Blink issue 110 mar12 2016

DOCTOR DO-A-LOT Azad Moopen, a regular on Forbes’ rich list, helms a conglomerate of healthcare institutions scattered across West Asia and India p6 saturday, march 12, 2016

vivek singh

Keeping peace is hard in Manipur’s Churachandpur. Its Kuki-Chin-Zomi clans do not share dialects or trust, but are holding onto an uneasy partnership against the State, to protect their right to live and own land in the hills p10

A town on tenterhooks

ART ARISE Catch the mustsee shows of spring-summer in galleries across the country p14

UNITED COLOURS OF BIRYANI Nothing else can match the fan following of this one-pot dish p19

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Marching on Myrmecologist Sunil Kumar holds forth; (below) as many as 80 ant species have been spotted in Lalbagh tara thomas Onerachel too many Anekantavada or many-sidedness in Jainism is like the parable of eight blind men and the elephant

Getting all antsy The gamblers of Kaliyuga

wikimedia commons

THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

A Sunday morning at Bengaluru’s Lalbagh is devoted to scurrying, agile ants

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engaluru’s ephemeral spring is almost over. You can tell the restlessness of the mercury once you step inside Lalbagh Botanical Garden, which is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the fast-warming city. Gentle rays of the morning sun fall on the walkways bustling with n the Indian epic Mahabharata, a minor people trying to overtake each other in the called walking.

Rituparna nameking of brisk In explains between toit his all, charioteer Nala how to of count the leaves there’s a colourful group children and and fruitswith of anmagnifying entire grove, just byStrolllookadults armed glasses. ing He these boastsparticipants that he has gained ing at offone thetwig. paths, of Ant this fromthat the scurry study beof Walkmagical examineknowledge trees and ants chance in gambling: “Knowledge I possess of tween rocks and leaves. theLed game dice, thus is mythat skill organises in numbers.” by of EcoEdu, a group naMany earlytalks, cultures of the world ture walks, workshops and allude camps,simthe ilarly to the mathematical art of statistics.

Ant Walk begins with an activity where everyFirst random sample taken from the colone isa asked to draw anisant.

What follows is a lection to be countedof— facts five throws of dice in a quick run-through that the average game, random votes in are an opinion poll. personoris20 familiar with: ants mostly black In but are nottiny, all methods, the sample is takorsome red; they but put together they outen to represent the average the weigh the humans on the distribution planet. They of move entire collection — such as apples in anmost ordead things around, some sting, and chard, red blood cells in human bloodants use their antennae to the sense and commustream, or Jews their in a certain nicate, because eyesightprecinct is weak. of Nazi Germany. The final count’s accuracy depends Open season on the method used because the trick is in defining what ‘randomness’ of in a samA flurry of terms — petiole,consists nodes and thorax — ple.

But in back the same way a telescope you takes me to biology classes atlets school. observe statistics is the black Lookingfaraway around objects, at the chirpy kids exchanging art of about counting fromand a distance. facts worker nurse ants with each On the otherifhand, systems that generate other, I wonder the EcoEdu team will be able randomness example, gambling) to hold their(for attention fordice overintwo hours? have been interpreted as the isexpression Whatalso about mine?

My curiosity assuaged of divine of the most ancient of these once we will. startOne observing the ants of Lalbagh. occult systems is —the I Ching, which claims Out of the 12,000 some say 22,000 — species that the 64 inin itsthe deck arefew a microof ants, wehexagrams spot over 15 first mincosmic, combinatorial representation or samutes. In two hours, we’ve also seen the diacample of possibilities in ant, thewhich, entireaccording Chinese ma (diacamma indicum) cosmos.

A on scholar of communication, Peter to articles the internet, is a queen-less geZhang hasalso noted “The hexagrams of the nus. We spotthat weaver ants, acrobat ants,I Ching areaayellow predecessor of the and even crazy ant.

Thebinary latter issystem classiLeibniz reinvented. line, the fied as an invasive The pest undivided in Australia where, yang, is the equivalent of one,they andare the‘eradicatdivided with the help of helicopters, line, yin, isareas the equivalent of zero. ed’ bythe baiting as large as 2,000 sq In m. the digital age,into thesmaller binary groups systemasisthe thewalk hidden We split promedium or milieu of our existence, theant-cenformal gresses. The conversation is largely cause of our mode being andofmanner of dotric, though on aofnumber occasions it

A history of making choices by counting from a distance

rohit gupta

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ing things. Probabilistic thinking is valorized To see how this model is a typical feature of all over again. Happenings tend to be grasped the world after the 20th century, here is a defiless in terms of linear causation, and more in nition of ‘probability sample’: “A sample in terms of the fusion of chance and necessity.” which every unit in the population has a The statistician PC Mahalanobis traced the chance (greater than zero) of being selected in origin of qualitative statistical thinking in the the sample.” In a sense, the very process of a Indian subcontinent to the Saptabhanginyaya pure democracy can be defined within samor the ‘seven-fold’ system of logic attributed to pling theory, and therefore the concepts of Jain philosopher Bhadrabahu, who flourished probability and chance. An election therefore in the 4th century BC. Just like the eight tri- is a sampling technique that represents the grams of I Ching which combine like chemical opinion of the entire population — for five touches upon the magical effect that elements to form the complexity of magnify64 (8x8) years mon good theof colony. such as theasred in theofcase India.Ants In democracy, in ing glasses have on all age groups.

Keepingout us spectator hexagrams, Mahalanobis also pointed fire possesssports, what the now infamous evolutionMindy Peden reminds us: company, as wellbe as aplaying guide is Sunil Ku- ary biologist“Chance that there might hypothetiRichard is Dawkins christened the great equalizer‘the in mar,eighth co-author of Onina this Trail Jain with Ants. He says green beard the cal element gene’ — a that theory became sense all that parties to thea he has spotted overdesigned 80 species system of dialectic, “toin the gardens bone of contention between andanything William flirtation know...him that of Lalbagh. Over course of the walk, he D Hamilton.could rationalise and thesystematise They happen.” recognise the presence of shares experience many ant facts.

As some what offers”.

Thechildren certain markers in other — According to Achal Oza,ants time In a comsense, the veryshared genetic plain did of hunger andtothirst, “These of primarily Jains not fail pointKumar out says,process potential queens — like anda game protect in Hinduism is also of a pure antsthis are made intonothing delicious in some them that logic had to chutney do democracy can beor killchance: females“...divided that do not into bear four this difdefined within parts abstract, of Coorg.”

My favourite with absolute truths marker.

Ants(ages). fight aggressively to ferent yugas The names of sampling theory learning the day is thetheotrail (such as ofmathematical protectyugas theircome territory dethese fromand a dice that ants rems) but leave were for onlyother basedants. on spite being predators, theyperiare game popular in the Vedic “Ants reality leave —pheromone lived where theretrails are great ‘ecosystem engineers’. od.

These yugas are known as the Most ants use their that other ants can sense. The no absolutes.

On getting read up on Krita or Sat home Yuga, ITreta Yuga, antennae to sense pheromone strongest on In Europe,trail the isfirst enumerant colony algorithms — route Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga.

The and communicate, the shortest possible route to methods ation of modern probabilistic is Krita Yuga is named optimisation techniques in the use after the best roll and becauseKali theirYuga after food.” to Girolamo Cardano, an inveterate credited across today that are the industries worst.” Therefore, if one eyesight islooks weakat democracies gambler and mathematician. It is an interestbased on and their foodas aants game of chance, the Tiny learnings ing contrast that in Jainism, probability smallest probability finding ismissions.

Pheromone that Kali Yuga will be The behaviour of ants is often emerged as a system of metaphysical reason- rolled, but it exists scentsno evaporate oversmall. time, wipmatter how anti-human.

Weitself. create waste; ing about reality ing away the short It is important for those whoroutes. build Other their they movemodern away plenty manCertain views of neuroscience envi- knowledge ofants sense on thisnumbers, and eventually the world on stamade and natural waste and use it forassustesage the human brain or consciousness a gi- tistical end upsurveys in the long we see, for and lines samples, andforaging those who nance and building.

Theirofcolonies ant democratic assembly neuronshave thatintrivote rule fooddemocracies, in their deceptively haphazard but orderthat given a limited set of cate patterns, channels and chambers that choices, to make decisions.

The currently dominant ly manner.

No matter thea size, blind the output of such system mayants not help aerate They are great examples of be paradigm of soil. fundamental physics known as solved our logistical issues centuries before a measure of the prevailing opinion, but what Kumar calls ‘a collective intelligence’ in only quantum mechanics was erected

by Heisenwe even knew we had them. of the inherent uncertainty. action.Pauli, He explains that unlike ants berg, Schrödinger and humans, others, also gupta explores theis history of science tara rachel thomas a freelance writer as based do notupon always display traits of selfishness based the principles probability,and its rohit in Bengaluru t@fadesingh individuality — Uncertainty working instead, for the com- Compasswallah pillar being the Principle.

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Machan, vote podu Fun posters and viral videos are encouraging Millennials in Tamil Nadu to go out and get inked… at the polling station, that is

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rom the first week of February, for at least two weeks (eons by social media standards), Facebook newsfeeds and WhatsApp groups in Chennai were flooded with memes of Shaktiman, Nokia 3310, ICQ chat boxes and Chiclets — all of them relics from a bygone era; and all of them tagged with a message on the lines of “If you remember this, then you must be old enough to vote. Act your age, register to vote.”

And just as the posters began fading from the fickle memory of digital natives, up popped a video file of cricketer R Ashwin with the label: “Dhoni or Virat, Ashwin answers”. Click on the video, and Ashwin starts off in Tamil, “Is this the question you need to worry about?

There are many other things that are much more important. Check first if your name is registered on the voters’ list.” This was clickbait at its cheeky best.

Similar videos with actor Surya, cricketer Dinesh Karthik and squash ace Dipika Pallikal, as also scores of memes tailored to a Tamil Nadu audience rapidly garnered likes, shares, comments and retweets. All of them came from one source: State Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni’s Facebook page TNElectionsCEO and Twitter handle @TNElectionsCEO. The EC in Tamil Nadu, like elsewhere in the country, makes an effort to increase the voter turnout during elections. Since 2009, under the Systematic Voters’ Education for Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme, the EC has run campaigns to inform voters about the correct identity proofs needed, location of polling stations, how to use an electronic voting machine (EVM), poll timings, how to file complaints and so on.

In TN, for the first time, the EC is using social media as a promotion tool.

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hen you think government, you think boring. We wanted to change that. We also didn’t want to talk down to people, we wanted to converse, as you will with a peer,” says Bala Manian, the 38-year-old strategy head at OPN Advertising, the agency behind the Election Commission’s spirited drive to get social media talking about voters’ rights and duties.

In its first phase, the #TN100percent campaign is encouraging people to vote. Ahead of the elections on May 16, the next two phases will focus on ethical voting and ensuring a 100

Booth camp The OPN Advertising team behind the Election Commission’s #TN100percent campaign

per cent voter turnout, respectively. Although The social media and online campaign will there have been similar campaigns in Maha- be followed by TV and radio spots, as well as rashtra, Gujarat and Delhi, asking people to go outdoor ads on billboards and bus shelters. out and vote, the TN campaign has created a The use of humour-laced intelligent messagstir all its own. ing makes this election season stand out from “We’re trying to create a movement of sorts, all previous ones, which were marked by a where everyone is emotionally invested,” says preference for sombre political posters. ComS Chockalingam, the agency’s 40-year-old cre- plaints, if any, may be sent directly to the EC on ative head. “The fact that ours is a young agen- WhatsApp (9444123456). cy also helps massively. The brief The ad agency and election ofwas to attract the 18- to 30-yearficials are confident that the next olds to this issue and I think we two phases of their campaign were able to do this.” The agency will be received equally well. In a In the 18-29 age was also behind the IPL Chennai group, we have 23 per State that boasts an average voter Super Kings team’s long-pop- cent voters — that is, turnout of about 70 per cent, the ular “Whistle podu” campaign. campaign aims to yank in the reabout 1.34 crore maining 30 per cent too. “If it e decided to tweak the were a normal brand campaign, campaign to talk in the then this attention we have got language of young people about would have been enough. But the things they liked,” says Lakhoni, about the this is our State and we feel quite passionately campaign. “In the 18-29 age category, we have about it,” says Manian.

23 per cent voters — that is, about 1.34 crore. Of “I mean, for us it will not be enough if a perthis, around two per cent are not registered to son just comes to vote; it’ll be even better if vote, which works out to 10 lakh people. The they talk to ten other people and tell them, first phase is targeted at them. We are using ce- ‘Machan, come and vote’. To achieve that last lebrities differently by drawing attention and mile, that will be the hardest,” she adds. focusing on intelligent content. That way the campaign generates positive publicity all sibi arasu is an independent journalist based in Chennai around,” he adds.

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Motherimpact of big data Deep

Numbers don’t lie: Malnourishment among children starts with the things that society does, A diving session Seychelles illustrates the orscuba doesn’t do, for theirin parents, especially the mother adaptability of the human mind and body same time, I was working on a study in Haiti, where poverty was deep, and women were compelled to walk hours to markets to sell their goods, their little babies, sometimes barely a month old, often left in the care of other children. I have met women in Uttar Pradesh who were utterly weighed down by all they had to do to keep their babies fed because they were too poor, had little food, little ability to make decisions for themselves, and certainly no clean water. I met women in Bangladesh — with so much spark and not as much poverty as in places I’ve visited in Bihar, but with so much to manage in their busy lives that it was challenging to find ways to care for their babies. But all these women and their families did it anyway, to make children’s lives as decent as possible.

So how can the government and society support these families and women? We need to make it easier for parents to do their job of parenting and caring for their children — this, in turn, can put babies on a path to better nutrition. And, it is possible. In Haiti, this was done by providing a food security and healthcare package for all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and for babies up to the age of two. In Bangladesh, this was done by providing families with a decent cash transfer, together with information on the right food choices. In Brazil, this was done through a combination of cash transfers, and supply of dj mattaar/shutterstock basic healthcare, water and sanitation.

Down to basics Every time we study programmes that try to improve the diets of poor families, we are also compelled to confront the conditions that led to poor ever hold your breath!”

The instructions were wonderfully laid-back, repivory.

They our roserecent in flat,India wideHealth plates Report and intriIn India, on nutrition in the first place sanjit das/ bloomberg PADI diving instruction book- resentative of the island spirit. cately patterned white towers Nutrition shows fans, that sharp these essentials areand nolet said the phrase in bold red The boat that took us far out to the Coral stubby Brightfamilies. yellow There and are black where inoutcrops. place for many 27 began studying nutrition lettes — twice — to as transition fair warn- Garden pregnant women Bihar.

These— was numbers Reef — a diveinsite off Mahé load- striped swam through theimagine formations million fish births annually.

Now the to scuba the hotel industry, to become ing to newbies.

On anot balmy autumna ed connect the lived of mothers and while with to a dozen or reality so experienced divers, clown fish darted around thenew anemone. struggles that half, or more, of the mothpublic professional, certainly some morning in health the Seychelles, I wasand descending families arehad trying to bring and dives. nour- A of that whom clocked overup 2,000 fatand sea families cucumber layencounter lazily on the ers will in seabed. states like notinto a storyteller.

But ofOcean, biology, rapidly the depths ofthe thestudy Indian a Once ish their children across India.

They matter they’d set off, Randy proceeded to beex- Bihar, TimeUPhad My breath had steadied. andslowed.

Jharkhand.

Life is slightly better biochemistry and physiology hooked me onto belt of 4kg lead weights slung around my plain causehand people must understand that poor Somehow, signals. in this magical blue universe, in a state like Odisha, where basic healthI had sernutrition and cylinder banishedstrapped thoughts a hotel waist, oxygen toofmy back.caTo nutrition among children starts with the slipped An upheld hand means stop.

“Don’t be giva second skin, discovering glorivices forinto mothers and babies are in place, but reer.alarm, It wasI realised a slow journey fromI’dunderstandmy with a start, broken the ing things that society or he doesn’t do,confor ous high-fives underdoes, water,” said. To weightlessness, altered vision, alien poverty, poor sanitation, food insecurity and ing the biology cardinal rule. of nutrition to appreciating firm theirall’s parents, the mother. good,especially make a ring with your thumb sounds, and neware ways to breathe poor education problem areas.and In move. states that the biology of what nutrients do inyour the and Instinct.

It’s most natural to hold Myindex workfinger, over two has been to try The like decades you’re saying ‘fantastic’. mask obstructs peripheral visioneducatand I like Kerala and Goa, women are more humanthe body is a culmination of aunderwater. series of so- A breath instant your head goes and understand howmean women makegreat choices thumbs up doesn’t you have div- swivelled my head furiously, keen notmore to miss ed, more able to delay marriage, have accial,last political, and economicinto conditions that The time I’d backflipped the ocean to ing about whatit to feed go their babies and how the cess to sanitation, chops, means upwards. anything.

Suddenly, I saw antenatal care, areno in one, less put people — especially poorest most Swimming dive was over a decadethe ago, aged and 15, when public health nutrition with and flippers takes just expanse of murky pooran households and, thus, blue. their vulnerable in situations where they cannot there’s little— fear of the unknown.

This time some community canused support them. getting to. “Move “Have I drifted far?”

I thought children are intoo better shape. nourish their bodies was not quite as easy.and those of loved ones.

Colleagues from around the your leg from the hip, like kickin There a moment I glanced are of nodread. easy solutions A thumbs up doesn’t Getting there Overinstant the past fewthe years, as surface, my worksalty andwaca- ing The I hit ocean world have spent considerable a football,” Randy advised. In up to We seemust human here. all shapes do whatfloating we can I haveyou methave women in mean great Air Seychelles operates reerfilled evolve, has become a mission of sorts to trying ter myitmask and stung my eyes.

Breathtime with mothers Banto poor keep up, Iin have a few metres above me.

In this to make things work, especially Uttar Pradesh diving chops,who it a direct four-and-a-half tell through stories about these conditions that lead to morphed ing the regulator was laboured; I had gladesh, into Haiti,a bobble-head.

Ethiopia, Vietworld, there more for the poor; make sureare girls are were utterly weighed watery means go upwards hour flight from Mumbai poor using data.

Backmy in nam, to be nutrition, conscious mostly not to breathe through and India. Inof almost every A few moments fear on the than two directions to consider. in school, that sanitation prodown by all they had 2008,Movement as new datawas emerged fromwhat the National nose. restrictive, with all ocean’s instance,surface, every and country, thisI to Mahé.

I realised On the ocean floor, I ranthat my grammes actually work, to do to keep their Family Health Survey, I realised how little dis-I had the equipment, and I was exhausted before worknowhere takes us back the basics. to gotobut down. fingers through shifting health services are the available for babies fed Stay cussion there was about the sorry state of nu- Using even started.

Every the timeropewethat study proanchored sands, sharp coralshould remnants everyone.

There be The Savoy Resort and trition inmy children and women.

Today, with the For all aquaphilia, there was a sudden grammes that try to improve boat I slowly descended, all the while grazing my skin.

The hour elapsed far too enough jobs to put money in the Spa is a waterfront new data from the Rapid Survey on Children, breakdown of faith in my own abilities.

My en- equalising the diets of poor are — families, exhalingwesharply against quickly and apockets pleasedofRandy signalled was the poor.

The itnumproperty on Beau Vallon, and trip the to emergence of more tire the Seychelles hadpositive built upstories, to this pinched also compelled the nostrilsto soconfront my ears popped.

In a dra- time to surface. bers tell the stories of the chalwithin easy distance of there is still a need to tellwas stories using moment.

Yet, my mind blank as Idata. strug- matic conditions thatRandy led toletpoor the lenges motion, go ofnutrition the rope,inmakI have since divedmust in other, more-touristed that parents manage in order to the dive centre.

Thetomotivation is clear —I’d bringing toaboard public ing gled recall instructions received firstaplace.

Thesegesture conditions differsweeping withare hisstarkly hands, and locations, where beginners are bodies. made toThose link nourish their children’s little Tip discourse things we’d rather sweep under the floated the boat. Something about equalising and varent from anything we inAll theI privileged away backwards. heard was secmy hands andthe stay withincome arm’suplength of strateach who make policies, with the Sign up for a diving carpet.

That in statesPanic like Rajasthan, one out of rattling ious hand gestures. set in. tions of society Forthe instance, breath.are Tenfamiliar metreswith. below ocean other.

It was only how heremuch in theto Seychelles egies, and decide spend onthat tack-I course or an every two women saytothey were married be- surface, There was no cause worry, of course.

I was I gave birth to my daughter a small college swam it was darker, cooler,infull of shadows fargrand and free, though the watchful ling this problem of under malnutrition must introductory dive with fore thewith age of thatDivers, 90 per an cent of house- and diving Big18,Blue established townalien in the US, surrounded medicreatures.

A swarmby of the tinybest silver fish eye ansight instructor, to discover not of lose of this simple fact. a new world holds ininOdisha haves no centre Beau Vallon on toilet, Mahé,that runinbymost the swam Big Blue Divers cal care.

I breastfed myseaweed daughter in a wonderpast.

Spools of danced in the and emerge with reinforced faith in the hupurnima menon is a senior research fellow at the statesLiz only a thirdan of experienced the mothers Dutch of children calm Fideria, lady depths. fully supportive environment family care, Spiky black sea urchinsofsat calmly on man mind and body’s capabilities. (www.bigbluedivers.net); under come five have at least 10 years of education, who’d to dive in 1995 and never left. Ran- the where I had time from work, enough food International Food Policy Research Institute, and coocean floor, atoff once gorgeous and dangerthey have 75 dive sites author on the Global Nutrition Report as well asfreelance the India bhattacharya is a Delhi-based thatmy poverty is stillwas widespread, and that basic dy, instructor, a local Seychellois with ous. to eatAnd andeverywhere, enough time to rest and rejoice in malavika otherworldly coral forto choose from.

Healthwriter Report on Nutrition health services reaching evenswag. half His the mations bleached blondearen’t dreads and serious the wonders of ofa lavender, new baby.

At around the travel in hues green, brown and

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Uneasy reflection The Modi government’s brazen support for political violence makes it a mirror image of Jyoti Basu’s (in picture) government in West Bengal arunangsu roy

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Horseshoe theory Kanhaiya’s ‘communism’ and Modi’s ‘fascism’ are alter-egos of each other. Both are antifreedom and bad for business

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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he more you bend a straight iron rod, the closer the two extremes will come to each other. If you are good enough to bend the rod perfectly, you will get a horseshoe shape with the ends within kissing distance of each other. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party took power, the Hindu right has tried to bend the iron rod of Indian pluralism with its rabid majoritarianism.

The further it has tried to bend the rod, the closer it has come to meeting its other end, its alter-ego: left-wing extremism. The extreme right and extreme left have more in common than they care to admit.

North Korea is the best current example of the horseshoe theory of political science.

North Korea is a communist nation in name, but ruled like a fascist state with a hereditary dictatorship, supported by a crony military elite. The deification of the dictator, the extreme nationalism, xenophobia and militaristic state are straight out of the Third Reich manual, and far removed from Marx or Engels.

From the Soviet Union to eastern European nations, to Cuba, ‘people’s revolutions’ have ultimately descended into tinpot dictatorships, not the egalitarian societies that its leaders promised.

Closer home, West Bengal’s communists under Jyoti Basu ruled more with fear than hope: fear of violence, fear of the foreign, fear of big business. In contrast, Narendra Modi’s right-wing government is friendly to big business and foreign investors. But its brazen support for political violence (the Patiala House lawyers who thrashed Kanhaiya Kumar still roam free and Muzaffarnagar riot-accused are ministers in the government) makes it a mirror image of Basu’s government in West Bengal, where communist cadres killed and looted with abandon, all in the name of the ‘people’s revolution’. For the right wing, ‘na-

tionalism’ is their ‘people’s revolution’: the Gujarat, where the mercantilism of the popgangajal that washes away all sins. ulation meant the Left could be rolled over Not only are the extreme left and right simi- without a fight? How did they think they lar, they also need each other to survive. Less could get away with this assault on a beehive than two years ago, communist parties in In- called Jawaharlal Nehru University, which dia were reduced to just 10 seats, a historic fall houses some of the brightest, most driven and that many believed it could not recover from. idealistic young minds from across the counThe fruits of 25 years of economic liberalisa- try? It takes extreme arrogance or extreme stution had created enough mass resentment pidity (or both) to do what this government against India’s welfare State hangover. Young, did in JNU. aspirational India wanted a leg-up, not handI am a capitalist and business owner, who me-downs. Trade unions were losing their rel- believes that the tyranny of the Left is as bad as evance in the new India. the tyranny of the Right. I grew up in Basu’s Class struggle for a utopian equality did not Bengal and consider it one of the worst govvibe with India’s millennials or their elder sib- ernments to have ever ruled a state in India. lings, who are now the decisive demographic And yet I joined the student protests to free group in Indian elections. Mocomrade Kanhaiya Kumar; I di’s victory was the most refound myself cheering his sounding victory for the free speech and the electric crowd as market in independent India, they fearlessly took on Modi I hope Kanhaiya and the most crushing defeat for from the ramparts of JNU, a camunderstands that the communism. Even in its baspus with which I have a long free market is an tions of Bengal and Kerala, red association. azaadi was no longer the coolest colour.

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It says something about the ineptitude of the Modi government — and the complete loss of a great reforms mandate — that a communist student leader is now the talk of the nation. A student leader who mistakenly frames azaadi from hunger and azaadi from capitalism as the same, and gets away with it, though more people have died from hunger in communist nations, and continue to die in North Korea. Kumar’s rise and the revival of the Left are the natural result of the political violence of the right wing, which Modi has failed to control. The revival of the extreme left has re-established the political equilibrium that was disturbed by the rise of the extreme right.

Did Modi and the RSS think that India was

safe, I hope that Kumar and his colleagues read up the old adage: If you are not a socialist in your 20s then you don’t have a heart, but if you are still a socialist in your 30s then you don’t have a brain. I hope they understand that the free market is an azaadi they should also be fighting for. Way more Indians have found azaadi from hunger in the post-liberalisation years than they did before.

As for Modi and his colleagues, they need azaadi from the prison of their own hubris. To translate the words of Pakistani poet Habib Jalib: “The one who held this throne before you/ He too was sure that he is God.”

sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of The Political Indian t@some_buddha

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Kerala doc’s Tentacles of Gulf-returned the network medical empire Arun Krishnan’s novel shows us how social media can be a conduit for criminal obsession

What Azad Moopen started as a private clinic in Dubai gradually ballooned into one of the largest healthcare groups in West Asia and India

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arly in this novel, the narrator-pro- the real, soft flesh of a real person? the mores, manners and rituals of American tagonist Arjun Clarkson is quoting a So this thriller is, in part, a comment on a society as if by rote; he offers us little observaBuddhist sermon for the edification world where privacy and anonymity are al- tions about the world he moves in (“If you give of a woman bartender. She listens in- ways fading. But overemphasising that aspect a signal that it is all right to be politically intently at first, intrigued by talk of “bodily sen- of the story might mean treating Clarkson as a correct, white businessmen feel more resations on fire”, but as Clarkson drones on cipher and ignoring his very particular quali- laxed”). But he is also an outsider in a wider about more abstract things, she loses interest. ties. He quotes the Buddha often (not just sense: he has trouble relating to people in gen“She had begun to fidget,” he tells us, with ap- when he wants to torture listeners) and wears eral, and there is something mechanical Wealth wellness Moopen, and Managing Director, Aster DM Healthcare parent in relish, “SheAzad twisted herChairman hair anxiously T-shirts advertising his beliefs, but we can tell about his attempts to be warm and social — into knots of the hangman’s rope. I felt calm from the start that something is off, that a consider a scene near the end where he speaks and equanimous. I enjoy watching the insides time-bomb is ticking away. He reminded me a to a little boy, or the one where he reads an Moopen went toeven Du- little of people fill uphen withAzad unease and anger, all thefrom makings of an entrepreneur, in effect. pushes a different of direction.

When des- email of you the in protagonist Bret Easton Ellis’s Michelle after they spent the night bai in 1987,words he wanted to ac- American as they are listening to the of the BuddHowever, and the decision doctor tiny knocks, you — shouldn’t complain of noise Psycho a bonafide psychopath or together, wonderstoifbecome “Thanksafor the had sex— earn ha. It is the most complish benevolenttwo waythings by which one someone been an emotional one. The youngest of five pollution,” theagood doctorlife wisecracks, seated with rich inner using fantasy to ual intercourse last night” would be an apt recan cause pain toenough others.”to build a palatial cope brothers and two this sisters, was barely at hiswith office inmoral Kozhikode’s Malabarhim.

Institute the decay around Not- ply.

“Or perhaps, wasMoopen an occasion that house then Clarkson bring back a ‘foreign’ A withstanding As it and happens, — who works car. in an 15 when away.

He knew that of Medical Sciences before his name,(MIMS). he also Long has some of called forhisa father more passed informal communication: general physician, been teaching advertising agencyMoopen in Newhad York — will soon the alwaysfor wanted oneWould of his chilcrowd-funding on as an idea, Moopen his father had markers ofcaught a modern-day ‘Thanks the sex.’ that at the Government Medical College, Kozhifind more gruesome ways of causing pain.

His Karna, a doctor. used itthe to build the ₹60-crore hospital in 2001 dren to become Mahabharata anti-hebe the gentlemanly thing to do? I kodemurder when heisdecided to take a five-year sab- ro, first committed in an unplanned “He used to like the medical profession as andwho later became its majority shareholder. is mentioned in the hadn’t read anything or overbatical. had gone to Dubai earlier infrom 1986,his as book: full of anger because of his burst of “I violence, spurred by demons one of my brothers-in-law a doctor,” Mooheard any was conversation that thriller is, in part, orn to affluent family Kalpakanpart but of athen philanthropic to collect past, things spiralmission quickly: one crime inability pen remembers.

After hislight MD deto an belong, lashing out in This would helpobtaining cast some on chery, in Kerala’s Malappu- a comment on a world gree fundstoto(and build a mosque in my hometown in at the leads necessitates) another, and he sets Calicut Medical College, world while simultanethisfrom matter.” where privacy and ram district, young Kerala,”bending he recounts.

A senior from his college, about the American dream of “Yes, ously he became a lecturer there in 1982. trying toa fit into Moopen it, using Here and elsewhere, Clarkson was inspired by his to father’s who wastopractising in the Emirate, had con- skill we can” his own purposes.

Killing becomes with weaponry carve imout anonymity are always emphasises the importance of alfading hen destiny knocked, even vinced Moopen to move to Dubai for a career aportant an addiction, a self-fulfilling prophecy. place forstanding himself. in their vilways being a gentleman, but he When destiny Sr would have lage.

A wealthy landlord, Ahmed opportunity.

“Therea was theatmedIt also becomes wayan of option hittinginout the This is a suspenseful narrais not aMoopen suave, controlled killer in knocks, you been pleased the turn Lechis UnniitsMoopen a freedom ical college to take without losing seniorimpersonality andleave the hypocrisies of the so- tive, urgency was growing as Clarthe league of,with say, Hannibal shouldn’t complain son’s career tookseems towards fighter and philanthropist ity. I took age, it, intending to return five kson’s cial-media while working withafter the very potential victimswho — ter —medical his calm surface to of noise pollution entrepreneurship. had helped build the local hosyears,” tools ofsays thatMoopen. age. The initial murder is an indi- including the one person who is conceal waves of hysteria. EvenIn signs Dubai,that Moopen’s desiremore to repital, school and post tooffice.

But he didn’t return. What started pri- genuinely rect result of Clarkson’s ability — via as thehis ubiqsympathetic him, a girlfriend tually, there are he is feeling home his first teach“People,Michelle including policemen, vate clinic in network 1987 gradually uitous online MyFaceballooned — to trackinto the named — drift in and out of view, and comfortableturn in his owntoskin.

Thelove book— has as — waned thesong years‘Mack rolledthe by. came to him to solve problems.

I detective be- its epigraphing one of the largest groups in West movements of an healthcare ex-colleague, a woman he as his encounters with a sceptical lyrics fromasthe His wife Nazeera three daughters — Allearntedgier. decision-making him,”clunky says the Asiaa and India.

The clinics, pharmacies has crush on. MyFace, a barely disguised and ver- come The prose isfrom somewhat in Knife’ — lines aboutand an underdog with a lethal isha, Ziham and Zeba wanted son, who became on a student leaderItin college hospitals in Moopen’s holding Aster places sion of Facebook, is the book’s company, other protago(“I stepped the staircase. had been concealed weapon that—healso uses againsttoa stay forback. As his clinic grew increasingly and successfully campaigned against the gov- midable DM Healthcare, generated an estimated nist, a Big Brother monitoring the actions$890 and lying undisturbed.

Now, it resented being adversary, the ‘shark’.

By the busy, end, itthe is doctor’s tookhis over.

“Busiernment’s to accord MBBS degreewith to homillion in revenues this year.

He is a regular movements of hundreds of millions of peo- woken up. move It creaked and complained a clear thatbusiness this Mackinstincts is spreading net wider nesslooking was in for mynew blood.

So he I started opening meopathy doctors. on Forbes’s rich homicidal list, whichspree valued the 62-yearple, and Arjun’s might be said long, drawn-out sound”), but I couldn’t always and sharks can — to use somore clinics,” heparlance says.

Sr had been particular about two cial-networking oldinvolve doctor-turned-entrepreneur’s at tellMoopen to both collaboration andwealth defiance: if this was a shortcoming or a way of con— ‘poke’. No wonder conspired to favour him. At things —Clarkson’s his youngest son must read Mathrub$1.1 billion what couldin be2015. a more intimate, more immedi- veying solemn awkwardness — allCircumstances those MyFace stocks are plummeting. hoomi and the Thecase, Hindu and he the turn of the 21st century, Dubai’s economy back, the learning is that you ate“Looking way of “connecting” — re-establishing the whichever theevery voicemorning; does fit the charsinghFlush is a Delhi-based wasarjun booming. with oil writer money, the Emirhad toOne excel in the mathematics. have jai might start trying totodothrust something, but into God acter. human touch — than a real knife gets impressionHe heshould is learning

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Antisocial Arun Krishnan HarperCollins India Fiction ₹299

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Made in Dubai The Aster DM Healthcare group’s first multispeciality hospital, in Jumeirah

ate’s rulers embarked on a flurry of construction, promoting Dubai as a tourism destination. Architectural marvels such as the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest structure) and the Jumeirah Palm (largest manmade island) brought travellers and investors in hordes.

Professionals from across the globe arrived to take up lucrative jobs.

Moopen’s business model proved hugely successful. Each of his clinics had a pharmacy, and they fed each other’s growth. As his clientele grew — Moopen himself saw up to 100 patients a day — he quickly realised the need for a professional to run the business.

“I was the first non-family member when I joined the company in 1998,” says TJ Wilson, Executive Director of Aster DM Healthcare.

Among the clinics Moopen was adding to his chain were a few bought from relatives. “A relative based in London was struggling to manage his clinic in Dubai. So we bought it,” says Wilson, who also heads the group’s governance and corporate affairs. “As Dubai boomed and new neighbourhoods came up, we replicated our clinic-pharmacy model in more locations.”

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oopen sensed his next big opportunity in Kozhikode. It was the 1990s, and patients in this coastal city travelled all the way to Chennai and Coimbatore in search of quality treatment. “We decided to fill the gap,” he says simply. His network of friends and relatives helped raise the money. Nearly 40 of them came forward with contributions ranging from ₹50 lakh to ₹1 crore each. Not only did Moopen get to spread his risks, the coming together of likeminded investors also made the hospital a community project.

He got another crucial factor right. “Azad picked the best of young and middle-aged doctors from India and abroad, including many from England and the US, for the hospital,” says KK Varma, the group’s chief medical officer, medical director of MIMS, and also Moopen’s former teacher. “He bypassed the local, entrenched doctors. This helped because the young doctors he hired had the hunger to do well. They needed to grow, and for that the hospital had to grow. It was a smart move from Moopen,” adds the paediatrician-sur-

geon and former principal of the Government ery schools — Toddler Town British Nursery — run by his second daughter, Ziham.

Medical College, Kozhikode.

Twenty-nine years after shifting to Dubai, By 2005, Moopen’s healthcare business had grown so big that he no longer had time to Moopen certainly has a lot more than one papractise medicine. He would soon joke that latial house and a big car, and that includes a his wife asks their children and grandchildren recently added Maybach. Those close to him to consult other doctors when needed, as her swear by his humility. He carries his bag to ofhusband has lost touch. Around this time the fice and has lunch with everyone else in the group had spread outside Dubai to the rest of staff canteen (even if his table, unlike others’, UAE, and beyond to other parts of West Asia, is covered by a clean cloth). Some see this endearing side as part of a well-cultivated perincluding Qatar and Oman.

His ambitions could no longer be bank- sonality, one that helps in networking.

But the man himself is clear about the legarolled by just friends and relatives. In 2008, Moopen raised money from India Value Fund cy he wants to leave behind, as also how to susAdvisors (IVFA). The fund house invested in As- tain it. “I don’t want to be seen as a moneybag. ter DM Healthcare’s equity once again in 2011. That demoralises me. I want to be known as a The following year it partly diluted its stake to doctor, a family man and a philanthropist,” Olympus Capital, which also bought primary says the tycoon, who has dedicated 20 per cent of his wealth to philanthropy. “I want to divide shares in a $100-million investment.

Suffused with capital, Moopen opened even my wealth equally into five parts. I have a wife more clinics and hospitals in India and West and three children. The fifth part will be for Asia, and acquired a few too. Interestingly, in the people who require it. So 20 per cent of the India, Moopen has desisted from opening wealth will go to charity.”

The Chairman and Managing pharmacies, even as peers such Director wishes to retire in five as Apollo have been bullish in years and take up a non-executhe segment. “The margins are tive role. He equally wishes to very low here,” he reasons. MoreI don’t want to be separate business from family. over, bulk purchases were not seen as a moneybag.

“Separation of the management profitable as “there are many That demoralises me and ownership is the best; otheragents between the manufacturwise, inefficiencies creep into the er and the retailers”. system,” he says. This might he group gets its highest sound contradictory when you margins from hospitals (nearly 25 per consider that two of his daughters are incent), with the clinics up next (about 15 per volved in the business. cent) and the pharmacies bringing up the rear The eldest, Alisha, is a chartered accountant (below 10 per cent). At 300 properties, Aster and handles the group’s West Asian operDM Healthcare has everything from budget ations. The youngest, Zeba, has just completed clinics to super-premium hospitals, including her medical course and is deciding between Medcity in Kochi, which opened in May 2015. joining the group’s management and healthThe pace of expansion is worryingly remi- care segments. niscent of other ventures that have lost steam Moopen, however, is in no doubt. Aster DM eventually. Wilson admits there is pressure Healthcare Group, which also has plans for an from the private equity investors, but also reit- initial public offering, will be board-driven erates that the group is sitting pretty on a fa- and run by professional CEOs. While there’s vourable debt-equity ratio. nothing new in this, few first-time entrepreMoopen is in no mood to stop, having set a neurs have actually been able to remain Vision 2025 statement for his business. Addi- hands-off from their babies. Dr Moopen’s pationally, he has ventured into the education pa skills will be called in on this one. sector — apart from a medical college in Wayanad, his family has invested in a chain of nurs- prince mathews thomas

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PICTURE THIS

The boys at the tank No aad(h)ar for the elderly PRESENT IMPERFECT

Pushpa Rawat’s second non-fiction feature, Mod (The Turn), confirms her position as an Theunusual Aadharand cardaffecting mechanism against inclusive nature of technology. It abandons those voiceis in Indianthe filmmaking with fading fingerprints or ageing irises to their own devices trisha gupta

from the inability to see themselves as legitisubjects of inquiry.

There’s thethen. boy who read.mate It broke my heart to see Mr K’s face describes and hisown tanki cohort as He was defeated;himself let down by his hands. “third class”, of andmis-identifying the other who fingercalls them The problem “garbage” association by the prints is not one(an to be dismissedunderlined as an aberrathat accumulates around tion trash unique to actually Mr K. Research shows that, the tank). fingerprints “Why don’t you gowith interview some other inevitably, fade age. Certain some good and people?” saystreatanother. kindspeople, of chemotherapies radiation is it to that bothers you? Doentirely you think I ment“What also lead faded, sometimes will misuse it?” asksWorking Rawat. “Why you dovanished fingerprints. withare your ing—it especially at all?” comes answer. handling hands if ittheinvolves reversal of the gaze——can thedamage woman bebricks, The or other rough objects hind thehandling camera and youngall men prints.

Even a lotthe of paper day,inorfront of it utensils — is sooninso normalised that itresult feels like washing the kitchen, could the least important thing This is in fingerprints being erased.

Theabout officialMod. rebutdeny thatisthere are Aadhar moments when tal tonot thistoargument that the also re- Raher vulnerability cordswat irislets information, so itshow. doesn’t really has beenwith her “dream” matter.When Thereshe are says two itproblems this — to work with boys at the one, reading iris the information itselfwater is justtank, as er- they laugh. especially But she carries on, not to bewith put off: ror-prone, in senior citizens “Don’t youSecondly, have a dream?”

Theagencies reply comes cataract issues. most nodal couched cynical humour, it has the ring are loathe to in install the costlierbut iris-reading of despondency: dream is that from tosoftware.

In fact, when“My I came back to Delhi morrow, I won’t comewho to the and spoke with an official is water in thetank.” know tanki emerges a sort of negative of mostThe things Aadhar, he as told me that, techni-idena place that the boys gravitate to because cally,tity, good fingerprint readers must be able to have nowhere to go. read they even feel the they fading prints of the else elderly.

ButWhat Rawat movingly captures is their sense is there a norm that agencies buy only the top-of bestuck.

Clear-eyed end, ing good machines?

No. enough to see they’re at a dead end, implementation they cannot see aofway If Nirnay This shoddy theout.

Aadhar, focused thenoself-perpetuatadded to the our factattention that thereonare possible ing cycle of women’s of marriages workarounds to young it, leaves peoplelives, like Mr K deand motherhood off all othereven options, pendent on younger closing family members, Fine lines Apart from old age, fingerprints can be damaged by certain kinds of chemotherapies and radiation then Mod reveals exactly how stultifying though they themselves are capable and con- the treatments, or even handling a lot of paper all day satyanarayana gola options are for poorown urban young men.

If they tent to take care of their affairs.

This robs fail — as so do — toand extract senior citizens ofmany their agency leavessome themvalue arlier last week, I went to Mumbai for tion office. The lady at the office keyed in our vulnerable from the rigid, unsympathetic, un-eduto the moods and whimsoften of their Backone to square Pushpa Rawat’sthat film movingly of being stuck of theone few activities make captures details her andsubjects’ a draftsense of the rental agreement in children. cativeAnd school system, then what what of those who areoptions alone?does me feel like an adult. I was travelling the government-approved format appeared. How this country offer them? are they expected to get their rent agreein my capacity as a landlady. Ok, I am Then, I was asked to pose in front of the cam- ments registered In some ways, Mod be seen as a conor buy anmight apartment? ’mtotrying to understand making this out be a bigger deal thanboys,” it is. we her ex-boyfriend, his parents temporaryInupdate era. Afemale picturefriends, was clicked.

A fingeron since RahulI Roy’s the week came When back, Four Pushpa Rawatin sayMumbai at a certain Still, I do have hear a little apartment her own, with Mod, Rawat printand reading device was thrust at turns her gaze a Friends Meet (2000), which alsoJaitley focused Finance Minister Arun an- on a point her film is replying and for the last fewin years haveMod. hadShe a pretty further outward. me. I little placed my left thumb on it. It group ofnounced school dropouts growing up in the in the Union Budget to call onehim of Mr herK. interlocutors, who easy tenant. Let’s Her subjects here are us nottopeople she knew Nationalthat captured the print and asked Capital Region (and which Roy Aadhar will be made into a folInevitably, know whyinto thismy earnest Mrwants K is 78.toHe moved houseyoung while‘didi’ to makemy a film about them. fade wait before while she it decided cross-checked lowed up in In 2013 with film about law. fact, theanother government is in the fingerprints has house been turning for months,and camera his own is beingupdemolished re- in she has connection with the boyswith at the printBut against theadatabase of AadBut here suchmen). a hurry that the theypersonal have al-docuage same young atlived the Pratap Nagarfor water tank in Ghabuilt.hand, He has in Mumbai most of his tankirecords.

— largely school dropouts who spend mentaryready har card Within a few secreveals how much is shaped by the circulated theitdraft of the ziabad they hangcareer. out. He is inde- onds,their life and has where had a fulfilling time playing and doing drugs. Ra- filmmaker’s a window poppedcards up saying owndecided persona.to As pass the older, bill and it as bettera boy she addresses doesn’t scoff of at her. pendentThe and proud.

His wife died a couple wat’s younger brother frequented the place, educated my fingerprint matched the one in man, bill Roy in received an uncomplicatmoney this session, so as with heartbreaking matter-ofyearsInstead ago andhe hesays pretty much manages everyandItsometimes still does. This Aadhar. was all super-efficient from his Jahangirpuri not ed to respect allow any Parliamentary thingfactness: himself.“Here, you will only find those whom might be why the super-impressed. group does not and super-quick.

I was subjects, and This perhaps that status delays in its implementation. makes the one to understands.”

Thenolease the house had expired and we respond to Rawat theThe belligThen, it was Mr K’swith turn. photo was Aadhar card, andalso allowed him to drawin-them the important biometric Rawat’s moving testament had to renew it. patient, In the light of myfilm lackisofainitiaerence sexual swagger clicked.

Theor fingerprint deviceI imagwas brought out onmandatory such things for as sex and girls formation many My dream is that it stores, tochasing her scrupulous effort toMr understand tive in the paperwork, K did mosta parineK pressed they might shown out. Mr his lefthave thumb on it. It read andamong notions things. MostI serious thisofis masculinity. access to ra- Rafrom tomorrow, ticular set boys:anthe oneshewho gather of it himself.

He of found agent, drafted theevery another woman a towon’t the print, andyoung then asked us with to wait be come wat,distribution being a woman, and much tion and the public system.

The to the day at the tanki, a few minutes from theaplace new agreement and he waited for me to fix camera. film makes matched withYethisthe Aadhar card. Ititdid not water closer to these boys in age and poor, who qualify for this, and are often the tank lives with her family. date where for theshe registration.

When I landed in match. clear that his they remain ambivaHe tried right thumb.

No match. He ones working with class, doeshands, not command authortheir will be the Like poignant, powerful film, NirMumbai, he her sat me down and made first me read and herNot one worst-affected. Yet, triedlent withabout eachher of presence his 10 fingers. itythe in the same way, nor isnot it easy proposed law does nay (Decision, for whichofRawat shared dithe entire draft. He2012, was in charge this whole project, the camera matched.

Theand agent tried toitself. calm us down. have any alternative for herprovisions. to broach the topic of roIt simply credit with Anupama thingrectorial and he was executing it with theSrinivasan), preci- “Sometimes Somethis worry that with a visual rehappens the elderly,” he abandons thosemance sex. She remains whoseor fingerprints have the not exactly ethnography, nor journalsion Mod and is authority I am certain he demonof them in ‘disreputable’ said. cord He made Mr engaged K press his fingers into aactivalways empathetic, cufailedoutsider, them, touncertain their ownbut devices. ism,all northose autobiography.

Rawat strated years that he belongs was anto the jeopardise their future. Technology dampities padwould and hold it there forpresent a while.orHe rious but never prurient. is expected to be an inclusive same professional. world as her characters, and yet she wiped is In the employed fact hands Rawat starts her film voices, and then we with re-tried.

No talkBut the of authority is notan the same as mechanism.

In lack not thinking through alterwholly of Thewent camera in office her hand Thenot following dayit.we to the of (as ingOn about whether the camera capturing match. any of the fingers.

The onlyisoption the lack of an authorial voice.technology That, Rawat has native for biometrics, the Aadhar one ofThe her friends outthe ingovernNirnay) has the agent. agent had points access to their faces. “She’s only to shooting ourwas hands,” we had available, according the agent, in spades. it can only gain from her openwill work in theAnd exact opposite manner. gained hersystem some distance ment’s online and thisfrom way her we lower-midcould that says one, and then we seetothe tossing ness to new experience. the lease be transferred Mrhands K’s son, t@veenavenugopal milieu.

Andregistraif in Nirnay avoiddle theclass rushGhaziabad and long wait at the the cards downwere as the boys enough decide how whose fingerprints young to bemany trisha gupta is a writer and critic based in Delhi she brought her very particular intense, seri- hundreds of rupees they’re betting. ous-minded scrutiny to bear upon her closest But the other aspect of ambivalence arises t@chhotahazri

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BAWDY LINE

Intellectual jeopardy L’affaire Kanhaiya makes me wonder where I would want my son’s loyalties to be — to the mind, to sceptical inquiry, to reason? Or to the mindless worship of something absolute?

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Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer

t was in the wake of the trial, in 1894, of the French ‘gaddaar’ Alfred Dreyfus that the word ‘intellectual’ was brought into being and first summoned into service.

Dreyfus, a captain in the French artillery, was accused of treason, tried and convicted for selling military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Two weeks after his conviction in a closed court, Dreyfus was put through the ceremony of military degradation, where he was publicly shamed, his medals, badges, epaulettes and other insignia were torn off, his sword broken, his cap knocked off, even as he protested his innocence and feebly shouted ‘Vive la France! Long live the Army!’ He was subsequently deported to Devil’s Island, French Guyana. The French establishment, the French people, and almost all major newspapers assumed his guilt; and when the forensic evidence was found to be false and fabricated, the authorities invoked the greater good of the nation-state to suppress calls for reopening the case. When that fell through, they dogwhistled to the right-wing press to try and infect public opinion with anti-Semitic rage.

Dreyfus was, after all, a Jew from Alsace.

Chants of ‘Death to the traitors’ and ‘Death to the Jews’ became commonplace in the streets of Paris. A strange, coercive moral terror roiled the possibility of any real questions being asked on the innocence of Dreyfus. It was a scandal that convulsed the French nation and sundered all public opinion into two factions: a small minority that believed in the innocence of Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards), and a bloodthirsty majority that bellowed for his blood (the anti-Dreyfusards). Into this sulphurous maelstrom of public opinion was released Emile Zola’s open letter to the President of the French Republic Félix Faure. Printed on the entire front page of L’Aurore, it brought out ineluctable forensic details (marshalled to maximum literary effect) that established not just Dreyfus’s innocence, but also the guilt of the true perpetrator of the crime, Ferdinand Walzin Esterházy. It stated, in a carefully objective way, with evidence, the complicity of an assortment of generals in conducting a foul and ‘monstrously biased’ inquiry, the culpability of at least three handwriting experts who submitted reports that were wilfully deceitful and fraudulent, the criminal misconduct of the War Office in using the press to coordinate an abominable campaign to mislead the people of the republic. Zola signed off with the following: “My fiery protest is simply the cry of my heart. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the inquiry take place in broad daylight. I am waiting.” Within the week the word intellectual (intellectuel) had attained common currency as a term of abuse for the Dreyfusards. Maurice Barres, darling of the anti-Dreyfusards, wrote a lengthy piece in Le Journal called ‘La Protestations des Intellectuels’, in which he mocked them and explained the term. Half-cultured poisoned

mous sleep medicine specialist, etc. All friends and colleagues. This is an abbreviated sample post (not an original production, but forwarded in the group): Khatre ka udghosh baja hain, ranbhoomi tayyar karo, Sahi waqt hain chun chun karke, gaddaron par vaar karo.

Nahi tumhare bas mein ho toh humein bol do Modi ji, Samvidhan se bandhe hamare haath khol do Modi ji.

Agar nahi kuchh kiya samucha bhaar uthaane waale hain Hum Bharat ke bete bhi hathiyaar uthane waale hain I cannot believe that in a group of 150-odd doctors there isn’t a single JNUphile/ partisan of Kumar; leastways none coming out openly.

All this, in the polite conventions of WhatsApp messaging, is allowed to go unchallenged.

As I sat down to explain L’affaire Kanhaiya to our nine-year-old, I wondered where I would want his loyalties to be — to the mind, to sceptical inquiry, to reason? Or to the mindless worship of something absolute? This whole No mincing words Emile Zola wrote an open letter to the President of France, in support of ‘traitor’ thing bears an odd relationship to the life of Alfred Dreyfus afp/daniel mihailescu the mind. What is the right place of the nation and nationalistic piety in the life of its people? spirits, he called them, those who were asham- The hubris of religion that it has acquired in ed to think like the simple French, had no roo- many of us — is it on account of a religious imtedness to the true culture of la patrie (the pulse? Does it come from the desire to worFatherland), traitorous and unfaithful to ship? Is the object of piety a secondary matter? blood and soil, blighted in thought and abnor- Nation worship, like religion, in its marrow, mal because their only allegiance was to the has some articles of faith that are sacred. You mind. And to sceptical inquiry. can run in your head Douglas Adams’s summa ‘Sambhal ke rahna apne ghar mein, apne hi of religion: “Here is an idea or a notion that gaddaaron se’. This song from the 1958 film Ta- you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; laq was recently circulated in a large What- you’re just not. Why not? Because you’re not!’ sApp group that includes me. This group was If one were to implant in a child credulity started largely for the purpose of about the sacred, will they not interchange of banter and reparlearn to look upon the sacred as a tee and perhaps entertainment, resource? And a warrant? but now has started looking like These disruptive ideas of scepActively vocal a syndicate of reactionaries that ticism that I might want my son members of this fetishises the nation and beto understand, the ones that group are gravity lieves, in a sternly prescriptive place principles of truth and jusdonating figures in way, that Kanhaiya Kumar’s guilt the world of medicine tice above the nation, are they is necessary to the safety of the not the same ones that might alcountry. This is a bloc of anti-JNUso plonk questions in his head philes, all struck with nationalisabout the petty vindictiveness of tic piety, all consistent in their God in the Satyanarayan Katha; or belief that any defence of Kumar, Umar Khalid the need for propitiating such a being at all? and JNU is treasonous. They are also consistent Would I not want him to realise, perhaps even (in their fulminations) in their use of the word before his voice breaks, that a moral and ethi‘intellectuals’ pejoratively. Actively vocal cal life can be lived without religion? members of this group are, I daresay, gravity I also told little Rudra the Dreyfus story. He donating figures in the world of medicine. was pleased with the manner in which it endThey include: a pioneering laparoscopic and ed, in 1899, with the eventual pardoning of ano-rectal surgeon (the anus is to him what Dreyfus. The French republic had regarded the daffodils were to Wordsworth), an incredibly rights of one Jew, under the law, as having gifted and prolific neurosurgeon (known for more value than a national climbdown. clipping cerebral aneurysms with spectacular I do hope that he grows up to be an insufferand joyous regularity), a trailblazing cardiac able little intellectual. surgeon, an eminent oncologist, a thoraco asatwik@gmail.com scopic surgeon (on the cusp of greatness), a fa-

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the message was longer, the crowd bigger, these were his people, they understood what he was saying. Slowly, tempers seemed to cool.

Pastor Benson had saved the day. Given the long history of mistrust among the tribal groups in Churachandpur, the movement against the three land bills introduced by the State government in August 2015 had almost turned communal, and then it didn’t.

God had intervened.

Speaking after the incident, Benson explained his reasons for venturing out that menacing day. He said he didn’t want people National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhilying injured or left for dead from police firMany facets of an artist: Collections from thelike Bhupen ing, it hadKhakhar happened on August 31 and Sepestate tember 1, 2015. He had hoped that the sight of Till March 30, 11 am – 5.30 pm a pastor approaching the warring sides would dissuade any heavy-handed action from the he works of artist Bhupen Khakhar have The recently police. samebeen pastor had, during a huge revisited and re-evaluated as an important in the by various heads of gatheringpiece addressed larger puzzle of India’s history of Modern painting.

His 2015, vowed to pray for churches in September works were previously neglected as their homoerotic con- leader who sold out the the death of any tribal tent often drew the ire of right-wing conservatives.

At most tribals of Manipur. exhibitions of the artist’s works, organisers made sure thatcountry, but people walk “This is Christian his explicit paintings never saw the light ofthe day.Cross This collecwith on one shoulder and an AK47 tion is not very different either. It showcases Khakon the many other. of The Church here is a failed instihar’s paintings that speak of the issues of theremarked proletariatRobul Pudaite, a senior tution,” and the common man, while discreetly skirting around member of the Kuki Student Organisation Khakhar’s sexuality. Be that as it may,(KSO) the collection showand a local.

“What started as a great cases a vibrant section of the late Baroda Schoolhas painter, movement been diluted by the actions of who fused elements of everyday kitsch withPastor a unique some.”

KhenapTombing refers to the curproach to modern painting. rent impasse as the Language Wars, between His very first exhibition, held in the utilised cut- clans, which — despite the1970s, Kuki-Chin-Zomi outs of gods and goddesses from calendars, coming street from graffiti the same stock — have strong and other elements of popular culture.and In this exhibition we springing from the diaunique identities see some of his watercolours and a few canvases.

TheseAre-Presbyterian pastor who lects they speak. markable works showcase his brandruns of gentle humour, a major group of educational instituwhich pokes fun at the predicament oftions middle-class society. in Churachandpur, Tombing wishes the Painter, pioneer, firebrand A watercolour by Bhupen Khakhar Church would play a more proactive role in solving the crisis. However, like they have done historically, its leaders have rallied to keep the various ethnicities together over the last six months, ever since the face off over the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket, Delhi three bills began.

Dayanita Singh Most recently, tensions heightened beConservation Chambers: Museum Bhavan tween the two old warring factions of the KuTill June 30, 11 am – 6 pm kis and Zomis after one side announced the burial date for the nine dead who have reayanita Singh demained in the district hospital morgue for scribes her mediclose to six months, and the other side veheum as photography mently opposed it. Then, in a surprising turn and the book as her priof events, a local WhatsApp group called for a mary form. She ‘has total shutdown on February 12 and 13, and this been preoccupied for proved hugely popular. People in large numsome years now with bers converged on the hospital to prevent the conceiving alternabodies from being taken away, speeches were tives to the presentadelivered by tribal leaders belonging to varition of a static print on ous civil society organisations, women prayed the wall’, and with at a memorial for the dead near the morgue. ‘evolving a portable arAt Sielmat, a small village in Lamka, hundreds Hidden depths “This Way and

by Mekhala Bahlwomen gathered on a chitectural form that of That” young men and Different chants Pastor Benson addresses, and prays with a large group of protesters at Sielmat images: vivek singh can function bothKhuptong as a bridge to prevent the entry of uniformed men site for display, and a into the town. repository for her phoGallery Espace, 16 Community Centre Memories of the August 31, September 1 killn what seemed like a quiet Satur- around and went toNew tographs’. In her latest a chemist nearby, Friendsshop Colony, Delhi ings of protesters were fresh in their mind. No day afternoon, a 36-year-old pastor the only one allowedis to offering, presented at in case thatremain | that is open,

by Mekhala Bahl vehicle was in sight, and groups of young men named Benson Khuptong spoke a of an emergency. Here, KNMA, she may have quickly wore tra- patrolled the streets and kept vigil at the morTillhe March 24, 11 am his – 7 pm Permutations “Museum offew Chance” Dayanita Singh quietbywords over tea with his ditional cassock over his clothes and walked gue. Women’s groups tried hard to keep the just found the ideal hyremiering Diarylooked Entriesgrim. is theThe pregnant wife, gave her an affectionate kiss right back into the middle brid between exhibiof the after the successful group exhibition peace. Things whicharmed befuddles and de- in and left home on foot. No vehicles were on the commotion. He first playful tion, book and museum piece. turnedsolo show by artist Mekhala Bahl, two main groups active lights, creating words and images that lead viewer engage with outside a complete shutdown.

The exhibition at KNMA brings to lifestreet Singh’s work — inita was manner that is dynamic, editable and right, and crossed the 300 yards thethe area — thetoZomi Revolutioninternal — Christian one that does ary notArmy, deal with facts wing or clear slowly forexhibition, half a kilometre, can take on more than one narrative atHe anywalked given time.

In the the artisthis presents self- him fromher separating the first set dialogue the armed of the This is affirmation. mind the matter at hand.

Ten minsufficient structures — what are referred to asfocused mobile on museums — which function as sites disofofprotesters.

He delivered a Zomi Re-unification Organisacountry, but people These are an unusual partthe of Cross Mekhala’s tion oeuvre, in that conutesBringing later he emerged from a side street onto decades play, preservation, circulation and storage. together photographs spanning short ofprayer and wordlessly (ZRO), and the the visual Kuki National walk with tent the manner letters composed the main Tedim road,that which through her artistic oeuvre, these structures function as repositories alsocuts provide a performative handed over to them ancreates artifi- meaning, Organisation — gave out stateon onein shoulder and of anonymous using alphabetical letters from ments newspapers magazines.

Lamka town permutations in Churachandpur district, Mani- cial space in which her images come together in infinite to allow for unexpected poetic rose that he fished out of his for andand against the burial. an AK47 oncut the out other image pur. design Crowdsand were gathering on sides,are integral and narrative possibilities. Says Singh, “The architecture of opposite the museums bag, as a mark ofEach peace.

He is more than the sum of its parts. Lines, dots, seemingly aro understand the ongoing bitrary marks dots, dribbles of rubber had burnedhandmade here continuousto the images shown and kept within old them.

Eachtyres large, wooden, structuredidn’t can bespeak their language — and scratches, tonal variations, patterns, one must paint,ethnicthe texture of the surface of the matrix,imbroglio the uneven edges of look the at for over 24 hours.

A large number of armed placed and opened in different ways. Itlyholds around a hundred framed images, of which thesome town is divided along the origins of Mekhala’s the ethnicearly conflict all work together to evoke a visceral response. stateincommandos and police stood in no Visit are in view, whilst others wait for their turn the reserve, stored inside the structures.” ities the and they don’t paper speak—each in the hills ofas Manipur. prints and paintings have been described diaries containing notes in trying to keep mobs site-specific work to experience how theman’s worldland, created

by Singh is notthe oneangry of static nostalgia, butdialects but understand other’s them. He then The wounds of the 1997-98 civil war between a secretthrough language. from getting to each other. an evolving experiment of thoughts and visuals. turned around and walked a barrage After a close inspection, the pastor turned of security personnel to the other side. Here the two sides, as it is commonly referred to

hills won’t talk to each other

Tapping the excitement created around the India Art Fair, galleries across the country are hosting some of its best shows. Here’s a summary of shows that you should not miss

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It’s an uneasy peace in Manipur’s Churachandpur as the deeply divided Kuki-Chin-Zomi clans join forces against the State to protect tribal land ownership rights

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Apparao Galleries, 7 Wallace Gardens, Nungambakkam, Chennai Art on the Body Till March 15

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earable art is not an entirely new concept, given that shringara is part of the rasa theory and ornaments are seen as artworks in the context of Indian tradition. However, within the parameters of modern art, it has been relegated to the niche of craft. This exhibition is an attempt to change that view. It displays one-off wearable art pieces created by cutting-edge contemporary artists, making the appreciation and contact with art an everyday experience.

Time to heal Local leaders address a large crowd atThe the artists district hospital Stop sign A blockaded street, to prevent security forces from entering the town featured in this exhibition include Smriti Dixit, who is known to create installations that revolve around femininity using evhere, are still fresh. According to some figures, eryday materials like sacred threads, clothes more than 900 died that year after Zomi tags and tea-cup handles. armed groups fought pitched battles against For this exhibition she has created floral their Kuki counterparts. Many years and a wreaths to adorn the neck, finger or shoulder. peace accord later, it still doesn’t take much to Pallavi Gandhi, on the other hand, picks a comdisrupt the fragile peace. posite narrative technique: each piece tells a stoKhenthang, the external affairs secretary of Heart-on-sleeve Jewellery designed by Priya Sundervalli ry using many techniques and ideas at the same ZRO, who has been with the group since it was time. formed in the ’90s, references British politicSenior artist Masooma Syed is a sculptor and fession and she refers to natural forms to create ian Churchill in his conversations: “there’s a painter who works with the idea of identity and delicate flowers that adorn fingers and wrists. wartime strategy and there’s a peacetime the self. Here she has worked with materials that Birgitta Volz works with fused glass using gold strategy.” The armed groups here want an amievoke the pace at which the creative process and silver to suggest celestial bodies. The simple cable settlement of their demands and are happens. Priya Sundervalli is a ceramist by proforms evoke great lyricism and beauty. willing to hold talks with the Central government. Years after they signed a cessation of hostilities agreement, in 2008, with the governments at the State and Centre, the situation remains disruptive; now they are working with civil society organisations to find solutions.

Vigilante beat Groups of young men patrol the streets at night

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After bloodshed An all-night vigil outside the district hospital morgue, in memory of those who died in the violent protests on August 31 and September 1, 2015 Picture of courage Muktasree Chakma Sathi shahidul alam

Arts And Aesthetics (AAA), Lado Sarai, Delhi Kalpana’s Warriors: Shahidul Alam Till June 17, 11 am – 7 pm

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n a perfect example of art meeting activism, Bangladeshi artist Shahidul Alam’s exhibition, curated by Ina Puri, is an evocative, multisensory installation; a tribute to activist Kalpana Chakma. Drawing from research by social scientist Saydia Gulrukh, Alam creates works that stand as pennons to the activists who, like Chakma, have either disappeared or faced severe losses because of their political views. Using a technique known as laser photo etching, Alam has created portraits printed on straw mats that are hung from the gallery ceiling. The mood is meditative and the presence of these personalities is accentuated by the smell of the mats and the glow of large candles, which are the only source of light in which the work is to be viewed. The intention is to recreate the sparseness and thrift of the surroundings in which Chakma lived. “Making the works on the mat surface were challenging as one had to calibrate the exact amount of ink and burn that was required to create the portraits,” says Alam. While the works are technically challenging, importantly, they evoke the right emotions.

Firewall At Sielmat bridge, protesters block entry into Lamka town

ada, the 26-year-old owner of a small store Delhi’s Jantar Mantar since November 4, 2015. outside the district hospital, described Singh told the tribal representatives that how he was asked by one of the doctors to the State legislature passed the bills knowing press down on the exit wound on the chest of very well that the Centre would never accept a young boy — the first casualty brought in on them. Now, a district remains paralysed by August 31 — as there weren’t enough medical protests, bodies remain unburied, and the staff around. precarious situation in a war-torn State has As the blood oozed out between his press- been compounded. ing fingers, the boy died before his eyes. After Since Singh came to power in 2002, more all these months, Dada’s hands tremble at the than 3,000 have perished in periodic insurmemory. All those who were shot, mostly gency-related killings, according to figures on from behind, leaving exit wounds in the front satp.org. The victims include civilians, securiof their bodies, came from poor backgrounds, ty force personnel and militants. Nine more just like Dada. There’s a palpable tension in lives seemingly do not matter in Manipur. the Muddy town. waters “The SS Salween” hand-made pigment on cloth, with hand-made Khaizasong Guite, the foundteak gilded frame The and the ing president of ZRO, who had andfiring brass name platenine deaths came about after six tribal MLAs’ led the organisation during houses were gutted in the fiery some of the worst years of fightChemould Prescott Road, Queens Mansion, Mumbai eruption of outrage at the pas- Even a minor incident ing and violence in the area and — a stone hurled, a Desmond Lazaro sage of the three land bills, is now its advisor, is categorical bullet fired, a child The In-Coming Passengers which locals fear would impinge in his reading of the current sithurt — is in danger of Till April 16 on their right to live and own uation: “The dead speak more spiralling into an land in the hills. But the incident than the living in outright war-like esmond Lazaro’s solo exhibition focuses on his mixed ancestry and his personal expebrought together tribes that are Churachandpur.” situation various spaces of identity and lineage. riences that have been a result of negotiating alike and yet so far apart. It had Churachandpur and its surHe was born into an Anglo-Indian family in Leeds, England. His parents had migrated seemed impossible before. rounding areas are on edge; even from Burma in 1957 and Lazaro’s great-grandfather hailed from Madras in the 1800s. HavOn December 29, 2015, Chief a minor incident — a stone huring travelled across the globe, moving from Leeds to Baroda (where he did his MFA at the Minister Okram Ibobi Singh met led, a bullet fired, a child hurt — is Faculty of Fine Arts), he never returned to England, and now lives with his family in Ponrepresentatives of a Joint Action Committee in danger of spiralling into an outright wardicherry.

(JAC) from Churachandpur that had been like situation. After a short visit to her homeIn a true coming together of East and West, Lazaro combines contemporary concerns formed in the immediate aftermath of the town, Kimte Guite, a 27-year-old postgraduate and narratives with the historic painting traditions of Rajasthan, especially Pichvai paintpassage of the bills. who teaches college students in Delhi, deings, and mimics the techniques of Polaroid photography in his paintings. Having masThe chief minister told them that the bills scribed the situation as surreal. “Everybody tered miniature painting techniques by studying for 12 years under Jaipur master Banu were passed under pressure from CorCom, a seems to go about their daily jobs, but there’s Ved Pal Sharma, one of the few living experts on this ancient tradition, Lazaro creates a conglomeration of proscribed militant a deep sense of anguish amongst the popworld of family images that resemble both the present and the past, where migration and groups operating out of Myanmar. This makes ulace, everybody tries to hide it but it’s evisettlement are recurring themes.

Manipur a special case, says Romeo Hmar, the dently undeniable.” convenor of the Manipur Tribal Forum Delhi, which continues to lobby with the Central vivek singh is a documentary photographer and georgina maddox is a Delhi-based art writer government and has held a protest rally at journalist based in Delhi

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Two to tango A pair of pintails take flight at the wetlands of Mangalajodi

Feather touch Mangalajodi in Odisha is a success story in the conservation of birds and a unique ecosystem

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angalajodi is a green speck on the north-eastern fringes of Chilika lake, Asia’s largest brackish water lagoon that stretches across 1,100 sq km. One of the 130-odd villages on the banks of the Chilika, Mangalajodi’s wetlands provide refuge to nearly three lakh migratory birds every winter, adding several colours to its marshy waters.

The migration season kicks off in October.

The early birds are soon followed by rafts of ducks and bevies of several other kinds. The village echoes with the trilling of the feathered visitors, some of whom stay till early summer, while the permanent residents can be seen through the year.

The expansive wetlands, mostly covered by reeds, are also a source of income for the fishing community from the nearby villages. The birds are often seen resting on the edges of country boats as the fishermen wait after casting their nets in the shallow waters.

Mangalajodi is also one of those conservation success stories in which poachers have turned protectors of a unique ecosystem and its rich avian life. Some of them are now employed as birding guides for tourists. Less than 100 km from Odisha capital Bhubaneswar, Mangalajodi is a birdwatcher’s delight minus the ugly trappings of commercial tourism. ashoke chakraborty

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Keen eye A kingfisher looks out for prey

Row, row, row Country boats venture out for fishing on the Chilika lake

Small fry A fisherman looks for a catch in shallow waters

Country roads A herd of buffaloes heads home in a single file

Off you go A moorhen watches a ruddy shelduck take off

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Collateral gains The burning

the message was longer, the crowd bigger, these were his people, they understood what he was saying. Slowly, tempers seemed to cool.

Pastor Benson had saved the day. Given the long history of mistrust among the tribal groups in Churachandpur, the movement against the three land bills introduced by the State government in August 2015 had almost turned communal, and then it didn’t.

God had intervened.

Speaking after the incident, Benson explained his reasons for venturing out that menacing day. He said he didn’t want people National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhilying injured or left for dead from police firMany facets of an artist: Collections from thelike Bhupen ing, it had Khakhar happened on August 31 and Sepestate tember 1, 2015. He had hoped that the sight of Till March 30, 11 am – 5.30 pm a pastor approaching the warring sides would dissuade any heavy-handed action from the he works of artist Bhupen Khakhar have The recently police. samebeen pastor had, during a huge revisited and re-evaluated as an important in the by various heads of gatheringpiece addressed larger puzzle of India’s history of Modern painting.

His 2015, vowed to pray for churches in September works were previously neglected as their homoerotic con- leader who sold out the the death of any tribal tent often drew the ire of right-wing conservatives.

At most tribals of Manipur. exhibitions of the artist’s works, organisers made sure thatcountry, but people walk “This is Christian his explicit paintings never saw the light ofthe day.Cross This collecwith on one shoulder and an AK47 tion is not very different either. It showcases many of Khakon the other.

The Church here is a failed instihar’s paintings that speak of the issues of theremarked proletariatRobul Pudaite, a senior tution,” and the common man, while discreetly skirting around member of the Kuki Student Organisation Khakhar’s sexuality. Be that as it may,(KSO) the collection showand a local.

“What started as a great cases a vibrant section of the late Baroda School painter, movement has been diluted by the actions of who fused elements of everyday kitsch withPastor a unique some.”

KhenapTombing refers to the curproach to modern painting. rent impasse as the Language Wars, between His very first exhibition, held in the utilised cut-clans, which — despite the1970s, Kuki-Chin-Zomi outs of gods and goddesses from calendars, coming street from graffiti the same stock — have strong and other elements of popular culture.and In this exhibition we springing from the diaunique identities see some of his watercolours and a few canvases.

TheseAre-Presbyterian pastor who lects they speak. markable works showcase his brandruns of gentle humour, a major group of educational instituwhich pokes fun at the predicament oftions middle-class society. in Churachandpur, Tombing wishes the Painter, pioneer, firebrand A watercolour by Bhupen Khakhar Church would play a more proactive role in solving the crisis. However, like they have done historically, its leaders have rallied to keep the various ethnicities together over the last six months, ever since the face off over the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket, Delhi three bills began.

Dayanita Singh Most recently, tensions heightened beConservation Chambers: Museum Bhavan tween the two old warring factions of the KuTill June 30, 11 am – 6 pm kis and Zomis after one side announced the burial date for the nine dead who have reayanita Singh demained in the district hospital morgue for scribes her mediclose to six months, and the other side veheum as photography mently opposed it. Then, in a surprising turn and the book as her priof events, a local WhatsApp group called for a mary form. She ‘has total shutdown on February 12 and 13, and this been preoccupied for proved hugely popular. People in large numsome years now with bers converged on the hospital to prevent the conceiving alternabodies from being taken away, speeches were tives to the presentadelivered by tribal leaders belonging to varition of a static print on ous civil society organisations, women prayed the wall’, and with at a memorial for the dead near the morgue. ‘evolving a portable arAt Sielmat, a small village in Lamka, hundreds Hidden depths “This Way and That” by men Mekhala Bahlwomen gathered on a chitectural form that of young and Different chants Pastor Benson addresses, and prays with a large group of protesters at Sielmat images: vivek singh can function bothKhuptong as a bridge to prevent the entry of uniformed men site for display, and a into the town. repository for her phoGallery Espace, 16 Community Centre Memories of the August 31, September 1 killn what seemed like a quiet Satur- around and went toNew tographs’. In her latest a chemist nearby, Friendsshop Colony, Delhi ings of protesters were fresh in their mind. No day afternoon, a 36-year-old pastor the only one allowedis to offering, presented at in case thatremain | that is open,

by Mekhala Bahl vehicle was in sight, and groups of young men named Benson Khuptong spoke a of an emergency. Here, KNMA, she may have quickly wore tra- patrolled the streets and kept vigil at the morTillhe March 24, 11 am his – 7 pm Permutations “Museum offew Chance” Dayanita Singh quietbywords over tea with his ditional cassock over his clothes and walked gue. Women’s groups tried hard to keep the just found the ideal hyremiering Diarylooked Entriesgrim. is theThe pregnant wife, gave her an affectionate kiss right back into the middle brid between exhibiof the after the successful group exhibition peace. Things whicharmed befuddles and de- in and left home on foot. No vehicles were on the commotion. He first playful tion, book and museum piece. turnedsolo show by artist Mekhala Bahl, two main groups active lights, creating words and images that lead engage with outside a complete shutdown.

The exhibition at KNMA brings to lifestreet Singh’s work — inita was manner that is dynamic, editable and right, and crossed the 300 yards thethe areaviewer — theto Zomi Revolutioninternal — Christian one that does ary notArmy, deal the witharmed facts wing or clear slowly for exhibition, half a kilometre, can take on more than one narrative atHe anywalked given time.

In the the artisthis presents self- him fromher separating the first set dialogue of the This is affirmation. mind the matter at hand.

Ten minsufficient structures — what are referred to asfocused mobileon museums — which function as sites disofofprotesters.

He delivered a Zomi Re-unification Organisacountry, but people These are an unusual part of Cross Mekhala’s tion oeuvre, in that conutesBringing later he emerged a side street onto decades play, preservation, circulation and storage. together from photographs spanning short ofprayer and wordlessly (ZRO), and the visual Kuki National walk with the tent the manner composed the main Tedim road, that which through her artistic oeuvre, these structures function as repositories alsocuts provide a performative handed over to them ancreates artifi- meaning, Organisationletters — gave out stateon onein shoulder and of anonymous using alphabetical letters from ments newspapers magazines.

Lamka town permutations in Churachandpur district, Mani- cial space in which her images come together in infinite to allow for unexpected poetic rose that he fished out of his for andand against the burial. an AK47 on cut the out other image pur. design Crowdsand were gathering on sides,are integral and narrative possibilities. Says Singh, “The architecture of opposite the museums bag, as a mark of Each peace.

He is more than the sum of its parts. Lines, dots, seemingly aro understand the ongoing bitrary marks dots, dribbles of rubber had burned handmade here continuousto the images shown and kept within old them.

Eachtyres large, wooden, structuredidn’t can bespeak their language — and scratches, tonal variations, patterns, one must paint, the texture of the surface of the matrix,imbroglio the uneven edges of look the at for over 24 hours.

A large number of armed placed and opened in different ways. Itlyholds around a hundred framed images, of which thesome town is divided along ethnicthe origins of Mekhala’s the ethnicearly conflict all work together to evoke a visceral response. stateincommandos and police in no Visit are in view, whilst others wait for their turn the reserve, stored inside stood the structures.” ities the and they don’t paper speak —each in the hills of as Manipur. prints and paintings have been described diaries containing notes in trying to keep mobs site-specific work to experience how theman’s worldland, created

by Singh is notthe oneangry of static nostalgia, butdialects but understand other’s them. He then The wounds of the 1997-98 civil war between a secretthrough language. from getting to each other. an evolving experiment of thoughts and visuals. turned around and walked a barrage After a close inspection, the pastor turned of security personnel to the other side. Here the two sides, as it is commonly referred to

hills won’t talk to each other

Tapping the excitement created around the India Art Fair, galleries across the country are hosting some of its best shows. Here’s a summary of shows that you should not miss

T

It’s an uneasy peace in Manipur’s Churachandpur as the deeply divided Kuki-Chin-Zomi clans join forces against the State to protect tribal land ownership rights

D

O

P

Q R

T

ND-X _ A

BL

watch cover

saturday, march 12, 2016

Apparao Galleries, 7 Wallace Gardens, Nungambakkam, Chennai Art on the Body Till March 15

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earable art is not an entirely new concept, given that shringara is part of the rasa theory and ornaments are seen as artworks in the context of Indian tradition. However, within the parameters of modern art, it has been relegated to the niche of craft. This exhibition is an attempt to change that view. It displays one-off wearable art pieces created by cutting-edge contemporary artists, making the appreciation and contact with art an everyday experience.

Time to heal Local leaders address a large crowd atThe the artists district hospital Stop sign A blockaded street, to prevent security forces from entering the town featured in this exhibition include Smriti Dixit, who is known to create installations that revolve around femininity using evhere, are still fresh. According to some figures, eryday materials like sacred threads, clothes more than 900 died that year after Zomi tags and tea-cup handles. armed groups fought pitched battles against For this exhibition she has created floral their Kuki counterparts. Many years and a wreaths to adorn the neck, finger or shoulder. peace accord later, it still doesn’t take much to Pallavi Gandhi, on the other hand, picks a comdisrupt the fragile peace. posite narrative technique: each piece tells a stoKhenthang, the external affairs secretary of Heart-on-sleeve Jewellery designed by Priya Sundervalli ry using many techniques and ideas at the same ZRO, who has been with the group since it was time. formed in the ’90s, references British politicSenior artist Masooma Syed is a sculptor and fession and she refers to natural forms to create ian Churchill in his conversations: “there’s a painter who works with the idea of identity and delicate flowers that adorn fingers and wrists. wartime strategy and there’s a peacetime the self. Here she has worked with materials that Birgitta Volz works with fused glass using gold strategy.” The armed groups here want an amievoke the pace at which the creative process and silver to suggest celestial bodies. The simple cable settlement of their demands and are happens. Priya Sundervalli is a ceramist by proforms evoke great lyricism and beauty. willing to hold talks with the Central government. Years after they signed a cessation of hostilities agreement, in 2008, with the governments at the State and Centre, the situation remains disruptive; now they are working with civil society organisations to find solutions.

Vigilante beat Groups of young men patrol the streets at night

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After bloodshed An all-night vigil outside the district hospital morgue, in memory of those who died in the violent protests on August 31 and September 1, 2015 Picture of courage Muktasree Chakma Sathi shahidul alam

Arts And Aesthetics (AAA), Lado Sarai, Delhi Kalpana’s Warriors: Shahidul Alam Till June 17, 11 am – 7 pm

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n a perfect example of art meeting activism, Bangladeshi artist Shahidul Alam’s exhibition, curated by Ina Puri, is an evocative, multisensory installation; a tribute to activist Kalpana Chakma. Drawing from research by social scientist Saydia Gulrukh, Alam creates works that stand as pennons to the activists who, like Chakma, have either disappeared or faced severe losses because of their political views. Using a technique known as laser photo etching, Alam has created portraits printed on straw mats that are hung from the gallery ceiling. The mood is meditative and the presence of these personalities is accentuated by the smell of the mats and the glow of large candles, which are the only source of light in which the work is to be viewed. The intention is to recreate the sparseness and thrift of the surroundings in which Chakma lived. “Making the works on the mat surface were challenging as one had to calibrate the exact amount of ink and burn that was required to create the portraits,” says Alam. While the works are technically challenging, importantly, they evoke the right emotions.

Firewall At Sielmat bridge, protesters block entry into Lamka town

ada, the 26-year-old owner of a small store Delhi’s Jantar Mantar since November 4, 2015. outside the district hospital, described Singh told the tribal representatives that how he was asked by one of the doctors to the State legislature passed the bills knowing press down on the exit wound on the chest of very well that the Centre would never accept a young boy — the first casualty brought in on them. Now, a district remains paralysed by August 31 — as there weren’t enough medical protests, bodies remain unburied, and the staff around. precarious situation in a war-torn State has As the blood oozed out between his press- been compounded. ing fingers, the boy died before his eyes. After Since Singh came to power in 2002, more all these months, Dada’s hands tremble at the than 3,000 have perished in periodic insurmemory. All those who were shot, mostly gency-related killings, according to figures on from behind, leaving exit wounds in the front satp.org. The victims include civilians, securiof their bodies, came from poor backgrounds, ty force personnel and militants. Nine more just like Dada. There’s a palpable tension in lives seemingly do not matter in Manipur. theMuddy town. waters “The SS Salween” hand-made pigment on cloth, with hand-made Khaizasong Guite, the foundteak gilded frame The and the ing president of ZRO, who had andfiring brass name platenine deaths came about after six tribal MLAs’ led the organisation during houses were gutted in the fiery some of the worst years of fightChemould Prescott Road, Queens Mansion, Mumbai eruption of outrage at the pas- Even a minor incident ing and violence in the area and — a stone hurled, a Desmond Lazaro sage of the three land bills, is now its advisor, is categorical bullet fired, a child The In-Coming Passengers which locals fear would impinge in his reading of the current sithurt — is in danger of Till April 16 on their right to live and own uation: “The dead speak more spiralling into an land in the hills. But the incident than the living in outright war-like esmond Lazaro’s solo exhibition focuses on his mixed ancestry and his personal expebrought together tribes that are Churachandpur.” situation various spaces of identity and lineage. riences that have been a result of negotiating alike and yet so far apart. It had Churachandpur and its surHe was born into an Anglo-Indian family in Leeds, England. His parents had migrated seemed impossible before. rounding areas are on edge; even from Burma in 1957 and Lazaro’s great-grandfather hailed from Madras in the 1800s. HavOn December 29, 2015, Chief a minor incident — a stone huring travelled across the globe, moving from Leeds to Baroda (where he did his MFA at the Minister Okram Ibobi Singh met led, a bullet fired, a child hurt — is Faculty of Fine Arts), he never returned to England, and now lives with his family in Ponrepresentatives of a Joint Action Committee in danger of spiralling into an outright wardicherry.

(JAC) from Churachandpur that had been like situation. After a short visit to her homeIn a true coming together of East and West, Lazaro combines contemporary concerns formed in the immediate aftermath of the town, Kimte Guite, a 27-year-old postgraduate and narratives with the historic painting traditions of Rajasthan, especially Pichvai paintpassage of the bills. who teaches college students in Delhi, deings, and mimics the techniques of Polaroid photography in his paintings. Having masThe chief minister told them that the bills scribed the situation as surreal. “Everybody tered miniature painting techniques by studying for 12 years under Jaipur master Banu were passed under pressure from CorCom, a seems to go about their daily jobs, but there’s Ved Pal Sharma, one of the few living experts on this ancient tradition, Lazaro creates a conglomeration of proscribed militant a deep sense of anguish amongst the popworld of family images that resemble both the present and the past, where migration and groups operating out of Myanmar. This makes ulace, everybody tries to hide it but it’s evisettlement are recurring themes.

Manipur a special case, says Romeo Hmar, the dently undeniable.” convenor of the Manipur Tribal Forum Delhi, which continues to lobby with the Central vivek singh is a documentary photographer and georgina maddox is a Delhi-based art writer government and has held a protest rally at journalist based in Delhi

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PICTURE THIS

The boys at the tank No aad(h)ar for the elderly PRESENT IMPERFECT

Pushpa Rawat’s second non-fiction feature, Mod (The Turn), confirms her position as an Theunusual Aadharand cardaffecting mechanism against inclusive nature of technology. It abandons those voiceis in Indianthe filmmaking with fading fingerprints or ageing irises to their own devices trisha gupta

from the inability to see themselves as legitisubjects of inquiry.

There’s thethen. boy who read.mate It broke my heart to see Mr K’s face describes himself and hisown tanki cohort as He was defeated; let down by his hands. “third class”, of andmis-identifying the other who fingercalls them The problem “garbage” by the prints is not one(an to association be dismissedunderlined as an aberrathat accumulates around tion trash unique to actually Mr K. Research shows that, the tank). fingerprints “Why don’t you gowith interview some other inevitably, fade age. Certain some good and people?” saystreatanother. kindspeople, of chemotherapies radiation is it to that bothers you? Doentirely you think I ment“What also lead faded, sometimes will misuse it?” asksWorking Rawat. “Why you dovanished fingerprints. withareyour ing—it especially at all?” comes answer. handling hands if ittheinvolves reversal of the gaze——can thedamage woman bebricks, The or other rough objects hind thehandling camera and youngall men prints.

Even a lotthe of paper day,inorfront of it utensils — is sooninsothe normalised that itresult feels like washing kitchen, could the least important thing This is in fingerprints being erased.

Theabout officialMod. rebutdeny thatisthere are moments when tal tonot thistoargument that the Aadhar also re- Raletsinformation, her vulnerability cordswat iris so itshow. doesn’t really has beenwith her “dream” matter.When Thereshe are says two itproblems this — to work with boys at the one, reading iris the information itselfwater is justtank, as er- they laugh. especially But she carries on, not to bewith put off: ror-prone, in senior citizens “Don’t youSecondly, have a dream?”

The agencies reply comes cataract issues. most nodal couched cynical humour, it has the ring are loathe to in install the costlierbut iris-reading of despondency: dream is that from tosoftware.

In fact, when“My I came back to Delhi morrow, I won’t comewho to the and spoke with an official is water in thetank.” know tankiAadhar, emerges a sort negative of mostThe things heas told me of that, techni-idena place that the boys gravitate to because cally,tity, good fingerprint readers must be able to have nowhere to go. read they evenfeel the they fading prints of the else elderly.

ButWhat Rawat movingly captures is their sense is there a norm that agencies buy only the top-of bestuck.

Clear-eyed end, ing good machines?

No. enough to see they’re at a dead end, implementation they cannot see aofway If Nirnay This shoddy theout.

Aadhar, focused thenoself-perpetuatadded to theour factattention that thereonare possible ing cycle of women’s of marriages workarounds toyoung it, leaves peoplelives, like Mr K deand motherhood off all othereven options, pendent on younger closing family members, Fine lines Apart from old age, fingerprints can be damaged by certain kinds of chemotherapies and radiation then Mod reveals exactly how stultifying though they themselves are capable and con- the treatments, or even handling a lot of paper all day satyanarayana gola options are for poorown urban young men.

If they tent to take care of their affairs.

This robs fail — as soofmany do — toand extract senior citizens their agency leavessome themvalue arlier last week, I went to Mumbai for tion office. The lady at the office keyed in our vulnerable from the rigid, unsympathetic, un-eduto the moods and whimsoften of their Backone to square Pushpa Rawat’sthat film movingly of being stuck of theone few activities make captures details her andsubjects’ a draftsense of the rental agreement in children. cativeAnd school system, thenwho what what of those areoptions alone?does me feel like an adult. I was travelling the government-approved format appeared. Howthis country offer them? are they expected to get their rent agreein my capacity as a landlady. Ok, I am Then, I was asked to pose in front of the cam- ments registered In some ways, Mod be seen as a conor buy anmight apartment? ’mtotrying to understand making this out be a bigger deal thanboys,” it is. we her ex-boyfriend, his parents temporaryInupdate era. Afemale picturefriends, was clicked.

A fingeron since RahulI Roy’s the week cameWhen back, Four Pushpa Rawat in sayMumbai at a certain Still, I do havehear a little apartment her own, with Mod, Rawat printand reading device was thrust at turns her gaze a Friends Meet (2000), which alsoJaitley focused Finance Minister Arun an-on a point her film is replying and for the last fewin years haveMod. hadShe a pretty further outward. me. Ilittle placed my left thumb on it. It group ofnounced school dropouts growing up in the in the Union Budget to call onehim of Mr herK. interlocutors, who easy tenant. Let’s Her subjects here are not knew Nationalthat captured the print and asked us topeople she Capital Region (and which Roy Aadhar will be made into a folInevitably, toHe know whyinto thismy earnest Mrwants K is 78. moved houseyoung while‘didi’ to makemy a film about them. fade wait before while she it decided cross-checked lowed up in In 2013 with film about law. fact, theanother government is in the fingerprints has been for months,and camera his own houseturning is beingupdemolished re- in she has connection with the boyswith at the printBut against theadatabase of AadBut here suchmen). a hurry that the theypersonal have al-docuage same young at lived the Pratap Nagarfor water tank in Ghabuilt.hand, He has in Mumbai most of his tankirecords.

— largely school dropouts who spend mentaryready har card Within a few secreveals how much is shaped by the circulated theitdraft of the ziabad they hangcareer. out. He is inde- onds,their life and has where had a fulfilling time playing and doing drugs. Ra- filmmaker’s a window poppedcards up saying own decided persona.to As pass the older, bill and it asbettera The boy she addresses doesn’t scoff of at her. pendent and proud.

His wife died a couple wat’s younger brother frequented the place, educated my fingerprint matched the one in man, Roy received an uncomplicatmoney bill in this session, so as with heartbreaking matter-ofyearsInstead ago andhehesays pretty much manages everyandItsometimes still does. This Aadhar. was all super-efficient from his Jahangirpuri not ed to respect allow any Parliamentary thingfactness: himself.“Here, you will only find those whom might be why the super-impressed. group does not and super-quick.

I was subjects, and This perhaps thatthe status delays in its implementation. makes one to understands.”

Thenolease the house had expired and we respond to Rawat theThe belligThen, it was Mr K’swith turn. photo was Aadhar card, andalso allowed him to drawin-them the important biometric Rawat’s moving testament had to renew it. patient, In the light of myfilm lackisofainitiaerence sexual swagger clicked.

Theor fingerprint deviceI imagwas brought out onmandatory such things as and girls formation forsexmany My dream is that it stores, tochasing her scrupulous effort toMr understand tive in the paperwork, K did mosta parineK pressed they might shown out. Mr his lefthave thumb on it. It read andamong notions things. Most thisofis masculinity. access to ra- Rafrom tomorrow, I serious ticular set boys:anthe oneshe who gather of it himself.

Heof found agent, drafted theevery another womanuswith a towon’t the print, andyoung then asked to wait be come wat,distribution being a woman, and much tion and the public system.

The to the day at the tanki, a few minutes from new agreement and he waited for me to the fix aplace camera. film makes matched withYethisthe Aadhar card. Ititdid not water closer to these boys in age and poor, who qualify for this, and are often the tank lives with her family. date where for theshe registration.

When I landed in match. clear that his they remain ambivaHe tried right thumb.

No match. He ones working with class,their doeshands, not command authorwill be the Like poignant, powerful film, NirMumbai, heher sat me down and made first me read about and herNot one worst-affected. Yet, triedlent with eachher of presence his 10 fingers. itythe in the same way, nor isnot it easy proposed law does nay (Decision, for whichofRawat shared dithe entire draft. He2012, was in charge this whole project, the camera matched.

Theand agent tried toitself. calm us down. have any alternative for herprovisions. to broach the topic of roIt simply credit with Anupama thingrectorial and he was executing it with theSrinivasan), preci- “Sometimes Somethis worry that with a visual rehappens the elderly,” he abandons thosemance sex. She remains whoseor fingerprints have the not exactly ethnography, nor journalsion Mod and is authority I am certain he demonof them in ‘disreputable’ said. cord He made Mr engaged K press his fingers into aactivalways empathetic, cufailedoutsider, them, touncertain their ownbut devices. ism,all northose autobiography.

Rawat strated years that he belongs was anto the jeopardise their orHe future. Technology dampities padwould and hold it there forpresent a while. rious but never prurient. is expected to be an inclusive same professional. world as her characters, and yet she is employed In the fact hands Rawat starts her film voices, wiped and then we with re-tried.

No talkBut the of authority is notan the same as mechanism.

Inlack not thinking through alterwholly of Thewent camera in office her hand Thenot following dayit.we to the of (as ingOn about whether the camera capturing match. any of the fingers.

The onlyisoption thefor lack of an authorial voice. technology That, Rawat has native biometrics, the Aadhar one ofThe her friends outthe ingovernNirnay) has the agent. agent hadpoints access to their faces. “She’s only to shooting ourwas hands,” we had available, according the agent, in spades. it can only gain from her openwill work in theAnd exact opposite manner. gained hersystem some distance ment’s online and thisfrom way her we lower-midcould that says one, and then we seetothe tossing ness to new experience. the lease be transferred Mrhands K’s son, t@veenavenugopal milieu.

Andregistraif in Nirnay avoiddle theclass rushGhaziabad and long wait at the thefingerprints cards downwere as the boys enough decide how whose young to bemany trisha gupta is a writer and critic based in Delhi she brought her very particular intense, seri- hundreds of rupees they’re betting. ous-minded scrutiny to bear upon her closest But the other aspect of ambivalence arises t@chhotahazri

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BAWDY LINE

Intellectual jeopardy L’affaire Kanhaiya makes me wonder where I would want my son’s loyalties to be — to the mind, to sceptical inquiry, to reason? Or to the mindless worship of something absolute?

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t was in the wake of the trial, in 1894, of mous sleep medicine specialist, etc. All friends the French ‘gaddaar’ Alfred Dreyfus that and colleagues. This is an abbreviated sample the word ‘intellectual’ was brought into post (not an original production, but forwardbeing and first summoned into service. ed in the group): Dreyfus, a captain in the French artillery, was Khatre ka udghosh baja hain, accused of treason, tried and convicted for ranbhoomi tayyar karo, selling military secrets to the German embasSahi waqt hain chun chun karke, sy in Paris. Two weeks after his conviction in a gaddaron par vaar karo. closed court, Dreyfus was put through the cerNahi tumhare bas mein ho toh emony of military degradation, where he was humein bol do Modi ji, publicly shamed, his medals, badges, epauSamvidhan se bandhe hamare lettes and other insignia were torn off, his haath khol do Modi ji. sword broken, his cap knocked off, even as he Agar nahi kuchh kiya samucha protested his innocence and feebly shouted bhaar uthaane waale hain ‘Vive la France! Long live the Army!’ He was Hum Bharat ke bete bhi hathisubsequently deported to Devil’s Island, yaar uthane waale hain French Guyana. The French establishment, the I cannot believe that in a group of 150-odd shutterstock French people, and almost all major newspadoctors there isn’t a single JNUphile/ partisan ON THEhis SHELF pers assumed guilt; and when the forensic of Kumar; leastways none coming out openly. evidence was found to be false and fabricated, All this, in the polite conventions of WhatsApp the authorities invoked the greater good of messaging, is allowed to go unchallenged. the nation-state to suppress calls for reopenAs I sat down to explain L’affaire Kanhaiya to ing the case. When that fell through, they dogour nine-year-old, I wondered where I would whistled to the right-wing press to try and inwant his loyalties to be — to the mind, to scepfect public opinion with anti-Semitic rage. tical inquiry, to reason? Or to the mindless Dreyfus was, after all, a Jew from Alsace. worship of something absolute? This whole No mincing words Emile Zola wrote an open letter Chants of ‘Death to the traitors’ and ‘Death to the President of France, in support of ‘traitor’ thing bears an odd relationship to the life of to the Jews’ became commonplace in the Alfred Dreyfus afp/daniel mihailescu the mind. What is the right place of the nation streets of Paris. A strange, coercive moral terand nationalistic piety in the life of its people? ror roiled the possibility of any real questions spirits, he called them, those who were asham- The hubris of religion that it has acquired in or two-and-a-half I’ve been being asked on the innocenceyears, of Dreyfus.

It writThere then several had months of cogied to think like the ensued simple French, no rooI realised manyexpectedly of us — is itcolourful on accountways. of a religious im- that this column: ‘On Shelf’. was a scandaling that convulsed the the French na-It was tation.

I viewed empty with a crititedness to the true my culture ofalcoves la patrie (the bookshelves bought are desire sweet, tobut pulse?

Does it come from the wor-booksupposed to beopinion about books, with Fatherland), a cal eye, stroking tion and sundered all public into two my subconscious beard traitorous and unfaithful to and madeof arepiety sweeter still. I still feel a pang ship?shelves Is the object a secondary matter? little ironic nod my (mostly) factions: a small minority thatto believed in the hapinblighted my metaphorical teeth. bloodsucking and soil, in thought and Occasionalabnor- Nation for worship, the shelf like unitreligion, I left behind India, made in itsinmarrow, py, (mostly) single life: a sort of ‘relationship innocence of Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards), and a mal because ly, I would visitonly the allegiance MDF slabs in thetoshed their was the and from articles the huge has some of wooden faith thatbox aredrawer sacred. from You bestatus update’ to the world, GSOH for needed. bloodthirsty majority that bellowed his But communion mind.stand And in to silent sceptical inquiry. with them. neath a queen-size bed, turned onsumma its side and can run in your head Douglas Adams’s realised that I’d never actually bloodI (the anti-Dreyfusards).

Into this talked sulphu-about ‘Sambhal Finally, was Nike the rescue: ke it rahna apnewho gharcame mein,toapne hi of religion: with planks theor inside.

It was a thing “Herenailed is an to idea a notion that our non-metaphorical actualwas books rous what maelstrom of public opinion re- realthe goddess ofsong victory pointed out,film quite gaddaaron se’. This from the 1958 Ta-pertofnot jugaad beauty. you’re allowed to say anything bad about; lyEmile sit on.Zola’s open letter to the President laq was leased ly, that if I didn’t Do It, It would neverWhatget Done. recently circulated in a large Halfnot. the Why pleasure the shelves my new you’re just not?of Because you’reinnot!’

The humble bookshelf canPrinted be a thing of the French Republic Félix Faure. on of So that I rolled up myme. non-literal sleeves. sAppJust. group includes This group was If one house their second-hand nature.

Constructwereis to implant in a child credulity beauty andpage wonder, yet is rarely considered the entire front of L’Aurore, it brought out in a sign above started There largelyshould for thebe purpose of my door: aban- ed from about bits ofthe plywood in the sacred,found will they notshed, and of itself.

I thought might beto differineluctable forensic detailsthings (marshalled don all of hope of and rightreparangles, ye who enter someonelearn interchange banter else’stooff-cuts, leftover cans as of apaint look upon the sacred ent in literary a book called Ideal Bookshelf,not but no. maximum effect)The that established here.

No matter how I sawed and sanded, and borrowed tee and perhaps entertainment, brushes, are a patchwork resource?

And athey warrant?

A hundred writers, artists, designers just Dreyfus’s innocence, but also the guiltand of crenothing quite fit.

I screwed urgently but now has started looking like up andActively to ideas form of part of my Theseupcycled disruptive scepvocalof other lives, ativeperpetrator types wereofasked to lineFerdinand up, and write the true the crime, wantedof to get hammered.

I members of this a syndicate reactionaries that own. an aesthetic choice ticism thatIt’s I might want my son that about, their favourite books.

Each essay Walzin Esterházy.

It stated, in a carefully objec-is accursedthe mynation schooland for behaving group are gravity fetishises has furnishedthe the ones entirethat house: a to understand, companied with a the painting of their tive way, with evidence, complicity of an‘ideal made do needlework lieves, in a me sternly prescriptive not donating figures in a charity-shop placedonation principleshere, of truth and jusbookshelf’ by the artist Jane Mounta—foul only, deassortment of generals in conducting carpentry.

Then again, way, that Kanhaiya Kumar’s guiltgiventhe world there, cast-offare overthey yonder. above the anation, medicine I stillof feel a pang fortice raid spite the name, her inquiry, paintings only of the and ‘monstrously biased’ theare culpabilthat I cantobarely thread needle, is necessary the safety ofathe Round here, people often not the same ones that might al-leave the shelf unit I left spines: not a shelf in sight.

They float in ity ofbook at least three handwriting experts who maybe At of times, I would country.

Thisnot. is a bloc anti-JNUstuff questions outside their gate with a in his head behind in India so plonk mid-air, exactly likewere books don’t.deceitful philes, submitted reports that wilfully raise my eyeswith to the heavens and all struck nationalissign: The table about the‘help pettyyourself’. vindictiveness of I’m When I packed up mymisconduct house and moved and fraudulent, the criminal of tic piety, implore that son ofin a carpenter all consistent their at, the chair I’m sitting God sitting in the Satyanarayan Katha; or on, back to England Delhitolast year, most of the War Office in usingfrom the press coordinate takeany pity on thisofpoor supplibelieftothat defence Kumar, Umar Khalid the need for propitiating the mugsuch I’m drinking coffee a being at all? out my possessions weretoleft behind. an abominable campaign mislead the The peo- only cant.

Jesus was aThey carpenter, and JNU is If treasonous. are alsohe consistent Would I not want of have all beenperhaps gifts. Myeven house is him to realise, I had shipped were ple ofthings the republic.

Zola signed off several with thecrates fol- of must have had theinpatience saint. (in their fulminations) their useofofa the word before unmetaphorically with generosity. his voice breaks,furnished that a moral and ethibooks, have been sittingthe in cry boxes lowing: “Mywhich fiery protest is simply of ever My brother helped keep my spirits up and ‘intellectuals’ pejoratively.

Actively vocal Apart that, the fact of the matter is cal life can befrom livedall without religion? since,Let waiting thethen, moment when my heart. them for dare, to bring methey, be- too, the shelves the level, or less.

Follow- I also members of thison group are, I more daresay, gravity thattold at this point in our our story. worldHe simply little Rudra thelives, Dreyfus join taking Somerset fore acould court of me lawinand let in thethe inquiry takeair. donating ing the great British naming your figures in the tradition world of ofmedicine. has too with much stuff in it.in We consume half a was pleased the manner which it endI walked into someone place inEvery broadtime daylight.

I am waiting.”

Withinelse’s tools, we struggled manfullyand — then They power include: a pioneering laparoscopic planet we can replace: the only ed, in 1899,more withthan the eventual pardoning of ethhouse,the I was with(intellectuel) shelf-envy and the week wordovercome intellectual womanfully — and again (Jesus, ano-rectal surgeon (thethen anusmanfully is to him what ical The choice has republic to be tohad recycle, share, mend Dreyfus.

French regarded the cupboardcommon love, andcurrency a crippling had attained as aanxiety term ofabout thosewere things heavy) — with Drilla and daffodils to are Wordsworth), anKiller incredibly and rights ofmake-do. one Jew, under the law, as having ability to do anything about darit. abusemy forown the Dreyfusards.

Maurice Barres, Mighty Boosh.

With a little help from giftedThe and prolific neurosurgeon (known for my Well,than theyaare done. climbdown.

Finally. The shelves are more value national day, few weeks after I moved in, a kindly ling of One the anti-Dreyfusards, wrote a lengthy son,cerebral we managed to finally Do-It-Ourselves. clipping aneurysms with spectacular up.

Andthat have miraculously — stayed up, so I do hope he—grows up to be an insuffertook pity‘Laon my bare walls pieceneighbour in Le Journal called Protestations des and Whenregularity), I put the final nail in (a metaphorical and joyous a trailblazing cardiac able little far atintellectual. least. The only problem now is, if I put completein lack of grip, and gavethem me aand stack of Intellectuels’, which he mocked nail: it a screw), I stood back admire my books on them, they’ll be hidden. Bugger. surgeon, anwas eminent oncologist, a to thoraco asatwik@gmail.com high quality MDFHalf-cultured (that’s medium density fiexplained the term. poisoned handiwork.

The constructing scopic surgeon (on theprocess cusp of of greatness), a fa- my breboard to you non-shelvies out there) that bookshelves has taught me many things — as anita roy is a writer, editor and publisher; he had to spare. well as expanding my son’s vocabulary in un- www.anitaroy.net

Shelving it

Bookshelves bought are sweet, but bookshelves made are sweeter still

anita roy

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Kerala doc’s Tentacles of Gulf-returned the network medical empire Arun Krishnan’s novel shows us how social media can be a conduit for criminal obsession

What Azad Moopen started as a private clinic in Dubai gradually ballooned into one of the largest healthcare groups in West Asia and India

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arly in this novel, the narrator-pro- the real, soft flesh of a real person? the mores, manners and rituals of American tagonist Arjun Clarkson is quoting a So this thriller is, in part, a comment on a society as if by rote; he offers us little observaBuddhist sermon for the edification world where privacy and anonymity are al- tions about the world he moves in (“If you give of a woman bartender. She listens in- ways fading. But overemphasising that aspect a signal that it is all right to be politically intently at first, intrigued by talk of “bodily sen- of the story might mean treating Clarkson as a correct, white businessmen feel more resations on fire”, but as Clarkson drones on cipher and ignoring his very particular quali- laxed”). But he is also an outsider in a wider about more abstract things, she loses interest. ties. He quotes the Buddha often (not just sense: he has trouble relating to people in gen“She had begun to fidget,” he tells us, with ap- when he wants to torture listeners) and wears eral, and there is something mechanical Wealth wellness Moopen, and Managing Director, Aster DM Healthcare parent in relish, “SheAzad twisted herChairman hair anxiously T-shirts advertising his beliefs, but we can tell about his attempts to be warm and social — into knots of the hangman’s rope. I felt calm from the start that something is off, that a consider a scene near the end where he speaks and equanimous. I enjoy watching the insides time-bomb is ticking away. He reminded me a to a little boy, or the one where he reads an Moopen went toeven Du- little of people fill uphen withAzad unease and anger, all thefrom makings of an entrepreneur, in effect. pushes a different of direction.

When des- email of you the in protagonist Bret Easton Ellis’s Michelle after they spent the night bai in 1987,words he wanted to ac- American as they are listening to the of the BuddHowever, and the decision doctor tiny knocks, you — shouldn’t complain of noise Psycho a bonafide psychopath or together, wonderstoifbecome “Thanksa for the had sex— earn ha. It is the most complish benevolenttwo waythings by which one someone been an emotional one. The youngest pollution,” theagood doctorlife wisecracks, seated with rich inner using fantasy to ual intercourse last night” would be an of aptfive recan cause pain toenough others.”to build a palatial cope brothers and two sisters, Moopen was barely at hiswith officethe in moral Kozhikode’s Malabarhim.

Institute decay around Not- ply.

“Or perhaps, this was an occasion that house then Clarkson bring back a ‘foreign’ A withstanding As it and happens, — who works car. in an 15 when away.

He knew that of Medical Sciences before his name,(MIMS). he also Long has some of called forhisa father more passed informal communication: general physician, been teaching advertising agencyMoopen in Newhad York — will soon the alwaysfor wanted oneWould of his chilcrowd-funding on as an idea, Moopen his father had markers ofcaught a modern-day ‘Thanks the sex.’ that at the Government Medical College, Kozhifind more gruesome ways of causing pain.

His Karna, a doctor. used it the to build the ₹60-crore hospital in 2001 dren to become Mahabharata anti-hebe the gentlemanly thing to do? I kodemurder when heisdecided to take sab- ro, first committed in aanfive-year unplanned “He used to like the medical profession as and who later became its majority shareholder. is mentioned in the hadn’t read anything or overbatical. had gone to Dubai 1986,his as book: full of anger because of his burst of“Iviolence, spurred by earlier demonsinfrom one of my brothers-in-law a doctor,” Mooheard any was conversation that thriller is, in part, orn to affluent family Kalpakanpart but of athen philanthropic to collect past, things spiralmission quickly: one crime inability pen remembers.

After obtaining hislight MD deto an belong, lashing out in This would help cast some on chery, in Kerala’s Malappu- a comment on a world gree fundsto to(and build a mosque in my hometown in at the leads necessitates) another, and he sets Calicut Medical College, world while simultanethisfrom matter.” where privacy and ram district, a fit young Kerala,”bending he recounts.

A senior from his college, about the American dream of “Yes, ously he became a lecturer there in 1982. trying to into Moopen it, using Here and elsewhere, Clarkson was inspired by his to father’s whocan” wastopractising in the Emirate, had con- skill we his own purposes.

Killing becomes with weaponry carve imout anonymity are always emphasises the importance of alfading hen destiny knocked, even standing vinced Moopen to move to Dubai for a career aportant an addiction, a self-fulfilling prophecy. place for himself. in their vilways being a gentleman, but he When destiny Sr would have lage.

A wealthy landlord, Ahmed opportunity.

“Therea was theatmedIt also becomes wayan of option hittinginout the This is a suspenseful narrais not Moopen a suave, controlled killer in knocks, you been pleased the turn Lechis UnniitsMoopen a freedom ical college to take without losing seniorimpersonality andleave the hypocrisies of the so- tive, urgency was growing as Clarthe league of,with say, Hannibal shouldn’t complain son’s career tookseems towards fighter and philanthropist ity. I took age, it, intending to return five kson’s cial-media while working withafter the very potential victimswho — ter —medical his calm surface to of noise pollution entrepreneurship. had helped build local hosyears,” tools ofsays thatMoopen. age. The initial murder is an indi- including the one the person who is conceal waves of hysteria. EvenIn signs Dubai,that Moopen’s desire more to repital, school and post tooffice.

But he didn’t return. What started pri- genuinely rect result of Clarkson’s ability — via as thehis ubiqsympathetic him, a girlfriend tually, there are he is feeling home his first — has teach“People,Michelle including policemen, vate clinic in network 1987 gradually uitous online MyFaceballooned — to trackinto the named — drift in and out of view, and comfortableturn in his owntoskin.

Thelove book as — waned thesong years‘Mack rolledthe by. came him to solve problems.

I detective be- its epigraphing one of the largest groups in West movements of an healthcare ex-colleague, a woman he as his to encounters with a sceptical lyrics fromasthe His wife Nazeera three daughters — Allearntedgier. decision-making him,”clunky says the Asiaaand India.

The clinics, pharmacies has crush on. MyFace, a barely disguised and ver- come The prose isfrom somewhat in Knife’ — lines aboutand an underdog with a lethal isha, Ziham and Zeba wanted son, who became on a student leaderItin college hospitals in Moopen’s holding Aster places sion of Facebook, is the book’scompany, other protago(“I stepped the staircase. had been concealed weapon that—healso uses againsttoa stay forback. As his clinic grew increasingly the and successfully campaigned against thebeing gov- midable DM Healthcare, generated an estimated nist, a Big Brother monitoring the actions$890 and lying undisturbed.

Now, it resented adversary, the ‘shark’.

By thebusy, end, it is doctor’s tookhis over.

“Busiernment’s to accord MBBS degreewith to ho-a clear million in revenues this year.

He is a regular movements of hundreds of millions of peo- woken up. move It creaked and complained thatbusiness this Mackinstincts is spreading net wider nesslooking was in for mynew blood.

So he I started opening meopathy doctors. on Forbes’s rich homicidal list, whichspree valued the 62-yearple, and Arjun’s might be said long, drawn-out sound”), but I couldn’t always and sharks can — to use somore clinics,” heparlance says.

Sr had been particular about two cial-networking oldinvolve doctor-turned-entrepreneur’s at tellMoopen to both collaboration andwealth defiance: if this was a shortcoming or a way of con— ‘poke’. No wonder conspired to favour him. At things —Clarkson’s his youngest son must read Mathrub$1.1 billion what couldinbe2015. a more intimate, more immedi- veying solemn awkwardness — allCircumstances those MyFace stocks are plummeting. hoomi and the Thecase, Hindu and he the turn of the 21st century, Dubai’s economy back, the learning is that you ate“Looking way of “connecting” — re-establishing the whichever theevery voicemorning; does fit the charsinghFlush is a Delhi-based wasarjun booming. with oil writer money, the Emirhad toOne excel in the mathematics. have jai might start trying toto dothrust something, but into God acter. human touch — than a real knife gets impressionHeheshould is learning

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STREET, EAT, REPEAT

Besotted by biryani The dish has an undeniable hold on the imagination of Indians Chef Ranveer Brar’s Lucknowi mutton biryani (Sent by him especially for this column) shabnam minwalla

Ingredients For garam masala: 1 cinnamon stick 8-10 cloves 2-3 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp fennel seeds 2-3 tsp coriander seeds 1 tsp peppercorns 2 star anise 2-3 mace 2-3 brown cardamom 3-4 green cardamom For mutton marination: Made in Dubai The Aster DM Healthcare 1/2 kg mutton 2-3 tsp ginger-garlic paste group’s first multispeciality hospital, in 1 tsp turmeric Jumeirah 1 tsp chilli powder Cashew nut paste Pinch of garam masala tsp curd ery4-5 schools — Toddler Town British Nursery — For run bycooking: his second daughter, Ziham.

2-3 tsp salt years after shifting to Dubai, Twenty-nine 3 tsp ghee Moopen certainly has a lot more than one pa2-3 tsp oil latial and a big car, and that includes a 2-3 house cups milk recently Saffronadded Maybach. Those close to him swear his humility.

He carries his bag to of500gby basmati rice — cooked

ate’s rulers embarked on a flurry of construc- geon and former principal of the Government One-potpromoting dish Ambur, Dindigul, their version of the biryani sr raghunathan tion, Dubai Calicut, as all a have tourism Medical College, Kozhikode. destination. Architectural marvels such as the By 2005, Moopen’s healthcare business had t all comes having a name like ShabBurj Khalifa (thefrom world’s tallest structure) and grown so big that he no longer time to the Mughal version of fusion foodshad — the comnam. Or Palm so I’ve(largest decidedmanmade after decades of practise the Jumeirah island) medicine.

He would soon joke with that ing together of delicate Persian pilaus strange encounters of the basmati-andbrought travellers and investors in hordes. his asksspices their children grandchildren thewife robust of India.and Pratibha Karan — kesar kind.

Ever so often, I meet an alProfessionals from across the globe arrived to to consult other doctors whencookbook needed, as—her author of the ultimate biryani bemost-stranger — say, my husband’s colleague’s husband take up lucrative jobs. and has lunch with everyone else in the has lost touch. thiswith timeArab the fice lieves that pilaus arrivedAround in India Method brother or thebusiness neighbour’s physiotherapist or group Moopen’s model proved hugely (even if his table, unlike others’, outside Dubai todish the was rest faof staff tradershad andspread invaders.

The one-pot Forcanteen garam masala: our bank’sEach relationship manager — and we UAE, successful. of his clinics had a pharmacy, by aallclean cloth).and Some seefinely. this enand otherthey parts Asia, voured bybeyond soldierstowhen setof upWest camp for is covered 1 Dry roast the spices grind startthey a desultory Minutes and fed eachconversation. other’s growth.

As hislater, clien-I including side marination: as part of a well-cultivated perthe night Qatar — andand as Oman. different cooking styles dearing For mutton 2 To the addinginger-garlic paste, spotgrew the telltale signs.

A hungry A matele — Moopen himself saw gleam. up to 100 pa- were onemutton, that helps networking.

Hisemployed, ambitionsbiryani could and no longer be bank- sonality, pulao gradually turmeric and himself chilli powder. tey tone.

And the inevitable remark, “Ha,for ha.a rolled tients a day — he quickly realised the need But the man is clear about the legajust(The friends relatives.

In 2008, parted by ways. mainand difference seems to be cashew nut paste, You must be to making fabulous biryani in your Moopen professional run the business. wantsadd to leave behind, as alsogaram how to susraised the money from India Value Fund cy 3heThen that in biryani meat is arranged between masala, curd and mix well. house.

You eating it all the time.

NextI Advisors “I was themust firstbe non-family member when (IVFA). The fund house invested in As- tain it. “I don’t want to be seen as a moneybag. layers of rice.)

4 Cover and refrigerate for an hour. time, don’t forget to invite me.”says TJ Wilson, terIronically, joined the company in 1998,” I want to be known as a DM Healthcare’s again in 2011.a That while equity biryanionce is considered 5 demoralises Let the meat me. come to room The firstDirector 15 or 20 times I felt to de- The Executive of Aster DMcompelled Healthcare. a familySeason man and philanthropist,” following year it partly diluted its stake to doctor, Mughal or North Indian dish, it probably origtemperature. with asalt.

Grease the nyAmong and clarify and apologise. explain that the clinics Moopen To was adding to Olympus the tycoon, who has per cent Capital, which south. also bought inated in the rice-loving At anyprimary rate, ev- says handi with ghee and oil.dedicated Transfer 20 meat we were soupfrom family.

That, like his chainmore wereaatomato few bought relatives.

“A shares his wealth wantfor to divide in a $100-million investment. bowl to philanthropy. handi. Stir and“Icook a ery corner of the country boasts unique of from minutes.

Cover with lid and most other Bombayites, we was ordered our biryarelative based in London struggling to versions wealth equally into fivethe parts.

I have a wife Suffused withascapital, opened even myfew — and I writeMoopen this column, I realise simmer half hour. ni from Delhi Darbar or Jaffer or Lucky’s. manage his clinic in Dubai.

SoBhai we bought it,” more three for children.

The fifth part will be for and hospitals India and West and that I clinics urgently need to visitinAmbur, Dindigul Now layer mutton cooked ricethe TheseWilson, protests fellalso on heads deaf ears, however.govSo Asia, says who the group’s who the require it. Sowith 20 per cent of and acquired a few Interestingly, in the6 people and Calicut.

And find waystoo. to sneak into a royand pour a little saffron-infused milk over now I smile graciously andaffairs. try to impersonate ernance and corporate “As Dubai India, Moopen has desisted opening al household to sample doodh kifrom biryani and bi- wealth will go to charity.” it. Add a little salt, garam masala, roasted the sort ofand woman makes biryanicame for light boomed new who neighbourhoods up, pharmacies, The over Chairman and Managing evenoranges as peersorsuch ryanis made with rose water. Not to onions and ghee it. entertainment, andclinic-pharmacy then invites we replicated our model in as Apollo have Director wishes to in five beena bullish mention Bhatkalin wedding and a 7 Cover the handi with the lid retire and weight the bank relationship fellow for more locations.” years and take up Keep a non-executhe segment.

“The margins are Beary feast. it down with something heavy. the flame a feast. What is it about this dish very low here,”For he those reasons.

Morewho want to Iembark don’t want to be low. tive role. He equally wishes to 8 Cook forseparate about half an hour.from Servefamily. hot. oopen sensed next biga opportunity over, bulk upon that transforms anyhis meal into business purchases werebiryani not trail, the great Hydeseen as a moneybag. cornerprofitable of the as in Kozhikode.

It was the 1990s,Every and pacelebration?

That ensures that “Separation of the management “there are many rabadi biryani is a goodThat starting demoralises me country tients in lightest, this coastal city travelled all the way boasts even the I-will-not-carryand ownership the best; agents between theAsmanufacturpoint. is the Lucknowi version tinctive smoky flavour — isand for othersome unique to Chennai and Coimbatore in search of qual- versions an-extra-paperclip kind of travwise, inefficiencies creep into the er and the retailers”. that is slowly cooked in a vessel unfathomable reason, my grandmother often ity treatment.

“Weonto decided to fill the gap,” he eller will struggle the flight system,” he says.

This orange might sealed with dough. But even birya- paired it with small glasses of bright he group gets have its highest says simply. His network ofwith friends and relain Hyderabad, encumbered sound of contradictory when you nis that few nawabi connec- squash. The biryani West Bengal has a story margins from (nearly per consider tives helped raise money. Nearly 40 of bags of biryani fromthe Paradise? of Nawab his daughters are intions andhospitals are ladled out at25little of its verythat own.two When Wajid Ali Shah the clinics updusty, next (about per volved them cameit’s forward with of contributions rang- cent), with shacks Perhaps the aroma rice, in the business. along remote15highwas banished by the British from Lucknow to andoften the pharmacies ing from ₹50and lakh to ₹1 crore each.from Not only spices, meat vegetables wafting that cent) The eldest, Alisha, is a chartered accountant ways are spectacular.bringing up the rear Bengal, he took his entire court along.

Which per cent).

300places properties, Aster and did Moopen get to spread his risks, com- (below massive aluminium pot. Perhaps it’sthe because handles the group’s West Asian operLittle 10 wonder thenAtthat like Ambur meant he had to feed hundreds of soldiers, noeverything budget ing together ofperfect likeminded the quest for the biryaniinvestors involves a also dec- DM The youngest, Zeba,So has completed and Healthcare Dindigul inhas Tamil Nadu andfrom Palakkad in ations. bles and family members. thejust kitchen-in-exsuper-premium made the hospital a community ade-worth of journeys across theproject. country. Per- clinics medical course and is deciding between Kerala to draw foodies fromhospitals, across theincluding country. her ile started tossing potatoes into the biryani to Kochi,biryani which opened Mayan 2015.

He got another crucialbattles factor right.

“Azad Medcity haps it’s those pitched over kaccha group’s management andadded health-a The lightin Ambur is servedinwith egg- joining add bulkthe — and realised that the spuds Thecurry pace and of expansion is worryingly remi- care picked youngand andother middle-aged biryani the and best pakkaofbiryani matters plant segments. a raita. While the Thalapakatti whole new dimension to the dish. ventures have lost steam doctors from India abroad, including of authenticity.

And and perhaps it’s the rituals niscent Moopen, however, is in no doubt. Aster DM biryani ofofother Dindigul is that made from shortThis tradition of experimentation continthere is pressure many from England andthe thedish.

US, for hospi- eventually. and tests surrounding Forthe example: which also has plans for an grained riceWilson calledadmits parakkam sittu and the Healthcare ues with allGroup, the biryanis-come-lately — Schezprivate equity butsubject also reittal,” KK Varma, the group’s medical whensays you’re confronted with a chief plateful of bi- from public offering, will bebaked board-driven meat the of ‘grass-fed goats’investors, — and is the of initial wan biryani, pasta biryani, biryani the group is sitting pretty on a fa- and officer, medical director of and MIMS, and also ryani, toss some on the floor examine the erates runand by soya professional CEOs. Whilebiryani’s there’s a bitterthat trademark battle between the original risotto biryani. And clearly debt-equity ratio.and the wannabe nothing Moopen’s former lo- vourable grains. If even twoteacher. grains “He stickbypassed together,the your this,tofew Thalapakatti restaurants magic is new partlyindue thefirst-time fact that itentrepreis as diMoopen is crowd. in no mood to stop, having set a neurs cal, entrenched doctors.

This helped biryani has failed the test.

(And yourbecause floor is Thalapakatti actuallyof been able to remain verse ashave the country its origin.

2025 statement for hisbiryani business. the young doctors hired problem.) had the hunger to Vision greasy — but that’s he another The “poor man’s” Andhra is Addispicy hands-off from their babies. Dr Moopen’s pashabnam minwalla is ainjournalist the author of he hasWhile ventured into the education doGiven well. They needed grow, andafor that the tionally, that this dishtoplays such role in our skills will be called on thisand one. and addictive. the famous biryani from pa — apart from a medical in Wayahospital had to though, grow. It we was a smart move sector drooly fantasies, know surprisingMalabar uses prawns and fish college and prefers ‘jee- The Strange Haunting of Model High School and The Shy Supergirl mathews thomas histofamily has The invested a chainhas of nursfrom theSome paediatrician-surly littleMoopen,” about itsadds origin. believe it was nad, ra rice’ basmati.

Bohrainbiryani a dis- prince

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saturday, march 12,12, 2016 saturday, march 2016

Mother of big data Deep impact

Numbers don’t lie: Malnourishment among children starts with the things that society does, A scuba diving session Seychelles illustrates the or doesn’t do, for their in parents, especially the mother adaptability of the human mind and body same time, I was working on a study in Haiti, where poverty was deep, and women were compelled to walk hours to markets to sell their goods, their little babies, sometimes barely a month old, often left in the care of other children. I have met women in Uttar Pradesh who were utterly weighed down by all they had to do to keep their babies fed because they were too poor, had little food, little ability to make decisions for themselves, and certainly no clean water. I met women in Bangladesh — with so much spark and not as much poverty as in places I’ve visited in Bihar, but with so much to manage in their busy lives that it was challenging to find ways to care for their babies. But all these women and their families did it anyway, to make children’s lives as decent as possible.

So how can the government and society support these families and women? We need to make it easier for parents to do their job of parenting and caring for their children — this, in turn, can put babies on a path to better nutrition. And, it is possible. In Haiti, this was done by providing a food security and healthcare package for all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and for babies up to the age of two. In Bangladesh, this was done by providing families with a decent cash transfer, together with information on the right food choices. In Brazil, this was done through a combination of cash transfers, and supply of dj mattaar/shutterstock basic healthcare, water and sanitation.

Down to basics Every time we study programmes that try to improve the diets of poor families, we are also compelled to confront the conditions that led to poor ever hold your breath!”

The instructions were wonderfully laid-back, repivory.

They our roserecent in flat,India wideHealth plates Report and intriIn India, on nutrition in the first place sanjit das/ bloomberg PADI diving instruction book- resentative of the island spirit. cately patterned white towers Nutrition shows fans, that sharp these essentials areand nolet said the phrase in bold red The boat that took us far out to the Coral where stubbyinoutcrops.

Brightfamilies. yellow There and are black place for many 27 began studying nutrition lettes — twice — to as transition fair warn- pregnant women insite Bihar.

These— was numbers Garden Reef — a dive off Mahé load- million striped fish swam through theimagine formations births annually.

Now the to scuba the hotel industry, to become ing to newbies.

On anot balmy autumna connect the lived of mothers and struggles ed with to a dozen or reality so experienced divers, while clown fish darted around thenew anemone. that half, or more, of the mothpublic professional, certainly families morning in health the Seychelles, I wasand descending arehad trying to bring and dives. nour- ers some of that whom clocked overup 2,000 A fatand sea families cucumber layencounter lazily on the will in seabed. states like notinto a storyteller.

But ofOcean, biology,a ish rapidly the depths ofthe thestudy Indian their children across India.

They matter Once they’d set off, Randy proceeded to beex- Bihar, Time My breath had steadied.

UPhad andslowed.

Jharkhand.

Life is slightly better biochemistry and physiology hooked me onto belt of 4kg lead weights slung around my cause people must understand that poor in plain hand signals.

Somehow, in this magical blue universe, a state like Odisha, where basic healthI had sernutrition and cylinder banishedstrapped thoughtstoofmy a hotel waist, oxygen back.caTo nutrition among starts with the vices An upheld hand children means stop.

“Don’t be givslipped a second skin, discovering gloriforinto mothers and babies are in place, but reer.

It wasI realised a slow journey fromI’dunderstandmy alarm, with a start, broken the things that society or he doesn’t do,confor poverty, ing high-fives underdoes, water,” said. To ous weightlessness, altered vision, alien poor sanitation, food insecurity and ing the biology cardinal rule. of nutrition to appreciating their parents, the mother. firm all’s good,especially make a ring with your thumb poor sounds, and neware ways to breathe education problem areas.and In move. states that the biology of what nutrients do inyour the and Instinct.

It’s most natural to hold Myindex workfinger, over two has been to try like like decades you’re saying ‘fantastic’.

The Kerala mask obstructs peripheral visioneducatand I and Goa, women are more human body is a culmination of aunderwater. series of so- and breath the instant your head goes understand howmean women makegreat choices A thumbs up doesn’t you have div- ed, swivelled my head furiously, keen notmore to miss more able to delay marriage, have accial, political, and economicinto conditions that The last time I’d backflipped the ocean to about whatitto feed go their babies and how the cess to sanitation, ing chops, means upwards. anything.

Suddenly, I saw antenatal care, areno in one, less put — especially poorest most public divepeople was over a decadethe ago, aged and 15, when health nutrition Swimming with and flippers takes just an expanse of murky poor households and, thus, blue. their vulnerable in situations where they cannot there’s little— fear of the unknown.

This time community canused support them. some getting to. “Move “Have I drifted far?”

I thought children are intoo better shape. nourish their bodies was not quite as easy.and those of loved ones.

Colleagues from around the your leg from the hip, like kickin There a moment of dread.

I glanced are no easy solutions A thumbs up doesn’t Getting there Over the past fewthe years, as surface, my worksalty andwaca- world The instant I hit ocean have spent considerable ing a football,” Randy advised. In up toWe seemust human shapes here. all do whatfloating we can I have you methave women in mean great Air Seychelles operates reer evolve, has become a mission of sorts to time ter filled myitmask and stung my eyes.

Breathmothers Bantryingwith to poor keep up, Iin have a few metres above me.

In this to make things work, especially Uttar Pradesh diving chops,who it a direct four-and-a-half tell about these conditions that lead to gladesh, ing stories through the regulator was laboured; I had Haiti,a bobble-head.

Ethiopia, Vietmorphed into watery world, there more the poor; make sureare girls are were utterly weighed for means go upwards hour flight from Mumbai poor using data.

Backmy in nam, to be nutrition, conscious mostly not to breathe through and India. Inof almost every A few moments fear on the than two directions to consider. in school, that sanitation prodown by all they had 2008, as new datawas emerged fromwhat the National nose. Movement restrictive, with all instance, every and country, thisI to Mahé. ocean’s surface, I realised On the ocean floor, I ranthat my grammes actually work, to do to keep their Family Health Survey, realised how little dis-I work the equipment, and I Iwas exhausted before takes us back the basics. had nowhere to gotobut down. fingers services through shifting health are the available for babies fed Stay cussion there was about the sorry state of nu- Every even started. timerope wethat study proUsing the anchored sands, sharp coralshould remnants everyone.

There be The Savoy Resort and trition inmy children and women.

Today, with grammes For all aquaphilia, there was a sudden that try to improve the boat I slowly descended, all the while grazing my skin.

The hour elapsed far too enough jobs to put money in the Spa is a waterfront new data from the Rapid Survey on Children, breakdown of faith in my own abilities.

My en- the diets of poor are equalising — families, exhalingwesharply against quickly and apockets pleasedofRandy signalled was the poor.

The itnumproperty on Beau Vallon, and the to emergence of more tire trip the Seychelles hadpositive built upstories, to this also compelled the pinched nostrilsto soconfront my ears popped.

In a dra- time to surface. bers tell the stories of the chalwithin easy distance of there is still a need to tellwas stories using moment.

Yet, my mind blank as Idata. strug- conditions thatRandy led toletpoor the lenges matic motion, go ofnutrition the rope,inmakI have since divedmust in other, more-touristed that parents manage in order to the dive centre.

Thetomotivation is clear —I’d bringing toaboard public first gled recall instructions received Thesegesture conditions differing aplace. sweeping withare hisstarkly hands, and nourish locations,their where beginners arebodies. made toThose link children’s little Tip discourse things we’d rather sweep under the ent the boat. Something about equalising and varfrom anything we in All theI privileged floated away backwards. heard was secmy who hands andthe stay withincome arm’suplength of strateach make policies, with the Sign up for a diving carpet.

That in statesPanic like Rajasthan, one out of tions ious hand gestures. set in. of society Forthe instance, rattling breath.are Tenfamiliar metreswith. below ocean egies, other. and It was only how heremuch in theto Seychelles decide spend onthat tack-I course or an every two women saytothey were marriedI was be- Isurface, There was no cause worry, of course. gave birth to my daughter infull a small college ling it was darker, cooler, of shadows swam fargrand and free, though the watchful this problem of under malnutrition must introductory dive with fore thewith age of thatDivers, 90 per an cent of house- town diving Big18,Blue established in the US, surrounded mediand alien creatures.

A swarmby of the tinybest silver fish not eye lose of ansight instructor, to discover of this simple fact. a new world holds haves no centreininOdisha Beau Vallon on toilet, Mahé,that runinbymost the cal Big Blue Divers care.

I breastfed myseaweed daughter in a wonderswam past.

Spools of danced in the and emerge with reinforced faith in the humenon is a senior research fellow at the states only a thirdan of experienced the mothers Dutch of children calm Liz Fideria, lady fully supportive environment family care, depths.

Spiky black sea urchinsofsat calmly on purnima man mind and body’s capabilities. (www.bigbluedivers.net); under five have at least 10 years of education, who’d come to dive in 1995 and never left. Ran- where I had timeatoff from work, enough food International Food Policy Research Institute, and cothe ocean floor, once gorgeous and dangerthey have 75 dive sites on thebhattacharya Global Nutrition Report as well asfreelance the India malavika is a Delhi-based that poverty is stillwas widespread, and that basic dy, my instructor, a local Seychellois with to eatAnd andeverywhere, enough time to rest and rejoice in author ous. otherworldly coral forto choose from.

Report on Nutrition travel writer health services reaching evenswag. half the bleached blondearen’t dreads and serious His the wonders of of a lavender, new baby.

At around the Health mations in hues green, brown and

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The black bird fan club Kadaknath, an indigenous fowl from central India, promises to be the next culinary toast

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t is rare as good truffle and delicious when cooked right. Does kadaknath have in it to be the next culinary obsession?

Apparently yes!

In January last year, when the Madhya Pradesh government applied for geographical indication or GI status for kadaknath, an indigenous black bird nurtured by the Bhil tribe, it raised a few eyebrows. Kadaknath was close to extinction a decade ago. ITC’s corporate chef Manjit Gill says it was so rare “that to procure a bird you had to approach the area in-charge or the commissioner.”

Concurs Saleem Quraishi, food archivist and manager of the Jehan Numa Palace hotel in Bhopal. “In Bhopal, the wait for a good kadaknath could stretch into weeks, and the bird is usually pre-ordered for occasions. And yet, what you finally get is very likely not the AGENDA real one, but a breed that looks similar.”

This ‘Pride of Madhya Pradesh’ languished in relative obscurity until as recently as 2014.

What set off the current buzz around it? It started with a few stray mentions on social media. Next you had chefs like Manish Mehrotra and food historian Ashish Chopra zeroing in on a breeder who was cooking up a storm with the black beauty. And, suddenly, the allblack was no longer just another wild fowl but a delicacy in the rarefied range of caviar. Chopra says kadaknath or kali masi, as it is locally known, “is very high-quality meat with a fanhe more you well bend a straight iron tastic texture, and goes with the simplest theink-black closer thehue, tworight extremes spice. But rod, it is its downwill to comegives to each If you good the bone, that it another. intense andare delectaenough to bend the rod perfectly, ble flavour.” you will get horseshoe shape with the ends “It’s one ofathose show-and-cook birds,” says within kissing distance of each other. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party took power, the Hindu right has tried to bend the iron rod of Indian pluralism with its rabid majoritarianism.

The further it has tried to bend the rod, the closer it has come to meeting its other end, its alter-ego: left-wing extremism. The extreme right and extreme left have more in common than they care to admit.

North Korea is the best current example of the horseshoe theory of political science.

North Korea is a communist nation in name, but ruled like a fascist state with a hereditary dictatorship, supported by a crony military elite. The deification of the dictator, the extreme nationalism, xenophobia and militaristic state are straight out of the Third Reich manual, and far removed from Marx or Engels.

From the Soviet Union to eastern European nations, to Cuba, ‘people’s revolutions’ have ultimately descended into tinpot dictatorships, not the egalitarian societies that its leaders promised.

Closer home, West Bengal’s communists under Jyoti Basu ruled more with fear than hope: fear of violence, fear of the foreign, fear of big business. In contrast, Narendra Modi’s right-wing government is friendly to big business and foreign investors. But its brazen support for political violence (the Patiala House lawyers who thrashed Kanhaiya Kumar still roam free and Muzaffarnagar riot-accused are ministers in the government) makes it a mirror image of Basu’s government in West Bengal, where communist cadres killed and looted with abandon, all in the name of the ‘people’s revolution’. For the right wing, ‘na-

Uneasy reflection The Modi government’s brazen support for political violence makes it a mirror image of Jyoti Basu’s (in picture) government in West Bengal arunangsu roy

chowdhury

Horseshoe theory

King’s special Kadaknath is a sought-after presence in royal feasts ashish chopra

Mehrotra, who chanced upon it while re- cult to coax the bird to multiply.” searching a new menu at the Indian Accent, a The meat isn’t the only reason for kadakrestaurant in Delhi. “The bird was not only nath’s popularity. Its blood and bones are beautiful but packed with nutrients, which used as medicine. The tribal people use kadakmade it a balanced meal by itself. It was a nath blood to cure chronic illnesses, and given weekly treat for the royal family of Chhattis- its protein content — 25 per cent compared to garh. Impressively, it retained its goodness 18 per cent in regular country chicken — and even when cooked for two hours,” he says. low fat content (0.78 per cent), it makes a perJiggs Kalra, food columnist and consultant, fect meal for both children and the elderly. tionalism’ their ‘people’s revolution’: the This calls it theisperfect bird for Indian cooking.

Gujarat, where the mercantilism of the popis probably why kadaknath was integral gangajal away all of sins.

“You can that pair washes it with all kinds masalas, cook to ulation meant could be rolled the war mealthe forLeft kings, especially theover MaNotway onlyyou arewant, the extreme and dum rightcooksimi- rathas. it the thoughleft I prefer withoutThe a British, fight? How did they they who found in it athink perfect relar, they also suits needthe each other to is survive. ing as it best meat, and still Less could getplacement away with this assault on a beehive for the original fowl in than twoofyears ago, communist parties in In- called Jawaharlalpreparations capable surprising the most maNehru University, such aswhich roast dia were reduced to justHis 10 faseats, a historic fall houses some of the brightest, ture palate,” says Kalra. most driven and chicken or chicken curry, that manyisbelieved could not recover from. idealistic young minds vourite the it ‘country from theamong counmade it across popular The fruits an of 25 years of economic liberalisa- try? It takes extreme arrogance captain’, Anglo-Indian the lateror extreme royals. stuThe tion had created speciality inspiredenough by the mass resentment pidity (or both) to doproximity what this government in taste to againstchicken India’s welfare British stew. “ItState is hangover. Young, did in JNU. game cuisine, says QuIndia wanted aaspirational simple chicken curry a leg-up, not handI am a capitalist andraishi, business owner,a who “played key me-downs.

Trade unions which is glamourised by were losing their rel- believes that the tyranny of in thetaking Left is this as bad as role tribevance in the new India. the addition of raisins, the tyranny of the Right.

I grew up in Basu’s al delicacy to the royal Class struggle for a onutopian equality did not Bengal and consider ittables, almonds and fried one of where the worst it govapvibe with India’s millennials or their elder sib- ernments to have everpealed ions.

Seasoned with ruled atostate in India. game-spoilt lings, who are local now the decisive demographic And yet I joined the student green chillies, herbs, protests to new free palates, and to the group in onions andIndian salt, it elections. is cooked Mocomrade Kumar; I onesKanhaiya as well. Kadaknath di’s victory wasonthe over two hours slowmost heat. refoundeventually myself became cheering a parthis of sounding victory the defree And what comes outfor is sheer speech and the electricofcrowd as the meat lavishness the roymarket in independent liciousness,” says Kalra. India, they took on makes Modi alty.” fearlessly Chopra says, “What I hope Kanhaiya and the most crushing defeatthe for Chopra, who first tasted fromblack the ramparts JNU, a camthe bird soofsought-after understands that the could communism.

Even in basbird at the Maharaja of its Panna’s pus with I have long also which prove to be itsaundofree hooked market to is an I was the tions ofparty Bengal andtwo Kerala, red dinner nearly decades association. ing.

There are very few genuine azaadi just as one suppliers was no longer the coolest colour. game fowl ago, is also a fan.

“I was hooked But now thatmarket. he is free in the Mostand are is to well-aged something about to It thesays game fowl just as one isthe to safe, I hope that Kumar and his either cross-bred, or an inferior whiskey ineptitudewhiskey,” of the Modi governwell-aged he says.

Chocolleagues up the old adage: breed that read is sold as kali masi.” mentsearch — and the loss of pra’s for complete kadaknath endIf you are a socialist in your There are not special cross-breeds a great reforms mandate — that ed in Tamil Nadu after he met 20s the thencroiler, you don’t have a heart, like which experts bea communist student now the talk of but if you arelieve Rudras Breeders.

Sinceleader then, is the still comes a socialist into your then close the30s original the nation. A student who mistakenly you don’t have chef-cum-author has leader routinely a brain. hope they understand but isn’t aIperfect clone yet. frames azaadi from hunger azaadi presented creations rangingand from Nagafrom ka- that theNational free market is an azaadi they should The Agriculture Innovation Procapitalism as the same, and gets away it, ject daknath curry and kadaknath pilaf to with kadakalsohas be been fighting for.toWay more Indiansbreedhave trying make kadaknath though more people have died from hunger ing nath korma. found azaadi from post-liberalisustainable forhunger farmersininthe drought-prone in “Exploring communistand nations, and continue to die in Jhabua re-innovating” kadaknath sation years than they did before. and Dhar districts by providing them North Korea.

Kumar’s rise and the of with dishes are on Mehrotra’s agenda.

Butrevival the chef As specimens for Modi and colleagues, theyresults need andhis facilities.

But the the Left theavailability natural result of bird, the political rues theare poor of the despite so azaadi from thebeen prison of their own To far have not encouraging.

Ashubris.

Mehrotra violence of the rightinwing, which has says, farms mushrooming Punjab, UttarModi Pradesh translate words of Pakistani poet Habib “It isthe still a celebratory dish made forJa-a failed to control.

Thereason, revivalsays of the and Tamil Nadu. The Gill,extreme “is that special lib: “Theoccasion one who held thronenumber before you/ for athis limited of left has re-established the political equilibkadaknath is a poor brooder.

It will not sit on guests.

He too was that God.” The sure menu hashe toiswait!” rium that the that rise of theinto exits egg, andwas is adisturbed true wildby breed gets sambuddhadash mitrais mustafi the founder The in a food andis travel writer of based treme easily right. and perishes. Even the tribes that madhulika fights Political Indian t@some_buddha Dida Modi and of the RSS think thatfind India was Bhubaneswar have tradition catching them it diffi-

Kanhaiya’s ‘communism’ and Modi’s ‘fascism’ are alter-egos of each other. Both are antifreedom and bad for business

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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Marching on Myrmecologist Sunil Kumar holds forth; (below) as many as 80 ant species have been spotted in Lalbagh tara thomas Onerachel too many Anekantavada or many-sidedness in Jainism is like the parable of eight blind men and the elephant

Getting all antsy The gamblers of Kaliyuga

wikimedia commons

THE COMPASS CHRONICLES

A Sunday morning at Bengaluru’s Lalbagh is devoted to scurrying, agile ants

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engaluru’s ephemeral spring is almost over. You can tell the restlessness of the mercury once you step inside Lalbagh Botanical Garden, which is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the fast-warming city. Gentle rays of the morning sun fall on the walkways bustling with n the Indian epic Mahabharata, people trying to overtake each othera minor in the calledwalking.

Rituparna nameking of brisk In explains between to it his all, charioteer Nala group how toof count the leaves there’s a colourful children and fruitswith of anmagnifying entire grove, just byStrolllookadultsand armed glasses. ing at He these boastsparticipants that he has gained offone thetwig. paths, of Ant this fromthat thescurry study beof Walkmagical examineknowledge trees and ants chance in gambling: “Knowledge I possess of tween rocks and leaves. theLed game dice, thus is mythat skillorganises in numbers.” by of EcoEdu, a group naMany early cultures of the world allude simture walks, talks, workshops and camps, the ilarly to the mathematical art where of statistics.

Ant Walk begins with an activity everyFirst random sample taken from the colone isa asked to draw an is ant.

What follows is a lection to be countedof—facts five throws of dice in a quick run-through that the average game, random votes inare an opinion poll. personor is 20 familiar with: ants mostly black In butare nottiny, all methods, the sample isouttakor some red; they but put together they en to represent the average distribution the weigh the humans on the planet.

They of move entire collection — such as sting, applesand in an ordead things around, some most chard, blood cells in human bloodants usered their antennae to the sense and commustream, or Jewstheir in a eyesight certain precinct nicate, because is weak. of Nazi Germany. The final count’s accuracy depends Open season on the method used because the trick is in defining ‘randomness’ of in a samA flurrywhat of terms — petiole,consists nodes and thorax — ple. the same way a telescope you takesBut meinback to biology classes at lets school. observe objects, statistics is the black Looking faraway around at the chirpy kids exchanging art ofabout counting fromand a distance. facts worker nurse ants with each On the otherifhand, systems that generate other, I wonder the EcoEdu team will be able randomness example, gambling) to hold their(for attention fordice overintwo hours? have been interpreted as theisexpression Whatalso about mine?

My curiosity assuaged of divine will. One of the most ancient of these once we start observing the ants of Lalbagh. occult systems I Ching, which claims Out of the 12,000is—the some say 22,000 — species that the we 64 hexagrams itsthe deck arefew a microof ants, spot over 15inin first mincosmic, combinatorial representation or samutes. In two hours, we’ve also seen the diacample of possibilities in ant, thewhich, entireaccording Chinese ma (diacamma indicum) cosmos. scholar of communication, Peter to articlesA on the internet, is a queen-less geZhang has noted “The ants, hexagrams of ants, the I nus. We also spotthat weaver acrobat Ching areaayellow predecessor of the and even crazy ant.

Thebinary latter issystem classiLeibniz reinvented.

The undivided the fied as an invasive pest in Australialine, where, yang, is the equivalent of one, andare the divided with the help of helicopters, they ‘eradicatline, yin, isareas the as equivalent of zero.

In the ed’ bythe baiting large as 2,000 sq m. digital age,into thesmaller binarygroups systemasisthe thewalk hidden We split promedium or milieu of our existence, theant-cenformal gresses. The conversation is largely cause of our mode being and of dotric, though on aofnumber ofmanner occasions it

A history of making choices by counting from a distance

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ing things. Probabilistic thinking is valorized To see how this model is a typical feature of all over again. Happenings tend to be grasped the world after the 20th century, here is a defiless in terms of linear causation, and more in nition of ‘probability sample’: “A sample in terms of the fusion of chance and necessity.” which every unit in the population has a The statistician PC Mahalanobis traced the chance (greater than zero) of being selected in origin of qualitative statistical thinking in the the sample.” In a sense, the very process of a Indian subcontinent to the Saptabhanginyaya pure democracy can be defined within samor the ‘seven-fold’ system of logic attributed to pling theory, and therefore the concepts of Jain philosopher Bhadrabahu, who flourished probability and chance. An election therefore in the 4th century BC. Just like the eight tri- is a sampling technique that represents the grams of I Ching which combine like chemical opinion of the entire population — for five touches upon the magical effect that elements to form the complexity of magnify64 (8x8) years mon good the of colony. such as theasred in theofcase India.Ants In democracy, in ing glasses have on all age groups.

Keepingout us spectator hexagrams, Mahalanobis also pointed fire possesssports, what the now infamous evolutionMindy Peden reminds us: company, well be as playing guide is Sunil Ku- ary biologist “Chance that there as might a hypothetiRichard Dawkins christened is the great equalizer‘the in mar,eighth co-author of Onina Trail cal element this with Jain Ants. He says green beard the gene’ — a that theory became sense all that parties to thea he has spotted overdesigned 80 species system of dialectic, “toin the gardens bone of contention between him andanything William flirtation know... that of Lalbagh. Over course of the walk, he D Hamilton. could rationalise and thesystematise They recognise happen.” the presence of shares experience many ant facts.

As some what offers”.

Thechildren certain markers in other — According to Achal Oza,ants time In acomsense, the veryshared genetic plain of andtothirst, “These ofprimarily Jains didhunger not fail pointKumar out says,process potential queens — like anda game protect in Hinduism is also of a pure ants this are made intonothing delicious in some them that logic had tochutney do democracy can beor killchance: females“...divided that do not intobear four this difdefined within parts abstract, of Coorg.”

My favourite with absolute truths marker.

Ants (ages). fight aggressively to ferent yugas The names of sampling theory learning the day is thetheotrail (such as ofmathematical protectyugas theircome territory dethese fromand a dice that ants rems) but leave were for onlyother basedants. on spite being predators, theyperiare game popular in the Vedic “Ants reality leave —pheromone lived where theretrails are great ‘ecosystem engineers’. od.

These yugas are known as the Most ants use their thatabsolutes. other ants can sense. The no On getting read up on Krita or Sat home Yuga, ITreta Yuga, antennae to sense pheromone strongest on In Europe,trail theisfirst enumerant colony algorithms — route Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga.

The and communicate, the shortest possible route to methods ation of modern probabilistic is Krita Yuga is named optimisation techniques in use after the best roll and the because Kali theirYuga after food.” to Girolamo Cardano, an inveterate credited across today that are the industries worst.” Therefore, if one eyesight islooks weakat democracies gambler and mathematician. It is an interestbased onas ants and their fooda game of chance, the Tiny learnings ing contrast that in Jainism, probability smallest probability finding ismissions.

Pheromone that Kali Yuga will be The behaviour of ants often emerged as a system of is metaphysical reason- rolled, but it scents evaporate oversmall. time, wipexists no matter how anti-human.

We itself. create waste; ing about reality ing away short It is important for the those whoroutes. buildOther their they movemodern away plenty Certain viewsof of manneuroscience envi- knowledge ofants and eventually the sense world this on numbers, on stamadethe and natural waste and use it foras sustesage human brain or consciousness a gi- tistical end up surveys in the long we see, for and lines samples, andforaging those who nance and building.

Theirofcolonies ant democratic assembly neuronshave thatintrivote rule food democracies, in their deceptively haphazard but orderthat given a limited set of catemake patterns, channels and chambers that choices, to decisions.

The currently dominant ly manner.

No matter thea size, blind the output of such system mayants not help aerateofsoil.

They are great examples paradigm fundamental physics known of as be solved our logistical issues centuries before a measure of the prevailing opinion, but what Kumar calls ‘a collective intelligence’ in only quantum mechanics was erected

by Heisenwe even knew we haduncertainty. them. of the inherent action.Pauli, He explains that unlike berg, Schrödinger and humans, others, ants also gupta explores of science as tara rachel thomasthe is ahistory freelance writer based do notupon alwaysthe display traits of selfishness based principles probability,and its rohit Compasswallah Bengaluru t@fadesingh individuality — working instead, for the com- in pillar being the Uncertainty Principle.

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Minister of Deliciousness

Machan, vote Birthday fight kills manpodu

footballer argument turns lethal Defence Minister eats Fun posters andBetter viral videos are encouraging Millennials in Tamil Nadu to go out and get namesake burger n Mumbai, the Messi vs Ronaldo inked… at the polling station, that is battle has cost a Nigerian

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man his life. Obinna Michael Durumchukwa, 34, was having beer with friends on his birthday, when an argument with anadian Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan countryman Nwabu Chukwuma turned violent: the dispute February, forof at the two iconic players. Durumchukwa was spotted eating his namesake burgerrom at the first week was of over the skills least two weeksthrew (eonsabyglass social Vancouver’s Cannibal Cafe. “The Minister of Naatmedia Chukwuma, police said. In turn, Chukwuma standards), Facebook and tional Deliciousness,” named after the Sikh slashednewsfeeds the birthday boy’s throat with a shard. Both men were WhatsApp groups were on expired visas. member of parliament, is a burger with a tanfoundintoChennai be overstaying flooded with memes of Shaktiman, Nokia doori chicken patty spiced with butter chicken 3310,and ICQ yochat boxes and Chiclets — all of them sauce, onion pakora, mint, coriander relics from a bygone era; and all of them gurt. Balle balle! we say. tagged with a message on the lines of “If you remember this, then you must be old enough to vote. Act your age, register to vote.”

And just as the posters began fading from the fickle memory of digital natives, up popped a video file of cricketer R Ashwin with the label: “Dhoni or Virat, Ashwin answers”. Click on the video, and Ashwin starts off in Tamil, “Is this the question you need to worry about?

There are many other things that are much more important. Check first if your name is registered on the voters’ list.” This was clickbait at its cheeky best.

Similar videos with actor Surya, cricketer Dinesh Karthik and squash ace Dipika Pallikal, as also scores of memes tailored to a Tamil Nadu audience rapidly garnered likes, shares, aja Thapa has a big mouth and he has put comments and retweets. All of them came it to good use. The teenager broke the from one source: State Chief Electoral Officer world record for fitting the largest number of Rajesh Lakhoni’s Facebook page TNElectionpencils into his mouth, adding a massive 46 sCEO and Twitter handle @TNElectionsCEO. pencils to the previous record of 92 held by InThe EC in Tamil Nadu, like elsewhere in the dian Dinesh Upadhyaya. Thapa, a security country, makes an effort to increase the voter guard, who would like to be known as ‘the turnout during elections. Since 2009, under street hero of Nepal’ also managed to fit 32 lit the Systematic Voters’ Education for Electoral candles into his oversized mandibles. Now Participation (SVEEP) programme, the EC has that’s a real mouthful. run campaigns to inform voters about the corrivers in Doha, Qatar rubbed eyesproofs in disbelief when recttheir identity needed, location of pollthey spotted a tiger strolling between cars.

The pet, ing stations, how toescaped use an electronic voting which had a chain tied to its neck, was filmed through machine (EVM),running poll timings, how to file comtraffic. A Twitter user commented, “Only inso Doha, plaints and on. four men tryBooth camp The OPN Advertising team behind the Election Commission’s #TN100percent campaign ing to wrestle a tiger back into a van Concerned, Inon TN,the forhighway.” the first time, the EC is using social the ministry of interior tweetedmedia that authorities were tool. following as a promotion up on the trending report. hen you think government, you per cent voter turnout, respectively. Although The social media and online campaign will think boring. We wanted to change there have been similar campaigns in Maha- be followed by TV and radio spots, as well as that. We also didn’t want to talk down to peo- rashtra, Gujarat and Delhi, asking people to go outdoor ads on billboards and bus shelters. ple, we wanted to converse, as you will with a out and vote, the TN campaign has created a The use of humour-laced intelligent messagpeer,” says Bala Manian, the 38-year-old strate- stir all its own. ing makes this election season stand out from gy head at OPN Advertising, the agency be“We’re trying to create a movement of sorts, all previous ones, which were marked by a hind the Election Commission’s spirited drive where everyone is emotionally invested,” says preference for sombre political posters. Comto get social media talking about voters’ rights S Chockalingam, the agency’s 40-year-old cre- plaints, if any, may be sent directly to the EC on mysterious ghostly octopus has been discovered 4300m below the Paand duties. ative head. “The fact that ours is a young agen- WhatsApp (9444123456). cific Ocean. A remote-operated diving vehicle sent fromphase, US-based In out its first there#TN100percent cam- cy also helps massively. The brief The ad agency and election ofsearch vessel Okeanos Explorer was surveying the paign seafloor off Necker Island, is encouraging people to vote. Ahead of was to attract the 18- to 30-yearficials are confident that the next Hawaii, when they came across the cephalopod.the Social mediaon users elections Maycom16, the next two phases olds to this issue and I think we two phases of their campaign mented that the creature resembles Casper, thewill friendly cartoon focus on ethical ghost. voting and ensuring a 100 were able to do this.” The agency will be received equally well. In a In the 18-29 age Luckily, at the depth it has been found, the octopod is unlikely to scare any was also behind the IPL Chennai group, we have 23 per State that boasts an average voter diving humans.

Super Kings team’s long-pop- cent voters — that is, turnout of about 70 per cent, the ular “Whistle podu” campaign. campaign aims to yank in the reabout 1.34 crore maining 30 per cent too. “If it e decided to tweak the were a normal brand campaign, campaign to talk in the then this attention we have got language of young people about would have been enough. But the things they liked,” says Lakhoni, about the this is our State and we feel quite passionately campaign. “In the 18-29 age category, we have about it,” says Manian.

23 per cent voters — that is, about 1.34 crore. Of “I mean, for us it will not be enough if a perthis, around two per cent are not registered to son just comes to vote; it’ll be even better if vote, which works out to 10 lakh people. The they talk to ten other people and tell them, first phase is targeted at them. We are using ce- ‘Machan, come and vote’. To achieve that last lebrities differently by drawing attention and mile, that will be the hardest,” she adds. focusing on intelligent content. That way the campaign generates positive publicity all sibi arasu is an independent journalist based in Chennai around,” he adds.

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Jaw dropping skills Nepalese teenager mouths 138 pencils

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A furry problem

Pet tiger runs amok in Doha

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Finding Casper

Deep dive leads to mysterious octopus

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

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n this day in 1913, Canberra became the second capital city of Australia, after the seat of government was moved from Melbourne.

This quiz, in keeping with that theme, will be all about ‘seconds’.

here,there & elsewhere

Jasmine tears

Second in line

1

The second line of which well-loved book is “He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world”?

2 3

From which specific activity does the term ‘second string’ for a backup originate?

If Mesopotamian Arabic is the most widely spoken language in Iraq, which language is in second place, spoken by approximately 15-20 per cent of the population?

4 5

One of the more common themes in Premier League football is the ‘Second Season Syndrome’. What exactly is this used to explain?

The architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr BR Ambedkar, had suggested a second capital for effective governance. Which city did he suggest as India’s second capital?

6

Another second line: identify the classic novel. “Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”

7

In 1995 Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy teamed up for the memorable romantic comedy Before Sunrise. What was the name of the sequel, their next film together, which was an even bigger hit?

8

Cary Grant was offered a role in a film series by his close friend, the producer Albert Broccoli. Talks finally broke off when the veteran actor committed to only one film. Name the second choice for the role: he stepped in and made a huge impact in the first film of the series.

9 10

What was Svetlana Savitskaya the second person to accomplish, almost 19 years after the first time it was done?

ins returns from his morning walk, to find me in tears. “La, la, la,” he says, B which in a French accent sounds like sparkling sympathy with a twist of lime.

“I warned you about that book! Me? I cannot face it,” he says, growing moist at the very thought. “Cambodia. The revolution. A little girl ...” He tugs at the ends of his scraggly grey moustache. In The Shadow of The Banyan, by Vaddey Ratner begins in the 1970s, at the moment when the Khmer Rouge take power. “It grabbed me right from the first paragraph,” I say. “It’s very well written.” That sounds so lame. There are hundreds of “very well written” books these days, many of them personal narratives, most of them searingly honest and eloquent. But this one, written from the perspective of a seven-year-old princess tossed onto a blood tide of brutality, is in a class all its own.

“I don’t want to know!” says Bins, covering his ears. Of course I won’t give him the option. Books like this absolutely refuse to remain coiled up quietly in memory. They scream to be shared. “The author tells us that she wrote it as a novel because she understood the need to shape a coherent story out of the shards of her childhood.” Her father really was a prince of the Cambodian royal line.

She tells us in the Afterword that

years after the events she describes in the book, when she visits the land of her birth, she loses her voice while reciting her own full title in the presence of the reigning monarch.

During the revolution, names like hers were a death sentence.

“There is no trace of self-pity,” I say.

“We see the child in her serene and beautiful ancestral home. Then with shocking abruptness she is cast out of it.” It’s like watching live footage on a news channel, but from the vantage point of a child, who cannot understand why she sees what she sees. Someone for whom the drama unfolds directly

from the mythic realm, with herself riding the back of a terrifying dragon.

Demons tormenting her. Angels protecting her.

Bins is interested in the references to the myths. “They have different names there, no?” Yes. For instance, ‘tevoda’ instead of what we in India might call an ‘apsara’ and ‘yiak’ perhaps similar to ‘yaksha’. I am reminded so strongly of my own childhood in Thailand, when for three years we were surrounded by the familiar-unfamiliar interpretation of the Ramayana. In this book, amidst all the horror there is also great beauty. The velvet-green paddy fields. The scent of coconut-based desserts. The jasmine garlands. The exquisite silks. The rich natural abundance of the countryside.

The dainty-waisted mother. The heroic poet-prince father.

The quiver-ful of stories, poetry and words that sustain the little girl who will survive to be evacuated to the West, are her weapons against the chaos around her. Bins sighs. “They are very powerful,” he says, “these weapons. Her arrows have reached my heart, just from holding the book.”

And her tears are in my eyes even as I write this. manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

cornerstone

Andrew Sandham is the first test cricketer to score a test triple century, getting 325 against the West Indies, in Sabina Park, Kingston.

Who was the second?

Answers 1. Around The World In 80 Days by Jules Verne 2. Archery. Archers would always carry a second string for their bow in case the first one broke 3. Kurdish, which has over 20-30 million native speakers across seven Asian countries 4. Teams promoted into the Premiership tend to have a strong first season, but normally slump badly and struggle to avoid relegation in their second year.

There is also a similar ‘sophomore curse’ in US sport, where athletes struggle after a strong firs- year performance 5. Hyderabad, functioning as a southern capital to balance Delhi in the north 6. 1984, the first line being the memorable “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

7. The 2004 film Before Sunset 8. Sean Connery 9. She was the second woman in space, on Soyuz T-7 in 1982. The first was Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6 in 1963 10. Sir Donald Bradman: he scored 334 against England at the Oval

ND-X _ A

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

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