for it to his education at The Modern School.
Khushwant Singh is so well loved for his inimitable sense of humour, his outspoken journalism, and his very public enjoyment of wine, women and song that we are in danger of not taking him seriously. In fact his achievements as a novelist, historian and naturalist, as well of course, as his journalism, show that underneath the jovial exterior lies a deeply serious man whose work should be more widely acclaimed in India and abroad. Khushwant should be best known for his two volume History of the Sikhs, essential
reading for any student of that community, and also for the classic novel Train to Pakistan, which portrays the blood-stained tragedy of Partition. Khushwant himself said to us, “If only it had been done another way, without those bloody massacres, I would have been very happy to have stayed in Pakistan. They forced us out.”
Less well known than this or his other novels, but invaluable for anyone who wants to know about the natural life of Delhi, is Khushwant’s beautifully illustrated Nature Watch. But in the end it has to be admitted that he is best known as a journalist (particularly for his hugely-popular column, With Malice Towards One and All). When I asked whether he thought he was a great journalist, he replied, “I don’t think so. But any bullshit I write gets published. I am the most widely read journalist in English. I also had experience of journalism as an editor, eight years at The Illustrated Weekly of India when the circulation went from 80,000 to four million. Then there was the Hindustan Times for three years – very satisfying. There I fell foul of Mrs Gandhi. It was shameful, the proprietor K.K. Birla, asked Mrs Gandhi to nominate the editor to replace me. I have to say that Birla did ask me to continue with my column.”
“But you were close to Indira Gandhi.”
“I was close to her. But she had a very petty side to her. She was very vindictive and went out of her way to take revenge, especially after the Emergency. But she certainly had her plus points. There was the Bangladesh War. She won that more than anyone else. The way she manoeuvred it, making Pakistani planes fly via Sri Lanka and it was all over in 10 days; 93,000 Pakistani soldiers laying down their arms. I met the officers and the men we had captured. I said, ‘You didn’t even put up a fight’. They replied ‘Don’t rub salt in our wounds’. It hurt me that they were humiliated.”
Khushwant then told us about one particular soldier he met – a young man who
“I have always consciously tried to belittle myself. But only last week people came and gave me flowers, then they touched my feet, and gave me a cheque for a lakh of rupees. I couldn’t say ‘Don’t do this’, could I?”
couldn’t even read or write. When he discovered that the soldier came from his ancestral village, Khushwant asked him what he had heard about the Sikhs who used to live there. The young man replied, “I was told they were a cruel community. If they caught you they would kill you.” Khushwant then pointed out that the soldier had been captured by the Sikh regiment and asked what they had done to him. “Nothing,” he replied.
The Emergency was one of the very rare times when Khushwant’s genial image suffered, and he faced considerable hostility. But he remains unapologetic about his decision to support the declaration of a State of Emergency. “Indira’s opponents went too far,” he explained. “They crossed all limits. I wasn’t alone in welcoming the Emergency. So did Vinoba Bhave. But it was misused, mainly by the family.”
“What about politics today?” “I have never seen politicians so low. They just run each other down, and I never heard them using the sort of language about each other that they use today. Nowadays when I read the paper I first look at the temperature, then go through the obituaries to see if any of my buddies have died. I don’t read stories of politicians running each other down. But Manmohan (Singh) is a good man –honest, able, and above all humble, which is a rare phenomenon. He’s doing the best he can, but this is an ungovernable country.”
There is one aspect of politics in which Khushwant does still take a great interest. “I am very bothered about the rise of religious fundamentalism in this country,” he said. “For example (L. K.) Advani. I never forgave him for the Babri Mosque. I have written more against him than anyone else. When he was Home Minister I was asked to preside over a meeting where he was present. I said, ‘I proposed your name for the New Delhi Parliamentary seat because I thought you were clean, honest, and not a womaniser’ – there was much laughter at that. Then I said ‘after what you have done
I will not spare you.’”
I started to explain to Khushwant that I was also opposed to secular fundamentalists who refused to accept there could be any good in religion but Khushwant cut me short, “There is no such thing as secular fundamentalism,” he said firmly. “Unless I am one!” he added, with a hearty laugh. “But look at the Indo-Pakistan question. There is prejudice against Pakistan in this country. They have been unfair to us and we have been unfair to them. There is no hope of change because it is all basically religious. We are not secular enough.”
So we came to the question of the future and what it held for Khushwant. He said, “I haven’t a clue about what is going to happen after I go, but all this business of reincarnation is utter bullshit. I am an agnostic.”
I asked, “What then is your attitude towards Sikhism? After all, you do publicly appear to profess it by keeping your beard and wearing a turban.” Khushwant replied, “I spent all my life working on the Sikhs. Perhaps I have written more on them than anyone writing in English and so people think I am religious. But I am not. I have a beard and wear a turban because it gives me a feeling of belonging and I’m too old to change now.”
I couldn’t end without asking Khushwant about the admiration for beautiful women that he has so often expressed. I reminded him that he had sometimes been called ‘a dirty old man.’ Khushwant laughed: “I prefer women to men and I admire beauty, so if that makes me a dirty old man, I am one. I have some very good-looking women living near me and they like to spend time with me. I have a very good memory for (Mirza) Ghalib who has a lot of very fetching couplets about women and wine, and they like to listen to them.” He paused and then recited,“Jab mekada chhuta to phir ab kya jagah ki qai/ masjid ho, madrasa ho, koi khanqah ho” (When we’ve left the wine-house, then what other place can
“Manmohan (Singh) is a good man – honest, able, and above all humble, which is a rare phenomenon. He’s doing the best he can, but this is an ungovernable country.”
hold us/ Whether it be a mosque, or madrassa or some Sufi cell?)
The 19th century poet’s humour and irreverence obviously appealed to Khushwant. From the superiority of the wine-house, he turned to a famous ghazal where Ghalib, in his distinctive style, defied anyone to stop the Lover from expressing the pain he feels at the poor treatment he gets from his Beloved.“Dil hi to hai na sang o khisht dard se bhar na aye kyun/ roenge ham hazaar bar koi hamen sataye kyun.”(My heart is not of stone or brick, why should it not fill with pain/ I will cry a thousand times, why should anyone torment me? And then, “Dair nahin, haram nahin, dar nahin, aastan nahin/ baithe hain reh-guzar pe ham ghair hamen utaye kyun.” (Neither temple, nor Ka’bah, nor door, nor threshold/ I sit on the roadside – why should anyone disturb me?)
“Why Ghalib above all Urdu poets?” asked Gilly. “I was the only student of Urdu at Modern School in my class,” Khushwant replied. “Then I continued it at college. I first got very involved with Iqbal, I translated his Shikva and the Jawab-e-Shikwa, which has gone into over 20 editions in India and Pakistan. But I can’t stomach religious fundamentalism and in the end he was the spirit behind the Pakistan movement, although I can understand that Muslims would have felt insecure in a country dominated by Hindus. I then turned to Ghalib – more my cup of tea…. Ishq se tabiyat ne zist ka maza paya/ dard ki dava payee dard-e-be-dava paya.” (Through love I found the taste of life/ I found a cure for pain, and a pain without cure.)
“For me, that is his best line.” So although Khushwant is not physically strong, mentally he is sharp as ever and his memory is remarkable. We had been given half an hour but had spent nearly an hour. When we apologised to Khushwant he said, “Don’t worry, come again.” We both very much hope we will. n
If there was ever a Bard of Bombay it was Manto, the subcontinent’s greatest writer of short stories. Earlier this year - the anniversary of Manto’s birth – the photographer Ram Rahman visited the neighbourhoods where Manto and his friends lived, worked and played
It was the late Habib Tanvir, the popular playwright, actor and director, who prompted me to read Saadat Hasan Manto’s profiles of his friends in 1940s Bombay. We were reminiscing about a theatrical event in 1993 that I had helped organise: Habib’s Naya Theatre had performed at Sahmat’s all-night show at the riverfront in Ayodhya, with Sitara Devi, the legendary Kathak dancer. Habib was laughing at my description of the drowsy local police waking up to the sound of Sitara’s ghungroos (ankle bells) at 4am, and the way their perception of her as Sizzling Siren changed in seconds to Goddess when I told them her age, rumoured to be 70 at the time.
“You have to read Manto on Sitara right away,” Habib said. Luckily, a five-volume set of Manto’s works had just been published in Devanagari script so that those, like me, who were unfamiliar with Urdu script could finally read Manto in his own language. His pen portraits of his Bombay pals – including the actors Sitara, Nargis and Ashok Kumar – are sharp, frank, intimate and acidic. With their combination of affection and fascination with personal insecurities, moral transgressions and vanity, these vivid sketches could only have been written by Manto.
Here he describes Sitara’s effect on K. Asif, the director who went on to make Mughal-e-Azam; Nazir was Asif’s uncle, who had previously had a relationship with Sitara:
Over the years I have known and analysed many women but the more I learnt about her, the closer I came to the view that she was not a woman but a typhoon which did not blow in and out as typhoons do, but which retained its force and fury without showing any signs of weakening… Sitara was like a sorceress of old who turns her
The Mariam building in Byculla was at the heart of Manto’s neighbourhood. In the late 1940’s the area was still largely Jewish
Down manto’s memory lanes: a walker’s map
DOCKYARDS
by Diya Sarker