THE RISE OF NIKKI HALEY IT’S COOL TO BE A SARPANCH AR RAHMAN IN CONVERSATION THE COMMUNIST WHO SURVIVED COMMUNISM THE DAY OF THE JACKET www.openthemagazine.com
12 december 2016 / rS 40
Modi in the Age of Rage the ARt of thRiving in AdveRsity By s Prasannarajan
contents 12 december 2016
5 46 oPen diary the day of the jacket By Swapan Dasgupta Coats maketh the man, and choices are plenty for cool gents as the season for dressing up sets in By Aekta Kapoor 6 12
Locomotif 40 The Editor of Ideas 52 By S Prasannarajan ‘if i StoP Searching for Something new i woULd die of boredom’ 12 AR Rahman in conversation By Divya Unny fareweLL fideL The Communist who made history after the end of history 55 By Sunanda K Datta-Ray breaking free on the beach Indie goes mainstream at the 10th Film Bazaar in Goa 16 By Divya Unny modi in the age of rage 16 The art of thriving in adversity 58 By S Prasannarajan dancing with Zadie Smith Family, friendship and identity—one of English fiction’s 24 most celebrated young writers returns to familiar turf 58 can india go caShLeSS? By Nandini Nair The possibilities and pitfalls of a digital economy By Siddharth Singh 64 tonight i can write the SaddeSt LineS 26 52 When poets translate each other the 311 ProbLem By Madhavankutty Pillai The bureaucracy can’t be left 26 46 out in the war on black money By Bharat Karnad 66 not PeoPLe Like US Dutt’s the Way 28 36 40 By Rajeev Masand it takeS a viLLage haLey’S comet india faSter to redefine Power South Carolina Governor than ever It’s quite cool for some Nikki Haley is set to be the Mohammed Shami and Cover photograph by professionals to forsake first Indian American with Umesh Yadav have broken Rohit Chawla cities for grassroots politics cabinet rank in America more than just speed barriers Cover by By Kumar Anshuman By James Astill By Aditya Iyer Saurabh Singh
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 3 open mail [email protected]
Editor S Prasannarajan Letter oF the week managing Editor Pr ramesh C ExEcutivE EditorS aresh Shirali, ullekh nP Social media has taken over the way everyone Editor-at-largE Siddharth Singh functions and communicates, so why should dEPuty Editor (mumbai burEau chiEf) madhavankutty Pillai politicians not jump on the bandwagon? As dEPuty Editor rahul Pandita mentioned in the story, ‘How Social Media Is crEativE dirEctor rohit chawla Shaping the New Political Order’ (December art dirEctor madhu bhaskar SEnior EditorS v Shoba (bangalore), 5th, 2016), Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and haima deshpande (mumbai), nandini nair Arvind Kejriwal largely owe their public im- aSSociatE EditorS Kumar anshuman, age and vote bank popularity to what they put lhendup gyatso bhutia (mumbai), monalisa S arthur, vijay K Soni (Web) out on social media. Just like there is no such SEnior aSSiStant EditorS thing as ‘bad publicity’ in the press, there is no Sonali acharjee, Shahina KK bad publicity on Twitter, Facebook and Insta- aSSiStant EditorS archana Pande, aditya iyer gram either. The frightening part, however, is chiEf of graPhicS Saurabh Singh that the public largely remains immune and SEnior dESignErS anup banerjee, veer Pal Singh unaware of the ways in which internet ‘news’ later. What a terrible situa- aSSiStant Photo EditorS ashish Sharma, raul irani can manipulated for propaganda. One cannot tion to have arrived at due even be sure whether posts are written by one to poor administration and aSSociatE PubliShEr person or an entire team of spin doctors. In the faulty planning of ‘a move Pankaj Jayaswal age of social media political campaigning, one with good intentions’. gEnEral managErS (advErtiSing) Karl mistry (West), needs to learn to take everything that is put up Rules for withdrawal are rashmi lata Swarup with an extremely large pinch of salt. being changed every day Krishnanand nair (South) national hEad-diStribution and SalES Somak Uppal and honest citizens are ajay gupta literally being made to beg rEgional hEadS-circulation d charles (South), melvin george for withdrawing their own (West), basab ghosh (East) to tweet or not to tweet of public contributions hard-earned money. The hEad-Production maneesh tyagi SEnior managEr (PrE-PrESS) It is interesting to note made by politicians. It is long-term plan may be to Sharad tailang that while several politi- now important for prime move towards a cashless chiEf dESignEr-marKEting champak bhattacharjee cians have decided that ministers and presidents to society, but it is a Western cfo anil bisht social media is the best ask whether it is necessary concept which will need hEad-it hamendra Singh way to connect with the to take selfies all the time thoughtful and better general public (‘How and if they can achieve the planned implementation chiEf ExEcutivE & PubliShEr manas mohan Social Media Is Shaping desired impact through the in India. We seem to be all rights reserved throughout the world. the New Political Order’, policies they implement. moving backwards with reproduction in any manner December 5th, 2016), In times of crisis, like the the market on the brink is prohibited. Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and there still remain many current money situation in of collapse. published by manas mohan on behalf of the owner, open media network Pvt who are yet to embrace the India, people need action, Mahesh Kumar ltd. Printed at thomson Press india ltd, 18-35 milestone, delhi mathura road, potential and pitfalls of the not Twitter spats. faridabad-121007, (haryana). World Wide Web. For R Ramachandran more thAn jUst An ImAGe Published at 4, dda commercial complex, Panchsheel Park, example, the Obamas Vidya Balan should be an new delhi-110017. Ph: (011) 48500500; fax: (011) 48500599 never tweeted directly FAULtY PLAnnInG inspiration to every In- themselves but through an This refers to the Open dian actress (‘Our Lady of to subscribe, Whatsapp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to office. Yet they remained Essay, ‘Of White, Black and Liberation’, December 5th, www.openthemagazine.com or call our toll free number immensely popular be- Double Black’ by Bibek 2016) not just because of 1800 102 7510 or email at: cause they let their public Debroy (December 5th, the kind of roles she takes [email protected] work and appearances 2016). A month has nearly on, but also the way she for alliances, email [email protected] speak for themselves. passed since the ‘demon- conducts herself. One need for advertising, email [email protected] While social media is etisation experiment’ not justify one’s weight, for any other queries/observations, certainly a great way began and the required fashion, relationship email [email protected] to hold public figures denominations of currency status or salary slip in volume 8 issue 49 accountable and be in- notes are still unavailable order to be a working for the week 6-12 december 2016 total no. of pages 68 stantly updated on their at banks and in ATMs. In woman in Bollywood. She views and plans, tweets many instances, banks are is more than just another and selfies cannot un- issuing tokens and asking ‘image’ in this industry. dermine the importance customers to return days Vidhi Lal
4 12 december 2016 open diary Swapan Dasgupta
hen the dust settles, the ing authorities of ‘respectability’. WAtMs start functioning again Anything that deviates from that and the social media posts about the norm is automatically portrayed as desperate plight of the neighbour- vile and prevents people from speak- hood liberal’s maid and maali ceases, ing their mind. this phenomenon it may be worth collating a list of the was dubbed the ‘social desirability most ingenious ways that those who bias’ and witnessed donald trump were caught on the wrong foot went doing better in online polls than ones about their laundry. which involved engaging with an the most familiar one was, of interviewer. course, the payment in advance of sible to quantify, but economists Is there a ‘social desirability bias’ cash to employees. the drivers in our studying the consequences of this at work in India? Maybe not in the locality spoke about how the masons, huge exercise may find it worthwhile big bad world but certainly in the carpenters and plumbers engaged by to estimate the quantum of unin- english-speaking world. And almost the builder who lives in the locality tended redistribution of wealth. the certainly in the echo chambers of were paid two years’ salaries in beneficiaries won’t be found among the media. advance. the other common trick the middle classes or Income tax that worked with the connivance of payers. they will be those who s We APPrOAch christmas, bank managers or petrol pump probably have the greatest need. Athe hoary battle between ‘Merry owners was to quietly exchange the christmas’ and ‘seasons Greetings’ or new money paid by many customers hAPPIlY AccePted a ‘happy holiday’ has resurfaced. I have with old notes at a discount ranging I new 2,000-rupee note extracted found ‘seasons Greetings’ cards (or from 15 to 20 per cent. from the economist and pollster email messages) silly and meaning- Politicians, I am told, simply surjit Bhalla for a bet I won on the less. Maybe it is because I spent a very disbursed their money for parking outcome of the us presidential long time living in what was then a to their trusted supporters, who in election. I will share the winnings christian West (alas, it has become turn went about finding parking with Odisha MP Jay Panda, who was too secular for my taste) that I don’t spaces in either Jan dhan Yojana my trump partner. balk at saying ‘Merry christmas’. It or other accounts. When we took that bet a week or doesn’t remotely challenge my very the most imaginative strategy so before november 8th, neither Jay pagan faith, nor does it suggest being was adopted by the consortium that nor I imagined we would be a thou- infected with cultural imperialism. chartered an aircraft to fly from hissar sand rupees richer. however, because It actually reminds me that, in a very to dimapur with trunk loads of old surjit kept vehemently insisting that personal sort of way, christmas is cash. the destination was nagaland hillary clinton would enjoy a a time for family, friends and some because, under the terms of some old “landslide victory”, both of us thought uninhibited gluttony. agreement, certain tribes in the state it would be fun to question his are exempt from Income tax. there astonishing over-confidence. ucked AMOnG my notes, are some other categories of people now that the election is over, poll- TI found this passage from who too are exempt from this tax, but sters are agonising over the results thomas carlyle. Amid the kerfuffle it’s best not to give people ideas. and dissecting their own inability of demonetisation, it has a relevance: Of course, those who accepted to predict the outcome. the most ‘When the ship returns to harbour dirty money for safe custody and con- common explanation centres on ‘shy with the hull battered and the rigging version will expect a service charge voters’—the guys who didn’t want to torn, before we assess the blame of and parking fees. But it is also likely reveal their voting preference because the pilot, before we award the verdict that there will be people who when they were wary of the reaction. of posterity, let us pause to enquire asked to return the principal will What this suggests is something whether the voyage has been twice feign ignorance. I know these likely deeply disturbing. It would seem round the world or to ramsgate and instances of gaddaari will be impos- there are groups that are certify- the Isle of dogs.’
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 5 LOCOMOTIF
playing out its liberation script. And it was an ideal time for a beginner to be in the company of a boss such as Padgaonkar, a sophisticate shaped as much by Café de Flore in Paris as by the cultural richness of India. It was an interest in European literature that brought us together, and then there was a lot to talk about the redemptive interface between literature and politics. In Prague, after the Velvet Revolution that began in a By S PRASANNARAJAN theatre called Magic Lantern, the philosopher had already become president; and from his exile in Vermont, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, still crying for the lost Slavic soul in the ruins of the empire, was contemplating his historic homecoming. THE EDITOR Padgaonkar was the editor who could engage the initiated with a conversation on Havel’s early plays or his essays from prison. OF IDEAS We could not contain our thrill when we went to meet President Havel on his first visit to India in 1994. For me, the morning itself began on a high: My first 3-4-5 (in-house jargon for the main edit page article, the numbers denoting the column space it occupied) appeared, and it was an essay on Havel to mark his visit: ‘A Kafka in Politics’. We met the great man in the evening in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. We carried almost all the avail- able Havel books to get autographed; I took the morning edition of the TOI too. Havel looked at the title of the article and smiled. He signed across the piece, and below his signature, instead of the predictable dots, he drew a little heart with a flourish of his pen. And our conversation had to be interrupted periodically because TIMES CONTENT the president, a chain smoker, could not find an ashtray. Finally Remembering Dileep Padgaonkar (1944-2016) he had to settle for an oversized flowerpot. Padgaonkar exuded the best of India and Europe, and in journalism, Sham Lal, the original intellectual-editor and literary columnist, was his spiritual guru. Padgaonkar’s HAT WAS ANOTHER time in journalism. eloquence could swing between Bhimsen Joshi and Mozart, Pages were not as well curated as they are now. OV Vijayan and Malraux, Souza and Picasso, Ray and Bunuel, Headlines were not as desperately clever as Heidegger and Golwalkar with understated ease. What set they sometimes are today. It was staid. It was him apart as a writer-editor was not the customary state-of-the- monotonous. It was at times tediously union punditry that added to the edit page gravitas, but his reflective, and a lot more explanatory. It was conversations with international writers, which usually took a time when the omniscient bureau chief, more than a page. My favourite is still his interview with the with a voice graver than the chief of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, conducted at his home in the desert Tnation, ruled the most coveted corner plot of the front page. The city of Arad. Post-Times of India, he would one day tell me about a news pages were, as they say, the state indeed: drab. Once in a ‘miracle’ in a Paris café: his chance encounter with Milan while, it would take the moral outrage and investigative skills of Kundera, a writer he knew I was mad about those days, and an editor to quicken the pulse of the state—or topple it. That said, his wife Vera. Kundera had already stopped talking to the Editor with a capital E was beyond the grasp of the state. He journalists or giving interviews, but the accidental conversation was, for all practical as well as theoretical purposes, the lord of the in the café wound up in the writer’s ‘impeccably modern’ flat editorial page. It was, as they say, the church, and very catholic in Montparnasse, and as both Padgaonkar and his wife Latika too, to be fair. The editor was the pontiff, who set the agenda of the spoke fluent French, Vera didn’t have to play their English nation from the sacred remoteness of the pulpit. He was the translator. It was such moments that brought wonderment in commandment-spewing Jehovah in pinstripes. He was a the words of Padgaonkar the storyteller. disembodied voice of wisdom. It was not the nuggets of news that One of his favourite European writers was Isaiah Berlin, the concentrated his mind, but the sovereignty of opinion. It was a historian of ideas. Berlin’s celebrated essay, ‘The Hedgehog and different time in journalism. And it was in its last glow that I met the Fox’, draws its title from the Greek poet Archilochus: ‘The my first editor, Dileep Padgaonkar, at the Times of India. fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ As editor, he was perhaps the last of the edit page Brahmins, Shakespeare is a fox, Dante a hedgehog. ‘Tolstoy was,’ Berlin though he was not your average pontificator. He was the wrote, ‘by nature a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog.’ In a quintessential conversationalist and raconteur in the thrall of world without Padgaonkar, those who have been touched by his ideas. I came to know him at a time when Eastern Europe was mind will miss the range of the fox.
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Social activist Zak Ebrahim delivers a TED talk in New York NOTEBOOK a son’s story of terror and peace
n a cold winter night in new Jersey, Zak better understanding about islam, about radicalisation. Maybe ebrahim, then only seven years old, was roused there is value in sharing my experiences. that’s how the idea from his sleep by his startled mother. it was close to came about,” he says. midnight. an uncle was on his way to take them to ebrahim’s father nosair had assassinated Meir Kahane, the hisO apartment in Brooklyn, new York. it was november 5th, founder of an ultra-orthodox and militant anti-arab group 1990, close to midnight. ebrahim didn’t quite understand then. called the Jewish defense league. it is said to be one of the first in- But his life, along with those of his mother and two siblings, stances of an islamic terrorist killing someone on american soil. was going to change forever. later from prison, he helped plot the 1993 world trade center Below in the living room, a tV show had been interrupted bombing, which failed to bring down both towers as intended by a breaking news item. a rabbi had been shot dead in Man- but led to the deaths of six people and several injuries. osama bin hattan. and so had his assailant. the video cut to the assailant, a laden is said to have referred to nosair in a video message. man in a pool of blood being lifted into an ambulance. it was his these acts of terror sent the family into a downward father, el-Sayyid nosair. “that basically was our introduction to spiral. they began to receive death threats and the FBi closely the new ideology that my father was following,” ebrahim says. monitored them. they kept moving, for their safety and for on december 4th, ebrahim will tell his story in Mumbai at employment opportunities, almost always tottering on the the tedxGateway at the national centre for Performing arts. edge of poverty. they began to hide their identity from others. “if people knew my story better, perhaps it will help them get a ebrahim, who was named abdulaziz el Sayyid nosair at birth,
8 12 december 2016 now adopted a new name, Zak ebrahim. AFTERTHOUGHT a few years ago, ebrahim decided to go public with his story. He is now a peace activist and a speaker. He published a mem- oir, The Terrorist’s Son, and began to offer himself as an example the business of someone who was raised by a fanatic yet came to embrace non-violence. “i have spent my life trying to understand what of politics drew my father to terrorism... i had these early memories of him, before his radicalisation, and these were happy positive there is at least one thing to memories. He was nice to me, he was humorous. why did learn from trump he do what he did?” he says. and then he gradually began to understand, he says, that perhaps he never knew his father well. onald trUMP iS in many ways a unique “My goal is not to bring about world peace. i don’t think that’s a winner of the top political job in the US. He is the possibility. there will always be violence and war. what i want first president-elect who does not have any mili- to do is to try and create an environment where it becomes dif- tary experience or some prior government job ficult for extremist groups to find new recruits.” thatD equips him to handle one of the most complex roles in His father, as ebrahim now remembers, had found it difficult the world. on top of this, his continuing engagement with to integrate with american life. after having moved to the US a sprawling real estate empire has raised questions about from egypt, nosair was accused of sexually assaulting a woman. conflicts of interest. the latter has been held as a unique the family moved from Pittsburgh to new Jersey hoping to start problem in recent US political history. it is hardly that. afresh, but nosair began to spend a lot of time at a Jersey city all this may be coming to an end. on twitter—trump’s mosque where omar abdel-rahman, popularly known as the favourite mode of communication—on november 30th, he ‘Blind Sheikh’ who headed a terrorist group, used to preach. said, ‘Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take when he was first arrested, for the murder of Meir Kahane, me completely out of business operations.’ critics were ebrahim remembers meeting his father in prison about a quick to point out that the expression ‘business operations’ month later. nosair convinced the family that he was being is ambiguous and does not rule out his continued owner- framed. and for a long time they believed him. when the trial ship of business while putting his children in executive for the world trade center bombing started taking place and positions to run them. the FBi began to present the evidence against nosair, ebrahim, the argument goes that foreign governments may then around 11 years old, first began to realise that perhaps his provide lucrative contracts or out-of-turn project clear- father wasn’t being honest. For many years thereafter, ebrahim ances to businesses he owns to curry favour with the white and his family kept in touch with nosair, either speaking on House. this, they say, amounts to a conflict of interest that the phone or occasionally visiting him. Until eventually, want- could potentially go against US foreign policy goals. as ing to start afresh, they decided to end all communication. mentioned earlier, this is hardly a unique case. during this period, ebrahim had a deep urge to confide his if anything, trump’s contender for the presidency, identity to close friends. “it was very difficult hiding something Hillary clinton, displayed worse dangers of conflict of like this. not being able to tell anyone, even close friends,” he interests. these pertained to the activities of the clinton says. He first began to get the urge of speaking about his experi- Foundation when Hillary was a serving US Secretary of ences when he got involved in anti-war protests after the iraq State under Barack obama. clinton’s chosen method to war, but he found it hard to gather the courage. keep a ‘hand’s distance’ did not work: some of her closest Some years ago, after he had begun speaking publicly about staff when she was in the State department continued to be his experiences, ebrahim received an email from his father’s engaged with the Foundation. in any case, the number of lawyer. nosair wanted to rebuild communication. the two foreign contributions to the Foundation while she soon began exchanging emails. nosair seemed positive about was a high-level official was sufficient to raise concerns ebrahim’s initiative. He told ebrahim that he was himself try- through her tenure in office. ing to help bring a peaceful resolution of the israeli-Palestine. that situation has not confronted trump yet. He has ebrahim is unsure about the sincerity of his father’s claims promised that by december 15th, he will release legal since he was appealing his conviction during this period. documents that will show his disassociation from his “i wanted to understand why he took the decisions he did. i trump organization. didn’t want to have conversation about returning to religion. the lesson in all this for democracies is clear. the busi- So i decided to end all communication.” ebrahim still gets ness of state is far more complex than it was in the days emails from his father once in a while, he says. But he doesn’t of aristotle. Special mechanisms of oversight are now re- respond anymore. n quired even for the very highest offices. that should, ideally, not be a problem in democracy, which, after all, is a system By Lhendup g Bhutia of checks and balances designed to rule out such issues. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 9 openinGs
PORTRAIT chief on similar considerations. according to Paki- stani media reports, there were other contenders, in- cluding a more senior general. But Qamar Javed Ba- the other jwa, viewed as a low-key and unassuming man, was selected so that he could soothe the current tensions between the military and the civilian government. general The Guardian quoted Talat Masood, a retired general, as saying, “general Bajwa is not one of those who Pakistan’s new army chief is not likely will try to assert his personality in order to dominate to alter Pakistan’s stance on India the political scene, or constantly be in the media… he is more reserved than his predecessor and that will help make the situation more harmonious with hree years ago, when Nawaz sharif had to choose the next Paki- the government.” a Reuters report quoted a cabinet T stan army chief, it is said he selected the most apolitical one among the minister as saying, “he is a very low-profile person candidates, someone who posed the least threat to his power. general raheel and after our last experience (with general sharif) sharif stayed away from interfering with the civilian government, even be- this is just a very important consideration; someone coming the first army general in two decades to step down on time without who doesn’t want the limelight at all.” seeking an extension, but he didn’t exactly fit Nawaz sharif’s assessment. The 62-year-old general has a service record of The two differed over the trial of general Pervez Musharraf, and the decision over 35 years. Partly educated abroad, including to lift a travel ban on the former dictator was seen as a sign of the government stints in Canada and the Us, he was heading the conceding to the army’s will. The army general also made a rare public state- army’s Training and evaluation Wing before the ment expressing reservations over the civilian administration’s governance current appointment. he has served extensively last year. over time, the general has become very popular, especially online. in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and northern areas There are reports of innerwear, called Captain Men’s Wear, being sold on the of the country. he is said to have a more moderate streets bearing raheel’s image on the packaging. The Dawn reported the ap- view on India and considers extremism a bigger pearance of mysterious banners earlier this year across various cities calling threat. The general has even served at a UN mission on him to ‘take over’ the government, some even urging him to contest elec- in Congo under the command of former Indian tions in 2018, although the army denied having anything to do with them. army Chief general Bikram singh. having survived general sharif, Nawaz sharif has chosen the next army how his personality will change the outlook of
Saurabh Singh general Qamar Javed bajwa, viewed as a low-key and unassuming man, was selected so that he could soothe the current tensions between the military and the civilian government
the army or its view towards India is debatable. The army has historically commanded such a powerful role because it has managed to maintain a narrative of India posing a threat to Pakistan’s existence. If he allows that ‘threat’ perception to dwindle, then the very rationale behind the military’s power is lost. It is too optimistic, thus, to expect any big shift in rawal- pindi’s policies towards India under Bajwa. n
By Lhendup G Bhutia
12 december 2016 ANGLE IdEAs
MuMbaI Fable The good that would come from not being the economic capital of India By madhavankutty piLLai
hIs MoNsooN, the entire road is far from there but certainly moving
T network of Mumbai collapsed. in that direction. Its many corruptions Singh Saurabh Footpaths, tar, gravel, concrete, are rooted in land; the first sin from emanations of black holes hidden which everything else emerged. In the REsPEcT under muddy brown slush—all melded slums, the minor gangster, the minor The supreme Court has ordered together to create a Jackson Pollock politician, the minor policeman and the that the National anthem be played painting where once there were high- minor ward officer captures government in cinema halls across the country ways. This didn’t happen last year. This land and then levies a toll on its access. and citizens must stand up for it in didn’t happen the year before last. This and from then on there is a progressive respect. The Hindu reports one of was because of the drought. This year it organised banditry with encounter cops the judges who passed the order as rained as it should. an economic capital becoming middlemen, solving property saying, “...people should feel that is a city that needs to rely on the mon- disputes for big builders and the swanki- they live in a nation and show soon failing to keep its traffic moving. est of high-rises having the imprimaturs respect to the national anthem and as it turns out, maybe not even that. of former chief ministers. every politi- the national flag.” That is well taken, oxford economics, a global advisory cian in Mumbai is an entrepreneur, a but there is still the question of firm, says that Mumbai has just been silent partner in numerous businesses. why it should be necessary or edged out as India’s economic capital. In a great enterprise of corruption is mandatory to exhibit what one its list of 50 best metropolitan economic set in motion every few decades when a feels. also, what makes cinema halls entities—Mumbai is 31st and Delhi swathe of the city is opened to develop- so important that this rite must be 30th. Delhi will extend its lead by 2030, ment. The suburbs keep extending performed there? Why not play the moving to 11th spot while Mumbai will until they soon touch gujarat. There are National anthem in all public places be 14th. Maharashtra Chief Minister also true economic gains. Indiscrimi- before every activity? For example, at Devendra Fadnavis does not agree. nate and even illegal construction is a railway platforms from public he has his own gDP numbers showing great money multiplier and job creator. announcement systems before a Mumbai on top, and, Chhatrapati Fadnavis’ solution of yet again using train sets off. Let an Indian show shivaji willing, it will remain that way. land as a sop for industry will inevitably adequate respect by listening to ‘Fadnavis said his government was give the same results. he might mean and standing up for the National framing policies to unlock land so that it well. For the first time, you notice that anthem everywhere. n becomes affordable. also, infrastructure work on metros and monorails is hap- projects such as the Mumbai trans-har- pening all together instead of single bour link would open up the hinterland,’ deserted lines that go nowhere. But said a Times of India report. these are things to be done three decades WORd’s WORTh To be an economic capital of India, a ago. The city now plays catch up to even city must make itself as unbearable as a half-decent way of living and its fails. “nobody respects possible and still manage to attract needy It is good to not be an economic capital. women more people. To get the crown taken away, the It might be even better to pause and de- city must become so unbearable that grow, to reverse, from metropolis to city than i do” even the desperate stay away. Mumbai to town with roads that are roads. n DonalD Trump
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 11 open essay
By SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY
getty images fARewell fiDel The Communist who made history after the end of history he Duke of Bedford didn’t aspirations and fulfilling them. Pope John Paul II’s comment have India in mind when he about higher wages and “proper housing” when he visited wrote that ‘the social signifi- Cuba in 1998 prompted Castro’s wry observation that some cance of Marks (& Spencer) was papal speeches read as if they were written by “a journalist from greater than that of Marx; or to
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 13 open essay summit in havana by declaring that The burly bearded revolutionary wasn’t beyond the Soviet union was non-alignment’s natural ally. It sounded like hailing the pale for discerning Indian prime ministers. the wolf as the lamb’s best friend. even “The first person who came to see me was Prime Mrs Gandhi, left-of-centre by her own admission, ‘slightly left of self-interest’ Minister Nehru,” Castro told Kunwar Natwar Singh. according to Peter hazelhurst of The “I was tense. Nehru boosted my morale.” Times (London), may have wondered. “We have,” she declared in New Delhi, adapting Lord Palmerston’s famous dictum, “neither natural allies nor natural adversaries. We have tried not to be openly critical [of anyone] or use a strident type of voice.” With American Republicans wooing de- veloping countries that were dissatis- fied with the Soviets with economic and technical assistance, egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser asked the uSSR’s khrushchev why Moscow tolerated his non-alignment but refused to accept Tito’s. “Don’t you know why?” the canny Russian replied. “Because if Tito succeeds, he will affect our bloc, but if you succeed, you will affect the other bloc.” Between khrushchev and Castro—not that they were always the best of friends—they hoped to entice the entire non-aligned group into the Soviet camp in the Cold War that was still raging. It wasn’t until the economic re- forms of PV Narasimha Rao and Man- mohan Singh moved India closer to the uS that the Cuba connection came under serious strain. The difficulties created by the American embargo became obvious when Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, Castro’s cultured Latin foreign minister for two decades, who was known and respected here, spent ten days in New Delhi in April 1992 hoping for at least 100,000 tonnes of rice in lieu of sugar trade unionists to donate a kilogramme of rice each and credit. Such bargains had been struck before on the anvil of and asked the Government to provide free transport regardless non-aligned solidarity, always drawing criticism and strictures of American wrath. As the furore continued, that wise old from the uS which accused India of helping its enemies and— owl, Narasimha Rao, quietly gave instructions to sell Cuba rich for a power that pampered the Shah of Iran and ferdinand 10,000 tonnes of non-Basmati rice and the same quantity Marcos of the Philippines—hobnobbing with dictators. hav- of wheat with a Rs 10-crore price tag. he knew it would be a ing lately discovered the delights of the free market, India was notional ‘sale’ like our ‘non-performing assets’. The rice and evasive with the Cubans. wheat were despatched and the State Trading Corporation half- Malmierca’s leftist Indian friends stormed and raged. heartedly tried to recover the cost. Cuba could not pay and the Indrajit Gupta asked if the American navy would invade money was written off two-and-a-half years after Narasimha or Carla hills, the uS trade representative who was always dif- Rao stepped down. It was a reminder to the uS that because ficult, impose fresh sanctions. George fernandes pleaded with of its global image, self-respect and domestic sentiment, India
14 12 december 2016 could go only so far and no farther. Nor would that India ever nedy’s abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. We know of the following betray an old friend. year’s Soviet missile crisis that distracted the world’s attention A grateful Castro called the gift the ‘Bread of India’ because from China’s invasion in the himalayas. What we know less it provided each one of the then 11 million Cubans with a about is the litany of American interventions ever since the loaf of bread. India also gave $2 million during a catastrophic dawn of the 20th century or franklin D Roosevelt’s warning earthquake. Castro was always appreciative. “The maturity of that it was “incumbent on all civilised and orderly powers to India [and] its unconditional adherence to the principles which insist on the proper (read uS) policing of the world.” lay at the foundation of the non-aligned movement give us haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic were bullied the assurance that under the wise leadership of Indira Gandhi, into submission. Colombia was split to create Panama so that the non-aligned countries will continue advancing in their the uS dominated the Canal Zone. Cuba lost 116 sq km of land inalienable role as a bastion for peace, national independence and water at Guantánamo Bay which it calls ‘usurped territory’ and development…” and wants back but which houses America’s infamous high When news of Salvador Allende’s fall reached him in security detention centre. Pope John Paul’s visit provoked an ex- war-torn Vietnam, he promptly flew back via Calcutta plosion of expectations from those not so mythic forces which where Jyoti Basu and thousands of people (but not the Chief Stalin mocked as the Pope’s divisions. “A visit from the Pope is Minister, Siddhartha like a visit from Jesus,” Shankar Ray) wel- Cardinal Jaime ortega, comed him at Dum Primate of Cuba, pro- Dum airport. There is claimed. “Nothing will some confusion about be the same afterwards.” the date of the Chile Barack obama’s visit be- coup. Newspaper gan the reconciliation, reports indicate Castro although, sadly, he failed heard the grim news in to carry out his promise hanoi. Curiously, how- to close Guantánamo. ever, Inder Malhotra’s The captains and biography of kings of the Western Indira Gandhi claims world have decided to the bombshell broke boycott Castro’s funeral. during her banquet They probably believe in New Delhi for the it’s posthumous punish- Cuban leader. The ban- ment for one of the few quet was on November Castro visited India twice (1973 and 1983) Third World leaders 11th, the coup exactly as Indira Gandhi’s guest. The bear hug in who stood up to their two months earlier. To might and yet escaped add to the confusion, which he famously enveloped his “sister” the fate of Saddam Castro himself claimed outside Vigyan Bhavan in 1983 must be hussein and Muam- 12 years later that it mar Gaddafi. But is it was the moment when one of history’s most dramatic greetings necessary for India to Mrs Gandhi discovered emulate them? The Ak- the sinister foreign 47 with which Allende hand eternally plotting shot himself was a gift her downfall. “What they have done to Allende, they want from Castro with a golden plate that read, ‘To my good friend to do to me also,” she told him, darkly mentioning domestic Salvador from fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the enemies “connected with the same foreign forces that acted same goals.’ India shares those goals with all Afro-Asian coun- in Chile, who would like to eliminate me”. tries. fidel Castro’s funeral will be an occasion to reaffirm those It’s not inappropriate that this particular legend was born goals and celebrate the non-ideological revolution he called “a in the controversy of conflicting facts and statements. The struggle to the death between the future and the past.” It’s the American ambassador, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, promptly Third World’s struggle for survival with dignity. n retorted that far from trying to assassinate her, the uS had twice given Mrs Gandhi money to fight elections. Whatever the Sunanda K Datta-Ray is a journalist and author truth, Castro had far greater reason to fear American enmity. of several books. He is an open contributor “If surviving assassination attempts were an olympic event, I would win the gold medal,” he joked. We know of Jack ken- Read Ullekh NP on Castro at Openthemagazine.com
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 15
COVER STORY
in the age of rage The ArT of Thriving in AdversiTy
By S PraSannarajan
Photo illustrations by Saurabh Singh Modi COVER STORY
his is what we know: it’s not at good time to be in power. Poli- ticians playing by the rulebook are being assailed by furies from the farthest provinces of resent- ment. slogans no longer inspire the base because the grassroots have declared war on clichés: so think before you use the word ‘change’. we have also been told that truth died a sudden death in the ruins of politics-as-usual: so beware the evangelist wasting his eloquence on tomorrow. Yesterday is suddenly beguiling, and it looks like the future belongs to time-travellers promising to take us back to a place beyond memory and mythology. it is as if the so-called ‘power of the powerless’ has made the old ideological divisions redundant. the extreme is the new centre. it is not a good time to be a politician steeped in the certainties of the tribe. still, every word of Narendra Modi is a reaffirmation that it is a good time to be
18 12 december 2016 the Prime Minister of India. folks think. Anecdotal evidence from the quieter parts of the Out there, in the wake of the Government’s midnight streets and the countryside suggest he is perhaps the only massacre of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, the streets are Indian politician who doesn’t suffer from a trust deficit. angry, queues are not getting shorter, the champions of the Between the anger on the street, dramatised by the usual shirtless have come out of hibernation, and economists of a suspects still struggling to lead the orphaned opposition certain ideological persuasion are pointing out the ineffec- space, and the prime ministerial sangfroid lies a harsh tiveness of the effort to contain black money. Modi remains political truth: the diminishing credibility of the satrapies unfazed, and he stands by what he believes, and he keeps in the corruption debate. No mobilisers of the underclass on announcing more measures to curb the evil he thinks in demonetised India can win the argument on corruption hinders the economy and makes India increasingly unequal because their backstories, in spite of their electoral success, in spite of the growth rate. He still believes that short-term bring out the worst traits of power. Set against them is a man pain is a prerequisite for the larger good, that the simulated for whom power provides no personal dividends. anger of the political class is not a reflection of what ordinary That is why Modi, in the prime ministerial history of
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 19 COVER STORY
India, is a cultural shift which still remains incomprehen- take the risk, start the unthinkable, succeed, or fail and start sible to certain sections of India that continue to see him as all over again. The regulation raj that came after the belated an affront to their liberal sensibility. But Modi happened death of the licence raj saw crony capitalism thriving un- before the politics of resentment was as sensational as it is der political patronage, and Modi, without much fanfare, today. It was not the aggrieved Hindu who brought him to brought in the kind of transparency India has not experi- power, and it was not the word ‘Hindu’ that animated his enced before. For once, the entrepreneur, the bureaucrat argument for India either. The much-caricatured mascot and the politician are partners in an honourable venture. of hard Hindutva won India by tapping into the anger of Modi, an irrepressible headline maker on the stump, is the underclass and the dreams of the youth, and he, unlike comparatively prosaic as Prime Minister, and thank God for your average resentment reaper today, did not sell hate. It that. And that is not something diehard Modiites have been was malevolence and entitlement, as institutionalised by expecting from their action hero. In his midnight launch of India’s oldest party, that he was raging against. It was an demonetisation, they got the big bang they badly wanted—or angrier time, and a regime retired from reality, headed by a did they? It should not have come as a surprise from someone dutiful doctor whose political power was rationed by higher who was in the habit of turning banalised promises into real- powers, failed to read the popular mind. Modi found a voice ity—and a narrative-shifting political statement. The eradi- more original than his party’s, and it was the voice of a man cation of black money, periodically mythified in unverified whose moral system did not abhor the possibilities of power. reports of secret funds from proxy businesses, was one such In a country where the pursuit of power was seen as a moral promise. Until Modi, no government bothered to do any- malady, he made no effort to hide his dedication to it in one thing serious about it; a convenient slogan, and that was it. of the longest campaigns in the history of Indian politics. Two realisations have powered his midnight bang. First, He refuses to slow down even after the storming of Delhi. this Prime Minister has rightly identified his primary war zone: the parallel India of unaccounted wealth. He could have been stoic about corruption and the pitfalls of an over- T IS NOT that, more than half way through his term, crowded democracy where politics can afford to be an illegiti- i Modi has received full-fledged adulation from his mate business. Or he could have shrugged it off as the Asian formidable middle-class constituency. He has not been way of power sharing in which wealth, family and patronage bold enough in liberating the economy from the last are parts of an unbreakable matrix. Only the style and degree remains of the socialist model; his cautious, incremental vary, he could have pretended, otherwise it is all the same. approach to reform is not the way to gain his place in In India, corruption is more than an act of assisted thievery; history; his silence as the rearmed lunatic fringe it has become an institutionalised evil, and they are all in it hijacked the cultural argument has been deafening; and together. Modi’s war on black money is an act of idealism. his serial setbacks in assembly elections have dimin- Which brings us to the second: the power of the ascetic. It ished the mystique… acolytes, not necessarily hard-core is his biography that provides the aesthetics of his politics. He fans, were showing signs of impatience. is your 24/7 nationalist for whom power is a spiritual quest. Have we missed the good news beyond the headlines? Or, Nothing else fascinates him as much as his own story as a have we taken certain things for granted in Modi’s India? At subtext of the larger national narrative. This is the extreme least on corruption, we did. We did not even notice that there manifestation of the conviction politician, permanently was not a single scandal in his administration. Till less than swayed by the possibilities of power. What makes him dif- three years ago—have we forgotten?—we were living in a ferent from your average Hindu nationalist is that his idea country whose official religion was corruption. Some of us of Akhand Bharat is not a unipolar Hindu rashtra built on even called it the UPA way of life. If there was a dispute, it was Vedic/scientific temper. His idea of being modern may not about the magnitude of it, not about the authenticity of it. It reject tradition, but it strives to keep pace with the digital is a wonderful thing to happen in a country like India, cited century. It is his sense of modernity and ethical governance more often as a perfect case study of the excesses of democ- that makes corruption a threat to his moral system. A leader racy: a quiet and efficient administration is, even if not so powered by his own mythology, and a granite faith in his news friendly, something we are yet to come to terms with. judgment, can be a dangerous choice for a democracy. When The other good news is a steadier economy, growing at a such a leader is fanatical about deploying his personal in- respectable pace despite bad signs from the global market- tegrity to restore institutions in a much-abused civil society, place. This too we have come to take for granted, and it is democracy becomes a better choice of governance. Modi, not an interventionist state but an interactive one that has unlike some of our provincial totems now crying for the made the Indian economy, used to violent swings under bad cashless, is not a me-alone leader in spite of his overwhelm- politics, less fragile and reassuringly predictable. Modi may ing self-awareness; he makes full use of his personal excep- not have become a Reagan or Thatcher in the middle of 2014, tionalism as a leader. but he provided the right atmospherics for adventurers to It is this self-proclaimed ethical system that adds to his
20 12 december 2016 Modi has turned the aftermath of demonetisation into a sacrifice shared between the people and the outsider-ruler, and he never misses a moment to convince them that it is a sacrifice worthy of the cause. It is not a soulless nationalist at play; it is a dash of Gandhi
authority. And it is what allows him, even while being in powerless. He can be an outsider even in Lutyens’ citadel. power, to put himself on the side of the powerless, and not To reap the anger of the powerless, Modi knows he has just rhetorically. In the age of rage, the insider is the en- to redefine power itself. He has turned the aftermath of de- dangered beast, the Establishment is the perpetuation of monetisation into a sacrifice shared between the people entitlement, and the angriest is the loser species in social and the outsider-ruler, and he never misses a moment to Darwinism. Out there in the swamplands of globalisation, convince them that it is a sacrifice worthy of the cause. It some people think they are the worst victims of an unequal is not a soulless nationalist at play; it is a dash of Gandhi. world. Predictably, the old Left has already lost the constitu- As a political stroke, it could not have been more original. ency of the wretched. In the 21st century, it’s the rearmed Renunciation was a preferred weapon of the Mahatma in nationalist who leads the revolution of the ghettos. In In- his struggle against power. For the most powerful politician dia, the cow belt socialists have kept their base more or less of India today, suffering is a prerequisite for the war against intact for a long time because they are better manipulators illegitimate wealth—and the wretched are listening from of caste. And the comrades, with their rapidly shrinking the longest queues. For someone who has learned to turn soviets, are nothing more than a whimper in the East and adversity into bestselling political statements since Gujarat a tedious struggle in the south. In the last General Election, 2002, the angry streets of demonetised India are an opportu- the nationalist shattered the old order of caste as well as class nity, particularly so when the protest is choreographed by in the north, and it was, in the end, one man’s triumph over politicians who dread new currencies of change. In India the dead weight of inheritance. He was the original outsider, 2016, Narendra Modi has shown us that the shared rage and his call was for a renewal of power, not repudiation. against the bigger evil has more transformative power than Once in power, he has not abandoned the language of the the conveniently simulated rage against him. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 21 “BE THE GAME CHANGER”. BECAUSE THE WORLD HAS ENOUGH FOLLOWERS
Mrs. Honey Uttamchandani Nagpal has been at the forefront of diversification at Shree Sant Kripa Group. From leading their foray into unchartered businesses, new product development and establishing global service standards, she has been a key figure in making Syska one of the most recognized brand in the country today.
SSK retail is under your supervision. Tell onto a complete ecosystem of wider India is a hyper active smartphone market. us about the highlights of your experience availability of affordable handsets and What is the key differentiator of Samsung’s so far significantly lower call rates. This has retail strategy here in your opinion? With India now becoming the second caused a tremendous growth in rural With Samsung vision being “inspire the largest mobile market in Asia & the areas, making it key to understand world create the future” in my opinion the smartphone industry growing on an price sensitivity. We are dealing with a key differentiator from other players is annual average of 23 per cent, these 6 highly competitive market and overall, Samsung’s diversified and wider handset years have been not only challenging a dynamic industry. Towards 2020, portfolio with models ranging from minuscule but have also created a great learning with the Digital India initiative, we are to ginormous. With great technology and curve for me. The notable entry of global looking at this industry to make key offering border range to customers as per brands & emergence of home-grown impacts in not only economic value but the varying needs, Samsung continuous to manufacturers has shifted the focus also employment support. be the market leader. AVENUES
come with smart controls to change the What is the future of LED technology in light output, colour and the texture of the India, especially in view of ‘Smart Cities’ same. LED not only helps achieve this but project? also makes the solution sustainable. The future of LED technology will keep getting better and more efficient. It will Any new products launched by the replace traditional lighting completely company? in India. The smart cities project is a SYSKA has always been a pioneer great example of how this government in identifying opportunities at a very is serious & focused for comprehensive early stage and is now in the process growth of India & not only the metros. of bringing many more iOT lights and products - SYSKA Smart Light Q. What is your view on the Government’s series being our first step towards this initiative like the Ujjala scheme? goal. But this is just the beginning. This Government under Prime Minister LED lighting promises lower costs Modi is focused on the basics like lighting because it delivers a longer operational life which is very important for the future and higher energy savings compared growth and by making the LED bulbs to other alternative lighting options. affordable under this scheme the LED In this new era of the Internet, when revolution will happen much faster than these lights are connected to the expected. With government support, we network, users also gain unprecedented shall see more and more people become control through automated and remote aware about the benefits of LEDs, it will access, to dynamically adjust the significantly help the LED manufacturers brightness, on-off patterns, and/or colour of the country to reach out to the masses. of each IP-addressable lamp. The iOT To help LED manufacturers reduce also promises manufacturing costs, the Government lower costs can grant tax and excise rebates for the Mrs.Honey by integrating manufacturing units in order to facilitate Uttamchandani sensors with the in-country production, this will in real Nagpal, devices so sense boost the MAKE IN INDIA ambition Director, that network for the LED lighting segment, making LEDs SSK Retail Pvt. Ltd. systems can more affordable. The way affordability automatically has increased the mass consumption in detect and shut mobile, hospitality and aviation sectors, Tell us about your investment in the down devices when they are not in use. LED production in India will bring the Indian hospitality industry for Syska Because devices are connected to the same change in the lighting sector. LED lights? network, users with the right software Reduced manufacturing cost will result in We have invested in this segment in and security access can remotely lower product prices, which would in turn terms of bringing relevant LED lighting monitor and command them. help the LED manufacturers to compete products. In recent years, increasing We will continue to expand our current with the substandard products which are customer expectation has transformed portfolio in lights, providing solutions currently present in the Indian market. the hotel environment from just a place across categories like Homes & Offices, to sleep into a destination to meet, Outdoor, Industrial and Decorative Could you share some buying tips for a work, play and entertain. Great lighting lighting. To increase our brand share per consumer to buy an LED bulb? and lighting control systems deliver the home per user we are also launching It is never too late to switch to LED immediate impression of style, quality Extension Boards, Extension Wheels, lights. Go for a brand which gives a wide and sophistication tuned to the changing Lantern, Desk LED Lamps and Multi range of LED bulbs in different watts, needs of each type of space throughout Plugs. These new and innovative quality delivers longer operational life, provides the day. The hotel industry is now focusing product range will not only ensure guarantee, offers an array of colours with a lot to highlight the architectural appeal increased adaptation to LED Lights, but ease of installation, proves to be energy of the building and façade by using an also SYSKA will be a household brand efficient and safe and also takes you light array of lighting solutions. These solutions name in coming years’ time. years ahead. In short, Ask for SYSKA. < economy can india go cashless? The possibilities and pitfalls of a digital economy By SiddharTh Singh
hese are cashless days in India. soon after the Union Government withdrew high-denomination notes in early November, the debate on India moving T towards a cashless economy—or more plausibly, a less- cash economy—has gathered steam. In the days immediately after the decision, many urban residents switched to digital pay- ments online due to sheer necessity, as notes of rs 100 and less suddenly became scarce. ‘scarcity’, however, is the wrong word to describe what happened. The rs100 note has over the last 15 years been edged out by rs 500 and rs 1,000 notes, so when the latter were withdrawn, it resulted in a shock of sorts. are these just the pangs of a transition to a cashless economy? Or is this a far-fetched goal in a country where cash transactions still account for most business undertaken? In the interim pe- riod, both answers could be correct. But one thing is more or less certain: the Government and a large number of Indians will shift to the digital domain if they get the right ecosystem for carrying out electronic transactions. The Government’s intent was spelt out on November 30th, when it announced the formation of a 13-member committee on the ‘promotion of cashless society’. The committee is led by an old champion of the idea, andhra Pradesh chief Minister N chandrababu Naidu. The committee has its task cut out. If India is to increase the number of those who steadily give up cash in favour of digital payments, it needs to address three issues. One, a large number of citizens, especially at lower rungs of the income scale, need to be equipped with devices through which such transactions can be done. The device of choice: a mobile phone, preferably a smart- phone. On this front, the progress is somewhat satisfactory. Two, the other side of this exercise involves bringing an ever growing number of persons within the ambit of formal banking, which in turn calls for designing and implementing a user-friendly system of cashless transactions, a formidable challenge. Unbelievable as it may sound after nearly 70 years of Independence, the task of getting as many Indians as possible to use banks is just beginning. Finally, the toughest part of the digital economy triangle is that of changing the habits of a population that has been used to cash
for more than a millennium. This is perhaps the toughest part of s ingh s aurabh by illustration the transformation sought.
24 12 december 2016 “The key component of widespread digital payments involves That is just one side of the equation. The other side—that of changing consumer and merchant habits in a cash-heavy econo- banking and payment systems that are needed for online trans- my. Implementing behavioural changes is extremely demanding actions—is probably even more skewed. Over the last decade, of state capacity. It’s not enough to have cards if consumers use mobile telephony has boomed, but the banking sector has lagged them at aTMs to withdraw cash. consumers must be willing to, far behind. Until 2014, the vast majority of Indians remained un- and know how to, transact digitally. For merchants, the prohibi- banked and, few, if any efforts were made to make banks respond tively high cost of card acceptance machines and connectivity to the needs of the poor. That year, the Government launched its issues often act as impediments to adopting digital payments,” no-frills, zero-balance, account scheme to ensure that everyone saksham Khosla, an analyst at the carnegie endowment for In- signed up. since then, the number of these accounts has swelled ternational Peace, tells Open. to approximately 255 million in early November. at least on this score one can have the satisfaction of seeing positive changes. In this context, the cause for concern is that design of the pay- veN BeFOre deMONeTIsaTION, there was plenty of ment systems by which users transfer money to others or use it to Eexcitement about the country’s digital payment prospects. In buy goods—the actual interface with banking. It was only in april July this year, a joint report by Google India and Boston consult- this year that the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) was launched. ing Group, titled ‘digital Payments 2020’, said that by 2020 the size This system is yet to become fully functional. “There was a spike of this industry would be $500 billion, contributing to roughly in the number of people who signed up for UPI in the initial days, 15 per cent of India’s Gross domestic Product (GdP). Further, but it tapered off after that. I don’t know what the problem is. Is it projected the non-cash share of the it one of ease-of-use or some other us- consumer payment segment at 40 per ability issue, one doesn’t know,” says cent that year, double the current figure. The toughest part of an investment banker who has closely These and other reports paint a rosy tracked India’s journey to a less-cash picture of India becoming a digital pay- the digital economy economy. he says that design issues ment economy. While it is true that triangle is changing are a problem, as similar payment in the last couple of years significant systems elsewhere—for example the strides have been made in creating a sys- the habits of a mPesa system of Kenya—are much tem that will allow the country to move population that has more user friendly. Indian systems, in that direction, the reality is sobering. been used to cash for with their cumbersome Know Your If the benefits of an economy that is customer (KYc) norms and multiple less dependent on cash are obvious, it is over a millennium. verifications for transactions, often de- not clear if India is ready for this ‘revo- This is perhaps the ter those consumers who are not used lution’. There are plenty of roadblocks to such mechanisms. This problem is before a majority of Indians can take toughest part of the likely to be particularly acute in rural the e-way to selling and purchasing transformation sought areas where customers have little, if various services. One big—and basic— any, experience of online systems. hurdle that needs to be crossed is infra- “There are various ways in which structural. at the moment, the spread the Government can incentivise this of mobile phones is very uneven. In July this year, the all-India change. at the moment, the Government has access to plenty number of mobile phones for every 100 persons—also known of money from taxing black money and from other sources. It as tele-density—was a healthy 83. But this bright number hides could, for example, offer cheaper inputs like seeds and fertilisers an uneven geographical spread. In rural areas, tele-density falls to farmers who pay for these using digital platforms. This will to 50.7, almost a third of the urban figure of 148. states such as not only encourage the price-sensitive Indian farmer to buy on- Bihar and assam are way behind the national average. simply line, but also give them experience in using online platforms,” put, India is simply not equipped to make the transition to a less- the banker adds. cash economy, let alone a cashless one. It is not easy to make a country of 1.3 billion people accus- These numbers, released by the Telecom regulatory authority tomed to coins and cash give them up wholly—or even great- of India (TraI), need to be seen in the right perspective. On paper, ly—in favour of modern technological alternatives. From in- the number of Indians with a mobile phone in their hand—the frastructural problems to those of habituation, nothing short basic requirement for joining a digital payments system of any of an end-to-end revolution would be required. In this process of kind—is more than a billion. But this number should be taken change, one should not be overly pessimistic or unduly hopeful. with a pinch of salt: the number of broadband internet subscrib- With an interested government and carefully designed com- ers across India is no more than 150 million. This includes 3G, 4G munication programmes, the transition is possible. If carried and wireline connectivity. The result is that the slice of those who out successfully, it will be one of the biggest such changes in the access the internet on mobile phones is rather thin. contemporary world. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 25 comment
By Bharat Karnad The 311 ProBlem The bureaucracy can’t be left out in the war on black money
emonetisation is treating a symptom. the culture after the 1991 reforms only motivated the triumvirate disease is systemic and grave, and relates to the habituated to swilling at the public trough to put their snouts in institutionalised corruption in the vast, inefficient, deeper. it resulted, for instance, in the multi-billion dollar Com- Dwasteful and mostly ineffective administrative monwealth Games, 2G, coal auction, embraer and assorted other apparatus of the indian state. scams of the manmohan singh era. With much larger amounts Consider what happened in Chennai after Primem inister of monies coursing through a freer and more energetic economy, narendra modi’s surprise announcement on high-denomina- the illicit part has grown bigger. according to Gurcharan Das, tion paper currency. according to a person in the know, large former head of Procter & Gamble in india, other than the import- stacks of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes held by the corrupt, bribe-tak- export trade, bribes to bureaucrats constitute the single biggest ing bureaucracy, lower judiciary and the political class, instantly source of black money today. For an idea of the problem india turned into waste paper. Unruffled, the triumvirate responded by is facing, consider this: some Rs 150 crore is reportedly extorted simply sending bulging sacks of demonetised currency notes in daily as bribes in just the Delhi Union territory by the transport their possession to contractors, influential litigants, and those Department and traffic Police. small wonder the black economy seeking favours, with instructions to do the needful of convert- is estimated to be as much 30 per cent of the national economy. ing the black money into white—however this is managed— RK Raghavan, former director, Central Bureau of investiga- and returning the laundered funds in like amounts. assuming, tion, said in a recent op-ed piece that he was less worried about the reasonably, that this modus operandi was followed in the rest of corruption at the petty functionary levels—the beat constable, the country as well, massive unaccounted-for sums in newly clerks, et al, which he claims is ‘part and parcel of the cutting minted Rs 2,000 notes in the hands of civil servants (and politi- edge of the administration’ than with ‘the rising graph of graft cians and the lower judiciary) will help cement the new black among Class i officers’, most notably in ‘key organisations’ iden- money economy, which modi’s efforts at cleaning up cannot tified by him as income tax, Customs & excise, enforcement touch, unless his promotion of cashless transactions really takes Directorate, and even his own agency, CBi. the problem here is off. But for the entire countryside and semi-urban concentrations two-fold. Petty functionaries in Groups C and D (in officialese), to go online will take years, affording the underground economy the lowest paid categories, comprise nearly 60 and 30 per cent enough time to consolidate. respectively of the government workforce of some 4 million, and in the 1985 centenary celebrations of the then ruling Congress deal directly with people. the Centre will find it difficult to moni- party, Prime minister Raijv Gandhi shocked the country by re- tor and mend their corrupt ways. vealing that only 15 paise of every rupee spent by the Government actually reached the people in the form of some benefit or public service, while the rest went into paying the salaries and allow- t the Class i officers-end, the trend since the 1980s ances of those manning the administrative structure, or was lost A has been for the Revenue services to be the top choice of to leakage—meaning the routine siphoning off of public funds. large numbers of the civil service merit-listers. With entrant- Rajiv’s revelations did not account for the billions of rupees in level officers steeped in cynicism and with an eye firmly on ‘black’ extorted by officials up and down the central and state the main chance, the skyrocketing of corruption is natural. bureaucracies in the process of ‘serving’ the public. Predictably, moreover, the brazenness of senior officers in these ‘lucrative’ no measures materialised to curb either of these menaces then, services is a lure for aspiring civil servants. it has long been a nor have any ameliorative steps been taken since, even as these tradition among income tax Commissioners, for example, for problems have worsened. their progeny at their weddings to be gifted gold ornaments by a less regulated economy and a burgeoning consumerist an endless line of supplicants. modi would really stir things
26 12 december 2016 up in complacent official circles were he to order, for a start, it down, with then Chief Justice Rm lodha ruling that ‘it grants the scrutiny of assets of retired senior officers in these services absolute protection to corrupt officers from prosecution’, who over the last 40 years, while making active covert and overt he argued, ‘don’t need a shield like this merely because they are surveillance a part of service life hereafter, considering that likely to be harassed.’ the existing inhouse means of checking corruption—such as notwithstanding such legal constraints, certain state govern- Vigilance Departments and state anti-Corruption Bureaus— ments, such as the one in tamil nadu, have made prior permis- are ‘a joke’, as Raghavan puts it. it was Chanakya, after all, sion mandatory. who long ago advised his king to mount a special watch on the question, therefore, arises: how is it possible that revenue collectors of every stripe, lest monies owed the state Central and state governments often act in such matters against stick to their fingers. the public interest, and, far from trying to minimise corruption But what makes civil servants audacious in their corruption and increasing accountability in government, provide safety to corruption facilitators among civil servants with a slate of rules and regulations which these babus themselves help draft? the villain is a provision in the Constitution, article 311, which provides those on the public pay- roll fairly comprehensive protection. subsection 1 of this article states plainly that ‘no person who is a member of a civil service of the Union or an all in- dia service or a civil service of a state or holds a civil post under the Union or a state shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed’. subsection 2 adds that ‘no such person… shall be dismissed or removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry’ in which he is ‘given reasonable opportunity’ to refute the charges. this pretty much precludes, in practice, any kind of puni- tive action. short of treason, serious defalcation and evidence of corruption so blatant or massive that it’s hard to ignore, an accused civil servant can get away with everything else. moreover, the due process for dismissal or removal from service, or reduction in rank, is so onerous, time- consuming and rife with dilatory procedures that, should an accused officer take recourse to them, he can ensure he retires with full and generous pension before he has exhausted his legal options. a concerned gov- ernment can, however, compulsorily retire civil ser- vants with questionable records of probity, propriety and performance after 25 years of service—by when, of course, they would already have done their damage. this doesn’t solve the problem, but the modi regime saurabh singh has used it to rid the higher bureaucracy of deadwood and corrupt officers. Crooked and dishonest civil servants, ranging from is the certainty of escaping punishment. the procedural and peons to government secretaries, cannot easily be ejected from administrative hurdles hampering the conduct of investiga- service because the CBi needs to prove their guilt when what is tions into bureaucratic wrongdoing and ill-gotten wealth are required is for the accused to prove their innocence—which is the daunting. these are put in place by the political class because it lines along which article 311 should be amended if the country needs the help of babus to skim the cream off government con- is to be saved from black money-fuelled corruption. n tracts and otherwise manage the drip-drip denudation of the trea- sury. the Congress dispensation introduced a rule requiring the Bharat Karnad is professor in National Security Studies at the Centre CBi to seek prior approval for investigating officers above the for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author most recently of Why rank of Joint secretary. the supreme Court in may 2014 struck india is not a Great Power (Yet)
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It takes a village to redefine power It’s quite cool for some professionals to forsake cities for grassroots politics By KUMAR ANSHUMAN
Photographs by ashish sharma
28 12 december 2016 “When a poor man comes and thanks me for my help in getting his quota of ration, the satisfaction is much more than any job can bring” Sachin kumar 37, Pradhan, Uravar, Uttar Pradesh
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2010, when Chhavi Rajawat are breathing fresh air into the remotest parts of states like Uttar quit her job at Bharti Tele-Ven- Pradesh, Rajasthan, haryana and others, and devising new ways tures to contest the election for of putting them on the map. “There was a very unique pattern village head of Soda in Tonk, Raj- that emerged in the last few panchayat elections,” says Sanjay asthan, she became an overnight Kumar, professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies celebrity. A Lady Shri Ram (LSR) (CSDS), Delhi. “In the past, the pradhan or the sarpanch would be a College graduate who also has person from a respected family and often an elderly man who has an MBA, Rajawat was like any occupied the post for ages. newcomers would have to be from the other educated girl chasing her families of existing or former sarpanchs. But this has been chang- INcorporate dreams. But after working for The Times of India, the ing since the late 1990s.” now the idea of a village head is being Carlson Group of hotels and Airtel, when she decided to enter ru- turned on its head, says Kumar. At a time when people are looking ral politics, it was bound to draw attention. “I didn’t have to think for new and unconventional faces in village politics, youth are about it much because Soda is where I come from and it needs in search of opportunities to prove their mettle, he adds. These me,” says Rajawat. “In fact, the villagers broke barriers of caste, young men and women were born and raised in villages, but later gender and religion to ensure my victory.” In Soda, not even 1 per moved to cities in search of a better life. now, they want a better cent of the voters are of her caste. But caste wasn’t a factor in that life for the people of their village. election, or the one after. Rajawat is currently serving her second The urban and the rural seem to be converging for the benefit term after a re-election in 2015. of one another. “what can an MBA graduate working in a multi- The story of 39-year-old Chhavi Rajawat marks a remarkable national company hope to achieve?” asks Vinod Chandra, a youth and unlikely shift in Indian polity at the grassroots level. Rural sociologist and a professor at Lucknow University. “The usual India, it seems, needs CeOs, not politicians. The reign of the PowerPoint presentation and luncheon meetings offer little job grizzled village sarpanch is over; young, energetic professionals satisfaction. The youth of today needs not just a variety of chal- lenges, but also wider recognition for his or her work and a reward that matches the effort.” In some of these youngsters, the urge to go back to their roots and make a difference is matched by the courage to give up a good life in the city. Last year, 21-year-old Delhi University student Va- sundhara Choudhary got elected from Lilawali village in hanu- mangarh district in 2015 and became the second well-educated woman sarpanch in Rajasthan. Choudhary is yet to complete her Psychology (honours) Bachelor’s degree from Gargi College and wants to pursue an MA and a doctorate thereafter. “Social work is something I was always attracted to and working at the village level will give me an opportunity to implement my ideas,” she says. her family background makes up for her inexperience in politics. her grandfather, Bhim Raj, was chosen village sarpanch in 1962 unanimously. he served two terms before becoming an MLA from nohar in 1972 and a Rajya Sabha MP in 1978. her father Anil Choudhary was a member of the Zila Parishad. In an age of backlashes against corruption and inefficiency, edu- cated first-time candidates have become vote magnets. In the UP Panchayat polls held in December 2015, about 100 candidates with high educational qualifications got elected as pradhans (about one in every eight of them). Of these, 38 were PhDs, 24 MBAs and 31 BTech degree holders, while others came from backgrounds like Fashion
“Social work is something I was always attracted to, and working at the village level will give me an opportunity to implement my ideas” VaSundhara choudhary 21, Sarpanch, Lilawali, Rajasthan
30 12 december 2016 “I spend most of my time in Rathera now. We have now constructed 200 toilets and are planning to construct 200 more to make the village open-defecation free” Poonam yadaV 32, Pradhan, Rathera, Uttar Pradesh
Design and Law. Priyanka Yadav, 23, who graduated from national became powerful. he or she became the facilitator at the village Institute of Fashion Technology(nIFT) only last year, has been level for the various government schemes. This led to a change elected from Richaora village panchayat in the Badagaon block of in village politics. “whenever there is talk of welfare, money will etawah district. “I want to serve my people and see them prosper come in and this will attract people,” says Chandra, “earlier, poli- in a clean and developed place,” says Yadav in fluent english. “I am tics used to be a mission, as we were dealing with the problems of encouraging people to start small garment units where I can help an emerging country. Today, politics has become more of a profes- them in designing and marketing.” State election Commissioner sion.” Sanjay Kumar of CSDS, who did a study on youth interest Satish Agarwal, says, “Besides the trend of educated people return- in politics, says, “Around 37 per cent of youth today are willing to ing to their roots, another unusual feature of this election was that join politics and this includes youth from urban and rural India.” 45 per cent of the seats were won by women, as against their quota of These young politicians don’t hitch their wagon to any political 33 per cent. OBCs and SCs winning general category seats is another party. “The moment you join a political party, people judge you by pleasant change.” These professionals-turned-politicians started what the party is doing,” says 37-year-old Sachin Kumar, who quit working on their ideas soon after their election, and the people and Citibank to become village pradhan of Uravar in Shikohabad, Uttar government are now starting to recognise their efforts. early this Pradesh. “I want to be judged by what I am doing.” Kumar wants a year, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav announced that political career and sees this village role as his first step. the Rani Laxmi Bai Award would be given to 100 women pradhans Thirty-two-year-old Poonam Yadav is an accidental politician. every year for doing good work in their panchayats. From etmadpur, Agra, she completed her MBA and was working as Before the 1980s, gram panchayats were not powerful; their role hR Manager in a manufacturing company in Gwalior. After mar- was limited to dispute-settling and being the signing authorities to rying Kaushal Yadav, a practising lawyer in the Supreme Court, get benefits from the Government. Former Prime Minister Rajiv she quit her job to be with her husband in Delhi. “I didn’t find the Gandhi pushed the idea of Panchayati Raj and on April 24th, 1993, job opportunities in Delhi very challenging,” she says. when her the 73th Amendment to the Indian Constitutional Act 1992 came father-in-law KC Yadav, a local politician in Mainpuri district, first into force, providing for the devolution of powers giving consti- suggested she contest the Panchayat polls, she wasn’t convinced. tutional status to panchayats. with the power to suggest devel- “we talked about how she could bring real change to the village and opment works and initiate welfare schemes, the village sarpanch do something she could be proud of,” says her husband. After initial
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hesitation, she decided to contest the poll from Rathera panchayat Like Poonam, 33-year-old Prabal Pratap Singh has an MBA and in Mainpuri, her husband’s ancestral village. The english-speaking was happily employed at a college in Agra. his three brothers and bahu became the talk of the village and won easily. “I spend most their children are all in government service. “whenever the family of my time in Rathera now,” she says. She wants every girl child in gathers at our village—Ishaqpur in Firozabad—the discussion is the village to go to school. She has formed a committee that goes mostly about government policies and implementation,” says to every house and convinces the family to send their children to Singh. “One such discussion led to the idea that someone from school day after day. Come evening, the committee pores over the the family should take part in village politics to effect real change.” attendance register of the village primary school and approaches Singh was the first to volunteer. “we voted for him because we the families of absentee kids to understand why they could not thought he would be honest and do what others couldn’t do for the make it to school that day. Poonam has zeroed in on another focus village,” says Ram nagina Singh, a retired Army man from Ishaq- area: the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat initiative. “we received pur. Singh’s family has a house in Shikohabad town, 10 km from government funds to build 100 toilets in the village. But I met the his village. But he prefers to stay in the village. The first thing he did local officers and wrote to the Chief Minister to get more,” she says. as pradhan was to bring all the services under one roof. The ration “we have now constructed 200 toilets and are planning to construct distribution centre, the common service centre and the panchayat 200 more to make the village open defecation free.” office are all run from one place to avoid inconveniencing villag- ers. The people of Ishaqpur make a living growing sugarcane and potato. The village has good irrigation facilities, but Pratap Singh “Nowadays all government services are wants to renovate the village pond that is in bad shape. “I have offered online, whether it is getting your got clearance from the local administration,” he says. he knows Aadhaar card or opening a bank account. he has to work hard if he is to succeed in his next target: the zila Being an IT guy really helps me” panchayat election. “There is no going back from here,” he says. gulShan yadaV 23, Pradhan, Dolcha, Uttar Pradesh OR SOMe ASPIRInG leaders, disapproving parents F are the first hurdle they must overcome before they can take a plunge into village politics. Sachin Kumar, 37, was raised in Faridabad before moving to Delhi for an MBA, which then led to a career at Citibank in 1998. After becoming se- nior manager, however, he often found himself thinking of going back to his village—Uravar in Shikohabad—but his father, Samar Singh, who had been village pradhan in the 80s, discouraged him. “I had ideas and working for a private bank had made me responsive to people,” he says. “But the scope to implement new ideas was limited at my position. I didn’t want to be a service manager throughout my life.” It took years for Sachin to finally resign and go back to his village. his family was aghast, but Sachin had made up his mind. “with the amount of money that the Government is spending on villages, it needs to be better managed and utilised,” he says. Once he filed his nomination in 2015, his family slowly came around. “I thought village life would be hard for him and that is why I initially disapproved,” says his 75-year-old father. Sachin won the election by an astounding margin of 2,500 votes. now, apart from utilising government funds, he is also trying to tap business funds under corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes. “I want to build a good hospital and a girls’ intercollege. I have made three presentations to different companies and I am waiting for their response. They can partner us and spend their CSR money effectively,” he says. After getting elected, he worked to get his village included in the Smart Village Scheme and is awaiting project clearances from the Government. Sachin has no regrets. “when a poor man comes and thanks me for my help in getting his quota of ration, the satisfaction is much
32 12 december 2016 “Whenever the family gathers at our village, the discussion is mostly about government policies. One such discussion led to the idea that someone from the family should take part in village politics” Prabal PrataP Singh 33, Pradhan, Ishaqpur, Uttar Pradesh more than any job can bring,” he says. in Computer Science, started working with an infotech company Then there are those who see politics as an interesting career in noida in 2014. his initial salary was below Rs 20,000 per month. choice. Thirty-year-old Amrit Anand, a research scholar in Ger- “My seniors would say that everyone started at this level,” he says. man Literature at Jawaharlal nehru University in Delhi, decided “But staring at the laptop for 10 hours a day was killing me.” The to contest panchayat polls at his village Pasai in Kaimur district only son of a police ShO in Uttar Pradesh, Gulshan quit his job of Bihar in June this year.“when I visited my village, I would of- without telling his family and filed his nomination for the pan- ten wonder how much change a mukhiya can bring about in the chayat election at his village—Dolcha in Baghpat. And he won. system right at grassroots,” he said. Amit says he has taken a well- Gulshan is now overseeing the construction of a library with thought-out decision. “There is no question of returning to Delhi, computers and wi-fi connectivity. “nowadays, all government though I would like to complete my PhD some day.” services are offered online, whether it is getting your Aadhaar Satya Pal, 29, wears a kurta-pyjama and looks like a convention- card or opening a bank account. Being an IT guy really helps me.” al, if unusually young, politician. Since his election as pradhan of he is also working on building a shooting range in the village Jarauli Kalan in Firozabad district last December, he has also been for boys who want to join the armed forces. Gulshan has created a sporting a worried frown. “we are just 20 km from Agra and our whatsApp group of all the pradhans of Baghpat district and shares village is situated on a national highway. But there are no basic updates on development work and information received from amenities here,” he says. Satya Pal is supervising the construction the district magistrate’s office. Anyone in his village can send him of roads at break-neck speed, after which his aim is to build toilets. a whatsApp message and he says he tries to resolve the problem “we are far behind other panchayats in our district. I will bring it without delay. on a par with the others.” Until recently, Satya Pal ran a shoe factory The residents of Dolcha sound happy. “earlier we did not get after completing his BTech and did not aspire for a job as it would the entire quota of sugar and wheat that we were supposed to re- require him to leave his village. So when villagers suggested he ceive,” says 62-year-old nahar Yadav. “now, Gulshan supervises contest the panchayat election, he liked the idea. “I am here to stay, the distribution and keeps a check on who got what.” Meanwhile, and this is my full-time job,” he says. the pradhan is pursuing an MBA in Marketing from Meerut as a Twenty-three-year-old Gulshan Yadav, who has a BTech degree hedge against a future electoral upset. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 33 Where and what to play with… at a golf course By V Krishnaswamy
ow that you have decided to B. LENGTH OF COURSES: most famous links courses are found in play course, how about a bit 18-hole, full-length courses: These Scotland or Ireland and some coasts of of information of the types are full courses where proficient golfers England. Among the most well-know is Nof golf courses. They can be prefer to play and where championships St Andrews. put into various types, depending on a and tournaments are held. Parkland courses: Parkland courses whole lot of different aspects. Nine-hole courses: There are 9-hole are somewhat designed with extremely Broadly, those differences in courses, many of them small because well-maintained fairways, manicured categories could be on the basis of : of the size of the land available or greens, mature and big trees, which (a) Ownership (b) Length and distance because of costs entailed in maintaining provide a challenge, thick rough and or number holes (c) Setting and design courses. In India, many Army/ Services bunkers, which penalise errant shots. of the courses. courses are 9-hole courses. They are usually inland, but some Executive courses (Par 3): Par-3s Parkland coasts can also be found on A. OWNERSHIP CATEGORIES: and miniature courses to relax, often in the coastline. Private: These are members-only hotels and resorts, where patrons may Resort courses: Very pleasing to the courses, where memberships can be have little time or just want some fun. eyes, they can be found in high-end through invitation and applications and Resorts, often in states like Florida, or is usually expensive. C. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: countries and islands like Bahamas, Hotels and resorts: Many hotels and Links courses: The original links Macau and so on. They are owned resorts have their own courses, which courses are mostly in the United and run by hotels or companies, which are open only to their guests or by Kingdom where thin strips of sand, provide high-paying customers courses special memberships. So, in a way, it grass and dunes lay between the sea designed by famous names and they is also a private club. and agricultural land. A Links course have stunning surroundings and Municipal/Public courses: Usually “linked” them together, in a manner backdrops. run by a town council or district or the of speaking. Links courses have Heath-land courses: Unlike Links authorities, it is open to the public on undulating fairways, sand dunes, deep courses, they are inland courses with pay-and-play basis. bunkers and few (often no) trees. The gentle, rolling fairways winding through AVENUES
have a comparatively thin face, allowing them to slice through thick lies and rough and even sand. Hybrids: Sets include 2 or 3 Hybrids from #3 to #5 hybrids, as these are easier to hit than comparable long irons. Hybrids are to combine the uses of woods and irons. Wedges: A pitching wedge and sand wedge are what are usually picked. Wedges have heads similar to irons, as their faces are more open. Wedges can send the ball a shorter distance at a greater height when struck and also used for high flops with backspin to cause a ball to stop quickly, to back up on a hole. Putter: The putter is used on the green and has a flat surface and is also called flat-stick by golfers. It has minimal or no loft on the ball and is used to roll the ball a landscape full of bushes and shrubs, white instead of green and an orange or along towards the hole. < but few large trees. Many of these are brightly coloured ball is used. found in the UK, like Walton Heath. Desert golf courses: Now seen in THE NATURE AND USES OF GOLF the Middle East and the US (in south- CLUBS western US), they are almost like oases Though a golfer is allowed only 14 clubs in the middle of sand. They have man- in his or her bag, the total number of clubs made lakes, desert plantations like cacti, is way more than that. Manufacturers palm trees and rocky outcrops give a make many more, and the ones that a very distinctive feel to these courses. player carries in his bag depends on his Designer courses: Can be put in skill, needs and comfort. different categories: A set: A traditional set consists of a driver, (a) Many designers hire golf architects to a couple of fairway woods (a 3-wood draw/create holes and then usually pick and sometimes a 5-wood), irons (5-iron 18 of them. to 9-iron), 2 or 3 hybrid clubs (3-hybrid (b) But there are designers like Tom Fazio, to 5-hybrid), a pitching wedge, a sand Tom Doak, Robert Trent Jones) who visit wedge and a putter. the site and create all the holes. In such Driver: The longest and biggest club in cases, it is considered a signature course. the bag, both in club head size and the (c) Designer courses may also be well- distance it sends the ball. It has steep known in a prestigious golf region (Myrtle faces, between 7.5 and 13 degrees and Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Palm is used off the tee. Springs, etc) Fairway Woods: A 3-wood with a Sand courses: Golfers play on all-sand loft between 12 and 17 degrees, and "A great day to make courses making the long game harder, sometimes a 5-wood, lofted 18 to 23 but the short game easier. The putting degrees is what golfers prefer. Fairway buddies and score birdies” area usually consists of “browns”, a woods have large heads like the driver, mixture of sand and oil, which is blended but are shallower with a lower sweet spot On 3rd December, 2016 and rolled. toward the bottom of the club. At Golden Greens - Gurugram Snow or ice courses: Like desert Irons: Irons range from 1 to 9, but most On 7th December, 2016 courses and sand courses, this is a carry irons from 5 to 9, with hybrids At Willingdon Golf Course - Mumbai rather recent invention. The course is replacing the lower number irons. Irons profile
Haley’s Comet efore DonalD Trump nominated nikki Haley to be his ambassador to the united nations on november 23rd, the governor of South Carolina was best known for two things: her bold attack on the Confederate flag, symbol of the old racist South, after a massacre of Black church-goers in her state last year, and her veiled criticism of Trump. neither seemed likely to endear Haley,B whose parents emigrated from punjab in the mid-1960s, to america’s president- elect. He takes criticism from no one; and, for his part, he took pains during the election campaign not to offend the White racists whom Haley riled with her stand against the flag of the former slave states. Yet, for all that, Trump has just nominated her to be amer- ica’s ambassador to the united nations. assuming she is confirmed by the Senate, as is likely, she will be the first Indian american to hold a position of cabinet rank in the uS. The explanation for Haley’s rapid promotion must start with the fact that she is a rare sort of a republican. She was born and raised a Sikh in the small South Carolinian town of Bamberg, where her parents, ajit Singh randhawa and raj Kaur randhawa, settled; before converting to Christianity, shortly before her marriage, Haley was known as nimrata ‘nikki’ randhawa. a former lecturer in Botany at punjab agriculture university, ludhiana, her father taught at a small private university, Voorhees College, where he would spend the rest of his career. as the only asian american family in Bamberg, the randhawas suffered numerous slights; famously, when nikki was
36 12 december 2016 south Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is set to be the first Indian American with cabinet rank in America Haley’s Comet By James astill in Washington DC
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 37 getty images profile
aged five, she and her sister Simran were forbid- den to take part in a local beauty pageant. It had a contest for Blacks and a contest for Whites and no one could say where the sisters belonged in such a system. Simran recalled: “Just before the intermission, nikki and I were called up on stage, thanked for participating, told we were being dis- qualified and given crayons and a colouring book as the music began to play.” Whatever mark that slight left on Haley, it did not blunt her ambition or her flair. five years into her tenure, she is still, at 44 and though a represen- tative of a party dominated by middle-aged White men, america’s youngest governor (a mantle she inherited from another conservative Indian american, Bobby Jindal, the governor of louisi- ana). The moral purpose she showed last year in demanding that the offending flag, a symbol of slavery and Southern White resentment, be taken down from its flagstaff above South Carolina’s statehouse helped broadcast her flair to america. “It should never have been there,” she said, speak- Haley with Narendra Modi in New York in September 2014 ing in a state that is roughly a third Black, but in- variably elects republicans, days after a White racist gunned down nine Black churchgoers in the old slave port was as a candidate. promoting Haley, a youngish, asian american of Charleston. “What I realised now more than ever is that people woman, known for her soothing words on racial tension, looks were driving by and felt hurt and pain. no one should feel pain.” like an effort to mitigate that impression. There is even specula- The fact that Haley was asked to give the official republican tion that Trump may quietly fear Haley; by bringing her inside his response to Barack obama’s last state-of-the-union address, in circle, it is said, he may hope to minimise a threat of her standing January, was a recognition of her growing reputation. She used against his possible re-election bid in 2020. and yet, none of that the opportunity to attack Trump, then the front-runner in the means Haley would necessarily make a good un ambassador. republican primaries, for the cheap insults, bragging and divi- siveness he was bringing to her party’s presidential contest. “It can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” efore Her STanD against the Confederate flag, she she warned: americans “must resist”. B was known for her uplifting back-story as the daughter She proceeded to criticise Trump more explicitly after he of hard-working immigrants; for some unproven allegations, failed to disavow the support of a former Grand Wizard of the aired at the time of her first run for governor, that she had Ku Klux Klan, a racist called David Duke. Standing besides one been unfaithful to her husband, an officer in South Carolina’s of Trump’s republican rivals, the floridian senator marco rubio, national Guard; and for her tireless efforts to entice foreign whom she had endorsed instead, Haley swore she would “not investors to her state. She has never been known for her views stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK.” on international affairs. It is not altogether clear that she has Trump, naturally, was unimpressed. He sneered that in case she any, besides some strong pro-Israeli statements and carping had any hope of being his vice-president, she was “not off to a about obama’s record abroad, both of which are more or less good start” and that she was “very weak on illegal immigration”. obligatory for ambitious republicans. This is to Haley’s credit. not many republicans leaders made once her appointment is confirmed, Haley will take over her even her cautious efforts to decry the mockery Trump was mak- job from a Democratic incumbent, Samantha power, globally ing of their party. It has won her plaudits from many mainstream acknowledged as an expert on human rights and, in particular, anti-Trump republicans. and the fact that Trump wants to hire preventing genocide. Haley, by contrast, will be arguably the least her—making Haley the first former critic he has thus tried to qualified un ambassador america has ever fielded. If that sug- bring on-side—is plainly an effort to mollify some of those anx- gests Trump is not too fussed about the un, it is an impression he ious critics. Trump’s other hires hitherto, including of Steve Ban- is happy to give. During an interview at his office in Trump Tower, non, a right-wing bomb-thrower, as his chief strategist, and Jeff in manhattan, he told me he would consider withdrawing amer- Sessions, an alleged racist, to be his attorney general, have sug- ica’s un membership—a remarkable claim, aired as casually as if gested he will be as incendiary and intolerant as president as he he was mulling quitting a private member’s club, not the world’s
38 12 december 2016 premier forum. Haley has a record of standing up to Trump; it is tivated by a feeling of spirituality, inculcated by Sikhism, yet im- hard to think what international issue she might choose to fight perfectly channelled by it given her shaky grasp of punjabi. maybe him over, or that he would care very much if she did. so; but it is hard not to recoil with Shukla from the expressions of perhaps there is another reason for Trump’s enthusiasm for public piety expected of modern republican politicians, which Haley: her Indian heritage. He is clearly well-disposed towards Jindal, a science-denying creationist, and Haley both dish up to or- India. While fulminating against Chinese deal-making and der. listen hard to Haley’s expressions of pride in her ancestral cul- currency-fixing on the trail, he often had warm words for India. ture, moreover, and they are always posited in terms of her greater “There won’t be any relationship more important to us,” he told allegiance to america. “Yes, my husband and I are Christians,” she a crowd of Indian americans at a rally in new Jersey. once said, “but we’re not going to say anything negative about the He would not be the first uS president to see India as a coun- way my parents raised me, because they reminded us every day terweight to China; George W Bush didn’t get far with that. But how blessed we were to live in this country.” But, to follow Haley’s Trump’s stated affection for India has, for good or ill, more to it than implausible logic, what if they hadn’t? Would she have felt free to grand strategy. He has an instinctive regard for strong leaders and denounce Sikhism then? Would she have wanted to? nationalists, which extends to narendra modi, whom Trump ex- The point is not that the incoming uS ambassador to the united tols as a “great man”. He also has Indian business interests; accord- nations is your typical aBCD (‘american-Born-Confused-Desi’). It ing to an analysis by the Washington Post, 16 of the 111 foreign busi- is that she is an opportunist, more obviously skilled at navigating ness deals he declared in his pre-election america’s chauvinistic politics than she financial disclosures were in India—more is interested in healing them. Her more than in any other country. explicit comments on race, of which, in This was highlighted when Trump Perhaps there is another the wake of the massacre in Charleston, met property developers Sagar and atul reason for Trump’s there have been many, also support this Chordia, along with another Indian real enthusiasm for Haley: view of her. for Haley, the racist crime estate associate, Kalpesh mehta, at Trump was an anomaly, which served to high- Tower in manhattan—not the Trump her Indian heritage. He light how racially harmonious her state Tower the Chordias have built in pune— is clearly well-disposed otherwise is. “I would not have been barely a week after his election. It is hard elected governor of South Carolina if to know what the melange of business towards India. While our state was a racially intolerant place,” ties, instinct and a vague apprehension fulminating against she said. “and I would not have won the of strategy that seems to inform Trump’s Chinese deal-making republican primary if we were a racially view of India might mean for uS-India intolerant party.” relations. probably, the president-elect and currency fixing on It is a narrative of progress that non- doesn’t himself know; he appears to have the trail, he often had White american politicians customar- few consistent thoughts on foreign policy. ily offer up, thus to acknowledge their Yet it would be ironic if his apparent predi- warm words for India skin colour, and the history of racism lection for India, however uninformed or it recalls, without scaring away White trifling, or otherwise, it may turn out to be, voters. Haley does this uncommonly has led him to Haley. Because during her well. Yet after an election in which ascent through right-wing america politics, she has as often given Trump, running a dog-whistle racist campaign, won her state an impression of disregarding her Indianness as of embracing it. primary by ten points and then the presidency, it is hard to see That is a charge easily made of ambitious immigrants, of much of the progress she describes. and it is hard to know how course. Damned if they cling to their family culture, damned if seriously she means what she says. they ditch it, they are assured criticism from one side or both. and all said, Haley still looks like a good pick for Trump, given Haley has had plenty of such carping. after she won the repub- the likely alternatives. She is appealingly optimistic and seems lican ticket for her first gubernatorial race—a virtual guarantee genuinely moderate in her social—if not her hawkish fiscal— of victory in South Carolina—she and Jindal, an evangelical views. But she has not done anything to warrant great optimism Christian, were accused by some Indian americans of having about her prospects of thriving under Trump. nor should her abandoned their culture to get on. “religious conversion,” said appointment elicit undue enthusiasm from India, a country she the aggrieved boss of the Hindu american foundation, aseem hardly seems to recognise. Haley’s has been an Shukla, “should be a personal sojourn, but Jindal’s and Haley’s impressive rise. But, right now, it mainly shows capitulation on public religiosity and rejection of their ancestral what a low bar for hope in his administration faiths are galling to many.” Trump has set. n Haley has responded to such criticisms by pointing out that she still feels comfortable visiting gurdwaras, as she did on a visit James Astill is the Washington correspondent of to amritsar in 2012. Her conversion, she has suggested, was mo- The economist and a contributor to open
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 39 cricket
Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav (right) have both consistently hit 90 mph India Faster Than Ever Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav have broken more than just speed barriers
By AditYA iYer
isualise this. a splendid sun spilling out of a smokey sky, spilling on to a cricket ground. Broad concrete stands seating men, women and children in different stages of rap- V ture and perspiration, their foreheads wrapped in crescent- moon shaped paper caps. ugly hoardings in radioactive colours—of chewing tobacco, cement mix, cough syrup and engine oil. Dusty out- field. Brown infield. Biscuit crumb pitch. White uniforms of fielders smeared with clay. Face towels hanging by tailbones. the conspiring lot packed around their prey, a Caucasian batsman, like cunning dholes. this, of course, is a scene from a test match in india. and because the series against england is currently underway, perhaps Rajkot. Or Visakhapatnam. Maybe Mohali. and because of the fielding side, india, is described to be in a position of control, you have, in your mind’s eye, already seen the spinners in action, haven’t you? Perhaps Ravichandran ashwin. Or Ravindra Jadeja. Maybe Jayant Yadav. Now, let’s zoom in and allow me to describe the state of play. and if you will, visualise this. a fast bowler at the top of his mark. the inner fold of his trousers stained a rich pink. Beady eyes. Knotted brows. Facial hair. a prowling run up. a catapulting release. a photogenic seam that behaves itself and stays upright for zoom-in cameras and consequent analyses. a red ball swinging in the air, cutting off the pitch. this way and that. Punching, rather audibly, into the wick- etkeeper’s gloves. his mittens clasped with the ball in the triangle made by thumbs and indexes, over his right earlobe. the slip cordon nodding in delight. the ‘woooof!’ from the crowd. twenty thousand pairs of pupils shifting gaze towards the large screen to know the delivery’s velocity. twenty thousand breaking smiles when the figure ‘146 kmph’ is thrown up. twenty thousand voices drumming up the following effort, in loop, 145-plus ball after ball, 145-plus over after over, 145-plus true quick after true quick. photos getty images xxxxxxxcricket
this too, believe it or not, is a scene from a test match in india— towards the shinier side, the opposite of conventional swing). in 2016. Witnessed through the New Zealand series. Now being srinath used his pace to fuel furious, inconsistent lengths. too witnessed by england. in Rajkot. in Visakhapatnam. in Mohali. short, too often. By the time he learnt to pitch the ball up and give But Mohammed shami and umesh Yadav have broken more it enough air to play with variations, he was a whole lot older. and than just speed barriers. they have broken egos (James ander- a whole lot slower. son’s and stuart Broad’s), broken stumps (alastair Cook’s), broken there are cautionary tales. and then there is irfan Pathan. helmets (Chris Woakes’) and broken bones (haseeb hameed’s). When Pathan first exploded on to the big stage in australia as they have also broken glass ceilings. a teenager back in 2004, he was the whole package; terrific pace, For the first time in the test badge’s 84-year history, india can terrific swing, terrific seam and, to make him a real teen sensation, boast of two genuine quicks bowling in rotation, in partnership, terrific hair—the very embodiment of the millennial cricket fan’s consistently over 90 mph. in india, lest we forget, where tracks dream. they say success has many fathers (read coaches) and they are tailored to assist either spinners or batsmen. Yet, here they also say that Pathan tried to obey all of them. the pace left him are, shami and Yadav. Burning up the speed guns. Burning away first. then the swing. then the seam. then the indian team. then the conventions. session after session, day after day, match after the fathers. then, perhaps the most tragic of all, his hair. match. Virat Kohli, captain of the test team and a man who faces several bowlers have since drum-rolled their national team these quicks regularly in the nets, is in visible awe. arrival with the tag of ‘fastest in the land’, bestowed upon “shami and umesh bowl their heart out. On these kind of pitch- them by Dennis lillee (the original guru) and wannabe Dennis es, to rush in every ball, consistently bowl above 145 kmph and lillees at various pace foundations that sprouted around the coun- bounce people out speaks a lot of their character,” Kohli, conced- try in the last decade. Munaf Patel, VRV singh, Jaydev unadkat. ing just how grateful he is to inherit not one but two fast bowlers the hype died before many of their careers did, but it was hard to at their prime, said at the end of the Mohali test. “i cannot wait to fool us, the fans. see what they do on pitches outside this country, where they will so we resigned to the ways of this universe and sighed as get a little assistance from pace-friendly wickets.” Praveen Kumar (a bowler of immense skill with no pace) led our Kohli, you would presume, knows what he is talking about if bowling attack on the tour of england in 2011. a year later, at the he is rubbing his palms in anticipation. Not just because he has fast bowling Vatican, the WaCa in Perth, Vinay Kumar was given these two soldiers in his ranks, but also because he too, as a 90s a chance. he was promptly tonked for a six (some would say he child, had to silently suffer the ignominy of india not producing was treated like a spinner) by a quick-footed David Warner in his a single tearaway. Not one, while neighbours Pakistan manu- very first test over and never played the format again. two years factured them by the proverbial dozen. in his book Pundits from on, in england again, the bowling line-up featured stuart Binny Pakistan, author Rahul Bhattacharya was told just why that was by as india’s first change bowler.s peaking to ESPN Cricinfo on that a Pakistani great and serial tormentor of indian batting line-ups tour, akram could barely contain his chuckle. in the 90s, aaqib Javed. “i played against West indies (in the 80s) and their back-up “that aggression, you get that from beef. it’s not that you need bowler was Winston Benjamin, who bowled at 145 kmph. india to have beef only from cow. here we use a lot of buffalo meat also. have stuart Binny,” akram said. “how come i never got stuart i believe that the red meat of these animals promotes aggression,” Binny when i was batting?” said Javed. “Your srinath, his speed was 90 miles but he never cre- then, just when no one was looking, or when we were focused ated terror. his body language was so soft. My speed was less than on the Binnys of this land, india unearthed (like uruk-hais from his but the pressure i could exert because of my body language the depths of isengard, nascent yet somehow fully formed) two was much more.” genuine, fearsome quicks. Not one, but two. if the prospect of that soft, is putting it mildly. Javagal srinath once famously doesn’t get you giddy, nothing will. bounced Ricky Ponting on the test tour of australia in 2000. the ball clipped the batsman on the underside of his grille. What happened next is the stuff of folklore. srinath, quite possibly N his seCOND over of the Vizag test, shami polished the the nicest man to spearhead an attack, tiptoed up to Ponting and Ishiny new ball by his thigh, wiped a sleeve over his forehead apologised with sincerity—spread hands, tilting head. Ponting, and ran in with the enthusiasm of a man breaking prison—spine doubled down in pain at this point, responded with a volley of upright, neck occasionally scanning ghouls and elbows thrash- expletives and in no uncertain terms asked the bowler to get out ing by his ribs. he pitched his release just short of Cook’s good of his face. so srinath did. length, at 90 mph, and the ball seamed safely away from the bats- at his fittest, a fleeting peak in his youth surrounded by numer- man’s off stump. shami bowled the same line and same length ous injury troughs, srinath was as fast as it got in indian cricket. off the following delivery, again at 90 mph, and this time Cook But pace alone, as the wizard Wasim akram will tell you, is exaggerated his leave—shoulders up, bat over his helmet. not enough. it’s what you couple that pace with. the cream of if shami laughed his way through his run up before deliv- Pakistan’s pace battery in every era since the 90s have combined ering the third ball, he concealed the smirk well, for he ran in their speed with reverse swing (the ability to make an old ball drift knowing his set-up was complete. But he still had to execute his
42 12 december 2016 that day. the dream ended a little over a year later, when shami’s left knee gave way after a three-month long tour of australia that included a test series, a one-day series, a warm-up series to the World Cup and the World Cup itself. the busted knee put him out of action for a year-and-a-half— a period longer than he had represented india. But when he returned, during india’s tour of the West indies earlier this year, shami did what no other indian pacer had before—return stron- ger than he was before the injury. “he has been really precise with his training to get fitter than ever, because one leg was weaker than the other so he worked very hard to get that right again,” said Kohli. “he’s become more aware of what he is capable of as a test bowler and he is running in harder than he was before. the results are there for all to see.” if you go purely by numbers, then shami is perhaps a failure in your eyes. Before his injury, he had taken four or more wickets in an innings on five occasions. since his return, he has done that just once. and during the course of this long indian summer, never at all. But Kohli, again, is the first to back his spearhead. and in his explanation he proves that he is a better captain than most critics give him credit for. “shami and umesh, their role is different,” Kohli said. “it’s great to have them bowl in short bursts and At his peak in the them bowl with serious pace. and i’m happy that early 90s, they are not getting desperate for wickets—four-fors, Javagal Srinath five-fors. their role is to come in and give us crucial was one of the fastest bowlers breakthroughs and they have been doing it. they India saw are also combining really well with spinners, who take a majority of the wickets, and that works well for indian cricket.” like shami, Yadav too doesn’t have many sleight of hand. this time the ball pitched just a little fuller and five-fors to show for his efforts—just one in half a decade of a little straighter. and it seamed the other way, towards Cook’s test cricket. But aggression, the emotion Kohli looks for in off stump. By the time the england captain—one of only four a fast bowler, Yadav has plenty of. in 2010, long before he was visiting batsmen to notch over 1,000 runs in india, no less—prod- in contention for a test spot, he felled sachin tendulkar with a ded his bat down the inner line, the ball had snapped the stump bouncer in a practice net in Cape town. it made national news. neatly in two. One half remained firmly rooted to the ground, and in this test match, he got a ball to rear up at hameed and the other picked up by ajinkya Rahane at gully. it’s hard to tell cracked his little finger. what the exact speed of the ball was, as even the broadcasters, But the moment that truly captured the team’s new appetite perhaps stunned by the moment, forgot to display the reading for pace unfolded in the second innings of this Mohali test. it was on our television screens. the crowd, Kohli, the players in the when hameed, with a plaster around the glove of his left hand, celebratory huddle, were caught in an emotion somewhere walked out to bat late in the day. immediately, Kohli tossed the between bewilderment and pure joy. Only shami seemed calm. ball to shami to test his steel, his mettle. hameed escaped the this, after all, was what he was born to do. wrath with a single. But his batting partner, Chris Woakes, didn’t. in a series better remembered for sachin tendulkar’s retire- the first ball he faced from shami crashed into his protected head, ment in November 2013, shami made his test debut. in front of the impact chopping down the helmet’s stem guard. his home fans at the eden Gardens, the Bengal pacer took four Few fast bowlers (not srinath for certain) have had the venom, wickets in the first innings and five in the second. shami had nine nerve or composure to follow a bouncer that hit the body with wickets to show for his effort; tendulkar had 10 runs. Chants of another short one. But shami proved that this was no run-of-the- “sachin, sachin” swiftly turned to ‘shami, shami” as the bowler, mill era of indian cricket. he directed the next ball too at Woakes’ bowling with the old ball and detonating the stumps at will, face and the fending bat looped an easy catch to the wicketkeeper. showed extreme skill in perhaps what was the best exhibition On the biscuit crumb pitch, the dholes surrounded shami. and of reverse swing by an indian bowler in indian conditions. from the concrete stands above, men, women and children in “i must be dreaming, i should pinch myself,” he said in Bengali paper hats bayed for more blood. n
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Coats maketh the man, and choices are plenty for cool gents as the season for dressing up sets in
by AektA kApoor his is going to be a cold, harsh, smoggy (if you live in Delhi) and largely cashless winter. Except for Donald Trump supporters, the rest of the world has relatively little to cheer about this season, so it’s befitting that the jackets, at least, should light up your eyes. Winter 2016 runways promised enough drama to last through the chill. From metallic, spacey blazers in new York, to jackets being worn inside out in Milan, to hems left unfinished in Delhi, there was never a dull moment. And the stories! Take for instance the psychedelic prints and the supersaturated jackets at Moschino’s agitprop fall 2016 collection that was designed in collaboration with London-based artists gilbert & george. Jeremy scott, creative direc- tor of Moschino, hit upon the vivid concept over tea with the duo who are known for their propagandist, graphic art. he wanted his collection to pay homage to their provocative images; they, in turn, offered him the images themselves. And thus, the two-dimensional, cartoon-like sheen to the pop-coloured menswear, a sense of painted clothing, or clothes in a painting, if you like. here’s another. A pair of salvatore Ferragamo oxfords worn by American artist Andy Warhol were bought back by the italian design house after his death, complete with random paint splatters on them. This priceless pair served as the inspiration for their winter 2016 footwear collection, designed by creative director Massimiliano giornetti. so this season, you can wear a hand-painted, replicated slice of history along with Ferragamo’s single-breasted tweed-effect top coat in wool, silk and cashmere. nothing like a legend to add class. it’s not so easy to group indian winter trends in the same category as their Western counterparts, mostly because winter in india is synonymous with the festive season—think Diwali, weddings, Christmas, weddings, new Year, and did i mention weddings?—and designers must play to the gal- leries as well. “You can sense that designers are aligned to their own sensibilities in summer, but to the market demands in winter,” points out image consultant and TV host neeraj gaba, who dabbles with quirky silhouettes in his personal style. he notes that the one thing that unites both indian and Western style this winter is the anti-fit phenomenon, with layering and accessories being used to add versatility to both formal and casual jackets. Delhi-based fashion designer Dhruv Kapoor, whose famously experimental clients even ask for mutations on his women’s wear, agrees: “‘Trend’ for me is a dirty word. it boils down to who you are and what you want to project. our brand is working on soft structure and a lot of shoulder. The cur- rent favourites are oversize coats in fine suiting, probably in Prince of Wales checks (or glen checks) and excessive shoulder pads.” he shares that he always has a couple of ‘boom’ pieces, which normally start selling a season later, once the market has figured how to style them differently after browsing celebrity looks and magazines. if the sheer ingenuity of the designs isn’t enough, it’s the stories behind the inspirations that make A model in an Ashish Soni suit this season of jackets all the more interesting. You may have to change your old ways of viewing the world, though, because the boundaries have been pushed to places you may not expect. fashion
ThE one jacket style that has consistently been taken up by every serious menswear designer this season is the bomber. A term used for a short jacket that is tightly gathered at the waist and cuffs with elasticated bands, a bomber typi- cally has a zipped front and is perfect for casual daywear. With ‘athleisure’ being the buzzword for a while now, the bomber jacket is a must- have in every urban dweller’s wardrobe. And worry not if you are a fastidious formal dresser, this season’s designers will make sure you have exactly the look you want. in Paris, Dries Van noten—who had to wait 15 years before he got the permission to hold his winter 2016 fashion show in Palais garnier,
(L-R) A blazer by Gaurav Jai Gupta, and suits by Ralph Lauren, Salvatore Ferragamo and Versace
BusinEss wear has a decidedly ‘business-unusual’ vibe this season. Many international designers went easy on the trouser fits, experimenting with textures and colours you are unlikely to have ever seen in a boardroom before. The more conservative collections feature sharp, slim silhouettes and a healthy obsession for checks. Ralph Lauren’s formal business looks under ‘Purple La- bel’ feature strong-shouldered, single-breasted jackets in 100 per cent wool. if you’re looking to make a real power state- ment, the three-piece slim herringbone suit comes in a wool-and-cashmere blend devel- oped especially for the italian label. Versace showed a zany, space-inspired lineup on the menswear runway but its in-store collection is more toned down, featuring italian-made slim fits with traditional tailoring. Designer gaurav Jai gupta, whose label Akaaro is known for his ‘india Modern’ sensibility, finds that many customers are now looking for day clothes that are an extension of their personality. his autumn-winter 2016 ‘Mu- muksha ‘collection features unlikely pairing such as a tussar-silk engineered shirt with a stainless steel merino wool jacket. he has used stainless steel, in fact, in a lot of his fabrics: “i like the structure, the play of it. it has an interesting drape quality,” he says. his customers go for classic, versatile pieces that they can pair with different accessories depending on the kind of look they want. “The charcoal blazer from the collection, for instance, will have a completely different appeal with white sneakers versus with black oxfords,” he says.
48 Jackets by (L-R) home of the Paris opera—came up with a pin- Hermes, Moschino, striped bomber jacket for those who prefer a Bottega Veneta, more sophisticated look even for a stroll about Burberry town. in Milan, Bottega Veneta offered a supple, crinkled lambskin version for the tall and lanky; creative head Tomas Maier’s tone-on-tone three- pocket style blouson defines luxe this winter. indeed, leather was a favourite addition to this otherwise rugged outerwear: the British label Burberry even added leather trims to its other- wise relaxed polyamide classic flying jackets in block-coloured and checks variants. Fabrics have also been played around with and you can ex- pect unlikely sensations under your fingers. At Louis Vuitton, a vintage shearling zipped blou- son made with multiple pockets has a military feel. The other French luxury major, hermès, has a zipped high-collar jacket in 100 per cent cashmere, with two slanted zip front pockets: you won’t be able to get your hands off it.
EMBRoiDERiEs and brocades are on top of the indian mind when it comes to occasion wear or party dressing. Traditional silhouettes like bandhgalas and kurtas are essential for weddings and festive occasions, and indian designers have left no stone unturned. Rohit Bal’s couture 2016 show ‘Kehkashan’ was inspired by Russian aristocracy and the netflix series Tudors. his velvet, short bandhgalas and long embroidered coats in black or white worn with heavy kundan necklaces and headpieces were meant to showcase his love for Kashmir along with the madness of King henry Viii and the decadence of the czars. A similar opulence was on display at Balmain’s fall-winter 2016 show in Paris, where you would find military-inspired regalia with all of olivier Rousteing’s aggressive genius. The navy blue cotton blazer with a shawl collar, gold decorative buttons, three welt pockets and buttoned cuffs will ensure all eyes are on you this wedding season. Designers want you to experiment with colours too. indian biggies Manish Malhotra and Varun Bahl came up with bright red, heavily embroidered pieces in their couture collections for this season. The hue was also a key theme in international ramps and red-and-black checks are a thing now. gucci’s new artistic direc- tor Alessandro Michele played with colours on his suits and jackets, so you can wear a heritage red tartan suit for Christmas. Also check out Dior homme’s winter 2016 sleek two-button fitted jacket with red-and-black micro checks in virgin wool. The French luxury fashion label also has a blue blazer made with spray fabric dye that gives it a ‘self-textured’ look, a trend that’s firmly in place, even in india. Ashish soni, one of india’s top names in menswear, says his all-over self-textured suits are flying off the shelves this season; Ranveer singh wore one for Karan Johar’s talk show Koffee with Karan recently. “i’ve been using silk-velvet as my choice of fabric because it goes both Outfits by with the ‘festive’ needs of this season, and is also lightweight, soft and malleable enough (L-R) Rohit for those parts of india that don’t have cold weather,” he says. The nehru jacket, he adds, Bal, Gucci, has become a style statement for all ages and all seasons now that our Prime Minister has Balmain and Manish made it a fashion favourite—customers buy at least two in different colours, soni says. Malhotra www.openthemagazine.com 49 fashion
Though patented in 1939 by Eddie Bauer, the puffer jacket took many decades to reach its fashionable new heights—you could in fact call 2016 the year of the puffer jacket considering how many designers have included it in their collec- tions from West to East. With a signature quilted design to keep the down insulation or synthetic fibres in place, puffer jackets offer both warmth and lightness, so they are the perfect choice for active, outdoorsy people or just those who jet-set around the world a lot. This season, it’s not just the functionality of this garment that will catch your eye but the sheer beauty of it, from high-shine tex- tures to shearling or leather touches. swiss label Bally will have you nice and cozy in an exquisite bright teal down parka. Made in italy with lamb nappa treated with a waterproof finish and trimmed with murmasky fur on the Overcoats by hood, it’s the stuff stylish winters are made of. (clockwise from far left) head over to Burberry if you’re looking for natty Etro, Valentino, warmth: their winter 2016 collection is about Canali, Fendi and jackets in all shapes and sizes—there are 27 vari- Givenchy ants on the puffers alone. india’s Dhruv Kapoor finds them to be one of his top-selling items this winter. Metallic sheens are also big this year— There’s no fixed rule for the over- from Calvin Klein Collection’s gold parkas to As- coat this year. it can go from shiny trid Andersen’s shearling-collared ones in copper. to sober faster than you can unbut- But if trendy chic is the top criteria, Ermene- ton it. At his massive 93-look Los Angeles winter 2016 show, his last for saint gildo Zegna is your go-to store. A navy shirt blou- Laurent, hedi slimane showed a double-breasted, A-line coat with gold cord- son with ultralight nylon filling and a front panel ing above the cuffs and a wide, pick-stitched peak lapel that would look as in tonal mélange wool, to waxed wool quilted good indoors as outdoors. if you want to make an impression at the next jackets, you’ll be surprised to see what an italian board meeting, try on a continental double-breasted long coat in mohair icon of men’s luxury fashion can do with puffers. wool or cashmere from italian menswear couture house Brioni—which is formal suiting at its very best. The other italian menswear label that well- Puffers by (L-R) suited men usually have in their wardrobes, Canali, also has a similar long, Ermenegildo Zegna, sleek silhouette that speaks business: the double-breasted wool-alpaca coat Bally and with applied flap pockets can be worn over both casual and formal wear. Dhruv Kapoor For more fashionable looks outside of the workplace, Etro’s unstructured coat crafted from bouclé in a blue-white mélange is unlined for a comfort- able fit. Fendi has a huge oeuvre of overcoats, from sane checks to crazy-cool fur numbers with those perpetually frowning ‘Fendi eyes’ at the elbows. French label givenchy has a black leather trench coat with fringes on the back for men with a penchant for late-night sojourns—think Kanye West with a lace-clad Kim Kardashian on his arm. if you want to play it safe with greys and blacks, Valentino is where to go: the cabochon single-breasted wool coat has a black-and-white herringbone pattern and is embellished with studs on the yoke—a perfect combination of festive and winter. n
Aekta Kapoor is a Delhi-based writer and editor specialising in fashion and lifestyle
50 12 december 2016 salon
CINEMA 52 | BOOKS 58 | POETRY 64 | NOT PEOPLE LIKE US 66
books Dancing with ZaDie smith Family, friendship and identity—one of English fiction’s most celebrated young writers returns to familiar turf 58 getty images 12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 51 cinemamusic
AR Rahman in conversation with Divya Unny
hen AR RAhmAn sang Vande was there at the Un 50 years back, and now I was Mataram with Coldplay’s Chris there giving her a tribute and recording it from all martin in mumbai recently, the dimensions. We have kind of immortalised it, so you W crowds roared with appreciation. can watch it for the next 50 years. Of course, we can not just because they were watching two legendary record it on regular video and upload it on YouTube, musicians together on one stage, but also because but we wanted to think beyond that. When you’re of the emotion that the song evokes. watching a live concert in VR you are part of the Speaking about the 12-year-old Rahman who experience, a lot more than otherwise, because with often skipped school to play music and support that headset on, you are in the space. You are not just his family, composer Ilayaraja once said, “he held an outsider. onto the instrument like his life depended on it. he was in love with music more than anyone I know.” You have always been a pioneer when it comes to At the age of five, Rahman would lock himself up embracing technology. Will recording music in VR in a room and play the harmonium for hours. his revolutionise the space like digital sound did two mother would wait outside with his lunch. decades ago? Today, at 49, he has crossed innumerable You can’t be a slave to technology, you have to milestones. Yet he often searches for that young empower it and make it work your way. If you want boy within his music. even when the world hailed to bring up the art, bring up the tradition, you will him as a leader in music, he chose to see himself as a do that. Imagine watching the biggest symphony seeker. “It’s what keeps me alive. If I stop searching orchestra perform on your VR set. It may be happen- for something new, I would die of boredom,” he says. ing in Berlin or San Francisco, but you are sitting in Right now, his search is beyond music. he is turning your home and experiencing that not just visually, to filmmaking and looking to specialise in a whole but also musically. Recording sound 360 degrees new way of capturing visuals and sound. makes it a wholesome, deeper experience. Rahman, dressed in all black, with a hint of green (his lucky colour) waits in his hotel room in There is so much technology around music these Goa during the 10th nFDC Film Bazaar. he’s just days that live sound almost seems like an illusion. returned from the release of the virtual reality (VR) Do you agree? film that captured his concert at the United nations Well, everything is an illusion; this conversation (Un). Twenty-four years after Rahman changed might be, who knows? It’s like you are in a dream the soundscape of film music in India (with Roja) and you want to sustain it. Technology helps you do with digital compositions, he is on the brink of yet that. It doesn’t mean you don’t respect the live form another brilliant idea. excerpts: of the art. For me it’s like pausing a good moment, and controlling it and reliving it. The VR films I Your tribute concert to MS Subbulakshmi at the UN have seen have been overwhelming. In a moment, in August is now a VR film. Do you think a film shot you are shifted to the himalayas or Antarctica, on 360 degrees can do justice to that live experience? places where you can never be. On my mother’s It’s about bringing to people what they could not birthday I connected with her through VR and it was have. Only a certain number of people could watch wonderful. It’s like the beginning of a whole new that concert. I wanted to make sure it reaches as wave of an art form that can expand your vision at many as possible. I knew that many people wouldn’t multiple levels. It’s about taking that leap of faith have been able to make it. mS Subbulakshmiji and sticking to your purpose. “If I stop searching for something new I would die of boredom” “If I stop searching for something new I would die of boredom” music
With this film or even your first film that you announced as a producer, your interest in storytelling has increased in the last few years. Is that a conscious shift? Yes, because you evolve as a musician. I have been concentrating on how to emote through music all my life. And then I see the world divided and I know that I can say several things which may or may not be communicated through music. When people divide themselves in the name of religion, gender, money, I feel like they don’t see the larger picture. I am very controlled in what I speak, I don’t want to attack people. But I feel “It was nIce to see youngsters reactIng to very responsible towards the world I Vande MataraM after so Many years of It live in and I want to express what I feel. my stories are that form of expression; beIng Made. chrIs MartIn has a Very eleVatIng my films will hopefully embrace the energy, whIch Made It eVen better” AR Rahman sense of belonging I feel towards people around me. These stories will always reflect upon the other sentiments that I We understand each other’s language so That’s all you’re going to tell us? have, apart from what music evokes. well, which is why we made a Roja or a I don’t speak much, you know that. Bombay or OK Kanmani, for that matter. (Smiles) After all these years, do you ever feel But today I feel like there is a wave of limited in your musical space? change through independent film- What was it like performing with There’s an over sensory attack happen- makers and the stories they are telling. Coldplay in Mumbai? ing with music today. There’s too much The more original content we create, It was lovely. It was very nice to see of it and it is too easily available. earlier the more unique things we can do by youngsters reacting to Vande Mataram the thought of taking a record, putting being ourselves, and the more we will be after so many years of it being made. it on, putting a needle on it or going to a noticed. Like what Satyajit Ray did. his Chris martin, of course, has a very concert and listening to someone play vision of India was real and glorious at elevating energy, which made it even was worth something. now it’s ten a the same time. I feel we are at the brink better. I like the band, they say good penny. You plug in your iPad and there of innovation in our cinema telling, and things through their music. They don’t are 10,000 songs. So where is the respect that inspires me as a musician too. use bad language or insult the art form. for the art form? The wholesomeness Which is why people respond to them of an experience is gone. If I make you Independent filmmakers cannot afford the way they do. a song and you listen to a YouTube clip to hire you, though… of it on an iPhone speaker, it will never (Laughs) Why should they hire me? You’re working on five films at the do justice to the notes I created. But that There are so many great musicians in moment. Plus, you travel between can’t change now, which is why you India. And I am never closed to working homes in LA and Chennai. And you do reinvent the way you are listening to with someone new. In fact, I am looking live shows. And you have an initiative, sound or watching movies so that we for stories that would excite me and I Nafs, to promote Indian talent can feel what music is really capable of. would love to work with someone who internationally. When do you sleep? has a fresh thought. On flights. Your mentioning the things Even today your best music comes from I do at one go is intimidating me a little. your regional space, when you work with Can you tell us some more about your But it’s nothing compared to what can the likes of Mani Ratnam. Are you happy first film? be done. I’m happy and lucky to have a with the stories that are being told in It’s being directed by Vishwesh Krish- set of brilliant young minds working cinema by young writers today? namoorthy and we’ve been working towards a vision of mine. I want my my work with my mentors, or those I’ve on it for six years now. It’s a story of self- work and my music to bring people shared a relationship with for so many discovery through music and I’m really together and everything I do is towards years, comes from a very sacred space. looking forward to shooting it. that. It’s purposeless otherwise. n
54 12 december 2016 A scene from Lunchbox
cinema Breaking Free on the Beach Indie goes mainstream at the 10th Film Bazaar in Goa By Divya Unny
hen an afghan film gles. Stories individual yet so universal in fanatic is captured by the Tali- their nature that they connect with you W ban, he professes one last wish, instantly. These are the stories that have to introduce them to cinema (an art form stolen hearts in goa at national film they deem ‘haraam’). a 10-year-old boy Development Corporation’s 10th film from the mountains walks seven kilome- Bazaar, which showcased over 300 films tres to his school every day with a pet don- from South east asia and was attended key to fulfill a promise. Dhunnu, who is by filmmakers from across the globe. part of a group of assamese village rock It’s a space where indie has become stars, must choose between two meals a the mainstream and the esoteric is the day and owning her own guitar. a grand- toast of the town. here, a film producer daughter visits Vrindavan in search of her from Los angeles can meet a debut estranged grandmother who lives the life director from Karnataka and decide of a half widow in this holy town. to make a movie on a funeral proces- “A film like Lunchbox Stories of real people, leading real sion in his village. Or a young writer about a lonely Indian lives in remote corners in and around our from Kolkata can meet a director from housewife making country. Stories that lie asleep in the Bangladesh only to find that their stories dabbas interests a diary of an aspiring writer till they are stem from similar social struggles. “My French producer and discovered and brought to life by popular story is about a young boy who doesn’t cinema. Stories so confined to cultures get admitted into any school because he becomes the most loved that they rarely see the light of an outside doesn’t know his father’s name. now the indie film of this country” world that knows little about their strug- situation could be the same in any part mArc bAschet film producer
12 december 2016 cinema
of the world, and that’s what makes Lunchbox about a lonely Indian house- just from India but across South-asia an idea universal,” says 25-year-old wife making dabbas interests a french who want to finish their films and take Bangladeshi filmmaker Bijon, who is at producer and becomes the most loved them across the globe—and the Bazaar the Bazaar in search of a distributor for indie film of this country. The film was just builds a bridge for them.” his film Kingdom of Dreams Subjects. “I only in its scripting stage when it came Today, film Bazaar is a platform for met Indian filmmakers and realised that to the Bazaar, and look where it is now. scripts waiting to be discovered, half- their struggles are a lot similar to ours. That doesn’t happen often,” says Marc made films in search of a co-producer, We have a very archaic censor board, too, Baschet who not only co-produced completed films needing funds to travel and we are trying to find a language [by the film but is back now to look for yet to festivals, and of course stories on the which] we can tell a story without being another Indian story that interests him. verge of inception. “I came to the Bazaar didactic about it,” he adds, before rush- Manas Malhotra, co-director, film Ba- with my debut film Sulemani Keeda two ing off for a meeting. zaar, says, “Stories are not really bound years back, and now I’m here with my film Bazaar provides space and op- by any boundaries, be it cultural or geo- newest film Newton. for the longest time portunity for independent filmmakers graphical, and with each year we learn the concept of a ‘bazaar’ was limited to a to make their films happen. Think of it this a little more. When we started the stall where people would discuss their almost like a stock market for good Bazaar, I had 15 foreign delegates; today films as a business proposal, but here it’s cinema where ideas are pitched and we have filmmakers from 33 countries. like having all people with similar cre- the best ones get picked up. “a film like We have independent filmmakers not ative motives under one roof,” says amit Masurkar, whose debut film was picked up by BBC’s Channel 4 at the Bazaar. “my film Thithi( ) was It isn’t as simple as it sounds either. as art house as one If you have a story and you’re looking to sell it, you’ve got to know your way can imagine, but it has around the mart. Walking the corridors now been seen by of the goa Marriott, one can sense this more people than it palpable energy of up-and-coming would have, if it had a talent, looking for a meeting, a conversa- conventional release” tion or just a drink to discuss their ideas. “Yes, the europeans are suckers for rAAm reddy director Indian stories, I hear, but how does one meet them?” a filmmaker-friend rues be- tween bites of paneer tikka during lunch. “I hear the producer of Thithi is here. She’s part of a big hollywood produc- tion house. Do you know her?” another new director asks me. I can’t do much for him, but I soon realise why there’s both luck and perseverance at play here, apart from a specific interest in stories about the Indian ethos. Sunmin Park, from South-Korea, “As a filmmaker, Film works as a hollywood producer and bazaar opens my picked up an Indian film as her last mind to stories that venture. She has a sizeable list of hol- may be out of my lywood credits on IMDb and is someone everyone wants to meet at the Bazaar comfort zone” this year. She proves how Indian cinema Geetu mohAndAs is suddenly ‘cool’ in the West. “Thithi was director, Liar’s Dice my 57th meeting at the Bazaar last year. When I met Raam (Reddy, its director), I knew how true he wanted to stay to his story. as someone who isn’t Indian, the whole idea of celebrating death in his film took me by surprise. The fact
56 12 december 2016 “I came here with my Bazaar. In India, we are not yet used to debut film Sulemani virtual reality as a form of filmmaking, and this proves to be an eye-opening Keeda two years experience for many a movie buff. “I back. the concept of watched a VR documentary on Syrian a ‘bazaar’ was limited refugees, told through the perspective to a stall, but here it’s of a 12-year-old girl and I felt like I could like having people with literally breathe that air. The whole film was shot on 360 degrees and I have similar creative motives never felt part of a story that much,” says under one roof” gayatri Ram, a budding actor. AmIt mAsurkAr director If you spend time at the Bazaar, you are sure to spot a stout Caucasian man in a short kurta soaking in the sun and observing his surroundings. he is Paulo Bertolin, a festival programmer, who is so in love with India that he quotes Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen more than our own filmmakers. Yes, he is also the man who has the power to pick the next entrant from India for The Venice film festival. “I have been coming to the Bazaar for the past four years and found that so much of village life is forever Undoubtedly, the story lines at Bazaar Chaitanya Tamane’s Court here. We changing and that the village represents this year have broken conventions. had a Tamil film Visaranai last year and something incredibly unique in human from India’s first animation film in San- gurvinder Singh’s Punjabi film Anhe anthropology is also what attracted me skrit named Punyatithi to a silent film Ghore Da Daan too before that,” he says. to this story of Indian rural life,” says named Chimni about a school girl who “In recent years, there has been a surge Park, who took the film to every festival survives on mid-day meals, to another of this new generation of independent from Locarno to Shanghai. fiction film called Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane filmmakers in India, again from very for Raam Reddy, who won multiple Le Jaa Riya Hoon starring 400 non-actors different backgrounds, and I feel now is national awards for Thithi, it was a from Delhi, films getting attention at the the moment when people are recognis- connection that changed the course of Bazaar are path-breakers in their own ing this new age of cinema... though I his career. “It’s funny that sometimes way. “My film is about an eight-year-old am still looking for that one Indian film you have to sell your own stories so boy who falls in love with a grown up which will be in the main competition, hard to your own people, but someone woman about to get married. It’s not a and that will be a real win.” from a new culture imbibes it a lot story-driven plot, but it’s a journey that While the Bazaar isn’t a foolproof better,” he says, “My film was as art anyone can connect with,” says debut way to make your movie happen—it house as one can imagine, but it has now director Rahul Shanklya, whose film offers no guarantees—it’s clear that been seen by more people than it would Nimmo is making all the right noises at the West may be a bigger market for have if it had a conventional Indian the Bazaar. “When I meet fellow film- talented indie artists. What’s espe- release. That’s what a space like Bazaar makers here, I feel like I know so little cially reassuring is that amid all those provides.” geetu Mohandas, who is about my own country, my own state,” megabudget films of Bollywood, we back at Bazaar after her national award he says. “There is a filmmaker from now have a parallel world of cinema winning film Liar’s Dice found a co- Kerala making a story about a particular with substance. as a friend who found producer here in 2011, echoes that. “as a sati practice from UP and I had no idea his producer at the Bazaar after work- filmmaker, it opens my mind to stories this existed. There are people from so ing on his film for eight years says, “We that may be out of my comfort zone. I many different backgrounds here. It’s are all independent in our thought. It’s met a Sri Lankan filmmaker here whose overwhelming to meet these people just about meeting someone who can film is about separating from a lover because that’s when you know that a understand how you want to tell your during the LTTe refugee crisis. story is limitless.” story and sticking with that vision. a It’s fascinating that such interesting for those who do not have a film to model friend of mine introduced me to work is being written and now being sell, there is time to discover a whole my producer here and we just clicked. made accessible to us.” new language of filmmaking at the Who would have thought?” n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 57 books
Zadie Smith Dancing with Zadie Smith swing Time Family, friendship and identity—one of Zadie Smith
English fiction’s most celebrated young Hamish Hamilton writers returns to familiar turf 464 Pages | Rs 1499 By Nandini Nair
n my mind, her struggles Rushdie, who himself called the work celebrity. While reading it, you will turn were over. She was a dancer: she’d ‘an astonishingly assured debut’. But to videos of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rog- found her tribe. i, meanwhile, the question on everyone’s mind at that ers, not only because of the eponymous ‘Iwas caught completely unawares time was: is Smith a one-book fluke? title, but because tap dance forms the by adolescence, still humming Gersh- Over the last two decades, she has tempo and jazz the background score of win songs at the back of the classroom as proven that she isn’t. if White Teeth— this novel (at least in the stronger parts). the friendship rings began to form and which won the Guardian First Book The girls here are aspiring dancers. harden around me, defined by colour, Award—was hailed for its ‘hybrid of But while flatfeet limits the prospects of class, money, postcode, nation, music, voices, tones and textures,’ her following the narrator, her friend Tracey fares well drugs, politics, sports, aspirations, lan- novel The Autograph Man (2002) delved in modern, ballet and tap. The essential guages, sexualities… in that huge game into the world of cinema, celebrity and disconnect between the hopes of youth of musical chairs i turned round one day that elusive phenomenon called fame. and the realities of adulthood is the most and found i had no place to sit.’ While it was appreciated, it did not re- poignant part of the novel. What is adolescence if not an attempt ceive the same acclaim as White Teeth. Re- The prologue of the book opens with to find a tribe to belong to? What is nowned book critic James Wood ripped the line that screams ‘millennials’—‘it loneliness if not realising that no one has The Autograph Man apart for its ‘cartoon- was the first day of my humiliation’. kept a chair for you? While we’d like to ishness and excess, the misplaced ironies Shame, of course, is not a new-age emo- imagine that children make friends on and grinning complicities,’ even while tion, but in our networked times it has a whim, we know the truth is far more conceding that Smith is capable of craft- become an act. it has become a theatre complicated. Even for pre-teens and teen- ing the marvellous sentence. NW, which where the mob plays the role of judge, agers, friendships congeal around ‘adult’ came out a decade later, was hailed as jury and executioner. moving from the issues—colour, class and money. Zadie ‘that rare thing, a book that is radical and 80s to the present, the novel cleverly Smith’s latest novel, Swing Time, soars passionate and real’. reveals the tightening stranglehold when it traces the contours of friendship While her novels brought her of technology on our lives. While the between two girls (Tracey and an un- attention, her commentary in maga- online world holds us in its thrall, named narrator who is the voice of the zines proved she was a prescient voice it is also a medium where its brightness passage above). The novel is pitch-per- to reckon with. in Changing My Mind: ‘putters to ash’ in the matter of hours. fect when it fleshes out mother-daughter Occasional Essays (2009) , Smith rises Even while she has been forced to go relationships, and the changing tides adroitly to the task of reviewing some of offline for 72 hours (a modern punish- between parents and children, but it her favourite books, such as Zora neale ment if there ever was), has lost her job misses a beat when it attempts to create Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. (which she’s had a decade), her privacy, the tumult of celebrity in today’s age and Smith doesn’t merely detail the good and way of life, watching Fred Astaire stumbles when it reaches Africa. and weak parts of a book. instead she in Swing Time elevates her spirits. Like Zadie Smith, 41, born to a Jamaican tells us how these stories affect her. She anyone who has watched Astaire in mother and an English father, is one of recounts her experience of reading Their Bojangles of Harlem, the extended solo in the most celebrated writers today. When Eyes as a 14-year-old, ‘i inhaled that book. the 1936 film Swing Time, the narrator her first novel White Teeth hit stands Three hours later i was finished and cry- too overlooks Astaire’s blackface and in 2000, Smith was still a 24-year-old ing a lot, for reasons that both were, and wonders instead if the large figures in Cambridge undergraduate. Set across were not, to do with the tragic finale.’ the background are Astaire’s shadow or continents and spanning 150 years, the in Swing Time, Smith once again three other dancers. Watching him, she book was hailed as a masterpiece. Her lit- explores themes that she has visited and feels a ‘wonderful lightness’ in her body, erary gameplay prompted critics to draw unpacked in the past in her fiction—cul- a ‘ridiculous happiness’ that seemed to comparisons between her and Salman tural identity and belonging, arts and come from nowhere. She echoes Roger
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 59 books
Ebert’s comment on the genius of Astaire: lonelier; emotions are magnified, knows no one is going to keep a chair for ‘What Fred and Ginger had together, and nothing is in moderation. her. And she doesn’t care. what no other team has ever had in the The novel also shows how adults Here is a wonderful line on the moth- same way, was a joy of performance. They choose to believe childhood is ‘innocent’, er’s battles: ‘i don’t mean that my mother were so good, and they knew they were when it never really is. Every parent asks didn’t love me but she was not a domestic so good, that they danced in celebration their child, ‘What happened at school?’ person: her life was in her mind. The of their gifts... it is a victory for the human And are seldom, if ever, told the truth. The fundamental skill of all mothers—the side, over the enemies of clumsiness, narrator recalls her summer as a nine- management of time—was beyond her. timidity and exhaustion.’ The narrator’s year-old: ‘i thought of [my parents] at this She measured time in pages. Half an love for dance shows us that the triumph point as two children, more innocent hour, to her, meant ten pages read…’ of the art form is that it rises above the than me, who it was my responsibility to While the growing-up sections will quotidian and the messy. protect from the kind of uncomfortable have readers highlighting and return- The prologue opens in the present, facts that they would either over-think ing to it, the exposition on Aimee (the but the first chapter takes the reader to (my mother) or over-feel (my father). Australia-born superstar singer and 1982 and the day the two girls first meet. That summer the problem became acute the narrator’s boss) is laborious. She is a it is camaraderie at first sight. Their because the true answer to ‘How was character who never becomes a person, shades of brown are exactly the same— school today?’ was ‘There is a mania in ‘half Peter Pan, half Alice’, she remains ‘as if one piece of tan material had been the playground for grabbing vaginas.’ more mythic than real. Pages are dedi- cut to make us both’. in her essay ‘Their cated to her, but all you will remember Eyes Were Watching God: What does is that she is a diva with tantrums. This Soulful mean?’ Smith writes about the The novel also shows section of the book drags, especially in importance of finding forms of identifi- how adulTs choose To contrast to the sparkling childhood bits. cations as a reader and writer of colour. belIeve chIldhood Is Aimee’s first line to the narrator: ‘Ev- She says, ‘At fourteen i couldn’t find erything coming out of your mouth right words (or words i like) for the marvellous ‘InnocenT’, when IT never now is totally worthless to me,’ sounds so feeling of recognition that came with really Is. every parenT Gordon Ramsay that you want to change these characters who had my hair, my asks TheIr chIld, ‘whaT the channel. Her lines such as ‘in this eyes, my skin, even the ancestors of the life… you’ve got to know what you want. rhythm of my speech.’ Both girls are from happened aT school?’ you have to visualise it, and then you the ‘estates’ and neither receive ‘benefits,’ and are seldom, If ever, have to pull it down,’ bore on the page. but they notice each other immediately Told The TruTh As a reader it is impossible to conjure her. because they look similar. Why is she so big? Why is she so famous? if the girls have a common love We see her only as the narrator does—‘a for dance, their mothers share noth- person for whom i scheduled abortions, ing. Tracey is her mother’s aspiration School for the narrator, as she says, is hired dog walkers, ordered flowers, wrote and only joy. The narrator’s mother is pain. Of course, her parents do not know. mother’s day cards, applied creams, a feminist, who merely tolerates her if Smith gets friendship right, she administered injections, squeezed spots, daughter’s love for dance. also throws light on the mother-daugh- wiped very occasional breakup tears and All friendships, all relationships ter dynamics. The narrator asks, ‘What so on. most days i wouldn’t have known i between two people work on power, do we want from our mothers when we worked for a performer.’ a clout that shifts and mutates. The are children? Complete submission… Therein lies the problem. The reader relationship between Tracey and the nar- And if she doesn’t do it, then it’s really cannot picture the performer in Aimee. rator violently grows and shrinks from a war, and it was a war between my Here is a novel that so wondrously evokes ages seven to their thirties. Swing Time mother and me. Only as an adult did i dance, then why is the performer at the illustrates the effect of time and vodka on come to truly admire her... for all that centre of it so page-three? The narrator any friendship, and reveals the trespasses she had done to claw some space in this dedicates 10 years of her life to her, but that are forgivable and those that are not. world for herself.’ why? What is the big fuss around Aimee? What is unpardonable is if a friend ruins The narrator’s mother isn’t merely if only Smith had kept her eyes riveted a parent for you. fantasising about an escape route from on the two central characters—the The opening chapters on childhood motherhood, but is digging herself a narrator and Tracey—just as the camera are short and concise, each revealing tunnel to ‘freedom’. She is intellectually stays steadfast on Astaire and Rogers in the agonies and cruelties, the joys and and politically different from the other Swing Time, without getting distracted by triumphs of this time. To be a child is just mothers (those who come to pick up anything else. in a bid for drama, Smith to feel ‘more’—sadder, happier, and their children from school) because she loses the rhythm. n
60 12 december 2016 books From Chennai with Love
Goddesses and divas populate this first fiction The high PriesTess Never Marries: By Diya Kohli sTories of Love aNd CoNsequeNCe Sharanya Manivannan
haranya Manivannan’s its crow-infested beaches, seaside HarperCollins protagonist is a Janus-faced fishing villages, and dodgy dives. Occa- 285 Pages | Rs 399 Screature of love and loss. she is sionally, the stories shift to Paris, a by turns sensual, whimsical, cruel, city that the writer retreats to when innocent, tender, and willful. she is ‘no one else will have her’, where she the sviya, or one who is her own wife. harnesses her loneliness and relearns someone has died. The city’s geography her unconventional form rarely suits the process of living. is mapped through emotions. in the ready moulds of patriarchy, and however, it is Chennai that is ‘Corvus’, the narrator details her daily the struggle to fit in is bloody and Manivannan’s grand theatre, where route to her lover’s house from the tortured. The High Priestess Never each unassuming street corner becomes back entrance of the Marundeeswarar Marries is Manivannan’s debut work indelible as it is twinned with the temple near the Thiruvanmiyur bus of fiction where she extracts women memory of a lover. ‘scheherazade on the stand. These coordinates are inextricable from real and mythical universes and shore’ is set in a bar in a hotel so shady from the memory of mornings spent makes them the central pivot of her that people have forgotten its existence. making love. Pieced together from stories. Each story has a female narrator and yet as the narrator shares this secret bridges sheltering stolen kisses, one- who has complete control of her place with her man, it becomes extraor- room apartments by the sea, govern- words, her body, and her desire. They dinary—a single moment captured in ment-run TasMaCs, dodgy Chinese are women who make difficult choices, a bubble for eternity—‘… a bar on the restaurants, and nostalgia, the city choose the tougher alternative—and shore with its windows of net, through that emerges is highly personal and one live with the consequence of their which i had lassoed that moon on so that belongs to every single character. actions. They rise from the sea like many nights’. it is a city Like one narrator writes, ‘i wondered mermaids with an ancient knowledge with a distinct personality and many why my parents had ever left Madras of how to tread the paths of men. Their tongues. in ‘Conchology’, there is a slum when, decades later, my life was an love comes in all shapes and sizes and called ayodhyakuppam where there ’80s Tamil film anyway, all kissing on is often disruptive. it is a love that es- are five different dirges on nights when rooftops and curfews and the way chews social mores and man-made rules P. susheela’s voice rose with unhindered saurabh singh and emerges battle-scarred, yet free. clarity from the watchman’s mini-radio her motley cast includes a woman downstairs during the scheduled who finds her life’s equilibrium between power cuts.’ her husband and her lover, and another Manivannan’s language has desire who breaks boundaries and goes written into its very bones, from its deep into a forest with a tribe of honey simplest forms to a more complex gatherers. The men in her stories are nu- reenactment of the power play between anced and hence worthy counterpoints men and women. sensuality judders and lovers to her vamps and goddesses. through each story and each encounter From a 21st-century god of love, to a is rendered erotic through its sharp boyfriend who is the proverbial lucky intensity and temporariness. hers is bastard, from the wounded Fisher King a liquid prose that flows from one of arthurian legend to the eternal taan- vignette to the next. The words are dav dancer, they are culled out of fact limpid pools of passion and pain and fiction. sometimes, they are filled with portents of despair, palli also cast as the perfect spouses in a doshams and other untranslatable way that Manivannan’s free-spirited astral signs. it is the perfect tongue woman can never be. for these high priestesses, poetesses, While some of the stories reside goddesses, and the vixen who love in a purely mythical world, others are and live according to their firmly rooted in Chennai’s underbelly, own terms. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 61 BookS Blessed and Cursed
Amruta Patil in her graphic retelling of the Sauptik: Mahabharata reimagines women as epic beings Blood and FlowerS Via Amruta Patil By Malini Nair HarperCollins 252 Pages | Rs 1,250 shwatthama is one of insecurities, arjuna is not always heroic, the most fraught anti-villains of Draupadi is not quite the victim of a A the mahabharata. Cursed with casual crack about brotherly sharing painful and suppurating immortality, from her mother- in-law, and nakul and her sons; sati, whose determination turns the myth is that he still wanders the earth sahdev are not also-rans in the drama. shiva into a householder; and Draupadi, paying for the sin of slaughtering the Patil’s strong preoccupation with who consorts with five men because they Pandava princelings as they slept. (hindi the forest is a strong thread through the each bring to her an outstanding quality. afternoon news channels, incidentally, narrative —the brutal devastation of the some of Patil’s most luminous art- love stories on bizarre ashwatthama fragile Khandav van and every living be- work is devoted to Draupadi: ‘Draupadi ‘sightings’ as much as miracle snakes.) ing in it to raise indraprastha; hidimba was queen without ever needing to be in Sauptik, amruta Patil’s brilliantly and her inseverable links with the forest crowned one. Regal was a spinal cord rendered second graphic retelling of from which she would never be parted, quality… to know Draupadi was to want the mahabharata, ashwatthama is the not even for the joys of being a Pan- her, and be pierced by the realization sutradhaar. her first, Adi Parva: The Churn- dava wife; the trees, flowers and fecund that she was not in your league, that you ing of the Ocean, retold the epic through greens and reds and fruits that suffuse would permanently burn with longing.’ the eyes of Ganga. the word ‘sauptika’ is the lives of the princes in exile. and it is not Krishna’s boundless fabric derived from ‘sleeping’, thus evoking the Patil also finds voices for the op- of modesty that saved her from mortifi- night massacre in Kurukshetra. pressed outcasts whose lives mean cation in the royal sabha, it was her own that is the only place that this little for mahabharata’s aristocracy: the ‘terrifying divinity’. tormented, naked outlier searching for nishads, for instance, eklavya and the But it isn’t all philosophical ponder- death finds peace in Patil’s imagining—a hunter whose arrow kills Krishna in the ance; there are sassy sparks of humour shamshan bhoomi where the mortality end. she also creates space for the living that light up the book. ‘arjun had the play runs 24x7. its two dons, Langda ‘dummies’ who are burnt alive in the moves, but he was no dancer. he was a and Bhainga, get the funniest lines in the house of wax to fool the Kauravas—an technocrat.’ or hidimba energetically book. it is to them that ashwatthama episode we often give so little thought to. wooing Bheem: ‘You big sexy man, be narrates the story—of his birth as a But more than anything else, Sauptik mine.’ But above all else, there is Patil’s chiranjeev in Drona’s home and a childish reinterprets the women of mahabharata outstanding art —a mix, as she says in an taunt from his Pandava playmates that as vital beings, not pretty props who push interview to the Indian Express, of Roerich, sets off the whole sad saga. the narrative in critical directions. even Diego Rivera’s mexican muralism (thus Patil’s characters are not the cardboard the recognised ‘victim’ types have some the Frida Kahlo strains—Draupadi sports heroes and villains we know. Duryod- agency over their fate. Pritha, who will a unibrow), Kalighat influences and hana wasn’t always a bundle of seething answer no questions about the father of Rajasthan miniature paintings. there are also fabric swatches on collage pages, and the sequence with the gopis is simply Amruta Patil gorgeous. From one page to another, there is no telling what effect Patil will use in terms of colour, technique or visual interpretation to take her story forward. as the book ends, ashwatthama, in his burning misery, poses to Krishna a very basic question about his arch enemy, arjun, the man who gets all the taalis in the mahabharata: “what is so great about a man who can only see the left eye of a wooden bird when a glorious forest lies beyond?” what indeed. n
62 12 december 2016
poetry
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines When poets translate each other By Madhavankutty Pillai
hat is poetry?’—the unexpected was what her own language first session of the first day threw up. Like when she had to explain ‘Wbegins with a sucker punch. sati to the German poet translating her it is an unanswerable question and the work. it is a poem, the translation of sati German poet Jan Wagner, of whom this must also be one word. shafi shauq, has been asked, knows it. he demurs, the Kashmiri poet, argues that the good talks about how lifetimes are spent translator has to not shy away but even writing essays on it and then attempts force his ego onto the poem. he cites an answer: “expression of the greatest edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the possible freedom in the smallest possible Rubáiyát of omar Khayyám in which he space.” Neat and amorphous, but not changed it all. “Not just a re-creation, he Ulrike Almut Sandig; (right) really a definition. What if the poet uses kept in mind the ethos and then created Hendrik Jackson and Shafi Shauq ( blue t-shirt) at the poetry festival more than the smallest space? the next his own rubaiyat,” says shauq. the ego day in another session, as a young writer, bode well in this case. the rider is to have shubhangi swarup, who edits india’s ability like Fitzgerald’s. only Virtual reality magazine, talks about poetry mean to that protestor? Nothing. poetry in the digital age, she asks: “are iii “i would rather be part of the protest,” he words necessary for poetry?” Combine in times of conflict, poets who are says. Later, when asked why he assumes both points of view—the greatest pos- apolitical find words of resistance. But it that poetry would not mean anything to sible freedom in the smallest possible is also in the thrall of war that love poems those tribals, he qualifies that he meant space without words—and what have erupt, remembers the Mizo poet Dawngi the poetry of the elite. he is still searching you? something that looks suspiciously Chawngthu of the insurgency-ridden for that form that will touch; that voice like a mini canvas with abstract art. years of her state. Free spirited Mizo men which will turn poetry “into a weapon”. and women found themselves bound in ii curfews, unable to mix, and hence the iV the topic of discussion in which Wagner pining and hence the poetry. they are in Poetry on the Edge, arundhathi subra- gets asked the question is called Chal- talking the Poetry of Conflict and sajjad maniam, who is moderating, asks for the lenges of translation. the poetry festival, sharif, who is from Dhaka, mentions poets present to define the edge in what- organised by the Goethe-institut/Max the bloody years leading to Bangladesh’s ever way they want. she talks of how Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai, is the cul- independence and once, when seeing poets transgress, ignore, melt borders by mination of a project in which 51 south bodies float down a river, learning that instinct and quotes the ninth century asian and German poets translated each the gender could be deduced by whether tamil Vaishnava poet Nammalvar who other’s works in a series of interactions they faced the sky. But even before that, said that poets are so subversive that they over the last two years. one of the things when the liberation and the crushing of are not only capable of being eaten by they discuss in the session is whether dissent was in the air, poets who never god but also capable of eating god. “that only poets can translate poets and even wrote on politics suddenly became is the kind of danger that poets represent then the inevitable loss of the original. political. “We presuppose that there and have always represented,” says yashodhara ray Chaudhuri, the Bengali is something called a protest poet. But subramaniam. Later i look up the Nam- poet, speaks about experiencing her own every poet is a poet of conflict,” he says. malvar poem she is alluding to. i find it work in translation. “it is like seeing the Kedar Mishra, who is from odisha, asks online in a translation by ramanujam, shadow of the shadow,” she says. During rhetorically why would he write poetry the lines saying, ‘and i / by his leave / have the course of the project, she anticipated when tribals in his state are resisting taken him entire.’ on stage is also soma- hurdles from a foreign language but the the greed of the state. What would his sundrampillai ‘sopa’ pathmanathan, a
64 12 december 2016 in JNU speaking poems on revolution but never penning them down. or the mystic Kabir. While they are performing, a young man seated next to me starts snapping his fingers and i am irritated at this discourtesy. raj shekhar says that one of things that he loves about spoken poetry is the snapping of fingers—he compares it to the sound of a “thousand butterflies being set free”—and i realise that this is ritual. i feel old. i am old.
Vii and so on to The Possibilities of Poetry In the Digital Age where shubhangi had posed the question—Can there be poetry with- out words? those who wielded words might wield holograms and horizons inside Vr headsets. or they might not and there will still be a school boy typing ‘rses r rd’. Who knows? Does it even mat- sri Lankan tamilian who wrote through with some hubris that it is alright to ter? the Mizo poet, Lalnunsanga ralte, and survived the quarter century of civil go low if you are capable of going high. talks about his language discovering war, his poetry initially not conscious of and a consensus that much of the loss of writing just about 100 years ago but the borders but then the violence surround- integrity in today’s lyrics is the marketing digital age propelling his words through ing and politics drawing itself into his department’s doing. it occurs to me that blogs until he, who has not published a voice. Naseem shafaie, the Kashmiri maybe they should shift some onus to the single work on paper, had travelled the poet, too had a similar awakening. “First audience too. this up-down-up trajectory world with his poems. he knows of those i would deny that i was politically con- of poetry in hindi songs, if true, is also in who in their poems use images that never scious,” she says. surprised by their own keeping with who pays for hindi movie existed before, like the little green signal evolution, her words began to resonate tickets. in the 50s and 60s, the revenue signalling you are online in chats. peter the suffering of the land. drivers were the literate class; then in the Griffin talks of looking and not finding 70s, 80s and 90s, blue collars decided the community and so making one in the V golden jubilees; and now with the multi- popular online forum Caferati which ev- the mandatory Bollywood session has plexes, yuppies determine the taste. ery aspiring indian english poet over the filmmaker abbas tyrewala, lyricist last decade or so must have visited. there Kausar Munir and film historian akshay Vi are bots which can make villanelles, he Manwani talking on poetry and hindi at the discussion on The Rise of the says. i think when that bot writes a ‘Do movies. there is remembrance of the Spoken Poetry, there are three sombre po- Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’ is first great poets—shailendra, Kaifi azmi, ets talking in mild tones in German, eng- when poetry, as we know it, is over for hu- Majrooh sultanpuri and others—who lish and hindi, which are the languages man beings. Until then there is the young deigned to write lyrics in the 50s, 60s that rochelle D’silva, Ulrike almut sand- man in the audience who puts his hand and early 70s and those songs became ig and raj shekhar write in. towards the up when shubhangi asks for a poem that immortal. But then they got overtaken by end, as they recite, the transformation anyone would like to see in a Vr avatar. the demand of popular culture, perhaps a is sudden and sharp—eyebrows dance he says Tonight I can Write the Saddest necessary dumbing down that later, after wide and narrow to the rhythm of words, Lines by pablo Neruda. these poets had become aged or passed hands and fingers gesticulate, guttural What is the image that it evokes in away, went into abject deterioration in the noises emanate and mix with soothing you? she asks. 80s and 90s. But then in the last decade, lullabies; poems run towards songs, look- the italian countryside, he says. there was a resurgence of the middle- ing over without crossing. spoken poetry he has got it wrong, you think. Neruda brow in which even when silly, the lyrics is a relatively new popular form, but raj is from Chile, another country, another had deliberate design and rigour. think shekhar talks about the indian tradition continent. But there is also something Dam Dama Dam versus Tune Maari of poets to whom writing was alien. Like right and human in the arising from no- Entriyaan. the general thrust underlined ramashankar yadav Vidrohi, who lived thing of an image that calls itself italian. n
12 december 2016 www.openthemagazine.com 65 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US
RAJEEV MASAND
Dutt’s the Way the female lead opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Tanu Weds Ranbir Kapoor is gearing up to play Sanjay Dutt in Munna Manu director Aanand L Rai’s ‘dwarf movie’. The filmmaker Bhai series director Rajkumar Hirani’s biopic of the contro- is reportedly in advanced talks with the Piku star, but casting versial star, and those who’ve seen images from the look test announcements won’t be made for at least a few weeks. conducted for the film have been raving. Currently filming Padmavati with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, The big question—how do you make Ranbir look like Deepika is expected to take a few weeks off to promote her Dutt?—appears to have been tackled superbly by Hirani and Hollywood film withVin Diesel, xXx: Return of Xander Cage. his team of artistes who’ve skillfully employed prosthetics, The film is being prepped for release in India a whole week make-up, and hairstyling to transform the star into the much- ahead of its international release (on January 20th next year), older Dutt. Iconic looks of Dutt have been facsimiled by and in time with Diesel’s arrival in India. So Deepika has no Ranbir in a series of still images which he’s saved on his time to begin work on a new film anytime soon. Not that her mobile phone and which he’s excitedly been showing friends. co-star is sitting idle, twiddling his thumbs. There is also confirmation now thatSonam Kapoor will play Shah Rukh will wrap Imtiaz Ali’s film before he begins a small role in the film. It is unclear yet which of the many Rai’s project, but he’s already got his VFX team at Red Chillies women in Dutt’s life she is expected to portray, but there’s a working on his look and movements as a dwarf. He told me good chance she may have been roped in by Hirani to play recently that having suffered multiple injuries while filming Madhuri Dixit. Apparently, the film will feature three action scenes over the years, there is no question of shooting women who’ve had a considerable influence on the actor’s the movie on his knees, like Kamal Haasan famously did in life. But it’s the male characters who’re likely to have bigger Apoorva Sagodharagal. roles. Between his father Sunil Dutt, and one of the actor’s closest friends, the film will focus on Sanjay Dutt’s relation- Keeping It Casual ships with the men he has most leaned on. The latest hook-up rumours in Bollywood involve two young, good-looking stars who’ve been shooting an action movie to- Well Begun, Half Done gether. He, if the filmigrapevine is to be believed, has just bro- I have it on very good authority that it’s not Katrina Kaif but ken up with his on-off girlfriend; she has been single for some Deepika Padukone who’s been more or less locked to play time although rumours of her ‘closeness’ to a certain married producer don’t seem to die down. (She was announced as the leading lady in the producer’s new film, her fourth with him). The actors reportedly ‘became comfortable’ with each other during a long outdoor shooting schedule, and unit- waalas insist it’s purely a casual thing. “You know how some- times you’re so bored, you hook up because there’s literal- ly nothing better you could be doing with your time? That’s what seems to have happened here,” says an insider with knowledge of the affair. The same source adds that it’s unlike- ly the fling will develop into a relationship. “They seem to have no interest in each other besides the fact that each serves the other’s biological needs. And that’s not a bad thing. At least they’re honest enough to accept that.” Uh, ok. n
Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-NEWS18
66 12 december 2016