Blink issue 107 february20 2016

KEEPING OUT DISSENT Nationalism has become a war cry after Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest. At JNU campus, friends and teachers continue to march, protest and resist p5-6 saturday, february 20, 2016

shutterstock/lauren cameo

Belly dancing ‘Russian girls’ are now the entertainers of choice in India’s metros. Five months ago an Uzbeki dancer went missing. In trying to find her, her family unspools the sinister threads of human trafficking, kidnapping and possibly, murder p9

Gone girl

YAKLAIMED Livestock in the Spiti Valley get insurance cover against predator snow leopards p2

SPAM TO SCREEN An email languishing in his junk box led Hansal Mehta to make Aligarh p15

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Cover from the predator

The IPL mirage

An enterprising NGO provides villagers in the Spiti Valley with insurance for their livestock against snow leopard attacks

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hen the April sun melts the snow in Kibber, in the high altitude fastness of Spiti Valley in the Himalayas, snow leopards hunt livestock and hurt villagers’ livelihoods. But what could be a volatile people-versus-wildlife conflict is one of peaceful coexistence.

Cooped up in mud-walled barns for the long harsh winter, the animals were waited on mouth and foot by villagers. The painstakingly gathered fodder stacked on their roofs is now gone. There is no option but to let the animals find what little they can scrounge in the surrounding hillsides. With yells and whistles, the village herder leads hundreds of hungry animals — cows, donkeys, sheep, and goats — to pasture.

The sleek horses and shaggy yaks with their young are out on their own. Since they graze in the high reaches, it’s impractical to herd them back every evening. With no shepherd to protect them, foals and calves are easy pickings for snow leopards. Each adult yak is worth about ₹30,000, while a horse fetches ₹8,000. Even with a herder guarding them, sheep and goats fall prey. But it’s the loss of large animals that hits Kibber’s villagers hard.

Through the long cold winter, inhabitants chant Tibetan Buddhist mantras of compassion to all life forms. Come spring, their beliefs

can be shaken when their losses to snow leop- partment recompensed only three per cent of ards mount. this loss.

“When was the last time a snow leopard was While the state’s largesse is ostensibly to killed?” I asked Kalzang. help support local livelihoods and buy villag“Many years ago, when I was a child. It must ers’ goodwill towards carnivores, its many have been 1990 or 1991. A snow leopard en- pernickety rules cause frustration towards the tered a barn and killed all the sheep and goats, department and antipathy with snow and itlokapally couldn’t get out. In the morning, people leopards. vijay killed it.”

If people had to have space in their hearts Like other states in India, the Himachal Pra- for snow leopards, they shouldn’t be asked to awan Negi’s mind-boggling status in desh Forest Department recomThe IPL, now in for its ninth season, has come to pay the wild cats’ meals.

From Indian cricket lore is the perhaps the best stay. Launched penses livestock owners for in 2008 much fanfare, the this beliefwith sprang a village-operIndian Premier tournament ated loss of advertisement their animals for to the wild has grown enormously, attractinsurance programme for League The staggering figure he ing players from predators.

Until(IPL). recently, it paid acrossaided the globe.

It is a Consuclivestock,

by Nature commanded the latest nothing no more thanin₹1,500 for aauction preda- hasWith cessful to brandservation with theFoundation. potential to threaten no shepherd to do withyak, his cricketing credentials. protect A matchthem, tor-killed a sum so meagre thefoals traditional forms the game. Itinsurance is no se“In theoftraditional fee ₹8.5 crore for a To maximum thatofvillagers scoffed. get even of 16 appearcret that the young rank a slot in an model,cricketers the owner puts in someand calves are ances in one season, he confessed, this amount, villagers had to was beyond IPL team ahead of playing the country. The thing for his for own assurance and easy pickings his comprehension.

It defies logic, for that IPL, the property make numerous trips to Kaza, of the Board of profit Control the company makes outfor of matter.

Negi, withcapital, just three first-class match- Cricket (BCCI)the the sub-district about in capital India, has changed theyindeed generate,” said es in five years, an interesting 20km away.

If is they met all thecase study on the way the game played.

Yash is Veer Bhatnagar, a senior scithe trendsthe thatdepartment have signified criteria, dis- the game in It has also entist alteredwith thethe cricketer’s approach foundation.

“Here modern times. months later. bursed money to the game. The of franchises the question of judgment profits is not there. To when make As a business module, thefrom IPL has proved to investing When Charudutt Mishra Nature Conin youngsustainable, talent has surprised both any programme the premium be a grandFoundation, success. It has cricket and the servation anredefined NGO based in Mysuand the observers of cricket. hascoaches to be substantial.

But it can’t be soDelhi high the There in is money, glamour ru, cricketer. visited Kibber 1995, the spectreand of Daredevils, theno least successful in the that it makes sense for theteam owner.

So IPL, the fame evenbeing for thekilled nondescript player. Negi is a is leopards in retaliation for livenotorious for making poor choices.

Stillthe it conservation programme has to undercut stirring reconfirm.

He is yet to wear the India managed stock losses was real. to shock all by picking Negi for such cost.” cap, and even if he does not,each it willfamily’s hardly matMishra estimated that loss a staggering price. How doesthe it help cricket or To buffer himself against vagaries of nater.

Negiup was theof Indian squad just in boost added topicked 12 per in cent its livestock holdchances ofowner Daredevils its ture, the a livestock paysin winning a nominal time the IPLand auc-the Forest De- amount based ings to or qualify ₹4,000 for annually, first-ever title? on rates decided by the villagtion and surprised the fraterniThe tournament, with its popty by becoming the highest ularity, and solid TV ratings, has paid cricketer. added handsomely to the BCCI’s What propelled Negi, the coffers. “It is all about money beThe overkill factor most expensive uncapped crickcause the game is reduced to a tadoes not affect the eter, to the forefront was the masha,” said a veteran cricket popularity of the IPL contest between two franchises official. But Ratnakar Shetty, a reeven as domestic keen to acquire a player. MS cricket in all countries spected cricket administrator, is played to empty Dhoni triggered the war and it disagrees. “It helps cricketers segalleries escalated to an extent where the cure their future and also allows individual gained in astonishyoungsters to interact with the ing terms. To his credit, Negi greats of the game.” It is true to an was humble as he benefited extent; but the IPL also tends to from the race between Pune pamper cricketers into believing and Delhi. Dhoni tactically backed Negi, his that this is the format that counts more than former colleague at the Chennai Super Kings, the traditional forms of the game. up to a point.

“It will revolutionise the game,” Lalit Modi, The argument in favour of Negi was that he who conceptualised the format, had made his could give you 20-odd runs when it matters. prophetic assessment in the inaugural year.

He is considered a finisher who has done it Almost every country has its T20 league now time and again for Delhi. He may not be the but nothing to match the IPL, considered the best left-arm spinner but is said to be effective. stepping stone to international recognition.

From a bowler who could bat he is now a bat- The challenge for coaches is to convince sman who could bowl. Negi suits the needs of young trainees to focus on a career in firsthis franchise even though he may not qualify class cricket than a season or two with an IPL to be the face of Delhi Daredevils. franchise. They concede it is a losing battle.

Negi is not the first to be hailed a great talThe overkill factor does not affect the popent because of the IPL windfall. In the past, ularity of the IPL even as domestic cricket in all Kamran Khan and Manvinder Bisla earned countries continue to be played to empty galfleeting praise of little consequence. Khan, a leries. The purist may not appreciate the way left-arm seamer, won much appreciation from cricket has degenerated into a slam-bang afAustralian legend Shane Warne but eventually fair, which is what the T20 brand is, but the adreturned to farming. Bisla, a batsman-keeper, ministrators are not complaining. Therein lies won the 2012 IPL final for Kolkata Knight Rid- the travesty of cricket. It has shrunk to a 40ers, but failed to gain a first-class team in the over ‘spectacle’ with critics fearing for the fusubsequent seasons and is happy represent- ture of the game. ing his employer Air India. The IPL show did stoke their ambitions but the national select- vijay lokapally is the Deputy Editor (Sports), The Hindu ors find sawwhat littlelittle merit T20 exploits.

Bare essentials At the end of winter, villagers let the animals theyin cantheir scrounge in the surrounding hillsides janaki lenin

The IPL has meant windfall for many nondescript cricketers but often it has been fleeting praise with little consequence

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Poster boy Pawan Negi is yet to wear the India cap, and even if he does not, it will hardly matter pti

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dim. “What can I say? Those families object to taking an oath on the Dalai Lama.”

Sometimes the carcass of a calf is hard to find. The snow leopard may stash it in an inaccessible spot, or the carcass may be completely eaten by scavengers. Since the insurance committee has no proof that the calf was taken, it asks the owner to take an oath on the Dalai Lama that the case is genuine. He swears he hasn’t sold the meat, nor has the animal died of disease. These families don’t think they ought to take the supreme leader’s name.

There’s also another possible reason for their reluctance in participating, Chudim said. To claim insurance, livestock owners have to leave the carcass for the snow leopard.

If they retrieve it, the hungry snow leopard may kill another calf and the total loss may be more. Chudim said the non-insuring families may think that by recovering the carcass and selling the remaining meat, they may get more money than from the insurance.

The 13-year-old insurance programme in Kibber is the working model for eight other villages in Spiti, Ladakh and even Mongolia.

Were people satisfied with the insurance programme, if there was such a huge discrepancy between market price and compensation amount?

“What’s not to like about it?” asked Tanzin Thinley, one of the first villagers to participate in the scheme. “There are many problems, but Talking point The 13-year-old insurance programme in Kibber is the working model for other villages in Spiti, Ladakh, and even Mongolia janaki lenin we are working to sort them out.”

Could the insurance programme be called a conservation success, for bringing peace beers themselves. Each insured animal has to be ing them. tween people and snow leopards? identifiable. This precludes the numerous, al“Conservation is a continuum,” said BhatThen in 2008, every land-owning family most identical, sheep and goats from the bought a horse, on the orders of their devata, nagar. “Something that is successful today can scheme, a decision made by the inhabitants. speaking through a human medium. It was a become unsuccessful tomorrow. And vice verThey want insurance only for cattle, horses, disaster. Chudim, one of the members of the sa. You are dealing with an ever-changing insurance committee, said of 33 horses, only system.” and yaks.

“People decide how they want to run the in- 10 survived. The losses nearly bankrupted the Market forces may change the scheme’s surance programme,” said Bhatnagar. “We fa- insurance programme. The NGO had to step in course. Or the devata may have a new fancy.

To replicate this model in areas where peocilitate discussions. We do go with some ideas, with fresh funds to keep it afloat.

The devata owns a stud male of every spe- ple lose crops to elephants or livestock to leopbut we are not stuck with our model. There are differences between the insurance pro- cies, while villagers stock females. When the ards, Bhatnagar said, “One key factor is that grammes in Kibber and the neighbouring vil- devata’s stallion reached his prime, he began the community should have the ability to pay protecting the surviving mares. premiums. People shouldn’t be so poor that lage of Chichim.”

“The stallion recognises his mares,” ex- paying a viable premium isn’t affordable. ConOnce the four-member village insurance committee collects premiums, the founda- plained Chudim. “When we take our horses servation funds can only subsidise the premiums paid by the herders if the tion invests one and half times that amount to [up to pasture in April], he original collection is form a corpus. At the end of the year, the com- comes running from a kilosubstantial.” mittee pays out claims that are capped at 60 metre away. We let our animals The conservation NGO also has per cent of the corpus. If losses are more, then go and he herds them away.

Yak deaths are the added burden of having to 60 per cent of the corpus is divided equally When we try to take them back, compensated raise funds to underwrite the among the affected families. However, yak he chases and kicks us. He’s doimmediately, since deaths are compensated immediately, since ing a better job than any human. they are essential for premium costs. “Telling any donor that we will need to keep they are essential for ploughing fields. The af- Not all stallions are like him.” ploughing fields Cow yaks, called demo, and coming in cycles of three years fected farmer can buy an animal and not miss their calves enjoy no such promay not always work. In Pakistan a beat in the farming cycle. and Nepal, they’ve made serious The foundation underwrites the insurance tection. Bull yaks are solitary efforts to link it to other sustainacosts for three years. For the following three much of the time and do not years, it runs on annual premiums and the ac- possessively herd cows. Snow leopards don’t ble local activities, like tourism, crafts, or even cumulated corpus. Since the premiums are mess with adult yaks, but target calves. Since micro-finance, which can provide an annual low and bank interest is only 10 per cent, the young animals are most at risk, some villagers contribution to the insurance funds.” The corpus drains. From the seventh year, for a pe- wanted to exclusively insure them. If everyone foundation is working with the community to riod of three years, the foundation steps in followed suit, the programme would have set up an enterprise that could eventually folded up. The insurance committee institut- fund the insurance programme. again to build the capital.

Since 2014, the Himachal Forest DepartHow difficult was it to convince villagers to ed a rule that calves cannot be insured alone.

Demos have to be insured as well. ment has upped the compensation to ₹10,000 sign up to this complicated deal?

The premium for a demo is ₹240 a year. If it for both yaks and horses. As long as bureauMore than a decade after the scheme began, Chhering Tandup Makhan, one of the village is killed by a snow leopard, the owner gets cratic problems remain, these village-run inelders who threw his weight behind the ₹13,000. However, if it dies of disease, the as- surance programmes help local livelihoods scheme, confessed at a village meeting, “I have sured sum is only ₹10,000. For an annual pre- and wildlife co-exist, without letting either to admit I did not understand much at all mium of ₹600 for a yak calf, since it’s at a bear the costs of the other.

As winter envelops Kibber and the livestock about what the insurance programme would greater risk of being killed, the owner gets bedo. But Charu [Mishra] was a friend. I knew he tween ₹2,500 and ₹3,000 in case of loss. For is ushered into its well-secured barns, snow meant well. So because of our friendship, I de- any family that has made no claim for three leopards hunt wild game — blue sheep and Hicided to support the idea. It did turn out well.” years, the committee waives the annual pre- malayan ibex. This is the time Spitians take as much pleasure as tourists watching the hefty A few years after the insurance programme mium for the fourth year, a no-claim bonus.

Most families insure their demos and calves. spotted cat prowling the hillsides. began, people realised that cows were not at risk because they returned home every eve- A few do not, and I asked why .

“Every man thinks differently,” replied Chu- janaki lenin writes on wildlife conservation ning with the herder. So they stopped cover-

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I SPY STATES OF MATTER

Either with against us Flashback tous theorfuture By charging dissenting students withfor sedition, the current done Actor and model Purab Kohli is all set fatherhood and theadministration sequel to Rockhas On!! everything that the Constituent Assembly feared

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sukumar muralidharan

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edition is a term with a ring of menace, carrying a hint of severe punishments for imagined slights to an entity mostly absent from citizen’s lives. In rationalising the arrest of a student from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on sedition charges, Delhi Police Commissioner Bhim Sain Bassi has at various times quoted faithfully from the book of law. Though he has proved a good clerk in the Macaulayan sense, he has failed to make a case that the JNU events fit the template. Bassi helped his image very little by guilelessly claiming that the police had several hours of video footage in its possession, which were being scrutinised for evidence of other ‘blasphemous’ utterances.

Sedition and blasphemy are close cousins 10.45am dosa at mom’s in theEgg imagination of Delhi’s police chief. That is not how students and teachers at JNU, with its long tradition of critical thinking and activism, see things. In the vastness of India, every day has a special significance. And mindful of its resonances in Kashmir, students of JNU organised an event for February 9, third anniversary of the day Afzal Guru was executed, ostensibly to appease the ‘collective conscience’ of the Indian nation.

Observances that challenge the dominant narrative are routinely carried out in Kashmir despite the heavy security blanket that shrouds the region. In the air of freedom of a university campus, it became an occasion for a counter-mobilisation by rival students heady on the brew of hyper-nationalism the current regime purveys. A melee of confused sloganeering ensued, some of it captured on phone-cam videos.

Matters would have rested there until the next contentious anniversary came around, except for the media and in particular one English news channel that claims a righteous monopoly on truth. While stirring the pot and calling for a crackdown on what it termed seditious conduct, this channel for good effect, juxtaposed the JNU events with the funeral held for an Indian army soldier killed in an avalanche in Siachen, a victim of the permanent state of war in Kashmir.

What cause really was served by this quest for cheap applause? As it pumped up the public outrage in its lust for ratings, the channel could not have been unaware that charges of sedition had been brought against a newspa11.30am Sneak peek to at the per belonging thelunchbox same business group as recently as June 2008, and that it had taken four long years to earn exculpation.

The Ahmedabad edition of the newspaper had just run a series of stories on a newly appointed city police commissioner, pointing to a service record riddled with abuses of power and dangerous liaisons with the underworld.

The import of one of the stories was fairly clear: that prime position in the police hierarchy was a reward for official services rendered in covering up the premeditated murder of underworld hatchet-man Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife.

Charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy were an immediate reward, implicating

8am Of squats and balances

9.15am Post workout booster

11.10am Anytime is doodle time

Freedom under fire Students staging a protest at the JNU campus in New Delhi on February 15, 2016 rv moorthy / the hindu

the publisher, resident editor and a reporter The constitutional historian Granville Ausof the newspaper. The trio were granted bail tin 11.20am described this phase of debate Announcing the arrival of Inaya,as a tripending full hearing of the case, gaining as umph of ‘liberty’ over ‘bureaucracy’. It was in my little baby in London employees of a large media group; a privilege this spirit that the Allahabad High Court in denied to journalists who work at great risk in 1960 held section 124, which defines the ofIndia’s most turbulent zones such as Chhattis- fence of sedition, as a violation of constitugarh and the North-East. tional freedoms. In further hearings before The police official who brought the charges, the Supreme Court, the clause was reinstated meanwhile, served out his term, retiring in subject to its invocation exclusively in situaMarch 2009 and securing a happy sinecure in tions of imminent violence and public disora university training security personnel. His der. This was the foundation on which the end was served by imposing the legal process Supreme Court ruled in the Balwant Singh on a critical newspaper, which case in 1995, that shouting sepain the Indian system is puniratist slogans in a public space shment in itself. did not attract sanctions under In April 2012, the Gujarat High the sedition law.

It is almost as if Court finally ruled on a bunch of These judgments continue to freedom is a rationed applications seeking the quashhold the field though they are ofcommodity ing of sedition charges. In grantten lost in the hiatus between ing these applications, the High vindictive executive action and 11.40am On myby way to work. Finally!

12 noon Bandra, as always Court went well-established judicial review. In 2012, the Gujajudicial precedent. It could not rat High Court summoned up have been otherwise. these as also all other relevant precedents to While debating the fundamental rights, In- set three newspaper employees at liberty from dia’s Constituent Assembly (CA) made a spe- the arbitrary charges laid against them. cial point of omitting ‘sedition’ as a These are hard won freedoms, just as easily circumstance in which free speech could be snatched away. And in today’s media environrestricted. A second important change was to ment of ‘war of all against all’, it is almost as if qualify every restriction imposed on freedom freedom is a rationed commodity which every by a requirement of ‘reasonableness’. This in- entity has to corner by plumbing the most sortroduced a test akin to that of ‘due process’, did depths. It is a game in which there can be where judicial review would be applicable as a no winners. But that realisation may well fetter on arbitrary exercises of power. The CA come too late to be of much use. also resolved to delete every legal provision of the penal code that was inconsistent with the sukumar muralidharan is an independent writer and researcher based in Gurgaon and Shimla new charter of liberty.

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Through it together And when there is nothing to do, we sing songs of protests, we make creative posters, we recite poetry, we laugh and we rage shanker chakravarty

And they march After Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest, life in JNU is characterised by hostel raids and police presence while the students try to keep the morale up

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n February 15, I had decided to go to court to see my friend Kanhaiya Kumar so that I could tell him that he needn’t feel alone, that there are thousands on campus protesting for the right to dissent, and free speech and for his immediate and unconditional release. As I was getting dressed, I reached out for the first sweatshirt I could get my hands on. By chance, it was the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sweatshirt. I paused and I put it back. Wearing a JNU sweatshirt in the city can also be a provocation now, you see. Looking back at the violence that ensued at Patiala House that day, I don’t think my fear was unwarranted.

In the past few days, the campus has been under severe distress because of random hostel raids, police questioning, lumpens entering campus and hurling abuses at teachers, the apathy of the administration, and false facts being circulated both by the media and the home minister. Additionally, JNU students have also been subjected to an atmosphere of complementary terror in the city. After being thrown out of his rented room in Munirka, a frustrated JNU student stood for an entire day with a placard saying, “I am a JNUite and I’m not a terrorist”. Another was asked by his auto wallah, “Should I take you to JNU or directly to Pakistan”. A girl travelling in the train was immediately branded a “JNU slut” by co-passengers after they discovered that she was a JNU student. Parents, friends and acquaintances are constantly calling up to ask if we have become anti-nationals. They are worried, but also voyeuristically curious.

However, the situation is not all bleak. On the day of Kumar’s arrest, after the initial and justified nervous lull on campus, students started pouring in front of the administrative block. They were soon joined by indignant

teachers still in shock at the brazenness of the rooms. Which is why my experience at the Delhi Police. About a thousand students and court that day left me shaken. Almost 50 lawteachers marched in protest from the admin- yers barged into the courtroom, as I was sitistrative block to the north gate. Since then ev- ting with the JNU teachers who had come to ery day, we are marching, protesting, resisting show their support for Kumar. While the one and we are staying strong. The day after the ar- male teacher got badly beaten up, the rest, rest perhaps saw the biggest public meeting who were women, were pushed, hurled abuse in the history of JNU; around 2,500 participa- at and told, “you breed traitors”, “scoundrels”, nts and speakers who ranged from politicians “this is not a JNU classroom”. I remember vivto academics to ex-JNU Students Union (JNU- idly a teacher screaming at the police to proSU) presidents. As student activists, we tect us as it was apparent the goons would thought, surely nothing bigger can be done. beat us up any second. One of the lawyers We were proven wrong the next walked up to her and in a meday when the call for a solidarity nacingly calm voice told her, human chain saw 4,000 partici“We have not started beating pants. Every day, students are you up now, we soon will”. I will gathering in front of the adminnever forget the physical threat Every day, we are istrative block in hundreds. We marching, protesting, that the right-wing goons in lawwait for our teachers to tell us yer coats posed to me and my resisting and we are about the progress in Kumar’s teachers that day. I will also nevstaying strong case or about what the vice-chaner forget the bravery of my cellor said in the most recent teachers who, in the face of immeeting with them. We wait for pending mob violence, were student leaders to make speechmore worried about Kumar’s es and keep our morale up. And when there is safety than their own. nothing to do, we sing songs of protests, we Let me finish by perhaps admitting what make creative posters, we recite poetry, we these teachers and student activists ‘are’ laugh and we rage. breeding on campus. Today, more than ever, In JNU, as in every other campus, I’m sure, there are students demanding the right to students frequently try to outsmart their free speech and the right to dissent. Students teachers. Last minute emails for deadline ex- who will not cow down before the JNUSU prestensions, parroting Wikipedia instead of read- ident is released, before all charges on JNU stuing the essays on the reading list, making up dents are dropped, before the witch-hunting dramatic stories of family tragedies to escape stops and before Delhi Police leaves campus. work are things almost everyone has indulged Young men and women are taking inspiration in. Sometimes we are successful, mostly we from each other and their teachers to ask are not. But an underlying assumption is that sharp questions in the face of brute force and we respect our teachers. And this respect is propagandist rhetoric. not blind; it comes from the atmosphere of openness, of freedom and of fearless debate pankhuri zaheer dasgupta is an MPhil student at the teachers have created for us in the class- the Centre for Women’s Studies, JNU

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The Faustian world of law Of hatches and squiggles APPROACHING EYE LEVEL

Ranjeev Dubey’s book paints a compelling picture of young lawyers trying to get by in a cut-throat world, but his efforts are somewhat marred by hyperbolic prose

andrea obzerova/shutterstock

Whatever happened to the hobby, the pointless activity we took up and abandoned easily without worrying about making it a revenue model?

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Legal Confidential Ranjeev Dubey Penguin India Non-fiction ₹499

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Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of the feminist website The Ladies Finger

Dog eat dog Playing one lawyer against another, one practice against another, creating intricate and complicated problems only to demonstrate the capacity to solve them, are all par for the course afp

he commercial practice of law is privileged information as secret, makes it gance and aggression that lawyers can deploy glamorous. In India, the law degree tough for society to get a close look at how the for clients, in their own commercial dealings is the new MBA — one of the most profession is practised. Writing a book on how (even with recovery of fees from clients) lawhatever happened to hobbies, sought after basic education qualifiand squiggles were turning into Jim Morrison. legal strategy was thought through in real and adulthood. yers can really suck. His description of the burasked friend T. sexiness.

Nobody Telecations, thanks to my its perceived Thencases I went out of and bought a colour pencilpend- Myden (some which he says, are indeed colouring book seems to be up a return to was of independently setting shop: “It seems to have vision serials like Suitsthem and anymore.

Boston Legal box ing andingot myself courts) an Audrey Hepburn in an appellate is tricky.

Much like pointless activity.

Let’sa clarify that.but Pointless true that we had client list, clients, unrun butYet, then underline thePeople stereotype. as that’s with any shades of pink and purple.

A couple intelligence officer writing on of hishours work; it activity is not aren’t just television.

Because I likewhich diamonds, forever. Like lactating deathly serious and ends the in photos 5Ks and are glamorous picture, warts of and smells or less on each pageendorsement gives me a feeling that is havecows, would attract and admonition a problem.

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Andisfor creative pungency of the smell what Ranjeev ahead-of-the-trend-curve C bey’s book interesting. kindThe of girl actually bits compelling me clean thethen, house and do other random nate and after a while, the milk flows! (...) types,Dubey it is now a constant that Legal every-Confiseeks to narratetension in his book discovered colouring books many years are hisadult rendition of how lawyers think about things treatingyou theneed new award-winning To while inseminate, a lot of equipment thingdential: you touch must succeed and bear enviAdventures of an Indian Lawyer.

If you ago building in Mcleodganj.

Shethe took her manipulation thangka- seriesand a practice, murky as technology. radio. I know other who that Inone terms of afriend law firm, able fruit. can build reasonable tolerance for hyperbolic themed colouring book down games to the people plains.play, of aspirations, the endless has meant a similar problem waslocaa swanky office because in a smartshe central T and I were discussing a common friend,allegoa Her family prose, mixed metaphors and dramatic giggledlove-hate but she was mock-proofthat as talthe constant roller-coaster brought that hermarketing. hands tion up andstrictly a lot ofand cashtold to finance I highly creative person have no ries, Dubey’s bookwho can seemed tell you to a good story. she A bought pencils, crayons ented resources can be and put watercolours through, the feelcoulddidn’t neverhave be idle.

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I didn’t have a hobbies. her unseemly gifts (andunderbelly she had of many) storyAll of the a profesand went colouring with ing ofatbeing captive tofervour. founder partners and manding she couldn’t switch off with spermPhD, bank!” seemed endmay in some search a revenuewith. This siontoyou not be wellfor acquainted fervourto reminds me of previous learning love them ona being leftstate with no mindless television.

She hadnarration to knit orof crotchAfter a 200-plus-page awful stomodel.

Which perhaps is better than T and me, of being.

Sample some nuggets: being 8, 12, 14 and told quite otherOfchoice.

Dubey’s own story inclearthe book et orries prune herthe plants whilehe whatever about ‘Dragons’, winds upshow with the who are constantly up schemes Description of acooking case handled: “Bentel wantly that draw, I can’t painthelpcanI can’t be testament to how wasstory running.

It’s been some of a structured capitulamarked byhave the absence models. ed to its cake, of eatrevenue it too, have Altel pay for and man, maps can werefeel, rather less amy lawyer underyears since we both ourbeen tion, justified thus: left “I had Butit,before wecompensate started discussing our comand then Bentel because Bentel ghastly.

This the didn’t seem tragic neath bluster and the mothers’ but here on thehouses receiving end we of are a scam mon got friend, the thing that prompted our no- at the diabetes.” above-mentioned ages. perceived bravado. unable to sit still. have aThese moth-guys for eight longI years.

Halfway through my Dubey describes well er in ble tut-tutting my new acquisition: View on was growing popularity of lawan educaOnly that I’d have to get mywell jolli- the first Dubey describes a wheelchair who can’t sit had sold me a chocolate-brownie page I was the tough path youngstillfairy-tale adulttion: colouring book. Polite people around “Law colleges are proliferating like mages from other Which I startled tough paththings. that young litigating either.

An adult story in colouring the past and to realise that lawyers have to book me have tried not flesh.” to make fun of this pur- was getting gots on ripped lawyersanyway. have toScrapbooks, navigate whenthe black is toome slow foraher style. locked into meat grinder: I hatches and navigate when chase. Perhaps I should gift it“You to my mother An intense revelation: can’t buy a bike stamp collections, dolls’ starting out. He doesclothes, just as well These days though I have Janebullwasn’t going to buy another squiggles were turning starting out currently in a wheelchair, and then worry aboutwas rainone all suggestion. the time. A hampuppets, origami.the It never whenugly he narrates workings into Jim the shit Virgin on and the dream only so colouring I could discovMorrison Perhaps trendarithmetical piece, came anmerI should doesn’twrite run ayour calculastopped.

Adults feared minds the ramof his partners’ (nickbook front of me. first erinthat they hadFor in the their closet othertions suggestion. the latterdoes I even pretendfor you; To a computer not fix a nail on pagenamed, I could the run ‘Dragons’). with a pairPlaying of time in year, Ifar ammore not sorting my another sophisticated ed toaagree.

Yes,you. yesThe I must write a trend wall for court is what it is;piece. you have scissors, pot of against glue, glitter or a one one alawyer another, clothes dusting my or remeatorgrinder.

Stillshelves the fact A thing a former mine to Once call a I unto deal with editor what isofon yourused plate. blankpractice notebook. against another, creatrearranging the masalas.

I amwere mained that the Dragons “more and more people are” (This isgood of at The derstood this, I started topiece. get seriously very first thing ever wrote was as only an to ing intricate and Icomplex problems not at the point yetmy where I can just watchon teleready to fund office, put clients the tacourse in highlegal contrast a ‘think piece’, running cases.from The results came almost eight-year-old feeling the needtotosolve express mydemonstrate the capacity them, are all vision may profits get there. blebut andI share withMy me.colouring They wereisready which is about “less lessthe people”). immediately, ofand which proof was to follow self in parwriting for theabout course.a Apaper story rose very I’d wellmade. told isI that patchy.

It’s unlikely better. likeopportunity my colto play fair andto beget equal andI the I like my months.” adult colouring book quite a bit. was 23 within anyone told me that I should ouring of abefore spoilt-rich-kid lawyer’s deeply-embedded quite bit but I don’t love it.

I may wasbook there for athe taking….There was a FausIt’s a tall book filled with of numbered This book is for the pages non-lawyer.

Every lawyer thinksense of writing seriously. and Seriously, as in you — of entitlement self-preservation abandon this thing soon. (Though one was tian deal to be made with the there devil.isWhat circles.

Follow colour the booktakes would havethe seen moreschemes than what Dubey should of earningpresence a living from I havelegal an think ubiquitous in it. the withthere Japanese that I maythis getdeal?” before I abannot cats to like about suggests and to thetalk squint-inducing courage about in coldpages print.are Dubey ever profession. since and on most days, thank the many don it altogether.) think gateway hobby.

That, could Iwell beit’s thea story of many a protransformed into names rather and cool situations portraits of masks client to fatell his circumstances and accidents of birth that led Yet, Dubey’s own actions, regardless of the I may knit. Iservices may unravel. warned. fessional firm —Be not just an Indian law mousstory, types.

Halfway through my that first an page I to this but he seems conscious interestpiece of advice. there are someofdays extremely positiveBut self-assessment his pro- firm — anywhere in the world. t@chasingiamb was startled tocould realise that the black hatches ed reader unmask them with simple inI wish writingprowess, didn’t involve decisions fessional tell an career even more emphatic ternet searches. The inherent obligation of story of lawyers’ fear, insecurity and the crav- somasekhar sundaresan is a Mumbai-based lawyers to keep client confidence, and to treat ing for comforts. For all the professional arro- lawyer specialising in financial regulatory practice

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BAWDY LINE

From Sardesais to Ribeiros The Lusitanisation of Goa’s Hindus has the acclaim of being the most sinister in Christendom

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Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer

he strident, choir-singing acidity of toddy vinegar was what was Goan about the feijoada: pungent pig sausages (Goan chorizo) cooked with kidney beans, tomatoes, onions and a grievous amount of chilli.

In a bona fide Portuguese restaurant called Ferradurra (horseshoe) in the Latin quarters of Panaji, over this bitch-slapping Goan edition of a stew that was invented in the slave quarters of Portuguese Brazil, my old friend and comrade Frederick Ribeiro told me the story of how his lineal ascendants became Christians in the 17th century.

How one vanggod of the Sardesais, Gaud Saraswat Brahmins of Succoro, Porvorim, quite suddenly, became Ribeiros, taking on the family name of the priest who had supervised their conversion. He’d heard the handed-down story from his father and to him what was bewildering about the whole thing was the utter and unalloyed Lusitanisation of the New Christians.

Not only had the Sardesais not relapsed into their old, lived faith but had completely moulted their way of life. It was a sloughing off not just of plumage, but of all material and performative expressions of Hindu culture. How does Pundalik Sardesai, an obligatorily lacto-vegetarian Brahmin (who wouldn’t even accept victuals from the lower orders), suddenly turn into a porcophilic, cow-eating Iberian? Why would he turn his back on the unchanging ancient agricultural and ritual calendar that would begin with Chaitra and Vaisakh, lead up to plantation in Ashadh, harvest in Bhadrapadh, weddings in Kartik and end with the harvest of the winter crop in Falgun? And replace it with the Catholic calendar that conformed to European agricultural and seasonal patterns? Why would he stop playing the robana or the gaita, stock musical instruments of Gomantak revelry? Why would he stop wearing the purvem (dhoti) and forbid his wife and daughter from wearing the choli?

In 1560, Cardinal Henrique, as regent of Portugal and the Algarves, alive to the spiritual requirements of the Indies, dispatched to Goa Aleixo Falcão, as inquisitor, to found the Holy Office of the Inquisition in these latitudes. ‘The Inquisition’ is a commendably misleading Catholic appellation. It sounds something like an Inquiry tribunal, but was actually a metonymic stand-in for f***-memercilessly-Iberian-torture-to-sniff-out-heresy-followed-by-broiling-at-the-stake. Obviously in a manner that would ‘best conduce to the glory and honour of Our Lord and the expansion of the Holy Catholic Faith’.

The whole point of the Inquisition was to forestall and defeat the tendency of the new converts to revert to the practices of their old religion. It was only to be expected that the Hindus hauled into a new religion would have little awareness thereof or love therefor: a high-yielding soil for heresy and thus a lot of breadth for the activities of the

was at full tilt and had earned the acclaim of being the most sinister and sadistic in all Christendom.

The Edict of the Inquisition of Goa (1736) gives an inventory of 52 prohibited items and offences by new converts that would invite the attention of the Inquisition. Some of them, in no specific order, are as follows: the said natives should not have in their gardens or properties the plant known as Tulosi, and if it exists already, should be uprooted immediately; the said natives should not during the appearance of the season of new crops (Novidade) arrange feasts in their houses; should not in public or at home wear purvem (dhoti) nor should women wear cholis; should not allow the principal woman of the house to bathe before cooking; should not observe as feast days Wednesdays, days of the new moon or full moon; should not distribute viddas (betel leaves with areca nuts) during the celebration of their marriages; shutterstock/tokarev anton should not sing vovios (celebratory wedding ditties) publicly or in private; should not Inquisition. anoint the bridegroom or bride with a mixTorture of a crudely surgical nature was ture of ground saffron, milk, coconut oil, rice used by the Holy Office as an expedient to ob- powder, crushed leaves of abolim; should not tain a confession. In the chamber of torture, during the days of confinement of their the accused was adjured, in the presence of wives coat with cow-dung the place in the two Inquisitors and the Diocesan bishop, to house where the confinement is to take tell the truth about his relapse and unbur- place; should not place their newly born childen his conscience. If they did not confess dren on raw rice… The Edict was structured satisfactorily, the executioner, a physician specifically to unmake any residual Hindu and a surgeon were called in. A notary was al- disposition. so present to keep a record of the proceedAny person who had known or heard that a ings. And he did faithfully record all that New Christian had committed an offence passed, including the shrieking ejaculations listed in the Edict was required to apprise the and the patient’s piteous appeals for mercy Inquisition of the particulars within a period or to be put to death (en pasof 30 days under pain of dire sant: the word ‘patient’ is used consequences. The witnesses in the Manual of Regulations of were required neither to subthe Inquisition for the heretic; stantiate the charges nor conHow does Pundalik from the Latin patientem — suffront the accused. The least Sardesai, an fering person, enduring withsuspicion, the slightest word, obligatorily lactoout complaint). Ordinarily, the was enough to apprehend the vegetarian Brahmin, torture of polé (pulleys) was adheretic and send him to Orlem suddenly turn into a ministered for the entry-level Gor, the House of the Inquisicow-eating Iberian? heretic. The patient’s hands tion. Giveaway expressions of were tied behind his back and aversion were looked for as beef then with a cord around his was served to the new convert wrists, he was hoisted from the for a Saint’s feast. floor (with weights to his feet) to the accomFour days after the Ferradurra meal, I had paniment of the psalm Miserere and then the privilege of meeting the extended Ribeisuspended as long as was desired. Following ro-Pinto clan, which had gathered for the this, he was allowed to fall with a jerk for a 50th wedding anniversary of Frederick’s parshort distance. Then, Miserere again. That ents. As Julio Ribeiro raised the toast to his was the house style. On occasions when the brother and his wife in the midst of a tapestry physician felt that on account of weakness of variously noble, markedly illustrious, bethe accused could not stand the polé, the spokely dressed, liberally urbane, Portutorture of potro was given. This was a proto- guese-speaking people, I found myself type of the Guantanamo waterboarding ses- anatomising the conversion of Pundalik Sarsions, but with an iron prong distending the desai. Not the part about whether he came to mouth and a variety of garrottes cutting into Christ by faith, voluntary love or prevenient the flesh. Lesser forms of torment included grace, or fear, or for temporal advantage, but leg crushers and breast rippers, applications whether the tapestry would’ve been differof boiling oil and burning sulphur and can- ent had he continued as a Sardesai. dles held beneath the armpits, and so on. The asatwik@gmail.com Goan chapter of the Big I, by the year 1600,

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Wheels of box courage Out of the The St+Art IndiaaFoundation’s newher show seeks to expand the reach ofwoman art and auto makedriver it a is Five weeks after vandal torched three-wheeler, Ghaziabad’s only moreon immersive, back the road accessible with more experience pluck and a new vehicle

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n a sunny winter morning, I take an auto to the Inland Container Depot (ICD), in Tughlakabad.

Spread over 55 acres, it employs 10,000 people and receives over 1,000 trucks full of containers every day, carrying goods that power large chunks of northern and western India.

News reports once described it as the ‘toxic heart of South Delhi’. This industrial landscape is grey and overflowing with rubbish.

Despite its proximity to the wealthy boroughs of South Delhi, it bears no resemblance to the green enclaves a couple of kilometres away.

The reason for my visit is the opening of WIP, short for ‘Work In Progress’, a street art show organised by the St+Art India Foundation. It is an ongoing project where street artists from across India and abroad are transforming a hundred shipping containers by painting gigantic murals, graffiti, typography and other forms of visual art over and inside them.

My first view of this large-scale art is sudden. It’s a long drive into the depths of the ICD, with bare walls all around. For a while, I can’t figure out how to locate the show. All I can see for a time are vehicles and workers doing their job. I stop to ask a man in uniform where I can find the show, and as he points to the right, I see a pink geometric-patterned entrance, so large that I feel silly for having missed it.

I have been promised a walking tour by the organisers, but my introduction to this monumental art is quite without context. The first thing that I see is a giant astronaut in a silver

suit with a reflective visor on its helmet, paintA particularly striking example of this is the ed on an undulating surface of six containers piece by artist Amitabh Kumar, depicting a destacked one atop another. On another side, a capitated animal. It plays with dimensions in golden-yellow mythical creature towers on its representation of the animal’s form, sintwo stacked containers. As I walk further in, ews and skin. The effect is that of a unified more art reveals itself. Each piece, on a differ- whole when you stand back, and disjointed ent container, is startlingly different in style pieces the closer you come to it. and sensibility: a gorgeous mural of a young At the venue, he is in the process of painting boy’s face, a dark container with poetry paint- the animal’s head on a separate container. ed in calligraphy all around it, a very large When I ask him what inspired the piece, he repiece at the back, depicting what looks like a plies, “There’s a huge, dead garbage dump palace. here which you can’t use any more. I wanted The experience of each individual piece to create a dead beast in response to it. So I changes as I keep walking. What starts out as a painted this animal with its head hacked off. I full view of the painted boy’s face, morphs in- wanted to paint the fallen head while interactto only his eyes, foregrounded ing with people who’ve come to by a large pop art hamsa: a palm view the festival.” with an eye at its centre. ElseThe performative aspect of the where, the word ‘Breathe’ stenfestival separates it from a stanThe containers, cilled against a long white wall dard gallery. The other thing that mimicking many in stark black is swallowed up by is radically different, is, of course, street artists other containers and a little latthe setting of this exhibition. themselves, are er, becomes the word ‘The’. The One of the stated aims of the itinerant discrete pieces constantly coafoundation is to celebrate ‘art for lesce into something else entireeveryone’. This isn’t just gimly, depending on where you’re mick, for St+Art has imagined a standing. much bigger audience than the By the time I start my curated regular suspects who frequent tour, I’m quite disoriented by the shifting per- art galleries: ICD’s 10,000 employees and their spectives. My guide is Giulia Ambrogi, co-foun- Singhal families are aamong thefrom primary received new vehicle the UP targeted der and curator at St+Art. She puts each piece government patrons. on February 13 rajeev bhatt in context by naming the artists behind the The art here has not only escaped the galworks, their styles and their treatment of the lery, but also the street, and has come to this licontainers. This is how I find out that the mu- minal space that is neither as vulnerable or road, the catcalls haveornot ral of the boy, by the Indian artist Anpu Varkey, the impermanent as streetand art,whistling nor as static inrecalls incident points where depicts her brother. Or that a particularly stopped. accessibleSinghal as gallery art. an As Ambrogi Solo performance Ruby Singhal has been an autorickshawbeautiful driver for six years rameshdepicting sharma carscontainers, ended in a pile-up, because thestreet drivcontainer, what appears three out, the mimicking many of the first vehicle was busy looking at her. to be a cosmic egg, is by an Italian artist, Agos- er artists themselves, are itinerant.

They will be peoplegoods stareacross at the her,country, opentino Iacurci, playing a visual pun on the fact Sometimes, on their way, carting uby Singhal (30) is regarded as a bit that Thethat eldest of threecontainer siblings, was Singhal then iswant particular usedfirst to mouthed, when the show over.to take her pictures to of an oddity in Ghaziabad. A mother learnt to ride a cycle, thenmany a moped, a scooter transport eggs.

In fact, of the artists show their wife, friends or children. “I think of shreya anasuya is aby Delhi-based freelance of three, Singhal is the UP city’s only and a motorbike.

Sheimmediate ran errandsenvironfor her only theila money I earn driving this auto,writer I fohavealso responded to their and activist woman autorickshaw driver. But family on that and ignore the catcalls or whisment. and shuttled her brothers to school. An cus she made headlines last month, after a vandal autorickshaw was in natural progression. tles,” she says. This year alone, Singhal has had torched her and husband Ajay Gupta’s autor“I was refused a licence by the Road Trans- eight to 10 altercations with men on the road. ickshaws. The vehicles were parked outside port Authority… they laughed when I asked “Some of my passengers feel more outraged their rented house and the culprit was a for an auto licence, so for a few months I used than I, some even ask me to chase these rascals young man, allegedly drunk. He set fire to his my scooter licence, after which a local journal- and teach them a lesson. I just avoid probown car, the three-wheelers and a few houses ist helped me get a driving lilems,” she says with a smile. in the area. “The police showed me a huge can cence for a light motor vehicle,” Singhal’s smile disappears as of petrol,” says Singhal. she says. she recalls the torching of the From January 6 — the day of the incident — Despite run-ins with corrupt two autos. “When the fire was Singhal ran errands till the second week of February, a harried traffic constables, aggresive raging, our main concern was to for her family and Singhal rented vehicles to feed the family. drivers on the road and lecherprevent the CNG cylinders from With a little help from an anonymous donor ous passers-by, Singhal enjoyed shuttled her brothers exploding. We kept pouring wato school and the Apartment Owners Association in her work from day one. “I came ter on the cylinders… It would Ghaziabad, the family then bought a second- home crying many times after have been a disaster, there were hand auto for ₹74,000. On Saturday last, Sing- policemen snatched my earnhouses all around,” she says. hal and her family were chauffered to Luck- ings, but I went back each mornShaken by the incident, the now by the state government, where she was ing,” she says. A few months family decided to move in with handed the keys to a new vehicle. later, Singhal learnt she was pregnant with one of Singhal’s brothers. “You can see how we Singhal is aware of the attention she gets as her third child, Prateek, who is now five. “I live here, in one room… With a country liquor Ghaziabad’s only woman auto driver, but thought, we’ve made the mistake now, so I store right below, there are drunkards loiterwhen she started out six years ago, it was not should work harder. I was in the auto with a ing all the time,” she adds. But all is well in to break a glass ceiling. “I began driving an au- passenger when I went into labour. I went to Singhal’s mind as long as her children — a to because we had no money. We lived in a the hospital at 2am, when the pain became un- daughter and two sons — are going to school. shack on the roadside, and my husband decid- bearable,” she says.

Students of a private school in Ghaziabad, ed to stop driving autos and start a small Within a month of Prateek’s birth, Singhal they continue to inspire their feisty mother to shop,” she says. That’s when she saw an oppor- was back on the road, with the infant tied to stay at the wheel. tunity to earn a living, using an important her waist. A few passengers offered to hold the skill that she had — the ability to drive. baby while she drove. Even after six years on saurabh yadav

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Those were the days Mother-daughter duo — Shokhista and Shakhnoza Shukurova

Dead girl walking In Delhi’s seedy underbelly, an Uzbeki dancer goes missing. Her mother and sisters arrive in the country to try and find her. Through a trail of ‘kidnappings’ and half-burned corpses, they pry open the world of human trafficking of ‘Russian girls’ right in the centre of the Capital

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t was before 10pm on September 24 when Shakhnoza Shukurova (27) reached the South Extension market. In its glory days, South Extension, fondly shortened to South-Ex, was the mecca of Delhi’s aspirational shoppers, and though the independent boutiques have now given way to international high street brands, it’s hardly a deserted stretch, even on a Thursday night. Shakhnoza was on her way to attend a party, but

her friend, Naaz, insisted that she first meet her at South-Ex so she could return the money she had borrowed. Shakhnoza had spent the day shopping. She’d bought a pair of shoes at Aldo and when they turned out to be a bit big, she picked up insoles to hold them in place. Then she went to Yashwant Place market in Chanakyapuri and bought a gold ring as a birthday present for the party she was going to. After which, she stopped

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Beyond lines of memory “T

to buy some flowers. Driving her around the city was Pritam, a chauffeur whose services she had been using for several years. All this while, she was on the phone to her mother in Uzbekistan, giving her detailed descriptions of everything, while clicking photographs and sending those to her from her second phone. When she reached South-Ex, she told her mother, she was going to Naaz’s car for five minutes to collect the money and she would call her right after. Then, Shakhnoza vanished.

When Shokhista Shukurova did not hear back from her daughter for 20 minutes, she dialled everybody’s number she had in Delhi. Pritam’s phone was switched off. By midnight India time, she managed to get through to a friend of Shakhnoza’s called Ozoda and asked her to find the driver. Ozoda and her husband set off searching and finally found Pritam sleeping in the car, outside his office. Pritam said there were four people in the car — Naaz, her boyfriend who is an Afghan citizen, a woman Miyasassar, who goes by the name Masha and allegedly runs a sex racket, and a man who had a cap on. He saw Shakhnoza enter Naaz’s car and it drove away. Ozoda and her husband eventually dialled 100, and the police were officially brought in. Even though Pritam’s version suggested that Shakhnoza entered the car voluntarily, the inspection of the site of the crime revealed the in-

and a genuine effort would be made to trace the girl. They caught on to the lawyer’s deceitfulness and found a replacement. The Uzbeki embassy wrote to the Home Minister. The police called in a few people and asked them questions. Masha, and her Indian husband, Gagan, were present at the police station most days. But for six weeks there were absolutely no breaks in the case.

On November 16, Delhi Police made the shocking revelation that Shakhnoza was murdered, and that her burnt body was recovered from Samalkha in Haryana. She was found by a farmer on September 26, two days after she went missing. But since the Haryana police weren’t aware of the case of the missing Uzbeki girl, it took them until November 16 to put the story of Shakhnoza and the burnt corpse together. All this while Gagan made regular appearances at the police station. The missing Uzbeki girl became the dead Uzbeki girl and the media dutifully reported it as such. In its report on November 17, The Indian Express quoted a police officer saying, “Gagan told the police he and Naaz abducted Shahnaz on Sep-

burned and got rid of the body.

his makes a nice story. But in truth, Shakhnoza is still alive,” Said, the sister from the US, tells me. It’s Christmas day and I crawl through the gaggle of shoppers in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar to reach the Kasturba Bhavan locality. Even a decade ago, Lajpat Nagar was visibly a stronghold of Delhi’s teeming middle class. Clusters of wires tangled overhead and colourful lengths of washed turbans hung down terraces. Now though, large parts of the neighbourhood are taken over by Afghans — businessmen and refugees. Inside Mazaar restaurant, where I meet Said and Shokhista, taut waiters in Pathan suits serve tea and pulao, while Arabic pop blares from the music system, and it is hard to believe you haven’t travelled abroad to reach a place which is so authentic to its roots.

Mazaar serves a dish called Qabuli-Uzbeki and it is, indeed, such a confluence of Delhi, Kabul and Uzbekistan that have brought us here. While the trims of the story of Shakhnoza are kidnapping and possibly murder, the essence of it is a deadly confluence of aspiration, sex and human trafficking. Shakhnoza, her family is eager to emphasise, was merely a dancer. She had been visiting India since 2008 and staying for short durations — often a couple of weeks, sometimes, a month or so. In 2014, she met and fell in love with an Indian boy, which gave her the reason to visit more often. One day, while at a beauty salon, she was talking to her mother on the phone, when a girl overheard her speaking in Uzbeki and approached her. The girl was blue and bruised.

Her name was Naaz, she too was from the country, she told her, from a rural region Living in the strains The Fern, a 2010 Khasi film, uses folk music as an artistic tool to prevent cultural amnesia called Hozarm. Employment prospects were next to nil there and very time I read Margaret Atwood’s to memory: it is ‘post,’ but at the same time, it ting, based on soa when approached family someone photograph, is an ex‘This is a photograph of me’, I re- approximates memory in its affective asking if she’d beresists interested force”. spatial memory that any The missingploration Uzbeki of her mind myself not to consume images Some of these filmmakers may not have in workingAas young a nannyfilmmaker or houseexpe- the linear interpretation. girl became dead complacently. The overwhelming rienced first-hand the horrors of Assam’s Uzbeki keeper, she immediately agreed. tur- from his films have a distinctly Targirl FTII, Pune, tension between reality and the image in the bulent history, but their parents did: and the kovsky (who,As she agot hercalled travelNospainsoon fact, as made film poem poses vexing questions. Is it possible to consequences trickled down into their chil- talghia) atmosphere. pers, she went Tashkent The tostill whereand a locate yourself accurately in a photo? How dren’s lives as well. therewith she was taken to Alphotograph from is clicked heads cut off is many selves do we inhabit in the digital age? matypicture in Kazakhstan andofthen IsOne 2006 film in particular, called Bhal Kha- such an accurate of the art repreCan there be a record of tiny, personal histo- bar (Good News), is an excellent meditation on sentation. tanbul, and through a long circuitous route, Upon asking the director about the ries, if the personal is also deeply tied to the the gradual erosion of journalistic integrity in role Nepal finally Delhi, passport ofand fluid spaceDelhi. in hisAtfilms, heher says “Space political? Take for instance, our access to the Assam. Based on a newspaper article by Saurav acts was taken away and of sheevocation was sold to broker as a medium ofa certain history of the North-east, which has been Kumar Chaliha (who also provides the voice- things who kept her locked an apartment of past, whichup oneincan’t even thinkand of largely dependent on books, be it fiction, poet- over for this film) and directed by Altaf Mazid, recalling forced herwith to service six or seven every a conscious mind.clients It’s almost ry or non-fiction. This fact is especially true for it takes into account the rise of voyeurism in like day. Eventually, shethought managed escapewhich from a glimpse of ortoimage, those living in ‘mainland’ India, who cannot the general populace. The film is an elaborate pops the clutches of the broker and ended up with up in a half-awakened state.” fully enjoy forms like folk theatre and regional lament for the days (before the Assam Move- theWhen Uzbeki madam, Masha. was of desperate Neil Gaiman, the She creator Dream cinema (both have suffered compromises and ment) when the newspaper’s to get out,(from but didn’t have money or her passThe Sandman series of comsetbacks due to the commercial pressure ex- front page could surprise port. Shakhnoza took her and had ics), pointed out home, that dreams areher reerted by Bollywood). write down that could you. Nostalgia is used to crial, this evenstatement when theysoare notthey made up Political chaos, mass migration to cities, the tique several aspects like the send it to of thematter, embassy for help.

Naaz heand wasask actually making The theme that changing contours of villages, and the thor- lack of goodwill that has wrote it down but then baulked at sending it an interesting comment about the connects thesetofour tember 24 with and strangled in a car of the media, have all played emerged soles had ough fallencorruption out of her new shoes. the embassy forperceive fear thatimages. the news her the riseher of to death way we In of Shanaccording to in South Delhi and drove with the films, body to Ha- prostituted a part distorting theatraumatic experiences Four days afterinthe event, and predictable confusion consumerism. lifeShar’s would reach her tom Manipuri film,hometown.

The Linger, Ahmed, is Gagan claimed Naaz told him Shahnaz faced in this part the country.

It isan inFIR such a ryana. over whose jurisdiction theof crime falls under, was This letterelements was foundof among Shakhnoza’s Making the shift from pohorror provide posthe ‘postmemory’ was notmemory returningtohercultural visa (sic) and giving her sessions after that a brave new generation film- litical filed. On scenario October 2, Shokhista arrived in India,ofalong clueshertodisappearance. a dream-like universe, ₹8 lakh she owed her.” makers isZamira. trying toThey examine and stathe memory, with her daughter went memory to the police Wanphrang K where the romantic angle is mixed hilewith theircriminal exact details be slightA hunt for2010 Naaz Khasi began.film, On November 21, she story of trauma. of people they Diengdoh’s tion, and multi-faceted through the recommendation guilt.might A troubling osly different, Naaz’sthe story is true thoutoo Fern, turned upfolk dead; her body a recent screening organised at Toddy barely knew,Athired a lawyer.

The lawyer explained to The uses music as an was found in Hacillation from world of of dreams from Asia provides who are pur in west Uttar Pradesh, in a similar, partly sands of women in in Hauz Khas Village, Delhi, I artistic them thatShop in India order to file a case South of kidnapping, tool to prevent culturto the real, thisCentral elusive film trafficked acrossthan the answers. world. Even as Thailand burned state.Some The police arrested watched fourofshort experimental origi- al they had to pay a sum ₹3 lakh.

The family films, immediateamnesia. of hisimmediately other films focus on more questions The Times ofa India China continue toact beofleading destinaGagan. Aissues reportininMeghalaya, nally curated for the TENT forThe Experily paid ₹1.25 lakh and promised the(Theatre rest soon. fol- identity placesaid tornthat be- and This screening was an intervention: it he confessed to the and crimes.

“Naaz,”sense Gagan re- was tions, afterresisting the financial meltdown of 2008, menting New Technologies) festivalfor in tween lowing days, theyinwere told that thefilm charges folk culture an urban ofisdisabout normative and linear porported toThe have said, “andaShakhnoza got into sex workers from Central Asia started moving Kolkata.

Shaheen Ahmed these location. interrogating eachCurator suspect was ₹20,000 and says additional film follows lonely old man (Ma trayals of traumatic memories.

The screening an argument in the car.”

He held Shakhnoza was to India from Dubai.

Neither films, a decade,phone from records.

2005-2015, sums should be spanning paid for analysing

By HK Wahlang) with the duitara (a two-stringed followed by a talk withofficial Binduagencies, Menon, tightly to quieten singing her down but “she got strannor NGOsDeka have and the Kaushik exact number of women thesister teleology of victim, linear history”.

Dis- folk this time,“rupture the second of the Nodira Said, instrument), about the fern in an Kaustabh Bhowmik, and it gled in the process.”

They then put the body in turned from Central are and in India, but most notions andAtnostalgia, who lives rupting in the US, joinedof thetime family. first, theythey fol- elegiac tone.

This striking figure represents out to Asia be a who fruitful engaging one. a case, poured petrol over it,music set it on fire,isand estimates put Uzbeki women themselves at beyond sentimentality toatcreate lowed thelook lawyer’s instructions and paid, least insomepart, the decay of primordial folk which al- These mavericks may well inspire a risk-taking disposed in acontains field in Samalkha. stayed brand upwards 3,000.from the North-east in the thing as opposed to the going physical the money thatintangible, was demanded.

They started to so a spaceitthat rich socialThey experiencof of cinema in Samalkha for two days, during which Naaz Liketomany The theme connects these es. the policephotograph. station every day.

Said that managed to attract To what extent can folklore keep track of years come.Central Asian countries, Uzbekispanickedor over the crime.

Gagan was worried fourattention films, according Ahmed, is ‘postmemosome media on the to case.

As the news of the memory recreate the past, Diengdoh seems tan too declared itself independent from the barman MPhilBut student at Jamia Millia Islamia, shewonder. would let the fact of their involvement slip rini former USSRisinan1991. without any reserves ry’. Marianna Hirsch states in Generation missing Uzbeki girl started to appear in “The newspapers, the to Delhi so heHaloi’s drove with Hapur,and killed her, New of oil, economic prospects in the country did of Postmemory,” “Postmemory not identical family hoped that eyewitnesses would is come forward and Mukul film her On to Memory Forget-

A generation of filmmakers from the North-east examine memory and the multi-faceted story of trauma through their films

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Missing link Pedestrians walk past a multi-storey showroom in Delhi’s South Extension Market. It is from this market where Shakhnoza Shukurova went missing on the night of September 24, 2015 bloomberg/

prashanth vishwanathan

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not improve. Cotton farming is the country’s leading economic activity, and even as recently as 2013, the Uzbek government was censured for enslaving its own population. When cotton-picking season comes around, students, teachers, nurses, doctors, all have to ensure that their quota of cotton is picked.

Schools are closed, essential services are downgraded and business hours are reduced as the state-sponsored forced labour kicks in.

In newspaper reports about busted rackets of Uzbeki prostitution, the most common reason stated is that the woman wanted to raise money to send home for a medical emergency.

It is economics that brings these girls — most of who are trained as hairdressers, nurses and secretaries — to countries like India.

Some are lured into it with offers of ‘respectable’ jobs and some come knowing exactly what they are getting into it. Either way, it is often economics that work against them too.

The girls are forced to surrender their passports to their ‘employers’ and are paid a margin of the money promised. Often, they take loans in advance, in order to pay for medical

drivers who are vetted and approved by the local fixers. A simple Google search for ‘blonde girl Delhi’ throws up nearly million pages in results with barely concealed titles like ‘South Delhi blonde escort huge tits’ or ‘kissing Delhi escorts’. Delhi blonde escorts even has a Twitter handle.

Despite the fact that Uzbeki bodies are traded so openly, there are no organisations working to help them. Most NGOs that I spoke to, in Delhi and Mumbai, said the only foreign victims of human trafficking they worked with were Nepalis or Bangladeshis.

So where would she be, I ask.

“Maybe in Punjab. Maybe they have kept her as a sex slave.”

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owards the end of January, I meet the family again. By now they have been here for four months. Said has left her husband and her 21-year-old son behind, and spent a considerable sum of money. But the case hasn’t really gone anywhere. This time, we are waiting at the Patiala Court, where a lawyer is willing to go through their papers. Notwithstanding its prurience, every case needs some closure and the Shukurovas refuse to leave this country erhaps it is this accepted arrangement of until they know exactly what happened. “I will bilateral trade between Indian men and only go back when I take Shakhnoza with me,” Uzbeki women, but when Said tells me the sto- Said says. ry of her sister’s run-ins with people from the This conviction is because Said’s theory that sex trade, she doesn’t sound ruffled. Once Shakhnoza is alive has suddenly received a Naaz came into her life, Shakhnoza started re- shot in the arm. Someone who knew the girl ceiving threatening phone calls from Masha, spotted her. One Mandeep Rawat, an acquaintReconstructing a life Hansalcame Mehtato Gagan and others. These, she duly recorded, ance of Shakhnoza and her mother, (left), the director and sent to her mother. Shakhnoza had few their house in January and told them that he Aligarh, along friends, and she wasn’t very close to her sis- saw Shakhnoza in December.ofIn a statement with Apurva Asrani, ters. But the mother and she were thick and recorded with the court, Rawat was on thesays film’she editor. spent hours talking to each other on the free his way from Delhi to Kullu The on story December is based11, phone app, Viber. Even though she was 1,500 and had stopped for a smokeoninthe Chandigarh. life of the Aligarh Muslim km away in Tashkent, her mother knew where Standing across him at the late paan shop was Shakhnoza was, almost down to the minute. Shakhnoza, dressed in a pinkUniversity nightdress and professor Dr Through the nearly two hours we sat at Ma- not looking very well. She wasShrinivas with a burly, Siras 6-ft zaar, Shokhista watched Shakhnoza’s videos tall man, who Rawat assumed was her boypaul noronha on her phone, on an endless loop, not even friend. When Rawat greeted her, Shakhnoza pausing them when she dissolved into tears. waved back. At this, the man bundled her into Afterward, I accompanied the duo to their a waiting car and sped away. Rawat wasn’t home, a single room with a kitchenette at one aware of Shakhnoza’s disappearance. When end and a bathroom at the other. A bed and he came back to Delhi, he went to meet his two chairs were the only furniture in the lawyer on some matter, and because he knew room. Here, Said opened a large bag of docu- the lawyer was acquainted with Shakhnoza, ments. In the two months that she had been in he mentioned seeing her. That was when he India, Said has started her own was informed that Shakhnoza had investigation. She broke into been “dead” since September.

Facebook groups and internet Highlighting these inconsistenrooms, and showed me reams of cies, the family filed a writ of habeas Delhi blonde photos of beautiful, well made- escorts even has a corpus in the last week of January, up Uzbeki women. In some, they but the court rejected it for being inTwitter handle posed themselves, Aligarh.byAfter the videoinofothers the sting operation gether incomplete.

Nowthey theiractually only request is Andheri and got my they wereheheld by theirand cli- ousted from help to check got out, wasclose humiliated that up theon case transferred to the thebekind of relationship ents or ‘husbands’, regular the university he had servedmen for 20 years. Five we had. One Crime they hope dayBranch, I camewhere back from workthey and in office-going white shirts and years ago, sex between homosexuals wasn’t il- the watchman wouldsaid uncover more evidence.

I wasn’t allowed inside. I ironed have run into begged legal, sopants, Siraswho wonyou thecould case he reluctantly At themy police station is enter investigating landlord to that let me and he anywhere in the HiddenBut somewhere in the fought against thecity. university. it was too litthough, is no gavecase me two hoursthere to clear mydoubt thingsthat out,”the he the crevices between these Shakhnotle, too late. There isn’t a lotgroups knownisabout him. dead is Shakhnoza.

Requesting anoadds. woman In the film, Siras goes through as much. za, Saidmuch is convinced.

In fact, of his ordeal was pieced together nymity, a senior officer saidstate that that the Both Mehta andpolice Asrani, however, Although denies it, he Shakhnoza’s with the helpthe of family a few interviews gave jour- DNA result is inabout the jurisdiction of theorSamalkthe film is not homosexuality a pitch own in the sex trade cannot be ha nalistinvolvement Deepu Sebastian (played

by Rajkummar and he isn’tasked awareififhe there a confirforpolice gay rights.

When was is gay, the Sientirely In August, she was invited Rao). Butruled it wasout. evident that Siras an out- mation that is Shakhnoza. there are no ras in the filmitsays he can’t be But described in just to a party that was hostedin byan another lierdance — he at was a Marathi professor Urdu- changes in their stance inhim the (Siras) case. Gagan is three letters.

“I never saw as a hoUzbeki madam, Ummida.

Ummida speaking city; and a single,Both gay man.

“He and was guilty of the murders charges against him mosexual.

I saw him asand a professor who was veher husband, beenaspreviously painted by hisRajneesh, peers andhave students someone have been filed court.who loved Lata ry lovable.

He with was the a poet implicated on human trafficking charges. who was a dirty, filthy person,” Mangeshkar songs and his glass or the lastof10whiskey,” days, surprisingly, Said has igThere, Shakhnoza claimed to her mother, she says Asrani.

During his research says Mehta, calling it nored myhiscalls. finally manage to get was a Coke lacedawith some substance to withgiven Ishani Banerjee, PR execumostI romantic film. “For me Zamira, who come drink.

She passed for an hour tive whose email out to Mehta set and a half, through to her thesister central idea was thehas violation The idea the film to Indiaoftoa man’s help in the search Shakand when she regained consciousness, she forback the ball rolling, they spoke to a private space.for If he had was triggered off by“We a don’t want to give you anyto inforfound herself semi-naked and wearing a dif- hnoza. few students at AMU. “Some forcibly brought a man his mail totoMehta fromnow,”house mation she snaps me. him, there are ferent set of lingerie.many Whenwere she threatened were forthcoming, and at raped PR executive Ishani As I listen in to our go to the police, Ummida allegedly extorted hostile.

Some agreed to help inilaws toprevious punish conversations, him. But weI Banerjee notice that Said hadaraised the life possibility of her with and videos her shot in comtially andphotos then backed out,”ofsays nipped beautiful in the bud a sexwe slave in Punjab well be-a promising positions. about her repu- Shakhnoza being Asrani, adding that heWorried tried getbecause chose to invade spotting her there. tation Tashkent, Shakhnoza ting inin touch with Siras’s familylet the matter fore Rawat reported space that has nothing to do with It could have a coincidence. drop.

She became quieter too, but they too wanted nothough part after that, us.been We kill men like him every It could have prescience. and of it.was listless in her phone conversations daybeen because we are voyeuristic,” Or Asrani. it could have been information she had with hermore mother.

“The we got into it, we realised one adds managed to ferret sudSaidhave acknowledges events could never got that into all thethese confines of are his somehow Yet, the release of this film atout. the Said’s time when reticence to talk possibly indicates is linked in ato sinister and they are bedroom know manner what his private lifewhat was den a curative petition against Section 377 is she being to finding led that one September evening.

However, So sheI close like.toThere would have to speculate. reviewed by theher.

Supreme Court, makes it imEven so, remain.

One doesn’t happened began toaccept draw what experiences fromafter my Shakhnoown life,” portant.

“Theseveral film is questions always going to be releis more important than the rest. za was pulledwho intohas that car. vocal “The police says Asrani, been aboutshowed his sex- though, vant because the law might change butWhat it is the chances that a dead reappears?

For us photograph the that body,gets andmy from the ualone orientation.

“Anof issue goat is are society’s attitude that stillgirl needs to change. no film one iscan sayto with absolute certainty leg wasa place visible, am pretty nota now, thatthat to rent inIMumbai yousure haveit’s to be And the going be significant in doing zero.

Shakhnoza. the police convinced ‘family man’.If One has to is goentirely through these so- that that.it’s This law is just a beginning,” says Mehta. about it, then why DNA test being ciety members whoisn’t will the judge you and put mohinivenugopal chaudhuri shared says. and I were living to- veena you in awith box.us,” Myshe partner

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A gold mine buried in junk A long-neglected email about the suicide of a gay professor led Hansal Mehta to make Aligarh, his latest film

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Wheels within wheels For Shokhista and daughter Nodira Said, life is a loop of visits to the police station and the court kamal narang

he junk folder of filmmaker Hansal Mehta’s email inbox is a treasure trove. At the time of editing his last film City Lights, he was poking around it when he found an unopened email that said ‘idea for a film’. Lying inside was a news article on the death of Dr Shrinivas Siras, a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), who was secretly filmed having sex with a rickshaw puller at his home. A year later, Mehta had fleshed out the tip-off into a feature film titled Aligarh, with actor Manoj Bajpai bringing to life Siras’s last days. Not surprisingly, he has been keeping a close watch on his junk folder ever since. “Even recently a senior journalist who had interviewed me many years ago sent me a very interesting idea.for Andancan youfamily believemember, it, it again in help ailing or landed to buy an my junk box,” he says, with apartment in Tashkent, anda laugh. the interest rate The timingsooffast the that email wasnever ratherend serencompounds they up dipitous.enough While discussing it with hisEven editor making money to pay it off. if Apurva a muffin, that Mehta was they do, Asrani there isover no guarantee they willsurbe prised a fair amount able to that take he thealready moneyknew into the country.

A about account Siras. “The died in 2010, on a news ofday anhe Uzbekistan sexI was worker, TV channel for a debate. did some rewho was deported fromI quickly Israel in 2014, says search him beforeinwe went live.with The first that theongirl landed Samarkand $10, thing the newscaster said was, ‘This Apurva the customs officers having taken theisrest.

Asrani is anotwithstanding, writer — which I wasn’t — and is Thesewho risks a ‘lucky few’ gay’,” he says, rolling his money. eyes inWith disbelief. do manage to make some their “Anyway, I followed the story butof it fair skin and lithe bodies, thereafter is nothat dearth just disappeared theAcross headlines inMumthree demand for them from in India.

Delhi, days.”

Being an editor nearly decades bai, Goa and Punjab, allfor it takes is two a phone call in the had made Asrani weary of beto hireindustry a ‘Russian girl’, a term that denotes a ing just “cutter and story is girl fromaanywhere in joiner”.

Central Siras’s Asia. They can onehired he wanted to write himself. be for ₹10,000-15,000 for an hour, and found few afterThey his theSiras rateswas go up to ₹1dead lakhafor anhours evening. suspected suicide inan 2010.

At 64, he in was at the stay four or five to apartment various cusp of in aby flat in parts of retirement, the city andand are living ferriedalone around taxi

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A ripple in the sky Tree ferns at the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, 2006

The elephant remembers At the timber yard in Hut Bay, Little Andaman Island, 1998

Touch wood At a plywood factory in Bamboo Flat, South Andaman Island, 1998

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Living on the edge An ant and a mushroom in Wandoor, 2003

Hawk-eye A forest agamid in Baratang, 2005

Floating worlds Inside the eye-popping, fragile beauty of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands

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ncient sea turtles nesting on remote uninhabited beaches, translucent jellyfish floating in warm, fecund tropical waters, giant rainforest trees holding up the blue heavens, little edible-nest swiftlets darting in and out of deep limestone caves... the Andaman & Nicobar Islands are a place of exceptional beauty and fragility.

From the north in Diglipur to the extreme south to Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island, exploring these remote islands can be as exhilarating as it is humbling.

It is imperative that the ecological balance of these islands is maintained. Otherwise, scores of species native to Andaman & Nicobar will soon be endangered or worse. The photos here are a small sampling of the richness of these islands and also the challenges they face.

Part of the exhibition ‘Island Worlds’ at Gyaan Adab, a centre for the arts and literature in Pune, they were all specially reproduced on silk fabric to offer a new visual and aesthetic experience even as they explore the many moods and dimensions of the islands. The exhibition ends today. pankaj sekhsaria is a writer and photographer based in Hyderabad

In troubled waters Grub Island, Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, Wandoor

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to buy some flowers. Driving her around the city was Pritam, a chauffeur whose services she had been using for several years. All this while, she was on the phone to her mother in Uzbekistan, giving her detailed descriptions of everything, while clicking photographs and sending those to her from her second phone. When she reached South-Ex, she told her mother, she was going to Naaz’s car for five minutes to collect the money and she would call her right after. Then, Shakhnoza vanished.

When Shokhista Shukurova did not hear back from her daughter for 20 minutes, she dialled everybody’s number she had in Delhi. Pritam’s phone was switched off. By midnight India time, she managed to get through to a friend of Shakhnoza’s called Ozoda and asked her to find the driver. Ozoda and her husband set off searching and finally found Pritam sleeping in the car, outside his office. Pritam said there were four people in the car — Naaz, her boyfriend who is an Afghan citizen, a woman Miyasassar, who goes by the name Masha and allegedly runs a sex racket, and a man who had a cap on. He saw Shakhnoza enter Naaz’s car and it drove away. Ozoda and her husband eventually dialled 100, and the police were officially brought in. Even though Pritam’s version suggested that Shakhnoza entered the car voluntarily, the inspection of the site of the crime revealed the in-

and a genuine effort would be made to trace the girl. They caught on to the lawyer’s deceitfulness and found a replacement. The Uzbeki embassy wrote to the Home Minister. The police called in a few people and asked them questions. Masha, and her Indian husband, Gagan, were present at the police station most days. But for six weeks there were absolutely no breaks in the case.

On November 16, Delhi Police made the shocking revelation that Shakhnoza was murdered, and that her burnt body was recovered from Samalkha in Haryana. She was found by a farmer on September 26, two days after she went missing. But since the Haryana police weren’t aware of the case of the missing Uzbeki girl, it took them until November 16 to put the story of Shakhnoza and the burnt corpse together. All this while Gagan made regular appearances at the police station. The missing Uzbeki girl became the dead Uzbeki girl and the media dutifully reported it as such. In its report on November 17, The Indian Express quoted a police officer saying, “Gagan told the police he and Naaz abducted Shahnaz on Sep-

burned and got rid of the body.

his makes a nice story. But in truth, Shakhnoza is still alive,” Said, the sister from the US, tells me. It’s Christmas day and I crawl through the gaggle of shoppers in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar to reach the Kasturba Bhavan locality. Even a decade ago, Lajpat Nagar was visibly a stronghold of Delhi’s teeming middle class. Clusters of wires tangled overhead and colourful lengths of washed turbans hung down terraces. Now though, large parts of the neighbourhood are taken over by Afghans — businessmen and refugees. Inside Mazaar restaurant, where I meet Said and Shokhista, taut waiters in Pathan suits serve tea and pulao, while Arabic pop blares from the music system, and it is hard to believe you haven’t travelled abroad to reach a place which is so authentic to its roots.

Mazaar serves a dish called Qabuli-Uzbeki and it is, indeed, such a confluence of Delhi, Kabul and Uzbekistan that have brought us here. While the trims of the story of Shakhnoza are kidnapping and possibly murder, the essence of it is a deadly confluence of aspiration, sex and human trafficking. Shakhnoza, her family is eager to emphasise, was merely a dancer. She had been visiting India since 2008 and staying for short durations — often a couple of weeks, sometimes, a month or so. In 2014, she met and fell in love with an Indian boy, which gave her the reason to visit more often. One day, while at a beauty salon, she was talking to her mother on the phone, when a girl overheard her speaking in Uzbeki and approached her. The girl was blue and bruised.

Her name was Naaz, she too was from the country, she told her, from a rural region Living in the strains The Fern, a 2010 Khasi film, uses folk music as an artistic tool to prevent cultural amnesia called Hozarm. Employment prospects were next to nil there and very time I read Margaret Atwood’s to memory: it is ‘post,’ but at the same time, it ting, based on soa when approached familysomeone photograph, is an ex‘This is a photograph of me’, I re- approximates memory in its affective asking if she’d be resists interested force”. spatial memory that any The missingploration Uzbeki of her mind myself not to consume images Some of these filmmakers may not have in workingAas young a nannyfilmmaker or houseexpe- the linear interpretation. girl became dead complacently. The overwhelming rienced first-hand the horrors of Assam’sUzbeki keeper, she immediately agreed. tur- from his films have a distinctly Targirl FTII, Pune, tension between reality and the image in the bulent history, but their parents did: and the kovsky (who,Asinsoon she agot hercalled travelNospafact, as made film poem poses vexing questions. Is it possible to consequences trickled down into their chil- talghia) atmosphere. pers, she went Tashkent The tostill whereanda locate yourself accurately in a photo? How dren’s lives as well. therewith she was taken photograph from is clicked heads cut to off Alis many selves do we inhabit in the digital age? maty picture in Kazakhstan andofthen IsOne 2006 film in particular, called Bhal Kha- such an accurate of the art repreCan there be a record of tiny, personal histo- bar (Good News), is an excellent meditation on sentation. tanbul, and through a long circuitous route, Upon asking the director about the ries, if the personal is also deeply tied to the the gradual erosion of journalistic integrity in role Nepal finally Delhi, passport ofand fluid spaceDelhi. in hisAtfilms, heher says “Space political? Take for instance, our access to the Assam. Based on a newspaper article by Saurav acts was taken and of sheevocation was sold to broker as a away medium ofa certain history of the North-east, which has been Kumar Chaliha (who also provides the voice- things who kept her locked incan’t an apartment of past, whichup one even thinkand of largely dependent on books, be it fiction, poet- over for this film) and directed by Altaf Mazid, recalling forced herwith to service six or seven every a conscious mind.clients It’s almost ry or non-fiction. This fact is especially true for it takes into account the rise of voyeurism in like day. Eventually, shethought managed escapewhich from a glimpse of ortoimage, those living in ‘mainland’ India, who cannot the general populace. The film is an elaborate pops the clutches of the broker and ended up with up in a half-awakened state.” fully enjoy forms like folk theatre and regional lament for the days (before the Assam Move- theWhen Uzbeki madam, Masha. was desperate Neil Gaiman, the She creator of Dream cinema (both have suffered compromises and ment) when the newspaper’s to get out,(from but didn’t have money or her passThe Sandman series of comsetbacks due to the commercial pressure ex- front page could surprise port. Shakhnoza took her and had ics), pointed outhome, that dreams areher reerted by Bollywood). write down that they could you. Nostalgia is used to crial,this evenstatement when theysoare not made up Political chaos, mass migration to cities, the tique several aspects like the send it to of thematter, embassy for help.

Naaz heand wasask actually making The theme that changing contours of villages, and the thor- lack of goodwill that has wrote it down but then baulked at sending it an interesting comment about the connects thesetofour tember 24 with and strangled in a car ough corruption of the media, have all played emerged soles had fallen out of her new shoes. the embassy forperceive fear thatimages. the news her the riseher of to death way we In of Shanaccording to in South Delhi and drove with the films, body to Ha- prostituted a part distorting theatraumatic experiences Four days afterinthe event, and predictable confusion consumerism. lifeShar’s would reach her hometown. tom Manipuri film, The Linger, Ahmed, is Gagan claimed Naaz told him Shahnaz faced in this part the country.

It isan inFIR such over whose jurisdiction the of crime falls under, wasa ryana.

This letterelements was foundof among Shakhnoza’s Making the shift from pohorror provide posthe ‘postmemory’ was notmemory returningtohercultural visa (sic) and giving her sessions after scenario 2, that a brave new generation film- litical filed. On October Shokhista arrived in India,ofalong herto disappearance. clues a dream-like universe, ₹8 lakh she owed her.” makers isZamira. trying to examine and stathe memory, with her daughter They went memory to the police Wanphrang K where the romantic angle is mixed hilewith theircriminal exact details be slightA hunt for2010 Naaz Khasi began.film, On November 21, she multi-faceted story of trauma. of people they Diengdoh’s tion, and through the recommendation guilt.might A troubling osly different, story is true thoutoo Fern, turned upfolk dead; her body a recent screening organised at Toddy barely knew,Athired a lawyer.

The lawyer explained to The uses music as anwas found in Hacillation Naaz’s from the world of of dreams from who are pur in west Uttar Pradesh, in a similar, partly sands of women in in Hauz Khas Village, Delhi, I artistic them thatShop in India order to file a case South of kidnapping, tool to prevent culturto the real, thisCentral elusive Asia film provides trafficked acrossthan the answers. world. Even as Thailand burned state.Some The police arrested watched fourofshort experimental films, origi- al they had to pay a sum ₹3 lakh.

The family immediateamnesia. of hisimmediately other films focus on more questions The Times ofa India China continue to act beofleading destinaGagan. Aissues reportininMeghalaya, nally curated for the TENT forThe Experily paid ₹1.25 lakh and promised the(Theatre rest soon. fol- identity placesaid tornthat be- and This screening was an intervention: it he confessed to the and crimes.

“Naaz,”sense Gagan re- was tions, afterresisting the financial meltdown of 2008, menting New Technologies) festivalfor in tween lowing days, theyinwere told that thefilm charges folk culture an urban ofisdisabout normative and linear porported toThe have said, “andaShakhnoza got into sex workers from Central Asia started moving Kolkata.

Shaheen Ahmed says these location. interrogating eachCurator suspect was ₹20,000 and additional film follows lonely old man (Ma trayals of traumatic memories.

The screening an argument in the car.”

He held Shakhnoza was to India from Dubai.

Neither films, a decade,phone from records.

2005-2015, sums should be spanning paid for analysing

By HK Wahlang) with the duitara (a two-stringed followed by a talk withofficial Binduagencies, Menon, tightly to quieten singing her down but “she got strannor NGOs Deka have and the Kaushik exact number of women thesister teleology of victim, linear history”.

Dis- folk this time,“rupture the second of the Nodira Said, instrument), about the fern in an Kaustabh Bhowmik, and it gled in the process.”

They then put the body in turned from Central are and in India, but most notions andAtnostalgia, who lives rupting in the US, joinedof thetime family. first, theythey fol- elegiac tone.

This striking figure represents out toAsia be awho fruitful engaging one. a case, poured petrol over it,music set it on fire,isand estimates put Uzbeki women themselves at beyond sentimentality toatcreate lowed thelook lawyer’s instructions and paid, least insomepart, the decay of primordial folk which al- These mavericks may well inspire a risk-taking disposed in acontains field in Samalkha. stayed brand upwards 3,000.from the North-east in the thing as opposed to the going physical the money that intangible, was demanded.

They started to so a spaceitthat rich socialThey experiencof of cinema in Samalkha for twocan days, during which Naaz Liketomany Central Asian countries, UzbekisThe theme connects these es. the policephotograph. station every day.

Said that managed to attract To what extent folklore keep track of years come. panickedor over the crime.

Gagan was worried fourattention films, according to Ahmed, is news ‘postmemosome media on the case.

As the of the memory recreate the past, Diengdoh seems tan too declared itself independent from the barman MPhilBut student at Jamia Millia Islamia, shewonder. would let the fact of their involvement slip rini former USSR isinan1991. without any reserves ry’. Marianna Hirsch states in “The Generation missing Uzbeki girl started to appear newspapers, the to Delhi so he Haloi’s drove with Hapur,and killed her, New of oil, economic prospects in the country did of Postmemory,” “Postmemory not identical family hoped that eyewitnesses would is come forward and Mukul filmher On to Memory Forget-

A generation of filmmakers from the North-east examine memory and the multi-faceted story of trauma through their films

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Missing link Pedestrians walk past a multi-storey showroom in Delhi’s South Extension Market. It is from this market where Shakhnoza Shukurova went missing on the night of September 24, 2015 bloomberg/

prashanth vishwanathan

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not improve. Cotton farming is the country’s leading economic activity, and even as recently as 2013, the Uzbek government was censured for enslaving its own population. When cotton-picking season comes around, students, teachers, nurses, doctors, all have to ensure that their quota of cotton is picked.

Schools are closed, essential services are downgraded and business hours are reduced as the state-sponsored forced labour kicks in.

In newspaper reports about busted rackets of Uzbeki prostitution, the most common reason stated is that the woman wanted to raise money to send home for a medical emergency.

It is economics that brings these girls — most of who are trained as hairdressers, nurses and secretaries — to countries like India.

Some are lured into it with offers of ‘respectable’ jobs and some come knowing exactly what they are getting into it. Either way, it is often economics that work against them too.

The girls are forced to surrender their passports to their ‘employers’ and are paid a margin of the money promised. Often, they take loans in advance, in order to pay for medical

drivers who are vetted and approved by the local fixers. A simple Google search for ‘blonde girl Delhi’ throws up nearly million pages in results with barely concealed titles like ‘South Delhi blonde escort huge tits’ or ‘kissing Delhi escorts’. Delhi blonde escorts even has a Twitter handle.

Despite the fact that Uzbeki bodies are traded so openly, there are no organisations working to help them. Most NGOs that I spoke to, in Delhi and Mumbai, said the only foreign victims of human trafficking they worked with were Nepalis or Bangladeshis.

So where would she be, I ask.

“Maybe in Punjab. Maybe they have kept her as a sex slave.”

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owards the end of January, I meet the family again. By now they have been here for four months. Said has left her husband and her 21-year-old son behind, and spent a considerable sum of money. But the case hasn’t really gone anywhere. This time, we are waiting at the Patiala Court, where a lawyer is willing to go through their papers. Notwithstanding its prurience, every case needs some closure and the Shukurovas refuse to leave this country erhaps it is this accepted arrangement of until they know exactly what happened. “I will bilateral trade between Indian men and only go back when I take Shakhnoza with me,” Uzbeki women, but when Said tells me the sto- Said says. ry of her sister’s run-ins with people from the This conviction is because Said’s theory that sex trade, she doesn’t sound ruffled. Once Shakhnoza is alive has suddenly received a Naaz came into her life, Shakhnoza started re- shot in the arm. Someone who knew the girl ceiving threatening phone calls from Masha, spotted her. One Mandeep Rawat, an acquaintReconstructing a life Hansalcame Mehtato Gagan and others. These, she duly recorded, ance of Shakhnoza and her mother, (left), the director and sent to her mother. Shakhnoza had few their house in January and told them that he Aligarh, along friends, and she wasn’t very close to her sis- saw Shakhnoza in December.ofIn a statement with Apurva Asrani, ters. But the mother and she were thick and recorded with the court, Rawat was on thesays film’she editor. spent hours talking to each other on the free his way from Delhi to Kullu The on story December is based11, phone app, Viber. Even though she was 1,500 and had stopped for a smokeonintheChandigarh. life of the Aligarh Muslim km away in Tashkent, her mother knew where Standing across him at thelate paan shop was Shakhnoza was, almost down to the minute. Shakhnoza, dressed in a pinkUniversity nightdress and professor Dr Through the nearly two hours we sat at Ma- not looking very well. She wasShrinivas with a burly, Siras 6-ft zaar, Shokhista watched Shakhnoza’s videos tall man, who Rawat assumed was her boypaul noronha on her phone, on an endless loop, not even friend. When Rawat greeted her, Shakhnoza pausing them when she dissolved into tears. waved back. At this, the man bundled her into Afterward, I accompanied the duo to their a waiting car and sped away. Rawat wasn’t home, a single room with a kitchenette at one aware of Shakhnoza’s disappearance. When end and a bathroom at the other. A bed and he came back to Delhi, he went to meet his two chairs were the only furniture in the lawyer on some matter, and because he knew room. Here, Said opened a large bag of docu- the lawyer was acquainted with Shakhnoza, ments. In the two months that she had been in he mentioned seeing her. That was when he India, Said has started her own was informed that Shakhnoza had investigation. She broke into been “dead” since September.

Facebook groups and internet Highlighting these inconsistenrooms, and showed me reams of cies, the family filed a writ of habeas Delhi blonde photos of beautiful, well made- escorts even has a corpus in the last week of January, up Uzbeki women. In some, they but the court rejected it for being inTwitter handle posed themselves, Aligarh.byAfter the videoin ofothers the sting operation gether incomplete.

Nowthey theiractually only request is Andheri and got my they wereheheld by theirand cli- ousted from help to check got out, wasclose humiliated that up theon case transferred to the thebekind of relationship ents or ‘husbands’, regular the university he had servedmen for 20 years. Five we had. One Crime they hope dayBranch, I camewhere back from work they and in office-going white shirts and years ago, sex between homosexuals wasn’t il- the watchman wouldsaid uncover more evidence.

I wasn’t allowed inside. I ironed have run into begged legal, sopants, Siras who wonyou the could case he reluctantly At themy police station is enter investigating landlord to that let me and he anywhere in the HiddenBut somewhere in the fought against thecity. university. it was too litthough, is no gavecase me two hoursthere to clear mydoubt thingsthat out,”the he the crevices between these Shakhnotle, too late. There isn’t a lotgroups knownis about him. dead woman is Shakhnoza.

Requesting anoadds. In the film, Siras goes through as much. za, Saidmuch is convinced.

In fact, of his ordeal was pieced together nymity, a senior officer saidstate that that the Both Mehta andpolice Asrani, however, Although denies it, he Shakhnoza’s with the helpthe of afamily few interviews gave jour- DNA result is inabout the jurisdiction of the the film is not homosexuality orSamalka pitch own in the sex trade cannot be ha nalistinvolvement Deepu Sebastian (played

by Rajkummar and he isn’tasked awareififhe there a confirforpolice gay rights.

When was is gay, the Sientirely In August, she was invited Rao). Butruled it wasout. evident that Siras an out- mation is Shakhnoza. there are no ras in thethat filmitsays he can’t be But described in just to a party that was hostedin byan another lierdance — he at was a Marathi professor Urdu- changes in their stance the (Siras) case. Gagan is three letters.

“I never sawinhim as a hoUzbeki madam, Ummida.

Ummida speaking city; and a single,Both gay man.

“He and was guilty of the murders charges against mosexual.

I saw him asand a professor who washim veher husband, beenaspreviously painted by hisRajneesh, peers andhave students someone have been filed court.who loved Lata ry lovable.

He with was the a poet implicated on human trafficking charges. who was a dirty, filthy person,” Mangeshkar songs and his glass or the lastof10whiskey,” days, surprisingly, Said has igThere, Shakhnoza to her mother, she says Asrani.

Duringclaimed his research says Mehta, calling it nored my finally manage to me get was a Coke lacedawith some substance to withgiven Ishani Banerjee, PR execuhiscalls. mostI romantic film. “For Zamira, who come drink.

She passed for an hour tive whose email out to Mehta set and a half, through to her thesister central idea was thehas violation The idea the film to Indiaoftoa man’s help in the search and when she regained consciousness, she forback the ball rolling, they spoke to a private space.for If heShakhad was triggered off by“We a don’t want to give ayou anyto inforfound herself semi-naked and wearing a dif- hnoza. few students at AMU. “Some forcibly brought man his mail totoMehta fromnow,”house mation she snaps me. him, there are ferent set of lingerie.many Whenwere she threatened were forthcoming, and at raped PR executive Ishani As I listen in to our go to the police, Ummida extorted hostile.

Some agreed to helpallegedly inilaws toprevious punish conversations, him. But weI Banerjee notice that Said hadaraised thelife possibility of her with and videos her shot in comtially andphotos then backed out,”ofsays nipped beautiful in the bud a sexwe slave in Punjab well be-a promising positions. about her repu- Shakhnoza being Asrani, adding that heWorried tried getbecause chose to invade spotting her there. tation Tashkent, Shakhnoza ting inin touch with Siras’s familylet the matter fore Rawat reported space that has nothing to do with It could have a coincidence. drop.

She became quieter too, but they too wanted nothough part after that, us.been We kill men like him every It could have prescience. and of it. was listless in her phone conversations daybeen because we are voyeuristic,” Or Asrani. it could have been information she had with hermore mother.

“The we got into it, we realised one adds managed to ferret Said’swhen sudSaidhave acknowledges events could never got that into all thethese confines of are his somehow Yet, the release of this film atout. the time reticence to talk possibly indicates she is linked in ato sinister they are bedroom know manner what hisand private lifewhat was den a curative petition against Section 377 is being to finding led that one September evening.

However, So sheI close like.toThere would have to speculate. reviewed by theher.

Supreme Court, makes it imEven so, remain.

One doesn’t what happened Shakhnobegan toaccept draw experiences fromafter my own life,” portant.

“Theseveral film is questions always going to be releis more important than the rest. za was pulled intohas that car. vocal “The police says Asrani, who been aboutshowed his sex- though, vant because the law might change butWhat it is the chances that a dead reappears?

For us photograph thethat body,gets andmy from ualone orientation.

“Anof issue goatthe is are society’s attitude that stillgirl needs to change. nofilm oneiscan sayto with absolute certainty leg wasa place visible, am pretty nota now, thatthat to rent in IMumbai yousure haveit’s to be And the going be significant in doing zero.

Shakhnoza. the police ‘family man’.If One has to is goentirely throughconvinced these so- that that.it’s This law is just a beginning,” says Mehta. about it, then why DNA being ciety members whoisn’t will the judge youtest and put mohinivenugopal chaudhuri shared says. and I were living to- veena you in awith box.us,” Myshe partner

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A gold mine buried in junk A long-neglected email about the suicide of a gay professor led Hansal Mehta to make Aligarh, his latest film

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Wheels within wheels For Shokhista and daughter Nodira Said, life is a loop of visits to the police station and the court kamal narang

he junk folder of filmmaker Hansal Mehta’s email inbox is a treasure trove. At the time of editing his last film City Lights, he was poking around it when he found an unopened email that said ‘idea for a film’. Lying inside was a news article on the death of Dr Shrinivas Siras, a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), who was secretly filmed having sex with a rickshaw puller at his home. A year later, Mehta had fleshed out the tip-off into a feature film titled Aligarh, with actor Manoj Bajpai bringing to life Siras’s last days. Not surprisingly, he has been keeping a close watch on his junk folder ever since. “Even recently a senior journalist who had interviewed me many years ago sent me a very interesting idea. for Andancan youfamily believemember, it, it again in help ailing or landed to buy an my junk box,” says, with apartment in he Tashkent, anda laugh. the interest rate The timingsooffast the that emailthey wasnever ratherend serencompounds up dipitous.enough While discussing with hisEven editor making money to it pay it off. if Apurva a muffin, that Mehta was they do,Asrani there isover no guarantee they willsurbe prisedto that a fair amount able takehe thealready moneyknew into the country.

A about account Siras. “Theofday died in 2010, on a news anhe Uzbekistan sexI was worker, TV channel for a debate. did2014, somesays rewho was deported fromI quickly Israel in search him beforeinwe went live. with The first that theongirl landed Samarkand $10, thing the newscaster said was, ‘This Apurva the customs officers having taken theisrest.

Asrani who is anotwithstanding, writer — which I wasn’t — and is These risks a ‘lucky few’ gay’,” he says, rolling his money. eyes inWith disbelief. do manage to make some their “Anyway, I followed the story butof it fair skin and lithe bodies, thereafter is nothat dearth just disappeared theAcross headlines inMumthree demand for themfrom in India.

Delhi, days.”

Being an editor nearlyis two decades bai, Goa and Punjab, allfor it takes a phone call in the had made Asrani weary of be-a to hireindustry a ‘Russian girl’, a term that denotes ing just “cutter and storycan is girl froma anywhere in joiner”.

Central Siras’s Asia. They onehired he wanted to write himself. be for ₹10,000-15,000 for an hour, and found fewanhours afterThey his theSiras rateswas go up to ₹1dead lakhafor evening. suspected suicide inan 2010.

At 64, he in wasvarious at the stay four or five to apartment cusp of in aby flat in parts ofretirement, the city andand are living ferriedalone around taxi

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Wheels of box courage Out of the The India aFoundation’s newher show seeks to expand the reach ofwoman art and auto makedriver it a is Five St+Art weeks after vandal torched three-wheeler, Ghaziabad’s only more immersive, back on the road accessible with more experience pluck and a new vehicle

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n a sunny winter morning, I take an auto to the Inland Container Depot (ICD), in Tughlakabad.

Spread over 55 acres, it employs 10,000 people and receives over 1,000 trucks full of containers every day, carrying goods that power large chunks of northern and western India.

News reports once described it as the ‘toxic heart of South Delhi’. This industrial landscape is grey and overflowing with rubbish.

Despite its proximity to the wealthy boroughs of South Delhi, it bears no resemblance to the green enclaves a couple of kilometres away.

The reason for my visit is the opening of WIP, short for ‘Work In Progress’, a street art show organised by the St+Art India Foundation. It is an ongoing project where street artists from across India and abroad are transforming a hundred shipping containers by painting gigantic murals, graffiti, typography and other forms of visual art over and inside them.

My first view of this large-scale art is sudden. It’s a long drive into the depths of the ICD, with bare walls all around. For a while, I can’t figure out how to locate the show. All I can see for a time are vehicles and workers doing their job. I stop to ask a man in uniform where I can find the show, and as he points to the right, I see a pink geometric-patterned entrance, so large that I feel silly for having missed it.

I have been promised a walking tour by the organisers, but my introduction to this monumental art is quite without context. The first thing that I see is a giant astronaut in a silver

suit with a reflective visor on its helmet, paintA particularly striking example of this is the ed on an undulating surface of six containers piece by artist Amitabh Kumar, depicting a destacked one atop another. On another side, a capitated animal. It plays with dimensions in golden-yellow mythical creature towers on its representation of the animal’s form, sintwo stacked containers. As I walk further in, ews and skin. The effect is that of a unified more art reveals itself. Each piece, on a differ- whole when you stand back, and disjointed ent container, is startlingly different in style pieces the closer you come to it. and sensibility: a gorgeous mural of a young At the venue, he is in the process of painting boy’s face, a dark container with poetry paint- the animal’s head on a separate container. ed in calligraphy all around it, a very large When I ask him what inspired the piece, he repiece at the back, depicting what looks like a plies, “There’s a huge, dead garbage dump palace. here which you can’t use any more. I wanted The experience of each individual piece to create a dead beast in response to it. So I changes as I keep walking. What starts out as a painted this animal with its head hacked off. I full view of the painted boy’s face, morphs in- wanted to paint the fallen head while interactto only his eyes, foregrounded ing with people who’ve come to by a large pop art hamsa: a palm view the festival.” with an eye at its centre. ElseThe performative aspect of the where, the word ‘Breathe’ stenfestival separates it from a stanThe containers, cilled against a long white wall dard gallery. The other thing that mimicking many in stark black is swallowed up by is radically different, is, of course, street artists other containers and a little latthe setting of this exhibition. themselves, are er, becomes the word ‘The’. The One of the stated aims of the itinerant discrete pieces constantly coafoundation is to celebrate ‘art for lesce into something else entireeveryone’. This isn’t just gimly, depending on where you’re mick, for St+Art has imagined a standing. much bigger audience than the By the time I start my curated regular suspects who frequent tour, I’m quite disoriented by the shifting per- art galleries: ICD’s 10,000 employees and their spectives. My guide is Giulia Ambrogi, co-foun- Singhal families are aamong thefrom primary received new vehicle the UP targeted der and curator at St+Art. She puts each piece government patrons. on February 13 rajeev bhatt in context by naming the artists behind the The art here has not only escaped the galworks, their styles and their treatment of the lery, but also the street, and has come to this licontainers. This is how I find out that the mu- minal space that is neither as vulnerable or the road, the catcalls have ral of the boy, by the Indian artist Anpu Varkey, impermanent as streetand art,whistling nor as static ornot instopped. Singhal recalls incident points where depicts her brother. Or that a particularly accessible as gallery art. an As Ambrogi Solo performance Ruby Singhal has been an autorickshawbeautiful driver for six years rameshdepicting sharma threethe carscontainers, ended in a pile-up, because thestreet drivcontainer, what appears out, mimicking many er of the first vehicle was busy looking at her. to be a cosmic egg, is by an Italian artist, Agos- artists themselves, are itinerant.

They will be Sometimes, peoplegoods stareacross at the her,country, opentino Iacurci, playing a visual pun on the fact on their way, carting uby Singhal (30) is regarded as a bit that Thethat eldest of threecontainer siblings, was Singhal mouthed, then iswant particular usedfirst to when the show over.to take her pictures to of an oddity in Ghaziabad. A mother transport learnt to ride a cycle, thenmany a moped, a scooter eggs.

In fact, of the artists show their wife, friends or children. “I think of anasuya is aby Delhi-based freelance writer of three, Singhal is the UP city’s only have and also a motorbike.

Sheimmediate ran errandsenvironfor her shreya only theila money I earn driving this auto, I foresponded to their woman autorickshaw driver. But ment. family and shuttled her brothers to school. An and cusactivist on that and ignore the catcalls or whisshe made headlines last month, after a vandal autorickshaw was in natural progression. tles,” she says. This year alone, Singhal has had torched her and husband Ajay Gupta’s autor“I was refused a licence by the Road Trans- eight to 10 altercations with men on the road. ickshaws. The vehicles were parked outside port Authority… they laughed when I asked “Some of my passengers feel more outraged their rented house and the culprit was a for an auto licence, so for a few months I used than I, some even ask me to chase these rascals young man, allegedly drunk. He set fire to his my scooter licence, after which a local journal- and teach them a lesson. I just avoid probown car, the three-wheelers and a few houses ist helped me get a driving lilems,” she says with a smile. in the area. “The police showed me a huge can cence for a light motor vehicle,” Singhal’s smile disappears as of petrol,” says Singhal. she says. she recalls the torching of the From January 6 — the day of the incident — Despite run-ins with corrupt two autos. “When the fire was Singhal ran errands till the second week of February, a harried traffic constables, aggresive raging, our main concern was to for her family and Singhal rented vehicles to feed the family. drivers on the road and lecherprevent the CNG cylinders from With a little help from an anonymous donor ous passers-by, Singhal enjoyed shuttled her brothers exploding. We kept pouring wato school and the Apartment Owners Association in her work from day one. “I came ter on the cylinders… It would Ghaziabad, the family then bought a second- home crying many times after have been a disaster, there were hand auto for ₹74,000. On Saturday last, Sing- policemen snatched my earnhouses all around,” she says. hal and her family were chauffered to Luck- ings, but I went back each mornShaken by the incident, the now by the state government, where she was ing,” she says. A few months family decided to move in with handed the keys to a new vehicle. later, Singhal learnt she was pregnant with one of Singhal’s brothers. “You can see how we Singhal is aware of the attention she gets as her third child, Prateek, who is now five. “I live here, in one room… With a country liquor Ghaziabad’s only woman auto driver, but thought, we’ve made the mistake now, so I store right below, there are drunkards loiterwhen she started out six years ago, it was not should work harder. I was in the auto with a ing all the time,” she adds. But all is well in to break a glass ceiling. “I began driving an au- passenger when I went into labour. I went to Singhal’s mind as long as her children — a to because we had no money. We lived in a the hospital at 2am, when the pain became un- daughter and two sons — are going to school. shack on the roadside, and my husband decid- bearable,” she says.

Students of a private school in Ghaziabad, ed to stop driving autos and start a small Within a month of Prateek’s birth, Singhal they continue to inspire their feisty mother to shop,” she says. That’s when she saw an oppor- was back on the road, with the infant tied to stay at the wheel. tunity to earn a living, using an important her waist. A few passengers offered to hold the skill that she had — the ability to drive. baby while she drove. Even after six years on saurabh yadav

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A master of black comedy Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon uses history and the fragmentary nature of memory to devastating effect, making you laugh even as you realise the horrors of human apathy that the letters are comforting her more than anybody.

Hemon explained it thus: “Well, there’s a constant struggle. You can think of any kind of trauma as a kind of rupture, a kind of before and after. And the change is irreversible: you can never get back to the before, much like Gregor Samsa cannot become as he was, once he wakes up as an insect. (…) One of the ways that people move on from the trauma is to mythologise the past.”

Each of Hemon’s books has been funnier than the last one, but somehow, they have also gotten proportionately sadder. His most famous work, the novel The Lazarus Project, has two Bosnian-Americans travelling to Bosnia in search of the Averbuch family. In 1908, Lazarus Averbuch, a young Russian Jewish immigrant in Chicago, was mistaken for an anarchist and shot dead by George Shippy, the city’s chief of police. The narrator, a writer called Brik, has been awarded a grant to write Averbuch’s story. The book flits constantly between two narrators: Brik and Olga Averbuch, Lazarus’s elder sister and our guide to a time when paranoia, anti-Semitism and xenophobia were beginning to poison the world, pushing it to the edge of World War I. In a way, the prototype for this style of doppelgänger narratives was introduced in ‘The Sorge Spy Ring’, a story from The Question of Bruno, where a young boy, obsessed with spies, re-imagines his father’s frequent absences as proof of a career in espionage (Richard Sorge Those were the days Mother-daughter duo — Shokhista and Shakhnoza Shukurova was a real-life Soviet spy executed by Japan in 1944). The way this story has been laid out on the page is highly distinctive: the main narrative is followed by a parallel historical track about Sorge at the bottom of the pages. Seven Me, myself and the other Aleksandar Hemon is adept at executing doppelgänger narratives velibor bozovic years after The Question of Bruno was released, JM Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year would feature hen Aleksandar Hemon, a Sa- sign of conflict, let alone full-blown war, like an identical layout. When asked about the storajevo journalist and occa- Hemon did: the Bosnian war of 1992-95. BLink ry’s unique structure, Hemon had this to say: sional writer of fiction and caught up with the author at the Jaipur Litera- “One of the illusions that come with leading a poetry in his late 20s, moved ture Festival last month, and he explained stable life is that history is ‘over there’ someto Chicago in 1992, he only had a functional, how people (and not just writers) use fictional where. So the wars are fought somewhere else, Lonely Planet-grasp of the English language. techniques to make sense of man keeps going forward slowly Which is why reading his latest novel, The Mak- their war experiences. and steadily and there’s this ing of Zombie Wars, feels as though irony has “We’re all assuming that life strict segregation between histocompleted a flawless headstand. The protago- and the world and everything ry and life. I wanted to point toOne of the illusions nist Joshua Liven, a perennially procrastinat- there is will go on as it is now — wards that by having another that come with ing screenplay writer, has a day job teaching an assumption of continuity,” leading a stable life is story that unfolds chronologicalEnglish to immigrants. Joshua Liven — or Josh, Hemon said. “We operate and ly as experienced by a boy, and that history is ‘over as he is generally referred to in the novel — is make plans assuming that this is has a kind of unity of time and there’ somewhere what Billie Joe Armstrong really, really doesn’t how it’s going to be tomorrow space. And I wanted to footnote want to be: an American idiot, albeit a benign (...) That’s pretty much a comthat with history (not direct hisone. He belongs to truly rarefied slacker terri- plete delusion, but if we didn’t tory; that would be too simple), tory. His idea of a dream screenplay is the do it, we would go crazy. This is history that’s remote from the The Making of Zombie Wars 138th rehash of a Hollywood zombie apoc- the way we had to deal with war, to concep- experience of the boy and then see how the Aleksandar Hemon alypse. He is unappreciative of his well-adjust- tualise it, to impose some sort of continuity of two narratives elucidate each other.”

Pan MacMillan India ed and super-successful girlfriend, the only history, of time and so on.”

Fiction That, in a way, sums up Hemon’s entire ap₹1360 person who stays by his side despite his lackaIn Hemon’s 2000 collection The Question of proach to fiction, a dazzling technique that t wasdaisical before 10pm on September 24 only whentime Shakhnofriend, Naaz, insisted thatstory she first meet has her blended at attitude (In fact, the he is her Bruno, the protagonist of the ‘A Coin’ fact and fiction to produce some za Shukurova (27) reached the South Extension so she could return the money she had anything other than lukewarm towards her is South-Ex writes letters at wartime, diligently inscribing of borthe most convincing black comedies of the market.

In he itsdiscovers glory days, South Extension, fondly Shakhnoza spent daythere shopping.

She’d when a cock ring among her pos- rowed. and posting each ofhad them, eventhe when is last two decades. And if his last book is anyshortened to South-Ex, the mecca of penis Delhi’s as- bought a pair of shoes at Aldoany andletters whenare they outto go by, he’s only just warming up to sessions).

He’d takewas a well-travelled over no way of knowing whether be-turned thing pirationalashoppers, and though the day independent boua bit big, she picked insoles hold them in the land where black comedy ought well-nourished heart any of the week.

In to ingbe delivered.

The tone of theup letters getstomore America, tiques have given international high street Then she went to Place market thenow story thatway he istowriting, his fictional alter- place. and more comforting, asYashwant though she fears the in toChabe called just ‘comedy’. brands, it’sego hardly a deserted stretch, evenwar on aon Thursday andasbought a gold ring a birthday present Major Klopstock is waging the un- nakyapuri worst as far the recipient is as concerned. aditya mani jha night. Shakhnoza was her way toruns attend a party, but for the party going to. After itwhich, she stopped dead. But in on reality, Liven from the first However, as she the was story progresses, is clear

Dead girl W walking Q

In Delhi’s seedy underbelly, an Uzbeki dancer goes missing. Her mother and sisters arrive in the country to try and find her. Through a trail of ‘kidnappings’ and half-burned corpses, they pry open the world of human trafficking of ‘Russian girls’ right in the centre of the Capital

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The Faustian world of law Of hatches and squiggles APPROACHING EYE LEVEL

Ranjeev Dubey’s book paints a compelling picture of young lawyers trying to get by in a cut-throat world, but his efforts are somewhat marred by hyperbolic prose

andrea obzerova/shutterstock

Whatever happened to the hobby, the pointless activity we took up and abandoned easily without worrying about making it a revenue model?

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Legal Confidential Ranjeev Dubey Penguin India Non-fiction ₹499

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Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of the feminist website The Ladies Finger

Dog eat dog Playing one lawyer against another, one practice against another, creating intricate and complicated problems only to demonstrate the capacity to solve them, are all par for the course afp

he commercial practice of law is privileged information as secret, makes it gance and aggression that lawyers can deploy glamorous. In India, the law degree tough for society to get a close look at how the for clients, in their own commercial dealings is the new MBA — one of the most profession is practised. Writing a book on how (even with recovery of fees from clients) lawhatever happened to hobbies, sought after basic education qualifiand squiggles were turning into Jim Morrison. legal strategy was thought through in real and adulthood. yers can really suck. His description of the burasked friend T. sexiness.

Nobody Telecations, thanks to my its perceived Thencases I went out of and bought a colour pencilpend- Myden (some which he says, are indeed colouring book seems to be up a return to was of independently setting shop: “It seems to have vision serials like Suitsthem and anymore.

Boston Legal box and myself courts) an Audrey Hepburn ing ingot appellate is tricky.

Much in like an pointless activity.

Let’sa clarify that.but Pointless true that we had client list, clients, unrun butYet, then underline thePeople stereotype. as that’s with any shades of pink and purple.

A couple intelligence officer writing on of hishours work; it activity is not aren’t just television.

Because I likewhich diamonds, forever. Like lactating deathly serious and ends the in photos 5Ks and are glamorous picture, warts of and smells or less on each pageendorsement gives me a feeling that is havecows, would attract and admonition a problem.

I watch a lot television but and they yield milk for of a period of time 10Ks.just People make pretty things and are told to bothin a veneer. tickle and satisfaction. equal measure. can’tthen seemdry to up. justMarketing watch it. aFriends and rela-same law firm is the scale up, don’t waste ugliness time, failoffast other The potential theand sight and the My friend T the whoclients’ has always bit DuIt is not storiesbeen that amake tivesas staying over are now reconciled to seeing animal husbandry: you artificially insemisuch acrid sweaty, TED-y aphorisms.

Andisfor creative pungency of the smell what Ranjeev ahead-of-the-trend-curve C bey’s book interesting. kindThe of girl actually bits compelling me clean thethen, house and do other random nate and after a while, the milk flows! (...) types,Dubey it is now a constant that Legal every-Confiseeks to narratetension in his book discovered colouring books many years are hisadult rendition of how lawyers think about things treatingyou theneed new award-winning To while inseminate, a lot of equipment thingdential: you touch must succeed and bear enviAdventures of an Indian Lawyer.

If you ago building in Mcleodganj.

Shethe took her manipulation thangka- seriesand a practice, murky as radio.

I knowInone other who that technology. terms of afriend law firm, able fruit. can build reasonable tolerance for hyperbolic themed colouring book down games to the people plains. play, of aspirations, the endless has meant a similar problem waslocaa swanky office because in a smartshe central T and I were discussing a common friend,allegoa Her family prose, mixed metaphors and dramatic giggledlove-hate but she was mock-proofthat as talthe constant roller-coaster brought that hermarketing. hands tion up andstrictly a lot ofand cashtold to finance I highly creative person have no ries, Dubey’s bookwho can seemed tell you to a good story. she A bought pencils, crayons ented resources can be and put watercolours through, the feelcoulddidn’t neverhave be idle.

EvenHell, in the thick even of a deeither.

I didn’t have a hobbies. her unseemly gifts (andunderbelly she had many) storyAll of the of a profesand went colouring with ing ofatbeing captive tofervour. founder partners and manding she couldn’t switch off with spermPhD, bank!” seemed endmay in some search a revenuewith. This siontoyou not be wellfor acquainted fervourto reminds me of previous learning love them ona being leftstate with no mindless television.

She hadnarration to knit orof crotchAfter a 200-plus-page awful stomodel.

Whichsome perhaps is better than T and me, of being.

Sample nuggets: being 8, 12, 14 and told quite otherOfchoice.

Dubey’s own story inclearthe book et orries prune herthe plants whilehe whatever about ‘Dragons’, winds upshow with the who are constantly up schemes Description of acooking case handled: “Bentel wantly that draw, I can’t painthelpcanI can’t be testament to how wasstory running. been some of a It’s structured capitulamarked byhave the absence models. ed to its cake,of eatrevenue it too, have Altel pay for and man, maps can werefeel, rather less amy lawyer underyears since we both ourbeen tion, justified thus: left “I had Butit,before wecompensate started discussing our comand then Bentel because Bentel ghastly.

This the didn’t seem tragic neath bluster and the mothers’ but here on thehouses receiving end we of are a scam mon got friend, the thing that prompted our no- at the diabetes.” above-mentioned ages. perceived bravado. unable to sit still. have aThese moth-guys for eight longI years.

Halfway through my Dubey describes weller inhad ble tut-tutting my new acquisition: View on was growing popularity of lawan educaOnly that I’d have to get mywell jolli- the first Dubey describes a wheelchair who can’t sit sold me a chocolate-brownie page I was the tough path youngstillfairy-tale adulttion: colouring book. Polite people around “Law colleges are proliferating like mages from other Which I startled tough paththings. that young litigating either.

An adult story in colouring the past and to realise that lawyers have to book me have tried not to make fun of this pur- was getting gots on ripped flesh.” lawyersanyway. have toScrapbooks, navigate whenthe black is toome slow foraher style. locked into meat grinder: I hatches and navigate when chase. Perhaps I should gift it“You to my mother An intense revelation: can’t buy a bike stamp collections, dolls’ starting out. He doesclothes, just as well These days though I have Janebullwasn’t going to buy another squiggles were turning starting out currently in a wheelchair, and then worry aboutwas rainone all suggestion. the time. A hampuppets, origami.the It never whenugly he narrates workings into Jim the shit Virgin on and the dream only socolouring I could discovMorrison Perhaps trendarithmetical piece, came anmerI should doesn’twrite run ayour calculastopped.

Adults feared minds the ram-(nickof his partners’ book front of me. first erinthat they hadFor in the their closet othertions suggestion. the latter does I even pretendfor you; To a computer not fix a nail on pagenamed, I could the run ‘Dragons’). with a pairPlaying of timeanother in year, Ifar ammore not sorting my sophisticated ed toaagree.

Yes,you. yes The I must write a trend piece. wall for court is what it is; you have scissors, pot of against glue, glitter or a one onealawyer another, clothes dusting my or remeator grinder.

Stillshelves the fact A thing a former mine to Once call a I unto deal with editor what isofon yourused plate. blankpractice notebook. against another, creatrearranging the masalas.

I amwere mained that the Dragons “more and more people are” (This isgood of at The derstood this, I started topiece. get seriously very first thing ever wrote was as only an to ing intricate and Icomplex problems not atready the point yet my where I canput just watchon teleto fund office, clients the tacourse in highlegal contrast a ‘thinkcame piece’, running cases.from The results almost eight-year-old feeling the needtotosolve express mydemonstrate the capacity them, are all vision may profits get there. blebut andI share withMy me.colouring They wereisready which is about “less lessthe people”). immediately, ofand which proof was to follow self in writing par for theabout course.a Apaper storyrose very I’d wellmade. told isI that patchy.

It’s unlikely better. likeopportunity my colto play fair andto beget equal andI the I like my months.” adult colouring book quite a bit. was 23 within anyone told me that I should ouring of abefore spoilt-rich-kid lawyer’s deeply-embedded book quite bit but I don’t love it.

I may was there forathe taking….There was a FausIt’s a tall book filled with of numbered This book is for the pages non-lawyer.

Every lawyer thinksense of writing seriously. Seriously, as in you — of entitlement and self-preservation abandon this thing one was tian deal to be soon. made(Though with thethere devil.isWhat circles.

Follow colour the booktakes would havethe seen moreschemes than what Dubey should of earningpresence a living from I havelegal an think ubiquitous in it. the withthere Japanese that I maythis getdeal?” before I abannot cats to like about suggests and to thetalk squint-inducing courage about in coldpages print.are Dubey ever profession. since and on most days, thank the many don it altogether.) think gateway hobby.

That, could Iwell beit’s thea story of many a protransformed into names rather and cool situations portraits of masks client to fatell his circumstances and accidents of birth that led Yet, Dubey’s own actions, regardless of the I may knit. Iservices may unravel. warned. fessional firm —Be not just an Indian law mousstory, types.

Halfway through my that first an page I to this but he seems conscious interestpiece of advice.

But there are someofdays extremely positive self-assessment his pro- firm — anywhere in the world. t@chasingiamb was startled tocould realise that the black hatches ed reader unmask them with simple inI wish writingprowess, didn’t involve decisions fessional tell ancareer even more emphatic ternet searches. The inherent obligation of story of lawyers’ fear, insecurity and the crav- somasekhar sundaresan is a Mumbai-based lawyers to keep client confidence, and to treat ing for comforts. For all the professional arro- lawyer specialising in financial regulatory practice

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On slippery slopes From Sardesais to Ribeiros BAWDY LINE

A good ski run comes after a series of ignominious tumbles in the snow The Lusitanisation of Goa’s Hindus has the acclaim of being the most sinister in Christendom

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ou should always look ahead. ance. And then comes a gentle push to get me he strident, choir-singing acidity started on the first of the series of ignominiEverything lies in the future… was at full tilt and had earned the acclaim of of toddy vinegar was what was ous tumbles that I take that day. I’d signed up you look back and you’ll falter,” being the most sinister and sadistic in all Getting there Goan about the feijoada: pungent warns Pierre, my skiing coach for a day’s beginner’s lesson to start my misadChristendom.

All major cities operate pig sausages (Goan chorizo) in his French-accented English.

Although he ventures in snow. A few minutes into the lesThe Edict of theSwiss Inquisition of Goa (1736) direct trains to Sion at regular items cooked me withon kidney tomatoes, advises wherebeans, to train my eyesonions while son, I tip over and go crashing down the slope. gives an inventory of 52 prohibited intervals.

Onconverts reaching that Sion,would there inand a grievous chilli.I continue to I emerge unhurt except for a bruised pride. At whizzing down amount the babyofslope, and offences by new are busesofthat up the Some of In a bona nervously assess.fide His Portuguese words carry restaurant a sense of the bottom of the slope is another fumbling vite the attention thedrive Inquisition. mountains Thyon. details the called Ferradurra (horseshoe) the Latin adult who looks equally embarrassed. Not far the eternal, and allude to theinnumerous them, in no specificto order, areFor as follows: lookshould up www.sbb.ch/home.html quarters of life Panaji, over storms that sends ourthis waybitch-slapping while passing away is a group of children waddling about in said natives not have in their gardens Goan of aanstew thatnod, wasstill invented in sheer joy, aided by their trainers. us by. Iedition give Pierre unsure trying to or properties the plant known as Tulosi, and Sightseeing the slave the quarters Brazil, my negotiate weightofofPortuguese the new I pick myself up and plough my if it existsApart already, should be uprooted immefrom the white slopes, the old friend and ski comrade Ribeiro and unfamiliar gear — Frederick helway up the slope to come skiing diately; the said natives should not during mountains offer perfectly curving told me the story of how his lineal ascendmet, goggles, costume, gloves, down again. After a few successful the appearance of crisp, the season of new roads and clean air ideal crops for antsheaviest became Christians in the century. the pair of boots I’ve ev- 17th“Everything glides down the slope, Pierre con(Novidade) arrange feasts in their lies in long hikes. Be mindful of thehouses; frost How oneand vanggod of of the Sardesais,the Gaud Sa- you look er worn, the skis, course. siders me well-trained enough to should not in public or at home wear purvem future... though. It can lead to accidents if raswat Brahmins ofThyon Succoro, Porvorim, We’re at Les Collons, in take to the button lifts. Also (dhoti) nor should women wear cholis; back and you’ll you lose your grip. quiteValais suddenly, became Ribeiros, falter,” taking warns on the region of Switzerknown as poma, these are conshould not allow the principal woman of the Pierre, the family name away of thefrom priest who had superland, a few hours Getraptions that carry skiers to the house toTip bathe before cooking; should not my coach If feast you’redays planning to be a days serious vised and theirthe conversion.

He’d heard the handneva, bright warm sun top of a slope so that they can observe as Wednesdays, of the skier, sign-up for should the week-long ed-down story piste fromhas hisan father on the powdery im- and to him swish down. But button lifts turn new moon or full moon; not distribon offer.

Youareca could alsodurwhat was bewildering mediate cheers me up. Theabout val- the whole out to be tricky to negotiate and ute viddascourses (betel leaves with nuts) thing was the with utterthe andyoung, unalloyed Lusitaniley is crowded private lessons for extra bucks. the falls that I thought I’d gotten ing the get celebration of their marriages; shutterstock/tokarev anton sation thethe New Christians. the oldof and ones in between, skiing and over return with a vengeance.

I find myself Also, read a good book while should not sing vovios (celebratory wedding Not only hadpast theus Sardesais notnot relapsed in- face down on the snow with more frequency snowboarding appearing so much ditties) publicly in great private; enjoying or some wineshould in the not tohuman their old, faithcars. but had completely than as butlived speeding I thought was possible. Pierre doesn’t Inquisition. anoint the bridegroom bride with a mixprecious winter or sun. moulted their life. It was a sloughing It’s a busy dayway withofholiday-makers from all runTorture out of of words of encouragement.

Seeing a crudely surgical nature was ture of ground saffron, milk, coconut oil, rice off not just of plumage, but of all about material over Europe and outside pottering in my flagging spirit,Office he even offers to carry used by the Holy as an expedient tomy ob- powder, crushed leaves of abolim; should not and performative Hindu cultheir skis; some sit expressions at cafés thatof overlook the skis the slope while am pulledofalong by equipped tainup a confession.

In theI chamber torture, to not and carryofofftheir imduring the daysjust of wear confinement ture. How doeson Pundalik an obligavalley, sipping mulled Sardesai, wine, reading, and the thelift. accused was adjured, in the presence of practical sporting gear, but also tackle a gentle wives coat with cow-dung the place in the torily lacto-vegetarian Brahmin (who enjoying the clear blaze of the winter sun in I soldier on for and about three hours, bishop, lifting my two Inquisitors the Diocesan to slope. triumphantisat to ticking houseFeeling wherepositively the confinement take wouldn’t accept victuals from the lowtheir faceseven — something they’ve longed for skis whatabout feels like muscle of my off tell with the truth his every relapse and unbura tiny sporting accomplishment on chilmy place; should not place their newly born er orders), suddenly turn into a porcophilic, since the onset of the gloom-inducing day- body andconscience. making repeated runsnot down the largely den his If they did confess failure-filled of first I dren on raw rice… ledger The Edict was attempts, structured cow-eating Why would he children turn his slope. time saving Iberian? season. Noisy, running For a novice, of this takesaquite some debate satisfactorily, the all executioner, physician if I should give the a serious specifically to unmake any sport residual Hindu backlarge on the unchanging agricultuand families walking ancient zombie-like in ski doing, and soon I’mcalled readyin. toAcrumble from and a surgeon were notary was al- thought.

I see the sun grow dim along the Aldisposition. ral and calendar would begin the boots are ritual ubiquitous.

Therethat are also the elderimpact oftothe boots on my shins.

Pierre pine so present keep a record of theBut proceedhorizon, chill set inthat anda Any person feel whothe hadsharp known or heard with lead up planta- won’t ly whoChaitra merelyand walkVaisakh, up and down theto powdery without perfecting of long ings. let Andmehegodid faithfully recordtheallartthat the warm pool at the bottom of the Newfor Christian had committed an offence tion inaided Ashadh, harvest in Bhadrapadh, slopes by walking poles.

The worldwedap- the ‘pizza slice’ — the of wedging your chalet passed, including themove shrieking ejaculations in.required to apprise the listed we’re in thestaying Edict was dingsto inbe Kartik and end with the harvest of skis pears on a high. in a triangle slow down and and inward the patient’s piteousto appeals for mercy Inquisition of the particulars within a period debashree majumdar is a freelance the winter crop in And replace Pierre instructs meFalgun? to lean forward a littleit stop pro.to death (en pasor tolike beaput of 30 days under writer pain and of dire in Geneva with the that conformed while I go Catholic down thecalendar slope to avoid losing balFinally, after ‘patient’ what seems like aeons, I’m editor currently living sant: the word is used consequences.

The witnesses to European agricultural and seasonal pat- in the Manual of Regulations of were required neither to subterns? Why would he stop playing the roba- the Inquisition for the heretic; stantiate the charges nor conHow does Pundalik na or the gaita, stock musical instruments of from the Latin patientem — suffront the accused. The least Sardesai, an Gomantak revelry? Why would he stop wear- fering person, enduring withsuspicion, the slightest word, obligatorily lactoing the purvem (dhoti) and forbid his wife out complaint). Ordinarily, the was enough to apprehend the vegetarian Brahmin, and daughter from wearing the choli? torture of polé (pulleys) was adheretic and send him to Orlem suddenly turn into a In 1560, Cardinal Henrique, as regent of ministered for the entry-level Gor, the House of the Inquisicow-eating Iberian?

Portugal and the Algarves, alive to the spiri- heretic. The patient’s hands tion. Giveaway expressions of tual requirements of the Indies, dispatched were tied behind his back and aversion were looked for as beef to Goa Aleixo Falcão, as inquisitor, to found then with a cord around his was served to the new convert the Holy Office of the Inquisition in these lat- wrists, he was hoisted from the for a Saint’s feast. itudes. ‘The Inquisition’ is a commendably floor (with weights to his feet) to the accomFour days after the Ferradurra meal, I had misleading Catholic appellation. It sounds paniment of the psalm Miserere and then the privilege of meeting the extended Ribeisomething like an Inquiry tribunal, but was suspended as long as was desired. Following ro-Pinto clan, which had gathered for the actually a metonymic stand-in for f***-me- this, he was allowed to fall with a jerk for a 50th wedding anniversary of Frederick’s parmercilessly-Iberian-torture-to-sniff-out-hershort distance. Then, Miserere again. That ents. As Julio Ribeiro raised the toast to his esy-followed-by-broiling-at-the-stake. Obvi- was the house style. On occasions when the brother and his wife in the midst of a tapestry ously in a manner that would ‘best conduce physician felt that on account of weakness of variously noble, markedly illustrious, beto the glory and honour of Our Lord and the the accused could not stand the polé, the spokely dressed, liberally urbane, Portuexpansion of the Holy Catholic Faith’. torture of potro was given. This was a proto- guese-speaking people, I found myself The whole point of the Inquisition was to type of the Guantanamo waterboarding ses- anatomising the conversion of Pundalik Sarforestall and defeat the tendency of the new sions, but with an iron prong distending the desai. Not the part about whether he came to converts to revert to the practices of their mouth and a variety of garrottes cutting into Christ by faith, voluntary love or prevenient old religion. It was only to be expected that the flesh. Lesser forms of torment included grace, or fear, or for temporal advantage, but the Hindus hauled into a new religion leg crushers and breast rippers, applications whether the tapestry would’ve been differwould have little awareness thereof or love of boiling oil and burning sulphur and can- ent had he continued as a Sardesai. therefor: a high-yielding soil for heresy and dles held beneath the armpits, and so on. The asatwik@gmail.com thus a lot of breadth for the activities of the Goan chapter of the Big I, by the year 1600,

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Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer

Slow, steady Beginners at a piste in Les Collons, Switzerland debashree majumdar

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I SPY STATES OF MATTER

Either with against us Flashback tous theorfuture By charging dissenting students sedition, the current done Actor and model Purab Kohli is all with set for fatherhood and theadministration sequel to Rockhas On!! everything that the Constituent Assembly feared

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sukumar muralidharan

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edition is a term with a ring of menace, carrying a hint of severe punishments for imagined slights to an entity mostly absent from citizen’s lives. In rationalising the arrest of a student from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on sedition charges, Delhi Police Commissioner Bhim Sain Bassi has at various times quoted faithfully from the book of law. Though he has proved a good clerk in the Macaulayan sense, he has failed to make a case that the JNU events fit the template. Bassi helped his image very little by guilelessly claiming that the police had several hours of video footage in its possession, which were being scrutinised for evidence of other ‘blasphemous’ utterances.

Sedition and blasphemy are close cousins 10.45am dosa at mom’s in theEgg imagination of Delhi’s police chief. That is not how students and teachers at JNU, with its long tradition of critical thinking and activism, see things. In the vastness of India, every day has a special significance. And mindful of its resonances in Kashmir, students of JNU organised an event for February 9, third anniversary of the day Afzal Guru was executed, ostensibly to appease the ‘collective conscience’ of the Indian nation.

Observances that challenge the dominant narrative are routinely carried out in Kashmir despite the heavy security blanket that shrouds the region. In the air of freedom of a university campus, it became an occasion for a counter-mobilisation by rival students heady on the brew of hyper-nationalism the current regime purveys. A melee of confused sloganeering ensued, some of it captured on phone-cam videos.

Matters would have rested there until the next contentious anniversary came around, except for the media and in particular one English news channel that claims a righteous monopoly on truth. While stirring the pot and calling for a crackdown on what it termed seditious conduct, this channel for good effect, juxtaposed the JNU events with the funeral held for an Indian army soldier killed in an avalanche in Siachen, a victim of the permanent state of war in Kashmir.

What cause really was served by this quest for cheap applause? As it pumped up the public outrage in its lust for ratings, the channel could not have been unaware that charges of sedition had been brought against a newspa11.30am Sneak peek to at the per belonging thelunchbox same business group as recently as June 2008, and that it had taken four long years to earn exculpation.

The Ahmedabad edition of the newspaper had just run a series of stories on a newly appointed city police commissioner, pointing to a service record riddled with abuses of power and dangerous liaisons with the underworld.

The import of one of the stories was fairly clear: that prime position in the police hierarchy was a reward for official services rendered in covering up the premeditated murder of underworld hatchet-man Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife.

Charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy were an immediate reward, implicating

8am Of squats and balances

9.15am Post workout booster

11.10am Anytime is doodle time

Freedom under fire Students staging a protest at the JNU campus in New Delhi on February 15, 2016 rv moorthy / the hindu

the publisher, resident editor and a reporter The constitutional historian Granville Ausof the newspaper. The trio were granted bail tin 11.20am described this phase of debate Announcing the arrival of Inaya,as a tripending full hearing of the case, gaining as umph ‘liberty’ over ‘bureaucracy’. It was in my of little baby in London employees of a large media group; a privilege this spirit that the Allahabad High Court in denied to journalists who work at great risk in 1960 held section 124, which defines the ofIndia’s most turbulent zones such as Chhattis- fence of sedition, as a violation of constitugarh and the North-East. tional freedoms. In further hearings before The police official who brought the charges, the Supreme Court, the clause was reinstated meanwhile, served out his term, retiring in subject to its invocation exclusively in situaMarch 2009 and securing a happy sinecure in tions of imminent violence and public disora university training security personnel. His der. This was the foundation on which the end was served by imposing the legal process Supreme Court ruled in the Balwant Singh on a critical newspaper, which case in 1995, that shouting sepain the Indian system is puniratist slogans in a public space shment in itself. did not attract sanctions under In April 2012, the Gujarat High the sedition law.

It is almost as if Court finally ruled on a bunch of These judgments continue to freedom is a rationed applications seeking the quashhold the field though they are ofcommodity ing of sedition charges. In grantten lost in the hiatus between ing these applications, the High vindictive executive action and 11.40am On myby way to work. Finally!

12 noon Bandra, as always Court went well-established judicial review. In 2012, the Gujajudicial precedent. It could not rat High Court summoned up have been otherwise. these as also all other relevant precedents to While debating the fundamental rights, In- set three newspaper employees at liberty from dia’s Constituent Assembly (CA) made a spe- the arbitrary charges laid against them. cial point of omitting ‘sedition’ as a These are hard won freedoms, just as easily circumstance in which free speech could be snatched away. And in today’s media environrestricted. A second important change was to ment of ‘war of all against all’, it is almost as if qualify every restriction imposed on freedom freedom is a rationed commodity which every by a requirement of ‘reasonableness’. This in- entity has to corner by plumbing the most sortroduced a test akin to that of ‘due process’, did depths. It is a game in which there can be where judicial review would be applicable as a no winners. But that realisation may well fetter on arbitrary exercises of power. The CA come too late to be of much use. also resolved to delete every legal provision of the penal code that was inconsistent with the sukumar muralidharan is an independent writer and researcher based in Gurgaon and Shimla new charter of liberty.

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12.35pm Thank god for roads like this

12.55pm The pink fancy — somewhere between home and studio

Through it together And when there is nothing to do, we sing songs of protests, we make creative posters, we recite poetry, we laugh and we rage shanker chakravarty

And they march

3.45pm Treats for being the good boy at work

After Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest, life in JNU is characterised by hostel raids and police presence while the students try to keep the morale up

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n February 15, I had decided to go to court to see my friend Kanhaiya Kumar so that I could tell him that he needn’t feel alone, that there are thousands on campus protesting for the right to dissent, and free speech and for his immediate and unconditional release. As I 6.25pm me I reached out for the first was Sunsets gettingupset dressed, sweatshirt I could get my hands on. By chance, it was the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sweatshirt. I paused and I put it back. Wearing a JNU sweatshirt in the city can also be a provocation now, you see. Looking back at the violence that ensued at Patiala House that day, I don’t think my fear was unwarranted.

In the past few days, the campus has been under severe distress because of random hostel raids, police questioning, lumpens entering campus and hurling abuses at teachers, the apathy of the administration, and false facts being circulated both by the media and the home minister. Additionally, JNU students have also been subjected to an atmosphere of complementary terror in the city. After being thrown out of his rented room in Munirka, a 9.40pm PersonalJNU touches frustrated student stood for an entire day with a placard saying, “I am a JNUite and I’m not a terrorist”. Another was asked by his auto wallah, “Should I take you to JNU or directly to Pakistan”. A girl travelling in the train was immediately branded a “JNU slut” by co-passengers after they discovered that she was a JNU student. Parents, friends and acquaintances are constantly calling up to ask if we have become anti-nationals. They are worried, but also voyeuristically curious.

However, the situation is not all bleak. On the day of Kumar’s arrest, after the initial and justified nervous lull on campus, students started pouring in front of the administrative block. They were soon joined by indignant

teachers still in shock at the brazenness of the rooms. Which is why my experience at the Delhi Police. About a thousand students and court that day left me shaken. Almost 50 lawteachers marched in protest from the admin- yers barged into the courtroom, as I was sitistrative block to the north gate. Since then ev- ting with the JNU teachers who had come to ery day, we are marching, protesting, resisting show their support for Kumar. While the one and we are staying strong. The day after the ar- male teacher got badly beaten up, the rest, rest perhaps saw the biggest public meeting who were women, were pushed, hurled abuse 7.15pm Awards night.

Black or burgundy?

7.35pm else, actually “scoundrels”, in the history of JNU; around 2,500 participa- at and told,Something “you breed traitors”, nts and speakers who ranged from politicians “this is not a JNU classroom”. I remember vivto academics to ex-JNU Students Union (JNU- idly a teacher screaming at the police to proSU) presidents. As student activists, we tect us as it was apparent the goons would thought, surely nothing bigger can be done. beat us up any second. One of the lawyers We were proven wrong the next walked up to her and in a meday when the call for a solidarity nacingly calm voice told her, human chain saw 4,000 partici“We have not started beating pants. Every day, students are you up now, we soon will”. I will gathering in front of the adminnever forget the physical threat Every day, we are istrative block in hundreds. We marching, protesting, that the right-wing goons in lawwait for our teachers to tell us yer coats posed to me and my resisting and we are about the progress in Kumar’s teachers that day. I will also nevstaying strong case or about what the vice-chaner forget the bravery of my cellor said in the most recent teachers who, in the face of immeeting with them. We wait for pending mob violence, were student leaders to make speechmore worried about Kumar’s es and keep our morale up. And when there is safety than their own.

10.57pm One before out 11.35pm Comeby on now, enough is enough! what nothing to do, we fading sing songs of protests, we Let me finish perhaps admitting make creative posters, we recite poetry, we these teachers and student activists ‘are’ laugh and we rage. breeding on campus. Today, more than ever, In JNU, as in every other campus, I’m sure, there are students demanding the right to students frequently try to outsmart their free speech and the right to dissent. Students teachers. Last minute emails for deadline ex- who will not cow down before the JNUSU prestensions, parroting Wikipedia instead of read- ident is released, before all charges on JNU stuing the essays on the reading list, making up dents are dropped, before the witch-hunting dramatic stories of family tragedies to escape stops and before Delhi Police leaves campus. work are things almost everyone has indulged Young men and women are taking inspiration in. Sometimes we are successful, mostly we from each other and their teachers to ask are not. But an underlying assumption is that sharp questions in the face of brute force and we respect our teachers. And this respect is propagandist rhetoric. not blind; it comes from the atmosphere of openness, of freedom and of fearless debate pankhuri zaheer dasgupta is an MPhil student at the teachers have created for us in the class- the Centre for Women’s Studies, JNU

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Cover from the predator

The IPL mirage

An enterprising NGO provides villagers in the Spiti Valley with insurance for their livestock against snow leopard attacks

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hen the April sun melts the snow in Kibber, in the high altitude fastness of Spiti Valley in the Himalayas, snow leopards hunt livestock and hurt villagers’ livelihoods. But what could be a volatile people-versus-wildlife conflict is one of peaceful coexistence.

Cooped up in mud-walled barns for the long harsh winter, the animals were waited on mouth and foot by villagers. The painstakingly gathered fodder stacked on their roofs is now gone. There is no option but to let the animals find what little they can scrounge in the surrounding hillsides. With yells and whistles, the village herder leads hundreds of hungry animals — cows, donkeys, sheep, and goats — to pasture.

The sleek horses and shaggy yaks with their young are out on their own. Since they graze in the high reaches, it’s impractical to herd them back every evening. With no shepherd to protect them, foals and calves are easy pickings for snow leopards. Each adult yak is worth about ₹30,000, while a horse fetches ₹8,000. Even with a herder guarding them, sheep and goats fall prey. But it’s the loss of large animals that hits Kibber’s villagers hard.

Through the long cold winter, inhabitants chant Tibetan Buddhist mantras of compassion to all life forms. Come spring, their beliefs

can be shaken when their losses to snow leop- partment recompensed only three per cent of ards mount. this loss.

“When was the last time a snow leopard was While the state’s largesse is ostensibly to killed?” I asked Kalzang. help support local livelihoods and buy villag“Many years ago, when I was a child. It must ers’ goodwill towards carnivores, its many have been 1990 or 1991. A snow leopard en- pernickety rules cause frustration towards the tered a barn and killed all the sheep and goats, department and antipathy with snow and itlokapally couldn’t get out. In the morning, people leopards. vijay killed it.”

If people had to have space in their hearts Like other states in India, the Himachal Pra- for snow leopards, they shouldn’t be asked to awan Negi’s mind-boggling status in desh Forest Department recomThe IPL, now infor its the ninth season, has come to pay wild cats’ meals.

From Indian cricket lore perhaps the best stay. Launched penses livestock owners foristhe in belief 2008 with much fanfare, the this sprang a village-operadvertisement Indian Premier tournament ated loss of their animals for to the wild has grown enormously, attractinsurance programme for League The staggering figure he ing players from predators.

Until (IPL). recently, it paid acrossaided the globe.

It is aConsuclivestock,

by Nature commanded the latest nothing no more thanin ₹1,500 for aauction preda- hasWith cessfulto brandservation with theFoundation. potential to threaten no shepherd to do withyak, his cricketing credentials.protect A matchthem, tor-killed a sum so meagre thefoals traditional “In forms the game. It is no setheoftraditional insurance fee ₹8.5 crore for a To maximum thatofvillagers scoffed. get even of 16 appearcret rank a slot in an model,cricketers the owner puts in someand calves arethat the young ances in one season, he confessed, this amount, villagers had to was beyond IPL team ahead of playing for the country. and The thing for his own assurance easy pickings his comprehension.

It to defies make numerous trips Kaza,logic, for that IPL, the property of the Board ofprofit Control the company makes outfor of matter.

Negi, withcapital, just three first-class match- Cricket (BCCI) the sub-district about India, has changed theincapital theyindeed generate,” said es in five years, is an interesting 20km away.

If they met all thecase study on the way the game is played.

Yash Veer Bhatnagar, a senior scithe trends have signified criteria, thethat department dis- the game in It has also entist altered thethe cricketer’s approach with foundation.

“Here modern times. months later. bursed money to game. The of franchises thethe question of judgment profits is not there. To when make As a business module, thefrom IPL has proved to investing When Charudutt Mishra Nature Conin youngsustainable, talent has surprised both any programme the premium be a grandFoundation, success. It has cricket and the servation anredefined NGO based in Mysuand the observers of cricket. has coaches to be substantial.

But it can’t be soDelhi high the cricketer.

There in is money, glamour ru, visited Kibber 1995, the spectreand of Daredevils, theno least successful in the that it makes sense for theteam owner.

So IPL, the fame evenbeing for thekilled nondescript player. Negi is a is leopards in retaliation for livenotorious for making poor choices.

Stillthe it conservation programme has to undercut stirring reconfirm.

He is yet to wear the India managed stock losses was real. to shock all by picking Negi for such cost.” cap, and even if he does not,each it willfamily’s hardly matMishra estimated that loss a staggering price. How doesthe it help cricket or To buffer himself against vagaries of nater.

Negi theofIndian squad just in boost added upwas to picked 12 per in cent its livestock holdchances ofowner Daredevils its ture, the a livestock paysin awinning nominal time to ₹4,000 qualify for the IPLand auc-the Forest De- amount based ings or annually, first-ever title? on rates decided by the villagtion and surprised the fraterniThe tournament, with its popty by becoming the highest ularity, and solid TV ratings, has paid cricketer. added handsomely to the BCCI’s What propelled Negi, the coffers. “It is all about money beThe overkill factor most expensive uncapped crickcause the game is reduced to a tadoes not affect the eter, to the forefront was the masha,” said a veteran cricket popularity of the IPL contest between two franchises official. But Ratnakar Shetty, a reeven as domestic keen to acquire a player. MS cricket in all countries spected cricket administrator, is played to empty Dhoni triggered the war and it disagrees. “It helps cricketers segalleries escalated to an extent where the cure their future and also allows individual gained in astonishyoungsters to interact with the ing terms. To his credit, Negi greats of the game.” It is true to an was humble as he benefited extent; but the IPL also tends to from the race between Pune pamper cricketers into believing and Delhi. Dhoni tactically backed Negi, his that this is the format that counts more than former colleague at the Chennai Super Kings, the traditional forms of the game. up to a point.

“It will revolutionise the game,” Lalit Modi, The argument in favour of Negi was that he who conceptualised the format, had made his could give you 20-odd runs when it matters. prophetic assessment in the inaugural year.

He is considered a finisher who has done it Almost every country has its T20 league now time and again for Delhi. He may not be the but nothing to match the IPL, considered the best left-arm spinner but is said to be effective. stepping stone to international recognition.

From a bowler who could bat he is now a bat- The challenge for coaches is to convince sman who could bowl. Negi suits the needs of young trainees to focus on a career in firsthis franchise even though he may not qualify class cricket than a season or two with an IPL to be the face of Delhi Daredevils. franchise. They concede it is a losing battle.

Negi is not the first to be hailed a great talThe overkill factor does not affect the popent because of the IPL windfall. In the past, ularity of the IPL even as domestic cricket in all Kamran Khan and Manvinder Bisla earned countries continue to be played to empty galfleeting praise of little consequence. Khan, a leries. The purist may not appreciate the way left-arm seamer, won much appreciation from cricket has degenerated into a slam-bang afAustralian legend Shane Warne but eventually fair, which is what the T20 brand is, but the adreturned to farming. Bisla, a batsman-keeper, ministrators are not complaining. Therein lies won the 2012 IPL final for Kolkata Knight Rid- the travesty of cricket. It has shrunk to a 40ers, but failed to gain a first-class team in the over ‘spectacle’ with critics fearing for the fusubsequent seasons and is happy represent- ture of the game. ing his employer Air India. The IPL show did stoke their ambitions but the national select- vijay lokapally is the Deputy Editor (Sports), The Hindu orsfind sawwhat little merit T20 in exploits.

Bare essentials At the end of winter, villagers let the animals little they in cantheir scrounge the surrounding hillsides janaki lenin

The IPL has meant windfall for many nondescript cricketers but often it has been fleeting praise with little consequence

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Poster boy Pawan Negi is yet to wear the India cap, and even if he does not, it will hardly matter pti

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dim. “What can I say? Those families object to taking an oath on the Dalai Lama.”

Sometimes the carcass of a calf is hard to find. The snow leopard may stash it in an inaccessible spot, or the carcass may be completely eaten by scavengers. Since the insurance committee has no proof that the calf was taken, it asks the owner to take an oath on the Dalai Lama that the case is genuine. He swears he hasn’t sold the meat, nor has the animal died 26-year-old man has been appreof disease. These families don’t think they hended by the police in Buldhana, ought to take the supreme leader’s name.

Maharashtra with ₹4.5 lakh cash and 17 There’s also another possible reason for mobile phones. The police claimed that their reluctance in participating, Chudim the man had seven girlfriends and stole said. To claim insurance, livestock owners to keep them happy. The man has cases have to leave the carcass for the snow leopard. pending against him in Chhattisgarh If they retrieve it, the hungry snow leopard and Madhya Pradesh, besides three dismay kill another calf and the total loss may be tricts of Maharashtra. He is an alcoholic more. Chudim said the non-insuring families and liked to live a comfortable life. may think that by recovering the carcass and selling the remaining meat, they may get more money than from the insurance.

The 13-year-old insurance programme in Kibber is the working model for eight other villages in Spiti, Ladakh and even Mongolia.

Were people satisfied with the insurance programme, if there was such a huge discrepancy dowry demand for ₹2 lakh in cash and a Royal Enfield between market price and compensation motorcycle turned into a nightmare for a girl from Saamount? ran district in Bihar. When her family could not pay, she was “What’s not to like about it?” asked Tanzin made to labour in the fields in her husband’s village in HaThinley, one of the first villagers to participate ryana. Not satisfied, the family also struck a deal to sell her to in the scheme. “There are many problems, but porn for ₹7 lakh.

Luckilyinfor the is young bride,model she for other villages in Spiti, Ladakh, and even Mongolia janaki lenin Talking point Thefilmmakers 13-year-old insurance programme Kibber the working we are working to sort them out.” escaped to her parents house and informed the police.

Could the insurance programme be called a conservation success, for bringing peace beers themselves. Each insured animal has to be ing them. tween people and snow leopards? identifiable. This precludes the numerous, al“Conservation is a continuum,” said BhatThen in 2008, every land-owning family most identical, sheep and goats from the bought a horse, on the orders of their devata, nagar. “Something that is successful today can scheme, a decision made by the inhabitants. speaking through a human medium. It was a become unsuccessful tomorrow. And vice verThey want insurance only for cattle, horses, disaster. Chudim, one of the members of the sa. You are dealing with an ever-changing insurance committee, said of 33 horses, only system.” and yaks.

“People decide how they want to run the in- 10 survived. The losses nearly bankrupted the Market forces may change the scheme’s surance programme,” said Bhatnagar. “We fa- insurance programme. The NGO had to step in course. Or the devata may have a new fancy.

To replicate this model in areas where peocilitate discussions. We do go with some ideas, with fresh funds to keep it afloat.

The devata owns a stud male of every spe- ple lose crops to elephants or livestock to leopbut we are not stuck with our model. There are differences between the insurance pro- cies, while villagers stock females. When the ards, Bhatnagar said, “One key factor is that grammes in Kibber and the neighbouring vil- devata’s stallion reached his prime, he began the community should have the ability to pay ullets fired by family memprotecting the surviving mares. premiums. People shouldn’t be so poor that of Chichim.” he Rajasthan government haslage ousted bersvillage to celebrate his wed-“The stallion recognises his mares,” ex- paying a viable premium isn’t affordable. ConOnce the four-member insurance Western authors such as John Keats, TS cost a the groom his life plained in Chudim. “When we take our horses servation funds can only subsidise the premicommittee collects ding premiums, foundaEliot, Thomas Hardy and many others from Lucknow.

Instead of welcom[up to pasture in April], he ums paid by the herders if the tion invests one and half times that amount to Std VIII textbooks. Replacing their works are ing the 28-year-old Amit Rastocomes running from a kilooriginal collection is form a corpus.

At the end of the year, the comchapters titled ‘Chittor’, ‘The brave lady of Ragi by firing the metre away. We let our animals substantial.” pays out claims that arepistols cappedinat 60air, the jasthan’ and ‘My first visit to the bank’.mittee The auwayward inthen his family go and he herds them away.

The conservation NGO also has per cent of the corpus.

If lossesshooters are more, Yak deaths are thors are almost unheard of. The textbook ended up killing him.

With the When we try to take them back, the added burden of having to 60 per cent of the corpus is divided equally compensated rewriting committee acted on a government bullet in hisHowever, head, Rastogi he chases and kicks us. He’s doraise funds to underwrite the among families. yak was immediately, since directive to introduce content that will have athe affectedrushed to a hospitalsince but it was ing a better job than any human. immediately, they are essential for premium costs. “Telling any doregional flavour and evoke a sense ofdeaths pride inare compensated too late.

In early February, two Not all stallions are like him.” nor that we will need to keep they are essential for ploughing fields.

The afploughing fields the country.

Samajwadi workers coming in cycles of three years fected farmer can buy an animalParty and not miss cele-Cow yaks, called demo, and their calves enjoy no such promay not always work. In Pakistan a beat in the farmingbrating cycle. panchayat poll results had shot anthe eight-year-old tection. Bull yaks are solitary and Nepal, they’ve made serious The foundation underwrites insurance boy prompting governmuch of the time and do not efforts to link it to other sustainacosts for three years.dead, For the followingthe three ment to ban celebratory possessively herd cows. Snow leopards don’t ble local activities, like tourism, crafts, or even years, it runs on annual premiums and the ac-firing.

Looks the like premiums this order will mess with adult yaks, but target calves. Since micro-finance, which can provide an annual cumulated corpus. Since are have to is beonly enforced a gun. low and bank interest 10 perwith cent, the young animals are most at risk, some villagers contribution to the insurance funds.” The corpus drains. From the seventh year, for a pe- wanted to exclusively insure them. If everyone foundation is working with the community to riod of three years, the foundation steps in followed suit, the programme would have set up an enterprise that could eventually folded up. The insurance committee institut- fund the insurance programme. again to build the capital.

Since 2014, the Himachal Forest DepartHow difficult was it to convince villagers to ed a rule that calves cannot be insured alone.

Demos have to be insured as well. ment has upped the compensation to ₹10,000 sign up to this complicated deal? demo islikely ₹240 to a year.

If itwhen f demands more be met areyaks and horses. As long as bureauThe premium for aare forthey both More than a decade after the scheme began, a snow owner gets from made fromleopard, a height,the then this man Kerala cratic problems remain, these village-run inChhering Tandup Makhan, one of the village is killed by However, it dies of disease, as- thesurance had a good ifshot at being heard.the While state as-programmes help local livelihoods elders who threw his weight behind the ₹13,000. is only ForTan annualKumar pre- climbed sembly was₹10,000. in session, Sudheer a and wildlife co-exist, without letting either scheme, confessed at a village meeting, “I have sured sum of ₹600 tree for in a yak calf, since atattention a bearto the complex to it’s draw hiscosts of the other. the to admit I did not understand much at all mium coconut riskAlong of being killed, ownerschemes gets be- for coconut with morethe welfare As winter envelops Kibber and the livestock about what the insurance programme would greaterilk. and ₹3,000 in case of loss.

For 55is climbers and a pension for those above years, Ku- into its well-secured barns, snow ushered do. But Charu [Mishra] was a friend. I knew he tween ₹2,500 has tree made no claim three leopards mar that wanted climbing to for be considered ‘skilledhunt wild game — blue sheep and Himeant well. So because of our friendship, I de- any family committee waives the annual pre- by work’.

Ladders and a cushion bed bought the fireibex. This is the time Spitians take as malayan cided to support the idea. It did turn out well.” years, the the fourthwent year,unused a no-claim bonus.agreedmuch department as Kumar to climb pleasure as tourists watching the hefty A few years after the insurance programme mium for andOommen calves. Chandy.

Mostdown families andinsure meet their chiefdemos minister spotted cat prowling the hillsides. began, people realised that cows were not at risk because they returned home every eve- A few do not, and I asked why .

“Every man thinks differently,” replied Chu- janaki lenin writes on wildlife conservation ning with the herder. So they stopped cover-

Girl trouble

Man steals to keep girlfriends happy

A

Sold for smut

Haryana man sells wife over dowry

A

Desi education

Textbook ban on Western authors

T

Lethal wedding

Groom felled by celebratory bullet

B

Q R

Nutty protest

Protestor scales coconut tree

I

ND-X _ A

3 23BL BL

hang

saturday, february 20, 2016

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24

in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

T

his week we had a special moment in the history of science — the discovery of gravity waves, also described as ‘baby pictures of the big bang.’ To celebrate, here’s a quiz on famous discoveries.

here,there & elsewhere

Murder poem

Serendipity

1 2 3 4

Forty notebooks of which famous poet’s works were discovered by her sister Lavinia after the poet’s death?

Which international cricketer, who debuted in 2012, was discovered by his coach while working as the foreman of a PVC pipe factory?

Which performer was first noticed in 2006 by the music label XL after a friend posted three of her songs on her Myspace account?

In 1944, photographer John Conover was asked by his boss in the US Army to take ‘some morale-building shots of that pretty girl for Yank and Stars & Stripes’. The girl who his boss recommended was a very young Marilyn Monroe. Who was the commanding officer?

5

What did James Marshall discover on the premises of his employer John Sutter in 1848 that changed the demographics of North America?

6

In 1895, Lord Rayleigh discovered that samples of nitrogen from the air were of a different density than nitrogen resulting from chemical reactions. Which other gas was discovered as a result of the subsequent investigations?

7

Which Indian film legend was responsible for bringing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the attention of the world music community? He first heard Nusrat at a welcome ceremony while in Pakistan and insisted that the singer visit India to perform at his son’s wedding.

8

This species was first discovered and documented by Europeans as late as 1910, when rumours of a ‘land crocodile’ reached Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbroek of the Dutch administration. Peter Ouwens, director of the Zoological Museum at Bogor in Java, first published a paper after receiving a photo and a skin from the lieutenant. Name the species.

his is me, Bins. Today I will talk about a book that SHE won’t read T because she’s pretending it’s too depressing for her. “But it’s set in Japan,” I say. “You love all Japanese things.” “This isn’t the version of Japan that I like,” she says. “It’s modern and urban. Too much like the rest of the world. The beauty, the delicacy ... where’s all that gone?”

I tell her she’s wrong. The book’s name is Journey Under The Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino. It’s not up-tothe-minute modern but set 30-40 years ago. “There are some very delicate murders in it,” I say. “Very Japanese murders. Even the way the story is told is different to ordinary murder mysteries. You should read it.

You would like it. It starts with a police detective investigating a man who was stabbed to death in an abandoned building...”

She’s got her fingers in her ears.

“Don’t tell me the story!” When someone asks me not do something, that’s when I do it! That is normal.

“The man owned a pawn shop. His wife is a suspect and so is his employee. But they both have alibis...”

The story is told like a movie; it creates clear pictures in the mind. It is also somehow quiet. Even though it’s a murder mystery, there’s almost no

screaming. Very little visible blood. Even when people cry, it is with their faces turned to one side. I find it fascinating.

“Pooh,” she says. “You will find anything fascinating if it’s weird enough.”

I nod. Of course that is true. But the book is not weird. It is like a beautiful, precise machine. First we meet the victim, along with the detective, then sloooowly, we are shown all the different people who came near the victim. We are told why they cannot be the ones who did the murder. Then we see other people. We wonder who they are. We struggle with their Japanese names. Then we understand the

connection. Then we see the detective again, quietly smoking in the background... “You see? It is like a Kurosawa film. A beautiful girl with silky hair. The tea ceremony. A corpse.”

Now she has picked up the book.

“It’s quite long,” she says, with an uncertain look on her face. “Yeah,” I say, “but I could not put it down.”

“Yes, I noticed that,” she says. “Didn’t wash dishes for three days.” “I had to concentrate!” I exclaim, raising my hands. The story is told very carefully.

The detective does not give up. I like very much the way the characters see beyond the surface of each other. They read between the lines of conversation. They look into the eyes of the murderer and they see thorns.

The social background of each person is part of the plot.

“Okay, okay, I’ll read the darn book!” she screams. “Stop screaming,” I say. “Stop telling me the plot!” she says, “and I am NOT screaming!” “Not at all Japanese,” I tell her. “They’d scream too, if they met you. Anyway.

I’ll read it,” she says, “under one condition.” I sigh. “All right,” I say. “I’ll do the dishes.” manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

cornerstone

9

Which ancient city was rediscovered by American historian Hiram Bingham in 1911 during an expedition organised and funded by Yale University?

10

Talent manager John Crosby noticed a young girl loudly arguing with a bank teller in Hollywood Boulevard and offered to represent her. She made her film debut in 1995 in the horror film Children of The Corn and went on to much bigger things. Who was the actress?

Answers 1. Emily Dickinson. Only 12 of this reclusive genius’s poems were published in her lifetime 2. Pakistani fast bowler Mohammed Irfan, at 7’1” the tallest person to ever play international cricket 3. Adele 4. Ronald Reagan, who became the American President in 1980 5. He found gold, resulting in the California Gold Rush. Interestingly, Sutter did not benefit from the rush, though his son went on to found the town of Sacramento 6. Argon, named after the Greek word ‘Argos’, meaning inactive 7. Raj Kapoor, Nusrat first performed in India during Neetu Singh’s wedding sangeet celebrations 8. The Komodo dragon, the largest lizards on earth 9. Macchu Picchu, one of the prominent cities of the Inca empire that flourished till the 15th century 10. Charlize Theron ND-X _ A

joy bhattacharjya is a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj

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